Wondering on Wednesday (v153)

I wondering, right off the bat, how anyone could have been unmoved by the president's press conference today, in which he mocked Republicans who didn't win their races, took credit for 'resigning' Jeff Flake, attacked the press, refused to answer questions he was asked, answered questions he wasn't asked, pretended that he was concerned about the environment, suggested that he would work in a bipartisan fashion with Nancy Pelosi, threatened to retaliate against any investigations initiated by the House, lied about why he still is not releasing his tax returns, and more. Transcript is here; video is here.

And I'm wondering how many people watched Nancy Pelosi's presser? For her part, she suggested they'd not investigate the president unless there was a reason, offered to work with the Rs, and so on - - what you would expect her to say. She also said she was the best person to be House Speaker.  And it seems she'll keep her leadership role. In addition to Pelosi, who's 78, Steny Hoyer, who's 79, and Jim Clyburn, also 78, want to remain in the top leadership roles. To which I can only sigh.

Pelosi can probably only sigh as well, as there's no question she was kicked out of the news cycle by the forced resignation of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III. That saddens me, the Sessions ouster. He managed to hold on for so long. At least he wasn't dragged out of town to be fired, a la Reince Priebus. I wonder if the first thing he's going to do is go to Disneyland?

I'm also wondering about Chris Collins out in Western NY (or, as Brian Williams allegedly said, the northern tier of upstate NY).  You remember Collins, right? Multiple ethics investigations: a federal indictment for insider trading: tried to get off the ballot, couldn't, and yes - he won.  Well, I should say, he's projected to be the winner. He's up by around 2800 votes, so we'll have to see if there'll be a fight from his opponent. If he wins, does he show up to work with his former colleagues? Or does he fake a pulled muscle or something, I wonder?

And then there's the dead brothel owner who was elected to the State Assembly in Nevada. Dennis Hof, who was a Trump-ish candidate, won with around 68% of the vote. You can wonder away on this one all you want.

Here in New York, our Sonofa Gov won re-election handily; polls in the final days of the campaign showed Andrew Cuomo had only a 13% lead over Marc Molinaro, but in the end he won by over 20%. Three other candidates were also in the race, and in total got under 240K votes - but each had enough to keep their party on the ballot for the next four years.  I wonder what it will take for NYers to boldly go towards a different party, the Libertarians or Greens, or even the new one that just popped up on our radar this year, the Serve America Movement?

Not surprisingly, folks have looked at the electoral map for NY, which shows Cuomo won the cities - Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and NYC - plus Tompkins County (home of Ithaca, one of the most liberal cities in the country), Ulster County, and Long Island. Some are calling for  a new system, so that Cuomo wouldn't be the winner because he didn't win a majority of the counties...  For some, the fact that Cuomo has more than 1.3 million votes than Molinaro apparently is not enough - he has to win the geographical victory as well? I have to wonder about that logic.

How to wrap this all up?  Well, let's go with this: it's expected that by the time is all said and done, over 113 million people will have voted in the midterms. That's 49% of all eligibles. The obvious thing we can wonder is, will these folks stay engaged for the duration?  Will we continue to see women including women veterans and women of color, elected, or is this a one-and-done?  Will Dems leverage their victories from Tuesday into something that's sustainable?

We'll be wondering that at least through the 2020 election cycle, which starts now.