Dark Days for Florida in 2022

I woke up to a gray day.

Not only because of an incoming Hurricane in mid-November - remember when hurricane seasons ended in October? Thanks to climate change, not anymore! - making it a dreary rainy day.

It was a gray dreary day because here in Florida for the 2022 midterms, I woke up to news that Republican Governor Ron DeSantis - that racist, immigrant-bashing, blasphemous moran - not just won re-election but he won in a blow-out by nearly double digits over Charlie Crist.

There was a similar result with Marco Rubio - that wet noodle of a Senator who barely shows up and only for television interviews - winning big against Val Demings for the U.S. Senator seat.

It was basically a massive blowout statewide in Florida for Republicans, while at the national level the GOP suffered with poor results, failing to flip the Senate (so far, some states are undecided but the Democratic incumbents are holding on) and barely winning the U.S. House despite poll predictions having them win 25-plus seats to wreak havoc on President Biden's hopes.

So today was me sitting around waiting for a hurricane to hit muttering to myself "What the hell happened?"

Previous midterm elections - with Florida's Governor races as part of the ballots - were never this bad for Democrats. In 2018, DeSantis eked out a win over Andrew Gillum with 4.07 million over 4.04 million votes. In 2014, Rick Scott won against Charlie Crist with 2.86 million votes over 2.8 million.

But this time, 2022 with DeSantis facing Crist who was running his second chance as a Democrat (Crist was a Republican Governor 2006-2010 but switched parties when he lost favor with a growing extremist GOP), the results were 4.6 million for DeSantis and 3.1 million for Crist. The voter turnout for the Senate race was pretty much the same: Rubio at 4.6 million and Demings at 3.1 million. 

Democrats just... lost over a million Florida voters somewhere. In a midterms where Democratic voter turnout saw moderate or better gains across most of the nation. What the hell happened?

In my darkest, angriest mindset, I'm going to the conspiracy angle of hard voter suppression happening. Republicans didn't gain voters all that much between 2018 to 2022, but the Democrats obviously lost them. I would be screaming about somebody somewhere blocking Democratic voters in likely Blue districts... except there's been no reports of that on social media or regular media.

Hey, if QAnon can run around screaming "stolen elections," I have a right to scream the same thing. It's just... dammit, where's the evidence of it? Alas.

The only other rational explanation was voter disinterest. All those Democratic voters just... refused to vote for the party this year. There's two reasons why that could be the culprit.

One of the bigger voter suppression stunts DeSantis pulled this election cycle was aggressively redoing the U.S. Congressional districts with extreme Republican-friendly gerrymandering. It was so blatantly partisan a gerrymander it ought to have been voted down by even the Republican legislature, or at least stricken down by the courts. And yet, nobody fought it.

Worse, the Florida Democratic party failed to challenge for every district in spite of that gerrymandering. Several districts had no Democratic congressional candidate, increasing the voter disinterest to turn out for the other important races for Governor and Senator.

Study after study shows that extreme partisan gerrymandering affects voter turnout. When DeSantis redid the Congressional map, he not only improved the odds of state Republicans winning extra U.S. House seats, he also improved his own odds to win re-election by depressed Democratic turnout.

The second reason for the drop in Democratic voter turnout? There had been complaints before - and this time around seemed to prove it - that the Democratic voting base just didn't like or trust Charlie Crist. Due to the fact he used to be Republican, the fact he still stood as a more Centrist moderate candidate to a base that would prefer progressives, and the fact he just didn't seem to reach more people this time around all hurt the overall ticket. How this affected Val Demings - who had a better rapport with the Democratic base, and should have seen better results - still doesn't make sense outside of the anti-Crist factions just refusing to show up at all.

And for all the evidence that the Democratic Party is failing to reach Hispanic voters - especially here in Florida, where the Cuban and Puerto Rican voting blocs are heavily social conservatives - I don't think that is a major reason for the missing voters from 2018: If the Hispanics were flipping parties, we'd be seeing an increase in Republican turnout this 2022 over 2018. Still, the failure by the Democratic Party at both the state and national level to appeal better to Latino voters is a major setback that the Dems have to address.

My mood is not lightened by the reports of Democratic gains elsewhere, especially in Midwest states where Dems gained control of state legislatures in Michigan and Minnesota. There may be a chance that the Democrats keep control of the Senate - only with gaining one extra seat, which may not be enough to break the filibuster/cloture stranglehold - but the Republicans are about to gain control of the House (due in strong part to DeSantis' gerrymandering, damn him). The reports are that the GOP will have a slim lead in the House, but that a schism between more hardcore wingnut factions could undercut the fight for Speakership. I doubt it: Republicans will unite even if it's behind a spineless cur like McCarthy if there's a chance to get their Cruelty agenda passed.

So here I sit, waiting for another storm to hit Florida, praying that at least this hurricane can well hit Mar-A-Lago like a bullseye and wash it all into the sea.

I've been raging and fuming ever since 2010, ever since sanity failed my state when the Republican voters eagerly put into office a documented Medicare Fraud. It's only gotten worse since then: The cruelty, the failures of leadership, all to "own the libs" even as the state literally falls apart bit by bit, disaster by disaster.

I'd like to move away, I'm at that point of giving up on the state I've lived almost my whole life. But I'm too old to go job-hunting across states anymore, and damn it all the rent is too damned high.

Gods help us.