Not Joe

Journalist excited about the outcome of Senate elections tweets before thinking:

Huh, so Democrats managed to pick up a Senate seat in a cycle where they should have been crushed.

Consider the possibility that Joe Biden is very good at his job.

— Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) December 7, 2022

Individuals don't vote for or against members of the President's party because the President is doing a good or bad job. They vote in large measure because of a perception of whether the President is performing well- and whether the things are going well, especially when his party ostensibly controls both chambers of Congress.

As of the date of the congressional elections (November 8, 2022), approval of President Biden stood at 41%-42%, disapproval at 53%-55%.  (It has improved since then, but is still "underwater.")  

The right track-wrong track numbers are even more startling at first glance, although some voters believe the country is on the wrong track while nonetheless supporting the Chief Executive. A Morning Consult "right track- wrong direction" survey (updated 12/5/2022) found that only 30% of voters presently believe the nation is on the right track while 70% believe it's headed in the wrong direction. On November 5, as you would expect, the numbers were even worse, at 26%-74%.  Dropping gas prices can be quite the palliative.

So, no, Mr. Millhiser, something else is at play. In late November, The Washington Post reported that Ballotpedia

broke out key battleground races for 2022, contests that weren’t simply Trump rubber-stamping the likely Republican winner. In those, they estimate, Trump’s candidate won in only 14 of 37 general-election contests (though the results are incomplete, awaiting other election calls). That includes Oz’s loss in Pennsylvania.

Georgia is particularly instructive. As has been frequently noted, Herschel Walker ran significantly behind Brian Kemp, as the latter won his race to be re-elected as Georgia governor. Additionally, Kemp had won re-nomination by defeating by roughly 42 points the candidate, David Perdue, who had the endorsement of Trump. 

In most states, Trump's support aided the GOP candidate in the party primary.  However, most were bad candidates. Kari Lake appeared to be a very strong candidate and likely to win the election for governor of Arizona. However- and even though she opposed a weak Democratic candidate running a bad campaign- Lake came out on the losing end.

So Donald Trump contributed mightily to preventing the "red wave" some observers expected. Nonetheless, as Cook Political Report found (as of mid-November) that Republican House candidates in the nation as a whole won the popular vote "51.7 to 46.8 percent, a result that would normally translate into GOP gains of 20-30 seats." It argued "This time, candidate quality and the toxicity of former President Trump and the MAGA movement hurt certain Republicans where it mattered most."

That's not President Joe Biden- that's Donald J. Trump and unless voters perceive 23-24 months from now that Democrats have delivered the goods, the outcome likely will be much worse.

 

 

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Tweet of the Day- If Abortion is Murder, Convince its Opponents

Over the last few days, there have been great tweets pertaining to the Republican candidate for United States Senator representing Georgia.

I would say a lot of the public reaction shows you that a lot of them don't actually believe abortion is murder.

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) October 4, 2022

Most of the Republican street which identifies as "pro-life" believes abortion is "murder" because it does not understand that "murder" is unlawful killing. If abortion had been murder and thus illegal, the practice would have been far rarer and pro-life folks would have been far less exorcised by it.

Still, the "pro-life" contingent of GOP voters does believe that abortion is killing. Thus, Hayes recognizes that according to what these individuals claim, Herschel Walker paid to have his child murdered. And the nearly unmistakable conclusion in the failure of any prominent Republicans to criticize Walker is that they don't actually believe that abortion is the termination of human life..

For years I've been noticing the habit of GOP legislators in Republican-dominated states to ban abortion and provide for punishment to doctors but either omit reference to. or actually exempt from penalty, the woman soliciting the procedure. Though rarely acknowledged, it was clear that a major contingent of forced-birth public officials or pundits has believed either that abortion is not killing or it's nevertheless acceptable.

Nonetheless, much (if not most) of the conservative street believes that abortion is killing and reproductive freedom must be considerably curtailed.  So now we have the new GOP slogan: "Abortion is murder. Let's make the guy who paid for one a Senator."

 

 

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A Convenient MIsunderstanding

As you've doubtless heard

Herschel Walker, the Republican nominee for Senate in Georgia, who has been a frequent critic of absentee fathers, especially in Black households, has acknowledged that he is the father of a second son he had not previously mentioned publicly, as well as an adult daughter who was born when he was in his early 20s.

The revelation, reported on Thursday by The Daily Beast, is the second this week about children Mr. Walker has fathered but did not publicly disclose. The outlet reported on Tuesday about a 10-year-old son of Mr. Walker’s with whom he is not in contact.

It's fair to say that Walker has a sketchy association with the truth. His dishonesty has no bounds and

Walker has also been called out for lying about graduating from the University of Georgia. He left after his junior year. He also said that he was a member of law enforcement in Cobb County and trained with the FBI. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found no evidence this was true. The Cobb County Police Department, a county neighboring Atlanta, also said it “had no record of involvement with Walker,” the newspaper reported.

So of course he was received enthusiastically at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference this weekend.  The quote in this tweet begins at approximately 3:26-29 of the video below and as you can hear, is incomplete because the recording from the conference is unclear and Walker's words particularly so. The candidate was responding to a question posed by host Ralph Reed, who falsely stated (at 3:26-02) that Democratic senator Raphael Warnock "says he's pro-abortion" because Reed long has been a right-wing supporter of plutocracy posing as a believing Christian.

Herschel Walker says Sen Warnock is a “false prophet” because he’s pro-choice: “I’m from the womb to the tomb .. I’m confused, because if a pastor says something like that .. is he like a false prophet? In the 10 Commandments, does it not say, ‘Thou shall not kill?’ pic.twitter.com/eDSHofqj5e

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) June 19, 2022

Herschel Walker says Sen Warnock is a “false prophet” because he’s pro-choice: “I’m from the womb to the tomb .. I’m confused, because if a pastor says something like that .. is he like a false prophet? In the 10 Commandments, does it not say, ‘Thou shall not kill?’

Consistently applied, that reason would lead Walker to oppose both capital punishment and all wars.  However

There are several strong arguments for the case that the sixth commandment should be translated as “Thou shalt not murder.” First, the verb used in the Torah commandment is “ratsah,” which generally is translated as murder and refers only to criminal acts of killing a human being. The word “kill” generally refers to the taking of life for all classes of victims and for all reasons. This generalization is expressed through a different Hebrew verb “harag.”

Another compelling argument against the “Thou shalt not kill” translation is that there are many places in the Hebrew scriptures that command or condone warfare, the sacrifice of animals, and several methods of capital punishment.

Most, albeit not all, theologians realize the command is "Thou shalt not murder." Thus understood correctly, neither capital punishment (where authorized) nor abortion (where legal) is murder. 

In what by now, 2022, should be no surprise, attendees at a "Faith and Freedom Coalition" conference have little knowledge of the Bible they claim to revere. Neither does their chosen candidate, Herschel Walker, for that US Senate seat in Georgia.  But neither does he seem to have much knowledge about anything, which increasingly appears to be an asset for Republican candidates.

 

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