Maybe logging on to enjoy Republican explanations of "what went wrong"? Steve Hayward, of the Power Line blog, begins his recap
There is no way to sugar coat this pitiful Republican performance.
and then proceeds to sugar coat the pitiful performance. According to Hayward, it all has to do with parallels to the midterm election of 44 years ago:
We remember what happened two years after that dismal 1978 midterm. And while Joe Biden has to be reckoned a big winner yesterday, it means that in due course the big loser was . . . the Democratic party. . . .
I can guaranty you that there are many old-line Democrats who secretly hoped Democrats would get crushed, so they could ease Biden out and clean out the crazy progressives who have hijacked the party. Instead Democrats are certain to take their relative success as evidence that there is nothing wrong with their message or their policies. Let them persist in this view.
The Democrats have bad policies and a messaging problem? Let them persist in this view.
I love a good morning-after quip, and my favorite of this morning goes, predictably, to James Carville. Jon Ralston, whose name when it appears in print is generally followed by the phrase "dean of Nevada political reporters," has predicted that the state's Democratic incumbent US senator, Catherine Cortez Masto, who narrowly trails in her re-election bid, will pull through on the strength of untallied mail-in ballots from the Las Vegas area. When Carville in a TV interview this morning predicted the same thing, he was asked why he felt sure Cortez Masto would win, and he immediately replied: "When Jon Ralston says it's Easter, I dye my eggs."
I believe that, as of lunch time on the morning after, only one US Senate seat has switched hands. That's in Pennsylvania, where, as one would expect, the Republicans nominated for an open seat a horrible candidate: Mehmet Oz, a quaky TV doctor endorsed by Trump. It's not the biggest reason he's unfit to represent Pennsylvania, but Dr Oz lives in New Jersey. When last Saturday he was urging his supporters to get out the vote, he told them to talk to their neighbors—"Do it before the Steelers game tomorrow," he said.
The Steelers weren't playing. It was their bye week.
If only Dr Oz, who came to national prominence telling Oprah what poo should look like, was their absolute worst. They could still slip into the Senate majority by winning either Arizona or Nevada and then a run-off in Georgia. Not sure they should even hope for that, however, as it would raise the profile of their Senate candidate in the Peach State. Trump usually endorses people who are even more damaged than he is, which somewhat limits the pool, but in the person of Herschel Walker this box was checked.
I see that the House projection right now is that Republicans will win 220 seats, "plus or minus ten." Since 218 makes a majority, their chances are better than 50-50. For this, they can probably thank the Supreme Court of the Republican party:
Since January, judges in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Ohio have found that Republican legislators illegally drew those states' congressional maps along racial or partisan lines, or that a trial very likely would conclude that they did. In years past, judges who have reached similar findings have ordered new maps, or had an expert draw them, to ensure that coming elections were fair.
But a shift in election law philosophy at the Supreme Court, combined with a new aggressiveness among Republicans who drew the maps, has upended that model for the elections in November. This time, all four states are using the rejected maps, and questions about their legality for future elections will be hashed out in court later.
The immediate upshot, election experts say, is that Republicans will almost certainly gain more seats. . . .
David Wasserman, who follows congressional redistricting for the Cook Political Report, said that using rejected maps in the four states, which make up nearly 10 percent of the seats in the House, was likely to hand Republicans five to seven House seats that they otherwise would not have won.
So, if any Republican is thinking this morning that it could have been worse . . . yeah, sure, it could have been fair. To give credit where it's due, I haven't heard (yet) any defeated Republican blame the Communistic genies known to reside inside voting equipment.
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