POLLS PREDICT - ELECTIONS PROVE

Election night 2023 showed which party is organized and has the message for success. The night demonstrated that the reality of it is there's a new landscape that's being shaped. Polls suggested Democrats were entering another Dark Night of the Soul, but once again - as in 2018, 2020 and 2022 - they over-performed when the actual votes were counted.

Tattoo this on your frontal lobes: Polls Predict - Elections Prove.

Headline of the Day: “Democrats romp, Youngkin flops”

Best news of the night for me:

Moms For Liberty endorsed 13 candidates for school board elections across Iowa. A single endorsed candidate won in a rural school district with less than 1,000 students.

Voters in Pella, Iowa, narrowly rejected a ballot initiative that would have transferred control of the small town’s library to city officials. The referendum was put on the ballot after some residents petitioned to change library oversight following controversy over a decision to keep the memoir “Gender Queer” in the library’s collection. About 51 percent of voters rejected the efforts, keeping the library under the purview of its independent board of trustees.

Voters in Derby, Conn., decisively rejected the Republican nominee for mayor, Gino DiGiovanni Jr., who was charged with trespassing at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. DiGiovanni placed third behind Joe DiMartino, the Democratic mayor-elect, and Richard Dziekan, the Republican incumbent who was running as an unaffiliated candidate,

I like these three items because traditionally, Republicans have been able to pull off shit like the above in non-national elections due to the traditional Democratic belief that elections were only held every four years when a presidential election was on the ballot. Democrats have now learned the Republican trick: TURNOUT EVERY ELECTION - IT MATTERS.

Democrats looking for positive signs for next year’s elections had lots of reasons to celebrate -victories in off-year elections in Kentucky, Virginia and Ohio signaled the continued strength of the party’s abortion-focused campaign playbook.

Democrats retook full control of the Virginia General Assembly, The Associated Press reported, handing a defeat to Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who poured millions of dollars and his personal political capital into expanding power for his party in the legislature. Democrats not only maintained their hold on the State Senate, but also captured control of the House of Delegates, where Republicans had held a 48-to-46 majority since 2021.

By his own choice, Youngkin was the other major issue in legislative races. Just in October, his PAC donated at least $2.3 million to G.O.P. candidates for legislative seats and another $2.35 million to the state Republican Party.

In Virginia, as elsewhere, abortion appeared to be a defining issue, albeit not the only one. The Supreme Court “Dobbs” decision, limiting abortion rights, has galvanized turnout from Democratic voters nationwide. Virginia was considered a test of Republicans’ ability to blunt blowback against the ruling.

Demonstrating that the GOP war on LGBTQ rights is also not a winner, Virginia voters also elevated Delegate Danica Roem - the first known transgender delegate - to the state senate.

At the same time, voters in Loudoun County - which had become a hot spot in the culture wars with attacks on LGBTQ+ individuals and with activists insisting the schools must not teach critical race theory - rejected extremism and turned control of the school board over to those who championed diversity and equity.

In Ohio, voters backed a measure to place the right to abortion in that state’s Constitution.

Ohio voters also approved a ballot measure to legalize the possession and sale of marijuana for people 21 and older. Ohio became the 24th state to legalize recreational marijuana usage.

Republicans were so upset by the results that some of them accidentally said the quiet part out loud, again:

Former Senator Rick Santorum, on Newsmax: “It was a secret sauce for disaster in Ohio. I don’t know what they were thinking. Thank goodness that most of the states in this country don’t allow you to put everything on the ballot because pure democracies are not the way to run a country.”

To which the Newsmax anchor replied: “It does seem like the Republican Party generally has a real problem with winning.”

“Hammerhead Sean” Hannity on Fox News: “Democrats are trying to scare women into thinking Republicans don’t want abortion legal under any circumstances.”

Sorry, Mr. World’s Dumbest Mick, an embarrassment to Irish people everywhere, but you morons do a great job yourselves scaring people when you all say you don’t want abortion legal under any circumstances. It’s on idiots like you, you fuckwitted fool.

In Kentucky, Governor Andy Beshear, a popular Democrat, won re-election. Beshear ran on abortion rights and having led his state through a dark period to a strong post-pandemic economy. His Republican opponent, Daniel Cameron, lost despite (or perhaps because of) being endorsed by Trump.

In Pennsylvania, Daniel McCaffery, a liberal Democrat who ran on support of abortion rights, won an open seat on the state Supreme Court, bringing the court to a 5-2 Democratic majority, restoring the makeup the court held before Chief Justice Max Baer, a Democrat, died last year.

Cherelle Parker, a Democrat and a former City Council member, was been elected Philadelphia’s mayor, becoming the first woman to lead the city. In her victory speech, Parker emphasized her humble background as the daughter of a single teenage mother, who grew up on welfare benefits while being raised by her grandparents. “My real-life lived experience was closest to the people who are feeling the most pain right now in our city. My life should be a textbook case study on how you turn pain into power.”

Gabe Amo, a former White House staff member in the Biden and Obama administrations, became the first Black person to represent Rhode Island in the U.S. Congress. The moderate Democrat, son of Ghanaian and Liberian immigrants, handily defeated his Republican opponent, Gerry Leonard, in the race to represent the First Congressional District.

In New York, Democrats held on to a county executive seat in Erie County, overcoming G.O.P. attacks about migrants. Democrat Marc Polancarz won a record fourth term on Tuesday. However, Republicans demonstrated they are still a force in the state, winning the county executive’s office in Suffolk County, N.Y., for the first time in two decades on Tuesday and taking what had been one of the last Democratic strongholds in the Long Island suburbs. Ed Romaine, the Republican candidate, attacked Democratic policies related to crime, the cost of living and a worsening crisis at the southern border which has resulted in over 100,000 migrants flooding into New York in the past year and creating a housing crisis.

Moderate Democrat Justin Brannan who is among the New York City Council’s most powerful members, beat his Republican opponent on Tuesday. Democrats held the seat that had shown signs of drifting away from their control. The Council’s finance chairman defeated Ari Kagan, who was elected to the Council as a Democrat in 2021, but left the party last year and quickly adopted Republican stances on issues such as abortion and crime.

Overall, Democats maintained their record from the 2018, 2020, and 2022 campaigns of brining voters to the polls with issues-oriented campaigns. The Republicans continued to underperform with their culture war sideshows.

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