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Election Night 2018 results — 47 Comments

1. Going to nurse a bottle scotch tonight.

2. OK polls just closed – hope we remain all Rs for the congressional seats as well as the major state offices. My drink choice is vodka….

3. Scotch… same here. 🙂

4. Oh well …

   Heavily Republican DuPage County has turned purple. Statewide D’s seemed to have taken a majority of the votes with approx 50% of precincts reporting.

   Statewide the Republican Governor and Attorney General candidates have conceded.

   The collar county House seats that are currently Republican have the Democrat challengers leading.

5. Voted at 6 P.M.

   All the booths were busy, but no lines. I think I was only 1400, or thereabout.

   When Obama was running, and during the last general election, the lines were down the halls and virtually out the doors of the elementary school almost all day. Into the sidewalk at times. They were wheeling them in on forklifts and gurneys … sort of. And the weather was just as overcast and drizzly. I have no idea what this means, if anything. But I’m going to bed early. Happy news or bad, it can wait till morning. I’m still in a violent mood over Obamacare.

6. Very weird. Dems seem depressed so I turned to foxNews about 20 minutes ago and they’ve called the House for the…Dems. wtf?

   They are all depressed too. Mollie Hemingway is warning Dems not to start and new investigations.

7. Dems are depressed because the “blue wave” is pretty small, and because the Senate is lost and the R majority may grow. I must say, it seems pretty early for Fox to be calling the House in total. They may be right, but it’s early. Didn’t they learn from some previous elections?

   Rs are depressed because with a tiny D majority in the House, nothing is going to get done for two years. Judicial appointments will continue, which is good.

   If the Dems in the House proceed with their impeachment threats, I think they will shoot themselves in the foot as the Senate Judiciary Dems did.

8. With zero percent of the vote in, Mitt Romney is declared winner in Utah, so that guy is back. I wonder if he could have won in 2012 if he hadn’t been such a stiff. Every time I look at the Texas senate on the Fox News map its switched from pink to blue to pink again.

9. Suggestion to commenters:

   If you’re going to comment on a local race, might you mention where you are?

10. My wife is totally bummed out by the takeover by the Ds of the House. I’m saving my total bummout until Nevada announces whether Dean Heller is re-elected to the Senate and Adam Laxalt is elected Governor. If they go down to defeat, I shall truly be bummed out. And it’s not looking good.

11. F,

    Sorry about that.

    I’m in what has become a solidly blue People’s Republic of Illinois.

12. Here in NH, my son told me that Eddie Edwards (Neo referenced him a few weeks ago) was holding remarkably strong. I thought he had zero chance. Just now, with 68% in, he is behind 53-46, so it doesn’t look good, even though the late reporting districts in NH tend to be Republican. Still, it’s better than I thought, and bids well for next time. Maybe Ashooh will run again. Sununu has won. Unfortunately, so has Kuster.

13. https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2018/11/06/senator-ted-cruz-trounces-beto-in-texas-n2535437
    * * *
    Wish I still lived in Texas and could have voted for Cruz.

    Dems are delusional.
    https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/democrats-still-see-victory-in-beto-o-rourke-loss-2020-pondered-1363746371609?v=raila&
    RACHEL MADDOW
    “Democrats still see victory in Beto O’Rourke loss; 2020 pondered”

14. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/fcfa9f8373342e19f90c07a2342124e8ffc68871e8afcd4538b1ca97da96bc32.jpg

    The Leftist Brain explains their voting patterns.

15. Blue Wave was pretty big in terms of votes (biggest popular vote margin in years). Democrats probably depressed because gerrymandering, Senate structure block them from translating huge popular majorities into governing majorities. Good to remember that Democrats have won popular majority in 4 of the last 5 presidential elections but only held White House 2 out of 5 times. How long can minority rule work for Republicans?

16. Hubbell, a high tax and abort just before birth monster leads by 2 % for Iowa govenor with 59% of ballots counted. Depressing and I have to wonder what the F is wrong with my fellow Iowans? Baby killing is a line in the sand for me, even first before the 2nd. Back to the trenchs for 2020.

17. 50% from the line. Not good. Sorry.

18. How long can minority rule work for Republicans?

    As long as group-thinking Dems keep herding themselves into giant cities.

19. Cornhead:

    You’re still a star in my book for your 2016 prediction.

20. Shepard,

    So you favor mob rule where 2 wolves and 1 sheep vote for what is for dinner. Change your nic, you are not a shepard. Shepards don’t eat the flock, they guard the flock. Sheesh, another ______.

21. @parker You’re misreading. I said this is a good explanation for why Democrats would be upset. Imagine if Republicans consistently won large popular majorities but couldn’t win governing majorities. How would you feel then? How legitimate would Republicans view those elections?

    Founders set up a system to preserve minority rights, not enshrine minority rule. Founders never anticipated a modern party sytem that would systematically return minority party rule. But that’s what we have. A majority isn’t a “mob,” it’s a majority, and I’d bet my left big toe that’s not the song you sing when Republicans do win majorities. But Republicans aren’t winning majorities anymore. Rs can’t depend on structural advantages forever so it’s worth asking what message might work.

22. @TommyJay Founders cared about people, not land. Our system is supposed to preserve minority rights, not minority rule. If a majority is clustered in cities, that’s an argument for preserving rural minority rights, not relying on a rural minority forever. How do Republicans survive if they can’t rely on gerrymandering after the next census? This is a real politcal question: how does the party survive if it keeps losing the vote?

23. Shepard:

    Democrats are always upset when they can’t force their agenda on those not able to resist them, be it the unborn or those who have been born. Poor dears, Democrats, bless their hearts.

    If Democrats can’t get their way through the legislature they have relied on the courts and the bureaucracy (working with the courts). Unfortunately for Democrats, President Trump and the Republican Senate control who get appointed to the courts for a while. So whine about it and organize another mob.

24. All things considered things seem to have gone about as well could be hoped for.

    The Kavanaugh vote seems to be a pretty big deal. McCaskill, Donnelly, Nelson and Heitkamp lose Manchin won.

25. https://townhall.com/tipsheet/laurettabrown/2018/11/06/florida-governors-race-n2535430

    Far-Left Candidate Andrew Gillum Concedes to GOP Rep. Ron DeSantis in Florida Governor’s Race
    Lauretta Brown Lauretta Brown |Posted: Nov 06, 2018 11:05 PM

    https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2018/11/06/jersey-trash-sleazy-bob-menendez-wins-reelection-n2535433

    “And to show how there is no shame in this state, a juror from the Menendez trial is at his election night party.”

    @NewsFallon

    “Among the supporters tonight ?@SenatorMenendez?’s HQ is Evelyn Arroyo-Maultsby, a juror on his federal corruption trial. She achieved some fame when she left the jury last year during deliberations to go on vacation. She would’ve voted for acquittal. ?@northjersey?”

26. Ok shepard, I accept your clarification. Simple old farm boy i need clear words. Not clarifications. Speak to the peasants not the ‘intellectuals‘. 😉 Salt of the earth grows the food, runs the mahinery, lays down their lives.

27. “Sheperd” is the latest iteration of an old visitor here.

    It is often the case that on election night, trolls visit when they think they’re riding high.

    Not that “sheperd” cares, but I refer you to this and this for some history.

28. Sheperd,

    It is possible to amend the Constitution so that small population states like New Hampshire and Rhode Island and Vermont and Delaware give up their Senators to a large population state like Texas.

    Go for it! Run for Federal office on that platform. Let your action speak louder than your words.

29. Big winner: Deep State
    The House did a pretty good job of exposing the criminality in the DOJ and FBI. We had a chance to save privacy rights. That opportunity is gone. President Trump hasn’t done much of anything in that area, and I don’t think he has enough control over his office to do it. And the Senate hasn’t shown that it has the courage. FBI agent Strzok was smirking because he knew he was getting away with it. He was right.

    Big loser: The US
    I don’t see the democrats bringing any sanity to the House. Worse still, President Trump may try to compromise with these lunatics.

30. Adam Schiff, Elijah Cummings and Maxine Waters will now have the opportunity to display their incompetence as committee chairmen for the next two years.

31. kevino:

    I actually don’t see him compromising with the left. If there’s a compromise that isn’t too much of a compromise and if he thinks it will ultimately help the right (for example, something to do with health care) I think he’ll do it. But not on anything else.

    Two years ago I would have thought otherwise, however.

32. kevino:

    As far as the halting of the ongoing House investigations, goes, they can still continue till the end of the term. My sense of it is that a great deal has been uncovered so far—at least, enough to convince those who are paying attention that the rot goes deep. But the trouble is that so many aren’t paying attention, and/or so many are simply reading what the MSM has to say about it all. So those investigations could have gone on for many more years and much of America would have ignored their findings.

    That’s how cynical I’ve become.

    For the right to win any sort of meaningful and lasting victories, more has to change with our educational system and various other non-political institutions, because until that happens, everything is filtered through the lens of the left.

33. @Neo Madison is not the final authority on federalism. And none of our Founders anticipated a semi-stable minority based out of rural states that didn’t exist in their time based around parties that didn’t exist in their time running on issues that didn’t exist in their time.

    But even Madison was pretty clear that federalism was designed to protect minority rights, not minority rule: “In the extended republic of the United States, and among the great variety of interests, parties, and sects which it embraces, a coalition of a majority of the whole society could seldom take place on any other principles than those of justice and the general good; whilst there being thus less danger to a minor from the will of a major party, there must be less pretext, also, to provide for the security of the former, by introducing into the government a will not dependent on the latter, or, in other words, a will independent of the society itself.”

    So my point stands. Republicans keep losing elections but winning office. Keep your head in the sand if you want but this is not sustainable. Protecting insurance for people with pre-existing conditions is very popular. Republican bills have tried to remove these protections. Trump lied and said the opposite. This might be a recipe to win AN election but what about the next one? Dems just won a HUGE popular vote majority. How long can Rs keep this going?

34. Maine’s next governor will be Janet Mills, Democrat and the current State Attorney General. Governor Paul LePage, who is term-limited, is channeling his inner Davey Crockett, and saying, “I’m going to Florida and you can go to hell.”

    Democrat wins for Senate and Maine’s 1st District, which were expected, but still too close to call on Maine’s 2nd District (the more rural and 100% white northern part of the state), which Pres. Trump carried in 2016.

35. This is a real politcal question: how does the party survive if it keeps losing the vote?

    LOL! Amazing how it works, when you actually look at the rules. But all the other races other than the Presidency are simple-majorities, so how do you explain Democrats having lost their way to their weakest position nationwide in 100 years?

    Last night’s wins in the House will give Democrats some ownership of whatever lies ahead; might be good. Trends in motion tend to persist, though, so it is hard not to see this as a brief uptick in the Democrats’ long decline. How long can they continue to exist as a party, Sheperd?

    They need a serious program, and you need a remedial class in American history.

36. P.S. Who has the majorities?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._Vote_for_President_as_Population_Share.png

    No one.

37. “Protecting insurance for people with pre-existing conditions is very popular. “

    Offloading the costs of your autogenic disorders onto innocent others, and making them financial slaves to your dysfunctions, no doubt is popular with some. As immoral, damnable, and worthless as many of those others may be. Nothing like paying higher insurance premiums so some drunken type 2 diabetic can have cheap “insurance”.

    It’s funny how the greatest terror of the left is the prospect of others having a voluntary choice as to whether to share risk with them.

38. Yankee on November 7, 2018 at 2:32 am at 2:32 am said:
    Maine’s next governor will be Janet Mills, Democrat and the current State Attorney General. Governor Paul LePage, who is term-limited, is channeling his inner Davey Crockett, and saying, “I’m going to Florida and you can go to hell.”
    * * *
    LOL – I didn’t think anyone but Texans remembered that!
    My fervent hope is that all the Democrats moving to Texas for the jobs don’t destroy the culture that created the boom after they get there (we can handle one Austin and one Houston and one Dallas, but dangnabbit they are starting to spread out wayyy too far now!)

    https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/you-may-all-go-to-hell-and-9-more-great-texas-quotes/

    “Don’t mess with Texas.”

39. DNW on November 7, 2018 at 12:39 pm at 12:39 pm said:
    “Protecting insurance for people with pre-existing conditions is very popular. “
    …

    It’s funny how the greatest terror of the left is the prospect of others having a voluntary choice as to whether to share risk with them.
    * * *
    While I don’t dispute your final line, there are a lot of pre-existing conditions which don’t involve life-style choices, and those which develop/ripen under one insurance carrier or policy are sometimes not covered if you change jobs or states. One of our sons had lupus flair up while he was in college (not a common situation), and he would be in very bad trouble if he changed employment, without some provision to continue coverage.
    Examples could be multiplied.
    However, as Neo often pointed out in the past, many states had made adequate provision for those cases, and others would eventually have followed, but Obamacare trashed the entire operation, and the GOP is just trying to put the pieces back together, but it’s hard to work around the PPACA to do it.
    That will be much harder now, with the house officially in Dem hands, as opposed to their former unofficial dominance.

40. Sheperd: The simple answer is, current far left ideas only fly in densely populated urban areas. This is why, when you look at a map of US voting, you see tiny blue islands surrounded by giant seas of red. We in flyover country – and we account for about half the citizenry of this vast nation, whether you believe it .. or like it .. or not – have had enough of the left and its policies.

    Discussions on this very polite and literate forum would make it crystal-clear why sane people, and those outside of the urban bubble, don’t vote Democrat. Since you’re an occasional lefty troll, I realize that all you know is what you hear in your lefty echo chamber, which consists mainly of what you and your ilk have invented from whole cloth based by projecting and inverting your own intolerance and hate. You don’t actually know any conservatives, or if you do, they’ve learned to keep quiet lest the lefty mob get them fired for having unauthorized opinions. So, if you want to actually know our positions, read some forums here and come back to talk when you’ve learned something. We won’t wait up for you.

    There’s nothing new about conflict between urban vs rural populations. This has been going on for thousands of years – ever since there were urban populations. We are stuck with each other: urban populations would starve after every dog, cat, pigeon and rat gets eaten, without rural populations to grow the food that feeds them; but urban centers are also where the customers are, to say nothing of being where advances in culture, knowledge and learning have tended to come from. Today, however, instead of offering anything useful to humanity, urban centers have become seething hotbeds of intolerant and unyielding hatred for the “other” – us. Yet the left seems eternally shocked and amazed that they lose any elections which allow us subhuman non-urban populations to vote.

    As Neo notes about your obsessions with simple-majority vote, the Presidency is the only one affected by the electoral college. Why, pray tell, did the GOP retain the Senate? Those were won by simple majorities. Why are the majority of Governors not Democrats, if the left is this vast majority that you imagine it to be? The electoral college was specifically designed to prevent a situation like California getting to dictate who is the president of the other 49 states.

    “Democracy” is a pretty, four-syllable word for “mob rules.” Democracies always eventually eat themselves. Our founders knew this, which is why the US is NOT a democracy.

41. @kyndyll, far more people in total cast ballots for democratic senators and governors than they did for republican senators and governors. It’s fine to say, as Madison did, that the government should have some elements in it (like, say, the senate) that are insulated from popular passions, to preserve the rights of the minority. It’s another thing to say that the Republican party should continue to rely on a minority of voters + structural advantages. Democrats had to win the popular vote margin by something like 8 percent or more to take the House majority. I had a civics teacher years ago ask us what kind of rules we’d make for a world we’d be born into without knowing whether we’d be rich or poor, healthy or sick, etc. It’s an exercise I turn to a lot. Is the sytem fair if you can win majorities or pluralities in the popular vote and get shut out of office? Our system is not a democracy, but it is democratic. Read that quote from Madison. He didn’t want minority rule, he wanted majority rule with built-in veto points to make sure minorities didn’t get trampled by majorities.

    @DNW if you read what I wrote, you’d see I didn’t say pre-existing coverage was good, I said it was popular. Trump said he’d protect pre-existing coverage after he backed bills that would have eliminated those protections. He didn’t come up with an alternative, he didn’t say “they’re bad because they take away freedom,” he just lied. So how long can the Rs last if governing depends on lying about policies and a minority of voters? What if it stops taking an 8% majority to win the house?

42. Sheperd:

    The truth about pre-existing condition coverage and the GOP bill: here, and here.

    It did not eliminate pre-existing coverage, it just changed its nature somewhat.

    As links I gave you earlier about the Founders and democracy indicate, the Founders indeed wanted to make sure that states as entities were respected, and were not all that interested in the popular vote as a whole. They were interested in it on a district-by-district level for the House (not the Senate, where representatives were originally appointed by state legislatures, with equal representation for each state regardless of its population), and were interested in the popular vote for president only on a statewide basis, with each state having somewhat proportional representation in the electoral college but definitely not strictly proportional representation.

    There is no national popular vote for Senate, or even for the House (where population matters a lot more than in the Senate). And yes, I think that is wise. Otherwise a few urban centers on the coasts would dictate policy for the entire nation, which is not what the Founders wanted. And I agree with them on that.

    And there is no doubt in my mind that Democrats would take the opposite position from the one they take now on this if they felt it was in their political interest.

43. I have no doubt that’s absolutely what the Democrats would do if the tables were turned, because parties are election winning machines. I won’t act surprised either if a lawyer tries to win a case on a technicality, because the lawyer’s job is to win, not to win in a particular way. But I’m not a lawyer or a politician, and I’m not talking about partisan electoral strategy, I’m asking how long you think Republicans can continue governing with minority support.

44. “I’m asking how long you think Republicans can continue governing with minority support.”

    Republicans don’t always win elections, and maybe they don’t have “national majority” votes (which is a totally meaningless statistic, electorally speaking), but for decades polls have shown majority conservative values in the country, which have been beaten down by executive fiat and judicial usurpation (think CA Proposition 8, for just one example).

    You probably are not even willing to entertain the idea that a portion of that “national majority” you laud is due to illegals voting, dead people voting, and young people (and naturalized immigrants) without a sound education in the American Constitution or the history of leftist disasters voting.

    To the cry that “no voter fraud has been found” the answer is pfui — on the same level that Hillary must be totally innocent because the FBI didn’t think she should be prosecuted.
    Few investigations of the fraud have been found, and no media publicizing of the fraud has been found.
    We who read something other than the NYT and WaPo have seen plenty of examples exposed.

45. And about that “national majority” thing —

    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/11/vote-for-the-dead-brothel-owner-its-important.php

    Plainvillian • 19 hours ago
    “My choice early in life was either to be a piano
    player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there’s
    hardly any difference.” – Harry S. Truman

    lydia • 19 hours ago
    Kind of smart. Voters knew a republican would be appointed.

    Bruno Strozek • 19 hours ago
    It’s a shock, really.
    Usually The Dead vote trends Democrat…

    IraSiegel • 19 hours ago
    “You gotta like a district where voters prefer a dead brothel owner to a Democrat”
    YES!!!

46. “…far more people in total cast ballots for democratic senators and governors than they did for republican senators and governors.”

    Not that our friend Sheperd is likely to come back at this point, but with a few minutes on my hands, I took Senate vote tallies from the NY Times site (which seems to be the origin of this “Wow, so many more votes for Democrat Senators than Republican Senators!” meme making the rounds) and added it up myself.

    Yes, duh, there are more votes for Democrat Senators than Republican Senators, yet the Republican party held the Senate. There’s no need even to apologize or explain, actually, because this is why there is a Senate AND a House of Representatives. The latter is designed to reflect population differences. The Senate, which has two Senators per state (no matter how many people are in a state) does not. This was designed with full intent. The Senate ensures that small states have a mechanism to protect them against large population centers; the House of Representatives is meant to give populations a representative voice, so that the million people over here have more say than the 100,000 people over there. The whole point of the arrangement was to ensure fairness – so that rural and urban populations would each have a house in Congress to best represent them. So really, it’s an incredibly idiotic argument to begin with – trust Democrats to make it.

    But, if we must, the discrepancy is due to:

    1) Democrats choose to cluster in dense population centers. Republicans tend to be people who are not married to dense urban living, so while they live in urban areas, they make up the majority in low-population rural states. In states which feature huge urban populations, Democrats usually outvote Republicans in contests that generate large numbers of votes; meanwhile, in a large number of less-populated states, Republicans often win in contests that generate relatively few votes.
    2) California, one of the most populous states in the union, had a Senate race this year which had only two Democrats. Over 6 million votes for Democrat senators were cast in this purely intramural contest. Given that there are millions of Republicans in California (some percent of which didn’t even bother to choose between Hard Left Crazy Dem and Harder Left Crazy Dem) the total votes for Democrat vs Republican Senators would have been different if California didn’t have this weird scheme.

    The problem with memes like this is that the generation just coming of age to vote, thoroughly indoctrinated in lefty ideas of “fairness” with very little knowledge of actual facts, are probably swayed by them.

47. KyndyllG – good points, and the CA situation invalidates the “national majority vote” meme from the get-go.

    However, if somehow enough crazy people voted to amend the constitution and make Senate seats national rather than state elections (how does that even make any sense? Should state governors be elected by national popular vote, so things will be “fair”?), they would most likely get rid of the electoral college too, in which case we might as well dispose of the upper house altogether and let the now-popularly-elected President take over completely.

    Which would have been fine with the Democrats when Obama & Clinton “won”, but once the Republicans adjusted their campaigning to the new rules, there are no guarantees on who would hold the White House. (As was discussed ad nauseum about Trump’s electoral vote count vs total vote percentage).

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