Donald Trump Presidency discussion thread II

Buer wrote: »

Fair enough, I'll bow to the superior knowledge and evidence of historical turn outs. I'd still believe there was a certain level of abstention from the Republican support which was the difference given the fine margin.

Regardless, I don't think this really is going to have a significant impact in a wider sense for control of congress. It reduces the defecit to a single seat in the senate but next year's mid-terms have a huge level of exposure for the Democrats relative to the Republicans. Of the 33 seats up for election, only 8 belong to sitting Republican senators and 7 of those 8 were won comfortably in the last election and are located in states that are generally secure Republican strongholds. The landscape has shifted significantly since then but it will need the Democrats to retain all of their existing seats and steal 2 of 8 from the GOP to gain control of the house.

Republican turnout being down was also a factor as 671,000 would not have won it for Jones in any other year - but that's also largely the point. Trumpism is not helping the GOP, their sheer lack of any sort of cohesion or competence as well as their attacks on health care, taxes, net neutrality, etc are making things considerably worse, and some of their candidates are just appalling. They've opened a tinder box where borderline unelectable people like Moore (who just lost a state that Trump won by 28%, where there has not been a single Dem senator for over 30 years, against an opponent who came across as kind of weak and with no real collection to the rural working class who make up a large part of the state) are the ones winning primaries because of how dramatically far to the right that party has raced ever since a black guy got in the White House.

The fact they just lost in Alabama shows that these types of politicians are not likely to do well in general elections for the House and Senate, but their issue is they have created a Frankenstein that will not vote for the more normal politicians (I think Kasich would have won the presidential election by a far larger margin than Trump did, but more importantly would be probably having a very successful presidency at this point had they gone for him. And yet he didn't even finish second...), which is going to make life difficult going forward. This is further compounded by the sheer amount of gerrymandering they've got involved with in the House elections, because the downside to gerrymandering is you want you opponent to win 1-2 seats by HUGE margins as all their voters are grouped together, then you win the other 8-9 seats by smaller margins as you've spread yourself to have a small 5% or so advantage in those areas. They had a 28% advantage going in to this...

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Now for a long ramble about how the Senate election might look at present.

In terms of the Senate elections next year, it is 25 Dem vs 8 Rep seats up which looks bad, but last nights result is going to cause serious worry for those eight seats. We've definitely learned the last year not to take anything for granted be it Brexit/Trump winning or Moore losing, but it is really hard to see the Democrats losing seats in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Washington, New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maine*, New York, Vermont*, or Michigan - which accounts for 17 of those 25 seats.

*Angus King and Bernie Sanders are both officially independents, but are essentially Democrats in all but name due to the present day Republicans being borderline impossible to work with.

That leaves 8 seats on on each side...
Dem: Missouri, Montana, Minnesota, North Dakota, Indiana, Ohio, Florida, West Virginia.
Rep: Texas, Mississippi, Nebraska, Utah, Tennessee, Wyoming, Nevada, Arizona.

For the Dems, Minnesota (which would have been a (D) lock if not for Franken resigning), Ohio and Florida are three of the classic 'purple' states in elections, meaning if things continue as they are then getting any of those three states is going to be an absurdly difficult task for the Republicans (though as Roy Moore showed us, you never know when your opponent might sh** the bed... repeatedly). Missouri went heavily for Trump (18%) but on a state level they are far more 'purple' than you might think and have had at least one Democratic senator (usually both) dating all the way back to 1911 and the Senator up for re-election (Jon Tester) has a +20 approval rating at the moment. North Dakota is quite similar - it might surprise some to learn that no Republican held a Senate seat there from 1986-2010, and Heidi Heitkamp has a +23 approval rating. Indiana may be trickier with a lot of Republican dominance typically in their senate seats, though Joe Donnelly got in in 2012 when the Republicans were typically the ones making big gains, and holds +20 approval. The one that really caught me off guard was West Virginia, for one of the deepest red states and the most pro-Trump one after Wyoming in 2016, they've only had one Republican senator since Dwight Eisenhower was president. Joe Manchin's approval rating there is a bit lower on +17 though that is higher than his Republican counterpart on +12.

Meanwhile for the Reps they have an issue, as a number of high profile guys are retiring or resigning - first of all is Jeff Flake of Arizona who happens to be the second least popular person in the entire Senate (after Mitch McConnell), with -22 approval, which is going to hurt whoever takes his place quite a bit from the off, and Arizona only voted in Trump by 3.5% to begin with which was down considerably on the Rep winning margin from every year in 2000-2012. To further compound matters, John McCains health may force a special election there too in the pretty near future for what has for 30 years been one of the very safest seats in the Senate for either party. In Tennessee Bob Corker has decent approval at +18 but a) he's highly critical of Trumpism, and b) he's retiring; if they can't keep the crazies out of winning that primary that seat - this should be a reasonably safe one otherwise, but nowhere near as safe as Alabama was thought to be. Next up you've got Nevada where Dean Heller is not resigning, but is struggling in terms of approval on a +/-0 net ratings... and Nevada rejected Trumpism by going for Clinton while voting in a Democrat in the other senate seat, which is not a good omen for them. Orrin Hatch in Utah may be safer but at just +5 approval is far from in the clear. Apparently there is interest in mobilising minorities and the urban vote to make a push against Ted Cruz (+22 approval) in Texas, though the Reps put huge value in that seat so would really throw the kitchen sink at retaining it. In Nebraska Deb Fischer has +10 approval so she is not necessarily safe but that state has apparently been shifting quite far to the right in the last decade or so, so I would expect them to hold there. The Wyoming seat would take a Roy Moore type incident to make it budge, would be shocked to see that stay anything but (R) with +27 approval; likewise with Roger Wicker in deep red Mississippi at +23 approval.

And of course, all of this is assuming none of the Republicans above get primaried by someone the right kind of crazy for the modern Republicans, which would hurt their chances further.

An awful lot can change in the next 11 months but the outlook above is not great for the Reps given that the Dems only need to gain two seats for a majority, and with every passing week is gets a bit worse... that's why yesterday was a hugely significant potential disaster for them, because gaining +3 next year would have been a hell of a lot more difficult. Expect to see huge, huge investment from the Kochs etc in Nevada and Arizona campaigning to begin probably before New Years on the back of last night.

Possibly, possibly not - apparently they're trying to shoehorn through a vote before he takes office which is a few weeks off. What I don't get is, have the GOP been able to use Sessions' vote prior to now, and if so do they get to continue to use it until Jones officially becomes Senator?

EDIT: Apparently Luther Strange holds it and will do until Jones officially has his first day in the role.

Schorpio wrote: »

rossie1977 wrote: »

While its probably a long shot, the Dems with the majority in the house and senate post November 2018 would be hilarious just to see how Trump would deal with it. He has struggled to agree with a Republican majority senate/house on many issues so I can't imagine his state of mind when the house and senate reject all his proposals.

It is vitally important the Dems control the senate soon because they don't want another conservative lifetime supreme court appointment happening under Trump.

I think that would actually make life easier for him.

Remember, it's very easy to blame the Dems. You could expect to see tweet after tweet after tweet moaning about he want's to MAGA, but a Dem-controlled house. It's actually the current situation which is causing Trump the most headaches - he should be able to easily legislate, but can't.

Except two democrat majorities would leave Trump with a far, far bigger headache that rhymes with beseechment.