2022 U.S. Congressional (and Other) Elections

[RoseMorninStar]

Wow...is he trying to lose? Or does he think all Republicans only watch Fox News?

I think he's smart/sly enough to know that people will eat up propaganda/believe what they want to believe. He's been doing it on his show for years. He's probably aware most people, in the current political climate, have made up their minds. To those that will vote for him, he could probably literally shoot someone on 5th avenue and still win. It's a trend.

[N.E. Brigand]

Good question, I want to say the latter because while Oz isn't really trying very hard, I think no one would go through this at all if they had no desire to win. But if he does win, I expect he'll be a largely absentee senator.

Meanwhile, Fetterman's campaign raised $1 million in the past 24 hours.

[N.E. Brigand]

A Daily Beast reporter has obtained one of Herschel Walker's child support agreements (for his youngest son, whose existence was unkown publicly before this summer). Apparently experts feel it's pretty stingy.

[N.E. Brigand]

As is often the case in debates, the moderator in last night's debate in Wisconsin's U.S. Senate race asked each of the candidates to name some positive attribute about his oppoent.

Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes, the Democratic challenger, praised Republican Senator Ron Johnson as a "family man."

Johnson complimented Barnes's good upbringing but only in order to say, "What puzzles me about that is: why has he turned against America?"

The audience booed Johnson.

(Earlier in the debate, the audience laughed when Johnson claimed that he'd been set up by the FBI.)

[N.E. Brigand]

The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania lied again:

"A touching moment at a recent campaign event for Mehmet Oz, better known as Dr. Oz, in Philadelphia — in which a Black woman broke down in tears as she described the fatal shootings of her brother and nephew, and was comforted by the Republican Senate candidate — made for riveting television, and brought to mind the former daytime TV host’s old namesake show."

This time he had the help of a bunch of lazy news outlets (like the Associated Press), who never bothered to look more closely before they reported on that event.

Had they done so, they would have learned that the woman works for Oz's campaign.

[N.E. Brigand]

This is not a still from Saturday Night Live:



It's an actual moment from tonight's debate between Senator Raphael Warnock and the challenger, Herschel Walker.

Walker claimed that Warnock was anti-cop. Warnock retorted that unlike Walker, he'd never pretended to be a police officer.

And then Walker flashed that fake badge and said, "I am work with many police officers."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

And then Walker flashed that fake badge and said, "I am work with many police officers."

What language is that?

[N.E. Brigand]

And then Walker flashed that fake badge and said, "I am work with many police officers."

What language is that?

I suspect he was torn between a lie -- "I am a police officer" -- and something closer to the truth, which is that he has done a little celebrity spokesperson work for some police organizations.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Using a prop apparently violated the rules of the debate as well.

[N.E. Brigand]

I think I just saw Tim Ryan. For sure I saw his campaign bus. I walked down a few blocks from the office to the drugstore for some cold medicine (aches, congestion, chills, but at least it's not Covid -- got a negative test result) and there was the Tim Ryan bus and near it was a small group of people surrounding a tall man

[N.E. Brigand]

In an NBC interview, Herschel Walker finally admits sending money to a woman who had an abortion -- and specifically he admits the $700 check she shared with reporters is his -- but he says it wasn't to pay for an abortion.

Walker says it was in additional spending money (beyond court-ordered child support ) for "the mother of my child".

But that child wasn't born until a few years later.

[RoseMorninStar]

In an NBC interview, Herschel Walker finally admits sending money to a woman who had an abortion -- and specifically he admits the $700 check she shared with reporters is his -- but he says it wasn't to pay for an abortion.

Walker says it was in additional spending money (beyond court-ordered child support ) for "the mother of my child".

But that child wasn't born until a few years later.

The sad truth is, will it matter? Voting is about something else.. certainly not the issues they claim them to be. I don't know if it's always been this way but it seems to be more about what people are willing to say or deny rather than truth or facts or even their own behavior.

Beau had a really interesting video on the 'most important midterm issue' today.

[N.E. Brigand]

Last Tuesday, Bloomberg published a story about Republicans' plans to cut and/or privatize Social Security and Medicare if they get control of Congress.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yesterday was the first day of early voting in Georgia and 130,000 people voted. The previous high for a midterm election was 71,000.

[N.E. Brigand]

Debating Democratic Congresswoman Val Demings last night in Florida, Republican Senator Marco Rubio essentially argued that: guns don't kill people, ballot drop boxes kill people.

[N.E. Brigand]

Oops:

[N.E. Brigand]

I first saw this clip cited by conservatives as an example of the supposed depravities of the left. But I'm also seeing Abrams's response being praised by liberals:



What strikes me about it is that in the 1970s, there were evanglical Christians who approved of the Roe v. Wade decision on the very grounds that Abrams lays out here.

[N.E. Brigand]

Joy Hofmeister, the Democratic candidate for governor in Oklahoma, seemed to surprise not only Oklahoma's current Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, but also the debate's moderator when she correctly noted that the violent crime rate in Oklahoma is higher than that in either California or New York. The moderator said he would check on that and report back later (I don't know if he did). The governor flatly denied it and held up the claim for derision.

In fact, crime rates in Republican controlled states are, on average, significantly higher than in Democratic controlled states. And in Oklahoma, it's not even possible to blame Democratic mayors of large cities (as Republicans are wont to do), because the state's two largest cities, which do indeed contribute to the state's high rate, have Republican mayors.

[N.E. Brigand]

The Washington Post sent a reporter to a recent Pittsburgh Steelers game to interview potential voters. Unsurprisingly, folks from the city were likelier to vote Democratic and folks from the country were likelier to vote Republican. This young woman, who already voted, split the ticket in the biggest races, casting a ballot for Democratic candidate Josh Shapiro in the governor's race but for Republican candidate Mehmet Oz in the U.S. Senate race. She says that "What's happening now isn't exactly working for us, so maybe change it up a bit ... [because] everyhing's so expensive." She finds the Republican candidate for governor (Doug Mastriano) too far right on issues that are important to her like "protecting the right to legal abortion" and "social justice topics" in general. (And she has some unspecified objections to John Fetterman.)

How on earth has Oz -- who describes himself as "100% pro-life" and says abortion is "murder" from the moment of conception -- convinced her that he won't vote with the rest of the Republicans to ban abortion? And what will she do when he takes that right from her?

But also, is she some sort of plant or does she just naturally gravitate toward election reporters? In 2018, she told a reporter that attending a Trump rally in 2016 was "actually terrifying: it was like I was in a horror movie," but now she says that she's OK with Oz supporting Trump?

I now see the Post did a series of these in multiple cities, and there are questions about how typical the respondent here in Cleveland is of the local population. But what galls me about that fellow's response is his belief that global warming is a serious problem but that we can't do anything about it. Not to mention that he thinks Tim Ryan is a much better person and candidate than J.D. Vance, but he doesn't want Democrats in control of Congress because feels that they've done everything wrong for two years. (No specifics are mentioned -- but he seems to be rich enough that Democrats have raised his taxes. That's a small segment of the population, but there are a lot more who believe it's true of them even if it isn't.)

[N.E. Brigand]

The Republican candidate for Senate from Arizona, Blake Masters, appears to be somewhat hypocritical regarding U.S. relations with China. He's called for a ban on Chinese nationals even working for U.S. companies (which I think is an extreme position) and he's said that his boss, the venture capitalist "Peter Thiel[,] and I have basically avoided doing business with China at all costs ... to my knowledge, there’s not a single startup that Peter invested in or that I invested in at Thiel Capital that’s Chinese." But as shown in the article at that link, that's not true.

It's been reported by multiple outlets this week that Peter Thiel, whose financial assistance played a big role in securing nominations of J.D. Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona, is trying to get a passport from the nation of Malta. He was born in Germany and already has passports from that nation, the U.S., and New Zealand. I assume this has to do with tax benefits, but it does seem at odds with the America-first positions espoused by his candidates.