Granted, California is uber blue already (Trump’s attacks on the state and refusal to help with the wildfires haven’t exactly endeared them there), so this isn’t particularly surprising.
I'm impressed. Going by past performance, I thought this would be a crapshoot. It also doesn't inspire confidence that the strongest voice against it is Schwarzenegger (granted he's defending his legacy). What's he gonna do? Call the people who support it "girlie men"? Seriously though, I doubt he's gonna cash out a good deal of his investments just to run a super pac campaign against it at this stage.
about his decision to run against John Cornyn: "Now that Wesley has chosen personal ambition over holding President Trump's House Majority there will be a full vetting of his record.""
I'm not sure I see the logic in that. Hunt has the same establishment flavor as Cornyn. I suspect he'd wind up helping Paxton. I'm still torn on who I want to win this primary. Paxton would be easier to beat but he'd still be the favorite and then we'd have him as a Senator, which is much worse that Cornyn.
Yeah, that's a totally rational position. The only real difference I could imagine in voting is that Cornyn at least appears to have some respect for the institution, whereas Paxton is burn it all down.
If Texas didn't have a runoff it probably would help Cornyn. Texas does have a runoff, so it precludes the possibility of Cornyn winning with a plurality while the anti-incumbent vote is split.
What Hunt running adds is a major chance that there will be a runoff. That means a longer, more expensive, more bitter primary for republicans.
I think our best shot by far is with Paxton but I'm not ready to say it's our only chance.
It's not unreasonable to think that their primary could be bitter enough, expensive enough, and damaging enough to give us a credible shot. Especially if it goes to a runoff.
All of them will run to the right and attack each other viciously to satisfy their extremist MAGA base—unlike our primary, where Talarico has promised to keep things civil. The only one in our primary running a scorched-earth campaign is Terry Virts. Cornyn would come out badly damaged—and already is, to some extent—in the eyes of the MAGA base, while Hunt is part of the nihilistic Freedom Caucus. And Paxton is, well, Paxton.
"Our democracy is under siege, cowards in Washington are bowing to Donald Trump, and Kentuckians are paying the price. Kentuckians deserve someone battle-tested and ready to fight for them on day one. I’ve spent my life stepping up when the mission was tough and the stakes were high, first as a Marine and now for Kentucky. I’m ready to complete the mission. Will you join me?
Unlike some on the left, I'm not a critic of Amy McGrath. Kentucky is a deep red state primarily because Trump and Republicans remain highly popular there, with a +19 approval rating. It's not about whether the Democratic candidate is pro-life or pro-choice, as Ezra Klein might suggest. In a federal, nationalized race in a Southern state—especially without the dynamic of a veto-proof legislature to counterbalance a liberal governor—I just don't see the state flipping blue.
Personally, I think McGrath does better as an organizer and spokesperson than as a candidate, but she should have some level of name recognition, which Logan Forsythe, Joel Willett, and even Pamela Stevenson are less likely to have at this point. (Stevenson was our candidate for AG in 2023, but so much attention goes to the candidates for Governor that downballot candidates can be all but invisible.) I will keep *all* options open when it comes to voting in the May primary.
The main issue I see here with Amy McGrath is that she went from losing the KY-06 race to Rep. Andy Barr to 3.2% back in 2018 to running in the Senate race in 2020 where she lost the Senate race to Mitch McConnell at around 20% points. Additionally, McGrath made several mistakes in her Senate campaign over the course of time.
Since KY is a red state where it’s a tough nut to crack for Democrats at the federal level, we certainly have nothing to lose by McGrath running for the Senate again. However, I think she would be better suited to challenge Barr again in KY-06. She might have had a chance against him in 2020 considering how small the margin of her loss was.
That makes Amy McGrath’s decision to jump in the Senate race even more puzzling.
The probability of her winning KY-06 is greater than the Senate race now that Andy Barr is in the GOP primary race. If McGrath couldn’t unseat him in the House back in 2018, what makes her so sure she has a chance in the Senate race?
We already have a good candidate for KY-06 in Cherlynn Stevenson, who was Democratic Caucus Chair in the state House, and narrowly (as in, by 125 votes) lost her bid for a fourth term in a swingy, closely-divided Lexington-area district. There are three other Democrats running, who I don't know enough about to comment on (I'm in KY-03), but one of the last things any of them needs is to be leadfooted.
We have good candidates in the Senate race, too, but none of the others have the kind of profile that can get Ye Media, yea, even outlets like this one, to sit up and take notice that Democrats are contesting that open seat. It may be better that they have to compete against someone like McGrath rather than have the primary remain a battle of relative unknowns.
Also, /this is not 2020/. It won't be a contest against a well-known six-term incumbent with a history of raising gobs and more gobs of cash. Mind, Morris has a few gobs of personal cash, and Barr starts out being able to use the warchest he built in the House - but both of them need to work on getting known statewide.
I can’t comment on Cherylynn Stevenson’s candidacy in KY-06 but it certainly helps to have a fresh face instead of the same candidates from before.
Since you’re based in KY, you certainly know the state better than me. I was not impressed that much by Amy McGrath’s 2020 Senate candidacy even while she had an impressive background coming in. She is indeed a high profile Senate candidate but it’s still a risk nominating her after losing the House race in 2018 and the last Senate race.
Then again, if McGrath is planning to significantly change her Senate campaign this time ago, an open race is the best shot she has at doing so.
She will lose, but maybe, just maybe, she can pull Stevenson over the finish line in KY-06? Should just spend all of the millions she will raise in that district alone.
I like seeing people step up, I just hope that she doesn't serve as a money vacuum like she did last time. Not truly her fault and a lot of the money donated to her last time might not have been donated at all otherwise. Would still prefer to see her get a bit less attention this time around so that more competitive senate seats can raise the giant gobs of cash.
"Last week Jesse Watters spoke to man named Eric who claimed he was formerly a member of antifa. Two years ago Watters interviewed Ramon "Mundo" Mendoza, a former Mexican Mafia member. Some folks thought the men looked similar. This is a side by side comparison. 🤷♀️"
MO Republicans are high on their own supply. Voters aren't stupid.
If voters manage to get Respect MO Voters on the ballot (hopefully OH voters do the same) and enshrined into the state constitution, maybe they'll stop trying to undo popular things voters want.
Since there hasn't been any progress on ending the government shutdown, do we think it's possible that the government will still be shut down by the time of the elections next month?
If so, it seems to me that a strong closing message for Democrats in both New Jersey and Virginia would be to vote for Democrats to send a message to Trump that he needs to end the shutdown by agreeing to extend the health care subsidies (which is already a popular position). Seems like that could help get more Democrats to the polls, particularly in New Jersey where Democrats are apparently less engaged.
Good luck with that. The military swear an oath to the constitution, not Trump. Their leaders are tactical experts who are far smarter than Trump to boot. Of course there are also many MAGA military members too, but I don’t think Trump has the military support he thinks he has. (Remember the LA disaster?)
I keep saying this, but the day he leaves this Earth will be a day of global celebration. It'll make the celebrations on 11/7/2020 look like a children's birthday party.
We don't know what America will look like by that point. I firmly believe Trump alone can hold his coalition together. Others who have tried have failed, and I certainly don't believe Vance can pull it off -- he's widely despised and almost sunk Trump 2024. I wouldn't make any post-Trump predictions at all yet -- anything could happen. For all we know his supporters could think the "deep state" poisoned him or some crap. Who knows.
I agree with this. I see no one on the horizon who has the right combination of hatred, childish vindictiveness and charisma to do it. I really do think MAGA falls apart once he's off the scene.
I don't fully agree at all. Republicans, seeing how much they've been able to get away with, will definitely elect someone even worse in the future, who is more politically savvy and more likely to turn the country into a totalitarian state. A lot has to be done to try to safeguard the country against that, if we indeed escape it this time, but nothing will fully prevent it. I'm not suggesting it'll happen immediately, but if it doesn't happen in 2028, watch out in 2032 and 2036! And after that. The Republicans didn't nominate Trump right after GW Bush, but there's no question in my mind that the total non-prosecution and normalization of Bush and his co-conspirators emboldened Trump, and moreover, Bush's election theft via the Supreme Court caused a much worse court. Etc.
I think that's different from stevk's point. A future republican will create a successful electoral coalition to win a presidential election. That's all but guaranteed. That future republican will probably be absolutely horrendous, and quite possibly worse than Trump. That's also very likely.
But, it's unlikely that there will be a successful handoff from the MAGA coalition to the next successful republican. Just as Trump's coalition was different from Bush Jr's, which was different from Reagan's coalition. Or as how Biden's coalition wasn't the same as Obama's which wasn't the same as Clinton's. This will be exacerbated in this case because MAGA is fundamentally a cult of personality, and those are particularly fragile when the central personality is no longer present. MAGA will (probably) fall apart, but that doesn't mean we'll be safe from far right conservatives going forward.
Only a small portion of the populace knew who Kirk was before his death. Everyone knows who Trump is. The former made it a lot easier to control responses to his death because so many people were forming first opinions.
I do agree to an extent though. That public facing figures will see the same kind of response. The difference is that non-public people will be able to be happy about it so long as they aren't absolutely brain dead about it online.
Also, the fact that Kirk was assassinated made it easier to crack down on that. Trump dying of natural causes won’t get the same response from the right.
Obviously no one wants this to happen but the GOP, but I’ve been thinking about the threats to send ICE to the Super Bowl, and I’m wondering if, if they actually do it, it’d help the Dems. The Super Bowl is one of the most watched TV events in the country, by many who are not involved in politics in particular. Imagine ICE just arresting people on live TV, or even covertly with media attention. Think of what people all around the US would think if they saw that. I suspect it could become a political awakening for a lot of people, like how Trump term 1 was for many, or how the fight against SOPA/PIPA in 2012 was for me. This would then benefit the Dems via GOP backlash.
None of this is guaranteed of course, and it would be awful if it happened. But I do wonder. Thoughts?
The Super Bowl broadcast rights for this year are held by NBC, although the Super Bowl halftime show is controlled by Apple Music and broadcast on whatever network the Super Bowl broadcast rights holder is in any given year.
The backlash would be greatest if Trump somehow pressured Apple, NBC, and/or the NFL into pulling Bad Bunny, who is a natural-born U.S. citizen, from the Super Bowl halftime show at any point before the show begins or if ICE arrested Bad Bunny on stage, and I'm saying this as someone who doesn't care for the kind of music that typically gets played at the Super Bowl halftime show and likes to listen to genres like classic country (pre-2000 or so) and heartland rock.
Counterprogramming the Super Bowl halftime show is nothing new, but Turning Point USA is planning some kind of counter-event to the Super Bowl halftime show for the first time featuring "Christian" (i.e., white Christian nationalist/supremacist) singers, although a singer/musician lineup for their counter-event hasn't been named yet.
What was the basis for the arrests of 30,000 Jews on Kristallnacht? Don't expect the Trump Administration to always have legal reasons for arrests, and note that they may eventually release people, then rearrest them, etc. Look at what happened to Kilmar Abreu.
Both would have done a lot of damage to the open internet and expand censorship. Thankfully they failed. The legislation would made websites wholly responsible for user generated content, and would have placed a lot of power in the government to remove access to sites deemed offending. Considering our current political climate it is not hard to imagine how such a power could have been abused.
I'll believe ICE is a net negative for Republicans when I see it. I suspect even those who express "concern" about their tactics are still grateful for their presence and are very unlikely to vote differently in November 2026 because of ICE arrests during the Super Bowl in February 2026.
I hate how this will be the $1B Senate race next year. The amount of negative Cooper ads from Whatley's dark money PAC buddies will be unbearable here.
Imagine how much more $$$ Rs will pour here in NC in 2028 if they lose the Senate and SCONC races next year. They want to keep the EVs for the President, protect a very vulnerable Ted Budd, their MAGA majority on SCONC (Berger Jr., Barringer, Newby are up for re-election), as well as the Circuit Court of Appeals idiot who tried stealing Justice Riggs' seat last year.
It's the North Carolina Court of Appeals (circuit is, largely though not always, a federal court designation), but yes. Although I suspect Judge Jefferson Griffin may decide he has other electoral plans for higher office. Also, note that all three Democrats on the NC Ct. App. are, I believe, up in 2026. That appears to be well-timed!
Trump-aligned (although she seems to be more anti-anti-Trump than a true Trump crony) Bari Weiss has now been installed as the new de facto head of CBS News as that organization's editor in chief. Weiss will directly report to Paramount CEO and Trump crony David Ellison (the son of Oracle co-founder and Trump crony Larry Ellison), not the now-nominal president of CBS News, Tom Cibrowski.
Reportedly, Weiss, whose prior experience in media includes a controversial stint at The New York Times, as well as founding The Free Press (a right-leaning competitor to HuffPost is how I would best describe it, but that might not be the best description of it), gained a ton of stock in the merged Paramount-Skydance company (I'm not sure how much stock Weiss now owns in Paramount). IIRC, The Free Press was acquired by Paramount as part of the Trump Administration-approved Paramount-Skydance merger.
In any case, CBS News is expected to undergo a drastic rightward shift in its political coverage and editorial bent, but it's not clear exactly how far to the right they'll go under Weiss and the younger Ellison, although I would definitely expect a lot of people who are currently at CBS News to not be employed there much longer.
Which is funny cause she partially invented or atleast accelerated cancel culture and the idea of safe spaces, "words are violence" based on the forbidden issue during her university days.
I wouldn't expect them to do anything to alienate their current audience, which is normies who are less political than people who watch MSNBC or CNN. If they started doing what Fox does they'd lose their audience. I think they'll just do 90% of what they were doing before, but the missing 10% would be stuff the regime would complain about.
Former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. is launching a comeback bid for his old seat. Apparently he’s the frontrunner so far. Not helpful to our image to have disgraced people like him attempting comebacks.
If he wins the primary, we lose the seat. This district isn’t like others—it’s trending right, not left. As much as I dislike Golden, he’s the only one who can actually hold it.
I don't buy it; how strong would the wave have to be? This is just going to be Kurt Schrader (Manchin of Oregon) vs McLeod Skinner 2.0 in a much redder seat.
I agree on the conclusion but I think the comparison to OR-05 isn't the best.
That's a semi-blue seat that we lost by 2 points in 2022 after the national party gave up on our candidate, probably in no small part due to her primarying the incumbent. Two points is enough that she probably would have lost anyway, but it was a factor. We then immediately won it back last year by 2 points. Considering how it all worked out I would say that we came out ahead eventually, replacing a bad incumbent with a better one, without changing control of power in DC in between.
ME-02 is actually red, and decently red at that. Once we lose that seat it's probably gone for good. If we lose ME-02 next year we're unlikely to win it back until/unless there is a political realignment or the state's redistricting changes (unlikely, due to Maine's constitution).
ME-02 is Trump + 10, which is almost as red as Ohio, Florida, and Iowa are at this point. Golden is the only Dem with a prayer of holding this seat in this era of polarization, even in a blue wave. I’d much rather have him than someone like LePage or another Republican in this seat.
If Dunlap wins the primary, Dems are throwing away this seat.
my parents live in maine, I spend a good portion of time there, and I had never heard of matt dunlap until about two weeks ago on this page. Not a shot he holds the seat, and I cannot stand Golden. But back when we consistently won elections there were an awful lot of people in our coalition I wouldn't have been able to stand either so let's hold our nose and make sure we don't let a seat slip away
The one possible hope is that LePage is so nuts, he may have a hard time against even Dunlap. But given how red the district is, that may be a tall order anyway.
I hate Golden but I don't see a realistic path to holding his seat otherwise.
What about a little mid-cycle gerrymandering to balance out the two districts? One district is basically D+22 and the other R+8 or so. Seems we ought to be able to move some voters around to make ME-02 stay competitive over time. Guessing the votes aren't there in the Maine Senate.
Maine's constitution requires a 2/3 majority to draw districts. A mid decade redistricting is completely off the table. Even a better map after 2030 is highly unlikely.
The best chance of that is if the state legislature fails to pass anything and then a court imposes such a map. But if a court is drawing Maine's maps after 2030 they would likely draw a least-change map. So while it's technically possible it's unlikely.
Ah, I was wondering why Maine wasn't part of the conversation.
I do think we ought to be doing this in Illinois. Even if they can't snatch any more seats, we could at least shore up the 4 seats Harris carried by single digits (and two more by <12). Rhode Island could do the same, with its Harris+22 seat sitting next to a Harris+7 seat. Oregon could shore up its competitive seats, if it they don't try to take the only R seat left. Maybe none of these seats will be in danger prior to the next redistricting in 2032, maybe they will.
Republicans in Utah advanced a new congressional map favored to help their party retain total political control in the Beehive State.
The state’s Redistricting Committee voted 8-to-2 along party lines Monday to advance one of five proposed maps to the legislature for a full vote, as part of a court-ordered process to select a new congressional map.
The map chosen by the panel was the only one of the five proposed maps in which the GOP retains a partisan advantage in all four of Utah’s congressional districts.
Standard republican MO with this. Drag the legal process out as much as possible. They consistently get away with using illegal gerrymanders for more than half of each decade due to this. I expect the judge won't let them get away with it in this case, but it costs them nothing to try. The judge isn't going to pick a bluer map than they would have otherwise, in order to punish Utah republicans for bad behavior.
If I remember right, even the map that has a republican advantage in all 4 districts has 2 districts trump won by single digits. They are risking Dems winning 2 seats in a blue environment for a small partisan advantage. Maybe they think that’s better than a 3 solid red, 1 solid blue map.
To be honest I think that's a smart strategic tradeoff, if it's the option at hand.
Those two seats would be very likely to be won by republicans in any environment where republicans could hope to win a majority in the house. That's the most important time to win a seat. Obviously they would prefer to win the seats in any electoral environment. Once that option is taken away, the next-best one for them is seats that will only be lost when it probably doesn't change the speaker of the house anyway.
True but it also expands the map republicans/the NRCC will have to play defense on. They’ll have to spend resources to defend 2 seats every election vs do nothing in a solid 3-1 map where the result is a forgone conclusion. But that’s a national republican party problem I suppose.
That's a smart way to look at it, I just don't think they're looking at it that way. They are trying to do the minimal amount to comply with the judge (which I'm not even sure this does) while still keeping all the seats red. I bet we win the Trump +2 district this year, not sure about the other one.
All five options should be rejected because of how they split Salt Lake County. The County has more than enough population for one Congressional district, so it has to be split regardless. However, from a COI standpoint, the best thing to do is have a district entirely within Salt Lake County and put the rest of the County in another district.
This is the map of Utah that I drew, which makes way more sense than the five options in the Salt Lake Tribune article:
California Redistricting (Prop 50): 54% Yes, 36% No.
"When read the exact language that will be on the Nov. 4 ballot, 56% of voters said they would vote yes, while 39% said they would vote no."
976 LV, by co/efficient (R)
https://punchbowl.news/article/campaigns/prop-50-polling/
A good sign, hopefully.
Granted, California is uber blue already (Trump’s attacks on the state and refusal to help with the wildfires haven’t exactly endeared them there), so this isn’t particularly surprising.
Got my ballot over the weekend
Same. Planning to get it in the mail ASAP.
I'm impressed. Going by past performance, I thought this would be a crapshoot. It also doesn't inspire confidence that the strongest voice against it is Schwarzenegger (granted he's defending his legacy). What's he gonna do? Call the people who support it "girlie men"? Seriously though, I doubt he's gonna cash out a good deal of his investments just to run a super pac campaign against it at this stage.
"Rep. Wesley Hunt is running for US Senate in Texas, defying GOP leaders to take on Cornyn and Paxton - AP
“What I’ve seen in polling over the past few months is people want an alternative, and I’m going to give it to them,” Hunt said in AP interview
https://apnews.com/article/senate-election-2026-texas-hunt-cornyn-paxton-450ee0f067273ca75de9268cf928d0be
https://t.co/G7956AQR9H "
https://x.com/IAPolls2022/status/1975153921741279607
"This thing is almost definitely going to a runoff, just a matter of which of Cornyn/Paxton/Hunt makes it.
Either way it’s going to be extremely nasty and expensive.
Which is great."
https://x.com/admcrlsn/status/1975166694608830479
Always room for one more on the Crazy Train.
"The conventional wisdom is that Wesley Hunt should help Cornyn.
It's another non-incumbent getting in, which usually splits up the limited non-incumbent vote.
But a TSU-YouGov poll last month showed Paxton leading Cornyn by 5 in races both without (44-39) and with Hunt (35-30)."
https://x.com/AaronBlake/status/1975183753019346986
"Pretty veiled threat from
@NRSC
to
@WesleyHuntTX
about his decision to run against John Cornyn: "Now that Wesley has chosen personal ambition over holding President Trump's House Majority there will be a full vetting of his record.""
https://x.com/EricMGarcia/status/1975188555321253943
Doesn't sound like the NRSC thinks this helps Cornyn
I'm not sure I see the logic in that. Hunt has the same establishment flavor as Cornyn. I suspect he'd wind up helping Paxton. I'm still torn on who I want to win this primary. Paxton would be easier to beat but he'd still be the favorite and then we'd have him as a Senator, which is much worse that Cornyn.
They all vote the same way in the end, especially when it really matters. Better to have a total quack making them all look bad.
Yeah, that's a totally rational position. The only real difference I could imagine in voting is that Cornyn at least appears to have some respect for the institution, whereas Paxton is burn it all down.
Who will run for Hunt's Congressional seat?
If Texas didn't have a runoff it probably would help Cornyn. Texas does have a runoff, so it precludes the possibility of Cornyn winning with a plurality while the anti-incumbent vote is split.
What Hunt running adds is a major chance that there will be a runoff. That means a longer, more expensive, more bitter primary for republicans.
It still needs to end with Paxton victorious in the runoff for Dems to have a shot
I think our best shot by far is with Paxton but I'm not ready to say it's our only chance.
It's not unreasonable to think that their primary could be bitter enough, expensive enough, and damaging enough to give us a credible shot. Especially if it goes to a runoff.
All of them will run to the right and attack each other viciously to satisfy their extremist MAGA base—unlike our primary, where Talarico has promised to keep things civil. The only one in our primary running a scorched-earth campaign is Terry Virts. Cornyn would come out badly damaged—and already is, to some extent—in the eyes of the MAGA base, while Hunt is part of the nihilistic Freedom Caucus. And Paxton is, well, Paxton.
It's Texas -- it can get bloody and mean but the GOP would still be favored.
I would not be so sure; if there is any cycle when Texas can go blue again, it's 2026. I don't think the 2020-24 trends will hold.
"Our democracy is under siege, cowards in Washington are bowing to Donald Trump, and Kentuckians are paying the price. Kentuckians deserve someone battle-tested and ready to fight for them on day one. I’ve spent my life stepping up when the mission was tough and the stakes were high, first as a Marine and now for Kentucky. I’m ready to complete the mission. Will you join me?
https://amymcgrath.com"
https://x.com/AmyMcGrathKY/status/1975153278938664963
Unlike some on the left, I'm not a critic of Amy McGrath. Kentucky is a deep red state primarily because Trump and Republicans remain highly popular there, with a +19 approval rating. It's not about whether the Democratic candidate is pro-life or pro-choice, as Ezra Klein might suggest. In a federal, nationalized race in a Southern state—especially without the dynamic of a veto-proof legislature to counterbalance a liberal governor—I just don't see the state flipping blue.
https://civiqs.com/results/approve_president_trump_2025?uncertainty=true&zoomIn=true&annotations=true&home_state=Kentucky
Personally, I think McGrath does better as an organizer and spokesperson than as a candidate, but she should have some level of name recognition, which Logan Forsythe, Joel Willett, and even Pamela Stevenson are less likely to have at this point. (Stevenson was our candidate for AG in 2023, but so much attention goes to the candidates for Governor that downballot candidates can be all but invisible.) I will keep *all* options open when it comes to voting in the May primary.
The main issue I see here with Amy McGrath is that she went from losing the KY-06 race to Rep. Andy Barr to 3.2% back in 2018 to running in the Senate race in 2020 where she lost the Senate race to Mitch McConnell at around 20% points. Additionally, McGrath made several mistakes in her Senate campaign over the course of time.
Since KY is a red state where it’s a tough nut to crack for Democrats at the federal level, we certainly have nothing to lose by McGrath running for the Senate again. However, I think she would be better suited to challenge Barr again in KY-06. She might have had a chance against him in 2020 considering how small the margin of her loss was.
Barr is not running for re-election, but for the R nomination for the open Senate seat.
That makes Amy McGrath’s decision to jump in the Senate race even more puzzling.
The probability of her winning KY-06 is greater than the Senate race now that Andy Barr is in the GOP primary race. If McGrath couldn’t unseat him in the House back in 2018, what makes her so sure she has a chance in the Senate race?
We already have a good candidate for KY-06 in Cherlynn Stevenson, who was Democratic Caucus Chair in the state House, and narrowly (as in, by 125 votes) lost her bid for a fourth term in a swingy, closely-divided Lexington-area district. There are three other Democrats running, who I don't know enough about to comment on (I'm in KY-03), but one of the last things any of them needs is to be leadfooted.
We have good candidates in the Senate race, too, but none of the others have the kind of profile that can get Ye Media, yea, even outlets like this one, to sit up and take notice that Democrats are contesting that open seat. It may be better that they have to compete against someone like McGrath rather than have the primary remain a battle of relative unknowns.
Also, /this is not 2020/. It won't be a contest against a well-known six-term incumbent with a history of raising gobs and more gobs of cash. Mind, Morris has a few gobs of personal cash, and Barr starts out being able to use the warchest he built in the House - but both of them need to work on getting known statewide.
I can’t comment on Cherylynn Stevenson’s candidacy in KY-06 but it certainly helps to have a fresh face instead of the same candidates from before.
Since you’re based in KY, you certainly know the state better than me. I was not impressed that much by Amy McGrath’s 2020 Senate candidacy even while she had an impressive background coming in. She is indeed a high profile Senate candidate but it’s still a risk nominating her after losing the House race in 2018 and the last Senate race.
Then again, if McGrath is planning to significantly change her Senate campaign this time ago, an open race is the best shot she has at doing so.
Would prefer Rocky Adkins but I guess he's not running.
Doesn't look like it, but there's still time. I don't particularly prefer him, but I'm OK with him.
Right messaging, wrong state.
She will lose, but maybe, just maybe, she can pull Stevenson over the finish line in KY-06? Should just spend all of the millions she will raise in that district alone.
Where are you seeing that Stevenson is running for KY-06?
Former state Rep. Cherlynn Stevenson is running for KY-06. Current state Rep. Pamela Stevenson is running for Senate. The two are not related.
Thanks for clarifying.
I like seeing people step up, I just hope that she doesn't serve as a money vacuum like she did last time. Not truly her fault and a lot of the money donated to her last time might not have been donated at all otherwise. Would still prefer to see her get a bit less attention this time around so that more competitive senate seats can raise the giant gobs of cash.
"Last week Jesse Watters spoke to man named Eric who claimed he was formerly a member of antifa. Two years ago Watters interviewed Ramon "Mundo" Mendoza, a former Mexican Mafia member. Some folks thought the men looked similar. This is a side by side comparison. 🤷♀️"
https://x.com/DecodingFoxNews/status/1975104597330157657
It's Rapaport lol.
MO Republicans are high on their own supply. Voters aren't stupid.
If voters manage to get Respect MO Voters on the ballot (hopefully OH voters do the same) and enshrined into the state constitution, maybe they'll stop trying to undo popular things voters want.
IN-SoS: Birch Evans "Beau" Bayh IV, son of Evan Bayh, is running as a Democrat for Indiana Secretary of State!
Secretary of State is an important election in Indiana, because ballot order is determined by the winner of the SoS race in each county.
https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2025/10/06/democrat-beau-bayh-to-run-for-indiana-secretary-of-state/
Hope he's more like his grandfather than his father.
I'd certainly take his dad's electoral performance (pre-2016)
He's on the Republication sex offender registry
Who isn’t at this point?
...who is?
Since there hasn't been any progress on ending the government shutdown, do we think it's possible that the government will still be shut down by the time of the elections next month?
If so, it seems to me that a strong closing message for Democrats in both New Jersey and Virginia would be to vote for Democrats to send a message to Trump that he needs to end the shutdown by agreeing to extend the health care subsidies (which is already a popular position). Seems like that could help get more Democrats to the polls, particularly in New Jersey where Democrats are apparently less engaged.
What do we think?
I think it's possible but unlikely it lasts that long.
It doesn't matter that it goes through Nov. 4. It only matters that it impacts early voting, which has begun in VA and begins in NJ on 10/24.
David Hogg makes first midterms endorsement against an incumbent Democrat
Hogg’s political group is backing state representative Donovan McKinney over congressman Shri Thanedar in Michigan
https://x.com/PollTracker2024/status/1975152091502137754
Hopefully progressives, Detroit’s Black leaders, Hogg, and others will coalesce around McKinney against multi millionaire Thanedar and AIPAC.
I happen to agree with Hogg on this one, but I still wish he would shut up and go away.
Trump to the Navy: "We have to take care of this little gnat that's on our shoulder called the Democrats."
https://x.com/atrupar/status/1974940532410310821
Good luck with that. The military swear an oath to the constitution, not Trump. Their leaders are tactical experts who are far smarter than Trump to boot. Of course there are also many MAGA military members too, but I don’t think Trump has the military support he thinks he has. (Remember the LA disaster?)
I keep saying this, but the day he leaves this Earth will be a day of global celebration. It'll make the celebrations on 11/7/2020 look like a children's birthday party.
See how they policed people's responses to Charlie Kirk's death. Imagine what they will do with celebrations of Trump's.
We don't know what America will look like by that point. I firmly believe Trump alone can hold his coalition together. Others who have tried have failed, and I certainly don't believe Vance can pull it off -- he's widely despised and almost sunk Trump 2024. I wouldn't make any post-Trump predictions at all yet -- anything could happen. For all we know his supporters could think the "deep state" poisoned him or some crap. Who knows.
I agree with this. I see no one on the horizon who has the right combination of hatred, childish vindictiveness and charisma to do it. I really do think MAGA falls apart once he's off the scene.
I don't fully agree at all. Republicans, seeing how much they've been able to get away with, will definitely elect someone even worse in the future, who is more politically savvy and more likely to turn the country into a totalitarian state. A lot has to be done to try to safeguard the country against that, if we indeed escape it this time, but nothing will fully prevent it. I'm not suggesting it'll happen immediately, but if it doesn't happen in 2028, watch out in 2032 and 2036! And after that. The Republicans didn't nominate Trump right after GW Bush, but there's no question in my mind that the total non-prosecution and normalization of Bush and his co-conspirators emboldened Trump, and moreover, Bush's election theft via the Supreme Court caused a much worse court. Etc.
I think that's different from stevk's point. A future republican will create a successful electoral coalition to win a presidential election. That's all but guaranteed. That future republican will probably be absolutely horrendous, and quite possibly worse than Trump. That's also very likely.
But, it's unlikely that there will be a successful handoff from the MAGA coalition to the next successful republican. Just as Trump's coalition was different from Bush Jr's, which was different from Reagan's coalition. Or as how Biden's coalition wasn't the same as Obama's which wasn't the same as Clinton's. This will be exacerbated in this case because MAGA is fundamentally a cult of personality, and those are particularly fragile when the central personality is no longer present. MAGA will (probably) fall apart, but that doesn't mean we'll be safe from far right conservatives going forward.
Only a small portion of the populace knew who Kirk was before his death. Everyone knows who Trump is. The former made it a lot easier to control responses to his death because so many people were forming first opinions.
I do agree to an extent though. That public facing figures will see the same kind of response. The difference is that non-public people will be able to be happy about it so long as they aren't absolutely brain dead about it online.
Also, the fact that Kirk was assassinated made it easier to crack down on that. Trump dying of natural causes won’t get the same response from the right.
I'm 100% certain that if Trump dies in office, MAGA will be aflame with conspiracy theories.
Mass civilian slaughter on American soil has always—always—been Trump's desideratum.
Obviously no one wants this to happen but the GOP, but I’ve been thinking about the threats to send ICE to the Super Bowl, and I’m wondering if, if they actually do it, it’d help the Dems. The Super Bowl is one of the most watched TV events in the country, by many who are not involved in politics in particular. Imagine ICE just arresting people on live TV, or even covertly with media attention. Think of what people all around the US would think if they saw that. I suspect it could become a political awakening for a lot of people, like how Trump term 1 was for many, or how the fight against SOPA/PIPA in 2012 was for me. This would then benefit the Dems via GOP backlash.
None of this is guaranteed of course, and it would be awful if it happened. But I do wonder. Thoughts?
The Super Bowl broadcast rights for this year are held by NBC, although the Super Bowl halftime show is controlled by Apple Music and broadcast on whatever network the Super Bowl broadcast rights holder is in any given year.
The backlash would be greatest if Trump somehow pressured Apple, NBC, and/or the NFL into pulling Bad Bunny, who is a natural-born U.S. citizen, from the Super Bowl halftime show at any point before the show begins or if ICE arrested Bad Bunny on stage, and I'm saying this as someone who doesn't care for the kind of music that typically gets played at the Super Bowl halftime show and likes to listen to genres like classic country (pre-2000 or so) and heartland rock.
Counterprogramming the Super Bowl halftime show is nothing new, but Turning Point USA is planning some kind of counter-event to the Super Bowl halftime show for the first time featuring "Christian" (i.e., white Christian nationalist/supremacist) singers, although a singer/musician lineup for their counter-event hasn't been named yet.
Bad Bunny is a US citizen - what would be the charges ice could arrest him for?
What was the basis for the arrests of 30,000 Jews on Kristallnacht? Don't expect the Trump Administration to always have legal reasons for arrests, and note that they may eventually release people, then rearrest them, etc. Look at what happened to Kilmar Abreu.
SOPA/PIPA=? Web searches don't help, as sopa is Spanish for soup and pipa is a Chinese musical instrument.
SOPA was the Stop Online Piracy Act introduced in the house, and PIPA was the Protect IP Act, introduced in the senate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_IP_Act
Both would have done a lot of damage to the open internet and expand censorship. Thankfully they failed. The legislation would made websites wholly responsible for user generated content, and would have placed a lot of power in the government to remove access to sites deemed offending. Considering our current political climate it is not hard to imagine how such a power could have been abused.
I'll believe ICE is a net negative for Republicans when I see it. I suspect even those who express "concern" about their tactics are still grateful for their presence and are very unlikely to vote differently in November 2026 because of ICE arrests during the Super Bowl in February 2026.
Lol
NC-Sen: Roy Cooper raised $14.5m in Q3, more than double Mark Whatley's $6m
https://x.com/ec_schneider/status/1975170839067631727
Rock it! Cooper really is a star recruit.
I love how he's changed his rhetoric from moderate, sensible corporate friendly to populist "millionaires and billionaires" style for the Senate race.
After the damage Berger and Moore wrecked in his last two years as governor, it's gratifying to see Cooper take the gloves off.
Him winning that Senate seat would be a nice knife in Destin Hall and Phil Berger's backs.
I hate how this will be the $1B Senate race next year. The amount of negative Cooper ads from Whatley's dark money PAC buddies will be unbearable here.
Imagine how much more $$$ Rs will pour here in NC in 2028 if they lose the Senate and SCONC races next year. They want to keep the EVs for the President, protect a very vulnerable Ted Budd, their MAGA majority on SCONC (Berger Jr., Barringer, Newby are up for re-election), as well as the Circuit Court of Appeals idiot who tried stealing Justice Riggs' seat last year.
It's the North Carolina Court of Appeals (circuit is, largely though not always, a federal court designation), but yes. Although I suspect Judge Jefferson Griffin may decide he has other electoral plans for higher office. Also, note that all three Democrats on the NC Ct. App. are, I believe, up in 2026. That appears to be well-timed!
Trump-aligned (although she seems to be more anti-anti-Trump than a true Trump crony) Bari Weiss has now been installed as the new de facto head of CBS News as that organization's editor in chief. Weiss will directly report to Paramount CEO and Trump crony David Ellison (the son of Oracle co-founder and Trump crony Larry Ellison), not the now-nominal president of CBS News, Tom Cibrowski.
Reportedly, Weiss, whose prior experience in media includes a controversial stint at The New York Times, as well as founding The Free Press (a right-leaning competitor to HuffPost is how I would best describe it, but that might not be the best description of it), gained a ton of stock in the merged Paramount-Skydance company (I'm not sure how much stock Weiss now owns in Paramount). IIRC, The Free Press was acquired by Paramount as part of the Trump Administration-approved Paramount-Skydance merger.
In any case, CBS News is expected to undergo a drastic rightward shift in its political coverage and editorial bent, but it's not clear exactly how far to the right they'll go under Weiss and the younger Ellison, although I would definitely expect a lot of people who are currently at CBS News to not be employed there much longer.
Weiss is quite vocal on the issue that we are forbidden to discuss, for one.
Outside of that, she’s an “anti-woke” hack who primarily whines about “cancel culture”. Like a relatively Trumpier Bill Maher. Not good.
Which is funny cause she partially invented or atleast accelerated cancel culture and the idea of safe spaces, "words are violence" based on the forbidden issue during her university days.
I'd hold off on a "drastic rightward shift." I think it's more likely that any shifts will be subtler.
It will be slow at first and then all at once, just like Twitter.
I wouldn't expect them to do anything to alienate their current audience, which is normies who are less political than people who watch MSNBC or CNN. If they started doing what Fox does they'd lose their audience. I think they'll just do 90% of what they were doing before, but the missing 10% would be stuff the regime would complain about.
Oh for the love of God.
IL-2:
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/06/jesse-jackson-jr-to-launch-bid-for-his-old-seat-00594382
Former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. is launching a comeback bid for his old seat. Apparently he’s the frontrunner so far. Not helpful to our image to have disgraced people like him attempting comebacks.
Has he shown any signs that he's changed for the better?
The fact that he's running at all would strongly imply that the answer is no.
ME 2: Dunlap is in.
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/10/06/congress/golden-gets-a-primary-00594620
If he wins the primary, we lose the seat. This district isn’t like others—it’s trending right, not left. As much as I dislike Golden, he’s the only one who can actually hold it.
Maybe. Maybe not. If it's a strong Democratic year I think Dunlap may be able to hold on to it. If Golden didn't go out of his way to antagonize the majority of the party electorate, including a few days ago, https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5533657-jared-golden-criticizes-far-left-government-shutdown/ , he may have escaped the challenge.
I don't buy it; how strong would the wave have to be? This is just going to be Kurt Schrader (Manchin of Oregon) vs McLeod Skinner 2.0 in a much redder seat.
I agree on the conclusion but I think the comparison to OR-05 isn't the best.
That's a semi-blue seat that we lost by 2 points in 2022 after the national party gave up on our candidate, probably in no small part due to her primarying the incumbent. Two points is enough that she probably would have lost anyway, but it was a factor. We then immediately won it back last year by 2 points. Considering how it all worked out I would say that we came out ahead eventually, replacing a bad incumbent with a better one, without changing control of power in DC in between.
ME-02 is actually red, and decently red at that. Once we lose that seat it's probably gone for good. If we lose ME-02 next year we're unlikely to win it back until/unless there is a political realignment or the state's redistricting changes (unlikely, due to Maine's constitution).
ME-02 is Trump + 10, which is almost as red as Ohio, Florida, and Iowa are at this point. Golden is the only Dem with a prayer of holding this seat in this era of polarization, even in a blue wave. I’d much rather have him than someone like LePage or another Republican in this seat.
If Dunlap wins the primary, Dems are throwing away this seat.
my parents live in maine, I spend a good portion of time there, and I had never heard of matt dunlap until about two weeks ago on this page. Not a shot he holds the seat, and I cannot stand Golden. But back when we consistently won elections there were an awful lot of people in our coalition I wouldn't have been able to stand either so let's hold our nose and make sure we don't let a seat slip away
The one possible hope is that LePage is so nuts, he may have a hard time against even Dunlap. But given how red the district is, that may be a tall order anyway.
I hate Golden but I don't see a realistic path to holding his seat otherwise.
I wish I could like this about 10,000 times. Purity tests will kill us in seats like these...
What about a little mid-cycle gerrymandering to balance out the two districts? One district is basically D+22 and the other R+8 or so. Seems we ought to be able to move some voters around to make ME-02 stay competitive over time. Guessing the votes aren't there in the Maine Senate.
Maine's constitution requires a 2/3 majority to draw districts. A mid decade redistricting is completely off the table. Even a better map after 2030 is highly unlikely.
The best chance of that is if the state legislature fails to pass anything and then a court imposes such a map. But if a court is drawing Maine's maps after 2030 they would likely draw a least-change map. So while it's technically possible it's unlikely.
Ah, I was wondering why Maine wasn't part of the conversation.
I do think we ought to be doing this in Illinois. Even if they can't snatch any more seats, we could at least shore up the 4 seats Harris carried by single digits (and two more by <12). Rhode Island could do the same, with its Harris+22 seat sitting next to a Harris+7 seat. Oregon could shore up its competitive seats, if it they don't try to take the only R seat left. Maybe none of these seats will be in danger prior to the next redistricting in 2032, maybe they will.
Ugh. As weird and annoying as Golden is, he's light years better than any Republican would be.
Republicans in Utah advanced a new congressional map favored to help their party retain total political control in the Beehive State.
The state’s Redistricting Committee voted 8-to-2 along party lines Monday to advance one of five proposed maps to the legislature for a full vote, as part of a court-ordered process to select a new congressional map.
The map chosen by the panel was the only one of the five proposed maps in which the GOP retains a partisan advantage in all four of Utah’s congressional districts.
https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/utah-republicans-advance-new-gerrymandered-congressional-map/
https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2025/09/21/redistrciting-utah-lawmakers-meet/
They're STILL going to get slapped down and the judge will implement her own.
Standard republican MO with this. Drag the legal process out as much as possible. They consistently get away with using illegal gerrymanders for more than half of each decade due to this. I expect the judge won't let them get away with it in this case, but it costs them nothing to try. The judge isn't going to pick a bluer map than they would have otherwise, in order to punish Utah republicans for bad behavior.
If I remember right, even the map that has a republican advantage in all 4 districts has 2 districts trump won by single digits. They are risking Dems winning 2 seats in a blue environment for a small partisan advantage. Maybe they think that’s better than a 3 solid red, 1 solid blue map.
To be honest I think that's a smart strategic tradeoff, if it's the option at hand.
Those two seats would be very likely to be won by republicans in any environment where republicans could hope to win a majority in the house. That's the most important time to win a seat. Obviously they would prefer to win the seats in any electoral environment. Once that option is taken away, the next-best one for them is seats that will only be lost when it probably doesn't change the speaker of the house anyway.
True but it also expands the map republicans/the NRCC will have to play defense on. They’ll have to spend resources to defend 2 seats every election vs do nothing in a solid 3-1 map where the result is a forgone conclusion. But that’s a national republican party problem I suppose.
That's a smart way to look at it, I just don't think they're looking at it that way. They are trying to do the minimal amount to comply with the judge (which I'm not even sure this does) while still keeping all the seats red. I bet we win the Trump +2 district this year, not sure about the other one.
All five options should be rejected because of how they split Salt Lake County. The County has more than enough population for one Congressional district, so it has to be split regardless. However, from a COI standpoint, the best thing to do is have a district entirely within Salt Lake County and put the rest of the County in another district.
This is the map of Utah that I drew, which makes way more sense than the five options in the Salt Lake Tribune article:
https://davesredistricting.org/join/5284d484-2344-44b0-8cdb-d3492d0b7c64