Election Finale

December 6, 2022 1:07 PM

5 key questions the Georgia Senate runoff will answer. The election could say a lot about candidate quality and whether Democrats can replicate their success in the state.
posted by team lowkey (81 comments total)

Herschel Walker may be the most cynical choice of candidate to stand for election to a major office in my lifetime. Compared to him, Sarah Palin was Margaret Thatcher. If he wins tonight, the floor's the limit when it comes to future Republican nominees.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:20 PM on December 6, 2022 [23 favorites]

Herschel Walker may be the most cynical choice of candidate to stand for election to a major office in my lifetime. Compared to him, Sarah Palin was Margaret Thatcher. If he wins tonight, the floor's the limit when it comes to future Republican nominees.

The bar was already set pretty low after the Republicans successfully ran Tommy Tuberville in the 2020 elections. Herschel Walker could, if he wanted, at least point to traumatic brain injury as an explanation for his cognitive issues. Tuberville is Walker without the horrifying personal issues, but just as much a "hey, let's elect our football guy" empty shell.

Anyway - go Warnock. And Georgia-dwelling MeFites - thank you for navigating your state's none-too-voter-friendly system in order to cast your votes.
posted by Nerd of the North at 2:17 PM on December 6, 2022 [29 favorites]

I saw this screenshot of a twitter thread on reddit and it sounded like a nightmare to vote in more heavily populated areas in GA. Republicans sure are doing all they can to prevent as many (mostly black & brown) people from voting out there.

I will say, however, I found in the comments that's not the case everywhere in GA.

Also, thank fuck for early voting out there. Keeping the ol' fingers crossed.
posted by revmitcz at 2:24 PM on December 6, 2022 [7 favorites]

Unfortunately for Herschel Walker, it is just sort of a full moon, just missing the opportunity to bring out the werewolf vote.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 2:54 PM on December 6, 2022 [10 favorites]

Herschel Walker may be the most cynical choice of candidate to stand for election to a major office in my lifetime

There's a photo on the NYT of (white) Walker supporters in a local store, clutching little signs, waiting at the door for him to pop in and give a quick speech. They look absolutely terrified at the prospect of him actually showing up, though.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:57 PM on December 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

This clip of Obama campaigning for Warnock drove a stake through my heart.
posted by box at 3:45 PM on December 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

Herschel Walker may be the most cynical choice of candidate to stand for election to a major office in my lifetime.

The bar was already set pretty low after the Republicans successfully ran Tommy Tuberville in the 2020 elections.

Let's not forget about pedophile Roy Moore in Alabama, who came every close to winning the special election to replace Jeff Sessions a few years back. I remember shuddering at the number of creepy dudes who went all "Well, Actually" to inform us that technically Moore was an ephebophile rather than a pedophile, so that made it okay. Recall that, as with Walker, some Republicans were initially hesitant to support him, but once Trump endorsed him, they changed their minds.

So, yeah, this is the new normal for the Republicans.
posted by lord_wolf at 3:54 PM on December 6, 2022 [10 favorites]

(’My God, Herschel Walker, What Have You Become?’ is a thoughtful essay I might end up regretting sharing.)
posted by box at 4:41 PM on December 6, 2022 [13 favorites]

For your viewing pleasure, NYT has the Needle
posted by soylent00FF00 at 4:41 PM on December 6, 2022

With 51% counted Warnock is up 53-47.

The aforementioned Needle was "leaning Warnock" and is now "probably Warnock".
posted by saturday_morning at 5:19 PM on December 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

Yay! It was annoying finding the right place to vote, although I was pleased to see that it was being done this time in a park and not the church it had been for previous elections. It was my pleasue to vote for Warnock instead of Nothing Celebrity Candidate #518.
posted by JHarris at 5:49 PM on December 6, 2022 [11 favorites]

I saw this screenshot of a twitter thread on reddit and it sounded like a nightmare to vote in more heavily populated areas in GA. Republicans sure are doing all they can to prevent as many (mostly black & brown) people from voting out there.

Anecdotally, I’m in a solidly blue metro Atlanta (but on the more rural side) county that, as of the last census, has a sizable black majority, and voting was quick and painless—no form and no waiting. But I fully believe that this county is just an outlier when it comes to election shenanigans… I know almost all of my friends in Atlanta voted early because they didn’t trust that they could successfully vote today in a reasonable amount of time.
posted by boisterousBluebird at 5:50 PM on December 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

Argh, NOW the needle is leaning Walker, and they've paused updates "while [they] investigate a data issue."
posted by JHarris at 5:51 PM on December 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

Maybe it's not leaning Walker after all, they're just not saying because of the issue, and there's a lot of votes left to count in blue areas. Frog I'm so sick of this state though, I'm surrounded by people who unthinkingly vote whoever Trump tells them to. It's hard keeping up the happy face here sometimes.
posted by JHarris at 5:55 PM on December 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

I've been sharing this article a bunch this week as it is the single best thing I've read about this nonsense:
What White Voters See in Herschel Walker by Dante Stewart for the NYT

I can't quite believe that the Times actually printed this, since it is largely an indictment of exactly the kind of white supremacist political cynicism the Times regularly boosts.

White ingratitude is bent on breaking people’s hearts. It is white ingratitude that refuses to appreciate what Senator Warnock means to Georgia and this country and forces him to prove himself once again. It is white ingratitude that desires the stereotype of the ignorant charismatic Black athlete. It is white ingratitude that disrespects and disregards the Black tradition of faith that wants to both heal the soul and save society. It is white ingratitude that refuses to acknowledge just how deeply racist a vote for Mr. Walker actually is. White ingratitude is not just about open hatred and violence; it is also the everyday ways many white people make life so much harder for those who don’t look like them.

Just hanging out here in DeKalb (still <5% of our vote reported, inexplicably) hoping that this nonsense will all be over soon.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:55 PM on December 6, 2022 [20 favorites]

Not looking so good right now; 51% walker with 56% counted. Really heavy turnout in my county, the 15th largest in the state and heavily Republican. Early voting wait times ranging from 45 minutes to over an hour all week long.

Herschel Walker Is an American Tragedy

As an aside, it strikes me as somehow appropriate that many of his supporters on social media can't even spell his name, despite seeing it on TV and yard signs for the last few months.
posted by TedW at 5:55 PM on December 6, 2022 [5 favorites]

And now Warnock is ahead again. I have work to do and need the distraction.
posted by TedW at 5:56 PM on December 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

Oh, and screw CNN and NYT, support local non-profit media and use WABE's election portal tonight.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:57 PM on December 6, 2022 [8 favorites]

As a domestic violence survivor I’m going to say I’m not loving how close this is tonight. How does no one care?
posted by corb at 6:13 PM on December 6, 2022 [23 favorites]

A lot of it is tribalism. People who are uncritical thinkers, who just vote red automatically. That's basically my whole family, excluding me.
posted by JHarris at 6:21 PM on December 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

No lines in DeKalb County (solidly Democratic suburb of Atlanta)… I’m guessing there are so few Republicans here that they can’t mount a suppression operation. (Seriously, in the primary there were “ballot questions” run by each party and the Republicans had a question “did you know DeKalb County has an active Republican Party?”.)
posted by madcaptenor at 6:25 PM on December 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

Looking more closely at the map, it looks like metro Atlanta still has a lot of votes to count, and is going for Warnock 60-90%. Roughly 6 million of Georgia's 11 million people live in that area, so that makes me optimistic. The fact that this race is even in a runoff, however, does not.
posted by TedW at 6:26 PM on December 6, 2022 [6 favorites]

Watching the election night results in this modern age as they come in is a recipe for madness. The Needle has its damage done.

Remember the Red Mirage factor. Remember that early voting breaks heavily Democratic and tends to lag behind. Note Dave Wasserman of Cook Political Report tweeting about lots of good news for Warnock in results and not as much for Walker.

This is going to be a Warnock win when the smoke clears; it's just a matter of how long it'll take for that to become completely clear, and by how much.
posted by delfin at 6:27 PM on December 6, 2022 [5 favorites]

And, of course, there will be the usual cries of Democratic Mass Ballot Harvesting and Blue Cities Waiting To See How Many Votes They Need To Steal and Perfectly Timed Blue Spikes Eliminating Walker Gains and Burst Pipes and other Lindellian nonsense.

Wasserman just called it for Warnock, FYI. Your mileage may vary.
posted by delfin at 6:41 PM on December 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

At this point, the only substantial remaining votes are in Cobb, Fulton, DeKalb, and Gwinnett, which are consistently 60%, 80%, 90%, and 60% for Warnock. There are still a few hundred thousand votes out in those 4, and all the dumb little counties with one or two thousand votes at 90% Walker have reported in. Everything should be fine. But I'm not going to sleep yet.
posted by hydropsyche at 6:42 PM on December 6, 2022 [6 favorites]

(We have 159 counties. Four of them have around a million people each. Dozens of them have a couple thousand. I'm allowed to say it's dumb.)
posted by hydropsyche at 6:50 PM on December 6, 2022 [13 favorites]

At least the needle is being optimistic. I hate that these races that should be blowouts keep being way too close.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:00 PM on December 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

I hope he trips over Kari Lake's feet on that tv show. I don't think he can remember a whole dance routine.
posted by adept256 at 7:04 PM on December 6, 2022 [4 favorites]

Dave Wasserman has seen enough.
posted by firechicago at 7:09 PM on December 6, 2022 [3 favorites]

The pattern that's emerging is that anyone crazy enough to win the primary is too awful to win the general.

And Warnock is in. 49-51 senate. Easier committee assignments. Manchin and Sinema are less relevant. Mitch has a sad, probably going to be mad at Trump. They will learn nothing from this.
posted by adept256 at 7:23 PM on December 6, 2022 [23 favorites]

And it looks like McCarthy will get his gavel, but be beholden to the five craziest dipshits in government. He's gonna have to take their calls about gazpacho police and daylight savings and whatever bugfuck crazy shit they dream up. That monkey's paw was cursed, Kevin.
posted by adept256 at 7:33 PM on December 6, 2022 [10 favorites]

It's being called for Warnock. By three points!
posted by zardoz at 7:43 PM on December 6, 2022 [6 favorites]

They will learn nothing from this.

I'm worried that the rightist mainstream media learned nothing from this. It's just money rolling in, no matter the cost to democracy.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:48 PM on December 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

I live in downtown Atlanta. The early-voting period was much compressed for this election, so when Spouse and I tried to early vote last week, there were many hundreds of people in line. Today, however, everyone all across town reported that while there were small lines in the early morning, after about 0900 everything was walk on in and vote. We walked to our precinct at about ten, and the whole thing took about three minutes from start to finish. This was the experience of nearly everyone who voted intown today. So, the voter suppression didn't really work, which likely means we can expect more horror in 2024.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 7:49 PM on December 6, 2022 [9 favorites]

CNN: Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock will win Georgia Senate race

Guardian: Raphael Warnock wins crucial Georgia runoff election – live

My sincere thanks to everyone who voted for him or supported him in any way.

And my most sincere thanks to the Reverend for running, and for serving his country.

WOOHOO!
posted by kristi at 7:51 PM on December 6, 2022 [17 favorites]

We did it, y’all.
posted by Fleebnork at 7:53 PM on December 6, 2022 [2 favorites]

I'm really looking forward to reading my FB feed over the next day or so!
posted by TedW at 7:56 PM on December 6, 2022 [1 favorite]

Incumbent Reverend beats werewolf wannabe... by less than one percent.

I'll take it, but it's sobering how close it was.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 8:10 PM on December 6, 2022 [13 favorites]

This year, Gov. Brian Kemp and his Democratic challenger, Stacey Abrams, along with outside groups backing them, raised upward of $250 million. And so far, data from the nonprofit group OpenSecrets shows that nearly $401 million has been spent on the race between Mr. Warnock and his Republican opponent, Herschel Walker, which will be decided in a runoff election on Tuesday.

“There’s never been anything like it,” said Bob Houghton, the president of the Georgia Association of Broadcasters, a trade group that represents the TV and radio stations that are, arguably, the real winners in these races. “It just keeps coming.”

We desperately need a Constitutional amendment that forbids money in politics, of any stripe, at any level. Not only is it obscene, it has been slowly killing democracy since the Reagan years.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:13 PM on December 6, 2022 [21 favorites]

Hallelujah!!

THE WORST DAY for Fonald Trucking Dump since he lost his own re-election.

1) Announcement of criminal referrals coming for Jan 6.
2) Trump Organization loses in NY, like a dog!
3) (Tiny-)hand-picked candidate Walker loses big league in Georgia.
posted by xigxag at 8:39 PM on December 6, 2022 [40 favorites]

I voted today, 2 minutes in and out.

No idea why and how Walker did so well.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:42 PM on December 6, 2022 [6 favorites]

I’m so relieved Warnock won for a lot of reasons. I’m still not convinced Georgia is purple, just think it is sensitive to Trump-backed bad candidates. And not even that sensitive because this race is closing out with a very thin margin. Dems will need to put a lot of work into that state to keep the momentum and Warnock or another Dem next time around.
posted by glaucon at 8:55 PM on December 6, 2022 [6 favorites]

Frog I'm so sick of this state though

“But Toad,” said Frog, “all the other states suck, too. What are you going to do, move to Alabama?!”

I know that’s pretty late, but you can’t encounter an autocorrect that amazing and just leave it there, can you?
posted by Ghidorah at 10:02 PM on December 6, 2022 [31 favorites]

We desperately need a Constitutional amendment that forbids money in politics, of any stripe, at any level. Not only is it obscene, it has been slowly killing democracy since the Reagan years.

I theoretically support small donors, but having gotten at least 500 emails about just this race I say kill it with fire. jeopardy is pretty much the only broadcast tv I watch and it is 100% political ads during election season
posted by CostcoCultist at 10:18 PM on December 6, 2022 [5 favorites]

I know that’s pretty late, but you can’t encounter an autocorrect that amazing and just leave it there, can you?

It wasn't an autocorrect, heh. We decolonize our heads by bits and pieces. I've taken to saying Frog lately instead of the G-word, it's a gag from Amphibia. By the end of the show even Anne was saying "Oh my Frog" sometimes, like she had picked up a bit of Ribbitology.
posted by JHarris at 11:52 PM on December 6, 2022 [15 favorites]

(A Frog and Toad response is awesome, BTW!)
posted by JHarris at 11:53 PM on December 6, 2022 [8 favorites]

jeopardy is pretty much the only broadcast tv I watch and it is 100% political ads during election season

Oooooh I don't know if you're in Georgia, but I am, and every time I've watched a Youtube video in the past few weeks, if ads could make it through, like half of them are political ads for or against either Warnock or Walker. I joked on mefi.social that I was considering writing in Ublock Origin on the ballot.
posted by JHarris at 11:56 PM on December 6, 2022 [5 favorites]

Another Atlanta resident here. It took me three tries to vote, finally succeeded yesterday. I believe that Republicans got smart(er) and a lot more were voting early, hence the impossible lines. A red family member told me that he was, “voting early cause it will be harder for the Dems to cheat if there are a lot of republican ballots in the mix”.

Thank you, Reverend Warnock.
posted by pearlybob at 2:24 AM on December 7, 2022 [12 favorites]

The best news is that in spite of all the money and the lies and the terrible candidacy of Herschel Walker, Senator Warnock is an astonishingly good Senator. He's one of the best speakers the Senate has ever seen. He cares deeply about his constituents. He has sponsored and cosponsored bunch of bills that are actually good laws we need. His core issues--voting rights, healthcare reform, VA reform, green energy, gun control--are ones that the majority of Americans support but the parties often forget to actually work on. This is not just another seat with a D next to it. When the circus leaves town, we still have a great Senator.
posted by hydropsyche at 3:51 AM on December 7, 2022 [67 favorites]

No idea why and how Walker did so well.

Lots of people are voting between Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell, and this isn't a stupid thing to do.

It's fun to ascribe a wheelbarrow full of pathologies to Republicans but honestly a Democratic candidate for US House or Senate would have to be a truly exceptional shitheel before I decided to stay home. It would be personally embarrassing to have a Democratic version of Roy Moore as a local Senator but if that's the price to have Majority Leader Schumer instead of Majority Leader McConnell? I think I can eat that shit sandwich and ask for seconds.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:15 AM on December 7, 2022 [8 favorites]

I didn't appreciate Rachel Maddow solemnly interrupting coverage before 9pm to declare that the election had gone from "Too Early To Call" to "Too Close To Call". That brought back some serious 2016 anxiety especially since everything I had been reading on elections nitter up to that point had been favoring Warnock. I spent about 20 minutes anxiously reloading various feeds to see if there was some unexpected development brewing, but to my relief the good news for Warnock kept coming.

Other than that, I thought the evening was pretty chill. Despite the worrisome but meaningless tallies, early results were looking quantifiably good by 8:30pm and by 9:30 the writing seemed to be on the proverbial wall. And by 10:30 it was over. The final result is way closer than than it should be, but it's more than enough.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:19 AM on December 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

From Georgia resident Charles Blow (NYT)

They twisted themselves into knots to excuse Walker, using a roundabout racism to do so. Some said that what we saw as a lack of intelligence was in fact a regional affectation: Walker speaks the way many Black people in Georgia speak.

In their construction of things, deficiency was endemic to Blackness and ubiquitous among Black people. The best that could be hoped for was a Black person who was willing to fall in line and vote with the party. Walker had proven that he would do that. He would be a willing puppet for their ventriloquism.

And he came dangerously close to winning.

This will remain a stain on the Republican Party. But Walker didn’t win. Cynicism didn’t win. Trump didn’t win.

Competence and common sense prevailed.

posted by hydropsyche at 5:27 AM on December 7, 2022 [12 favorites]

Politico post mortem: "He Never Should Have Run for This Seat."

Unnamed Walker confidant (not any kind of reliable narrator): "The idea that the origin story of Herschel’s candidacy was Trump calling him up and telling him he should run for the Senate, that is not accurate. But you’re not going to get anybody to say that on the record. And the reason why is because it kind of sounds like you’re being disrespectful of the president."

Christian Walker (ditto): "The Truth: Trump called my dad for months DEMANDING that he run. Everyone with a brain begged him: “PLEASE DON’T DO THIS. This is too dirty, you have an insane past… PLEASE DONT DO THIS.”

We got the middle finger. He ran."
posted by box at 5:47 AM on December 7, 2022 [18 favorites]

It's fun to ascribe a wheelbarrow full of pathologies to Republicans but honestly a Democratic candidate for US House or Senate would have to be a truly exceptional shitheel before I decided to stay home.

Yeah, I made this point in a conversation this morning. Fuck the enthusiastic Walker supporters, but I have sympathy for people who didn't like Walker as a candidate but felt they had to vote for him in order to increase the number of Republicans in the Senate.

Like you say, I would hold my nose and put up with a lot of crap in order to get another Democrat in. We're lucky in that (by and large) the Democrats tend to favor people who are actually qualified to govern (even if you disagree with their views on individual issues) over moronic empty suits and amoral shitbags. But even so, Dems in other states have felt that they had to vote for Andrew Cuomo or Joe Manchin or whomever, and I would do the same in their position.

Hopefully Republicans will see this as an indictment of their tendency to elevate celebrity over competence, but I won't hold my breath.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 6:13 AM on December 7, 2022 [6 favorites]

Former NYT reporter David Cay Johnston (the first reporter to get Trump's tax returns) this morning:

It's profoundly disturbing that more than 1.7 million Georgians, 49%, voted for a manifestly unfit candidate—an incoherent, lying, denying, Russian-roulette playing, abortion pressuring, woman beater.

We need to ask ourselves what moral values the GOP stands for. Clearly, it’s no longer a party that can lay claim (if it ever could) to upholding “family values.”

Just 10 years ago in Missouri, Todd Akin said "legitimate rape" doesn't result in pregnancies. Because of that one stupid and misogynistic comment he lost a Senate race to Claire McCaskill by almost 16 points. Herschel Walker should have lost by that much or more of decency and competency mattered to Georgia Republicans.

We cannot have a decent government when indecent candidates are put forth by any political party.

If there's any comfort here, it's knowing that there a lot of racist white Georgia Republicans who are furious today, because they bit their tongues, held their noses and voted for a Black man -- and still lost.
posted by martin q blank at 6:59 AM on December 7, 2022 [23 favorites]

I'm very, very happy that Warnock won, but the only lesson the Republicans will take away from this, as others have noted above, is that they'll have to improve their voter suppression game.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:59 AM on December 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I'm glad Warnock won, but awfully depressed that so many people turned out for absolutely no other reason (i.e. contrast with a general election, where there's a lot of other races worth putting an opinion in for) than to vote for Herschel Walker, who is really astonishingly stupid and manifestly unfit for public office.
posted by jackbishop at 7:08 AM on December 7, 2022 [4 favorites]

4 Takeaways (WaPo)
posted by box at 7:10 AM on December 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

We need to ask ourselves what moral values the GOP stands for. Clearly, it’s no longer a party that can lay claim (if it ever could) to upholding “family values.”

I think it's pretty simple:
Republicans seemingly won't vote for a Democrat under any circumstances. That's their "moral values".
posted by Liquidwolf at 8:08 AM on December 7, 2022 [9 favorites]

If Walker had won he might single-handedly have destroyed the Republican party.

I'll miss his twice weekly xose of laughable stupidity.

This past weekend he complained of hoo.msny pronouns in the army. Then, he confessed he did'nt know what a pronoun is.

He was the best the Republian party has to offer.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 8:16 AM on December 7, 2022 [7 favorites]

If Walker had won he might single-handedly have destroyed the Republican party.

The only way Walker could single-handedly destroy the party of Trump, Sarah Palin, Tommy Tuberville, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and the legions of batshit idiots I'm too exhausted to remember is by somehow magically taking over News Corp, Musk-style, and turning Fox News into Werewolves v. Vampires, all day every day, channeling viewers' self-righteous anger and sense of victimhood into the great cryptid debate. And even that would probably not be enough. People would go with it.
posted by trig at 8:29 AM on December 7, 2022 [10 favorites]

We need to ask ourselves what moral values the GOP stands for. Clearly, it’s no longer a party that can lay claim (if it ever could) to upholding “family values.”

It was obvious all the time that for Republicans, "family values" was a media-acceptable code phrase for white male dominance and subjugation of women. Always. So-called "family values" was an obviously reactionary reaction to the rise of feminism, and they lost any claim to "morality" when the evangelical crowd abandoned an actual born-again christian, Jimmy Carter, to vote for Ronald Reagan, way back in 1980.

It's a blot on the so-called "liberal media" that they ever took Republican claims to morality and family values seriously, even if the mask is finally starting to slip.
posted by Gelatin at 9:20 AM on December 7, 2022 [35 favorites]

Republicans seemingly won't vote for a Democrat under any circumstances. That's their "moral values".

When the Lieutenant Governor of Georgia said that he did not vote because he couldn't even abide voting for the literal successor to MLK, he said everything that ever needs to be said about the modern GOP.
posted by Etrigan at 9:37 AM on December 7, 2022 [11 favorites]

I failed to note that so-called "family values" is also a bigoted reactionary position against the rise in acceptance of LCBTQ people, but it absolutely is that too, and we see it in the demonization -- which now has an actual body count -- of such harmless fun as drag shows. .
posted by Gelatin at 9:59 AM on December 7, 2022 [9 favorites]

I hope at some point someone does a good run-down of turnout in the special election. I posted this in a previous thread, but prior to the contest, polling done by AARP was showing something like a 33 point gap in voter preference between voters under 50 and voters who were over (i.e.: +24 Warnock for voters from 18-49, +9 Walker for voters 50+)

So who turned out for the special and how did that differ from the general, and was that poll a crazy outlier or was it largely reflected in the results?
posted by Nerd of the North at 12:41 PM on December 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

No idea why and how Walker did so well.

On second thought, I was reminded by someone else that a LOT of Georgia is rural or semi-rural and leans red. It's only the sheer size of the blue pockets (Hello Atlanta) that helped turn and keep the state blue.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 1:08 PM on December 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

I am not certain that this analysis of the race from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution hasn't been posted, but I don't think so because someone would have quoted this on-the-record description for sure:

“Herschel was like a plane crash into a train wreck that rolled into a dumpster fire. And an orphanage. Then an animal shelter. You kind of had to watch it squinting through one eye between your fingers,” said Dan McLagan, an adviser to Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, one of Walker’s defeated rivals in the GOP primary.
posted by Dip Flash at 4:35 PM on December 7, 2022 [9 favorites]

Thing is, Mr. McLagan, would Gary Black's voting record been any different from Walker's if either of them had won the election? I'm guessing probably not.
posted by The Card Cheat at 9:43 AM on December 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

when Spouse and I tried to early vote last week, there were many hundreds of people in line

Oregon's been voting entirely by mail for 25-30 years and it's awesome.
posted by neuron at 10:58 AM on December 8, 2022

Annnnd Sinema just left the Democratic Party. Well, at least we had the insurance.
posted by caviar2d2 at 4:40 AM on December 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

(On Kyrsten Sinema's style.)

She told Politico that she wasn't running for president, so there's that.
posted by box at 4:54 AM on December 9, 2022

I swear at this point the only explanation for Sinema is that she sought election to the Senate for the purpose of trolling. There's no actual rational explanation I can see for what she does.

I'd give better than even odds that she decides to caucus with the Republicans just for the lulz.
posted by sotonohito at 4:56 AM on December 9, 2022 [2 favorites]

In this moment, she say she'll be an Independent, and that she expects to keep her committee assignments. Probably my favorite sentence in the Politico link:

Unlike independent Sens. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Angus King (Maine), Sinema won’t attend weekly Democratic Caucus meetings, but she rarely does that now.

posted by box at 5:14 AM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

Can she do that? If you're elected as a Democrat, what about the people that voted for her?
posted by VyanSelei at 5:31 AM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

Can she do that?

Yes, and she will be the 22nd person to do that since 1890.
posted by miguelcervantes at 5:37 AM on December 9, 2022

What about the people that voted for her?

Sinema's level of fucks given is expected to remain unchanged.
posted by box at 5:41 AM on December 9, 2022 [5 favorites]

Sinema has always been a fifth column for the dem caucus. Good riddance.

I bet she is banking on the idea that they wont run a dem candidate against her in '24, but I think the dems should call her bluff.
posted by mrjohnmuller at 6:37 AM on December 9, 2022 [3 favorites]

TPM on Sinema this morning: "Deeply unpopular in Arizona, Sinema faced a potential primary challenge in 2024, with Rep. Reuben Gallego (D-AZ) regularly nipping at her heels."

Sounds like she might have been expecting that Dem candidate to run against her anyway.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 8:18 AM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

Which becomes her insurance policy. She's banking on the idea that a three-way race will be easier for her to win than a Democratic primary, which is true. She's also planting the idea that if Gallego or someone like him does challenge her as a Democrat, a Republican opponent will coast to victory because the voting-against-Kari-Lake-or-someone-like-her voter base will be split.

She may also believe that in a three-way race, she will emerge with a coalition of Sensible Moderates from both left and right who will support her principled stance on partisan politics. This is, of course, batshit insane.
posted by delfin at 12:04 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]

We're also discussing Sinema over here.
posted by Etrigan at 12:33 PM on December 9, 2022

“A Republican ‘Soul-Searching’? Highly Unlikely.” Thomas Zimmer, Democracy Americana, 09 December 2022
posted by ob1quixote at 2:58 PM on December 9, 2022 [1 favorite]