There was no red wave

@whowasthatmaskedman
There are tens of millions of Jim Crow babies.

@whowasthatmaskedman With inflation and an unpopular president, the Republicans should have done much better.

@LeopoldBloom I get that America is hurting along with the rest of the world.. Inflation is global, with a portion of it being Putin related and a portion being Pandemic related. Americas situation has been made worse by its poor economic health going into this. That was political and stemmed from previous administrations burying the bad news in a pile of printed money and subsidies. The current administration is the first to admit the Emperor has no clothes. So of course the people shoot the messenger..😷

@whowasthatmaskedman
But did they really shoot the messenger? Historically, a new President almost always has suffered through midterm losses far worse than this simply because the honeymoon has worn off. For Biden and the Democrats to do this well is quite remarkable, even if he does lose the House. Ranks up there with Give 'Em Hell Harry Truman overcoming a three-way split in his party to upset the presumed Dewey landslide.

@dancingtongue I get your point. I was of course refering to those among us who were blaming Biden.. But yout point is well made in that these mid terms were not the classic anto President swing we historically see. On the other hand I this much of the credit for that goes to Trump, the Republican party and the Supreme court. 😷

@whowasthatmaskedman Which, of course, Trump and the Republicans will never understand. Anymore than they could accept that Trump didn't lose because the election was stolen but because (1) he told Republicans to eschew the mail-in ballots where Republicans tended to dominate and vote in person because there was no pandemic and (2) generated the largest turn-out in history to vote against him.

@LeopoldBloom Bit surprisingly they didn’t … ;)

@justanothername Not surprising at all. Trump endorsed some real stinkers, and the Dobbs ruling motivated a lot of women to vote Democratic. Without those two factors, it would have been a red wave.

@LeopoldBloom And yet, even now, the MAGA crowd can't grasp that, and now in their usual strategy of devouring their own, are threatening to reject McCarthy for not being rabid enough even though Ivanka and her husband reportedly already left the sinking ship, wanting no part of any future White House run by her father.

@dancingtongue With the expected razor-thin Republican margin, if the Democrats remain unified and a few Republicans defect, the next Speaker could be a moderate Republican. It would be hilarious if it's Liz Cheney. There's no requirement that the Speaker be a House member.

@LeopoldBloom True, but I cannot imagine the House turning over control to an outsider. There are moderate Republicans in the House, but they probably would have an even less chance of winning given the Freedom Caucus' strangle hold on the party, and the intimidation of the Caucus and Trump on even voicing a disenting opinion to MAGA conspiracy theories. The Democrats nominating Liz Cheney would be a bold stroke at attempting bi-partisanship, but unlikely to pick off the needed Republican votes because of the intimidation factor.

@dancingtongue I agree Cheney is a longshot. There has never been a Speaker who wasn't a House member, but Cheney isn't a total outsider. It would only work if the margin was very slim. It's still possible that the Republicans end up with a one-vote majority. A Republican who was planning on retiring or who came from a swing district where they might not be reelected anyway might be persuaded to go along with the Democrats and reelect Pelosi.

Other options might be a placeholder like John Boehner.

@LeopoldBloom Boehner would be another interesting "outsider" candidate, but I doubt he or Ryan would be interested in returning to the role after having been chewed on by the Freedom Caucus so much when they were Speakers before. Pelosi is too polarizing a figure. Even when she is effective, she manages to alienate people. Perhaps Jeb Bush? Maybe that is why he was so effusively praising DeSantis' coalition building victory in Florida?

@dancingtongue I'm not sure he'd want the headache as there wouldn't be any future in it. It's not like he's going to be the next senator from Texas.

@LeopoldBloom He actually was Governor of Florida and lives in Florida. But he probably would enjoy the retribution for all the times Trump called him "Low Energy Jeb Bush" during the 2016 Presidential Primaries.

@dancingtongue I don't think he'll be the next senator from Florida either. He could be a compromise pick for Speaker like Nathaniel Banks in 1855, where the Republicans accept him as he's not a Democrat, and the Democrats tolerate him because he's not a MAGA. Banks was a "Know-Nothing" and acceptable to the Democrats and Oppositionists for that reason.

@LeopoldBloom Well, a Know-Nothing isn't what we need since they were the early populist version of MAGA. But someone who no longer has ambitions for higher office, nor an ideological bent, with the demonstrated political chops of a statesman who can work both sides of the aisle to get things done is. I believe Jeb's record in Florida is much more like his father's than his brother's, which is why he was rejected by the Trumpian wave in the 2016 primaries. While he embraces much of traditional conservative values which would make him acceptable to some Republicans, he is a "maverick" on others -- significantly, on immigration reform -- which draws the ire of MAGA and respect of Democrats. While he probably still has Presidential aspirations, it isn't a driving ego need: hence, his early drop from the 2016 primaries and the undeserved "low energy" sobriquet from Trump. I'm no fan of many of his positions, but at least he is not way-out extremist on them: he wants to limit abortion but recognizes the need for it in cases of rape, incest, health issues; his approach to improving education is based on vouchers but he also believes in common core standards rather than political whitewashing of curriculum and book banning; he doesn't totally agree with climate change but is in favor of ecological protections, and succeeded in the largest protections of the Everglades ever enacted. The challenges of tampering down the MAGA and Squad extremist agendas and actually getting something done -- particularly on immigration -- might be a challenge he would welcome , he might have enough support on both sides of the aisle to be acceptable, and, needless to say, any successes as second-in-line for the Presidency would help any lingering Presidential ambitions.