PEERING THROUGH THE FOG

An email from a friend in England waiting in the in-box for me this morning asked “how go the mid-terms?” I’m posting my answer here for all of you, too.

Caution: when looking across a valley filled with fog, it can be difficult to get a good view of what’s on the other side.

I am reminded of what Churchill said about Dunkirk:

“We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory.”

That said, things are still not fully known.

In Nevada, Cortez Masto is only down 15,000 behind Laxalt and there are still 65,000 votes outstanding in Democratic Washoe County (Reno) and another 85,000+ in Democratic Clark County. If she can get 55% of both, she can take it. Narrowly.

These counts will also determine the three Democratic-held House seats, where the D is in the lead at the moment, but narrowly in each. These are crucial to denying a Republican takeover of the House.

In Arizona, there are still 250,000 same-day votes outstanding statewide, and an additional 60,000 mail-in votes in Mariposa County. The mail-ins likely favor Democrats. The same day is a puzzler: in 2018 they favored Republicans and in 2020 Democrats. Kelly has a 95,000 vote advantage over Masters, so how the same-day breaks will make or break. They’re only announcing new totals at 8:30 pm local time, so expect a few more days before the fog begins to lift.

If those two go Democratic, then the Georgia runoff only determines the size of the Democratic majority. But if Republicans win one of AZ or NV, then it determines if Democrats have a 50-50 majority with the VP's vote. If the Republicans win AZ and NV, then game over, they control the Senate.

In the House, things are continuing to narrowly break for Democrats in a way that could keep the House.

Boebert lost in Colorado, which was unexpected, but Trumper former Interior Secretary Zinke won the new seat in Montana, which was hoped would go D. A Republican seat was flipped in New Mexico.

California is the big question. Vote count is slow because of the rules change for mail-in ballots for Covid. Votes arriving by Monday will still be counted if post-marked November 8. Probably no really solid view of final results in the narrow races before end of the month. Redistricting changed the districts enough to keep things puzzling. Katie Porter is hanging on in what is virtually a new district, but there's only 55% of the vote counted and she leads by 1.5%.

There are four seats that were Republican, that were flipped D in 2018 with the anti-Trump vote, but flipped back in 2020 despite Biden carrying the district. Right now, there is less than 50% of the vote counted in each as of last night; the Republicans hold slim majorities, but it is impossible to tell from where in the district outstanding votes are coming from, whether D or R precincts, so it's impossible to say what is solid and what isn’t and if there are a majority of votes still to come from D precincts, then there is a good shot at retaking them.

Two other seats that flipped back R in 2020 are solid R now, but they are both in Orangatang County so the surprise was they ever went D.

Bottom line: If Democrats flip three of the four R seats here, hold the D seats in Nevada, hold the three D seats in Oregon after losing #4 (the former Shrader seat) to the Republicans after nominating a candidate too liberal for that district, they can come up with a 3-seat majority that holds the House. A narrow path. But if they do, the Democratic Speaker would have an easier time of running things than McCarthy will with a similar number.

Right now as of this morning’s announcement that the Democrats defended a seat in Connecticut, it looks like the R's would have a maximum 221 majority, which means McCarthy could lose 3 votes at maximum to hold. The moderate caucus in the Rs is now larger that it was (with the loss of the 4 Democratic seats in New York), which means the Fwee-Dumb Kawkuss can't completely dominate, but they'll have to be answered to and it depends on how spineless McCarthy actually turns out to be as to whether he even makes it to Speaker.

With a D Senate, all they can do is put on the monkey show with the monkeys flinging their feces at the audience for the next two years. Lots of Democrats get hauled in for "investigations," but if they model themselves on how Hillary Clinton handled BenghaziBenghaziBenghazi, they'll make the Republicans look like the morons and fools they are.

Big thing: nothing gets done for two years.

Bigger thing: Democrats need to come back in the "lame duck" and pass a debt limit raise high enough the morons can't touch it for two years to avoid the planet crashing and burning, and need to pass a big enough aid package for Ukraine to keep them going while the Pro-Putin traitors run the House. These are so obvious and important that Democrats will be stepping all over themselves trying to get things to a vote, since the proper descriptive term for "organizing Democrats" is "herding a swarm of bees through a blizzard with a switch," an old Southernism that's very apropos.

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