Tuesday November 8, 2022 is Election Day in the United States of America. In addition to Congressional "midterms" at the federal level, many state governors and other more local offices are up for grabs. Given how things shook out over Election Day 2020, things could get a little crazy.
...or, perhaps, not! But here's the Megathread for if they do. Talk about your local concerns, your national predictions, your suspicions re: election fraud and interference, how you plan to vote, anything election related is welcome here. Culture War thread rules apply, with the addition of Small-Scale Questions and election-related "Bare Links" allowed in this thread only (unfortunately, there will not be a subthread repository due to current technical limitations).
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Notes -
As an opening salvo of the presidential primaries of 2024, the midterms were a great night for Desantis and a pretty bad night for Trump. Dems had high hopes for Florida a few months ago, as it's ostensibly a purple state. Desantis made headlines for his Martha's Vineyard + Disney stuff and it was plausible that swing voters may have punished Republicans for this. In the end, though, Florida was a bloodbath for Democrats. Rubio and Desantis both won by double digits, and many democratic congressional districts were wiped out with recent redistricting changes.
Trump, on the other hand, has egg on his face. He helped clear the lane for weak senate candidates like Oz and Walker, and they underperformed similar races (e.g. governors) through split ticket voting. It's impossible to redo the election to see what it would have been like if Trump didn't back candidates, but it's not implausible that Trump's meddling cost Republicans control of the Senate chamber. It also probably shrunk McCarthy's house majority a bit, making it more unwieldy and difficult to restrain Biden.
As of the time of writing, Desantis currently has a 26.5% chance to be the next president on Election Betting Odds, while Trump has a 19.3% chance. It was even more stark early today when it was 30%+ vs 15%, and while I think this is very unrealistically lopsided in Desantis' favor, the recent movements have captured the sense that Trump fatigue is setting in not only for moderate swing voters, but for a broader swathe of Republicans as well. I personally think Trump still has a 66%+ chance of winning the Republican nomination if he seeks it in 2024, but it's looking increasingly likely that it won't be a simple coronation: he'll have to work for it through a potentially crowded field. If Desantis proves to be an actual threat, things could get really ugly really quickly. All major presidential candidates have a hardcore following of blindly loyal fanboys that will stick with them through basically anything, but through browsing places like 4chan and interacting with some Republicans in my circle of family and friends, it seems that Trump's version of this is quite large. Desantis won't just be seen as an enemy, but as a traitor, and many Trump loyalists will not look kindly on a man who hurt their king.
It'll be interesting to see how crowded a field it is.
In addition to Trump and DeSantis, Predictit is only giving odd for Haley, Youngkin, Pence, Pompeo, Romney, and Rubio. None of them are over 5 cents. With the possible exception of Youngkin who I don't know that much about, all of them seem like fairly Establishment GOP candidates.
My perception is that if the Establishment doesn't want Trump, all those candidates will play ball to cut deals for the promise to go away strategically, similar to how the Democratic field cleared for Biden.
I think what gives DeSantis a real shot is that he can realistically run to the right of Trump on how Covid was handled.
Abbott’s also almost certainly got feelers out for the presidency; although he could be derailed very easily by local political factors, he’s also one of the GOP’s most prolific fundraisers and is a bit too far to the right to be firmly establishment.
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Does anyone care, other than a few weirdos like me? It sure seems like most people are willing to chalk up even the worst excesses to something along the lines of, "well, we just didn't know".
Among the GOP primary electorate, yes, I think a lot of people care.
(My older Fox News watching relatives, who I perceive to be well represented both in Trump's base and in the GOP primary electorate, care a lot).
A large fraction of that electorate wants the government to be small, and mostly leave them alone.
Covid response was the largest government intrusion into the average person's life in nearly everyone's lifetime (maybe since WWII?).
In large part, that happened on Trump's watch, while Trump's didn't directly cause much of it, he didn't do much to prevent it. (Its not obvious that he had the authority as President to prevent much of what happened, but those nuances tend to get lost in the branding of these things [and can probably quickly be summed up as 'he had the authority to fire Fauci, and didn't']).
One way to think of the GOP is break it out into 3 group - Bush style establishment, Trump loyalists, and anti-libs.
Bush style establish has a very limited voting block (ballpark, maybe somewhere between 5-25% of the GOP), but is over-represented in the various positions that have levers of power.
If the field clears for DeSantis, that might very well be helpful for him, I'm skeptical it will be decisive.
Trump loyalist will vote for Trump based on personality - it's not a winnable demo for anyone who's not Trump.
Anti-libs have largely supported Trump, but not because of who Trump is, but who he's against. They're happy/grateful that Trump got to nominate 3 SC justices, they're distrustful of GOP politicians who seem to get more liberal once they get to Washington. But it's what Trump stands for, not who he is personally.
Personally, they were embarrassed by Trump's twitter antics, they were embarrassed by "grab them by the pussy", they don't love that he's on his third wife, but they looked around, and voted for what they perceived as the lesser evil.
That's a winnable demo for someone who might be perceived as a better standard-bearer for the anti-lib perspective.
DeSantis's anti-Covid record gives him real credibility with that demo.
The exact breakdown on what percentage make up the Trump loyalists and what percentage makes up the anti-libs I think is somewhat of a mystery. And I think will ultimately determine who winds up the nominee.
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