Doggett could make a huge difference if he transferred a few million dollars so that it could be used to pay for housing and other expenses for the TX House Democrats in IL. To me in seems obvious that the only way to stop the TX gerrymander is get 51 TX House Dems to commit to living out of state until spring which to me would mean enrolling kids in school, renting apartments, and setting up life so it works rather than try to be in a hotel.
If González is knocked out, then TX-23 becomes a good pickup opportunity for Democrats. I’m sure they’ll go after it anyway, but if it becomes open I’d favor a Democrat.
To my knowledge, campaign funds can not pay for the $500/day fines. I’ve read that given the bribery statutes in Texas that offering employment to the TX House Dems can be a way of providing by funds to pay those fines.
The travel, hotels, eating out, and later bringing family can be paid by party funds.
I’m with you on everything except the last part. There’s no way an open Trump 57-42 district becomes Democratic favoured even with a far right Nazi nutjob as our GOP opponent and a hopeful Trump midterm backlash to boost the tides of all Dem boats. A Democrat could absolutely win it, but they’re certainly not favoured in a Trump + 15 district.
Cook rates TX-23 as a +7 Republican district (as of Wikipedia pulled April, 2025). It’s possible that Cook is wrong. (If it is truly +15, then I agree with you)
According to polling I’ve seen, Trump’s standing with Hispanic voters is cratering over inflation, tariffs, and focusing on other things than the economy. (Which sounds a lot why so many Hispanics abandoned the Democratic Party!) If this remains the case, then these border districts may swing further Democratic than a typical district as they swing towards Trump/Republicans more than most in the last decade.
González outperformed Trump in 2024 and Trump outperformed House Republicans generally. Without González and with a crazy candidate, I’d rate this a toss up and if forced to chose, would chose the Democrat.
PVI ratings are not the same as margins. The number in a PVI is the difference in one-party vote share over the national average.
To illustrate this fully, imagine that the baseline is 50-50 nationally. If Rs are doing seven points better than 50% in a district, that means they need to take seven points away from Ds — 57-50 is not a vote share that is possible. It would be 57-43. That means the PVI is, ballpark figure, giving half of the expected margin of victory. A PVI of R+7 would expect to see the R winning by roughly 7 * 2 = 14 points.
Couldn’t have said it any better myself. R+7 in PVI basically means R+14 in margin. If it were a R+7 margin district, I could definitely buy a Democratic favoured argument as an open seat and a Nazi nutjob as the GOP nominee. But not as a R+7 PVI district. I know people sometimes get the two mixed up, so your post explains the why perfectly.
It also helps illustrate why higher PVIs are increasingly difficult to win. Republicans hold one D+3 and two D+1 house seats. We hold one R+4, one R+3, two R+2, and three R+1 seats. Going from R+1 (pres margin ~R+2) to R+4 (pres margin R+8) is a much larger gap to make up than would be expected by the three point difference separating them.
In the vast majority of elections it's going to be difficult for a party to lose anything in the +4 or better category for themselves. Getting to a PVI of +6 is in the borderline safe seat territory. At that margin the worry isn't about waves so much as realignments.
I understand your point somewhat, but the Democrats really don't need to pick up 14 points from the GOP, it's 7 points to get it from 43-57 to 50.1-49.9. Every point won is a point lost by the other side. That's a hefty margin, but it isn't totally out of the realm of possibility in the right circumstances. And when so many people have said that Democrats need to be contesting every seat at every level, this would seem to be the exact reason why a strong candidate should be running in this kind of district, is it not?
There’s a difference between plausible, which I admit and “is favoured”, which I very much disagree with. Of course Democrats should run strong campaigns everywhere, including this district and I don’t think I stated anything to the contrary otherwise.
re: the Mi-St. Sen item; what would a Republican abstaining accomplish? If a bill is going to pass 20-19 with the LG breaking a tie and a Republican abstains, wouldn't it just pass 19-18 instead?
Realistically it takes so long for stories of that kind to break through to the general populace I doubt it had much of an impact on the numbers for responses on the 6th or 7th. The people that would know about it right away would be the most politically informed. It's up to Mamdani to make enough hay out of that for it to break through to the general voter over the next few months.
Still, it would be interesting to see the results broken down by day, even though that introduces a lot of mathematical noise.
I suspect that's, in part, due to a lack of name recognition for Delgado. I'm not sure people know who he is.
My primary concern in the general is that Hochul's unpopularity will end with Elise Stefanik as Governor, though this being a very GOP-unfriendly environment may prevent that too.
Hochul's popularity has been rebounding. I actually think she might have learned her lesson, as she's been governing/campaigning much more actively, doing fewer stupid things, and doing more smart things. She's not perfect by any means, but I'm not concerned that she'd lose anymore.
Hochul is benefiting from the same thing as Newsom and others. She can be Trump's foil. Anything dumb or awful that Trump does or says she can look like the adult in the room by either doing nothing, or by doing or saying something in opposition.
It's a kind of rally around the flag effect, of sorts.
That is a good point. I believe it was her who got Gillibrand to apologize for claiming Mamdani supports “global jihad” too. She does seem to have learned.
Even if Adams or Cuomo dropped out, it's hard to imagine building a workable electoral coalition; Adams' base of black and Latino voters has deserted him—the former for Cuomo and the latter for Mamdani. Coumo maintains healthy support from black and jewish voters in this poll, but I suspect more black voters are trickling to Mamdani (he has plus favs with black voters in this poll, even compared to Coumo.)
I don't know why Whitmer won't call a special election for that state Senate seat. If I were her, I would've scheduled one as soon as I saw the special election results in other states.
And 2026 is the chance for Dems to regain a trifecta in MI and MN, as well as potentially Wisconsin with a new governor's race.
If you ever needed a sign of what Democrats expect 2026 elections to be, this is by far the biggest one yet. I’m honestly shocked. I never ever expected Brown to run again, I figured he’d run for Governor as a career capstone and retire after 2 terms if he won against Ramaswamy.
That he is running again and knows even if he wins, he has to run another hard campaign 2 years later (basically he has to run for office for 6 years straight if you include 2024), truly means he thinks it’s possible for Democrats to win the majority in the Senate. That really says everything of the current political environment Trump and Republicans are facing.
That was my thoughts too, although I didn't know about him moving. I figured he would conclude that local statewide office would be easier to win and it would be a lot easier on him to boot. Pessimistically we could argue he was in the senate so long that it's hard to walk away from, but those senate elections are demanding and doing it three cycles in a row when he already knows the state's shifting is not in his favor is a tough sell.
Presumably he has to have some reason more than blind optimism to think it is worth his time. Especially when he's in his early 70s and could easily opt to retire and enjoy his life with minimal stress.
I'm sure national Democrats strongly encouraged him to run for Senate instead of Governor, and I'm sure Brown understands that, with Trump in the White House, winning the Senate race is much more important than winning the Governor's race.
I just think there’s absolutely no way a 70 year old politician in a state moving right against his party quickly that was just tossed by voters decides he wants to run a campaign for 6 straight years unless he thinks he has the chance to be in power instead of in a minority. That defies any form of logic to me.
Sherrod and his wife Connie Schultz (she's cool--you should follow her) are both good people who care about making the world better. I think this may be a case of the candidate feeling the weight of responsibility, knowing he's the best chance to take this seat and fight for democracy. He's willing to risk a second consecutive loss on his record right at the end of his career, because he knows he is needed. I wish we had more candidates who prioritize the fight for democracy over the contents of their Wikipedia page.
The fight for the majority is definitely coming into view. If North Carolina, Maine, and Ohio start leaning Dem, I think Iowa determines the majority. What a nightmare if it's Nebraska.
I have faith in Osborn though. He did pretty well last time, considering his state, and we're in a very GOP-unfriendly environment. Not saying he's a shoe-in, but I wouldn't count him out just yet.
I don’t think we can say Ohio leans Dem even with Brown running or if polling shows him ahead because the undecided voters are almost certainly not Democratic voters and will more than likely come home to Republicans. That said, Lean R races have flipped in a big enough wave, so that’s what we’re going for and banking on in order to win the Ohio Senate race.
Basically our path to a majority is ME/NC + 2 of AK/IA/NE/OH/TX. It’s a very narrow window and steep uphill climb, but we definitely have almost our best slate plausible minus AK (TBD) and Sand in IA if he ran for Senate instead of Governor (we still have a surprisingly strong bench running for Senate, but Sand is a cut above them all).
I still don’t think we’re going to pull it off because of just how hard the task is and the playing field being almost entirely in red states, but we probably couldn’t ask for a better chance on paper to pull off a miracle majority in 2026.
I'd lump Texas in that second category with IA and friends. I think as things stand it's more plausible than AK and NE and on par with IA. Which is to say it's really unlikely but with a big enough wave it is possible.
Realistically if we get only one seat in that latter bucket on top of NC+ME it will be a great night for us. Obviously gaining the senate is critical for protecting the country right now. But unfortunately it is a very tall order. If we pick up three seats in 2026 it makes it vastly more likely that we will hold the senate after 2028, which is also crucial.
and through Presidems' entire first term, since we have a variety of vulnerable seats in 2030, although Slotkin, Gallego, Baldwin, and Rosen are all strong incumbents it's likely we lose at least one or two of them.
I liked your post (as usual!) because you presented your point well and concisely, but I think I disagree on this basis only—Iowa is far smaller and homogeneous and thus easier to move. Think of Florida, by contrast. Texas is similar; there are just that many more people who can, theoretically, resist or combat the knock-on effects of a wave, and the differences in regions of the state make uniform appeal more difficult. But in a state with Iowa's population and culture, if a candidate, movement or an idea takes off, it's going to saturate the state quickly. (For the same reason, I've been saying for decades now that Democrats should make a sustained play for West Virginia. Vance used it as a base after all—but of course, we'd actually be trying to help those people.)
I definitely don't agree about West Virginia. I've seen the argument you're making about low-population states, but is there any empirical evidence to support it?
While that's probably a fair assessment, I think it's too premature and defeatist to be writing off electorates and states prematurely. Iowa was a purple tossup state until it wasn't since 2016. Conversely no one ever imagined Arizona and Georgia becoming purple until 2016. We also may not know what the electorate in Ohio will look like come November of 2026, let alone who's undecided. It's important to note that the electorate in midterms is often drastically different than the electorate in a presidential election and presidential candidates can easily alter the electorate's perception. If nothing else, remember that Ohio recently repealed an abortion ban and reelected Brown in 2018, so a situation where Brown running even or has an advantage, however marginal it may be, is far from inconceivable.
I don’t think saying it’s Lean R is defeatist, but that’s totally up to subjective opinion. I do think it’s accurate to say how hard it will be for Democrats to win the majority, but maybe the electorate that shows up makes it much easier.
I’m just not counting any chickens in the state after twice seeing Democrats lead polling to only fall short to Vance and Moreno, two candidates who are errrr not exactly blue chip recruits and probably are below replacement generic Republican in terms of candidate quality.
The good thing with Nebraska this time is that there isn't a circumstance from 2027-29 where Osborn has to affirmatively caucus with Ds to determine the majority.
If it's 50-49 D (say Cooper, Sherrod, and Mills win, Ds hold their seats) then he can choose to caucus with nobody and Dems get the majority.
If it's say 50-49 R (say only two of the above win), then even if he did caucus with Ds, Vance could break the tie.
If Mills runs, I don't think she will win. I'm sorry. Age does matter at a certain point, and there is no doubt in my mind it will come up as an issue in the election.
Democrats need to recruit another candidate besides Mills.
Although one of his Republican opponents calls him "a spineless moderate," Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX23) has a 0% rating from Americans for Democratic Action, a 0% rating from Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, an 8% rating from Common Cause, an 18% rating from Planned Parenthood Action Fund, a 100% rating from Freedom First Society, a 100% rating from the National Shooting Sport Foundation, and a 100% rating from the Independent Petroleum Association of America. He might lack a spine, but he is no "moderate."
The definition has shifted, there’s no such thing as a moderate Republican anymore except maybe Brian Fitzpatrick in PA. There’s just hard MAGA vs less hard MAGA as the GOP has moved far right on everything.
Sadly the media chooses to portray anything that isn’t hard right MAGA, that breaks with the party on a rare occasion as moderate (see Mike Lawler), though compared to past actual moderate reps, they most certainly are not.
This unfortunately gives voters the wrong actual factuality and reality of the politicians in their party, but media are so terrified of being accused of bias that they don’t ever report the truth on anything, just what the truth is relative to the party itself.
If I had a magic wand and could fire every media journalist and reporter, replacing them with real journalists or make strict rules about reporting facts only, regardless of any blowback from the right wing, I would do so in a heartbeat and we’d live in a much better world.
Yeah, it depends on your perspective entirely, which is why I said maybe.
He votes mostly for whatever legislation is pushed by the party in power at the time that will pass with or without his vote and on rare occasions bucks that voting pattern on some issues. When Biden was in office, he almost always voted with Democrats. Now with Trump in power he almost always votes with his party.
It’s why he’s still in office when other Republicans lost their careers. He’s the Susan Collins of the House and its shrewd political strategy because he can always point to something for voters to like to earn those precious few crossover voters to keep his career afloat protecting him from the right in the primary and left in the general.
I don’t think he’s moderate fwiw, just an “I’ll morph my ideology and policy to whatever legislation is going to get passed into law” chameleon lawmaker with very few set positions on any issues.
Politicus says that the Senate Leadership Fund (a pro GOP PAC) says that supporting a Paxton general election in TX would cost them $200 million to $250 million-- as opposed to spending $50-70 million to keep Cornyn in his seat.
We'll see how the Republican TX primary goes, but that kind of money spent to keep a seat red in Texas means less money to take open seats in North Carolina and Michigan next year.
Minor quibble: Republicans aren’t the ones defending an open seat in MI, Democrats are, but I know exactly what you’re trying to say here and agree with you. Every dollar they have to spend in TX is one they can’t spend on offensive targets or defensive ones.
The fundraising required to run a campaign in a state with 40m people is astronomically larger than anywhere else in the country, which is why I really hope Talarico passes this time for the Senate race.
Give Allred 2 years to raise funds and focus on Paxton. He can always run for Cruz’ seat in 2030 if Allred falls short and we need as much time as possible to run a hard general election campaign, instead of a 6 month sprint timeline after a year and a half of time spent to win the primary.
Something that I think is worthy of more attention buried in the article:
Allred leads Paxton by 1 point 49-48 with 3% of voters undecided, which obviously will get most of the attention from Democrats, but Cornyn isn’t exactly safe to win either even if he holds on to the nomination after a bruising and expensive primary.
He’s up just 51-45 on Allred with 4% undecided. Cornyn won his last race 54-44 in 2020 against MJ Hegar in a year where the national environment was pretty much 50/50. He’s up 2 points on Paxton, that’s not exactly a big over performance. 51% as an incumbent isn’t at all safe and can easily be ground down in an aggressive attack campaign.
So Allred starts ahead of MJ Hegar before his campaign has really even started. That’s a great place to begin, regardless of who he ends up facing. Odds I think are GOP voters come home for Cornyn or Paxton (it’s a red Republican state still), but enough of a Democratic wave could see him beat either opponent and that goes against conventional wisdom that Cornyn is pretty much safe if he wins nomination.
In the game of Gerrymander Chicken that California and Texas are playing on redistricting, this is likely going to be settled by the end of next week. California's deadline for getting something on the ballot in November is August 22. I'm not sure if Texas has a deadline other than the walkout running into the December filing deadline.
The GOP leaders said if they can't reach a quorum by Friday, the session will be over. But the thing is, Abbott can call as many special sessions as he likes until he does Trump's bidding.
I wonder if they will or not. I don’t think Abbott et al expected Dems to threaten to undo their commissions to retaliate and it’s not a free pass like they were hoping it would be
I wonder how inconvenient it is for the republican legislators to have these special sessions going indefinitely? Are they able to continue doing their normal jobs or does this take out their own incomes too?
If it is imposing any serious cost on republicans to continue trying I could see that leading to them giving up at some point.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression was that California's ballot proposal on redistricting was going to say specifically that they would only draw a new map if Texas did first. So they should still put it on the ballot and encourage its passage, and if TX Dems are successful at stopping the new map there, then it wouldn't have any effect.
God we are such fucking losers it's unbelievable. "Accomplished their mission". At least accept that this is a gigantic loss. All they have to do is stay out of the state for 12 more weeks, thank god this type of leadership hasn't been around at other important points in our nation's history or we'd all be speaking German or the Capitol would be in Richmond.
“Two people inside the meeting, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, told CNN that no decision has been made on whether to return to Texas.”
12 weeks, three months, is not nothing. Since California is poised to try and offset Texas, I won’t crucify them if they decide to return.
I think California should redistrict if any red state redistricts, and Dems should use all available leverage to block red state redistricting. I don't care if you have to live at a Hilton in Chicago for 12 weeks, that's not exactly a deployment to Fallujah. It's just another example of Dem electeds not understanding or refusing to acknowledge that Trump is trying to consolidate power and that if Republicans pull every lever and Dems only pull the ones that are comfortable for us, he'll succeed. Whether that's an acceptable outcome for them is an open question, but I'm tired of giving partial credit while Republicans crucify their elected officials for so much as an errant tweet, let alone doing anything other than maximalist partisan warfare.
Is this about Colorado redistricting? Of all the Democratic-controlled states where Dems could gain seats by redistricting, Colorado is one of the ones that I haven't heard anything from. Any movement to repeal their commission (or just ignore it, since that's what Republicans would do) and draw a 7D-1R map, thus picking up three seats for Dems?
Easier to avoid the risk of Republicans winning anything in bad years for us by conceding just one district. Plus a 7D-1R map can be fairly compact as well, and doesn't look terrible. Here's mine - the least blue of the 7 Dem districts is still Harris +6, and shifted to the left in 2024.
Same way with Oregon. Dems should shore up our existing seats before trying to get greedy and drawing a map that puts Portland and Ontario in the same district.
Mullins McLeod sounds like a great candidate.
Hah!
Two thoughts about Texas.
Doggett could make a huge difference if he transferred a few million dollars so that it could be used to pay for housing and other expenses for the TX House Democrats in IL. To me in seems obvious that the only way to stop the TX gerrymander is get 51 TX House Dems to commit to living out of state until spring which to me would mean enrolling kids in school, renting apartments, and setting up life so it works rather than try to be in a hotel.
If González is knocked out, then TX-23 becomes a good pickup opportunity for Democrats. I’m sure they’ll go after it anyway, but if it becomes open I’d favor a Democrat.
My understanding is that campaign funds cannot be used to support the quorum break.
Money is fungible.
To my knowledge, campaign funds can not pay for the $500/day fines. I’ve read that given the bribery statutes in Texas that offering employment to the TX House Dems can be a way of providing by funds to pay those fines.
The travel, hotels, eating out, and later bringing family can be paid by party funds.
I’m with you on everything except the last part. There’s no way an open Trump 57-42 district becomes Democratic favoured even with a far right Nazi nutjob as our GOP opponent and a hopeful Trump midterm backlash to boost the tides of all Dem boats. A Democrat could absolutely win it, but they’re certainly not favoured in a Trump + 15 district.
Cook rates TX-23 as a +7 Republican district (as of Wikipedia pulled April, 2025). It’s possible that Cook is wrong. (If it is truly +15, then I agree with you)
According to polling I’ve seen, Trump’s standing with Hispanic voters is cratering over inflation, tariffs, and focusing on other things than the economy. (Which sounds a lot why so many Hispanics abandoned the Democratic Party!) If this remains the case, then these border districts may swing further Democratic than a typical district as they swing towards Trump/Republicans more than most in the last decade.
González outperformed Trump in 2024 and Trump outperformed House Republicans generally. Without González and with a crazy candidate, I’d rate this a toss up and if forced to chose, would chose the Democrat.
PVI ratings are not the same as margins. The number in a PVI is the difference in one-party vote share over the national average.
To illustrate this fully, imagine that the baseline is 50-50 nationally. If Rs are doing seven points better than 50% in a district, that means they need to take seven points away from Ds — 57-50 is not a vote share that is possible. It would be 57-43. That means the PVI is, ballpark figure, giving half of the expected margin of victory. A PVI of R+7 would expect to see the R winning by roughly 7 * 2 = 14 points.
Couldn’t have said it any better myself. R+7 in PVI basically means R+14 in margin. If it were a R+7 margin district, I could definitely buy a Democratic favoured argument as an open seat and a Nazi nutjob as the GOP nominee. But not as a R+7 PVI district. I know people sometimes get the two mixed up, so your post explains the why perfectly.
It also helps illustrate why higher PVIs are increasingly difficult to win. Republicans hold one D+3 and two D+1 house seats. We hold one R+4, one R+3, two R+2, and three R+1 seats. Going from R+1 (pres margin ~R+2) to R+4 (pres margin R+8) is a much larger gap to make up than would be expected by the three point difference separating them.
In the vast majority of elections it's going to be difficult for a party to lose anything in the +4 or better category for themselves. Getting to a PVI of +6 is in the borderline safe seat territory. At that margin the worry isn't about waves so much as realignments.
You say that, but what were the PVIs of the seats the Democrats won in SC, OK and Hochul's district in Western New York? Not one was a realignment.
I understand your point somewhat, but the Democrats really don't need to pick up 14 points from the GOP, it's 7 points to get it from 43-57 to 50.1-49.9. Every point won is a point lost by the other side. That's a hefty margin, but it isn't totally out of the realm of possibility in the right circumstances. And when so many people have said that Democrats need to be contesting every seat at every level, this would seem to be the exact reason why a strong candidate should be running in this kind of district, is it not?
There’s a difference between plausible, which I admit and “is favoured”, which I very much disagree with. Of course Democrats should run strong campaigns everywhere, including this district and I don’t think I stated anything to the contrary otherwise.
I see. I thought it was the difference in margin over the national average. Thank you.
This would put it in the category of seats that can be won in a wave year so you should vigorously contest, but not expect to win any individual race.
re: the Mi-St. Sen item; what would a Republican abstaining accomplish? If a bill is going to pass 20-19 with the LG breaking a tie and a Republican abstains, wouldn't it just pass 19-18 instead?
The denominator would change if that seat is filled.
Right now there's 37 senators, so 19/18 is a majority. If there's 38, 19/18 with one abstention is only 50%.
Oy vey
NYC Mayor Siena:
Mamdani 44
Cuomo 25
Sliwa 12
Adams 7
https://sri.siena.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/SNY0825-Crosstabs.pdf
Oof. Imagine you are Adams. 7% for reelection. "Maybe I could have done a few things differently ...?"
"Maybe I shouldn't have taken money from Türkiye"
He was doomed already, but the conspiracy in broad daylight with the Trump administration is some of the most dystopian stuff we've seen thus far.
Wonder if this poll was in the field before the "Cuomo on the phone with Trump" news broke
Poll was Aug 4-7, the news broke Aug 6.
Realistically it takes so long for stories of that kind to break through to the general populace I doubt it had much of an impact on the numbers for responses on the 6th or 7th. The people that would know about it right away would be the most politically informed. It's up to Mamdani to make enough hay out of that for it to break through to the general voter over the next few months.
Still, it would be interesting to see the results broken down by day, even though that introduces a lot of mathematical noise.
Also Hochul up 50-15 in the primary
I suspect that's, in part, due to a lack of name recognition for Delgado. I'm not sure people know who he is.
My primary concern in the general is that Hochul's unpopularity will end with Elise Stefanik as Governor, though this being a very GOP-unfriendly environment may prevent that too.
Hochul's popularity has been rebounding. I actually think she might have learned her lesson, as she's been governing/campaigning much more actively, doing fewer stupid things, and doing more smart things. She's not perfect by any means, but I'm not concerned that she'd lose anymore.
Hochul is benefiting from the same thing as Newsom and others. She can be Trump's foil. Anything dumb or awful that Trump does or says she can look like the adult in the room by either doing nothing, or by doing or saying something in opposition.
It's a kind of rally around the flag effect, of sorts.
Exactly. Being Trump's foil has paid dividends for both domestic and overseas politicians.
That is a good point. I believe it was her who got Gillibrand to apologize for claiming Mamdani supports “global jihad” too. She does seem to have learned.
I doubt this has any impact whatsoever on her electability...
No, but I bring it up to demonstrate Hochul being willing to work with the left. There was quite a bit of left outrage over those comments.
That is not going to happen...no way a D loses for NY-Gov in a R-prez midterm environment. Plenty of other things to worry about ahead of this one...
Does she have a running mate? Separate primary I know but does she have a candidate that's "her guy"
Primary is probably a year away so i'd imagine she'd find a running mate some time next year.
Non-Mamdani vote is tied at 44, but the chance of any of them actually dropping out is pretty slim.
Even if Adams or Cuomo dropped out, it's hard to imagine building a workable electoral coalition; Adams' base of black and Latino voters has deserted him—the former for Cuomo and the latter for Mamdani. Coumo maintains healthy support from black and jewish voters in this poll, but I suspect more black voters are trickling to Mamdani (he has plus favs with black voters in this poll, even compared to Coumo.)
They can't get their names off the ballot, right?
No, I don't think they can.
I also understand that they can't, so they can't really drop out.
Obviously they could pull out but name remains on ballot but let's be honest none of those guys will do that.
I don't know why Whitmer won't call a special election for that state Senate seat. If I were her, I would've scheduled one as soon as I saw the special election results in other states.
And 2026 is the chance for Dems to regain a trifecta in MI and MN, as well as potentially Wisconsin with a new governor's race.
Sherrod Brown is in!https://bsky.app/profile/mcpli.bsky.social/post/3lw7kxu3msc2s
Absolute best chance to pick up that seat and maybe help downballot! Excellent news
If you ever needed a sign of what Democrats expect 2026 elections to be, this is by far the biggest one yet. I’m honestly shocked. I never ever expected Brown to run again, I figured he’d run for Governor as a career capstone and retire after 2 terms if he won against Ramaswamy.
That he is running again and knows even if he wins, he has to run another hard campaign 2 years later (basically he has to run for office for 6 years straight if you include 2024), truly means he thinks it’s possible for Democrats to win the majority in the Senate. That really says everything of the current political environment Trump and Republicans are facing.
Boy, I hope this read is the correct one.
I thought for sure that Brown would run for governor, if anything (especially after he moved to Columbus).
That was my thoughts too, although I didn't know about him moving. I figured he would conclude that local statewide office would be easier to win and it would be a lot easier on him to boot. Pessimistically we could argue he was in the senate so long that it's hard to walk away from, but those senate elections are demanding and doing it three cycles in a row when he already knows the state's shifting is not in his favor is a tough sell.
Presumably he has to have some reason more than blind optimism to think it is worth his time. Especially when he's in his early 70s and could easily opt to retire and enjoy his life with minimal stress.
Brown is truly a public servant at heart.
And luckily, Vivek Ramaswamy is so obnoxious and unlikable that I could see him blowing the gubernatorial race, even against a non-Brown opponent.
I'm sure national Democrats strongly encouraged him to run for Senate instead of Governor, and I'm sure Brown understands that, with Trump in the White House, winning the Senate race is much more important than winning the Governor's race.
I just think there’s absolutely no way a 70 year old politician in a state moving right against his party quickly that was just tossed by voters decides he wants to run a campaign for 6 straight years unless he thinks he has the chance to be in power instead of in a minority. That defies any form of logic to me.
Sherrod and his wife Connie Schultz (she's cool--you should follow her) are both good people who care about making the world better. I think this may be a case of the candidate feeling the weight of responsibility, knowing he's the best chance to take this seat and fight for democracy. He's willing to risk a second consecutive loss on his record right at the end of his career, because he knows he is needed. I wish we had more candidates who prioritize the fight for democracy over the contents of their Wikipedia page.
We keep getting the best thinkable news about Democratic senate candidates. Awesome!
C'mon, Gov Mills, jump in that Maine Senate race... we need you to unseat Ms. Concerned Collins.
I actually think the AG would be better than a 75-ish governor with ok but not outstanding approvals in what will be a dogfight race.
Why has no one publicly polled this one yet?
Honestly I agree. I know AG is appointed in Maine, but still.
She's not 75-ish. She's currently 77 and will be 79 if she wins and is inaugurated. That's 80-ish.
Maine's population is the oldest of any state in the county, so Mills's age may not be as much of a liability as it would in other states.
The fight for the majority is definitely coming into view. If North Carolina, Maine, and Ohio start leaning Dem, I think Iowa determines the majority. What a nightmare if it's Nebraska.
Iowa and Nebraska are going to be tough.
I have faith in Osborn though. He did pretty well last time, considering his state, and we're in a very GOP-unfriendly environment. Not saying he's a shoe-in, but I wouldn't count him out just yet.
It would be gratifying if we could get a repeat of 2006 -- where Rs absolutely took a beating at the ballot box.
Likely-R for now.
I don’t think we can say Ohio leans Dem even with Brown running or if polling shows him ahead because the undecided voters are almost certainly not Democratic voters and will more than likely come home to Republicans. That said, Lean R races have flipped in a big enough wave, so that’s what we’re going for and banking on in order to win the Ohio Senate race.
Basically our path to a majority is ME/NC + 2 of AK/IA/NE/OH/TX. It’s a very narrow window and steep uphill climb, but we definitely have almost our best slate plausible minus AK (TBD) and Sand in IA if he ran for Senate instead of Governor (we still have a surprisingly strong bench running for Senate, but Sand is a cut above them all).
I still don’t think we’re going to pull it off because of just how hard the task is and the playing field being almost entirely in red states, but we probably couldn’t ask for a better chance on paper to pull off a miracle majority in 2026.
I'd lump Texas in that second category with IA and friends. I think as things stand it's more plausible than AK and NE and on par with IA. Which is to say it's really unlikely but with a big enough wave it is possible.
Realistically if we get only one seat in that latter bucket on top of NC+ME it will be a great night for us. Obviously gaining the senate is critical for protecting the country right now. But unfortunately it is a very tall order. If we pick up three seats in 2026 it makes it vastly more likely that we will hold the senate after 2028, which is also crucial.
I knew someone was going to reply before I could edit my facepalm worthy faux-pas. I agree 100% with you on everything you’ve said here.
and through Presidems' entire first term, since we have a variety of vulnerable seats in 2030, although Slotkin, Gallego, Baldwin, and Rosen are all strong incumbents it's likely we lose at least one or two of them.
TX may be a smidge more likely than IA, as it's been mostly slowly trending toward the Democrats, not quickly away from them.
I liked your post (as usual!) because you presented your point well and concisely, but I think I disagree on this basis only—Iowa is far smaller and homogeneous and thus easier to move. Think of Florida, by contrast. Texas is similar; there are just that many more people who can, theoretically, resist or combat the knock-on effects of a wave, and the differences in regions of the state make uniform appeal more difficult. But in a state with Iowa's population and culture, if a candidate, movement or an idea takes off, it's going to saturate the state quickly. (For the same reason, I've been saying for decades now that Democrats should make a sustained play for West Virginia. Vance used it as a base after all—but of course, we'd actually be trying to help those people.)
I definitely don't agree about West Virginia. I've seen the argument you're making about low-population states, but is there any empirical evidence to support it?
While that's probably a fair assessment, I think it's too premature and defeatist to be writing off electorates and states prematurely. Iowa was a purple tossup state until it wasn't since 2016. Conversely no one ever imagined Arizona and Georgia becoming purple until 2016. We also may not know what the electorate in Ohio will look like come November of 2026, let alone who's undecided. It's important to note that the electorate in midterms is often drastically different than the electorate in a presidential election and presidential candidates can easily alter the electorate's perception. If nothing else, remember that Ohio recently repealed an abortion ban and reelected Brown in 2018, so a situation where Brown running even or has an advantage, however marginal it may be, is far from inconceivable.
I don’t think saying it’s Lean R is defeatist, but that’s totally up to subjective opinion. I do think it’s accurate to say how hard it will be for Democrats to win the majority, but maybe the electorate that shows up makes it much easier.
I’m just not counting any chickens in the state after twice seeing Democrats lead polling to only fall short to Vance and Moreno, two candidates who are errrr not exactly blue chip recruits and probably are below replacement generic Republican in terms of candidate quality.
Texas without Cornyn, and with Allred or another moderate, is our best best at 51 seats IMO.
The good thing with Nebraska this time is that there isn't a circumstance from 2027-29 where Osborn has to affirmatively caucus with Ds to determine the majority.
If it's 50-49 D (say Cooper, Sherrod, and Mills win, Ds hold their seats) then he can choose to caucus with nobody and Dems get the majority.
If it's say 50-49 R (say only two of the above win), then even if he did caucus with Ds, Vance could break the tie.
If Mills runs, I don't think she will win. I'm sorry. Age does matter at a certain point, and there is no doubt in my mind it will come up as an issue in the election.
Democrats need to recruit another candidate besides Mills.
She's younger than the current President lol
Never doubt that there will be a double standard for Dems and for women!
While I am glad Sherrod is running again, I fear he will face an onslaught of money from crypto.
Maybe that prevents them from getting involved in other races, but it's still a risk.
Of course, if a major crypto crash finally happens in the next 12 months, I am not so concerned...
I don't think this is the key issue. There is going to be virtually limitless money spent on this race. Crypto cash isn't gonna swing it.
AL-Sen: Barry Moore joins the primary
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/12/barry-moore-alabama-senate-00504786
The only good thing about that race is that Tommy Tuberville will no longer be a Senator.
Unfortunately for Alabama, he’s almost certainly going to be their Governor!
Also true. I am quite thankful I don’t live there right now.
"right now"? would you ever choose to live in Alabama? were you originally from Alabama and, if so, why did you leave?
I misspoke, sorry. I should have said “ever”. I am a lifelong New Yorker.
Moore is worse than Tuberville tbh.
Although one of his Republican opponents calls him "a spineless moderate," Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX23) has a 0% rating from Americans for Democratic Action, a 0% rating from Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund, an 8% rating from Common Cause, an 18% rating from Planned Parenthood Action Fund, a 100% rating from Freedom First Society, a 100% rating from the National Shooting Sport Foundation, and a 100% rating from the Independent Petroleum Association of America. He might lack a spine, but he is no "moderate."
MAGA folks (and lazy, pea-brained pundits) define "moderate Republican" as "not a flaming @$$hole in public 100% of the time."
The definition has shifted, there’s no such thing as a moderate Republican anymore except maybe Brian Fitzpatrick in PA. There’s just hard MAGA vs less hard MAGA as the GOP has moved far right on everything.
Sadly the media chooses to portray anything that isn’t hard right MAGA, that breaks with the party on a rare occasion as moderate (see Mike Lawler), though compared to past actual moderate reps, they most certainly are not.
This unfortunately gives voters the wrong actual factuality and reality of the politicians in their party, but media are so terrified of being accused of bias that they don’t ever report the truth on anything, just what the truth is relative to the party itself.
If I had a magic wand and could fire every media journalist and reporter, replacing them with real journalists or make strict rules about reporting facts only, regardless of any blowback from the right wing, I would do so in a heartbeat and we’d live in a much better world.
Fitzpatrick is no moderate.
Voting for the bid ugly bill when it was going to win without his vote doesn’t take much courage.
The same goes for Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski.
Yeah, it depends on your perspective entirely, which is why I said maybe.
He votes mostly for whatever legislation is pushed by the party in power at the time that will pass with or without his vote and on rare occasions bucks that voting pattern on some issues. When Biden was in office, he almost always voted with Democrats. Now with Trump in power he almost always votes with his party.
It’s why he’s still in office when other Republicans lost their careers. He’s the Susan Collins of the House and its shrewd political strategy because he can always point to something for voters to like to earn those precious few crossover voters to keep his career afloat protecting him from the right in the primary and left in the general.
I don’t think he’s moderate fwiw, just an “I’ll morph my ideology and policy to whatever legislation is going to get passed into law” chameleon lawmaker with very few set positions on any issues.
If you ain't spoutin' crazy conspiracies and attacking minorities then you ain't a true publican - average republican voter.
Politicus says that the Senate Leadership Fund (a pro GOP PAC) says that supporting a Paxton general election in TX would cost them $200 million to $250 million-- as opposed to spending $50-70 million to keep Cornyn in his seat.
https://www.politicususa.com/p/democrats-have-a-real-chance-to-turn
We'll see how the Republican TX primary goes, but that kind of money spent to keep a seat red in Texas means less money to take open seats in North Carolina and Michigan next year.
Minor quibble: Republicans aren’t the ones defending an open seat in MI, Democrats are, but I know exactly what you’re trying to say here and agree with you. Every dollar they have to spend in TX is one they can’t spend on offensive targets or defensive ones.
The fundraising required to run a campaign in a state with 40m people is astronomically larger than anywhere else in the country, which is why I really hope Talarico passes this time for the Senate race.
Give Allred 2 years to raise funds and focus on Paxton. He can always run for Cruz’ seat in 2030 if Allred falls short and we need as much time as possible to run a hard general election campaign, instead of a 6 month sprint timeline after a year and a half of time spent to win the primary.
Tweaked my original post for clarification.
Cruz won't be up for reelection until 2030.
Something that I think is worthy of more attention buried in the article:
Allred leads Paxton by 1 point 49-48 with 3% of voters undecided, which obviously will get most of the attention from Democrats, but Cornyn isn’t exactly safe to win either even if he holds on to the nomination after a bruising and expensive primary.
He’s up just 51-45 on Allred with 4% undecided. Cornyn won his last race 54-44 in 2020 against MJ Hegar in a year where the national environment was pretty much 50/50. He’s up 2 points on Paxton, that’s not exactly a big over performance. 51% as an incumbent isn’t at all safe and can easily be ground down in an aggressive attack campaign.
So Allred starts ahead of MJ Hegar before his campaign has really even started. That’s a great place to begin, regardless of who he ends up facing. Odds I think are GOP voters come home for Cornyn or Paxton (it’s a red Republican state still), but enough of a Democratic wave could see him beat either opponent and that goes against conventional wisdom that Cornyn is pretty much safe if he wins nomination.
From Newsom's press office:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DNQquVoOXxI/?igsh=MTB4d3dnNmd3b2t2Mg==
Whoever is running Newsom's press office is clearly trying to get under Trump's skin.
How long before the same pundits who spent months insisting that Democrats should "FiGhT HaRdEr" start saying "Whoa guys, dial it back a little"?
The New York Times is reporting that Sherrod Brown is running for the Senate again. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/us/politics/sherrod-brown-plans-to-try-for-a-senate-comeback-in-ohio.html?unlocked_article_code=1.dk8.ENFj.LSLS2eGduoxr&smid=url-share
It'll be tough, but worth nothing that G. Elliott's approval model as of today (8/12/25) has Trump at -1.8 net approval in Ohio. https://www.gelliottmorris.com/p/data?utm_campaign=work-in-progress&utm_content=20250603&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&lctg=656846806d1b9de34f0092f9&utm_term=Work%20in%20Progress
a few days ago GEM published a report that had trump underwater on trade issues in 40 states
Probably not in Ohio.
He was, though much narrower than elsewhere
In the game of Gerrymander Chicken that California and Texas are playing on redistricting, this is likely going to be settled by the end of next week. California's deadline for getting something on the ballot in November is August 22. I'm not sure if Texas has a deadline other than the walkout running into the December filing deadline.
The GOP leaders said if they can't reach a quorum by Friday, the session will be over. But the thing is, Abbott can call as many special sessions as he likes until he does Trump's bidding.
I wonder if they will or not. I don’t think Abbott et al expected Dems to threaten to undo their commissions to retaliate and it’s not a free pass like they were hoping it would be
I wonder how inconvenient it is for the republican legislators to have these special sessions going indefinitely? Are they able to continue doing their normal jobs or does this take out their own incomes too?
If it is imposing any serious cost on republicans to continue trying I could see that leading to them giving up at some point.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression was that California's ballot proposal on redistricting was going to say specifically that they would only draw a new map if Texas did first. So they should still put it on the ballot and encourage its passage, and if TX Dems are successful at stopping the new map there, then it wouldn't have any effect.
God we are such fucking losers it's unbelievable. "Accomplished their mission". At least accept that this is a gigantic loss. All they have to do is stay out of the state for 12 more weeks, thank god this type of leadership hasn't been around at other important points in our nation's history or we'd all be speaking German or the Capitol would be in Richmond.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/texas-democrats-return-after-governor-ends-special-session/story?id=124592449
“Two people inside the meeting, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, told CNN that no decision has been made on whether to return to Texas.”
12 weeks, three months, is not nothing. Since California is poised to try and offset Texas, I won’t crucify them if they decide to return.
The smart thing would be to wait and see if Abbott indeed calls another session first
He'll wait to call it until they're all back and then arrest them at the airport.
I think California should redistrict if any red state redistricts, and Dems should use all available leverage to block red state redistricting. I don't care if you have to live at a Hilton in Chicago for 12 weeks, that's not exactly a deployment to Fallujah. It's just another example of Dem electeds not understanding or refusing to acknowledge that Trump is trying to consolidate power and that if Republicans pull every lever and Dems only pull the ones that are comfortable for us, he'll succeed. Whether that's an acceptable outcome for them is an open question, but I'm tired of giving partial credit while Republicans crucify their elected officials for so much as an errant tweet, let alone doing anything other than maximalist partisan warfare.
This won’t make Jared Polis happy.
https://bsky.app/profile/heathervogell.bsky.social/post/3lw7ojlxs422g
What's the context with Polis? Sounds like a good settlement. I assume he had some connections with the company?
Is this about Colorado redistricting? Of all the Democratic-controlled states where Dems could gain seats by redistricting, Colorado is one of the ones that I haven't heard anything from. Any movement to repeal their commission (or just ignore it, since that's what Republicans would do) and draw a 7D-1R map, thus picking up three seats for Dems?
No.
https://www.cpr.org/2025/05/29/polis-vetos-rent-algorithm-bill-realpage/
Thanks. Sucks that Polis has gone so conservative though. Dems can definitely do better in Colorado.
He was always an annoying libertarian rich boy.
Why not 8-0? It’s no longer a swing state.
Easier to avoid the risk of Republicans winning anything in bad years for us by conceding just one district. Plus a 7D-1R map can be fairly compact as well, and doesn't look terrible. Here's mine - the least blue of the 7 Dem districts is still Harris +6, and shifted to the left in 2024.
https://davesredistricting.org/join/c057dbda-449a-4bfa-9900-029e132d6339
Same way with Oregon. Dems should shore up our existing seats before trying to get greedy and drawing a map that puts Portland and Ontario in the same district.