sooo…I did a little research.
using the CNN website, I took a look at the House – since all 435 seats were in play, I literally scrolled through every single district, in every single race, and looked for one criteria, and one criteria only. Not whether it was red or blue, or whether it flipped, but – whether or not the incumbent kept his seat.
now, if draining the swamp was so fuckin’ important to all these scorched-earth folks who voted for Pumpkin Spice Jesus, then you’d think that they’d be ripe for gettin’ rid of the folks already clogging up the works on Capitol Hill, right?
well….naw. not so much.
These are the races where incumbents were unseated:
CA-17
FL-7
FL-13
IL-10
NE-2
NV-4
NH-1
NJ-5
That’s it. Eight races in seven states.
That means that in the other 427 races, either there was no incumbent, or that the incumbent held their seat. So I went back and counted again to get just the number of returning incumbents, of the total number of 435 seats.
There were a number of states where candidates were listed as running without opposition, but the results didn’t notate them as being incumbent, so I had no way of knowing whether they were existing, sitting members of congress or not without digging a lot deeper than I really cared to at the moment, so I only went with candidates who were listed as incumbents.
Of those specifically listed as incumbents (and this is sadly unscientific), THREE HUNDRED TWENTY NINE SEATS WERE RETAINED IN THIS ELECTION BY INCUMBENTS WHO WERE ALREADY IN OFFICE.
Iowa, Maine, West Virginia, New Mexico, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Utah all had one hundred percent retention rates, albeit with single digit numbers of representatives. The big winners in perfect incumbent retention rates?
Colorado, with 7 of 7
Missouri, with 8 of 8
…and let’s give it up for OHIO, with a perfect retention rate of 16 for 16! You win the Drain The Swamp Hypocrisy Trophy!
Near perfect were Tennessee (naturally) at 8 for 9, Washington at 9 for 10, New Jersey at 11 for 12, Minnesota at 7 for 8…and those big pockets in Texas and California? Well, Texas went 25 for 36 and California went – get this – 46 for 53. So of the 53 seats up for grabs in Cali, only seven were unopposed or newly vacant seats.
You might ask yourself (cue music here)…what does this all mean?
Well, here’s the thing. The guy we’re all pissing and moaning about right now? He’s a figurehead. A used car salesman. He gets nothing done without the cooperation of the suits in the dome, and if we’ve seen anything proven over the past eight years, it’s that their power to do nothing knows no bounds.
So what’s happened here is that we’ve sent a bad hairpiece to the White House because a bunch of Duck Dynasty fans thought his billionaire ass was a straight-shootin’ anti-establishment agent of change who was gonna go to DC and fix shit and bring their jobs back…
But what y’all did, in effect, was to fire the guy who was trying to fix your car with a plunger for the last eight years, hire a new mechanic, and hand him the same plunger and tell him to go fix your car better than the last guy did.
It don’t matter if he’s a fuckin’ genius or a buffoon. You just handed him another plunger…and your car ain’t goin’ nowhere.
Drain the Swamp, my ass.
...from the rear view mirror 