A Right Wing Cannot Flap Alone, or, Donald Trump Screwed the Putsch

[A Black Falcon]

So, basically what happened in this election is that the nonpartisan polls were fairly accurate.  The problem is that there weren't very many OF them, while there were a whole lot of Republican-funded polls by right wing pollsters, so polling-wise the situation looked a lot worse than it actually was.  The right wing pollsters' right-leaning polls were inaccurate.  Thank goodness.

Of course, it is getting significantly harder to poll -- very few people answer their phones to unknown numbers anymore, and internet polls are difficult to do -- so some of this problem is inevitable and will only get worse, but even so, you can see the massive gulf in results between the very inaccurate right-wing pollsters and the reasonably close nonpartisan ones.

To start the year, Republicans had a big lead.  Then, the Supreme Court ended Roe v. Wade, totally changing the equation. After this Democrats got a big lead.  The polls did show a Republican gain in the month before the election, before things started moving back towards the Dems closer to election day.  The final result was something pretty much like the earlier, pre-"Republican wave" polling: as most people had been thinking for much of the year, the Democrats kept the Senate while the Republicans took the house.  So, the results were a mixed bag, with a slight Republican lean in the overall turnout negated in the Senate by the favorable map and some horrible candidates on the Republican side.

Meanwhile, the pundit class ignored the nonpartisan polling and predicted a big Republican victory that the polling never showed post-Roe repeal.  Republicans expected a win because "that's what always happens in a Presidents' first midterm", and a lot of members of the press were all too happy to gleefully predict Republican victory, because they seem to prefer Republicans to Democrats.  It's pretty frustrating stuff.

But then the election happened, and the red wave fortunately failed to materialize on a nationwide basis.  Instead, some states went right and others went left, the results were very mixed.  Republicans did best in Florida, probably America's worst state, which went hard right this year.  Meanwhile, in states such as Maine the Democrats did great.  Unfortunately for our House majority, one of the states we did poorly in was New York.  Combined with some very questionable court decisions there that blocked an attempted Democrat-favored map, Republicans picked up multiple seats there, sealing their victory.

However, the Republican majority is fortunately small. Currently Republicans are leading in 222 races, and Democrats in 213.  That is only a five vote majority, which is extremely close.  The Democrats recently have been united enough to work together and get our agenda through with a narrow majority, but the Republicans, quite unlike their old days of being the more disciplined and uniform party, now are riven by divisions.  Their right flank wants endless investigations and hearings about Hunter Biden and his laptop.  They also want hearings into how horribly the people arrested for being a part of the mob who assaulted the capitol on Jan. 6th have been treated in detention.  And they don't want Kevin McCarthy for leader, since his doormat-style of leadership isn't enough for them, they want someone as insane as they are.

Of course, their wing did not win in this election.  Election deniers did worse than average, and as you pointed out, very few candidates are going hard into election denial about their defeats in this election.  The losing Republican governor candidate in Arizona Kari Lake is an exception, she'd a diehard Trumper, but almost all others conceded defeat the way you should after losing.  That's a relief for sure!  Certainly, this does not exactly prove our democracy is fine now, it is not, but if it continues it's a huge step forward.  But despite this, the Trump wing of the party is not going to go down without a fight, and they don't care that they clearly lost and want to get as much as they possibly can out of the rest of their party for their support for a Republican Speaker of the House.

Seriously, thinking about the Hunter Biden hearings and prospecitve impeachment iof Joe Biden for literally nothing is so frustrating and sad, but it's what is probably going to happen.  However, to keep their majority in '24 they will need to win seats that they held this time but that voted for Biden in '20.  I cannot see those more moderate Republicans fully getting in line behind Trump-style election denial and policies, not when the not-Trump wing of the Republican Party's great hope for stopping Trump, the also crazily evil Ron DeSantis, is ascendant in his position in their party due to his huge win for Florida Governor... we will see how this will go, but the House will probably be a total disaster for the next two years, as the Republicans mostly fail to govern in any way and spend most of their time screaming about nonsense and yelling eachother.  Ugh.

But hey, at least with our Senate majority we get two more years of judicial nominees passed without a problem, and that is a big, BIG deal.  Absolutely huge.  Keeping the Senate after the '24 election will be nearly impossibly hard because of the states we need to defend then (West Virginia, Montana, Ohio, and more...), so before then we need to get as many judges through as possible.  It is fantastic that we held the Senate, it was getting a bit scary for a little while before the election thanks to the absolute flood of right-wing polls.

As for Trump, he announced he is running for President in '24... and the right-wing media and most Republican members of congress are NOT on board.  Most of them want to move on from Trump to DeSantis.  Well, they're both absolutely horrendous so I take no strong position there, but watching the right-right fight for the '24 nomination should be interesting.  I hope they rip eachother to shreds and make it easier for Biden to win again in '24...

Lastly, Nancy Pelosi just announced that she will not run for another term as Speaker of the House.  When she retires as Speaker she will have been our House leader for 20 years, and she's done a fantastic job!  Keeping the Democratic Party in line is incredibly difficult, but she always managed it when it counted.  Just amazing work there.  I think we'll really miss her leadership in the coming years...