In my humble opinion, Doug Jones is the man who *should* have been Biden’s Attorney General – not Merrick Garland. Had Doug Jones been AG, the key J6 prosecutions would have started far earlier, as would the investigations into the funders and real backers of this insurrection and coup attempt. Also, the damning investigations and prosecutions of Trump would have started *years* earlier.
In short: Attorney General Doug Jones would have made sure the American justice moved at a respectable pace – comparable with what Brazil did after Bolsonaro’s attempt to stay in power.
(Ah, well, this is all "water under the bridge" – water personally passed by Trump.)
Garland was actually an unserious centre to centre-right nominee with links to originalist and federalist constitutional philosophies nominated by Obama to see if the Republican party would confirm him in good faith or not. It already seemed unlikely as McConnell has been obsessed with the courts for all his life. Furthermore, McConnell also needed the open Supreme court seats to be the proverbial carrot for evangelicals, who then had reservations with Trump, to suck it up and vote. Hillary had already promised to junk his nomination and instead nominate liberals and progressives who believed in a living constitution. One only wonders why we felt indebted to him. There was also no precedent for the charges brought against Hunter.
Democrats need to stop this picking people that are moderate or Republicans bc it looks good needs to die. Voters don’t give a shit nor know who any of these people are.
Whoever is the next Democratic president needs to hire Jones or Jack Smith to go after FDJT and EVERY SINGLE associate like Patel, Blondi, and Miller -- throw the book at them and get them in court.
Heck, since I'm in a petty mood, have them go after Karoline Leavitt and her lying self too.
I didn’t realize appointed him, I thought he was inherited. What an absolutely epic fuck up. He should have already learned not to trust any Republicans ever.
I would have put Doug Jones and former Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood in charge of things at the Justice Department with Jones as Attorney General and Hood as Deputy Attorney General.
The concept of having consensus candidate for the GOP to vote for made no sense in the first place. The GOP and Mitch McConnell did not want any such replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia. They wanted another Scalia.
I think Merrick Garland was fine as a judge but he made an ineffective Attorney General.
The problem with Alabama is that it's a deep red +30R state so even a midterm wouldn't help. Perhaps, a pro life, pro business populist conservative Democrat like John Bel Edwards could be competitive.
…or a candidate who can launch a successful GOTV operation and inspire 80 percent of Alabama Democrats to vote. Without pushing a similar share of Republican-leaning voters to do the same.
Those registered *Democrats* would be very different compared to your coastal or normal Democrat plus they are nominally Democrats usually because of the New Deal/Great Society tradition in those counties. Many of them are very conservative and have regularly voted for Republicans but don't care to change their registration. Voter registration is a really bad way to gauge support.
Really? Let's look at the gubernatorial results from 2010 to 2018:
*2010: Ron Sparks (D), Agriculture Commissioner & liberal alternative to Artur Davis in the Democratic primary. Result: lost 58% - 42% in the general.
*2014: Parker Griffith (D), former congressman and CONSERVATIVE who changed his party registration back and forth like underwear. Result: Defeated in a 64% - 36% landslide in the general.
*2018: Walt Maddox (D) mainstream liberal Democratic mayor of Tuscaloosa. Lost 59% - 40%. Cracking 40% in a state like Alabama is a BFD these days!! 💙🇺🇲
Now that Trump's popularity is deep underwater, advertising that you have his "complete and total endorsement," as Karrin Taylor Robson is doing, might be strategic folly, at least in the general election.
Probably, but only 54% of Republicans say Trump is focused on the right priorities. If his support among Republicans erodes further before the primary, keeping some distance from him might be a prudent course for GOP candidates.
Yeah, but the bulk of Republican primary voters still worship Trump above all else, even if they occasionally think his insufficiently MAGAtastic advisors (and the deep state) sometimes push things in the wrong direction.
The dual endorsement makes this primary a real race to the bottom, though.
There’s a never ending “good Tsar bad boyars” vibe around MAGALand which is ironic since almost all of their most politically damaging ideas/policy implementations come from Trump’s short-sighted impulsiveness
Yep. For the most part, the sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, and dickheads who decide GOP primaries—they all adore him (Trump). They think he's a righteous dude!
So Mark Sumner has a diary up on Daily Kos that says that despite Trump and the GOP's sinking approvals, they still aren't afraid because the Dems popularity is still even more underwater. He explains it's due to leadership's indecisiveness. I'm not saying those criticisms aren't wrong, in fact I agree with them. But as we've seen from the most recent elections, despite Democratic voters being pissed at the party, they are hardly demoralized from voting and coming out. Someone here said that fixing the image approval for the party maybe can't be fully resolved this year or next year. Democratic voters are also still pissed with the party because they can't believe they lost to Trump again. Don't want to get into 2028 primary talk but I think once we get closer to the Presidential primary, that's going to be the opportunity to really see massive improvement. Obviously, the party needs to get their shit together and I can understand folks not having any faith that Schumer can improve the party's standing. Jeffries I think has a better shot at doing that. I think letting folks like Buttigieg, Pritzker, Shapiro, Booker, Van Hollen, AOC, Crockett, Murphy, Sanders and anyone else who knows how to work the circuit be the spokespeople for the party. Grant it, we are already seeing that. Ultimately, I don't think the party's low public approval is going to hurt our chances in the New Jersey or Virginia Governors races and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court elections. But I do think it has to improve before next year and greatly approve of 2028. Thoughts?
The GOP is very good at pretending that bad approvals are “rigged” especially in the age of Trump so I wouldn’t expect them to be worried even if D numbers were better
He’s literally rage tweeting about how GDP contraction numbers are unfair to him. He’s the weakest but loudest personality in decades. Everybody knows to keep their head down around the giant 80 year old toddler
100%. The smart people in the room know how to read polls and the polls say Democrats are pissed at everyone. No one is spared right now considering how awful everything is. Us being mad at our party leadership should not be encouraging to them. Maybe we’ll take out some Dems in primaries but what comes after a primary? The general election and the GOP is next.
GOP favorables were also dogshit in the initial months of the 1st Obama term; not much evidence they serve as a weight on unpopular POTUS midterm backlash (they also improve over-time, as is already happening in current polling e.g. Dems are now leading on the economy)
As an aside, even I'm surprised at how quickly Trump shot his economy advantage to shit. All he had to do was *literally nothing* and he'd probably still have 50% or better approval on that issue...
I made a comment above on this topic and my brain had thoughts of maybe this is our Tea Party movement while typing it up. And your comment makes me go mmmmmhhhhmmmm. It’s a good thing we’re awesome and better and have morals. Our type of Tea Party movement wouldn’t be a careen to the left like their movement was to the right. It’d be a careen to fucking winning. It’s time play the game differently.
Speaking of playing differently, why didn’t Dems call in CEOs gouging us in the shopping aisles? Instead, we were stupid and were like, “Look over there!” (Famous RuPaul Drag Race quote for when the queens did a mock political Presidential debate.) Someone needs to drag in the CEOs of Coke and Pepsi and ask, “What in the actual fuck?!?” Everyone has some explaining to do at this point, even the eggs. The whole thing got way past the point of inflation and got into price gouging.
They also need to be asked if Donald Trump cut the corporate tax, why are they needing to jack up prices to screw us? We gave them tax cuts and they gave us higher prices. That’s a campaign slogan right there.
It'll never happen but I think a way that the party could start making inroads with the voters is a purge of elected officials from the early 2000s and anyone who isn't willing to fight. Slotkin has it right when she says that voters see the Dems as weak so we need to change that perception and vote out the incumbents that are seen as weak. If they're strong then they'll survive a primary challenge.
Dems unpopularity is more due to liberal dissatisfaction with their own party in contrast to Republicans enjoying the chainsaw wielded by House Reps if you see the breakdowns.
What really matters is the generic ballot where we are ahead and the midterms are a referendum on the president not the opposition party as multiple pundits point out. Republicans really think that this was landslide and are still high on the "vibe shift" narrative. Bush had a permanent conservative coalition and Obama had an upcoming Democratic majority. How did that turn out? We also have the optimized and reliable high propensity electorate for midterms as seen in 2018 and 2022 i.e the college educated, wealthier, older and more tuned in voters.
The thing that is personally demoralizing to me is that I really think the party decently had it's shit together last November, especially when all of the factors were taken into account. And we still got beaten. So, I'm not sure that getting our shit together again (and plenty can argue on exactly what that will look like) is going to save us. I do think the party needs change, but I don't know in which direction, and I'm not sure how much it will help.
We did not in fact have our shit together, I’m sorry, but we didn’t. Why Democrats decided to rerun the failed 2016 Clinton strategy “Trump is a danger to democracy” in 2024 is one of the key reasons we lost everything. Most people (even many supporters) don’t like Trump as a person, but they don’t care until he’s in office and only then do they get mad about it.
To be fair I don’t think any Democrat could’ve won as the majority of voters had made up their mind they wanted 2019 back again come hell, high water or Trump. But Harris and her team ran an old school race talking about what she wanted to do with policy (no one cares about that). Biden didn’t talk much about policy in his successful 2020 campaign.
The way to win modern elections is to make your opponent look unacceptable to the average/swing/doesn’t pay attention voter. People vote based on what they don’t want, not what they do want. We saw that in every election from 2017-2023 (except a mild blip in 2021 elections) as Democrats hammered Republicans and gained a ton of ground everywhere only for 2024 to come up and then for the party to completely toss the playbook that wins elections and go back to attacking Trump.
I do think this point gets brought up a lot but still not enough - nostalgia for pre-COVID still hasn’t subsided (indeed it may never) and a lot of people got basically cooked mentally 2020-22 and have never recovered. The equation “Trump = 2019” is inane logically but emotionally very, very powerful.
That’s also why I think his approvals have nosedived so fast - he’s very publicly and loudly *not* bringing the pre-COVID rosy warm nostalgia memory people (wrongly, as we were headed into recession by the end of that year, but nevertheless) want back and that they believe they elected him to bring back as a single-issue vote
The indicators around manufacturing output and similar were blinking as early as 2018 - a big reason why Powell started cutting rates, along with rising WH pressure heading into an election year, to get ahead of it
That said, a mid-to-late 2020 recession in a no-COVID scenario is probably more of a 2001 (pre-9/11) type contraction, maybe a smidge worse if short of 1990-91, than another 1982 or 2008
The biggest contributors to a Democratic Party getting its shit together....
1) Don't run a cognitively compromised octogenarian incumbent with an approval rating south of 40% and convince yourself that everything is gonna work out.
2) Don't let 10 million people cross your borders illegally and only begin making gestures to fix it a few months before the election.
I would say yes, it’s great Democrats are winning special elections at a greater rate this year than back in 2017 and Trump’s unpopularity is definitely helping Democrats.
However, let’s be reminded that Trump had to be elected again in order for this happen. We can’t keep waiting for any Republican POTUS to be elected in order to win elections. That’s too lazy.
Breaking up the media companies and system is a better approach and allows more healthy competition with the media as opposed to media giants and excessive disruptive technology always sucking too much of the oxygen in the market.
Your second paragraph makes me kind of laugh in a sad way. The ups and down of American politics is torturous. But, your point is correct and we shouldn’t have the ups and downs so hard in the first place. People should be smarter at what they’re voting for and do it consistently. We should also have a safe real life version of Jurassic Park so it’s whatever.
Honestly, just like corporate sales departments push their sales executives to sell deals no matter the odds, the Democratic Party should do the same in how it elects Democrats.
I would love the DNC to get Democrats to think of red states like LA and OK as must-win states, just so that it raises the stakes. I know it may be a low probability of happening but why not?
In the mindset of a CEO, I don’t want to hear more Democratic Party insiders talk about how 2026 is going to be difficult for them in the Senate. I want them to bust their ass and win.
2028 at the earliest, but we need Riggs and Earls seat to accomplish that. We also have to take out 2 GOP incumbent Justices in 2028, which is an uphill battle to say the least.
Newby is at mandatory retirement age by 2028 -- so his seat will probably be open. The NC GOP legislature forced through a law extending mandatory retirement age for justices so that Newby wouldn't be forced to retire (and have Gov Stein appoint a replacement) in 2026 or 2027.
2028. That’s when Paul Newby, Tamara Barringer and nepo baby Berger Jr (son of NC state Senate leader Phil Berger) are up for re-election. Only need to flip 2 of them to score a majority.
But we HAVE to retain Riggs and Earls in order to get that opportunity. We really need fair state and congressional maps in place (aka the GOP legislature majority wiped out) before the 2030 census.
Our luck is simply bad, 2030 could be a democratic midterm so we'd need to pass some fair redistricting legislation before that by gutting the filibuster. We always have odds stacked against us due to structural flaws.
I would love to see a Dem federal trifecta after 2028 eliminating the filibuster and imposing a voting rights act that implements an independent redistricting process for each state (and requires them use it for state legislature lines). But I think the more realistic scenario for 2028 is a Dem president with a R controlled Senate and Dem House.
Sadly even if Democrats tried to do that with a trifecta, the Trump Supremes will almost certainly block it. They know fair districts for the country = they can’t win power.
A three-judge panel for the North Carolina Court of Appeals granted Republicans’ request to stay a lower court ruling that halted a measure passed by the GOP last year that would change how members of the elections board are appointed.
Under the measure, the governor would no longer be allowed to make appointments to the five-member board. Instead, that power would be given to the state auditor, a Republican. North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein (D) sued Republican legislative leaders over the measure, arguing that it violated principals of separation of powers in the North Carolina Constitution.
Shortly after the court of appeals granted the GOP’s stay request Thursday, Stein asked the North Carolina Supreme Court for a brief administrative stay so he can file a formal request for the court review of the case.
Without the state Supreme Court’s intervention, State Auditor Dave Boliek would immediately be authorized to pick a new slate of board members, as terms for the current state election board members ends today.
Phil Berger is the worst man in this state (he has several nepo baby sons in different counties and positions), Destin Hall is the second. (Tim Moore would be second if he weren’t in Congress.) This is going to have to be settled in federal court because almost all the GOP state judges here don’t care about fairness, stare decisis or the rule of law.
It’s going to take not just sustained GOTV efforts but flipping the state Supreme Court (or a federal law banning partisan gerrymandering) for that to happen.
And the reason that NC GOP is getting even more extreme now is because they’re scared of Anderson Clayton. She helped flip statewide seats last year that would’ve gone Republican (LG, AG, school superintendent). That’s why they’re all in on trying to steal Allison Riggs’ seat. Because they know if the SCONC flips after 2028, their partisan gerrymandering, 12 week abortion ban and not funding public schools will get overturned.
I was looking at the results of the Canadian election, and I noticed something. Nationwide, 16 seats flipped from Liberal to Conservative. Of those, 13 were in Ontario, and 5 of those were in just one region of Ontario - the York region (this is the suburbs directly north of Toronto). In fact, the ridings in this region flipped from 7L-2C in 2021 to 8C-2L in this election (one seat was newly created in the most recent redistribution). Does anyone know why this particular region would be a hotbed of anti-Liberal sentiment right now while the Liberals held their own almost everywhere else?
2 reasons that have nothing to do with a specific party anti-Liberal sentiment: crime and the economy. Canada’s economy and inflation especially has made it very hard on a lot of people. Toronto has priced out all, but the wealthiest. The suburbs are getting to be that way fast, with house prices doubling or more.
Couple that with a tough on crime pitch in an area people are worried about it getting worse and you have a ripe recipe to flip seats from Liberal to Conservative from the “we need change” vote, which is exactly what happened in the 2024 US election. The “it can’t possibly get worse than now with someone else in charge” type of easy, infantile illogical thinking instead of examining the policies (which is harder, so voters don’t like to do it).
Those issues may have been muted when Trump was the main factor but in the final two weeks of the campaign, based on Abacus tracking, the concerns about Trump faded and gave the Conservatives an opening to make the case for change, Coletto said.
Affordability and crime were two issues that mattered to a lot of voters in that 905 region that worked against the Liberals, he said.
He said in many parts of the 905 area, there was the perception that crime, particularly auto thefts, had gotten out of hand, and that was linked to the Trudeau years.
"And I think the Conservatives in the final week-and-a-half of the campaign really tried to put a focus on that," Coletto said.
In my humble opinion, Doug Jones is the man who *should* have been Biden’s Attorney General – not Merrick Garland. Had Doug Jones been AG, the key J6 prosecutions would have started far earlier, as would the investigations into the funders and real backers of this insurrection and coup attempt. Also, the damning investigations and prosecutions of Trump would have started *years* earlier.
In short: Attorney General Doug Jones would have made sure the American justice moved at a respectable pace – comparable with what Brazil did after Bolsonaro’s attempt to stay in power.
(Ah, well, this is all "water under the bridge" – water personally passed by Trump.)
Garland was actually an unserious centre to centre-right nominee with links to originalist and federalist constitutional philosophies nominated by Obama to see if the Republican party would confirm him in good faith or not. It already seemed unlikely as McConnell has been obsessed with the courts for all his life. Furthermore, McConnell also needed the open Supreme court seats to be the proverbial carrot for evangelicals, who then had reservations with Trump, to suck it up and vote. Hillary had already promised to junk his nomination and instead nominate liberals and progressives who believed in a living constitution. One only wonders why we felt indebted to him. There was also no precedent for the charges brought against Hunter.
Hate to say this, but the selection of Garland for Obama-esque reasons was utterly disastrous and avoidable. Fatal error potentially.
Democrats need to stop this picking people that are moderate or Republicans bc it looks good needs to die. Voters don’t give a shit nor know who any of these people are.
Whoever is the next Democratic president needs to hire Jones or Jack Smith to go after FDJT and EVERY SINGLE associate like Patel, Blondi, and Miller -- throw the book at them and get them in court.
Heck, since I'm in a petty mood, have them go after Karoline Leavitt and her lying self too.
LOL “Blondi.”
Leavitt is so awful that she makes Kayleigh McEnany seem like Betty White.
Doug Jones or Sally Yates, both of them were obviously way better for the job than Garland.
Garland is somehow the worst nominee for two different American Presidents. It's incredible.
I think James Comey was a worse Obama nominee than Garland. Your mileage may vary.
I didn’t realize appointed him, I thought he was inherited. What an absolutely epic fuck up. He should have already learned not to trust any Republicans ever.
I would have put Doug Jones and former Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood in charge of things at the Justice Department with Jones as Attorney General and Hood as Deputy Attorney General.
Merrick Garland was a wimp as Attorney General.
why did Obama and Biden bother with Garland in the first place? what was their rationale?
Hoping McConnell would take the bait on a guy who didn't ruffle any feathers.
Yep. He was Obama's final attempt at "consensus" (that he should have known would never happen).
The concept of having consensus candidate for the GOP to vote for made no sense in the first place. The GOP and Mitch McConnell did not want any such replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia. They wanted another Scalia.
I think Merrick Garland was fine as a judge but he made an ineffective Attorney General.
It was worth a try. I don't blame Obama. I do blame Biden!
Yeah the effort to appease Merrick Garland's hard feelings about 2016 came at an incredible cost.
My dream Alabama 2026 ticket:
*Sue Bell Cobb for Governor.
*Doug Jones for US Senate.
https://www.270towin.com/states/alabama
The problem with Alabama is that it's a deep red +30R state so even a midterm wouldn't help. Perhaps, a pro life, pro business populist conservative Democrat like John Bel Edwards could be competitive.
…or a candidate who can launch a successful GOTV operation and inspire 80 percent of Alabama Democrats to vote. Without pushing a similar share of Republican-leaning voters to do the same.
Those registered *Democrats* would be very different compared to your coastal or normal Democrat plus they are nominally Democrats usually because of the New Deal/Great Society tradition in those counties. Many of them are very conservative and have regularly voted for Republicans but don't care to change their registration. Voter registration is a really bad way to gauge support.
I’m well aware. I meant "80 percent of Alabamans who vote Democrat", regardless of registration. I should have been more clear.
No party registration there, if I remember correctly. Just people vote in party primaries.
I'm hoping Brandon Presley can do that in Mississippi in 2027.
Really? Let's look at the gubernatorial results from 2010 to 2018:
*2010: Ron Sparks (D), Agriculture Commissioner & liberal alternative to Artur Davis in the Democratic primary. Result: lost 58% - 42% in the general.
*2014: Parker Griffith (D), former congressman and CONSERVATIVE who changed his party registration back and forth like underwear. Result: Defeated in a 64% - 36% landslide in the general.
*2018: Walt Maddox (D) mainstream liberal Democratic mayor of Tuscaloosa. Lost 59% - 40%. Cracking 40% in a state like Alabama is a BFD these days!! 💙🇺🇲
Now that Trump's popularity is deep underwater, advertising that you have his "complete and total endorsement," as Karrin Taylor Robson is doing, might be strategic folly, at least in the general election.
It's good strategy for the primary.
Probably, but only 54% of Republicans say Trump is focused on the right priorities. If his support among Republicans erodes further before the primary, keeping some distance from him might be a prudent course for GOP candidates.
Yeah, but the bulk of Republican primary voters still worship Trump above all else, even if they occasionally think his insufficiently MAGAtastic advisors (and the deep state) sometimes push things in the wrong direction.
The dual endorsement makes this primary a real race to the bottom, though.
Exactly, Cornyn and Paxton are both begging for his endorsement. DeSantis got rejected after the golf session at MAL.
There’s a never ending “good Tsar bad boyars” vibe around MAGALand which is ironic since almost all of their most politically damaging ideas/policy implementations come from Trump’s short-sighted impulsiveness
Yep. For the most part, the sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, and dickheads who decide GOP primaries—they all adore him (Trump). They think he's a righteous dude!
(I'll show myself out.)
True but candidates don’t worry about the GE if they have a tough primary. Gotta win that or nothing else happens.
So Mark Sumner has a diary up on Daily Kos that says that despite Trump and the GOP's sinking approvals, they still aren't afraid because the Dems popularity is still even more underwater. He explains it's due to leadership's indecisiveness. I'm not saying those criticisms aren't wrong, in fact I agree with them. But as we've seen from the most recent elections, despite Democratic voters being pissed at the party, they are hardly demoralized from voting and coming out. Someone here said that fixing the image approval for the party maybe can't be fully resolved this year or next year. Democratic voters are also still pissed with the party because they can't believe they lost to Trump again. Don't want to get into 2028 primary talk but I think once we get closer to the Presidential primary, that's going to be the opportunity to really see massive improvement. Obviously, the party needs to get their shit together and I can understand folks not having any faith that Schumer can improve the party's standing. Jeffries I think has a better shot at doing that. I think letting folks like Buttigieg, Pritzker, Shapiro, Booker, Van Hollen, AOC, Crockett, Murphy, Sanders and anyone else who knows how to work the circuit be the spokespeople for the party. Grant it, we are already seeing that. Ultimately, I don't think the party's low public approval is going to hurt our chances in the New Jersey or Virginia Governors races and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court elections. But I do think it has to improve before next year and greatly approve of 2028. Thoughts?
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/4/30/2319667/-Democrats-are-losing-the-most-important-fight-in-history?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
The GOP is very good at pretending that bad approvals are “rigged” especially in the age of Trump so I wouldn’t expect them to be worried even if D numbers were better
Agree. I think the smarter GOP operatives would be worried but they know that they are more worried about pissing off Trump.
He’s literally rage tweeting about how GDP contraction numbers are unfair to him. He’s the weakest but loudest personality in decades. Everybody knows to keep their head down around the giant 80 year old toddler
100%. The smart people in the room know how to read polls and the polls say Democrats are pissed at everyone. No one is spared right now considering how awful everything is. Us being mad at our party leadership should not be encouraging to them. Maybe we’ll take out some Dems in primaries but what comes after a primary? The general election and the GOP is next.
GOP favorables were also dogshit in the initial months of the 1st Obama term; not much evidence they serve as a weight on unpopular POTUS midterm backlash (they also improve over-time, as is already happening in current polling e.g. Dems are now leading on the economy)
As an aside, even I'm surprised at how quickly Trump shot his economy advantage to shit. All he had to do was *literally nothing* and he'd probably still have 50% or better approval on that issue...
“You didn’t go to jail and now you get to golf for four years, again not in jail. Just don’t do anything too stupid Kay”
I made a comment above on this topic and my brain had thoughts of maybe this is our Tea Party movement while typing it up. And your comment makes me go mmmmmhhhhmmmm. It’s a good thing we’re awesome and better and have morals. Our type of Tea Party movement wouldn’t be a careen to the left like their movement was to the right. It’d be a careen to fucking winning. It’s time play the game differently.
Speaking of playing differently, why didn’t Dems call in CEOs gouging us in the shopping aisles? Instead, we were stupid and were like, “Look over there!” (Famous RuPaul Drag Race quote for when the queens did a mock political Presidential debate.) Someone needs to drag in the CEOs of Coke and Pepsi and ask, “What in the actual fuck?!?” Everyone has some explaining to do at this point, even the eggs. The whole thing got way past the point of inflation and got into price gouging.
They also need to be asked if Donald Trump cut the corporate tax, why are they needing to jack up prices to screw us? We gave them tax cuts and they gave us higher prices. That’s a campaign slogan right there.
It'll never happen but I think a way that the party could start making inroads with the voters is a purge of elected officials from the early 2000s and anyone who isn't willing to fight. Slotkin has it right when she says that voters see the Dems as weak so we need to change that perception and vote out the incumbents that are seen as weak. If they're strong then they'll survive a primary challenge.
Is that what Slotkin said, though? Didn't she complain they were too woke?
Dems unpopularity is more due to liberal dissatisfaction with their own party in contrast to Republicans enjoying the chainsaw wielded by House Reps if you see the breakdowns.
What really matters is the generic ballot where we are ahead and the midterms are a referendum on the president not the opposition party as multiple pundits point out. Republicans really think that this was landslide and are still high on the "vibe shift" narrative. Bush had a permanent conservative coalition and Obama had an upcoming Democratic majority. How did that turn out? We also have the optimized and reliable high propensity electorate for midterms as seen in 2018 and 2022 i.e the college educated, wealthier, older and more tuned in voters.
https://www.racetothewh.com/senate/26polls generic ballot average
The thing that is personally demoralizing to me is that I really think the party decently had it's shit together last November, especially when all of the factors were taken into account. And we still got beaten. So, I'm not sure that getting our shit together again (and plenty can argue on exactly what that will look like) is going to save us. I do think the party needs change, but I don't know in which direction, and I'm not sure how much it will help.
We did not in fact have our shit together, I’m sorry, but we didn’t. Why Democrats decided to rerun the failed 2016 Clinton strategy “Trump is a danger to democracy” in 2024 is one of the key reasons we lost everything. Most people (even many supporters) don’t like Trump as a person, but they don’t care until he’s in office and only then do they get mad about it.
To be fair I don’t think any Democrat could’ve won as the majority of voters had made up their mind they wanted 2019 back again come hell, high water or Trump. But Harris and her team ran an old school race talking about what she wanted to do with policy (no one cares about that). Biden didn’t talk much about policy in his successful 2020 campaign.
The way to win modern elections is to make your opponent look unacceptable to the average/swing/doesn’t pay attention voter. People vote based on what they don’t want, not what they do want. We saw that in every election from 2017-2023 (except a mild blip in 2021 elections) as Democrats hammered Republicans and gained a ton of ground everywhere only for 2024 to come up and then for the party to completely toss the playbook that wins elections and go back to attacking Trump.
I do think this point gets brought up a lot but still not enough - nostalgia for pre-COVID still hasn’t subsided (indeed it may never) and a lot of people got basically cooked mentally 2020-22 and have never recovered. The equation “Trump = 2019” is inane logically but emotionally very, very powerful.
That’s also why I think his approvals have nosedived so fast - he’s very publicly and loudly *not* bringing the pre-COVID rosy warm nostalgia memory people (wrongly, as we were headed into recession by the end of that year, but nevertheless) want back and that they believe they elected him to bring back as a single-issue vote
We were heading into recession at the end of 2019? Or just because COVID happened?
The indicators around manufacturing output and similar were blinking as early as 2018 - a big reason why Powell started cutting rates, along with rising WH pressure heading into an election year, to get ahead of it
That said, a mid-to-late 2020 recession in a no-COVID scenario is probably more of a 2001 (pre-9/11) type contraction, maybe a smidge worse if short of 1990-91, than another 1982 or 2008
The biggest contributors to a Democratic Party getting its shit together....
1) Don't run a cognitively compromised octogenarian incumbent with an approval rating south of 40% and convince yourself that everything is gonna work out.
2) Don't let 10 million people cross your borders illegally and only begin making gestures to fix it a few months before the election.
Can't really argue with that.
I would say yes, it’s great Democrats are winning special elections at a greater rate this year than back in 2017 and Trump’s unpopularity is definitely helping Democrats.
However, let’s be reminded that Trump had to be elected again in order for this happen. We can’t keep waiting for any Republican POTUS to be elected in order to win elections. That’s too lazy.
We have to stomp out GOP revisionist history whenever and wherever it crops up
100% agree!
Right. But how? Fox and the like aren't going to be forced off the air and the internet.
Breaking up the media companies and system is a better approach and allows more healthy competition with the media as opposed to media giants and excessive disruptive technology always sucking too much of the oxygen in the market.
Your second paragraph makes me kind of laugh in a sad way. The ups and down of American politics is torturous. But, your point is correct and we shouldn’t have the ups and downs so hard in the first place. People should be smarter at what they’re voting for and do it consistently. We should also have a safe real life version of Jurassic Park so it’s whatever.
Honestly, just like corporate sales departments push their sales executives to sell deals no matter the odds, the Democratic Party should do the same in how it elects Democrats.
I would love the DNC to get Democrats to think of red states like LA and OK as must-win states, just so that it raises the stakes. I know it may be a low probability of happening but why not?
In the mindset of a CEO, I don’t want to hear more Democratic Party insiders talk about how 2026 is going to be difficult for them in the Senate. I want them to bust their ass and win.
NC state representative Sarah Stevens (R-Surry County) announced her bid to challenge incumbent NC Supreme Court justice Anita Earls next year.
https://andersonalerts.substack.com/p/stevens-runs-for-nc-supco?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1330076&post_id=162545207&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=3f2u4m&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Going to be hard with the ongoing Riggs/Griffin drama and angry Dems itching to pay Republicans back next year.
Which year can we flip the court and gerrymander the state?
2028 at the earliest, but we need Riggs and Earls seat to accomplish that. We also have to take out 2 GOP incumbent Justices in 2028, which is an uphill battle to say the least.
Newby is at mandatory retirement age by 2028 -- so his seat will probably be open. The NC GOP legislature forced through a law extending mandatory retirement age for justices so that Newby wouldn't be forced to retire (and have Gov Stein appoint a replacement) in 2026 or 2027.
2028. That’s when Paul Newby, Tamara Barringer and nepo baby Berger Jr (son of NC state Senate leader Phil Berger) are up for re-election. Only need to flip 2 of them to score a majority.
But we HAVE to retain Riggs and Earls in order to get that opportunity. We really need fair state and congressional maps in place (aka the GOP legislature majority wiped out) before the 2030 census.
Our luck is simply bad, 2030 could be a democratic midterm so we'd need to pass some fair redistricting legislation before that by gutting the filibuster. We always have odds stacked against us due to structural flaws.
I would love to see a Dem federal trifecta after 2028 eliminating the filibuster and imposing a voting rights act that implements an independent redistricting process for each state (and requires them use it for state legislature lines). But I think the more realistic scenario for 2028 is a Dem president with a R controlled Senate and Dem House.
Sadly even if Democrats tried to do that with a trifecta, the Trump Supremes will almost certainly block it. They know fair districts for the country = they can’t win power.
North Carolina Republicans still at it:
A three-judge panel for the North Carolina Court of Appeals granted Republicans’ request to stay a lower court ruling that halted a measure passed by the GOP last year that would change how members of the elections board are appointed.
Under the measure, the governor would no longer be allowed to make appointments to the five-member board. Instead, that power would be given to the state auditor, a Republican. North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein (D) sued Republican legislative leaders over the measure, arguing that it violated principals of separation of powers in the North Carolina Constitution.
Shortly after the court of appeals granted the GOP’s stay request Thursday, Stein asked the North Carolina Supreme Court for a brief administrative stay so he can file a formal request for the court review of the case.
Without the state Supreme Court’s intervention, State Auditor Dave Boliek would immediately be authorized to pick a new slate of board members, as terms for the current state election board members ends today.
https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/north-carolina-court-state-election-board-republican-control/
Indeed. They'll never stop willingly.
North Carolina republicans seem so ruthlessly partisan. Worst state GOP in the country?
I live here & I agree.
Phil Berger is the worst man in this state (he has several nepo baby sons in different counties and positions), Destin Hall is the second. (Tim Moore would be second if he weren’t in Congress.) This is going to have to be settled in federal court because almost all the GOP state judges here don’t care about fairness, stare decisis or the rule of law.
It's because they know North Carolina will become a blue state like Virginia.
It’s going to take not just sustained GOTV efforts but flipping the state Supreme Court (or a federal law banning partisan gerrymandering) for that to happen.
And the reason that NC GOP is getting even more extreme now is because they’re scared of Anderson Clayton. She helped flip statewide seats last year that would’ve gone Republican (LG, AG, school superintendent). That’s why they’re all in on trying to steal Allison Riggs’ seat. Because they know if the SCONC flips after 2028, their partisan gerrymandering, 12 week abortion ban and not funding public schools will get overturned.
I was looking at the results of the Canadian election, and I noticed something. Nationwide, 16 seats flipped from Liberal to Conservative. Of those, 13 were in Ontario, and 5 of those were in just one region of Ontario - the York region (this is the suburbs directly north of Toronto). In fact, the ridings in this region flipped from 7L-2C in 2021 to 8C-2L in this election (one seat was newly created in the most recent redistribution). Does anyone know why this particular region would be a hotbed of anti-Liberal sentiment right now while the Liberals held their own almost everywhere else?
Don't know but maybe the Cost of living and immigration may have hurt liberals in the Toronto region. Just a guess.
2 reasons that have nothing to do with a specific party anti-Liberal sentiment: crime and the economy. Canada’s economy and inflation especially has made it very hard on a lot of people. Toronto has priced out all, but the wealthiest. The suburbs are getting to be that way fast, with house prices doubling or more.
Couple that with a tough on crime pitch in an area people are worried about it getting worse and you have a ripe recipe to flip seats from Liberal to Conservative from the “we need change” vote, which is exactly what happened in the 2024 US election. The “it can’t possibly get worse than now with someone else in charge” type of easy, infantile illogical thinking instead of examining the policies (which is harder, so voters don’t like to do it).
Those issues may have been muted when Trump was the main factor but in the final two weeks of the campaign, based on Abacus tracking, the concerns about Trump faded and gave the Conservatives an opening to make the case for change, Coletto said.
Affordability and crime were two issues that mattered to a lot of voters in that 905 region that worked against the Liberals, he said.
He said in many parts of the 905 area, there was the perception that crime, particularly auto thefts, had gotten out of hand, and that was linked to the Trudeau years.
"And I think the Conservatives in the final week-and-a-half of the campaign really tried to put a focus on that," Coletto said.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-vote-ontario-majority-conservatives-1.7523038