The red wave that wasn’t: An election postmortem By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/11/the_red_wave_that_wasnt_an_election_postmortem.html Well, that was disheartening, dispiriting, and demoralizing.  We went into the party with a president with some of the lowest approval ratings in history and Americans (at least according to the polls) focused like lasers on issues that could be chalked up to Democrat policy failures — namely, inflation and crime.  And yet Republicans are hanging […]

There WOULD Have Been a Red Wave, but One Group Saved the Left From Being Completely Obliterated By Robert Spencer

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2022/11/09/there-would-have-been-a-red-wave-but-one-group-saved-the-left-from-being-completely-obliterated-n1644558 John Della Volpe, a hard-Left pollster and author of a deathless tome entitled FIGHT: How Gen Z is Channeling Their Fear & Passion to Save America, is claiming that his favorite age group saved the midterm elections for those who love skyrocketing inflation, open borders, rising crime, international ridicule and brinksmanship, and accelerating authoritarianism. […]

Here’s A List Of Counties Reporting Issues At The Ballot Box This Election Day By: Shawn Fleetwood

https://thefederalist.com/2022/11/08/heres-a-list-of-counties-reporting-issues-at-the-ballot-box-this-election-day/ Election Day 2022 has arrived and unsurprisingly, some Americans are already encountering a myriad of problems when going to cast their ballots at their local precinct. Given the chaotic nature of the 2020 elections — all thanks to an influx of private money into election offices and an unprecedented expansion of unsupervised mail-in voting […]

New York Chooses the Status Quo Amid a stark decline in quality of life and public safety, Kathy Hochul prevails in the governor’s race. Seth Barron

https://www.city-journal.org/new-york-chooses-status-quo By a relatively slim margin, Governor Kathy Hochul won her campaign to be elected the first woman to lead New York State. Anxiety among the Democrats that she would lose to Long Island congressman Lee Zeldin, who ran a strong race, appears to have been overblown. Hochul’s margin of victory was roughly where the […]

It’s Ron DeSantis’ GOP Now Bob Maistros

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/11/09/its-ron-desantiss-gop-now/ ‘The Red Wave.” If you’ve been watching Fox News and frequenting conservative websites the last few weeks (and this commentator admits he does more than his share of both), you were hearing how Republicans were going to have another one of those massive 2010-style seat pickups in the House. Win 56 seats in the […]

How did I get the midterms so wrong? I was hardly alone but that is no consolation Roger Kimball

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/get-midterms-wrong-red-wave/ How wrong can you be? About as wrong as I was about the character of the midterm elections. I thought there would be a red wave, fueled in part by high-octane orange fuel. Clearly I was wrong. It is no consolation to know that I was hardly alone in my assumptions. Nor is it […]

Morning Greatness: Where’s the Red Wave? By Liz Sheld

https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/09/morning-greatness-wheres-the-red-wave/

Election:
Red State Voters Widely Reject Marijuana Legalization In Midterms
Nevada Won’t Be Done Counting Mail-In Ballots For Days: REPORT
Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan Wins Re-Election In New Hampshire
Stacey Abrams concedes to Kemp in Georgia governor’s race
DeSantis’ midterms win cements position as 2024 presidential contender
Possible interference from Beijing looms over elections
Sarah Huckabee Sanders will be first female governor of Arkansas
In Arizona, voting machine glitch gives way to election integrity concerns
WV voters strike down 4 proposed amendments in midterms
Democrat Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers defeats Republican challenger for second term
New York governor race: Hochul beats Zeldin in election to lead Empire State
Republicans pick up hotly contested House seat in Virginia
Rand Paul promises to ‘subpoena every last document of Dr. Fauci’ in victory speech
Florida’s Miami-Dade County turns red for DeSantis: First GOP gov to win in two decades
Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer wins reelection in Michigan
Election history in the making: Women, black, gay, Gen Z candidates notch wins
Californians back flavored tobacco ban
DeSantis, conservatives score more Florida school board wins
Budd Smokes Beasley in North Carolina Senate Race

Other morsels:
Twitter to add ‘official’ mark to verified big accounts
Virginia Giuffre drops allegations against Alan Dershowitz, saying she ‘may have made a mistake’
Judge tosses Vindman’s suit against Trump allies
Wes Moore makes history as Maryland’s first Black governor
Ron Klain’s uncertain future inside the White House

The Establishment Is Trying to Divide and Conquer MAGA By J.B. Shurk

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/11/the_establishment_is_trying_to_divide_and_conquer_maga.html

There are videos making the rounds showing President Trump standing on stage in Miami’s pouring rain while imploring Americans to get out and vote.  The metaphor is striking.  There’s Trump, battling the elements, lively as ever, refusing to give up, insisting on finishing what he’s started.  Citizen Free Press appropriately notes that “President Trump is truly a force of nature.”

I know that the months ahead will make for some spirited political debate among friends, but I encourage you to cement in your minds this quintessential image of Trump unbroken and unbowed.  Whatever else can be said about the man (and there is plenty), he remains the only leader in our times unafraid to stand alone.  When other self-proclaimed allies run the other way or look for somewhere safe to weather the approaching storm, Trump stands inside the tempest, demanding that it give up and surrender.  That’s something that will forever separate him from those who pretend to be him.

It has become normal to deconstruct Trump’s public appeal to something as basic as he fights!  Yet it is not just that Trump fights; it is why he fights that has attracted such a diverse voting coalition unlike any other political movement today.

Consider the Republican Party’s consensus issues before Donald Trump descended the golden escalator and changed everything.  By and large, Republican politicians defended the endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq without question. They ignored the harms of illegal immigration as a taboo issue equated with racism.  And they dismissed discussion of revitalizing American industry and manufacturing as unrealistic in a globalist system where cheap slave labor is plentiful overseas.  

Close All China Consulates, Slash Embassy Staff by Gordon G. Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19104/close-china-consulates

Beijing reportedly has… used the station to track Chinese individuals of interest to the regime and, short-circuiting legal procedures, to persuade those Chinese to voluntarily return to China.

“[T]hey are very bold because they know they can do as they like and the State Department won’t do a damn thing.” — Maura Moynihan, author, to Gatestone, October 2022.

Prior to the recent indictments, the U.S. government often let off Chinese agents with only a warning, sometimes because of intervention by the State Department.

Law enforcement is essential, but it is hardly an answer to China’s massive campaigns against the United States.

One solution is to deny Chinese wrongdoers the safe havens they enjoy in America. China’s principal safe heavens are its embassy and consulates.

[T]he U.S. should also be closing China’s non-diplomatic presences — primarily banks and companies — to even out the situation.

China uses every point of contact to try to bring down America, and American institutions are now being overwhelmed by the onslaught. It may sound drastic to some, but the survival of freedom and democracy in America critically depends on getting the Chinese regime out of the U.S.

The best way to do that is to expel the military officers, spies, agents, provocateurs and criminals finding protection in China’s diplomatic presences in the United States. Nothing else would better communicate resolve to Beijing than getting dangerous Chinese actors off American soil.

The Biden administration should of course be shutting down the Chinatown police station, as well.

The DeSantis Florida Tsunami A huge re-election victory vindicates his pandemic policies.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-ron-desantis-florida-tsunami-charlie-crist-governor-election-covid-11667964888?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Ron DeSantis was expected to win re-election as Florida Governor, but the big news Tuesday was the magnitude of his victory. His nearly 20-point rout of Democrat Charlie Crist shows the magnitude of the political change in the once-swing state and may launch the Republican’s campaign for the White House.

The Governor won nearly everywhere in the state, and notably in Democratic strongholds. He won by double digits in heavily Hispanic Miami-Dade County, which Joe Biden carried by 85,000 votes and a statewide Republican hadn’t carried since Jeb Bush won re-election 2002. Mr. DeSantis also won Osceola County south of Orlando, which has a heavy Puerto Rican population. He even won in Democratic Palm Beach County.

The DeSantis tide lifted other GOP candidates, as Sen. Marco Rubio won re-election handily. The GOP also picked up two House seats, including the St. Petersburg seat Mr. Crist gave up to run for Governor.

Florida has been trending to the GOP for some time, and previous two-term Governors Mr. Bush and Rick Scott did much to demonstrate effective Republican governance. But Mr. DeSantis won by fewer than 34,000 votes in 2018. He was leading Tuesday by nearly 1.5 million with 90% of the vote counted. Florida Democrats are going to have to rethink their campaigns in the state.

In his victory remarks, Mr. DeSantis credited his pandemic policies, stressing “freedom” over mandates, and “education” over “indoctrination.” He expanded school choice in the state, which has helped win minority voters. He opened the state for business and classroom instruction earlier than most Governors did—decisions that were widely derided in the national and Florida press. But the voters seemed to appreciate those policies and rewarded him.

Mr. DeSantis is thought to have presidential ambitions, and his victory speech sounded like it. A national campaign is a much larger challenge than running even a large state like Florida, and Mr. DeSantis will have to cut down on his extensive use of the vertical pronoun if he wants to rally a movement.

But there’s little doubt that his Florida success will grab the attention of voters outside the Sunshine State. You can bet Donald J. Trump was watching—unhappily.