==The midterms: 2010 versus 2022==
The Republicans got their butts kicked in the 2022 midterms. What happened?
The closest midterm to compare 2022 to is 2010. Back in 2010, we had a Democratic president, a Democratic senate, and a Democratic house. We also had a weak economy.
It was a very red bloodbath: Republicans gained 63 seats in the house, and six seats in the senate. They retained control of one or more legislative house throughout the 2010s.
Compare this to 2022: We have a Democratic president. A Democratic senate. A Democratic house. And a weak economy. Based on just the fundamentals, the Democrats should had lost both legislative houses.
That didn’t happen.
While votes are still being counted, it looks like the Republicans will have only a very small majority in the house.
Democrats are most likely going to gain a seat in the senate when all is said and done.
While there are a lot of factors which affects how people will vote, If I had to pin the results down to one issue, it would be abortion.
In 2018 we had the blue wave giving the house back to the Democrats. The main issue which persuaded people was healthcare. At the time, Republicans got very close to taking away healthcare from millions of Americans. It was only the now-deceased John McCain who saved the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Republicans learned their lesson in 2018. They very quickly stopped talking about “repealing Obamacare” (their then-name for the ACA) once the 2018 results showed it didn’t resonate with voters.
I am not seeing the same kind of self-reflection the Republican party had after their 2018 defeat here in 2022. This may change come next year; we will see.
Abortion, of course, wasn’t the only issue. Republicans who did not support democracy almost all lost their elections in this midterm.
I have released MaraDNS 3.5.0028 this week. The updates I have been making this month have been, by and large, to fix up a small number of Y2038 issues which were present in the code. MaraDNS has been Y2038 compliant for a while, but there were a couple of non-critical things which would had broken come Y2038 on systems with a 32-bit time_t.
Full details are over at the MaraDNS Y2038 statement page.
==Appendix: I’m moving to Mastodon==
With Twitter’s future so uncertain, I am moving my social media from Twitter to Mastodon. My new social media URL is:
https://mstdn.social/@Samboy
Comments for blog entries can be seen in the forum.