11-07-2018, 02:32 PM
(11-06-2018, 11:02 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Apparently Trump has more flunkies (a nasty way of looking at it, but the GOP is an authoritarian cadre party; cadre parties have flunkies and not independent actors) in the Senate, but he has lost the House. A bunch of states have ditched Republican governors from the Tea Party era.
Effects on the presidential election: Republicans will have no help from Democratic Governors in some states that Trump won in 2016. Trump will have to win fair and square, and if his approval levels result in poor electoral numbers, he will not win.
Only eleven Democrats will be up for re-election in 2020 in the Senate, and only two will be in a state that Donald Trump won in 2016. Doug Jones, the incumbent Senator from Alabama, won under freakish circumstances unlikely to be repeated. The other incumbent Senator running for re-election in a state that Trump won in 2016 will be Gary Peters in Michigan -- and he won against the 2014 Republican wave, which says more about Michigan. On the other side, Susan Collins (R, Maine) has probably doomed her Senate career in a state that looks hostile to Trump, and Corey Booker (R, Colorado) is in a state hostile to Trump after having barely won in a wave year. Also, Arizona has an appointed Senator... appointed incumbents tend to have trouble.
There will be relatively few gubernatorial races -- eleven.
The Presidential election will be all up to Donald Trump. Will he moderate? Will he compromise? I doubt it. We know his personality, and basic personalities rarely change at his age except as the result of dementia. I have never seen dementia make any person more pleasant to be around.
That's Corey Gardner of Colorado
Cory Booker is the Democratic senator from New Jersey.
Democratic senators will be largely safe, but how many Republicans can be flipped?
Unfortunately, Republicans are fanatics who vote for whatever Trump wants and against anyone who defies or votes against his reactionary court picks. Republican fanatics understand the meaning of their vote; Democrats often do not. The two sides are segregated now into the vast heartland of red states and counties and the blue urban patches, and the constitution favors the former, especially in the Senate and also the electoral college. At this point I don't know what fixes that. All I have is astrological indications of progress in the 2020s. But how far can you make a silk purse out of a sow's ear?
America is a horrible country. And looking around the world, I see few places any better, unless you want to live in the cold and the dark.