According to this, the fuckup that democrats do not have a top tier candidate in Louisiana is exacerbated by the fact that Bill Cassidy, the incumbent, is currently polling third in his primary. This is a colossal fuckup by Kirsten Gillibrand (current DSCC chair), Chuck Schumer (senate minority leader), and Ken Martin (chair of the DNC). Why is no one with power calling for any of them to resign their leadership roles?
I don't live in Louisiana. Have never lived in Louisiana. It is not my job to find candidates to run in Louisiana, unlike Gillibrand, Schumer, or Martin. But how about Helena Moreno or LaToya Cantrell or Troy Carter or Cleo Fields?
And Helena Moreno has been NOLA Mayor for five weeks. If she wanted to be a Senator or thought she could win that she wouldn't have run for her current office.
Some years ago, after seeing a winnable race not seriously contested again, i decided that rather than grumbling about recruitment failures to try doing it, identified a good candidate and emailed them urging them to run. Got a polite reply, flattered anyone would think this, but claiming they wouldn't be a good candidate.
Disagree. I don’t want another Jaime Harrison situation where everyone thinks an unwinnable seat is suddenly winnable and the money that goes there does not go to other, more important races. I don’t think we could have won with anyone.
Disagree. The only races we are certain to lose are those we don’t bother to contest. I agree with North Star that Louisiana’s Senate seat should be contested, and strongly. (Recently, in another state, also failed to register a candidate for a state supreme court seat...)
As for money, it’s not like there is a constant, given pot – or a zero-sum game competing for a share of it. In these 2026 Midterm Elections, I don’t think we will see a shortage of money for Democratic candidates.
In Texas, James Talarico strikes me as an unusual candidate. How many other seminarians does the Democratic Party have running for Senate? Or for any other office?
Not necessarily an independent, mind you, I just meant an unusual candidate in general. ArcticStones mentioned Talarico as another example. Unusual candidates can take many forms.
No no it's far more than that. It's building and maintaining a grassroots network and organization with local voters and the community. If we keep dismissing every district or state that even remotely too red, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. And you know what? Many of those voters like in rural districts will respond likewise. Why should they see a reason to vote for Democrats if Democrats don't make the effort to engage and reach out to them? Howard Dean was onto something big that we can't forget.
I don't love the Democratic leadership, but we have strong candidates in every state that Trump won less than 60% of the vote in. I'd love to get strong candidates in deep red states too, but realistically Louisiana is a bit out of reach, it's probably only our 13th-best target. Whiffing on recruitment there isn't the end of the world.
The Colorado map shown at the top of the Digest is pretty good, but the one I've posted several times is better since it moves the 3rd up to Harris+9 (largely by pulling out of Grand Junction entirely and pushing further into Jefferson County in exchange).
I'd post the map again except I'm on my phone and I can't use DRA on it.
8-0 maps are DOA because the only way to do 8-0 is to split Denver between a whole bunch of districts, and CO Democrats aren't going to do that. They seem to want one district to be solidly based in Denver. On my 7-1 map, 95% of Denver is in the same district.
Face reality - Lauren Boebert isn't going anywhere.
So "Wall Street's favorite Democrat" and corporate lobbyist Melissa Bean who cut taxes for the rich and corporations is backed by two A.I super PACs and AIPAC's super PAC now. She would be dead on arrival in most districts due to her record but this is a suburban district held by Raja Krishnamoorthi so who knows.
The PA state senate 16 is a super swing district, overlapping 2 competitive US House Districts: PA-01 and PA-07, and further downballot overlaps potentially competitive state house districts 143 and 187, as well as a couple of solid D state house districts (132, 134) and some longer shot Republican ones (131, 145, 183).
Most voters in PA-S-16 can cast 3 different votes to replace Republicans - in the state house, state senate, and US House (also statewide Rs) making that part of the electoral map like a scrabble triple word score (to borrow a phrase from Field Team 6).
Anti-public education billionaire Jeffrey Yass, richest person in PA contributed hundreds of thousands to Republican Jarrett Coleman, more than all the funds Mark Pinsley had in the 2022 state senate campaign.
But how does it compare to other counties, or Talarico's turf, or Hispanic counties? This seems like a headline designed to drive a narrative. (Also, 2022 did not have any noteworthy Dem primaries.)
There are similar stories in California and New York. This has firmly convinced me that the Supreme court needs to be packed, and new electioneering regulations need to be brought in by the next President.
Texas 23 is a textbook case of gerrymander. If districts are supposed to be compact, the 23rd is immense, sprawling from San Antonio to El Paso. At 48,000 square miles, it is larger than 29 states. No matter the outcome of the Tony Gonzales scandal, the Democratic nominee will be a distinct underdog in November.
It's not a gerrymander due to its size, the size is a necessity because of population density. But it does carve out areas of San Antonio in a particular way that makes it a gerrymander
Susanne Shore, Pete Ricketts's wife, is running for the Omaha seat of the University of Nebraska Board of Regents as a Democrat (and with his endorsement, of course).
Either way, I hope she loses her bid. She may have a D next to her name, but she needs to be tied down to her husband and how he's made life more expensive for Nebraskans.
We don't know what she stands for. Spouses are allowed to have there own opinions! And if her views and record (if she has one) is substantially different her husband's, she shouldn't be judged by who she happens to be married to.
It's an interesting math problem to figure out how Osborn can win. He lost by around 66,000 votes in 2024 vs Harris who lost by nearly 200,000. He needs to improve his margins in Douglas County (Omaha). He only overperformed Harris by 7 points, instead of the 15+ point overperformances in a lot of the rural counties. Doing 15 points better that Harris in Douglas would put him very close to an upset.
Lakshya Jain from "The Argument" says on a New Republic podcast that if the 2026 midterms were held right now, Dems would flip 20-25 House seats and 2-3 in the Senate.
the hague exists, and as the years go by even if he pardons himself and everyone in the admin my litmus test for the 28 primary is who is going to commit to trying this administration for its crimes against humanity
One of my hopes is that, with our highly educated, highly attuned current primary electorate, that simply pointing out that certain entities with PAC’s who champion positions we don’t want in our party are meddling by dumping huge sums into our primaries will make the candidates they’re funding radioactive. Candidates that we want to win should make who is funding their opponents a crucial part of their strategy.
I'm highly skeptical of Artificial Intelligence and Data Centers for a variety of reasons. Many in the Democratic Party are not. I am unaware of an official position on the matter within the platform. I could be wrong. I wish people would be skeptical of AI and data centers, but we know it isn't that cut and dry.
I agree you can, so maybe this means the party has to take definitive positions on these issues. The battle between the business wing and the more leftist wing continues.....
And some are pretending that Trump hitting the campaign trail in the fall will save them--as if he were nationally popular? Greater involvement from him would at best be a wash, considering how fired up Democrats and like-minded independents are to oppose him. Further ahead, "Many Republicans trace their troubles to Trump not being on the ballot this year or in 2028." Or ever again. Time to find a new strategy.
BTW, look who got credited for calculating the Democratic overperformance in 2025 (compared to 2024) in state legislative elections.
We all know the MSM and his cronies are shielding how badly his health has deteriorated over the past year.
I doubt he will be around by November. Speech therapists and people experienced with working with elderly home healthcare patients point out he's got full-blown frontotemporal dementia -- particularly his manic sundowning posts on TruthSocial.
My dream is that during a long speech, Trump visibly sharts himself on stage. The State of the Union would be the perfect time to make that dream come true.
According to this, the fuckup that democrats do not have a top tier candidate in Louisiana is exacerbated by the fact that Bill Cassidy, the incumbent, is currently polling third in his primary. This is a colossal fuckup by Kirsten Gillibrand (current DSCC chair), Chuck Schumer (senate minority leader), and Ken Martin (chair of the DNC). Why is no one with power calling for any of them to resign their leadership roles?
Who would you like to run in Louisiana? Have you contacted them?
I don't live in Louisiana. Have never lived in Louisiana. It is not my job to find candidates to run in Louisiana, unlike Gillibrand, Schumer, or Martin. But how about Helena Moreno or LaToya Cantrell or Troy Carter or Cleo Fields?
LaToya Cantrell. You're funny.
Don't take that tone or speak that way to fellow community members.
LaToya Cantrell? She wouldn't hit 30% I'm not even exaggerating.
And Helena Moreno has been NOLA Mayor for five weeks. If she wanted to be a Senator or thought she could win that she wouldn't have run for her current office.
Some years ago, after seeing a winnable race not seriously contested again, i decided that rather than grumbling about recruitment failures to try doing it, identified a good candidate and emailed them urging them to run. Got a polite reply, flattered anyone would think this, but claiming they wouldn't be a good candidate.
Disagree. I don’t want another Jaime Harrison situation where everyone thinks an unwinnable seat is suddenly winnable and the money that goes there does not go to other, more important races. I don’t think we could have won with anyone.
Disagree. The only races we are certain to lose are those we don’t bother to contest. I agree with North Star that Louisiana’s Senate seat should be contested, and strongly. (Recently, in another state, also failed to register a candidate for a state supreme court seat...)
As for money, it’s not like there is a constant, given pot – or a zero-sum game competing for a share of it. In these 2026 Midterm Elections, I don’t think we will see a shortage of money for Democratic candidates.
Perhaps. Maybe with an unusual candidate a la Dan Osborn.
In Texas, James Talarico strikes me as an unusual candidate. How many other seminarians does the Democratic Party have running for Senate? Or for any other office?
Split Ticket's research showed that Independents would not fare well in the deep south due to Black people's deep bonds with the Democratic Party.
Not necessarily an independent, mind you, I just meant an unusual candidate in general. ArcticStones mentioned Talarico as another example. Unusual candidates can take many forms.
I think the point of LA is not to win but to divert GOP campaign resources away from more competitive states.
Good point.
No money is being diverted from elsewhere to Louisana.
The only instance where that maaaaaaybe would've happened is if John Bel Edwards was running, which he isn't.
No no it's far more than that. It's building and maintaining a grassroots network and organization with local voters and the community. If we keep dismissing every district or state that even remotely too red, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. And you know what? Many of those voters like in rural districts will respond likewise. Why should they see a reason to vote for Democrats if Democrats don't make the effort to engage and reach out to them? Howard Dean was onto something big that we can't forget.
I don't love the Democratic leadership, but we have strong candidates in every state that Trump won less than 60% of the vote in. I'd love to get strong candidates in deep red states too, but realistically Louisiana is a bit out of reach, it's probably only our 13th-best target. Whiffing on recruitment there isn't the end of the world.
The Colorado map shown at the top of the Digest is pretty good, but the one I've posted several times is better since it moves the 3rd up to Harris+9 (largely by pulling out of Grand Junction entirely and pushing further into Jefferson County in exchange).
I'd post the map again except I'm on my phone and I can't use DRA on it.
Here's an 8-0 I made.
https://davesredistricting.org/join/7ea3ff2a-74b6-49fb-b505-cdb2fd3c9ddd
8-0 maps are DOA because the only way to do 8-0 is to split Denver between a whole bunch of districts, and CO Democrats aren't going to do that. They seem to want one district to be solidly based in Denver. On my 7-1 map, 95% of Denver is in the same district.
Face reality - Lauren Boebert isn't going anywhere.
The proposed 7-1 actually does split Denver.
Also Lauren Boebert could lose a primary to another R like Jeff Crank. He did better in his 2024 primary than she did.
Here's my 8-0. This map is probably my greatest DRA accomplishment, since it's the only even remotely clean 8-0 that I've seen. District 2 is modified from an earlier version where it was much cleaner but less safe. https://davesredistricting.org/maps#viewmap::78211b99-3f26-4a5c-8317-78d281a1f95d
IL-2, IL-7: You can definitely learn a lot about someone by who their enemies are. I for sure support Peters and Ford now, fuck crypto.
So "Wall Street's favorite Democrat" and corporate lobbyist Melissa Bean who cut taxes for the rich and corporations is backed by two A.I super PACs and AIPAC's super PAC now. She would be dead on arrival in most districts due to her record but this is a suburban district held by Raja Krishnamoorthi so who knows.
Bean is running in IL-8, but yes, not a fan of her candidacy based on who's supporting her either.
LaShawn Ford is a centrist BTW, Kina Collins is the progressive in that race.
Collins would be better than Ford but Ford is better than Conyears-Ervin, so may have to be strategic.
Ya, Conyears-Ervin is supported by the far-left Chicago Teachers union and AIPAC’s super PAC and also has corruption cases at the same time lol.
What strange bedfellows
There are a few progs in that race, but without prog consolidation, Ford or Fisher looks better than Conyears-Ervin.
they can EASILY do an 8-0 map
Thanks as always! Interesting Pennsylvania news!
The PA state senate 16 is a super swing district, overlapping 2 competitive US House Districts: PA-01 and PA-07, and further downballot overlaps potentially competitive state house districts 143 and 187, as well as a couple of solid D state house districts (132, 134) and some longer shot Republican ones (131, 145, 183).
Most voters in PA-S-16 can cast 3 different votes to replace Republicans - in the state house, state senate, and US House (also statewide Rs) making that part of the electoral map like a scrabble triple word score (to borrow a phrase from Field Team 6).
Anti-public education billionaire Jeffrey Yass, richest person in PA contributed hundreds of thousands to Republican Jarrett Coleman, more than all the funds Mark Pinsley had in the 2022 state senate campaign.
"VoteHub’s 2026 state-level elasticity scores.
Elasticity is essentially a measure of how many swing voters a state has.
More formally: it estimates how many points a state shifts for every 1-point move in the national vote."
https://x.com/ZacharyDonnini/status/2023775157463171421?s=20
Good stuff
"Zachary Donnini
@ZacharyDonnini
Dallas County’s turnout is currently running at roughly three times its 2022 midterm pace.
Black voters driving much of the surge, which is something that is highly unusual this early in the early voting period."
https://x.com/ZacharyDonnini/status/2024496045162447345
I just hope they turn out in November if Crockett doesn't win the primary.
if they don't they will live with the results and no one will give a damn
But how does it compare to other counties, or Talarico's turf, or Hispanic counties? This seems like a headline designed to drive a narrative. (Also, 2022 did not have any noteworthy Dem primaries.)
Donnini is kind of a dishonest figure
"Teddy Schleifer
@teddyschleifer
NEWS:
Meta is about to start a $65 million midterms push — its biggest political effort in its 20 years in business.
Meta is standing up two super PACs that this week will drop money in races in Texas and Illinois to push A.I.
Exclusive w/
@matt_zdun"
https://x.com/teddyschleifer/status/2024156310107812331?s=20
There are similar stories in California and New York. This has firmly convinced me that the Supreme court needs to be packed, and new electioneering regulations need to be brought in by the next President.
Alright, yet more strain on Texas' electrical grid. All so creeps online can make revenge porn more seamlessly.
Texas 23 is a textbook case of gerrymander. If districts are supposed to be compact, the 23rd is immense, sprawling from San Antonio to El Paso. At 48,000 square miles, it is larger than 29 states. No matter the outcome of the Tony Gonzales scandal, the Democratic nominee will be a distinct underdog in November.
It's not a gerrymander due to its size, the size is a necessity because of population density. But it does carve out areas of San Antonio in a particular way that makes it a gerrymander
Right. Most of the district is a pretty distinct and succinct COI. It’s the bullshittery in Bexar that makes it a gerrymander
DemocratIC
Huge pet peeve of mine, thank you!
Yes, indeed! I was writing hastily and never otherwise employ that McCarthyite barbarism.
Susanne Shore, Pete Ricketts's wife, is running for the Omaha seat of the University of Nebraska Board of Regents as a Democrat (and with his endorsement, of course).
https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2026/02/19/former-nebraska-first-lady-susanne-shore-runs-for-nu-regent-in-omaha/
Um, ok
I hope they turn her down.
I think it's elected.
Either way, I hope she loses her bid. She may have a D next to her name, but she needs to be tied down to her husband and how he's made life more expensive for Nebraskans.
We don't know what she stands for. Spouses are allowed to have there own opinions! And if her views and record (if she has one) is substantially different her husband's, she shouldn't be judged by who she happens to be married to.
That is true. But it's not a good look for her.
I'm certainly not the only one pointing it out.
It's been reported she often donates to Dem candidates that her husband endorses against.
That seems kind of sexist ngl
Impact Research poll | 2/2-2/5 LV
US Senate Nebraska 2026
🟥Pete Ricketts 48% (incumbent)
⬜️Dan Osborn 47%
—
Senator Pete Ricketts favorables
Unfavorable 53%
Favorable 46%
(Dan Osborn internal)
https://x.com/PollTracker2024/status/2024506759566508130
when Osborn wins let not one sole be "shocked"
It's an interesting math problem to figure out how Osborn can win. He lost by around 66,000 votes in 2024 vs Harris who lost by nearly 200,000. He needs to improve his margins in Douglas County (Omaha). He only overperformed Harris by 7 points, instead of the 15+ point overperformances in a lot of the rural counties. Doing 15 points better that Harris in Douglas would put him very close to an upset.
Lakshya Jain from "The Argument" says on a New Republic podcast that if the 2026 midterms were held right now, Dems would flip 20-25 House seats and 2-3 in the Senate.
https://newrepublic.com/article/206759/transcript-trump-erupts-panic-2026-polls-take-brutal-turn
He says Democrats have a 40% chance of flipping the Senate outright. Can't see anything getting better for the GOP in the next 8 months.
He also always tends to be more conservative in his estimates too
Yes. He tends to be more accurate than Bitecofer as well.
Bitecofer is a doomer and more centrist than him nowadays.
Her doomerist antics piss me off so much. Like Marc Elias can be a bit doomerist too (for good reason!) but he pulls back.
Bitecofer is all about the grift.
Better to be cautious in estimates than too aggressive
That sounds about right, considered the number of newly gerrymandered seats, a 20 seat gain would be a good result.
The former president of South Korea was sentenced to life for fomenting insurrection, imagine that?
Trump should be serving the EXACT SAME sentence after that Jan 6 bullshit he pulled.
Unfortunately, eight Senate Republicans had no spine back in early 2021. As well as 74 million Americans who memory holed his treachery.
Don't forget SCOTUS.
the hague exists, and as the years go by even if he pardons himself and everyone in the admin my litmus test for the 28 primary is who is going to commit to trying this administration for its crimes against humanity
The US is not a member of the ICC. Stop talking like they're the Justice League.
are he and trump "friends"?
Different system of government. And it took them 40 years (save for a single year break) under a military dictatorship to get there.
One of my hopes is that, with our highly educated, highly attuned current primary electorate, that simply pointing out that certain entities with PAC’s who champion positions we don’t want in our party are meddling by dumping huge sums into our primaries will make the candidates they’re funding radioactive. Candidates that we want to win should make who is funding their opponents a crucial part of their strategy.
I'm highly skeptical of Artificial Intelligence and Data Centers for a variety of reasons. Many in the Democratic Party are not. I am unaware of an official position on the matter within the platform. I could be wrong. I wish people would be skeptical of AI and data centers, but we know it isn't that cut and dry.
But you can attack them for being supported by Trump donors who fund these.
I agree you can, so maybe this means the party has to take definitive positions on these issues. The battle between the business wing and the more leftist wing continues.....
Democratic turnout is matching Republican turnout in the Texas early vote so far...
Link? None of the big sites have actual numbers, except for certain counties.
Republicans are still hitting the copium on special election losses.
https://archive.ph/a9C1h
And some are pretending that Trump hitting the campaign trail in the fall will save them--as if he were nationally popular? Greater involvement from him would at best be a wash, considering how fired up Democrats and like-minded independents are to oppose him. Further ahead, "Many Republicans trace their troubles to Trump not being on the ballot this year or in 2028." Or ever again. Time to find a new strategy.
BTW, look who got credited for calculating the Democratic overperformance in 2025 (compared to 2024) in state legislative elections.
He also seems way too sick to actually campaign like he did in his first term
We all know the MSM and his cronies are shielding how badly his health has deteriorated over the past year.
I doubt he will be around by November. Speech therapists and people experienced with working with elderly home healthcare patients point out he's got full-blown frontotemporal dementia -- particularly his manic sundowning posts on TruthSocial.
Don’t give me hope
I'm hoping he'll crack during that shitty State of the Union address they'll be doing next week.
My dream is that during a long speech, Trump visibly sharts himself on stage. The State of the Union would be the perfect time to make that dream come true.
Putting Trump front and center only works when everyone doesn’t have to already see him and deal with his bullshit every day.