The Ubiquitous — The Problem of Electorate Redrawing: Threats to American Democracy and the Establishment of the House
That finding doesn’t mean Democrats are favored to hold the House, because Biden won the popular vote by 4.5 percentage points — a better showing than seems likely for Democrats this year. There have been polls that suggest a dead heat between the two parties in the popular vote. Democrats have a chance to retain the House. Times subscribers can sign up to receive the newsletter that’s about that case, but it won’t be in the newspaper.
The drawing of state legislature districts is a real problem for American democracy. Some states, like North Carolina, are also likely to redraw their congressional maps even before 2030, especially if a coming Supreme Court case restricts the authority of state courts. If you wanted to rank the current threats to American democracy, there would be no need to consider the subject of gerrymander.
There is a movement within the Republican Party that would not accept a loss in an election. After that, in some order, would be the outsize and growing influence that the Senate gives to residents of small states; the winner-take-all nature of the Electoral College; the lack of congressional representation for residents of Washington, D.C., and of Puerto Rico, many of whom are Black or Latino; and the existence of an ambitious Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court even though Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections.
The Predictions of the 2022 Midterm Elections: Tom Malinowski’s Legacy and Where the Electorate Comes From
When New Jersey was redrawn last year, Representative Tom Malinowski was seen as a political goner.
In the middle of it all, the Seventh Congressional District had been redrawn to include almost 25,000 more Republicans, even though Mr. Malinowski narrowly escaped reelection in 2020. The announcement of Mr. Malinowski’s candidacy was terse, and he quoted an ominous Shakespearean battle cry: “We have yet to speak, dear friends, once more.”
There are signs that Democrats believe the national political tide has shifted to a point that the race is not as competitive as it was a year ago.
Any path for Democrats to stay in control of the House must go through districts like Mr. Malinowski’s, where well educated voters helped Democrats win control of the House last year.
Add it all up, and there’s no question that Republicans are in a better place today than they were even a month ago. That doesn’t mean they are favored just yet to win the majority. It does suggest that there might be some traction on their side.
Over the course of nearly two decades, there has been a series of political waves: Democrats in 2006 and 2010, Republicans in 2010 and 2014, and Democrats again in 2018? Yet as the first mail-in ballots go out to voters, the outcome of the 2022 midterms on Nov. 8 appears unusually unpredictable — a reason for optimism for Democrats, given how severely the party that holds the White House has been punished in recent years.
Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania, which have been seen as the most likely states to flip control of the Senate, have become the epicenter of the fight with their increasing amount of acrimony. In many ways, the two parties have been talking almost entirely past each other both on the campaign trail and on the airwaves — disagreeing less over particular policies than debating entirely different lists of challenges and threats facing the nation.
A month ago, Democrats had a 7-in-10 chance of keeping the majority in the US Senate in the midterm elections, according to a forecasting model built by the wizards over at FiveThirtyEight.
The good news for Fetterman, even as his own negatives have gone up, is that Oz’s negatives remain relatively high – 17% of Republicans and more than half of independents had an unfavorable view of the celebrity surgeon in the Times survey – and the Democrat continues to outpace Oz on the question of which candidate understands the concerns of everyday Pennsylvanians, according to the Monmouth survey. The Pennsylvania Senate battleground of Fetterman and Biden is playing host to the president and he is expected to campaign in Philadelphia on the final weekend before Election Day.
The race between Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly and Republican Blake Masters has also narrowed – a Fox News poll released Tuesday shows no clear leader with Masters picking up support from Republicans. Kelly, who won a 2020 special election and is running for a full six year term, has proved to be more resistant to being tarred by the GOP than their other targets. That has kept this race more competitive than probably should be given the national environment, because in a purple state Biden won by only half a point. He has a 6-point lead over Masters, according to two polls. A retired astronaut with impressive fundraising totals, Kelly has tried to distance himself from his party on immigration – as he did during their debate last month – and largely had the airwaves to himself to sell that message.
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A CBS News/YouGov poll out in Nevada shows the Senate race is in a dead heat, with Republican nominee Adam Laxalt at 49% and Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto at 48%.
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Democrats are beginning to point fingers in Wisconsin, where Lt. Over the last two months, Gov. Barnes has watched his lead shrink over GOP Sen. Johnson. People are hitting their heads. How do we let this happen?” said Tom Nelson, a Democrat who ran for the Senate nomination earlier this year.
No race has seen more drama in the last month than Georgia, where Trump’s hand-picked candidate, Herschel Walker, is facing allegations from two women that he urged them to get abortions, which he has denied. The accusations about the retired football player being a hypocrite, which the Democrats used in their narrative against him, do not appear to have made a difference in his standing with people in the race. After at first steering clear of the allegations, Warnock used them in a recent ad against his opponent. A New York Times/Siena poll gave no clear leader after a survey had given a 7 point lead to him.
A seat Democrats flipped last year could mean a lot more than any other race. If neither candidate receives a majority of the vote in Georgia on November 8, the race will advance to a December 6 runoff. With Senate control dependent on the Peach State, we have to wait another month to find out which party has the majority.
The supremacy of voters’ economic concerns is bad news for Democrats in Nevada. The state has suffered a big hit by the Covid-19 bug and the average gas price is still near $5. It is difficult for first-term incumbents to establish a strong brand in Nevada. That’s complicating Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto’s key task – winning over voters dissatisfied with Biden and the direction of the country. Her favorability rating stood at 39% among likely voters in the New York Times/Siena poll (the same as GOP challenger Adam Laxalt’s), which was about on par with the percentage of likely voters who approved of Biden’s job performance. According to recent polling, her share of the votes is above Biden’s approval ratings, and Democrats believe she has a chance to perform better than the president. Cortez Masto and Laxalt were tied at 47% in the Times poll – a similar finding to a recent CBS poll and CNN polling from early October, which showed no clear leader.
The Senate seat most likely to flip is the one in the state of Pennsylvania. The Democrats have the best chance to win the election to replace Pat Toomey. Biden narrowly won the commonwealth in 2020, after Trump had carried it in 2016, making it a pivotal battleground for the midterms and the next presidential contest.
Democrats, meanwhile, have seized on Oz’s comments during the debate that the discussion over abortion should be left to “women, doctors, local political leaders,” with Senate Majority PAC using it to link him to GOP gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano, who’s trailing in his race. Fetterman stood at 50% to Oz’s 46% among likely voters in a CNN Poll of Polls, which averages four most recent surveys that meet CNN’s standards, including the Times/Siena poll and others conducted mostly before the debate.
The Republicans say that Masto is making Biden a “rubber stamp” for a number of issues, including higher inflation and “chaos” at the border. Democrats attacked Laxalt over abortion, even though Laxalt said he didn’t support a ban and that the right to abortion in Nevada is settled law. They tried tying Laxalt to Trump, and highlighted his efforts, as Trump’s Nevada campaign co-chair, in the filing of lawsuits related to the 2020 election. But perhaps in a recognition that economic concerns outweigh abortion or democracy as issues that are important to voters, Democrats – including Obama, who rallied the party faithful in Nevada on Tuesday – have tried to flip the script on higher gas prices, blaming them on corporations and tying Laxalt to “big oil.”
Warnock continues to enjoy stronger favorability ratings than his GOP challenger, whose image is underwater. A separation in a state the President flipped by less than half a point in 2020 could be seen in the Democrat’s favorability ratings. But the gubernatorial race in Georgia could help carry Walker across the finish line with GOP Gov. Brian Kemp appearing to have the advantage over Democrat Stacey Abrams in a rematch of their 2018 contest. If neither of the Senate nominees gets half of the vote on November 8, the top two candidates will head to a December 6 runoff.
As the only Republican senator running for reelection in a state Biden won in 2020, Sen. Ron Johnson is the chamber’s most vulnerable GOP incumbent. A Marquette University Law School poll released Wednesday showed no clear leader in the race between Johnson and Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes – similar to a CNN survey from mid October – which is comparable to the close governor’s race.
Wisconsin is still a tough state with an even tougher political environment for Barnes because Biden only carried it by half a point in 2020. Independents, for example, were breaking for Johnson in the Marquette survey (53% to 46% among likely voters), and 68% of registered voters said they were “very concerned” about an inflation – an issue that favors Republicans. Barnes was not polling as high as Biden, but still got 45% of the Wisconsin vote in 2020. Obama received a high percentage of the vote in the state in the 2012 elections, and rallied with Barnes in the final weeks of the campaign.
The End of the Senate Race: SuperPAC Spending in New Hampshire in the Post-Circumnuclear Age of Republican Success
The Senate Leadership Fund had to cut its spending in order to help other states and Masters is getting some late help from other Republican spenders. Masters has a lot of support from both Trump and Peter Thiel and after winning the GOP primary he tried to tone down some of his more extreme rhetoric. But the former president recently urged him to go “stronger” on his unfounded election fraud claims.
Many had expected a closer race for the Senate seat than is currently being held by Richard Burr. Democrat Cheri Beasley and Republican Rep. Ted Budd were tied among registered voters in a late October Marist poll. (Budd, a third-term congressman, had a small edge among definite voters.) In the 2020 election, Trump won by a single point. Since 2008, the last time the state went blue, the Democrats haven’t won a Senate race.
Democrats have long hoped that Beasley could help energize parts of their base that don’t usually turn out in midterms – like rural Black voters and young voters. But national Democrats haven’t been able to pour as much money into this race given the number of incumbents they’re defending. The Senate majority PAC increased its spending in the state this fall, suggesting Democrats believe that they have a chance.
In a clear slap at Trump, Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire — the Republican who handily won re-election while Maggie Hassan, the Democratic senator, beat the Trump protégé Don Bolduc, her Republican challenger — told a Nov. 18 meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition: “I have a great policy for the Republican Party. We need to get behind winners that can close the deal in November, and stop supporting candidates that aren’telectable.
Still, Hassan’s closing ad, in which she talks about “standing up to the president – whatever it takes,” speaks to her vulnerability this year given the national environment, which even her massive fundraising advantage may not be able to erase.
But there’s no denying that Trump’s hand-picked Republican candidate, J.D. Vance, struggled to raise money and consolidate GOP support after a divisive primary. The diversion of Republican super PAC spending from more reliable battlegrounds to shore him up in Ohio speaks to his weaknesses as a candidate. After Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan had the airwaves mostly to himself over the summer, the Senate Leadership Fund has been trying to poke holes in his moderate image by tying him to Biden. Still, Ryan’s vast fundraising advantage has allowed him to run plenty of ads in which he says he has sided with Trump on trade and takes on his own party.
The candidates were tied in a late October survey, which is likely to speak to this particular match-up, since the governor’s race was shown not to be close in the same survey. The Republicans are confident that the people who made up 8% of the registered voters in the Senate race will break for the other party. It is likely that Trump will be holding a rally in Ohio on Election Day.
For the second month in a row, the state of Florida was not included in the list of seats most likely to flip. That’s because Republican Sen. Marco Rubio – although he’s been outraised by a strong challenger in Democratic Rep. Val Demings – is a two-term incumbent who seems to be doing everything he needs to do to win in this environment.
She has leaned heavily on her law enforcement experience. In one spot, she explains her opposition to defunding the police and states that the Senate could use a cop. Despite that she still has not been enough to blunt Republican attacks that she prioritized Nancy Pelosi over the police.
That might actually help O’Dea in a state Biden carried by more than 13 points in 2020. And in a sign of the GOP’s brewing divisions ahead of 2024, the race has become a point of divergence between Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has backed O’Dea. The Senate Leadership Fund gave to a pro-Dea super PAC the same amount it gave to a Republican group in Washington state. But Biden’s smaller margin in Colorado (he won Washington by 19 points) makes it more likely to flip if the national environment gives Republicans a chance to pick up a seat in a state seen as safely blue.
Democrats excelled in Pennsylvania. They ran as well as Mr. Biden did in 2020 or even better. Every seat was swept by them. John Fetterman won the race for U.S. Senate by a wider margin than Mr. Biden had won the state. Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor, won in a landslide.
Republicans are likely to have won significantly more votes for their U.S. House candidates than Democrats, but the Democrats benefited from the geographic distribution of their support and the strength of several of their House incumbents in hard-fought races. Democrats did well with Latino voters from 2012 and 2016 but turnout was down in cities like Philadelphia. The Republicans’ strength in Florida as well as New York was remarkable — and those are two of the largest states in the country. So absolutely, both parties have outcomes to celebrate and liabilities to watch.
The democracy and abortion issues were the most obvious differences. Republican candidates for governor in Pennsylvania were central to efforts to overturn the presidential election results. Democrats feared that a Mastriano victory could risk a constitutional crisis and a threat to democratic government. It might have threatened another long-held right as well; Mr. Mastriano is a strident opponent of abortion, and Republicans controlled the state Legislature.
There are exceptions, of course — like Democratic strength in Colorado or Republican durability in Texas. But most of each party’s most impressive showings fit well.
In Florida, where the Republican landslide was, there was no stop-the-steal movement, nor was the governor going further than a 15-week abortion ban. In Michigan, there was a referendum on abortion at various points in the year, where Democrats swept the most competitive House districts.
In the United States, who leads your state’s government shapes your daily life. The governors and legislatures make policies on guns, abortion and education.
Combined with gridlock at the federal level, “where you live now increasingly determines what policies you live under,” said Thad Kousser, professor of political science at UC San Diego.
Most of the time, Democratic governors were on the defense in close races. Biden’s low approval ratings and inflation woes stoked fears of a “red wave.”
But many Democrats in tighter competitions won reelection: Gov. Janet Mills in Maine, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in New Mexico.
Tony Evers was reelected for a second term. He will continue to work with a state legislature led by Republicans. Gov. Laura Kelly kept the governor’s office in Kansas, a state which former President Donald Trump won twice.
The party also solidified its control in two states where registered Democrats significantly outnumber Republicans: Maryland and Massachusetts. There were two open governorships, one won by the Democratic candidate and another by the Republican. Democrats now completely control state government in both states. The governor’s office, state house, and state senate all have a single party in control. The Democratic agenda items will be easier to pass, because the Republicans will no longer veto them.
There will also be a Democratic trifecta in Oregon, where Democrat Tina Kotek emerged victorious on Thursday night out of a close race with Republican Christine Drazan.
Going into the election, Republicans held 28 state gubernatorial offices, and Democrats, 22. That number will change, although final results are pending in a few states.
No matter what, the majority of Americans “will be living in states where Democrats are governors” in 2023, due to their wins in high-population states, said Ben Williams of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), during a press call.
This cycle, two Democratically-aligned outside spending groups put $80 million into beginning to change that, on top of the around $50 million spent by the party itself. There was a goal of making sure state legislatures did not try to overturn the results of the next presidential election.
The party flipped the Michigan state House and the state Senate, a chamber it has not controlled in four decades. That will give Democrats a clear path to enact their agenda items. In her victory speech, Gov. Whitmer said to “fight like hell” to protect fundamental rights, as she promised to improve the economy, education and public education.
In Pennsylvania, Democrats also claim to have flipped the state House of Representatives, holding a press conference to announce their victory. In that chamber, state Rep. Joanna McClinton could be the first Black woman to become speaker of the Pennsylvania House.
The Associated Press has not yet called all of these races, and the state Republican party has not conceded. “We believe Democrats claiming the majority at this time is premature and we are continuing to closely monitor a number of races where votes are still being counted,” Pennsylvania House GOP spokesperson Jason Gottesman told NPR.
The GOP may still pull off an upset in Nevada, a state that voted for President Joe Biden in 2020. Gov. Steve Sisolak is trailing Las Vegas area sheriff Joe Lombardo, a Republican, in his bid for reelection. The Associated Press has not yet called the race.
But in Arizona, where Republican Gov. Doug Ducey is term-limited, the race is too close to call. As of Friday, former local Fox television anchor Kari Lake and Secretary of State Katie Hobbs are still locked into a tight race. Lake, who has made false claims about the integrity of the 2020 election, initially declined to say if she would accept the outcome of her race if she lost.
Republicans held or strengthened their trifectas by picking up seats in Florida, the Iowa Senate and South Carolina’s House. The party now holds veto-proof majorities in Florida and Ohio. In these states, many conservative policy priorities have already been enacted or proposed, such as permitless gun carrying and restrictions on teaching about gender or sexuality in schools.
In North Carolina the same thing happened. Republicans won a supermajority in the state Senate. Democrats in the state House maintained enough seats to keep the GOP from pushing Cooper around.
Divided governments like these are becoming rarer. The political scientist said that since 2010, the red and blue states have gotten more and more alike.
CNN’s Exit Polls: The Economics, Politics, and Judgment: An Analysis of the 2008-2012 Obama Presidential Campaign
The economy: A slim plurality of voters, about 31%, called inflation their top issue, and roughly 8 in 10 said inflation had been a hardship for them personally. According to a survey, voters trust the GOP over the Democrats to handle inflation.
Abortion rights: The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade brought abortion to center stage, with about 27% of voters calling it their top issue. About 6 in 10 people felt negatively about the decision, with nearly 4 in 10 expressing anger. Democrats had an 11 point advantage over the GOP when it came to which party voters trusted to handle issues related to abortion.
CNN’s Exit Polls consist of in-person interviews with voters on Election Day, as well as online and telephone polls measuring the views of early and absentee by-mail voters. They were conducted on behalf of the pool. Read more here.
Editor’s Note: David Axelrod, a senior CNN political commentator and host of “The Axe Files,” was a senior adviser to President Barack Obama and chief strategist for the 2008 and 2012 Obama presidential campaigns. He has his own opinions in this commentary. View more opinion on CNN.
The politician that whispered that salty line to Barack Obama was Joe Biden, who captured the line on a hot mic a dozen years ago.
Biden would be forgiven if he had shouted it again from the rooftops of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where he’s attending an Asian summit, when he learned that Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto was projected to win reelection in the Silver State, guaranteeing Democrats’ continued control of the US Senate.
It’s the next turn in an election season that saw Democrats defy history and score unexpected victories across the country.
Senate Republicans also were confident going into Election Day about their chances to break the 50-50 deadlock that has given Democrats control of the Senate on the strength of Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote. If Democrats and Herschel Walker win the race for Georgia’s 51st seat, Harris will not have to cast a vote.
If there is a change in the House, Democrats will retain control over the agenda on both the Senate floor and committees.
What’s more, the Senate has sole authority to confirm judicial nominations and key executive appointments, which is critical, even if a Republican House blocks other major Biden initiatives.
By allowing Trump, and not Obama, to fill the Supreme Court vacancy and speeding Barrett through in record time, McConnell and his Senate majority changed history.
The ruling that ended abortion rights in the 50’s and opened the door to other radical decisions has been profoundly changed by the two conservative justices named by Trump. There was a backlash in the wake of the court decision that may have had much to do with Democratic victories this year.
The Post-Primordial Exodus From Britain to the USA: The Effects of the Election Denialism on the American Democracy and the Performance of the Primordial Government
After he lost the majority in the parliamentary elections in Britain, the prime minister supposedly received assurances from his wife that it was a blessing in disguise.
moved in ways predicted by the fundamentals — a Republican shift with a Democratic president who has low approval ratings and governs during poor economic indicators. However, in a few keys states and races Democratic candidates outperformed those indicators. The story seems that the Republicans were beaten up by low-quality candidates in some key races.
In this year’s referendum, the opposition and its leader were equally judged against the ruling party and President. It was a repudiation of election denialism, extremism and coarseness.
Republican politicians, who are afraid and want to make themselves look bad, have stuck with Trump despite knowing better. Watching their quick post-primary exodus from his camp, led by Rupert Murdoch and his right-wing media empire, has been something to behold. Losing is not allowed for them, but trespasses against democracy can be.
Trump is a master escape artist who will hold on to some of the Republican politicians in place. He made it absolutely clear that cooperation with Biden in Congress is treason. Because of fear of Trump, more Republicans in Congress will have the chance to work with Biden on certain issues. While I’m not betting on it, that would be a blessing for the country.
While Biden was abroad, the verdict came from Nevada, where he was going to meet with China’s president before returning to the US.
The President might have been hobbled going into these discussions by a thumping in the midterms. It would have intensified growing doubts among our allies and adversaries about the durability of American democracy and about Biden’s political viability.
The people had their say, thumbed their nose at the purveyors of conventional wisdom and dealt a blow to Trump and extremists and election-denying Republicans.
The End of the G.O.P. War: What Are the New Voters Saying about the 2016 U.S. Presidential Elections?
Both Begala and Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, stood firmly opposed. It should be left to the Republicans to choose their own Trump, Lake said.
If Democrats truly worry about the health of American democracy, they shouldn’t do anything to help Trump’s return to office even if it means a higher chance that they lose the presidency. The slightly higher probability of holding the presidency with Trump as the G.O.P. nominee is surely outweighed by concerns about the threats to democracy should he win election.
There is not one narrative to come out of this election. While we usually think about nationalization, in this election, we saw quite significant differences across states. The pre-election polls in Pennsylvania and Michigan suggested better results than they actually did. From this perspective, Democrats should be happy. But they did much worse than expected in Florida and New York. So which lesson is the right one?
If it were possible 30 years ago, the G.O.P. would have put up huge margin of victory in rural America. This means that a large number of votes are wasted. Democrats lose the Penalty they have suffered for running up vote shares in urban districts in the past, as the suburbs become more competitive, but not enough to lose seats.
Appealing to voters without Trump on the ballot may not be a winning strategy for Republicans. The types of voters who are enthusiastic for Trump do not seem equally enthusiastic for his endorsees.”
In other words, it isn’t just that moderates and independents were scared off by extremist candidates; MAGA voters themselves were not fully animated by their own candidates. The candidate they want is Trump, not a Don Bolduc or a Kari Lake or a Mehmet Oz.
If they feel good about their chances, they should take comfort in that. The national electorate is polarized with close elections. Ultimately, I believe turnout is going to matter more than persuasion.
This result was a foregone conclusion. The models and polls did well. The Democrats overperformed expectations slightly, but as others have pointed out, their performance is better in seats than in votes.
The parties are even, and it doesn’t look like there is a path to change quickly. This election was close. I expect the next presidential election to be close as well.” He acknowledged that Trumpendorsed candidates.
did poorly, but this does not mean that a Trump-centric Republican Party cannot win or that Trump himself cannot win. He almost did it in 2020. If he is the nominee, I still expect the election to be close in 2024.
The Republican Party elites are becoming more concerned about the possibility of a Trump bid. Ed Goeas replied by email, “assuming that the economy is out of the ditch by the end of ’23), I would have to believe a Trump nomination would be devastating.”
The Art of the Possible: How Amy Greene can make the new GOP majority a fragile, fragile, and volatile place in our national history
If politics is the art of the possible, McCarthy is acting in a way that is most likely to allow him to reach power – even if the speaker’s gavel might turn into a poisoned chalice and require him to infringe democratic values to keep it.
The tiny GOP House majority that takes over in January, after a disappointing midterm performance, would mean a fragile governing mandate for any party at any point in American history. The ideological battle being waged by pro-Donald Trump extremists inside the party would make even a more comfortable majority volatile.
It also reflected the personal power that she had, after she broke with some GOP members and lined up to support McCarthy in his speakership. After coming to Congress as a fringe figure, and quickly losing her committee assignments over her past retweets of violent rhetoric against Democrats, Greene now promises to be one of the most prominent faces of the new GOP majority. She can say what she wants without fear of repercussions from the leader of her party. And it also shows that while Trump’s power may be waning elsewhere after a lackluster launch of his 2024 campaign, his influence over his followers in the House, like Greene, remains strong.
McCarthy used to be a pleasant and smooth-talking GOP rising star, but has now adopted some of the combative defiance of the “Make America Great Again” movement as badges of honor.
This is what makes the current year-end fight over funding the government so important since a bipartisan framework agreement was announced Tuesday night, which could lead to a fiscal crisis in just a few months.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/14/politics/kevin-mccarthy-speakership-battle-analysis/index.html
“Oh, I know she is being facetious” — a warning to extremists during the 2024 election in the New York (McCarlin) row
From a broader political perspective, it might be in McCarthy’s interest to stand up to the most extreme members of his conference. The path to the GOP majority went through comparatively moderate seats in places like New York that will be most at risk in the 2024 election. Swing- state voters rejected the extremists who were campaigning against him in the final round of voting. The anti- Trump vote made a difference when the Republicans lost the House and the presidency.
So showing voters in 2024 that GOP governance addressed key problems like inflation and the economy will be important. But while he has announced he will form a select committee to examine China’s growing threat, which could unite both parties, most of McCarthy’s recent rhetoric has focused on a relentless set of investigations of the Biden administration and conservatives’ interest in impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
“Oh, I think she said she was being facetious” is how McCarthy responded when asked if she was the future speaker. The attitude was consistent with his attempt to rewrite the history of the worst attack on US democracy in modern times in which he briefly said Trump bore responsibility.
McCarthy declined to criticize the former president for meeting with a white supremacist at a dinner also featuring a hip hop star who has recently made antisemitic remarks. The House Republican leader made a false claim at the White House after meeting Biden and others last month, that Trump had criticized Fuentes four times.
According to CNN, McCarthy had indicated at the White House that he would be open to a large bill. McCarthy told his members that he was a “Hell no” on the measure as it was worked on by Senate Republican leader McConnell.
The split not only augurs likely future tensions between Republicans in the House and McConnell, it raises the possibility that it will become politically more difficult for some Republican senators to vote for a spending deal now – especially as conservative media has taken up McCarthy’s line.
There is no strong alternative to his candidacy if he is going to have a chance to become the next president of the US. GOP Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, the former head of the Freedom Caucus, has launched a long-shot bid.
In another era — two or four years ago, perhaps — the Santos saga, with its absurd cascade of lies, would have been an amusing sideshow for many Democratic politicians, who would have been able to mock the chaos and move on, comfortably sure that Santos, who fabricated much of his personal and financial biography, would only further hobble a neutered Republican minority. But the new congressman, now under investigation by local and federal authorities, was instead a crucial cog in Kevin McCarthy’s House majority, having flipped the redrawn Third Congressional District in New York, an area that had been represented by Democrats for decades, by eight points.
These disappointments have cast into sharp relief both the divisions within the party and the peculiar void of the state’s Democratic organization itself. Few New Yorkers cared, until late 2022, that the statewide Democratic apparatus operated, for the most part, as a hollowed-out appendage of the governor, a second campaign account that did little, if any, work in terms of messaging and turnout. New Hampshire has a Democratic Party with 16 full-time paid staff members. New York’s has four, according to the state chairman, Jay Jacobs. One helps keep the social media accounts up to date. Most state committee members have no idea where the party keeps its headquarters, or if it even has one. (It does, at 50 Broadway in Manhattan.)