I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality of American politics. If you were sent this email - or you are a free subscriber - and you’d like to subscribe: you can sign up here.
Today’s post is free for all subscribers, so if you’re still not a paid subscriber and want access to all Truth and Consequences content … click the button below.
A couple of years ago, I took my kids to a water park in Pennsylvania, and I played a game with my youngest where I snuck up behind, picked him up, and threw him in the water. He’d come up for air and scream, “I didn’t see that coming.”
I had the same reaction to the results of last night’s midterm election.
I had a suspicion that Democrats might do well, but last night was shocking — as it appears Democrats are poised to keep the Senate and have an outside shot of maintaining control of the House of Representatives. From a historical perspective, this could end up as one of the best midterm performances by an incumbent party in modern American history.
Here are my initial 13 takeaways (more coming soon).
The House is still in play. Democrats had a bunch of narrow, heart-breaking losses in places like Iowa-3 and Michigan-10 but also picked up seats in Ohio, North Carolina, Illinois, New Mexico (probably), and Texas. They held serve in Indiana, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. There are still uncalled races in Oregon, Washington, Arizona, and California — some of which would represent flips from red to blue if Democrats prevail. Democrats would need to run the table if they want to hold the House … but it’s a real possibility. Perhaps most shocking of all, Republican looney-tune and gun fetishist Lauren Boebert looks to be at serious risk of losing (she’s currently trailing by an absurd 73 votes). This is a race that absolutely no one had on their radar screen.
Keeping the poisoned chalice. I hate the Senate. It should be abolished. But until that blessed day, better for it to be in Democratic control, and it looks like that’s going to happen. Pennsylvania flipped from red to blue. Votes in Arizona and Nevada are still being tabulated, but my sense is that Democrats are probably going to hold both seats. Georgia will have a run-off on January 6, and I assume Raphael Warnock will be favored to win.
Abortion mattered. According to the NBC exit poll, more than sixty percent of Americans said they were dissatisfied or angry about the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade – and of that 61%, more than seven out of ten voted for a Democratic candidate. The Democratic strategy of relentlessly pounding on the abortion issue seems to have paid off. I’m not sure yet if abortion is what saved Democrats, but there is no doubt it played a role.
Candidate quality mattered. In an era of intense political polarization, it’s become fashionable to suggest that the only thing that matters in elections is tribal and partisan identity — and don’t get me wrong, those things matter. But what we saw last night was that candidate quality cannot be ignored. A truly shocking number of voters split their tickets between Democratic and Republican candidates. Here’s what I wrote in my MSNBC piece this morning:
In a host of House races, Republicans threw away winnable races with first-time, pro-MAGA, Trump-endorsed candidates. In Pennsylvania, gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano had no money, ran a lackluster campaign and, not surprisingly, lost by double digits. Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon also lost big. It should hardly be a surprise that down the ballot, in both states, Republicans took a beating. In Michigan, according to The Detroit News, Democrats look poised to control both the state House and Senate, the latter for the first time in 38 years.
In Georgia, Republican Brian Kemp easily won another term as governor, but Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker was running nearly 6 points worse. In New Hampshire, Republican Gov. Chris Sununu romped to re-election with a 15-point victory. In contrast, Democrat Maggie Hassan won re-election to the U.S. Senate by beating Trump-endorsed election denier Don Bolduc by 10 points.
In race after race, Republican primary voters backed weak, pro-Trump candidates, and the party paid the price for it on Election Day.
Michigan trifecta. As mentioned above, Democrats now control all the major statewide offices and both houses of the state legislature. Part of the reason is that Democrats had a strong gubernatorial candidate in Gretchen Whitmer (in the unlikely scenario that Joe Biden doesn't run for reelection, she'd move to the top of the list for potential 2024 nominees). But the bigger reason is that Michigan Republican Party is crazy. We still don't have a clear sense of why Democrats did as well as they did, but I suspect the mishegas of the GOP played a significant role.
Andy Levin, go stand in the corner. In Michigan's 10th congressional district, Republican John James beat Democrat Carl Marlinga by 1,600 votes. Had Marlinga won, it would have flipped the seat to Democrats. So this was a winnable race, which makes the decision by Democrat incumbent Andy Levin to challenge fellow Democratic incumbent Hayley Stevens in a primary in the newly created 11th district so disastrous. Had Levin run in the 10th, there's a very good chance he would have won. If Republicans win the House by one seat (which is possible), Levin's bad choice could end up costing the Democrats their House majority.
Florida is gone for Democrats. On a night in which Democrats overperformed virtually across the board, Ron DeSantis won reelection by 19 points, Rubio won by 16, and several House seats flipped to the GOP. Part of the problem here is that the Florida Democratic Party is a dumpster fire perched on top of a tire fire, but it might just be that Florida has become a solidly red state. As if we didn't need one more reason to hate America's worst state.
New York State was a shit show. Democrats lost four seats in the Empire State. You can blame Governor Kathy Hochul for running a lackluster campaign (she won by a mere 5 points). You can blame the fact that the New York Democratic gerrymander got thrown out by the courts … after former Governor Andrew Cuomo pushed for a bipartisan redistricting commission. But at the end of the day, these were winnable races, and Democrats screwed the pooch. I don't have a clear sense yet as to why. I suspect that Hochul's lousy campaign had down-ballot effects, or perhaps crime played a bigger role in New York than in other states. Whatever the case, the failure of Democrats in New York will possibly end up costing the party a chance to preserve its House majority.
The Trump problem. This is simply the most astounding quote from former President Donald Trump. "I think if they (Republicans) win, I should get all of the credit, and if they lose, I should not be blamed at all." Amazing, right? There's no denying that Trump bears some responsibility for what happened last night. His candidate endorsements — whether it was Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania, Don Bolduc in New Hampshire, or Blake Masters in Arizona — were terrible. If Republicans were smart, they would use the midterm results as an opportunity to shed the Trump albatross. Don't bet on that happening. Next week he is planning to announce his presidential bid, and when he does, he will suck up all the political oxygen in the GOP (and that's before he gets indicted). He still is probably the most popular politician in the party. Republicans had a chance to rid themselves of Trump in January 2021 by supporting impeachment and conviction in the Senate. Instead, they stuck with him, and now it will be much harder to stop him from getting the GOP nomination in 2024 … and causing even more damage to the party.
Making concessions. Not only did GOP election deniers get crushed in competitive races, but so far, no Republican electoral loser has refused to concede to their Democratic victor. That's a very good sign for American democracy.
Ugh. There's plenty of good news in the results for Democrats, but Ron Johnson won reelection, and JD Vance won his first term as a Senator. Even worse, 1.9 million Georgians voted to make Herschel Walker a US Senator. This is why America can't have nice things.
Give Josh Shapiro some love. John Fetterman ran a hell of a Senate race. He got more votes than Joe Biden received two years ago and, right now, is up by 3.4 points. Credit where credit is due. But Josh Shapiro won by 13.4 points, and he's not getting any of the same love. I get it. His opponent, Doug Mastriano, was a terrible candidate who had no money and little financial support from national Republicans. Also, Fetterman had a stroke during the campaign. But his opponent was not very good either, and in getting 47 percent of the vote, Oz dramatically outperformed his poor favorabilities. This isn't so much a criticism of Fetterman as it is a plug for Shapiro, who, if he plays his cards right, could be a sleeper presidential contender in a few years.
Democratic ratfucking worked. Remember during the primaries when pearl-clutching pundits complained that Democrats were helping boost MAGA Republicans at the expense of GOPers, like Peter Meijer in Michigan, who had courageously voted to impeach Donald Trump? Well, Meijer's primary opponent, John Gibbs, lost by 13 points, flipping a seat from red to blue. In fact, every MAGA Republican promoted by Democrats lost (we're still waiting on Kari Lake in Arizona). Democrats clearly did the right thing in promoting candidates who couldn't win.
I'll have more takeaways tomorrow, but I wanted to get something out to you tonight!
Musical Interlude
I don't know why no one's talking about the uncounted millions of super pac money that was spent in NC to help Trumper Ted Budd *narrowly* defeat Cheri Beasley for Senate. Beasley, a judge, was swamped by attack ads that started three months before the election on all possible media, some of them so full of outright lies that all NC TV stations finally took them down, but too late. Still, Budd barely won, thus showing that NC is deeper purple than ever. Forget getting rid of the Senate. Just get rid of Super PACs, all of them, and stop the flow of disinformation.
Abolishing the Senate is:
1. A bad idea
2. Sour grapes
3. Never gonna happen
The less we hear of the idea the better
Rest of the analysis seems spot on, granted the Democrats still shouldn't have assisted Trumpy candidates