There are now just 11 days before some very consequential elections throughout the country, but there’s hardly any room for that on the front pages or even in the 24 hour news cycle. The number of suspected pipe bombs that have been sent to prominent critics of President Donald Trump is now ten, the Saudi Arabian government continues to provide fresh explanations for its brutal murder of an American resident, some five thousand refugees from Central America are continuing their thousand mile walk toward America’s southern border, and as usual President Donald Trump takes up a lot of the space.
Even so, we’ve been keeping an eye on several races of local and national interest. It still looks as if Democratic nominee and liberal dreamboat Rep. “Beto” O’Rourke will come closer than most Democrats typically do down there in Texas but will still lose to Republican incumbent Sen. “Ted” Cruz in their widely watched race. So far as we can tell from this distance the Democrats seem to have a very good shot at flipping a Senate seat in Florida, where all the polls show Tallahassee mayor and Democratic nominee Andrew Gillum leading Republican nominee Rep. Ron DeSantis.
There’s another intriguing Senate race in Arizona, where Democratic nominee Rep. Kyrsten Sinema is clinging to a well-within-the margin-of-error lead over Republican nominee Martha McSally. That Senate race in Tennessee is worth watching, too, as former Gov. Phil Bredesen has a good shot at beating of beating Rep. Marsha blackburn and becoming the state’s first Democratic senator since Al Gore. Not to mention a surprisingly close race for governor of Georgia between Democrat nominee and state Rep. Stacey Abrams and Republican nominee and Secretary of State Ted Matz.
For the moment the consensus of the pollsters and the pundits is that the Republicans have a very good of chance of retaining control of the Senate, while the Democrats have an even better chance of winning the House, and we’re inclined to agree. There are still 11 front pages and 24-hour news cycles to go, and God only knows what they might bring, but the early voting has already begun and certain trends seem likely to persist for a while.
So far, and for so far as we can tell, those trends are not favorable to the Republicans. The Republicans might well win most of the aforementioned Senate races, and in North Dakota Republican nominee Rep. Kevin Cramer seems a sure bet to unseat Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, and the fact that all of the Democratic incumbents were elected in the anomalous year of 2012 leaves them playing defense in several swing states and red states, but that should only make it all the more worrisome to Republicans that it’s so close. That far better chance all the polls and pundits give to Democrats to win the House should be all the more troubling to the Republicans, as it reflects the popular vote rather then the random chances of the electoral map.
Part of the problem is that the Democrats have been running some candidates with centrist pitches and made-for-TV-ads biographies, including veterans and business moguls and somehow unblemished records in public office, while the Republicans have chosen a few not-ready-for-prime-time contenders. Even for the sharper Republican candidate, several issues are breaking the Democrats’ way.
The Republicans seem to be getting less than their usual share of votes in the rural areas, too, and the news has plenty of farers on the record grousing about how the recent trade wars have severely reduced their income. A large number of well-educated suburban white women who usually vote Republican have abandoned the party in every special election since President Donald Trump was elected are expected to do so again, although that might well be a mere coincidence. The Democrats are also making political hay of the landslide popularity of that coverage-for-preexisting-conditions clause in Obamacare, and all the Republicans who once ran on their promise to repeal the law and reign in entitlement spending are reduced to lying that they certainly never meant to repeal that part, and that it’s actually those lying Democrats who want to kick out all those poor people with preexisting conditions and make cuts in Medicare. Meanwhile, the pipe bombs and the Saudi murder and the unarmed marching refugees still a thousand miles away from the border don’t seem to help, and neither most the news that Trump daily commands.
Several of the Democrats’ rising stars are young or black or Latino or Asian or women, and in the case of the surprisingly possible next governor of Georgia she’s both black and a woman, and even here in Kansas we’ve got a lesbian Native American kick boxer who seems to have a good chance of flipping a Republican House seat. Meanwhile the Republicans have mostly chosen the usual straight old white guys, except that white woman who’s slightly behind another white woman in Arizona and that white woman in Tennessee who lost the endorsement of pop chanteuse Taylor Swift and many of her fans to a straight old white Democratic guy. The Republicans’ current reputation as the Grand Old Party of straight old guys has made it quite popular with straight old white guys, but these days there are only so many of us, and some significant portion of us on both the right and the left would prefer a party that was more welcoming to freedom-loving and entrepreneurial and individualist individuals of every sex, class, race, religion, and sexual predilection, so it doesn’t seem a sound a long-term strategy.
Lying about the Republican party’s past opposition to mandating coverage of preexisting conditions won’t help, either, although we have to admit that reiterating the sound arguments Republicans once made likening it to buying home insurance while your house is on fire would probably once again go down in flames. The Secretaries of State who are running for governor against that black woman in Georgia and a white woman here in Kansas have both been credibly accused of suppressing the black and Latino vote, and although it might work in both of the very close races it’s not a long term solution to the Republican party’s problems, and could well be used against them down the road.
At this point we’re holding out for gridlock, with neither party able to impose it’s will on other, and with 11 long days to go we like our chances.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 