A Hillbilly, a Heisman Winner, and Dr. Oz Walk Into a Bar...: A 2022 Senate Election Preview
PLUS: Find out what GOP candidate fell for a 1000 year-old trick pulled by Erik the Red!
Democrat Claire McCaskill of Missouri was considered one of the most vulnerable senators running for re-election in 2012. Her opponent was Rep. Todd Akin, a staunch anti-abortion Republican. Asked his thoughts during a television interview in August about allowing women who become pregnant following a sexual assault to get an abortion, Akin replied that in instances of what he called “legitimate rape” that women’s bodies have “ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Akin’s comment doomed his campaign. In a state Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney won by 9.4%, McCaskill won by 15.5%.
Clearly, “candidate quality”—or personal attributes like integrity, honesty, intelligence, moral character, decency, public spiritedness, etc., that transcend basic ideological differences—mattered in Missouri in 2012. A big question in today’s politics is if candidate quality matters anymore. Partisan nominees can almost always count on the support of partisan voters in elections, but sometimes nominees cross a line that suggests they’re not fit to serve in public office. In such cases, many independents and even some of their fellow partisans will put aside their ideological or policy concerns and pick on quality, concluding it is better to elect someone who can serve responsibly than someone who is morally or ethically deficient.
In today’s highly polarized environment, however, ideology matters more than candidate quality. (Or maybe the two concepts have been conflated in the minds of partisans.) Fearing the opposition, partisans prefer someone who will be loyal to the party and help it build power even if that nominee is lacking characteristics ordinarily associated with good public service. This is particularly true today on the Republican side of the aisle, where the GOP has wedded themselves to a man and a movement that has repeatedly demonstrated they are unsuited to public office. This year is no different: Trump’s name isn’t on the ballot, but there are a number of candidates who have followed his example and practically mock the notion that there are basic attributes beyond party loyalty that matter when it comes to public service.
Such candidates are running in gubernatorial, House, state, and local races throughout the country, but this week I’m focusing on the Senate, where Republicans have managed to nominate a number of poor quality candidates in critical races. This matters not only because many of these races are toss-ups, but also because the Senate is currently split 50-50. A net gain of only one seat would hand Republicans control of the chamber, which would make it almost impossible for Biden to advance any part of his agenda and seriously impede his ability to confirm judges. Yet even small gains for Democrats could provide them with the cushion they need (so long as they keep control of the House, which is truly an uphill battle, and counter the midterm environment) to enact more of their platform.
Rather than review every race, I’ve focused on what most assume will be the most competitive contests. That adds up to nine races: Four featuring Democratic incumbents, two featuring Republicans incumbents, and three open seats currently held by Republicans. Sorry, these reviews get long, but there’s a lot to cover when it comes to these closely-contested races.
This must be said: Ordinarily during the midterm of a Democratic presidency beset by high inflation, the Republican would be favored to win most of these races. The quality of the Republican candidates along with a few other issues have shaken that assumption, however. We’ll see in a little over a month if candidate quality still matters enough to affect electoral outcomes.
INCUMBENT: Mark Kelly (Democrat)
STATE PROFILE: Historically, Arizona—the home of Barry Goldwater—has been a red state. In the twenty-four Senate elections since Goldwater was first elected in 1952, Republicans have won seventeen times. Republicans have also won fourteen of twenty-two gubernatorial elections in that time and carried the state at the presidential level every year except 1992 and 2020. As that suggests, however, Arizona appears to be undergoing a political transformation, as Biden narrowly won the state by about 11,000 votes. It is also currently represented by two Democratic senators who cut a fairly moderate profile, and five out of its nine congressional seats are held by Democrats. As the population of Phoenix and Maricopa County exploded, the state has started sliding to the left. Democratic-leaning Latinos also make up a much larger share of the electorate today than in the past. Meanwhile, Republicans in the state have veered to the right. Relatively moderate senators like John McCain and Jeff Flake have essentially been purged by the state GOP while Trumpian figures like former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and state GOP chair Kelli Ward have alienated voters with hardline positions on cultural issues.
CANDIDATES: The Democratic nominee for Senate is incumbent Mark Kelly, who won the special election to fill John McCain’s seat in 2020. Kelly is a former astronaut and the spouse of former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was seriously wounded in a mass shooting in 2011.
Kelly is facing off against venture capitalist and Peter Thiel protégé Blake Masters. If they didn’t, the phrase “Peter Thiel protégé” should have set off alarm bells. Thiel co-founded PayPal and then went on to become one of the first investors in Facebook. In other words: Cha-ching! He’s one of those Silicon Valley types who had a really good idea once upon a time and got so stinkin’ rich off it he’s convinced himself and others he’s a genius with piercing insight into the future of humanity. (All he did was invent PayPal, people.) Politically, Thiel has been described as a libertarian and a contrarian, but at his core he’s an authoritarian who wants to deregulate the state so wealthy techno-capitalists can take power and guide the pathetic sheeple with their misplaced love for democracy to their most productive end. (John Ganz in this article calls it “Fascism 2.0”. Read it to learn, among other things, why Thiel prefers Mordor to the Shire. Also recommended: David Corn’s article on Thiel for Mother Jones.)
Anyway, Peter Thiel wants Blake Masters to be the next senator from the state of Arizona so badly that by the end of July he’d poured $15 million into the race. Senator Saruman just doesn’t have a good (ahem) ring to it, though, for good reason. Masters has recommended Americans revisit the ideas of the Unabomber, wants to replace every general in the Army with conservative (yet somehow non-ideological) colonels, has hired two fake electors to serve on his campaign, believes in the “Great Replacement” theory, has vowed to prosecute Dr. Anthony Fauci, blames the problem with gun violence in the United States on “black people, frankly,” hypothesized that one-third of the rioters on 1/6 were undercover FBI agents, called Kentanji Brown Jackson a “pedophile apologist,” admires Kyle Rittenhouse, and has been endorsed by the neo-Nazi publisher of one of the nation’s most despicable hate sites. “Yeah, but that tells me nothing about his policy positions,” you say. Well, here’s Masters throwing around the “fresh” idea of privatizing Social Security:
Masters also has a thing for violence, as this ad demonstrates:
To be clear, he’s not talking about self-defense here (which is what the conservative Supreme Court has based its rulings about the Second Amendment on.) By invoking the Taliban, he clearly thinks those guns need to be used against the government.
Masters is part of a new generation of conservatives (let’s call them neo-libertarians) who think old-school libertarianism is too soft because it doesn’t want to use the government to advance its agenda. Neo-libertarians believe in a strong state to save us from the political and cultural dystopia we’re currently living through. They also think people need to learn how to be libertarian and that the proper social hierarchy resulting from that libertarianism needs to be enforced. Masters is the first avatar of this new movement. Arizona’s voters would be wise to reject it.
CONCLUSION: On paper, Arizona is a pure toss-up. Democrats are bullish about the way the state is trending, but Republicans have the political infrastructure to remain competitive. While the state is getting younger (advantage Democrats), it is also a destination spot for retirees (advantage Republicans.) In an ordinary midterm, this seat should be won by Republicans, but the quality of the Republican nominee erodes the GOP’s advantage.
INCUMBENT: Marco Rubio (Republican)
STATE PROFILE: Florida Florida Florida. The Sunshine State has been at the center of national politics for years, most prominently in 2000, when a razor-thin 537 vote margin (shaped by who-knows how many hanging and dimpled chads) and a Supreme Court decision handed George W. Bush the White House. Bill Clinton barely lost it in 1992 before winning it in 1996. Bush won the state twice, as did Barack Obama. For most of the past fifty years, they’ve sent a Democrat and a Republican to the Senate, but Republicans have held the governor’s mansion since 1998. There is a sense, however, Florida is beginning to slip out of reach for Democrats as the large advantage the party has held in the Miami area has started to shrink. Republicans also have a much stronger state party apparatus than the Democrats. Biden was projected to win the state on the way to a landslide victory over Trump; instead, he lost it by a little more than three points, pushing victory celebrations to the weekend. Yet while Republicans have put together a string of victories that suggest Florida may become a fixture of their Electoral College map, their margins of victory have not been large, meaning Democrats can remain competitive here if they get their act together and stitch together a diverse voter coalition.
CANDIDATES: The Democratic nominee is Rep. Val Demings, who represents a congressional district covering most of western Orange County in central Florida. Demings is a former police chief of Orlando, served as an impeachment manager during Donald Trump’s first Senate trial, and reportedly made Joe Biden’s vice presidential shortlist.
The Republican nominee is two-term Senator Marco Rubio of West Miami. Rubio was 38-years-old when he first pushed sitting Republican Governor Charlie Crist out of the 2010 Republican primary for Senate and then defeated Crist (now running as an independent) in the general election. (Today, Crist is running against Ron DeSantis to get his old job back.) In the heady days of 2011, Rubio looked like the future of the Republican Party. Today, he is at best the third-most-likely Floridian to win the GOP presidential nomination in 2024 (and fellow senator Rick Scott and Donald Trump’s children are nipping at his heels.)
What happened to “Little Marco”? Oh, I remember now. Few politicians have done more to debase themselves in the Trump era than Marco Rubio. While running for president in 2016 against Trump (and when he wasn’t mocking his rival for having “small hands”) Rubio called Trump a “liar,” a “con artist” seeking to pull the “biggest scam in American political history,” and too “erratic” to be trusted with the nation’s nuclear codes…and then stated he supported giving that erratic lying con artist the nation’s nuclear codes. After that erratic lying [insert other adjectives here] con artist demonstrated he couldn’t be trusted with the nation’s security, Rubio chose to acquit him during his impeachment trial, supported him for a second term in the Oval Office, and then voted to acquit him again during his second impeachment trial. Rubio is now asking Floridians to send him back to the Senate so he can prove he remains about 31 vertebrae short of a spine when it comes to standing up for democracy and the rule of law, which makes him Donald Trump’s ideal senator. (To this end, Rubio has been spending time recently assuring the American people Trump’s hording of classified documents is nothing more than a “storage” issue. He’s doing this despite serving as vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.)
Sadly, I think Rubio knows better. You know all those times when a journalist has said, “Republicans on Capitol Hill will tell you privately they think Trump’s a danger to the republic but can’t bring themselves to say so publicly because they fear their base will reject them”? Whenever I read a story like that, I literally imagine the Republican in that story is Marco Rubio. But I will say this about him: When it comes to personal debasement, at least Teddy “Cancun” Cruz and Lindsey “Goose” Graham have him beat. Third place again, Little Marco.
CONCLUSION: Rubio is the incumbent in a competitive state leaning-to-trending red during a midterm election. Demings is a quality candidate, but those other factors mean Rubio has the advantage. The national environment would need to shift toward Democrats for Demings to come out on top.
INCUMBENT: Raphael Warnock (Democrat)
STATE PROFILE: Like Arizona, Georgia looks to be a toss-up state. Like other southern states, Georgia was a solidly Democratic (albeit conservative) state for nearly all of the twentieth century. The major exception was at the presidential level: Since 1964, it’s favored the Republican candidate for president every year except 1968 (when it backed George Wallace, with Nixon outpolling Humphrey), 1976 and 1980 (when it backed favorite son Jimmy Carter), and 1992 (when fellow southerner Bill Clinton eked out a victory.) The big change in state politics came in 2002, though, when Georgia swung decisively to the right. It’s only taken two decades for Democrats led by Stacey Abrams (the former minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives) to regroup and build an impressive voter outreach program. That and the continued growth of the Atlanta metro area helped deliver the state for Biden in 2020 and resulted in Democrats unseating both Republican senators.
CANDIDATES: Incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church (which Martin Luther King, Jr., co-led from 1960-1968), is the Democratic nominee. Warnock defeated Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler in a run-off on January 5, 2021, to fill the seat vacated by Republican Senator Johnny Isakson.
Warnock’s opponent is 1982 University of Georgia Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker. That season, Walker averaged 5.2 yards per carry. After three years of college ball, he ranked third all-time in rushing. Some argue he is the greatest college football player of all-time. Even today, Walker remains one of the most beloved athletes in Georgia’s history. (Many of the details about Walker come from this Washington Post article by John Rosengren.)
As a professional football player, Walker won the USFL MVP Award in 1985 while playing for the New Jersey Generals, a team owned by (checks notes) Donald Trump. (From Walker’s 2008 memoir: “Mr. Trump became a mentor to me, and I modeled myself and my business practices after him.” Oh Lord.) After the USFL folded on account of an ill-advised antitrust lawsuit brought by (checks notes) Donald Trump, Walker was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys, where he was pretty good even though Dallas never made the playoffs nor managed a winning record. In 1989 Walker was traded to the Minnesota Vikings, who regarded him as the piece they needed to make a Super Bowl run; instead, the Cowboys acquired a bunch of players and draft picks from Minnesota that would translate into a decade-long run at the top of the NFL and three Super Bowl championships. The trade was such a flop (Walker never lived up to the hype) that the Twin Cities’ Star Tribune to this day awards “Herschel the Turkey” to underwhelming Minnesota athletes. In 1992 Walker finished seventh in the two-man bobsleigh competition at the Winter Olympics. For much of the past twenty years, he has licensed his name to Renaissance Man Food Services to market chicken products (he has often overstated his role in and the size of the company.) In 2009, he was fired by (checks notes) Donald Trump during the second season of Celebrity Apprentice for not coming up with a new frozen-food meal for Schwan’s.
Somehow Herschel Walker believes this resume qualifies him to serve as a United States senator.
True, Walker could be a wise and learned retired professional athlete devoted to serving his country, but no. Consider:
Here’s Walker in 2019 falsely claiming to be an FBI agent and discussing a time in his post-football life when he chased after a man with the intent to kill him only to be dissuaded by a sign on the back of the man’s vehicle that said,
“Please Don’t Murder Me”“I’m Not Speeding I’m Qualifying”“My Kid is an Honor Student at Wilson Middle School”“Honk if You Love Jesus.”
Herschel Walker falsely claims that he is an FBI agent. It gets worse. He proceeds to tell an unhinged story about angrily grabbing a gun with the intent to kill a man.At the same event, he also said Russian roulette was one of his favorite games.
While married in the early 00s, Walker choked his ex-wife on multiple occasions and held a gun to her head as he threatened to blow her brains out.
The first time he ever voted in an election was in 2020.
In August 2020, he said, “Do you know, right now, I have something that can bring you into a building that would clean you from COVID as you walk through this dry mist? As you walk through the door, it will kill any COVID on your body.”
In December 2021, he argued deceased Georgia congressman John Lewis would not have supported the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which aimed to restore elements of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that Lewis advocated (and bled) for.
He thought it was unfair to ask him in January 2022 if he would have voted for the infrastructure bill Biden signed into law in November 2021.
In March 2022, he said, “At one time, science said man came from apes. Did it not? Well, this is what’s interesting, though. If that is true, why are there still apes? Think about it.”
Walker often claims to own companies that don’t actually exist and exaggerates his success as a businessman.
Discussing his dissociative identity disorder (a diagnosis some of his closest acquaintances doubt and that was not handed down by a clinical psychologist but by someone who believes you can tell if someone is gay based on what color of crayon they prefer) Walker claimed Jesus had the same affliction since Christ said he was the father, son, and Holy Spirit. (That’s both bad psychology and bad theology.)
During a June 2022 interview, he said if Stacey Abrams didn’t like the quality of life in Georgia she should move to one of the other 51 states.
For years, Walker has stated publicly he has one child. In July 2022, The Daily Beast learned he had another ten-year-old child. Asked by his own campaign manager if Walker had any other children, Walker said no. The next day, The Daily Beast learned of another secret child, this one thirteen-years-old. Walker admitted this was also his child. The Daily Beast then learned Walker had a fourth child born when he was in college. A campaign adviser said Walker lies “like he’s breathing” and has “lied so much that we don’t know what’s true.” Aides confessed to having “zero” trust in their candidate. Three different people interviewed by The Daily Beast about Walker independently called him a “pathological liar.”
In July 2022, he explained climate change this way: “The Green New Deal, you know climate change. I’m going to help you with that real quickly.…We, in America, have some of the cleanest air and cleanest water of anywhere in the world. So what we do is, we gonna put, from the Green New Deal, millions and billions of dollars cleaning our good air up….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.” A few days later, he added this process was aided by the Earth’s “rotation.”
In September 2022, when asked about what women’s issues were important to him, he said inflation because “they got to buy groceries.”
And just this week, in reference to his upcoming debate with Raphael Warnock: “I’m a country boy. I’m not that smart. He’s a preacher. He is smart and wears these nice suits. So, he is going to show up and embarrass me at the debate Oct. 14th, and I’m just waiting to show up and I will do my best.”
All that’s in addition to the ground-up red meat Walker regularly serves crowds on the campaign trail. A vote for Walker is basically an admission one believes a brain and a moral compass are not a necessary requirement for a sitting United States senator, and no, it’s not snobbish to say a senator should be smart because intelligence—even just average intelligence—is a pretty basic expectation for any job anyone does.
Here’s my test for Georgia voters who believe otherwise: Stand up in front of all your friends next Saturday and assert in all seriousness that Herschel Walker has what it takes to coach the #1 ranked and defending national champion Georgia Bulldogs football team. That’s right: Put this guy with zero coaching experience in charge of recruiting; designing a playbook; facilitating practice; hiring coaches; scouting; overseeing the team’s offense, defense, and special teams; and making in-game decisions. I dare you to say your beloved program would be in good hands. And if you can’t, you have to admit he isn’t qualified to serve in the US Senate.
CONCLUSION: The same story is playing out in Georgia as in Arizona. Due to excellent political organization, the state is trending blue, but the Georgia Republican Party remains strong. If Georgia is a toss-up, it should lean Republican in a midterm, but the poor quality of the Republican nominee could undermine the GOP’s advantage.
INCUMBENT: Catherine Cortez Masto (Democrat)
STATE PROFILE: It’s hard to pin Nevada down politically. It seems there’s an underlying western-style conservatism to the state’s politics, but that tendency hasn’t been strong enough to lock Democrats out of office. The two most important recent developments have been 1.) The Las Vegas boom, which has brought with it an influx of Latino residents; and 2.) The political career of former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, which not only positioned Reid well to deliver for his constituents but also enabled him to assemble a powerful state Democratic party apparatus. Together, those two developments have fueled Democrats’ recent success in the state. Reid, of course, retired from the Senate in 2016 and recently passed away, and there are signs the in-state coalition he cobbled together may be fragmenting. Regardless, both parties like their chances of winning in Nevada.
CANDIDATES: Nevada’s senate race pits Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto (who won the 2016 election to replace Reid) against former State Attorney General Adam Laxalt. (Laxalt has an interesting pedigree; he is the grandson of former Nevada Senator and Governor Paul Laxalt and the son of former New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici, a fact that was not publicly known until 2013.) Laxalt is 1-1 in statewide races, having won the Attorney General contest in 2014 but losing the 2018 gubernatorial campaign. On the issues, the race tracks as a fairly typical Democrat vs. Republican showdown. Laxalt, however, did chair Trump’s 2020 campaign in state and called for the state’s results to be overturned after citing numerous baseless claims of fraud.
CONCLUSION: While this isn’t an open seat, Cortez Masto is a first-term senator, which leaves her a bit more vulnerable than other senators who have faced voters on multiple occasions. The economy will likely loom large as a major issue, as the Las Vegas economy was absolutely battered during the pandemic. Democrats are hoping the Reid machine can turn-out votes, while Republicans are banking on voters’ frustrations with the president’s party .
INCUMBENT: Maggie Hassan (Democrat)
STATE PROFILE: No other state has as fierce a reputation for ideological independence as New Hampshire. In statewide races, party nominees can’t drift too far to the right or left if they hope to remain competitive in the general election.
CANDIDATES: The Democratic nominee is first-term incumbent and former governor Maggie Hassan, who defeated Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte in 2016 by 1,017 votes. Hassan keeps a pretty low profile as a senator and has yet to endear herself to New Hampshire voters.
Hassan’s opponent is shoot-first, aim-second retired General Don Bolduc. You know how doctors test people’s reflexes by tapping them on the knee with that hammer thing? Bolduc’s political beliefs are kind of like how someone’s leg reacts after that happens, only if that leg dropkicks the doctor for hitting it.
Consider his position on COVID. In the first place, he thinks COVID was unleashed upon the United States by the Chinese. But he’s also an anti-vaxxer who thinks Bill Gates is using vaccines to inject people with microchips. Imagine him as a general: “The enemy is charging us! But whatever you do, don’t strap on your helmet or body armor because it will turn you into lizard people!”
Or that he signed a letter with 123 other retired generals in 2021 claiming the 2020 election was rigged while sounding alarms about socialism and Marxism and invoking the spirit of 1776. Questioned about the letter at a debate in August, Bolduc said, “damn it, I stand by” it. Then a couple days after winning the New Hampshire primary, he said he’d done some “research” and believes now that Biden won the election fair and square. (We’ll see how long that sticks.)
Or how he went on FOX News last February demanding the United States send special forces into Ukraine (drawing an on-air rebuke from FOX’s Pentagon correspondent) only to state a few weeks ago he opposes any further support for the country.
The guy also supports privatizing Medicare, opposes allowing the government to negotiate prescription drug prices, wants women to “get over” the end of Roe, believes public and private schools should be prohibited from teaching lessons about human sexuality and social-emotional learning, and (this is his main campaign issue) wants to repeal the 17th Amendment (which allows for the direct election of senators. So pressing.)
Bolduc is such a loose cannon that Corey Lewandowski successfully encouraged Donald Trump not to endorse him. (Bolduc is a frequent guest on Steve Bannon’s podcast, though.) Republican Governor Chris Sununu, one of the most popular governors in the nation, also refused to endorse Bolduc during the state primary, describing the general as “not a serious…conspiracy-type candidate.” Bolduc for his part called Sununu a “Chinese communist sympathizer” and claimed Sununu’s family (a dynasty in New Hampshire politics) “supports terrorism.” Yet in a sign of the GOP times, Sununu has endorsed Bolduc in the general. Even though he appears to be cruising toward re-election, it seems Sununu thinks he needs Bolduc to win. As for Bolduc…yeah, not so much.
CONCLUSION: Hassan is vulnerable, particularly in a midterm that shouldn’t favor Democrats. She’d be in real jeopardy if someone like Sununu was running against her. But look: Trump lost New Hampshire in 2016 by just under 3,000 votes. He lost the state in 2020 by a little over 59,000 votes (or 7.4%). A Trump-style Republican has a shot to squeeze out a victory in New Hampshire, but maybe this is a state where that window is closing? New Hampshire may be the state Democrats need to be least worried about. It’s also the state that will be the canary in the coal mine if Democratic prospects begin to sink.
INCUMBENT: Open (Held by a Republican)
STATE PROFILE: After Barack Obama won North Carolina in 2008, pundits expected North Carolina to follow the trajectory of Virginia and Colorado and turn blue, but it keeps breaking Democrats’ hearts. Mitt Romney pulled out a two-point victory in 2012 and Trump nearly doubled that margin four years later. Biden closed that gap by a point-and-a-half two years ago, but that still left Democrats about 75,000 votes short. Democrats had hoped the Tar Heel State’s sizeable Black population and growth in the Charlotte and Research Triangle areas would transform North Carolina, but white rural areas turned deep red and conservative groups used the Tea Party movement to get super organized in the state. Now pundits view Georgia as more ripe for a Democratic transformation than North Carolina. That doesn’t mean North Carolina is a lost cause, though. Democrats have held the governor’s office for all but four years since the turn of the century (with the lone Republican governor denied a second term for pushing right-wing politics) and they’ve won a couple Senate races since 1998 (and perhaps could have won another in 2020 if their nominee hadn’t been a campaign-trail adulterer.) There’s also a fairly robust progressive political organization on the ground in the state. So maybe (again) this is the year?
CANDIDATES: Either North Carolina or Nevada is the lowest-profile race on this list. The Democratic nominee is former North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley, who won her seat on the court in 2014 in a statewide election but was voted out as the head jurist in 2020 by 401 votes. Beasley is constantly on the campaign trail but has been careful not to say anything that might rile up voters in either party, which can cut either way.
Beasley’s opponent is three-term House member Ted Budd, who represents a congressional district running from Greensboro to exurban Charlotte. Budd isn’t seen nearly as often on the campaign trail as Beasley, leading some to believe he’s taking the race for granted. Budd has what passes today as a pretty standard Republican resume and was one of 147 GOP members of Congress who voted against certifying the results of the 2020 election even after an angry and terribly misinformed mob stormed the Capitol to try to accomplish that very feat themselves. (That’s probably a big reason why Err Budd’s been endorsed by Trump.) Interestingly, Budd opposed the infrastructure and gun control bills both of North Carolina’s Republican senators helped pass.
CONCLUSION: So why isn’t Republican Richard Burr, who is only 66 years old and was first elected to the Senate in 2004, running for re-election? With North Carolina trending purple, does he see the political writing on the wall? I kind of doubt that. North Carolina should be a no-doubt Republican hold in a midterm during a Democratic presidency, even more so with a GOP incumbent running for re-election. In truth, Burr strikes me as the kind of guy who’s tired of licking Trump’s boot heels and just wants out of Washington before the tug of war between his conscience and ambition results in a chronic ulcer. Since Burr is retiring, this open seat race makes it more competitive than the contest in Florida, but it’s still a heavy lift for Democrats.
INCUMBENT: Open (Held by a Republican)
STATE PROFILE: For Democrats, Ohio is the state that got away. Barack Obama won the state twice by 3.0-4.5 points. But then Trump crushed Hillary Clinton by 8 points in 2016, and even though Biden improved on Clinton’s turnout, it wouldn’t even have been enough to beat Trump in 2016, let alone 2020, when Trump increased his tally by 300,000 votes. Now, this former bellwether is considered a solidly Republican state, voting for the first time since it favored Nixon over Kennedy in 1960 for the loser in a presidential election. Despite other signs to the contrary (Democrats have only won a gubernatorial election in the Buckeye State once since 1990) Democrats still regard Ohio as their great white whale. They hold out hope that a populist Democrat with working class sensibilities like three-term sitting Senator Sherrod Brown could make them competitive once again. How would they do that? Maximize turnout in Cleveland, which has seen its population cut in half since the 1950s; reclaim the advantage they lost in the area around Akron, Canton, and Youngstown as well as northwest Ohio (anchored by Toledo); accelerate Cincinnati’s leftward drift; and pile on the votes in the rapidly-growing Columbus metro area. Good luck.
CANDIDATES: To pull this off, Democrats have probably found their candidate. Nine-term Rep. Tim Ryan represents Ohio’s 13th District, a rust belt region running from eastern Akron to Youngstown. That area used to be a Democratic stronghold (Obama won it twice by an almost 2-1 margin) but that advantage narrowed to +4 for Biden in 2020. By those metrics, Ryan has always overperformed, picking up 78% of the vote in 2008, 68% in 2016 (when Hillary Clinton only won with 51%), and 53% in 2020. If those declining margins aren’t disconcerting enough, though, Republicans drew Ryan into a +25 Republican district in the latest round of gerrymandering. That move pushed Ryan into the Senate race. Democrats have to hope Ryan—who has been critical of free trade agreements and supported Trump’s China tariffs—can use his populist appeal to win over working-class Ohioans.
The victor of the…let’s call it “spirited” Republican primary (at one point, a debate moderator had to intervene to prevent two candidates from brawling) was venture capitalist and author J.D. Vance. Vance managed to win in large part by not being as crazy as Josh Mandel, a MAGA candidate who tried to out-Trump Trump but still couldn’t win Trump’s endorsement for some reportedly weird reasons.
But Mandel is his own story, let’s talk about Vance, whom you might know as the author of Hillbilly Elegy, which Ron Howard adopted as a film starring Amy Adams and Glenn Close in 2020. Hillbilly Elegy was the book everyone seemed to turn to after Trump won in 2016 to try to figure out how Democrats had lost their way with white working-class Americans. I’ve read it. It’s an OK memoir about growing up in Appalachia (a better book about growing up in poor white America is Heartland by Sarah Smarsh) but the main thing I remember about it was how messed up Vance’s family life was. Maybe that’s a result of Vance’s family’s socio-economic circumstances, but still, his family was almost willfully and gleefully messed up. What he seemed to be saying but couldn’t actually convince himself to write was, “Yes, it’s hard growing up in Appalachia, but I was not raised right regardless.”
I say that not to look down my nose at Vance, but because I think it’s indicative of a broader issue with the 38-year-old, which is that he’s still trying to figure things out. Aren’t we all, you may say, but every time I see Vance, it seems like he’s midway on a journey of self-discovery. Every day he’s learning a little more about the world around him, still sorting through its ups and downs, and evaluating the value of his relationships with others. I don’t think that should be the point of a Senate campaign, let alone serving in the Senate.
Vance grew up in southwest Ohio, served in Iraq as a public affairs specialist with the Marines, graduated from Ohio State, and received his J.D. from Yale, where law professor Amy Chua (the “Tiger Mom”) urged him to write his memoir. He practiced corporate law before moving to Silicon Valley, where he began working for a venture capital firm run by Peter Thiel (yeah, that guy again.) After he published his book, Vance decided to move back to Ohio to start a non-profit and explore a career in politics. It doesn’t sound like that non-profit idea turned into much but he did join, create, and invest in firms focused on helping start-ups outside the NYC/Silicon Valley area.
You wouldn’t know it now, but back in 2016, when he was frequently found on cable news channels promoting his book, Vance was a Trump critic. Here’s how he described Trump in The Atlantic on July 4 of that year:
What Trump offers is an easy escape from the pain. To every complex problem, he promises a simple solution. He can bring jobs back simply by punishing offshoring companies into submission. As he told a New Hampshire crowd—folks all too familiar with the opioid scourge—he can cure the addiction epidemic by building a Mexican wall and keeping the cartels out. He will spare the United States from humiliation and military defeat with indiscriminate bombing. It doesn’t matter that no credible military leader has endorsed his plan. He never offers details for how these plans will work, because he can’t. Trump’s promises are the needle in America’s collective vein.
The great tragedy is that many of the problems Trump identifies are real, and so many of the hurts he exploits demand serious thought and measured action—from governments, yes, but also from community leaders and individuals. Yet so long as people rely on that quick high, so long as wolves point their fingers at everyone but themselves, the nation delays a necessary reckoning. There is no self-reflection in the midst of a false euphoria. Trump is cultural heroin. He makes some feel better for a bit. But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they’ll realize it.
Comparing Trump to heroin is pretty potent stuff coming from a guy who grew up in a region now ravaged by an opioid epidemic. The point, though, is that Vance saw through Trump and knew he was an authoritarian exploiting white resentment for political gain yet lacking the policy that would actually improve their lives. Today, Vance essentially parrots Trump by using social media to stir up white cultural resentment. It doesn’t really fit him—it’s hard not to remember he was a compassionate and humane guy back in 2016—but that also may be kind of the point. It’s like he’s “maturing” beyond his soft, considerate conservatism into the hardened, disciplined neonationalist who blames social decadence (he wants to ban pornography and believes people should stay in violent marriages for the sake of the children) and the elite coastal establishment for the collapse of middle America. (Ironically, he’s probably the only candidate running this year to graduate from an Ivy League school, work as a corporate lawyer, live in Washington D.C., live and work in Silicon Valley, and have an executive producer credit on an Academy Award-nominated Hollywood film.)
It’s hard not to miss how pathetic this all has become. It’s clear as day to Donald Trump, who told an audience at a rally he invited himself to with Vance two weeks ago, “J.D. is kissing my ass. Of course he wants my support.” In fairness to Vance, he’s always had conservative inclinations and placed the problem of moral decay at the center of his political world view. It’s just that now, rather than searching for democratic solutions to public problems, he’s more invested in building political strength around the idea of victimhood. Mass movements built around impotence tend to end badly for the societies they hope to change. (Writer David Frum knew Vance personally. Here’s what he thinks of him now.)
CONCLUSION: There’s one other aspect to Vance’s campaign worth noting: It’s absence of energy. Republicans fretted all summer about Vance’s anemic fundraising and lack of urgency. Ryan has run circles around Vance in this regard. It may not matter if what most pundits say is true and Ohio’s politics have shifted too far to the right for Democrats to have any chance to close the gap. Still, if Vance underwhelms, Democrats have a candidate who’s about as well-positioned to squeak out a victory as they could hope for.
INCUMBENT: Open (Held by a Republican)
STATE PROFILE: Long considered a toss-up state that Democratic presidential candidates still managed to win every year since 1992, Joe Biden (who, you may not have heard, was born in Scranton) made Pennsylvania the centerpiece of his campaign strategy in 2020 after Trump snatched it out of the Democratic column in 2016. Biden’s 80,000 vote advantage (almost the size of Scranton!) only amounted to a 1.2% margin of victory, so there’s a feeling now more than ever that the state could go either way. Pennsylvania is also one of just a handful of states currently represented in the Senate by a Republican and a Democrat. The state’s political geography is in a bit of flux right now. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh remain Democratic strongholds, while the vast rural areas between the two metro areas remains solidly Republican. Suburban Philadelphia is sliding to the left, though, while the areas around the mid-sized industrial cities in the east and west of the state are trending more conservative. Both parties aim to maximize support in their strongholds while staving off losses in the areas drifting away from them.
CANDIDATES: Pennsylvania is a hot mess this cycle. The Democratic nominee is Lt. Governor John Fetterman, whom I’ve written about before. Here’s a picture of him:
That’s pretty much how he always dresses, even when he’s meeting President Biden outside on a snowy day. Now you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, so it should be known Fetterman is a progressive candidate (he supports Medicare for all and criminal justice reform, is pro-union, wants to legalize marijuana, etc.) who knows how to talk policy with white working class Pennsylvanians. But still, that book cover is doing a lot of the heavy lifting for him. I don’t know if people relate to him based strictly on his public image or if that’s just a hook that piques their interest, but whatever it is, it seems Pennsylvanians have a fairly positive view of him.
But here’s the catch: Days before the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, Fetterman suffered a stroke. For months, he was off the campaign trail. He has resumed campaign activities and media events, but at a slower pace. In his campaign appearances, the effects of the stroke really aren’t evident outside of a few moments when he struggles to find the right word. It’s pretty clear he’s well on the road to recovery. But he’s only agreed to one debate with his Republican opponent contingent on certain format conditions, so questions about his health linger.
And who is Fetterman’s Republican opponent you ask? None other than Dr. Mehmet Oz. You know, this guy:
Oz built his reputation as a renowned heart surgeon in New York City. After receiving a lot of media attention for performing a heart transplant for the brother of Yankees manager Joe Torre in the mid-1990s, Oz became a media personality and a frequent guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show. That in turn led to him getting his own syndicated show dispensing medical advice in 2009.
A big problem, however, is that Oz is a snake-oil salesman. Oz would frequently promote pseudoscientific remedies on his show, delving into clickbait topics like faith healing, homeopathy, alternative medicines, and the paranormal. A 2014 study found more than half the medical recommendations made on the show weren’t backed by science. For example, he has talked about the unsafe levels of arsenic in apple juice and the dangers of placing a cellphone in a bra, claims that are completely false. Medical researchers who worked on his show have said producers often ignored their concerns about the information the show was airing. In 2014, Oz testified before a committee of the very legislative body he is hoping to join about miracle “weight loss” pills he recommended on his show that were just made of green coffee extract and admitted his claims often “don’t have the scientific muster to present as fact” (you read that right!) All this suggests Oz is either too easily persuaded by spurious claims, has a vested interest in the products he is promoting, will say anything for the sake of ratings, or has no idea what he’s talking about and doesn’t care. John Oliver suggests it may be all of the above:
Somehow, I don’t think a licensed doctor who has made millions peddling unproven medical advice should be given the power to come up with solutions to what ails America, but then again I’m just a political scientist who has yet to land a daytime talk show. What do I know?
If that isn’t enough, Oz’s problems are compounded by his poor campaign skills and an oppo file thicker than Gray’s Anatomy. To begin with, he’s a carpetbagger from New Jersey. Now, if the citizens of a state (let’s just say New York) are fine with being represented in the Senate by an out-of-stater (let’s say Bobby Kennedy or Hillary Clinton), I’m OK with that. Oz’s problem is things keep popping-up that remind people he’s not from Pennsylvania. For instance, as of last spring, he remained on the voter rolls in New Jersey. He was caught filming campaign videos at his New Jersey home. When Oz made a video about rising food prices, he distracted from his message by mispronouncing the name of a common Pennsylvanian grocery store while shopping for the ingredients to crudité. Fetterman and the Democrats have trolled him on this throughout the campaign by, among other things, sending a plane with a banner over the Jersey Shore welcoming him home for the summer and nominating him for the New Jersey Hall of Fame.
But there’s more. Despite bragging about hunting in Florida, Oz does not have a Florida hunting license. When asked how many homes he owned, he replied two, which was off by eight. He has made cringe-worthy statements about poop, incest, and how the best way to provide health care to poor Americans wouldn’t be by providing them with a right to health care but by setting up free 15-minute physicals in a “festival-like atmosphere.” He’s also said abortion at any point after conception is “murder.”
For much of the summer, Oz was hard to find on the campaign trail, TV, or social media. Republicans lamented the poor state of his campaign and fundraising operation. His primary campaign languished until Trump endorsed him (supposedly at the behest of Melania) and even then he barely defeated the preferred candidate of the Republican establishment. Given Oz’s stumbles, it’s hard not to assume Oz, as a celebrity politician, assumed his campaign would be a coronation and hadn’t given much thought to what it might actually take to win a Senate race in a state of 13 million people.
CONCLUSION: Like Ohio, where incumbent Republican Senator Rob Portman ran afoul of Donald Trump and chose not to run for re-election, Pennsylvania also has an open Senate seat after incumbent Republican Pat Toomey decided to retire rather than wrestle with a Trump-endorsed challenger during a primary. That provides Democrats with an opening in both states, even though Republicans have more of a built-in advantage in Ohio. Ordinarily, we would expect the Pennsylvania race to be competitive but ultimately favor the Republican candidate in a midterm cycle with a Democratic president, but yet again, Republicans have nominated a poor candidate while Democrats landed on someone who can make a race of it…so long as his health doesn’t become a major issue. Democrats will also be aided in this race by a gubernatorial contest featuring a quality Democratic nominee and a Republican nominee who is a liability. This is the Democrats’ best opportunity to pick up a seat, but they will have to overcome challenging midterm factors to do so. And who knows: Maybe a famous face, a Trump endorsement, and a highly polarized political environment is enough to get Oz the votes he needs. But also know this: This race has the potential to turn into an absolute circus if it hasn’t already.
INCUMBENT: Ron Johnson (Republican)
STATE PROFILE: For the past decade, Wisconsin has been the state that has most closely mirrored our national politics. A diverse coalition of urban voters in Milwaukee and the progressive college town of Madison anchor Democrats in the state. Despite a history of progressivism, the rural areas have turned deep red. Democrats have lost their hold on southwestern Wisconsin. Suburban Milwaukee has remained stubbornly in the Republican column, creating perhaps the most polarized metro region in the nation. The 2012 recall of Republican Gov. Scott Walker—who could be credited with pioneering the blithe hardball style of governance many Republican leaders now imitate—galvanized partisans on both sides of the aisle. In 2016, Trump won Wisconsin by about 22,000 votes, or right around 0.8%. In 2020, Biden won by about 20,000 votes, or about 0.6%. Every statewide contest and every political dispute that arises is a dogfight now.
CANDIDATES: The Democrats have nominated Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes, who is perhaps the most vulnerable candidate Democrats have put forward in a closely-contested Senate race this year given positions he’s taken that are right in the Republicans’ culture war wheelhouse: Abolishing ICE, defunding (or at least transferring funding from) police departments, supporting the Green New Deal, criticizing the nation’s founding, etc. Barnes has tried to sweep those positions under the rug, but they remain a potential liability. Interestingly, Barnes avoided a bruising Democratic primary that could have left him wounded heading into the general election. Instead, his opponents dropped out of the race one-by-one, allowing Barnes to consolidate support within the party. He’s in a surprisingly strong position going forward.
As for the Republican nominee…You know the phrase dumber than a rock? I don’t know what is dumber than a rock, but whatever that is, incumbent Republican Senator Ron Johnson is dumber than that.
Johnson, the former CEO of a polyester and plastics company, was first elected to the Senate in the Tea Party year of 2010, knocking off three-term incumbent Russ Feingold. Johnson faced Feingold again in 2016 and was considered doomed by most observers. His victory would have shocked more people had the country not been coping with Trump’s win. After much hemming and hawing, Johnson has his hat back in the ring once again.
I must say that whenever I read a headline that begins “Cruz Says” or “Graham Says,” I immediately brace myself to be simultaneously astounded, shocked, and stupefied, but when I see a headline begin with the words “Ron Johnson Says,” I worry I may not be able to perform basic cognitive functions for the next five to ten minutes. Some of his greatest hits:
He’s blubbered some Q style nonsense about how he thinks Joe Biden is “compromise” [sic] because he “might have” funded “potentially” a “global sex scandal, sex .. um .. operation.”
He tried to slip Vice President Mike Pence a slate of fake electors from Wisconsin, blamed it on his staff when the press called him out on it, said he didn’t know what he was doing, then dodged reporters’ questions by pretending to talk on a cell phone. Stephen Colbert explains it all pretty well below:
One of those fake electors is currently on Johnson’s campaign payroll.
Johnson is an anti-vaxxer whose main objection to someone falsely claiming that the COVID vaccines cause AIDS is that while that “may be true,” the nutcase shouldn’t get ahead of public opinion by saying so:
On Rumble, anti-vaxxer Todd Callender says “[COVID] shots caused vaccine-induced AIDS. They purposefully gave people AIDS.” Ron Johnson: "You gotta do one step at a time. Everything you say may be true. But right now, the public views the vaccines as largely safe and effective."He’s also recommended mouthwash as a treatment for COVID. Johnson’s promotion of horse de-wormer as a COVID treatment also prompted this response from the FDA:
He also incorrectly claimed the vaccine has killed thousands and has wondered aloud in the Year of Our Lord 2022 how a vaccine could possibly improve on our God-given immune systems (“Why do we assume that the body’s natural immune system isn’t the marvel that it is? Why do we think that we can create something better than God in terms of combating disease?” I don’t know, Ron, why’d God give us these brains of ours? And how did you end up with such a deficient one?) Johnson’s basic medical advice when dealing with COVID is to avoid taking the vaccine but ingest any drug you have sitting around once you catch the virus. But don’t worry, he does still support vaccine mandates, but only for an “incredibly dangerous disease.” Johnson’s vaccine denialism prompted the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to call him the most dangerous senator Wisconsin has had since Joseph McCarthy.
As many Republicans have in the past, Johnson has said he would like to repeal Obamacare. Unlike many Republicans, though, he has expressed that opinion as recently as March 2022.
Earlier this year, he blocked his own judicial nominee.
Johnson’s a Viktor Orban fanboy: “I recognize the liberal left doesn’t like Hungary, but there are so many positive things about what they’re doing in that country.”
Not only does he think Social Security spending should be discretionary, but he also thinks the government should invest Social Security funds in the stock market.
He insisted he’s not a climate change denier weeks after calling climate change “bullshit.”
Despite this
Johnson said there wasn’t any violence on the Senate side on 1/6, which may be technically true, but c’mon Ron! Johnson said he also didn’t feel threatened on 1/6 because essentially they were his people.
Johnson once tried to slow down passage of the pandemic relief bill by getting Senate clerks to read it aloud through the night. But because he forgot to show up when they finished, Democrats were able to cut debate on the bill from 20 hours to 3 hours, ultimately speeding up passage of the bill.
Let’s finish with this oldie but goodie: “You know, there’s a reason Greenland was called Greenland,” Mr. Johnson told WKOW-TV in Madison [in 2010]. “‘It was actually green at one point in time. And it’s been, you know, since, it’s a whole lot whiter now so we’ve experienced climate change throughout geologic time.’ In the interview on Thursday, Mr. Johnson was still misinformed about the etymology of Greenland, which got its name from the explorer Erik the Red’s attempt to lure settlers to the ice-covered island. ‘I could be wrong there, but that’s always been my assumption that, at some point in time, those early explorers saw green,’ Mr. Johnson said. ‘I have no idea.’”
I have no idea indeed. Either Johnson is about three-and-a-half quarts and a container short of a gallon of milk or he’s a shyster like shyster-in-arms Erik the Red trying to convince people the grass is greener on his political ice cap. Regardless, the Senate would be much better off if the people of Wisconsin held him to his initial two-term limit pledge.
CONCLUSION: One has to assume an incumbent from the opposite party of the president during a midterm election in a toss-up state is favored to win. Yet when Johnson said people were coming up to him crying, begging him to run for re-election, he may not have taken into account that those people were actually Democrats, who see running against him as their best chance at reclaiming this seat. That may be true—Johnson may give Democrats the opening they need—but it’s still just a chance in this electoral environment.
OTHER STATES TO KEEP AN EYE ON:
I single out these states because conventional wisdom suggests the incumbent is favored in each of them, but if a wave forms in either direction, these senators could be in trouble.
Colorado: No one is mistaking it for California or New York, but Colorado has shifted pretty convincingly to the left since Obama won it in 2008. Still, like Virginia, one can imagine the right kind of Republican winning a statewide race there. Republicans may have found their guy in businessman Joe O’Dea, who has expressed his dislike of Donald Trump (despite saying he would vote for Trump again if he won the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.) The incumbent is two-term Democratic Senator Michael Bennet who isn’t the most charismatic guy but has earned the respect of Colorado voters. O’Dea might get some buzz but Bennet should win unless Republicans build up a lot of momentum heading into November.
Iowa: Incumbent Republican Senator Chuck Grassley has been in the Senate since 1980. He is an Iowan institution in a state that was a toss-up for much of Grassley’s time in Washington but that has moved as far right as Colorado has moved left. But Iowans also know if they send Grassley back to Washington for his eighth term, he’ll celebrate his 90th birthday in DC. Grassley’s approval ratings have dropped from their previously stratospheric levels, but while Iowans are not necessarily enamored of their Republican officeholders they seem now to loathe Democrats. If Democrats hope to win, what will need to happen is 1.) Grassley’s age will need to become an issue; 2.) Grassley will need to do something to highlight that problem; 3.) Another issue will have to pop up to compound Grassley’s problems; 4.) Democratic nominee and retired U.S. Navy Admiral Michael Franken (two words that don’t fit together: “Iowa” and “Navy”) will have to generate excitement around his campaign; and 5.) The national environment will have to shift in Democrats’ favor. Not inconceivable, but improbable.
Kansas: I’ve heard nothing to suggest two-term incumbent Republican Senator Jerry Moran is in any trouble, but I’m just listing this one here because Kansans got really motivated to head to the polls about two months ago to defend an abortion rights provision in the state’s constitution. I want to keep an eye on this race to see if any of that political momentum might carry over come November.
Oregon: Signs suggest Oregon’s Democratic gubernatorial nominee Tina Kotek is in trouble, but that may be a function of a three-way race involving an independent candidate who had previously aligned herself with the Democrats. Unless a massive Republican wave forms, though, four-term incumbent Democratic Senator Ron Wyden is almost certainly safe.
Utah: This is a weird one. Two-term Republican incumbent with a libertarian streak Mike Lee is one of the Senate’s most conservative members. Utahn Republicans haven’t exactly warmed to him, either. Following the 2020 presidential election, Lee coordinated with the Trump White House on plans to send alternate slates of electors from the states to Congress, but Lee ultimately backed away from the plan and voted to certify the results. After 1/6, he said Trump deserved a “mulligan” for his speech that morning to rally-goers. Trump won Utah in both 2016 and 2020 but he isn’t particularly popular there, so Lee’s intervention and defense of the ex-president soured him somewhat with Romney-style Republican voters. Challenging Lee is former CIA officer Evan McMullin, an independent who ran for president in 2016 and won 21% of the vote in Utah. Despite pledging not to caucus with either party if elected to the Senate, McMullin convinced Democrats in the state not to nominate their own candidate this year in the Senate race. He’s got a shot—in 2016, when McMullin won 22% of the vote, Hillary Clinton won 27% of the vote; if their totals were combined, they would have beaten Trump’s 46%—but despite Lee’s polling weakness, McMullin is struggling to gain traction.
Signals and Noise
By Jill Lawrence for USA Today: “If You Care About Your Country and Your Rights, Don't Vote For Any Republicans in 2022” The logic is straightforward: Unless they refuse to caucus with their party, a vote for an anti-Trump Republican empowers the rest of Don Trump’s Republican Party.
“If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying, ‘It’s declassified,’ even by thinking about it because you’re sending it to Mar-a-Lago or wherever you’re sending it. And there doesn’t have to be a process. There can be a process but there doesn’t have to be. You’re the president. You make that decision. So when you send it, it’s declassified. I declassified everything.”—Don Trump during a FOX News interview with Sean Hannity.
Also from his interview with Hannity: “There’s also a lot of speculation, because of the severity of what they did, the severity of the FBI coming and raiding Mar-a-Lago. Were they looking for the Hillary Clinton emails that were deleted, but they are around someplace?” After Hannity asked if he had them, Trump replied, “They may have thought that it was in there. And a lot of people said the only thing that would give the kind of severity that they showed by actually coming in and raiding with many, many people is the Hillary Clinton deal, the Russia, Russia, Russia stuff, or… I mean there are a number of things. The spying on Trump’s campaign.” A lot of people? Like, how many Steve Bannon clones does Trump talk to in a day?
“It was ‘ransacked,’ and in far different condition than the way I left it.”—Don Q. Trump complaining about the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago. As an American citizen who’s lived in this country since Donnie entered politics, let me tell you, I can relate. (He was also upset the agents didn’t take off their shoes when they entered his bedroom.)
Trump
retweeted…noretruthed… no, shared a post to his social media platform declaring the “greatest” and the “second greatest.” You know who was the “greatest”? Jesus. Guess who was the second greatest? No, guys, not Ralph Hinkley, but good guess…Don Trump had a tough week in the halls of justice. The New York Attorney General filed a civil suit against him for fraud. It’s not an open and shut case, but because Trump didn’t settle it when he had the chance (pleading the 5th instead) former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti thinks he’s boxed himself in. Meanwhile, Stephen Collinson of CNN sees Trump’s defense in the confiscated documents case crumbling. Trump’s lawyers refused to lie/couldn’t prove Trump had declassified the classified documents he had smuggled to Mar-a-Lago, so the special master Trump demanded to review the documents let the DOJ resume work on them. The reason Trump wanted that special master was to delay the investigation; his stalling tactic lasted all but two weeks.
In the article “Nice Democracy You’ve Got Here. Shame If Something Happened to It”, David A. Graham of The Atlantic notes Trump is acting like a mob boss by hinting someone (but not him) might do something violent if he doesn’t get his way. And after 1/6, Graham adds Trump can no longer claim he didn’t intend for his words to inspire violence.
The New York Times has found months of investigations have not changed the public’s opinion of Trump (which sits at 44/53 favorable/unfavorable.)
NBC News is keeping tabs on all those fake electors and found many of them hold powerful positions in state GOP parties.
Judd Legum has pictures of the pamphlets migrants on the flights to Martha’s Vineyard chartered by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis were given to convince them to board the flights. The brochure (Fun Fact: That’s not the Massachusetts state flag!) states migrants arriving in Massachusetts could receive a number of benefits, including “8 months cash assistance,” “assistance with housing,” “food,” “clothing,” “transportation to job interviews,” “job training,” “job placement,” “registering children for school,” “assistance applying for Social Security cards,” and many other benefits. That is not true, leaving DeSantis and his crew vulnerable to charges of fraud, false imprisonment, and kidnapping. (The Sheriff of Bexar County, Texas, has initiated a criminal investigation into the matter.)
DeSantis’s Martha’s Vineyard stunt may not be playing well in South Florida’s Cuban and Venezuelan communities. It’s also only supported by 1/3 of Americans according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.
According to Nick Catoggio, DeSantis is trying to “outjerk” Trump, which is a helluva way to try to win the Republican Party’s nomination for president and not exactly what they teach kids in elementary school about when it comes to the topic of desirable leadership skills.
By Mona Charen for The Bulwark: “Don’t Blame the Immigrants. It’s Our Laws That Are Criminal.”
Wacko Doug Mastriano, the GOP nominee for governor in Pennsylvania, has been joined on the campaign trail by evangelist Lance Wallnau. Here’s Wallnau fusing Trumpism, QAnon, Christian Nationalism, and Nazi iconography at a recent Mastriano rally:
PA MAGA Gov nominee Doug Mastriano rally: “Put your right hand in the air … America will have a new birth of liberty.”Look at those free thinkers! Want to know more about Wallnau? Brace yourself! According to William Bender of the Philadelphia Inquirer:
Prefacing his remarks by stating, “I’m not saying this is going to work for you,” Wallnau once told a livestream he’d heard about this gay bar owner who went straight by eating a cake baked by prostitutes. (“The power of God hit him while he was eating the cake.”)
He claimed “witchcraft” was behind the Women’s March on Washington and protests against Donald Trump. (I would have thought he’d have assumed witchcraft was behind the cake the prostitutes baked to turn the gay bar owner straight, but God works in mysterious ways I guess.)
With Jim Bakker, he sold coins featuring the likenesses of Trump and King Cyrus (why Cyrus you ask? Because Cyrus was the non-believer who was used by God to advance the interests of the believers) to help Trump get re-elected and so people could have a point of contact with God. The coins retailed for $45.
You can imagine what he thinks about vaccines, Vladimir Putin, and Joe Biden.
Election denier and Republican nominee for Nevada Secretary of State Jim Marchant wants to end mail-in voting because he thinks it’s rife with fraud despite voting by mail multiple times, including to vote three times in Florida while living in Nevada.
Ohio GOP House candidate J.R. Majewski saw his campaign implode this week after the AP reported he is not as he claimed a combat veteran who was one of the first troops on the ground in Afghanistan. (It looks like the closest he got to combat in Afghanistan was loading planes in Qatar. He even lacks both an Afghanistan Campaign Medal and a Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal.) Majewski has, however, made pro-Trump YouTube rap videos (they’re private now for reasons unknown, but here’s a lyric: “Joe is focused on ice cream while he’s crapping his pants/ We want our dreams and our freedom, this is our last chance”) and did this
and this
to his yard. That level of devotion to Trump probably keeps him in the race. As for his military record, Majewski has said he can’t provide proof of his deployment to Afghanistan because the records are “classified,” which got me thinking about a way he could solve his little dilemma…
A sign your campaign may be in trouble: Your campaign spokesperson says, “Of course, [the candidate] does not believe that women shouldn’t vote or shouldn’t work.”
These are the sort of stories that push abortion to the top of people’s lists of political priorities.
Enthusiasm about voting in this year’s midterms is at an all-time high and could result in a turnout on par with the 2004 presidential election.
Molly Beck reports for Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “Former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman told a group of Republicans this month that a revolution against government officials over the 2020 election has become necessary but said people have become too comfortable to water the ‘tree of liberty’ with blood.” If you recall, Gableman led the state’s $1 million review of supposed election fraud in the 2020 election and found not a single piece of evidence before being fired by Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos. (Actually, Gableman did find one person who admitted to committing voter fraud; Gableman is currently representing him in court.)
MAGA Hitler (see below) got sentenced to four years in jail for storming the Capitol on 1/6.
A judge in Alaska has ruled a member of the state legislature is likely ineligible to hold office due to his membership in the Oath Keepers, who aim to overthrow the United States government. The Alaska constitution prohibits those who want to overthrow the federal or state government from holding office. I don’t know, what if he likes going to their meetings and practice insurrection sessions only for the snacks?
Surviving Koch brother Charles Koch wasn’t going to donate to election deniers but what’s democracy when tax cuts and deregulation are on the line?
House Republicans revealed their 2022 policy platform this week, which is one more platform than the national party wrote in 2020. Workshopped with Newt Gingrich (seriously), it’s called their “
ContractCommitment with America.” Kevin McCarthy is so proud of this he slapped a quote about “commitment” on the top of the letter he sent to GOP House members announcing the platform:
Only (well, not the only) problem is Abe Lincoln never said that. It’s actually from a 1986 newspaper ad by Lehman Brothers, the investment bank whose collapse precipitated the 2008 financial crisis. (In all likelihood, some intern/lamebrain Capitol Hill GOP chief of staff stumbled across that dumb meme in their Facebook feed in between stories about satanic pedophiles, the benefits of horse de-wormer, and how great Trump is [#2, behind Jesus, lest you forget]. You’ve seen the meme before: It’ll have a quote like “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” and it will be attributed to some sage like Gandhi or Morgan Freeman or Ben Kingsley in costume as Gandhi.) Also, “Commitment to America” is a hard phrase to attach to a caucus full of people who declined to certify the results of an election just hours after a mob their election denial helped fuel ransacked their place of work. More like “Commitment to Trump.” BUT WAIT, there’s more: The video they produced to promote their Commitment contained stock images from Eastern Europe, Ukraine, and Russia, including an image of a Russian oil drill, which who cares, but it just shows you how phoned-in all this is.
Republicans want to repeal the new law allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices. Asked about a series of social policy proposals, allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices to lower prices has long ranked at the top of the list and enjoyed bipartisan support. Republicans really can’t claim to be the populist working class party if they’re opposed to this.
This is an about face: Ryan Grim of the The Intercept writes Republicans plan on investigating the Chamber of Commerce over their use of ESG (environmental, social, and governance) metrics to determine company valuations.
The House passed the Electoral Count Act this week. Jonathan Bernstein of Bloomberg sees it as a sign of how radical even mainstream Republicans are since only nine Republicans voted in favor of it.
The House also passed a package of policing bills, but they’re not expected to get past a Republican filibuster in the Senate.
Teddy “Cancun” Cruz told a crowd at Texas Tech this week that he led the fight to expand I-27 in East Texas. What he didn’t tell the crowd is that he actually voted against the bill that achieved that.
Some have speculated recently that Latinos in the U.S. have been drifting away from the Democratic Party. But a recent study by the New York Times finds that while Latinos are split between what party does a better job on economic issues, they still remain firmly in the Democratic camp. (They’re split more evenly in the South—particularly in Texas and Florida—and there’s clear movement to the GOP among young men who are first-generation Americans.)
(Semi) Good News: A University of Maryland poll found 57% of Republicans do not believe the Constitution allows the government to declare the United States a Christian nation. Not a reassuring number, but at least it’s a majority. Bad News: That same poll found 61% of Republicans support declaring the United States a Christian nation.
Vladimir Putin had a terrible horrible no good very bad week. He gave an address threatening to use a nuclear weapon and announced he plans to mobilize 300,000 Russians with past military experience, leading thousands to flee the country. The announcement also led to protests breaking out in the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Reports indicated Russia’s attempt to squeeze Europe over gas imports may be faltering. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made it known he wants Putin to give back all the land he’s taken from Ukraine, including Crimea. Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi told Putin now “is not an era of war” to his face. And Chinese leader Xi Jinping stated he had “questions and concerns” about Putin’s special operation.
Does this make sense? The UK is getting hammered by inflation and Liz Truss’s new government decides to throw more money into the economy by cutting taxes? Guess who benefits the most from this?
Maybe inflation will ease if all that money gets reinvested in the stock market instead of trickling down to the working class. The pound plummeted as a result, with markets acting as though the UK is an emerging market.
President Biden told 60 Minutes the United States would defend Taiwan if the island was attacked by China.
You know how many ants are currently living on this planet? According to a new study out of the University of Hong Kong, 20,000,000,000,000,000! (That’s 20 quadrillion, probably give or take a few trillion.)
