With Sweeping DeSantis and Rubio Wins, Florida Was a Bloodbath for the Democrats

The instant the polls closed in Florida, the calls were made: Ron DeSantis, projected winner in the governor’s race; Marco Rubio, projected winner in the Senate race. Neither was a surprise, but the Senate race was a bit of a disappointment, because Democrats thought they had a good candidate in Represenative Val Demings, and months ago, the polls were pretty close.

On MSNBC, Alex Wagner, Carlos Curbelo, and David Plouffe remarked on what a train wreck the situation was for the Democrats in Miami-Dade, where the swing from Democrat to Republican was on the order of 20 points, maybe more. Could that be real?

Apparently, yes. Under state party chairman Manny Diaz, the Florida Democratic Party has just vaporized. Politico reported back on October 28 that there were “already plenty of signs that Nov. 8 is going to be a rough night for Florida Democrats.”

Diaz got in the middle of some local races between Democrats, and one intra-party critic, Tom Kennedy, charged that “the party was ‘non-existent’ on Spanish-language media and Democrats are getting ‘eaten up’ in early voting.”

How does a major party—in south Florida—become “non-existent” on Spanish-language media? And how does the national party let that go on?

This is a collapse that’s beyond epic. If the state Democratic Party can ever come back from this, it’ll take a decade. And until it does happen, Democratic presidential candidates can kiss 29 electoral votes goodbye.

Compared to the long lines voters experienced when casting their ballots during the state’s early voting period, voting on Election Day in Georgia appeared to run smoothly—with few notable exceptions. In Fulton County, which encompasses Atlanta, many voters went in and out of polling locations at a brisk pace.

A poll worker at Park Tavern, which had notoriously long lines in the 2020 election, told me that this Election Day had not seen any significant delays. As the surrounding streets clogged with rush hour traffic, a growing number of voters ducked into the polling place after leaving work.

Ashley Adams, an attorney who volunteers with the Election Protection coalition to assist voters with any issues or concerns they may have regarding voting, told me that she had not received many inquiries from voters with questions about casting their ballot. The steady stream of voters, she said, was due to the “pressure” people were feeling to turn out.

“I think that there’s a bit of election fatigue,” Adams said. She predicted that many voters were hoping no race would go to a runoff—a possibility if candidates in the gubernatorial or Senate races do not obtain a majority of the vote.

It’s a case candidates are making as well. As GOP Governor Brian Kemp told supporters at a rally on Monday evening, if he wins outright, “Y’all won’t be getting mailers and phone calls and watching commercials during Thanksgiving.” “It’s going to be great,” he promised.

Democrat Maxwell Alejandro Frost has defeated Republican Calvin Wimbish and won the race for Florida’s 10th congressional district, projects the Associated Press.

Frost leads Wimbish 58.8 percent to 39.7 percent, with 98 percent reporting.

Frost’s victory was not unexpected in the district, but his election still marks history. The newly-elected congressman will be the first Gen Z and first Afro-Cuban member of Congress.

A former campaign staffer first for Bernie Sanders and then Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election, Frost has been involved in politics for years. In 2018, Frost organized with the ACLU to lobby voters to support a successful Florida ballot initiative that restored voting rights to felons. Thereafter, Frost served as a national organizing director for gun violence prevention organization March For Our Lives, spurred into action after the tragic high school shooting in Parkland, Florida that killed 17 people and injured another 17.

Frost, a part-time Uber driver, put forth an unapologetically progressive platform. Some of his focus was on big-ticket items including Medicare-for-All, the Green New Deal, and banning assault weapons. Frost also put out targeted proposals including the Homes for All Act, which would direct the construction of 12 million new affordable housing units, and putting an end to a rule that gives 80 percent of transportation funding to highways and only 20 percent to transit.

While age could have been an inhibitor, the 25-year-old, buoyed by nationwide progressive support, overcame the Democratic establishment. Filling in the seat formerly held by Congresswoman Val Demings, Frost emerged from a crowded primary field of nine other candidates including former Florida representatives Alan Grayson and Corrine Brown, and state Senator Randolph Bracy.

Frost enjoyed support from members of congress including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Jamie Raskin, and figures such as Reverend Jesse Jackson and gun violence activist Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter was killed in the Parkland shooting.

This piece has been updated.

Democrat Becca Balint has defeated Republican Liam Madden and won the Vermont at-large congressional race.

Balint’s victory was not unexpected in blue Vermont, but her election still marks history. The newly-elected representative will be the first woman and first openly gay person Vermont sends to Congress.

The seasoned legislator was widely seen as the progressive candidate throughout the primary and election season. Balint has served in Vermont’s state Senate since 2015, and was the first lesbian elected to the chamber. In 2017, she was selected as majority leader of the Democratic caucus, before becoming the first woman to serve as president pro tempore in 2021.

Balint’s campaign focused not only on her time in the state legislature, but on how her personal background has guided her worldviews.

Embroiled in depression as she first came out, Balint sought a therapist who would accept her sexual orientation. “It absolutely saved my life,” she said, “and if it had been handled differently, I honestly don’t know if I would be here.” Years later, she finally told her parents, who offered to take her to a therapist to “fix” her—an offer she refused.

Now, as an elected official, Balint has joined efforts in the state legislature to support transgender youth seeking medical care, and to prohibit conversion therapy.

Balint was born in a U.S. Army hospital in Germany, where her Hungarian Jewish father was stationed at the time. His father, Balint’s grandfather, was killed during the Holocaust, Balint wrote in a personal blog, when he fell behind on a forced march after trying to help another ailing prisoner.

“One ongoing toll of the Holocaust and indeed of all totalitarian regimes…is that we start to doubt our neighbors’ basic humanity. We come to believe it’s safer to keep them at a distance because people can sometimes be so horribly callous,” Balint wrote. “This is the family story I am trying to change. I believe strong neighbors make strong democracy.”

In an interview Tuesday evening, former President Donald Trump said that if Republicans he endorsed do well, he should “get all the credit”—but if those candidates lose, he “should not be blamed at all.”

The serial fraudster and inciter-of-riots complained that he always seems to be the one who takes the heat if things go awry for Republicans. “Usually what would happen is when they do well I won’t be given any credit, and if they do badly they will blame everything on me.”

Though Trump may complain, he has still enjoyed playing kingmaker for the party, inviting candidates across the country to beg his favor. “In many cases I told people to run, and they ran and they turned out to be very good candidates,” Trump said.

If Republicans do suffer losses this election, Trump does deserve some of the blame. On Monday, he declared he may announce his 2024 bid for president as soon as November 15.

He is self-obsessed enough to flirt with a presidential announcement in the lead-up to a midterm election that is already meant to be a slam dunk for Republicans. He’s spending time at candidate rallies testing new nicknames for possible primary opponents, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. All that only serves to remind midterm voters why they voted him out of office just two years ago.

Conspiracy theories of election rigging are already swirling Tuesday after some Arizona polling stations reported issues with their vote-counting machines.

About 20 percent of polling stations in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county, were experiencing problems with their tabulator machines, according to election officials. The ballot would not run through the tabulator, but officials were prepared for such a scenario.

The Maricopa County Elections Board explained on its official Twitter account that people could still vote by dropping their ballots in a lockbox attached to the machines or by going to another one of the 223 voting stations.

But right-wing figures seized on the report anyway, accusing the state government of trying to rig the election in favor of Democrats.

“Reports are coming in from Arizona that the Voting Machines are not properly working in predominately Republican/Conservative areas,” former President Donald Trump said on TruthSocial. “Here we go again? The people will not stand for it!!”

Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, both extreme-right figures and former advisors to Trump, accused Democrats of trying to steal the election, with Miller complaining about a “third world voting system.”

Arizona Republican Party chairwoman Kelli Ward, who is being investigated for her role in the attempted January 6 coup to steal the election, tried to cast doubt on all of the tabulators’ accuracy. “How did all of the machines in Maricopa miraculously work over the last few days when they were ‘tested & certified’ with test votes & test ballots…but now they won’t work for real voters & real ballots?” she tweeted.

Others have accused Katie Hobbs, the Democratic secretary of state who is also running for governor, of being behind the issue.

“The problems you are witnessing in Maricopa County are thanks to two people who are on the ballot today: KATIE HOBBS & ADRIAN FONTES,” tweeted Tyler Bowyer, a member of conservative group Turning Point USA, also referring to the Democratic candidate for Arizona secretary of state.

Hobbs’ opponent MAGA Republican opponent Kari Lake, who continues to refuse to accept the results of the 2020 election, has retweeted multiple posts blaming Hobbs for the problems.

Hobbs, of course, does not oversee the technical maintenance of voting machines, and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors is made up primarily of Republicans.

Arizona is a crucial swing state that, in a major twist, went for President Joe Biden in the 2020 election. The state has struggled particularly hard with election fraud conspiracies as Trump continues to falsely claim for years that the election was stolen from him.

After the 2020 election, the state’s Republican Party supported a massive recount of the votes that ultimately found no evidence of voter fraud. Ironically, the recount was demanded in part because Trump and other Republicans claimed the electronic voting machines had been hacked.

Right-wing media is painting a picture of insurgency on Election Day…from the left.

Conservative news outlets and media figures have been priming voters to reject tight Democratic victories—or any outcomes they don’t like—on Tuesday.

“Bottom line: Democrats absolutely cannot lose tomorrow’s elections,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson told his viewers Monday night. “So with that in mind, they’re already preparing the rest of us for election theft, which if you don’t want a civil war, you shouldn’t complain about.”

Fox News also slammed White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre for saying that it could take a few days to count all the votes cast Tuesday, quoting a conservative think tank fellow as saying, “This is not…how it’s supposed to work.”

In fact, that’s exactly how it’s supposed to work. A record-high number of people, at least 44 million, voted early. States have different laws on when poll workers can start counting early votes, let alone ones cast on Election Day, meaning results will be released at varying times.

But far-right news outlets are trying to argue that delays will mean Democrats are rigging the outcome.

The Federalist praised so-called “election observers” who have been turning up to ballot boxes and voting stations, ostensibly to make sure there is no voter fraud. The outlet also accused the Department of Justice of deploying federal officials to stop the poll watchers in the government’s “latest election-rigging scheme.”

In reality, the self-appointed watchers, some of whom show up armed, have been accused of voter intimidation. Arizona has filed 18 counts of voter intimidation with the DOJ, and North Carolina has also reported both voter intimidation and interference.

Steve Bannon, a former advisor to Donald Trump, also accused Democrats of trying to steal the election, via mail-in ballots. “We’re going to contest all of this. Only legitimate, certifiable chain-of-custody votes count, OK?” he said.

And despite being the only party with members that continue to lie about the 2020 election results, many right-wingers are also saying the Democrats will not only reject any midterm losses but will also get violent over them.

In addition to Carlson’s cry of civil war, The Federalist warned Democrats will not cede power “peacefully,” and Bannon said the left will get “‘nasty.”

But chillingly, it is not the left that appears to be preparing for violence. Reporter Ben Collins, who covers disinformation and extremism, tweeted that “on extremist pro-Trump forums, they are not talking about voting.”

People in those forums have been discussing preparing firearms for when results come out.

Right-wing media has started Election Day spreading false claims that Democrats will try and steal midterm outcomes.

The 2022 midterms are highly contentious, as Democrats fight to maintain control of Congress. At least 44 million people voted early, according to a report by the United States Elections Project, a record high.

Christina Bobb, a lawyer for former President Donald Trump (who started the terrifying new trend of rejecting valid election results), said Monday night she expects results no later than Wednesday morning.

“There should absolutely be a result no later than the middle of the night, early Wednesday morning,” she told Right Side Broadcasting Network. “I think those areas that don’t have a result, it’s gonna look very suspicious.”

She accused Democrats of creating fraudulent ballots in the 2020 election and of using the Covid-19 pandemic as a cover.

In reality, the pandemic forced states to dramatically expand mail-in voting, creating delays because the paper ballots had to be checked and counted by hand.

Every state has different laws on when poll workers can start counting votes, meaning results will be released at varying times.

Republicans are already trying to seize on those differences to sow doubt about any outcomes they don’t like.

Republican lawmakers have spent the entire run-up to the midterms priming voters to reject tight Democratic victories. Many tried to sow suspicion around the Pennsylvania result, after the state’s acting secretary of the commonwealth said it could take days to count all the votes.

But the thing is, under Pennsylvania state law, poll workers can’t even start counting votes until the morning of Election Day. And as writer James Surowiecki pointed out, the “Republican state legislature will not allow early votes to be counted or even pre-canvassed” before then.

“Then right wingers use that legislature-required delay as evidence of something nefarious. It’s ridiculous.”

In a fun dystopian twist, a company is offering to give foreign tourists an up-close look at the U.S. election system—during some of the most crucial elections in recent history.

The midterm elections are already highly contentious, with President Joe Biden warning repeatedly that “democracy is on the ballot.” Democrats are fighting to hold their razor-thin control of Congress, while Republicans are priming voters to reject tight liberal victories. Billions of dollars have been poured into the races in an effort to influence the outcome.

“Folks, US ‘democracy’ has become such a clown show that English and Australian tourists are booking specialized election experience tours & disrupting canvasses,” writer Gwen Snyder warned on Twitter Monday.

Citing a friend of hers who works with Get Out The Vote in Philadelphia, a typically blue haven in an otherwise red state, Snyder said that “far right disruptors” were showing up to GOTV events and pelting organizers with an endless stream of strange, highly detailed questions. All of them seemed to be British or Australian.

“Turns out, these were tourists that had PAID A COMPANY to deliver them a front seat at the US election zoo,” Snyder explained in her Twitter thread. “Anyway, it’s election eve and everyone on the ground is now scrambling to figure out how to protect their canvasses from weird intrusive election tourists in this, one of the most critical turn out areas in the country.”

The group, Political Tours, seems to turn a profit by taking tourists to some of the most contentious elections around the world. The company website says most clients come from New Zealand, Australia, and the U.S., as well as England and Europe.

The six-day U.S. tour costs £3,950, about $4,500, and includes a visit to polling stations on Election Day. The website mentions visiting Virginia and Pennsylvania, both of which will witness toss-up races for Congress.

Many voters and organizers across the country are already on edge, with reports of armed watchers turning up to ballot boxes and intimidating would-be voters. Any disruptions at the voting booth could cause delays, which could be seized upon by Republicans as a reason to blame Democrats for rigging the election.

The last thing the country needs is tourists at the voting booth.

Elon Musk’s Twitter has thus far been historic. Thousands of workers have lost their jobs. Users are being banned with no warning. And a platform used by over 400 million people has already seen a rise in hate and misinformation. Legacies being made.

It’s hard to do much about Musk’s whims right now—and that should be the key takeaway for all tech workers. If Twitter employees were unionized, things would have looked much different.

Last week, Musk fired half of Twitter staff, with little notice and in violation of federal and California state law.

Some workers filed a lawsuit against Twitter, but Thomas Kochan, professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, says that’s not enough. Musk, the world’s richest man, can always find a legal team to give him just enough cover to avoid actual consequence.

Instead, Kochan says, workers—those laid off and those who remain at the company—need to act in concert.

“They’re all asking themselves, ‘Am I next? Or am I at risk’? So they have a common cause,” Kochan said. “It would be good for the workforce and a good signal to arrogant CEOs that you just can’t do that.”

Unionizing isn’t the only way workers can act on this cause, of course. Petition-filing, going public with concerns, staging walk-outs and protests—these are all protected acts. And they can serve to lobby the public in workers’ favor, which consequently pressures investors and advertisers, notes Kochan. A strategy like that is certainly relevant to Twitter, a company reeling from advertiser retreat.

Still, a union would have done the basics and prevented such mass layoffs to begin with.

This should be a lesson as tech companies are entering a sudden slowdown. Lyft, Netflix, Spotify, Peloton, and Coinbase have all laid off thousands of employees this year. Apple and Amazon have enacted hiring freezes. Meta is preparing for large-scale layoffs. And this is just a sampling of the chaos across the industry.

The formula of Musk’s acquisition is a familiar one. Billionaire owner acquires a new company, then haphazardly fires people in the name of cutting costs. Challenging this predictable, ruinous cycle requires worker solidarity.

It requires nothing less than a union.