Cortez Masto Wins – But Democrats Won’t Control The Senate
Great news. According to the Associated Press and MSNBC, Catherine Cortez Masto is now the projected winner in Nevada Senate race.
Of course, there are going to be court challenges. The Nevada race will be put under such close scrutiny that the issue may not be fully resolved for months to come.
MSNBC also declared that the Democratic Party will retain control over the Senate.
That’s not true because the Democratic party has not had EFFECTIVE control over the Senate since 2015 because there are two Republican operatives. Manchin and Sinema, who are posing as Democratic Senators.
Manchin, in particular, has a penchant for using his vote to manipulate the Biden administration to do his bidding…often for his own personal benefit.
As long as Manchin and Sinema are sitting in the Senate, the Democrats need 52 seats to offset these two Republican operatives who are buried like ticks in the Democratic Caucus.
If Warnock wins in December, as I hope and think he will, that would give the Democrats 51 votes in the Senate…and that is as good as it is going to get until 2024.
With a 51 to 49 spread, and Manchin and Sinema voting with the Republicans on keystone issues, the Democrats will end up with a 49 to 51 deficit and the Vice President becomes irrelevant because the VP can only break a tie. She cannot create one.
We know that Manchin will continue to use this power to manipulate the entire legislative process. This makes Sinema even more important because Sinema is the only person who can prevent Manchin from giving Republicans the win over and over again.
The REALLY BAD NEWS is that the Democraticc party will probably continue to act as if they really do have effective control over the Senate when, in fact, they do not.
The REALLY REALLY BAD NEWS is that news outlets like MSNBC will continue to misrepresent the reality of the circumstances in the United States Senate, generating a false complacency within the Democratic leadership and among rank and file Democratic voters.
Yes, this by-election was a great achievement for the Democrati party…but, no, it was not enough.
11/13/2022 @ 9:36 am
I have been thinking of posting on this issue for some time, but I lack the energy. The difficult thing about this is that it takes building a bridge between two perceptions of reality. One, is the general premise conveyed here in this post, and in one of your previous posts about why the Democrats will lose. The second perception is the correct one, or at the very least, more accurate.
Much has been revealed about America in this recent election. We still have warts and scars, but they are not as many, or as frightening as we once imagined. The American voter did reason her/his way through systems that would move us closer to the abyss of authoritarianism, and they chose democracy. As you say, there will be court challenges, but it is clearly more reasonable now to expect the endorsement of democracy by due process than its casual abandonment.
I’m not fond of quoting Nixon, but his particular use and interpretation of the “silent majority” concept fits well here. Much of our worry about the direction America was taking was based upon the notion that we were too ignorant, and or depraved to make the right, decent choice. I think we can allay those worries now. The MAGA is not large enough to achieve its desired ends, and it has lost the casual support of independents. MAGA has also lost access to big donors. The big donors are not true believers. They are parimutuel bettors. Their election denial scheme has come up lame, and this game is expensive. They wont bet on the lame nag again. Funding will fall to the low money donors to remain as true believers. They have no power.
The war of ideas is not between truth and fantasy anymore. The war is between factions on the right, and center right. The right media is abandoning the far right, and repositioning for the center right.
In negotiations, the last one to make an offer is losing. The last one to receive an offer can reject, or agree. The far right destroyed its leverage on Nov 8th. They can make demands from the far right, but those will seem even more ridiculous than before. From center left, America can either silently wait for acceptable overtures, or use the leverage that the momentary capture of independents provides. It will appear that we are losing the battle of the airwaves because Biden, and Ron Klain use quiet, substantive deal making. But, Biden’s first two years have been successful. The aberrational midterm response by the voters is a strong indication that the voting public agrees. The ‘Silent Majority’ is real.
11/13/2022 @ 11:21 am
I really enjoyed your surprising optimism…and I would agree with most of your analysis if I had never read “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” which delineated exactly how the Nazis came to power despite never being more than a small minority of the electorate.
Challenging the validity of election returns proved to be a failure. Attempts to use the flaws in the presidential succession law to overturn a valid election also proved fruitless. However, the far right now includes several million activists and the core groups are well organized, well trained, well equipped and well-armed and represent a significant percentage of the active US military, federal and state constabularies, media personalities even some elected representatives…and the thumb on the scale is their control over the Supreme Court.
My intent in my recent writings is to encourage readers to think very, very carefully before they conclude that we have won the war when all we have won is the first skirmish.
11/13/2022 @ 1:04 pm
I agree with that as well. This was only the “first skirmish”. The thing of it is, it was a bit of a defining skirmish. Trumpists had to (or will have to), abandon a position that states a false reality. Our biggest weakness was doing battle with them on their terms, or so it seemed. They could have unzipped our democracy with a victory on our election system structure. That failed. Voters made sure that it failed. They wont be able to mount an assault of that kind anytime soon.
11/13/2022 @ 2:05 pm
Optimistically our season has changed and it remains a spiritual weekend. Never too primitive to roll out the barrel nor the carpet of peaceful progress. Now I’m listening to Opera Pop Christmas 2023 while a sensation of billowed sail celebrates peace on earth. Harkened moments ago as humanitarians Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez gifted their $100 million Bezos Courage and Civility award to Dolly Parton. Sure our election results will resonate with more than a tad of bully-boy bellicose squabble. Sure our legislation will be compromised yet righteous, the best we can do. The people have spoken and shall prevail. Change has arrived. Truth has one definition.
11/13/2022 @ 4:59 pm
The idea that we control the Senate has been a false one all along and it has bothered me that the media has gone along with it because that view casts Biden in an inactive, incompetent, and extremely centrist light he doesn’t deserve. It’s like blaming him for inflation. The fact that we don’t answer this stuff bothers me.
11/13/2022 @ 6:33 pm
I thought I just did that.
11/13/2022 @ 5:33 pm
There is another thing about “controlling the Senate…”. It’s true that we can’t count on Manchin or Sinema for legislation, but those things are less important than judicial appointments, or a trial in the Senate if the GOP manages to pass articles of impeachment. Biden has managed to pass very important legislation already, with nearly the same cards in hand. 2 years from now presents a significantly better path for Democratic candidates. Inflation is already dropping, and mortgage rates dropped 60 basis points on Friday. Manchin and Sinema are not giving away more benefit than their membership offers Schumer as majority leader. Assuming they don’t both change parties, the Democrats have not optimal, but decent control of the Senate.
11/13/2022 @ 6:42 pm
I don’t see how you can see it that way. Manchin and Sinema were instrumental – but not unique – in the defeat of the For The People Act of 2021. To refresh your memory, this bill addressed voter access, election integrity and security, campaign finance, and ethics for the three branches of government, including national mandates for automatic and same-day registration, vote-by-mail, early voting, required the establishment of independent redistricting commissions to carry out congressional redistricting, while calling for the development of a national strategy to protect U.S. democratic institutions. addressed campaign finance by expanding the prohibition on campaign spending by foreign nationals, requiring additional disclosure of campaign-related fundraising and spending, requiring additional disclaimers regarding certain political advertising, and establishing an alternative campaign funding system for certain federal offices, required the establishment of a code of conduct for Supreme Court Justices, prohibited Members of the House from serving on the board of a for-profit entity, and establishing additional conflict-of-interest and ethics provisions for federal employees and the White House, and would have required President, the Vice President, and certain candidates for those offices to disclose 10 years of tax returns.
11/13/2022 @ 9:14 pm
It’s easy. There are two things to consider. Manchin and Sinema are not similar, and their states are not similar. They work together when it is convenient, but it wont always be. The denialism made a space for them that wont exist in the next two years. These two are on the fringes of the GOP when they are giving Dems fits. They have to work together. After the last election, the GOP itself will have difficulty working together. These two won’t be able to play the GOP off on the DEM when the GOP doesn’t have a play. While they are fighting within themselves, they wont.
The second thing to keep in mind is that the gambit with Secy’s of State, in the various battleground states was a structural attack. That essentially failed. Had that succeeded, that would have been devastating to free elections. They planned to throw elections to the states, which had one vote each. Voters shielded against that, which demonstrated a deeper no more sophisticated understanding of our system than I would have sworn that they had.
Americans get it, and they are protecting it. It will be harder to sell threats to it. Globally it strengthens the position of the concept of democracy, which would have been deeply wounded. And, I’ll say’ it again, federal judges. Biden can now continue to fill the federal bench. Had the Dems lost the Senate, that would have been over. That is more important than legislation in the next to years by several orders of magnitude. (Thousands of times).
One of the things I was going to write about in this whole what is America question was…Exit Strategy. I am currently planning to leave Ohio for Vermont. One of the primary reasons is that should this country turn into something that I dislike, Ohio will be within that bad area. The Ohio of my youth was in the safe area for my family. I still fear that that is no longer the case, but not as urgently. If Ohio is becoming another Alabama, or Mississippi, it is happening more slowly as a result of the last election. I’m buying a farm in Vermont because I am betting my life that in the arc of what remains of my lifetime, this country does have problems, and in Ohio, the fixes are being resisted more than, say, in Michigan. I know this country has problems. I am not wearing rose colored glasses. But, I can see that there is an America beyond Ohio’s borders that values my values. I expect that there will be time to live in that America, while this America either prepares to fight it, or comes to understand that it must fix itself.
11/13/2022 @ 9:30 pm
I have a friend who left Colorado for Maine because his wife’s family is from there. When he arrived he found an active and growing neo-Nazi movement with strong racist and anti-semitic characteristics. That’s not the Maine I used to know and love. Spent three years going in and out of the state as a director of the United Jewish Appeal in the early eighties…and there was no hint of that back then….but I suppose that was true almost everywhere except in the Deep South.
I envy you your move. I would desperately love to shake Florida’s sands off my flipflops. A nice little homestead in Vermont sounds just about right.
11/13/2022 @ 10:10 pm
Amy and I have been looking into it for a few years, with several trips to many towns. One of the many things that we learned is that New Hampshire and Maine are very different from Vermont. The differences are too many to name. And too deep to explore here, but they are immense. And, yes, homestead is part of the plan. A farmhouse and acreage, which will be a safe hideout, if it comes to that.
11/14/2022 @ 10:39 am
We are stuck in Florida because we’re in a reverse mortgage, which was the only way we could have gotten into this house, but it eats away at our equity month after month because that’s how a reverse mortgage operates. If I could, I would move to Colorado to be near my son but I can’t live at that altitude. I can’t handle cold weather either, so realistically New England is out. The mid-Atlantic states are unaffordable and Satya’s job isn’t transportable. I will probably die in Florida but that’s one of the selling features of the state. People come here to die.