Last Call For House Definitely Afire

Dave Wasserman, Cook Political Report's House guru, is the first to admit his calls were catastrophically wrong, and that the likely voter models did not account for the 70% turnout in this week's election favoring the Republicans so much, nor the massive ticket-splitting as Never Trump Republicans and independents racked up huge voting totals for GOP House candidates.

 

Republicans appear to have swept at least 18 of the 27 races in our Toss Up column, with Democrats leading precariously in only three of those races and another six up in the air. Republicans also appear to have won at least four of the races in our Lean Democratic column (FL-26, SC-01, TX-23 and TX-24) and even one race in our Likely Democratic column, where Miami Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala (FL-27) went down to defeat.

Meanwhile, beyond two North Carolina seats that Democrats were guaranteed to pick up because of redrawn district lines, Democrats appear to have only picked up one other GOP seat with Carolyn Bourdeaux in GA-07. This Gwinnett County seat also performed strongly for Biden. There's also a chance Democrat Hiral Tipirneni will defeat GOP Rep. David Schweikert in AZ-06, but there are plenty of Arizona votes left to count.

There will be a lot for everyone to unpack in the days, weeks, and months ahead about what much of the survey data got wrong at multiple levels. But credit should be given to the NRCC, led by chair Tom Emmer and executive director Parker Hamilton Poling, as well as the Congressional Leadership Fund led by executive director Dan Conston, for continuing to invest on offense when other consultants wrote races off.

The day after the election is always a fog of war, but there are three lessons from the early House results:

1. Democrats suffered a catastrophic erosion in Hispanic support.

The races where Republicans most vastly outperformed everyone's priors were heavily Hispanic districts that swung enormously to Trump. These include both GOP pickups in Miami (Carlos Gimenez in FL-26 and Maria Elvira Salazar in FL-27) as well as Republican Tony Gonzales's hold of Rep. Will Hurd's open TX-23. Amazingly, Republicans didn't lose a single seat in Texas.

2. It was a stellar night for Republican women.

We already knew before the election five more GOP women were coming to the House from safe red seats: Kat Cammack (FL-03), Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA-14), Mary Miller (IL-15), Lisa McClain (MI-10) and Diana Harshbarger (TN-01). But after last night, Republicans are on track to more than double their current count of 13 women.

Among last night's GOP winners were Maria Elvira Salazar (FL-27), Victoria Spartz (IN-05), Ashley Hinson (IA-01), Michelle Fischbach (MN-07), Yvette Herrell (NM-02), Kendra Horn (IN-05), Nancy Mace (SC-01) and Beth Van Duyne (TX-24). It's also possible they will be joined by Young Kim (CA-39), Michelle Park Steel (CA-48), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (MN-02), Nicole Malliotakis (NY-11) and Claudia Tenney (NY-22).

3. Democrats' "national security freshmen" found ways to survive an otherwise poor night for their party in the House.

Although Democrats' challengers mostly fizzled, the four Democratic women from Trump districts who signed a letter last September launching an impeachment inquiry built bipartisan brands that paid off: Reps. Elissa Slotkin (MI-08), Mikie Sherrill (NJ-11), Elaine Luria (VA-02) and Abigail Spanberger (VA-07).

We'll have much more to say soon, but for now it's clear that House Republicans' centerpiece of female recruitment was a success, while House Democrats' centerpiece of Texas was a bust. And, Speaker Nancy Pelosi will need to navigate a much narrower majority in January.

 

The Dems got destroyed in Texas, and things went pear-shaped in Florida too. Latino outreach in Arizona was successful however. There are lessons there if the Dems choose to learn them.

 

Republicans already have.

The Fight For $15 Flies Far For Florida

Florida voters handily approved a hike in the state's minimum wage to $15 an hour, and Republicans are seething.

Voters in Florida have decided to amend the state’s constitution to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour by Sept. 30, 2026.

With more than 60-percent of voters approving of Amendment 2, the state’s minimum wage will gradually go up.

The Florida Constitution, Article X, Section 24, will be modified to increase the existing state minimum wage from $8.56 an hour to $10 an hour starting Sept. 30, 2021. It then will increase by $1 each year until reaching $15 an hour in September 2026. Afterward, increases in minimum wage will be adjusted for inflation.

Lawyer John Morgan and his campaign, Florida For a Fair Wage, spearheaded this amendment.

“I’m confident because Floridians are compassionate and know that giving every worker a fair wage means not just lifting up those who would directly benefit but lifting up our broader economy when hardworking folks have more money to spend,” Morgan previously said.

In a letter to the Miami Herald, the president and CEO of the Florida Restaurant & Lodging Association wrote that an increase in the minimum wage would result in business owners finding ways to control costs.

“Solutions include reducing the number of employees and the hours that remaining employees work and seeking labor alternatives like automation,” Carol B. Dover stated ahead of the amendment’s passage.

 

The thing is though the "crushing job-killing minimum wage hike" hasn't killed the other seven states where $15 minimum wage is now law.

 

You know what has hurt low-paying jobs?

 

COVID-19 and the Republican response to it.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

As he all but promised to do on Twitter last week, Donald Trump held a 2 AM press conference and declared victory with millions of ballots still uncounted, and says his campaign will go to the Supreme Court to stop counting.

President Donald Trump early Wednesday morning kept up his tactic of characterizing counting all ballots as cheating.

“Millions and millions of people voted for us tonight,” he told gathered supporters at the White House. “And a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people and we won’t stand for it.”

It’s the same old story: Trump has argued for weeks that vote-counting should be stopped after Election Day — meaning, just throw out any ballots that take more than a few hours to count.

“We were getting ready for a big celebration,” he added. “We were winning everything, and all of the sudden it was just called off.”

“Frankly we did win this election,” he lied later.

 

It gets worse. Much much worse.

Shortly after Trump said “we’ll be going to the Supreme Court, we want all voting to stop,” MSNBC anchor Brian Williams abruptly cut in to call Trump out on his misleading claim that “frankly, we did win the election.”

“We are reluctant to step in, but duty bound to point out when he says we did win this election, we’ve already won, that’s not based in the facts at all,” Williams said.

 

We're now in a full-blown capital C Constitutional Crisis. 

 

We have been for a while now, frankly, but this is one where we don't come back from as a country without tremendous bloodshed if Trump is not stopped here. He is openly stating he will steal this election through the Supreme Court.

I've been warning about this scenario for months now.

 

It's finally here.

 

Only historically catastrophic things happen from this point on.

StupidiNews!

• A new Harvard Business School study finds that the number of Americans unable to pay bills has doubled since Republicans allowed CARES Act unemployment benefits to expire.
• Hurricane Eta has reached Nicaragua as a Category 4 storm, Eta is expected to move over inland Nicaragua and Honduras over the next 24-48 hours.
• Current US hospitalizations for COVID-19 have topped 50,000, the highest level in three months, as the number of daily new COVID-19 US cases continues to top the 100,000 mark.
• New Jersey voters have legalized recreational marijuana use, while Oregon voters have decriminalized a number of federally illegal drugs in small doses.
• A new study on haunted houses being "scary fun" finds that there's a hormonal mind/body balance point between being terrified and being thrilled by fear.