I was just thinking a few days ago that, in light of how massively unpopular our mayors were in Chicago and NY, "at least one of our most populous cities has a popular mayor".
As I said in previous discussions on the Downballot, I do not envy anyone being Mayor. This particularly pertains to Karen Bass’ situation.
The issue here seems to be bad timing on Mayor Bass’ part. However, keeping quiet on her part is better than saying anything that could add ammunition to the media. Bass has said she’s been in contact with fire department and public health officials.
She needs to give a damn good answer as to why she hasn’t answered questions from the media or this issue is going to be a liability to her re-election chances in 2026.
She's always struck me as just a career politician going from one job to the next. Sure there's a lot of those but at least do something with your time in office.
I suggest familiarizing yourself more with Bass. As State Assembly Speaker along with State Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg forged a significant, painful compromise with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2010 to address the CA State Budget in light of the Great Recession. That was a bold move and indicated Bass was willing to lead to make unpopular decisions for the good for CA.
Bass also doesn't aim to be a celebrity like Gavin Newsom does. I believe the reason why she ran for Mayor of LA was because she saw the city in trouble, not because she had been angling herself to be Mayor her whole life. Going from serving in the State Assembly to Congress to being Mayor isn't exactly a linear path for most politicians.
Also, news conference Bass participated in in light of the LA firestorm showed she's far more intelligent than others are giving her credit for. She's already seeing the need to rebuild and wants to focus on that as well, not just addressing the more immediate problem of getting the fire out and dealing with the humanitarian efforts.
Jimmy Carter Says Best Part of Heaven is He Will Never See Trump
HEAVEN (The Borowitz Report) — In a wide-ranging interview on Thursday, former President Jimmy Carter said that the best part of Heaven “by far” is the knowledge that he will never see Donald J. Trump again.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful for the gift of eternal life,” he said. “But an eternity without Trump is the greatest gift of all.”
Carter said that he was “far from alone” in appreciating his Trump-free existence, adding, “Nelson Mandela just said the same thing.”
Asked if he had seen Trump on cable news criticizing his sale of the Panama Canal, Carter responded, “We don’t have cable news up here. I’ve heard it’s on nonstop in the other place.”
(For many years, Andy Borowitz was the lead satirical writer at the New Yorker. Before that, in 2011, the Borowitz Report was voted the Number One Twitter account in the world in a Time magazine poll.)
Magnificent retort: "Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum says U.S. should be called "América Mexicana" in Trump clapback." Behind her was a rather-telling 17th-century map.
I think Paxton would be the more beatable candidate.. obviously, our side needs a viable alternative (under the circumstances of the national election, I feel like Allred did a decent job)
It's hard to get excited at all about Texas after last cycle. From potential "Blexas" in the late 2020s to fucking Senator Paxton . .JHC what a disaster. The most disheartening thing is the excesses and corruption of the GOP state government get no voter pushback. Ditto with Ohio . . .they can govern as terribly as they want and voters don't seem to care.
disagree; Trump will provide the chaos necessary to bring Texas into play; obviously, I feel like Paxton would be the better opposition target for many reasons; mainly, to split the Republicans into warring factions (that are already causing chaos in the state lege); our job as Democrats is to provide a great candidate (I have no problem giving Allred another shot)
Texas is one of the 2024 shifts that I want more data points for.
No questions, it was a bad result for us. On the other hand, Harris saw larger declines in many large, non-competitive states. Besides Texas, she saw large drops in New York, Illinois, California, New Jersey, and Florida. Not large states but Connecticut and Massachusetts saw similar as well.
Of the five most populous states, the only one to not see a large shift away from us was Pennsylvania. Of the ten states with a population of at least 10m, Ohio was the only non-competitive state to not see a large shift away from us.
To me this paints the picture that people were a lot less likely to vote for Harris in places where people are likely to think their vote doesn't matter. This gives some hope for a return to form for us in those large states where we saw a large loss in support. Which is not to say that it's guaranteed.
Texas is inherently iffier because it's the only state in that group that has been and remains a red state. It's entirely possible that republican efforts in the state to be as aggressively right wing as possible have managed to shift the demographics of people moving to Texas and to change the political culture there. Or that something else has happened to slow down, cancel, or reverse previous realignment towards us.
I want to see how 2026 and 2028 go in Texas before I reach a conclusion. I'm not particularly hopeful about us being able to win a senate seat there in 2026. But at the same time, two years is a dozen lifetimes in modern politics and we have no fucking clue what the electoral climate will be for us come November 2026.
Three years of indifference about the situation at the border predictably came with a very high cost in Texas. Democrats are gonna have a hard time putting their 2018 coalition back together and building upon it.
Of course they can. They are the "government sucks" party. They aren't expected to be adults and thus they can get away with murder and beyond. Their central tenet is that government is broken and dysfunctional and cannot be repaired so we might as well put Joe Nosepicker in "charge." This is why Orange Slob became a Republican. He'd never make it as one of us precisely because he'd actually be expected to govern and to be an adult.
In improving his margin in the national popular vote by about 6 points from 2020, Donald Trump ran further ahead of his 2020 margin in the nation’s most vote-rich counties than he did in the rest of the country.
Overall, 151 counties cast half the nation’s presidential votes in 2020 (the list is included at the bottom of this article). Those same counties cast slightly less than half in 2024, which in and of itself tells us something about what happened (more on that below).
Instagram and Threads users will no longer be able to opt out of being shown political content from people they do not follow, parent company Meta has announced.
Users will not be able to turn off unsolicited political posts but can choose between three settings - "less", "standard" or "more". The change will be introduced in the US this week before being expanded globally next week.
Drew Benvie, chief executive of social media consultancy Battenhall… [said] the real motivation was the "changing political winds" in the US, where Donald Trump will shortly return to the White House.
"Threads and Instagram were largely thought of as 'safe spaces', especially compared to the turbulent developments on X," he told the BBC.
He predicted it could drive people towards rivals such as Bluesky, but said she also worried about the impact on those who stayed on Meta platforms.
This week's changes "will open up the potential for vast amounts of disinformation to spread at speed across a user base of over 2 billion," he warned.
Deeply problematic for sure. I think we can safely assume that progressive messages won’t be the political content that Mr Zuckerberg & Co push to people’s Instagram and Threads feeds.
Most likely, this will make right-wing content and the right-wing ecosystem even louder – and more difficult for Democrats to overcome.
If Barbara Lee is successful, she will be following a tradition of prominent officials who became mayor of Oakland after holding powerful elected positions. After serving 13 terms in Congress from the same Congressional district that Lee later represented, Ron Dellums was elected mayor of Oakland. And Jerry Brown served as mayor of Oakland after serving as governor of California.
I expect it's a little closer; 53-47; unless Trump really goes off the deep end or Sears is another crazy like Robinson (I highly doubt that; Robinson was a once in a lifetime gift imo)
Keep in mind that Ed Gillespie was Ralph Northam's 2017 opponent. He was considered a "normal" Republican. Didn't stop him from losing by 9 per cent. In some circles, Sears is considered a "female EW Jackson."
Fetterman is nowhere near Sinema. Unlike Sinema, Fetterman is pro-universal healthcare and pro-union. Compared to how she was as Senator, Fetterman is more liberal.
The reason why Sinema became who she was was because she tried to stall some of the most key pieces of legislation important for President Biden and the Democratic Party's agenda. She also tried too hard to be "bipartisan" in the name of doing so but ended up making a 180 turn in the end.
Fetterman by contrast has been a reliable vote for most of the Democratic Party's agenda. He's also never claimed to be a progressive and even as far back as in the Fall on 2023.
Considering Senators Bob Casey and Sherrod Brown just recently lost re-election, I'd be cautious before even considering arguing that Fetterman needs a primary challenge.
Everything he's doing now is performative and people need to understand the difference. When his vote actually blocks legislation that could actually pass or he's one of the 2-3 deciding votes on a terrible nominee, then we can talk.
Trump nominated five that should definitely NOT be confirmed:
Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr, Kash Patel and Matt Gaetz. Fortunately, Gaetz felt compelled to withdraw. The other four must be defeated in the Senate!
The application for stay presented to Justice Sotomayor and by her referred to the Court is denied for, inter alia, the following reasons. First, the alleged evidentiary violations at President-Elect Trump's state-court trial can be addressed in the ordinary course on appeal. Second, the burden that sentencing will impose on the President-Elect's responsibilities is relatively insubstantial in light of the trial court's stated intent to impose a sentence of "unconditional discharge" after a brief virtual hearing.
Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, Justice Gorsuch, and Justice Kavanaugh would grant the application.
Should have been 9-0, and I was hoping for 6-3 or 7-2, but I'll take it. Anything that drives a wedge between Trump and literally any portion of the Republican wing on SCOTUS is vital. The more he rants about Roberts and Barrett, the better for us.
So glad to hear things are progressing well. Best wishes for your full recovery!
Congratulations on the recovery progress. Are you surprised things are going this well?
This is absolutely fantastic news. Congratulations!!!!!
Good luck to you with everything..👍
I was just thinking a few days ago that, in light of how massively unpopular our mayors were in Chicago and NY, "at least one of our most populous cities has a popular mayor".
Just saw a clip from the press conference on the evening news and completely agree that she was not impressive.
As I said in previous discussions on the Downballot, I do not envy anyone being Mayor. This particularly pertains to Karen Bass’ situation.
The issue here seems to be bad timing on Mayor Bass’ part. However, keeping quiet on her part is better than saying anything that could add ammunition to the media. Bass has said she’s been in contact with fire department and public health officials.
She needs to give a damn good answer as to why she hasn’t answered questions from the media or this issue is going to be a liability to her re-election chances in 2026.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/08/wildfire-threatens-karen-bass-extended-honeymoon-00197228
She's always struck me as just a career politician going from one job to the next. Sure there's a lot of those but at least do something with your time in office.
I suggest familiarizing yourself more with Bass. As State Assembly Speaker along with State Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg forged a significant, painful compromise with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2010 to address the CA State Budget in light of the Great Recession. That was a bold move and indicated Bass was willing to lead to make unpopular decisions for the good for CA.
Bass also doesn't aim to be a celebrity like Gavin Newsom does. I believe the reason why she ran for Mayor of LA was because she saw the city in trouble, not because she had been angling herself to be Mayor her whole life. Going from serving in the State Assembly to Congress to being Mayor isn't exactly a linear path for most politicians.
Also, news conference Bass participated in in light of the LA firestorm showed she's far more intelligent than others are giving her credit for. She's already seeing the need to rebuild and wants to focus on that as well, not just addressing the more immediate problem of getting the fire out and dealing with the humanitarian efforts.
Jimmy Carter Says Best Part of Heaven is He Will Never See Trump
HEAVEN (The Borowitz Report) — In a wide-ranging interview on Thursday, former President Jimmy Carter said that the best part of Heaven “by far” is the knowledge that he will never see Donald J. Trump again.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful for the gift of eternal life,” he said. “But an eternity without Trump is the greatest gift of all.”
Carter said that he was “far from alone” in appreciating his Trump-free existence, adding, “Nelson Mandela just said the same thing.”
Asked if he had seen Trump on cable news criticizing his sale of the Panama Canal, Carter responded, “We don’t have cable news up here. I’ve heard it’s on nonstop in the other place.”
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/jimmy-carter-says-best-part-of-heaven
(For many years, Andy Borowitz was the lead satirical writer at the New Yorker. Before that, in 2011, the Borowitz Report was voted the Number One Twitter account in the world in a Time magazine poll.)
And permanently tuned to Fox.
Magnificent retort: "Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum says U.S. should be called "América Mexicana" in Trump clapback." Behind her was a rather-telling 17th-century map.
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/08/mexican-president-responds-trump-america-mexicana
Would love Barbara Lee to be the next Mayor of Oakland, hope she wins and wish her all the best!! 💙🇺🇲
if the voters elect her, then that's the way it should be, but sometimes we need to be building a bench for the future
my comment is not to be taken as a negative against Lee(or anyone else); more of a general principle
Not trying to be ageist, but sometimes these folks need to retire
I think Paxton would be the more beatable candidate.. obviously, our side needs a viable alternative (under the circumstances of the national election, I feel like Allred did a decent job)
It's hard to get excited at all about Texas after last cycle. From potential "Blexas" in the late 2020s to fucking Senator Paxton . .JHC what a disaster. The most disheartening thing is the excesses and corruption of the GOP state government get no voter pushback. Ditto with Ohio . . .they can govern as terribly as they want and voters don't seem to care.
disagree; Trump will provide the chaos necessary to bring Texas into play; obviously, I feel like Paxton would be the better opposition target for many reasons; mainly, to split the Republicans into warring factions (that are already causing chaos in the state lege); our job as Democrats is to provide a great candidate (I have no problem giving Allred another shot)
Texas is one of the 2024 shifts that I want more data points for.
No questions, it was a bad result for us. On the other hand, Harris saw larger declines in many large, non-competitive states. Besides Texas, she saw large drops in New York, Illinois, California, New Jersey, and Florida. Not large states but Connecticut and Massachusetts saw similar as well.
Of the five most populous states, the only one to not see a large shift away from us was Pennsylvania. Of the ten states with a population of at least 10m, Ohio was the only non-competitive state to not see a large shift away from us.
To me this paints the picture that people were a lot less likely to vote for Harris in places where people are likely to think their vote doesn't matter. This gives some hope for a return to form for us in those large states where we saw a large loss in support. Which is not to say that it's guaranteed.
Texas is inherently iffier because it's the only state in that group that has been and remains a red state. It's entirely possible that republican efforts in the state to be as aggressively right wing as possible have managed to shift the demographics of people moving to Texas and to change the political culture there. Or that something else has happened to slow down, cancel, or reverse previous realignment towards us.
I want to see how 2026 and 2028 go in Texas before I reach a conclusion. I'm not particularly hopeful about us being able to win a senate seat there in 2026. But at the same time, two years is a dozen lifetimes in modern politics and we have no fucking clue what the electoral climate will be for us come November 2026.
Three years of indifference about the situation at the border predictably came with a very high cost in Texas. Democrats are gonna have a hard time putting their 2018 coalition back together and building upon it.
But they won't do that; Trump will endorse a crazy lackey
Trump will provide for the Democratic party with extremist policies; we need to have an alternative plan ready (and a candidate)
Trump and the Republicans will overreach (mark my words); his track record is proven; he always doubles down
Of course they can. They are the "government sucks" party. They aren't expected to be adults and thus they can get away with murder and beyond. Their central tenet is that government is broken and dysfunctional and cannot be repaired so we might as well put Joe Nosepicker in "charge." This is why Orange Slob became a Republican. He'd never make it as one of us precisely because he'd actually be expected to govern and to be an adult.
It's almost an open secret here in Florida that Moody will follow Rubio into the Senate
She seems less bad than other options like Gates or whoever
Very true
In improving his margin in the national popular vote by about 6 points from 2020, Donald Trump ran further ahead of his 2020 margin in the nation’s most vote-rich counties than he did in the rest of the country.
Overall, 151 counties cast half the nation’s presidential votes in 2020 (the list is included at the bottom of this article). Those same counties cast slightly less than half in 2024, which in and of itself tells us something about what happened (more on that below).
https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/how-the-other-half-votes-the-big-counties-versus-the-rest-of-the-country-in-2024/
POLITICAL CONTENT – whether you want it or not
Instagram and Threads users will no longer be able to opt out of being shown political content from people they do not follow, parent company Meta has announced.
Users will not be able to turn off unsolicited political posts but can choose between three settings - "less", "standard" or "more". The change will be introduced in the US this week before being expanded globally next week.
Drew Benvie, chief executive of social media consultancy Battenhall… [said] the real motivation was the "changing political winds" in the US, where Donald Trump will shortly return to the White House.
"Threads and Instagram were largely thought of as 'safe spaces', especially compared to the turbulent developments on X," he told the BBC.
He predicted it could drive people towards rivals such as Bluesky, but said she also worried about the impact on those who stayed on Meta platforms.
This week's changes "will open up the potential for vast amounts of disinformation to spread at speed across a user base of over 2 billion," he warned.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyjyd0297go
A very good post; and I am skeptical that the Democratic party does anything other than whine
This is so fucking dumb; no-one is asking for this. The entire tech/crypto apparatus can't die a sooner death.
Deeply problematic for sure. I think we can safely assume that progressive messages won’t be the political content that Mr Zuckerberg & Co push to people’s Instagram and Threads feeds.
Most likely, this will make right-wing content and the right-wing ecosystem even louder – and more difficult for Democrats to overcome.
If Barbara Lee is successful, she will be following a tradition of prominent officials who became mayor of Oakland after holding powerful elected positions. After serving 13 terms in Congress from the same Congressional district that Lee later represented, Ron Dellums was elected mayor of Oakland. And Jerry Brown served as mayor of Oakland after serving as governor of California.
Our first major poll of the 2025 Gubernatorial Election has been released from Emerson College. Presumed Democratic nominee former US Representative Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) leads presumed Republican nominee Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears (T-VA) 42 per cent to 41 per cent. 13 per cent are undecided and 4 per cent want someone else. https://bluevirginia.us/2025/01/new-emerson-college-poll-of-2025-virginia-governors-race-shows-abigail-spanberger-leading-winsome-earle-sears-by-just-1-point-42-41
It will be a close race but I expect Spanberger to win
The polls were close for most of 2017. Northam ended up winning by 9 per cent.
I expect it's a little closer; 53-47; unless Trump really goes off the deep end or Sears is another crazy like Robinson (I highly doubt that; Robinson was a once in a lifetime gift imo)
Keep in mind that Ed Gillespie was Ralph Northam's 2017 opponent. He was considered a "normal" Republican. Didn't stop him from losing by 9 per cent. In some circles, Sears is considered a "female EW Jackson."
Sears has a degree from Regent University, she's cray-cray.
Who can we get to challenge Fetterman? He looks like he's going the Sinema route.
What?
Fetterman is nowhere near Sinema. Unlike Sinema, Fetterman is pro-universal healthcare and pro-union. Compared to how she was as Senator, Fetterman is more liberal.
The reason why Sinema became who she was was because she tried to stall some of the most key pieces of legislation important for President Biden and the Democratic Party's agenda. She also tried too hard to be "bipartisan" in the name of doing so but ended up making a 180 turn in the end.
Fetterman by contrast has been a reliable vote for most of the Democratic Party's agenda. He's also never claimed to be a progressive and even as far back as in the Fall on 2023.
Considering Senators Bob Casey and Sherrod Brown just recently lost re-election, I'd be cautious before even considering arguing that Fetterman needs a primary challenge.
I regret not backing Connor Lamb. Maybe he can make another run.
Everything he's doing now is performative and people need to understand the difference. When his vote actually blocks legislation that could actually pass or he's one of the 2-3 deciding votes on a terrible nominee, then we can talk.
We'll see, but i predict he'll definitely be voting for some of the republicans crap legislation.
I figure he'll vote the way someone like Ossoff does. He'll vote for some of the Republicans' bait, but probably not the worst of it.
Trump nominated five that should definitely NOT be confirmed:
Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr, Kash Patel and Matt Gaetz. Fortunately, Gaetz felt compelled to withdraw. The other four must be defeated in the Senate!
I think Gabbard and Patel get all Republicans voting for; so nothing our side can do
Trump is not President yet; no votes have been taken; your post is premature at best; Trump won Pennsylvania and Fetterman knows it
The application for stay presented to Justice Sotomayor and by her referred to the Court is denied for, inter alia, the following reasons. First, the alleged evidentiary violations at President-Elect Trump's state-court trial can be addressed in the ordinary course on appeal. Second, the burden that sentencing will impose on the President-Elect's responsibilities is relatively insubstantial in light of the trial court's stated intent to impose a sentence of "unconditional discharge" after a brief virtual hearing.
Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, Justice Gorsuch, and Justice Kavanaugh would grant the application.
Should have been 9-0, and I was hoping for 6-3 or 7-2, but I'll take it. Anything that drives a wedge between Trump and literally any portion of the Republican wing on SCOTUS is vital. The more he rants about Roberts and Barrett, the better for us.