Just a reminder – if we do get blown out tonight, after the President’s party suffered stinging rebukes in the ’82, ’94 and ’10 mid-terms, the President went on to be comfortably re-elected two years later. Also, if we lose tonight, we still have the White House, the Senate (almost certainly, unless there is an unexpected Blue Tsunami) with an increased majority and a solid, 5-4 majority on the Court. We’re still ahead of the game. Though, don’t kid yourself: losing will be bad in the sense that it will embolden the Democrats…though that, long term, could work to our advantage. They are crazy, after all, and two years of them being nuts as a House majority might work to our advantage in 2020.
Rumors have been flying all day, as is natural during Election Day. I can’t make out any pattern…some rumors are good for the GOP, others for the Democrats. I guess we’ll have to wait. But not much longer.
UPDATE: 8pm Eastern…not looking good for the GOP tonight.
UPDATE II: 8:41 Eastern…looking a lot better.
UPDATE III: GOP wins IN Senate race (thanks, Spook)
Blogs For Victory 
Well, I did my part in Indiana, Mark. What happened to Heller? He was leading when I went to bed.
I was actually surprised that Braun won in Indiana, and especially by the margin. He didn’t run a great campaign. I’d have to say that the better explanation is that Donnelly lost. He ran a two-pronged campaign with surrogates calling Braun every name in the book and making outrageous claims about Braun’s business that were either not true or were taken grossly out of context, while at the same time Donnelly’s personal ads tried to make it sound like he was Trump’s best friend. Based on the outcome I’d say it backfired big time. The nasty PAC ads turned off voters in the middle, and the “I voted with Trump 62% of the time” personal ads turned off his base.
It looks like the conventinal wisdom was pretty close, a 3-4 seat pickup in the Senate for Republicans and a 25-30 seat pickup for the Dems in the House. The turnout was historic, which is a good thing for the health of our Republic, regardless of which side you’re on.
I fully expect House Dems to overreach come January and remind everyone what a bunch of dicks they are. I’d be shocked if they actually give anyone reason to keep them in power in 2020.
The vile, vicious and despicable Dem ads in Colorado worked, however. The Colorado GOP is so impotent, so helpless, so floppy, it simply cannot address things like this.
My question to the new governor and Representative is how, or even IF, they can run vile, vicious, dishonest and despicable campaigns without being seen as vile, vicious, dishonest and despicable.
Two years ago Colorado had a weak incumbent, Michael Bennett. I sent his opponent a thousand dollars to kick off his campaign—-a good man, a veteran, a successful black businessman. And from then on, I literally sometimes forgot the name of the Republican candidate. It WAS that bad. His “campaign” was to go on local radio talk shows. It had to have been the worst campaign ever run. The reliably Leftist Denver Post characterized Bennett’s campaign as “despicable” and we now have four more years of an inept, incompetent, placeholder for the Dems, when he could have been beaten.
This year at least the Republicans had some TV ads, weak and feeble as they were, but they were helpless in the face of the avalanche of lies and personal attacks mounted by the Dems. The Colorado GOP just whimpered and hid behind the couch.
If Donald Trump had let the national GOP run his campaign, we would be talking about President Clinton right now.
The GOP effort was feeble here in Nevada, too, and it got the logical result: the GOP got crushed. We’ve been Californicated!
And there is no reason for it. The Dems set themselves up time after time, and we miss our chances.
When Dems focus on Identity Politics, which is what they always do and what they have to do, they open the door for good ads pointing out that people need to look past the hyperbole to the actual POLITICAL SYSTEM the Dem in question is representing.
I guarantee this will get you a “HUH???” Ask a Dem why he or she voted for so-and-so and you will get some simpering “Well, I am for gay marriage…” or some other issue. When you say “but your candidate’s office has no authority over gay marriage” you get the “HUH?” again. Whassat? Political system? Huh?
We absolutely have to start defining and explaining the political system of the Left, in simple terms even a Dem can understand, and basic enough that the Left can’t deny it and can only try to defend it.
I am working with a couple of kids, 11 and 13, and the other day they asked me something about politics. I just said that the Left is all about a very powerful Central Authority that takes control over almost everything and everyone in the country, and the Right wants a smaller federal government with authority closer to home, with the states and the people, and more personal decisions and freedom. The kids understood it, and when I had dinner with the family that night they could explain it, in those simple terms.
I truly believe if the national GOP had a coherent long range plan, with ads ready to go, we could address every single Leftist claim quickly. When Candidate D claims that his R opponent did such-and-such we should hit back within hours with an ad that asks why Candidate D is making personal attacks and accusations and then point out that it is because he does not want people to pay attention to the political system he is supporting and will continue to promote if he is elected—-centralized power, reduced local authority, and unlimited expansion of the federal government. Don’t pay attention to what he says about anything BUT the core principles and agendas of the system he represents.
We should have an ad campaign that runs between election cycles, about corruption in Washington and politics in general—just 30 seconds pointing out that corruption follows power, and when we allow so much power to be concentrated in one place we set up the conditions for corruption—-which is why Republicans want more authority returned to and kept in the states, according to the Constitution, so power is distributed throughout the country. It’s a simple message. It could even be restated to eliminate the reference to Republicans. But it should be heard over and over again, for two years before the next election. We should have several versions of it, and slot them into every day of TV viewing.
Alternate this with 15-second slots showing the text of the 10th Amendment, with it being read by someone people like, like Clint Eastwood or Tom Selleck.
We constantly address the superficial in our politics, and the fact is, the Left OWNS superficial. It is their natural habitat. And that is where and why they succeed. If we can plant IDEAS in the interim, they will start to influence election decisions or at least how to process election ads. They would lay the foundation for election cycle ads telling people to look beyond the hyperbole to the actual political system it supports.
But we won’t. We will sit around pissing and moaning and then next time around we will let the Left set the tone, lay out the narrative, and then feebly whimper that we don’t agree. But never be able to say why.
I’m in a tough spot. My gender is an embarrassment and my political party is a mess.
Hey, 59% of white women voted Cruz in Texas…and, wow, are liberals pissed about that!
But, you’re right – and our problem here is the liberal’s control of pop culture. They do insert their idiocy every chance they get. The learned it from the Communist stooges in Hollywood back in the 30’s and 40’s, who inserted Stalinism, even if just an ounce, into each and every script they could get their hands on. The most innocuous article about how to bake cookies or what the Fall fashions are can be used as a vehicle…this is why Glen Reynolds has been for years calling on money bag GOPers to buy up things like women’s magazines and such. Just a few puff pieces about Melania in such magazines would probably mean an extra point or two for Trump in 2020. It shouldn’t work that way, but it does.
We have to do what we must to gain power – and then reduce that power to the point where who wins a national election becomes unimportant. And to do that, we’re going to have to learn carefully how the Democrats do it, and then duplicate it.
Mixed results but we still have the Senate which means trade deals and the courts ….. let’s hope RBG retires.
I fully expect House Dems to overreach come January and remind everyone what a bunch of dicks they are.
hahaha I think you can count on that.
Yeah, they’ll act like that. And the meek and mute GOP will miss every chance to step up and say to Dems “THIS is how you want to be represented? THIS is how you want to be seen?”
One nice thing about a divided Congress is the fact that it’ll help keep their mitts out of our wallets.
Trump is already playing Pelosi tweeting out that she “deserves to be the Speaker”
This ought to be fun watching Trump play with a Democrat House.
Can’t you just see Trump pulling the Lucy and the football prank over and over on House Democrats?
Yes I can ….. Trump is going to drive them nuts and he will have fun doing it ….
One real bright spot in my own back yard; my Congressman, Jim Banks (R – Indiana 3rd District), who also happens to be a personal friend, handily defeated his Bernie Sanders acolyte opponent, Courtney Tritch 65% to 35%.
There’s been a lot of talk over the last couple years about how divided the GOP is, while the Democrats have managed to stay united. I think that scenario is about to be flipped 180 degrees. Pelosi says impeachment is off the table, and yet exit polls showed 41% of people who voted yesterday, the majority of whom are most likely Democrat, want Trump impeached.
One of the downsides to this election from a Conservative standpoint is the fact that far Left radicals came within a whisker of winning governships in Georgia and Florida and U.S. Senate races in Texas and Arizona, all fairly conservative states. That does not bode well for the future.
Democrats did put out maximum effort yesterday – but the payoff was relatively small. The bottom line, as we’ve all said, is that the first mid-term of a President is always rough on his party. But yesterday’s House losses were in no way out of the ordinary and other Presidents did vastly worse. Notably Obama and Clinton. There was bound to be a bit of snap-back after the GOP wins of 2014 and 2016. Lets be glad it wasn’t worse.
For the future, I think our best bet is to become even more Populist Conservative. For my Nevada, my suggestion is that we GOPers go, hat in hand, to the private sector unions and start to make better deals for them than the Democrats are offering. Not, of course, to the union leadership – which is Democrat to the bone – but to the regular working folks. Find ways and means to show them that in the battle between Worker and Casino, we’re on the Worker’s side. Democrats hammered relentlessly on health care costs (absurd, I know, as the costs are their fault) and won…we need to find a way to speak to that. Also, the GOP in NV did a partial 180 from being mostly Never Trump to saying kind things about him…people don’t like flip floppers. Now that we’ve neatly been relieved of such, for 2020 let’s get some Trumpsters running for office. Also – the GOP didn’t even run a candidate in my purple Assembly district…that sort of stuff has to stop. Run a candidate for every office, every election.
I’m a little surprised by this.
Kinda shoots down my theory that Trump and Sessions have been working quietly together behind the scenes to coordinate a massive series of indictments of the actual bad actors n the political arena/deep state during the last couple years.
I’ve been back and forth on that theory, as well – and my guess is that Sessions, after his very silly mistake of recusal, simply couldn’t bring himself to ride herd on Mueller’s increasingly idiotic investigation. Now, Sessions is out…and Rosenstein is no longer the point man at Justice for Mueller. I’m thinking that if Mueller doesn’t quickly shut it down, it’ll be shut down. And I’m wondering if the Acting AG will let Mueller write the final report, or whether he’ll assign himself that task?
Trump, I think, is getting ready for some exercise of raw, Presidential power…and I think that if the Democrats do carry out their threat of endless investigation, they’re going to find that the subpoena power of the House is nothing compared to the prosecutorial power of Justice.
I wouldn’t call it a “theory” as much as wishful thinking.