via powerlineblog
Related: The best outcome imaginable.
In a bizarre late-night appearance, President Trump and his campaign seemed poised to challenge the results and vote-counting methods. While there may be questions to be asked of Michigan and Pennsylvania, Biden is closing the gap beyond a margin of error, making Donald Trump a one-term president, just as liberals had hoped.
So why are Democrats still acting deflated? For starters, Republicans look poised to hold the Senate, rendering any Biden agenda dead on arrival. Filibuster remains. No Green New Deal. No court packing. No statehood for Washington DC and Puerto Rico and with them four new Senate seats. No massive defunding and restructuring of police. Nothing. The activist left has been neutered for now. Thanks to a newly tilted Supreme Court, Biden’s attempts to executive-order his way around Congress have been severely crippled as well. Biden will occupy the Oval Office while the national media gives Kamala Harris the presidential treatment. This should suit the political right just fine. A Mitch McConnell-led Senate will also force a President Biden to moderate his Supreme Court choices.
And as a result: Stocks continue election rally as Wall Street anticipates gridlock.
Or not: Senate on the line: Are we heading for two runoffs in Georgia?
Mitch McConnell went into Tuesday night with a 53-seat majority, which included both Georgia seats. He lost two — Cory Gardner and Martha McSally (provisionally) — and picked up one in Alabama, where Doug Jones got clobbered by Tommy Tuberville. Susan Collins’ surprise win in Maine left many reassured that the GOP would control the Senate with a 52-seat majority no matter how the presidential race shook out.
Now, however, it looks like McConnell may be back down to 50 if Republicans can’t convert in a special election two months from today. That essentially gives Democrats full control of Washington, as Kamala Harris could cast tiebreaking votes to put Chuck Schumer in charge of the floor and pass whatever rules and legislation Democrats want. Either McConnell would need to get Joe Manchin to flip — which seems pretty unlikely — or get ready to fight for converts on every vote that takes place. And thanks to the 2013 nuclear option and the 2017 expansion of it, Biden could appoint nearly anyone he wants to any position he wants in that scenario.
At the end of his administration, Calvin Coolidge was quoted as saying that its greatest accomplishment, particularly in comparison with the disastrous Wilson administration of the previous decade, was “minding our own business.” Cocaine Mitch needs control over the Senate to ensure that’s the de facto outcome of a potential Biden administration as well.
GRIFTING POLITICAL CONSULTANTS HAPPIEST: Dems Spend More Than Quarter Billion to Lose Longshot Senate Races.
Democrats spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars in a futile bid to pick up longshot Senate seats in Kentucky, South Carolina, and Texas.
The campaigns of Kentucky’s Amy McGrath, South Carolina’s Jaime Harrison, and Texas’s M.J. Hegar burned through nearly $200 million, and outside groups backing them spent an additional $60 million boosting the three candidates.
JOEL KOTKIN: So Much for Turning Texas Blue.
President Trump won the state easily over Joe Biden, though his margin this time was just seven points, down from nine in 2016. Demographic changes seem to be part of the reason, as Texas becomes not only more urban—more than 85 percent of the population lives in cities—but also more heavily minority. Urban areas like Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston, notes demographer Wendell Cox, have become enormously attractive to the foreign-born, whose numbers have grown at twice the national average.
Yet diversity turns out to be a lot more diverse than pundits think. Hispanics now outnumber whites, and the nonwhite population, including many African-Americans, exceeds 57 percent. Yet Texas minorities tend to be less rigidly Democratic than those in places like California and New York. Indeed, Hispanic voters in Texas broke far more for Trump than expected, giving him a remarkable 40 percent of their votes, even in the longtime Democratic bastion of the Rio Grande Valley.
Texas’s Zapata County, which hasn’t voted Republican in a century, is 93.3 percent Hispanic and went for Trump 52.5 percent. Kenedy County, 76.7 percent Hispanic, went 65.5 percent for Trump; and Cameron County, 88.1 percent Hispanic, gave Trump 44.4 percent of the vote. In Starr County, a 95 percent Hispanic county and one of the nation’s poorest, Hillary Clinton won in 2016 by 60 points; Trump reduced that margin in 2020 to just 5 points. The number of voters leaving down-ballot races blank indicate that many in the county turned out just to vote for president.
This shift among Latinos comes just in time for the GOP, whose leaders fret about losses in the still largely white middle-class suburbs, with their generally well-educated voters, who have dominated growth in Texas.
Someone still needs to implement my Welcome Wagon Project.
h/t Ed