Thursday News: “Trump’s Whupping”; Northam Post-Election Press Conference; House of Delegates Control Hangs By a Thread

by Lowell

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Thursday, November 9.

• Election results set off a blame game among Republicans
• A Year Later, The Shock Of Trump’s Win Hasn’t Totally Worn Off In Either Party (And never will.)
• American voters delivered a harsh rebuke to climate deniers on Tuesday. (At this point, if you deny climate science, you should have no place in American public life. Period.)
• Senators Grill Trump Environment Picks Over Their Distrust of Climate Science (“Kathleen Hartnett White, who has called CO2 the ‘gas of life,’ and coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler faced intense questioning over their positions on climate science.” Demented.)
• Senate set for clash with House on tax bill
• Team Trump deflects blame after election losses (Of course they do; this is the party that never takes responsibility for any of their f’ups.)
• Blue Dog Democrats taking hard line on GOP tax bill
• GOP anxiety rises over ’18 midterms
  
• Some of Trump’s judicial nominees may be unfit. The Senate is rushing them through anyway. (The same McConnell/GOP-controlled Senate that stalled on President Obama’s 100% qualified judicial nominees, including his superb nominee to the Supreme Court.)
• Voters just sent a message: Republicans are way out of step on health care
• Democrats, Republicans, take note: A new era has begun
• Trump ally Robert Kraft revealed as longtime owner of offshore firm (“The New England Patriots’ billionaire boss is among several major US sports team owners who appear in the Paradise Papers”)
• Trump Is Ceding Global Leadership to China
• Losses Put New Pressure on G.O.P. to Act on Tax Rewrite (“The Senate will break from the House legislation in several key ways, including eliminating the ability to deduct state and local taxes and scaling back, rather than ending, the estate tax.” Still really bad.)
• Trump environmental nominee doesn’t believe science should ‘dictate policy’ (This person is a complete nutjob.)
• The Fundamentals Favor Democrats In 2018 (“Tuesday’s elections were a wake-up call for Republicans — and for morning-show pundits.” TV pundits, in general, are morons. Right-wing radio’s even worse.)
• Lewandowski: ‘My memory has been refreshed’ on Carter Page Moscow trip (Riiiiiiight.)
• Fox, facing new competitors, clings tighter to Trump (“The network that sparred with him as a candidate now rarely questions him.” Fox is the right-wing equivalent of state media in North Korea or Maoist China.)
• In 24 hours, the Republican National Committee completely changed its tune about Virginia (“Yesterday the GOP was ‘all in’ on the election. Not anymore.”)
• A Year After Trump, Diversity Has Its Day (“A transgender lawmaker in Virginia, a Sikh mayor in New Jersey and a refugee mayor in Montana: Were these Democratic victories a rebuke of President Trump or sign of change?”)
• Virginia’s Election and Trump’s Whupping (“But it turns out that the normal rules of politics do indeed apply to Trump. With his approval rating at a paltry 38 percent, Trump’s Republican Party took a whupping. It’s not just that the Democrats easily won the highest-profile race — the Virginia governorship. Democrats enjoyed a stunningly good night across the country.”)
• Flynn worries about son in special counsel probe (Flynn’s son is as bad or worse than his father.)
• Democratic wins: Start of anti-Trump surge or ‘not so fast?’ (“Not so fast, Republicans said Wednesday. But they acknowledged that setbacks in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere on Tuesday created new urgency for the GOP to fulfill its list of campaign promises before voters head back to the polls next year.” If they push through their wildly unpopular agenda, they’re going to get wiped out next November.)
• How Dominion Energy, Fracked Gas Giant, Lost Big in Virginia Election (“The election results may also throw up barriers to Dominion’s ability to fast-track its permitting of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline. Northam requested that the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality perform a more systematic permitting of the project, a question on which the current DEQ vacillated.” We need to fight this crap, hard.)
• Suburbs Rebel Against Trump, Threatening Republicans in Congress (“In Virginia, the district of Representative Barbara Comstock, a Republican, went 56 percent to 43 percent for Lt. Gov. Ralph S. Northam, the Democrats’ triumphant candidate for governor. Mr. Northam also captured 51 percent of the votes in the district of Representative Scott Taylor, a freshman Republican from Virginia Beach.”)
• Trump’s $250 Billion China Haul Features Little of Substance (“Most deals are non-binding, will take years to materialize…‘This is all for show,’ attendee at signing ceremony says”)
• Blue Wave, Meet Red Wall (“The Democrats won by a landslide in Virginia. The Republicans’ gerrymandered map still stood strong.” I mean, Dems should definitely have a majority in the Virginia House of Delegates at this point, no doubt about that.)
• Trumpism Stumbles in Virginia, and Republicans Fall to a Democratic Wave
• What the Hell Just Happened in Virginia? (“The winner of the 2018 midterm elections will be the party that can best contain its divisions. Democrats were the clear winner on that front.”)
• How Northam gained in a more polarized Virginia (“The victory came in a familiar way for Democrats: a surge of support in urban areas around Richmond and Hampton Roads and a giant Northern Virginia margin of 260,000 votes, double McAuliffe’s win in the D.C. suburbs four years ago.” Even in the cold, pouring rain all afternoon and evening. Great job, everyone who voted!)
• After first big test of the Trump era, Republicans try to sift through election results (“‘I don’t know how you get around that this was a referendum on the president,’ [Rep. Scott] Taylor said Tuesday at the GOP election night party in Henrico County. ‘I don’t know how you get around it.'”)
• Editorial: What’s next for Virginia? (“The problem for Republicans is that voters who normally sit out off-year elections seemed to come out of nowhere — but mostly Northern Virginia — and they voted overwhelmingly for the Democrats. Voter turnout was up an astounding 15.7 percent from the last gubernatorial election. Not all of that can be attributed to an increase in population, and it certainly can’t be attributed to an exciting set of candidates this time around. But it can be attributed to voters’ negative feelings about Trump.”)
• Is it finally blue? Democrats speed Virginia’s transformation — thanks to Trump
• Corey Stewart: Election not a repudiation of Trump, state GOP chair should resign (“Gillespie did not veer right enough, or he would have won, Stewart claims.” LOL)
• Reverting to quiet bedside manner, Northam says Virginia rejected Washington’s divisiveness (Congratulations to Clark Mercer, who Gov.-elect northam named as his Chief of Staff.
• After Virginia blowout, Comstock’s road to reelection grows steeper (Gillespie lost the 10th CD by around 13 points. Time for Comstock to retire?)
• Potential chaos ahead as control of Virginia House of Delegates hangs in balance
• Upset at Trump — missed by many pollsters — fueled Democratic sweep
• Nuance in a purple state (“With both chambers of the General Assembly so tightly split, there will be a renewed emphasis on across-the-aisle cooperation.” Yeah, we’ll see if that actually happens.)
• It’s 12 — no, 13 — for Yancey as vote certification begins (“As of last night, when precinct chief officers called in results, the 94th District race between incumbent Republican Del. David Yancey and Democrat Shelly Simonds boiled down to just 12 votes, with Yancey coming out on top. Of the five races in question, it had the smallest difference in votes cast.”)
• How Democrats Won Big In The Virginia House — And Why It Matters (“The party exceeded the rosiest expectations for the legislature’s lower chamber.”)
• First Two Latinas Are Elected to Virginia House of Delegates, Making History (“Elizabeth Guzmán and Hala Ayala became the first Latinas elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, part of a Democratic sweep in the state.”)
• Control of the House of Delegates may come down to a dozen votes in Newport News (For anyone who says their vote doesn’t matter…)
• Danica Roem Is Virginia’s First Transgender Elected Official. Here’s What She Wants to Accomplish (“What I hope people across the country are able to see in [our victories] is that transgender people can be really good at doing their jobs in elected office; we can make really good legislators”)
• D.C.-area forecast: Cloudy today before an Arctic blast arrives tonight, and widespread freeze Friday night