This was supposed to be a “shellacking”, with Republicans taking over pretty much every body up for election this year. The last runoff for a U.S. Senate seat from Georgia now decided in Democrats favor, it’s time to answer the question:
WTH?
The Republicans failed to wrest a single U.S. Senate seat from us Democrats and despite winning about 3% more votes in U.S. House races than the Democrats which should translate into about a 13 seat majority, they won only 8 more seats than us Democrats. We flipped 3 Republican held governorships to the Republicans 1, and 1 Secretary of State to the Republicans 0. Here in Minnesota we held every statewide office on the ballot and the state House while picking up 3 seats to gain a thin 1 seat majority in the Senate.
Again, WTH?
We didn’t win this election, the Republicans pretty much lost it by running unqualified extremist candidates they must have scraped up off the internet’s skid row. Despite Reverend and Senator Warnock’s well earned win in Georgia, the easy survival of a bunch of Republican candidates there proves that Georgia is not a purple state and candidate quality still matters a whole lot. Same thing happened in the Minnesota Senate races when a poorly vetted Republican candidate got himself in a scandal, our wise DFL Senate caucus vigorously campaigned in that Republican leaning district and won it. Republicans winning only about half the U.S. House seats there overall vote predicted suggests they’re having the same “wasted vote” problem as the Democrats, as rural Republican voters uselessly “run up the score” by their huge victory margins while their extremist candidates turned off even 3rd tier suburban voters. Here in Minnesota’s congressional races we Democrats won 4 seats with 329 thousand more votes than we needed while the Republicans won 4 seats with 281,000 more votes than they needed, figure in the lower voter turnout in Republican districts and that’s pretty much as wash. Thus the “political wing” of the Neo-Nazis AKA the Republican Party will struggle to govern in congress and well earn the title of “lower house” while in our Minnesota legislature they’ll engage in tiring floor theatrics while our Democrats govern.
WTH happens next election?
I’ll discuss our political future ’round New Years…
Sassy Democrat 