The Chris Moeller Archives

Noises your TV didn't make on Tuesday night

The Democrats spotted the Republicans their usual electoral advantage during these midterms. In my purple-state television market, we watched ad after ad depicting Mexicans and Central Americans climbing over a desert wall, but didn't see any that I know of depicting brown children being held in cages. One side plays tackle football, the other plays touch.

While domestic squabbles keep us occupied at home, dividing us into a simplistic pair of primary colors, Washington stands unified on nearly all international issues, with virtually no media attention being paid to the U.S.'s impact on the rest of the globe, and instead substituted with a lot of cheerleading for American democracy. This is what your TV did not sound like on Tuesday night...

Polls have closed in most states on the East Coast. And we have a few projected winners already. In Virginia, Mary Stone is victorious. She made the war and resulting famine in Yemen a central part of her campaign. She ran TV and radio ads condemning the Obama-era drone strikes and saying she would get U.S. intelligence and logistics out of the area, ending our support of the Saudi bombing campaigns. Voters polled there say they were concerned with the U.N. report during this election year that says 13 million Yemenis face starvation as a result of the violence. Those predictions would make it the most deadly famine on Earth in 100 years. Debra has some projections in the Northeast...

Yes, New Hampshire voters followed suit, Susan. The murder of U.S. journalist Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudi government seems to have galvanized support against our national economic partnership with the Saudi royal family. Brenda Lake, who has been the most vocal critic of the Saudis in the Senate, has been overwhelmingly elected to a third term. She led the fight against President Trump's $110 billion arms deal with the Saudis in 2017 and voters were very eager to come out and give her their support. Only Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu believes the Saudis should get a pass for murdering Khashoggi, but obviously Netanyahu is not a voter in New Hampshire, Susan.

And now, we can project this one out of New Jersey. Carl Stewart, a first-time candidate at the state level, becomes the first district's choice in the House. He centered his campaign on U.S. military operations in Africa. The U.S. has an imperial-scale presence on that continent-- the major regional base in Djibouti, and network bases of AFRICOM in Mozambique, Tanzania, Burundi, Kenya, Somalia, Uganda, Ethiopia, South Sudan, CAR, Chad, Niger, Ghana, Senegal, Liberia, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Egypt, Morocco, and elsewhere. The military presence exists there only to justify itself, and has become a substitute for diplomacy, academic research, trade, and investment. Stewart traveled to Africa this summer, and his opponent ceded the race during a televised debate two weeks ago, admitting on air that he was unaware of AFRICOM and not qualified for the job of congressional representative. Stacey, polls are closing now in Illinois and some Midwestern states?

That's right. And out of Illinois comes the re-election of Margaret Shipley. She's one of the lions of the Senate and she'll be headed back there for a fourth six-year term. Since her first election, in the year following 9-11, she's been the most vocal advocate for improving U.S. diplomatic relations. She was expected to face a tougher fight than the one she got today, but last month, the U.N. General Assembly voted to condemn the U.S. embargo of Cuba. 189 member-nations signed on to the condemnation, with no abstaining votes. Only the U.S. and Israel voted against the motion. This U.N. vote was seen as a sort of "canary in the coal mine" for the "leadership" of a nation that Pew Research found carries a 70% unfavorable rating for itself and its president in 25 different polled countries. The U.S. continues to thumb its nose at the world, imposing targeted sanctions at countries and withdrawing from multiple international agreements. The Cuba vote was a piece of good timing for the political fortunes of Shipley, and she's headed back to Washington to continue being a thorn in the paw of the president. Jim is at the electoral map, and we've got a race too close to call in Nebraska. Jim, there's a lot of piggy-backing that's taken place on a key issue to voters in the Cornhusker State...

That's right, Stacey. Guatemala is a place that not many Americans knew much about, but Anna Greenblatt and Ameera Abdul both made it the centerpiece of their opposing campaigns, linking the violence there and across Central America to the U.S.'s failed drug policies and new attempts by the U.S. to intimidate a commission that has held up a fragile peace against an increasingly-militarized Guatemalan government. According to exit polling, older Nebraskans still clearly remember the military-committed genocide in Guatemala in the early '80s, and voters of all ages say they have found it easy to connect the problems of violence in Central America to increased human displacement into North America and then directly to the human violation of Trump's border separation policy for families. This is the passion for human rights and peace among voters that Greenblatt and Abdul were both trying to tap into, and it looks as if a record number of voters have gone to the polls in that state. Only three thousand votes separate the two women with 40% of precincts reporting, and this one is simply too close to call at this point. We're likely headed towards another of Nebraska's famous re-counts. Debra, back to you if you have the projections with polls closing on the west coast. We have a new Senator in the Golden State?

Jim, it's 29-year-old Tyresa Long. Iraq and Afghanistan are still resonant issues with California voters, a state with a lot of military installations. George W. Bush's "axis of evil" was back on people's minds just before election day with Trump advisor John Bolton ushering in the phrase "troika of tyranny" to describe Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua in this hemisphere, and Trump telling reporters that he was once again considering the military option, reminiscent of his predecessors' war follies as well as his own during his first two years in office. The legacy of the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan still do not sit well in this part of the country, especially as the U.S. continues to issue sanctions on the former country and virtually occupy the latter. Susan...

Jim, Stacey, Debra, it's going to be a long night here in the studio with many races still to be decided and unknown which of the SIX major American political parties will have wrestled control of Congress by the time all the votes have been tallied. We pause now for a commercial message and to turn it over to our affiliates for your local results. We will be back her at midnight eastern time. 

You've been watching Election Night in America 2018.

posted by CM @ 9:43 AM