2022 MIDTERM RESULTS

Independent Voter site Balladeer’s Blog takes a look at the 2022 midterm elections based on what we know now. As regular readers know I despise both the Republican and Democrat Parties and would like to see them both splinter into multiple smaller parties, so I can provide a non-partisan view.

(By the way, I’m one of the few sites – either Democrat OR Republican – which did NOT pretend that some mythical Red Wave was coming. I got accused of being a “secret Democrat shill” for that, but as always, I was just offering my non-partisan take.)

First, I will provide some numbers regarding the breakdown of party seats in the House and the Senate, then later in this blog post I will provide a measured take on the results. Long-time readers know that, since 2010, I have pointed out how ridiculously the major parties overreact to midterm election results.

THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES – It seems the Republicans took back the House from Democrat control (222 seats to 213 but even that is not final. Real Clear Politics claims the Republicans have 227 seats to 208 for the Democrats.), but Republicans won fewer seats than they did in 2020, when it was the Democrats who were disappointed by how badly they did and how many seats they lost. (Democrats were claiming all that year that they would dramatically increase their seats in the House but instead they lost big.)

          Without the Democrat losses in 2020 there is no way the Republicans would have taken back the House this time around. Hey, who was at the top of their ballot in 2020?   

THE SENATE – Going into last Tuesday’s elections, the Democrats held 50 seats and the Republicans held 50 seats. As of today, the Democrats hold 50 seats and the Republicans hold 49 seats with the December runoff election in Georgia set to decide the final division of seats. Not exactly earth-shaking changes, but you overseas readers might not know that by the typical overstatements of America’s biased media outlets, all of which favor either one party or the other.

MY VIEW OF THE RESULTS:

A. FOR OVERSEAS READERS, LET ME POINT OUT THAT EVERY TWO YEARS, ONLY ONE-THIRD OF THE SENATE IS UP FOR REELECTION, UNLIKE THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, IN WHICH ALL 435 MEMBERS ARE UP FOR REELECTION EACH TIME. (Senators have 6 year terms, Representatives have 2 year terms.)

           So, with just about 33 different Senate seats being fought over every two years, with each seat’s election campaign bringing with it a LOT of its own variables, how the Senate races go in one election are never a true nationwide snapshot. 

B. THE BIGGEST MISTAKE THAT AMERICA’S POLITICAL PARTIES HAVE MADE IN THE PAST TWELVE YEARS REGARDING THE MIDTERM RESULTS: THINKING THAT THEY REPRESENT NATIONAL TRENDS.

           If you’d like a look at the hilarious roller coaster ride that the political parties and pundits can go on every midterm, I covered that in-depth years ago HERE. Maybe in the distant past the midterm results meant more, but for more than two decades now, they have proven to have fairly limited meaning for the country or for the next upcoming election.

C. PENNSYLVANIA ELECTED A MAN WHO HAD ALREADY DIED AS WELL AS THE SHAMBLING MONSTROSITY NAMED FETTERMAN. These results embody why I despise loyalty to a political party. Partisan zealots will vote for their designated gang of white-collar criminals even if an old rubber tire or a mannequin is the candidate.

           The clueless and outdated Republican Party, which is always outmaneuvered and outdone by the Democrats, is hilariously pretending that the other Republican candidate (who lost in the primaries) would have defeated Fetterman in the Senate race. Insanity! Up against the kind of blind, unthinking “My political party right or wrong” mentality shown in these Pennsylvania results, ANY Republican candidate would apparently have lost. 

D. BOTH THE DEMOCRATS AND THE REPUBLICANS STILL INSIST ON PRETENDING EVERYTHING IS ABOUT DONALD TRUMP. The cesspool of corruption which masquerades as America’s political system still hates nothing more than outsiders like Donald Trump. (A CNN poll after voting found the vast majority say that neither Biden nor Trump had anything to do with which candidate they (voters) chose. )

           If the Republicans had seen their mythical Red Wave hit, they would have insisted that it proved they didn’t need Trump on the ballot to win big. Now that the Republicans were once again left looking foolish, they’re trying to blame it on Trump, anyway. It was virtually a no-lose situation for the anti-Trump forces. More HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE

           Trump’s endorsed candidates won over 80% of their races in the elections last week (some are still outstanding), yet obsessive anti-Trump people claim that those winning candidates would have won anyway. Hypocritically, they do not say that his losing endorsees would have lost anyway. Plus, other Republican politicians and media outlets endorsed those same losing candidates. More HERE 

E. REPUBLICAN FIGURES LIKE MITCH MCCONNELL AND RONNA MCDANIEL ARE IN THE OFFICES WHICH ARE SUPPOSED TO MANAGE THEIR PARTY’S INDIVIDUAL ELECTION CAMPAIGNS – NOT DONALD TRUMP. “Cocaine” Mitch and Ronna are rightfully being called out by many Republicans as the true people responsible for their party’s misfire last week. More HERE and HERE 

           By the way, it was Lindsay Graham who floated the notion of a nationwide ban on abortion, which the dazed and confused Republican Establishment now admits motivated a huge number of women – who were planning on sitting out the election up until then – to go out and vote Democrat. 

           McConnell (see HERE) and McDaniel mismanaged the allotment of Party Money to candidates and ripped away Republican voter enthusiasm by claiming they would do next to nothing with any Congressional majority they gained and by constantly bashing the alleged “poor quality” of some of their candidates. (As if ANY candidate on either side could be worse than the Fetterman Monster.)

            You’ll notice that ONLY Republicans treat their losing candidates as pariahs. Democrats still flock around past losers like Hillary Clinton and stood by Joe Biden, a previous two-time loser in presidential campaigning. Democrats are still talking about possibly keeping Nancy Pelosi in a leadership position as the Minority Party Leader in the House, despite the fact that as Speaker she has now presided over TWO losses of the House to Republicans. 

F. PLACES LIKE FLORIDA, WHICH TOOK STEPS AGAINST FRAUD-FRIENDLY PROCEDURES INCLUDING VOTE BY MAIL, BALLOT HARVESTING, SLOW-COUNTING, ETC DID VERY WELL FOR THE REPUBLICANS. In the past, I’ve detailed how and why the Democrats have so much success with such antics.

           And by the way, wasn’t the widespread Vote by Mail (which is NOT the same as absentee voting) supposed to go away after Covid? Until the people who run the Republican Party get serious about combatting such fraud-friendly procedures, they can go on blaming their own candidates forever and it will only get worse. More HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE and HERE

G. THE REPUBLICANS STILL REFUSE TO BE COMPETITIVE IN THE MEDIA ARMS RACE. All of America’s media outlets are biased toward one political party or the other. Places like Fox News, One America News, Newsmax, the New York Post, etc, are biased in favor of Republicans. Places like CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, the New York Times, the Jeff Bezos Post, etc, are biased in favor of Democrats.

           At present, the people who run the Republican Party are still reluctant to spend money on media outlets, because media impact cannot be measured on a profit and loss sheet. (Yet media dominance has certainly done very well for the Democrats, who prioritize flooding the country with their talking points no matter the cost in mere money.)

           In the 2000 and 2004 elections, with the virtually lone Fox News Channel, Republicans saw their horrible candidate – the repulsive and disastrous George W. Bush – get to, and then stay in, the White House, with many people crediting Fox as a large reason why. You’d think Republican Party power players would have finally realized the importance of media outlets for messaging. Nope. Since then, they’ve added very few outlets of their own, consumed by fears of “splitting audience share.”   

           Republican VOTERS, however, realize the importance of the Media Arms Race. For just one example, in Florida, Hispanic-American Republicans rallied to try contesting the Democrat takeover of several Spanish Language radio stations, but the actual Republican Party movers and shakers did nothing.           

H. THE PEOPLE WHO RUN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY STILL THINK THEIR FAILURES COME DOWN TO “POOR MESSAGING.” Hilarious! Because of how few media outlets Republicans have compared to Democrats very, very few people ever even KNOW what the Republican candidates’ “messages” are, let alone if they agree with them or not.

           By being so passive in the Media Arms Race, the Republicans’ “message” is defined by the Democrats’ media outlets, which, if you haven’t gotten my meaning yet, still dramatically outnumber Republican media outlets. To casual voters, the Republicans are only what the Democrats’ media outlets have told them they are. 

           Flipping channels, casual voters can come across countless presentations of the Democrat Party views, but only a tiny number of presentations of the Republican Party views. And even that’s only if they haven’t simply blocked those few channels because the enormous number of Democrat media outlets have assured them that those channels are just evil propaganda. 

I. THE REPUBLICANS HAVE DECIDED THAT RON DESANTIS IN FLORIDA IS THEIR NEW MITT ROMNEY OR JOHN MCCAIN OR JEB BUSH. Comically enough, many Republican Party bigwigs and pundits are once again letting their opponents pick their candidates for them. (Sometimes literally, like in this year’s primary elections when Democrats openly called for their voters to vote for Republican candidates who were likely to lose in the “real” elections in November.)

           In the past, Republicans have idiotically gone along with candidates that the Democrats and their outlets have assured them were “more palatable” to moderates and independents. Yet, you’ll notice that Mitt Romney and John McCain lost their presidential campaigns anyway, and Jeb Bush failed to even get past the primaries! Gee, it’s almost like public sentiment is so thoroughly weighted to perceive Republican candidates as racist, sexist, warmongering rich pigs that THAT perception is to blame, more than individual candidates. (Despite the media assurances that he was perceived favorably, McCain was still identified with Hitler, just like George W. Bush was, and Romney did no better.)   

          And remember, though the Republican Party establishment apparently forgot, Republicans were cemented in the public’s mind as racists, sexists, and warmongering rich pigs LONG DECADES BEFORE DONALD TRUMP CAME ALONG. Stop acting like Republican candidates were considered soft, warm and cuddly until Trump. He had nothing to do with the public perception of Republicans as virtual Nazis. Remember George W. Bush for just one example.

           If anything, Trump had to fight upstream against the (to many voters) “stain” of having that (R) after his name. If Republicans abandon Trump, all their candidates will STILL have to wear that R like a Scarlet Letter until the Republican establishment fights back effectively in the Media Arms Race. As it is, they would rather attack and abandon ANY of their candidates who push back against the opposition party’s media outlets. 

J. REPUBLICAN POWER PLAYERS STILL DON’T GET IT. To carry on from “I”, you can watch and read and hear plenty of Republican Party operatives saying that they need candidates who don’t seem like “haters” or “fanatics.” Statements like that have it all backwards – once a Republican candidate gains public momentum, the numerous hostile media outlets go on to PORTRAY them as haters and fanatics.

           Ron DeSantis is still not as high-profile as he may become if the Republicans decide to go with him, and yet he’s already been called “more fascist than Trump” and “as bad as Hitler.” A television crime show has already dealt in a fictional storyline painting DeSantis as a gay sexual predator – and had it BOTH ways by then having it turn out that a Trump supporter was lying just to frame DeSantis.

           Hmmm. Slamming TWO high-profile Republican candidates in one go! Even if you explained this successful “mud-slinging out of nowhere” endeavor to Republican power players in one-syllable words, they STILL probably would not understand its effectiveness. (In a separate case, a tv producer for Yellowstone had to hurriedly deny doing “a red-state show” because they knew what a kiss of death that would be in a media world thoroughly dominated by Democrats.)

           Hell, just go back through old IMDb user reviews to see how this carries over to public perception. No matter who the most vile fictional villain is in movies at any time since IMDb launched, that villain is always compared to the most prominent Republican of the moment, be it George W. Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Donald Trump … and presumably Ron DeSantis next.   

Like I often remark, it should be an American blessing to say “May all your enemies be as clueless and self-defeating as the people who run the Republican Party.”

           *** Regular readers know that I spent most of my life as a Democrat before leaving that increasingly fascistic and intolerant party to become an Independent Voter (and are sick of hearing it, I’m sure). But I take shots at both major parties, so if you’re a new reader who needs proof of that, click HERE.

           (And by the way, remember that at no time do I claim that my opinions are always right, or the only valid opinions, I just guarantee that what I’m saying is not based on affiliation with either political party.)