I have this habit, both good and bad depending on your point of view, of being a “tab hoarder”. I just don’t open up a few tabs for posts that I would LIKE to comment on – I have a lot. Right now, probably well over 800. I keep deluding myself that “I’ll get to them…someday”. Problem is, if all I ever did was use those, I wouldn’t have quite as many. Problem is, I’m doing exactly how I describe the writers/Groksters – we are all political activists that happen to have a blogsite. I get involved in local politics and report on them. After all, if it is happening in my town/area, it’s also happening in yours if well (even if the topic is a bit different – same kinds of people, same tactics).
So, this is an “aggregate” post so I can start devolving myself from bunches of stuff that were interesting to me at the time so you might as well. Or not. Almost all of them are going to be about folks who have written about the election results on the Republican side of things: what went wrong, who to hold accountable/blame, rant, observations, comment “rationally”, or something else. Of COURSE, we here at GraniteGrok have already “been at it” (especially Ed), so read/re-read them. Reformatted, emphasis mine:
- SHOCKER! WaPo Update About Mar-A-Lago Raid Doesn’t Fit the Narrative
…Remember when the FBI raided Trump’s home supposedly looking for “nuclear secrets” a few months back? Guess how that turned out?
Federal agents and prosecutors have come to believe former president Donald Trump’s motive for allegedly taking and keeping classified documents was largely his ego and a desire to hold on to the materials as trophies or mementos, according to people familiar with the matter. In other words, Trump was keeping souvenirs, as everyone else does. That review has not found any apparent business advantage to the types of classified information in Trump’s possession, these people said. FBI interviews with witnesses so far, they said, also do not point to any nefarious effort by Trump to leverage, sell or use the government secrets.
- Let the Blame Games Begin?
Who or what was responsible for the Republican nationwide collapse in the midterms? After all, pundits, politicos, and pollsters all predicted a “red tsunami.” Given such high Republican expectations, the blame game for the loss is as strident and confusing as was the election itself. Here are some of the most common targets of criticism.
- Abolish ‘Voting Season’ and Bring Back Election Day
Returns are not counted for days. It is intolerable for a modern democracy to wait and wait for all sorts of ballots both cast and counted under radically different and sometimes dubious conditions. The Democrats – with overwhelming media and money advantages – have mastered these arts of massive and unprecedented early, mail-in, and absentee voting. Old-fashioned Republicans count on riling up their voters to show up on Election Day. But it is far easier to finesse and control the mail-in ballots than to ‘get out the vote.’
- Video: Kamala Said The Quiet Part Out Loud About The Voter Base That Won Them The Midterms
In the video clip, Harris says: “What else do we know about this population, 18 through 24? They are stupid. That is why we put them in dormitories. And they have a resident assistant. They make really bad decisions.” Kamala said the quiet part out loud. She admitted that only stupid people can vote for their agenda!
When President Joe Biden touted the Democrats’ better-than-expected performance in the midterms, he had a special shout-out for young voters: “I especially want to thank the young people of this nation, who I’m told — I haven’t seen the numbers — voted in historic numbers again,” Biden said, “just as they did two years ago.” He wasn’t alone. Other Democrats have praised young voters for helping the party avoid being crushed by a “red wave.” The role of Gen Z and young millennials was crucial.
Young people, when they turn out, seem to strongly favor Democrats — making them a decisive voting bloc that can determine who wins in key races across the country.
- Don’t Blame Gen Z for Voting Democrat, Blame the People Who Told Them To
Something uncharacteristic happened during the 2022 elections in that the youth actually put its money where its mouth was and turned out to vote. Historically, you could count on Gen Z to do a lot of screaming and yelling about politics but then absolutely fail to turn up at polling locations. This year, they switched it up and came out in force and one in three was voting Democrat. According to pollster John Della Volpe noted, Gen Z was the dam that stopped the red wave.
Life after Trump. “We can talk about cheating and the fix being in and mail-in votes. We can go on and on about the deep state and the media. We can spend months in denial but the fact is, Americans do not want Donald John Trump to be their president. He did not save the Republican Party. He spent it. . . . I really wanted Trump to come back but I just don’t see it. He’s damaged goods, done in by Barack Obama and the FBI and the Washington media. Chuck Schumer warned Trump on TV two weeks before his inauguration, ‘You take on the intelligence community? They have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you.’ That is evil. That is unfair. That is the world we live in, for like Sarah Palin, our enemies turned Trump into an albatross. He came so close to bringing Washington down that they now will destroy him, ruin his children and salt his fields because he threatened them.”
- The biggest winner of election 2022 was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“The biggest winner of election 2022 was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Four years ago, he carried Florida 50%-49%, by just 32,000 votes, and he has been under repeated attack by the national press for his policies on COVID, concentrating on protecting the elderly and insisting on open schools and outdoor activities, and for a bill forbidding overt sexual material in kindergarten through third grade. His mettle was tested when Hurricane Ian attacked southwest Florida on Sept. 28 at a point not predicted by meteorologists (weather experts have improved greatly in recent decades but aren’t perfect). He got the Pine Island bridge repaired within three days and the Sanibel Island bridge repaired in three weeks rather than the predicted three months. He didn’t just promise to build things — he delivered. This year, DeSantis won reelection by 19 points, a 1,506,000-vote margin, in the state that George W. Bush carried in 2000 by a 537-vote margin after 35 days of recounts and litigation.”
- This Explains the Lack of a Red Wave More Than Anything Else.
All the fundamentals were in the Republicans’ favor, yet while the GOP is still on track to win the majority in the House and maybe eke out a 51-seat majority in the Senate, the red wave many of us were expecting didn’t happen. There are many theories about why the elections played out as they have. Many believe it was a lack of quality candidates, or the issue of abortion, or even Donald Trump. But on Wednesday, Tucker Carlson of Fox News offered his explanation for the Republican Party’s dismal midterm election results despite a favorable environment — and it makes perfect sense.
“[T]he mechanics of an election. They matter. In fact, they matter sometimes more than any individual running in the election. The way people vote makes a big difference to the outcome,” he explained.
Indeed – Getting voters to vote matters. For decades the Democrats have their “constant campaign” and their year ’round Get Out The Vote efforts. I’ve complained to Republicans for over a decade that the Rs don’t. This year, I’m blaming NH GOP Chair Stepanek and Tucker. Fall on your swords. And your replacement better take note. Same message to the subsidiary Committees (County, City, Town) as well. Well, let’s keep going – with the blunt Sara Hoyt:
We’ll open by quoting Wy Knot from The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, by way of an opening: Oh, you ROCKHEADS. You DESERVE TO STARVE! I’ve been wanting to say that for a day and a half. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get something else out of the way.
So, I [Ian Bruene] think this is my distillation of lessons from the midterms (written as speaking to a generic audience):
- Iowa and Florida did the hard work to clean up voting. They had blowout victories.
- Guam doesn’t have voting power. Thus not worth frauding. They had a blowout victory.
- Iowa had tons of abortion, reeeeeee campaigning. The result was to turn redder.
From that we can make some conclusions:
- It’s the fraud. Anyone who is taking the abortion talking point can kindly stuff it.
- It’s the fraud. If you aren’t interested in doing the hard local work to clean it up, you aren’t interested in winning.
- We have a mild win. Why are y’all casting it as the defeat to end all defeats? I don’t care how much of a losing fetish you have. If you must indulge it hire a dominatrix and do it in private.
To this I’d add two notes: there are contests still undecided. By doing the normal GOP and GOPe bullshit of going “Oh, this is perfectly legit with just a bit of fraud” you are ensuring those contests are frauded dem. And that we lose the Senate.
- Jen Psaki Casually Admits That Dems Peddle Socialism
After many polls had already closed on Tuesday night, former Biden administration press secretary Jen Psaki implied that Democrats support socialism. Democrats lost a huge amount of Latino support in Florida because “socialism does not play there,” Psaki tweeted, saying “the Latino vote is not the same everywhere.”
We may not have this here in New Hampshire NOW but you wait – if the Dems take the NH House via recounts, you can be sure they will be trying to enact it:
- Republicans need to figure out mail-in voting: It’s being used by Democrats to influence the course of elections.
What was the determinative fix in the 2022 midterm elections? Early, mostly mail-in, voting. It is perfectly legal. But it undermines a fair and open electoral process. Were I a Democrat, I might even say that it “threatens our democracy.” Why? Because it allows for the wholesale manipulation of the vote. It also dilutes the integrity of an election by transforming it from an event into a process.
I should add that “mail-in ballots” is an equivocal term. It can mean different things in different contexts and in different states. The practice is obviously open to more interference and manipulation than same-day voting is. So extra safeguards must be put in place and scrupulously followed if such interference and manipulation is to be avoided. Some states do this. Florida is a good example. Other states do not. Apparently, about 1.4 million people asked for mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania. Around the same number voted early by mail in Arizona, compared to just shy of half a million on Election Day. Were all such ballots carefully checked to ascertain the identity and eligibility of the person casting the vote?
…The real issue is that the wholesale practice of early or mail-in voting makes a mockery of elections.
Another Democrat trope just vanished – it was ALWAYS just a Democrat meme to get out their voters even as they KNEW it was a lie.
- The Other Imaginary Red Wave
We have been through this hysteria before. Predictions of right-wing violence are now a standard feature of Democratic rhetoric. In the lead-up to January 6, 2022 (the one-year anniversary of the 2021 Capitol riot), the media, politicians, and the Biden national-security apparatus warned that “domestic violent extremists” were likely to strike again. Washington, D.C., was reportedly on edge in anticipation of the MAGA rebels. As it turned out, January 6, 2022, was notable only for the maudlin theatrics of newly patriotic Democrats, who softly sang “God Bless America” in a candlelight vigil on the Capitol steps, as calm engulfed them.
During the previous year, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security had issued regular warnings about election-denying terrorism. The summer of 2021, August 2021, September 2021—all provoked a satisfying increase in alerts and in precautionary barricades and bollards. And still, the right-wing terrorists did not strike.
And we never do.
- White House Report Card: National division is a win for Biden
This week’s White House Report Card finds President Joe Biden leading what now appears to be a permanently divided nation. Despite his promises of unity, voters this week stuck with their team, the Republicans unable to bring over enough independents and Democrats to prove that their message and that of MAGA are dominant and liberals holding on with the help of single women and younger voters.
- IN OUR SYSTEM, YOU GOTTA GET THE VOTES WHERE YOU NEED THEM:
People didn’t show up where people needed to show up to flip races. Oh, they showed up elsewhere. You’ll hear about the “national popular vote,” the total number of votes cast for each party. Republicans received almost 52 million votes, Democrats only around 47 million. It’s an interesting stat that means absolutely nothing.
For the past few cycles, Democrats were roundly mocked by conservatives for citing how they’d won the NPV, as they should have been, so it can’t be a source of comfort now. Everyone knows where the votes are needed. If the candidates, campaigns, and party can’t work within that reality they deserve to lose.
Well. Plus: “That being said, the real problem for Republicans was Lindsey Graham. The senior Senator from South Carolina, for reasons known only to him, decided to introduce a nationwide 15-week abortion ban in September. Think what you will of the concept, it was a stupid strategic move.”
Extremely so. And it didn’t hurt for the Democrats having this TREMENDOUS “bait and switch” for the Gen Z-ers:
- Biden’s illegal student-loan bailout bought off Gen Z — and staved off a red wave
Republicans are not so giddy, to say the least. When analyzing what went wrong, the GOP shouldn’t overlook how President Joe Biden blatantly bribed some young voters to save him from the red wave — and they don’t even need the cash.
That’s right: The kids actually did show up to vote this time around. Per the Edison Research National Election Pool’s exit polling, 27% of eligible voters aged 18 to 29 cast ballots. That makes this the second-highest youth turnout in a midterm in nearly 30 years. And Edison estimates that in key competitive states, the youth turnout was even higher, around 31%.
It’s amusing that the Democrats keep kvetching that low income Republican never vote their “self-interest” by voting for Democrats. What, getting your student debt wiped out ISN’T in their self-interest? But the Dems lied – they knew it would never happen just like the “right-wing violence” they are always using to dupe voters. They knew that the court system would kill it – but as former US Senate President Harry Reid (D-Nevada) said about his lying from the Senate well that Romney didn’t pay his taxes during the Presidential race – “it worked” as planned (Romney, as if I had to remind you, lost to Obama).
You know, like GAC Commissioners Douglas Lambert and Jade Wood kept saying that Gunstock would close forever. They led the low information voters on, too, just like the Democrat Citizens for Belknap PAC wanted.
- Rays of Hope (abstracted)
- Gridlock in Washington.
- Republicans drew many more votes than Democrats.
- Republicans won every age group over 30. Of course, we got clobbered among young people. But at least we know where we need to concentrate our efforts.
- Republicans made substantial gains with minorities.
- The Democrats can’t get men to vote for them.
- The Democrats can’t rely on abortion forever. Can they? I think it is fair to say that Dobbs, while correct, cost Republicans the election….
- Goodbye, Trump.
In my view, the strangest thing about the midterm election is how rigidly it preserved the status quo.
- Michael Savage Suggests ‘Enemy Within’ GOP Doomed Midterms with Timing of Roe Ruling
- The Modern Electioneering Process of “Ballot Submission Assistance” is Taking Center Stage
If CTH had a small part in helping people to reset their reference points around modern electioneering, well, that’s a good thing. The difference between “ballots” and “votes” is previously explained {SEE HERE} and absolutely critical to understand before moving forward. Thankfully a large percentage of conservatives, intellectually honest independents and even some establishment republican donors have read our research and are now starting to have the ‘votes‘ vs ‘ballots‘ conversation. That understanding is critical, because any conversation that does not accurately identify and accept the problem is futile.
In Senator Mitch McConnell’s infamous quote on candidate quality, Adam Laxalt, the GOP challenger to Catherine Cortez Masto still makes for a Trump-endorsed outlier. The fact is, he almost won, he could have won, and it proves he wasn’t a bad candidate, although I’m willing to argue Captain Sam Brown, who got fleeced in the primary, would have done better. And, Masto proponents knew it. Insiders know of instances where Democrats concerned with losing the vulnerable Masto seat re-registered as Republicans to cast votes for Laxalt in the primary, afraid to face Captain Sam Brown. I know it happened, I was told so as a boast by a contact close to Masto’s campaign. My response was, “Doesn’t that violate the spirit of the closed primary?” Of course, it does. They just don’t care.
- There’s Plenty Of GOP Blame To Go Around, But One Person Deserves More Than Others
Well, that sucked. And the hits keep on coming. One of the favorite pastimes of the political class is finger-pointing – when a candidate bombs the fingers come out, mostly because the alternative would be to take some responsibility themselves. In the case of the 2022 election, there is plenty of blame to go around as there was a whole lot of feces hitting a very powerful fan. Pretty much everyone got hit with their share of splatter. Trump supporters blame Mitch McConnell, and non-Trump supporters blame Trump. But where does most of the blame belong? Honestly, everywhere…That being said, the real problem for Republicans was Lindsey Graham…
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