It’s too late to help with GOTV in state and/or local races, and by tonight, it will be time to hold our collective breaths and wait. Today, we offer a moving election story from Valarie Kaur (not the video, a different story), along with a wildly optimistic prediction from Michael Moore. We also offer the latest polls on key races in NM and the U.S. Hang on! Tomorrow will be a late night, but those annoying commercials are almost over.
Polls Project Very Tight Races Nationwide
With races tightening throughout the nation, it looks like a very long night if you hang on to the bitter end. Here is a summary of the latest poll results I could find. Let’s start with the bad news first. The Dems retain the House only with a miracle as fivthirtyeight.com sees 83 of 100 possible scenarios where the GOP retakes the House..
The Senate News is Only Mildly More Encouraging
Fivethirtyeight calls this a toss-up, and until you look under the hood it looks very toss-up like. But with Warnock and Fetterman, now both trialing narrowly and no obvious safe Dem. Senate wins, it is hard to be optimistic.
If the Dems, lose the House, January will be full of plans to form committees to investigate the FBI and DOJ, while also impeaching Biden for… well, for being Biden and doing his job.
In NM–Things Look Much Better
The race for Governor has tightened considerably. Where once MLG held a cozy double digit lead, depending on the poll she is leading by 3-5% with Ronchetti gaining momentum. Fivethirtyeight.com has her lead at 5.6%.
The news from the most recent ABQ Journal polls is comforting for the three U.S. House races with Leger with a solid, very likely insurmountable lead and with with Stansbury and Gabe clinging to narrower leads.
That is the good news and recent polling from fivethirtyeight.com’s House projections page affirms these polls with:
- Stansbury’s lead at 12.5%;
- Leger’s lead AT 18%
But sadly, fovethirtyeight.com finds Gabe trailing Herrell by 5%. If you go to the link above for 538 House projections, you will land on a map of the nation with dots in every state for all the U.S. House races and you can hover your curser over any blue or red dot to get the most recent polling. In NM there are 2 blue dots and one pink.
In the Governor’s race, fivethirtyeight.com gives MLG a 5.6% lead and an 84% chance of winning.
The most recent polling I found for the Attorney General, Secretary of State, Treasurer and Land Commissioner, was from the NM Political Report, with:
- the AG holding an 8% lead,
- the SOS holding a 15% lead,
- Land Commissioner holding an 8% lead and
- Laura Montoya leading by a 7% margin for State Treasurer.
So if the polls are correct, we retain MLG as governor along with the AG, SOS and Treasurer’s office. So assuming these races hold and most NM House Dems overcome their GOP challengers, the political environment in the Roundhouse will not have changed materially.
It appears that both Teresa and Melanie are safe for U.S.House Dists. 1 and 3, but most sadly it looks like we likely lose the race to unseat Herrell in USHD 2, despite having a tremendous candidate in Gabe Vasquez.
It could be worse, but we have some thinking to do about how we message progressive policies, so working people understand clearly how these policies are worth fighting for. and are not elitist Marxist fantasies, as the GOP relentlessly claim. But, we’ll do that deep dive after the votes are counted. For now, how about an inspiring message from Valarie Kaur.
Valarie Kaur: Dear Beloved Community
The midterm election is on Tuesday, November 8th! On the ballot are issues that will impact our bodies, our communities, our climate, and our democracy. Every seat in the House of Representatives is up for grabs, as are 35 U.S. Senate seats and 36 governorships. Our votes on Tuesday will shape the course of history.
I invite you to reclaim your vote as an act of love — love for one another, our earth, and future generations.
When I feel despair nip at my heels, I remember my grandfather’s story. When he arrived in America in 1913 as a Punjabi farmer, immigration officers took one look at his beard and turban and threw him into detention. It was a time of white nationalist rage and elected leaders fueled terror and violence (sound familiar?). My grandfather would have been deported — I would not be here — if it weren’t for a white lawyer, an ally who helped set him free. Still, it took decades of organizing for dark-skinned immigrants like him to win the right to vote. Once my grandfather finally became a citizen, he was an elderly man with a white flowing beard. But he never missed an election. Even when he was old and frail in his nineties, my father carried my grandfather to the polls in his arms. Just so he could cast his ballot.
My grandfather had every reason to give up on this country. And yet, he stayed in the fight. For us.
That’s the kind of ancestor I want to be.
This election, no matter how dark it feels, I ask you to stay faithful to the labor. Refuse apathy. Make a plan to vote. Carry others to the polls with you.
And now, cuz we all gotta dream, Michael Moore predicts a blue tsunami…
| The prediction below is from Michel Moore’s blog entitled onlineMike’s Midterm Tsunami Truth #38“The Day After the Blue Tsunami” MICHAEL MOORENOV 7 All I have to say is, may it be so…. It is now less than 29 hours until the polls open. Whose heart didn’t just skip a beat reading that sentence! This is it my friends! Everything and anything that we do in these next 30+ hours will decide the fate and the future of this unfinished Democracy. Tens of millions of our fellow Americans would prefer we not finish it. I understand. For them, the country has become too black and brown, too many women “taking over,” too many languages from the huddled masses they don’t understand, too many educated people, too much compassion for the have-nots, the disabled and the families who can’t afford a Christmas tree. Plus, TV shows got smarter, sports got dumber and spaghetti in a can just doesn’t seem to taste right anymore. If you think you are scared of us losing on Tuesday, imagine what it feels like for our not-so-loyal opposition who are now forced to live in a country where the majority no longer go to church, the majority of adults are no longer married, the majority no longer have a gun in the house, the vast majority support nondiscrimination laws for the LGBTQ+ community, and the vast, vast majority are not haters, bigots, climate deniers, election deniers or drive a General Motors car. Think of how scared they are of Tuesday! So come with me on a brief but joyful jaunt down the yellow brick road to “The Day After the Blue Tsunami” to see what our future could look like after we defeat the insurrectionist-loving Republicans. (Spoiler Alert: It looks a lot like the America we’ve always wished we had — and now will. Spoiler Alert #2: This peek at our future will only become a reality if we force the elected Democrats to give us the country they’ve promised us. As we know all too well, they will need our guidance and assistance.) Sometime between Tuesday night at 11pm ET and Friday morning we will know the outcome of the Midterm election. And if it goes the way it should go, then we will have the chance to create a different America in the next two years. By holding the House and hopefully picking up 2 new seats in the Senate (to counter any blockage from Manchin and Sinema), then we will have a clear shot at improving so many things which need our attention. So, if you will, sit back, close your eyes and imagine it’s sometime in 2023. It’s the America we’ve long hoped for. The New USA — brought to you by the libs, the teachers union, critical race thinkers and the makers of classroom kitty litter… The year of 2023 began with the first day of the new Congress on January 3, 2023. The new 53-majority Democratic Senate voted to eliminate the filibuster. From that day forward, President Biden and the Democratic Congress were able to pass a long list of legislation to make life better for working families, the Earth in general and the Democracy specifically. With the filibuster gone, there was no Republican interference. Also on Day 1, the Dems needed to make two strong statements — and they did, by taking these actions: They passed a series of election reform bills so that voting is now easier — and voter suppression is against the law. Gerrymandering was also outlawed. This should prevent the next Trump from trying to upend our election system. And Congress began the process to eliminate the Electoral College!No one works for less than $25 an hour any longer. All workers now get “paid family leave time” when needed. All workers also enjoy a minimum of 4 weeks paid vacation every year. Workers are encouraged to join unions that will negotiate and advocate for them. ObamaCare is now “USA Universal Care” — a system of free health insurance for all. No one ever has to pull out their wallet again at the doctor’s office or at the hospital. It is fully funded by taxing employers the way they were always taxed for Medicare. By eliminating the private profit-making insurance companies, profit and overhead costs have been brought down by at least 25%. Finally, thanks to Congress instituting the proposal from National Nurses United to charge a penny tax on all shares traded each day on Wall Street, billions have been raised to cover USA Universal Care. By learning from the Canadian system, no American now is ever denied care. There are no co-pays, no deductibles. One popular improvement to the American system, unlike the Canadians and British, the U.S. covers mental and dental care. By shifting the focus to health prevention, costs have been brought way down — and more importantly, less people are getting sick for less periods of time. Who knew what a 30-min walk would do!Now that the required 38 states have passed the Equal Rights Amendment for women, it has finally been placed in the United States Constitution! That took long enough! (Weren’t there women on the Mayflower?)As soon as the 535 members of Congress got their locker keys and cafeteria passes, they got right to codifying the original Roe v. Wade into a nationwide law making abortion legal in all states and territories, keeping all birth control legal and easily available — and authorizing research on a male birth control pill, plus making vasectomies free and easy to obtain. The government is now funding free pre-K for 3 and 4-year-olds. Community college and vocational school are also now free. The rich are finally paying more in taxes. This seems to have made all the hard-working people and parents in the country feel better. Capping the out-of-control prices of the cost of homes also helped. Hollywood got back to making movies but seemed in some cases to have forgotten how to make a great one. People wanted comedies so there were more of those. The richest man in the world bought Twitter and in the first week fired half of all the company’s employees. By email. Nonetheless, we were all so relieved that the crazy Trumpsters not only lost the election, many of them bought a large swath of land in Utah and moved there, waiting to be beamed up by JFK, Jr. where he was expected to take them to one of Jupiter’s moons where Sean Hannity would guide them and rule with wit and compassion. Trump had already built a signature golf course there on Ganymede, and even had the gravesites mapped out for his other two wives, his five kids and Gary Busey. We didn’t really miss any of them. We liked not having to be inundated with the stress of feeling like our world was going to fall apart any minute. Soon, we could no longer remember what MAGA stood for. Which was a good thing. |
This deliriously optimistic look into the future through the eyes of Michael Moore, left me with two thoughts. First how sad it is that this look to the future is so fanciful and so removed from our likely future. An second, I want some of what Moore is smoking.
In solidarity & hope,
Paul & Roxanne
Categories: Election, Political Reform & National Politics
George Lakoff has been urging Dems to change their messaging for decades. Alas. They’re still going for facts rather than the kinds of clever, advertising messaging GOPs have mastered. We allowed GOPs to call Social Security an “entitlement” and never came back with “it’s called INSURANCE”. There are numerous examples of our failures. Until Dems can convince white Southerners and other blue-collar voters that government healthcare isn’t just for “Black people” we’ll continue down the same sorry road we’re on.
If Bernie couldn’t convince those voters of the values of his programs who can? Then again, that particular block of voters has already been brainwashed about “communist” programs and other “evils”. C’mon Dems. Let’s get some genuinely clever advertising folks on board.