Don't Expect The Gloom & Doom About Biden To End
Eastern Kentucky closes their polls early so all the national attention and focus always starts there in a very red state that Trump won with a whopping 62.1%. Last night, though, the news for incumbent governor, Democrat Andy Beshear right from the get go, was excellent, much better than expected. Counties that had voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 were either going to Beshear or giving far fewer votes to Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron than they needed to for him to win. In the end, Beshear beat Trump-endorsed Cameron 693,370 (52.5%) to 626,196 (47.5%)— a nice feat when you look back to 2019, when Beshear bested Republican incumbent Matt Bevin 709,846 (49.2%) to 704,760 (48.8%). Beshear won 27 counties where Trump beat Biden, 10 of them by double digits!
The one bad spot in an otherwise fantastic election night for Biden and the Democratic Party was the governor’s race in Mississippi. You want to know why? The Democrat, Brandon Presley, ran as an anti-Choice candidate, deflating enthusiasm, resulting in a low turnout among Democrats. He even lost Lafayette County (Oxford), a blue part of the state where Jim Hood beat Reeves 8,111 to 7,095 in 2019. Tate Reeves was reelected 51.8% to 46.9%, so... not even a runoff.
Once the polls closed, it didn’t take long to see that the Republicans were getting their asses kicked in Ohio. Both ballot measures, #1 to legalize abortion and #2 to legalize recreational marijuana won handily. And, like in Kentucky, women voters had something to say to the GOP— NO. Counties that voted for Trump in 2020, voted for abortion and pot yesterday. Abortion won by over 13 points and pot won by 14 points. Basically, the voters were reacting against Republican-controlled government trying to interfere in their lives in ways that were deemed illegitimate.
In 2020, Biden won just 7 Ohio counties. Yesterday, pro-Choice won 25, including all 5 of the only big population counties Trump had won: Stark (Trump 58%, Choice 53%), Butler (Trump 61%, Choice 51%), Lorain (Trump 50%, Choice 62%), Delaware (Trump 52%, Choice 59%) and Lake (Trump 56%, Choice 60%).
In Virginia, Republicans were banking on Glenn Youngkin’s mainstream popularity to flip the state Senate and hold the House of Delegates. Instead, the Democrats held the Senate and flipped the House! Women voters turned out in droves and helped Democrats defeat Republican incumbents Senator Siobhan Dunnavant and Delegate Karen Greenhaigh while Democrats were winning open swing districts in both chambers. It was a disaster for Youngkin, a disaster for the Republican Party and a disaster for the anti-Choice movement. I wonder if the media will make a national star out of Beshear the way they tried to make a start out of Youngkin.
The only congressional race was a Rhode Island special election to fill David Cicilline’s seat. Gabriel Amo clobbered Gerry Leonard 64.8% to 35.2%, even better than Biden’s 63.8 to 34.7% win over Trump in 2020.
There were two races in Pennsylvania that I was watching closely, one to fill an empty Supreme Court seat that would determine if the Court has a liberal or a conservative majority and one to fill the Allegheny County Executive position. Democrat Daniel McCafferty easily bested Republican Carolyn Carluccio— 1,598,670 (52.9%) to 1,421,931 (47.1%) for the Supreme Court seat, meaning democracy and Choice will be safe. In Allegheny County, Democratic Socialist Sara Innamorato was deemed by the GOP and by corporate media as "too far left" for a county-wide race. Nevertheless, she beat Republican Joe Rockey by over two points— 183,862 (51.26%) to 174,251 (48.58%). Aside from that, Democrats pretty swept almost everything in winnable races from school boards, commissioners, etc., especially in the southeast suburbs. MAGA was massacred.
In New Jersey the Democrats didn't just maintain their trifecta, the expanded it, gaining 5 seats, something few expected because of Bob Menendez's corruption scandal and Joe Biden's unpopularity. Particularly noteworthy was that Ed "The Trucker" Durr, the MAGA loon who beat corrupt Senate President Steve Sweeney in 2021 was decisively defeated in his election bid:
John Burzichelli (D)- 22,511 (57.13%)
Ed Durr (R)- 16,754 (42.52%)
The New Jersey Globe reported another big win for a [putative] Democrat. “Under normal circumstances,” reported Joey Fox, “the 30th district wouldn’t be remotely competitive. It backed Republican Jack Ciattarelli by 28 points in the 2021 gubernatorial election, and hasn’t elected a single Democratic legislator since 1992, when the district first became based in Lakewood. But Orthodox Jewish leaders saw an opportunity to defy those statistics and elect a member of the Democratic majority caucus. To do so, they had to supercharge turnout in Lakewood and get huge numbers of Orthodox voters to pull the lever for [Avi] Schnall, a longtime Orthodox leader (with shallow connections to the Democratic Party). They also needed to avoid provoking a backlash in Howell and Wall, two other 30th district towns that are quite Republican but have minimal Orthodox populations— and in fact were liable to be hostile to Schnall’s Orthodox-focused messaging.” Schnall had 27,562 votes to incumbent Republican Ned Thomson’s 17,676.
Local elections all around the country foretell the makings of a 2024 blue wave-- even as MAGA-Mike and his lunatic extremists in the House keep pushing their radical agenda.
Even in as red a bastion as Indiana, where Democratic mayoral challenger in Terre Haute, 27 year old Brandon Sakbun defied the odds in his first political race to beat 16 year incumbent Republican mayor Duke Bennett— 59.82% to 40.18%. The future of America is not MAGA Mike or Marjorie Traitor Greene, it's reality-based young women and men like Sakbun.
