Well, we got through it. I do not want to crow or even chuckle, but I did not see this coming. I was feeling good about Michigan, but the night before Election Day, after my shift observing absentee ballot pre-processing, I stopped for a fancy cocktail at the fancy cocktail bar across from Huntington Place. Got to talking to another Democratic challenger, and confessed I felt good about the gubernatorial and Secretary of State races here, but the attorney general might be touch-and-go.
For non-Michiganders, our AG is a spiky lesbian who was born with no fucks to give, at least about what people think of her. And so she’s had some public incidents (overserved at a tailgate party, making jokes about drag queens in schools) that would make any campaign coach facepalm. She’s also been a stand-up comic, and not everyone shares her sense of humor. And being female, of course some simply think she should sit down and shut up.
However. All my worry was for naught. Gretchen Whitmer won by 10+, Jocelyn Benson (SOS) by 14+, and Dana Nessel, the AG, by nearly 9. All of these qualify as landslides. And, to be sure, all were extremely fortunate in their opposition, which was uniformly awful, and that’s not just me saying so. Here’s the conservative editorial-page editor of the Detroit News:
Tudor Dixon, the gubernatorial hopeful, was the best of the bunch, and seemed to be making a solid run at Whitmer as the campaigning closed. A respected pollster put Dixon a fraction of a point ahead of the governor on the morning of Election Day. That turned out to be delusional.
Dixon started too late, and with too little oomph in her campaign. The challenger couldn’t raise enough money to truly compete with a Whitmer war chest that topped $36 million (Dixon raised $7 million).
The other two GOP hopefuls, Matt DePerno for attorney general and Kristina Karamo for secretary of state, were abysmal candidates who had no business on a respectable ballot. Many organizations traditionally aligned with the Republican Party refused to endorse them. They raised and spent even less money than Dixon. “Money talks” is still true when it comes to politics.
Karamo was a religious nut job, who came with a steamer trunk of oppo, much of it from her own podcast, where she opined that extramarital sex, yoga and various other benign forces led to demonic possession. She also spent a lot of time blabbering about abortion, which isn’t even part of the job she was running for. DePerno was more grounded in reality but also had a long string of regrettable incidents in his past, including padding his bills and assaulting his own clients. But both were, yep, personally endorsed by you-know-who. As was Dixon, who was just as crazy but a little more presentable. She also had many on-the-record interviews and media appearances when she was trying to be a minor-league Fox News commenter. But even this year, on the trail, when she was making hay from dirty books in school libraries, she used as an example the time one of her kids got a book out of her own school library that included a section on… anyone? Divorce. Yes, divorce.
So with these three leading the ticket, the down-ballot races were more or less doomed, and newly drawn legislative districts stripped the gerrymander advantage from Republicans. Long story short: Both chambers of the legislature flipped blue.
Election night at Huntington Place was anticlimactic, though. As the counting went on, the various GOP-linked challengers ran around scribbling madly on their clipboards, but nothing came of it. Everything ran very smoothly. The only downside was a throbbing headache that sent me home around 1 a.m. By then, the lay of the land was evident and the air was rapidly leaking out of the balloon. I didn’t feel I was letting anyone down by booking early.
I still have the headache, which has waxed and waned since Sunday. Seeing my doctor tomorrow.
And now it’s a lovely, lovely November day and I’m going to take a final-ish bike ride.
What else? Here’s a Twitter thread I did early on E-Day, on the unique joy of visiting Mr. C’s Car Wash here in Grosse Pointe. Let’s try embedding the first tweet and see if it doesn’t break the coding:
It's my birthday month, which means new stickers on my license plate, which reminds me I need a clean license plate, which reminds me I haven't had my car washed in forever. So off to Mr. C's full-service wash. First stop after leaving my car? The hallway of stuff! pic.twitter.com/uEscaQnBx7
— Nancy Nall Derringer (@nnall) November 8, 2022
Otherwise, I’m gonna get on that bike. Hope your November day is equally lovely. See you next week.
JodiP said on November 10, 2022 at 10:41 am
Thanks for MI update and good news. The MN legislature also flipped blue!
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Peter said on November 10, 2022 at 11:05 am
Jodi, that’s great news about Minnesota.
I’m still hoping that Kari Lake goes down in flames, and that voters in Georgia come to their senses.
I still can’t believe that Ron Johnson won. To quote the great Ren Hoek, he’s nothing more than a bloated sack of protoplasm.
If Republican leaders think that Trump is going to take the hints and sulk in Mar-A-Lago now that Ron De Santis is the anointed one, they’re loonier than I thought. They’re going to find out what victims have been saying for decades: Everything Trump Touches Dies.
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Julie Robinson said on November 10, 2022 at 11:11 am
Mar-A-Lago was under the mandatory evacuation order, poor little Donnie. Think he had to go to a shelter?
We lost power, actually heard the transformer blow. No sun since it’s still raining and blowing. No other damage so far.
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Mark P said on November 10, 2022 at 11:51 am
I wish the news in Georgia was better. I’m still hoping Raphael Warnock can defeat CTE and domestic violence poster child Herschel Walker, but I’m making no large wagers. On the home front, we’re waiting for some needed rain from the tropical storm. I still have some large oak rounds I need to split and haul up from the steep downhill part of our property. I simply could not do it without my 14-year-old Kawasaki side-by-side utility vehicle. Otherwise, the firewood situation looks good. I hope I can get that wood stacked and covered before the rain. We may actually need a fire within a week.
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David C said on November 10, 2022 at 11:59 am
Rojo winning stank. Wisconsin’s billionaires spent a shitload of money on ads that were “Mandela Barnes is black. Blackety, black, black , black…” Yet he only lost by 1%. The DSCC lit a shitload of money on fire trying to win in Florida when a small percentage of that would have done a world of good here. I’m thinking seriously about moving back home to Michigan. We don’t have a citizen’s initiative here so we’re stuck with our gerrymandering lege.
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jcburns said on November 10, 2022 at 12:22 pm
I kinda resent the idea that Georgia voters need to “come to their senses” after 1.8 million of us voted for Stacey Abrams, and 1.94 million voted for Raphael Warnock.
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alex said on November 10, 2022 at 12:30 pm
I think Indiana voters need their heads examined after delivering Jim Banks another landslide.
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Deborah said on November 10, 2022 at 1:09 pm
More good news, the third Rep in NM is now a Democrat. The incumbent Republican lost. So NM is fully Democratic now with both senators, all three house representatives, the guv, AG, SOS, and Dem majorities in the state houses. Some of the elections were razor thin victories but they won fair and square.
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Deborah said on November 10, 2022 at 1:25 pm
I should add that voter turnout in NM was a bit less this year than the last midterm in 2018. So that’s interesting to me, did more of the Republicans stay home this year?
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Julie Robinson said on November 10, 2022 at 2:38 pm
In hyper-local news, our power came back on, then it went out again, then it came back on again. We were so focused on the election that we had done zero hurricane prep this time, save for charging our power banks. We’ve got two bins in the garage with flashlights, batteries, camp stove, weather radio, and we still had our hurricane snacks, but we had two refrigerators full of food and we didn’t cook up the meat. Maybe we’ve snuck by, maybe it’ll go out again. Tired of this.
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Jeff Gill said on November 10, 2022 at 3:17 pm
Deborah — or more of them died since 2018, elderly, unvaccinated, and angry to the end. I think there’s a study to be done in many corners about how GOP COVID losses helped build the ramp to Tuesday’s unanticipated leap for Dem outcomes with relatively stable or lower turnout. Not the only cause, but a contributing factor for sure.
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Jeff Borden said on November 10, 2022 at 4:26 pm
The DNC still resembles the old Will Rogers description. Wonder if Tim Ryan might’ve pulled it out in Indiana Jr., I mean, Ohio, if he’d gotten more money. The fauxbilly ran a poor campaign. And dear dog, but RoJo again? He’s nearly as dumb as Herschel Walker even if he didn’t endure the concussions.
We’re still in a heap of trouble. The religious zealots on SCOTUS ate teeing up to examine a North Carolina effort that would give state legislatures enormous latitude in assigning electors. It really could result in “forever red” states.
Shout out to JC. I mock Floriduh and Texass, but there are millions of progressives living in those QOP strongholds. It’s not their fault the QOP has made it exceedingly difficult to change things for the better.
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Suzanne said on November 10, 2022 at 4:31 pm
Alex, not only did Hoosier voters re-elect Jim Banks, the elected this fool for Secretary of State, an office that he worked for at one time and got fired from.
https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2022/11/10/indiana-voters-shamefully-and-prominently-elect-morales/
“ Hoosier voters outdid themselves this time. The state announced to the nation the depth of its shallowness, its disengagement in its own government, and most of all, its ignorance.”
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Jeff Borden said on November 10, 2022 at 4:49 pm
Suzanne,
Watch out for Ohio coming on strong!
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Dexter Friend said on November 11, 2022 at 4:00 am
After election updater/guru Steve Kornacki said the mostly-republican mail-in votes would likely push Kari Lake over Dobbs I finally shut off the news and watched some Netflix garbage. I had had enough. I do not share in the joy others feel about the Democrats not getting slammed, not losing as much as predicted. Joy Reid summed it up when it became apparent Vance was going to clobber Tim Ryan here in Ohio. She highlighted how it backfired when Ryan came on strong with how he didn’t work for Biden, he tried so hard to replace Nancy Pelosi , and “I stood with Trump on China!!” Joy said many voters saw that and thought Ryan was just too cozy with the Republicans and voted against Ryan for the content of those horrible ads, and I mean they were shown all day and all night. I felt queasy every time I heard him say “I stood with TRUMP!!…” no matter the context.
Yet, Marcy Kaptur also dissed Biden and her own party in general, campaigning on a “I work for OHIO !!” schtick, and although the rural areas rejected her, Toledo brought her home safe, easily.
Pray for Preacher Warnock. I am so fucking sick of this moron dumb-ass Herschel Walker. Jeezuss Kreist wotta idiot.
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Dexter Friend said on November 11, 2022 at 4:14 am
For Tarantino fans: https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/quentin-tarantino-san-francisco-castro-17568998.php?IPID=SFGate-HP-CP-Spotlight
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Mark P said on November 11, 2022 at 9:08 am
Trump’s election caused me severe cognitive dissonance. It was like seeing some supernatural occurrence for which there is no rational explanation. The only explanation I can come up with for his supporters is that the ordinary people I see and meet on the street are pod people. And now Herschel Walker. It is literally beyond my ability to understand. But then, Georgia has a history. This is the state that bumbled into having Lester Maddox as governor, and then, to prove it wasn’t a fluke, elected him lieutenant governor when he couldn’t run for governor again. He was the one who stood in front of his restaurant with a pick handle to prevent blacks from entering. So, pod people, ignorant bumpkins, or just plain, old evil? I don’t know. I just wish they would all wander off into the woods and disappear. Only not my woods.
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Deborah said on November 11, 2022 at 9:55 am
I hear what you’re saying Mark P. It was cognitive dissonance for me too when Trump got elected. It’s really weird to try to imagine what people could be thinking especially when no one around you seems to feel that way. Living in the bubble of Chicago and most of IL except for the far southern part of the state, there seem to be mostly like minded people. Also NM is all blue now. I saw my first MAGA hat in the wild on Election Day, an old white guy out walking his dog in my Chicago neighborhood. It startled me. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to have that all around you where you live.
I’ve started reading The Persuaders by Anand Giridharadas about people who go out to change minds. It’s a skill I will have to learn because I certainly have no clue how it’s done.
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David C said on November 11, 2022 at 10:28 am
I’m only surprised that a Trump didn’t happen earlier. When you find out that half of adults read below sixth grade level if they read at all. Then their go to is “I seen him on TV”. They had no idea how much Mark Burnett had to do to make him look sane. They probably wouldn’t have cared. He said whatever was rattling around in their heads. They should change the national motto to nobody has ever gone broke underestimating the taste and intelligence of the American people.
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brian stouder said on November 11, 2022 at 3:03 pm
The political metaphor I subscribe to is – surfing. We, the people, have our oceans full of hopes, dreams, fears, arbitrary beliefs and preconceptions (and willful ignorances); and our governmental representatives surf on the waves, and exploit opportunities wherever they present themselves.
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ROGirl said on November 11, 2022 at 3:08 pm
I’m just thankful that the MAGA freaks didn’t take over. The propaganda machines churned out so much bullshit that I avoided the news headlines until I finally peeked and saw that John Fetterman beat Dr Oz. The Michigan blue sweep was pretty amazing, considering how red the state legislature has been. Maybe they’re all just preparing for the next phase of the war on democracy, but this felt like a decisive moment.
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Deborah said on November 11, 2022 at 4:40 pm
I was sorry to read that Rep. Patrick Maloney lost his race in suburban NY. I always thought he was a good guy.
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alex said on November 13, 2022 at 7:17 am
Testing testing 1 2 3
On edit: Didn’t get an internal server error message this time.
Come on in, folks! The water’s warm!
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nancy said on November 13, 2022 at 7:36 am
I had such cognitive dissonance from Trump’s election that for weeks afterward, the phrase “president-elect Trump” on the radio made me shudder. And the swearing-in was seriously dreamlike. I kept thinking this can’t be happening.
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alex said on November 13, 2022 at 8:41 am
What I remember most from the Trump swearing-in was Melania gesticulating with her face and showing what appeared to be the same contempt for her husband that most of America was feeling that day. I remember her disappearing from public view for a few months afterward and wondered if she was recovering from some broken bones.
As for cognitive dissonance, for me it began in July of that year and it hasn’t stopped. I feared it would become the new normal, and it has.
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LAMary said on November 13, 2022 at 1:38 pm
The inauguration speech compounded the bad feeling the Trump election gave me. Remember W saying, “that was some weird shit” to the Obamas?
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Deborah said on November 13, 2022 at 2:12 pm
At this point I kinda hope Trump runs again, because if the midterms are any indication, he’ll lose. But the possibility of violence when he loses again is reason enough to hope he doesn’t become the GOP nominee.
So glad Nevada pulled it off for the Dems keeping the Senate, now Warnock will be icing on the cake.
Any word on Arizona governors race? There was an opener on SNL that was pretty good, the woman who impersonates Lake is spot on.
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David C said on November 13, 2022 at 2:31 pm
I’m with you on that Deborah but I hope he runs as an independent. How hard would it be to goad him into that? If enough people, probably about three, tell him that Mitch McConnell is afraid he’ll run as an independent he’ll do it for spite.
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Julie Robinson said on November 13, 2022 at 3:26 pm
The prevailing sentiment among my crew is to bring on the battle between TFG and DeSantis. Let them mortally wound each other in the primary.
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brian stouder said on November 13, 2022 at 5:52 pm
If we had to write a speculative essay as to what US history will record in 2024 – or, more accurately, what we’d love to see happen – I’d write about a surprisingly decisive victory by the Biden/Harris ticket, and an upsurge in D’s in congress. Then, along about 2026, President Biden resigns and retires, and President Harris rolls onward to her eventual re-election in 2028
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Dexter Friend said on November 14, 2022 at 12:10 am
President Harris ain’t never gonna happen. She’s sorta the Dan Quayle sort, never meant to go any further. She basically has been sidelined so far. If Biden and his advisers wanted a dynamo for VP, he’d have picked Stacey Abrams. Val Demings. I caught hell online from many when I began dissing the possibility of Harris being in the pool at first. I just didn’t like her California political history, what she did on the job, too much for this post. If Biden passes away and Harris becomes President, I’d give her a clean slate and let her show what she’s really made of. Biden and Trump both may or may not run. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, says Donald won’t run. Many Republican leaders are wishin’ and prayin’ the toxic bastard will not run. Biden is just old, the oldest sitting leader ever. I hope Joe runs anyway. And kicks Harris back to California and picks Stacey this time. Stacey Abrams is too bright a star than to be anything but President some day.
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