Nose to Nose
As of right now -- 7:15 PM Arizona time -- the vote-counting is still going on, but the Senate race has been called: Mark Kelly wins, which isn't surprising; he's done well for Arizona citizens, especially when they've been bullied by the federal govt. The only surprise there is that Blake Masters actually got a few thousand votes; he's obviously not just a bigot but a nut-case. What else can you call someone who claims that abortion is "a religious sacrifice" and "demonic"? We have to wonder why the GOP chose him for a candidate at all.
The only answer I can think of is the "ideological candidate" game. When a political party knows that it's definitely going to lose a particular race, it puts up a candidate from the far fringes of the party's ideology. The idea is to win over the brand-new, young, idealistic -- and gullible -- voters, so they'll be loyal to the party whether they win or not. Apparently, the GOP really thought that the majority of their voters were opposed to on-demand abortion. I daresay they know better now -- especially since so many states passed laws, and even constitutional amendments, protecting women's bodily autonomy -- and passed by public referendum, yet. Actual vote-count shows that 71% of all Americans want to keep the right to abortion. With that many states keeping that right, abortion bans are doomed to failure. Any woman unwillingly pregnant, even if she lives in a state with ferocious abortion bans, need only hop on a bus and ride a few hours to another state. Alaska and Hawaii are abortion-rights states. All that the anti-abortion crowd can do is try to persuade women not to get abortions; they can no longer force. It's a lost cause, and the Republicans were fools to place any hope in it.
As for the other races, the results are tightly divided between parties. In the governors' elections, the Democrats have 23 wins and the GOP has 25. Arizona will probably choose Katie Hobbes, Democrat, and Alaska will get Mike Dunleavy, Republican. In the House of Reps, the Republicans are leading with 211 seats to the Dems' 202; Alaska and Maine will probably go Democrat, Arizona and Oregon GOP, and Colorado and California are anyone's guess. Still, it looks as if the Republicans will get the majority -- just barely.
The real nail-biter is in the Senate. With Arizona choosing Kelly and Nevada going for Cortez, there are now 48 seats for both parties -- but Alaska, which has two Republican candidates (and how that happened is a story in itself), will definitely give the GOP a 49th seat. That means control of the Senate will all depend on Georgia. If the run-off election -- three weeks away now -- goes Democrat, which it seems likely to do, the Senate will be in a dead heat again: 49 seats to 49.
That means that those two oddball Independent senators will hold the swing votes for control of the Senate. You'll see both parties courting them like Penelope's suitors. Personally, I just love the idea of third-party senators calling the shots. That will break up politics-as-usual like nothing else. Gloriosky! Everybody else may be gnawing their nails for the next three weeks, but I'll be giggling.
Of course, the big question is what turned the expected Republican "Red Wave" into a trickle. The Democrats, of course, are blaming it all on Trump, claiming that his endorsement of candidates was a kiss of death rather than a help. If this were true it would mean that Trump has become as big a spoiler as David Duke, who has made his money for the past 20 years and more by offering to dirty any candidate's reputation by endorsing them. But that would also mean that Trump has kept his campaign promise -- to "drain the swamp", for that he's certainly done -- just not the way anybody expected. But Democrats can't be trusted on this subject; despite all the barriers raised against him, they're terrified that he'll run for POTUS (or any office with pardon-power) in 2024 -- and win.
In fact, what chewed into GOP hopes for this election was the abortion question. Exit polls revealed that US voters' first concern was indeed inflation and the economy, but abortion was the second. By its very nature, it's a subject which only the fringes of both parties will even talk -- let alone squawk -- about, but it's clearly something which at least half the population, the female half, cares deeply about. Male pundits may warble about the "sanctity of life" and how "human life begins at conception", but the women whose bodies those fetuses are growing in are not so sanguine. All but the most naive know well what ordeal they're facing. Any woman who doesn't already love the creature in her uterus is not going to risk her life, her health, her freedom, her treasure, or the welfare of her other children for it.
This is what the GOP overlooked, to its loss.
--Leslie <;)))><
