2022 U.S. Congressional (and Other) Elections

[N.E. Brigand]

It's cute how Democratic leaders continue to imagine that voting is the solution vs. people who literally attempted a coup the last time they lost

Surely it has to be at least part and probably most of the solution? Democrats can't abandon democracy just because Republicans are doing so.

[Dave_LF]

Certainly not, but the "Republican" party should have been burned to the ground over 1/6 on day 1 of the Biden administration. New parties, third parties, and independents are welcome to participate in elections; traitors are not.

[Sunsilver]

I NEARLY put this in the WTF thread. It's so bad that fellow Republicans are begging this guy NOT to run!

@Team_Harbaugh/Twitter; @EricGreitens/Twitter
The Republican Party has nominated a group of seemingly unstable candidates for various political races around the country.

And in the case of Missouri, the GOP Senate nominee is downright disturbing. Eric Greitens—the Trump-backed former Governor of the state—actually resigned in 2018 amid horrifying allegations of sexual assault, abuse against his ex-wife and a raft of felony charges.

That was all before he created a campaign ad last month in which he, armed with an assault rifle, subtly called for violence against Republicans not aligned with the far-right and Trump's "Big Lie" accusations of 2020 election fraud.

He is currently polling far ahead of any potential GOP challenger in the Missouri Senate race. And Greitens' former friend and roommate, nonprofit executive and former Navy pilot Ken Harbaugh, is doing his damnedest to change that.

Harbaugh took to Twitter to post a video in which he calls Greitens a "broken man" and begs him to withdraw.

https://secondnexus.com/ken-harbaugh-er ... -306349101

[RoseMorninStar]

Good for Ken Harbaugh.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[N.E. Brigand]

The sad thing is that what Walker is saying in those two videos, though poorly expressed, is really just standard conservative talking points.

[N.E. Brigand]

Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee in Pennsylvania's gubernatorial race, apparently is paying the right-wing social media site Gab for followers: every new account there now automatically follows Mastriano's account. When a reporter contacted the company's anti-Semitic* CEO to ask about this, he replied as follows:

We're taking back this country for the glory of God and there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop us. We are playing the long game and unlike most of you, we have children and thus the future belongs to us because we are raising them up with a Biblical worldview.

Keep writing, you're only making us stronger and galvanizing support from the base. After six years you guys still don't get it and it's hilarious. Repent now and accept Jesus Christ in your heart. Every knee will bow, yours included.

God bless!

*One example of the CEO's anti-Semitism is his claim to be "building up a parallel Christian society because we are fed up and done with the Judeo-Bolshevik one." Another would be how he boasted about the number of visitors Gab received after the maniac who killed eleven people in 2018 at the Tree of Life synagogue (in Pittsburgh, i.e., in the state Mastriano seeks to lead!) was found to have been a frequent poster there. And yet Mastriano agreed to be interviewed by Gab's CEO and told him: "Thank God for what you have done."

[N.E. Brigand]

I agree with all the prognosticators who say Republicans have major advantages this year. The party that controls the White House almost always loses seats in Congress in the mid-term election, and it doesn't help that the President's approval numbers are bizarrely quite low. (I say "bizarrely"* because I think that by all measures except inflation -- which is a global issue -- the U.S. is better off now than it was at this point in Barack Obama's and Donald Trump's first terms.) However, in the Ohio and Pennsylvania senate races, the Democratic candidates have a surprising financial advantage at this time that's been driven by small donors:

Ohio:

Ahead of a Friday deadline covering April through June, [Republican Senate candidate J.D.] Vance reported having $628,000 in his campaign's bank account, after raising $1 million and spending $1 million while winning the brutal Republican primary in May. Three of Vance's affiliated committees also had around $1.5 million, but there are restrictions on how that money can be spent, so it may not completely be available for Vance to use in his race.

[Democratic Senate candidate Tim] Ryan, meanwhile, reported having $3.6 million in campaign cash and raising $8.6 million during the same time period, when Ryan won a much easier contest to secure the Democratic nomination. Before making his official filing, Ryan announced raising $9.1 million during the second quarter, including $500,000 he’d previously reported raising in a pre-primary report. ...

Ryan also built that cash lead while running $6 million in campaign ads and maintaining a busy slate of public appearances, compared to almost no advertising from Vance, who’s largely kept a low public profile. "I think legitimately he’s got to crank up his fundraising, and a lot of that's got to be national," said Terry Casey, a Columbus-based Republican strategist. "But clearly, they’re still digging out and recovering from the primary, because it was so nasty, twisted and dirty."

"It’s certainly got to be a wake-up call to the J.D. Vance campaign, because Tim Ryan is running circles around him right now," said an Ohio Republican strategist who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It’s early enough that Vance can be fine, but he’s got to be moving, and he’s got to start working. That’s all there is to it." ...

When it comes to fundraising, Vance could have an ace in the hole that also could be contributing to his early money problems: Peter Thiel, the right-wing Silicon Valley billionaire who largely single-handedly funded Vance’s winning primary campaign. Despite not raising or spending nearly as much money as the other Republican candidates during the primary race, Vance was able to effectively outsource much of his campaign operations to Protect Ohio Values, a Super PAC to which Thiel gave $15 million. Thiel’s contributions likely were the largest donation by a single donor for a single race in Ohio political history.

Pennsylvania:

Fueled by a massive advantage in donations from those who gave less than $200, Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman [a Democrat] heavily out-raised Republican Mehmet Oz from late April through the start of July, entering the opening act of the general election for U.S. Senate with a significant cash advantage.

Mr. Fetterman's total haul from individuals and committees, according to campaign finance reports due to the Federal Election Commission on Friday, checked in at $9.9 million. Mr. Oz, the cardiothoracic surgeon and TV celebrity, brought in $1.1 million, closing the gap a bit by loaning his campaign another $2.2 million.

As the calendar turned to July, Mr. Fetterman had five times as much cash on hand as Mr. Oz, at a total of $5.5 million to $1.1 million. ...

The gap between the candidates in small-dollar donations this past quarter was widest. Mr. Fetterman, from April 28 to June 30, raised $5.1 million from those who gave less than $200, while Mr. Oz got $153,000. The Fetterman campaign said last week that 69% of its donations this period came from new donors.

The Ohio and Pennsylvania are both currently held by retiring Republicans. In the past two presidential elections, the Republican candidate won Ohio by about 8.1%; in Pennsylvania, the Republican candidate won in 2016 by 0.7% and lost in 2020 by 1.2%.

*Edited to add links to this essay in the Atlantic about "weirdlfation" (i.e., "jobs are booming, but growth is falling; consumer sentiment is the worst in 60 years, but restaurants, airplanes, and theaters are full.") and this editorial in the Washington Post about how the media's attempt to 'balance" its 2017-2020 coverage of Donald Trump's presidency is causing them to cast Joe Biden's presidency in an excessively negative light.

[N.E. Brigand]

Ohio's Supreme Court has again ruled that the Republican-drawn Congressional districting plan for Ohio violates the state's constitution (which voters amended a few years ago to require fair maps), but because the Republicans have repeatedly ignored the court's deadlines and Ohio has already run the 2022 primaries, it won't matter until 2024 even if a fair map is eventually drawn (which is unlikely).

[Dave_LF]

Much of the world seems to be suffering under a deluge of political candidates who suffer from criminal insanity, but some are insane in more pedestrian ways:
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/feigcat

[RoseMorninStar]

[elengil]

Oh yay. Look what we all have to look forward to.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/15/politics ... index.html

House Republicans are plotting revenge on the select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection, as the GOP weighs a broader effort to re-litigate some of Donald Trump’s biggest election grievances if it recaptures the House majority.

[N.E. Brigand]

NPR has new reporting on the Trump administration's efforts -- foiled by the courts and their own ineptitude -- to add a citizenship question to the decennial census with the intention of undercounting segments of the population so as to favor Republican redistricting and thus the elections from 2022 through 2030. As bad as the redistricting has been for Democrats, it could have been worse still, and the newly-revealed documents make it clear that was the goal.

[N.E. Brigand]

It's funny, but do ads like this actually move voters?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I don't know, but I found it very effective. But then, I'm neither a Pennsylvania voter nor a typical voter of any kind. Still, I'm going to say that yes, it might be more effective than most political ads.

[N.E. Brigand]

75% of Americans don't even know that Congress passed a massive ($550 billion) infrastructure bill eight months ago, according to this report in Politico, where you can read that "its passage was overshadowed by Democratic infighting over an entirely different piece of Biden’s agenda". I would argue that reporters have a choice about which stories are more important and which should be "overshadowed."

This very article quotes a member of Congress saying that Democrats didn't do enough to inform voters about the bill before it goes on to say: "While House Democrats collectively held over 1,000 events to promote the bill, the polling shows it didn’t resonate with most people." Again, I think the media has to take some of the blame here. When voters are told about the law, 80% of them approve of it. And obviously Democrats have been telling voters: 1,000 events! The problem is that the media doesn't consider that to be news.

[N.E. Brigand]

Congressman Madison Cawthorn, the controversial Republican from North Carolina, has narrowly been defeated in today's primary by challenger State Senator Chuck Edwards. I wonder if Cawthorn will remain in Congress through the end of his term.

Today Rep. Cawthorn posted a bizarre and perhaps Anti-Semitic message on Instagram that concludes as follows:

"I am on a mission now to expose those who say and promise one thing yet legislate and work towards another, self-profiteering globalist goal. The time for gentile politics as usual has come to an end. It's time for the rise of the new right, it's time for Dark MAGA to truly take command. We have an enemy to defeat, but we will never be able to defeat them until we defeat the cowardly and weak members of our own party. Their days are numbered. We are coming."

At first I thought "gentile politics" was a typo for "gentle politics," but given that it seems to be contrasted with "self-profiteering globalist," I wonder.

Business Insider reports that Rep. Cawthorn "failed to properly disclose up to $950,000 in cryptocurrency trades, including 'Let's Go Brandon' coin, bitcoin, and ethereum."

Madison Cawthorn's campaign has yet to file its financial report with the Federal Election Commission for the second quarter of 2022; that filing was due a week ago. A new report in the Daily Beast suggests that the reason is that "Cawthorn’s campaign ended in a financial collapse, covering costs with donor money it wasn’t allowed to touch unless he won the primary . . . he owes donors hundreds of thousands, but he’s broke."

[N.E. Brigand]

House Democrats were smart to hold a vote this week on whether the right to contraception should be protected. All Democrats voted for it. An overwhelming majority of Republicans voted against it. And the Republicans' constituents are now confused:



And there is other news (largely out of anyone's control, although I think Pres. Biden is doing what he can) that could help Democrats in November:



Exposing unpopular Republican positions is important. Improvement to economic factors is important. While events like these are unlikely to be sufficient to help Democrats keep control of Congress this year, they may soften the blow.

[N.E. Brigand]

Congressman Lee Zeldin, a Republican from New York, is challenging the state's current Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul.

Zeldin was attacked at a campaign event two days ago. The attack was roundly condemned by Hochul and other public figures including President Biden.

There is much outrage on the right that the attacker was subsequently released. They claim this is the results New York's recent reform of bail laws.

In this case, the attacker was charged not with assault but with attempted assault. It's true that New York law does not allow for defendants to be held on that charge.

But it gets weirder. The attacker, an Iraq War veteran who has struggled with alcoholism, says he didn't know who Zeldin was. He says someone told him that Zeldin had made disrespectful remarks about veterans, so he approached Zeldin to take away the microphone. The weapon he is said to have used to attack Zeldin is a plastic cat-shaped object that some people have described as a key chain; the ears are pointy, perhaps enough so that they could break the skin.

And it gets weirder still! The district attorney who chose not to charge the attacker with a violent felony is the local chair of Zeldin's campaign. She is generally considered to be tough on crime. And yet, even before the attacker was charged, Zeldin predicted that he would be "instantly released." And Zeldin is now saying that "New York's cashless bail law MUST be repealed."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

And it gets weirder still! The district attorney who chose not to charge the attacker with a violent felony is the local chair of Zeldin's campaign. She is generally considered to be tough on crime. And yet, even before the attacker was charged, Zeldin predicted that he would be "instantly released." And Zeldin is now saying that "New York's cashless bail law MUST be repealed."

I literally am unable to respond to this, other than to highlight it again.