{"id":178513,"date":"2018-11-07T19:47:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-08T00:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/11\/07\/midterm-recap\/"},"modified":"2018-11-07T19:47:00","modified_gmt":"2018-11-08T00:47:00","slug":"midterm-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/11\/07\/midterm-recap\/","title":{"rendered":"Midterm Recap"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 330px;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"180\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Ep9Vzb6R_58\" width=\"320\"><\/iframe><br \/><i>Monty Python has the definitive word on this<\/i><\/div>\n<p>I still have pretzels, but no beer tonight.  <\/p>\n<p>In terms of the Senate, the Democratic incumbents who lost, Donnelly, McKaskill, and Heitkamp, were profoundly weak tea.<\/p>\n<p>I wish that Manchin was included in that list, because while I understand that the dynamics of the Democratic Party tends to promote narcissistic preeners who are basically useless (the aforementioned Donnelly, McKaskill, and Heitkamp), they should never promote <b>Disloyal<\/b> Democrats.<\/p>\n<p>Also Bob Menendez, because he&#8217;s corrupt as hell and would be in jail but for the Supreme Court making it impossible to prosecute politicians for corruption.<\/p>\n<p>The only bright side in terms of incumbents being turfed out was Dean Heller of Nevada.<\/p>\n<p>On the House side, there is a bright side, Dwems retaking the house, David Brat being defeated in VA, as did Dana Rohrabacher in California, and Pete &#8220;The Stupidest Motherf%$#er in Texas&#8221; Sessions.<\/p>\n<p>On the not so bright side, you have Duncan Hunter, Jr., who won even though he is under indictment for embezzling campaign funds, and virulent racist Steven King (R-IA) won narrowly.<\/p>\n<p>In governor&#8217;s races, the Democrats <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/politics\/archive\/2018\/11\/democrats-governors\/575185\/\">picked up 7 seats nationwide<\/a>, but none pleased me more than the loss of Scott Walker.<\/p>\n<p>Florida and Georgia are still technically in play, but I won&#8217;t hold my breath <\/p>\n<p>The AFL-CIO put it best on their statement, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/aflcio.org\/pressreleases\/afl-cio-statement-scott-walker-defeat\">Scott Walker was a national disgrace<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In state houses, about 300 seats were picked up by Dems, erasing about 1\/3 of the seats they lost under Obama.<\/p>\n<p>Also, 7 state houses flipped, most notably the New York State Senate, whose Republican Senate was decisively flipped, much to the chagrin of Andrew &#8220;Rat Faced Andy&#8221; Cuomo, who has tried to ensure Republican control so that he won&#8217;t have to veto progressive legislation.  (See Democrats, disloyal)<\/p>\n<p>We also had a fair number of initiatives.<\/p>\n<p>Anti-abortion initiatives in West Virginia and Alabama passed, and failed in Oregon.<\/p>\n<p>Three initiates in California were defeated under a deluge of Wall Street money, price controls in response to profiteering by dialysis clinics, and a public bank for Los Angeles were deleted.<\/p>\n<p>Redistricting reform passed everywhere it was on the ballot, Colorado, Michigan, Missouri and Utah, along with a sort-of redistricting reform in Ohio.<\/p>\n<p>Weed also did well, with victories in Michigan, Missouri, Utah, and North Dakota.<\/p>\n<p>Medicaid expansion was on the ballot in 4 states, with it passing in 3 states. ( Idaho, Nebraska, and Utah, and a loss in Montana) <\/p>\n<p>There are also three new Democratic governors who will likely implement the policy.<\/p>\n<p>On criminal justice reform, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aclu.org\/blog\/smart-justice\/2018-midterm-elections-were-big-win-criminal-justice-reform-ballot-initiatives\">there were some significant ballot measures passed<\/a>, most notably restoring voting rights to 1\u00bd million felons in the Florida, which should make a difference in future elections.<\/p>\n<p>Louisiana repealed a Jim Crow law that allowed for 10-2 guilty verdicts for most felonies.<\/p>\n<p>Washington passed changes to standards for police shootings, so prosecutors no longer have to show actual malice.<\/p>\n<p>All in all, last night was not good as I had hoped, but not as bad as I had feared.<\/p>\n<p>My only question now is, &#8220;How will Nancy Pelosi f%$# this up?&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Monty Python has the definitive word on this I still have pretzels, but no beer tonight. In terms of the Senate, the Democratic incumbents who lost, Donnelly, McKaskill, and Heitkamp, were profoundly weak tea. I wish that Manchin was included in that list, because while I understand that the dynamics of the Democratic Party tends &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[817],"class_list":["post-178513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178513"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178513\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}