The AP/Fox exit polls can be found here. Check out your state, the country, or an interesting race.
Elaine Godfrey/Atlantic:
House Progressives Celebrate a ‘New Kind of Centrism’
Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus see the midterms as a victory for progressive thinking, not a call to moderation.
A few of the most well-known House candidates—Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, and Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar—won their elections, but they were running in very blue districts (or, in Pressley’s case, unopposed), and their wins were expected. But a slew of other CPC-endorsed House candidates lost their races. They included the populist Randy “Ironstache” Bryce, who positioned himself as a working-class hero in Speaker Paul Ryan’s district in Wisconsin; the Elizabeth Warren protege Katie Porter in California; Kara Eastman in Nebraska; and Gina Ortiz Jones in Texas.
Because of this, and because of the big Democratic wins in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania last week, some strategists and commentators have suggested that Democrats would be better off if they nominate more moderate political leaders—nice midwestern folks with experience wrangling independents and Republicans, people who can counter Donald Trump’s brash behavior with pragmatism. In other words, they say, maybe the midterm elections demonstrated that the best Democratic contender in 2020 would be a political centrist.
But when she was asked about it at Monday’s press conference, Pramila Jayapal, the vice chair of the CPC, just laughed. “If centrist is defined as ideas that serve the center of the country, then I might agree with that,” she said, citing recent polls showing that the vast majority of Americans support “Medicare for all,” a policy priority that for a long time was championed only by members of the far left.
I have always thought of myself as a centrist and that’s why I post here, the centrist site. What DC thinks is, frankly, not my concern. In fact, when you win you don’t have to accept other people defining who you are. You get to do it for yourself.
John Harwood/CNBC:
A week later it's clear the midterms did produce a blue wave – here are the three main factors that drove the Democrats' triumph
- One week ago, three distinct but overlapping currents combined to shift tidal forces in America's midterm elections — and smash the Republican Party's congressional fortress.
- Those currents were demographic change, Democratic mobilization and disaffection with President Donald Trump.
- As is clearer now than on election night, they produced a blue wave that has fundamentally altered the political calculus of the capital.
It’s always mobilization AND persuasion. For example:
John Stoehr:
How Liberals Think About Impeachment
Pay no mind to conservative pundits on the outside looking in.
Now that the Democrats have taken the US House of Representatives, and will set their legislative agenda after the new Congress is seated in January, I suspect we’re going to hear much more about the prospect of impeaching Donald Trump.
The primary source of that speculation won’t be the Democrats, not party leaders and especially not Nancy Pelosi. The primary source is going to be conservative intellectuals who can’t, or won’t, do much to influence the Republican Party. They can, however, try influencing, to some degree, how the new House majority operates.
We saw this in Tuesday’s USA Today. Kurt Bardella warned Democratic leaders to avoid making the same mistake the Republicans made when they proclaimed to have found wrongdoing in the previous administration but didn’t, discrediting themselves.
The Democrats won’t do that. I don’t see any serious evidence suggesting they will. What I do see is conservative pundits on the outside looking in. They see a Democratic Party through a conservative lens, and are blind to how liberals function in the world.
First Read:
Trump has remade the GOP in his own image. It's costing them.
First Read is your briefing from "Meet the Press" and the NBC Political Unit on the day's most important political stories and why they matter.
What happened last night? Well, the Senate seat that Flake gave up is now in Democratic hands, with NBC News declaring Kyrsten Sinema the apparent winner over Republican Martha McSally in the race to succeed Flake. The call for Sinema came after she extended her lead over McSally by more than 38,000 votes.
Sinema becomes the first Democrat to win a U.S. Senate race in Arizona since 1988.
And Arizona isn’t the only place where Trump’s beefs with other Republicans ended up costing his party. In June, the president attacked Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C. and endorsed his primary opponent Katie Arrington – which helped defeat Sanford. What happened last week? Democrat Joe Cunningham beat Arrington, flipping that Charleston-area congressional seat to the Democrats.
And in August, Trump endorsed Kris Kobach over incumbent GOP Gov. Jeff Colyer — and Kobach narrowly won that primary. What happened last week? Well, Democrat Laura Kelly beat Kobach, giving Dems one of their most impressive wins in a red state.
Of course, Kobach may replace the not-Nazi-enough Kirstjen Nielsen at DHS, but he’d have to be confirmed first. And the hardline stuff is what lost the GOP last Tuesday.
WaPo:
Republicans fan unfounded worries about voter fraud in Florida and other close contests
What appears to be a coordinated Republican strategy to undercut post-election vote counting is also evident in New Mexico, where Rep. Yvette Herrell (R) is refusing to concede her race to Democrat Xochitl Torres Small after absentee ballots changed her status from winner to loser, and in Arizona, where the National Republican Senatorial Committee contended a county election official had been “using his position to cook the books” for Democrat Kyrsten Sinema.
Basically, Republicans are bad people who lie to you.
Jennifer Rubin/WaPo:
What Democrats’ big win in Arizona means
The race was notable on multiple levels.
First, what was a reliable red state is now very much in play for Democrats in 2020. While Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey won reelection, Democrats snagged the Senate seat and flipped Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District. Look for Arizona to become a battleground state in 2020. More generally, the West and Southwest (Nevada, Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico) are safely or trending Democratic. Coupled with Democratic wins in the Rust Belt and Upper Midwest, Republicans outside the South are finding it tough going. That should be worrisome for Senate Republicans on the ballot in 2020 from Maine, Colorado, North Carolina and Arizona — and for Trump in trying to put together 270 electoral college votes in 2020.
Second, while the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s conduct in casting doubt on the vote-counting process was reprehensible, Ducey, Cindy McCain and McSally behaved appropriately, refusing to join in the anti-democratic process of delegitimizing elections that don’t go their way. As a result, there will be no reasonable doubt as to the legitimacy of Sinema’s victory — or of McSally’s political viability going forward.
Third, the Democrats’ win reveals just how miserably Republicans performed in a year in which Democrats held on to or flipped Senate seats in seven states that Trump won in 2016 (Montana, Arizona, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania).
Politico:
Republicans used redistricting to build a wall around the House. Trump just tore it down.
GOP gerrymandering did not envision the upending of the Republican coalition.
House Democrats steamrolled Republicans in an array of districts last week, from those drawn by independent commissions or courts, to seats crafted specifically by Republicans with the intention of keeping them in the GOP column.
The overriding factor: a Republican president who political mapmakers could not have foreseen at the beginning of the decade. Trump altered the two parties’ coalitions in ways that specifically undermined conventional wisdom about the House map, bringing more rural voters into the GOP tent while driving away college-educated voters.
The trade worked in some states. But it was a Republican disaster in the House, where well-off suburbs, once the backbone of many GOP districts, rebelled against Trump in 2016 and then threw out House members in 2018.“It’s worth pointing out that the map is still quite gerrymandered,” said David Shor, head of political data science at Civis Analytics, a Democratic firm. “But I think an underappreciated aspect of that is you had districts that elected incumbents that were good fits for the [Republican] coalition that existed — but no longer worked as well when the 2016 realignment happened.”
More lighthearted WH hi-jinx with the “good mood” reality show after the public rejected him and he cost Republicans the House — and he got bad press:
- LA Times: Trump, stung by midterms and nervous about Mueller, retreats from traditional presidential duties
- WaPo: Five days of fury: Inside Trump’s Paris temper, election woes and staff upheaval
- Vanity Fair: “THE PRESIDENT IS VERY DEPRESSED”: WITH DON JR. FACING POSSIBLE INDICTMENT, AND ENDLESS HOUSE INVESTIGATIONS FORTHCOMING, NO WONDER TRUMP IS IN A BAD MOOD
- Michael Goodwin/NY Post: Trump needs to get out of his funk if he wants to be re-elected
- Eugene Robinson/WaPo: Trump goes to the mattresses — and shows who was the big loser
Things are going so well for him. What could go wrong? I mean, the guy always wins, right? just ask him.
By the way, the political stunt known as the “caravan” is backfiring badly, with Trump losing an election (disapproval of trump on immigration was 54% in the exit poll), the troops far from home at Thanksgiving, the bills mounting and media recognizing it as all nonsense.
Nice job.