Currently interested in Minneapolis’ mayors race, which from what I’ve heard has been a clusterfuck. City council too. Anyone in the know have an idea of what might happen?
On a related note, the MN Senate race is also on my radar. Again, for anyone in the know: who is more likely to win the Dem primary: Craig, or Flanagan?
Much as I want Flanagan to win, I think saying she's winning in polls plural is misleading. As best I can tell there is exactly one poll of the primary, which was done by PPP in February. Flanagan was wildly ahead of Craig in that poll, 52-22, which is good to see. But that's the better part of a year ago. Notably it was two months before Craig officially launched her campaign, and a week before Flanagan officially launched her campaign.
It's not worthless but it's not an overwhelming data point either.
Still, Minnesota does not usually disappoint with their Democratic candidates - this is the state that elected Tina Smith, Paul Wellstone and Walter Mondale (to this exact Senate seat, might I add), which is why I think Flanagan has a fighting chance over Craig, an establishment crony.
Would love to see the Democrats in charge of Washington put a referendum on the ballot to repeal their independent commission until some particular Republican-gerrymandered state (maybe Georgia?) switches to an independent commission themselves. Virginia should predicate the return of their commission on North Carolina adopting one, Colorado should do the same until Missouri adopts an independent commission, and of course California should specifically return to their commission only if Texas starts to use one.
Sure, and then maybe Tennessee for Massachusetts, which would be an automatic one-seat Dem gain since we'd regain the seat in Nashville but Massachusetts would still be 9-0 even with an ungerrymandered map.
The reciprocity approach is one I like. Tie our ability to have commissions to their states' approach to it. California's commission comes into play in Texas has one. New York will go with one if Florida does. It wouldn't fix the problem but it would make us look more reasonable and would fit in with good government goals. It's a win/win approach.
Agree with you on making the argument “we’re offsetting the GOP’s redraws” for every commission we override or redraw we undertake. I think it’s effective and persuasive to those who may like the commissions or fairness of their state’s districts and as we’ve seen from polling in California, what once was up in the air for voters is now solidly on our side.
I don’t agree that New York needs to have Florida redraw again for them to redraw their map. Use a couple of other states instead: IN, MO, NC etc. Or use the current redrawn map in Florida as an excuse to do so. If they don’t redraw again, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to redraw in New York anyways because Florida is already a massive gerrymander that should be offset in any case.
Colorado AG Phil Weiser made some important comments yesterday in favor of a Prop 50 like amendment in Colorado. I think we start to see in the coming weeks a serious initiative proposed to do this with formal party backing. It only takes 120k signatures to put an amendment on the ballot so its a pretty easy lift.
Perhaps the polling showing strong support for Prop 50 in California is starting to make Dems in other states believe that they could win a similar referendum too.
I also wonder if the specter of a Southern wipeout post-Louisiana v. Callais has lit a couple of fires under the Dem establishment (as in Virginia), both as a matter of practical politics and also as a moral matter given that we could see LA, MS, AL, AR, TN, SC, and maybe MO with no Black Democratic representation in Congress...
Illinois & Maryland are the easiest pickups right now outside of those two and the four I mentioned the logistics are alot tougher.
Washington state Dems are far short of the supermajority they need to alter their commission and Minnesota's constitution appears to ban mid-decade redistricting. Oregon could go 6-0 but the GOP can quorum bust there.
Mid-decade redistricting is explicitly banned in Missouri and North Carolina too. That didn’t stop the GOP there, so I don’t think it’ll be any tougher in Minnesota. They just need the house back in 2026 and that honestly should be pretty easy.
You probably can redraw Minnesota and either gain 2-3 seats if you connect the 1st, 2nd, and 8th to St. Paul and Minneapolis and allow the 7th to act as a vote sink and absorb other rural and exurban parts of those districts.
There's also Wisconsin and the renewed lawsuit for fair redistricting. While that's obviously not gerrymandering, fairer districts at the bare minimum would likely mean making more seats competitive, possibly the 1st and 3rd, while potentially weakening the conservative partisan shift in other districts notably the 5th and 6th, which given their proximity to Milwaukee I'm willing to guess would in all likelihood absorb parts of its suburban and metropolitan areas.
I believe so, yes. Georgia requires a 2/3 vote in the state legislature to override the governor's veto, and Republicans don't have anywhere near those margins in the state House or Senate. (And they're not likely to get that either, since the vast majority of state legislative seats are safe for one party.)
Obviously the lunacy of the current Supreme Court should never be underestimated, but it would be very bizarre for them to decide only two years ago that Alabama required two majority African-American districts, and then suddenly reverse that just a few years later and say that they don't require any. And the composition of the Supreme Court hasn't changed in that time.
Two years ago, John Roberts wasn't taking orders from Trump. He is now. 99% of his shadow docket "rulings" have been in Trump's favor. The SCOTUS doesn't even bother with making up explanations anymore :(
I don't think Roberts is taking orders from anyone.
The reality is that, despite him being the "least conservative" of the republican members of the court, he and all the others are deeply conservative. They are republicans first, judges second. The modern conservative identity has it as their single most important trait and they are still people. They are not able to disentangle themselves from core identity supremacy.
Chances are all six of them watch Fox, and if they read anything for news it might be one of the more classy conservative papers but it will still be one with a conservative ideology.
Their partisanship is dominant and overriding being consistent or good at being a judge.
I strongly reject the word "conservative" for these radical supporters of an unconstitutional imperial Executive. There's nothing conservative about that.
Yeah - I trust the current court as much as I would Kavanaugh to drive after an open bar Federalist Society dinner. But it would be quite a turn for them and I trust Chris Geidner’s take on the oral arguments (limited ruling that eliminates the second MM VRA district in Louisiana but keeps the rest of the VRA intact). Again, it’s not wrong to expect the worst from this court but there is some thought that it won’t be a worst case scenario. Although, it does not hurt to plan like it will be the worst case and shore up as many districts as possible across the country.
I'm curious about the Georgia Public Service Commission elections. Hopefully they will have some positive inklings for Ossoff and the governor's race. D performance held up pretty well in Georgia in 2024 despite everything, so hopefully there is still an overall leftward current there (unlike in Texas, which seems to have had stronger countervailing rightward movement since 2018.)
Daniel Nichanian has pointed out that Atlanta has overlapping municipal elections so hopefully that will help drive D turnout.
CA Prop. 50. The Sec of State's latest data as of the 23rd: 4,001,421 VBMs returned (out of 23.26M mailed out). So that's 17.2% so far
AND tomorrow Saturday, in-person voting is starting in most counties, for those voters adverse to VBM's. (Note that some smaller counties are VBM only). This special election is looking to get an excellent voter turnout.
(Interesting data tidbit: that SoS pdf shows roughly 3 in 4 ballots were mailed back, and 1 in 4 used drop-boxes/drop-off locations to return ballots.)
Very easy yes vote for me, and likely my brother, his wife and mother-in-law. And I do mean very easy since all I had to do was fill out the ballot, then drop it off at the drop box in front of my local public library.
Really excited about the Virginia redraw. It’s time we stop bringing butter knives to a gun fight. Hopefully Colorado nukes their commission too and goes for a 7-1 map. Other races I’m interested in:
-Prop 50, and whether it does better than Harris
-VA legislature
-I don’t much care for the VA AG race. I would abstain over the Jones issues if I lived there and would rather the legislature just take Miyares powers away if he wins. Like what NCGOP does.
Interesting idea with the VA AG. I would obviously still vote for Jones if I lived in VA, but it's good to have a backup plan if Miyares does pull out the win.
Was going to like your post until you said you wouldn’t vote for the Democrat over Trump’s AG. I know you don’t live there, so it’s a moot point of course. But I’ll take a Democratic AG who once texted something awful over not stopping the election someone who will follow the dictator in chief’s every order to do Trump’s bidding these next 3 years of hell we have before us.
I see Jones as a liability who will be a lightning rod for controversy if he wins too, so I really don't care. Jones has unquestionably bad judgment, and it's not just the text situation. Plus there's a chance he goes to jail over his community service hours scam. With Miyares, we can at least make the role ceremonial for four years and delegate AG powers to Spanberger's executive agencies.
And I'm not really concerned about Miyares' ability to win higher office given he has shown no interest in building his own brand in Virginia. He was on track to lose in a landslide until the text and community service hours thing.
I am not in a position to comment on how much the VA Attorney General affects VA as a state as I don’t live there.
However, I’d say the greater concern is electing Abigail Spanberger as Governor as her actions on the job can directly impact VA’s economy. She may not have control over the tariffs but she would certainly be pragmatic and work responsibly to govern the state as opposed to Winsome Earle-Sears, who has been running a lame duck gubernatorial campaign the role time.
If the GOP wins the VA Attorney General race but not any of the others, I would not lose sleep over it.
Give Boebert SOME credit given that she's just 1 of 4 Republicans in the House that have voted to release the Epstein files. I'd say that makes her better than her chickenshit "moderate" colleagues including Mike Fitzpatrick and Don Bacon.
It goes further back than the Epstein files vote Boebert cast. She also two years ago started becoming less combative as a result of barely even defeating Democratic Candidate Adam Frisch in 2022 by less than 1,000 votes.
Of course, this “pivot” Boebert is doing is not real. Just more postering at best.
If Jason Miyares remains AG, he could tamper with or even outright obstruct the Virginia redraw you just said you were so excited about. And the state legislature won't necessarily be able to take away all his powers, as they still have to follow the state constitution.
I know Jay Jones has his issues, but for a multitude of reasons, Dems need to bite their tongue and vote for him.
The Virginia AG powers are entirely statutory and only 'prescribed by law' according to the state constitution. The General Assembly can make his position useless, it just dpeends how far they are willing to go.
It would be hard to think of a Trump/Yes on Prop 50 voter (Prop 50 being approved would basically end the CA GOP's relevancy in nearly all federal elections, even though they're already irrelevant in most federal elections), although I'm honestly surprised that the GOP has not put up much of a fight against Prop 50.
It's honestly not THAT hard. Basically , that's your low information voter that complained about expensive eggs, gas and inflation in general. Many of those include angry minority voters, notably Hispanics that were fooled into blaming Biden for high inflation. Many of those voters now are less than satisfied with how Trump's 2nd term has played out and see Republicans as full of crap.
Another group that's less likely to vote at all on Prop 50 are the young Gen Z male voters dealing with not only inflation, but struggling to find work and pay off loans and bills. The same types that may have been duped by the likes of Rogan, the Paul Bros and yes, Kirk.
Something that I think that we’ve started to see glimpses of from the Democratic base and swing voters in general that I think needs a lot more discussion than it’s generated so far:
The “I don’t like blank, but I’m still voting for them” phenomenon.
We’ve for years and years and years, ok, decades, for some of us ;), have gone by the IOKIYAR (It’s OK if you’re a Republican, for those unaware) moniker. That there’s two sets of rules for politicians, 1 for Democrats and 1 for Republicans. Where scandals don’t matter for one party and do for the other. Look no further than 2023 where a Democratic nominee had a sex scandal that cost her the race in the legislature (I don’t think it is/was a scandal, but it’s obvious voters did).
Is that finally coming to an end? I don’t think we can say for certain, but I don’t think we can’t not say for certain anymore either. This started obviously because of Trump, the rapist, convict dictator in the White House and our base going “is what x Democrat did really that bad?” in comparison. But not just in our own individual minds, it’s starting to show up in actual data.
Firstly, we saw Zohran Mamdani win the Democratic primary for mayor of NYC. I know we’ve talked a lot about this race before, but it was such a massive upset, especially considering our being used to the establishment candidate being trusted by our own voters to lead in almost every race we have a competitive primary for. But also because of his erm controversial (?) views on a banned topic of discussion here.
Voters didn’t care that he was outside the mainstream of our party on an issue. They still voted by a large majority to support him. That was the first crack we saw in the rules perhaps changing from the squeaky clean moderates who didn’t offend anyone or have controversial anything in their history that our party’s voters nominated. I want to be clear on this next part: I personally no longer support him. However, I don’t think it’s at all clear that Graham Platner with far, far worse problems and issues in Maine Senate than Mamdani ever had, is at all doomed in his campaign.
Obviously it was a Republican poll, so we don’t have anything nonpartisan yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me if polling to come confirms that almost half our base is more supportive of him after his apology (45% in the GOP poll) and he still wins the primary. We’ll have to wait on nonpartisan polling and election votes to determine those of course and he could still lose a general election to Collins, much we don’t know here still. But that’s the 2nd instance.
Now, we get the October surprise with Jones text scandal in Virginia. Polling has shown he’s absolutely taken a hit here from voters, that’s unarguable, BUT, his former support is NOT going to the Republican alternative. Jason Miyares is stuck in the 45-46% area as an incumbent. IMO, I think Jones wins comfortably, around 3-5 points in a couple weeks. If that does end up being the case, I think that’s another major sign of change within our voters and swing voters minds.
I obviously am not saying someone who denies and gaslights and lies with the frequency of anyone on the GOP side would be forgiven by our voters, because that would never happen, but ones who own up to their mistakes and change their ways from before? With our voters and average swing voters saying we’ll take the Democrat with warts and all over the Republican? I think it’s at least possible they begin to say with frequency “I don’t like blank, but I’m still voting for them” or in other words an amended moniker IAOKIYADAR (It’s actually OK if you’re a Democrat against a Republican).
Maybe this only lasts for the time when Trump is in office fucking up everything, running a dictatorship with a say yes, no rules party that accedes to his every whim. Even if that’s the case though for the next 3 years and then it goes back to the old way, that’s still a colossal shift in voters preferences and what they’re willing to tolerate from a Democrat. I don’t see anyone talking about this and it’s probably one of the biggest changes in our party since 2016, that’s also happening in swing voters and for our party’s nominees. There’s also the possibility it becomes a permanent feature (at least among our voters, swing voters will always swing).
Interested to hear everyone’s thoughts and discussion about this, because if it’s true, it’s very big news and opens up our party primaries to a whole ton of different kinds of candidates who never thought they could win nominations before, injecting fresh blood and enthusiasm into our party, which we’ve sorrily needed since 2016. As a personal note, I’m glad and I do hope this continues where our voters and the decision making voters say I’ll take the flawed Democrat over a regular/MAGA Republican /end.
Interesting and well thought-out post. I kind of doubt Mamdani fits into this, though. Mamdani's win could show that opinions of voters, even many Jewish voters in the city with the largest Jewish population in the world (speaking as one of them), are changing on the forbidden topic, and that voters who are not obsessively bigoted may be more clearly accepting of Muslim candidates.
Thank you for the compliment! I don’t think he’s the poster boy for this theory, that’s for sure. But I do think his non disavowal of a phrase that at first sight sounds insane until you get what he’s actually meaning by the saying (which I won’t mention because I’m trying to stay far away from a very divisive and banned topic here for good reason) is still a massive change for the better.
I mean just 3 years ago you had a candidate lose a general election on the phrase “defund the police” after he renounced supporting it. Obviously NYC and WI are very much not even close to each other in anyway shape or form, but 1 Democrat who meant something else than actually defunding the police, (which you’d know after explaining) renounced the phrase and won the primary. The other Democrat didn’t denounce the problematic stance and still won the primary.
That’s a change and a significant one still imo. Voters didn’t care about hearing the explanation behind the phrase 3 years ago, they did in 2025. Again, I want to be clear, different electorates and different states and different White House and different years and different Democrats. But, Mamdani didn’t lose from an emotionally charged, but non-eloquent phrase. That in my mind shows a meaningful difference and is the reason I included him.
Mamdani has, as much as I hate the comparison, a Reaganesque quality. The ability to charm and communicate to voters so as to appear non-threatening even though his positions are, or are perceived to be, extreme. So far he’s been a very effective politician.
I think the jury is still out on the Maine Senate race. I would like to have some faith in Democratic primary voters that we are not going to ignore all the information we have that Platner knew his tattoo was a Totenkopf. I'd give it a week or so to settle into the electorate before panicking about primary polls.
To Virginia Dems' credit, I have little doubt that Jones would have lost the primary had we known about his issues beforehand. I do think you're right that Miyares would be running away with it had he even once broke with Trump over anything of note. But he hasn't, so there's no reason for blue voters to trust him at all over a problematic candidate. The problem in Maine though is that Susan Collins has broken from Trump, regardless of how performative it is. I could easily see voters choosing her over him in a landslide despite an otherwise blue environment.
I think you’re absolutely right on Maine, we need to wait for it to settle before really saying anything with certainty, it could very well end up being a deal breaker for primary and/or general election voters. If that doesn’t end up being the case though (we’ll know after the primary and general election), we did have a glimpse of what would happen before it did in hindsight.
I also agree with you that Jones would’ve lost the primary had it come out then. The main point I was making though was when it’s a problematic D vs a regular/MAGA Republican, our voters and more importantly swing voters aren’t choosing the GOP. That’s a change from previous elections, where a far more tame scandal sunk our candidates in quite a few races (if Jones does win, which tbd).
I think Collins could win as could Miyares, they’re both possibilities, but I don’t think that happens in this current environment. I was right for most elections from 2017-2020 and wrong about most elections from 2021-2024. It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if I end up getting this theory right or wrong and I’m not saying anything with absoluteness. But I am just seeing little cracks in the data and election results that may or may not lead to some bigger ones that I think we should talk about before that happens if it does.
I do think post-scandal politics is no longer something that overwhelming only applies to Trump anymore since Trump is President again despite everything that happens and JD Vance happily telling everyone anyone who is a Republican can do no wrong (obviously Vance thinks Democrats breathing is a crime punishable by imprisonment). Trump has shifted the Overton window in what is and what isn't a career ending scandal so far in one direction does anything short of someone murdering someone ends ones political career anymore?
Also the consensus across the Democratic Party now is that we definitely went too far in policing our side of the aisle, throwing out and canceling so many people that the tent is less than 40% of the electorate at this time so there's much more room for Dem candidates showing their let's say imperfections or deviating from party orthodoxy than it was in 2024.
I think many Democrats and "progressives" got too censorious during the MeToo and Peak Woke periods, tossing promising candidates and officeholders overboard for minor at best, and often distantly past, transgressions.
But that doesn't necessarily apply to Platner. For example, even if we accept that he didn't know what the Totenkopf tattoo meant when he got it (or was too inebriated to remember or care), as a self-proclaimed student of military history he should have eventually realised what it had stood for and gotten it altered or removed BEFORE he started running for office.
Your remarks about being too censorious seem reasonable, but on the other hand, I don't think any candidate with Bill Clinton's history of sexually predatory behavior would be likely to win a Democratic primary for president, nowadays, and I'm glad about that.
On sexual predatory behavior, that’s about flat out avoiding doing this and showing respect towards women as human beings. Men cannot argue they are being “oppressed” or “censored” by the nature of their behavior when it’s obvious what they are doing.
But censorship over different political viewpoints and perspectives goes against what I have learned as a liberal growing up in Berkeley.
We're talking about censure, not censorship. There are political viewpoints that absolutely should be condemned, let alone censured. When followers of Lyndon Larouche won Democratic primaries, the rest of the party did the right thing by urging a vote against them in the general election.
Yes, of course re: censure. I'm just arguing that men cannot talk about complaining being censored or censured when it's clear they cannot beat around the bush with this.
As far as political viewpoints are concerned, I'm just talking about things in a general sense. The 1st Amendment however allows free speech but does not specifically cover the agenda that's behind the movement of Lyndon LaRouche and others. That's where it gets dicey.
Democratic House candidates have raised a total of $44.2 million this cycle, their most in the last two decades. Republicans have raised $19.6 million, down from a high of $26.9 million in 2023.
Ballotpedia identified 23 districts as general election battlegrounds. Democratic candidates in those districts raised a total of $24.2 million, and Republican candidates raised a total of $11.9 million. That means Democratic candidates outraised Republican candidates by about 2-to-1 in battleground districts and across all 100 districts.
Want to poke my head in here to drop this excellent article from the UnPopulist about how the failure of Emmanuel Macron's technocratic centrist political project has opened a wide open lane for Marine Le Pen to storm through in 2027 and finally become President. Macron responding to domestic political setback after political setback due to not having a workable majority in parliament by ruling more and more as a King isn't helping matters.
The article notes a new milestone was set in French politics last month when Nicholas Sarkozy (before he headed off to prison) declared that Le Pen's National Rally party is welcome within the Gaullist Right tent. Previously it was kept out, but if anything Sarkozy was a laggard in this regard since a faction of the Les Republicans led by Eric Ciotti threw their support behind Le Pen in 2024 when Macron had a fit of political insanity and called snap parliamentary elections the night National Rally cleaned up at the EU Parliamentary elections.
Europe’s sadly only a few years behind us, and France is the bleeding edge. If it’s not Le Pen it’ll be Bardella on one of the Wauquiez/Ciotto/insert some other RN-lite figure of the increasingly reactionary Gaullist tendency
Worth hedging that though, as 2027 is still two years off. We cannot rely on the current state being maintained that long. I will not presume that France's politics can move as rapidly as ours do. Even if they do not, the time left is more than enough for something to change substantially without requiring a miraculous set of circumstances.
None of that to say that such a thing will happen either!
True. It’s just that things have gone worse for our side since those unlikely wins and as the IRA used to say “you have to get lucky time and we have to get lucky once”
One issue that likely isn't helping the French left is....air conditioning. Specifically, when National Rally wants to implement a "major air-conditioning equipment plan" and the left calls it an "aberration that must be overcome", this framing isn't going to endear the left to voters when heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense, regardless of what Saint Greta of Sweden and other climate activists say.
Thinking about the current mess in Maine. I really wish Jared Golden had just ran for senate, he is basically Platner without the baggage and a proven winner who is vetted. Now he's facing a primary and looks to be an underdog for his seat against LePage. Even if he wins he still has to fight it out every 2 years instead of a 6 year term in the senate.
Let me clarify I think Golden and Platner have similar backgrounds in being prior military (tattoos and all) with unorthodox political views. Golden is pro-union, pro-tariff, and supports taxing the rich which some progressive will like while he's more moderate on guns and FP.
Outside of sounding progressive on foreign policy, Platner seems to share alot of Golden's views along with being anti-establishment though I don't know where he stands on tariffs.
Golden has lucked out with weak and flawed opponents but I think LePage is going to be toughest opponent he's had to face since LePage won ME-2 solidly before.
LePage won ME-02 while losing to Mills by double digits. The district likes him.
I would absolutely not say Golden is out of the woods. This will be one of the more competitive seats. It's entirely possible that Golden loses even in a good year for us.
It appears from the polls at least that Golden's popularity has collapsed. He has been like Fetterman in trashing Dems and saying nice things about Trump that has turned off Dems but still votes anti-Trump so Republicans don't like him either. I expect most Dems to come home between him and LePage but he needs way more their support in that district.
I'm going to second everyone else and say Golden and Platner are fairly different, but also add that I don't think Platner has particularly set or deep beliefs, so he could easily turn into Golden, or something else.
There is a reason why Susan Collins wins re-election. I've never looked at the numbers, but I presume she does well in ME-2. Golden is genuinely trying to represent that district, IMO. Would he be a Manchin or Sinema? Probably. The question for Dems to ask themselves is whether Manchin or Sinema are better than Collins. Some would say No, some would say draw, but if Golden had run, that would have been an important question.
Golden would've denied Collins the ability to run up margins in ME-2 that is necessary for Republicans to win statewide in Maine. Regardless of his ideology that would've been the main benefit of having his as nominee.
The question is whether someone as disruptive within the party as him is needed for the race. If the Democratic candidate loses to Collins again, you'll be able to say "I told you so," but a "what if" can never really be proven.
A poll, conducted by Z to A Research, shows the following result in a possible Hakeem Jeffries-Chi Ossé matchup:
- Jeffries: 72%
- Ossé: 21%
Jeffries additionally has a 74% favorability rating and a 69% very favorable rating in his district. However, half of these voters had apparently not heard of Ossé.
Also important to note that Jeffries is the literal House Minority Leader. There's a difference between primarying him and primarying some random Democrat who's been in office for decades and has barely done anything in office (I believe that was one reason Mai Vang is challenging Doris Matsui)/has actively pissed people off with their antics (Thanedar, Fetterman, and although I don't support his challenger Golden)/does not represent their district at all (Thanedar again, Goldman, Bowman in 2022, etc.)/is getting so old, they're missing votes and/or displaying signs of health problems (Larson, Holmes Norton, Evans, etc.)
Eric Cantor/George Nethercutt/AOC moments aren't particularly common in politics anyway.
Is Dan Goldman *really* in trouble in a primary if he faces a legitimate candidate to his left and the field on that side of the spectrum isn't split? Cuomo was never going to be a fit for the libs who live in Park Slope, but would that really mean trouble for Goldman who seemed to fit the median primary voter in the district (who watches/d) MSNBC.
I have little doubt that the internet is more anti-leadership and anti-octogenarian than the broader electorate. There's still room for some members of those groups to lose their primaries; if we relied on the internet as our baseline you'd expect those incumbents to be nearly wiped out. An outcome that doesn't reach that levels can still be quite impactful.
Jeffries, specifically, is leadership and while I am deeply unimpressed with him I think it's fair to say he has not been a lightning rod of disappointment the way that Schumer has. Our house caucus has avoided embarrassing themselves or disappointing the base. He's in his 50s, not an ancient politician with an elected career longer than most millennials' lifespans.
I think this is one of those wayyyyy too early to mean anything polls. The primary is a long ways away and NYC mayor is taking up all the oxygen and attention. Those supporting Jeffries are basically doing so because he’s the incumbent and has high name recognition. I think there’s at least a small possibility there’s double like voters if Osse runs. Where people who approve of Jeffries still vote for Osse because they like him more or better.
My expectations are basically for Mamdani’s coming majority win (fingers crossed!) to create an explosion of progressives challenging establishment incumbents regardless of age and at the same time for Democratic primary voters to start to think about if their current incumbent is really the best choice right now during this time.
After that happens that’s when we’ll start to get a better idea on whether there is a tea party of the left wave building in primaries or not. Not right now before the 2025 elections reverberate into our party. That all said, Jeffries obviously could still win and is probably likely to as leader, but it wasn’t that long ago when we said it was impossible for a party leader to lose and he actually did.
It's worth noting on the tea party that they didn't actually defeat all that many incumbents in primaries. Only two republican members of the house lost their primary in 2010, and one of them was a democrat who had changed party. Only one republican senator lost a primary that year.
Where they had an impact was in successfully pressuring incumbents to retire and in open seat primaries.
Perhaps the biggest change is that republicans in office changed their actions to appease their voter base. This is happening to a far lesser extent with democrats. If anything, Schumer and a handful of senators seem to hold that desire from democratic voters in outright disdain. Leadership across the party is consistent in keeping protests and party anger at arms length, dissociating themselves from it or outright ignoring it as much as they possibly can.
If our party starts knocking out incumbents in primaries are a greater than usual rate, that will be very unlike what happened with the tea party. And if that does happen, it likely will be in no small part due to elected democrats reacting very differently than how republicans reacted in 2009-2010.
Of course you are correct, not many incumbents lost their primaries over 2010 or 2014 elections. But, insurgent nobody candidates started to get closer to defeating them. And rather than lose their next primary race with the same opponent who is better funded and has bigger resources of both people and power, they decided to retire.
So if history does rhyme and the same thing happens, yeah, we can say that the tea party wave of the left also didn’t take out many incumbents, but we create a message for our elected leaders to start representing what we want as a party, to fight the GOP with everything we’ve got. Even the incumbents who are still in office from before and after that wave on the Republican side have changed.
I think Schumer’s days are numbered and I think Jeffries has some vulnerabilities that could cause him to underperform in a primary. I view him as a transition leader who gets the behind the scenes struggle for power, but not the public struggle and Schumer as a past the best by date leader hanging on. Neither are the future of our party, I can say that for certain. They’re the right now leaders. Who is the future for Democrats can be debated endlessly, right, left and centre. Just because something is the way it is now, doesn’t mean it will be tomorrow or next year.
If this does happen, regardless of who wins what primary races in the 2026 midterms, our party will be better off in the long run because new people with fresh ideas and younger, vibrant, knock them out with one punch Democrats will be replacing who currently lead us. That imo is the only way we can defeat the GOP fascist cult of personality and have even the slightest chance of holding power for more than 2 or 4 year 1 term stints.
Right, commonly a long term incumbent that sees a serious chance of defeat will opt to retire rather than risk the humility of ending their career with defeat. That's very likely played into Doggert's decision making. Although for him it would be to another incumbent. Schakowsky might have done the same. If Pelosi does retire that could be a factor for her as well. Those will not be primary wins even if the threat of a primary played a large part.
Although a lot of incumbents in a similar position seem intent to fight it out to the end, so there's a lot more opportunity here than there was in 2010 for republican incumbents to lose primaries.
Schumer day's likely are numbered, but there's only so much solace in that. It means there's only so much room to pressure him, if he would be content to retire in 2028. Especially if he's already decided to retire, without telling anyone. It's not impossible he loses leadership in between, if we get a miracle and win 51 seats but one of them refuses to vote for him as senate leader. But that's a narrow path.
I'm not seeing Schumer's behavior the same way as you. He utterly caved the last time he had a chance to derail or slow down a horrible Republican spending measure, and he was greeted with an absolute firestorm of outrage that must have surprised him with its severity, so he has held firm so far this time. He hasn't changed his spots, but he has reacted somewhat to the attitudes of Democratic rank and file.
I'm waiting to give him credit until after this process has finished successfully, without him caving. Especially after the trial balloon / rumors of a Nov 1 "off ramp" to give up.
If he makes it through this without caving, I'll agree.
As I suspected, Goldman is far more vulnerable to a primary challenge than Jeffries is. Goldman is an absolutely awful ideological fit for NY-10, whereas it's not hard to imagine a voter in NY-8 who voted for Mamdani in the mayoral primary but isn't interested in voting against Jeffries in a Democratic primary for a U.S. House seat that he's represented for over a decade and has a decent chance of becoming Speaker of the House.
The Bulwark's Focus Group podcast episode about the New Jersey governor's race is out. It wasn't as bad of a Focus Group for Mikie Sherrill as I thought when Sarah Longwell previewed it earlier this week.
The most interesting takeaways are as follows:
1) The undecided voters in this group are feeling meh about both candidates and if you prodded them on who they'd vote for if they had to mostly lined up on partisan lines (Kamala voters go for Sherrill, Trump voters go for Jack Ciattarelli). One undecided voter who voted for Kamala said he was 51/49 leaning to Sherrill, but he believed Sherrill wants to push LGBTQ stuff in schools and he disagreed with that. Another undecided voter who voted for Trump said he'd probably vote for Sherrill because he was worried that Ciattarelli was Chris Christie 2.0. and electing Ciattarelli against a Dem legislature in Trenton was a recipe for gridlock.
2) Cost of living is a big concern among everyone in the Focus Group. (Bridge tolls, property taxes, energy prices, etc.) In that vein Kamala voters weren't against Ciattarelli's promises to cut taxes.
3) Voters are pretty tuned about about this race since they're more interested in following the circus of a mayoral race in NYC.
4) Trump voters don't like Chris Christie because they saw their property taxes and cost of living continue to go up under Christie.
5) Kamala voters mentioned Sherrill being unable to explain whether she made $7 million off stock trading when Charlamagne pushed her about it when she was on The Breakfast Club before the primary.
6) Voters in the focus group were aware of Mikie Sherrill's Naval Academy scandal, but didn't really care about it.
BONUS: Longwell's colleague JVL who was with her on the podcast went on a rant against YIMBYism saying New Jersey is already building a ton of housing, but housing prices aren't going down in large part because New Jersey is already one of the densest places in the country and they have good schools and are smack in the middle of Philly and NYC meaning paying a premium is the cost of living in New Jersey.
I do think JVL's rant speaks to a big weakness about YIMBYism and Abundance is that if the average voter who doesn't even know who Ezra Klein or Derek Thompson or Scott Wiener sees a bunch of apartment buildings go up in their neighborhood, but if they don't feel housing prices going down in the short term they'll turn against the whole idea entirely especially among "get off my lawn" suburbanites.
I'd love to get a focus group or survey that asks 2 things those individuals who are afraid of certain things being pushed in schools like LGBT items or critical race theory or "woke" agendas. 1) What specifically in terms of any of those items are "they" pushing into schools and 2) in what area are they pushing it? Maybe this sounds like the condescending elite liberal talking down to those people, but I honestly don't understand. Maybe I missed the survey that explored this topic.
I also want to ask, how much time do you think teachers have to teach all this stuff, along with the required curriculum?
On the flip side, I can tell you it concerns me when you conservatives dominate the textbook fights over history textbooks that push a conservative viewpoint when it comes to the Constitution or that Christianity should play this outsized role in government because the Founding Fathers believed in God. To me that's more concerning because it goes to the very heart of how this country is run. It concerns me when PragerU and its 'educational' materials are being sanctioned for use in schools with the approval of state officials.
Those Christian-establishmentarian bigots would love Founding Father Thomas Paine. From the Wikipedia article about him, with several citations:
"Paine became notorious because of his pamphlets and attacks on his former allies, who he felt had betrayed him. In The Age of Reason and other writings, he advocated Deism, promoted reason and freethought, and argued against religion in general and Christian doctrine in particular."
DC Delegate: According to a police report Eleanor Holmes Norton has 'early stages of dementia' and has a caretaker with power of attorney. This was the result of police being called out because Holmes Norton was scammed at home by a group claiming to be a cleaning crew. Her credit card was charged $4,400. Her office is pushing back on the report.
On a personal note, regarding so many elected officials who seem to prefer to leave their office via a body bag versus just simply retiring, I wish I could tell them it's okay if you leave. I used to be the head of a local PAC for 8 years (and held other positions for years before that). I get it. You devote a good portion of your life to the position or your organization, so much so that you wonder what will happen if you leave. What changed it for me was I thought, "I'm worried what will happen if I leave, but what would happen if I dropped dead tomorrow?" The organization would be in the same position, and possibly worse off, because at least if I just voluntarily left I could still offer advice and help if needed.
I get that everyone doesn't age the same. I've known people my age who look and are physically 20 years older than me. I've seen people 20 years older than me still get around like they're younger. I'm loathe to make a generalization, but it's these continual small stories you see when it comes to older elected officials that makes me pause. There's currently 213 Dem House members. 13 are 80+ years old and another 44 are 70+. I used 70 because that's the age when Rep. Sylvester Turner died and we still haven't filled that seat. We have a caucus where 27% (26.76%) are over that age of 70.
Just for my own morbid curiosity, the rest of the Dem caucus breaks down as:
Probably best not to automatically attribute this to Norton’s age.
However, because she is dealing with early stages of dementia, this kind of scam isn’t a good thing for her to deal with. Better Norton resign and deal with her health ASAP.
I know that even Gwen Graham likely would have lost the U.S. Senate Race in Florida, but I wonder if she could have made the general election competitive. Florida is a tough state to breakthrough at this point, but I suspect Moody will become entrenched going forward. Maybe Mujica or Jenkins can at least make the race interesting. Graham still has the skill to run a quality campaign, but it would likely be too late for her to get in now and raise the necessary resources.
It is. I always have an inflated view of how much money you have to raise in a race because these incumbent Republicans basically have all kinds of money at their disposal and Florida is already against us. I assume some powerful people have already asked Graham about it, and she said No, but I don't know that, and she could get in the race.
I think considering Gwen Graham was running against Andrew Gillum in the 2018 Democratic Primary, she didn't have the chance to really show enough about her appeal statewide. Gillum became the gubernatorial nominee, had the FBI investigation to deal with and then did not get convicted of anything in the end.
Graham could still have a shot but I also haven't paid much attention to the FL-GOV race so I cannot say.
It's odd looking back at Nelson's loss. I remember when it happened I was certain we would come to be greatly frustrated by that in the years ahead.
Yet, in the grand scheme of things I'm not sure it changed much. During the 50-50 senate for the first two years of Biden's term we saw Sinema and Manchin were often in lockstep, especially on the most important issues. Adding one more dem seat would have helped but the impact might not have been that significant. After 2022 we no longer held the house so legislative goals were out the window anyway, even though our senate caucus was now large enough that with Nelson in there we could have bypassed Sinema and Manchin working together.
Then, if he had barely won in 2018 we almost certainly would have lost that seat in 2024. The balance of power starting this year would not be changed.
Some legislation might have been made a bit better, and Biden would have gotten a few more appointments through. Which would have been good. It did not work out to the dramatic consequences I expected.
Hopefully history repeats and I am exactly as wrong about the consequences of Casey's narrow loss last year.
Probably. Gillum made a huge mistake not asking Graham to run with him as Lt. Governor. He chose Chris King who,iirc, got about 3-4% in the primary. King then disappeared from the campaign never to be heard from again.
Perhaps but considering Gillum was under FBI investigation in the end and had the legal fiasco to deal with throughout 2018, even if Graham were his running mate, I really don’t know how that would have changed things that much.
Unless Graham had more crossover appeal than Gillum.
I think Florida was always headed for this transition into a Republican bastion. Not from the Latino vote shift, or even anything to do with who ran for the GOP or anything to do with politics. Conservative retirees from northern/eastern/plains states want something different than they had: sun and beaches. Something they had to go a very long ways to access before in their lives and even if they had some of it, it’s not like Florida where it’s like that almost year round.
So white retirees were always going to and were continuing to flock to Florida even with hurricanes coming every few years to where they live. The part that made the state competitive for Democrats were the native born black and Latino populations to counteract that wave of millions of white people over the decades. Once the Latino vote stopped being 60-40 D, it was all downhill from there as black population growth would never be able to keep up with the mass of voters Republicans were gaining. Now to be fair I don’t think Republicans will have a lock on this state forever.
At some point a state crisis with nothing to do with politics other than the incompetence of the party in power so big will happen under the GOP that even conservatives will pull the lever for Democrats even for just 1 term for some statewide race. It’s an inevitability with a lock hold on a trifecta under a party that’s sole goal is to own the libs and nominate the loudest politicians into office to attack us constantly. Maybe it’ll be under Governor Byron Donalds, maybe it’ll be decades from now, but there’s going to be a Katrina like situation in the state of Florida from a hurricane. Or people won’t be able to afford their homes from a financial crisis or something else we have no idea is currently going wrong that’s waiting to bubble to the surface.
Transplants from the midwest shifted right the same time the folks back home shifted right. Couple that with hispanic voters going right, well, we have the current Florida.
The transition to GQP bastion was helped by the Florida Democrats incompetence. Ever since 2010 when a backroom deal was struck to block the Hillsborough County Dem choir from the state chair in favor of Allison Tant the party has been reeling from one close loss after another till Chartle Crist was blown out by DeSantis in 2022. Yet in all the recent state constitutional referendums the liberal/democratic have garnered solid majorities even though the didn’t reach the 60% threshold to pass. You would think Florida Democrats would use that to their advantage.
I personally would want her to try to run for the U.S. Senate against Moody, but if she got into the Governor's race that would be fine. Florida is such a large state with so many people, it is sad if we have to completely write it off, but it may have gotten to that point.
Former U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema, now a lobbyist for Active Infrastructure, urged Chandler, Arizona's Planning Commission on October 15 to approve a $2.5 billion AI data center project warning of impending federal preemption under President Trump's July 2025 AI Action Plan if the city delays. The commission advanced the rezoning 5-2 despite city staff's recommendation against it over infrastructure strains, with a City Council vote set for November 13. The proposal promises construction jobs but draws criticism for the facility's projected high water and energy demands amid Arizona's severe drought.
As someone who spends a lot of time following computer hardware... $2.5b on a data center is insane.
In 2022 the US gov deployed the world's first exascale supercomputer, at the time the fastest supercomputer in the world for $600m. It was more than twice as fast as the next fastest in the world, and about eight times faster than the next one down. In 2024 its successor as the fastest supercomputer in the world debuted with a similar $600m price tag.
These are absurdly large systems. Finding a way to spend $2.5b on a data center is an incredible task, even with Nvidia's growing prices. The over investment in the AI market is insane.
From what I've read, the AI bubble is far larger than the dot.com bubble of the late 1990s/early 2000s or even the subprime mortgage bubble of the mid-2000s. If the AI bubble bursts, a recession is virtually certain. If the AI bubble doesn't burst, we're going to end up with an entire class of people who are effectively unemployable due to so many jobs being replaced by AI and a persistent problem, even outside of a recession, of far more people being able to work but not in the workforce than there are job openings.
Economic predictions are wholly outside of my wheelhouse, so I cannot speak to that.
I can say that it has resulted in an tremendous growth in many of the semiconductor companies. TSMC's revenue is double what it was four years ago. AMD isn't the primary hardware winner from the AI boom, but their stock price keeps going up and their growth in data center revenue is a one of the brighter spots in their company. Nvidia absolutely exploded as we all know. Demand for memory, both RAM and NAND flash, is going up and up and up due to data center and AI based demand.
Intel is basically the only major player that hasn't managed to benefit from this change. Which plays a part in why they're in a bad spot now.
From a pure tech perspective I think AI is in a weird spot. It's not a bubble in the sense of there being nothing there: there is stuff it can do that is meaningful and interesting. It's a bubble because it's being overhyped. Generative AI in particular. The non-generative uses are the most interesting to my mind.
We’ve rolled out proprietary data aggregation and summarization tools at my work using LLMs and they’re pretty great. They have a massive workflow efficiency bonus for human workers. I still don’t see a use case for them “replacing” what most people do, just enhancing it. The hype machine of what they can do is a bit out of control
Yeah, uses like that are the way forward. This is an older use but it is based on the same tech: on my phone once I label a person in a photo once, the phone finds can detect that person in other photos. Even works on pets. That’s another good use, for consumers.
People thinking it will replace lawyers or programmers are delusional. Or at least 20 years too early.
In Back to the Future 2, Doc Brown was telling Marty McFly that in the future, all lawyers were abolished and that the justice system moved swiftly as a result.
Problem is, AI and robotics really can’t deal with the complexities of making an argument in a legal sense. The effectiveness of attorneys isn’t just about their ability to argue a case in court and outside of court. It’s about the emotional mindset they have in persuading the judge, defense attorneys and jury to weigh the facts, reason and everything else.
The AI bubble will eventually burst. It’s going to be inevitable.
I have been hearing in my network and from those I know who work in technology and recruiting that hiring through AI recruiting tools and moving to AI while cutting staff isn’t exactly producing the dividends and results across the board. I’m fact, it’s become a real mess. AI tech is not perfect and like any digital technology solution, it’s still powered by the internet, which in turn is powered by the data centers.
However, I am one to exercise caution with these doomsday predictions.
1) Eventually there is going to be regulation on data centers, which means that if they are lessened or limited, AI’s impact is muted. This is because of environmental concerns, not just because of societal concerns in general.
2) I’ve heard crap from those in tech and the Future of Work advocates from predicting that in 2020 40% of the workforce would be freelancing. The whole statistic cited by these people is bullshit and is taken from a survey Intuit did at around 2013 or 2014 to sell its products. Fail.
I’ve also heard that self-driving back in the 2010 was going to be the new wave of getting around and that we wouldn’t need to drive a car anymore. Hardly anyone uses autonomous vehicles and if they do, they are primarily in cities where tech has the most influence, like San Francisco. Even in Berkeley, NO ONE uses self driving. Are we even thinking about it in Wyoming?
Oh and one video published on YouTube said there will be only five jobs in 2030. Absolute hogwash. AI cannot change the system that quickly and then the whole world move in a system like that in just four years.
No way in hell will AI replace teachers. You can count on teachers unions in full force fighting against the powers that be so they can continue to keep their jobs.
Currently interested in Minneapolis’ mayors race, which from what I’ve heard has been a clusterfuck. City council too. Anyone in the know have an idea of what might happen?
On a related note, the MN Senate race is also on my radar. Again, for anyone in the know: who is more likely to win the Dem primary: Craig, or Flanagan?
Flanagan has been winning in polls but craig has establishment support. Flanagan has broader statewide appeal, however
Much as I want Flanagan to win, I think saying she's winning in polls plural is misleading. As best I can tell there is exactly one poll of the primary, which was done by PPP in February. Flanagan was wildly ahead of Craig in that poll, 52-22, which is good to see. But that's the better part of a year ago. Notably it was two months before Craig officially launched her campaign, and a week before Flanagan officially launched her campaign.
It's not worthless but it's not an overwhelming data point either.
Still, Minnesota does not usually disappoint with their Democratic candidates - this is the state that elected Tina Smith, Paul Wellstone and Walter Mondale (to this exact Senate seat, might I add), which is why I think Flanagan has a fighting chance over Craig, an establishment crony.
For what it’s worth, my wife and I saw Eric Adams leaving Palm Beach International Airport this morning.
Gee, I wonder where he’s heading.
As promised, here's my 9D-1R Washington map:
https://davesredistricting.org/join/9101acdd-b0f0-4885-9bf6-ea630799bb13
Would love to see the Democrats in charge of Washington put a referendum on the ballot to repeal their independent commission until some particular Republican-gerrymandered state (maybe Georgia?) switches to an independent commission themselves. Virginia should predicate the return of their commission on North Carolina adopting one, Colorado should do the same until Missouri adopts an independent commission, and of course California should specifically return to their commission only if Texas starts to use one.
Florida for New York and Ohio for New Jersey?
Sure, and then maybe Tennessee for Massachusetts, which would be an automatic one-seat Dem gain since we'd regain the seat in Nashville but Massachusetts would still be 9-0 even with an ungerrymandered map.
As a WA resident that’s glorious. That 5th might be dodgy in a good R environment but otherwise I’m impressed!
Thanks! Are you able to contact your state legislators (assuming they're Dems) and ask them to do what California is doing?
I’m voting for her in the special (obvs) but Victoria Hunt’s office is usually pretty blah, as most WA Dem constituent outreach is
The reciprocity approach is one I like. Tie our ability to have commissions to their states' approach to it. California's commission comes into play in Texas has one. New York will go with one if Florida does. It wouldn't fix the problem but it would make us look more reasonable and would fit in with good government goals. It's a win/win approach.
Agree with you on making the argument “we’re offsetting the GOP’s redraws” for every commission we override or redraw we undertake. I think it’s effective and persuasive to those who may like the commissions or fairness of their state’s districts and as we’ve seen from polling in California, what once was up in the air for voters is now solidly on our side.
I don’t agree that New York needs to have Florida redraw again for them to redraw their map. Use a couple of other states instead: IN, MO, NC etc. Or use the current redrawn map in Florida as an excuse to do so. If they don’t redraw again, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to redraw in New York anyways because Florida is already a massive gerrymander that should be offset in any case.
Colorado AG Phil Weiser made some important comments yesterday in favor of a Prop 50 like amendment in Colorado. I think we start to see in the coming weeks a serious initiative proposed to do this with formal party backing. It only takes 120k signatures to put an amendment on the ballot so its a pretty easy lift.
Perhaps the polling showing strong support for Prop 50 in California is starting to make Dems in other states believe that they could win a similar referendum too.
I also wonder if the specter of a Southern wipeout post-Louisiana v. Callais has lit a couple of fires under the Dem establishment (as in Virginia), both as a matter of practical politics and also as a moral matter given that we could see LA, MS, AL, AR, TN, SC, and maybe MO with no Black Democratic representation in Congress...
If Dems can unwind the commissions in just VA, NY, CO, and NJ they net up to 12 seats by 2028.
VA +3: 9-2
NY +4: 23-3
NJ +2: 11-1
CO +3: 7-1
That could just about counteract a VRA-armageddon of potentially 12-15 new GOP seats.
Is it possible to go further in any of those four states?
Illinois & Maryland are the easiest pickups right now outside of those two and the four I mentioned the logistics are alot tougher.
Washington state Dems are far short of the supermajority they need to alter their commission and Minnesota's constitution appears to ban mid-decade redistricting. Oregon could go 6-0 but the GOP can quorum bust there.
Washington Dems could still collect signatures though.
Mid-decade redistricting is explicitly banned in Missouri and North Carolina too. That didn’t stop the GOP there, so I don’t think it’ll be any tougher in Minnesota. They just need the house back in 2026 and that honestly should be pretty easy.
Virginia can be made 10-1. I've drawn maps of NJ and CO that eliminate all Republican districts.
You probably can redraw Minnesota and either gain 2-3 seats if you connect the 1st, 2nd, and 8th to St. Paul and Minneapolis and allow the 7th to act as a vote sink and absorb other rural and exurban parts of those districts.
There's also Wisconsin and the renewed lawsuit for fair redistricting. While that's obviously not gerrymandering, fairer districts at the bare minimum would likely mean making more seats competitive, possibly the 1st and 3rd, while potentially weakening the conservative partisan shift in other districts notably the 5th and 6th, which given their proximity to Milwaukee I'm willing to guess would in all likelihood absorb parts of its suburban and metropolitan areas.
Would winning the Georgia Governorship allow us to block a gerrymander in 2031?
I believe so, yes. Georgia requires a 2/3 vote in the state legislature to override the governor's veto, and Republicans don't have anywhere near those margins in the state House or Senate. (And they're not likely to get that either, since the vast majority of state legislative seats are safe for one party.)
Obviously the lunacy of the current Supreme Court should never be underestimated, but it would be very bizarre for them to decide only two years ago that Alabama required two majority African-American districts, and then suddenly reverse that just a few years later and say that they don't require any. And the composition of the Supreme Court hasn't changed in that time.
Two years ago, John Roberts wasn't taking orders from Trump. He is now. 99% of his shadow docket "rulings" have been in Trump's favor. The SCOTUS doesn't even bother with making up explanations anymore :(
What’s he even afraid of? In Congress I at least understand the threat of primaries. You can’t primary a Supreme Court Justice.
Who says he's afraid? Seems like he's doing what he wants.
I don't think Roberts is taking orders from anyone.
The reality is that, despite him being the "least conservative" of the republican members of the court, he and all the others are deeply conservative. They are republicans first, judges second. The modern conservative identity has it as their single most important trait and they are still people. They are not able to disentangle themselves from core identity supremacy.
Chances are all six of them watch Fox, and if they read anything for news it might be one of the more classy conservative papers but it will still be one with a conservative ideology.
Their partisanship is dominant and overriding being consistent or good at being a judge.
I strongly reject the word "conservative" for these radical supporters of an unconstitutional imperial Executive. There's nothing conservative about that.
Remember: The radical right-wing justices, or at least several of them, are being paid off.
“Paid off” grants them agency in the matter, they’re more hired and replaceable stooges than corrupted independent agents.
They have the power to do whatever they want if they so chose, so they do have agency, but sure, they are replaceable.
Yeah - I trust the current court as much as I would Kavanaugh to drive after an open bar Federalist Society dinner. But it would be quite a turn for them and I trust Chris Geidner’s take on the oral arguments (limited ruling that eliminates the second MM VRA district in Louisiana but keeps the rest of the VRA intact). Again, it’s not wrong to expect the worst from this court but there is some thought that it won’t be a worst case scenario. Although, it does not hurt to plan like it will be the worst case and shore up as many districts as possible across the country.
What is Governor Reddit upto?
I'm curious about the Georgia Public Service Commission elections. Hopefully they will have some positive inklings for Ossoff and the governor's race. D performance held up pretty well in Georgia in 2024 despite everything, so hopefully there is still an overall leftward current there (unlike in Texas, which seems to have had stronger countervailing rightward movement since 2018.)
Daniel Nichanian has pointed out that Atlanta has overlapping municipal elections so hopefully that will help drive D turnout.
CA Prop. 50. The Sec of State's latest data as of the 23rd: 4,001,421 VBMs returned (out of 23.26M mailed out). So that's 17.2% so far
AND tomorrow Saturday, in-person voting is starting in most counties, for those voters adverse to VBM's. (Note that some smaller counties are VBM only). This special election is looking to get an excellent voter turnout.
(Interesting data tidbit: that SoS pdf shows roughly 3 in 4 ballots were mailed back, and 1 in 4 used drop-boxes/drop-off locations to return ballots.)
I just received my ballot today, it is marked yes, and will be deposited in a drop box on Sunday.
Two yes votes from my house already processed.
Very easy yes vote for me, and likely my brother, his wife and mother-in-law. And I do mean very easy since all I had to do was fill out the ballot, then drop it off at the drop box in front of my local public library.
Really excited about the Virginia redraw. It’s time we stop bringing butter knives to a gun fight. Hopefully Colorado nukes their commission too and goes for a 7-1 map. Other races I’m interested in:
-Prop 50, and whether it does better than Harris
-VA legislature
-I don’t much care for the VA AG race. I would abstain over the Jones issues if I lived there and would rather the legislature just take Miyares powers away if he wins. Like what NCGOP does.
-Georgia PSC
-PA lower court partisan races
-NY AD-115 special
Interesting idea with the VA AG. I would obviously still vote for Jones if I lived in VA, but it's good to have a backup plan if Miyares does pull out the win.
Was going to like your post until you said you wouldn’t vote for the Democrat over Trump’s AG. I know you don’t live there, so it’s a moot point of course. But I’ll take a Democratic AG who once texted something awful over not stopping the election someone who will follow the dictator in chief’s every order to do Trump’s bidding these next 3 years of hell we have before us.
I see Jones as a liability who will be a lightning rod for controversy if he wins too, so I really don't care. Jones has unquestionably bad judgment, and it's not just the text situation. Plus there's a chance he goes to jail over his community service hours scam. With Miyares, we can at least make the role ceremonial for four years and delegate AG powers to Spanberger's executive agencies.
And I'm not really concerned about Miyares' ability to win higher office given he has shown no interest in building his own brand in Virginia. He was on track to lose in a landslide until the text and community service hours thing.
I am not in a position to comment on how much the VA Attorney General affects VA as a state as I don’t live there.
However, I’d say the greater concern is electing Abigail Spanberger as Governor as her actions on the job can directly impact VA’s economy. She may not have control over the tariffs but she would certainly be pragmatic and work responsibly to govern the state as opposed to Winsome Earle-Sears, who has been running a lame duck gubernatorial campaign the role time.
If the GOP wins the VA Attorney General race but not any of the others, I would not lose sleep over it.
I still want an 8-0 Colorado.
If you'll pardon my asking, why are you so obsessed about this?
Because Lauren Boebert is my least favorite member of congress.
Give Boebert SOME credit given that she's just 1 of 4 Republicans in the House that have voted to release the Epstein files. I'd say that makes her better than her chickenshit "moderate" colleagues including Mike Fitzpatrick and Don Bacon.
It goes further back than the Epstein files vote Boebert cast. She also two years ago started becoming less combative as a result of barely even defeating Democratic Candidate Adam Frisch in 2022 by less than 1,000 votes.
Of course, this “pivot” Boebert is doing is not real. Just more postering at best.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/13/lauren-boebert-maga-colorado-election-00113943I’m
Correct, but I have to nitpick that it's Brian Fitzpatrick, not Mike. Mike held the same seat before Brian.
If Jason Miyares remains AG, he could tamper with or even outright obstruct the Virginia redraw you just said you were so excited about. And the state legislature won't necessarily be able to take away all his powers, as they still have to follow the state constitution.
I know Jay Jones has his issues, but for a multitude of reasons, Dems need to bite their tongue and vote for him.
100% - I can’t believe it’s even being debated.
The Virginia AG powers are entirely statutory and only 'prescribed by law' according to the state constitution. The General Assembly can make his position useless, it just dpeends how far they are willing to go.
https://law.lis.virginia.gov/constitution/article5/section15/
I'm not confident the state courts would agree with that interpretation.
Good list. I would add the PA SC retention votes.
It would be hard to think of a Trump/Yes on Prop 50 voter (Prop 50 being approved would basically end the CA GOP's relevancy in nearly all federal elections, even though they're already irrelevant in most federal elections), although I'm honestly surprised that the GOP has not put up much of a fight against Prop 50.
Sure, but it's quite easy to think of Trump voters who won't vote this year.
It's honestly not THAT hard. Basically , that's your low information voter that complained about expensive eggs, gas and inflation in general. Many of those include angry minority voters, notably Hispanics that were fooled into blaming Biden for high inflation. Many of those voters now are less than satisfied with how Trump's 2nd term has played out and see Republicans as full of crap.
Another group that's less likely to vote at all on Prop 50 are the young Gen Z male voters dealing with not only inflation, but struggling to find work and pay off loans and bills. The same types that may have been duped by the likes of Rogan, the Paul Bros and yes, Kirk.
Something that I think that we’ve started to see glimpses of from the Democratic base and swing voters in general that I think needs a lot more discussion than it’s generated so far:
The “I don’t like blank, but I’m still voting for them” phenomenon.
We’ve for years and years and years, ok, decades, for some of us ;), have gone by the IOKIYAR (It’s OK if you’re a Republican, for those unaware) moniker. That there’s two sets of rules for politicians, 1 for Democrats and 1 for Republicans. Where scandals don’t matter for one party and do for the other. Look no further than 2023 where a Democratic nominee had a sex scandal that cost her the race in the legislature (I don’t think it is/was a scandal, but it’s obvious voters did).
Is that finally coming to an end? I don’t think we can say for certain, but I don’t think we can’t not say for certain anymore either. This started obviously because of Trump, the rapist, convict dictator in the White House and our base going “is what x Democrat did really that bad?” in comparison. But not just in our own individual minds, it’s starting to show up in actual data.
Firstly, we saw Zohran Mamdani win the Democratic primary for mayor of NYC. I know we’ve talked a lot about this race before, but it was such a massive upset, especially considering our being used to the establishment candidate being trusted by our own voters to lead in almost every race we have a competitive primary for. But also because of his erm controversial (?) views on a banned topic of discussion here.
Voters didn’t care that he was outside the mainstream of our party on an issue. They still voted by a large majority to support him. That was the first crack we saw in the rules perhaps changing from the squeaky clean moderates who didn’t offend anyone or have controversial anything in their history that our party’s voters nominated. I want to be clear on this next part: I personally no longer support him. However, I don’t think it’s at all clear that Graham Platner with far, far worse problems and issues in Maine Senate than Mamdani ever had, is at all doomed in his campaign.
Obviously it was a Republican poll, so we don’t have anything nonpartisan yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me if polling to come confirms that almost half our base is more supportive of him after his apology (45% in the GOP poll) and he still wins the primary. We’ll have to wait on nonpartisan polling and election votes to determine those of course and he could still lose a general election to Collins, much we don’t know here still. But that’s the 2nd instance.
Now, we get the October surprise with Jones text scandal in Virginia. Polling has shown he’s absolutely taken a hit here from voters, that’s unarguable, BUT, his former support is NOT going to the Republican alternative. Jason Miyares is stuck in the 45-46% area as an incumbent. IMO, I think Jones wins comfortably, around 3-5 points in a couple weeks. If that does end up being the case, I think that’s another major sign of change within our voters and swing voters minds.
I obviously am not saying someone who denies and gaslights and lies with the frequency of anyone on the GOP side would be forgiven by our voters, because that would never happen, but ones who own up to their mistakes and change their ways from before? With our voters and average swing voters saying we’ll take the Democrat with warts and all over the Republican? I think it’s at least possible they begin to say with frequency “I don’t like blank, but I’m still voting for them” or in other words an amended moniker IAOKIYADAR (It’s actually OK if you’re a Democrat against a Republican).
Maybe this only lasts for the time when Trump is in office fucking up everything, running a dictatorship with a say yes, no rules party that accedes to his every whim. Even if that’s the case though for the next 3 years and then it goes back to the old way, that’s still a colossal shift in voters preferences and what they’re willing to tolerate from a Democrat. I don’t see anyone talking about this and it’s probably one of the biggest changes in our party since 2016, that’s also happening in swing voters and for our party’s nominees. There’s also the possibility it becomes a permanent feature (at least among our voters, swing voters will always swing).
Interested to hear everyone’s thoughts and discussion about this, because if it’s true, it’s very big news and opens up our party primaries to a whole ton of different kinds of candidates who never thought they could win nominations before, injecting fresh blood and enthusiasm into our party, which we’ve sorrily needed since 2016. As a personal note, I’m glad and I do hope this continues where our voters and the decision making voters say I’ll take the flawed Democrat over a regular/MAGA Republican /end.
Interesting and well thought-out post. I kind of doubt Mamdani fits into this, though. Mamdani's win could show that opinions of voters, even many Jewish voters in the city with the largest Jewish population in the world (speaking as one of them), are changing on the forbidden topic, and that voters who are not obsessively bigoted may be more clearly accepting of Muslim candidates.
Thank you for the compliment! I don’t think he’s the poster boy for this theory, that’s for sure. But I do think his non disavowal of a phrase that at first sight sounds insane until you get what he’s actually meaning by the saying (which I won’t mention because I’m trying to stay far away from a very divisive and banned topic here for good reason) is still a massive change for the better.
I mean just 3 years ago you had a candidate lose a general election on the phrase “defund the police” after he renounced supporting it. Obviously NYC and WI are very much not even close to each other in anyway shape or form, but 1 Democrat who meant something else than actually defunding the police, (which you’d know after explaining) renounced the phrase and won the primary. The other Democrat didn’t denounce the problematic stance and still won the primary.
That’s a change and a significant one still imo. Voters didn’t care about hearing the explanation behind the phrase 3 years ago, they did in 2025. Again, I want to be clear, different electorates and different states and different White House and different years and different Democrats. But, Mamdani didn’t lose from an emotionally charged, but non-eloquent phrase. That in my mind shows a meaningful difference and is the reason I included him.
I get the analogy. Yeah, probably better not to pursue discussion of it in more detail.
Mamdani has, as much as I hate the comparison, a Reaganesque quality. The ability to charm and communicate to voters so as to appear non-threatening even though his positions are, or are perceived to be, extreme. So far he’s been a very effective politician.
It's a valid point, though. Political skill can be admired outside of how one evaluates policy positions.
It's meaningful, too. If you are right, but can't sell it? What's the point?
I think the jury is still out on the Maine Senate race. I would like to have some faith in Democratic primary voters that we are not going to ignore all the information we have that Platner knew his tattoo was a Totenkopf. I'd give it a week or so to settle into the electorate before panicking about primary polls.
To Virginia Dems' credit, I have little doubt that Jones would have lost the primary had we known about his issues beforehand. I do think you're right that Miyares would be running away with it had he even once broke with Trump over anything of note. But he hasn't, so there's no reason for blue voters to trust him at all over a problematic candidate. The problem in Maine though is that Susan Collins has broken from Trump, regardless of how performative it is. I could easily see voters choosing her over him in a landslide despite an otherwise blue environment.
I think you’re absolutely right on Maine, we need to wait for it to settle before really saying anything with certainty, it could very well end up being a deal breaker for primary and/or general election voters. If that doesn’t end up being the case though (we’ll know after the primary and general election), we did have a glimpse of what would happen before it did in hindsight.
I also agree with you that Jones would’ve lost the primary had it come out then. The main point I was making though was when it’s a problematic D vs a regular/MAGA Republican, our voters and more importantly swing voters aren’t choosing the GOP. That’s a change from previous elections, where a far more tame scandal sunk our candidates in quite a few races (if Jones does win, which tbd).
I think Collins could win as could Miyares, they’re both possibilities, but I don’t think that happens in this current environment. I was right for most elections from 2017-2020 and wrong about most elections from 2021-2024. It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if I end up getting this theory right or wrong and I’m not saying anything with absoluteness. But I am just seeing little cracks in the data and election results that may or may not lead to some bigger ones that I think we should talk about before that happens if it does.
I do think post-scandal politics is no longer something that overwhelming only applies to Trump anymore since Trump is President again despite everything that happens and JD Vance happily telling everyone anyone who is a Republican can do no wrong (obviously Vance thinks Democrats breathing is a crime punishable by imprisonment). Trump has shifted the Overton window in what is and what isn't a career ending scandal so far in one direction does anything short of someone murdering someone ends ones political career anymore?
Also the consensus across the Democratic Party now is that we definitely went too far in policing our side of the aisle, throwing out and canceling so many people that the tent is less than 40% of the electorate at this time so there's much more room for Dem candidates showing their let's say imperfections or deviating from party orthodoxy than it was in 2024.
I think many Democrats and "progressives" got too censorious during the MeToo and Peak Woke periods, tossing promising candidates and officeholders overboard for minor at best, and often distantly past, transgressions.
But that doesn't necessarily apply to Platner. For example, even if we accept that he didn't know what the Totenkopf tattoo meant when he got it (or was too inebriated to remember or care), as a self-proclaimed student of military history he should have eventually realised what it had stood for and gotten it altered or removed BEFORE he started running for office.
Your remarks about being too censorious seem reasonable, but on the other hand, I don't think any candidate with Bill Clinton's history of sexually predatory behavior would be likely to win a Democratic primary for president, nowadays, and I'm glad about that.
On sexual predatory behavior, that’s about flat out avoiding doing this and showing respect towards women as human beings. Men cannot argue they are being “oppressed” or “censored” by the nature of their behavior when it’s obvious what they are doing.
But censorship over different political viewpoints and perspectives goes against what I have learned as a liberal growing up in Berkeley.
We're talking about censure, not censorship. There are political viewpoints that absolutely should be condemned, let alone censured. When followers of Lyndon Larouche won Democratic primaries, the rest of the party did the right thing by urging a vote against them in the general election.
Yes, of course re: censure. I'm just arguing that men cannot talk about complaining being censored or censured when it's clear they cannot beat around the bush with this.
As far as political viewpoints are concerned, I'm just talking about things in a general sense. The 1st Amendment however allows free speech but does not specifically cover the agenda that's behind the movement of Lyndon LaRouche and others. That's where it gets dicey.
2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024, this election ain’t that.
https://x.com/AdImpact_Pol/status/1981447273985802738
We've tracked over $26.8m spent on ads targeting the #VAPol House of Delegates general elections this year.
Spending/reservations:
🔵$20.1m
🔴$6.7m
Democrats hold a spending advantage in 21 of the 22 elections that have seen +$100k in total spending/reservations.
https://news.ballotpedia.org/2025/10/22/record-high-fundraising-in-the-virginia-house-of-delegates-races/
Democratic House candidates have raised a total of $44.2 million this cycle, their most in the last two decades. Republicans have raised $19.6 million, down from a high of $26.9 million in 2023.
Ballotpedia identified 23 districts as general election battlegrounds. Democratic candidates in those districts raised a total of $24.2 million, and Republican candidates raised a total of $11.9 million. That means Democratic candidates outraised Republican candidates by about 2-to-1 in battleground districts and across all 100 districts.
Want to poke my head in here to drop this excellent article from the UnPopulist about how the failure of Emmanuel Macron's technocratic centrist political project has opened a wide open lane for Marine Le Pen to storm through in 2027 and finally become President. Macron responding to domestic political setback after political setback due to not having a workable majority in parliament by ruling more and more as a King isn't helping matters.
The article notes a new milestone was set in French politics last month when Nicholas Sarkozy (before he headed off to prison) declared that Le Pen's National Rally party is welcome within the Gaullist Right tent. Previously it was kept out, but if anything Sarkozy was a laggard in this regard since a faction of the Les Republicans led by Eric Ciotti threw their support behind Le Pen in 2024 when Macron had a fit of political insanity and called snap parliamentary elections the night National Rally cleaned up at the EU Parliamentary elections.
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/the-failure-of-macrons-technocratic?r=juk1g&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Europe’s sadly only a few years behind us, and France is the bleeding edge. If it’s not Le Pen it’ll be Bardella on one of the Wauquiez/Ciotto/insert some other RN-lite figure of the increasingly reactionary Gaullist tendency
No chance for the left to win?
In 2027? Unlikely in its current state
Worth hedging that though, as 2027 is still two years off. We cannot rely on the current state being maintained that long. I will not presume that France's politics can move as rapidly as ours do. Even if they do not, the time left is more than enough for something to change substantially without requiring a miraculous set of circumstances.
None of that to say that such a thing will happen either!
A lot of unlikely-looking wins for the non-fascist side have occurred in France.
True. It’s just that things have gone worse for our side since those unlikely wins and as the IRA used to say “you have to get lucky time and we have to get lucky once”
I get you. But considering the track record of the French electorate, I wouldn't bet against them.
One issue that likely isn't helping the French left is....air conditioning. Specifically, when National Rally wants to implement a "major air-conditioning equipment plan" and the left calls it an "aberration that must be overcome", this framing isn't going to endear the left to voters when heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense, regardless of what Saint Greta of Sweden and other climate activists say.
https://www.natesilver.net/p/i-loved-my-time-in-the-uk-but-it
Wasn’t Le Pen barred from running?
Yes
Thinking about the current mess in Maine. I really wish Jared Golden had just ran for senate, he is basically Platner without the baggage and a proven winner who is vetted. Now he's facing a primary and looks to be an underdog for his seat against LePage. Even if he wins he still has to fight it out every 2 years instead of a 6 year term in the senate.
He’s not basically Platner.
Let me clarify I think Golden and Platner have similar backgrounds in being prior military (tattoos and all) with unorthodox political views. Golden is pro-union, pro-tariff, and supports taxing the rich which some progressive will like while he's more moderate on guns and FP.
Outside of sounding progressive on foreign policy, Platner seems to share alot of Golden's views along with being anti-establishment though I don't know where he stands on tariffs.
Jared Golden did work for Susan Collins before running for Congress, though. Would be a slight conflict of inerest
Saying Golden and Platner are basically the same is crazy
Golden is not an underdog. If Theriault couldn’t beat him with Trump on the ballot the 80-year-old LePage in a Trump midterm definitely won’t.
Theriault ran a weak campaign, however, as did Poliquin, Golden's predecessor and 2-time opponent.
Golden has lucked out with weak and flawed opponents but I think LePage is going to be toughest opponent he's had to face since LePage won ME-2 solidly before.
LePage won ME-02 while losing to Mills by double digits. The district likes him.
I would absolutely not say Golden is out of the woods. This will be one of the more competitive seats. It's entirely possible that Golden loses even in a good year for us.
LePage barely won ME-02 in 2022 and Golden is more popular than Mills in that district. And it’ll likely be a way less favorable year for the GOP.
It appears from the polls at least that Golden's popularity has collapsed. He has been like Fetterman in trashing Dems and saying nice things about Trump that has turned off Dems but still votes anti-Trump so Republicans don't like him either. I expect most Dems to come home between him and LePage but he needs way more their support in that district.
So you’re saying Golden’s biggest problem is Harris voters abstaining rather than Trump-Golden voters flipping to LePage?
I'm going to second everyone else and say Golden and Platner are fairly different, but also add that I don't think Platner has particularly set or deep beliefs, so he could easily turn into Golden, or something else.
Platner has Fetterman written all over him.
There is a reason why Susan Collins wins re-election. I've never looked at the numbers, but I presume she does well in ME-2. Golden is genuinely trying to represent that district, IMO. Would he be a Manchin or Sinema? Probably. The question for Dems to ask themselves is whether Manchin or Sinema are better than Collins. Some would say No, some would say draw, but if Golden had run, that would have been an important question.
Golden would've denied Collins the ability to run up margins in ME-2 that is necessary for Republicans to win statewide in Maine. Regardless of his ideology that would've been the main benefit of having his as nominee.
I agree, and I think would have been a capable nominee.
The question is whether someone as disruptive within the party as him is needed for the race. If the Democratic candidate loses to Collins again, you'll be able to say "I told you so," but a "what if" can never really be proven.
I agree with your analysis. It won't take Golden jumping into the race to be competitive against Collins with Gov. Mills in the race.
NY-8:
https://www.cityandstateny.com/politics/2025/10/private-poll-shows-hakeem-jeffries-50-point-lead-over-chi-osse-hypothetical-congressional-primary/408870/?oref=csny-topic-lander-river
A poll, conducted by Z to A Research, shows the following result in a possible Hakeem Jeffries-Chi Ossé matchup:
- Jeffries: 72%
- Ossé: 21%
Jeffries additionally has a 74% favorability rating and a 69% very favorable rating in his district. However, half of these voters had apparently not heard of Ossé.
Make of this what you will.
Yet another bit of evidence that points of view seen on the internet may not be indicative of reality.
In Jeffries’ district.
Also important to note that Jeffries is the literal House Minority Leader. There's a difference between primarying him and primarying some random Democrat who's been in office for decades and has barely done anything in office (I believe that was one reason Mai Vang is challenging Doris Matsui)/has actively pissed people off with their antics (Thanedar, Fetterman, and although I don't support his challenger Golden)/does not represent their district at all (Thanedar again, Goldman, Bowman in 2022, etc.)/is getting so old, they're missing votes and/or displaying signs of health problems (Larson, Holmes Norton, Evans, etc.)
Eric Cantor/George Nethercutt/AOC moments aren't particularly common in politics anyway.
Is Dan Goldman *really* in trouble in a primary if he faces a legitimate candidate to his left and the field on that side of the spectrum isn't split? Cuomo was never going to be a fit for the libs who live in Park Slope, but would that really mean trouble for Goldman who seemed to fit the median primary voter in the district (who watches/d) MSNBC.
The only poll I’ve seen had Brad Lander ahead by over 20 points. I don’t think Goldman has a chance.
I think he has a chance, but he sure feels the need to email me almost every day...
You think the median voter in my district watches MSNBC? I'm skeptical. I think most people are busy working or studying.
I have little doubt that the internet is more anti-leadership and anti-octogenarian than the broader electorate. There's still room for some members of those groups to lose their primaries; if we relied on the internet as our baseline you'd expect those incumbents to be nearly wiped out. An outcome that doesn't reach that levels can still be quite impactful.
Jeffries, specifically, is leadership and while I am deeply unimpressed with him I think it's fair to say he has not been a lightning rod of disappointment the way that Schumer has. Our house caucus has avoided embarrassing themselves or disappointing the base. He's in his 50s, not an ancient politician with an elected career longer than most millennials' lifespans.
It would be a real shock if he was in danger.
I think this is one of those wayyyyy too early to mean anything polls. The primary is a long ways away and NYC mayor is taking up all the oxygen and attention. Those supporting Jeffries are basically doing so because he’s the incumbent and has high name recognition. I think there’s at least a small possibility there’s double like voters if Osse runs. Where people who approve of Jeffries still vote for Osse because they like him more or better.
My expectations are basically for Mamdani’s coming majority win (fingers crossed!) to create an explosion of progressives challenging establishment incumbents regardless of age and at the same time for Democratic primary voters to start to think about if their current incumbent is really the best choice right now during this time.
After that happens that’s when we’ll start to get a better idea on whether there is a tea party of the left wave building in primaries or not. Not right now before the 2025 elections reverberate into our party. That all said, Jeffries obviously could still win and is probably likely to as leader, but it wasn’t that long ago when we said it was impossible for a party leader to lose and he actually did.
It's worth noting on the tea party that they didn't actually defeat all that many incumbents in primaries. Only two republican members of the house lost their primary in 2010, and one of them was a democrat who had changed party. Only one republican senator lost a primary that year.
Where they had an impact was in successfully pressuring incumbents to retire and in open seat primaries.
Perhaps the biggest change is that republicans in office changed their actions to appease their voter base. This is happening to a far lesser extent with democrats. If anything, Schumer and a handful of senators seem to hold that desire from democratic voters in outright disdain. Leadership across the party is consistent in keeping protests and party anger at arms length, dissociating themselves from it or outright ignoring it as much as they possibly can.
If our party starts knocking out incumbents in primaries are a greater than usual rate, that will be very unlike what happened with the tea party. And if that does happen, it likely will be in no small part due to elected democrats reacting very differently than how republicans reacted in 2009-2010.
Of course you are correct, not many incumbents lost their primaries over 2010 or 2014 elections. But, insurgent nobody candidates started to get closer to defeating them. And rather than lose their next primary race with the same opponent who is better funded and has bigger resources of both people and power, they decided to retire.
So if history does rhyme and the same thing happens, yeah, we can say that the tea party wave of the left also didn’t take out many incumbents, but we create a message for our elected leaders to start representing what we want as a party, to fight the GOP with everything we’ve got. Even the incumbents who are still in office from before and after that wave on the Republican side have changed.
I think Schumer’s days are numbered and I think Jeffries has some vulnerabilities that could cause him to underperform in a primary. I view him as a transition leader who gets the behind the scenes struggle for power, but not the public struggle and Schumer as a past the best by date leader hanging on. Neither are the future of our party, I can say that for certain. They’re the right now leaders. Who is the future for Democrats can be debated endlessly, right, left and centre. Just because something is the way it is now, doesn’t mean it will be tomorrow or next year.
If this does happen, regardless of who wins what primary races in the 2026 midterms, our party will be better off in the long run because new people with fresh ideas and younger, vibrant, knock them out with one punch Democrats will be replacing who currently lead us. That imo is the only way we can defeat the GOP fascist cult of personality and have even the slightest chance of holding power for more than 2 or 4 year 1 term stints.
Right, commonly a long term incumbent that sees a serious chance of defeat will opt to retire rather than risk the humility of ending their career with defeat. That's very likely played into Doggert's decision making. Although for him it would be to another incumbent. Schakowsky might have done the same. If Pelosi does retire that could be a factor for her as well. Those will not be primary wins even if the threat of a primary played a large part.
Although a lot of incumbents in a similar position seem intent to fight it out to the end, so there's a lot more opportunity here than there was in 2010 for republican incumbents to lose primaries.
Schumer day's likely are numbered, but there's only so much solace in that. It means there's only so much room to pressure him, if he would be content to retire in 2028. Especially if he's already decided to retire, without telling anyone. It's not impossible he loses leadership in between, if we get a miracle and win 51 seats but one of them refuses to vote for him as senate leader. But that's a narrow path.
I'd love AOC for Speaker, but it's a little soon for that if it would ever work nationally.
I'm not seeing Schumer's behavior the same way as you. He utterly caved the last time he had a chance to derail or slow down a horrible Republican spending measure, and he was greeted with an absolute firestorm of outrage that must have surprised him with its severity, so he has held firm so far this time. He hasn't changed his spots, but he has reacted somewhat to the attitudes of Democratic rank and file.
I'm waiting to give him credit until after this process has finished successfully, without him caving. Especially after the trial balloon / rumors of a Nov 1 "off ramp" to give up.
If he makes it through this without caving, I'll agree.
Nobody's beating Jeffries!
As I suspected, Goldman is far more vulnerable to a primary challenge than Jeffries is. Goldman is an absolutely awful ideological fit for NY-10, whereas it's not hard to imagine a voter in NY-8 who voted for Mamdani in the mayoral primary but isn't interested in voting against Jeffries in a Democratic primary for a U.S. House seat that he's represented for over a decade and has a decent chance of becoming Speaker of the House.
The Bulwark's Focus Group podcast episode about the New Jersey governor's race is out. It wasn't as bad of a Focus Group for Mikie Sherrill as I thought when Sarah Longwell previewed it earlier this week.
The most interesting takeaways are as follows:
1) The undecided voters in this group are feeling meh about both candidates and if you prodded them on who they'd vote for if they had to mostly lined up on partisan lines (Kamala voters go for Sherrill, Trump voters go for Jack Ciattarelli). One undecided voter who voted for Kamala said he was 51/49 leaning to Sherrill, but he believed Sherrill wants to push LGBTQ stuff in schools and he disagreed with that. Another undecided voter who voted for Trump said he'd probably vote for Sherrill because he was worried that Ciattarelli was Chris Christie 2.0. and electing Ciattarelli against a Dem legislature in Trenton was a recipe for gridlock.
2) Cost of living is a big concern among everyone in the Focus Group. (Bridge tolls, property taxes, energy prices, etc.) In that vein Kamala voters weren't against Ciattarelli's promises to cut taxes.
3) Voters are pretty tuned about about this race since they're more interested in following the circus of a mayoral race in NYC.
4) Trump voters don't like Chris Christie because they saw their property taxes and cost of living continue to go up under Christie.
5) Kamala voters mentioned Sherrill being unable to explain whether she made $7 million off stock trading when Charlamagne pushed her about it when she was on The Breakfast Club before the primary.
6) Voters in the focus group were aware of Mikie Sherrill's Naval Academy scandal, but didn't really care about it.
BONUS: Longwell's colleague JVL who was with her on the podcast went on a rant against YIMBYism saying New Jersey is already building a ton of housing, but housing prices aren't going down in large part because New Jersey is already one of the densest places in the country and they have good schools and are smack in the middle of Philly and NYC meaning paying a premium is the cost of living in New Jersey.
I do think JVL's rant speaks to a big weakness about YIMBYism and Abundance is that if the average voter who doesn't even know who Ezra Klein or Derek Thompson or Scott Wiener sees a bunch of apartment buildings go up in their neighborhood, but if they don't feel housing prices going down in the short term they'll turn against the whole idea entirely especially among "get off my lawn" suburbanites.
https://youtu.be/BriAlwiB0cU?si=3poRhP2w1_dsarzh
I'd love to get a focus group or survey that asks 2 things those individuals who are afraid of certain things being pushed in schools like LGBT items or critical race theory or "woke" agendas. 1) What specifically in terms of any of those items are "they" pushing into schools and 2) in what area are they pushing it? Maybe this sounds like the condescending elite liberal talking down to those people, but I honestly don't understand. Maybe I missed the survey that explored this topic.
I also want to ask, how much time do you think teachers have to teach all this stuff, along with the required curriculum?
On the flip side, I can tell you it concerns me when you conservatives dominate the textbook fights over history textbooks that push a conservative viewpoint when it comes to the Constitution or that Christianity should play this outsized role in government because the Founding Fathers believed in God. To me that's more concerning because it goes to the very heart of how this country is run. It concerns me when PragerU and its 'educational' materials are being sanctioned for use in schools with the approval of state officials.
Those Christian-establishmentarian bigots would love Founding Father Thomas Paine. From the Wikipedia article about him, with several citations:
"Paine became notorious because of his pamphlets and attacks on his former allies, who he felt had betrayed him. In The Age of Reason and other writings, he advocated Deism, promoted reason and freethought, and argued against religion in general and Christian doctrine in particular."
DC Delegate: According to a police report Eleanor Holmes Norton has 'early stages of dementia' and has a caretaker with power of attorney. This was the result of police being called out because Holmes Norton was scammed at home by a group claiming to be a cleaning crew. Her credit card was charged $4,400. Her office is pushing back on the report.
https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/del-eleanor-holmes-norton-scammed-at-home-by-group-claiming-to-be-cleaning-crew/4006388/
On a personal note, regarding so many elected officials who seem to prefer to leave their office via a body bag versus just simply retiring, I wish I could tell them it's okay if you leave. I used to be the head of a local PAC for 8 years (and held other positions for years before that). I get it. You devote a good portion of your life to the position or your organization, so much so that you wonder what will happen if you leave. What changed it for me was I thought, "I'm worried what will happen if I leave, but what would happen if I dropped dead tomorrow?" The organization would be in the same position, and possibly worse off, because at least if I just voluntarily left I could still offer advice and help if needed.
I get that everyone doesn't age the same. I've known people my age who look and are physically 20 years older than me. I've seen people 20 years older than me still get around like they're younger. I'm loathe to make a generalization, but it's these continual small stories you see when it comes to older elected officials that makes me pause. There's currently 213 Dem House members. 13 are 80+ years old and another 44 are 70+. I used 70 because that's the age when Rep. Sylvester Turner died and we still haven't filled that seat. We have a caucus where 27% (26.76%) are over that age of 70.
Just for my own morbid curiosity, the rest of the Dem caucus breaks down as:
18 members under 40 (8.45%)
46 between 40-49 (21.59%)
52 between 50-59 (24.41%)
40 between 60-69 (18.77%)
Great post.
Probably best not to automatically attribute this to Norton’s age.
However, because she is dealing with early stages of dementia, this kind of scam isn’t a good thing for her to deal with. Better Norton resign and deal with her health ASAP.
I think she's not really in early stages of dementia and they're being polite.
Yeah, they’re probably trying to contain the liabilities Norton is presenting in continuing to remain in office.
At this point, she’s become another Dianne Feinstein.
Exactly, though fortunately not voting.
I know that even Gwen Graham likely would have lost the U.S. Senate Race in Florida, but I wonder if she could have made the general election competitive. Florida is a tough state to breakthrough at this point, but I suspect Moody will become entrenched going forward. Maybe Mujica or Jenkins can at least make the race interesting. Graham still has the skill to run a quality campaign, but it would likely be too late for her to get in now and raise the necessary resources.
Isn’t the primary in August?
It is. I always have an inflated view of how much money you have to raise in a race because these incumbent Republicans basically have all kinds of money at their disposal and Florida is already against us. I assume some powerful people have already asked Graham about it, and she said No, but I don't know that, and she could get in the race.
I think considering Gwen Graham was running against Andrew Gillum in the 2018 Democratic Primary, she didn't have the chance to really show enough about her appeal statewide. Gillum became the gubernatorial nominee, had the FBI investigation to deal with and then did not get convicted of anything in the end.
Graham could still have a shot but I also haven't paid much attention to the FL-GOV race so I cannot say.
I honestly feel like if Gwen Graham were the nominee in 2018 then Florida would still be a swing state
To an extent. The acceleration of conservative late Boomers and Gen Xers headed down that way in retirement preceded 2016
How so? Bill Nelson also lost. That state was zooming right big time
It's odd looking back at Nelson's loss. I remember when it happened I was certain we would come to be greatly frustrated by that in the years ahead.
Yet, in the grand scheme of things I'm not sure it changed much. During the 50-50 senate for the first two years of Biden's term we saw Sinema and Manchin were often in lockstep, especially on the most important issues. Adding one more dem seat would have helped but the impact might not have been that significant. After 2022 we no longer held the house so legislative goals were out the window anyway, even though our senate caucus was now large enough that with Nelson in there we could have bypassed Sinema and Manchin working together.
Then, if he had barely won in 2018 we almost certainly would have lost that seat in 2024. The balance of power starting this year would not be changed.
Some legislation might have been made a bit better, and Biden would have gotten a few more appointments through. Which would have been good. It did not work out to the dramatic consequences I expected.
Hopefully history repeats and I am exactly as wrong about the consequences of Casey's narrow loss last year.
I feel that Nelson's campaign was dragged down by gillums
Probably. Gillum made a huge mistake not asking Graham to run with him as Lt. Governor. He chose Chris King who,iirc, got about 3-4% in the primary. King then disappeared from the campaign never to be heard from again.
Perhaps but considering Gillum was under FBI investigation in the end and had the legal fiasco to deal with throughout 2018, even if Graham were his running mate, I really don’t know how that would have changed things that much.
Unless Graham had more crossover appeal than Gillum.
I think Florida was always headed for this transition into a Republican bastion. Not from the Latino vote shift, or even anything to do with who ran for the GOP or anything to do with politics. Conservative retirees from northern/eastern/plains states want something different than they had: sun and beaches. Something they had to go a very long ways to access before in their lives and even if they had some of it, it’s not like Florida where it’s like that almost year round.
So white retirees were always going to and were continuing to flock to Florida even with hurricanes coming every few years to where they live. The part that made the state competitive for Democrats were the native born black and Latino populations to counteract that wave of millions of white people over the decades. Once the Latino vote stopped being 60-40 D, it was all downhill from there as black population growth would never be able to keep up with the mass of voters Republicans were gaining. Now to be fair I don’t think Republicans will have a lock on this state forever.
At some point a state crisis with nothing to do with politics other than the incompetence of the party in power so big will happen under the GOP that even conservatives will pull the lever for Democrats even for just 1 term for some statewide race. It’s an inevitability with a lock hold on a trifecta under a party that’s sole goal is to own the libs and nominate the loudest politicians into office to attack us constantly. Maybe it’ll be under Governor Byron Donalds, maybe it’ll be decades from now, but there’s going to be a Katrina like situation in the state of Florida from a hurricane. Or people won’t be able to afford their homes from a financial crisis or something else we have no idea is currently going wrong that’s waiting to bubble to the surface.
Transplants from the midwest shifted right the same time the folks back home shifted right. Couple that with hispanic voters going right, well, we have the current Florida.
The fact that the great majority of the Greatest Generation liberal retirees from New York have died off mattered a great deal, too.
And what's going to happen to Florida is that it is going to sink under the sea... :(
The transition to GQP bastion was helped by the Florida Democrats incompetence. Ever since 2010 when a backroom deal was struck to block the Hillsborough County Dem choir from the state chair in favor of Allison Tant the party has been reeling from one close loss after another till Chartle Crist was blown out by DeSantis in 2022. Yet in all the recent state constitutional referendums the liberal/democratic have garnered solid majorities even though the didn’t reach the 60% threshold to pass. You would think Florida Democrats would use that to their advantage.
Nominating Andrew Gillum over Gwen Graham was a massive own goal that accelerated Florida becoming a red state.
I personally would want her to try to run for the U.S. Senate against Moody, but if she got into the Governor's race that would be fine. Florida is such a large state with so many people, it is sad if we have to completely write it off, but it may have gotten to that point.
WATN:
Former U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema, now a lobbyist for Active Infrastructure, urged Chandler, Arizona's Planning Commission on October 15 to approve a $2.5 billion AI data center project warning of impending federal preemption under President Trump's July 2025 AI Action Plan if the city delays. The commission advanced the rezoning 5-2 despite city staff's recommendation against it over infrastructure strains, with a City Council vote set for November 13. The proposal promises construction jobs but draws criticism for the facility's projected high water and energy demands amid Arizona's severe drought.
As someone who spends a lot of time following computer hardware... $2.5b on a data center is insane.
In 2022 the US gov deployed the world's first exascale supercomputer, at the time the fastest supercomputer in the world for $600m. It was more than twice as fast as the next fastest in the world, and about eight times faster than the next one down. In 2024 its successor as the fastest supercomputer in the world debuted with a similar $600m price tag.
These are absurdly large systems. Finding a way to spend $2.5b on a data center is an incredible task, even with Nvidia's growing prices. The over investment in the AI market is insane.
From what I've read, the AI bubble is far larger than the dot.com bubble of the late 1990s/early 2000s or even the subprime mortgage bubble of the mid-2000s. If the AI bubble bursts, a recession is virtually certain. If the AI bubble doesn't burst, we're going to end up with an entire class of people who are effectively unemployable due to so many jobs being replaced by AI and a persistent problem, even outside of a recession, of far more people being able to work but not in the workforce than there are job openings.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/ai-bubble-2025-analysts-warn-of-an-impending-financial-crisis/articleshow/124340039.cms
Economic predictions are wholly outside of my wheelhouse, so I cannot speak to that.
I can say that it has resulted in an tremendous growth in many of the semiconductor companies. TSMC's revenue is double what it was four years ago. AMD isn't the primary hardware winner from the AI boom, but their stock price keeps going up and their growth in data center revenue is a one of the brighter spots in their company. Nvidia absolutely exploded as we all know. Demand for memory, both RAM and NAND flash, is going up and up and up due to data center and AI based demand.
Intel is basically the only major player that hasn't managed to benefit from this change. Which plays a part in why they're in a bad spot now.
From a pure tech perspective I think AI is in a weird spot. It's not a bubble in the sense of there being nothing there: there is stuff it can do that is meaningful and interesting. It's a bubble because it's being overhyped. Generative AI in particular. The non-generative uses are the most interesting to my mind.
We’ve rolled out proprietary data aggregation and summarization tools at my work using LLMs and they’re pretty great. They have a massive workflow efficiency bonus for human workers. I still don’t see a use case for them “replacing” what most people do, just enhancing it. The hype machine of what they can do is a bit out of control
Yeah, uses like that are the way forward. This is an older use but it is based on the same tech: on my phone once I label a person in a photo once, the phone finds can detect that person in other photos. Even works on pets. That’s another good use, for consumers.
People thinking it will replace lawyers or programmers are delusional. Or at least 20 years too early.
In Back to the Future 2, Doc Brown was telling Marty McFly that in the future, all lawyers were abolished and that the justice system moved swiftly as a result.
Problem is, AI and robotics really can’t deal with the complexities of making an argument in a legal sense. The effectiveness of attorneys isn’t just about their ability to argue a case in court and outside of court. It’s about the emotional mindset they have in persuading the judge, defense attorneys and jury to weigh the facts, reason and everything else.
It's a wet dream of the 1% to replace us all with computers (which will, of course, crash civilization). Whether it pans out is anyone's guess.
The AI bubble will eventually burst. It’s going to be inevitable.
I have been hearing in my network and from those I know who work in technology and recruiting that hiring through AI recruiting tools and moving to AI while cutting staff isn’t exactly producing the dividends and results across the board. I’m fact, it’s become a real mess. AI tech is not perfect and like any digital technology solution, it’s still powered by the internet, which in turn is powered by the data centers.
However, I am one to exercise caution with these doomsday predictions.
1) Eventually there is going to be regulation on data centers, which means that if they are lessened or limited, AI’s impact is muted. This is because of environmental concerns, not just because of societal concerns in general.
2) I’ve heard crap from those in tech and the Future of Work advocates from predicting that in 2020 40% of the workforce would be freelancing. The whole statistic cited by these people is bullshit and is taken from a survey Intuit did at around 2013 or 2014 to sell its products. Fail.
I’ve also heard that self-driving back in the 2010 was going to be the new wave of getting around and that we wouldn’t need to drive a car anymore. Hardly anyone uses autonomous vehicles and if they do, they are primarily in cities where tech has the most influence, like San Francisco. Even in Berkeley, NO ONE uses self driving. Are we even thinking about it in Wyoming?
Oh and one video published on YouTube said there will be only five jobs in 2030. Absolute hogwash. AI cannot change the system that quickly and then the whole world move in a system like that in just four years.
Also, one other point:
No way in hell will AI replace teachers. You can count on teachers unions in full force fighting against the powers that be so they can continue to keep their jobs.