Good morning! Hello! How are you? All well? Feeling great? Now, look. Yes, it was a gamble to stay glued to MSNBC last night. Yes, it was a gamble to stay up too late. And yes, it was a gamble to have two tiny wines. But do I feel bad about any of these decisions? I do not!
Let us recap:
Republicans look as if they failed to take the Senate, John Fetterman has flipped a senate seat blue. WI, NV, GA, and AZ are all too close to call, but it is a long-ass road indeed for the Republicans to take the Senate. There are a lot of unknowns still about last night, but one thing we know for absolute certainty: Right now, Mitch McConnell is, at best, freaking out and not feeling good. We only get days like these, days where we know Mitch McConnell is having a bad day, once in a great while and we should relish that indeed. If Republicans fail to take the Senate, the judicial confirmation train keeps moving and that, alone, is a huge, huge win.
In Georgia, Raphael Warnock looks set to keep his seat and defeating the lunatic Hershel Walker. It may go to a runoff, though, which is unfortunate. But I’m not worried at all about Warnock beating Walker in a runoff. Good luck getting Republicans to turn out for that guy again without Kemp on the ballot. It would be so weird and hilarious if Raphael Warnock delivered the Senate to Democrats in a runoff, again, and this is indeed a quite possible outcome. Cortez-Mastro is looking dire in Nevada, for a loss of one, putting things back in balance. Kelly looks like he’s keeping his seat in Arizona, barring lunatic shenanigans, good riddance Blake Masters. Republicans kept Ohio (god I can’t believe JD Vance is going to the Senate that guy is so loathesome) and look set to keep Wisconsin, though never say never. If those results all play out, Georgia will once again call it.
Not only that, it looks like Republicans might not even take the house. To which I say: hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaah. OMG. I was convinced this was going to happen. And look: it is probably still going to happen. But if it does, it’s barely going to happen. Let’s look at the record of past losses in the house in midterms working backward: -41, -13, -63, -32, +8 (Bush), +3 (Bill), -54, -8, -5, -26, -15, -48, -12,-47,-4, -48, -12, -28, -54, -45, -72, +9 (FDR first time), -52, -9, -77 and now we are back to Teddy Roosevelt. Biden’s worst outlook right now is looking to be close to the fifth(ish) best midterms performance in modern history, and the best in more than 30 years. It is quite likely that his midterm performance will be better than both of Obama’s, which is just gonna be hilarious when they chat on the golf course, I’m sure Biden will not let Barack forget about this.
Speaking of the house, while that lunatic MTG won her seat, that other lunatic Lauren Boebert looks to have lost hers, to which I say: hahahahahahahahahahahaha.
There were five abortion mandates/propositions/bills on the ballots in five states, including such bastians of liberalism Montana and Kentucky, and they all lost.
Massachussetts elected the first lesbian governor in America so good for them still proving their blue chops.
Here in North Carolina, our beloved Cheri Beasley lost her US Senate bid to flip one NC Senate seat blue, and it was less close than the polls said it was going to be. That is disappointing. Not only that, Republicans won every judicial contest — thank god they don’t field candidates in most of them. BUT: we flipped one US House of Representatives seat (congratulations Wally Nickel), kept all the rest and, most importantly, kept the Republicans from obtaining a supermajority in both houses, thus the ability for them to override the vetos of our beloved Democratic governor. Barely. By one vote in one house. But give how jerrymandered to hell NC is, despite multiple court cases finding against the Republican jerrymandering, this is a huge accomplishment.
So. All in all, I feel okay. Another thing that can undeniably be said about last night: There was no Red Wave. They absolutely, unequivicolly did hugely worse than the historical average. They did worse than they “should” have, given the economy. They pumped millions and millions (and millions) of dollars into their bullshit crime wave narrative and crime barely registered as a voter concern in the exit polls. They pumped millions more into bashing Biden for inflation but didn’t bother to, you know, have a plan of their own, so that didn’t do them much good at all. Just a glorious expenditure, absolute waste of Republican dollars and I am 100% here for it.
But lets keep our fingers crossed and rubbing our shiny wooden nickels for another few days as we see how the US House Seats in California shake out, and our beloved Mary Peltola in Alaska (c’mon Mary!).
Speaking of Alaska, it’s a bit too early to say, but ranked choice voting looks like it’s really going to shine tonight, giving Alaskan Democrats the opportunity to vote for their preferred candidate, who had zero chance of winning, and then choosing Lisa Murkowski as their second choice, quite likely propelling her to victory from the (very slight) deficit she has at this moment.
And you: you did great. You did just great. Thank you for voting.
Man. What a relief. I gotta say, though, I was thinking last night: I think about those past mid-term elections with shame. I can’t even say that before the age of 30 or so that I definitely voted in all of them. I know I voted in every presidential, but the mid-terms? I like to think I did, but honestly, probably not. I remember being only vaguely aware of Obama’s drubbings in the mid-terms. I remember Bush I’s “I have earned political capital and I intend to spend it” speech in 2004, but that doesn’t mean I voted. It is looking as if the kids really stepped up and turned out yesterday. Good for them. They are better people than I was.
I’m pretty beat from last night so we’re gonna keep this one short today, but one additional thing I would like to say here is that I believe there is more to the Binance/FTX story than we’ve heard so far and that SBF isn’t done. I don’t mean conspiracy theory stuff, well, maybe some of that, but also, just. The terms of the deal are murky AF, CZ said explicitly they were “non-binding” and if the terms are non-binding, and the panic is over, what’s to keep SBF from finding another buyer for FTX, including, possibly, himself, who still has some assets, certainly enough to beat a bid of pennies on the dollar. FTX US, which seems to be not ioncluded in this deal (and if it were, gonna assume the feds would put the kibosh on the whole thing) did a financing round not too long ago valuing it at $8 billion, and I can’t find a cap table or anything but if it’s a normal company (lol) with two co-founders I think we could expect SBF to still own 20% of it or even more, which is not no money.
I dunno, mukry buyout mechanics, weird qualifiers from both SBF snd CZ in their announcements and, well, I just suspect that more’s gonna happen here.
I realize those two paragraphs made no sense to most of you. I apologize.
In other news, I would like to thank my friend Liisa for following up and actually taping the music in a W Hotel lobby for me last week. That is quality reader follow-through. Gold GMHHAY star for Liisa. The voices and ambient sound make the song un-Shazaamable but it is absolutely in the vein of a W Hotel lobby playlist of days of yore. Sounds vaguely like a sped-up Bjork Debut-era remix. Maybe from that hilarious EP The Best Mixes From The Album-Debut For All The People Who Don't Buy White-Labels. Great EP. In any case, I would say the conceit of my W Hotel Lobby in a Better, Alternate Universe playlist series still stands.
I know with a closer like that I should do a W Hotel Lobby in a Better Alternate Universe playlist, but I don’t have one ready so you get a country playlist today. It is a good one. Lots of good country these days. Really into this new Plains record. And the new Will Sheff, which is admittedly mostly not very country. I saw him live solo once on Rainey Street in Austin because Trammell personally booked him for the Twitter VIP party that was a great show and man Twitter was a great platform, remember Twitter I miss Twitter.
Thank you and take care of yourself, ya hear?