Karma Police, arrest this man,
He talks in math, he buzzes like a fridge
He’s like a detuned radio
Karma Police, arrest this girl
Her Hitler hairdo is makin’ me feel ill
And we have crashed her party
-Radiohead, “Karma Police”
This is where we are after Election Day Tuesday.
In the House, several races, mainly in California, have yet to be called, yet because of Florida (see below) and surprisingly, New York, Republicans have made enough gains that they will probably get the chamber. But they probably won’t have a double-digit margin and might not get a net gain at all.
In the Senate:
Georgia has to be set aside for the moment because even though incumbent Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock is leading, he has less than 50 percent of the vote, and so the race is going to a runoff by Georgia state rules, just like Warnock had the last time. And yeah, liberals, let’s boo the Libertarian candidate for even existing, but you would have had a similar result if he wasn’t there. The real problem is that anybody would vote for Herschel Walker in the first place.
Ron Johnson has just won his race in Wisconsin, so the Senate is back to 48-48.
The Alaska race is ranked-choice, but the two leading candidates are both Republican, being, Trumpnik Kelly Tshibaka and the incumbent (relatively moderate) Lisa Murkowski. So the Senate is still at least 49 seats Republican, it’s just a question of how much of a Trumpnik the Alaska Senator is.
So now it comes down to- Arizona and Nevada. Where they’ve already said it’s going to take several days because of the way everything is counted. But this is how the Church of Trump can make a case that everything is Rigged and Stolen. Professional liars know how to conceal their poison in a coating of truth, and the reason they can say the system is rigged is because some election systems really are complicated and obscure. Right now in Nevada at least we’re waiting on a bunch of mail-in votes, some of which legally cannot be counted until Saturday, and that’s the only hope that incumbent Senator Catherine Cortez Masto has against Adam Laxalt.
Republicans now need both Arizona and Nevada to secure a majority. The most likely result at the moment is that Cortez Masto loses to Laxalt (fuck) and incumbent Senator Mark Kelly holds out against Trumpnik Blake Masters. That then makes it Democrats 49, Republicans 50. If Warnock then wins the Georgia runoff it goes back to a tie, which is where we were, and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris means Democrats keep control of the Senate. If Democrats keep both those seats, it’s a Democratic majority whether Warnock wins or not, and if he does win, it’s Democrats with 51 seats. (Of course, the phrase ‘Senator Herschel Walker’ is the worst-case scenario in any event.)
So, basically back to a draw in the Senate and the preponderance of votes will probably give Republicans the House. So why is everyone in the Democratic Party so (unusually) cheerful?
Because the President’s party usually does a lot, lot worse in the midterms. 2022 was the best performance by the President’s party in midterms since 1950. The Michigan state legislature went Democrat for the first time in 40 years. Here’s a bit from the right-leaning Washington Examiner: “Things generally went well where the Republican was perceived as competent and not a servant to Trump — otherwise, not so much,” said one GOP operative speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to reflect candidly on the results. “The GOP should’ve become the party of Brian Kemp and Ron DeSantis yesterday, but it damn well better become it today.”
“Trump endorsed over 330 candidates, held 30 rallies, and raised millions of dollars over the course of the midterm elections. The former president intended to use Tuesday’s results to strengthen his position within the party by delivering wins for the candidates he endorsed. But with the party’s underperformance, there appears to be growing frustration at the former president for endorsing what many see as a “slate of bad candidates.”
“It’s time for Trump to step aside. Many of these races should have been easy wins for Republicans with record inflation and President Joe Biden’s sagging approval ratings. Instead, last night was an absolute nightmare scenario,” said an adviser to a Republican senator, who did not want to be identified. “I personally do not know of one person who still feels confident in his leadership after last night.“
All that leads me to one conclusion, Republicans, and the conclusion is this: You suck. GAD, you suck SO hard. The Republican Party sucks harder than Alina Lopez at an all-Black gangbang.
I guess Mitch McConnell was right when he said candidate “quality” would probably stop his team from getting the Senate back. Who knows where Republicans would be if their political standard wasn’t “Arabic numerals are a Muslim conspiracy against Roman letters, and the heliocentric theory is a Communist subversion they teach our kids at Drag Queen Story Hour”?
I believe that the results confirm both of my initial impressions before Election Day. One, that the pollsters and other media were creating reasons to make the Republican candidates more competitive than they arguably should have been on their merits, and two, regardless of how much people hate the Democrats, they know they can’t trust the Republicans. Americans are tired of this shit. We are tired of the “circus.” We are tired of the designated conservative party being like the Nazis, only crazy and racist. We are tired of every aspect of public life being about our perfect little boy who is the center of the universe. We are tired of this spoiled little brat who poisons the air with his malice and lies, who constantly whines and hollers for attention, and maybe little boy should shut his fucking yap and GO TO FUCKING BED.
If there was any place where Republicans met and exceeded expectations, it was Florida, where Val Demmings seemed competitive against incumbent Republican Senator Marco Rubio but ended up losing by almost 10 points. Republican Governor Ron DeSantis beat Charlie Crist almost 60-40. And perhaps ironically, it’s all because of Hispanics. But then, liberals should have learned by now that Hispanics are not all the same group and do not all act alike any more than Irish and Canadians and Scots and English and Americans all act alike just cause they speak (something like) the same language. Still, I can understand how Florida Cubans and Venezuelan refugees would hate a Democratic party that is, rightly or not, identified with socialists. What I can’t understand is how “anti-socialists” can vote for a party that wants a one-party regime, built around a cult of personality where the Leader tells everyone what they can say, and what they can believe, and punishes business for not obeying his version of political correctness. And this time, I’m not talking about Trump, I’m talking about DeSantis.
So that’s what the setup is going forward. Prior to Tuesday, if DeSantis got re-elected (a damn-near certainty) and Trumpnik candidates did not win across the board (which seemed less likely before Tuesday) that strengthens DeSantis’ position against Trump, when, NOT if, Trump chooses to run for re-election as President. Trumpniks winning more seats would have helped Trump’s case. As it is, Trump has been teasing the press about some “very big announcement” around November 14th, or maybe the 15th, and the fact is, while announcing for President would require campaign finance restrictions that would restrict Trump’s ability to grift, Trump has to run for president again if he wants to stay out of jail. Either that or he gets a suitcase and crashes on Vladimir Putin’s couch, and most of the border traffic for Russia is going in the other direction. Plus which, they don’t really have a McDonald’s anymore.
Now of course, Trump may have competition. And while DeSantis is getting some backing for a presidential run because various right-wingers are also getting tired of Edward Babyhands, I don’t like Ron’s chances.
I mean, I don’t want to favor Trump in any comparison, but he actually has a sense of humor. Granted, this is the sadistic, gloating humor you would expect from a Bond villain who has Daniel Craig strapped to a chair, but it’s something like a sense of humor. Whereas DeSantis always acts like he’s sucking on a lemon, and that’s on his good days. He’s no fun. And most Republicans want to have fun while they’re punishing minorities and pregnant women.
Plus which, if we can confirm that most of the success that Republicans did have this year was despite Trump, as with the re-election of Trump heretics Brian Kemp as Georgia Governor and Brad Raffensberger as Secretary of State, it may be that in some races people actually care more about who would do a better job with the state than all the culture war stuff. I am frankly not sure if DeSantis has done anything to deserve his local popularity besides lean on all the culture war stuff. And if that’s all he has, he really can’t compete with Trump, who wasn’t competition for him before simply because Trump wasn’t going to run for Florida Governor.
And if that’s all Republicans have, Tuesday proved that it’s just not enough, even with a lot of states ginning the rules to favor them. Kemp and DeSantis did prove that local voters can support Republicans who aren’t Trumpniks. But they still need the national party to win the White House, and the question in the next two years is whether the national party wants to get rid of Trump. My guess is they don’t. My guess is that they keep whipping up their suckers for cash by playing the victims, and any Republican Congress will try to stage show trials against whatever Emmanuel Goldstein Trump wants them to go after that week, and put their reality TV show on the House committee floor in the afternoon so they can go on Fox News in the evening and brag about what a good job they did. It’s a lot more fun (and a lot more lucrative) than actually running a government, which they would know if they ever tried it.
Rick Wilson was right. Everything Trump touches dies. But he didn’t specify that everything Trump touches dies slowly and painfully. I’m okay with the slow part, as long as he and his enablers suffer as much pain as possible in the process. It’s only what they deserve.
So, knowing all the things that could still go wrong before January, let me just seize the moment to say the following:
FUCK YOU TRUMP.
Fuck You, you Russky traitor bitch.
FUCK.
YOU.
UP.
THE.
ASS.
This is what you get
This is what you get
This is what you get-
When you mess with us….