Oops, he did it again!
For the second time in a row, Trump (probably) handed the Senate to the Dems on a silver platter. Three months ago I explained what all the pundits missed:
I see some puzzlement in the media as to why Trump keeps endorsing such lousy candidates.
After losing the 2020 election, Trump immediately began planning his comeback (as I predicted.) The first step was to assure that the Dems took the Senate. Trump intervened in the two runoff races in Georgia, and at a minimum this cost Purdue his seat. With the Dems in total control of Congress and the Presidency, Biden soon became unpopular.
Now Trump’s trying to insure that the Dems hold at least the Senate in this fall’s midterms. Needless to say that is not an easy task, especially given all of the problems we face. But FiveThirtyEight claims the Dems are favored in the Senate. That’s an astounding indication of Trump’s ability to disrupt the natural course of events with some truly horrific endorsements. (Normally, the GOP would easily take the Senate in 2022.)
Politics is like a pendulum. When one party gets control of everything, it gives the out of power party the advantage in presidential races. The last thing Trump wants is a GOP Congress passing national abortion bans that get vetoed by Biden in the summer of 2024. That would force Trump to either come out as pro-choice (which he OBVIOUSLY is), or else take a public stand that would give swing voters a reason to vote for Biden.
Trump is an idiot, but he understands politics better than lots of very smart pundits. There’s a method to his madness.
As in 2020, Trump defied the oddsmakers. In the 2020 Georgia runoff, he sabotaged Purdue (who was on track to win) with his insane post-election nuttiness, which made the GOP seem toxic. This time, Trump worked his magic by promoting some of the most awful candidates you can imagine. Herschel Walker makes Caligula’s horse seem like Solon. (How motivated will GOP voters be in a runoff where Kemp is not on the ballot and Walker is the only guy they can vote for?)
At all costs, Trump wanted to avoid a highly unpopular GOP controlled Congress in 2024, just as he’s running for president. If that happened, swing voters would think, “We need Biden to veto their insane proposals—even Elon Musk says divided government is best.”
And it worked. Trump is an idiot savant. He doesn’t know if Finland is a part of Russia. But he knows politics better than our best pundits.
PS. Or maybe this post is just a spoof:
PPS. Go back and read the pundits at the National Review over the past month. LOL.
PPPS. This made me smile:
Over in Grand Rapids, Mich., the district elected its first Democrat to Congress, Hillary Scholten, in nearly fifty years over Republican John Gibbs. Gibbs won the party nomination on the strength of Trump’s endorsement over incumbent Peter Meijer, the only freshman House Republican to vote to impeach Trump for his role in the January 6 riot.
Meijer was one of the very few Republicans with an ounce of integrity, and like Liz Cheney he was “canceled” for telling the truth. Love to see that outcome.
PPPPS. The biggest loser on election night? Me!! it looks like we are a bit less banana republican than I had assumed.
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9. November 2022 at 10:28
Ok, so, and I dont know if this will actually happen but let’s say:
2024, Republicans finally dump Trump and wake up, and choose DeSantis as the nominee. He is not an incompetent idiot, but the ecosystem promoting republican to far right ideas, both through “good outlets” (say WSJ)and stuff like Brietbart, remains intact.
I, who generally has a conservative disposition, would happily support him, even though I recognize that he is partially a continuation of the “populist” movement, with some policies that continue a reversal of the liberal order.
Would you?
9. November 2022 at 11:23
Aladdin, It depends which Ron DeSantis shows up. The original one, or the more recent Trumpian one.
Another factor is divided government, which I tend to favor.
If Peter Meijer is the nominee, I’ll definitely vote for the GOP.
9. November 2022 at 12:32
As always, this is a very smart post, but I can’t quite tell where the “Sumner Needle” is on Trump’s odds of being the GOP nominee in 2024. I guess 90 – 95%? Or somewhat lower?
I’m not actually saying I know anything – I admit I’m an idiot – but I think it’s important to remember that Trump is very, very unpopular for a national-level politician. Yes, the Democrats have been happy to compete with him in the unpopularity sweepstakes – for the Dems (and especially the Progressives), Trump has been something of a Godsend, or a “get out of jail free” card – but for how long can these balls remain in the air?
I am totally agnostic on whether DeSantis is 10% idiot, 40% idiot, or 70% idiot. A politician’s job, sometimes, is to be an idiot. (The alternative being unemployment).
I know I’m going to get shot down, but I still think DeSantis is more likely to be the GOP nominee than Trump. And for all of Trump’s native cunning, that “idiot savant” quality, 2020 left him asking (quite cogently!) “how the **** could I lose to that guy?” and that really is a question for which Trump has had no good answer.
Related: is Trump’s “threat to democracy” thing real, or mostly the product of Progressives living in a Fox News type bubble? (I do agree that Trump style nationalism, under the right conditions, could evolve into a threat to democracy, which I think is a Sumner point).
9. November 2022 at 12:33
Scott,
I’m interested in your reaction to Niccolo Soldo’s thoughts on America:
https://niccolo.substack.com/p/the-triumph-of-the-centre
His takeaway seems to be that party elites have reasserted themselves in US politics, which implies to me that he doesn’t think Trump will win in 2024.
9. November 2022 at 12:39
I’m not convinced that I’ve been right yet in my claims that Trump’s support is dwindling over time, but some of the midterm results seem to support the point. I’ve been saying that each new scandal or otherwise crazy behavior from him is costing him support, while he does nothing to grow his support. This is particularly true with moderate Republicans and independents.
He still has a high floor, but his ceiling is very slowly closing in on him. I say again, I don’t know how he gets the votes back he lost in 2020, and he’s now likely less popular than he was then.
Ignore the polls, as they’re less reliable than at any other time in the modern polling era, which began in the 50s. Also, while I can buy that betting markets will offer the best predictions, that doesn’t make those predictions reliable, particularly so far out from the next election.
We don’t even know if DeSantis can perform on a national level. Bill Clinton and Barrack Obama were national stars. Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris don’t have the talent to compete nationally. They are state-level talent. This is akin to trying to predict which high school football stars will make it in college, or which college stars will make it in the pros. Most don’t make a successful transition. Most prospects, even when chosen by experts, do not pan out.
9. November 2022 at 12:40
Trump endorsements went 219 wins and 16 losses.
During an ‘off cycle’ general election.
This has never happened before, not even close. And if Bolduc didn’t flip flop on the 2020 election being rigged and stolen, he would have easily won too, but he did so he lost.
The GOP retook the House.
If the remaining election counts are legal, the GOP will retake the Senate as well.
Pennsylvania is a corrupt swamp. There is no way there were more Dem voters for a brain damaged candidate.
Did you notice the voter turnout in Florida? Notice how Florida magically became a deep red state after DeSantis banned Zuckerbucks, started arresting people for election fraud, and enacted election safe guards? Most of the country is actually deep red and we all know it.
The mainstream media, the establishment, and the deep state framed Trump for treason and viciously attacked him for at least 6 years in a row.
Wake me up when Desantis gets viciously attacked for treason and then the lie is broadcast for the world 24/7 in one of the most relentless attacks to take anyone down we’ve ever seen.
DeSantis image to normies is so crystal clean because this did not even remotely happen to him.
We also know why Trump said ‘Ron DeSanctimonious’ right before the midterms. Trump knew that mainstream controlled opposition fake maga would try to blame him for the fake wins by the cheating democrats.
I wonder when all the vaccine pushing salesmen pundits will realize that the covid attack was an intentional pretext to impose easy to cheat mass mail in ballots for the 2020 election. Nothing more, nothing less.
9. November 2022 at 15:10
Lol I just love the 219-16 line, which is obviously copy pasted from elsewhere, and is so ridiculous it doesn’t even deserve a rebuttal.
I hope George here doesn’t find out Trump himself is one of those “vaccine pushing salesmen”
9. November 2022 at 15:16
Everyone, I still think Trump gets the nomination, although I suppose this result makes it a bit less likely. Conditional on winning the nomination, DeSantis would be much more likely to win the 2024 election (say 70% vs. 50% with Trump).
Garrett, That sort of article slightly oversimplifies. There’s not just one “elite”, as GOP and Dem elite views differ on all sorts of issues.
I suppose you could argue that there are some views that are popular among (non-elite) high school dropouts, such as bans on free speech, xenophobia, authoritarian politics, etc.
9. November 2022 at 16:05
Let’s look at the facts:
1. The reality is that most of Trump’s candidates actually won, including ‘bigly’, as New Yorkers like to say, over an establishment politician in Alaska who was terribly corrupt.
Anybody can cherry pick variables to affirm their preconcieved notions. We could cherry pick losses in 2012 when Obama supported losing candidates, or in 1984 when some of Reagan’s backed candidates lost. This is just silly psuedoscience and every political scientist will tell you it means absolutely nothing. Obviously, there is more than one variable involved in winning or losing, so we cannot infer anything about Trump’s support, although I think Republicans would generally prefer DeSantis because he’s more articulate, but that was clear well before the midterms.
2. Walker hasn’t lost yet. There will be a runoff, and we’ll see what happens during the runoff.
And how do you know the democrats won the Senate? Do we know the outcome in Arizona and Georgia? I think you’re jumping the gun their Mr. Globalist/Elitist.
And Warnock is nothing to be proud of. This is a man who yells “I hate whitey” at his church, but I suppose that type of behavior and divisive rhetoric aligns well with Sumner’s values.
3. Trump and DeSantis both have the same policies, and DeSantis won Miami-Dade for the first time in twenty years, so clearly those policies resonate with voters. But why are you surprised?
Freedom and liberty and less regulation and more power into the hands of people, and less power into the hands of neo-marxists, tends to resonate with people, especially with Cubans, and I’m sure as the centralization continues we will see more hispanics and blacks run for the exit.
So again, this election is simply more proof that candidates who run on the RINO, Cheney, corrupt, elitist, Sumner ticket, i.e, those that favor big government and big regulation at the expense of the working class, and in Cheney’s case giving themselves lavish government contracts, simply fail to orchestrate successful campaigns — including Dr. Oz — who lost convincingly to a man who lived with his parents until he was fifty.
Now Sumner might be proud of the hard left’s accomplishments, such as getting fetterman elected, but I’m afraid, that most of us are not impressed.
In fact, one might say that Fettermen’s success is the best sign yet that WE DO LIVE in a banana republic.
9. November 2022 at 16:20
Warnock spent 100M.
Walker 32M.
Big Tech and their big wallets are on the march. They want those establishment figures to remain, because they need to keep their monopoly, oligopoly, and stranglehold on society. They know if the populists get into power they will break them up, like they broke up the barons under T. Roosevelt.
They are viciously attacking decentralized blockchain startups too. Any threat to their power is being hammered — even Elon, who is the only one who has our back.
But liberty will win in the end. It always does.
9. November 2022 at 18:07
Trump isn’t playing four-dimensional chess–he’s playing five-dimensional chess. Walker could very well pull off a victory in Georgia, but regardless, I think the real drama will be in the House. If McCarthy has a one or two seat majority that means that power will be in the hands of a few oddball Republicans who can either choose to continue to worship the Orange Jesus or turn some crucial votes to Democrats in exchange for BIG pots of pork or media exposure.
Banana Republics were efficient. We’re in a Monty Python sketch.
9. November 2022 at 19:31
It doesn’t seem useful to speculate on 2024, particularly with so much uncertainty. We don’t know if Biden will even run again. If he doesn’t, we have no idea who the Democratic nominee will be. We also don’t know if Trump will run again, and if he doesn’t, who the Republican nominee would be. Trump could end up in prison instead. And both Biden and Trump are old enough that there’s a nontrivial possibility that one or both of them fail to live into 2024.
There’s also much economic uncertainty, though it’s easy to imagine a healthier supply side by 2024, which could help Democrats a bit.
Generally, we’ve seen Americans do have limits on how much craziness they want to see from office holders. Republicans run the risk of outrunning the Overton window and ending up with more disappointment.
10. November 2022 at 03:39
Aladdin, since your post about 219-16 was directed at what I wrote, here is my reply to what you wrote: REEEEEEEEE
“copied and pasted from elsewhere” : LOL, how do you know? Are you viewing sources but are afraid to say, and then taking that shame and anxiety and projecting it hoping to purge yourself of what you’re ‘guilty’ of having seen?
“doesn’t even deserve a rebuttal” : That’s because you have none, LOL. Facts are facts.
Every Trump endorsement is open source, he announces them all, which are tracked, catalogued and easily referenced.
The Fake News is right now trying to push a narrative that the D’s didn’t lose that somehow Trump is where the losing is centered.
Write it again! 219-16…219-16…219-16
If Trump DIDN’T endorse, didn’t have rally after rally, didn’t expose the Democrat cheating and didn’t expose the fake news, the result would have been far fewer than 219.
Site owner is having cognitive difficulties, conflating Democrat cheating with Trump’s actions. What a tone deaf blogpost title and opening sentence, LOL. 219-16 and the narrative is Trump helped the D’s.
Everyone, this is what sour grapes and fake news brainwashing looks like.
10. November 2022 at 04:45
Actually, Donald’s base is still the same.
I have worked on many campaigns over the years, and they do a lot of internal polling before they invite speakers, so OZ would never have invited him if he didn’t poll well with rust belt independents.
Why do you think Hershel is “dumb.” Is it dumb to support law and order, and policing? Warnock doesn’t. Is it dumb to be fiscally responsible, because Warnock thinks that one should reduce inflation by spending more money. Is valuing free speech and family values dumb?
He certainly doesn’t sound dumb to me.
Scott, I really think you to a need visit a church, just to feel some love from the people around you, or go on a vacation and take a break. I don’t know if you are burned out, or if it’s because of social rejection, reduction in your blog traffic after most economists rejected your ideas, or perhaps it’s personal issues, but you have the disposition of an antisocial loner. And that can lead to dangerous outcomes. In fact, it’s one of the main reasons 37% of unmarried woman identify with the radical left. They’ve been rejected for whatever reason, and rather than look in the mirror they lash out at the “system” and the “patriarchy.”
Your vicious personal attacks on entire groups of people, predominantly christian conservatives, is almost psychopathic. And recent posts are becoming more incoherent and bigoted.
I’m actually greatly concerned about your mental health.
10. November 2022 at 06:31
The trump party is a subset of the Republican Party. Trump steamrolled the power base in the Republican Party in 2015. He beat the anti-trumpers into oblivion 2016-2021. By nov 2022 that element has grown large enough (it’s still under the radar and quite sheepish and small) that Republican support is chipped down 5-8 points lower than it would be unified. That’s why there was no red wave. We see this most clearly in split ticket voting in Georgia and Arizona and other swing environments. It’s still to small to win primaries but it’s large enough to impact generals. The 2% libertarian vote will sit out or swing democrat in the Georgia special election giving warnock the seat. Trump will lose in 2024 and his run controlling the party will be over. Desantis could win in 2024. Trump won’t.
10. November 2022 at 06:41
Ed, The subset of Christian conservatives that believe: the earth is 5,000 years old, that believe that the caught up left behind view of the “rapture” is imminent, that salvation is obtained by whispering Jesus name three times in a mirror rather than by their conduct, and that vaccines have micro chip in them (the mark of the beast lol)… ought to be attacked. More so by Christians themselves. That’s pure idiocy and so is undermining Christianity as a whole. People start thinking all Christians are morons like them.
“Usually even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world . . . and this knowledge he holds to be certain from reason and experience. . . . If [non-Christians] find a Christian mistaken in a field that they themselves know well and hear him maintaining foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life and the kingdom of heaven, when they think that their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?” – St. Augustine
10. November 2022 at 06:44
It’s the Peter Principle: “The Peter principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter, which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to “a level of respective incompetence”
10. November 2022 at 06:46
That’s a really good way of describing it Ed.
Psychopaths generally have persistent anti-social behavior: Sumner is definetly anti-social.
Impaired Empathy and Remorse (e.g., hates populism, people power, individual rights, blue collar men and woman, religious people, etc: another check.
Egotistical traits (he says his readers cannot read, other monetary economists are all wrong, anyone who disagrees is an imbecile, etc): I think we can put another check mark here.
And then we have the psychopathic trait of inversing logic, inversing reality, whereby someone like Cheney, a corrupt politician, suddenly becomes the gold standard of the good and just politician. This is also something Sumner does a lot.
All inconsistencies for Sumner become normal: for example, Broward, Maricopa and Fulton for twenty years have had problems that arise during the election, but if anyone asks questions they are idiots because there is nothing abnormal about these counties, despite the fact that they are all democrat, always try to report late into the night or the next day after all other results are calculated, always seem to have issue with the machines, and all exist in swing states.
Btw, to his credit, Desantis removed the election official in Broward which now reports normally like the other counties, instead of the following morning or at 3:00 a.m, like they used to. I think it made a big difference in the outcome.
Yeah, I think we might be looking at a real psychopath here. There is also the ignoring of certain variables that don’t fit into the psychopathic mind. For example, he will say that all Trump and DeSantis supporters are part of a cult, as if everyone votes for the same candidate for the same reason; there is this proclivity to place everyone into a group, then to create a bubble of logic that fits some preconcieved notion.
It’s quite bizarre. It would be a good case study.
10. November 2022 at 08:08
Post #2:
Prior to the midterms, the narrative on this blog was that more ‘maga’ candidates (smeared with the dog whistle insult of ‘nationalists’) winning elections would be indication of ‘banana republic’.
Trump’s endorsements then go 219 wins and 16 losses, an incredible 93%(!) success rate. Never in the history of the country has anything even remotely close like that happened.
First blogpost after the midterms: “We’re a little less Banana Republic”.
LOL! Cognitive dissonance, or…
Edward is right, ‘incoherent’. But I don’t blame the site owner’s psychopathic tendencies (which we can glean from the repetitive psychological projections).
It’s ultimately megalomaniacal pride and arrogance in refusing to admit that the ‘mainstream’ media narrative is in fact plagued with deception by conscious design, tricking as trusting people as possible into mental pretzels, to keep the people weaker and easier to control.
Site owner started to attack Trump because the media narrative did so first. Media rarely criticizes Biden or Obama, ergo we see less criticisms of those on this blog. Prior to 2015 nobody called the Ellis Island award winning Trump a racist, but because fake news did, trusting viewers did.
Same thing with Musk. Prior to Twitter takeover, Musk was the darling of the left. Hardly any criticisms, all praises. After Twitter takeover, all of a sudden criticisms blasted from fake news, and ‘coincidentally’ that’s when site owner suddenly started to criticize Musk.
Same thing, but in reverse, for warmongering lying Liz Cheney. Before Jan 6 sham unselect committee, very little if any positive narrative from fake news was printed. Beginning Jan 6 sham committee, fake news blasts support for Liz Cheney (because then they can push anti-Trump narrative), and then ‘coincidentally’ the site owner starts to write positive praise for A FREAKING *CHENEY*. Let that sink in.
What is happening in this country and worldwide is that the mass populations of people are rapidly learning en masse the true source(s) of a lot of what used to be relegated to ‘non-coordinated’ and ‘organic’ human events, that before it was believed that humanity in general, or ‘most people’, as allegedly too flawed for their own good, and as bad and ‘dangerous’ as the ‘narrative’ told us we are, that the media was allegedly mostly truth tellers, etc.
Those with unjustified prides the size of the milky way are now appearing to the great bulk of humanity as literally insane and crazy, similar to how Edward described the site owner’s ideas. The bigger the pride, the harder the fall.
Turns out that most people are GOOD people. World is learning that there has been a COORDINATED AND DELIBERATE psychological warfare being waged on humanity, to intentionally divert the public’s attention away from the source’s own corruption and criminal activity (e.g. Media collusion with D party to push D’s lies narrative, and also censorship of incriminating evidence such as the Hunter laptop) and towards their ‘opponents’ instead.
To create a false history.
Hunter laptop PROVES BIDEN COMMITTED TREASON. Yet the liberal media, FBI, DOJ, and site owner, are ALMOST ENTIRELY SILENT, and there are no repeating calls to impeach. But those same people supported the impeachment of Trump for merely ASKING about it on a phone call to Ukraine!
For those paying attention, these are at the same time chess moves to expose corruption DEEP WITHIN the media and in government.
JFK spoke about ‘secret societies’. JFK was one of the first ‘conspiracy nuts’.
I know the truth that those who STILL follow the fake news’ ‘logic’ of ‘permitted range of discourse’, the followers can pretend in their minds to be independent from the fake news trap, and pretending that they are thinking for themselves, but in reality it goes deeper, they don’t yet see that the only reason they are talking about this and that and not something else entirely, is because of the deliberate psychological warfare from legacy media designed to prevent some talk and encourage other talk, for politics, power reasons. Just by writing about a topic in a certain way is intended to get readers to think and talk about it in that way, but in reality it was designed to prevent the people from thinking and talking about truths that are detrimental to the ‘secret society’, to the satanic cult crime syndicate rigging elections worldwide.
How’s this for sick and twisted irony: The loudest voices blithely arrogating to themselves special insight into the mind of Geist, into nature of all things ‘above’ the rest of us peons, are trying to convince everyone that POWER is the predominant motivator for humanity. We see this narrative in movies (also controlled), media, and on monetarist blogs. Turns out that it was never about them ‘discovering’ that in everyone else, as if it is the primary driver of everyone else, it was ALWAYS a pre-emptive strategy to JUSTIFY THEIR OWN INTRODUCTIONS OF POWER.
They accuse you of what they do.
That’s how their logic operates. Dialectic invocations (projections) of what allegedly is true and what allegedly is not true about other people, of the world, and all along it was just one series of projections of their own warped psychology of their own thirst for power, laws be damned, human lives be damned, countries be damned. It’s mentally traumatized sick psychopaths seeing themselves as the only ‘real’ Gods, they will lie about you, they will drug, rape and kill children, then they will cry that they are being threatened by bigots and haters when they so much as get questioned or criticized.
When you saw the lying POS ‘Jan 6 unselect committee’ prattle on about how they are trying to ‘save our democracy’, the ENTIRETY of the narrative was 100% a PROJECTION of their own desire to cover up their own destruction of democracy (Nov 2020 election rigged and stolen, MAJORITY of the country now accepts this truth). Deflect from the insurrection rigging the Nov election, and project the insurrection narrative against those EXPOSING the Nov insurrection, by forming a narrative that the Jan 6 peaceful protest of those KNOWING the election was rigged are somehow the insurrectionists.
The jan 6 peaceful protest was INFILTRATED by, which we also now know, nazi Azovs, FBI ‘agitating’ assets like Ray Epps, and other foreign/domestic hostile parties whose mission was to create as much havoc and disruption as possible, attention diversion, all so that lying POS like warmongering Liz Cheney and crocodile tears Adam Kinzinger can act on TV to brainwash as many trusting viewers as possible that ‘oh no look at the dangerous election deniers’.
Behind closed doors they laughed and high fived each other. In front of cameras, they play act.
Speaking of Banana Republic, the radical left Soros puppet LA District Attorney Gascon, just buried National Security Act violations and DISMISSED ALL CHARGES against Eugene Yu.
Was the original arrest and charge just a show? Or is there something even more sinister taking place?
Blackmail, threats, bribes, PLAGUE swamps such as California, Pennsylvania, Michigan, NY, ‘coincidentally’ all long time [D] controlled states.
Once you learn EVERYTHING is a psychological operation, everything makes more sense.
NYT is AGAIN pushing FAKE STORIES this morning, claiming Trump is blaming his own wife
10. November 2022 at 09:14
Trump has to go away. But he will not. I will not repeat the woulda coulda shoulda things that could have happened were it not for the relentless attacks against him. In the end, he never learned how to deal with it——and when you lose you have failed. He failed in 2020—and now it appears he wants the GOP to fail.
His attack against Ron DeSantis proves he is a jackass. I hope the Governor figures out how to not take the bait. So far he has done so.
While it is possible he caused the Red Wave to get flushed, I do not understand how it never showed up in the polls. Maybe the modern world cannot do polls anymore—-very possible. Although no one is saying that. Historically, the GOP tends to get understated in the polls.
So while I want him to go away ——I am having trouble figuring out how he “caused” the results. I think DeSantis should stump for Walker in the runoff——even if Trump does. Nevada still may go GOP —-and it looks like the House goes GOP (85% says 538) .
So it’s still anyone’s game—-unfortunately.
10. November 2022 at 09:23
Edward, You said:
“He certainly doesn’t sound dumb to me.”
And what should we conclude from that?
BTW, thank you for your sincere concern about my mental health.
Michael, You said:
“I do not understand how it never showed up in the polls.”
The polls were pretty accurate. You really ought to become informed before commenting.
“things that could have happened were it not for the relentless attacks against him.”
LOL. Trump’s entire political persona is nothing more than relentless political attacks on all his opponents, from day one. He’s still doing it (with DeSantis). Did DeSantis do something I missed that provoked the attack? And you think Trump’s a victim?
Politics is a helluva drug.
10. November 2022 at 11:18
“The polls were pretty accurate.”
Amazingly accurate, right? I hadn’t been paying much attention, then a couple of days before the election looked the 538 prognosis, and then we essentially we got an outcome very close to the center of their prognosis. The polling error was slightly (0.5 – 1%) favorable for the D’s, but just slightly.
Yet the D people are super happy, and the R people are super unhappy. (I think this is true even if they think the Senate is still a coin flip). We live in a nutty country.
10. November 2022 at 12:34
I’m a complete dilettante and outsider and find all this fascinating mildly amusing. Especially this bit, “he knows politics better than our best pundits.” Scott, he just blamed his wife publicly for the midterm results. If he’s playing a game, he has more guts than I do 😉
10. November 2022 at 18:07
“Herschel on the climate/Green New Deal/air:
“Since we don’t control the air our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air so when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then now we got we to clean that back up.””
Yup, he’s dumb. Probably a bit of TBI. 4 different kids with 4 different women, probably couldn’t remember which one he is supposed to be with.
The PA vote was a referendum on Oz. When you get rich selling miracle pills to old ladies that history doesnt leave you when you go live in a new state for 3-4 months. A generic GOP candidate would have won pretty easily, especially after the stroke.
Steve
10. November 2022 at 21:12
Scott,
I don’t think this has as much to do with Trump as everyone is assuming. The really big shift here has to do with Dobbs and abortion, where Trump is actually (according to reporting) far more moderate than most republicans. True, his candidates were terrible and a lot of republicans are bringing that up, but it’s easier to kick one guy out of your party (especially when that guy is Donald Trump) than to backtrack on one of the fundamental beliefs in your organization.
11. November 2022 at 02:57
The polls were “pretty accurate”.
Every poll is “pretty accurate”. These polls, otoh, were trending toward GOP in the final week in particular. Read 538 or RCP. For example. 538 had GOP with 59%chance of winning senate and 85-90% chance of winning House. Of course, those are merely “win-lose” odds, not expected winners from each party. RCP definitely overstated GOP as they do “expected winners”.
Fetterman, Hochul are two examples of close “late losers” but won by their forecast from 2 weeks go. Many others too.
All besides the point.
It is your irritating throwaway comment “why don’t you become informed before commenting” that is lazy and stupid.
11. November 2022 at 03:23
Also, did you not see my comment re: DeSantis and Trump? Trump was an obvious victim——but not of DeSantis——which is why I called him a jackass and to just “go away”.
And in the end he could not win, hired crazies to challenge election results (all of which I wrote about)—-when legitimate issues on election procedures were right in front of his face and he could not comment on.
And in the end he lost——which I laid on him. And Of all things to “like” about him you seem to believe his so-called desire to hack the GOP was smart in some demented way.
Peter Meijer? I think he will make the age cut. Why him? He let Trump stump for him. Is that a joke?
11. November 2022 at 09:01
I love the irony of so many people calling Herschel Walker dumb or a bad candidate getting no blow back at all.
But anyone who says Raphael Warnock is dumb or a bad candidate, is immediately labeled as racist.
What if we say BOTH of these options are bad candidates and BOTH appear to be pretty dumb…
11. November 2022 at 10:00
The difference is that people who claim Walker is dumb can provide quotes. I haven’t seen that for Warnock, or I see quotes that are really just political opinions. For example if either Walker of Warnock make standard claims about tax policy held by their party I would not consider that a matter of intelligence but rather tribal affiliation. If one of them keeps botching basic concepts of science or doesnt know basic civics details I think that suggests they are dumb.
Steve
11. November 2022 at 10:06
anon, The polls were biased against the GOP in 2016 and 2020, so that played a role in expectations of a red wave.
Rajat, Yes, it seems absurd.
Andrew, Trump’s private views on abortion (I agree he’s pro-choice) don’t matter, AT ALL. He appointed the people that overturned Roe. That’s all the public knows, and all they need to know.
Michael, Again, the polls were extremely accurate. Deal with it.
Tom, Then you’re doubly racist. 🙂
11. November 2022 at 11:49
@ Steve
Then I fault you for not following his history. Both of these individuals have done an incredible job of showing anyone can be a senator in this country.
@ Scott
I guess I’ll have to do as Warnock suggests and repent.
@ Michael
The polls were extremely accurate this time around… I don’t know how you could say otherwise. I think maybe the most accurate I can remember?
The REAL issue, here is that independent voters did not break for the GOP as expected. It was essentially a 50/50 with less that 1/3 providing a positive approval of the democratic party platform. That CLEARLY indicates the GOP had a massive problem with the candidates they put up. Most independents don’t like the dems, but still voted that way because there was just way too many poor candidates on the GOP tickets.
The candidate pools from both parties continue to get worse and worse – I think it’s good that a lot of centrists “won” in respective races, but the fact that there seem to be fewer and fewer is a real problem.
11. November 2022 at 11:50
“anon, The polls were biased against the GOP in 2016 and 2020, so that played a role in expectations of a red wave.”
Actually to be honest, after I posted that comment I learned more about that. Somehow I had missed the whole “red wave” thing. (I get most of my news from a couple of twitter feeds and two or three blogs). And then when I read 538’s thing before the election, they (Silver?) did a good job of explaining why not to assume a particular polling error – in particular, the way that polling and/or the composition of polls has changed in response those polling errors.
I was forgetting that most people think about polling in a primarily partisan way. Re: all the lefties who hate and disparage Nate Silver to this day because in 2016 he was right about Trump having a quite reasonable chance of winning.
Predictions are hard; predictions about predictions….
11. November 2022 at 16:33
Scott,
Definitely true that Trump aided the pro life wing of the republicans, but my point was more so that a lot of republicans are hoping that they can pin the blame on him solely and then carry on without him. Abortion is a long-standing priority of the party, and they don’t want to face the facts that their sincere beliefs have more to do with the lackluster results than one unpopular leader. Just my take, could be entirely wrong
12. November 2022 at 08:23
Andrew, Yes, I agree with that. It was clearly both. Abortion made the GOP less popular than otherwise, and the Trumpiest nuts did worse than the more normal Republicans. That turned a red wave into a dead heat.