Election Angst but Hope

An election too close to call yet, but leaning to a Biden victory.

I am sorry to turn in my customary post-election report incomplete.   As I write this it is 5:30 am CST and we don’t know much more about the outcome of the Presidential race than we did when I finally turned in four hours earlier.  We do know that the predicted Red Mirage of a Trump Election Day surge came true and that Democratic hopes of a Blue Wave once again fell short.  But with critical states still undecided—although various media outlets have not yet agreed on calling some races—and mail-in and absentee ballots still to be counted in Pennsylvania, Joe Biden looks to have the best path to an Electoral College win.  Hardly any media outlets are even reporting the national popular vote, although at this point with lots of votes out, Biden has a 3% edge.  That edge will surge when late reporting, heavily Democratic California completes its vote tally in about two weeks.

The early loss of Florida by a significant margin sent shivers into Democratic hearts last night But Biden had a significant win in Minnesota and now holds a lead in Wisconsin with Milwaukee finally reporting.  Trump won in Ohio and leads in Michigan, but there are still enough outstanding votes there to possibly narrowly swing the state.  Media outlets are split on declaring Arizona, but Biden has a significant lead there and is expected to hold it.  Biden leads by a narrower margin in Nevada.  Biden also picked up Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District around Omaha in a state that awards Electoral votes by Congressional District.  That would be just enough to push Biden over 270 Electoral College votes for a win.

There are many often contradictory election result maps out there.  This one shows Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania tending to Biden, not counting the single Nebraska Congressional District won by Biden, and counting Georgia as a solid red despite the Atlanta area's still uncounted.  See somethin different on the channel of your choice.

Meanwhile although Trump now leads in Georgia, Atlanta and its surrounding suburban counties still have enough uncounted ballots to push the State narrowly to Biden.  Counting there was suspended in the early hours of the morning and is not expected to resume until 10 am.

Meanwhile Trump’s current lead in Pennsylvania represents only 43% of the total vote.  Officials in that state still have significant mail-in and absentee ballots, many of them from Philadelphia and its suburban counties, and by court order can count those post marked by Election Day and received within three days.  This has had Trump unhinged for weeks.  His attempts to block vote counting “after Election Day” were previously blocked by Federal Court.  In his early morning White House address in which he claimed victory in the election, Trump once again vowed to challenge the Pennsylvania, and perhaps other state votes in cases that could be decided before the Supreme Court with his new appointees representing a solid conservative majority. However there is so much president for continuing to count ballots after Election Day that most Court observers don’t believe that even the reactionary judges would have the nerve to overturn state election laws.

Trump’s real hope is to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election and perhaps to rouse his die hard supporters and armed White nationalist militias and groups to rise up against his loss.

But by the time you read this, things might have changed.  Punditry this season is written on water.

Now for a quick review of other developments.

The good news; I was frankly fearful of some Election Day right-wing terrorist attacks on polling places, voters, and possibly candidates in an attempt to scare voters from the polls.  That did not materialize.  There were some of Trump’s pickup truck caravans that tried to impede access to polling places, but it was not widespread or effective.   Nor have urban riots and looting ballyhooed by Trupistas materialized.  The election was tense, but by in large peaceful.  Republican voter suppression tactics continue but most determined voters managed to get to cast their ballots.

The bad news: Once high hopes of recapturing the Senate have been dashed.  The most hopeful scenario now is a 50-50 split after a run-off election in Georgia between Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Democrat Raphael Warnock.  Democrats picked up one seat with popular former governor John Hickenlooper in Colorado and former astronaut Mark Kelly is the likely winner in Arizona.  But Democrats as expected lost incumbent Doug Jones’ seat in deep red Alabama.  Low key, below the radar Democratic incumbent Gary Peters is in a tight race in Michigan that could be tied to the eventual Presidential winner there.  Maine’s reprehensible alleged independent moderate Susan Collins inexplicably clings to a narrow lead in that deeply divided state.  The biggest disappointment of the night was the double-digit loss of Jaime Harrison who raised the most money of any Senate candidate in history and had a narrow lead in some state polls just two weeks ago to Lindsey Graham, the former Trump foe turned sycophant and the Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee who rammed through the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett.  It was no surprise that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was re-elected handily in Kentucky.  He is already plotting how to be completely obstructionist if Biden wins just as he was when Barak Obama was in the White House.

The Good News:  Democrats are on track to retain a majority in the House of Representatives. Speaker Nancy Pelosi seems a shoe-in to return to that role.  But a divided Congress will give Biden a headache if he is elected and stymie many of his plans, programs, and reforms.

The Bad News:  The country will face unprecedented turmoil as Trump attempts to stay in power by any means necessary.  Virtual civil war is not out of the question nor is the possibility of Trump barricading himself in the White House and daring any authority to drag him out.  There are also odd scenarios being talked about.  One would be an Electoral College tie that would send the election into the House of Representatives.  Despite the solid Democratic majority in the House, rules call for each state delegation to caucus and then cast a single vote.  Despite much lower populations, there are many more Red States than Blue ones.  Another possibility being discussed is Republican majorities in some state legislatures simply ignoring the popular vote and selecting their own Electors.  Although some state Constitutions require their legislatures to endorse the Electors of the candidate who won the state, some a mum on the issue and other are unclear.   Finally, there is always the possibility of a “faithless Elector” jumping to the other candidate as one Missouri Elector did in 2016.

Election anxiety is not going away any time soon.  Pass the Bourbon and the Pepto-Bismol in no particular order…

Tomorrow—How it all shakes out in Illinois and McHenry County races.

Illinois Primary Results—Not News Any More So This Must be Analysis—State Races

J.B. Pritzker,celebrates winning the Democratic gubernatorial primary with lieutenant governor candidate Juliana Stratton.  It is now his race to lose against unpopular Governor Bruce Rauner in a deep Blue state during a Democratic wave election.

Well the results are in for the Illinois Primary except for some squeaker local races here and there.  If you are a local or a political animal, you know how at least the top-of-the-ticket marquee races turned out.  In this post I once again pretend to be a pundit and try and explain what it means.  I will bore down threw the ballot narrowing as I go through the Congressional races in my neck of the woods to the nitty-gritty of McHenry County races in subsequent posts.  And I will do it through the biased lens of a partisan progressive Democrat, just so you know what to expect.

Governor and Lt. Governor

I know some progressive were heart broken when billionaire J.B. Pritzker romped to victory in the Democratic contest with at last report 45.10 % of the total vote almost 20 points ahead of left darling State Representative Daniel Biss with 26.22%, a hair ahead of liberal nostalgia candidate Chris Kennedy at 24.64%.  It confirmed for them all their charges that the winner bought the election with his unprecedented $53 million primary war chest and two years of relentless TV advertising.

But those progressives are not nearly as disappointed as both the winner and looser on the Republican side.  And for good reason.  Incumbent Governor Bruce Rauner, another billionaire who mismanaged the state to financial catastrophe with his 2 ½ year budgetless stand-off with the Democratic legislature, held on by a DuPage County eyelash over previously obscure movement conservative State Representative Jeannie Ives by 51.7 to 48.3%.  

Deeply unpopular Governor Bruce Rauner barely beat back a challenge from the far right of the Republican Party by State Rep Jeannie Ives.  He will struggle to win over her supporters in November.

Ives, who did well Downstate and dominated the GOP vote-rich collar counties, represented the deep bitterness of hard core conservatives who felt that Rauner abandoned them on their key holy social issues—abortion, opposition to LSBGT rights, and guns—and in the end “caved” to Speaker Michael Madigan and Democrats to end the budget impasse.  Her comments in defeat were not only far from gracious, she continued to savage Rauner and held out no olive branch for reconciliation or party unity in November. 

Many of her supporters will not hold their noses to vote for Rauner, despite his pleas in his victory statement.  There is already talk about undertaking the nearly impossible task of fielding an independent candidate or turning to the Libertarian Party whose activist nominee Kash Johnson could conceivably be persuaded to withdraw to allow a better-known politico to take his spot.  But I wouldn’t hold my breath for either eventuality.  More likely, many Ives voters will feel undermotivated to vote in November or be willing to leave the Governor’s race blank on their ballots or write in Ives or make some other protest vote.

Rauner can’t afford a single defection from Republican ranks.  The vote totals in the two primaries tell the tail.  Illinois has been tending deeper blue over the last several election cycles and that process has been accelerated by Donald Trump imploding presidency and Rauner’s own unpopularity.  But the primary numbers are staggering.  All Democrats, including the single digit three also-rans, got 771,819 votes as of the most recent numbers.  Rauner and Ives together got only 3018,791, significantly less than half of the Democratic votes cast.  While primary turn out is significantly lighter than in the General Election, that is a mighty deep hole for Rauner to dig himself out of, especially as the disparity reflects a high degree of Democratic passion and commitment.

That passion and commitment will build as progressives lay some of their distaste for a money-bags aside and discover that Pritzger’s platform is nearly as progressive as Biss, differing more in detail than in substance.

That’s good for progressives up and down the ticket.   But it is not the end of the silver lining to Biss’s loss.  Biss and Kennedy voters taken together topped Pritzker by 46,150 votes.  If progressives and liberals had fielded a single candidate, they might have won.  At any rate, it shows the potential for future races.

Also, since progressives are highly motivated to beat Rauner—and the Trump agenda—this fall, they will almost unanimously support the ticket in the fall and will be moved to hit the bricks in support of the many down ballot progressives who won on Tuesday.  Dems in general will not have to fret about a disunited party to the degree that has the Governor is sweating bullets about his.

Polls taken before the end of 2017 showed Rauner losing to a generic Democrat by as much as 20%.  A February poll by the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University showed Pritzker besting the Governor by 15 points.  No one expects those margins to hold up in a hot general election.  Rauner will close part of that gap.  But any way you slice it, those are long odds to overcome.

But Democrats cannot be over confident.  They still must inspire a big turnout from all their base voters and be able to reap disgusted independents and Republicans.  Rauner has one long shot chance—to keep doing what he has been doing, running mostly against Mike Madigan, a figure who has been so effectively demonized, not entirely without cause, that he is widely despised across much of Down State and the vote-rich Collar Counties.  He needs to convince enough voters in both regions who are otherwise going against Republicans as a protest to Donald Trump, to split their ballots for him.  It’s a long shot but not impossible.

Attorney General

The Democratic race for Attorney General turned into a two-candidate sprint to the finish line after pulling way ahead of a crowded pack.  That field of five included two with progressive support, Aaron Goldstein and Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering and three former prosecutors who pledged to root out corruption—an implicit slap at Mike Madigan. Only one, Sharon Fairley barely broke out of the single digits.  

Kwame Raoul over came former Governor Pat Quinn's name recognition to win the Attorney General nomination.

State Senator Kwame Raoul, who had the backing of most organization Democrats as well as solid support in the Black community, nosed out former Governor Pat Quinn in a surprisingly tight race.  Quinn, who has appeared on ballots for assorted offices for more than thirty years with mixed results, had few ardent fans but benefited chiefly from simple name recognition. 

Other candidates in the field tried to tag Raoul as Madigan’s pick, a claim that was undercut when TV spots by a Republican PAC absurdly leveled the same charge against Quinn who as those with actual memories recall was at constant odds with the Speaker during his spell as Governor.

In his victory speech Raoul highlighted his family’s roots as Haitian immigrants and pledged to protect the immigrant community form Trump’s deportation frenzy.  He hopes to broaden his support with increasingly important Latino voters for whom immigration is a key issue.  In some parts of the country Haitian and Latino immigrant communities have been at odds.  But the much smaller number of Haitians in Illinois as given them more reason to seek allies. 

Erika Harold will be an attractive and formitable opponent--the Republican's best shot at winning state-wide office in November.

This fall Raoul will face probably the toughest state-wide race against former Miss America and Harvard Law School graduate Erika Harold in November.

Harold will make a very attractive candidate in TV spots.  A lot of white voters will see the lightly sepia candidate of mixed White, Black, and Native American heritage and compare her to a big, scary looking Black man with a shaved head and vote against him while congratulating themselves on not being racist.  I’ll take flack for that statement, but it is the truth.

Harold will also distance herself from unpopular Trump and Rauner by claiming to be independent and even essentially non-partisan.  But social conservatives and former Ives supporters who cannot stomach Rauner, know that she is stridently anti-abortion and an opponent of LBGT rights and flock to her side.  Meanwhile she will let PACs fund attack ads tying Raoul to Madigan with out personally getting her supposed non-partisan hands dirty.

Raoul will have to rack up huge margins in the Black and Latino communities and other Democratic strongholds to overcome Harold’s appeal.

Other Constitutional Officers

Secretary of State Jesse White, Treasurer Michael Frerichs, and Comptroller Susana Mendoza will all sail effortlessly to victory this November.

Down ballot, the other popular Democratic state-wide offices holders who all ran un-opposed can relax.  Their campaigns for re-election this fall will be almost as equally stress free.  Secretary of State Jesse White, Comptroller Susana Mendoza, and Treasurer Michael Frerichs will face three Republican challengers—Jason Helland, Darlene Senger, and Jim Dodge respectively.  The GOP trio are essentially sacrificial goats and place holders since no ambitious or promising pol would risk their reputations in a suicide mission.   The most that the hapless Republicans can hope for is that they will get a line in their obituaries that reads “one-time candidate for…”

The Payless Pundit Returns—Reading the Tea Leaves of Sweet Victory

Obama and Democrats back in fighting trim.

It has long been a political axiom of mine the Republicans, particularly of the rabid right wing variety will crawl through glass to get to the polls.  That explains their often puzzling political success in recent years.  They can easily dominate primary elections and produce candidates so bizarrely out of the main stream that they can’t win election—which is pretty much the story of Democrats keeping control of the Senate and picking up two extra seats (thanks to the Maine Independent who will likely caucus with them.) 

In tight general elections that “enthusiasm” has given them the edge over Democrats and progressives who often can’t be inconvenienced or who refuse to turn out for candidates who disagree with them on a pet issue. 

The early call for this election, going back to the disaster—for Democrats—of the 2010 mid-terms was that given a still terrible economy and the disdain being voiced for the President by many liberals who were either disappointed he had not achieved more and lived up to expectations or who were angry about not cleanly and quickly getting out of the Bush wars, was that Republican enthusiasm would swamp Barack Obama.

Then the Supreme Court handed the Republicans the gift that keeps on giving—the Citizen’s United ruling which opened the floodgates of corporate and fat cat mega bucks into the “independent” Super Pacs.  Those Pacs would buy enough negative attack advertising to bury Democrats, whose own donors seemed unenthusiastic.

Last night’s Electoral College landslide—303 to 206 with Florida still out but likely to fall blue—and narrow absolute majority of the popular vote flipped those expectations on their ears.

It turned out that there was no shortage of Democratic enthusiasm for the President.  Quite the contrary.  He held the 80% of the vote of non-whites that he got in 2010. He benefited from a significant gender gap as his lead among women more than made up for his deficit among men.  Young people—supposedly disconnected from the political process and disillusioned after flirting with the romantic notion of Obama in ’08—actually turned up in even greater numbers this time.  And, despite being hammered as a secret Muslim, for supposedly being born in Kenya or elsewhere, and as simultaneously a Communist and the new Hitler, Obama slipped by only 3% in his weakest demographic—white men.

How did this happen? I have some thoughts, a couple of them even fairly original.

First off, the President should send thank-you notes to the Occupy Movement.  It was surely an unintended consequence as many Occupiers have been stridently against being “co-opted by electoral politics.”  They did not want to be the Tea Party of the left or be turned into a faction of the Democratic Party.  And they weren’t and aren’t.  But the Occupy Movement managed almost single handedly to shift the national conversation after obsession with budget balancing and austerity—the Republican game—to the power of Wall Street, income inequality, and the empowerment of ordinary people to stand up.  That enabled the President and Democrats as a whole to shift from a kind of whiny defense to an aggressive re-assertion as the natural friend of working and middle class people.

The Republicans—the Right Wing holding their nose—reluctantly nominated Mitt Romney who shape-shifted to conform to the passions of the extremes of his party.  He may thus have finally won their loyalty at the polls, but he betrayed himself in many ways.  The richest man ever to seek the Presidency, he oozed smarmy rich guy entitlement and betrayed time and time again a real ignorance of the lives of ordinary Americans.  When his famous attack on the 47% was exposed, the President’s campaign and an army of allies was ready to pounce and defined the candidate before he really had a chance to let his chameleon act work its charms.

But it was not enough to attack Romney in the way of conventional politics.  That’s where the social media, especially Facebook. Twitter, and YouTube, were game changers.  In 2008 the infant blog-o-sphere provided alternative sources of information and helped galvanize and organize Obama’s march to victory.  This year that was already almost passé.  Everyone knew that the social media would be a player, but even the tech savvy Obama campaign did not know exactly how.

It was not because the campaign could post endless messages to its database, although they did.  It was because individual picked up and spread various memes like wild fire.  And hard core supporters of both candidates were relentless in bombarding their friends with clever posts, links to media articles, and personal appeals.  The conventional wisdom was that most of this was useless “preaching to the choir” or at best a way of whipping the base to a frenzy. 

But it turned out to be the gateway to those elusive swing voters, an often overlapping set with the maligned low information voters.  It turns out that even the most hardened partisans have wider networks of friends and families who are not already on their side.  But repeated exposure, however annoying, to messages from those to who people have some sort of connection, add up.  In addition these posts alerted folks to information that they missed by avoiding news reporting—a common thing these days—or which were barely reported by the media.

These social media messages helped Obama paint Romney as a careless plutocrat and two-faced liar.  And it was very effective in mobilizing women after repeated rape references by Republican candidates and the relentless attacks on Planned Parenthood and the right to choose.  It was how many discovered the war on women.

Even things that struck me as personally small potatoes like the Romney wants to kill Big Bird meme turned out to really strike a chord with many fans and supporters of public broadcasting, and more important, many parents and nostalgic former children.

The greatest effect may have been spreading the word about voter suppression efforts by Republican elected officials, shady campaign operatives, and self-proclaimed vigilantes.  It galvanized the Black community which some thought was losing its fervor for the President.  The more Blacks learned from their friends of efforts to keep them from voting, especially in the final days of the campaign, the more determined they were to defy it.  Thus the long, patient lines in black precincts from Florida to Ohio.

Similarly, Hispanic voters were mobilized by being exposed to the xenophobia that imbued Republican campaigns at every level.

Which brings us to the elephant in the room that all of the Mainstream talking heads—except Fox News—finally grasped last night.  Whites are now a minority in a multi-racial and ethnic society.  The phenomenal growth of Hispanics eligible to vote and registered is changing the electoral map in places like Florida and Colorado.  Arizona is drifting the same way and will probably flip from deep Red to reliably Blue by the next Presidential cycle.

Which is why, by the way that Arizona and states like Alabama and Georgia adopted such draconian anti-immigrant policies that it has not only led to an exodus from those states by undocumented folks, but of citizens and legal residents as well even in the face of great harm to their local economies.  It makes sense if it is recognized as a desperate last-minute stand to retain white privilege and power.

The Republican Party has painted itself into the corner as the, in Senator Lindsay Graham’s words “the party of old, angry white men.”  Despite being able to hold on to the House of Representatives because of redistricting favorable to them and a tilt to sunbelt states in population growth, the GOP is well on its way to disappearing as truly national party and becoming at best a regional rump.

The Republicans can’t beat 50,000 young eligible Latinos coming of age to vote every week between now 2014.  And that doesn’t even count those who become naturalized citizens.

To make matters worse those suddenly energized young votes, often motivated by social issues are settling into the Democratic Party, which may have won the allegiance of most of them for a life time.

Republicans react to this in three ways:  Rage and denial, despair, and a determination by some to “take back their Party.”  The latter will be impossible as long as those dedicated Tea Party types can continue to dominate primary elections.  And it is probably impossible to do in the South.  Thoughtful Republicans would need to start recruiting top flight candidates for Congress and Senate right now, raise ridiculous sums of money to counter the bucks from the Libertarian/Randist oligarchs paying for the Tea Party, and have the stomach to go into a knockdown, drag out fight under the battle cry “It’s Our Party, Not Yours, Assholes!”  And frankly, I don’t see that happening.

Instead the Republicans will cut themselves to ribbons with recriminations, which began even before the election was called.  And being the loudest voice, the Tea Party will probably be triumphant with a declaration that they lost the election by not being extreme enough.

In recent years Republicans have relied on Family Values and social issues like abortion and gay rights to rally a reliable base.  But they are losing the country on those issues, especially same sex marriage.  That cohort of young people simply are not buying what they are peddling there, and continuing to do it will spell doom.

Which brings us to one of the biggest losers of last night—the Hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church—which laid everything on the table by ordering pulpit statements on the last Sunday which made it very clear that the faithful would put their souls at risk by voting for the President or virtually any Democrat.  They skated perilously close to the edge of legality, and probably crossed it confident that they would be insulated from prosecution by an administration fearful of being painted as the enemy of the Church.  But the whole operation which included the distribution of those ubiquitous We Vote Pro Life yard signs, mailings and e-mails to parishioners fizzled.  Obama and the Democrats swept all of the most heavily Catholic states in New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and industrial Mid-West.  And they carried the Catholic vote in every one of those states.  And just the attempt has triggered at least a temporary exit from the Church by many offended Catholics.

The next four years will be a challenge.  Even with a friendlier, more liberal Senate Majority, a determined rearguard action by the Looney-Tunes House Republican caucus will make it difficult for Obama to enact his agenda.  How much he is willing to compromise and on what can erode the support he has gained on the left.

But there is a real opportunity to once and for all shuck the phony image of the Democrats as the party of snooty elitists successfully promulgated by the real elitists in America, and re-capture its traditional identity as the party of working people and the middling classes.

The danger is from the farthest fringes of the Right—maybe 20% of the population.  These people are irreconcilable to an Obama presidency.  They are motivated, frankly, mostly by racism and are becoming more open and unembarrassed by it.  It includes not just un-reconstructed Confederates, but supposedly “responsible” figures like Donald Trump, who was Tweeting his rage and defiance in repeated messages last night.  He stopped just short of calling for an insurrection.  Many others are not stopping there at all.

I think there will be a surge of right wing domestic terrorism, and more serious, attempts to subvert elements of the military for an attempted coup d’état.  There may even be serious revival of the secession talk that has been bubbling around in Texas, fueled by Governor Rick Perry himself and in other areas.

Tuesday was an important win for progressives.  But it has not arrested a possible slide into civil war.