#legislation might take longer but it also lasts a lot longer unless its overturned in the courts

[proserpine-in-phases]

Honestly people who want everything solved by executive order seem to not want a president. They want a dictator

[patriotsnet]

What Happens If Republicans Win Midterms

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/what-happens-if-republicans-win-midterms/

What Happens If Republicans Win Midterms

Gop Lawmakers Threaten To Punish Democrats If They Win Back Control Of Congress

‘When we take the majority back in 2022, I’ll make sure consequences are doled out,’ said Rep. Madison Cawthorn.

Republicans are outraged that Democrats are governing by majority rule in the House. In retaliation, they are vowing to do the same things they now decry as unprecedented and wrong.

“Never in the history of our country has a Speaker acted like such an authoritarian,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Thursday.

He was upset that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had his request to appoint Republican Reps. Jim Banks and Jim Jordan to the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Both men voted to overturn the 2020 election results and pushed the lie that President Joe Biden only won because the election was stolen.

“Never in the history of Congress and the select committee I checked with the historian has this ever taken place, where the one party decides who’s all on the committee,” McCarthy told Fox News in a video he with his tweet. McCarthy in fact to give Republican then-Speaker John Boehner the exact same unilateral appointment power in 2014 for the Select Committee on the Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi.

But while House Republicans claim they are being mistreated because the majority won’t let them have their way, they are also promising to retaliate by turning the same actions they criticize now against Democrats in 2023.

TAGS

‘the Beast Is Growing’: Republicans Follow A Winning At All Costs Strategy Into The Midterms

Much remains uncertain about the midterm elections more than a year away including the congressional districts themselves, thanks to the delayed redistricting process. The Senate, meanwhile, looks like more of a toss-up.

House Democrats think voters will reward them for advancing President Joe Biden’s generally popular , which involves showering infrastructure money on virtually every district in the country and sending checks directly to millions of parents. And they think voters will punish Republicans for their rhetoric about the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2020 election.

“Democrats are delivering results, bringing back the economy, getting people back to work, passing the largest middle-class tax cut in history, while Republicans are engaged in frankly violent conspiracy theory rhetoric around lies in service of Donald Trump,” said Tim Persico, executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

But the challenges Democrats face are real and numerous.

They knew they would face a tough 2022 immediately after 2020, when massive, unexpected GOP gains whittled the Democratic majority to just a handful of seats.

“House Republicans are in a great position to retake the majority,” said Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, “but we are taking nothing for granted.”

His rural district had been trending Republican for years. Kind won re-election last year by just about 10,000 votes.

What If The Republicans Win Everything Again

Total victory for the G.O.P. would mean Trump unleashed.

Opinion Columnist

The end of Robert Muellers investigation. The loss of health insurance for several million people. New laws that make it harder to vote. More tax cuts for the rich. More damage to the environment. A Republican Party molded even more in the image of President Trump.

These are among the plausible consequences if the Republicans sweep the midterm elections and keep control of both the House and Senate. And dont fool yourself. That outcome, although not the most likely one, remains possible. The last couple of weeks of polling have shown how it could happen.

Voters who lean Republican including whites across the South could set aside their disappointment with Trump and vote for Republican congressional candidates. Voters who lean left including Latinos and younger adults could turn out in low numbers, as they usually do in midterm elections. The Republicans continuing efforts to suppress turnout could also swing a few close elections.

No matter what, Democrats will probably win the popular vote in the House elections, for the first time since 2012. Trump, after all, remains unpopular. But the combination of gerrymandering and the concentration of Democratic voters in major cities means that a popular-vote win wont automatically translate into a House majority.

I Do Not Buy That A Social Media Ban Hurts Trumps 2024 Aspirations: Nate Silver

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sarah: Yeah, Democrats might not have their worst Senate map in 2022, but it will by no means be easy, and how they fare will have a lot to do with the national environment. And as we touched on earlier, Bidens overall approval rating will also make a big difference in Democrats midterm chances.

nrakich: Yeah, if the national environment is even a bit Republican-leaning, that could be enough to allow solid Republican recruits to flip even Nevada and New Hampshire. And then it wouldnt even matter if Democrats win Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

One thing is for sure, though whichever party wins the Senate will have only a narrow majority, so I think were stuck in this era of moderates like Sens. Joe Manchin and Lisa Murkowski controlling every bills fate for at least a while longer. 

sarah: Lets talk about big picture strategy, then, and where that leaves us moving forward. Its still early and far too easy to prescribe election narratives that arent grounded in anything, but one gambit the Republican Party seems to be making at this point is that attacking the Democratic Party for being too progressive or woke will help them win.

What do we make of that playbook headed into 2022? Likewise, as the party in charge, what are Democrats planning for?

With that being said, the GOPs strategies could still gin up turnout among its base, in particular, but its hard to separate that from general dissatisfaction with Biden.

The 2024 Presidential Election Will Be Close Even If Trump Is The Gop Nominee

One very important thing we should have all taken away from both the 2016 and 2020 presidential contests is that the two major parties are in virtual equipose . The ideological sorting-out of the two parties since the 1960s has in turn led to extreme partisan polarization, a decline in ticket-splitting and and in number of genuine swing voters. Among other things, this has led to an atmosphere where Republicans have paid little or no price for the extremism theyve disproportionately exhibited, or for the bad conduct of their leaders, most notably the 45th president.

Indeed, the polarized climate encourages outlandish and immoral base mobilization efforts of the sort Trump deployed so regularly. Some Republicans partisans shook their heads sadly and voted the straight GOP ticket anyway, And to the extent there were swing voters they tended strongly to believe that both parties were equally guilty of excessive partisanship, and/or that all politicians are worthless scum, so why not vote for the worthless scum under whom the economy hummed?

The bottom line is that anyone who assumes Republicans are in irreversible decline in presidential elections really hasnt been paying attention.

Republicans Set To Rebound Big In 2022 Midterms Unless

We are just 600 short days away from the 2022 midterm elections, which means it is the perfect time to handicap the Republicans chances to win back the House, Senate and prepare a serious challenge to President Biden

Patrick Joseph ToomeyBlack women look to build upon gains in coming electionsWatch live: GOP senators present new infrastructure proposalSasse rebuked by Nebraska Republican Party over impeachment vote already have Democrats scrambling to flip those seats in much easier electoral terrain.

As I noted in The Hill last month, Republicans are on the hook to defend 20 of their seats in 2022, while Team Blue has just 14 seats to hold, all in states won by Joe Biden in 2020. Since March is a perfect month for sports analogies, a good defense provides for a strong offense when the status quo is Democrats retaining control of the upper chamber. While there is clearly a power in incumbency, FiveThirtyEight suggests that senate vacancies are actually more of a mixed bag. In election cycles since 1974, the party with the most Senate retirements has actually gained seats just as often as it has lost them. For every year like 2008, when more Republicans than Democrats retired and Republicans lost seats accordingly, theres a year like 2012, when a whopping seven Democrats retired yet the party picked up two Senate seats.

How these various Rs play out in the next few months will determine if the Rs are successful in 2022.

Rising Violent Crime Is Likely To Present A Political Challenge For Democrats In 2022

But there are roadblocks to fully enacting Democrats’ agenda. Their thin majorities in both chambers of Congress mean nearly all Democrats have to get on board with every agenda item in order to push through major legislative priorities. And without adjusting or eliminating the legislative filibuster in the Senate, Democrats need 10 Republicans to join them for various legislation a near-impossible task.

Renewable Energy And Health Care Among The Sectors That Could Get Shakeup Due To Midterms

The 2022 midterm elections are already affecting Washington, and the results could shake up sectors such as renewable energy, health care and finance.

As Democrats in Washington work to deliver on infrastructure spending and other priorities, theyre trying to make progress in large part because of a key event thats still more than a year away.

That event is the midterm elections on Nov. 8, 2022, when Republicans will aim to take back control of the House and Senate and become a more powerful check on the priorities of President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats.

What leaders are thinking about, particularly since we have unified party control, is that these midterm elections are inevitably a referendum on the governing party, said Sarah Binder, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and a professor of political science at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

In that sense, shrinking time coupled with What is it that Democrats want to run on? it adds pressure on Democrats to get their priorities through the door.

Time is growing short, Binder said, because party leaders often avoid making their members vote on tough issues in the same calendar year as an election, since that can hurt incumbents in tight races. Party leaders often think primarily about what they can get done in the first year of a Congress, as opposed to counting on the second year, she said.

Sectors that could win or lose

Year

Races worth watching

Can Democrats Avoid A Wipeout In 2022

Bidens plan: Go big or go home.

The good news for Democrats who watched Joe Biden unveil a historically ambitious agenda last night is that newly elected presidents have almost always passed some version of their core economic planparticularly when their party controls both congressional chambers, as Bidens does now.

The bad news: Voters have almost always punished the presidents party in the next midterm election anyway. The last two times Democrats had unified controlwith Bill Clinton in 199394 and Barack Obama in 200910they endured especially resounding repudiations in the midterms, which cost Clinton his majority in both chambers and Obama the loss of the House.

Theres a very different strategy this time, David Price, a Democratic representative from North Carolina and a former political scientist, told me. Theres an openness now to the sense that a bolder plan, ironically, might have greater appeal for independents and others we need to attract than trying to trim and split the difference with Republicans.

Read: The GOP cheat code to winning back the House

There is this recognition of this moment and how fleeting it is, and an evaluation that, absent the trifecta of control, it is very hard to move big policy, said a senior official at one of the partys leading outside advocacy groups, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategizing. So you have to take your shot. I think thats part of what undergirds Go big.

What If Republicans Win The Midterms

March 3, 2018

WASHINGTON A sizable portion of the American population has been convulsing with outrage at President Trump for more than a year. Millions of people who previously took only mild interest in politics have participated in protests, fumed as they stayed riveted to news out of Washington and filled social media accounts once devoted to family updates and funny videos with furious political commentary.

Yet public life on the whole has remained surprisingly calm. A significant factor in keeping the peace has surely been anticipatory catharsis: The widespread expectations of a big Democratic wave in the coming midterm elections are containing and channeling that indignation, helping to maintain order.

What will happen if no such wave materializes and that pressure-relief valve jams shut?

The country was already badly polarized before the plot twist of election night in 2016, of course, but since then liberals and much of what remains of Americas moderate center have been seething in a way that dwarfs the usual disgruntlement of whichever faction is out of power. While nobody can know for sure whether Mr. Trump would have lost but for Russias meddling, many of his critics clearly choose to believe he is in the White House because Vladimir Putin tricked the United States into making him its leader.

This November, if the wave turns out to be a mere trickle, we could see the accomplishment of that goal take hold.

Poll: Republicans Set To Win House Back In Massive Landslide

Republicans are set to win back the House in a historic landslide in 2022, according to a poll conducted by NBC News.

Based on all factors, youd have to consider Republicans the early favorites for the House majority in 2022, poll tracker David Wasserman NBC.

Democrats best hope is that Bidens approval rating stays above 50 percent and that Republicans have a tougher time turning out their voters without Trump on the ballot.

reports: The NBC report cites the all-too-predictable trend of the presidents party losing House seats in midterm elections, Democrats choosing not to run for reelection in some cases, and Republicans reaping the benefits of increased online donations, which are now on par with those of Democrats.

It is early, too early, to guarantee the Democrats loss of their slim 220-212 House majority. Voters wont hit the polls for almost 15 months, and things often have a way of changing on a dime in the world of politics. But the early signs certainly arent encouraging for the Democrats, especially as President Joe Bidens approval rating has taken a hit in recent weeks. American voters are being bombarded with images of a completely bungled withdrawal of Afghanistan and headlines about increased COVID hospitalizations and deaths. Inflation is also becoming a growing concern each month, contrary to the hopes of the Federal Reserve, and the crisis at the southern border shows no signs of abating.

Colwell: Republicans Are Likely To Win Control Of The House Next Year But

Three reasons why Republicans are very likely to take control of the House next year involve things over which Democrats have little or no control.

There is, however, one reason why Democrats might be able somehow to hang on to their slim majority. And they do have better prospects of at least holding on to the 50-50 Senate tie.

Reasons for Republicans winning control of the House:

FIRST: History is on their side. The party out of the White House almost always makes big gains in the first midterm election in a new presidency. In those midterm elections since the end of World War II, the average loss for the presidents party has been 29 seats. Democrats lost 63 seats in the 2010 midterm after election of President Barack Obama. Republicans lost 40 seats in the 2018 midterm after election of Donald Trump.

Because Democrats already lost seats in 2020, even as Joe Biden won the presidency, Republicans need only a net of five seats to win the majority. Democrats cant go back to 2020 to win more seats.

Factors in midterm losses for the presidents party include voters wanting a check on the president and disillusionment over any presidents inability to bring about everything voters hoped for.

SECOND: Redistricting after the census will result in many more safe Republican seats. Thats because Republicans control state legislatures in far more states than do Democrats. Both parties gerrymander. But it is the GOP controlling district drawing in many more states.

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Republicans In Decent Shape To Win House Majority In 2022

Washington Examiner

It is never preferable to be in the minority party in a legislative body. But as far as minorities go, House Republicans are in a pretty good spot.

Between the trend of midterm elections usually the party that is not in the White House, a closely divided House, and a party apparatus ready to continue their expectations-exceeding 2020 strategy while Democrats rework theirs, Republicans are on track to winning back the House in 2022.

“It has the makings of what could be a good year for the Republicans when it comes to the House,” said J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

President Bidens approval rating is around 53%, and while he is not underwater, history indicates he would need to bump that rating up by at least 10 points in order to have a shot at gaining seats. Gallup analysis found that even presidents with approval ratings of 50% during the midterm elections averaged a loss of about 14 House seats from their own party.

That would be enough to bump Republicans back into the majority. Democrats have the slimmest House majority since 1930, currently 221 seats to 210 GOP seats .

Republicans in the 2020 cycle shattered the expectations of analysts who forecasted Democrats to gain House seats in 2020. Not a single Republican incumbent lost the election, and they picked off 13 incumbent Democrats.

But it is not all smooth sailing for Republicans.

Why We Arent Going To Panic

We should all have our eyes wide open as we inch closer to the 2022 Midterms, but by no means should we give up hope. There are plenty of reasons why we can win the midterms.

For starters, Democrats appear to be quite awake to how dangerous the Republican party has become in just the past few years. And since the Republicans dont appear to be any less radicalized with Trump out of the party, I dont think Democrats are going to go back to sleep.

At this point in the election cycle, we dont have a full picture of who is retiring from Congress or who the candidates will be for these seats. Getting great candidates for crucial, must-win seats can energize voters and donors.

Presidential approval seems to have an important effect on midterms and at this point, Bidens approval rating is 15 points higher than his disapproval. If he continues to do good things for Americans and keep his approval rating high, that will help the Democrats a lot.

So, lets approach this midterm as clearly as possible: Our democracy is still on the line, and as awful as the Republicans are, they are in striking position to win back some power in Congress. Each of us needs to do everything we can to ensure that does not happen. If you arent already, consider subscribing to Political Charge as Ill be delving into specific actions we can take every month!

If you want to win the midterms, please share this post with others who want to win, too!

Republicans Will Likely Take Control Of The Senate By 2024

The usual midterm House losses by the White House party dont always extend to the Senate because only a third of that chamber is up for election every two years and the landscape sometimes strongly favors the presidential party . But there a still generally an out-party wave that can matter, which is why Republicans may have a better than average chance of winning in at least some of the many battleground states that will hold Senate elections next year . If they win four of the six youll probably be looking at a Republican Senate.

But its the 2024 Senate landscape that looks really promising for the GOP. Democrats will be defending 23 seats and Republicans just 10. Three Democratic seats, and all the Republican seats, are in states Trump carried twice. Four other Democratic seats are in states Trump won once. It should be a banner year for Senate Republicans.

Balance Of Power: 2022 Senate Races

If Democrats want to win the again, they need to win the four competitive seats they currently hold Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and New Hampshire. That or augment any loss with a gain in any of their three competitive targets Pennsylvania, , or North Carolina.

This Senate preview still holds up, but the shorter version is Democrats are easily favored in Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada. They should also win New Hampshire if Chris Sununu doesnt run .

The thing is, theyre also favored to win in Pennsylvania, where they have a strong field of primary candidates and where Joe Biden won.

They have to be no worse than, and admittedly probably better than, a tossup in Wisconsin, where Republicans have candidate issues and Democrats have a strong likely nominee.

So even if New Hampshire goes Republican because of some local candidate factors, Democrats are in a good spot to win the Senate again.

That means if youre trying to make a bet, you can essentially box out two of four combinations where the GOP wins the Senate, and focus your attention on the two remaining options, if youre looking for the values.

The 1858 Midterm Election

November 2, 1858

There is always a lull after a tempest, and so the political world has subsided into an unwonted calm since the election, commented a reporter for The New York Times. The Republicans are naturally . . . exultant over their sweeping victories. Such a commentary might apply to any number of elections, but this reporter described the outcome of a particularly historic electionthe midterm election of 1858. The Republican success that year was especially remarkable because the Republican Party was only four years old.

Almost by spontaneous combustion, the Republican Party burst forth in 1854 in response to the controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act. For decades, Americas political battles had been fought between the Democrats and the Whigs. By the early 1850s, however, the issue of slavery had splintered the Whigs into warring factions and divided Democrats between north and south. When Democratic senator Stephen Douglas pushed his Kansas-Nebraska bill to passage, including its proposal to settle the issue of slavery by popular sovereignty, the uproar among northern abolitionists and anti-slavery activists was too fierce to be contained by the ailing Whig Party. As one person commented, The Whigs were simply not angry enough.

The Future Could Actually Be Bright For Republicans

Ed Kilgore

The most common political narrative outside MAGA-land is that the Republican Party is screwed, and richly deserves the ignominious future it faces.

Until recently the GOP was a reasonably normal and intermittently successful center-right political party, not wildly different from its counterparts in other countries with a two-party system, despite some racist and militarist habits that burst into view in times of stress. But then America elected a Black president, and Republicans went a little crazy, according to those outside their circles. First they abetted a destructively antediluvian Tea Party Movement and then lurched into the arms of an evil charlatan who somehow got elected president and spent four years trashing hallowed conservative principles and losing both Congress and the White House before his disgraceful and violence-inflected departure.

Worse yet, in the face of huge demographic challenges that beg for a new approach, the Republican Party has now lashed itself to a Trumpian mast going forward, following the most consistently unpopular president in American history in his bizarre crusade to deny he has ever lost anything. Meanwhile a shockingly united Democratic Party is whipping a few decades worth of liberal legislation through Congress as Republicans whine about cancel culture and try to sell the idea that Joe Biden is actually Che Guevara.

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Long Drives, Air Travel, Exhausting Waits: What Abortion Requires in the South

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Just a quick walk through the parking lot of Choices-Memphis Center for Reproductive Health in this legendary music mecca speaks volumes about access to abortion in the American South. Parked alongside the polished SUVs and weathered sedans with Tennessee license plates are cars from Mississippi, Arkansas, Florida and, on many days, Alabama, Georgia and Texas.

Choices is one of two abortion clinics in the Memphis metro area, with a population of 1.3 million. While that might seem a surprisingly limited number of options for women seeking a commonplace medical procedure, it represents a wealth of access compared with Mississippi, which has one abortion clinic for the entire state of 3 million people.

A tsunami of restrictive abortion regulations enacted by Republican-led legislatures and governors across the South have sent women who want or need an early end to a pregnancy fleeing in all directions, making long drives or plane trips across state lines to find safe, professional services. For many women, that also requires taking time off work, arranging child care and finding transportation and lodging, sharply increasing the anxiety, expense and logistical complications of what is often a profoundly difficult moment in a woman’s life.

“Especially for women coming from long distances, child care is the biggest thing,” said Sue Burbano, a patient educator and financial assistance coordinator at Choices. “They’re coming all the way from Oxford, Mississippi, or Jackson. This is a three-day ordeal. I can just see how exhausted they are.”

The long drives and wait times could soon spread to other states, as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares this fall to consider a Mississippi ban on nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with no allowances for cases of rape or incest. Under a law enacted in 2018 by the Republican-led legislature, a woman could obtain a legal abortion only if the pregnancy threatens her life or would cause an “irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.”

Mississippi’s ban was promptly challenged by abortion rights activists and put on hold as a series of lower courts have deemed it unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision. That 1973 ruling, in concert with subsequent federal case law, forbids states from banning abortions before “fetal viability,” the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb, or about 24 weeks into pregnancy.

Tennessee, Texas, Mississippi and several other states have since passed laws that would ban abortions after six weeks. That legislation is also on hold pending legal review.

Groups opposed to abortion rights have cheered the court’s decision to hear the Mississippi case, believing the addition of Justice Amy Coney Barrett gives the court’s conservative bloc enough votes to overturn Roe, or at least vastly expand the authority of individual states to restrict abortion.

But, for supporters of reproductive rights, anything but a firm rejection of the Mississippi ban raises the specter of an even larger expanse of abortion service deserts. Abortion could quickly become illegal in 21 states — including nearly the entire South, the Dakotas and other stretches of the Midwest — should the court rescind the principle that a woman’s right to privacy protects pregnancy decisions.

“If we end up with any kind of decision that goes back to being a states’ rights issue, the entire South is in a very bad way,” said Jennifer Pepper, executive director of Choices in Memphis.

The decades-long strategy by conservative white evangelical Christians to chip away at abortion access state by state has flourished in the South, where hard-right Republicans hold a decisive advantage in state legislatures and nearly all executive chambers.

Though details vary by state, the rules governing abortion providers tend to hit similar notes. Among them are requirements that women seeking abortions, even via an abortion pill, submit to invasive vaginal ultrasounds; mandatory waiting periods of 48 hours between the initial consultation with a provider and the abortion; and complex rules for licensing physicians and technicians and disposing of fetal remains. Some states insist that abortion providers require women to listen to a fetal heartbeat; other providers have been unable to obtain admitting privileges at local hospitals.

“Everything is hard down here,” said Pepper.

The rules also have made some doctors reluctant to perform the procedure. While obstetricians and gynecologists in California, New York, Illinois and elsewhere routinely perform abortions at their medical offices — the same practices where they care for women through pregnancy and delivery — their peers in many Southern states who perform more than a small number of abortions a year must register their practices as abortion clinics. None has done so.

Texas offers an example of how targeted legislation can disrupt a patient’s search for medical care. In 2012, 762 Texans went out of state for abortions, according to researchers at the University of Texas-Austin. Two years later, after then-Gov. Rick Perry signed into law the nation’s most restrictive abortion bill, shuttering about half the state’s abortion facilities, 1,673 women left Texas to seek services. In 2016, 1,800 did so.

Similarly, in March 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic took hold, Gov. Greg Abbott issued an order prohibiting all abortions unless the woman’s life was in danger, deeming the procedure “not medically necessary.” The month before the order, about 150 Texans went out of state to seek abortion services. In March and April, with the order in effect, nearly 950 women sought care outside Texas.

There can also be an unsettling stigma in some parts of the South.

Vikki Brown, 33, who works in education in New Orleans, said she initially tried to end her pregnancy in Louisiana, calling her gynecologist for advice, and was told by a receptionist that she was “disgusted” by the request.

She sought out the lone abortion clinic operating in New Orleans but found it besieged with both protesters and patients. “I knew but didn’t understand how difficult it was to get care,” said Brown, who moved to Louisiana in 2010 from New York City. “The clinic was absolutely full. People were sitting on the floor. It was swamped.” It took her six hours to get an ultrasound, which cost $150, she said.

A friend in Washington, D.C., counseled Brown that “it didn’t have to be like that” and the pair researched clinics in the nation’s capital. She flew to Washington, where she was able to get an abortion the same day and for less than it would have cost her in New Orleans, even including airfare.

“No protesters, no waiting period,” she said. “It was a wildly different experience.”

Atlanta, a Southern transportation hub, has also become a key piece in the frayed quilt of abortion care in the region.

Kwajelyn Jackson, executive director of Feminist Women’s Health Center in Atlanta, said the clinic regularly sees patients from other states, including Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky and the Carolinas.

These visits often involve long drives or flights, but rarely overnight stays because the state-mandated 24-hour waiting period can begin with a phone consultation rather than an in-person visit. Georgia has many of the same laws other states employ to make clinical operations more burdensome — requirements to cremate fetal remains, for instance, and that abortion providers adhere to the onerous building standards set for outpatient surgical centers — but its urban clinics so far have weathered the strategies.

Jackson said staffers at her clinic are aware of its role as a refuge. “We’ve had patients who were able to get a ride from Alabama, but they weren’t able to get a ride home,” she said. “We had to help them find a ride home. It is so much simpler to go 3 or 4 miles from your home and sleep in your bed at night. That is a luxury that so many of our patients can’t enjoy.”

Many women embarking on a search for a safe abortion are also confronting serious expenses. State Medicaid programs in the South do not pay for abortions, and many private insurers refuse to cover the procedure. In addition, the longer a woman’s abortion is delayed, the more expensive the procedure becomes.

Becca Turchanik, a 32-year-old account manager for a robotics company in Nashville, Tennessee, drove four hours to Atlanta for her abortion in 2019. “We got an appointment in Georgia because that was the only place that had appointments,” she said.

Turchanik said her employer’s health insurance would not cover abortion, and the cost of gas, food, medications and the procedure itself totaled $1,100. Her solution? Take on debt. “I took out a Speedy Cash loan,” she said.

Turchanik had a contraceptive implant when she learned she was six weeks pregnant. She said she was in an unhealthy relationship with a man she discovered to be dishonest, and she decided to end her pregnancy.

“I wish I had a child, but I’m glad it wasn’t his child,” she said. “I have accomplished so much since my abortion. I’m going to make my life better.”

But the emotions of the ordeal have stayed with her. She’s angry that she had to call around from state to state in a panic, and that she was unable to have her abortion close to home, with friends to comfort her.

Others turn to nonprofit groups for financial and logistical support for bus and plane tickets, hotels, child care and medical bills, including the National Abortion Federation, which operates a hotline to help women find providers. Last year, the federation received 100,000 calls from women seeking information, said its president, the Very Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale.

Access Reproductive Care-Southeast, an abortion fund based in Atlanta, has trained over 130 volunteers who pick women up at bus stations, host them at their homes and provide child care. A study published this year in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health examined 10,000 cases of women seeking assistance from ARC-Southeast: 81% were Black, 77% were uninsured or publicly insured, 77% had at least one child, and 58% identified as Christian.

“It’s amazing to see the scope of the people we work with,” said Oriaku Njoku, ARC-Southeast’s co-founder. “The post-Roe reality that y’all are afraid of is the lived reality for folks today in the South.”

A Texas law targets precisely this kind of help, allowing such organizations or individuals to be sued by anyone in the state for helping a woman get an abortion. It could go into effect Sept. 1, though abortion rights advocates are suing to stop the new law.

Despite the controversy surrounding abortion, Choices makes no effort to hide its mission. The modern lime-green building announces itself to its Memphis neighborhood, and the waiting room is artfully decorated, offering services beyond abortion, including delivery of babies and midwifery.

Like other clinics in the South, Choices has to abide by state laws that many abortion supporters find onerous and intrusive, including performing transvaginal ultrasounds and showing the women seeking abortions images from those ultrasounds.

Nonetheless, the clinic is booked full most days with patients from almost all of the eight states that touch Tennessee, a slender handsaw-shaped state that stretches across much of the Deep South. And Katy Deaton, a nurse at the facility, said few women change their minds.

“They’ve put a lot of thought into this hard decision already,” she said. “I don’t think it changes the fact that they’re getting an abortion. But it definitely makes their life harder.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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Long Drives, Air Travel, Exhausting Waits: What Abortion Requires in the South published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[stephenmccull]

Long Drives, Air Travel, Exhausting Waits: What Abortion Requires in the South

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Just a quick walk through the parking lot of Choices-Memphis Center for Reproductive Health in this legendary music mecca speaks volumes about access to abortion in the American South. Parked alongside the polished SUVs and weathered sedans with Tennessee license plates are cars from Mississippi, Arkansas, Florida and, on many days, Alabama, Georgia and Texas.

Choices is one of two abortion clinics in the Memphis metro area, with a population of 1.3 million. While that might seem a surprisingly limited number of options for women seeking a commonplace medical procedure, it represents a wealth of access compared with Mississippi, which has one abortion clinic for the entire state of 3 million people.

A tsunami of restrictive abortion regulations enacted by Republican-led legislatures and governors across the South have sent women who want or need an early end to a pregnancy fleeing in all directions, making long drives or plane trips across state lines to find safe, professional services. For many women, that also requires taking time off work, arranging child care and finding transportation and lodging, sharply increasing the anxiety, expense and logistical complications of what is often a profoundly difficult moment in a woman’s life.

“Especially for women coming from long distances, child care is the biggest thing,” said Sue Burbano, a patient educator and financial assistance coordinator at Choices. “They’re coming all the way from Oxford, Mississippi, or Jackson. This is a three-day ordeal. I can just see how exhausted they are.”

The long drives and wait times could soon spread to other states, as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares this fall to consider a Mississippi ban on nearly all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with no allowances for cases of rape or incest. Under a law enacted in 2018 by the Republican-led legislature, a woman could obtain a legal abortion only if the pregnancy threatens her life or would cause an “irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.”

Mississippi’s ban was promptly challenged by abortion rights activists and put on hold as a series of lower courts have deemed it unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision. That 1973 ruling, in concert with subsequent federal case law, forbids states from banning abortions before “fetal viability,” the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb, or about 24 weeks into pregnancy.

Tennessee, Texas, Mississippi and several other states have since passed laws that would ban abortions after six weeks. That legislation is also on hold pending legal review.

Groups opposed to abortion rights have cheered the court’s decision to hear the Mississippi case, believing the addition of Justice Amy Coney Barrett gives the court’s conservative bloc enough votes to overturn Roe, or at least vastly expand the authority of individual states to restrict abortion.

But, for supporters of reproductive rights, anything but a firm rejection of the Mississippi ban raises the specter of an even larger expanse of abortion service deserts. Abortion could quickly become illegal in 21 states — including nearly the entire South, the Dakotas and other stretches of the Midwest — should the court rescind the principle that a woman’s right to privacy protects pregnancy decisions.

“If we end up with any kind of decision that goes back to being a states’ rights issue, the entire South is in a very bad way,” said Jennifer Pepper, executive director of Choices in Memphis.

The decades-long strategy by conservative white evangelical Christians to chip away at abortion access state by state has flourished in the South, where hard-right Republicans hold a decisive advantage in state legislatures and nearly all executive chambers.

Though details vary by state, the rules governing abortion providers tend to hit similar notes. Among them are requirements that women seeking abortions, even via an abortion pill, submit to invasive vaginal ultrasounds; mandatory waiting periods of 48 hours between the initial consultation with a provider and the abortion; and complex rules for licensing physicians and technicians and disposing of fetal remains. Some states insist that abortion providers require women to listen to a fetal heartbeat; other providers have been unable to obtain admitting privileges at local hospitals.

“Everything is hard down here,” said Pepper.

The rules also have made some doctors reluctant to perform the procedure. While obstetricians and gynecologists in California, New York, Illinois and elsewhere routinely perform abortions at their medical offices — the same practices where they care for women through pregnancy and delivery — their peers in many Southern states who perform more than a small number of abortions a year must register their practices as abortion clinics. None has done so.

Texas offers an example of how targeted legislation can disrupt a patient’s search for medical care. In 2012, 762 Texans went out of state for abortions, according to researchers at the University of Texas-Austin. Two years later, after then-Gov. Rick Perry signed into law the nation’s most restrictive abortion bill, shuttering about half the state’s abortion facilities, 1,673 women left Texas to seek services. In 2016, 1,800 did so.

Similarly, in March 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic took hold, Gov. Greg Abbott issued an order prohibiting all abortions unless the woman’s life was in danger, deeming the procedure “not medically necessary.” The month before the order, about 150 Texans went out of state to seek abortion services. In March and April, with the order in effect, nearly 950 women sought care outside Texas.

There can also be an unsettling stigma in some parts of the South.

Vikki Brown, 33, who works in education in New Orleans, said she initially tried to end her pregnancy in Louisiana, calling her gynecologist for advice, and was told by a receptionist that she was “disgusted” by the request.

She sought out the lone abortion clinic operating in New Orleans but found it besieged with both protesters and patients. “I knew but didn’t understand how difficult it was to get care,” said Brown, who moved to Louisiana in 2010 from New York City. “The clinic was absolutely full. People were sitting on the floor. It was swamped.” It took her six hours to get an ultrasound, which cost $150, she said.

A friend in Washington, D.C., counseled Brown that “it didn’t have to be like that” and the pair researched clinics in the nation’s capital. She flew to Washington, where she was able to get an abortion the same day and for less than it would have cost her in New Orleans, even including airfare.

“No protesters, no waiting period,” she said. “It was a wildly different experience.”

Atlanta, a Southern transportation hub, has also become a key piece in the frayed quilt of abortion care in the region.

Kwajelyn Jackson, executive director of Feminist Women’s Health Center in Atlanta, said the clinic regularly sees patients from other states, including Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky and the Carolinas.

These visits often involve long drives or flights, but rarely overnight stays because the state-mandated 24-hour waiting period can begin with a phone consultation rather than an in-person visit. Georgia has many of the same laws other states employ to make clinical operations more burdensome — requirements to cremate fetal remains, for instance, and that abortion providers adhere to the onerous building standards set for outpatient surgical centers — but its urban clinics so far have weathered the strategies.

Jackson said staffers at her clinic are aware of its role as a refuge. “We’ve had patients who were able to get a ride from Alabama, but they weren’t able to get a ride home,” she said. “We had to help them find a ride home. It is so much simpler to go 3 or 4 miles from your home and sleep in your bed at night. That is a luxury that so many of our patients can’t enjoy.”

Many women embarking on a search for a safe abortion are also confronting serious expenses. State Medicaid programs in the South do not pay for abortions, and many private insurers refuse to cover the procedure. In addition, the longer a woman’s abortion is delayed, the more expensive the procedure becomes.

Becca Turchanik, a 32-year-old account manager for a robotics company in Nashville, Tennessee, drove four hours to Atlanta for her abortion in 2019. “We got an appointment in Georgia because that was the only place that had appointments,” she said.

Turchanik said her employer’s health insurance would not cover abortion, and the cost of gas, food, medications and the procedure itself totaled $1,100. Her solution? Take on debt. “I took out a Speedy Cash loan,” she said.

Turchanik had a contraceptive implant when she learned she was six weeks pregnant. She said she was in an unhealthy relationship with a man she discovered to be dishonest, and she decided to end her pregnancy.

“I wish I had a child, but I’m glad it wasn’t his child,” she said. “I have accomplished so much since my abortion. I’m going to make my life better.”

But the emotions of the ordeal have stayed with her. She’s angry that she had to call around from state to state in a panic, and that she was unable to have her abortion close to home, with friends to comfort her.

Others turn to nonprofit groups for financial and logistical support for bus and plane tickets, hotels, child care and medical bills, including the National Abortion Federation, which operates a hotline to help women find providers. Last year, the federation received 100,000 calls from women seeking information, said its president, the Very Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale.

Access Reproductive Care-Southeast, an abortion fund based in Atlanta, has trained over 130 volunteers who pick women up at bus stations, host them at their homes and provide child care. A study published this year in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health examined 10,000 cases of women seeking assistance from ARC-Southeast: 81% were Black, 77% were uninsured or publicly insured, 77% had at least one child, and 58% identified as Christian.

“It’s amazing to see the scope of the people we work with,” said Oriaku Njoku, ARC-Southeast’s co-founder. “The post-Roe reality that y’all are afraid of is the lived reality for folks today in the South.”

A Texas law targets precisely this kind of help, allowing such organizations or individuals to be sued by anyone in the state for helping a woman get an abortion. It could go into effect Sept. 1, though abortion rights advocates are suing to stop the new law.

Despite the controversy surrounding abortion, Choices makes no effort to hide its mission. The modern lime-green building announces itself to its Memphis neighborhood, and the waiting room is artfully decorated, offering services beyond abortion, including delivery of babies and midwifery.

Like other clinics in the South, Choices has to abide by state laws that many abortion supporters find onerous and intrusive, including performing transvaginal ultrasounds and showing the women seeking abortions images from those ultrasounds.

Nonetheless, the clinic is booked full most days with patients from almost all of the eight states that touch Tennessee, a slender handsaw-shaped state that stretches across much of the Deep South. And Katy Deaton, a nurse at the facility, said few women change their minds.

“They’ve put a lot of thought into this hard decision already,” she said. “I don’t think it changes the fact that they’re getting an abortion. But it definitely makes their life harder.”

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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This story can be republished for free (details).

Long Drives, Air Travel, Exhausting Waits: What Abortion Requires in the South published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

[nothingman]

Net neutrality can still be saved, but the window of opportunity just got smaller.

We knew this was coming. The six-month delay from the date of the Federal Communications Commission’s controversial repeal of net neutrality was essentially about red tape; on Monday, the full terms of the repeal take effect.

So what does this mean for efforts to stop the repeal and, more importantly, for your internet connection?

For now, not much. Basically, very little has changed since last month, when Congress’s last-ditch attempt to cancel the repeal under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) made headlines. The measure passed in the Senate, but it’s extremely unlikely to pass in the House, where canceling the repeal is deeply unpopular with the majority of Republicans despite the fact that more than 80 percent of Americans support net neutrality. In fact, since Congress only has 60 days to review the law (starting from April 23, 2018), it’s possible the House could just stall and refuse to vote on the CRA at all until the time limit expires.

If that happens, there are still other avenues through which lawmakers and citizens can fight the repeal process. But they’re slow and fraught with a lot of litigation — and they won’t necessarily stop internet service providers like Verizon or Comcast from throttling your bandwidth in the meantime. Here’s a glimpse at what’s next.

Net neutrality’s best chance at survival lies with the courts

Shortly after the repeal went through in December, all 22 states with a Democratic attorney general, led by New York, signed on to a joint lawsuit against the FCC to revoke the new rules. While a court proceeding would take longer than a simple congressional block, given that that congressional block is currently languishing in the House, it could be the best chance we have at weaving net neutrality protection into the fabric of internet law.

The collection of suits (which also included objections from consumer advocates and tech companies) petitioned the US Court of Appeals for a review of the FCC’s order and were eventually punted to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

The selection of San Francisco was essentially hitting the jackpot for net neutrality advocates. Judges serving Silicon Valley are far more likely than judges in other cities to have presided over previous cases involving internet regulations. They’re also far more likely to be well-versed in the many technological issues at play — meaning the location could be the most crucial factor in whether the repeal ultimately takes effect.

That said, a court fight will be long and messy. Currently, no date has been set for the court proceedings to begin, and in the meantime, the deregulation will proceed. It’s also possible that even if a court overturns the FCC’s decision, it may only overturn part of it.

The FCC has explicitly blocked states from trying to legislate their own versions of net neutrality — though some are trying anyway

You might think that individual states could have the right to legislate their own net neutrality protections, but you’d be wrong. The FCC repeal included language that explicitly excluded individual states from enacting consumer protection laws because it’s easier on ISPs not to have to deal with different regulations from state to state. That means that as of today, the rights of states to govern themselves won’t apply to protecting net neutrality.

That said, both Washington and Oregon have already passed legislation in defiance of the FCC order, with California not far behind. So this issue, too, will likely be headed to the courts.

In essence, with all the legal complications at play, we just don’t have any way of knowing what the final court decision could be. What the final version of a net neutrality repeal might look like, and when it might take effect, are both unknown at this point.

Which leaves with the immediate reality that net neutrality is now officially over.

If nothing is done to protect it, net neutrality will ebb away slowly, rather than all at once

Net neutrality activists like Fight for the Future have predicted that encroaching moves by corporate ISPs will be gradual and insidious rather than sudden and overnight. For one reason, the court situation is still a giant mess, so rolling out significant changes while the courts are still deciding the fate of the repeal could be disastrous.

For another, corporations won’t want you to notice the difference. It’s easier to get the public to accept a gradual fee hike or change in the structure of your internet service over time than it would be to, for example, abruptly start charging you extra for access to your favorite websites.

Gradual change will also give the ISPs time to ride out the public’s mistrust, perhaps by claiming that net neutrality went away and the world didn’t end. While that might be true at first, internet freedom advocates have fought so hard to preserve net neutrality because there’s ample precedent that ISPs want to, and will, control what content you can access if they aren’t prevented by law from doing so.

For example, your ISP might charge you more or less to access specific “bundles” of certain websites, much as cable television providers do now — but instead of “basic cable,” you might be forced to pay for access to more than a “basic” number of websites. ISPs will also be able to control how quickly you’re served webpages, how quickly you can download and upload things, and in what contexts you can access which websites, depending on how much money you pay them.

They’ll be able to charge you more to access sites you currently visit for free, cap how much data you’re allowed to use, redirect you from sites you are trying to use to sites they want you to use instead, and block you from being able to access apps, products, and information offered by their competitors or other companies they don’t like. They can even block you from being able to access information on certain topics, news events, or issues they don’t want you to know about.

Finally, they’ll be able to exert this power not just over individual consumers, but over companies as well. This could result in the much-discussed “internet fast lane,” in which an ISP forces a company like Twitter or BitTorrent to pay more to give users faster access to its services. Many ISPs, notably Comcast, have their eye on this feature, also known as “paid prioritization.” (Disclaimer: Comcast is an investor in Vox’s parent company, Vox Media, through its NBCUniversal arm.) Larger, more powerful companies likely won’t be hurt by this change. Smaller companies and websites almost definitely will be.

We already have a good idea of how these scenarios might play out because before the 2015 FCC ruling protecting net neutrality, ISPs tried instituting all of them: via jacked-up fees, forced redirection, content-blocking, software-blocking, website-blocking, competitor-blocking, app-blocking and still more app-blocking, data-capping, and censorship of controversial subjects.

There’s also ample, well-founded concern that the lack of net neutrality regulation will disproportionately hurt minority communities, thwart technological innovation, particularly among small internet businesses, and block broadband expansion in rural communities that already have limited access to internet services.

If net neutrality advocates have made it seem like there’s simply no end to the worst-case scenarios that unregulated ISPs might subject us to, it’s because they’ve learned from experience. This history of ISP exploitation is a major reason that advocates for net neutrality fought so hard for it to begin with.

Lest you believe that the current FCC is prepared to make sure that such offenses are fully sanctioned and dealt with by the government, think again. FCC Chair Ajit Pai is a vocal proponent of letting ISPs self-regulate and seems perfectly content to ignore their contentious and often predatory history.

This is the reality of a deregulated internet. While it’s good for consumers to stay alert to any potential changes, the blunt truth is that the window of time for saving net neutrality is closing rapidly. The best action for citizens to take on behalf of net neutrality is to lobby the House to vote on the Congressional Review Act — but the likelihood of the House actually doing so is very small. So unless the courts step in and block the repeal, which could take months or longer, net neutrality is over.

At this point, all we can do is wait.

via Vox - All

[patriotsnet]

What Happens If Republicans Win Midterms

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/what-happens-if-republicans-win-midterms/

What Happens If Republicans Win Midterms

Gop Lawmakers Threaten To Punish Democrats If They Win Back Control Of Congress

‘When we take the majority back in 2022, I’ll make sure consequences are doled out,’ said Rep. Madison Cawthorn.

Republicans are outraged that Democrats are governing by majority rule in the House. In retaliation, they are vowing to do the same things they now decry as unprecedented and wrong.

“Never in the history of our country has a Speaker acted like such an authoritarian,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Thursday.

He was upset that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had his request to appoint Republican Reps. Jim Banks and Jim Jordan to the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Both men voted to overturn the 2020 election results and pushed the lie that President Joe Biden only won because the election was stolen.

“Never in the history of Congress and the select committee I checked with the historian has this ever taken place, where the one party decides who’s all on the committee,” McCarthy told Fox News in a video he with his tweet. McCarthy in fact to give Republican then-Speaker John Boehner the exact same unilateral appointment power in 2014 for the Select Committee on the Events Surrounding the 2012 Terrorist Attack in Benghazi.

But while House Republicans claim they are being mistreated because the majority won’t let them have their way, they are also promising to retaliate by turning the same actions they criticize now against Democrats in 2023.

TAGS

‘the Beast Is Growing’: Republicans Follow A Winning At All Costs Strategy Into The Midterms

Much remains uncertain about the midterm elections more than a year away including the congressional districts themselves, thanks to the delayed redistricting process. The Senate, meanwhile, looks like more of a toss-up.

House Democrats think voters will reward them for advancing President Joe Biden’s generally popular , which involves showering infrastructure money on virtually every district in the country and sending checks directly to millions of parents. And they think voters will punish Republicans for their rhetoric about the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2020 election.

“Democrats are delivering results, bringing back the economy, getting people back to work, passing the largest middle-class tax cut in history, while Republicans are engaged in frankly violent conspiracy theory rhetoric around lies in service of Donald Trump,” said Tim Persico, executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

But the challenges Democrats face are real and numerous.

They knew they would face a tough 2022 immediately after 2020, when massive, unexpected GOP gains whittled the Democratic majority to just a handful of seats.

“House Republicans are in a great position to retake the majority,” said Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, “but we are taking nothing for granted.”

His rural district had been trending Republican for years. Kind won re-election last year by just about 10,000 votes.

What If The Republicans Win Everything Again

Total victory for the G.O.P. would mean Trump unleashed.

Opinion Columnist

The end of Robert Muellers investigation. The loss of health insurance for several million people. New laws that make it harder to vote. More tax cuts for the rich. More damage to the environment. A Republican Party molded even more in the image of President Trump.

These are among the plausible consequences if the Republicans sweep the midterm elections and keep control of both the House and Senate. And dont fool yourself. That outcome, although not the most likely one, remains possible. The last couple of weeks of polling have shown how it could happen.

Voters who lean Republican including whites across the South could set aside their disappointment with Trump and vote for Republican congressional candidates. Voters who lean left including Latinos and younger adults could turn out in low numbers, as they usually do in midterm elections. The Republicans continuing efforts to suppress turnout could also swing a few close elections.

No matter what, Democrats will probably win the popular vote in the House elections, for the first time since 2012. Trump, after all, remains unpopular. But the combination of gerrymandering and the concentration of Democratic voters in major cities means that a popular-vote win wont automatically translate into a House majority.

I Do Not Buy That A Social Media Ban Hurts Trumps 2024 Aspirations: Nate Silver

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sarah: Yeah, Democrats might not have their worst Senate map in 2022, but it will by no means be easy, and how they fare will have a lot to do with the national environment. And as we touched on earlier, Bidens overall approval rating will also make a big difference in Democrats midterm chances.

nrakich: Yeah, if the national environment is even a bit Republican-leaning, that could be enough to allow solid Republican recruits to flip even Nevada and New Hampshire. And then it wouldnt even matter if Democrats win Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

One thing is for sure, though whichever party wins the Senate will have only a narrow majority, so I think were stuck in this era of moderates like Sens. Joe Manchin and Lisa Murkowski controlling every bills fate for at least a while longer. 

sarah: Lets talk about big picture strategy, then, and where that leaves us moving forward. Its still early and far too easy to prescribe election narratives that arent grounded in anything, but one gambit the Republican Party seems to be making at this point is that attacking the Democratic Party for being too progressive or woke will help them win.

What do we make of that playbook headed into 2022? Likewise, as the party in charge, what are Democrats planning for?

With that being said, the GOPs strategies could still gin up turnout among its base, in particular, but its hard to separate that from general dissatisfaction with Biden.

The 2024 Presidential Election Will Be Close Even If Trump Is The Gop Nominee

One very important thing we should have all taken away from both the 2016 and 2020 presidential contests is that the two major parties are in virtual equipose . The ideological sorting-out of the two parties since the 1960s has in turn led to extreme partisan polarization, a decline in ticket-splitting and and in number of genuine swing voters. Among other things, this has led to an atmosphere where Republicans have paid little or no price for the extremism theyve disproportionately exhibited, or for the bad conduct of their leaders, most notably the 45th president.

Indeed, the polarized climate encourages outlandish and immoral base mobilization efforts of the sort Trump deployed so regularly. Some Republicans partisans shook their heads sadly and voted the straight GOP ticket anyway, And to the extent there were swing voters they tended strongly to believe that both parties were equally guilty of excessive partisanship, and/or that all politicians are worthless scum, so why not vote for the worthless scum under whom the economy hummed?

The bottom line is that anyone who assumes Republicans are in irreversible decline in presidential elections really hasnt been paying attention.

Republicans Set To Rebound Big In 2022 Midterms Unless

We are just 600 short days away from the 2022 midterm elections, which means it is the perfect time to handicap the Republicans chances to win back the House, Senate and prepare a serious challenge to President Biden

Patrick Joseph ToomeyBlack women look to build upon gains in coming electionsWatch live: GOP senators present new infrastructure proposalSasse rebuked by Nebraska Republican Party over impeachment vote already have Democrats scrambling to flip those seats in much easier electoral terrain.

As I noted in The Hill last month, Republicans are on the hook to defend 20 of their seats in 2022, while Team Blue has just 14 seats to hold, all in states won by Joe Biden in 2020. Since March is a perfect month for sports analogies, a good defense provides for a strong offense when the status quo is Democrats retaining control of the upper chamber. While there is clearly a power in incumbency, FiveThirtyEight suggests that senate vacancies are actually more of a mixed bag. In election cycles since 1974, the party with the most Senate retirements has actually gained seats just as often as it has lost them. For every year like 2008, when more Republicans than Democrats retired and Republicans lost seats accordingly, theres a year like 2012, when a whopping seven Democrats retired yet the party picked up two Senate seats.

How these various Rs play out in the next few months will determine if the Rs are successful in 2022.

Rising Violent Crime Is Likely To Present A Political Challenge For Democrats In 2022

But there are roadblocks to fully enacting Democrats’ agenda. Their thin majorities in both chambers of Congress mean nearly all Democrats have to get on board with every agenda item in order to push through major legislative priorities. And without adjusting or eliminating the legislative filibuster in the Senate, Democrats need 10 Republicans to join them for various legislation a near-impossible task.

Renewable Energy And Health Care Among The Sectors That Could Get Shakeup Due To Midterms

The 2022 midterm elections are already affecting Washington, and the results could shake up sectors such as renewable energy, health care and finance.

As Democrats in Washington work to deliver on infrastructure spending and other priorities, theyre trying to make progress in large part because of a key event thats still more than a year away.

That event is the midterm elections on Nov. 8, 2022, when Republicans will aim to take back control of the House and Senate and become a more powerful check on the priorities of President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats.

What leaders are thinking about, particularly since we have unified party control, is that these midterm elections are inevitably a referendum on the governing party, said Sarah Binder, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution and a professor of political science at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

In that sense, shrinking time coupled with What is it that Democrats want to run on? it adds pressure on Democrats to get their priorities through the door.

Time is growing short, Binder said, because party leaders often avoid making their members vote on tough issues in the same calendar year as an election, since that can hurt incumbents in tight races. Party leaders often think primarily about what they can get done in the first year of a Congress, as opposed to counting on the second year, she said.

Sectors that could win or lose

Year

Races worth watching

Can Democrats Avoid A Wipeout In 2022

Bidens plan: Go big or go home.

The good news for Democrats who watched Joe Biden unveil a historically ambitious agenda last night is that newly elected presidents have almost always passed some version of their core economic planparticularly when their party controls both congressional chambers, as Bidens does now.

The bad news: Voters have almost always punished the presidents party in the next midterm election anyway. The last two times Democrats had unified controlwith Bill Clinton in 199394 and Barack Obama in 200910they endured especially resounding repudiations in the midterms, which cost Clinton his majority in both chambers and Obama the loss of the House.

Theres a very different strategy this time, David Price, a Democratic representative from North Carolina and a former political scientist, told me. Theres an openness now to the sense that a bolder plan, ironically, might have greater appeal for independents and others we need to attract than trying to trim and split the difference with Republicans.

Read: The GOP cheat code to winning back the House

There is this recognition of this moment and how fleeting it is, and an evaluation that, absent the trifecta of control, it is very hard to move big policy, said a senior official at one of the partys leading outside advocacy groups, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategizing. So you have to take your shot. I think thats part of what undergirds Go big.

What If Republicans Win The Midterms

March 3, 2018

WASHINGTON A sizable portion of the American population has been convulsing with outrage at President Trump for more than a year. Millions of people who previously took only mild interest in politics have participated in protests, fumed as they stayed riveted to news out of Washington and filled social media accounts once devoted to family updates and funny videos with furious political commentary.

Yet public life on the whole has remained surprisingly calm. A significant factor in keeping the peace has surely been anticipatory catharsis: The widespread expectations of a big Democratic wave in the coming midterm elections are containing and channeling that indignation, helping to maintain order.

What will happen if no such wave materializes and that pressure-relief valve jams shut?

The country was already badly polarized before the plot twist of election night in 2016, of course, but since then liberals and much of what remains of Americas moderate center have been seething in a way that dwarfs the usual disgruntlement of whichever faction is out of power. While nobody can know for sure whether Mr. Trump would have lost but for Russias meddling, many of his critics clearly choose to believe he is in the White House because Vladimir Putin tricked the United States into making him its leader.

This November, if the wave turns out to be a mere trickle, we could see the accomplishment of that goal take hold.

Poll: Republicans Set To Win House Back In Massive Landslide

Republicans are set to win back the House in a historic landslide in 2022, according to a poll conducted by NBC News.

Based on all factors, youd have to consider Republicans the early favorites for the House majority in 2022, poll tracker David Wasserman NBC.

Democrats best hope is that Bidens approval rating stays above 50 percent and that Republicans have a tougher time turning out their voters without Trump on the ballot.

reports: The NBC report cites the all-too-predictable trend of the presidents party losing House seats in midterm elections, Democrats choosing not to run for reelection in some cases, and Republicans reaping the benefits of increased online donations, which are now on par with those of Democrats.

It is early, too early, to guarantee the Democrats loss of their slim 220-212 House majority. Voters wont hit the polls for almost 15 months, and things often have a way of changing on a dime in the world of politics. But the early signs certainly arent encouraging for the Democrats, especially as President Joe Bidens approval rating has taken a hit in recent weeks. American voters are being bombarded with images of a completely bungled withdrawal of Afghanistan and headlines about increased COVID hospitalizations and deaths. Inflation is also becoming a growing concern each month, contrary to the hopes of the Federal Reserve, and the crisis at the southern border shows no signs of abating.

Colwell: Republicans Are Likely To Win Control Of The House Next Year But

Three reasons why Republicans are very likely to take control of the House next year involve things over which Democrats have little or no control.

There is, however, one reason why Democrats might be able somehow to hang on to their slim majority. And they do have better prospects of at least holding on to the 50-50 Senate tie.

Reasons for Republicans winning control of the House:

FIRST: History is on their side. The party out of the White House almost always makes big gains in the first midterm election in a new presidency. In those midterm elections since the end of World War II, the average loss for the presidents party has been 29 seats. Democrats lost 63 seats in the 2010 midterm after election of President Barack Obama. Republicans lost 40 seats in the 2018 midterm after election of Donald Trump.

Because Democrats already lost seats in 2020, even as Joe Biden won the presidency, Republicans need only a net of five seats to win the majority. Democrats cant go back to 2020 to win more seats.

Factors in midterm losses for the presidents party include voters wanting a check on the president and disillusionment over any presidents inability to bring about everything voters hoped for.

SECOND: Redistricting after the census will result in many more safe Republican seats. Thats because Republicans control state legislatures in far more states than do Democrats. Both parties gerrymander. But it is the GOP controlling district drawing in many more states.

Site Map

Republicans In Decent Shape To Win House Majority In 2022

Washington Examiner

It is never preferable to be in the minority party in a legislative body. But as far as minorities go, House Republicans are in a pretty good spot.

Between the trend of midterm elections usually the party that is not in the White House, a closely divided House, and a party apparatus ready to continue their expectations-exceeding 2020 strategy while Democrats rework theirs, Republicans are on track to winning back the House in 2022.

“It has the makings of what could be a good year for the Republicans when it comes to the House,” said J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

President Bidens approval rating is around 53%, and while he is not underwater, history indicates he would need to bump that rating up by at least 10 points in order to have a shot at gaining seats. Gallup analysis found that even presidents with approval ratings of 50% during the midterm elections averaged a loss of about 14 House seats from their own party.

That would be enough to bump Republicans back into the majority. Democrats have the slimmest House majority since 1930, currently 221 seats to 210 GOP seats .

Republicans in the 2020 cycle shattered the expectations of analysts who forecasted Democrats to gain House seats in 2020. Not a single Republican incumbent lost the election, and they picked off 13 incumbent Democrats.

But it is not all smooth sailing for Republicans.

Why We Arent Going To Panic

We should all have our eyes wide open as we inch closer to the 2022 Midterms, but by no means should we give up hope. There are plenty of reasons why we can win the midterms.

For starters, Democrats appear to be quite awake to how dangerous the Republican party has become in just the past few years. And since the Republicans dont appear to be any less radicalized with Trump out of the party, I dont think Democrats are going to go back to sleep.

At this point in the election cycle, we dont have a full picture of who is retiring from Congress or who the candidates will be for these seats. Getting great candidates for crucial, must-win seats can energize voters and donors.

Presidential approval seems to have an important effect on midterms and at this point, Bidens approval rating is 15 points higher than his disapproval. If he continues to do good things for Americans and keep his approval rating high, that will help the Democrats a lot.

So, lets approach this midterm as clearly as possible: Our democracy is still on the line, and as awful as the Republicans are, they are in striking position to win back some power in Congress. Each of us needs to do everything we can to ensure that does not happen. If you arent already, consider subscribing to Political Charge as Ill be delving into specific actions we can take every month!

If you want to win the midterms, please share this post with others who want to win, too!

Republicans Will Likely Take Control Of The Senate By 2024

The usual midterm House losses by the White House party dont always extend to the Senate because only a third of that chamber is up for election every two years and the landscape sometimes strongly favors the presidential party . But there a still generally an out-party wave that can matter, which is why Republicans may have a better than average chance of winning in at least some of the many battleground states that will hold Senate elections next year . If they win four of the six youll probably be looking at a Republican Senate.

But its the 2024 Senate landscape that looks really promising for the GOP. Democrats will be defending 23 seats and Republicans just 10. Three Democratic seats, and all the Republican seats, are in states Trump carried twice. Four other Democratic seats are in states Trump won once. It should be a banner year for Senate Republicans.

Balance Of Power: 2022 Senate Races

If Democrats want to win the again, they need to win the four competitive seats they currently hold Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and New Hampshire. That or augment any loss with a gain in any of their three competitive targets Pennsylvania, , or North Carolina.

This Senate preview still holds up, but the shorter version is Democrats are easily favored in Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada. They should also win New Hampshire if Chris Sununu doesnt run .

The thing is, theyre also favored to win in Pennsylvania, where they have a strong field of primary candidates and where Joe Biden won.

They have to be no worse than, and admittedly probably better than, a tossup in Wisconsin, where Republicans have candidate issues and Democrats have a strong likely nominee.

So even if New Hampshire goes Republican because of some local candidate factors, Democrats are in a good spot to win the Senate again.

That means if youre trying to make a bet, you can essentially box out two of four combinations where the GOP wins the Senate, and focus your attention on the two remaining options, if youre looking for the values.

The 1858 Midterm Election

November 2, 1858

There is always a lull after a tempest, and so the political world has subsided into an unwonted calm since the election, commented a reporter for The New York Times. The Republicans are naturally . . . exultant over their sweeping victories. Such a commentary might apply to any number of elections, but this reporter described the outcome of a particularly historic electionthe midterm election of 1858. The Republican success that year was especially remarkable because the Republican Party was only four years old.

Almost by spontaneous combustion, the Republican Party burst forth in 1854 in response to the controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act. For decades, Americas political battles had been fought between the Democrats and the Whigs. By the early 1850s, however, the issue of slavery had splintered the Whigs into warring factions and divided Democrats between north and south. When Democratic senator Stephen Douglas pushed his Kansas-Nebraska bill to passage, including its proposal to settle the issue of slavery by popular sovereignty, the uproar among northern abolitionists and anti-slavery activists was too fierce to be contained by the ailing Whig Party. As one person commented, The Whigs were simply not angry enough.

The Future Could Actually Be Bright For Republicans

Ed Kilgore

The most common political narrative outside MAGA-land is that the Republican Party is screwed, and richly deserves the ignominious future it faces.

Until recently the GOP was a reasonably normal and intermittently successful center-right political party, not wildly different from its counterparts in other countries with a two-party system, despite some racist and militarist habits that burst into view in times of stress. But then America elected a Black president, and Republicans went a little crazy, according to those outside their circles. First they abetted a destructively antediluvian Tea Party Movement and then lurched into the arms of an evil charlatan who somehow got elected president and spent four years trashing hallowed conservative principles and losing both Congress and the White House before his disgraceful and violence-inflected departure.

Worse yet, in the face of huge demographic challenges that beg for a new approach, the Republican Party has now lashed itself to a Trumpian mast going forward, following the most consistently unpopular president in American history in his bizarre crusade to deny he has ever lost anything. Meanwhile a shockingly united Democratic Party is whipping a few decades worth of liberal legislation through Congress as Republicans whine about cancel culture and try to sell the idea that Joe Biden is actually Che Guevara.