Politics: 2020 Iowa Senate Race Results

 

There might have been some hope for Democrats going into the race, but it was ultimately all for naught as the Republican candidate won reelection. Joni Ernst will continue being senator from this state. This is a person who can’t even name the price of soybeans in her state.

 

Of course, it doesn’t help that she believes in conspiracy theories or has other issues with how she runs herself in office. Why would one believe that healthcare workers are trying to make sure that coronavirus is still around or infecting others? It doesn’t make sense.

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/9/2/1974453/-Joni-Ernst-goes-QAnon-suggests-Iowa-healthcare-workers-are-bilking-the-system-with-COVID-19

 

There’s not much else to say. I just wish that there was more hope for Theresa and others in the Democratic party when they ran for office in the senate. But I plan to get more into that in a new blog post in the future covering all of the senate races not already covered. Let’s hope that I have the time to write these posts. And that’s provided that I don’t abandon these blogs at some point in the near future for various reasons like work commitments.

Politics: 2020 Polling Results

 

A lot has already been said about the polling from the 2020 elections. The common theme is that the polling was wrong. But was it? Polling said that Biden would win the election, which he did. He won with a huge gap in the popular vote between him and Trump. While I won’t mention every single poll, I’ll split this into three main categories: the gubernatorial elections, the senate elections, and the presidential election. I will ignore every other one. Polling comes from a lot of sources and not just one, but may only include October and early November polls.

 

The Gubernatorial polls were all right. All of the governors running for reelection won their races regardless of which party they were. That’s exactly what the polls said would happen. And the races without incumbents in them went the ways the polls suggested.

 

In the polls on the senate races, there were a lot of consistent toss-ups with at least one source saying that one side only would win with most of them and only one having the polls disagree. The polls about Maine and North Carolina were wrong. The rest were right with Georgia’s special election toss-ups by some consistently and the regular one split both ways (unless I got both of them switched by mistake). North Carolina was probably wrong due to a scandal that was revealed about the Democratic candidate late in the election cycle.

 

Now regarding the presidential poll, one can’t just do the election as a whole as you have to go state by state. The information that I was looking for seemed to change where it was at. But the gist of it is that Florida and North Carolina were both wrong while everything else was right.

 

Perhaps the biggest issue to keep track of are the sites of 578 and 270 to win. They seemed to be the ones that are most predicting a blue wave that never happened as the Democrats lost seats in the House (although not enough to lost their majority). 270 to win mentioned some of the polls that made things look better for Biden then they turned out to be (the end result still being good in the end for Biden). 578 might have been the one that most talked about the House races that weren’t even mentioned in this blog post.

 

In conclusion, I don’t believe that the polls were as wrong as people thought as most of them said exactly what was going to happen. It may have gone too far into how strong some of the candidates’ support was, but it was much better than some would have you believe.

Politics: 2020 Missouri Governor Race Results

 

When it came to the Missouri race for governor that happened last year, it was the incumbent, Republican Mike Parsons, against Democratic challenger Nicole Galloway. Mike ascended to the office of governor after his predecessor resigned after scandals in June of 2018. He has made some legally questionable moves that the Missouri Supreme Court decided to go along with for some reason, such as appointing a new number two, which goes against the Missouri Constitution. Plus, he didn’t seem to care as much about the coronavirus, even after getting it himself. Why is there not a mask mandate in Missouri?

 

That’s why I think that Nicole’s loss represents a lost opportunity for Democrats. There is a lot that could have been covered in the ads that wasn’t. Nicole was painted as untrustworthy. But most people knew that the ads attacking her were not true. But she never ran ads saying this that I ever saw. You need to counter lies that aren’t true. And you need to do this in ads on TV so people will see it and know what is going on. Nowadays, it doesn’t matter if it is true or not. If someone paints you or people close to you as untrustworthy, you will lose.

 

Because Mike doesn’t care that much about the pandemic, his is now one of many states that I have an avoidance preference of Missouri. This basically means not going to this state when I can avoid it. And I won’t be posting pictures of it on facebook typically for a while.

 

Another annoying thing about the ads is a dumb thing that keeps working over and over again. It seems that for any Republican to win in Missouri, all they have to do is accuse their opponent of being too liberal. It’s dumb and yet it keeps working over and over again. They don’t actually have a legit reason for not liking said candidate. They are just accused of being too liberal and that’s all that they need to do to win.

 

While Mike could run for reelection again in 2024, we don’t yet know if that will happen or not. He said once that he wouldn’t run for this or any other office again after this election so we’ll see if he holds up his deal or not. He may have won reelection, but that doesn’t mean he’s the better candidate. He certainly doesn’t do a good job for his state. But the majority of those that voted for him in that state just didn’t see it.

Politics: 2020 Illinois Senate Race Result

As much as I wanted a post on the results of the presidency back in December or earlier, I am glad that I haven’t done it yet and will work really hard to get it done at some point soon in the near future (I hope), although it might not happen until next month. I also have no idea at the time how long these random updates will continue and if it will go back to monthly ones instead. I also don’t yet know when I’ll see more of The Good Fight as that would supersede a lot of these political posts, but would undoubtedly still have different political things in it.

Anyways, let’s get to the 2020 Illinois senate race results. Every six years now it seems, one of the most boring and predictable elections happens which can be a nice change. I have no idea just how little the RNC cares about winning this election, but one can only assume that they don’t have any interest because they never seem to spend money on winning this seat at all. And while Dick Durbin, the winner of the race, doesn’t spend any money on ads either (at least on TV that I see), he is able to coast to a win easily as well.

Let’s face it: this senate seat won’t be interesting until Dick Durbin dies or retires from office. He has held this seat since the 90s while the corresponding senate seat keeps being fought over more and more and is normally occupied by a new person every cycle. I’ll have to keep track of that in 2022. He will hang on to his senate seat until the 2026 election with his term set to expire on January 3, 2027. I have no idea what else there is worth saying.

Politics: 2020 Indiana Governor Race Results

There is an important post for this blog that I want to do that isn’t ready yet and I needed to do something quick. Thus, I’m talking about the Indiana governor race from earlier this year. This was at one point going to be one of the races that I was eager about as I wanted there to be a change in who held the office at one point, but then changed my mind.

Basically, the race came between incumbent Republican governor Eric Holcomb, Democrat Woody Myers, and Libertarian Donald Rainwater. It would seem that a lot of people did not like Eric due to some of the restrictions that were put in place. But it doesn’t explain alone why Donald did as well as he did, getting at least 11% of the vote. Eric still won around 56% of the vote with Donald seeming to steal the votes from the Democrat. I didn’t support Woody since he was not that strong a candidate. Plus, I liked Eric’s efforts to combat the coronavirus largely due to him joining an alliance of largely Democratic governors.

Ultimately, Eric is now term limited and will not be able to run again in 2024. If he ever turns on me, then I will start counting done to when he will be leaving office since it is guaranteed that this will happen at a specific date. He will leave office when his term expires in 2025. I will not know what he could do after that in terms of a political future. Will he run for other office? I do not know. But I actually like the fact that he won and look forward to him continuing his time in office in the future.

Politics: 2020 Attorney General Election Results

I have an important post to cover in this blog, but I will not be doing that today. I hope to have that covered next before the year is over. I’ll be scheduling a lot of posts for different blogs to cover the rest of this year and one for New Year’s Day as well. Now I decided that it would be fast and easiest to write this post now. I will cover other results of races from this year later while covering some of next year’s elections and other things that I feel work well in this blog.

Now I do need to cover more in general the attorney generals that are related to the case that relates to Obamacare called California versus Texas. (Speaking of that, when are we going to learn the results of that case? I mean, it has had its only day in court so when are going to hear what the results are? Shouldn’t we know already?) Now I will split some of them into two groups and a picture in a later post should explain more. The ones that I call good are the orange ones. Of all of them that ran for reelection (which was all of them), note that the orange ones advance and will stay around until 2025.

Starting at the beginning, let’s start with the state of North Carolina. The race was between the incumbent Democrat Josh Stein and the Republican challenger Jim O’Neill. Josh won reelection and will continue to serve as a result. Let’s next get to the state of Washington. The race there was between incumbent Democrat Bob Ferguson and the Republican challenger Matt Larkin. Bob won reelection. In the state of Oregon, the race was between incumbent Democrat Ellen Rosenblum and the Republican challenger Michael Cross. Ellen won reelection. The last state in this grouping to mention is Vermont. The race there was between the incumbent Democrat T.J. Donovan and the Republican challenger H Brooke Paige. T.J. won reelection.

As for the states with attorney generals that are against Obamacare that ran for reelection, the ones that I’m calling the green ones, they also all won their elections and won’t be up again until 2024. I’m already counting down the days.

Let’s start with the state of Missouri. While Eric Schmitt wasn’t elected to this office before, he did win this office by winning reelection. This Republican won against Democratic challenger Richard Finneran. In the state of Utah, Republican incumbent Sean D Reyes won against the Democratic challenger, Greg Skordas. In West Virginia, Republican incumbent Patrick Morrisey won against the Democratic challenger, Sam Petsonk.

Now there was one of the green ones that will be leaving office. His name is Curtis Hill and he will be leaving office on January 11, 2021. He never had to face the voters of Indiana as after a scandal left him without a law license for a month, he wasn’t nominated to another term. Instead of him, the Republican party of the state (not the voters) chose Todd Rokita to be their nominee and he won against Democrat Jonathan Weinzapfel.

As for the only two states that had this office up for election this year, I might as well cover both of them before I get to the end of this post. In Montana, the incumbent Republican, Tim Fox, did not run for reelection. The race was instead between Republican Austin Knudsen and Democrat Raph Graybill. Austin won the election. The last state was Pennsylvania. The incumbent office holder, Democrat Josh Shapiro, beat the Republican challenger, Heather Heidelbaugh. 

That’s all that I need to cover for this post. I hope that you found it helpful and I will do a better job explaining the green ones versus the orange ones in the next post including the graphic that will make it all make sense to you. So stay tuned. There is more to talk about regarding a lot of the attorney generals in this country.

Politics: The Crusade Against Act Blue

Lindsey Graham couldn’t believe for a moment that people would want to give more money to his opponent than to him. He and some others were wondering how Act Blue was raising so much money for the Democratic candidates for office.

He thinks that Act Blue should be investigated. The Democratic fundraising site pulled in a lot of money for Democratic candidates in the 2020 election cycle. Still, it would seem that Democrats underperformed in the elections, not doing as well as they hoped.

But what is the crusade against Act Blue? Well, quite clearly, it is people like Lindsey Graham and others like him who think that openly giving money on a secure website is somehow bad because it puts him at a financial disadvantage. Of course, he still won anyways so maybe he will give up this idea of an investigation into a legal political donation site. What does he think is wrong with this site? It is hard to say.

When we have this thing called dark money, it very clearly puts some people at an advantage they wouldn’t otherwise have which is why a lot of candidates refuse to accept it. Dark money relates to Super Pacs and other things like it. Act Blue is very open and not like dark money at all. It is more likely that Lindsey Graham has benefited from dark money than by something like Act Blue. And that’s provided that people have even used something like that for him. Last I checked, the Republican counterpart to Act Blue was so new that most people might not know about it or use it.

Will there be any problems or issues if Act Blue is investigated? I wouldn’t see how myself. I mean, maybe something here and there could cause issues, but it is ironic that Republicans, people who are more likely to benefit from suspicious things like dark money, are wanting to investigate a very open site that emails receipts to the people who use it. Plus, if there have been some people that misused it, what would that mean in general? Would the whole site be bad and not just one person here and there? That’s why the crusade against act blue, if it was even that major an issue anymore, is kind of dumb and pointless.