USA Politics

Jer said:
Except for, y’know, the 27 times the U.S. has altered its constitution since 1787, including the first two amendments that have been most centrally involved in this discussion. But let’s not undermine your applause line.
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The Bill of Rights were written by the same guys who wrote the Constitution. Well, some of them, but it's generationally the same.

No significant amendment to the US constitution has occurred in 51 years, when the voting age was lowered. No amendments are likely to occur. And with the recent draft decision that will overturn Roe v. Wade, it is very clear that the 5 conservative judges on the SCOTUS are rejecting the concept of a living Constitution, and indeed, the 9th Amendment, and want to revert to the originalist interpretation of the Constitution. If it doesn't say it, it can't possibly exist.

Anyway, it doesn't matter. I won't assume you can move along with the flow of discussion and points without pedantry. So I'll leave it at this: if you want to think you have the better outcome in the world, you have the right to believe that. And I have the right to believe otherwise.
 
LooseCannon said:
No significant amendment to the US constitution has occurred in 51 years
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Which is still 184 years after the date you claimed the U.S. stopped advancing its definitions of social mores — nearly 3/4 of the country’s lifespan.

LooseCannon said:
And with the recent draft decision that will overturn Roe v. Wade, it is very clear that the 5 conservative judges on the SCOTUS are rejecting the concept of a living Constitution, and indeed, the 9th Amendment, and want to revert to the originalist interpretation of the Constitution. If it doesn't say it, it can't possibly exist.
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That’s not “very clear” at all. The original Roe decision hinged on a pretty imaginative interpretation of the 14th amendment, which may very well have been a technically incorrect decision from a legal perspective. And the 9th amendment doesn’t grant any specific rights, it simply makes it clear that not enumerating a right in the constitution doesn’t mean that it’s automatically unprotected by federal law. It’s a “don’t infer” clause, not a “we confer” clause.

I don’t personally like the idea of rolling back federal protection for abortion rights, but that doesn’t mean that the legal basis for it was valid in the first place, or that overturning it is incorrect. The Supreme Court usually overturns at least one of its own decisions each year, so this is nothing new, and further undermines your ludicrous suggestion that U.S. social law is still stuck in 1787.

LooseCannon said:
I won't assume you can move along with the flow of discussion and points without pedantry.
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Hilarious that you throw down blatantly incorrect statements for the purpose of dramatic verbal posturing, then characterize any correction of them as pedantry. Perhaps if you dialed back on the hyperbole you’d get something closer to the conversational flow you’re hoping for.
 
LooseCannon said:
And with the recent draft decision that will overturn Roe v. Wade, it is very clear that the 5 conservative judges on the SCOTUS are rejecting the concept of a living Constitution, and indeed, the 9th Amendment, and want to revert to the originalist interpretation of the Constitution. If it doesn't say it, it can't possibly exist.
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Maybe I'm missing something but I have the impression that Chief Justice is quite balanced, so I'd count 4 originalists instead.
 
A low presidential approval is definitely a bad omen for the party in power, probably the most reliable historic indicator of a midterm outcome (along with economic numbers, which aren’t great).

Man this year is weird though. I’m not even going to try and predict what will happen, anything from a massive red wave to Democrats narrowing holding on to both chambers seems like a reasonable possibility. You can cherry pick data that will suggest either outcome. IMO there are two unanswered questions that make this so hard to predict: is a conservative Supreme Court enough of a turnoff to suburban voters that they will vote Democrat and are Latinos in states like NV, FL, TX going to continue to move to the right? There isn’t a lot of house polling unfortunately so we don’t really know what some of these demographics are thinking.

One thing I will say though is that Democrats’ chance of holding both chambers is about the same as Trump’s chance of winning in 2016. Take that for what you will.
 
An interesting read on the races nearest the tipping point for the house:
fivethirtyeight.com

The 10 Districts Most Likely To Decide Control Of The House

Winning the House of Representatives was supposed to be a gimme for Republicans this year. Democrats’ current majority is just eight seats. And since the end of…
fivethirtyeight.com fivethirtyeight.com

Senate election scenarios:
www.nbcnews.com

Senate What If: Choose potential paths to a Senate majority in 2022

Decide who wins the 2022 Senate by assigning states to Republicans or Democrats and see how the balance of power changes. Also see scenarios from NBC News’ Steve Kornacki and Chuck Todd.
www.nbcnews.com www.nbcnews.com

I agree that too much is up in the air to know what’s going to happen here. Roe being overturned and election deniers running for Secretary of State positions all over the country are going to stoke turnout among left-leaning voters, but election denial and low approval for Biden will stoke turnout among right-leaning voters too. That said, complacency tends to set in when people achieve large victories, so I have a hard time seeing the right being quite as motivated as before with a 6-3 Supreme Court in their favor and Roe already overturned.
 
Senate is a slightly clearer picture than House. I think Fetterman has it in the bag (famous last words) which gets Dems up to 51, but the Nevada race isn’t looking good which means that Georgia could very well decide control of the Senate again. If that goes to a runoff, Warnock is toast IMO. His best hope is to clear the 50% threshold, but that seems like a tall order, which means Herschel Walker might win the prize for dumbest US senator (sorry Tommy Tuberville).
 
Tommy Tuberville is actively stupid, and it's impressive. I think it'll all come down to gas prices in the end.
 
LooseCannon said:
Tommy Tuberville is actively stupid, and it's impressive. I think it'll all come down to gas prices in the end.
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Wouldn't surprise me, this country would gladly throw entitlements they worked for their entire life under the bus just to save a dime on a carton of eggs now.

The fact that the Senate is still competitive is still surprising to me considering mid-term elections never go well for the president's party. So, there's that.
 
IMO the Senate is all luck of the draw, Democrats just happen to be working with a map where almost all the competitive seats are in states they won in 2020. In 2018 it was the same thing, bad year for Republicans but all the competitive seats were in very red states. 2024 will be similar, don’t be surprised if Democrats win the presidency but lose the Senate just because they’re defending seats in places like West Virginia and Montana.
 
One week before election and it seems like the most uncertainty we’ve had in a few cycles. If you look at the 538 deluxe model, Senate and House have definitely narrowed toward Republicans, but if you switch it to “lite” which tracks polls only, it shows Democrats having a bit more of a chance, especially in the Senate. This is also true when adjustments are made to key races like PA Senate and TX’s 34th district (the Southern part of Texas is one of the many question marks this election). The disparity between models is especially noticeable in the House where there isn’t a lot of polling so the model has to draw from other sources. This to me is the biggest wild card in the race: polls being off is one thing but there are going to be some shocking results next Tuesday in races where there haven’t been any quality polls.

Making predictions is a fool’s errand, but I’m going to do it anyway because I think it’s fun to go back and see how wrong I was. So posterity sake:

  • 50/50 Senate again. A lot is being made of polls tightening in NV and PA but I think it’s more that pollsters are correctly catching that these are all going to be races that come down to less than a point. This is something pollsters missed in 2020 (showing Biden with double digit leads in places like Wisconsin) but they tend to catch in midterm polling. Fetterman and Cortez Masto both eek out wins. I also think polls are accurate in forecasting Warnock getting 48-49% in Georgia, which means he will lose in the runoff.
  • Republicans win in the House but Democrats do over-perform expectations and hold on to most of the toss up races. Slimmest House majority in US history?
  • As in 2018 the polls will have a pretty good year and once again we’re asking why they can’t poll elections when Trump is on the ballot.
  • The attack on the Pelosi house is going to be a much bigger deal than people are giving it credit for and will act as a sort of “October surprise.” We’ve seen throughout the year that the Democrats have performed better in polls when political extremism and Trump election denial/January 6th stuff is in the news. People generally don’t like terrorists and a general reminder that the Republican Party is filled with them isn’t good for that party.
 
Thinking we may see a nearly even split House and a 51-49 Dem majority in the Senate. An absolutely incredible result for the president's party in a mid-term. Should've been a Republican blowout.
 
Fetterman winning in PA is big. GA is almost certainly going to a runoff, and enthusiasm for a second round of voting will decide who wins there. AZ looks solid for Kelly, but we won’t know for days yet. Don’t know much about NV. But it does look promising that the Dems may hold the line at 50 in the Senate, or maybe even tick it up to 51.

I live in the MN-2 U.S. House district, which has typically leaned slightly Republican, but the Democrat won the House election here in 2018 and 2020. This was a district the Republicans really thought they could flip, but with 91% of the votes in, the Democrat is ahead by ~5%, which is 2-3 points better than her victory margin in 2020, IIRC. My local state house and state senate races went decisively Democratic (~10% margin), and the statewide races appear to be leaning Democrat by a couple of points except for Governor and Secretary Of State, where the Democrats are winning by an ~8-10% margin. So it does appear that a lot of people are splitting their votes, voting Democrat for positions that could be used to pose a threat to the democracy or to try to outlaw abortion, but voting Republican for other roles. Interesting, and encouraging.

I would love to see Trump’s personally chosen candidates in competitive states all go down in flames. He’d just blame a “rigged” election, of course, but it might take some more wind out of his sails within the Republican Party for 2024…
 
It's looking good for Dems in the Senate, but GOP seems to lead the House.

Just noticed: Wasn't there a rule that who takes Ohio takes the presidential? Wasn't that rule broken in 2020?

Screenshot 2022-11-09 at 15.52.26.png Screenshot 2022-11-09 at 15.53.11.png
 
____no5 said:
Just noticed: Wasn't there a rule that who takes Ohio takes the presidential? Wasn't that rule broken in 2020?
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Yes, it was true for many years (1964-2016) that the winner of the presidential contest in Ohio would win the entire election. And yes, 2020 broke that trend. Ohio and Florida have been trending more reliably Republican in recent times.
 
Yeah, Ohio and Florida are probably now mostly-red, with Virginia going mostly-blue. Arizona seems to be trending that way as well.

Overall a much better night than forecast for the Dems, which I had thought might be the case. Pollsters seem to be leaning pretty hard towards the GOP side to try to make up for the Donald Trump effect, but that effect doesn't seem to exist if he's not actually on the ballot.
 
So Senate control is now down to the results in Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada. Republicans have to win 2 out of those 3 to take the majority.

Dems are ahead in AZ, Republicans in NV. Dems are slightly ahead in GA, but with a Libertarian candidate drawing more votes than the difference between Warnock’s and Walker’s totals, and that race is likely headed to a runoff in December. So unless the Dems eke out a win in NV or the Republicans pull a surprise in AZ, control of the Senate will come down to a GA runoff yet again.

Hard to know how turnout will be affected in the runoff, or how Libertarian voters will handle the runoff (stay home, or vote Republican?). Last time Trump was actively depressing Republican turnout in the GA runoff, and it’s hard to say whether he’ll have the same impact this time around or not — so it really is a jump ball for Senate control.
 
It will depend on whether Republicans win NV imo. If it’s the 51st seat, the RNC isn’t going to spend big money on that race. Different story if it decides control of the senate. My hunch going into it is that Warnock can’t win in a run off, but Walker performed so poorly last night and Democrats are emboldened enough that I am starting to think he can pull it off. Walker also won’t have Kemp at the top of the ticket to drag him to the finish line.
 
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