Between the lack of any urgency to counterbalance GOP gerrymandering, the attempted "gotcha" about Chris Van Hollen, and the general "wait and see" approach to fighting Trump's agenda, I gotta borrow a question from the great Bianca del Rio:
"Hakeem Jeffries, what do you do successfully...quickly."
Jeffries and his team are so arrogant. He'd have lined up behind Cuomo had he won the primary almost immediately after, despite his personal failings. The NY Dem Leaders are completely and totally failing us.
She’s the only Democrat where I can actually say she understands power and how to use it. We were extremely fortunate to have her as a Minority Leader/Speaker over these last decades. No one else leading the party seems to get it.
Reid was quite powerful as Senate Minority Leader and then eventually as Senate Majority Leader during Bush Jr's 2nd term. He really got Democrats in line and focused
Agreed, though Pelosi was absolutely more ruthless with using power whether in the minority or majority, Reid was more successful in getting and maintaining Senate Majorities. They’re both all stars compared to what we have now though.
In the race for the open NC U.S. Senate seat, former governor Roy Cooper still enjoys a 7-point lead over TACO's lapdog Michael Whatley, according to Carolina Forward's recent polling.
50-37 Generic ballot in favour of Democrats for State House and US House in suburban areas is even higher than 2018 level suburban margin that voted 52-45 for Dems that year. Even more so for the Senate race at 54-36.
It obviously won’t end up that large as partisans go back to their respective camps and the GOP base solidifies, but even if all undecided voters move to the Republican (extremely unlikely with Trump as president), that would still be hitting around 2018 numbers in a worst case scenario.
If this comes anywhere close to reality in 2026 in NC and likely other swing states (if it’s happening in NC, odds are high it’s happening elsewhere), there’s going to be some massive upsets in the House and probably the Senate too. I would look at NC-11 for example as a possible upset in NC.
The bad news is that so far, the rural vote is behind 2018 numbers that was 38-59 Dem compared to 33-51 for 2026 generic and 36-51 in the Senate race. The urban vote is also way behind. They voted 73-25 in 2018 and are 66-28 for generic and 64-28 Senate.
Obviously undecided voters can shift these closer to the 2018 levels or further away from it as the campaigns begin. The crux of the matter is Democrats have the suburban voters (swing, moderates) and need to work on the urban voters (revving up and turning out our base) and rural voters (winning crossovers from our former ancestral base, now solid for our opponents, where every point we can gain is enormously consequential because there’s so much rural territory in every state).
We didn't have competent D party leadership in NC back in 2018, all the gains made in that year were almost entirely fueled by backlash to TACO (like Rs losing their legislative supermajority and Anita Earls winning her SCONC seat). We had the highest midterm turnout (51%) in the state since 1990 I think.
I hope we can exceed that number next year with Anderson Clayton leading the charge and with Cooper as the US Senate nominee. And not only pick off the Ds that vote with Rs to override Gov Stein's vetoes, but we score a handful of upset wins that force Phil Berger and Destin Hall to actually do their job and work with the opposite party.
Good post, but territory doesn't vote, so the reason to appeal to rural voters is because of votes, not that there is "so much rural territory in every state."
Right. No idea on how the urban/rural demarcation is used here. But if you use Census figure for population not in an urban area (which includes dense urban centers as well as the suburbs around them dense enough), NC is the most rural among competitive states. It has close to 35% of residents not in any urban area, in sheer absolute numbers only second to Texas.
And there are a considerable amount of rural Democratic voters, like in Warren County (which has a high percentage of Black voters). We should never write them off, especially since their votes still count for statewide races like governor, Senate, state Supreme Court and Court of Appeals.
Very good questions and I admit I don’t know for certain what the answers are. I used the most respected organization in election analysis, pew research for the 2018 numbers and compared them to what this poll said. Obviously NC specifically would have differing numbers slightly than nationwide, but I feel it’s close enough to warrant comparison.
No idea whether the areas grouped by rural/suburban/urban are exactly the same as pew also. It’s a rough estimation analysis, not anything to take to the bank for the reasons you pointed out and more.
I see. NC has a much higher % of voting pool in small towns/rural areas, than the whole country. Also you probably should not extrapolate the average countrywide rural voter to one in rural South.
Also the “urban” electorate is not comparable either. NC has tiny urban cores, that areas within Raleigh or Charlotte city limits would be comparable to suburbs.
My guess out of memory (you should validate using DRA, hehe), in 2018, it should be roughly 50-50 in the rural eastern plains, and roughly R+40 in the rural piedmont. So overall R+20 should be right on the mark.
Trump’s net job approval is -2 (48%-50%) while Dem Gov. Josh Stein’s is +21 (51%-30%). Meanwhile, the generic ballot is effectively tied. (R 45%; D46%).
"North Carolinians are also closely divided on the generic ballots for state legislature and Congress. The congressional race is split by a tenth of a point, with 46% of voters intending to vote for a Republican candidate and 46.1% supporting a Democratic candidate. For the state legislature, 45.2% of voters said they intend to vote for a Republican, while 44.7% said they would vote for a Democrat. " https://www.carolinajournal.com/polls/august-2025-cooper-shows-early-lead-on-whatley-in-us-senate-race/
So Starmer is where some Democrats like Whitmer are looking for inspiration. A centre-right buffoon and one of the biggest failures in the Western world with an approval of -65 lol. This party is cooked.
"The PPI has its eye on talented governors such as Whitmer, Colorado’s Jared Polis, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, Kentucky’s Andy Beshear, newcomers such as North Carolina’s Josh Stein and former governors such as Rhode Island’s Gina Raimondo, who also served in Joe Biden’s cabinet as a commerce secretary.
Shapiro and Whitmer in particular, argued PPI President Will Marshall, embody an “impatience with government bureausclerosis” — a battle occupying Labour in the U.K. Friendly think tanks like to hail Shapiro for fixing a key interstate in just 12 days after it collapsed.
In the U.K., PPI is interested in center-left ministers such as Lammy, Wes Streeting, Bridget Phillipson, John Healey, Ellie Reeves, Alison McGovern, Torsten Bell, Kirsty McNeill and Lucy Rigby, along with new junior ministers such as Kanishka Narayan and Mike Tapp.
Democratic former Congressman Tim Ryan — who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2020 as well as against the now-Vice President JD Vance in a 2022 Ohio Senate race — came to the U.K. in July, facilitated by the PPI, and held briefings with Labour MPs and peers. Ainsley and Deborah Mattinson, a pollster and former Starmer adviser who works with the PPI, presented research on swing voters who are becoming disillusioned with center-left parties.
Ryan also met Starmer at a pre-arranged encounter during an event in parliament and the two spoke about politics, said one person who was there.
Marshall said the PPI-Labour relationship “withered” in the years the hard-left Jeremy Corbyn led Labour, but the history goes back to 1989, when he met Patricia Hewitt, a center-left think tanker in the political wilderness, who would become a Cabinet minister under Tony Blair."
Labour UK are a complete failure, and it is really delusional to look there for inspiration.
"Whitmer, the Democratic governor of Michigan and potential hopeful in the 2028 U.S. presidential election, and McSweeney, the chief of staff to embattled British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, discussed Labour’s landslide victory in its 2024 general election campaign, said a person who recalled the encounter.
There, Starmer’s chief of staff accepted an eye-catching gift from Whitmer — a £90 “Michigan Wood” pen. The encounter was a small glimpse of the ties that remain between the U.K. prime minister’s aides and the U.S. Democratic Party, still licking its wounds after a resounding election defeat by Donald Trump and the Republicans.
It was also indicative of something else: McSweeney’s personal desire to build a coalition and playbook for center-left parties to win and govern worldwide, with Starmer at its heart, including and going beyond just the U.S. Democrats."
DLC and the Clintons spent a lot of time and resources convincing entire generations that they are “progressives” after the word "liberal" became tainted in the 1980s.
If we're being generous, we could argue that they're scared and reaching out for a "simple" escape route towards reliably winning elections. Generally moderating an ideology can open up a party to more new voters, if done smartly and in moderation (pun intended).
The problem that shatters the being generous part here is that Starmer and Labour are an impressively bad option to look to for electoral inspiration. Starmer is overwhelmingly unpopular. Not to mention that Labour's victory in last year's election was, while wide by seat count, paper thin by margins. That victory also relied on Tories having fucked up for four PMs in a row while having their vote fractured in a FPTP system. Looking to Starmer for inspiration is like looking at Carter's victory in 1976 as something replicable rather than being deeply reliant on circumstance.
Less generously, one might argue that they are lacking in core convictions or individual political compass and are going in whatever direction would align with the talking heads on TV and their overpaid consultants push them towards.
Starmer had a plan to win the 2024 election, but as we've found out over the past year plus he had no plan when he got there. I've been an unfortunate critic of Starmer and Labour since they keep stepping on rakes (Peter Mandelson the latest such rake), but it didn't help them that they aren't going to run against a still discredited and hate Tory party in 2029.
They'll be running against Reform which like their Canadian namesake looks likely to coalesce the center right and everything to the right of that in 2029. And you can't accuse Nigel Farage of breaking his promises since he's really only had one major one, getting the UK out of the EU. In that regard he's batting 1.000 with his promises which will be enough in 2029.
"Looking to Starmer for inspiration is like looking at Carter's victory in 1976 as something replicable rather than being deeply reliant on circumstance."
Which US Democrats did too much of in the 1980s, trying to win back Southern voters who voted for Carter and were probably unavailable to any other Democrat, and not doing enough to win over those elsewhere. Bill Clinton, while a Southerner himself, understood that we couldn't base a victory on that region anymore and so helped forge a winning coalition elsewhere, with whatever Southern states we could win as a bonus.
"Manchin even declared that he wanted Republicans to win the Senate majority in 2024 due to their support for maintaining the filibuster, saying it was 'the only hope for preserving the Senate as an institution.'"
This will age well when Republicans inevitably end the filibuster.
Kirk’s death will not be our Reichstag Fire. Our institutions are a lot stronger than Germany’s were in 1933, and if Trump truly had the ability to pass our version of the Enabling Act, don’t you think he already would have done so?
I think Horst Wessel is a better analogy for Kirk.
There's certainly an attempt to hold the left collectively responsible for his death, though obviously significantly less extreme than the Kristallnacht.
It takes 50+1 votes, they have it, but they do not want to end the filibuster because the next democratic admin will pass PR, DC statehood, John Lewis VRA, public option, independent redistricting etc without it.
My gut feeling is SCOTUS will bless some unilateral move Trump engineers to keep the government open they would have never granted under any other Dem president.
Republicans still know that the filibuster benefits them in net. It transfers power to the minority of voters in an already minority biased institution.
So long as republicans are more motivated most by policies that do not need sweeping legislation, the filibuster advantages them. Substantially. Look at what they're doing now, which is more or less the culmination of a decade of policy dreams for them: gutting government programs and agencies, looting the country, and stonewalling our previous programs. All of that is doable with either reconciliation, SCOTUS, and/or the executive branch. They do not need to remove the filibuster to achieve the majority of their goals.
We are not in the same position. Democrats actually want to create system change through legislation. Even at the moderate end of the party, our goals require enabling legislation that is more complex than the purely budgetary items that will survive reconciliation.
If republicans think they can hold onto power long enough they'll kill it anyway, or if enough of their caucus has generational changeover.
From our side this isn't a great tradeoff. Our historic inability to get things done this century, while often with good political reasons, is increasingly leaving our potential voters dissatisfied with us. "Vote dem, we'll do nothing instead of make things worse" is not a great rallying cry, but it's what I'm seeing more and more people think of us as.
Also, more broadly, no matter what policies you support shouldn’t 50% plus 1 be enough to pass them? It was enough to elect the members. Washington has it in its head that 60 is some magic number of approval. We should pass whatever we want whenever we have 50 seats again.
I don't expect them to end the filibuster. If they thought it would benefit them, they would have already done it. At least enough of them like the filibuster because it eliminates the pressure to pass bills that are popular among the Republican base but unpopular overall.
I guess this is the analogue to Republicans waiting until they retire from political office to criticize the Republican Party, and it figures to have even less effect because there's only one of him and he's influential, if at all, only in West Virginia. Thank you for your service in the Senate, Mr. Manchin, and I guess you'll do whatever makes you the most money now...
But he at the same time got both the infrastructure bill and Inflation Reduction Act passed in the Senate.
Manchin: “Yeah, I know. Those were great bills but I was not helping the Democratic Party in this case. I had concerns that weren’t being addressed by Democrats and I got them addressed before the bills got passed in Congress and Biden signed them into law.”
not at all surprised to hear that about Yglesias. Every interaction I've ever had with him in person (Netroots a long time ago) and online, he's been a smug self centered jerk.
Former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar (R-Charleston), the last downstater of any party affiliation to hold the Illinois governorship, died this weekend at the age of 79.
Edgar was a center-right governor. In his later life, Edgar was critical of the GOP's rightward lurch in Illinois and nationally, even endorsing Kamala Harris's presidential bid in 2024.
Edgar worked for years after serving to improve governance in Illinois through his Edgar Fellows program, which trained policymakers across the state from both parties on how to lead. He was involved with the program pretty much until the day he died (The fundraising dinner was last Tuesday. A former staffer relayed a message over the phone from him from the hospital).
The “I got mine, but screw you” attitude of Americans and immigrants, especially Cubans doesn’t give me much hope and the article itself says that a re-poll of the electorate doesn’t reveal any major shifts in support from 2024.
I agree it’s an opportunity, but I really doubt they’re going to shift much considering how conservative and indoctrinated they are against “socialist dictatorships” from communist Cuba. This feels like something we want to be true, rather than it actually being true. I’d love to be wrong fwiw.
Well, it's not as if Democrats need the Cuban vote to make most of the gains in the House and Senate next year. However, the Democratic Party should be leading by example and playing the long game even if it doesn't result in immediate success in the near future say in the 2026 midterms or the 2028 presidential election year.
I agree that Cubans are going to continue being a difficult voting demographic for precisely the reasons you pointed out. I still think Democrats (especially FL Democrats) need to be more united on the issue with Cuba but it's harder when Trump is POTUS and trying to balance the concerns with Cubans/Cuban-Americans at the same time.
State Rep. David Morales, a DSA and WFP affiliate, is the latest progressive candidate running for a mayorship, this time against incumbent Brett Smiley.
Anybody have the DRA links or presidential numbers for the new MO gerrymander? I live in KC, so I'm eager to see what our chances are in any of the three districts.
The least red was R +18 in 2024, which includes KC east of Troost. I also live in KC and unfortunately I don’t think Dems will have much of a chance in any of the new districts.
"But redistricting is a deeply personal issue. Several members of the delegation would have to cede Democratic voters to make Harris’ seat blue. Reps. Kweisi Mfume in Baltimore, Johnny Olszewski in Baltimore County and Sarah Elfreth in the Annapolis area could see their seats change the most in redistricting.
And any new map will likely have to shore up Democratic Rep. April Delaney in western Maryland, who has the most competitive of the eight seats."
Honestly, if the congressional incumbents are worried about giving up Democratic territory, they're being babies about it. Most of their districts can lose a lot of Democratic voters without being in any danger of flipping red.
The one incumbent who could really fall into the danger zone with a redraw is Delaney, and any changes are likely to make her district bluer, not redder. For her district to flip it would probably have to add Carroll County and lose most or all of its portion of Montgomery, and Democratic redistricters are not going to do that. (Neil Parrott and others who challenged the legislature's initial map in court were probably expecting that to happen, resulting in a 6-2 delegation.)
Yes MD-06 needs to be restored to something similar to the way it was prior to the 2022 redistricting. MD-04, 07, and 08 can afford to soak up plenty of Republican territory. For instance, MD-07 can pick up all of Carroll county and MD-08 can pick up the rural parts of Frederick.
Other than MD-06, the least blue of our blue seats in Maryland is MD-02 at D+10. Harris won 57-39 and Moore won it 60-36. The other five seats are even more blue. They have lots of room to shed blue voters.
They're not even at risk of being significantly inconvenienced. They'll deal with the change for a cycle and then move on with life. They should be able to put up with that without complaint when democracy is on the line.
That's one of the weird cases of definitions. D+10 as a PVI would roughly equate to D+20 in margins. So in this case it's correct, but the nomenclature is confusing.
PVI is a comparison of the single party performance relative to the national baseline. So if e.g. candidate A won 52% of the national popular vote, and a district gave A or A's party 55% of the vote consistently, it would work out to a PVI of +3 for A's party. That would correspond, roughly, to a margin of +6 in the two party vote in a 50-50 year, as the expected result would be 53-47.
Simplified, PVI ratings are basically half of the margins.
I understand, just don’t think it’s very helpful. Comparing to what the result was in the last presidential race is by far the best measure of partisanship.
It's more or less meant to convey that while accounting for the fact that the popular vote margin of the prior election isn't locked in place for the next one.
Regarding Maryland specifically, the Cook Political Report places the PVI of MD-06 at D+3, one point more Democratic than they had it before the 2024 election. Both Harris and Delaney (in an open seat race) won it by margins in the six point range.
Trump administration officials on Monday responded to the activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination by threatening to bring the weight of the federal government down on what they alleged was a left-wing network that funds and incites violence, seizing on the killing to make broad and unsubstantiated claims about their political opponents.
The right is trying to equate making historically valid comparisons between prominent modern right-wing political figures here in the U.S. (Trump, Vance, Musk, etc.) to mid-20th century fascists in Europe (Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, etc.) with political terrorism/violence, which is absolutely absurd.
There is no left-wing network, at least not an influential one, that is expressly advocating for political violence in America. Sadly, facts do not matter to the current Administration.
I believe Antifa is being looked at by the Trump Administration but their presence in the U.S. is so nebulous that it’s hard to really to put the blame on them. There are more accusations of being associated with Antifa than real hard evidence the "organization" has anything to do with specific attacks and assassinations.
I put quotation marks in Antifa to clarify what your question is directed towards.
But like you, I don't think Antifa is a real organization by any stretch of the imagination. The Weather Underground was and is exactly what Trump, MAGA and Co. are thinking Antifa is (when it's really not). However, because TWU was disbanded decades ago and had been more relevant at the height of the Vietnam War, racism, etc., all the GOP has these days with regards to "terrorism from the left" is more noise.
For the last time, this is not the Reichstag Fire. This is at worst, our Horst Wessel. Besides, Trump has already been cracking down on political opponents, and Charlie Kirk hasn’t meaningfully changed our trajectory.
Reported for spamming and off topic.
WI-GOV: State Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) is making another run for governor. She came third in the primary in 2018.
https://madison.com/news/state-regional/government-politics/elections/article_21376a23-88fe-4ee0-ac90-768852f84bd4.html#tracking-source=home-top-story
Between the lack of any urgency to counterbalance GOP gerrymandering, the attempted "gotcha" about Chris Van Hollen, and the general "wait and see" approach to fighting Trump's agenda, I gotta borrow a question from the great Bianca del Rio:
"Hakeem Jeffries, what do you do successfully...quickly."
What was the attempted "gotcha"?
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5503579-van-hollen-criticizes-nyc-democrats/
Jeffries and his team are so arrogant. He'd have lined up behind Cuomo had he won the primary almost immediately after, despite his personal failings. The NY Dem Leaders are completely and totally failing us.
Time to primary Jeffries if this is the case.
I know progressives were already targeting him for a primary and I doubt they'd win but I'd like to see him in a close race to bring him down a peg.
Yeah, I agree.
The main goal in primarying establishment Democrats like Jefferies is so they can show more spine and be accountable for being aloof.
Apparently, Pelosi helped tip the scales in CA from saber rattling to actual action.
She’s the only Democrat where I can actually say she understands power and how to use it. We were extremely fortunate to have her as a Minority Leader/Speaker over these last decades. No one else leading the party seems to get it.
Harry Reid I think qualifies too. He killed the filibuster for judicial nominations (albeit way too late) but still did what needed to be done.
Except for Thomas, right? And every freakin senator voted for Scalia.
Reid was quite powerful as Senate Minority Leader and then eventually as Senate Majority Leader during Bush Jr's 2nd term. He really got Democrats in line and focused
Agreed, though Pelosi was absolutely more ruthless with using power whether in the minority or majority, Reid was more successful in getting and maintaining Senate Majorities. They’re both all stars compared to what we have now though.
In the race for the open NC U.S. Senate seat, former governor Roy Cooper still enjoys a 7-point lead over TACO's lapdog Michael Whatley, according to Carolina Forward's recent polling.
https://carolinaforward.org/blog/the-september-carolina-forward-poll/
50-37 Generic ballot in favour of Democrats for State House and US House in suburban areas is even higher than 2018 level suburban margin that voted 52-45 for Dems that year. Even more so for the Senate race at 54-36.
It obviously won’t end up that large as partisans go back to their respective camps and the GOP base solidifies, but even if all undecided voters move to the Republican (extremely unlikely with Trump as president), that would still be hitting around 2018 numbers in a worst case scenario.
If this comes anywhere close to reality in 2026 in NC and likely other swing states (if it’s happening in NC, odds are high it’s happening elsewhere), there’s going to be some massive upsets in the House and probably the Senate too. I would look at NC-11 for example as a possible upset in NC.
The bad news is that so far, the rural vote is behind 2018 numbers that was 38-59 Dem compared to 33-51 for 2026 generic and 36-51 in the Senate race. The urban vote is also way behind. They voted 73-25 in 2018 and are 66-28 for generic and 64-28 Senate.
Obviously undecided voters can shift these closer to the 2018 levels or further away from it as the campaigns begin. The crux of the matter is Democrats have the suburban voters (swing, moderates) and need to work on the urban voters (revving up and turning out our base) and rural voters (winning crossovers from our former ancestral base, now solid for our opponents, where every point we can gain is enormously consequential because there’s so much rural territory in every state).
We didn't have competent D party leadership in NC back in 2018, all the gains made in that year were almost entirely fueled by backlash to TACO (like Rs losing their legislative supermajority and Anita Earls winning her SCONC seat). We had the highest midterm turnout (51%) in the state since 1990 I think.
I hope we can exceed that number next year with Anderson Clayton leading the charge and with Cooper as the US Senate nominee. And not only pick off the Ds that vote with Rs to override Gov Stein's vetoes, but we score a handful of upset wins that force Phil Berger and Destin Hall to actually do their job and work with the opposite party.
Good post, but territory doesn't vote, so the reason to appeal to rural voters is because of votes, not that there is "so much rural territory in every state."
Right. No idea on how the urban/rural demarcation is used here. But if you use Census figure for population not in an urban area (which includes dense urban centers as well as the suburbs around them dense enough), NC is the most rural among competitive states. It has close to 35% of residents not in any urban area, in sheer absolute numbers only second to Texas.
When I say rural territory, I don’t mean land, because it doesn’t vote, but instead rural voters of which there are a lot of.
And there are a considerable amount of rural Democratic voters, like in Warren County (which has a high percentage of Black voters). We should never write them off, especially since their votes still count for statewide races like governor, Senate, state Supreme Court and Court of Appeals.
Are you comparing the actual votes in 2018, to this polls 2026 ballot test numbers?
What is the definition of rural/suburban/urban used by this poll? Is that consistent with the classification to sum up 2018 results?
Very good questions and I admit I don’t know for certain what the answers are. I used the most respected organization in election analysis, pew research for the 2018 numbers and compared them to what this poll said. Obviously NC specifically would have differing numbers slightly than nationwide, but I feel it’s close enough to warrant comparison.
No idea whether the areas grouped by rural/suburban/urban are exactly the same as pew also. It’s a rough estimation analysis, not anything to take to the bank for the reasons you pointed out and more.
I see. NC has a much higher % of voting pool in small towns/rural areas, than the whole country. Also you probably should not extrapolate the average countrywide rural voter to one in rural South.
Also the “urban” electorate is not comparable either. NC has tiny urban cores, that areas within Raleigh or Charlotte city limits would be comparable to suburbs.
My guess out of memory (you should validate using DRA, hehe), in 2018, it should be roughly 50-50 in the rural eastern plains, and roughly R+40 in the rural piedmont. So overall R+20 should be right on the mark.
Try this article from a decade ago. After explosive growth post COVID, NC probably has even more sprawls, I.e., exurbanization.
https://carolinademography.cpc.unc.edu/2016/03/21/the-persistent-rurality-of-north-carolina/
Trump’s net job approval is -2 (48%-50%) while Dem Gov. Josh Stein’s is +21 (51%-30%). Meanwhile, the generic ballot is effectively tied. (R 45%; D46%).
The generic ballot is 45-42 D?
Poorly written on my part.
"North Carolinians are also closely divided on the generic ballots for state legislature and Congress. The congressional race is split by a tenth of a point, with 46% of voters intending to vote for a Republican candidate and 46.1% supporting a Democratic candidate. For the state legislature, 45.2% of voters said they intend to vote for a Republican, while 44.7% said they would vote for a Democrat. " https://www.carolinajournal.com/polls/august-2025-cooper-shows-early-lead-on-whatley-in-us-senate-race/
So Starmer is where some Democrats like Whitmer are looking for inspiration. A centre-right buffoon and one of the biggest failures in the Western world with an approval of -65 lol. This party is cooked.
"The PPI has its eye on talented governors such as Whitmer, Colorado’s Jared Polis, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, Kentucky’s Andy Beshear, newcomers such as North Carolina’s Josh Stein and former governors such as Rhode Island’s Gina Raimondo, who also served in Joe Biden’s cabinet as a commerce secretary.
Shapiro and Whitmer in particular, argued PPI President Will Marshall, embody an “impatience with government bureausclerosis” — a battle occupying Labour in the U.K. Friendly think tanks like to hail Shapiro for fixing a key interstate in just 12 days after it collapsed.
In the U.K., PPI is interested in center-left ministers such as Lammy, Wes Streeting, Bridget Phillipson, John Healey, Ellie Reeves, Alison McGovern, Torsten Bell, Kirsty McNeill and Lucy Rigby, along with new junior ministers such as Kanishka Narayan and Mike Tapp.
Democratic former Congressman Tim Ryan — who ran unsuccessfully for president in 2020 as well as against the now-Vice President JD Vance in a 2022 Ohio Senate race — came to the U.K. in July, facilitated by the PPI, and held briefings with Labour MPs and peers. Ainsley and Deborah Mattinson, a pollster and former Starmer adviser who works with the PPI, presented research on swing voters who are becoming disillusioned with center-left parties.
Ryan also met Starmer at a pre-arranged encounter during an event in parliament and the two spoke about politics, said one person who was there.
Marshall said the PPI-Labour relationship “withered” in the years the hard-left Jeremy Corbyn led Labour, but the history goes back to 1989, when he met Patricia Hewitt, a center-left think tanker in the political wilderness, who would become a Cabinet minister under Tony Blair."
https://www.politico.eu/article/britain-labour-party-democrats-keir-starmer-peter-mandelson-angela-rayner/
entirely unclear to me what your point is here
Labour UK are a complete failure, and it is really delusional to look there for inspiration.
"Whitmer, the Democratic governor of Michigan and potential hopeful in the 2028 U.S. presidential election, and McSweeney, the chief of staff to embattled British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, discussed Labour’s landslide victory in its 2024 general election campaign, said a person who recalled the encounter.
There, Starmer’s chief of staff accepted an eye-catching gift from Whitmer — a £90 “Michigan Wood” pen. The encounter was a small glimpse of the ties that remain between the U.K. prime minister’s aides and the U.S. Democratic Party, still licking its wounds after a resounding election defeat by Donald Trump and the Republicans.
It was also indicative of something else: McSweeney’s personal desire to build a coalition and playbook for center-left parties to win and govern worldwide, with Starmer at its heart, including and going beyond just the U.S. Democrats."
Oh wow, a pen.
Guns are tightly regulated in the UK so sharp objects are the new thing to fear. /s
He’s only trying to pave the way for Reform to take power. Let him be.
They're looking here for inspiration though, not the other way round.
Starmer’s more like Fetterman.
Will Marshall spends his life trying to stamp progressivism out of the Democratic Party. Despite the Orwellian name of his group.
DLC and the Clintons spent a lot of time and resources convincing entire generations that they are “progressives” after the word "liberal" became tainted in the 1980s.
I don't think the entire party is cooked, but what is wrong with these people?
If we're being generous, we could argue that they're scared and reaching out for a "simple" escape route towards reliably winning elections. Generally moderating an ideology can open up a party to more new voters, if done smartly and in moderation (pun intended).
The problem that shatters the being generous part here is that Starmer and Labour are an impressively bad option to look to for electoral inspiration. Starmer is overwhelmingly unpopular. Not to mention that Labour's victory in last year's election was, while wide by seat count, paper thin by margins. That victory also relied on Tories having fucked up for four PMs in a row while having their vote fractured in a FPTP system. Looking to Starmer for inspiration is like looking at Carter's victory in 1976 as something replicable rather than being deeply reliant on circumstance.
Less generously, one might argue that they are lacking in core convictions or individual political compass and are going in whatever direction would align with the talking heads on TV and their overpaid consultants push them towards.
Starmer had a plan to win the 2024 election, but as we've found out over the past year plus he had no plan when he got there. I've been an unfortunate critic of Starmer and Labour since they keep stepping on rakes (Peter Mandelson the latest such rake), but it didn't help them that they aren't going to run against a still discredited and hate Tory party in 2029.
They'll be running against Reform which like their Canadian namesake looks likely to coalesce the center right and everything to the right of that in 2029. And you can't accuse Nigel Farage of breaking his promises since he's really only had one major one, getting the UK out of the EU. In that regard he's batting 1.000 with his promises which will be enough in 2029.
"Looking to Starmer for inspiration is like looking at Carter's victory in 1976 as something replicable rather than being deeply reliant on circumstance."
Which US Democrats did too much of in the 1980s, trying to win back Southern voters who voted for Carter and were probably unavailable to any other Democrat, and not doing enough to win over those elsewhere. Bill Clinton, while a Southerner himself, understood that we couldn't base a victory on that region anymore and so helped forge a winning coalition elsewhere, with whatever Southern states we could win as a bonus.
https://punchbowl.news/article/senate/manchin-revenge/
Manchin confirms that he missed the boat to switch to Republicans in 2016 and viciously attacks Democrats.
Nobody is going to read his entirely predictable book except lazy political reporters returning to the same old well.
My favorite comment that I’ve read about his book is that it’s called “Dead Center”…and the cover fittingly shows him to the right.
And their remarks will be forgotten quickly.
Oh no! Anyway
Willy Wonka: "Stop, don't, come back"
"Manchin even declared that he wanted Republicans to win the Senate majority in 2024 due to their support for maintaining the filibuster, saying it was 'the only hope for preserving the Senate as an institution.'"
This will age well when Republicans inevitably end the filibuster.
It will not age well for us if Republicans end the filibuster before us. Trump can turn Kirk's death into the Reichstag Fire and pass enabling laws.
Kirk’s death will not be our Reichstag Fire. Our institutions are a lot stronger than Germany’s were in 1933, and if Trump truly had the ability to pass our version of the Enabling Act, don’t you think he already would have done so?
I think Horst Wessel is a better analogy for Kirk.
That or Ernst vom Rath.
There's certainly an attempt to hold the left collectively responsible for his death, though obviously significantly less extreme than the Kristallnacht.
Republicans do not have the votes to end the filibuster. Otherwise they would have done so at the beginning of the year.
It takes 50+1 votes, they have it, but they do not want to end the filibuster because the next democratic admin will pass PR, DC statehood, John Lewis VRA, public option, independent redistricting etc without it.
Exactly.
What if we shut down the government and push their limits?
Since Moses says that the bill does not restore the ACA and Medicare funding, the government is headed for a shutdown.
You get what you asked for, Mr. Speaker. Hope you lose your primary next year.
My gut feeling is SCOTUS will bless some unilateral move Trump engineers to keep the government open they would have never granted under any other Dem president.
Republicans still know that the filibuster benefits them in net. It transfers power to the minority of voters in an already minority biased institution.
So long as republicans are more motivated most by policies that do not need sweeping legislation, the filibuster advantages them. Substantially. Look at what they're doing now, which is more or less the culmination of a decade of policy dreams for them: gutting government programs and agencies, looting the country, and stonewalling our previous programs. All of that is doable with either reconciliation, SCOTUS, and/or the executive branch. They do not need to remove the filibuster to achieve the majority of their goals.
We are not in the same position. Democrats actually want to create system change through legislation. Even at the moderate end of the party, our goals require enabling legislation that is more complex than the purely budgetary items that will survive reconciliation.
If republicans think they can hold onto power long enough they'll kill it anyway, or if enough of their caucus has generational changeover.
From our side this isn't a great tradeoff. Our historic inability to get things done this century, while often with good political reasons, is increasingly leaving our potential voters dissatisfied with us. "Vote dem, we'll do nothing instead of make things worse" is not a great rallying cry, but it's what I'm seeing more and more people think of us as.
Also, more broadly, no matter what policies you support shouldn’t 50% plus 1 be enough to pass them? It was enough to elect the members. Washington has it in its head that 60 is some magic number of approval. We should pass whatever we want whenever we have 50 seats again.
I don't expect them to end the filibuster. If they thought it would benefit them, they would have already done it. At least enough of them like the filibuster because it eliminates the pressure to pass bills that are popular among the Republican base but unpopular overall.
I guess this is the analogue to Republicans waiting until they retire from political office to criticize the Republican Party, and it figures to have even less effect because there's only one of him and he's influential, if at all, only in West Virginia. Thank you for your service in the Senate, Mr. Manchin, and I guess you'll do whatever makes you the most money now...
I hope an Orca destroys his yacht. Centristly, of course.
The orcas always aim for the center of the hull. Split the yacht right down the middle...
But he at the same time got both the infrastructure bill and Inflation Reduction Act passed in the Senate.
Manchin: “Yeah, I know. Those were great bills but I was not helping the Democratic Party in this case. I had concerns that weren’t being addressed by Democrats and I got them addressed before the bills got passed in Congress and Biden signed them into law.”
not at all surprised to hear that about Yglesias. Every interaction I've ever had with him in person (Netroots a long time ago) and online, he's been a smug self centered jerk.
What is this regarding? Nothing turned up from my Google search.
Edit: For those who are also wondering, RL Miller was referencing this: https://bsky.app/profile/the-downballot.com/post/3lyv5qmmkik2d
He screenshotted The Downballot without crediting them.
When?
https://bsky.app/profile/the-downballot.com/post/3lyv5qmmkik2d
So typical of him!
Former Illinois Governor Jim Edgar (R-Charleston), the last downstater of any party affiliation to hold the Illinois governorship, died this weekend at the age of 79.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/former-illinois-gov-jim-edgar-a-popular-two-term-republican-dies-at-79/ar-AA1Mxv9E?ocid=BingNewsSerp
Edgar was a center-right governor. In his later life, Edgar was critical of the GOP's rightward lurch in Illinois and nationally, even endorsing Kamala Harris's presidential bid in 2024.
One of the few Illinois Governors not to spend some time in prison...
(Also, he supported Biden back in 2020 as well as Harris in 2024.)
Edgar worked for years after serving to improve governance in Illinois through his Edgar Fellows program, which trained policymakers across the state from both parties on how to lead. He was involved with the program pretty much until the day he died (The fundraising dinner was last Tuesday. A former staffer relayed a message over the phone from him from the hospital).
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/15/farm-labor-shortage-pennsylvania-trump-immigration-00560820
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/15/somos-poll-00563264
https://english.elpais.com/usa/2025-09-14/floridas-cubans-are-now-divided-on-trump-he-acts-like-fidel.html?
LAMF
I’ll be curious to see how the latter story affects TX’s new map.
Certainly, we won’t expect Cubans in FL to vote for the GOP in high numbers like in 2024 because of the mixed feelings about Trump.
This is an opportunity for Democrats.
The “I got mine, but screw you” attitude of Americans and immigrants, especially Cubans doesn’t give me much hope and the article itself says that a re-poll of the electorate doesn’t reveal any major shifts in support from 2024.
I agree it’s an opportunity, but I really doubt they’re going to shift much considering how conservative and indoctrinated they are against “socialist dictatorships” from communist Cuba. This feels like something we want to be true, rather than it actually being true. I’d love to be wrong fwiw.
Well, it's not as if Democrats need the Cuban vote to make most of the gains in the House and Senate next year. However, the Democratic Party should be leading by example and playing the long game even if it doesn't result in immediate success in the near future say in the 2026 midterms or the 2028 presidential election year.
I agree that Cubans are going to continue being a difficult voting demographic for precisely the reasons you pointed out. I still think Democrats (especially FL Democrats) need to be more united on the issue with Cuba but it's harder when Trump is POTUS and trying to balance the concerns with Cubans/Cuban-Americans at the same time.
Providence, RI Mayor:
https://www.providencejournal.com/story/news/politics/2025/09/15/david-morales-providence-mayor-race-2026-election-brett-smiley/86163299007/
State Rep. David Morales, a DSA and WFP affiliate, is the latest progressive candidate running for a mayorship, this time against incumbent Brett Smiley.
Don’t know if anyone noticed this but Substack was also down for like an hour.
Anybody have the DRA links or presidential numbers for the new MO gerrymander? I live in KC, so I'm eager to see what our chances are in any of the three districts.
The least red was R +18 in 2024, which includes KC east of Troost. I also live in KC and unfortunately I don’t think Dems will have much of a chance in any of the new districts.
MD redistricting, from Punchbowl News.
"But redistricting is a deeply personal issue. Several members of the delegation would have to cede Democratic voters to make Harris’ seat blue. Reps. Kweisi Mfume in Baltimore, Johnny Olszewski in Baltimore County and Sarah Elfreth in the Annapolis area could see their seats change the most in redistricting.
And any new map will likely have to shore up Democratic Rep. April Delaney in western Maryland, who has the most competitive of the eight seats."
Honestly, if the congressional incumbents are worried about giving up Democratic territory, they're being babies about it. Most of their districts can lose a lot of Democratic voters without being in any danger of flipping red.
The one incumbent who could really fall into the danger zone with a redraw is Delaney, and any changes are likely to make her district bluer, not redder. For her district to flip it would probably have to add Carroll County and lose most or all of its portion of Montgomery, and Democratic redistricters are not going to do that. (Neil Parrott and others who challenged the legislature's initial map in court were probably expecting that to happen, resulting in a 6-2 delegation.)
Yes MD-06 needs to be restored to something similar to the way it was prior to the 2022 redistricting. MD-04, 07, and 08 can afford to soak up plenty of Republican territory. For instance, MD-07 can pick up all of Carroll county and MD-08 can pick up the rural parts of Frederick.
Other than MD-06, the least blue of our blue seats in Maryland is MD-02 at D+10. Harris won 57-39 and Moore won it 60-36. The other five seats are even more blue. They have lots of room to shed blue voters.
They're not even at risk of being significantly inconvenienced. They'll deal with the change for a cycle and then move on with life. They should be able to put up with that without complaint when democracy is on the line.
I’d keep MD-02, MD-03, and MD-05 basically as is. MD-04, MD-07, and MD-08 can all shed about 10 points of Dem performance.
That’s why D+10 is kind of an irrelevant stat. It’s really D+18.. Kamala’s margin. Partisanship compared to other states/races is kinda useless IMO.
That's one of the weird cases of definitions. D+10 as a PVI would roughly equate to D+20 in margins. So in this case it's correct, but the nomenclature is confusing.
PVI is a comparison of the single party performance relative to the national baseline. So if e.g. candidate A won 52% of the national popular vote, and a district gave A or A's party 55% of the vote consistently, it would work out to a PVI of +3 for A's party. That would correspond, roughly, to a margin of +6 in the two party vote in a 50-50 year, as the expected result would be 53-47.
Simplified, PVI ratings are basically half of the margins.
I understand, just don’t think it’s very helpful. Comparing to what the result was in the last presidential race is by far the best measure of partisanship.
It's more or less meant to convey that while accounting for the fact that the popular vote margin of the prior election isn't locked in place for the next one.
Regarding Maryland specifically, the Cook Political Report places the PVI of MD-06 at D+3, one point more Democratic than they had it before the 2024 election. Both Harris and Delaney (in an open seat race) won it by margins in the six point range.
National Research is run by Adam Geller, one of Trump’s pollsters.
I suspect the stealing of credit is pretty widespread on Substack and I'm not sure if there any mechanisms to handle that. Continue the good work.
Trump administration officials on Monday responded to the activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination by threatening to bring the weight of the federal government down on what they alleged was a left-wing network that funds and incites violence, seizing on the killing to make broad and unsubstantiated claims about their political opponents.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/us/politics/jd-vance-charlie-kirk-show.html?smid=url-share
Reichstag fire.
The right is trying to equate making historically valid comparisons between prominent modern right-wing political figures here in the U.S. (Trump, Vance, Musk, etc.) to mid-20th century fascists in Europe (Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, etc.) with political terrorism/violence, which is absolutely absurd.
There is no left-wing network, at least not an influential one, that is expressly advocating for political violence in America. Sadly, facts do not matter to the current Administration.
My fear is, who will they target? What “groups” do they have in mind? The DSA? The Working Families Party? The ACLU? Planned Parenthood?
I believe Antifa is being looked at by the Trump Administration but their presence in the U.S. is so nebulous that it’s hard to really to put the blame on them. There are more accusations of being associated with Antifa than real hard evidence the "organization" has anything to do with specific attacks and assassinations.
Is there an "Antifa" organization? I thought it was just a disjointed collection of groups that kind of engage in fission-fusion type dynamics.
I put quotation marks in Antifa to clarify what your question is directed towards.
But like you, I don't think Antifa is a real organization by any stretch of the imagination. The Weather Underground was and is exactly what Trump, MAGA and Co. are thinking Antifa is (when it's really not). However, because TWU was disbanded decades ago and had been more relevant at the height of the Vietnam War, racism, etc., all the GOP has these days with regards to "terrorism from the left" is more noise.
For the last time, this is not the Reichstag Fire. This is at worst, our Horst Wessel. Besides, Trump has already been cracking down on political opponents, and Charlie Kirk hasn’t meaningfully changed our trajectory.