Tangle - Democrats win the Senate.
Episode Date: November 14, 2022We're covering the results from the 2022 midterms, including Democrats officially taking the Senate. Plus, a question about why some results take so long to come in, and an important under the radar s...tory about Taiwan.You can find our previous midterm coverage here.Here is a good breakdown of why voting takes so long in California.You can read today's podcast here, today’s “Under the Radar” story here, and today’s “Have a nice day” story here.Today’s clickables: Quick hits (1:10), Today’s story (2:14), Right’s take (11:26), Left’s take (5:36), Isaac’s take (17:46), Listener question (22:48), Under the Radar (25:55), Numbers (26:44), Have a nice day (27:40)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle.
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening.
Welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place where you get views from across
the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find
everywhere else. I am your guest host, Trevor Eichhorn, usually the producer on this podcast.
But today, our fearless leader Isaac is in transit. He wrote today's newsletter from the airport, so I am stepping into the driver's
seat for the pod. I hope you're doing well. Nice to see you, as it were. It was a big week for
democracy. It was a big week for our country in a lot of ways. We are going to get right into it,
but we will start off today with some quick hits.
quick hits. First up, U.S. inflation slowed more than forecasters expected, rising 7.7% in October from a year ago, while the core consumer price index increased 0.3% from the prior month.
The stock market rallied on the news. Number. A federal judge in Texas ruled that President Biden's plan to erase student loan debt was
unlawful, throwing its future into question. The Education Department is suspending student
debt relief loan applications. 3. Ukrainian forces reclaimed
the southern port city Kherson after Russian forces vacated the territory.
Number four, Chris Magnus, the head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection,
is being forced out of the agency as record levels of migrants continue to enter the U.S. from Mexico.
Number five, President Biden is with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Bali on Monday. Democrats have now done what seemed somewhat improbable a few months ago.
Democrats retained control of the Senate with two victories out West.
The House is still up in the air this morning. Although national races tend to steal the
spotlight, yes, we get that.
These state-level wins are important and they will have major implications.
Quite a week in politics, indeed. On Saturday night, Democrat Catherine Cortez Mastro defeated Republican Adam Laxalt in Nevada's Senate race, assuring Democrats 50 seats and a Senate majority
for the next two years.
The victory means Democrats will head into the December 6th runoff in Georgia's Senate race with an opportunity to gain a seat in a midterm election where they were widely expected to
lose their majority. Nearly a week after election night, the race for the House majority is still
too close to call, though Democrats would have to win all five remaining toss-up seats to
retain the majority. By retaining control of the Senate with an opportunity to pick up a seat in
December and keeping the House race so competitive, Democrats can boast the strongest midterm showing
in two decades for a party holding the White House. Party leaders and strategists have credited
the fall of Roe v. Wade and the unpopularity
of former President Donald Trump's preferred candidates for galvanizing their base and
attracting moderates, while also pointing to the critical strategic decisions about
which races to invest in for their surprising success.
We'll be doing a post-mortem on the midterms in this week's subscribers-only Friday edition.
Along with winning the Senate majority and mitigating potential losses in the House, Democrats also
won several key swing state gubernatorial races, assuring executive control in Pennsylvania,
Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada. The governor's race in Arizona is still too close to call,
however. And one notable defeat came in Georgia, where Republican
Brian Kemp easily defeated Stacey Abrams. Meanwhile, numerous Republican candidates
running for Secretary of State positions in swing states who questioned or denied the results of the
2020 election have all lost. None so far have refused to concede or openly questioned the
results. Today, we're going to explore some or openly questioned the results. Today we're going
to explore some reactions to the latest results from the left and the right, and then Tangle's
take. You can find our previous midterm coverage with the link in today's episode description. Let's start off today with what the left is saying.
Many on the left celebrate the victory and point to abortion and concerns for democracy
as the major reasons that the Democrats have performed so well.
Some celebrated Republicans like Liz Cheney,
who broke from their party and endorsed Democrats. Others emphasized Democrats'
successful legislative agenda and said that they should keep pushing for more progressive programs.
In the New York Times, Lisa Lehrer emphasized abortion as the reason Democrats prevailed.
Support for abortion rights appears to be one of the big
reasons Democrats defied history and staved off deep midterm losses, she said. Democratic campaigns
invested more heavily in abortion rights than any other topic, riding a wave of anger after
the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June. In total, Democrats and their allies spent nearly
half a billion dollars on ads mentioning abortion,
more than twice what they spent on crime, and eight times as much as Republicans spent on abortion,
according to Ad Impact, an ad-tracking firm.
In Virginia, Minnesota, New Mexico, and elsewhere, abortion rights emerged as a driving force in the midterm elections,
helping Democrats win ballot measures, governor's races, and House seats.
Lehrer continued,
In several states where the future of abortion rights rested on the outcomes of state legislative
and governor's races, voters said the issue was pivotal, according to exit polls conducted by
TV networks and Edison Research. In Pennsylvania, abortion overtook the economy as the top issue on
voters' minds. Democrats there won a Senate race, critical to their hopes of maintaining a Senate
majority as well as the governor's mansion, and seemed poised to flip control of the state House
of Representatives. In Michigan, where nearly half the voters said abortion was their top issue,
Democrats won both chambers
of the legislature and re-elected Governor Gretchen Whitmer, giving the party a trifecta
of power for the first time in 40 years. Jacob Garden Swartz said there were two winners in
this election, Democracy and Liz Cheney. Democrats were the most successful in the
races where they clearly and constantly articulated the threat of Republican
authoritarianism. John Fetterman and Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire,
Gretchen Whitmer and Jocelyn Benson in Michigan, Tony Evers in Wisconsin, Steve Simon in Minnesota,
and Maggie Toulouse-Oliver in New Mexico, Garden-Swartz said. Each emerged victorious
against GOP challengers who denied or
questioned the results of the 2020 election. In exit polls, nearly 8 in 10 voters said they felt
confident in the fairness and accuracy of elections, with 68% indicating that they felt
democracy was under attack. And in several key races, Democrats relied on an unlikely messenger to
hammer home the message of their opponent's extremism, outgoing Republican Representative
Liz Cheney, Garden-Swartz said. Cheney, vice chair of the House Select Committee investigating the
January 6th insurrection, has become something of a crusader against Trump and others in her party
who continue to push falsehoods about
2020. A week before the election, she went so far as to endorse and campaign for several Democrats
facing election deniers as opponents. If Democrats learn anything from Tuesday, it's that they should
lean more into pro-democracy messages that plainly lay out the stakes if GOP election deniers take
charge. Support for abortion rights
now appears to be one of the big reasons Democrats defied history and staved off deep midterm losses.
Elizabeth Warren, Democratic senator from Massachusetts, said Democrats won on the
backs of negotiating Medicare, infrastructure bills, capping insuline costs, taxing corporations, and canceling
student debt.
And now it's time to do more.
A few lobbyist-friendly Democrats in our own party blocked much of the president's agenda
for working families.
They torpedoed the president's plan to reverse the Trump tax giveaways.
They blocked proposals to cut skyrocketing housing and childcare costs, Warren wrote.
They thwarted efforts to fight
corruption and gerrymandering, defend democracy, and protect abortion rights. If these Democrats
had listened to voters instead of special interests, we would be in an even stronger
electoral position today because we would have delivered even more for Americans.
Americans understand that the economic well-being of families is
inextricably linked to democracy and to individual rights, even if too many cable news gurus do not.
A majority of Americans know that abortion is a kitchen table issue that is central to both
health and economic security, not a distraction. Americans understand that prices are rising in
part because of corporate greed
and want the government on their side. Tuesday's results confirmed those views. Across America,
every ballot initiative to protect abortion rights passed, along with many proposals to
tax the wealthy and put money in workers' pockets, Warren said. And so-called experts,
who called Democrats' message incoherent, were just plain wrong.
And candidates who ignored their advice won. John Fetterman embraced populist economic policies,
called out corporate greed, and won. Raphael Warnock took a central role in urging the
president to cancel student debt and is strongly positioned to win in Georgia.
Many Democratic candidates leaned hard into protecting abortion rights and democracy
while also aggressively supporting popular economic plans.
That's that for what the left is saying. Now let's take a look at what the right is saying.
That's that for what the left is saying. Now let's take a look at what the right is saying.
The right is divided about the results, with some blaming Trump and others blaming establishment Republicans. Some argue there is still a path forward for a strong 2024 cycle
for Republicans, while others are celebrating Republican gains in states like New York.
In the Washington Post, Hugh Hewitt said the path to a successful 2024
for Republicans hasn't changed. Right now, Republicans are overcorrecting to deep disappointment,
and of course, there are recriminations egged on by blue bubble media and Democratic activists
who would love to see a GOP civil war, Hewitt wrote. What ought to matter to Constitution-first
conservatives is that the House,
as of Sunday morning, is still more likely than not to go to Republicans, and, if it does,
the GOP can 1. set up a select committee on China and 2. attend to a depleted Pentagon budget,
while 3. conducting vigorous oversight of federal agencies that are failing,
especially Homeland Security.
A small majority can do these things, and they matter both on the substance and with the voters.
Go that way, and put hard votes in front of the Democrats while standing as a wall against the
excesses of the past two years. On the Senate side, every 10 years, like clockwork, the GOP
forgets that candidates
who win primaries are sometimes too far to the right for the general. Republicans cannot wish
away the independents who do not want abortion rights ended, only limited. They cannot wish
away young voters. The Buckley rule abides. Nominate the most conservative candidate who
can win. The Republicans didn't. McConnell warned them,
but he did his part for those who were viable. J.D. Vance in Ohio, successfully, and Adam Laxalt
in Nevada, the most disappointing loss of the election, Hewitt said. In the closely divided
chamber, the GOP should stick with the guy who had the guts and acumen to do what it took to
secure a conservative Supreme Court majority.
The Senate Republicans, whether they total 49 or 50, will remain a check on the administration.
Let the battle-tested McConnell chart the course to a last legacy burnishing turn
at Senate majority leadership in 2024. In The Federalist, Tristan Justice wrote the
case against Mitch McConnell for Senate Minority
Leader. McConnell's super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, went on to gut desperately
needed campaign cash from the conservative candidates in Arizona and New Hampshire,
who refused to kiss the ring of Washington monarchs, Justin said. In Arizona, McConnell
axed $18 million from the race where Republican venture capitalist Blake
Masters sought to bring down a well-funded Democrat incumbent. While the Masters race
remains too close to call, General Don Baldock in New Hampshire was completely defeated by Democrat
Senator Maggie Hassan, who captured a second term despite multiple polls showing Republicans within
the margins of error. Balduck was similarly abandoned
by the GOP leader, with $5.6 million cut from the contest. Both Balduck and Masters signaled
support for another candidate to lead the Senate conference if elected to the upper chamber.
McConnell took money from the competitive pickup contests and redirected resources into Alaska and
Colorado, the former featuring a race between two Republicans
and the latter featuring a candidate who alienated the base, he wrote.
Alienating the base, however, has become routine practice for McConnell,
who boasts a lower favorability rating than President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris,
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. In other words, McConnell is the most unpopular politician in the country,
a fact Democrats used to their advantage in this election cycle by villainizing McConnell
as the new GOP boogeyman. In Alaska, McConnell's PAC spent more than $6 million to boost Republican
Senator Lisa Murkowski over the state party's endorsed challenger, Kelly Schubaka. Meanwhile in Colorado,
Republican construction executive Joe Odea, who benefited from $1.25 million of McConnell's money,
lost by 11 points with 88% of precincts reporting. In the New York Post, newly elected Mike Lawler celebrated the real
red wave in New York and how Republicans can build on it. New Yorkers are getting sick and
tired of woke liberalism, and it's showing in pockets of voters once considered the base of
the Democratic Party, Lawler said. In short, there's a crack in the traditional Democratic
coalition, and Republicans have an enormous opportunity to expand that breach with time-tested arguments in the coming months and years. police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness
to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it
feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on
Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been
reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor
about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu.
It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older,
and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur,
and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca. In the Hudson Valley, where I prevailed on election night over Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee Chairman Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, the first time in 42
years that a DCCC chairman lost re-election, voters once considered unreachable by Republicans
were an essential part of my victory. Latino, Asian, Jewish, and a growing number of African
American voters rejected woke orthodoxy and all that comes with it. In Southeast Brooklyn,
one of the most ethnically diverse areas in the country, voters toppled three long-term incumbent
Democrat state assembly members, something that would have been unimaginable a couple of years ethnically diverse areas in the country, voters toppled three long-term incumbent Democrat State
Assembly members, something that would have been unimaginable a couple of years ago. In areas of
Queens, the same thing is occurring. First and second generation Americans are embracing the
conservative ethos of hard work and personal responsibility over failed big government
liberalism. A great deal of credit goes to Congressman Lee Zeldin
for running a smart, focused,
and passionate anti-crime campaign
in his narrow defeat last Tuesday.
Of all the places where a red wave could have crested,
few would have guessed it would have been here in New York,
where Republicans will send as many as
11 new members of Congress to Washington
and a number of new state senators
and assembly members to Albany.
With hard work and compassionate outreach, this could just be the beginning.
And that'll do it for what the right and the left are saying.
Now it's time for Tangle's Take.
Well, this sure wasn't what we were originally expecting. As Isaac said on Wednesday, he thought the odds of Democrats
pulling off a Senate hold were pretty good based on everything that we'd seen in the first 24 hours,
and now they have the majority locked in. But he certainly didn't imagine this outcome a week ago.
We suspect the Democrats will end up picking up a seat by winning the runoff in Georgia,
where there are three obstacles facing Republicans. One, why dump obscene amounts of money into a
Senate race for a single seat that won't change the majority, especially when the Senate map
looks so bad for Democrats in 2024. Sure, you want the seat locked
down for six years, but it seems to us Republican donors will be far less motivated than Democrats,
who could make either Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia or Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona
irrelevant. How do you motivate Republican voters to come out when they understand it may not make a huge
difference? Two, when Trump announces that he is running for office, which he seems primed to do
tomorrow, Democrats will be even more highly motivated to turn out. Three, and most crucially,
Walker is clearly a weak candidate. Other Republicans running for state offices in
Georgia cleaned house and margins suggested that voters there have concerns about Walker.
Otherwise, he would have kept pace with them.
We have a hard time seeing how Republicans manage to get the vote out or whether they'll be as motivated as Democrats to fundraise and pour money into the race.
As for the why of what just happened, Isaac will talk about that more in this week's Subscribers Only Friday edition, and he thinks that we still need to get all the results
and data in.
But based on the evidence we have so far, more than threats to democracy or gerrymandering
or Trump's drag on the party or concerns about crime, the issue of abortion rights
seems to have had the most outsized impact on the midterms.
We're sure these other factors
played a part, and candidate quality was an issue too. Mehmet Oz was a carpetbagger,
Blake Masters wasn't experienced or well-funded, Adam Laxalt was unable to navigate the abortion
issue, and Herschel Walker was, well, Herschel Walker. Still, it was a great week for democracy.
Herschel Walker. Still, it was a great week for democracy. Not because of who won and lost,
but because of how they won and lost. None of the predictions about waves of people refusing to concede, violence in the streets, or widespread distrust of the results came to fruition.
Candidates are losing, admitting they lost, and going quietly. which surprised us. The fact that Isaac was surprised
made him think that maybe he was consuming a little too much left-wing content around the
threats to democracy in this upcoming election, which is a piece of self-reflection he left with.
We were also glad to see that it's a bad campaign strategy to deny the results of a previous
election, given how poorly all of those candidates fared. One imagines telling
voters elections are rigged may not be a great way to get them to actually vote. It's a welcome
development for a country that relies on peaceful transfers of power to function. No appeals of
protest like we had in 2020, and very few calls of voter suppression like the ones echoed from
Clinton's 2016 campaign. Despite some
skepticism Americans have about our election work, the vast majority seem, for now, comfortable with
the outcomes in the 2022 midterms. It has been a long time since we could say that about an election.
What's even more fascinating about 2022 is just how different the election appears depending on where you look. In New York,
Oregon, and Florida, Republicans did clean Democrats' clock with issues like crime or
inflation or anti-woke rhetoric. Yet, in states like Pennsylvania or Michigan, where conditions
seemed favorable for major Democratic losses, the opposite happened. Despite the nationalization of our politics,
this was a very uneven primary election. The House majority obviously still matters,
and it's currently on a knife's edge. But, as was true last week, Republicans still have the
inside track. We don't see that changing. One thing you can bet on, though, is that the House
will be a mess. Republicans are
going to have an ugly battle over leadership position. Even if they win a majority, it'll be
a small one, which gives outsized power to individual members, which creates chaos and
infighting. Republicans are also going to be welcoming several new House members from New
York and California who are not going to vote consistently with House Republican leadership.
Many of them will need to appease voters in purple districts.
In simple terms, it's going to be a nearly impossible group to wrangle.
That does it for Tangle's Take.
Now it's time for your questions answered.
This question comes from Sam in Southern California. Sam asks, why do election results take so long now? Pennsylvania, basically had results for us on the night of the election. That's due in part to the races there not being very close. To be sure, tight races make ensuring you know who is the winner a
little more time-consuming, and we'd put that at the top of the list of reasons why a vote count
may go on for days, or even weeks. The other reason is that states now have very different
ways of conducting elections. One of the big distinctions between states, especially now,
is those that process absentee and mail-in ballots before election day
versus those that process them on election day.
Then there are the states who allow those ballots to arrive in the days after the election
and still count them, which means you have to wait for all those votes to arrive in the mail
before you begin processing and counting them. Many races that have already been called are still processing
overseas absentee and military ballots. It's the ones in states that are both still processing
these votes and are very competitive that are lasting so long. What Isaac usually tells people
is that the time that it takes to count votes is usually a tradeoff between access and security. If you want to count the votes as fast as possible, you have to make voting less accessible and less secure. If you want to make voting as accessible and secure as possible, you are generally going to end up with a much longer process.
much longer process. You'll get more votes via mail, more votes that are going to be counted even if they show up late, and in order to keep elections secure, you'll have to do a lot of
double-checking, processing, and ballot curing, helping machines process votes that are illegible
to the machine or reaching out to voters to fix ballots that weren't filled out properly.
I'll put a link in the episode description here to an article that has a good breakdown of why votes take so long in California. The good news is we know where
to look for answers. While Florida benefited from a not-very-close election in 2022,
they also have a superior system. They've made voting early easy and give anyone a take-home
ballot who requests it. They start counting early votes when they come in, and they've standardized the system with 100% paper ballots. 9 million of the 11 million
2020 votes in Florida were cast early. There were basically zero issues, and we had reliable results
on election night. Nationalized politics have driven Florida to make some unfortunate changes to the system that worked so well in 2020, but it still looks very good in 2022.
To us, allowing states to expand take-home voting and to start processing and counting those votes before Election Day are simple reforms worth implementing.
But it will require individual states following Florida's lead for something like that to happen.
individual states following Florida's lead for something like that to happen.
Now for our Under the Radar section. Congress is now deliberating on how to fund an unprecedented package of billions of dollars of military assistance to Taiwan in anticipation of a
potential Chinese invasion of the island, according to the Washington Post. With Biden and
China's Xi Jinping set to meet in Bali on Monday, members of Congress are considering dipping into
our own stocks of weapons and providing them to Taiwan through the foreign military financing
program paid for by the United States. The idea would be to transfer weapons to Taiwan in a manner
similar to the way the U.S. did for Ukraine, but before
any potential attack. The Washington Post has the story about its controversial negotiations.
There's a link in today's episode description.
Now for some numbers. The number of people who voted in the U.S. House races was 101 million.
number of people who voted in the U.S. House races was 101 million. The number of votes for Republicans as of 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Sunday night was 52.2 million. The number of
votes for Democrats as of the same time on Sunday night was 47.2 million. The margin of Democrat
Raphael Warnock's lead over Herschel Walker in Georgia's Senate race,
which has now headed to a runoff, is around 35,000. The margin of Republican Governor
Brian Kemp's victory over Stacey Abrams in Georgia's gubernatorial race was around 300,000.
The last time that a president's party maintained control of all state legislatures where they
previously had a majority,
which Democrats did in this election, was 1934.
And of course, last but not least, our Have a Nice Day section. A 14-year-old inventor in San Diego has won a prize for coming up with the FinCEN headphones, which use blue light therapy to
detect and treat mid-ear infections. Leanne Fan says the low-cost option can treat a problem that
impacts 700 million people worldwide and causes 21,000 deaths a year. She also believes that her
invention could reduce post-infection hearing loss by up to 60% in children. The invention took home the top prize in the 2022
3M Young Scientist Challenge. The week has the story. There's a link in today's episode description.
And that's a wrap on today's episode of Tangle. Thanks for tuning in.
Everyone send Isaac your best safe travel energy today. We will be back here same place, same time tomorrow.
In the meantime, show us some love.
Tell a friend about us.
Follow us if you haven't.
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See you tomorrow.
Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and produced by Trevor Eichhorn.
Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Sean Brady, and Bailey Saul.
Shout out to our interns, Audrey Moorhead and Watkins Kelly,
and our social media manager, Magdalena Pokova, who designed our logo.
Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75.
For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our website at
www.readtangle.com.
Thanks for watching! inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.
Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported
across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu
season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor
about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu.
It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older,
and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur,
and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca.