On that note, how does everyone here feel about our chances? The PA Dems had some really bad leadership problems recently under Sharif Street and did horribly last year but we’re in a very anti-GOP environment and the PA Dems have a new leader (DePasquale), so how might we do?
I’m of two minds with DePasquale. It really depends which one shows up. The 2006 to 2020 campaign version who held the Auditor office in tough years or the 2024 version where he lost pretty badly. Yes, it was a bad year for Democrats everywhere, but the margin was still pretty sizable. I’m obviously hoping for the former. We’ll see what happens in 2026 or any specials upcoming.
So how worried do we have to be in the NJ Gov race? Sherrill is as exciting as toast and I'm sure she appeals to some of the disaffected white suburbanites, but there's something about this race which makes me think there'll be low voter turnout.
A fear I have is that NJ is so ludicrously corrupt (with party bosses who mainly just try to help themselves), they won’t and it will either be close or we’ll lose. I saw something on Bluesky saying there’s an enthusiasm gap between Dems and GOP, with the latter ahead, so I guess we can only hope this isn’t going to go poorly.
Anecdotally, I live in the NY area, and I’ve been seeing as many Ciattarelli ads as Sherrill, if not more. Not good.
This feels more like a “Ed Gillespie gains on Northam, the race is neck and neck” media created story than a “Glenn Youngkin wins VA in a shocker” actual story. If I see the RGA spend what the DGA (Governors party) org has/does, then I’ll start to get concerned. But throwing their poster boy fake moderate a few mill because they have to keep up with appearances is not anything to worry about.
Until I see polling showing Hispanics/Latinos suddenly in love with Trump again like they were in 2024 which was what made NJ close, this should be a pretty easy victory for Sherrill even if she as a candidate doesn’t excite our base. Trump being president does that for us already.
as a resident, and regular canvasser donor etc, we could not be more fine. murphy was asleep at the wheel in a worse environment and won. Bigger question is what happens to our assembly majority, up or down depending on enough ticket splitting in LD 3 and 4.
Could be a case where lower-turnout really helps us, as Dem-leaning voters and even R-ish indies are all pissed about how much GA Power bills have skyrocketed in the past 5 years.
Axios is reporting Gov. Mills is likely to run for Senate against Collins. I have very mixed feelings about her running. I think national dems have a bad read on the ground in Maine and think she is like Cooper in being a popular Gov and needed to flip the seat.
Her approval rating has been mediocre at best with most polls showing her 50/50 and polarizing. Sure, she is probably better liked than Collins. But I think the strategy the GOP employed last year of recruiting outsiders like Sheehy & Moreno to knock off longtime incumbents is something Dems should emulate.
That’s a good point. There’s been a movement against very old politicians lately, and after Gerry Connolly won a contested bid for Oversight Committee chair, then died months later, things like this are important considerations.
One potent thing that could be used against Collins is there is a clip of her back in the 90s promising to serve 2 terms. An outsider could turn that into a devastating ad coupled with the fact she hasn't held town halls in years. With Mills you can't do that type of messaging since she's been in politics as long as Collins.
Is her net worth known, that has to be disclosed by congressional officials right? Term limit attacks work well when combined with "is now worth $x million" at the end to really drill in the idea that they're in it for themselves.
Basically no chance she could serve two terms. More biting question: with Mills age, how likely is it that she could serve one term?
I'd really rather Mills sat this out. Especially with Mills giving fodder to Collins by saying she appreciates what Collins is doing in DC, or whatever the phrasing was.
I think it's clear that some amount of voters are at least willing to consider age right now, whether or not any of us agree with them. If people question a candidate's ability to serve even a single term, that will hurt the candidate at the ballot box.
Frankly I don't think Mills is the strongest candidate anymore.
I feel like national Dems have tunnel vision on this. They think they have another Roy Cooper here and are willing to forego the risks with her. I have a feeling Schumer is desperate to get big(not the best) names in these races to stave off doubts about his leadership.
If this is the route they want to go, I hope Platner mops the floor with her. Send a message to Schumer and Gillibrand. We don't need Mills to beat Collins, IMO.
Mills could serve two terms, but that would require her to serve until she's 91. That would be a powerful incentive to continue to elect Democratic governors to ensure a Dem replacement could be appointed if needed. (Fun fact: when she was born in Farmington, Maine, the state legislature had 156 Republicans against 28 Democrats, in addition to the GOP holding the governorship and the entire congressional delegation.)
One thing that would concern me is the possibility of a bloody primary, but a decently fought primary could be beneficial. If Mills, Platner, or anyone else can’t stand up to internal criticism then they’re not going to hold up well in the general, in which they’ll probably be subjected to all manner of attacks from Republican campaign committees while Collins personally plays Ms. Congeniality.
No Republican I can think of would be able to challenge Mills in 2032 if she were Senator or even mount a credible Senate campaign against a Democratic challenger in 2032.
Maybe, maybe not. The state is quirky enough that I wouldn’t assume that. They haven’t elected a Senator with a (D) after his/her name in decades despite the general blueness on the federal level.
You seriously see no issue? Life expectancy in this country for women is 81. She will be 85 at the end of the term. This isn't a gap between 38 and 43 this is the gap where most people die from old age in the middle. I don't think most people would ordinarily hire a 79 year old to a new six year contract job. Can Mills overcome this? Not easy but sure. Does her praising Collins and writing their ads for them inspire confidence? Absolutely not. If she wants to run she should do so now so she can show she is not too old for the job. The worst scenario is her twiddling her thumbs, praising Collins while freezing the field for months and then backing off so another candidate loses months of fundraising and organizing to defeat an incumbent praised by the other party's govenor.
I feel like she's being pressured to run, perhaps as a means to counteract more progressive candidates like Platner. Why else would she be running now? Platner has been having strong fundraising, gaining lots of publicity and visibility and drawing widespread support. Someone is prolly desperate if Mills feels inclined to run because as of now, there's no real need for her to enter the race anymore.
The greater takeaway for me is just how many very viable candidates think that Collins is vulnerable. I believe her time is up, and so evidently do many Mainers. It matters little to me how old Mills will be in X year; let's excuse Collins from office first, then worry about that later. Mills, moreover, may not even win the primary.
I am currently interested in the NY-12 primary. I want to see if it will be contested, or if Micah Lasher will clear the field.
NY-10 too. I heard Yuh-Line Niou is floating a bid, and Lander has been subject to much speculation. Either way, Goldman might be toast — he’s simply too centrist for his district, and polling for him has been atrocious. (I was very unhappy with the ICC vote myself but I won’t elaborate because that would edge into violating the I-P topic ban.)
Niou would be the first openly autistic member of either house of Congress, IIRC.
Goldman might be the Jamaal Bowman of this cycle: doomed to defeat in the primary due to being a bad ideological fit for the district. However, progressives should get behind one non-Goldman candidate, whether that be Niou, Lander, or someone else, as Congressional primaries in New York are plurality-wins and do not use ranked-choice voting.
I have a broader question about a recent event and its connection to politics.
How might the assassination of Charlie Kirk affect next year? Will people remember it, or no? If so, will the shock of his killing help the GOP? Or will the crackdown on free speech lead to a backlash against the GOP, thereby helping the Dems? Or some other possible outcome?
If Kirk is still being talked about next month it will be because of the second order consequences of his assassination. It will have effectively no impact on elections this year, let alone next year.
I don't know, they are working very hard to canonize the guy and a year from now a lot of people will remember him as a saint who got murder by Antifa, or whatever the hell. Non maga people will think that, because that is how horrific our media is.
If his death impacts next year's elections, that will be more influence 16 months out from that than they was from a presidential candidate being convicted of dozens of felonies last year. That story died in, what, two or three weeks?
I'm not ruling anything out. Here are two competing factors:
1. Kirk enthusiasts (who more or less overlap with MAGA) are really getting into it. With the propensity gap as it is, they were set to be sitting out this off-year election (2025 I'm referring to) and possibly the midterm, which would be helpful for Dems. Now? I'm not so sure. They may be upping their propensity. That said...
2. Kirk enthusiasts are very, very, very weird. They've been doing bizarre things like ordering Starbucks coffees in his name ("I am Charlie Kirk"), complaining that their churches didn't reorganize last Sunday's services around Kirk*, and just plain being overly obsessive in a way that I haven't seen before. I hope this will be alienating to normal people.
* there probably were some evangelical churches that basically worshipped Kirk, but I think most of those were Christian nationalist in nature anyway. Lots of the complaints that I saw were from lapsed Catholic Trumpers who came to Mass expecting Kirk-centric worship and were shocked to find out that the Catholic Church actually has a liturgy.
A lot of the social media discourse is essentially canonized him, or as close as Protestants get to that. If you're stewing in post after post calling Kirk a blessed man, a martyr, one who walked in the path of Jesus, etc, I could see why you would think that church might be about him.
For churches where the minister does have the freedom to rewrite the service on the fly, (which as Ben notes, doesn't include the Catholics), it is an interesting question of how much do you drop whatever you have prepared and write an entirely new service in response to world events. I remember when there was a terrorist attack in Sri Lanka that targeted Christians, one of my friends was relating that their minister rewrote the service to be about it, even though it had happened that morning, though several hours earlier because of the time difference. He was somewhat surprised that my church just mentioned it in the prayers, but otherwise proceeded as normal.
I don't think there's a right or wrong way to address such events, it's really just knowing your congregation and what they would expect and need. If your church did have a lot of people who were deeply affected by the murder of Kirk, the right thing to do would be to address it in the service, even if you found him, or his lionization, distasteful.
There is a long history in this country of bigoted people hiding their hate behind and within their religion, knowing that it considered incredibly crass to attack "a good Christian person."
Therefore, Democrats should not make it more of an issue than it already is.
Unfortunately, going from blame to blame on both sides of the political spectrum doesn’t exactly solve the problem. I’d prefer Democrsts spend more time getting their mind off of this issue and focusing more on uniting the country.
And this Washington Post one, also conducted post-Kirk RIP, has a 9 point lead among registered voters, after the questions were worded "Would you rather see the next Congress controlled by the Democrats, to act as a check on Trump, or controlled by the Republicans, to support Trump's agenda?"
Charlie who? Actually most voters rightly believe that Kirk shouldn't have been assaulted, let alone killed, regardless of what they think of his views, and that political violence against anyone is an ominous problem. But they likely also think he doesn't merit effective canonization as the new national patron saint, and he's not an excuse for pulling Jimmy Kimmel or anyone else off the air.
Recent polls showed that a vast majority of Gen Z or college students did not agree with his views or have a positive approval of him, his actual fans are old conservatives enjoying "college liberals owned" clips.
One such poll: only 10% of college students “strongly agree” with Kirk’s views
The fact that even Zaid Jilani, hardly a liberal’s liberal, is pointing this out is quite telling about the limits of trying make Saint Charlie a thing
AOC offered a defense of Sarah McBride over her vote in favor of the Charlie Kirk Day of Remembrance resolution, even though AOC voted against the resolution:
A lot of online leftists percieve McBride as not fully supportive of the transgender community and being unwilling to push back against transphobia against herself.
Seth Moulton, more moderate than McBride, case a NO vote on the resolution but also got death threats because of criticizing.Nancy Mace of all people for accusing the left of starting this mess. It got pretty bad for Moulton that he was concerned for his safety.
There is a strong counterargument to make, though: in this time when the U.S. risks being cowed into autocracy, we need all politicians to stand up and resist, knowing that they face death threats. Those who are cowed are literally the problem, as we know very well that most Republicans in Congress don't believe in or personally support many of the things they're advocating because the experience of being under attack on January 6, 2020 or having their families face death threats has them running the other way. Yes, they have other motivations, such as not losing primaries, but there isn't any question that the reason Trump was not removed from office and prevented from ever running again was cowardice from Republican senators, and we cannot afford to have Democratic Congress members emulating that response.
But Democrats still have to get power in Congress, which they don’t have enough of as they don’t control of it.
Voting NO to honor Charlie Kirk I would say is fine as long as it’s not used as a convenient way for Democrats to add more to the cesspool than what already exists. It was not as if Seth Moulton needed to tweet back to Nancy Mace on X to fire back as opposed to simply talking to her in person and having a conversation with her.
I see many Democrats as well as Republicans spending time on X and trying to be relevant on the platform but what is this really accomplishing?
I don't know. People on this board say the Democrats lost the 2024 election online but also that what happens online doesn't matter. Do we really know in advance what will and won't matter?
Poor messaging was arguably the most consistently agreed upon problem in the wake of last year's elections. Not so much agreement on what the actual problem with the messaging was or how to fix it, but the fact of it faced little if any dispute.
We're increasingly facing a hostile traditional media landscape. The major TV outlets and papers were already showing a trend of bias towards republicans in recent years and so far this year we've seen that trend turbocharged.
We need to get our message out somewhere. A lot of people are online, so that's a good place as any. It's not sufficient on its own but it's a useful step to go. Maybe not twitter specifically but it and platforms like it are also a place where officials can effectively completely control their message.
I don't think the problem is officials using these platforms. Maybe using the platforms poorly, but not the fact of using them at all. We cannot rely on TV and national papers to get our messaging out in a good way anymore.
Blueskyism is not "the left", it is its own thing. And McBride is very centrist, has defended Manchin on multiple occasions, nobody should expect her to vote like a progressive.
The assumption that all LGBTQ people are going to be ultra-lefties in office remains one of the stranger online fixations. McBride represents Delaware!
You're right, because ultimately we're all human and there's nothing fundamental about any of our basic identities that pushes a person towards any part of the ideological spectrum. Being LGBTQ doesn't fundamentally make someone favor or disfavor higher taxes on the rich, or support public transit, or any number of things in the political sphere.
I do see why people make those assumptions though. While it's not an inherent process of those identities, the facets of our society do push various identities in certain directions. Due to societal trends, queer people are more likely to live in cities, they're less likely to be religious, they're more likely to spend a lot of time online with people that agree with and support them. They will have spent a non-zero portion of their life being "othered" by a substantial part of society and many will naturally gravitate towards the other part of society, the part that does accept them.
Consequently you would expect the average LGBTQ person to be quite a bit to the left of median voter or public official.
McBride not falling under that bucket is, in a way, a good thing: it points at increased acceptance within society that permits someone to successfully exist outside of those spaces that push individuals in that group in those directions.
Also it's kind of silly for people to assume they'll all be far left because we're not even a year out from Sinema being in office. She was one of the most centrist dems in modern history and bisexual. And she was well known to people that follow politics.
Fully agree. Also, perhaps a weird example, but it’s good for that trend too that the second-most prominent Cabinet official (Bessent) is a long-married gay man and it has been not a big deal. (This isn’t to say that Bessent doesn’t suck big time but you get what I mean)
At this point, the best thing is to elect more trans politicians in office. That way, there’s no unrealistic expectations that one trans politician like McBride has to be perfect with every single issue.
Of course, if Nancy Pelosi were retiring in 2028, a trans congressional candidate being elected to the House to replace her would likely be very liberal given San Francisco’s politics.
And we're talking Virginia where Roem is a State Senator as opposed to California where it would be much easier to be liberal.
Considering trans candidates like 2016 US Senate Candidate in Utah Misty Snow never won their races, it's a real sign of progress we've got more trans representation in office these days than there used to be.
I think I subscribe to The Downballot so you can tell me what races to be interested in. Also, what races to contribute to, that are both plausibly winnable, and need the money.
For everyone's amusement, here's a RRH Elections cartoon making fun of "California's Cartoonishly Bad Congressional Redistricting". (Funny how they haven't produced anything similar about Texas or any other red state's gerrymanders.)
People on RRH literally said that Texas was fine, but not California, because Gavin Newsom is a sanctimonious schmuck. I find Newsom pompous and irritating too, at times, but I don't see what that has to do with redistricting.
I am critical of Newsom but for reasons even the RRH and GOP machine will even discuss.
I'm still stunned as to why more in the news in the last 10+ years haven't brought up how Willie Brown was the reason why Newsom got into political office.
Sometimes the simplest explanation is the correct one; Schumer has an old habit of recruiting old Governors for Senate seats and then clearing the field.
TN 7th Special
Margin will be interesting, if nothing else!
Primary too. Given recent Dem trends part of me is curious to see how Aftyn Behn will do.
Also curious to see who the GOP winner will be in that primary. At this point I’m just going to say “who’s the furthest right?”
Yeah one GOP candidate participated in Jan6 insurrection and is using that as his platform.
Unsurprising. The GOP is a fucking circus at this point.
PA Supreme Court retention
On that note, how does everyone here feel about our chances? The PA Dems had some really bad leadership problems recently under Sharif Street and did horribly last year but we’re in a very anti-GOP environment and the PA Dems have a new leader (DePasquale), so how might we do?
I’m of two minds with DePasquale. It really depends which one shows up. The 2006 to 2020 campaign version who held the Auditor office in tough years or the 2024 version where he lost pretty badly. Yes, it was a bad year for Democrats everywhere, but the margin was still pretty sizable. I’m obviously hoping for the former. We’ll see what happens in 2026 or any specials upcoming.
It's extremely hard to lose a retention election. I imagine they will have no trouble.
So how worried do we have to be in the NJ Gov race? Sherrill is as exciting as toast and I'm sure she appeals to some of the disaffected white suburbanites, but there's something about this race which makes me think there'll be low voter turnout.
I'm starting to get a little worried but I hope they will get their act together.
A fear I have is that NJ is so ludicrously corrupt (with party bosses who mainly just try to help themselves), they won’t and it will either be close or we’ll lose. I saw something on Bluesky saying there’s an enthusiasm gap between Dems and GOP, with the latter ahead, so I guess we can only hope this isn’t going to go poorly.
Anecdotally, I live in the NY area, and I’ve been seeing as many Ciattarelli ads as Sherrill, if not more. Not good.
The ending of the party line has culled the machine’s power quite a bit, though.
Is there any evidence that Sherrill is corrupt? I haven't heard anything like that.
Not her, the party bosses. They are very corrupt. My concern is that Sherrill is too close to them, not so much that she’s corrupt in and of herself.
Agreed, that would be a concern.
Based on Sherrill's eight-point poll lead? Or something else?
This feels more like a “Ed Gillespie gains on Northam, the race is neck and neck” media created story than a “Glenn Youngkin wins VA in a shocker” actual story. If I see the RGA spend what the DGA (Governors party) org has/does, then I’ll start to get concerned. But throwing their poster boy fake moderate a few mill because they have to keep up with appearances is not anything to worry about.
Until I see polling showing Hispanics/Latinos suddenly in love with Trump again like they were in 2024 which was what made NJ close, this should be a pretty easy victory for Sherrill even if she as a candidate doesn’t excite our base. Trump being president does that for us already.
Also Trump's tariffs have hit Indian and Chinese businesses hard.
as a resident, and regular canvasser donor etc, we could not be more fine. murphy was asleep at the wheel in a worse environment and won. Bigger question is what happens to our assembly majority, up or down depending on enough ticket splitting in LD 3 and 4.
I am very interested in Virginia governor race
CA Nov ballot initiative to redraw house districts! (Finally)
GA Public Service Commission. Due to court cases, there hasn't been an election for any of the 5 seats since 2022!
Could be a case where lower-turnout really helps us, as Dem-leaning voters and even R-ish indies are all pissed about how much GA Power bills have skyrocketed in the past 5 years.
MI state Senate SD-35 special election May 2026.
MI Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, Open seat.
U
Axios is reporting Gov. Mills is likely to run for Senate against Collins. I have very mixed feelings about her running. I think national dems have a bad read on the ground in Maine and think she is like Cooper in being a popular Gov and needed to flip the seat.
Her approval rating has been mediocre at best with most polls showing her 50/50 and polarizing. Sure, she is probably better liked than Collins. But I think the strategy the GOP employed last year of recruiting outsiders like Sheehy & Moreno to knock off longtime incumbents is something Dems should emulate.
Another concern: given her age, how likely is it that she could serve more than one term if she wins?
That’s a good point. There’s been a movement against very old politicians lately, and after Gerry Connolly won a contested bid for Oversight Committee chair, then died months later, things like this are important considerations.
One potent thing that could be used against Collins is there is a clip of her back in the 90s promising to serve 2 terms. An outsider could turn that into a devastating ad coupled with the fact she hasn't held town halls in years. With Mills you can't do that type of messaging since she's been in politics as long as Collins.
Is her net worth known, that has to be disclosed by congressional officials right? Term limit attacks work well when combined with "is now worth $x million" at the end to really drill in the idea that they're in it for themselves.
No one ever cares about politicians breaking term limit pledges.
Basically no chance she could serve two terms. More biting question: with Mills age, how likely is it that she could serve one term?
I'd really rather Mills sat this out. Especially with Mills giving fodder to Collins by saying she appreciates what Collins is doing in DC, or whatever the phrasing was.
I think it's clear that some amount of voters are at least willing to consider age right now, whether or not any of us agree with them. If people question a candidate's ability to serve even a single term, that will hurt the candidate at the ballot box.
Frankly I don't think Mills is the strongest candidate anymore.
I feel like national Dems have tunnel vision on this. They think they have another Roy Cooper here and are willing to forego the risks with her. I have a feeling Schumer is desperate to get big(not the best) names in these races to stave off doubts about his leadership.
If this is the route they want to go, I hope Platner mops the floor with her. Send a message to Schumer and Gillibrand. We don't need Mills to beat Collins, IMO.
Platner is not the only other candidate now. Maybe the brewer is better.
No he doesn't support a shutdown and is modeling himself after Mark Kelly.
Mills could serve two terms, but that would require her to serve until she's 91. That would be a powerful incentive to continue to elect Democratic governors to ensure a Dem replacement could be appointed if needed. (Fun fact: when she was born in Farmington, Maine, the state legislature had 156 Republicans against 28 Democrats, in addition to the GOP holding the governorship and the entire congressional delegation.)
One thing that would concern me is the possibility of a bloody primary, but a decently fought primary could be beneficial. If Mills, Platner, or anyone else can’t stand up to internal criticism then they’re not going to hold up well in the general, in which they’ll probably be subjected to all manner of attacks from Republican campaign committees while Collins personally plays Ms. Congeniality.
Not really a concern so much as the main concern should be about unseating Susan Collins.
If Collins is unseated next year, it will be much easier for Democrats to keep the seat regardless if it’s Mills in there or someone else.
And even if Mills retires after one term, Dems are highly likely to hold an open seat in Maine in a Presidential year (2032).
Of course.
No Republican I can think of would be able to challenge Mills in 2032 if she were Senator or even mount a credible Senate campaign against a Democratic challenger in 2032.
Maybe, maybe not. The state is quirky enough that I wouldn’t assume that. They haven’t elected a Senator with a (D) after his/her name in decades despite the general blueness on the federal level.
I had heard a rumor somewhere - I forget where - indicating that if she ran, only running for a single term would be a campaign promise on Day 1.
How likely is it she can serve a single term? That will be hammered away at if she is the nominee.
Seriously? Collins is only like 5 years younger.
Same with Trump/Biden and look how that turned out.
You seriously see no issue? Life expectancy in this country for women is 81. She will be 85 at the end of the term. This isn't a gap between 38 and 43 this is the gap where most people die from old age in the middle. I don't think most people would ordinarily hire a 79 year old to a new six year contract job. Can Mills overcome this? Not easy but sure. Does her praising Collins and writing their ads for them inspire confidence? Absolutely not. If she wants to run she should do so now so she can show she is not too old for the job. The worst scenario is her twiddling her thumbs, praising Collins while freezing the field for months and then backing off so another candidate loses months of fundraising and organizing to defeat an incumbent praised by the other party's govenor.
I feel like she's being pressured to run, perhaps as a means to counteract more progressive candidates like Platner. Why else would she be running now? Platner has been having strong fundraising, gaining lots of publicity and visibility and drawing widespread support. Someone is prolly desperate if Mills feels inclined to run because as of now, there's no real need for her to enter the race anymore.
I will be volunteering for AOC if she decides to primary Schumer. We need to get that man out of the Senate anyhow.
FWIW, with how 2024 turned out, I'm not sure that Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown could have defeated *any* opponent.
The greater takeaway for me is just how many very viable candidates think that Collins is vulnerable. I believe her time is up, and so evidently do many Mainers. It matters little to me how old Mills will be in X year; let's excuse Collins from office first, then worry about that later. Mills, moreover, may not even win the primary.
I am currently interested in the NY-12 primary. I want to see if it will be contested, or if Micah Lasher will clear the field.
NY-10 too. I heard Yuh-Line Niou is floating a bid, and Lander has been subject to much speculation. Either way, Goldman might be toast — he’s simply too centrist for his district, and polling for him has been atrocious. (I was very unhappy with the ICC vote myself but I won’t elaborate because that would edge into violating the I-P topic ban.)
I've heard that Mamdani's inner circle is not very receptive to the idea of Lander being deputy mayor so he may primary Goldman, after all.
With whose social media rhetoric? It's not that clear who you mean.
Goldman.
Niou would be the first openly autistic member of either house of Congress, IIRC.
Goldman might be the Jamaal Bowman of this cycle: doomed to defeat in the primary due to being a bad ideological fit for the district. However, progressives should get behind one non-Goldman candidate, whether that be Niou, Lander, or someone else, as Congressional primaries in New York are plurality-wins and do not use ranked-choice voting.
Niou endorsed Lander and they are said to be on good terms.
Openly yes, but very far from the first lmao
Niou would be, and that would be a huge moment for the autistic community (of which I am a member). Might help with the discrimination we face too.
Would also like the same to be for a politician who has ADHD (which I have) as it’s a real disability that is trivialized by the mainstream.
But I will take Niou in the House as autism and ADHD are not that far apart from each other in terms of neurodivergence.
I would say diagnosed rather than openly
I have a broader question about a recent event and its connection to politics.
How might the assassination of Charlie Kirk affect next year? Will people remember it, or no? If so, will the shock of his killing help the GOP? Or will the crackdown on free speech lead to a backlash against the GOP, thereby helping the Dems? Or some other possible outcome?
If Kirk is still being talked about next month it will be because of the second order consequences of his assassination. It will have effectively no impact on elections this year, let alone next year.
I don't know, they are working very hard to canonize the guy and a year from now a lot of people will remember him as a saint who got murder by Antifa, or whatever the hell. Non maga people will think that, because that is how horrific our media is.
It all feels so phony, though. It feels like how gruesome and public his demise was caused some public hysteria.
If his death impacts next year's elections, that will be more influence 16 months out from that than they was from a presidential candidate being convicted of dozens of felonies last year. That story died in, what, two or three weeks?
"Non maga people will think that, because that is how horrific our media is"
One can be worried about many things but non-MAGAs lionizing Charlie Kirk a year from now shouldn't be one of them.
100% agree with this assessment.
I'm not ruling anything out. Here are two competing factors:
1. Kirk enthusiasts (who more or less overlap with MAGA) are really getting into it. With the propensity gap as it is, they were set to be sitting out this off-year election (2025 I'm referring to) and possibly the midterm, which would be helpful for Dems. Now? I'm not so sure. They may be upping their propensity. That said...
2. Kirk enthusiasts are very, very, very weird. They've been doing bizarre things like ordering Starbucks coffees in his name ("I am Charlie Kirk"), complaining that their churches didn't reorganize last Sunday's services around Kirk*, and just plain being overly obsessive in a way that I haven't seen before. I hope this will be alienating to normal people.
* there probably were some evangelical churches that basically worshipped Kirk, but I think most of those were Christian nationalist in nature anyway. Lots of the complaints that I saw were from lapsed Catholic Trumpers who came to Mass expecting Kirk-centric worship and were shocked to find out that the Catholic Church actually has a liturgy.
Interesting points. Kirk was a staunch Christian and super religious to begin with.
Kirk enthusiasts look at him being Christian as a way to elevate themselves, however phony and bizarre it may be.
A lot of the social media discourse is essentially canonized him, or as close as Protestants get to that. If you're stewing in post after post calling Kirk a blessed man, a martyr, one who walked in the path of Jesus, etc, I could see why you would think that church might be about him.
For churches where the minister does have the freedom to rewrite the service on the fly, (which as Ben notes, doesn't include the Catholics), it is an interesting question of how much do you drop whatever you have prepared and write an entirely new service in response to world events. I remember when there was a terrorist attack in Sri Lanka that targeted Christians, one of my friends was relating that their minister rewrote the service to be about it, even though it had happened that morning, though several hours earlier because of the time difference. He was somewhat surprised that my church just mentioned it in the prayers, but otherwise proceeded as normal.
I don't think there's a right or wrong way to address such events, it's really just knowing your congregation and what they would expect and need. If your church did have a lot of people who were deeply affected by the murder of Kirk, the right thing to do would be to address it in the service, even if you found him, or his lionization, distasteful.
Catholic churches can't change the mass, but the priest does give a sermon.
*homily
Is that the official name?
There is a long history in this country of bigoted people hiding their hate behind and within their religion, knowing that it considered incredibly crass to attack "a good Christian person."
I think it’s very hard if not impossible to pre-judge the salience of a matter on an election 14 months away merely 10 days after its occurrence.
Beyond that what little polling has been done so far has shown no discernible sympathy bump
Therefore, Democrats should not make it more of an issue than it already is.
Unfortunately, going from blame to blame on both sides of the political spectrum doesn’t exactly solve the problem. I’d prefer Democrsts spend more time getting their mind off of this issue and focusing more on uniting the country.
Exactly. Democrats should say the same thing that Republicans always say after a mass shooting:
"Thoughts and prayers. Now, let's move on to something else."
I like the sound of that! :)
This Atlas Intel Poll, conducted entirely after Kirk's killing, has a Democratic lead of 8.3 points on the generic ballot.
https://x.com/polltracker2024/status/1969165011088986513?s=46&ct=rw-null
And this Washington Post one, also conducted post-Kirk RIP, has a 9 point lead among registered voters, after the questions were worded "Would you rather see the next Congress controlled by the Democrats, to act as a check on Trump, or controlled by the Republicans, to support Trump's agenda?"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/09/19/trump-poll-crime-immigration-economy-tariffs/
Charlie who? Actually most voters rightly believe that Kirk shouldn't have been assaulted, let alone killed, regardless of what they think of his views, and that political violence against anyone is an ominous problem. But they likely also think he doesn't merit effective canonization as the new national patron saint, and he's not an excuse for pulling Jimmy Kimmel or anyone else off the air.
Thanks for the stats Mike. Good to know.
Recent polls showed that a vast majority of Gen Z or college students did not agree with his views or have a positive approval of him, his actual fans are old conservatives enjoying "college liberals owned" clips.
One such poll: only 10% of college students “strongly agree” with Kirk’s views
https://x.com/oelayat/status/1969265379240243579
The fact that even Zaid Jilani, hardly a liberal’s liberal, is pointing this out is quite telling about the limits of trying make Saint Charlie a thing
IA-Gov: respondents shared the script for a message-testing poll with me, comparing Rep. Randy Feenstra (IA-04) with State Auditor Rob Sand.
https://laurabelin.substack.com/p/someone-is-testing-messages-about
NY 1, 2, 3, 4, 17, 21 ... NE 2 .. the eight blue districts in TX ... NC ... NH ... ME.
AOC offered a defense of Sarah McBride over her vote in favor of the Charlie Kirk Day of Remembrance resolution, even though AOC voted against the resolution:
https://bsky.app/profile/aoc.bsky.social/post/3lza4bhhpe22i
McBride has, from what I've seen, faced the most vocal online criticism from the left over voting in favor of the resolution.
Why? because of the trans issue? A play-it-safe politician comes in all genders.
A lot of online leftists percieve McBride as not fully supportive of the transgender community and being unwilling to push back against transphobia against herself.
McBride should get a pass on this.
Seth Moulton, more moderate than McBride, case a NO vote on the resolution but also got death threats because of criticizing.Nancy Mace of all people for accusing the left of starting this mess. It got pretty bad for Moulton that he was concerned for his safety.
There is a strong counterargument to make, though: in this time when the U.S. risks being cowed into autocracy, we need all politicians to stand up and resist, knowing that they face death threats. Those who are cowed are literally the problem, as we know very well that most Republicans in Congress don't believe in or personally support many of the things they're advocating because the experience of being under attack on January 6, 2020 or having their families face death threats has them running the other way. Yes, they have other motivations, such as not losing primaries, but there isn't any question that the reason Trump was not removed from office and prevented from ever running again was cowardice from Republican senators, and we cannot afford to have Democratic Congress members emulating that response.
All of what you are describing makes sense.
But Democrats still have to get power in Congress, which they don’t have enough of as they don’t control of it.
Voting NO to honor Charlie Kirk I would say is fine as long as it’s not used as a convenient way for Democrats to add more to the cesspool than what already exists. It was not as if Seth Moulton needed to tweet back to Nancy Mace on X to fire back as opposed to simply talking to her in person and having a conversation with her.
I see many Democrats as well as Republicans spending time on X and trying to be relevant on the platform but what is this really accomplishing?
I don't know. People on this board say the Democrats lost the 2024 election online but also that what happens online doesn't matter. Do we really know in advance what will and won't matter?
Poor messaging was arguably the most consistently agreed upon problem in the wake of last year's elections. Not so much agreement on what the actual problem with the messaging was or how to fix it, but the fact of it faced little if any dispute.
We're increasingly facing a hostile traditional media landscape. The major TV outlets and papers were already showing a trend of bias towards republicans in recent years and so far this year we've seen that trend turbocharged.
We need to get our message out somewhere. A lot of people are online, so that's a good place as any. It's not sufficient on its own but it's a useful step to go. Maybe not twitter specifically but it and platforms like it are also a place where officials can effectively completely control their message.
I don't think the problem is officials using these platforms. Maybe using the platforms poorly, but not the fact of using them at all. We cannot rely on TV and national papers to get our messaging out in a good way anymore.
A lot of online leftists should get offline occasionally.
Should get offline frequently
Should get offline permanently.
And actually do something productive with their lives than just rant and moan all the time.
Blueskyism is not "the left", it is its own thing. And McBride is very centrist, has defended Manchin on multiple occasions, nobody should expect her to vote like a progressive.
Her.
The assumption that all LGBTQ people are going to be ultra-lefties in office remains one of the stranger online fixations. McBride represents Delaware!
You're right, because ultimately we're all human and there's nothing fundamental about any of our basic identities that pushes a person towards any part of the ideological spectrum. Being LGBTQ doesn't fundamentally make someone favor or disfavor higher taxes on the rich, or support public transit, or any number of things in the political sphere.
I do see why people make those assumptions though. While it's not an inherent process of those identities, the facets of our society do push various identities in certain directions. Due to societal trends, queer people are more likely to live in cities, they're less likely to be religious, they're more likely to spend a lot of time online with people that agree with and support them. They will have spent a non-zero portion of their life being "othered" by a substantial part of society and many will naturally gravitate towards the other part of society, the part that does accept them.
Consequently you would expect the average LGBTQ person to be quite a bit to the left of median voter or public official.
McBride not falling under that bucket is, in a way, a good thing: it points at increased acceptance within society that permits someone to successfully exist outside of those spaces that push individuals in that group in those directions.
Also it's kind of silly for people to assume they'll all be far left because we're not even a year out from Sinema being in office. She was one of the most centrist dems in modern history and bisexual. And she was well known to people that follow politics.
Fully agree. Also, perhaps a weird example, but it’s good for that trend too that the second-most prominent Cabinet official (Bessent) is a long-married gay man and it has been not a big deal. (This isn’t to say that Bessent doesn’t suck big time but you get what I mean)
At this point, the best thing is to elect more trans politicians in office. That way, there’s no unrealistic expectations that one trans politician like McBride has to be perfect with every single issue.
Of course, if Nancy Pelosi were retiring in 2028, a trans congressional candidate being elected to the House to replace her would likely be very liberal given San Francisco’s politics.
This was something Danica Roem experienced a decade ago when she first ran for office and she’s never been anything but a standard suburban liberal
And we're talking Virginia where Roem is a State Senator as opposed to California where it would be much easier to be liberal.
Considering trans candidates like 2016 US Senate Candidate in Utah Misty Snow never won their races, it's a real sign of progress we've got more trans representation in office these days than there used to be.
Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware has a very liberal record so far in the Senate. She had a pretty liberal record in the House too.
Yeah - Delaware is safely blue - acting like a rep has to vote like Manchin is a bit silly.
I think I subscribe to The Downballot so you can tell me what races to be interested in. Also, what races to contribute to, that are both plausibly winnable, and need the money.
For everyone's amusement, here's a RRH Elections cartoon making fun of "California's Cartoonishly Bad Congressional Redistricting". (Funny how they haven't produced anything similar about Texas or any other red state's gerrymanders.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU-3S20Z4TE&t=30s
People on RRH literally said that Texas was fine, but not California, because Gavin Newsom is a sanctimonious schmuck. I find Newsom pompous and irritating too, at times, but I don't see what that has to do with redistricting.
They're dishonest Republican hyperpartisans.
I am critical of Newsom but for reasons even the RRH and GOP machine will even discuss.
I'm still stunned as to why more in the news in the last 10+ years haven't brought up how Willie Brown was the reason why Newsom got into political office.
Also, the reason why Kamala Harris and Newsom never faced each other in primaries.
And it just happens to be a coincidence that Harris was elected SF District Attorney at the same time that Newsom was elected Mayor of the city:
Right at the end of Willie Brown’s 2nd term as Mayor back in 2003.
How very interesting.
I'd guess that they have internal data that shows Mills beating Collins head-to-head? They are both well known names and Mills is more popular.
Sometimes the simplest explanation is the correct one; Schumer has an old habit of recruiting old Governors for Senate seats and then clearing the field.