To hear President Biden tell it, the process and the results were a success not just for Democrats, but for democracy. He had warned in the campaign’s final run that the republic’s fate was “on the ballot,” an argument that seems to have resonated.
“It was a good day, I think, for democracy,” Biden said in a victory lap (or not-as-bad-as-expected lap) dressed up as a news conference. “Our democracy’s been tested in recent years but, with their votes, the American people have spoken and proven once again that democracy is who we are.”
Election officials managed high turnout “without much interference at all; without any interference, it looks like,” he said, an apparent reference to worries right-wing groups might try to disrupt the process.
The Daily 202 put the glass-half-full, glass-half-empty question to Jennifer Victor, a U.S. politics expert at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. Jennifer’s verdict: Full.
“Given the number of candidates on ballots this year who distrust the legitimate outcome of the last election, the stakes were high in this cycle,” she said. “By any reasonable measure, the U.S. earned a passing grade on its democracy test this year.”
Voters in crucial battleground states rejected election denying candidates to be secretary of state, “increasing the likelihood that 2024 election administration will be honest,” said Jennifer, who underlined “we have seen little election-denying nonsense in the post-election period.”
It’s true that the conduct of the election went pretty smoothly.
- As my colleague Rosalind S. Helderman chronicled, officials and voting advocates said it “felt remarkably normal — with only the usual smattering of mechanical issues and routine human errors but no systemic problems and, blessedly, no violence.”
Yes, election deniers “tried to undermine this election before polls even closed, seizing on problems with vote-counting machines in Arizona and a likely delay in counting in Pennsylvania to spin viral theories of vote manipulation — led, as usual, by … Trump, who claimed without proof that the election was being stolen from Republicans.”
“Complaints filed by voters showed, too, that efforts by members of far-right groups to insert themselves as poll watchers in some precincts led to scattered confrontations,” Roz reported.
But there were no catastrophic failures, certainly nothing to call into question the outcome.
My colleague Emma Brown reported “[a]t least 145 Republican election deniers running for the U.S. House had won their races as of Wednesday afternoon, ticking past the 139 House Republicans who objected to the counting of electoral votes following the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.”
“And while Democrats are projected to prevail in gubernatorial contests in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, several high-profile races remained too close to call Wednesday morning — notably in Arizona, where Republican firebrand Kari Lake has made denying the 2020 election results a central theme in her campaign for governor.”
In some Senate races, election deniers prevailed: J.D. Vance won in Ohio and Rep. Ted Budd carried the day in North Carolina.
- In battleground state races for secretary of state — the officials who oversee elections — Democrats won in Michigan, Minnesota and New Mexico. Final results were not yet available for Arizona, but the Democrat was leading as of Wednesday night.
“In Nevada, Republican secretary of state nominee Jim Marchant — one of the “alternate” slate of electors the Nevada GOP submitted to overturn Biden’s legitimate 2020 victory — was narrowly ahead of his Democratic opponent with 77 percent of ballots counted,” Emma reported.
If elected, Marchant could “attempt to thwart certification of the popular vote in the 2024 presidential race — something he has said he would have done had he been in office in 2020,” Emma noted.
And don’t overlook the role of Congress:
“With election deniers poised to constitute a majority of the House GOP caucus, they are likely to wield great influence in the selection of the next speaker should Republicans gain the majority. The speaker would in turn preside over the House the next time electoral college votes are sent to Washington to be counted, following the 2024 presidential election.”
So while America’s elections infrastructure seems to have passed the 2022 stress test, another one looms in just two years.
Prices rose less than expected in October, as inflation may be easing
“Prices rose 7.7 percent in October compared with the year before, and 0.4 percent over September, the same rate as the previous month, according to data released Thursday morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s far above normal levels, but it was lower than analysts had expected. So the report brought some hope that the soaring cost of living may be easing. Officials at the Fed have made clear that they need to see months of encouraging data to get a sense of how the economy is evolving. The latest data may mark a shift, but they’ll want to see it continue,” Rachel Siegel reports.
Republicans expected to narrowly take House; Senate in limbo
“Control of the House and Senate remained uncertain Thursday, with counting continuing in key races. Anticipating victory in his chamber of Congress, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has started making calls asking for support in his bid to be the next speaker. As for the Senate, two critical races in Arizona and Nevada remain too early to call, and a third in Georgia is headed for a Dec. 6 runoff after neither Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D) nor Republican Herschel Walker won more than 50 percent of the vote,” John Wagner and Amy B Wang report.
Russia says troops begin to withdraw from key Ukrainian city
“Russia said its troops began pulling out of a strategic Ukrainian city on Thursday, a retreat that would represent a humiliating defeat in the grinding war. Ukrainian officials acknowledged Moscow’s forces had no choice but to flee but stopped short of declaring victory in Kherson,” the Associated Press’s Sam Mednick and Yuras Karmanau report.
Lunchtime reads from The Post
School culture war campaigns fall flat in some tight races
“In some of Tuesday’s highest-profile, closest races, hard-edge attacks over gender identity, patriotism and parents’ rights appear to have been insufficient. Republican gubernatorial candidates who trumpeted these issues in Michigan, Wisconsin and Maine lost, and candidates in Kansas and Arizona who did the same were trailing their opponents in close contests,” Laura Meckler and Anne Branigin report.
How Trump, infighting and flawed candidates limited Republican gains
“Behind the scenes, nothing came easy to Republicans this cycle, as their historic tail winds collided with the fractious reality of a political party in the midst of a generational molting. GOP leaders spent much of the last year fighting against each other or plotting against their own primary voters. They were hobbled by unprepared first-time candidates, fundraising shortfalls and Trump, whose self-concern required constant attention — right up to the eve of the election, when he forced party bosses to beg him once again to delay a presidential campaign announcement,” Michael Scherer, Josh Dawsey, Hannah Knowles, Isaac Arnsdorf and Tyler Pager report.
U.S. releases 9/11 commission interview with George W. Bush, Dick Cheney
“The April 2004 interview with the bipartisan 9/11 commission, which took place in the Oval Office, included discussion of intelligence warnings before the attacks and the events that unfolded on the day of Sept. 11, according to the copy of the 31-page document. It also describes Mr. Bush acknowledging that Air Force One had poor communications while he was on the plane shortly after the attacks began—and Mr. Bush’s assertion that he gave Mr. Cheney the authority to shoot down commercial airliners that were unresponsive,” the Wall Street Journal’s Dustin Volz and Warren P. Strobel report.
“The newly declassified document was released to the public Wednesday.”
South Dakota voters approved Medicaid expansion, but implementation may not be easy
“As other conservative states have shown, voter approval doesn’t always mean politicians and administrators will rush to implement the change,” Arielle Zionts reports for Kaiser Health News.
“In Missouri, for example, experts said subpar publicity efforts and an outdated application system led to a glacial pace of enrollment after voters there approved Medicaid expansion in 2020. A similarly slow rollout could occur in South Dakota, said Tricia Brooks, a Georgetown University research professor who studies Medicaid.”
Shockingly, Californians don’t want sports betting
“With so much election news flying off the shelves, you might have missed this stunner out of California as voters rejected two propositions that would have brought sports betting to the state,” Jane McManus writes for Deadspin.
“You can’t watch a sports highlight without tripping over a casino ad, but here is one of the largest states in the nation turning down a potential $4 billion annually in revenue. And despite an estimated $400-$600 million spent trying to get the voters to go for it.”
Midterm results could give Biden a political boost
“Tuesday’s midterm election results gave President Biden a much-needed political boost, as his party’s better-than-expected performance enabled him to avoid a damaging setback and tamped down Democratic calls for him to consider ending his presidency after one term,” Toluse Olorunnipa reports.
Biden and China’s Xi Jinping to hold first in-person presidential meeting
“President Biden will hold his first in-person presidential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday in Bali ahead of the Group of 20 summit next week,” Yasmeen Abutaleb and Matt Viser report.
Biden pushes to require big federal contractors to cut climate pollution
“The Biden administration on Thursday will propose requiring all major federal contractors to set targets for reducing their emissions in line with the 2015 Paris climate accord, a significant step toward greening the government’s sprawling operations and one that could ripple across the U.S. supply chain,” Maxine Joselow reports.
Biden says Elon Musk’s foreign connections are ‘worth being looked at’
“President Biden said that aspects of Elon Musk’s business dealings deserve scrutiny, in response to questions about the involvement of foreign governments in acquiring the social media company Twitter,” Adela Suliman, Faiz Siddiqui and Aaron Schaffer report.
Where voter turnout exceeded 2018 highs, visualized
“A smaller share of Americans appear to have voted in these midterm elections than the last one, but in some states, voter enthusiasm exceeded the high mark set in 2018, according to a Washington Post analysis of Associated Press and U.S. Elections Project data,” Kati Perry, Luis Melgar, Kate Rabinowitz and Dan Keating report.
Democrats proved they have a bench. Now Biden should step aside in 2024.
“It’s one thing to defeat a scandal-plagued president who botched the initial COVID response, has little discipline, and was never popular at any point in his presidency. It’s quite another to defeat an extremely popular, twice-elected governor who appears to have taken a once-reliably purple state and turned it deep red. The political calculus President Biden made when he said he expected to run for re-election is no longer the political reality facing democrats post midterms,” Michael Starr Hopkins writes for the Daily Beast.
- “President Biden’s most-convincing campaign argument was that only he could assemble the coalition necessary to beat Trump. Even if Trump is the 2024 GOP nominee—something that is in no way predetermined—Trump 2024 is not Trump 2020, much less 2016. He’s more beatable than ever, which makes Biden’s main qualification as a Trump-beater less exclusive.”
The rise of Ron DeSanctimonious
“Ever since he lost his re-election bid in 2020 Donald Trump has been waiting to unload on Ron DeSantis. Mr Trump wants to reclaim the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. Florida’s popular Republican governor is by far his biggest rival for it, and Mr Trump cannot stomach a rival of any kind. Yet the former president held his fire, hoping his former protégé could be persuaded to back down—right until the eve of the midterms. ‘If he runs he could hurt himself very badly’, he told Fox News, as Floridians were queuing up to vote. ‘I would tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering,’” the Economist writes.
At 2:40 p.m., Biden will leave for the Howard Theatre, where he will speak at an event thanking Democratic National Committee supporters. Vice President Harris will also speak.
Biden will leave the White House for Joint Base Andrews at 9:25 p.m., where he will fly to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for the COP27 conference.
When Fetterman takes office in January, 10% of all U.S. senators will be named John/Jon
— Grace Segers (@Grace_Segers) November 9, 2022
Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.
