This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.Question of the WeekElections alter the balance of power in a democracy while affording us new information about what voters want.
A surge in turnout among people motivated by the erosion of abortion rights carried Democrats to victory in multiple races.
Pittsburgh community organizer Summer Lee was elected the first Black woman to represent Pennsylvania in Congress after winning the state’s 12th Congressional District in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Lee, currently a state representative, faced off against Republican Mike Doyle — who happened to share the same name as the outgoing Democratic incumbent.
Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich says President Biden must “push back as hard as he can” if Republicans take control of even one chamber in Congress following Tuesday’s midterm elections. He says the administration needs to be clear there is no compromise on the debt ceiling, which he expects a Republican-controlled Congress would challenge, potentially triggering a repeat of the political crisis in 2011 under former President Obama.
Voters supported the right to abortion in at least four of the five states where reproductive rights were on the ballot in Tuesday’s midterm elections. “Abortion rights are deeply popular, and when you put the question before voters, they say yes,” said The Nation’s Amy Littlefield.
Georgia Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock and his opponent Republican Herschel Walker will likely head to a runoff if neither candidate wins 50% of the vote needed to win the election outright. Warnock was able to capture more white and rural votes than Stacey Abrams, who lost to Georgia’s incumbent Republican Governor Brian Kemp, explains LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund.
The balance of power in Congress is still up in the air after Democratic candidates outperformed expectations in much of the country in Tuesday’s midterm elections. Control of the Senate now rests on four states: Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. We speak with The Nation’s John Nichols, who says Democratic Senate candidate Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes could still close the gap with Republican incumbent Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, who now has the advantage.
The Republican-controlled state, where lawmakers have long resisted Medicaid expansion, is the seventh in the last five years to do so at the ballot box — and likely the last to do so for some time.
Kentucky progressives are hoping for a repeat of Kansas’ upset vote on Tuesday.
The doctors argue in the lawsuit the subpoenas are effectively a “fishing expedition” against abortion providers that violate Indiana law.
The update comes amid anxieties about the administration’s effort to promote the newest vaccination as an upgrade over the original.
Inflation has cooled only slightly and job growth remains strong.
A new POLITICO-Morning Consult poll suggests voters’ views of the economy are baked in.
Housing investment, though, plunged at a 26 percent annual pace, hammered by surging mortgage rates.
According to an NBC News poll released Sunday, 70 percent of registered voters expressed interest in the upcoming election as a “9” or “10” on a 10-point scale.
The party played with fire and avoided any burns with its midterm election strategy.
“I know more about him than anybody — other than, perhaps, his wife,” the former president claimed of his potential rival.
James defeated Republican Michael Henry, a Queens lawyer who was endorsed by various police unions but faced long odds.
The “red wave” never materialized for Republicans as Donald Trump-endorsed candidates floundered across the country.
Republicans were ready. This was their year. They were going to sweep to control of Congress and put election deniers in at every level of government to ensure that Democrats couldn’t win—or couldn’t have their wins counted—in 2024 and beyond.
Twitter users called out the Arizona Republican over the comment alluding to the brutal assault on the House speaker’s husband.
Follow: Daily Kos Elections on Twitter for blow-by-blow updates
Results: USA Today • CNN • Guardian • NBC • Politico
Guides: Live Cheat Sheet • Race Previews • Poll Closing Times • County Benchmarks
UPDATE: Wednesday, Nov 9, 2022 · 7:10:57 AM +00:00
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David Jarman
NY-18: No call yet from anyone, but we have a Republican concession in New York’s Hudson Val
Gov. Tony Evers defeated Republican Tim Michels in Wisconsin’s governor’s race, earning a second term of competent, progressive leadership. Evers’ tenure has mostly consisted of using his veto pen to hold off an extremist right-wing and corporate takeover of the state, including protecting the state’s voters and ensuring free and fair elections for the future.
Incumbent Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, has won reelection, defeating Republican nominee and prolific conspiracy theorist Tudor Dixon.
“I got knocked down but I got back up,” Pennsylvania lieutenant governor and Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman tweeted last month, referring to the stroke that took him off the campaign trail for months.
If you’ve come to enjoy the bare-knuckled, closely divided, and high-anxiety American politics of the last few years then the 2022 election brings good news for you.The final balance of power in the U.S. Congress and state houses won’t be clear for days or in some cases possibly weeks, but early results suggest that Republicans will likely retake control of the House, while the balance in the Senate remains too early to predict.
PHOENIX, Ariz.—The Watchers tend to show up at sundown—or so I’d heard. And yesterday evening, I went looking for them. Around 7 p.m., at a ballot drop-off site next to a juvenile-detention center in Mesa, just east of Phoenix, I sat on a concrete bench and waited under the parking lot’s bright lights. A steady stream of cars drove through, and people hopped out to slip their green mail-in-ballot envelopes into the big metal box.
Though it feels reductionist to compare Elon Musk and Donald Trump, the Musk era at Twitter has some eerie parallels to the Trump White House. There’s a ton of confusion; lots of firings; people shredding documents; outlandish, impossible-to-execute ideas being floated; sycophantic advisers; nervous employees trying to appease a mercurial man; and tweets—so many tweets. It is an exhausting, enraging, and sometimes grimly hilarious spectacle that changes by the hour.
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.Americans sometimes forget how blessed they are. I hope they remember today, regardless of their vote, that their Constitution is a miracle. I learned a lesson about this in, of all places, the former Soviet Union.But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.
In 2020, and again in 2021, the dreaded twindemic never came. The worry among experts was that a winter COVID surge layered on top of flu season—or even, in worst-case scenarios, a flu outbreak of pandemic proportions—would push already strained hospitals to the brink. Thankfully, we got lucky. Flu season simply didn’t materialize in 2020: The United States recorded only about 2,000 cases, a jaw-dropping 110 times fewer than it had the season prior.