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Blue Wave Crashes: Democrats’ Hopes For Senate Majority Fizzle; House Margin Eroded

Bottom line: Republicans are headed for a net gain of around ten seats.

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U.S. Senator Joni Ernst meets with Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Army General Viktor Muzhenko, Feb. 18, 2019 | Image Credit: U.S. Embassy Kyiv Ukraine/Flickr

Penned by Zero Hedge

What ‘Blue Wave’?

While 8 states (per the NYT) are still waiting on final vote counts in the presidential race, it’s already clear that Tuesday was not the blowout Democratic victory that Nate Silver and a legion of other idiot pundits had expected.

Despite the legion of celebrities and models urging their followers to ‘get out and vote’ by posting selfies with their ‘I voted’ stickers and/or (in one notorious campaign) posing nude for risque adverts (oh to have been a fly on the wall during that pitch meeting), all the ‘vote now’ merch in the world couldn’t deliver the Senate Majority that Wall Street had pinned its hopes of a sweeping stimulus deal upon.

To be sure, the Dems managed to flip a couple of high-profile seats; but the majority of “threatened” Republican Senators (and remember, there were a lot of them) managed to fend off deep-pocketed Democratic rivals.

Here’s a roundup of where things stand as of Wednesday morning in New York (courtesy of the NYT & Bloomberg):

  • Democratic Senate candidates were running slightly behind Biden in several states, making it difficult for the party to retake Senate control.
  • Republicans flipped one seat: Tommy Tuberville beat the Democrat Doug Jones in Alabama. Gary Peters, the Democratic incumbent in Michigan, is locked in a close race with his Republican challenger, John James; it will depend on the outstanding votes.
  • Democrats flipped two seats: John Hickenlooper defeated Gardner in Colorado, and Mark Kelly defeated McSally in Arizona.
  • In Iowa, Senator Joni Ernst, a Republican, won re-election. Republicans also won races in Montana, South Carolina — where Lindsey Graham held on to his seat — and Texas.
  • John Cornyn defeated Air Force combat veteran MJ Hegar. Republican Roger Marshall won the open Kansas Senate seat, defeating a well-funded Barbara Bollier in a race Democrats had hopes of winning if there was a wave election.
  • Georgia Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed by the governor, will face off against Democrat Raphael Warnock, senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, in the runoff. In the other Georgia contest, Republican incumbent David Perdue was leading Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff, who narrowly lost an Atlanta-area House special election in 2017.
  • Democratic Senator Mark Warner was easily re-elected to a third term in Virginia and Republican Shelley Moore Capito won a second term in West Virginia, according to Associated Press projections. Incumbent Democrats Edward Markey in Massachusetts, Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire, Jack Reed in Rhode Island, Chris Coons in Delaware and Dick Durbin in Illinois also won re-election.
  • Along With McConnell and Capito, Republican James Inhofe won re-election in Oklahoma. In Tennessee, Republican Bill Hagerty won the seat being vacated by Republican Senator Lamar Alexander, who is retiring. South Dakota Republican Mike Rounds and Nebraska Republican Ben Sasse also were re-elected. In Wyoming, Republican Cynthia Lummis won election to the seat now held by Mike Enzi, who is retiring.
  • Several other races remain too close to call, including in Maine, where Senator Susan Collins leads the Democratic nominee, Sara Gideon. In a special Senate election in Georgia, the incumbent Kelly Loeffler is headed to a January runoff against the Democrat Raphael Warnock.

As we await the final results, President Trump has a much stronger chance of winning a second term than any of the ‘professionals’ anticipated, and although Twitter and Facebook affixed labels to some of his spicier tweets last night (including one accusing Democrats of trying to “steal” the election), the chaos that many had feared has given way to an eerie silence.

At this point, “virtually everything has to go right” for the Dems to take the Senate, said one veteran analyst with the Cook Political Report tweeted.

The two big tossup Senate races that have yet to be called involve Susan Collins (of Maine) and Thom Tillis (of North Carolina), both of whom were holding on to leads in vote counts. Both would need to lose to deliver the four seats that Dems would need to take an outright majority (rather than a 50-50 tie with the VP casting the deciding vote).

When President Trump said during rallies in recent weeks that he expected the GOP to take back the House, professional analysts sniggered. However, they failed to anticipate even the possibility that the GOP could expand its caucus. The Senate races “closely mirrored” the race at the top of the ticket, with few voters splitting ballots, as President Trump helped carry some embattled senators, including Lindsey Graham, over the line.

But as bad as the situation is for the Senate, Democrats’ performance in various tossup House races was even more abysmal. Though the Dems are expected to hold on to their majority, the GOP is expected to take more than 200 seats, leaving them with an emboldened minority. Pollsters had expected Dems to pick up more than a dozen seats; it’s just the latest reminder of how far off the public opinion polls were in the runup to the election.

Politico’s Jake Sherman put it best in a string of tweets where he labeled Tuesday “an abject disaster” for Democrats.

Bottom line: Republicans are headed for a net gain of around ten seats. Even members of Nancy Pelosi’s leadership team are having a hard time hanging on to their seats. When the dust settles, the speaker is going to have some explaining to do. Maybe it’s time for the Dems to put the 80-year-old Speaker out to pasture?

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Biden Wants To Give Separated Illegal Immigrants $450,000 Per Person

The average amount sought through the courts is roughly $3.4 million per family, according to the report.

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Image Credit: Phil Murphy/Flickr

The Biden administration is mulling a plan to offer immigrant families separated during the Trump administration $450,000 per person in compensation, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter.

The payments – part of an inter-agency solution to several lawsuits filed on behalf of separated parents and children claiming lasting psychological trauma could amount to nearly $1 million per family, though ‘the final numbers could shift,’ according to the report.

According to sources, most of the families crossing into the US from Mexico included one parent and one child. Depending on circumstances, many families could get smaller payouts.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents families in one of the lawsuits, has identified about 5,500 children separated at the border over the course of the Trump administration, citing figures provided to it by the government. The number of families eligible under the potential settlement is expected to be smaller, the people said, as government officials aren’t sure how many will come forward. Around 940 claims have so far been filed by the families, the people said. -WSJ

In total, the potential payout could reach $1 billion or more.

Throughout the Trump administration, thousands of children were separated from their parents (and coyotes paid to bring them into the country) after they had crossed illegally into the country from Mexico. The lawsuits allege some of the children suffered various ailments – including malnutrition, heat exhaustion, and were kept in freezing cold rooms with little medical attention. Some claim lasting mental health problems due to the trauma of being without their parents for several months.

The average amount sought through the courts is roughly $3.4 million per family, according to the report.

“President Biden has agreed that the family separation policy is a historic moral stain on our nation that must be fully remedied,” said ACLU deputy director, Lee Gelernt. “That remedy must include not only meaningful monetary compensation, but a pathway to remain in the country.”

Senate Republicans slammed the plan on Thursday afternoon following the WSJ‘s report.

“The Biden administration’s promises of citizenship and entitlement programs have already caused the worst border crisis in history—a huge cash reward will make it even worse,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR).

The discussions about the payouts have taken place over the past few months among a group of dozens of private lawyers representing the families and government lawyers. Some government lawyers have viewed the payouts as excessive for people who had violated the law by crossing the border, the people said. One government lawyer threatened to remove his name from the case out of disagreement with the potential settlement offer, the people said. -WSJ

“It is a complicated, complex piece of litigation” – trying to resolve hundreds of separate lawsuits at the same time, and “sometimes even more complex to try the cases” said Margo Schlanger, who ran the civil-rights office during the Obama administration at the Department of Homeland Security and now teaches at the University of Michigan law school.

What will the reparations crowd think of this?

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White House To America: ‘We’re Coming Door To Door…With Shots!’

Will CDC soon recommend a nation-wide re-count of Covid deaths?

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White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said at the daily press conference yesterday that President Biden’s strategy to get everyone a Covid shot – whether they want it or not – is to start going “door-to-door” to those not yet jabbed. So…they have a list? Also today: bomb-maker Raytheon goes “woke.” Capitol Hill Cops set up shop in California. Will CDC soon recommend a nation-wide re-count of Covid deaths?

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Half A Million Illegals Crossed Since Harris Named Border ‘Czar’

By the time June’s figures are reported in the coming days, the combined number is expected to be over half a million, more than the entire population of Miami, Florida or Cleveland, Ohio.

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According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures, around 500,000 illegal immigrants have crossed the southern border since Kamala Harris was named border ‘czar’.

The Washington Free Beacon reported the findings, noting that only three months has passed since Harris took on the responsibility, and that the half a million figure is just those that have been apprehended.

The CBP says around 180,000 immigrants are being caught per month. In April agents arrested 178,854 illegal immigrants, the highest monthly figure for 21 years. That figure was then surpassed in May as agents apprehended 180,034 illegals.

By the time June’s figures are reported in the coming days, the combined number is expected to be over half a million, more than the entire population of Miami, Florida or Cleveland, Ohio.

Harris only bothered to visit the border when President Trump announced he was making a trip. Even then Harris visited El Paso, some 1000 miles away from where the crisis is taking place.

Previous to this, Harris lied and claimed she had been to the border, telling NBC’s Lester Holt “This whole thing about the border. We’ve been to the border. We’ve been to the border.”

When Holt pushed back and said she had not, Harris snapped “I—and I haven’t been to Europe. And I mean, I don’t—I don’t understand the point that you’re making,” then again laughed maniacally:

On Tuesday, Republican Senator Ron Johnson argued that Harris’ trip to El Paso was designed to distract the media and keep them away from the real crisis hit areas of the border.

“They took her to a point in the border where she wouldn’t see the crisis and so the press wouldn’t report on the crisis,” Johnson said.

The Senator added, “You just simply can’t understand what this administration is doing. We literally are apprehending now about 6,000 people per day. That’s I mean, that’s a large caravan every day being processed, some of them being returned, others are being dispersed. But this crisis is not going away. It’s just under everybody’s radar because the press isn’t covering it.”

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