Did the Pittsburgh Steelers Save the U.S. Senate?

Senator-elect John Fetterman and President Joe Biden

The Republican Party was predicting a "red wave" in yesterday's Congressional and gubernatorial elections. Which was, at least by historical pattern, understandable. The party with the President, in the midterm election of the President's 2nd year, usually loses a lot of seats in each house of Congress. (It's usually even worse in a re-elected President's 6th year.)

The Republicans, the "Grand Old Party" (GOP), were trying to make these elections a referendum on President Joe Biden. They wanted to ride the issues of inflation (which is worldwide, so not Biden's fault), crime (which Biden had addressed with a successful gun control bill) and "socialism" (of which only Democrats have proven that they know the meaning).

The Democratic Party were hoping that people wouldn't fall for this, that they would vote based on the issue of abortion with the downfall of Roe v. Wade (they were hoping for a "Roevember"), and would have their own backlash, against election deniers, the people who still say (whether or not they actually believed) that Donald Trump really won in 2020.

Well, the people have spoken. And their messages conflict. As of this writing, it looks like the Democrats have a chance to hold onto the U.S. Senate. There's also a slight chance they could hold onto the U.S. House of Representatives. A few races in the Western States, and a December 6 Senate runoff in Georgia between the Democratic incumbent, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, and the Republican challenger, former University of Georgia Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker, will decide it. (UPDATE: Warnock won, and the Democrats have a one-vote majority in the Senate. But the Republicans have a five-vote majority in the House.)

But Trump is, again, the biggest loser. Most of the candidates he endorsed lost. The biggest winner is Ron DeSantis, the Governor of Florida: Not only was he easily re-elected, but he had re-engineered, through the State legislature, the State's Congressional Districts, which may end up providing the margin of victory for the Republicans in the House. More than that, he showed the Party that he, not Trump, is "the winner in the Party."

So he, not Trump, becomes the front-runner for the 2024 Republican Presidential nomination -- and that's before we find out what happens to Trump as far as criminal investigations go.

Biden is, if not the biggest winner, a big one: He didn't get "a shellacking," as President Barack Obama said he got in 2010, or "a thumpin'," as George W. Bush said he got in the 6th-year election of 2006. In fact, he may have gotten a break: Some Presidents have lost control of Congress in Year 2, and ran against the other party to get re-elected in Year 4: Harry Truman in 1948, Bill Clinton in 1996, Obama in 2012.

However it turns out, the country saw that candidates for whom Biden showed up and spoke did considerably better than those for whom Trump did. So all this talk about, "Who will the Democrats nominate in 2024?" is stupid: If Biden is still alive in 2024 -- and, given the current state of his physical health, he probably will be -- he will be the Democratic nominee. And all the talk about the state of his mental health now looks stupid as hell: He picked a hell of a lot more winners than Trump did, and he set the policies that those people ran on.

The Republicans really wanted to ride the crime issue. It didn't work in New York: Kathy Hochul, who was elevated to the office when Andrew Cuomo resigned, won a full term despite getting hammered on the issue by the Republican nominee, Congressman Lee Zeldin. But Hochul reminded New Yorkers that they're too smart for that: The way to control crime is to crack down on guns. She also may have been saved by the abortion issue: Two of the new Republican Congressmen from New York made a point of saying that, while they opposed abortion, they would not support a federal ban on it, and that may have pushed them over the line.

At first, it looked like all 13 of New Jersey's members of Congress -- all but 2 of them Democrats -- would be re-elected. One ended up flipping: The 7th District, including most of Somerset and Hunterdon Counties and the suburban half of Union County, where Tom Kean Jr., the Trump-bowing son of the moderate former Governor, on his 4th try for public office, defeated Democratic incumbent Tom Malinowski.

In the 12th District, with most of southern Middlesex County (including my hometown of East Brunswick), some of Somerset County, and most of Mercer County (including the State capital of Trenton and Princeton University), Democratic incumbent Bonnie Watson Coleman easily won a 5th term, getting over 60 percent of the vote against Darius Mayfield.

Both are black. I've met both of them, Watson Coleman when she was campaigning at the Middlesex County Fair in East Brunswick, Mayfield at the Milltown 4th of July Parade. Watson Coleman is a popular, well-performing incumbent, unstained by any scandal, and there simply wasn't a case for a challenger to make.

Mayfield is considerably younger, bright, and comes across like gangbusters. But the 12th District was drawn to favor Democrats. Mayfield's 1st decision, to establish his residence in such a district, meant that his campaign was doomed from the start. Waiting for the 77-year-old Watson Coleman to retire wouldn't have helped, the way it might have in 69-year-old Republican Chris Smith's 4th District or 71-year-old Democrat Frank Pallone's 6th, both of them based on the northern Jersey Shore, and the 4th is getting more conservative with more retirees moving there. Had Mayfield moved to the 4th or the 6th, and bided his time, perhaps running for the State legislature first, he would have been in great shape to win a House seat in 2024, or 2026, or 2028.

One race that gave the Democrats hope of keeping control of the Senate was in Pennsylvania. The Democratic nominee was Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman. The Republican nominee was celebrity surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz, backed by Trump. Oz had became famous through his appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah endorsed Fetterman, which was a shuddering rebuke of Oz.

Fetterman had previously been Mayor of Braddock, a small town outside Pittsburgh. Oz had never run for public office before, and didn't even live in Pennsylvania until buying a house there just before the filing deadline. Despite being only 53 years old (he was born while the Woodstock Festival was playing, while Oz is 62), Fetterman suffered a stroke right before the Primary, but won it anyway.

There were questions as to whether he had recovered enough to run the campaign, but he managed to out-debate Oz, who is very intelligent, his support for Trump aside. That support is based on tax cuts and deregulation of the prescription drug industry, both economic stances that favor him personally. And the people of Pennsylvania picked up on that: They decided that Oz wasn't trustworthy on those issues.

Despite having a Harvard degree, Fetterman ran on authenticity: He shaved his head, wore hooded sweatshirts, and talked like a real Pittsburgh guy. At a rally with Fetterman, with Obama also speaking, Biden said, "I've lived in Pennsylvania longer than Dr. Oz has, and I moved away when I was 10 years old!"

Fetterman was projected the winner late last night, with a lead of over 56,000 votes. This morning, Oz conceded. On MSNBC, former Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri says she knows when Oz lost the election. Last Saturday, he had a rally with Trump in Latrobe, 40 miles east of Pittsburgh, and he told people to go find 10 people to vote before tomorrow's Steelers game. "Do it before the Steelers game," he said. "Just find the time."

The Pittsburgh Steelers had a bye week this past Sunday. If you don't know the Steelers' schedule -- or the Philadelphia Eagles' schedule, if you're east of the Susquehanna River -- you are not a Pennsylvania guy. Fetterman? The shaved head aside, the man actually looks like Bill Cowher, the Hall of Fame coach who led the Steelers to victory in Super Bowl XL. I'm sure that got him a few votes.

The Steelers, founded in 1933, have been owned by the Rooney family ever since. The Rooneys are Republican, and 2 grandsons of team founder Art, Tom and his brother Patrick, have served in Congress from Florida. But in 2008, Dan Rooney, Art's son and successor as the team's controlling owner, supported Obama for President, which may have made a difference in both the Pennsylvania Primary and the general election. Unlike a lot of high-profile Republicans, when the Rooneys talk about "hard work" and "family values," they have the record to show that they mean it.

So if the Democrats do hang onto control of the U.S. Senate, it could be because a Republican fucked up with Steeler fans.

What really saved the Democrats from a "red wave" was young voters. CNN's national House of Representatives exit poll, by age group:

* 65+, that is, people born in 1957 or earlier: The Republicans won by 13 percent.

* 45-64, people born between 1958 and 1977: Republican by 11, in spite of my contribution.

* 30-44, people born between 1978 and 1992: Democrats by 2.

* 18-29, people born between 1993 and 2004: Democrats by 29.

So, to all you "kids" in "Generation Z," thank you. You're even getting the 1st Congressman from your generation: Maxwell Frost, 25, elected from the Florida 10th, the west side of Orlando and some suburbs including Walt Disney World. DeSantis couldn't stop him. He's a gun-control advocate, with a very mixed ancestry including Puerto Rican, Haitian and Lebanese. You're likely to be considerably more satisfied with him than I was with the 1st Congressman born after I was, who turned out to be Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the vicious right-winger who became the Republican nominee for Vice President in 2012 and the Speaker of the House from 2015 to 2019.

And to all those Hippies who betrayed your former ideals: You have become the people you used to hate. You deserve whatever happens to you, whether it's a tax increase or one of the maladies in the endless barrage of commercials for drugs for people your age.

Let me close with this: Stores' Christmas sale commercials > political candidates' commercials. At least you'll never see one store trashing another store's products.