Politics: 2022 General Senate Races

I gave myself too little time to write this post as usual so I won’t be able to include all of what I’m wanting to in it. Know that class three is up this time. When it comes to the patterns with who flips with this class, it was normally the Republicans who gained seats in this class until 2016 when Democrats had a net gain of it.

 

Meanwhile, regarding the patterns with who flips with midterms, it is normally always the Democrats who lose seats during the midterms. Since the 2002 midterms, only once have the Democrats gained seats during the midterms (in 2006). This is bad, especially since two of these midterms took place under Republican presidents where the minority party, that is the Democrats, are posed to do better. 1998 was the most recent midterms under a Democratic presidency where the Democrats didn’t do that bad as they lost the same number of seats that they gained. Meanwhile, the last time that the Democrats gained seats in the senate midterms under a Democratic president was all the way back in 1962.

 

Still, I’m going to spotlight just a few of the candidates running for office in the senate elections this year before I get to some of the polling when I last checked a long while ago. While I don’t like Lisa Murkowski or respect her anymore after her vote on Barrett, there still are a few good aspects on her at times.

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/4/8/2024986/-Lisa-Murkowski-s-Letter-to-Constituents?pm_source=story_sidebar&pm_medium=web&pm_campaign=recommended

 

Perhaps the worst of the senators up for reelection this year is one Wisconsin senator named Ron Johnson. He has a weaker chance to win than most of the incumbents who are actually running for reelection. He still might win though, which is sad. Note that he is not part of this sedition caucus as it is known. Still, he deserves to be outsed more than any other Republican in this class that I can think of right now.

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/6/28/2037488/-Senator-Ron-Johnson-is-panicked-that-Americans-want-a-better-nation?detail=emaildkre

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/3/12/2020774/-Sen-Johnson-tells-host-he-wasn-t-afraid-of-Capitol-building-mob-They-respect-law-enforcement?detail=emaildkre

 

Another Republican senator that has had issues with me is Mike Lee of Utah. He isn’t that smart of a person and I guess that he’s just flat out rude at times. There isn’t much else that I can say about him right now.

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/9/25/1980860/-Utah-s-Senator-Mike-Lee-insults-intelligence-of-his-constituents

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/4/20/2093043/-Sen-Mike-Lee-is-betraying-his-country-still-hiding-what-he-knows-about-a-violent-coup

 

When it comes to the election for senate in Missouri, it is their state’s terrible attorney general who won the Republican’t primary. He doesn’t understand this legal concept as he is saying that he sued China over covid or wants to control the US border with Mexico, neither of which he has any authority over.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_non_conveniens

 

One of the most important things to remember about Republicans is how often they lie. They will vote against something that is popular with voters and the general public. They will then claim that they support that thing. Let’s keep calling them out on this.

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/3/15/2021157/-Watch-out-for-Republicans-trying-to-claim-credit-for-American-Rescue-Plan-s-state-and-local-aid?detail=emaildkre

 

With 5 of the incumbent Republican senators retiring from office (including a 6^th from a different class who will leave on the same date), you’d hope that the potential replacements on that side of politics would be good or at least better as in not so bad. But that’s not the case at all. Still, they might not be doing as well as they could have.

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/19/2111327/-OH-Sen-LOL-J-D-Vance-s-R-Campaign-Is-So-Broke-He-s-Now-Begging-Donors-To-Pay-Off-His-Debts?pm_source=story_sidebar&pm_medium=web&pm_campaign=recommended

 

While we won’t know until the election just how good or bad Democrats might do, it would seem that they aren’t going to do well, but that might not be the case. It is possible that only one seat is in play throughout the whole country with all of the others likely to stay within their own party regardless of the retirements. Last I checked, not one poll seems to show a flip from either party as likely to happen right now. We’ll see what happens. I can only hope that for once, the liberals can do better in the elections than polling suggests.

Politics: 2022 Gubernatorial Elections

As you might expect in any of my blogs, I’m going to do a quick update about this blog and some other things to include before getting to the point of this blog post. I shouldn’t have just stuck with two random things because I might have to wait until after the midterms to finally finish the post on the results of the 2020 presidential election.

 

If I had an extra post, I knew that I could cover everything that I would want to regarding the secretary of state elections, but may not be able to cover that one this year like I want to due to time constraints. I will thus only post these quick links to cover it here.

 

https://ballotpedia.org/Secretary_of_State_elections,_2022

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Secretary_of_State_Coalition

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_secretary_of_state_elections

 

Now I’m going to get to actually posting about the 2022 gubernatorial elections. This might be the only place where the Democrats might actually do well in the midterms. Although, they might not do terribly in the senate races with only Pennsylvannia really in play and no seats seeming likely to flip in either party. And they might be better off then they should be in the House races. This thought about Democrats doing poorly because they are in the White House right now might not happen at all, although I’m still pretty sure that gerrymandering is going to hurt them in the long run in the end.

 

The states with elections for governor this year are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvannia, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tenessee, Texas, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

 

Who is term limited or otherwise not staying in office? I won’t name names, but they are the governors of Arizona, Arkansas, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Oregon, and Pennsylvannia. When it comes to the races that I care about, I would want to review largely the governor’s respond to the covid pandemic. I’m thus not sure that I care about most of these races in the end. I might care a bit some about the Pennsylvannia due to the crazy MAGA who won that primary. And if the current attorney general of Arizona wins that primary, then I won’t want him winning higher office as well.

 

Despite Maryland’s governor, Larry Hogan, being a Republican, I think that he’s had the best response to the pandemic of all of the governors in any state in this country. This is why I want him to run for president in 2024. I also think that the Republican governors of New Hampshire, Vermont, and possibly even Alabama (I’ll get to this later) have had good responses.

 

People have seem to have been giving Gretchen Whitmore of Michigan a lot of crap. And that hasn’t been anyone on the left like me who knows about all of the crap that she’s been through. People did the anti-lockdown protests which involved a potential take over of that state’s capitol that was more than likely a precursor for the storming of the US captiol. Alternatives to her don’t seem good since a lot of them were found to have done voter fraud.

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/4/30/1941636/-WARNING-Potential-Terrorist-Threat-in-Progress-IN-THE-MICHIGAN-CAPITOL?utm_campaign=trending

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/5/13/1944597/-Michigan-extremists-stoke-violent-talk-ahead-of-Thursday-anti-lockdown-protest-as-commission-cowers?detail=emaildkre

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/5/24/2100063/-Massive-Election-Fraud-Scandal-Rocks-MI-GOP-s-Gubernatorial-Primary-BradCast-5-24-2022

 

Texas has a terrible governor who is terrible in all sorts of ways. While one of these links will be about something in Texas other than their governor, there are a whole lot of reasons why we should be worried about him. It’s bad enough that so many Republicans make a name for themselves by being controversial. But they actually become popular with their base as a result of this. That’s why I’m worried about him being the front runner in the presidential race.

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/2/19/2016984/-Texas-disaster-a-leadership-test-Biden-is-passing-with-flying-colors-while-Gov-Abbott-disappears?detail=emaildkre

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/8/16/2046202/-All-Republican-Texas-Supreme-Court-sides-with-Abbott-blocking-county-mask-mandates?pm_source=story_sidebar&pm_medium=web&pm_campaign=most-shared

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/5/25/2100228/-Beto-confronts-Governor-Abbott-during-his-Festival-of-Republican-Hypocrisy-amp-Crocodile-Tears?pm_source=story_sidebar&pm_medium=web&pm_campaign=recommended

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/6/17/2104716/-Greg-Abbott-s-stunt-busing-asylum-seekers-from-Texas-to-D-C-has-cost-1-6-million-and-counting?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=main&traffic_source=Connatix

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF6k_GcBGDw (Greg Abbot booed)

 

Now while I talked some about the Illinois race, I should get into more about Pritzker. Some feel that he hasn’t had a good reaction to the pandemic with most people thinking that he went to far when it is possible that he might not have gone far enough. He had a mask mandate in this state after the delta variant started and had to fight misinformation about it. His opponent is an anti-mask social justice warrior.

 

Pritzker response to misinformation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO5MVsAkdHg

 

An exceptionally poor governor in all of this has been Kristi Noem of South Dakota. Her state has some of the highest per capita dead of covid. And she seems to know nothing about how to be a good leader. Tim Walz of Minnesota has critized her as he should.

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/11/11/1995095/-Minnesota-governor-blasts-South-Dakota-governor-over-COVID-as-SD-s-positive-rate-surges-to-56?pm_source=story_sidebar&pm_medium=web&pm_campaign=recommended

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/2/15/2016159/-Gov-Kristi-Noem-may-have-illegally-used-state-airplane-to-attend-right-wing-political-events?detail=emaildkbow

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/kristi-noem-vows-vaccine-mandate-war-against-joe-biden-as-south-dakota-covid-cases-soar/ar-AANGFfc?ocid=mailsignout&li=BBnbfcL

 

The worst governor of any state right now could only be Ron DeSantis. I fear him being the GOP nominee for president in 2024 more than I fear Trump getting the nominee again. He has had such a terrible pandemic response that it is shocking that people like him.

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/4/4/2024440/-New-revelations-just-blew-up-FL-Gov-Ron-DeSantis-s-unearned-golden-boy-image-for-good

 

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcssKK1dMno (Ron DeSantis bad covid treatment)

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/11/24/1998105/-Boycott-Florida-PLEASE-DeSantis-is-trying-to-kill-us-all-for-a-dollar?pm_source=story_sidebar&pm_medium=web&pm_campaign=recommended

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/4/3/2024242/-Gov-Ron-DeSantis-is-taking-action-to-make-sure-no-one-escapes-from-Republican-mistakes?detail=emaildkre

 

https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/29/politics/desantis-concealed-firearms/

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/6/23/1955485/-Rebekah-Jones-State-of-Florida-falsifying-COVID-data-so-they-can-open-in-time-for-July-4th-weekend

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/florida-gov-ron-desantis-calls-for-restrictive-new-voting-laws/ar-BB1dQqFW?li=BB141NW3&ocid=mailsignout

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/2/18/2016792/-DeSantis-is-prioritizing-vaccinating-the-rich-and-white-threatens-those-who-question-him?detail=emaildkre

 

One of the people that I wanted to donate against in 2018 but didn’t due to money constraints and other reasons was Kim Reynolds of Iowa. I really regret not trying to get her out of office more than I did. I believe that she shouldn’t stay in office and here’s at least two links as to why she has failed to serve Iowa.

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/5/11/1944330/-Iowa-governor-who-declared-victory-over-coronavirus-now-quarantining-after-White-House-visit?detail=emaildkre

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/8/4/1966497/-If-districts-defy-mandate-on-50-in-person-learning-Iowa-governor-says-students-won-t-get-credit?detail=emaildkre

 

I tend not to give to politicians more than once. While I like Tony Evers and want him to stay in office, my donations might instead have to go to fixing that state’s Supreme Court in the end. They have fought his good measures like trying to change the primary date in 2020 which other states allowed in the end. More good could have happened, but didn’t because of this.

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/5/13/1944878/-Wisconsin-s-conservative-Supreme-Court-strikes-down-governor-s-coronavirus-stay-at-home-orders

 

While I don’t know how I feel for sure about Alabama’s governor, Kay Ivey, I do know that she seems to understand the basic idea about how vaccines for covid work and that they should be used. I don’t know if she’s backing up any of what she’s saying with what she’s doing, but I will say that she at least has this one thing right.

 

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/23/alabama-governor-covid-vaccinations-500638

 

Some other states are worth mentioning briefly. It is my belief that the governor of Georgia unfairly got his job. I don’t feel that the governor of Tenessee has handled covid well. I have mixed feelings about the governor of Ohio, but am otherwise okay with him staying in office right now. He did, after all, speak at the Democratic National Convention on behalf of why we should elect Trump, perhaps the only predominate person of any party to speak at the other one’s convention. I currently like the governors of Oregon, Nevada, Minnesota, New Mexico, and California, even though the first one won’t stay around.

 

One last thing to note before I end this post with some trivia is how some governors are treating refugees from Afghanistan. I don’t know how much of this is outdated. I can tell you that at least one of the two who doesn’t want them, the already mentioned Kristi Noem, has a very racist reason as to why they shouldn’t be accepted.

 

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/570202-35-governors-willing-to-accept-refugees-from-afghanistan-2-arent

 

It was 2014 when any Democratic governor last lost reelection to a Republican governor. While seats have flipped from Democrat to Republican in the years since then, not one of them was one who lost reelection. All of them either didn’t or couldn’t run for another term in office. Is that streak likely to end this year? We’ll see. It seems likely to happen in Kansas, but that might be about it this time around. I wish that the streak would continue.

Politics: 2022 Missouri Senate Race

I have about half an hour to write this post to ensure that this one is done. I just have not had that much time and am almost certain that some cast updates will be incomplete, but this may not be the case in the end. I hope not. Anyways, here’s a quick post.

 

Let’s start with the Republican primary. Just how bad are the candidates? We’ll, let’s see. We have not one but two members of the sedition caucus (Vicky Hartzler and Billy Long), a former governor who resigned after numerous scandals (Eric Greitens), an attorney general who sued to get rid of Obamacare during a pandemic (Eric Schmitt), and a person who did something controversial and is now waving his eternal Karen card (I’m not saying his name). There’s plenty of other candidates in there too. The only one that I like out of all of them is Dave Schatz. We’ll see if I still feel that way later, especially if he wins.

 

Sadly, I’m unsure who I would want to support in the Democratic primary. The person that I most wanted to win was Scott Sifton, but he dropped out of the race. None of them seem to have that much experience in office and at least two of them put me on email lists that I never signed up for as I normally only donate to races after the primary. I guess we’ll see who winds up being the nominee as undecided has always and only been the winner here. It doesn’t seem like most of the polling favors Democrats in any of the match ups.

 

There’s not too much else to say here. I can’t even endorse someone on the Democratic side, although I’d think that Lucas Kunce is probably the best bet, although Trudy Busch Valentine seems most likely to be the nominee. And the Republican endorsement of mine is Dave Schatz as he is the only one I’d want to see win from that side, even though I’m certain that I’d want the Democrat in any match up.

Politics: 2022 Illinois Gubernatorial Race

I have no idea when or hopefully even if I’ll finish my post on the results of the 2020 presidential election. I’m hoping that it can be next month’s post. If that won’t be the case, then I’ll be getting a post done in this year’s Missouri senate race instead. I might get a post in on the secretary of state elections too, although I won’t know for sure if I’ll have time for that, especially if I’m doing only one post in this blog done a month. Considering how every election is time sensitive, then I might as well do this one and not waste time on election based posts not related to something that needs done.

 

Speaking of stuff that needs done, I’m going to talk about the Illinois race for governor. It has the incumbent, J. B. Pritzker, running against a nurse in the primary, but otherwise poised to do well in both that primary and the general election. I even did a YouTube video called Pritzker doesn’t suck, which is in reponse to the signs thoughout the state that says that he does.

 

With that being said, this Democratic incumbent has made a lot of questionable choices in his time in office so far and there is some rightful criticism of his time in office. Oddly, though, we have not seen this in the ads so far before the primaries. Maybe they are waiting until after? Maybe they just want to know who will be the Republican nominee first before firing that weapon at him since they want to save their resources until then.

 

Let’s get to the nominees in the Republican primary. There are a lot of boring, unelected people in the race like Gary Rabine, Jesse Sullivan, and Max Solomon. There’s social justice warrior Darren Bailey who loves to promote the fact that he sued Pritzker and won while failing to add that the lawsuit affected only him and benefitted no one else. There’s Richard Irving who likes to use a lot of right wing talking points and will probably be the nominee. Then there’s Paul Schimpf, the only Republican in the race that I can stomach. He has experience, but you would not even know that he’s running around here due to his lack of ads. Since the Democratic primary seems pointless to me this time around, I’m voting in the Republican primary for Paul Schimpf. He’s the only Republican nominee that I’d vote for in the general election.

 

It seems like Irving and Bailey are attacking each other over who is the most conservative. Some are accused of being either liberal or even too liberal. Why is that a go to attack? And while I guess that it might work to an extent in a Republican primary in Illinois, there is no way that it would work in the general election in a state this blue. And despite the fact that Madigan has resigned over a year ago, he’s still used as a line of attack by Republicans.

 

Still, with the primary on June 28^th of this year with early voting already having begun, I would suggest just sticking with J. B. Pritzker in the general election and let him continue his time in office that he deserves to extend.

Politics: It’s the Ads

Well, I’ve delayed this month’s post again in the hope that I could get a really big post done, but this still isn’t happening. Maybe it will happen by next month, but I will get the backup done in advance while spending a potentially long time on this other post. I don’t want to be writing this post the day of, a bad habit of mine for blogs, yet here we go again! Plus, my addiction that I have to writing blogs is a problem that I don’t think that anyone else fully understands. And it is not something I’m planning to change. I realize that I need help, but won’t change my behavior relating to my own problem. What’s wrong with me?

 

Anyways, I should get to the point of what this blog is about. When I see political ads, there are a lot of things that I think about regarding it. I’ve started a clicker for it in regards to this year’s election. We just have several more months until it is over. But there are good ways to handle ads and bad ways. I want to encourage every single Democrat running for office to read this post and follow my advice for how to do good ads that will either win you elections or at least let people know that you were trying.

 

In 2018, both the Missouri senate race and the Illinois gubernatorial race had the Republican candidate for office lying a lot and the Democratic one calling them out on these lies. If one lies, the other person should always call them out on it. And I know that when one ad is showing proof that the lies are lies and the original ad doesn’t have proof or sources backing that up in their ads, then why should I believe the ones that are clearly lies?

 

Sadly, not everyone will see it as that. When Claire McCaskill called out Josh Hawley for his lie saying that he would protect pre-existing conditions, my brother thought that she was attacking his child. She wasn’t. The ad made no mention of his child. And shouldn’t one call out a lie for what it is? You can’t just let him claim that he is for that coverage when he has openly voted against it and supported a lawsuit to get rid of protections for people with it.

 

What’s always dumb is just how often, at least in nearby red areas where I live near, such as Missouri and Kentucky, the too liberal attack works. That’s not even a good argument as to why one shouldn’t be elected. They are too liberal. So what? How is that a problem? Do people really not see or care just how badly too conservative people are that are issues?

 

This leads to where people need to focus on in ads. In 2020, both of the Democrats who ran for senate in Kentucky and governor in Missouri never really focused on issues that could have lead to them winning. One would be more likely to beat Mitch McConnell if one does simple things like point out all of the terrible things that he has said and done. I could imagine that being a good ad. And one will need to do attack ads at times since they are likely going to be attacked by the other side anyways.

 

Mitch has given people plenty of reasons not to ever vote for him under any circumstances. It might help some people to simply air any and all of those things that he has said and that will make them realize that they shouldn’t be voting for a person who refuses to work with the other party and then blames them for everything that goes wrong. Going to the Missouri race, Mike Parson has said a lot of things, belittling the severity of the pandemic as nearly all Republicans do, that should be in the ads if you want to convince people not to vote for him. In neither race were these issues front and center in the ads. They weren’t mentioned at all. Did they want to win? You can’t just assume that people know what all they’ve said and done. If people paid attention to what was going on in this country, Republicans would never even get elected.

 

Another failure of the 2020 ad cycle was the fact that no one was attacking the Republicans for causing the longest government shutdown in history. I’d know that there are a lot of issues that could take more importance as well, but these weren’t happening in the ads. It was an important issue and now there’s not going to be a chance to use it again.

 

This leads to the current election cycle. If Republicans are painted to be the party of the January 6^th insurrection, they aren’t likely going to last. They might actually do terribly in the elections, or at least the House races. Point out the hypocracy of anyone who said that voters should decide Trump’s fate who then voted against what voters actually wanted. Call out anyone and everyone who praises those who stormed the capitol. Call out anyone who said that they never said one thing with the proof that they did say something, like Kevin McCarthy wanting Trump to resign. And especially point out everyone who admitted that it was a bad day at one point who won’t say that in the present or then voted against a commission to find out what actually went on.

 

That’s what the point of this post and the title of this means. If Democrats don’t want to wonder what went wrong after election losses, they should realize: it’s the ads. If you put anything that could help your cause or hurt your opponents, put it in the ads. Don’t just assume that they will know what you are talking about. Focus on making good ads and don’t just make any election a wasted opportunity to get rid of someone horrible.

Politics: The Primary Compromise

These blog posts are normally on the first Thursday of the month and I have a big one that I’m working on that isn’t done yet. To ensure that something is done, I’m going to publish this post here today since I’m unsure if I have the last Thursday free for this blog.

 

The title of this post basically has me thinking that if we don’t want an incumbent to win, we should think of a compromise about what to do in order to get them out of office. If they face any primary challenge, we should do whatever it takes to ensure that they lose that primary. I do realize that not everyone has the luxery of living in an open primary state. Others wouldn’t want to vote in the other party’s primary or donate to the other party. But I feel that it is a good thing to point out from time to time.

 

I won’t add too much more. I am posting a lot in a facebook group called I’m glad they finally passed health care reform that will talk about primaries this year. I hope to do updates into the attorney general races, House races, gubernatorial races, and senate races over time. I also want to do more updates into the sedition caucus, but largely as they leave office by posting about those who leave office as they leave. It started with 147 and the number will lower.

Politics: On Political Sign Theft and Vandalism

While I want to talk about the upcoming 2022 elections, I won’t do it much in this post, but will cover a link here to keep track of some things in the meantime. I really need to get the long post done on the presidential race from over a year ago that people are still fighting about. I hope that this link will tide you over as I get to what this actual post in about: 

https://www.270towin.com/2022-election-calendar/

There’s something that I want to write about. Getting to the actual point of this post, there are times when people of either party, but probably more than likely the Republican Party, wind up stealing political signs or vandalizing them.

Obviously, this shouldn’t be done. And not just because stealing and vandalism are both wrong and illegal, but because these people are just going to replace them with new signs which would further fund the campaign of people that one wouldn’t want in office. 

Simply put: don’t vandalize political signs or steal them either. If you don’t like them, do what I do: pretend to shoot them with paintball guns in your mind, getting a point for each drive. Don’t actually shoot them with anything or vandalize them in any way. Just pretend to.