…has had a terrific holiday!
It’s been incredibly busy time for me, as should be obvious by the dearth of posts, what with visiting family and having my daughter over but now things are coming back to normal.
I’m deep into my next novel and have another project that likely will be started this year. I don’t want to say too much about it but it’s something I’ve wanted to do for quite a while with a very talented individual I’ve known for many years now.
Let’s see what happens!
As we come closer to the end of 2022, it occurs to me this past year seems to have been the year when the COVID pandemic became less serious than before.
In large part, I suspect, is the amount of vaccines people have taken. As of October and according to bloomberg.com, 12.7 billion shots have been given to date worldwide. The same article notes 613 million doses have been distributed in the United States alone.
There’s also the fact that, unlike the early years of COVID, we now have a better understanding of treatments for those who are infected versus when precious little was known.
Nowadays, it is rare to see people with masks on in stores or out and about in general. I’ve had four shots, the two initial shots and two booster shots to date. I may have caught COVID during the very first wave of the pandemic and before we in the United States even knew it was here. We’re talking about very late January or early February of 2020.
My father, it turned out, caught COVID but didn’t know it… and why would he when it wasn’t yet thought to be in the U.S.? Anyway, people around him also got sick and that included me, though my illness was incredibly mild and amounted to feeling really fatigued. It wouldn’t be until nearly a year later when going to a yearly checkup that blood samples revealed he had COVID antibodies in his system and the only time he was sick was back then in early 2020.
Anyhow, by March of 2020 it was official that COVID was in the U.S. and it seemed the country and the world was in an upheaval.
And as I said above, it now appears the wave, now nearly three years later, has crested.
That’s not to say everything is what is was before. There are high rates of respiratory illnesses appearing in children and there are still those who are catching COVID. Hospitals, too, are seeing an influx of patients but, again, it seems like maybe the worst of it is over.
So are we approaching some return to normalcy?
I don’t think so. Not yet anyway.
I’m a big fan of movies but it seems like the movie industry in particular has taken some serious body shots from not only COVID but the internet and streaming services and I seriously wonder if it will every go back to what it was before.
When the COVID lockdowns began in earnest, there were several films the movie studios had hoped to release but were forced to hold back. Once they were released, it seemed like it was either too early or they wound up going to streaming and… I don’t know how “well” they did that way.
The bigger ones seem to be Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, Wonder Woman 84, and the last Daniel Craig Bond film, No Time To Die. Regardless of what one feels about these three films, and there were those who didn’t like them, they seemed to come and go and I can’t help but feel they didn’t do all that well at the box office.
Since then, there have been movies that have done extremely well. Top Gun: Maverick, for example, has been a box office juggernaut. The latest Spider-Man film also did very well. But they seem to be exceptions rather than the norm.
The streaming services from the various movie studios tried to step in where movie theaters were unable to and certain movies were released “simultaneously” in theaters and streaming or, in other cases, very shortly after the theatrical release and this, I feel, might have created unintended consequences.
Why bother going to a movie theater, especially during the time when doing so might be somewhat risky, when you can simply watch the same film in your home and via streaming?
In the past, when we had crappy television sets, there was a clear visual advantage to seeing films in theaters. Nowadays, with new technology and genuinely massive television screens available showing films in Ultra HD, there is less and less difference watching at home versus in theaters.
The purchase of Warner Brothers has also resulted in some really concerning news. Of course there was the infamous “cancellation” of several features, including the all but complete Batgirl film, and one wonders if maybe the new company might be having some genuine financial difficulties.
James Gunn, director of Guardian of the Galaxy and the second Suicide Squad film, has been put in charge of the DC comic book character properties and reportedly they are coming up with some kind of multi-year plan for the release of features more akin to what Marvel did in its early phases.
…but…
I can’t help wonder if maybe at this point the whole superhero genre is dangerously close to being done.
Mind you, box office receipts would say otherwise but even the many Marvel properties released of late don’t seem to be garnering the enthusiasm of before, even if they do still seem to be box-office gold. I suppose, in the end, if they keep making a profit they will continue being made but where before you hardly heard anyone say anything negative about the Marvel features, now you have many people noting they don’t feel these newer works are all that special.
I’m no psychic so I don’t know how things will turn out. Perhaps the movie industry will dust itself off and get back on its proverbial feet and we’ll once again look forward to new releases like before.
And as the movie industry goes, perhaps so too will the rest of our lives. The pandemic sure does feel like it is slowly fading from our lives versus what we faced before.
Can a new normalcy return?
I stumbled upon this article on by Isaac Serna-Diaz on msn.com…
Given some of the more frightening exchanges one hears about with air travel, I feared this would be another of them, with the impatient dude who wanted to sit beside his girlfriend getting in some altercation with the man who sat in the middle seat.
Turned out not to be the case, but as a somewhat frequent flier, I was curious as to the general consensus regarding this situation.
See, on my last trip back home from visiting my daughter, we were in a really small aircraft that had two seats on either side of the aisle. My wife and other daughter had the seats on the left side of the aircraft, window and aisle, and I had the aisle seat on the other side of the aisle. This way, we were “together” even if separated by an aisle.
In the two seats ahead of mine and sitting beside the window was the guy I mentioned in my Metropolis review (you can read that here). As the aircraft filled, a couple -man and woman- appeared and they had the seat directly in front of mine and the window seat beside me.
The man asked me if I could move to the aisle seat in front of me so that he and his girlfriend could have the two seats together. I told him that I would rather stay where I was as my wife and daughter were directly across the aisle with me.
The guy seemed… well… for a second there I truly believed things would go ugly. Not that he did anything, mind you, but again, you get used to reading about altercations on aircraft over stupid things and I wondered if he was the type that wouldn’t take no for an answer.
My fears -whether real or not- amounted to nothing as that gentleman then asked the guy in the seat in front of mine and by the window if he wouldn’t mind going to the window seat behind him and next to me. He agreed to do so and that was that.
Yep, he’s the young guy who was watching Andor on his cellphone.
I didn’t think much about that until this article.
So the situation in the article was somewhat different. Here we had a larger aircraft with three seats on each side of the aisle and in this case the gentleman and his girlfriend were kept apart by a guy who had the middle seat and didn’t want to give it up.
Reading the article, it seemed people fell on either side (pardon the unintended pun). Some felt it was rude of the guy in the middle seat to not move over either way, to the window or aisle, and let the man (who happens to be a writer for Saturday Night Live) sit next to his girlfriend.
Others noted that perhaps the passenger was a nervous flier and taking the middle seat was his way of coping with flying.
Me? I side with the passenger who didn’t want to move. All the way.
Why?
Easy: You get to pick your seats. The man and girlfriend (in my case as well as in the one in the article) obviously procrastinated in either getting their ticket or checking themselves in.
If you know you’re going to fly and you want to sit with your loved ones, then how about you make it a point to both get your ticket and assign yourself a seat well in advance that will have you and the rest of your party together?
Mind you, I’ve had situations where my family and I have had to sit in different seats. Once, my elder daughter was some five rows and across the aisle from where we sat. Once, many years ago and when that same elder daughter of mine was a small infant, my wife and I were forced to sit separately and my then infant daughter was one of those wailing kids that drive everyone on a flight psychotic…
…to this day, my wife tells me I was damn lucky to have a separate seat and that the passengers around her were glaring at her with daggers in their eyes. As someone who has had flights with crying kids, I don’t blame them at all.
But this too can certainly happen as well.
So my point is this: Shit happens and there are times when you don’t get your way and it sucks but that’s life.
If the guy in the story above was comfortable in the middle seat and didn’t want to give it up, it’s on you that you didn’t get seats assigned next to each other rather than the fault of the man who obviously got the seat he wanted (for whatever reason) and refused to give it up.
Tweeting about it, while interesting, doesn’t solve the problem.
Get your seat’s assignments earlier and you won’t have to worry about such a problem cropping up.
So as I’m writing what I’m hoping will be the last politically tinged post in a while news comes that Brittney Griner, WNBA player who was infamously detained/jailed in Russia for drug charges, has been released…
Needless to say, this is a great thing. Ms. Griner was released as part of a prisoner swap. There is at least one notable American, former Marine Paul Whelan, who remains since 2018 imprisoned in Russia and, apparently, the Biden administration tried hard to secure his release as well but were unable to.
Regardless, its good news.
Though I had absolutely no knowledge of Ms. Griner until she was arrested, I can’t help but feel happy for this accomplishment and hope the Russians eventually allow for the release of Mr. Whelan.
Obviously, POLITICS FOLLOW…
So a couple of days ago and on December 6th George had their run-off election to determine who would serve the next six years in the Senate, incumbent Democratic candidate Rafael Warnock or Republican ex-football player Hershel Walker.
There was a runoff because in the midterm elections held on November 8th, Mr. Warnock didn’t receive the necessary 50% of the votes needed to be declared the outright winner. He did receive the most votes, mind you, but just not enough. So the runoff came and, while the results were close, Mr. Warnock won.
This effectively ends what seems like a too long midterm election cycle, one that proved surprising in many ways.
Chief among them is the fact that the supposed “red wave” never materialized. While Republicans did regain control over the House of Representatives, their margin of victory is very slim…
In the House of Representatives, the magic number is 218 and, as you can see from the graphic above, Republicans gained 10 seats to have an 11 vote margin over Democrats but only 5 votes which can provide them a majority in any votes. In other words, if a measly 6 Republicans decide they don’t like whatever is being presented on the floor and the Democratic party holds their votes together, whatever proposals may not pass.
One would think Republicans can maintain a united front. After all, for the previous two years the Democratic Party held the exact same numbers. However, unlike the Democratic Party, the Republican party is far more fractured and there are far right wing elements within it which are trying to exert their power and this may not sit well with others within the party who aren’t quite as extreme in their views.
We’ll see.
As far as Mr. Warnock, he represents the 51st Democratic Senator. In the Senate, there are 100 representatives and the current Vice President can serve as a “tie breaker”. In this election cycle, not only did the Republicans underperform in the House, though they did gain control, in the Senate they actually lost one seat. Now, the Democratic Party has an actual majority here, which will help them with their legislation and, especially judicial picks. Now the committees which push judicial candidates for formal votes will have a Democratic majority which therefore means these picks will be sent to the full Senate much more quickly.
In this day and age, a positive for sure.
In the meantime, Ex-President Donald Trump seems to be having a very bad time of late. He recently hosted Kayne West and Mr. West decided to bring along Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist, to the event. This, along with a court finding the Trump Organization found guilty on all counts of tax evasion, begins to show how bad a time he’s been having of late. Add to that the fact that the majority of candidates he endorsed for this election cycle, including Mr. Walker, lost and you start to see the first inklings of the Republican party maybe realizing he is a drain on their party.
Maybe.
Politics are an interesting and, especially these days, toxic topic to delve into.
On December 5th it was announced actress Kirstie Alley, perhaps best known for her role in the TV show Cheers, had passed away from cancer at the age of 71. My first experience seeing her was in the wonderful Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, easily (IMHO of course!) the best of the Star Trek theatrical movies…
I don’t know Ms. Alley other than the roles she’s played on movies or TV but I was surprised to see many people opining on how (here comes that word again) toxic she had become in the past ten or so years. Seems Ms. Alley, who is also a Scientologist (another strike against her to many!) also became very pro-Trump and hard right wing in her final years, espousing some of the more far out/lunatic rantings coming from that side.
I genuinely feel for people who have fallen into the sway of these right wing politics, especially the things offered from right wing media that seem from the outside looking in as being idiotic at best and dangerous at worst.
In the past few generations, really since Nixon was essentially booted from the White House, it seems like the ring wing in this country has slowly but effectively weaponized their strategies and have used the media to a sometimes alarming degree in swaying voters their way.
And they have taken a lot of people into their sway, including, it would seem, Ms. Alley.
Maybe I’m naive but its my hope that many of these people realize that much of the hate -and it usually is just that, focused hate- is being used to outrage them and keep them in their camp. Hate can be like a drug, one that keeps people in your sway.
I’m not saying these people are mindless drones, though at times they may talk like them.
Perhaps with this election and the fact that Republicans -and especially those who seemed to be farthest right- lost and underperformed as they did that maybe this particular dam is starting to crack.
We’ll see, won’t we?
There was a time lawyer Michael Avenatti was a regular fixture on certain news shows.
He was brash, charismatic, and represented Stormy Daniels in her lawsuit against Donald Trump and payments he made to her to keep quiet about an affair he had with her and the non-disclosure agreement (you can read about what happened here).
During this time, Mr. Avenatti wasn’t afraid to call out the Donald Trump on a very public forum and, on the left side of the political aisle, he became something of a celebrity for doing just that.
Welp, if you’ve read the article linked to above, things came crashing down on Avenatti and hard.
Brash talk, charismatic presence… it didn’t matter. Mr. Avenatti was, it turned out, was taking money from his clients even as he presented an avenging angel image. How he could keep such a high profile and appear on news programs as he did and then, behind the scenes, think he could get away with stealing from his clients…
…it’s just unbelievable.
Anyway, he has now been sentenced for his criminal acts to 14 years in prison.
Incredible downfall for someone who looked like he literally had everything going for him!
These are mighty strange days.
For two years the world has been dealing with a pandemic and while it seems like it is somewhat receding -thanks to vaccines and better treatments- I suspect we’ll be dealing with the fallout of this for a while.
The economy has been impacted and I suspect will remain impacted for a while. There’s a Toyota car dealership I pass by now and again, a fairly new very large one that was completed a couple of years before COVID, and each time I pass it I take a look at the parking lot. Before COVID, their very large parking lot was literally full of new vehicles for sale. Nowadays, even up to this past weekend when I drove by, there are maybe 1/8th of the cars there.
Other things have changed as well.
From little things like finding disposable paper coffee cups (8 oz are hard to find in paper for some reason) to movie theaters having a hard time getting back to pre-pandemic levels. It seems streaming films might have hurt the movie studios as there are many people who perhaps no longer desire going to a movie theater to see the most recent works. That’s not to say all recently released films are facing fewer audiences, but going back to way the things used to be isn’t happening immediately.
I don’t know if it’s related to all this, but I’m also seeing all kinds of personalities express some wild crap.
I mean, there was always provocateurs like Alex Jones (Rush Limbaugh was a predecessor and we’ve always had the craziness of the Fox network and their “news”) but it seems like there are more and more personalities who are making really out there statements and engaging in out there actions.
First on the list, perhaps, is Elon Musk. From the time he proposed to buy, and then did buy, Twitter he’s been really out there, making oddball statements and, frankly, acting like someone who’s out of control.
There are reports that since he took over Twitter the platform has displayed more and more right wing comments, and one wonders just how far to the right Musk has gone. An odd thing, certainly, as I suspect most of the clients who purchase his vehicles don’t have such ideologies. One can’t help but feel like his pronouncements and ideological shifts are going to hurt the bottom line of his most prosperous company… and its a shame because I still feel Tesla is a terrific company and releases terrific products.
It was startling, after so much bad press regarding Musk, to see them formally release their Semi truck and look good doing so (there are those who feel the Semi truck is smoke and mirrors but I don’t know. It may not be “perfect” in its first iteration but like all products whatever “problems” or limitations it has, I’m certain, will be dealt with in time).
Donald Trump has continued his ranting and raving and there are those who suspect it may be in part due to the fact that all his legal woes are coming to a head and he may be about to face some real consequences to his actions.
I dunno.
Part of the problem this country has with people in very high office is that even while people talk about justice being blind, there also exists this “treating people with kid’s gloves” philosophy, particularly when it comes to people on the higher echelon of our society. And what is a higher echelon than being an ex-President?
The reality, I strongly suspect, is that if anyone other than Donald Trump had engaged in his many dubious activities, they would have met a far harsher reality from the justice department than he has. In the case of Donald Trump, there’s a sense of being overly cautious and making sure whatever they are investigating and whatever they may charge him with, that the case be beyond solid.
I have absolutely no love for Donald Trump. I feel he’s a blowhard and a nasty piece of work. But I don’t think he’s stupid. The other day he stated the Constitution should be suspended and he should be put back into the presidency. Is it a tell that he realizes the long legal road he’s been on might reach something of an end?
And speaking of Donald Trump, he would have a big dinner and invite Kanye West, aka Ye, who seems to be another person who’s really fallen off the deep end. His latest rants are -incredibly- pro Hitler and anti-Jew and he seems oblivious to how hurtful and harmful these words of his are. There has long been a feeling that West is “out there” and that he suffers from mental issues. In the past few days especially, his behavior may seem to reflect that and, if this is indeed the case, I do hope he gets the help he clearly needs.
There was a commentator on the news who stated the behaviors of Musk, Trump, and West are displays, to varying degrees, of the old adage of “absolute power corrupting absolutely”.
All three of these men have had decades where they’ve been at the top of their game. Trump has lived his full life being close to, if not at, the top of the real estate market. Musk, similarly, has had a string of successes after a rocky start with Tesla. West is considered -and has been considered for a while now- a musical genius and has a legion of fans.
Each of the three men have likely not faced people who have dared to tell them no and, perhaps, this is why they stray outside the boundaries of what most of us may feel are appropriate.
Today we have the internet and the ability to scrutinize each and every move any of these people is assured, so maybe their actions are being exposed more than for similar people in power in the past. And I do wonder also if the pandemic and the extraordinary situation we’ve gone through has also had some effect.
Either way, one hopes in the coming year we glide into a better normal.
We’ll certainly see.
After this, I promise I’ll lay back and find other stuff to talk about. Regardless…
BEWARE – THERE BE POLITICS DISCUSSED HERE…!
Still there?
You have been warned…!
So as of today, Wednesday the 16th of November, a full eight days since the midterms elections on the 8th, the following is true:
a) Many thought there would be a big “red” wave which did not materialize at all.
b) Not only did it not materialize, the Democratic Party will retain control over the Senate. To be determined is whether they will have 50 or 51 votes. This is because the Ralph Warnock/Herschel Walker race in Georgia goes to a tie-breaker as neither received 50% of the vote. Warnock did get more votes but, given this is essentially a “new” election, I suppose anything is possible.
c) the right wing media has had a really hard time explaining what happened and some of the explanations are…
…well, I guess the word “yikes” comes to mind.
Sorry for the quality of the video, it’s the best example I could find without getting too deep into the madness of YouTube.
Let me be clear here: I find most -perhaps even all- of what Jesse Watters says here loathsome. If we are to take his words here at face value (and with many of the Fox talking heads one sometimes wonders what is real and what is said to simply be provocative) he seems to view women -single women in particular- as being some kind of lesser/dumb creatures who are “brainwashed” into voting Democratic. Further, he states that they need to get married so as to “wake up”. At this point they will vote for the clearly better Republican choice.
Yeah, sure.
As I didn’t want to totally lose my mind, I’ve seen/read some choice items here and there from the right wing side and they really seem at a loss as to why they underperformed so badly here. Mr. Watters’ comments are idiotic, for sure, but I haven’t heard all that many right wing analysis for the underperformance which is more insightful, especially in interviews of politicians of the Republican party.
One thing that no one on that side seems to want to talk about, for example, is the effect of the insurrection of January 6th. In the right wing echo chamber that event is either too distant or completely irrelevant. Given what happened very recently to Paul Pelosi, husband of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and the abhorrent reactions from some in the right wing to it, I suspect this violent act only reminded people not in the thrall of Fox News and its like of just how nasty those on that side can be.
Then there’s the Dobbs Decision which essentially nullified Roe v. Wade and struck down the right to abortion. This ruling not only inflamed many (including unmarried women) because not only was it a bad decision, IMHO, but it also remined people of the chicanery and lies which lead to the Supreme Court having a majority in place to overturn it.
To wit: Mitch McConnell not allowing Barrack Obama to get his nominee for the Supreme Court to get a hearing and be put in. McConnell’s reasoning was laughable then, and proved incredibly hypocritical when he subsequently hurried the nominees of Trump into position on the court. Following the Dobbs decision, people scrutinized the hearings several of these now Supreme Court justices gave back when they were originally nominated and it was clear they were at best very slippery in their responses about Roe v. Wade… if not outright lying.
Not a good look for people who now sit on the upper echelon of our court system.
And who can forget Donald Trump himself? His at times outrageous actions and hateful -even bigoted- rhetoric during his presidency turned off a lot of people. He simply couldn’t show himself to be nice. He had to always go nuclear on it seemed every issue.
Trump’s handling of COVID, further, led to the deaths of many, many of his supporters. By scoffing at the dangers of the pandemic, he emboldened his fans to ignore vaccines and preventative care. Today, one can find articles pointing out that more Republicans died from COVID following the appearance of the vaccines than Democrats. Whether those deaths may have affected the vote count is questionable and may not have mattered.
What one wonders, however, is how many people who scoffed at COVID subsequently had a big scare with it and realized -maybe too late for relatives or loved ones- that what Trump and the right wing media said about it was wrong. And if what they said was wrong about the pandemic, then maybe, just maybe, this might have opened their eyes enough to look away from the right wing media environment.
The point I’m making is that there probably wasn’t any one single thing that caused the red wave to not materialize. And it certainly wasn’t single women.
Yesterday, November the 15th Donald Trump announced he will run for President again for 2024 and the announcement was met with, it appears, yawns…
There is at the very least a realization in the Republican party that Donald Trump is toxic to their election chances. It’s taken them a while to realize this fact but here’s the thing: Like or loathe him, Donald Trump commands a lot of voters’ attention on that side of the political spectrum. Certainly he does for voters who until now have flocked to Republicans.
So there appears to be attempts like what you see in that New York Post front page to put him down, to not give him attention.
This is a very calculated effort but here’s the problem: It might not work.
What if Trump re-engages with the 30 or so percent of people who will vote for him no matter what? What if when the Republican debates come around he manages to blow Ron DeSantis -or whichever other candidate is out there trying to get the Republican nomination- out of the water like he did with Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush?
Conversely, what if what the Republican power structure and right wing media is doing works and he doesn’t get the Republican nomination? Does Donald Trump give up and quietly go away?
Man, I do not see that happening.
In Donald Trump I see a guy who doubles and triples down on his actions when they fail.
So what happens if Donald Trump doesn’t get the Republican nomination? Is it entirely out of the realm of possibility he decides to run as a 3rd party candidate?
Either way, I suspect today the more rational minds within the Republican party must be realizing his brand of politicking is a net drag on them.
As I’m not a fan of the Republican party as it stands today -way too extreme for my taste- I’m nonetheless curious to see how this all plays out in the next couple of years.
It’s morbidly entertaining, if nothing else.
…about the November 8th election.
Obviously…
BEWARE… POLITICS!
It’s Friday the 11th and as of today, we still don’t have a total tally or knowledge of who “won” either the House or Senate.
We can make some guesses and it appears the Republicans will take over the House but with a very slim margin and it appears, at least so far, that Democrats will indeed keep the Senate, though their number may be the same, ie 50 seats, or one extra to 51 (plus the Vice President who can vote in the Senate would make them have 52 votes).
What I find most intriguing today, apart from still being quite pleasantly surprised by most everything that happened (save to my state of Florida) is that it appears there’s been an awakening with the youth vote.
I believe, like many others, issues regarding the Dobbs decision, which invalidated Roe v. Wade, is going to keep haunting the Republican party for a very long time. Already there was a report that the party leaders in Florida are looking to further limit abortions and… I just don’t see that helping their -or Ron DeSantis’- cause.
For so many years the issue of abortion was played well by the Republican party as an instrument to draw in people but now that the Supreme Court has taken away Roe, the sleeping tiger (as the old cliche goes) has awoken and it feels like this may be the start of something quite bad for the Republican party.
Of course, we’ll see.
Either way, the decision may well have led to this non-Red wave, which so many pundits were predicting…
Here’s the thing that must be stressing Republicans out even more: They still have Trump hollering from the sidelines and many of them are only now, after this election, starting to talk openly on (finally) leaving him…
Worse, Trump has begun to bad mouth Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida and who many of the right wing pundits feel is the best choice to run for President in 2024…
Trump, I do believe, wants desperately to be President again and realizes this may well be the one -and only- way to avoid all the many, many legal problems he is currently facing.
Which will, I believe, make things incredibly hard for DeSantis and those who hope the Republicans will somehow help their cause by the next election cycle.
I wonder.
Ron DeSantis may have surprised many by his win in Florida, but I have grave doubts he will be able to project himself well to the rest of the country. Much as I don’t like Trump, I can’t deny he has a great deal of charisma. He talks big and very confidently and for some, that was enough. Even when whatever he said made no sense.
DeSantis doesn’t have that charisma. If anything, he is a black hole of emotion, a guy who looks awkward in public and when he talks you almost expect him to start screaming that those darn kids get off his lawn.
He may, in time, be able to smooth his public persona, but I wonder.
Either way, the big takeaway in the days following the election, apart from how poorly the Republicans did/how well the Democratic party did and how it appears the Dobbs decision will continue to reverberate throughout the country, is how now there are those in the Republican party who are willing to do the unthinkable and denounce Trump.
Too bad they didn’t show any of that kind of bravery when he was being impeached.
Though it should be obvious from this post’s headline, nonetheless…
AHEAD LIES POLITICS! BEWARE!!!
Going into the midterm elections of November 8th, it was looking pretty grim from the Democratic party. Historically, the party in power tended to do badly in the midterms, often losing a large number of seats in the House of Representatives as well as the Senate.
Pundits predicted the so-so economic news of late coupled with inflation and a lower approval rating for President Biden and Republican enthusiasm to vote pointed to the possibility of a “red wave”, ie a massive turnout for Republican candidates.
It was not to be.
Even today, two days after the elections, we still don’t know for certain if the Republicans will take over the House of Representatives (they likely will, but by a very small margin). The Senate remains in play as well, with the very real possibility the Democratic party might pick up 1 overall extra seat from what they had before to where the Republicans may gain control over the Senate by an equally thin margin.
So while it is possible the Republicans gain control over the Senate and House, their margins will be razor thin at best.
There is plenty of teeth gnashing on the Republican side as to why this happened and it appears there is a consensus, even within the right-wing ether, that the Republican party really blew it here. In fact, the only “bright” spot for them was what happened in Florida with the re-election of the Governor, a man who it seems Fox news is keen on anointing the next big thing (I have my doubts he’ll play all that well outside of this state, frankly) and the re-election of Marco Rubio to the Senate.
But that was it.
Let’s see what happens next…