This will be a tough race for Democrats to win, but Democrats rarely have the advantage of having nominated a genuine progressive. It will be a good barometer, but the gun issue really hurts Democrats.
(Even before the specific gun issue was presented by the moderators, Beto already was getting his butt kicked on the issue, clearly refusing to answer Cruz' gun question, EVEN AFTER THE MODERATORS GAVE HIM MORE TIME, then when the moderators asked a specific gun related question, it got even worse for Beto. It must have seemed like 10 minutes in hell to Beto, though I suspect it was only 6-7 straight minutes of gun debate)
More bad news for Democrats in Texas.
A special election for the state Senate was just held in San Antonio. (understand that Texas state Senators actually represent more voters than U.S. Congressmen)
A Former Democratic U.S. Congressman (Pete Gallego) lost 53% to 47% to his Republican opponent.
This district is 66% Hispanic and 7% Black.
Texas is tough.
(I feel like Texas might be a more liberal place if it were its own country, like some have suggested it should be. But the national Democratic party seems to have too many "Big D" issues - like gun control - that hurt the candidates in Texas. The national party is seen as too out of touch, on many fronts (and not all of it centers around actual issues), and though Beto is a rare progressive voice for Texas voters, he is too easily painted as some tool of the national party)
There might be some good news for Democrats in Texas. John Culberson is only leading his Democratic challenger 48% to 45%. This is the (once) heavily Republican Houston district, which George H. W. Bush held, and it was 47% Hispanic (I assume it still is about that much if not more). I started to like Culberson when he strongly opposed a war against Assad, 5 years ago, so I wonder if his Democratic opponent is a war monger.
It must be admitted:
(everything below - all the way to the end of my post - is about Nebraska)
There are times when a pro war Democrat runs against a more moderate Republican. A Democratic congressman in Omaha, Brad Ashford, supported war against Syria and opposed the Iran deal. He was defeated by Republican Don Bacon, even though Hillary almost beat Trump. Romney won the district 53% to 46% while Hillary only lost 48% to 46%. Now a 1-term Congressman, Don Bacon, is facing a progressive Democratic challenger who upset Ashford in the Democratic primary. Bacon is one of the most vulnerable GOP congressmen, as well as the strongest critic of Trump's trade policies - he has had a hand in creating pro-trade groups to battle Trump on trade, so the general election will have 2 good candidates: win-win for Americans.
Whoever wins the Omaha district this fall (the Republican Bacon or the progressive Democrat) will be a much better congressman than Brad Ashford. Ashford opposed the nuclear deal with Iran (the only area of foreign policy where Trump was more hawkish than Hillary), which even an increasingly hawkish Democratic party (Lybia, Iraq, Syria, North Korea, Ukraine, Russia, etc.) almost entirely supports.
I was really sick on my stomach when Ashford was making his comeback, but he was defeated in the primary, in a major upset. I, previously,had high hopes for Ashford, as he was a fairly decent member of the Nebraska legislature. A former Republican, Ashford was a key moderate in the non-partisan legislature (when he was known as a Republican despite the party-free membership), casting the deciding vote (around) 1990 to have Nebraska split its electoral votes according to the congressional district vote. (Obama got 1 electoral vote from Nebraska in 2008, because he won the Omaha district 50%-49%, which no Democrat did since 1964, and haven't since 2008) Republicans have come extremely close to moving the state back to the standard electoral vote allocation.
A few moderate Republicans have refused to become the deciding vote (and only 1 is needed to bring a 2-1 super majority) to bring the electoral vote allocation back to the way it was pre-1992 (One said he would if the legislature would accept the Medicaid expansion, which it hasn't)
Medicaid is on the November ballot. The legislature did allow a petition drive. It was a longshot, but 84,000 required signatures (actually about 130,000) were collected. There 84,000 were registered voters, which was a high percentage to reach. The petition survived multiple Republican sponsored court challenges.
The GOP governor said the expansion would cost $800 million over 10 years, but a credible study showed that it would only cost the state (just under) $39 million in Fiscal Year 2022, while the federal government send in over $572 million to the state the same year. The first fiscal year cost to the state (FY 2020) will be $19.8 million if the voters support the initiative in November.
The federal funding will create 10,000 jobs each and every year.
A Colorado legislative study showed that the Medicaid expansion created 31,000 jobs in 2015.
It seems that Medicaid expansion can reduce workforce unemployment by a full 1.0% ?
Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.
Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.
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