The wild ride will not come to an end.

Predictions, sort of, for Tuesday, Nov 8th, 2022

I know very little with any level of certainty about how election 2022 is going to play out. Neither does anyone else, no matter how aggressively they’re making “mark my words” sorts of proclamations right now.

I’ll echo my old friend Nicco Mele’s comments (in a post I encourage you to read that is much less depressing than its title, It’s always darkest before it’s pitch black):

Please, ignore the media — all of it. Nobody has any idea what’s going on. Nobody has any idea who will actually vote and who they may or may not vote for.

All of that said, I think there are a couple of things we can know with quite a bit of certainty:

1. We won’t know the results on Tuesday night.

Resist any urge to panic or to breathe sighs of relief Wednesday morning. We’re in for weeks of ballot counting and fighting over that count. The weeks after the 2020 election are going to look like halcyon days of calm and order compared to what we’re going to see in the coming weeks. 

• Republicans are *already* suing to disqualify mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin - all states that are likely to have results close enough to for those ballots to be the margin of victory one way or the other. 

• As of Nov 3, 120 voting-related lawsuits had already been filed - nearly twice as many as had been filed before Election Day in 2020, many of them by the Trumpy fraudsters that have been emboldened over the last couple of years. Some of these disasters might win vital Secretary of State elections tomorrow.

2. Republicans will claim sweeping victory, immediately and regardless of the actual outcome.

While we’re living through another round of “STOP THE COUNT” vs. “COUNT THE VOTES” shouting matches over the next several weeks, Democrats will be proclaiming the importance of the process and Republicans will be proclaiming their across-the-board victory and moving forward as if that’s true, which of course makes it more likely regardless of the actual vote tally. My version of “self care” at this moment is getting zen with the extent to which the national Democratic apparatuses will not have learned any lessons on this from 2020.

3. There will be violence.

Grim, but the sooner we come to terms with the reality that we can no longer claim to live in a “bloodless” political system, the better. There will be attempted violent attacks on ballot counting centers. There will be attempted violent attacks on election officials. There will be attempted violent attacks on elected officials - mostly if not exclusively targeting Democrats. Some of the attempts will be successful. The violence will be both reactionary (a la the attempted attack on Nancy Pelosi that went awry and ultimately put her husband in the hospital instead) and strategic, a la the heavily armed “poll watchers” that will now and again go from “watching” to much worse. Violence is a calculated component of the GOP/Trump/MAGA/QAnon strategy, so we’ll see more of it.

So… what will the outcomes of Election 2022 be?

Among my pet peeves is bloviating while avoiding saying anything that can be deemed correct or not. So, while maintaining that no one, including me, really knows anything definitive about how Election 2022 is going to turn out, some educated-ish guesses that I’ll own as predictions:

• Republicans are going to pick up at least 15 seats in the House, flipping the Chamber, expanding by at least 10 the “completely wackadoo fringe GOP” caucus, and thereby making reasonable good government even less doable in the lower house. Look to seeing even more obnoxious (if that’s possible) Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert, et al, emboldened by partners in (sometimes literal) crime and with real power when the GOP caucus puts them in leadership positions.

• Republicans are going to take the Senate by one seat, and then govern as if they won a 75-seat majority. Filibuster? Gone. Presidential appointments confirmed? None. National abortion ban? By the end of 2023. End support for Ukraine? By mid-2023 at the latest. I’m not going to predict it, but I wouldn’t be shocked if there are some major reversals on healthcare access, up to and including rolling back the allowance for kids up to 25 to stay on their parent’s insurance and nixing pre-existing condition protections. These among other terrifying and wholly awful policy changes that, for reasons I will never claim to understand, will only get applause from the GOP base and so embolden even more outrageous policy action and an even more scary proto-fascist anti-democracy tilt in the GOP.

Self-care corner: my recommendations for distraction

It’s rough here right now. I know. No shame in checking out for minute. Here’s how I’m doing that:

• Watch: Abbott Elementary, Derry Girls, Trying

• Read: Rivers of London Series

• Listen: Postmodern Jukebox

And I’ll be hitting refresh, snuggling my dogs, drinking my whisky, and, probably regrettably, tweeting, texting, and on the phone Tuesday night. Feel free to reach out. We’re going to need to stick together to get through in as few tiny shards as possible.

Maps - Here’s where I got my guess/prediction numbers

My House Map:

My Senate Map:

My Governors Map: