Would Murkowski Ever Switch Parties?

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)

Every congressional cycle for the past twenty years has seen moderation go by way of the dodo bird.  It is increasingly unbecoming of members of either party to moderate their views in a world where straight-ticket voting is such a big deal.  This is why when a state realigns (recently this being the case with Ohio & Florida on the right, Arizona & Georgia on the left) it is imperative that you swoop in as quickly as possible and go for as many chips (i.e. seats) as you can, largely as a result of there being so few on the table to begin with.

Particularly for Republicans, moderation of any kind is seen as a sign of weakness, and in the Trump Era, a sign of betrayal by the leader of the party.  You saw this happen this past year, where House incumbents like Jaime Herrera Beutler & Peter Meijer lost primaries that ultimately went to the Democrats in the general, Republicans willing to sacrifice seats solely as an appeasement to the former president.

Which makes what happened this past week in Alaska all the more remarkable.  As was anticipated by polling, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Rep. Mary Peltola (D-AK) both won reelection to the next Congress.  But both did so with a shockingly similar coalition despite coming from completely different parties.  This is basically unheard of in modern politics.  While crossover voting happens, surely (compare Nan Whaley's numbers to Tim Ryan's in Ohio this past cycle, or look at how Wisconsin, Kansas, & Nevada all elected different parties for Governor vs. Senator), it's very rare that a candidate like Murkowski exists.  While Peltola is doing what people normally associate with a red-state Democrat (aka hold your entire base, and try to pick off as many independents and moderates as possible from the other party), Murkowski basically did the same thing...with the same voters.  

Murkowski did not hold the Republican base-she lost it to a conservative challenger Kelly Tshibaka.  Murkowski won by holding pretty much all Democrats, either in the first or the second round of voting (but honestly, more so in the first as Democrat Pat Chesbro only got 10.3% of the vote).  Keep in mind that Joe Biden won 42% of the vote in Alaska, Hillary Clinton won 37%, and in 2012 Barack Obama got 41%.  Somewhere around 40% of the state regularly votes for Democrats on a presidential level.  If Chesbro is only getting 10% of the vote, it stands to reason that 75-80% of Democrats voted for Murkowski on the first ballot, and virtually all of them did on the second ballot.  With Republicans on average getting about 50-55% of the vote in presidential elections the past three cycles, Murkowski was just elected with likely 95% of the people who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and maybe 20% of the voters who went for Trump.  Put simply-she won because Democrats elected her, not Republicans.

That doesn't happen anywhere else.  The only other person who is in that same league of that is Joe Manchin, and doing some quick math even he got elected more so because of Biden voters than because of Trump voters.  This used to not always be the case-in the 1980's, Reagan voters gave overwhelming majorities to a number of Southern Democrats.  But Murkowski now stands apart as a unicorn in Congress, someone who holds her seat almost exclusively thanks to the other party.

This isn't the first time this has happened, it's worth noting.  Murkowski won in 2016 due to a number of Democratic defections (though you could make a mathematical argument that it was close to 50/50 between Clinton voters & Trump voters, which is still more than a crossover phenomenon like Manchin), while in 2010 she won with roughly half of her voters being probable Obama voters.  This is quick math, it's worth noting (a secret ballot makes it impossible to get this number precisely), but she's the only current member of Congress with this pattern, and it's worth asking two questions about these results: first, what are Democrats getting out of this relationship, and two, would Murkowski ever switch parties?

Murkowski with fellow
moderate Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV)

The first question, to be honest, is some but not a lot.  Murkowski has definitely stuck out as a potential aide to Chuck Schumer in the past six years, but rarely when it came to something of major consequence.  She voted against Brett Kavanaugh & for the second Trump impeachment, but voted for Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, & sided with Trump in the first impeachment hearing even when Mitt Romney refused to back the then-president.  She voted against Betsy DeVos, but she did so only when it was clear that DeVos would be confirmed anyway (it should be noted, the same thing happened with Kavanaugh), and she voted for Ketanji Brown Jackson...but at that point she knew she'd get confirmed.  She has not stuck her neck out too far on abortion rights, not only ensuring Barrett & Gorsuch were on the Court, but also not helping to end the filibuster to codify Roe.  She didn't help Schumer to bring Merrick Garland's vote to the floor of the Senate, even though she knew at the time it might make the difference long term for abortion rights & gay marriage, both of which she adamantly supports (she is one of the dozen Republican senators who will make sure that DOMA is repealed hopefully in the next week).  In terms of tangible things that Murkowski has genuinely gone on a limb for the Democrats for, the three biggest ones that come to mind are overriding Trumpcare (when she, Susan Collins, & John McCain sank the bill that would've gutted the Affordable Care Act), and she recently endorsed both Joe Manchin & Mary Peltola (both Democrats) for reelection.  These endorsements were likely not decisive, and one could argue Peltola's ended up helping Murkowski more in the end, but it was a risky move in a (still) red state.  Murkowski, it has to be noted, is getting a lot of Democratic support for very little cost.

The second question, I think, is one that will be intriguing over the next six years.  Alaska Republicans clearly don't like Murkowski-the only reason she has a job is Ranked-Choice Voting, and as the GOP is not moderating, she's going to either have to shift to the right (in a similar fashion to Susan Collins) or she's going to continue to look out-of-step.  Peltola's victory, especially if she can repeat in 2024, is something she can keep an eye on.  Alaska is one of the most independent states in the country (their legislatures are frequently coalition governments in a way pretty much no other state can achieve for longer than a term), and if they are willing to vote entirely for the person rather than the party, there's a lot to be gained from Murkowski moving to the Democrats, particularly if she can work out an arrangement with Chuck Schumer about energy policy, the one issue that she is the most to the right of an average Democrat.  She has six years to think about it, obviously (during which time she'll be able to see how Biden, Peltola, and her fellow senator Dan Sullivan fare in their reelection bids), and at 65-years-old it's hard to tell if she's the sort of candidate that will want to be an octogenarian in the Senate (she may well have just survived her last reelection bid), but this is an avenue I hope that Schumer & Senate Democrats are keeping open.  In a map where just 1-2 seats can make the difference, Democrats being able to grab a seat in state like Alaska would be worth pretty much any price they had to pay.

The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954)

Film: The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954)

Stars: Elizabeth Taylor, Van Johnson, Walter Pidgeon, Donna Reed, Eva Gabor, Roger Moore

Director: Richard Brooks

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Donna Reed: click here to learn more about Ms. Reed (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We are going to conclude our month-long look at the career of Donna Reed with the twilight of her film career.  Reed would stop making theatrical movies by the mid-1950's, when she was essentially shooting bargain basement flicks for Columbia, and one could argue that today's movie The Last Time I Saw Paris was the last really high-budget movie she'd make, though the budget has less to do with her coming off of an Oscar win and more because she was starring opposite one of the biggest emerging stars of the era, Elizabeth Taylor.  Given that motion pictures were doing nothing for her, she decided to move to television, where her long history of big-screen projects and her Oscar win were enough to get her an eponymous TV series called The Donna Reed Show which would run for eight years on ABC.  Initially a flop (Reed was up against Milton Berle & the show was nearly cancelled in its first season), moving the series to Thursday nights earned the show a following, but it also accrued quite a bit of infamy.  We're going to talk about what happened to Reed's show, both during & after its run, in a second, but first I want to make sure we pay attention to the movie at-hand today, The Last Time I Saw Paris.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is told in retrospect, and it's got a lot of plot (based on a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald it also has a lot of booze & tragedy).  Essentially the gist of the movie is that we have Charles Willis (Johnson), a war correspondent who is accosted by a woman on the street that we learn is Helen (Taylor), a carefree younger sister of a woman who has also made Charles' acquaintance Marion (Reed).  Both sisters are obviously in love with Charles, but it's Helen that he prefers, her carefree spirit & more conventional attractiveness making her impossible to deny.  Charles & Marion are a terrible pairing, with the former an unsuccessful writer who is practical, the latter a free spirit who indulges in spending money she doesn't have.  Their lives are torn asunder when the barren oil fields that Charles got as a dowry from his equally cavalier father-in-law (Pidgeon) actually strike oil, making them momentarily rich.  The couple start to grow apart, with them both starting up affairs (with a young Eva Gabor & Roger Moore), hurting their relationship, and leading Charles to become an alcoholic.  One night, Helen tries to return in the rain to their house, but Charles, drunk, cannot get to the door, and so Helen goes to Marion's in the cold...and promptly dies from pneumonia.  Charles cannot forgive himself, and neither can Marion, who holds a grudge for him not choosing her initially, and for a while she keeps his daughter with Helen from her, but in the end they are reunited, trying to live their lives in the wake of Helen's death.

The movie should work but it doesn't.  There's a compelling story, and Taylor is fire here (she looks great).  But the story doesn't really know what to do with the main characters, who don't really have much chemistry with each other or with Gabor/Moore.  Honestly, I always struggle with Van Johnson when he's doing drama...my favorite role for him is the curmudgeon in Brigadoon, but I've never loved him in anything else.  Honestly, Donna Reed is really good here in a role that is vastly underwritten-her late-breaking adoration of Charles is only etched in her eyes, not in the script, and I spent most of the movie wanting to see things from her perspective.  After a month of Reed getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop, at least here she earns the star power she wasn't given in other movies we've profiled.

Reed, as I mentioned, moved to television after this.  The Donna Reed Show was the first major broadcast show in the United States to feature a mother as the most important character in a family sitcom, rather than the father or the children.  The show launched the singing careers of Shelley Fabares ("Johnny Angel") & Paul Petersen ("My Dad"), who played Reed's children.  The show, though, attracted criticism of feminists, who thought the show depicted Reed's character Donna Stone as a submissive housewife who wore ballgowns while washing windows; this would be mocked decades later in a Gilmore Girls episode where Rory would dress as Donna Reed on a date with her boyfriend Dean.  Reed did not take well to her character being criticized by the women's liberation movement of the 1970's, and engaged in public statements against women in film & TV of the era that we would now consider to be "slut shaming" referring to them as "kooky, amoral, & sick."  

Reed's politics were more complicated, though, than you'd think.  While she was a longtime Republican, which leans into much of what we associate with her today as being synonymous with her fictional Donna Stone character, I was surprised to find out in researching her this month that she went from endorsing Barry Goldwater in 1964 to supporting Eugene McCarthy in 1968, a shift driven entirely by her views on Vietnam, which she vehemently opposed.  Reed would rarely work after The Donna Reed Show (though she attempted a comeback in Dallas to replace Barbara bel Geddes that would ultimately result in Reed successfully suing CBS for breach-of-contract when bel Geddes changed her mind and returned to the show).  She died in 1986 at the age of 64 of pancreatic cancer.  Next month, for our last month focused on "Film-to-TV," we are going to talk about an actress who, unlike the eleven figures we profiled before this, was one of the biggest stars of the Classical Hollywood era, not needing to indulge in television as a way to cement her celebrity.  That she did anyway in the 1960's indicated just how important television had become, permanently linked to the Hollywood machinery.

OVP: The Caddy (1953)

Film: The Caddy (1953)

Stars: Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Donna Reed, Barbara Bates

Director: Norman Taurog

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"That's Amore")

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Donna Reed: click here to learn more about Ms. Reed (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We talked last week about how Donna Reed's career throughout the 1940's was a struggle, with her getting one iconic part (It's a Wonderful Life) to go with a series of forgettable westerns & dramas.  This week, though, we're going to talk about what was the most successful chapter, both commercially & critically, during Reed's career (while it was happening-lest we forget, It's a Wonderful Life became a holiday landmark in the decades that followed, not at the time).  In 1953, during her time at Columbia, she had two films that were released days apart: the first of the two was The Caddy, a movie that she was on loan to Paramount for that brought her into the company of Martin & Lewis in a huge hit...hence it being our movie today.  The bigger deal, though, was that she also had an even bigger hit coming out for her home studio of Columbia, Fred Zinnemann's landmark epic From Here to Eternity.  Playing the role of Lorene Burke in the film, Reed got the best notices of her career, and quickly found herself competing for an award she'd had to watch others try for for decades: the Oscar.  Up against impressive competition (including Grace Kelly & Geraldine Page), Reed won the trophy, her first and only Oscar nomination/win. As we'll see today, though, while her career was arguably in the best state it'd been in in a while, From Here to Eternity (where, it has to be noted, she won a supporting Oscar despite having spent a decade attempting to achieve leading lady status) was more fluke than the rule.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Joe Anthony (Martin) and Harvey Miller, Jr. (Lewis), who are at the beginning of the film a noted comedy duo who are telling the story of their lives before a big show. We see their humble beginnings, with both men struggling to find their place in the world until we discover that Joe is an excellent, even pro-worthy golfer.  He initially does this in partnership with Harvey, who is a superb caddy, but Joe lets the fame go to his head, particularly as he attempts to woo a wealthy socialite Kathy Taylor (Reed), and mistreats his friend.  In the end, they find their friendship & their unorthodox families are worth more than the pro circuit...and instead launch a successful career in show business, where they are openers for another legendary comedy duo: Martin & Lewis (playing themselves).

I've seen a few Martin & Lewis films, and while I generally love their banter, I always think they work better when they're doing a schtick onstage than pulling along a story.  Neither of these men are great actors, and the plots are so formulaic they make an Astaire & Rogers musical look original.  The calling card in the movies is frequently the cameos, which here are a series of legendary golfers (including Ben Hogan & Sam Snead) playing themselves.  This would be indistinguishable from their other movies were it not for one of the musical numbers they throw in about a third through the musical.  Martin sings (for the first time) one of his signature numbers, the ridiculous & romantic "That's Amore!"  This is not a good song lyrically (it was infamously mocked on the Dean Martin Roasts by Orson Welles), but it works so well.  Here, it's sung by both Martin & Lewis, but it's really Dean who keeps it alive.  That flawless, lazy baritone feels so warm & inviting, you honestly feel surrounded by the pasta he's crooning over.

The film features Donna Reed as another indistinguishable love interest.  The Caddy in conjunction with From Here to Eternity should've been a big deal for Reed.  Obviously one won her an Oscar, but The Caddy was also a huge hit, particularly internationally (this is one of the films that cemented Jerry Lewis's legendary status in France, where he was hailed as a comedic genius).  But Martin & Lewis got the credit there, and James Jones got the credit for From Here to Eternity.  Reed was soon getting upstaged by bigger stars like Elizabeth Taylor & Dana Andrews in her later pictures.  We'll talk about that later today when we profile one of those films, and what ultimately led to the TV show that would cement Donna Reed's legend, for better or worse.

Tulsi Gabbard's Grand Fall

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (I-HI)

As I mentioned a few weeks ago when we did our election night guide, I will be stepping away from politics with a much needed break post the election, and that will be true once we're done with November.  I will admit I left less turned off by politics than I expected (I was petrified I'd not only see Republicans win, but do so with some of the worst candidates imaginable).  But even with me much more enthusiastic about the future of politics in America (assuming that Raphael Warnock wins in the next couple of weeks-go vote Georgia!), I wanted to put a bow on a few thoughts I had about this past election cycle before I go.  We'll surely do an article about the Georgia runoffs, and if anything major happens in the next few weeks, but I will largely stay away from politics, particularly presidential politics, until the new year as we move back into the Oscar season around here.

That being said, one of the phenomena of the past few months that I didn't get to talk about was the strange journey of former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a one-time congresswoman from Hawaii who ran (unsuccessfully) for president in 2020 & since then has seen a pointed move toward the right, culminating in her switching to become an Independent candidate on October 11, 2022, just weeks before the midterm elections.  I wanted to talk about the unusual downfall that Gabbard endured, perhaps losing more than any other person not on the ballot on November 8th (except for Donald Trump).

Gabbard's history with the Democratic Party has always been a rocky one.  The daughter of longtime Hawaii State Senator Mike Gabbard, she has always been held at arm's length by the party due to her father's vehement opposition to same-sex marriage.  Gabbard herself worked on campaigns against same-sex marriage as late as 2004, when she was in the state legislature.  Though the younger Gabbard would change her viewpoints on same-sex marriage, eventually cosponsoring legislation to overturn DOMA, she has continually been to the right of much of her caucus on LGTBQ+ rights, particularly when it comes transgender issues & supporting LGBTQ+ educators.

Gabbard's most noted policy shifts from the Democratic Party, though, were in foreign policy.  She met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and supported his claims that he did not use chemical weapons against his citizens.  She has been deeply sympathetic to the Russian position on a number of major foreign policy debates, to the point where Hillary Clinton insinuated that Russians were "grooming" a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, a statement that was largely assumed to be about Gabbard.  Her positions made for unlikely allies.  In 2020, her presidential campaign received the endorsements of David Duke & Richard Spencer, both white supremacists, and while she declined these endorsements, it cannot be denied that her campaign was gaining a lot of support from the right, which likely led to her both declining to run for reelection (it's certain she would've lost a Democratic Primary at that point) and eventually switching parties.

Gabbard with President Joe Biden during the 
2020 presidential campaign

What couldn't be assumed, though, was that Gabbard's move would have no cache.  For a brief moment in 2020, Gabbard had some support in that primary, albeit never enough to be seen seriously as a plausible nominee.  She won delegates to the DNC (from American Samoa), and had a clear following in the online community.  I personally remember being relieved when she endorsed Joe Biden, as a third party bid (or her moving to endorse Donald Trump) was a real possibility, and arguably the biggest position of power that she had in her career.  But in that moment, she did the right thing and now, it's clear she doesn't have that sort of power anymore.

Most of the candidates that Gabbard stuck her neck out for in a high-profile way lost on November 8th.  Kari Lake, Don Bolduc, Adam Laxalt, Tom Barrett, John Gibbs..all of them got Gabbard's endorsement, all of them lost on Election Day.  It was an embarrassing turn for Gabbard, particularly given what this was clearly meant to be a trial balloon for: being Donald Trump's runningmate.  Gabbard is only 41-years-old, but has no political future in her home state of Hawaii, which is a bastion of blue politics.  The only way she can hold major office again is nationally, and that would be either as a VP nominee for Donald Trump.  You could make an argument for her on any ticket, but she's a harder sell on any ticket other than Trump's given her past positions on climate change & abortion; Trump's loyal following in the Republican Party & unorthodox approach to politics (while being completely devoted to Russia) makes Gabbard a good fit for his policy portfolio.  If not VP, she clearly would be a potential contender for a future Republican administration, likely trying for Secretary of State or Defense.  But given how she gained the Republicans nothing in 2022, it seems more likely that Gabbard is headed to the status of electoral footnote, a former congresswoman who is at best an historical curiosity for political scientists to occasionally mention, and despite decades of being antagonistic to the Democratic Party, in her one moment of power...she endorsed Joe Biden.

Election Night Thoughts on the House

With nearly all races called, it is now pretty apparent who will take the House, and roughly by what margin.  You know the drill at this point that we're recapping races based off of what happened in the 2022 midterms (we've already done Senate and Governors), so let's jump right in, shall we?

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA)

1. Republicans Takes the House...Barely

As of this article publishing there appears to be just two House races still uncalled (California's 13th and Colorado's 3rd).  That puts the Republicans somewhere between 220-222 seats, a slim majority but a majority nonetheless (I personally suspect it'll end up being 222 with both of these races eventually going to the Republicans).  The Democrats just got done with two years of their own majority that exact size and had rousing success with it, but the Republicans are in a position as a party where it's generally assumed that won't be possible.  For starters, there's little indication that the GOP will be anything more than a "veto" against the Biden administration for the next two years, as a majority that slim will either need to have a series of discharge petitions or will require Marjorie Taylor Greene to back something that will have Joe Biden's name on it...that's a tall order.

I am one of the few people who think that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy will not struggle to get the requisite votes to become Speaker, even though his caucus clearly has some appetite to abandon him.  McCarthy has shown a craven opportunism in the past two years that is bordering on the grotesque, giving in at every turn to Donald Trump, who has heartily endorsed his run for Speaker even if some Trump loyalists (specifically Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs, & Ralph Norman) have made a point of calling for McCarthy to be replaced.  As a result, I think he'll cash in every chip he has to get to a win on the first ballot...but it'll likely come at a cost.  McCarthy is not Nancy Pelosi.  Pelosi made running a caucus this size look easy, but it's not-you have to be willing to find common ground between a vast array of viewpoints and constituencies, and while he will be able to lead investigations into Biden administration figures & family members (specifically the president's son Hunter), it's hard to see him getting much else done.  Already, he seems to be risking valuable capitol for no reason (pushing for Adam Schiff, Ilhan Omar, & Eric Swalwell to be removed from committees), which feels less about finding a path forward to actually govern & more about appeasing Greene.  I've said this before, but while Pelosi is skilled, she also had serious people in her party to deal with-Cori Bush & Henry Cuellar are on the opposite ends of the Democratic Party spectrum, but at the end of the day they know that what's in common between them is worth more than what's not.  People like Greene & Gaetz see far more value in disruption than compromise, and that'll put a bleak mark on McCarthy's tenure given the minuscule size of his majority.  I'll stake a claim right now that I would be surprised if he's still Speaker on Election Day 2024.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)

2. Nancy Pelosi Goes to the Back Bench

With the loss of her majority, Nancy Pelosi will end what has to be considered the most impressive run as Speaker of the House in the past 50 years, if not possibly the most impressive run of all-time.  Pelosi is the true successor to LBJ in the Democratic Party, but while the latter got there through cutthroat cronyism, Pelosi oversaw a wealth of traditionally underrepresented communities in Congress, particularly women, become the driving force in her caucus.  You could argue more than President Obama or Biden, she has profoundly shaped the way that the Democrats work in Washington.

It has to be noted that a pretty large component of how Pelosi lost the Speaker's gavel came from her beloved state of California.  Assuming John Duarte wins the 13th district, five seats (enough to get her the majority) that Joe Biden won in 2020 went for Republicans in 2022.  This is less on Pelosi, who in the waning days before the campaign was caring for her husband, the victim of an assassination attempt, and more on Gavin Newsom in my opinion.  Newsom made a point of trying to gain a national name for himself the past few months in the wake of his successful recall election, running ads against Ron DeSantis & Greg Abbott.  Rather than doing those ads (which went nowhere-Abbott & DeSantis won decisive reelections), he should've been staying home and paying attention to vulnerable Democrats in these five seats (and in Mike Levin's & Katie Porter's, as both nearly lost).  Given his reelection was a foregone conclusion, spending much of it working GOTV efforts in these seven districts that his Republican opponent didn't have the money or cache to duplicate may well have won the Democrats the House...it certainly would've cost Kevin McCarthy any chance he had at the Speaker's gavel.

With Pelosi now out, Hakeem Jeffries will assume the position as House Minority Leader.  Jeffries has been the heir apparent for a few years now, particularly after multiple Pelosi protégés went to the Senate (specifically Chris van Hollen & Ben Ray Lujan).  Jeffries does not have the obvious ability that Pelosi had to merge both sides of his caucus (he has made disparaging remarks about members of "The Squad" in the past that he can't afford to do anymore), so it is not yet clear if he will be able to find a similar winning formula in an extremely diverse caucus.  It's likely that Biden & Schumer will provide a strong counterargument to the McCarthy tenure in the House, but Jeffries will need to be part of it.

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY)

3. New York Democrats Flounder

It has to be remembered that most people, including me, never thought that the majority would be this close, and as a result, trying to point fingers at what was largely a good night for the Democrats (they literally only lost six incumbents last week) feels like silliness given that this is nearly a best case scenario.  But it's pretty easy to see where Democrats lost their majority if you want to place blame, and while California was a big part of that math, no place abandoned progressives more than the Empire State of New York.  The biggest loss there was Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the first DCCC Chair in decades to lose reelection (and during an otherwise strong night for Democrats), Maloney district-hopped in the hopes of getting an easier reelection, but he couldn't overcome the carpetbagger title & lost in one of the biggest upsets of the night.  

Maloney wasn't the only New York Democrat to suffer.  People have pointed out that the Democrats would've had a stronger map here were it not for a Cuomo-backed judge overruling their gerrymander (this is true), but it's not like Democrats were botching in Trump districts.  In total, six districts (the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 17th, 19th, & 22nd) all elected Republicans to districts Joe Biden won in 2020, more than enough to get the Democrats the surprise of the century of holding the House.  Maloney, Cuomo, & incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul deserve the blame here, all deeply unpopular in New York City, which made sure that Democratic support was soft in the otherwise blue state, and it cost them the Speaker's gavel.  Hochul survived, though much of her political currency is now gone (if I'm Tish James, I've got my eyes set on her job in 2026), and Maloney will never hold elected office again after not only losing the House majority, but losing it in his own backyard...only in his own backyard.

Rep-Elect Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA)

4. Republicans Drop the Ball Badly Everywhere Else

Outside of California & New York, the Democrats largely had a good night, and were it not for those two states would've won the House in my opinion.  A lot of that strength came through successfully navigating gerrymanders (both in & out of their favor).  In Nevada & New Mexico, Democrats kept together potentially vulnerable redistricting maps that could've faltered in an actual red wave, and instead netted a seat.  Democrats did the same in Illinois, and overcame a rough gerrymander in Ohio to actually net seats.  Democrats held potentially vulnerable seats in Washington, Minnesota, Colorado, & Michigan thanks to a strong top-of-the-ticket, and the death of the Rio Grande Valley Democrats was greatly exaggerated, as both Reps. Vicente Gonzalez & Henry Cuellar took easy reelections in a region of the country that is quickly becoming more Republican.

Perhaps the most noted situation on Election Night, though, was the rejection of Republican extremism. This was felt in a strong way in the Senate (Blake Masters & Mehmet Oz both losing) and Governors (Tim Michels & Kari Lake both losing), but was also clearly a problem for Republicans in the House.  For all of the hemming-and-hawing over whether it was appropriate for Democrats to go after Rep. Peter Meijer in the primary, it ended up being for the best.  Meijer lost the primary, quickly got behind the MAGA extremist he was running against in in the primary (blaming the Democrats for his victory), and then Democrat Hillary Scholten, possibly the first born-again Evangelical to represent the Democratic caucus (she's also pro-choice and pro-gay marriage, for the record...an unusual combination of political beliefs), won.  As a result, it was a trade-up for the Democrats and less a loss for the "moderate wing" of the Republican Party and more a case where the moderate wing simply has no place in the Republican Party.

Democrats duplicated this road to success in Washington's 3rd congressional district, the only open seat Trump district to go blue (all of the others had incumbent Democrats running), where another impeachment vote (Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler) lost in the primary and the MAGA candidate (Joe Kent) lost to a moderate Democrat (Marie Gluesenkamp Perez).  This appears to be a winning formula-moderate Democratic women against extremist MAGA figures (Rep. Mary Peltola, who won reelection, did it in a special election earlier this year).  Though Rep. Lauren Boebert probably will hold on, I suspect Democrats to try a similar tactic against her in two years.

Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA)

5. The Road to 2024

Though it's too soon to know anything about 2024, there are a few absolutes we can utter right now.  The first is that the Democrats, assuming the maps don't move, would start that year with a mild advantage.  McCarthy didn't transform enough districts (this was arguably the biggest problem for Democrats in 2022-they had given up too much ground in 2020 while McCarthy won't have taken up enough) to have much gain from incumbency.  In 2023, there will be 18 districts that went for Joe Biden that are held by House Republicans and six held by the Democrats that went to Trump.  There's no guarantee these stay the same in 2024 (some of the districts will flip to the other side, with my eye in particular on some of the New York & California seats who may just have been opportunities for Biden because they were rejecting Trump more than embracing the left...though Biden could net seats in places like Michigan & Colorado under the new map), but this means that at least some of these seats are vulnerable in 2024.

I personally doubt we see a lot of rematches in these districts, to be honest.  Normally I'd decline Republicans running for seats they lost after a midterm where the other party held the White House (if you can't win in this year, you can never win), though I think there's some room for Democrats to get some of their losers this cycle up again in two years & get them blue checkmarks.  With the exception of State Rep. Rudy Salas (who ran a good campaign against Rep. David Valadao that probably carries him in a presidential election), the Democrats should totally skip out on the CA/NY candidates.  Reps. Elaine Luria (VA) & Andy Levin (MI) would be worth pursuing again (both lost in 2022 but have a clear avenue with Biden at the top of the ticket in 2024), but otherwise I think mostly starting from scratch on the left, trying to find candidates more in the Gluesenkamp Perez/Peltola mold for marginal seats instead.  On the Republican side, it would behoove them to have current representatives like Jaime Herrera Beutler & Peter Meijer make comebacks, but it's not clear how the NRCC would be able to get them successfully through a primary.

The biggest question for the GOP's chances might be how aggressive they can be in mid-decade gerrymanders.  I expect that with key victories in the North Carolina & Ohio Supreme Courts that they will attempt to gerrymander further both states, as there are a number of newly-elected members they could go after if they were given free reign to do so.  Countering that, Democrats could go back in certain states (New York, Maryland, & Minnesota spring to mind) to either shore up incumbents or make stronger plays to net seats as a maneuver to nullify those gains.  And of course, the fate of the VRA is headed to an extremely conservative Supreme Court that may move to gut it.  It's clear that the VRA as written should've gotten Democrats three more seats in Alabama, Louisiana, & Florida this cycle-will the Supreme Court agree...or will they try to gut the bill further to make it so that seats held by Terri Sewell, Bennie Thompson, & Troy Carter at risk?  We shall see...

Election Night Thoughts on the Governors

All right, with the announcement last night in Arizona, we are going to get to Part 2 of our Election Night recap (we will likely do a third later this week when the House majority is official, though I will caveat in that article that we won't know the final counts based on the California races for at least another week-side note, Gavin Newsom could do worse than to invest in some elections infrastructure in his state).  If you missed it, we did a recap of the Senate this past weekend, and we are splitting our election night articles into three recaps.  Let's dive in, shall we?

Gov-Elect Katie Hobbs (D-AZ)

1. Democrats Net Two Governor's Mansions

Democrats had an extraordinary 2022 when it came to governor's races, and I'll be the first to admit that I was wrong (and darn happy to be).  I had anticipated they would have a net loss of one seat, but instead they ended up with a net gain of two seats.  It should not be lost on us that, even though they were expected, Wes Moore (MD) and Maura Healey (MA) are big gains for the Democrats this year.  Their wins ensure trifectas for both of those states, and are historic in other ways.  Moore is the first African-American governor of Maryland (and only the sixth African-American governor in American history), and Healey is the first woman to serve as Governor of Massachusetts, a state that has been notorious for not electing Democratic women to the governorship (in 2002 & 2014, Democratic women took what looked like surefire victories and ended up losing).

But the biggest win was undoubtedly in Arizona, where Secretary of State Katie Hobbs defied pundits & the polls and won.  In retrospect, it feels like Hobbs was written off more due to her unorthodox campaign style than polls, which honestly showed the race to be pretty close (the nonpartisan ones, at least).  Hobbs was low-key, refusing to debate or engage with Kari Lake, an extremely conservative woman whose decades as a news reporter gave her a type of charisma that Hobbs simply didn't show on the campaign trail.  But Lake spent much of the campaign alienating her potential supporters, particularly Republicans who were Trump-wary but supported John McCain for decades in the state that loved him.  Lake literally told McCain Republicans to "get the hell out" while Hobbs aggressively courted them.  Lake, an election denier, is (as of this writing) the only major Republican for high office not to yet concede her race.  This has been a concerted effort this year after election denialism failed at ballot box, so I'm curious if she does.

Only one state ended up being a loss for Democrats, and that was in Nevada.  In a struggling economy and in an increasingly competitive state, Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) became the only sitting governor to lose (from either party) in 2022.  He was defeated by Sheriff Joe Lombardo (R), who, though he did have Donald Trump's endorsement, also courted the establishment, and became the sole statewide bright spot for the GOP in a rough midterm.

Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI)

2. Democrats Sweep Competitive Great Lakes States

The biggest win for the Democrats feels like Arizona since it was a pickup, but honestly the real success story was the way that they dominated the Great Lakes states this year.  Democratic incumbents Gretchen Whitmer (MI) and Tim Walz (MN) won easy second terms, and certainly more consequential terms, given that their coattails won both governors their first trifectas since taking office in 2019 (despite blue leans, both states rarely see blue trifectas, so Whitmer & Walz are afforded a lot of legacy-building the next two years).  In Pennsylvania, Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) coasted to the governorship against Doug Mastriano, arguably the worst candidate either party ran for major office in 2022.  And in the biggest upset of the bunch, Gov. Tony Evers (WI) got Democrats a huge win by holding the Wisconsin governorship, even as the Republicans made gains in the state legislatures and Sen. Ron Johnson (R) won reelection.  Evers win sets up a potentially seismic situation in Wisconsin in April.  The 4-3 Wisconsin Supreme Court has an open seat race where one of the Republicans is leaving office.  If the Democrats can win the seat, combined with Evers & Attorney General Josh Kaul's reelections, it is probable that they could redraw the Wisconsin state legislative districts...which would end one of the most undemocratic gerrymanders in the history of the United States (not hyperbole-Wisconsin's state legislative districts are as close to a dictatorship as one can get in America in 2022).

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL)

3. Ron DeSantis Scores Big Ahead of Presidential Race

Hobbs got the most exciting win, Evers got the most consequential, but Gov. Ron DeSantis likely got the win most people are going to focus upon.  DeSantis clobbered in Florida, which officially completed its transformation from the nation's most finicky barometer into fully-fledged red state.  DeSantis was one of several governors (others include Kristi Noem in South Dakota and Kevin Stitt in Oklahoma) who are looking at a potential run for president in 2024, but no one has been louder about his willingness to take on Donald Trump than DeSantis.  With Donald Trump likely to announce his third bid for the White House in 2024 any day now (possibly even today), DeSantis sits as the most likely candidate to topple him according to early polling.  His victory in Florida can hardly dissuade him from pursuing that next echelon.  It's also worth noting that Rep. Charlie Crist is finally done with politics now.  The bane of Democrats' existence regardless of what side of the aisle he was on, Crist has now cost Democrats the governorship three times, in addition to a failed Senate campaign in 2010.  Good riddance, and may he never run under any banner again.

Secretary of State-Elect Cisco Aguilar (D-NV)

4. MAGA Suffers Huge Defeats

We won't be doing a separate article about down-ballot races, but it has to be said that MAGA had a horrible night, particularly when it came to election deniers.  In addition to Kari Lake in Arizona & Tim Michels in Wisconsin, Democrats won a lot of major down-ballot races against election deniers.  Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Minnesota, & Michigan will all have Democratic Secretaries of State headed into 2024, and with the potential exception of Arizona (as of today, the votes are still counting with the Democrat leading slightly) they'll all have Democratic Attorneys General.  Throw in that North Carolina has Democrats in both of those positions as well (from 2020), and that Josh Shapiro is the Governor of Pennsylvania, and you see that one of the biggest issues of 2022 was, in fact, respect for democratic norms.  This was something that pundits frequently criticized Democrats for highlighting too much in the wake of a struggling economy, but it ended up resonating with voters.  Nevada & Arizona, for example, saw a clear amount of ticket-splitting where voters acknowledged their Secretaries of State compared to, say, other offices like Treasurer or Controller.  This should allow a lot more Democrats to breathe easier headed in 2024 that the winner of that election will get to the White House.

Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-TX)

5. Democratic Stars Falter

On the reverse side for Democrats, two major stars within the party saw the end of their electoral careers last week.  Rep. Beto O'Rourke became a superstar in 2018, nearly beating Ted Cruz with the kind of grassroots campaigning that felt like a once-in-a-generation talent, but an ill-advised presidential campaign made O'Rourke stake a position too far to the left, and he ended up getting crushed by incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott.  Like O'Rourke, House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams nearly won in an upset in 2018 in Georgia, but since then her career has been a series of missteps, turning down potential runs for higher office she'd have a better shot at (US Senate, US House, DNC Chair) and instead keeping her eye straight on the governor's race in 2022 (with a mild detour into thinking she should be Vice President, even though that rubbed many the wrong way in the bizarre "pretend you don't want it" veepstakes).  Abrams lost by a large margin to Gov. Brian Kemp (R) last week.  Both of these two have two high-profile losses in their states, and while occasionally candidates come back from such things, their star power was so high during those losses that I would imagine last week was the final time they appear on a ballot.

Election Night Thoughts on the Senate

All right, so you might've noticed that I've been having some radio silence when it comes to the election, which is not typical for us after an election on this blog.  This is for a variety of reasons, but it isn't because I haven't had the time...I've just been so darned confused.  I will admit, despite my best efforts to put on a brave face in the recap, that I was fully expecting an absolute nightmare on Tuesday night.  For the first time ever, I didn't watch any election night television.  I instead put on Risky Business and The Good Liar (neither of which are great-follow me on Letterboxd to get a full dossier on my movie-watching as I don't review every new film I see on this blog but I do there), and was slowly following along on Twitter...suddenly realizing that as the night went on this wasn't a typical midterm.

Indeed, it wasn't, and that's why, as I'm writing this, we still don't know who will control not the Senate, but somehow the House, which was a foregone conclusion as late as 6 PM on Tuesday for anyone paying attention.  So we are going to do something I've never done before, and rather than jinx anything (or prematurely say something that isn't real yet-I wrote a recap yesterday of the whole election and just a few hours later it was already incorrect), we're going to do recaps once we know who will win majorities in the Senate & House, and for the governor's once we know who wins in Arizona (the last major uncalled race since Alaska will surely go red) for a total of three articles.  As a result, we will publish the Senate article first, since while we don't know the final numbers yet, we do know who will be in charge.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)

1. The Democrats Take the Majority

With the announced win today of Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), the Democrats have secured their 50th seat, and held their majority.  Sen. Chuck Schumer has defied the odds, and will at the very least get another two years in a 50/50 Senate, and plausibly even increase his majority.  Things like this do occasionally happen (2002 & 2018 the party in the White House picked up seats in the Senate), but it's rare, and a great sign for Democrats.  It's worth noting that from a practical perspective it would behoove the Democrats to get the 51st Senate seat.  This is super important as we look at a brutal map for the Democrats in 2024 (where they'll need to win at least two races in West Virginia, Texas, Ohio, & Montana to even stand a chance at extending their majority, and a third if they lose Georgia) but also from a practical standpoint.  51 Senators would give them a majority on all committees, which would make it much easier for Joe Biden's appointments to get to the floor (through parliamentary procedure, Republicans have a lot of leeway right now to hold up committee hearings), as well as it would give them subpoena power, which could be crucial if the Republicans take the House and start to use that power to berate the Biden administration (likely through public investigations into Biden's son, Hunter).  This victory also means that Chuck Schumer has a lot less pressure to get through 50+ judicial nominations before the end of the lame duck (though I suspect he'll still get through a few), and focus more on legislation at hand around gay marriage & the debt ceiling, saving judicial nominations & other outstanding Biden appointments for next session.  Finally, two more years means the possibility of another Supreme Court opening.  Obviously the Democrats would love the chance to replace one of the conservative justices, but expect there to be a push in the next two years for Justice Sonia Sotomayor to consider retiring given her health, age, and the Democrats being petrified that they'll endure another Ruth Bader Ginsburg situation.

Sen-Elect John Fetterman (D-PA)

2. John Fetterman Flips Pennsylvania

So far (we still don't know about Georgia), the only Senate seat to flip in 2022 despite hundreds of millions being spent across the country, was in the state of Pennsylvania, where Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) defeated television personality Dr. Mehmet Oz to secure the seat held by retiring Sen. Pat Toomey.  Despite most pundits (though, I have to say, not yours truly) predicting a last minute Oz win, Fetterman not only hung on but won by a respectable 4+ points (well above what Joe Biden achieved in 2020).  Fetterman's win means this is the first time that we have two Democrats elected to the Senate from Pennsylvania since the 1950's, and is a big moral win given how poorly Oz and the media treated Fetterman as he recovered from a stroke.  Ableist rhetoric on networks like CBS & CNN likely backfired in the end, as people understood that a stroke recovery takes time, and that Fetterman was up to the task.  This is also a big win for a guy who has been slowly moving his way up the Pennsylvania ladder for the past decade, first as a small-town mayor and then running a distant third place finish in 2016 for the Senate before getting on the gubernatorial ticket in 2018 with outgoing Gov. Tom Wolf.  Fetterman will not be able to overturn the filibuster (though if the Democrats do win the House, expect there to be a strong push to see if the Democrats can break Sen. Kyrsten Sinema on it given she's headed into a primary that she'll likely lose if she doesn't bend her stance), but he helped the Democratic math for the next six years tremendously by staving off Oz.

Blake Masters (R-AZ)

3. Biggest Loser of the Cycle: Donald Trump

Fetterman's victory was one of many that proved the real loser of the Senate cycle was former President Donald Trump.  Trump's involvement in primaries became a huge headache for Mitch McConnell's quest to get back the majority, as he endorsed a plethora of candidates that proved disastrous for the party.  Oz, Blake Masters (AZ), Don Bolduc (NH), and Hershell Walker (GA) all under-performed on election day, and while Walker is still in this race, he's an underdog in the runoff.  The only major candidate that Trump stuck his neck out for that won was JD Vance (OH), who underperformed significantly and cost Republicans resources they could have diverted to Arizona & Nevada (Vance may have won, but he probably inadvertently cost the Republicans the Senate with a truly incompetent campaign).  McConnell, should he stay on as leader, is now in an impossible situation where he's going to have to find a way to get Trump to stop endorsing unelectable candidates, particularly considering there's a gold mine of Senate seats next cycle in purple states (Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, & Michigan all will hold elections)...states where Trump candidates botched royally in 2022 and gave Democrats a string of major victories.

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA)

4. Warnock & Walker Head to a Runoff

There is still one undecided race on the map, and that's in Georgia.  Thanks to a third party run by Libertarian Chase Oliver, neither Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) nor football player Herschel Walker (R) were able to hit a majority of the vote, though I will point out Warnock did better than Walker in the election.  As a result, Georgia voters will once again go to a runoff on December 6th to decide the victor of this seat, though unlike in 2021, this will not decide the majority of the Senate, which Democrats have already secured.  I illustrated above why Democrats are desperate to get Warnock a victory, but I also want to say that I think he starts out with an edge.  If you look at the results from Tuesday, Republicans actually had a very strong night in the Peach State-Warnock was the only Democrat to lead a race, and no other candidate will advance to the runoff.  That means that Walker is not popular, inarguably the least popular Republican to run this year, and is facing off against the most popular Democrat in a Biden state.  A runoff that "doesn't matter" (in terms of the majority) will struggle with turnout, and while Walker will get a full court press from national Republicans, and most importantly from Gov. Brian Kemp (who just won a big victory), Warnock is clearly better-liked and has the more passionate base, which should help.  Should he win, Warnock will have managed to run four tough races in three years, and will thankfully get to have a break until 2028, as that's an intense amount of endurance to put on one politician.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

5. Will McConnell Survive?

One of the bigger questions that I honestly didn't think would come even if the Democrats lost on Tuesday was whether or not Mitch McConnell should stay on as Minority Leader.  McConnell has led the Senate Republicans since 2007, and is largely considered to be an effective leader, but it's worth noting that during his 14-year-tenure, he's only had a majority for six years (2015-21), and he's looking at another two years in the minority at this point.  This has caused an unusual repudiation from a number of members of his caucus.  By my count at least seven Republican senators (Rick Scott, Ron Johnson, Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley, & Cynthia Lummis) have all called for a delay until after the Georgia runoffs to decide who will run the Senate Republicans, a not insignificant of McConnell's confirmed 49 members.  It's not clear who would challenge McConnell for the job; the only senator whose name has been floated is Rick Scott, who is coming off a terrible run as NRSC Chair so it's doubtful Republicans would want to back him.  Personally, I think if Marco Rubio made a play for the job, McConnell would be in for a race (but Rubio is not a politician known for taking risks, frequently to his ultimate chagrin, so this would be out-of-character).  This is the first serious play against McConnell in his decades as a Republican leader, but given that he has continued to struggle to get a lasting majority for his caucus, and has once again lost the majority, I'm curious to see if the Republicans are able to oust him.

Hangman's Knot (1952)

Film: Hangman's Knot (1952)

Stars: Randolph Scott, Donna Reed, Claude Jarman, Jr., Frank Faylen, Lee Marvin

Director: Roy Huggins

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Donna Reed: click here to learn more about Ms. Reed (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Today we're going to continue our journey with Donna Reed oddly with another western (this was not intentional, as this wasn't exactly a staple of Reed's filmography, but last week's first choice became unavailable so I had to pinch hit with Apache Trail to hit our deadline): Hangman's Knot.  It is filmed a decade after last week, and a lot happened between the two films.  For starters, Reed made during this time the most famous film of her career It's a Wonderful Life, which was nominated for multiple Oscars including Best Picture and Best Actor, but wasn't something that Reed herself would gain a citation for despite it being probably the best role of her career.  This wasn't a hit for MGM, where she was under contract, though (It's a Wonderful Life was made when she was on loan to RKO), and the quality of her roles didn't improve, perhaps in part because the movie was not commercially successful at the time (it gained much of its popularity when it fell into public domain & became a Christmas classic in the years ahead).  Eventually, tired of playing the same wife & girlfriend roles, Reed moved to Columbia, and made a number of lower-tier films (and one classic we'll discuss next week which would become her other signature film role), one of which was Hangman's Knot.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about a group of confederate soldiers who find out in Nevada in 1865 that the war has ended (and they lost).  They also have intercepted a large amount of gold, which their commanding officer Major Matt Stewart (Scott) thinks they should give back to the Confederacy to help rebuild, while his compatriots, specifically Rolph Bainter (Marvin) thinks it would be better in his pocket.  As they are headed back, they come across both a group of bandits who are looking for the gold thieves (and more importantly, the gold), and a stagecoach that's carrying two people (unmarried), including a war nurse for the Union, Molly Hull (Reed).  They take the two, along with a station agent & his daughter, hostage while they hole up in a small building, trying to stave off the bandits who return & are looking for the gold.  This results in a showdown not just outside, but in, as Rolph wants to take the gold & Molly for himself, even though Matt Stewart has similar designs.  In the end, the bigger name on the marquee wins, and Matt Stewart gets the girl and brings the gold back to Virginia.

The movie is honestly pretty good.  I have always struggled with Randolph Scott as an actor (I have heard his movies with Budd Boetticher are what will change your mind about him, and they're on the list but I haven't gotten there yet), but you don't really need him to be good to enjoy this movie.  The Technicolor is beautiful, gorgeous vistas shot in the famed Corriganville Movie Ranch (most-noted for being where the John Ford classic Fort Apache was made).  Our Star of the Month Donna Reed doesn't get a lot to do, it's worth noting.  She kind of just serves as the love interest once again, not a lot different from her days at MGM, and I suspect looking into 1953 she was hoping for different (as we'll discuss next week, she both did & didn't get that).

The best performance in the movie is from Claude Jarman, Jr., who plays the young twink who has never killed a man despite being in the war for years.  Jarman, who was a child star in the 1940's for MGM (he's best known as the boy in The Yearling), was making his first foray into adult film roles with Hangman's Knot, and he has a sensitivity here that stands out.  He wouldn't last as an adult star, though.  He'd make his final film role four years later is Disney's The Great Locomotive Chase, and would soon run the San Francisco International Film Festival and work behind-the-scenes in movies.  At the age of 88, he's one of the last living contract players from MGM in the 1940's.

An Ode to Twitter

I came to Twitter quite late.  I had largely eschewed it, mostly because I didn't really like Facebook and because most of my friends were not on Twitter.  I joined in March 2015, and I have to assume that was related in some fashion to my blog (I don't exactly remember).  I wanted to promote the blog, gain more readership, and I figured since I don't talk about the blog very often to coworkers or on my other social media (then Facebook), this was a way to do it.  If memory served, I also joined Tumblr at the time, hated it, and quickly left.  But Twitter, Twitter became addictive in a way I didn't really comprehend right away over seven years ago.

Twitter is a strange place and unlike any other social media.  While I have followed celebrity accounts & strangers on Facebook & Instagram (I no longer have the former, I still have but rarely lose the latter), it's not the main point.  The goal is to keep tabs on people you know, either whom you know every day or whom you used to know & this is you're way of "staying connected."  Twitter, though...Twitter was different because it forced you to go out and find your own friend groups.  In a lot of ways it felt like college, joining new cliques (Film Twitter, Gay Twitter, Elections Twitter) where the people spoke the language of your own hobbies, of your own world.

It also became addictive, and not always in a good way.  I would, in the years that follow, become something of a self-identified Twitter addict.  There is not a day that goes by where I don't check it, usually repeatedly, a quick touchbase to see what's new in the different accounts & news that I follow.  I am generally bored by cable news, and while I find well-written journalism to be absorbing, it can be daunting.  But with Twitter you can cultivate your own cable news station.  You can put only people that you want to see.  My Twitter feed consists of near constant elections analysis, Oscar discussions, & a cavalcade of attractive men (how are there so many attractive men on Twitter?)...it's like you craft your own brand of cocaine.

I will admit that as a cis white man with a small following, I don't endure a lot of the more toxic elements of Twitter.  I make a point of not hate-following anyone, and of liberally using the block button (and being mindful of not going into the replies too often for people who might profess something that would be easily countered), so I don't have as much of an interaction with those elements...but I know they're there.  I see, increasingly in the Trump Era, people posting things they know not to be true, and it can be particularly frustrating to see misinformation start to shape people's world views (for example, the 2022 election that we are going to be watching tonight is partially hard-to-read because the data is so easy to alter or skew).

But Twitter is the only social media that genuinely, truly means something to me.  It's not just that it's filled with content that I endlessly find entertaining-it's also a place where I've met real friends.  After staying out of the DM's for the first couple of years, I started to message people.  I made friends in Chicago & Arizona & Kansas City & all the way into Lyon, France, who stopped being just accounts and became real, integral parts of my life.  Some of them I've made the transition to meeting in person!  Particularly in 2020, Twitter and these friendships got me through.  When you associate a social media as the platform to interact with actual human beings, people you care about, it becomes as important to your phone as texting.

Which is why Elon Musk's destruction of the app makes me sad.  2022 has been a year where things I love or am passionate about have faltered a lot.  I have watched as movie theaters, my one true place-of-peace, have continually struggled to justify their existence.  I'm scared but prepared for the Democratic Party to lose both houses of Congress tonight, likely with the most toxic Republican caucus in the nation's history.  Inflation has impacted us all, and I'm no exception, cancelling or delaying travel, one of the few things that relaxes me, so that I am not living paycheck-to-paycheck.  Twitter coming to a crash, one of the building blocks of my relatively isolated world, is genuinely scary.

I don't know how long Twitter will last, either with me on it (I'm still debating my next move) or in the state that I have come to know & love it (i.e. how many of the people who make the app "My Twitter" will still be fixtures on it going forward).  Musk's changes seem less intent on helping make the app profitable and more as a vanity project for him to "own" the liberals who mock his narcissistic tendencies (he has already picked high-profile fights with celebrities as varied as Kathy Griffin & Hank Green).  It seems clear that Twitter is more valuable to him destroyed than as a functioning business, given it is inarguably the most valuable tool for journalism & checking power (a topic for a different day, but Twitter is by-far the most important social media, and perhaps the most important private company in history in ensuring that democracy & free speech are protected).  This is far more important than what I end up spending a few hours of my day doing, obviously, but this is a personal blog so I wanted to share that this has made me feel a bit of unrest.  Particularly given how just a few days of Musk being in charge have caused the app to feel chaotic, full of naval-gazing & increasing vitriol (that could be its proximity to the election, which is its own bag of horrors), I don't see how it doesn't implode if an adult doesn't enter the room soon.  And I will be sad when that happens-I love Twitter, for all of its faults, and I can't quite grasp anymore what my life would be without it.

Election Night Guide: Utah through Wyoming

I am doing a final predictions series for the November 8th midterm elections.  If you've missed previous articles, they're listed right here: Alabama-Arkansas, California-Hawaii, Idaho-Louisiana, Maine-Montana, Nebraska-North Dakota, Ohio-Texas

(Note: I'll be doing commentary on every race for Governor & Senate regardless of level-of-competitiveness.  I'll only do mentions for the House if I assume it'll be competitive in some way-if the House race isn't listed, I'm assuming an easy hold for the incumbent party)

Evan McMullin (I-UT)

Utah

Senate: I've frequently said online that the next frontier for Democrats, if it comes through education levels for voters, will likely include some sort of play for Utah.  Utah is an unusual state in its politics.  It is not racially diverse (at all), but it is highly-educated, so you're looking at an audience of moderate, college-educated white voters that are very religious (but also very tolerant of other religions).  It's why politicians like Mitt Romney do well here and why Republicans like Donald Trump under-perform.  While the race doesn't include Democratic candidate, Sen. Mike Lee (R) is facing off against former presidential candidate Evan McMullin (I) and it is an interesting test of just how conservative the electorate is.  I expect Lee to win the race, to be clear, but I am watching the margins here.  McMullin has said that he won't caucus with either party, but it's obvious he's filling in as a surrogate Democrat here & it's probable that if he won he'd cut some sort of deal to support Chuck Schumer.  If McMullin gets close here, expect Democrats to try this playbook again in 2024 if/when Romney doesn't run for another term (or is challenged from the right in the primary).

State Sen. Becca Balint (D-VT)

Vermont

Governor: Gov. Phil Scott (R) continues a proud tradition of moderate Republicans winning elections as New England governors.  Scott, who would be a Democrat in virtually any other state (he voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 election), will cruise to another term as he's one of the country's most popular chief executives.

Senate: Sen. Patrick Leahy will retire this year from the Senate, after 48 years in the body.  Leahy was the penultimate member of Congress left to have served during the Vietnam War (along with Chuck Grassley) and one of only three members of Congress who served during the Ford administration (the others being Grassley & Ed Markey).  Leahy is also the only Democrat to ever serve in the US Senate from the state of Vermont, which will change tomorrow when Rep. Peter Welch will be elected to the US Senate.  At the age of 75, he will be the oldest first-time elected freshman senator in the history of the country.

House: State Senate President Becca Balint (D) won the nomination to succeed Welch, staking a claim in the primary against Lt. Gov. Molly Gray as the more progressive candidate (Balint will be a potential contender to join the "Squad" in the next Congress).  Balint's assured win I wouldn't normally list here since it's a hold, but it's worth noting because she will become the first woman to represent Vermont in Congress; Vermont is the only state in the Union to never be represented by a woman in Congress, so a lot of history happening in the Green Mountain State tomorrow.

Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA)

Virginia

House: Kyle Kondik of Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball put out a strong hypothesis if you're trying to read tea leaves early in the night.  If the Democrats lose the 10th district (incumbent Jennifer Wexton is their candidate, Biden won it by 18), we're looking at a Republican tsunami.  If Democrat Rep. Abigail Spanbarger loses the 7th, we're looking at a strong night for the R's in a Biden +6.3 district.  If the Republicans can't even take Virginia's 2nd district (where their candidate is Rep. Elaine Luria and Biden won by 3-points), Democrats are having a better night than they (or I) expected.  I personally think that Wexton is such a reach (even Terry McAuliffe won the 10th in his awful performance last year) that it's not worth entertaining, and while I do think I'm maybe underestimating the House R's (more in a second), I'm not at the point where I'll guess Spanbarger loses.  I do think, however, that the R's will have a decent night, and so as a result I'm going to predict State Sen. Jen Kiggans (who was a very good recruit) bests Luria in the second congressional district. R+1

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA)

Washington

Senate: Every election cycle is filled with little nuances and random asides that you inevitably forget years later.  So I want to note for posterity that one of the oddest aspects of the 2022 election has been Florida Sen. Rick Scott's (R) bizarre obsession with Sen. Patty Murray (D), whom he has publicly called mean & said repeatedly he doesn't like.  This has led to way more investment in this race than polling would suggest (Scott chairs the NRSC), and while the Republicans did get a decent candidate in Tiffany Smiley (I'm sure Mitch McConnell wishes that she'd run in Arizona or Pennsylvania), Murray will cruise to another term and likely in the next six years become the longest-serving woman in the history of the Senate.

House: Two races to note-Rep. Kim Schrier (D) represents a Biden +7 district, which I don't think swings based on how well Schrier did in the jungle primary earlier this year, but it's worth noting that if the Republicans are doing well throughout the night, Schrier should be on your radar on the West Coast.  And Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler's (R) primary defeat in the third district to election denier Joe Kent might have opened up a chance for the Democrats in a more favorable year...but Trump won this district by 5-points, I'm not buying that the Democrats have this in their wheelhouse for 2022.

West Virginia

House: West Virginia lost a seat in redistricting, which means that while both of their seats are blood red, they still have a loss for the Republicans at large and so this is an R-1 state for the GOP.

Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI)

Wisconsin

Governor: I don't wanna-don't make me rate this race!  As a Minnesotan, my dislike of Wisconsin magnifies every time they vote, because while they frequently do the right thing, just as often they don't, and as one of the nation's true bellwethers, it's always at a high cost when they don't.  That's what is at stake here, where hard-right army veteran Tim Michels (R) appears to have the slightest of leads over incumbent Gov. Tony Evers (D), though it's so close as to have Marquette (the gold standard in Wisconsin) having the two men in a dead-even tie.  I will be honest-there is no single governor's race on the map, perhaps no race period that I can think of that I want the Democrats to win more than this one.  Michels, who has literally said "elect me and I'll make sure no Democrat can ever win again" has displayed deeply authoritarian rhetoric on the campaign trail, and Wisconsin's state legislature is gerrymandered to the point where it basically is apartheid (the only way Democrats can have a say is through winning the governor's mansion and four Supreme Court seats at the same time, which is hard to do in a swing state).  I genuinely don't think there's a favorite here-nothing would surprise me as long as it's close, but I'm forcing myself to predict, and I think it's a red year. R+1 (I am BEGGING to be wrong here).

Senate: After spending much of the summer with Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes ahead, Sen. Ron Johnson has run a nasty campaign (i.e. it's been pretty damn racist), and has regained the lead.  It's worth noting that Barnes has been the weakest Senate recruit in a major race this cycle-his fundraising hasn't kept up, and it's probable the Democrats should've gone with someone else like Rep. Ron Kind, who retired this year.  It's Wisconsin, so counting out either side would be foolish, and there is some evidence that young voters are turning out at higher-than-usual rates in Wisconsin, but Barnes winning would be an upset this year, and I'm not predicting Democrats for upsets in 2022-Johnson gets another six years.

House: Redistricting dramatically hurt the Democrats in the third district, and Kind's retirement sealed the deal (I honestly think he would've had a better shot of staying in Congress running for the Senate than for reelection), so R+1.

Wyoming

House: Not a loss technically for the Democrats, but it has to be said that Rep. Liz Cheney's (R) primary loss will feel like a loss for the party at this point given her heroic work on the January 6th committee.

The Final Count

Governors: I am predicting a final count of 29R-21D for this election cycle, with the Democrats gaining Massachusetts & Maryland, but losing Wisconsin, Kansas, & Nevada in the process.  The races I'm least confident about are Arizona, Kansas, & Wisconsin all of which I called as red (even though it was a last minute call, I feel like Kotek taking Oregon is probably more-likely than not as the race forms a two-party lane-Drazan peaked too early).  I don't think Nevada is an actual tossup (I think Democratic turnout is too low there, and if they're going to take a race it'll be the Senate not the governorship), but there's enough uniquenesses in Kansas, Wisconsin, & Arizona that Democrats could conceivably net a seat this cycle, though thanks to their loss in Virginia last year, there's no chance they get a majority or even a tie for the most governorships.

Senate: I have predicted that the Democrats will get 49 seats and the Republicans will get 50 seats on Election Day, with the majority going to a runoff in Georgia that I won't begin to predict without the context of who will vote on Election Day.  I think if someone wins the majority on election night it will be the Republicans, for the record; I fully intended to predict they win the Senate outright tomorrow until I finally gave in to my gut & changed my mind in Pennsylvania.  I do not have confidence in my prediction that John Fetterman wins at all, and it's clear that the Republicans have gained back some momentum in Georgia & Arizona which could result in a surprise.  Conversely, the only seat that I think I might be underestimating the left in is Nevada (Wisconsin, Ohio, & North Carolina read like pipe dreams in such a circumstance).  At the time I'm writing this Jon Ralston is favoring Laxalt, which is why I am, because of abysmal turnout in Nevada, but this is also an election cycle where Democrats can wait until the last minute to vote in the Silver State...and they might (we don't have a lot of precedence for what's happening there).  (Editor’s Note: Ralston ended up picking Cortez Masto, but I’m sticking with Laxalt-I see why, and it’s clear Dems are closing well, but I don’t trust the Independents here-if Dems win, we likely won’t know until this weekend). Anywhere from Democrats getting 47-51 Senate seats feels feasible, but my official prediction is that the Senate majority goes to a runoff, even if I'm preparing for the worst.

House: I am predicting that the Democrats lose the House of Representatives, likely with that causing the retirement of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  There are a lot of What If's in the battle for the House, but I think the past month has had too much momentum to the Republicans due to the economy to be able to stave off a miracle the way they may well have in September.  My final count (I did the math, so I believe I'm right here is) 229R-206D.  This feels a bit too generous to the Democrats in my mind, and there are definitely races on the map (OH-9, MN-2, NV-1, IL-17, OR-6, PA-8, MI-7, & CA-22 specifically) I'm thinking that I may have been too generous to the left, but the legitimate amount of unease is going to leave me where I'm at.  I do think the Republicans win the national House Popular Vote (meaning 2022 will not sit alongside 1996 & 2012 as a year where the majority of voters voted for Democrats but still didn't win the House), but it's something I'll be looking at given that number has not been consistent in polling.

And with that, I bid you good luck tomorrow, and make sure to vote, particularly if you're a Democrat who wants to prove me wrong!