I’m interested in Boston’s mayor’s race. I’ve been hearing Wu is quite popular (even the police union endorsed her), but her opponent is quite well funded. I suspect it won’t matter - is my suspicion correct, or misguided?
On a separate note, I know 2028 is quite a way’s away, but as far as Senate races go, has there been any chatter about anyone running? I have heard some chatter about WI candidates (per the last open thread), and I know people have been discussing Jeff Jackson for Ted Budd’s seat, but has anyone else been floated for anything this far out?
I only know of two polls, both with large undecideds but Wu is ahead by double digits in each of those. The most recent was in April.
Kraft is a rich guy with a famous father trying to money bomb the election. Money is the only real thing he has going for him, with no true ties to Boston to speak of other than a family association with the local football team. The cornerstone of his campaign, as best I can tell, is being loudly opposed to bike lanes. I'm not going to assume that bike lanes are wildly popular but I struggle to see the electoral coalition that rallies a majority around being opposed to them...
I'd be really, really shocked if Wu loses. At the same time, we're going into that election with little data so while I'd be shocked it is possible. Upsets are most likely at times where there's little data to work with.
Wu seems like one of the few big city mayors who isn’t utterly despised by their electorate so I’d imagine she’s likelier than not to win
It’s a contrast to, say, Bruce Harrell in Seattle who nobody really likes but also nobody quite hates, which in this neck of the woods is an improvement considering the previous four mayors lol. And the city has genuinely made a turn since he took over
I think she's largely disliked by (1) people who have lived in Boston for 60+ years and hate every kind of change, and (2) the North End business owners, who are on the more conservative side. I saw a sign for Kraft in one of the bakeries there last time I was around. I declined to give them my patronage (not that their bottom line will notice). There was a big kerfuffle from that owner class a year or two ago when they got upset at the city charging them more for having sidewalk dining, but they were being charged more than other parts of the city because they were causing a bigger mess that cost the city more to clean up.
It should not surprise anyone, then, to note that when Kraft bought a house in Boston to establish residency that he picked the North End.
Rich 2nd or 3rd generation Italian-American business owners is not a particularly large coalition, and money is the one thing Kraft doesn't need for his campaign.
I suspect Wu also got a nice boost from earlier this year when republicans brought in a bunch of democratic mayors to do a hearing on immigration. She came out of that looking great and I can only assume she got some great local media from it. Most voters won't remember the specifics but enough positive coverage can leave a lasting impression.
I think Jeff Jackson is probably going to run for re-election for atty general in 2028. But if Cooper runs and wins, not to mention overperform next year, I wouldn’t be surprised if Jackson changes his mind and challenges Budd.
Arizona State Superintendent of Public Instruction: Term-limited State Treasurer Kimberly Yee is challenging the incumbent, Tom "the Crypt Keeper" Horne, in the GOP primary. Apparently, Horne is enforcing some modest limits on how homeschooling families can spend state voucher funds (e.g., espresso machines are not an acceptable homeschooling expense), and Yee is running to remove those restrictions. https://www.axios.com/local/phoenix/2025/05/28/yee-challenge-horne-republican-primary-superintendent-of-public-instruction
Of course, I hope neither of these candidates wins the general election. It's disappointing (though not surprising) to see Yee—once considered a "reasonable" Republican—turning full MAGA.
I imagine your comment was a simple gut reaction, but here's a counterpoint.
By the time my daughter was 10ish, if she wanted to run ahead to the Lego section of Target while we were looking at something else, we didn't have a problem with that. By 5th grade, she could be at the public library on her own and check out books. By 13, she could ride her bike pretty much anywhere in our suburb this side of the 4-lane. She'd meet her friend who also had liberal, not-cowed-to-media-fear-mongering parents. We coached her a lot about stranger danger, but we also thought the independence you get from free range parenting was a valuable skill. She has turned out to be a independent, competent, socially functional 18 yr old. The kid whose friends call when they need a hand.
The stats on kidnapping and similar crimes show they are quite low. Lower than when I was a kid and even then weren't high. On the other hand, the stats on how much media coverage a single incident involving a child will get, compared to my youth, must be nearly infinitely higher. With cell phones and the development of our surveillance state, likelihood of tragedy is reduced more. Frankly, I think online is Far More dangerous than in public
If kids are respectful, there is no reason they cannot be in public by themselves, at times, durations, and locations that are age/maturity-level appropriate.
The idea that parents cannot leave kids alone, ever, in practice is partly what has led millenial/gen Z to have the stereotype of being entitled, dependent, lazy, etc. (Which, by the way, I rarely see in the students of those generations I've worked with--esp Gen Z.)
Related to the discussion above, if one thinks it's good for kids to vote at 16, then they need some independence and autonomy before that. Still, knowing my daughter and her friends and classmates, I'm for keeping the voting age at 18, though I do like TechnoOOs approach, above.
I’m in favor of doing the same here. I think it could potentially be a good tool to teach civic participation to young people.
It goes hand in hand with my support for robust civics education in schools in general. It’s depressing that some Americans don’t know their own governmental representatives.
If we're going to lower the voting age, I'd go down to 14 so that most high school freshmen could vote, but I don't really favor having different minimum ages for everything. If you can't trust someone to drink, why would you trust them to vote?
Drinking age of 21 is absurd and encourages widespread criminality. If had to pick an age for everything I'd choose 16: Drink. Drive. Legal Consent. Vote. Etc. That's actually where Britain is going as those other things are already 16. School is also no longer compulsory at 16.
Britain is not the U.S. We can't always assert just because something works in another country will it automatically apply to the U.S. The UK also doesn't have the corporate influence in advertising like the U.S. does and prevents alcohol advertisements that can potentially target those below the age of 18. In the U.S., rules to my understanding are less strict than what's in the UK.
Problem is, if you lower the drinking age in the U.S., generally speaking in this environment it can potentially lower the age threshold by which criminality can occur. This means increasingly more high school and junior high students could potentially be under the influence of alcohol because they can't wait to do so until they hit the minimum age of 18. If anyone turns 18 and drinks during high school, they could still share drinks to their friends in class who haven't turned 18 yet but could towards the end of the year after high school graduation.
I believe certain state laws allow exceptions to those under the age of 21 to drink for religious reasons or parental consent at say a dinner party. If you were to lower the minimum drinking age to 18, then you'd need to create enough exceptions that allow drinking in certain circumstances where there's no risk of more DUIs.
Besides, lowering the age of drinking from 21 may not be needed anyway as there are more trends these days where centennials and younger generations are getting into non-alcoholic bars and lounges. Plenty of them in the Bay Area, at least in Oakland and San Francisco.
The best way to prevent DUIs is to have good public transit, because the problem is not the drinking but the driving, and I say that without making any excuses at all for drunk drivers, just recognizing the practical effects of things like the closure of the on-campus pub at my undergraduate school after the 21-year-old drinking age was imposed.
I have seen plenty of people on BART having a bit of influence from beer, mixed drinks or wine but riding the train saves them from the liability of having to drive home. This is especially applicable if they're going out to a club in San Francisco and going back home to say Downtown Oakland.
My hope is that we enter a more robust public transit system where the dependency on cars is lessened. Not sure it's easy enough in a city like Dublin or Pleasanton but in cities like San Francisco for sure.
Yeah, that's one of the plenty of ongoing problems BART has.
In this environment though, the transit agency is facing a budget shortfall and probably isn't in a position to extend hours that long. Here's hoping BART gets more opportunities for revenue that don't always require increasing the fares.
I like the way Norway deals with drunk driving. First, the blood-alcohol limit is 0.02% – compared to 0.08% in most US states. Second, if you are convicted of a DUI in Norway, you will, almost unconditionally, receive two punishments:
1) A fine equaling 1.5x your monthly salary or earnings
2) A 30-day jail sentence
Additionally, if your blood-alcohol level exceeds 0.05%, your license will be revoked for 12–18 months. With high intoxication, you risk your license being revoked for several years.
PS. And to MichaelFlutist’s point, Norway does have excellent public transit. If you’re drunk at a party, someone will almost always insist that you not drive – whether offering to order a taxi, drive you home, or letting you sleep over.
There probably are people (possibly a significant portion of people) who can have higher blood-alcohol levels than that without impairment of their driving performance. That, however, was not a factor when Norwegian authorities enacted the new, lower limits.
The core political attitude in Norway is that drinking SHALL NOT be combined with driving – essentially pretty much a Zero Tolerance policy.
I think 18 is a good age of majority, since it covers most college students. What that means is that you shouldn't be able to get a full gun or driver's license if you're younger. I would give everyone younger than 18 who qualifies a probationary driver's license that can be suspended more easily than an adult driver's license, and allow provisionally gun-licensed young people to hunt and target shoot only with adult supervision and would forbid them from joining the military.
People aged 16-18 usually vote for left of center parties so Labour might have calculated that it would benefit them. But these youngsters also hate the "establishment" and "mass migration" especially when things are going south (as it is in Britain), aka they are they same people who would vote for populist right parties when a center left party is in power.
I understand all that. What I don’t understand is the logic behind you calling it a "power grab". In my book, empowering people to vote is the very opposite of that.
"A Minnesota state senator was convicted of burglary Friday for breaking into her estranged stepmother’s home, and faced calls for her immediate resignation from a closely divided chamber where she holds a deciding vote."
"Democratic Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy was quick to issue a statement saying that Mitchell has told colleagues that she planned to resign if convicted, “and I expect her to follow through on that pledge.”"
Democrats hold only a one-seat majority in the Senate
Looks like a decently blue seat, at least, for when the special election comes around. She won 59-41 in 2022.
Also silver lining that while we won't hold a majority in the state senate while they work out how to expel her, we also don't hold a majority in the state house so it's not like this will hold back all that much legislation. Not great but it could be a lot worse. If this had happened between 2022 and 2024 elections it would have had far greater consequences.
The legislature isn’t in session until next year and yeah, her seat is pretty blue. Everything will be fine and in place for the next session and we’ll maintain our majority.
And remember with the assassination of Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman last month, we are technically in the minority in the MN House (until the Sept 16th special election- the special primary is Aug. 12th if needed)
This is irresponsible dumbfuckery on so many levels – not least politically. That’s especially so since Mitchell has been the deciding vote for Democrats in a closely divided chamber. I wonder how long it will take to get her replacement in place?
This story hits close to home, in that my dad died a few years ago too and I was just over at my stepmom's last week when my sister was in town helping go through old photos and knicknacks, who wants to keep what, what do we throw out, that kind of stuff. I also have a key to her house and the security code for the system she put in after my dad died.
I have a very different post-Dad relationship with my stepmother than this senator.
Yeah, I as well as Politico thinks that James Talarico is gonna run for the Senate. I think he's wanted to run for Senate for a long time and it's not just Paxton, he's talked about how a blue Texas can change the filibuster, Citizens United, the Supreme Court and the electoral college even before he was famous (pre-2020) according to some clips I've seen of his.
A primary between Allred and Talarico would not be ideal, because of the late state runoff, the enormous state to cover and trying to beat the massive amount of GOP political infrastructure they’ve managed to build with endless control of the state for 20 years.
If Talarico does though, it’s a really hard choice between the two. 1 a proven overperformer (remember Allred flipped a swing congressional seat in his first run) with a built in campaign infrastructure ready to turn the key on. The other, a fresher, younger voice, willing to go where most Democrats don’t who is deeply religious that is unproven above the state legislature level.
I honestly hope he passes, he’s still very young and if Allred comes up short, he’s going to be the entire list of candidates Democrats want to run against Ted Cruz in 2030. He’ll be every single persons #1 pick. He’d still be the top choice if Allred becomes Texas Senator by beating Paxton/Cornyn for that matter. He’s got a golden setup opportunity if he’s patient, but we’ll just have to see what he does.
It’s not just those 2 running though even if Talarico filed tomorrow. That’s why I think a runoff is almost guaranteed should Talarico run. Virts is already running (no he’s not going to win or get a large share of the vote, he’s a lightweight, not a heavyweight political candidate). I bet another state government Democrat jumps in too, sensing the Paxton opportunity in a likely blue leaning year.
As far as who is better, to each their own, but dismissing a D+5 WAR candidate running in 2024 of all election years as “he already had a chance” feels not based on data. No Democrat could’ve won TX in 2024. I know you’re a progressive and align with Talarico more than the moderate Allred, but give him his due credit for his performance, even if you still want Talarico. There’s no reason to minimize how well Allred performed.
Ted Cruz is not up for reelection until 2030. If a Democrat wins in 2028, he isn't going to have a chance. Allred is a proven overperformer (5 points) and Latinos split their ticket for him similar to what happened in Arizona. But if it's a choice between a typical great moderate candidate and a non-divisive generational progressive talent, I would back the latter. I would still like him to run for Lt. Gov or Gov to avoid a messy primary but let's see what he decides.
Trump winning by 13% points may have not been as much of a gut pitch if you think about it.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton lost TX to Trump by close to 9% points. Meanwhile, in the 2022 Texas Gubernatorial Race, Beto O’Rourke lost by a tad less than 11% points, only 2% points difference vs what Kamala Harris lost by. This while Biden in 2020 lost TX by less than 6% points.
If say Greg Abbott wins re-election by less than what he won re-election by in 2022, that’s still going to be progress.
And why did that happen? If you dig in the data, it was due to a total collapse of support among Latinos, Asians and younger voters, the same voters who are disillusioned with Trump right now. His approval comes around -10 in 2 or 3 Texas polls. They along with college educated whites used to be be our backbone in Texas. Every election since 2004 in Texas was closer than the previous one until 2020. It's extremely racially polarized Texas, if we win these groups back, we win the state.
What PollJunkie is likely referring to here is a regional unemployment problem as it relates to the border, not so much a trend reflective of the overall unemployment rate nationwide.
Also, with tech hiring and layoffs going around like a rollercoaster since the last several or so years, the unemployment rate while holding up well with President Biden in office wasn’t exactly elevated.
I haven’t paid attention to this specific problem as it relates to unemployment but it may be unique to states with borders next door to Mexico. I would have to research more.
When I say regional unemployment problem, it could be where layoffs are happening more frequently + hiring volatility in a given city. If I am reading stories after stories of layoffs happening in the Bay Area, I don’t necessarily have specific data points for unemployment rates in the Bureau of Labor Statistics easily available to pull-up. Usually what is shown in BLS reports nationwide and statewide I have access to.
As the numbers stand today, the model suggests the Democrats would reclaim control of the House with 231 seats, while the Republicans would return to the minority with 204.
If we assume that we hold all of our current House seats (probably wrong to assume that, every party almost always loses some races even in good years) and that we would pick up all the seats that were won by the 16 closest races by percentage points (also likely wrong assumption to make) that would mean we pick up every seat the GOP won by 5.4% or less.
A 5 point shift left from 2024 probably wouldn’t do it. However, if you take into consideration the fact that almost every single incumbent party lost ground from now until the midterms in the generic ballot, a 7-8 point shift left may just make it. Ohio would flip, Nebraska would probably flip at R+6.67 and Texas at R+8.5, would be just on the cusp. Maine and North Carolina would also obviously flip. Need 4 of the above.
Of course just using the data and not taking into account candidate quality, campaigns, money etc is foolish, but it gives you an idea of the path to a Senate Majority if nothing else. Basically, best case scenario for us is if Allred and Osborn can repeat their 2024 WAR, Cooper runs for NC and our Democratic nominee doesn’t shit the bed in Maine. If that happens, we don’t need that much of a blue leaning year to pull off a miracle majority. Even without Ohio.
I think a 5.5 point shift in our favor would very likely have us picking up NC’s senate seat and would put ME as 50-50.
If we got both of those it would put us in a good-not-great position for gaining the senate in 2028 with Wisconsin and the other seat in North Carolina.
Losing Casey last year is a huge disadvantage for us.
I agree both of those are likely with a 5 point shift left. But yes, losing Casey was just a massive loss for Democrats, no other way to put it. It would definitely set us up well winning ME and NC in 2026 and running against Vance in 2028 if we can’t get a majority in 2026.
Sure can, no problem! That 6.67 was the margin he lost by in 2024. He lost the seat 53.19-46.52 last year.
Like I said though, the projection/calculation is rudimentary and isn’t something to use as an argument of what will definitely happen in the event of a 7-8 point shift left nationally. More of, it’s possible to flip, if the national election shifts left by 7 and the NE-Sen race shifts left by that same 7 points.
There’s a whole lot of reasons to factor into why that may or may not happen, but Osborn running again was the biggest need to flip NE-Sen, so it’s a good start in trying to deny the GOP 1 more vote in the Senate.
Iowa feels to me like it’s in the next tier of races, around a Likely R rating. Alaska, Iowa and Ohio (if Brown or Ryan doesn’t run) would be grouped together in that next bunch. Maybe add Kansas if we’re being generous. With or without Ernst. The only way these become competitive imo is if we nominate a dynamite political candidate appealing to non-voters/low info voters and the tariffs stay in place up until the midterm election.
That might be a recipe to win these stretch red seats in a big national wave, or localized big wave. But everything has to go right to put them on the board. If Governor Kelly ran in Kansas, that would bump it immediately up to the reach, but plausible seats. Same with Peltola in Alaska. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try for them, but we should be realistic about our chances here in these states.
I suspect that there is a belief that Iowa could be competitive because many of Trump's policies will have a bad economic impact on Iowa. His trade war has hurt Iowa's agriculture, which depends on exports. His cuts to foreign aid and to food stamps are hurting agricultural sectors. His immigration policies are hurting Iowa's farmers and hog farmers who rely on undocumented labor. Iowa is a big wind power state which will be hurt by Trump's attacks on renewable energy. This will cause the price of power to go up in Iowa for everyone. Furthermore, many Iowa farmers earned a second income by leasing land to wind power companies which is now threatened. Iowa made a huge leap to the left in the 80's due to Reagan's policies hurting farmers and there is a belief that this could happen again. I still can't wrap my head around how anyone in a farm state could have voted for Trump other than they thought that getting rid of the two transgender athletes in the state is more important than their own income.
It's a very white state, and many white voters in every state are on some level bigoted, as reflected in the fact that a majority of white voters nationwide have voted Republican for president every 4 years since 1968! Though having said that, Iowa was won by Obama in the 2008 caucuses and twice in general elections.
According to wikipedia, nationally Bush got 40% of white voters in 92. BillC got 39% and Perot got 20%. Perot+Clinton also got a majority of the white vote in 96. Hence the 🙂, since it was an asterisk of an election.
This Sunday, there's going to be voting for upper house elections. While the Liberal Democratic Party has governed for a long time, there seems to be a Nigel Farage type politican running in an opposition party.
You guessed it, Sohei Kamiya, who has his party Sanseito, is completely anti-immigration and anti-many things in the populist right agenda he has.
He's also taking advantage of political situation where the cost of living in Japan, which is high and inflation has contributed a great deal to it.
Japan goes to the polls on Sunday to vote in its upper house elections. The country’s Liberal Democratic Party has governed almost continuously since the Second World War.
But, as with the rest of the world, populism is now shaking the country’s politics.
Sohei Kamiya, a youthful-looking, sharp-suited 47-year-old some are calling “the Japanese Nigel Farage”, has steered his start-up party Sanseito to third place in many opinion polls.
He is campaigning on an anti-immigrant, anti-woke and anti-net-zero platform. He is also promising generous giveaways for voters who are under pressure from a cost of living crisis.
“Increasingly there is potential to compare this with the UK’s Liz Truss moment,” says Masayuki Nakajima, a senior strategist at Mizuho Bank.
“I’d like to deny this completely but part of me sees it this way, because many politicians are advocating a populist agenda without credible funding sources.”
Voters are fuming at the cost of living, with inflation stuck at levels seldom seen since the 1980s. Kamiya’s answer: a more than 16tn Japanese yen (£80bn) plan to abolish consumption taxes.
I have a friend who lives in Japan and he’s told me that even groups of people you would think would be the source of left-wing politics like students are pretty tepid/afraid to rock the boat. I’m surprised that there’s any populism at all tbh.
Even amid that, Japan has certainly gone a long way since WWII ended. The country’s relationship with the U.S. since then has been for the most part very good to my understanding.
In 1958, Kenji Miyamoto became the JCP's leader and moderated the party's policies, abandoning the previous line of violent revolution. Miyamoto also began distancing the JCP from the Eastern Bloc in the 1960s. The party maintained a neutral stance during the Sino-Soviet split, declared its support for multi-party democracy in opposition to the one-party politics of China and the Soviet Union, and purged pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese members. His efforts to regain electoral support were particularly successful in urban areas such as Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo, and the JCP worked with the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) in the 1970s to elect a number of progressive mayors and governors. By 1979, the JCP held about 10% of the seats in the National Diet. The party saw a brief electoral resurgence after the collapse of the JSP in 1996; however, the party has generally been in decline since in terms of electoral results and party membership.
The party at present advocates the establishment of a democratic society based on pacificism. It believes that this objective can be achieved by working within an electoral framework while carrying out an extra-parliamentary struggle against "imperialism and its subordinate ally, monopoly capital". As such, the JCP does not advocate violent revolution, but rather a "democratic revolution" to achieve "democratic change in politics and the economy". It accepts the current constitutional position of the emperor but opposes the involvement of the Imperial House in politics. A staunchly anti-militarist party, the JCP firmly supports Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution and seeks to dissolve the Japan Self-Defense Forces. It opposes Japan's military alliance with the United States as an unequal relationship and infringement of Japan's national sovereignty.
This may be me just not knowing enough about Japan and not having visited there but as much as the Japanese are complaining about inflation as reported in this article, I don’t see how the country will change that much in the end politically.
Japan has by contrast to other countries remarkably more civility. For starters, Japan has one of the lowest homicide rates in the world. Former PM Shinzo Abe was assassinated three years ago but two years after he left office. The assassination itself was unheard of and random when it was first reported.
Japan is indeed very civil (and clean) though that’s downwind of a culture that is confirmist and small c conservative in a way visitors don’t really experience or see
I think visitors experience and see it somewhat. You can't visit Japan without experiencing the bowing and the excessive wrapping of items to go, for example.
For sure. I loved my ten days in Japan, it’s a wonderful place with wonderful people. Even then though I can see how it could have some significant downsides culturally if you had to grow up in it/live it. It’s just different
And it's almost impossible to become a citizen there if you weren't born there. Even baseball legend Sadaharu Oh was not widely accepted for many years because his father was Taiwanese.
It's difficult, but I knew someone who married a Japanese man and was so fluent in Japanese that she taught both Japanese and English in Japan, although she was from Ohio and not of Japanese descent. She gained Japanese citizenship.
I presume she had to take a Japanese name and renounce her American citizenship to do so. From my understanding, Japan does not permit dual citizenship.
She did not. She took her husband's last name and passed a language test. Not sure what else she had to pass, maybe something on Japanese history and culture.
Newsom seems to be making up for his utter tomfoolery during the pandemic by passing some pretty good bills like the CEQA repeal and now by trying everything to stop the steal.
While Tom Suozzi prefers what "seems like the normal thing", i.e. after the census, these are hardly normal times. And our exceptional times, with democracy in crisis, call for exceptional measures – whether or not Suozzi understands that.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his political team have begun privately shaping a legally risky — and likely expensive — strategy to redraw House maps in several Democratic-controlled states, according to Democrats briefed on the effort. They are exploring their plans in California, New York, New Jersey, Minnesota and Washington state in hopes of flipping at least a handful of Republican seats next November.
Tom Suozzi in past instances he’s against something Democrats want to do doesn’t mince words. A “probably not” from him means he’s seriously giving some thought to the dangerous times we live in with the GOP trying to unfairly and illegally redraw their way to hold power. I’m very surprised he’s not saying “Hell no” or “Absolutely Not”.
He represents a Trump district and thus is extremely valuable to have as a Democratic incumbent. He needs to whine about Democrats and not go with the national party sometimes. That said, these are only words, not votes and he has no control over whether they redraw or not, so let him do his thing, it obviously works for voters in his district.
Yeah, if anybody is to personally benefit from redistricting, it would be Suozzi. The idea that his position is purely out of "self preservation" is pretty silly.
The subsamples in these polls tend to be shaky but this one has him at 28/72 among 18-29 year olds and 32/68 among Hispanics. More evidence that the groups that swung toward Trump from 2020 to 2024 have already swung away from him.
It was a joke. Still Cuomo shouldn't even joke about this. He has already weak ties to the city and gives off the impression he doesn't really like NYC.
Northeast has been atrociously bad about building more housing for generations. The demand to live up here is completely mismatched with the supply of places to live. There's been some efforts to improve this but they're middling at best and often get stuck in court as rich old people sue to avoid changing the "neighborhood character." The south has been a lot better about that. Not sure about the other regions.
The data I've seen shows that it's much less than everywhere else in the country per capita, especially so in the most populous states in the northeast.
Even if you were completely right, the point doesn't change: we're not building enough to meet demand. Take a hypothetical scenario with 1000 housing units and demand for 2000 housing units. If 200 additional units are built, that helps, but is wholly and woefully insufficient to meet that demand.
Our part of the country needs to build way, way more housing.
I know that it is popular on here to believe that housing is pretty simply an issue of supply. it really isn't. There are many factors that impact the cost of housing, and building supply absolutely induces demand. New construction sells at a large premium over existing housing, and helps to drive prices up. I feel like home builders have done a number on the discourse around housing. I've sat in meetings with actual homebuilders who are being honest "the neighbors will thank us for raising their housing prices". We're probably going to have a a general recession and a housing recession. It's the best way of actually reducing housing costs
Induced demand is absolutely a thing, but with housing that's a factor that ties into the more specific components of demand. Demand is not really an intrinsic property in and of itself, it's a property in relation to another: price. The proper system to map it out is price vs demand curves.
If we want to go into more detail, you can induce demand by creating more units that exist at a specific price point. Supply needs to be build in excess to get pricing to go down. You see similar to this with the classic example of induced demand, highway lanes. People will drive on the highway if it enables them to get to work during rush hour in, e.g., 30 minutes. Before two lanes are added, it takes them 33 minutes. After two lanes are added, it takes them 30 minutes. This brings the highway immediately back up to capacity.
That all expanded on... it really is an issue of supply. Do you honestly think that if, hypothetically, we magically doubled the number of housing units available across the northeast, perfectly matched with current housing distribution, that prices would do anything other than go down? Do you think it would get more expensive to live in NYC if there were twice as many homes there?
This isn't even something we need to discuss in the abstract, in hypothetical terms. Austin TX made a huge effort to increase housing construction, after years and years of cost increases. They added >10k apartments per year across this decade. Rent and housing costs have gone down. This isn't hypothetical. This is real. It 100%, absolutely and undeniably is a matter of supply. https://www.npr.org/2024/10/08/nx-s1-5118345/how-austin-texas-was-about-lower-the-cost-of-rent
Like the old adage with brute force, this one is simple: if you find more supply isn't working, you're not adding enough. Austin added enough, and they're reaping the benefits.
If there are 2000 families that want to live somewhere and 1000 homes for them to live in, there's no way around it. The first 1000 of them will bid prices up to the point that they can bear, and the second 1000 of them will leave for cheaper — conservative — states. Further diluting our political power and making elections harder for us to win.
What is happening in Austin right now is arguably the start of the bust part of the boom and bust cycle and a couple of years people will be screaming about being underwater and demanding to know how anyone could let this happen. And yes, if you magically doubled the supply of housing in NYC and didn't allow a new influx of people, prices would drop. But you can't double it and you can't completely prevent people from moving in.
It would not, as double the housing would not actually accommodate double the population, as the current housing supply does not accommodate the current population.
There are, it should be noted, a finite number of people in this country. There are 40-60m people in the northeast, depending on how you want to define it. Induced demand is limited by the number of people available to be induced. You won’t see 40m+ people leave for the northeast fast enough to see anything but a dramatic housing cost decrease.
The handwave on Austin is ridiculous. They did exactly what your argument insists would cause increased prices and you want me to believe it is an entirely hyper localized bust with nothing to do with increased supply? Please. That is not an argument, that is denial.
Where did I say it had "nothing to do with increased supply"? I said it was more complicated than that. The bursting of the tech bubble in the city helped.
Because the northeast usually trails the rest of the country in housing trends. It is more stable in general than the rest of the country. Much of the rest of the country is heading into a buyers' market and possibly a housing recession. The northeast will likely catch up. This was largely inevitable
Update for anyone interested: I live in south Orange County. Condo community; not age restricted but 90% over 65. A 2200 sq ft 180 degree ocean view condo, 45 years old, some upgrades, on the market this week for $1,925,000....SOLD!
I’m interested in Boston’s mayor’s race. I’ve been hearing Wu is quite popular (even the police union endorsed her), but her opponent is quite well funded. I suspect it won’t matter - is my suspicion correct, or misguided?
On a separate note, I know 2028 is quite a way’s away, but as far as Senate races go, has there been any chatter about anyone running? I have heard some chatter about WI candidates (per the last open thread), and I know people have been discussing Jeff Jackson for Ted Budd’s seat, but has anyone else been floated for anything this far out?
I only know of two polls, both with large undecideds but Wu is ahead by double digits in each of those. The most recent was in April.
Kraft is a rich guy with a famous father trying to money bomb the election. Money is the only real thing he has going for him, with no true ties to Boston to speak of other than a family association with the local football team. The cornerstone of his campaign, as best I can tell, is being loudly opposed to bike lanes. I'm not going to assume that bike lanes are wildly popular but I struggle to see the electoral coalition that rallies a majority around being opposed to them...
I'd be really, really shocked if Wu loses. At the same time, we're going into that election with little data so while I'd be shocked it is possible. Upsets are most likely at times where there's little data to work with.
Wu seems like one of the few big city mayors who isn’t utterly despised by their electorate so I’d imagine she’s likelier than not to win
It’s a contrast to, say, Bruce Harrell in Seattle who nobody really likes but also nobody quite hates, which in this neck of the woods is an improvement considering the previous four mayors lol. And the city has genuinely made a turn since he took over
I think she's largely disliked by (1) people who have lived in Boston for 60+ years and hate every kind of change, and (2) the North End business owners, who are on the more conservative side. I saw a sign for Kraft in one of the bakeries there last time I was around. I declined to give them my patronage (not that their bottom line will notice). There was a big kerfuffle from that owner class a year or two ago when they got upset at the city charging them more for having sidewalk dining, but they were being charged more than other parts of the city because they were causing a bigger mess that cost the city more to clean up.
It should not surprise anyone, then, to note that when Kraft bought a house in Boston to establish residency that he picked the North End.
Rich 2nd or 3rd generation Italian-American business owners is not a particularly large coalition, and money is the one thing Kraft doesn't need for his campaign.
I suspect Wu also got a nice boost from earlier this year when republicans brought in a bunch of democratic mayors to do a hearing on immigration. She came out of that looking great and I can only assume she got some great local media from it. Most voters won't remember the specifics but enough positive coverage can leave a lasting impression.
Seems like another good reason to root against the Patriots this year--si that people frustrated with losing take it out on the owner's son (Kraft)
I think Jeff Jackson is probably going to run for re-election for atty general in 2028. But if Cooper runs and wins, not to mention overperform next year, I wouldn’t be surprised if Jackson changes his mind and challenges Budd.
Arizona State Superintendent of Public Instruction: Term-limited State Treasurer Kimberly Yee is challenging the incumbent, Tom "the Crypt Keeper" Horne, in the GOP primary. Apparently, Horne is enforcing some modest limits on how homeschooling families can spend state voucher funds (e.g., espresso machines are not an acceptable homeschooling expense), and Yee is running to remove those restrictions. https://www.axios.com/local/phoenix/2025/05/28/yee-challenge-horne-republican-primary-superintendent-of-public-instruction
Of course, I hope neither of these candidates wins the general election. It's disappointing (though not surprising) to see Yee—once considered a "reasonable" Republican—turning full MAGA.
On a totally unrelated note, here’s a sign seen in a café where the management got fed up by parents leaving their kids while they ran errands:
"Unattended children will be given a free puppy and a double espresso."
Maybe this is just because I grew up in the "stranger danger" era, but who in their right mind leaves a kid unattended in a public space?
Guess my grandmother was right when she said "It takes no brains to breed."
She was right. But which era was -not- a stranger danger era?
I imagine your comment was a simple gut reaction, but here's a counterpoint.
By the time my daughter was 10ish, if she wanted to run ahead to the Lego section of Target while we were looking at something else, we didn't have a problem with that. By 5th grade, she could be at the public library on her own and check out books. By 13, she could ride her bike pretty much anywhere in our suburb this side of the 4-lane. She'd meet her friend who also had liberal, not-cowed-to-media-fear-mongering parents. We coached her a lot about stranger danger, but we also thought the independence you get from free range parenting was a valuable skill. She has turned out to be a independent, competent, socially functional 18 yr old. The kid whose friends call when they need a hand.
The stats on kidnapping and similar crimes show they are quite low. Lower than when I was a kid and even then weren't high. On the other hand, the stats on how much media coverage a single incident involving a child will get, compared to my youth, must be nearly infinitely higher. With cell phones and the development of our surveillance state, likelihood of tragedy is reduced more. Frankly, I think online is Far More dangerous than in public
If kids are respectful, there is no reason they cannot be in public by themselves, at times, durations, and locations that are age/maturity-level appropriate.
The idea that parents cannot leave kids alone, ever, in practice is partly what has led millenial/gen Z to have the stereotype of being entitled, dependent, lazy, etc. (Which, by the way, I rarely see in the students of those generations I've worked with--esp Gen Z.)
Related to the discussion above, if one thinks it's good for kids to vote at 16, then they need some independence and autonomy before that. Still, knowing my daughter and her friends and classmates, I'm for keeping the voting age at 18, though I do like TechnoOOs approach, above.
The United Kingdom lowers its voting age to 16.
https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/uk-lower-voting-age-what-about-united-states/
I’m in favor of doing the same here. I think it could potentially be a good tool to teach civic participation to young people.
It goes hand in hand with my support for robust civics education in schools in general. It’s depressing that some Americans don’t know their own governmental representatives.
If we're going to lower the voting age, I'd go down to 14 so that most high school freshmen could vote, but I don't really favor having different minimum ages for everything. If you can't trust someone to drink, why would you trust them to vote?
Drinking age of 21 is absurd and encourages widespread criminality. If had to pick an age for everything I'd choose 16: Drink. Drive. Legal Consent. Vote. Etc. That's actually where Britain is going as those other things are already 16. School is also no longer compulsory at 16.
Britain is not the U.S. We can't always assert just because something works in another country will it automatically apply to the U.S. The UK also doesn't have the corporate influence in advertising like the U.S. does and prevents alcohol advertisements that can potentially target those below the age of 18. In the U.S., rules to my understanding are less strict than what's in the UK.
Problem is, if you lower the drinking age in the U.S., generally speaking in this environment it can potentially lower the age threshold by which criminality can occur. This means increasingly more high school and junior high students could potentially be under the influence of alcohol because they can't wait to do so until they hit the minimum age of 18. If anyone turns 18 and drinks during high school, they could still share drinks to their friends in class who haven't turned 18 yet but could towards the end of the year after high school graduation.
I believe certain state laws allow exceptions to those under the age of 21 to drink for religious reasons or parental consent at say a dinner party. If you were to lower the minimum drinking age to 18, then you'd need to create enough exceptions that allow drinking in certain circumstances where there's no risk of more DUIs.
Besides, lowering the age of drinking from 21 may not be needed anyway as there are more trends these days where centennials and younger generations are getting into non-alcoholic bars and lounges. Plenty of them in the Bay Area, at least in Oakland and San Francisco.
The best way to prevent DUIs is to have good public transit, because the problem is not the drinking but the driving, and I say that without making any excuses at all for drunk drivers, just recognizing the practical effects of things like the closure of the on-campus pub at my undergraduate school after the 21-year-old drinking age was imposed.
I completely concur!
I have seen plenty of people on BART having a bit of influence from beer, mixed drinks or wine but riding the train saves them from the liability of having to drive home. This is especially applicable if they're going out to a club in San Francisco and going back home to say Downtown Oakland.
My hope is that we enter a more robust public transit system where the dependency on cars is lessened. Not sure it's easy enough in a city like Dublin or Pleasanton but in cities like San Francisco for sure.
A big problem with BART is that it stops running before bars close, except on New Year's Eve. They should run the BART until after 2 AM.
Yeah, that's one of the plenty of ongoing problems BART has.
In this environment though, the transit agency is facing a budget shortfall and probably isn't in a position to extend hours that long. Here's hoping BART gets more opportunities for revenue that don't always require increasing the fares.
I like the way Norway deals with drunk driving. First, the blood-alcohol limit is 0.02% – compared to 0.08% in most US states. Second, if you are convicted of a DUI in Norway, you will, almost unconditionally, receive two punishments:
1) A fine equaling 1.5x your monthly salary or earnings
2) A 30-day jail sentence
Additionally, if your blood-alcohol level exceeds 0.05%, your license will be revoked for 12–18 months. With high intoxication, you risk your license being revoked for several years.
PS. And to MichaelFlutist’s point, Norway does have excellent public transit. If you’re drunk at a party, someone will almost always insist that you not drive – whether offering to order a taxi, drive you home, or letting you sleep over.
That's good, but are those blood alcohol levels high enough to have any appreciable effect on driving?
It has a very appreciable effect on combining drinking with driving – and that is the whole point!
I get that, but my question still stands.
I hear you.
There probably are people (possibly a significant portion of people) who can have higher blood-alcohol levels than that without impairment of their driving performance. That, however, was not a factor when Norwegian authorities enacted the new, lower limits.
The core political attitude in Norway is that drinking SHALL NOT be combined with driving – essentially pretty much a Zero Tolerance policy.
I really like the way the fine is linked to salary or earnings.
That’s my favorite part of this. Having to spend a month in jail also really stings.
I think 18 is a good age of majority, since it covers most college students. What that means is that you shouldn't be able to get a full gun or driver's license if you're younger. I would give everyone younger than 18 who qualifies a probationary driver's license that can be suspended more easily than an adult driver's license, and allow provisionally gun-licensed young people to hunt and target shoot only with adult supervision and would forbid them from joining the military.
Nigel Farage just won the next election. This Labour power grab will backfire.
Please explain your reasoning. How is granting young people the right to vote a "power grab"?
People aged 16-18 usually vote for left of center parties so Labour might have calculated that it would benefit them. But these youngsters also hate the "establishment" and "mass migration" especially when things are going south (as it is in Britain), aka they are they same people who would vote for populist right parties when a center left party is in power.
I understand all that. What I don’t understand is the logic behind you calling it a "power grab". In my book, empowering people to vote is the very opposite of that.
But they will have a true left party to vote for, whether it be the Greens or the new party Corbyn is involved forming, or the two merged.
I'm not sure I'd put much faith in Corbyn forming a functional party.
Minnesota lawmaker convicted of felony burglary for breaking into estranged stepmother’s home
https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-state-senator-nicole-mitchell-guilty-burglary-696586410ee64866c7711ea0910b836e
"A Minnesota state senator was convicted of burglary Friday for breaking into her estranged stepmother’s home, and faced calls for her immediate resignation from a closely divided chamber where she holds a deciding vote."
"Democratic Senate Majority Leader Erin Murphy was quick to issue a statement saying that Mitchell has told colleagues that she planned to resign if convicted, “and I expect her to follow through on that pledge.”"
Democrats hold only a one-seat majority in the Senate
WTF? Stupefying.
I hope she's expelled promptly.
Looks like a decently blue seat, at least, for when the special election comes around. She won 59-41 in 2022.
Also silver lining that while we won't hold a majority in the state senate while they work out how to expel her, we also don't hold a majority in the state house so it's not like this will hold back all that much legislation. Not great but it could be a lot worse. If this had happened between 2022 and 2024 elections it would have had far greater consequences.
The legislature isn’t in session until next year and yeah, her seat is pretty blue. Everything will be fine and in place for the next session and we’ll maintain our majority.
And remember with the assassination of Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman last month, we are technically in the minority in the MN House (until the Sept 16th special election- the special primary is Aug. 12th if needed)
67 Repub, 66 DFL, 1 vacant
What an incredibly rough patch of time.
This is irresponsible dumbfuckery on so many levels – not least politically. That’s especially so since Mitchell has been the deciding vote for Democrats in a closely divided chamber. I wonder how long it will take to get her replacement in place?
This story hits close to home, in that my dad died a few years ago too and I was just over at my stepmom's last week when my sister was in town helping go through old photos and knicknacks, who wants to keep what, what do we throw out, that kind of stuff. I also have a key to her house and the security code for the system she put in after my dad died.
I have a very different post-Dad relationship with my stepmother than this senator.
Joe Rogan’s Latest Guest Might Turn Texas Blue
State Rep. James Talarico opens up about what it’s like to go on the most coveted podcast in politics, his potential run for Senate and how his party needs to change. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/07/19/james-talarico-texas-democrat-joe-rogan-interview-00441989
Yeah, I as well as Politico thinks that James Talarico is gonna run for the Senate. I think he's wanted to run for Senate for a long time and it's not just Paxton, he's talked about how a blue Texas can change the filibuster, Citizens United, the Supreme Court and the electoral college even before he was famous (pre-2020) according to some clips I've seen of his.
He’s a true talent. I hope he takes the leap
Why not run for something bigger ?
I hope he runs as well but he’ll have to get by Allred in the primary.
So who could run for Governor now? Joaquin Castro, if he doesn’t run for Senate? I believe Nathan Johnson is going for AG.
At any rate, Talarico is a stellar candidate and I wish him well. I think he might have an actual chance at flipping the Senate seat.
A primary between Allred and Talarico would not be ideal, because of the late state runoff, the enormous state to cover and trying to beat the massive amount of GOP political infrastructure they’ve managed to build with endless control of the state for 20 years.
If Talarico does though, it’s a really hard choice between the two. 1 a proven overperformer (remember Allred flipped a swing congressional seat in his first run) with a built in campaign infrastructure ready to turn the key on. The other, a fresher, younger voice, willing to go where most Democrats don’t who is deeply religious that is unproven above the state legislature level.
I honestly hope he passes, he’s still very young and if Allred comes up short, he’s going to be the entire list of candidates Democrats want to run against Ted Cruz in 2030. He’ll be every single persons #1 pick. He’d still be the top choice if Allred becomes Texas Senator by beating Paxton/Cornyn for that matter. He’s got a golden setup opportunity if he’s patient, but we’ll just have to see what he does.
If it’s just those two, there wouldn’t be runoff. Allred already had a chance. Give Talarico a shot.
It’s not just those 2 running though even if Talarico filed tomorrow. That’s why I think a runoff is almost guaranteed should Talarico run. Virts is already running (no he’s not going to win or get a large share of the vote, he’s a lightweight, not a heavyweight political candidate). I bet another state government Democrat jumps in too, sensing the Paxton opportunity in a likely blue leaning year.
As far as who is better, to each their own, but dismissing a D+5 WAR candidate running in 2024 of all election years as “he already had a chance” feels not based on data. No Democrat could’ve won TX in 2024. I know you’re a progressive and align with Talarico more than the moderate Allred, but give him his due credit for his performance, even if you still want Talarico. There’s no reason to minimize how well Allred performed.
Ted Cruz is not up for reelection until 2030. If a Democrat wins in 2028, he isn't going to have a chance. Allred is a proven overperformer (5 points) and Latinos split their ticket for him similar to what happened in Arizona. But if it's a choice between a typical great moderate candidate and a non-divisive generational progressive talent, I would back the latter. I would still like him to run for Lt. Gov or Gov to avoid a messy primary but let's see what he decides.
Trump winning by 13 last year was a real gut punch for turning Texas blue.
Trump winning by 13% points may have not been as much of a gut pitch if you think about it.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton lost TX to Trump by close to 9% points. Meanwhile, in the 2022 Texas Gubernatorial Race, Beto O’Rourke lost by a tad less than 11% points, only 2% points difference vs what Kamala Harris lost by. This while Biden in 2020 lost TX by less than 6% points.
If say Greg Abbott wins re-election by less than what he won re-election by in 2022, that’s still going to be progress.
And why did that happen? If you dig in the data, it was due to a total collapse of support among Latinos, Asians and younger voters, the same voters who are disillusioned with Trump right now. His approval comes around -10 in 2 or 3 Texas polls. They along with college educated whites used to be be our backbone in Texas. Every election since 2004 in Texas was closer than the previous one until 2020. It's extremely racially polarized Texas, if we win these groups back, we win the state.
Yes. If I’m not mistaken, economics and inflation are a particular reason why Latinos moved to Trump.
Yes and also culture war crap especially among latino men.
Men are also employed in more working class jobs which were affected by Biden's border crisis.
Affected how? Unemployment was practically nil during the Biden Administration and wages went up.
What PollJunkie is likely referring to here is a regional unemployment problem as it relates to the border, not so much a trend reflective of the overall unemployment rate nationwide.
Also, with tech hiring and layoffs going around like a rollercoaster since the last several or so years, the unemployment rate while holding up well with President Biden in office wasn’t exactly elevated.
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-unemployment-rate.htm
Was there a regional unemployment problem on the border, compared to any other time?
I haven’t paid attention to this specific problem as it relates to unemployment but it may be unique to states with borders next door to Mexico. I would have to research more.
When I say regional unemployment problem, it could be where layoffs are happening more frequently + hiring volatility in a given city. If I am reading stories after stories of layoffs happening in the Bay Area, I don’t necessarily have specific data points for unemployment rates in the Bureau of Labor Statistics easily available to pull-up. Usually what is shown in BLS reports nationwide and statewide I have access to.
Yeah chances to turn Texas blue rest on first rebuilding with these groups.
First model is out for 2026 midterm elections, this is one G Elliott Morris highlighted in one of his posts:
https://usapolling.substack.com/p/democrats-hold-the-advantage?utm_campaign=posts-open-in-app&triedRedirect=true
As the numbers stand today, the model suggests the Democrats would reclaim control of the House with 231 seats, while the Republicans would return to the minority with 204.
A shift of 16 seats. I don't think that would have a chance of putting the Senate in play.
Right now, probably not but it’s still early and I expect the list of seats we can grab to grow and to the number we would need to flip the Senate.
I hope you're right.
I don’t think one has anything to do with the other. Really apples and oranges.
The general Congressional ballot is a mark of overall voter sentiment.
If we assume that we hold all of our current House seats (probably wrong to assume that, every party almost always loses some races even in good years) and that we would pick up all the seats that were won by the 16 closest races by percentage points (also likely wrong assumption to make) that would mean we pick up every seat the GOP won by 5.4% or less.
A 5 point shift left from 2024 probably wouldn’t do it. However, if you take into consideration the fact that almost every single incumbent party lost ground from now until the midterms in the generic ballot, a 7-8 point shift left may just make it. Ohio would flip, Nebraska would probably flip at R+6.67 and Texas at R+8.5, would be just on the cusp. Maine and North Carolina would also obviously flip. Need 4 of the above.
Of course just using the data and not taking into account candidate quality, campaigns, money etc is foolish, but it gives you an idea of the path to a Senate Majority if nothing else. Basically, best case scenario for us is if Allred and Osborn can repeat their 2024 WAR, Cooper runs for NC and our Democratic nominee doesn’t shit the bed in Maine. If that happens, we don’t need that much of a blue leaning year to pull off a miracle majority. Even without Ohio.
I think a 5.5 point shift in our favor would very likely have us picking up NC’s senate seat and would put ME as 50-50.
If we got both of those it would put us in a good-not-great position for gaining the senate in 2028 with Wisconsin and the other seat in North Carolina.
Losing Casey last year is a huge disadvantage for us.
I agree both of those are likely with a 5 point shift left. But yes, losing Casey was just a massive loss for Democrats, no other way to put it. It would definitely set us up well winning ME and NC in 2026 and running against Vance in 2028 if we can’t get a majority in 2026.
Can you elaborate on your calculations regarding NE? The election results in 2024 were that close?
Sure can, no problem! That 6.67 was the margin he lost by in 2024. He lost the seat 53.19-46.52 last year.
Like I said though, the projection/calculation is rudimentary and isn’t something to use as an argument of what will definitely happen in the event of a 7-8 point shift left nationally. More of, it’s possible to flip, if the national election shifts left by 7 and the NE-Sen race shifts left by that same 7 points.
There’s a whole lot of reasons to factor into why that may or may not happen, but Osborn running again was the biggest need to flip NE-Sen, so it’s a good start in trying to deny the GOP 1 more vote in the Senate.
Interesting.
Thoughts on Iowa? Still too red? With or without Ernst?
Iowa feels to me like it’s in the next tier of races, around a Likely R rating. Alaska, Iowa and Ohio (if Brown or Ryan doesn’t run) would be grouped together in that next bunch. Maybe add Kansas if we’re being generous. With or without Ernst. The only way these become competitive imo is if we nominate a dynamite political candidate appealing to non-voters/low info voters and the tariffs stay in place up until the midterm election.
That might be a recipe to win these stretch red seats in a big national wave, or localized big wave. But everything has to go right to put them on the board. If Governor Kelly ran in Kansas, that would bump it immediately up to the reach, but plausible seats. Same with Peltola in Alaska. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try for them, but we should be realistic about our chances here in these states.
I still believe the answer is GOTV and massive Democratic voter registration. This in addition to what Dragonfire underscores.
I suspect that there is a belief that Iowa could be competitive because many of Trump's policies will have a bad economic impact on Iowa. His trade war has hurt Iowa's agriculture, which depends on exports. His cuts to foreign aid and to food stamps are hurting agricultural sectors. His immigration policies are hurting Iowa's farmers and hog farmers who rely on undocumented labor. Iowa is a big wind power state which will be hurt by Trump's attacks on renewable energy. This will cause the price of power to go up in Iowa for everyone. Furthermore, many Iowa farmers earned a second income by leasing land to wind power companies which is now threatened. Iowa made a huge leap to the left in the 80's due to Reagan's policies hurting farmers and there is a belief that this could happen again. I still can't wrap my head around how anyone in a farm state could have voted for Trump other than they thought that getting rid of the two transgender athletes in the state is more important than their own income.
I also forgot that now the MAHA movement is going after corn syrup, which will hurt the corn farming industry in Iowa.
It's a very white state, and many white voters in every state are on some level bigoted, as reflected in the fact that a majority of white voters nationwide have voted Republican for president every 4 years since 1968! Though having said that, Iowa was won by Obama in the 2008 caucuses and twice in general elections.
Well, 60% of white voters voted against the GHWBush in 1992, and 52% against Dole in 1996. 🙂
I assume you mean in Iowa, not nationwide.
According to wikipedia, nationally Bush got 40% of white voters in 92. BillC got 39% and Perot got 20%. Perot+Clinton also got a majority of the white vote in 96. Hence the 🙂, since it was an asterisk of an election.
I see.
All of which I expect Iowans to greet with cries of "thank you sir, may I have another?"
As a followup to Jacob M.'s link to election results of the snap election in Tasmania, read this story: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-20/election-worst-labor-result-ever-but-still-a-chance-analysis/105550998
Japan Upper House Elections
This Sunday, there's going to be voting for upper house elections. While the Liberal Democratic Party has governed for a long time, there seems to be a Nigel Farage type politican running in an opposition party.
You guessed it, Sohei Kamiya, who has his party Sanseito, is completely anti-immigration and anti-many things in the populist right agenda he has.
He's also taking advantage of political situation where the cost of living in Japan, which is high and inflation has contributed a great deal to it.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/07/18/will-japans-nigel-farage-break-economy-sohei-kamiya/
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Japan goes to the polls on Sunday to vote in its upper house elections. The country’s Liberal Democratic Party has governed almost continuously since the Second World War.
But, as with the rest of the world, populism is now shaking the country’s politics.
Sohei Kamiya, a youthful-looking, sharp-suited 47-year-old some are calling “the Japanese Nigel Farage”, has steered his start-up party Sanseito to third place in many opinion polls.
He is campaigning on an anti-immigrant, anti-woke and anti-net-zero platform. He is also promising generous giveaways for voters who are under pressure from a cost of living crisis.
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“Increasingly there is potential to compare this with the UK’s Liz Truss moment,” says Masayuki Nakajima, a senior strategist at Mizuho Bank.
“I’d like to deny this completely but part of me sees it this way, because many politicians are advocating a populist agenda without credible funding sources.”
Voters are fuming at the cost of living, with inflation stuck at levels seldom seen since the 1980s. Kamiya’s answer: a more than 16tn Japanese yen (£80bn) plan to abolish consumption taxes.
Is there any populism on the Japanese left?
I have a friend who lives in Japan and he’s told me that even groups of people you would think would be the source of left-wing politics like students are pretty tepid/afraid to rock the boat. I’m surprised that there’s any populism at all tbh.
There's a long history of opposition left-wing parties in Japan, especially the Communists.
Even amid that, Japan has certainly gone a long way since WWII ended. The country’s relationship with the U.S. since then has been for the most part very good to my understanding.
The Communists never won a nationwide election. They also moderated starting in 1958. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Communist_Party:
In 1958, Kenji Miyamoto became the JCP's leader and moderated the party's policies, abandoning the previous line of violent revolution. Miyamoto also began distancing the JCP from the Eastern Bloc in the 1960s. The party maintained a neutral stance during the Sino-Soviet split, declared its support for multi-party democracy in opposition to the one-party politics of China and the Soviet Union, and purged pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese members. His efforts to regain electoral support were particularly successful in urban areas such as Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo, and the JCP worked with the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) in the 1970s to elect a number of progressive mayors and governors. By 1979, the JCP held about 10% of the seats in the National Diet. The party saw a brief electoral resurgence after the collapse of the JSP in 1996; however, the party has generally been in decline since in terms of electoral results and party membership.
The party at present advocates the establishment of a democratic society based on pacificism. It believes that this objective can be achieved by working within an electoral framework while carrying out an extra-parliamentary struggle against "imperialism and its subordinate ally, monopoly capital". As such, the JCP does not advocate violent revolution, but rather a "democratic revolution" to achieve "democratic change in politics and the economy". It accepts the current constitutional position of the emperor but opposes the involvement of the Imperial House in politics. A staunchly anti-militarist party, the JCP firmly supports Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution and seeks to dissolve the Japan Self-Defense Forces. It opposes Japan's military alliance with the United States as an unequal relationship and infringement of Japan's national sovereignty.
Reiwa Shinsengumi? I've heard they are a populist left party in Japan (led by a former actor named Taro Yamamoto), but I don't know much about them.
Here is an article on that that you may find of interest.
"Is There Left Populism in Japan? The Case of Reiwa Shinsengumi"
https://apjjf.org/2020/10/Klein
Thanks, good paper.
I like how the Japanese are complaining about inflation when for thirty years their problem was not enough inflation
This may be me just not knowing enough about Japan and not having visited there but as much as the Japanese are complaining about inflation as reported in this article, I don’t see how the country will change that much in the end politically.
Japan has by contrast to other countries remarkably more civility. For starters, Japan has one of the lowest homicide rates in the world. Former PM Shinzo Abe was assassinated three years ago but two years after he left office. The assassination itself was unheard of and random when it was first reported.
Japan is indeed very civil (and clean) though that’s downwind of a culture that is confirmist and small c conservative in a way visitors don’t really experience or see
I think visitors experience and see it somewhat. You can't visit Japan without experiencing the bowing and the excessive wrapping of items to go, for example.
For sure. I loved my ten days in Japan, it’s a wonderful place with wonderful people. Even then though I can see how it could have some significant downsides culturally if you had to grow up in it/live it. It’s just different
And it's almost impossible to become a citizen there if you weren't born there. Even baseball legend Sadaharu Oh was not widely accepted for many years because his father was Taiwanese.
It's difficult, but I knew someone who married a Japanese man and was so fluent in Japanese that she taught both Japanese and English in Japan, although she was from Ohio and not of Japanese descent. She gained Japanese citizenship.
I presume she had to take a Japanese name and renounce her American citizenship to do so. From my understanding, Japan does not permit dual citizenship.
She did not. She took her husband's last name and passed a language test. Not sure what else she had to pass, maybe something on Japanese history and culture.
At least in the USA, wages kept up with inflation. Japan right now gets inflation while wages are lagging behind.
New York Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat whose district includes parts of Long Island, said changing the maps now is “probably not” a good idea.
“Traditionally people do this every 10 years after the census, so that seems like the normal thing to me,” Suozzi said.
This guy cares about nothing but self preservation. He was the same guy who was preaching collaboration and compromise with Trump and DOGE..
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/20/politics/redistricting-2026-house-democrats
Not clear if he’s speaking in general or just New York. But he’s always good for an undermining quote.
Not sure if they can legally redo New Jersey’s map. The best they could gain would be Kean’s seat without creating a dummymander.
California is pretty much the only sliver of hope
Newsom seems to be making up for his utter tomfoolery during the pandemic by passing some pretty good bills like the CEQA repeal and now by trying everything to stop the steal.
NJ could draw Van Drew’s seat to become competitive.
While Tom Suozzi prefers what "seems like the normal thing", i.e. after the census, these are hardly normal times. And our exceptional times, with democracy in crisis, call for exceptional measures – whether or not Suozzi understands that.
Obviously not, he's an arrogant old school centrist. Really appreciate Jeffries leading the charge.
I'm assuming that's sarcastic. I haven't heard or seen any remarks from Jeffries about new redistricting in New York.
From the article:
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his political team have begun privately shaping a legally risky — and likely expensive — strategy to redraw House maps in several Democratic-controlled states, according to Democrats briefed on the effort. They are exploring their plans in California, New York, New Jersey, Minnesota and Washington state in hopes of flipping at least a handful of Republican seats next November.
Tom Suozzi in past instances he’s against something Democrats want to do doesn’t mince words. A “probably not” from him means he’s seriously giving some thought to the dangerous times we live in with the GOP trying to unfairly and illegally redraw their way to hold power. I’m very surprised he’s not saying “Hell no” or “Absolutely Not”.
He represents a Trump district and thus is extremely valuable to have as a Democratic incumbent. He needs to whine about Democrats and not go with the national party sometimes. That said, these are only words, not votes and he has no control over whether they redraw or not, so let him do his thing, it obviously works for voters in his district.
Yeah, if anybody is to personally benefit from redistricting, it would be Suozzi. The idea that his position is purely out of "self preservation" is pretty silly.
CBS: Trump job approval 42/58
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-news-poll-trump-deportation-program-prices/
The subsamples in these polls tend to be shaky but this one has him at 28/72 among 18-29 year olds and 32/68 among Hispanics. More evidence that the groups that swung toward Trump from 2020 to 2024 have already swung away from him.
Elastic voters are elastic
https://nypost.com/2025/07/19/us-news/cuomo-i-will-move-to-florida-god-forbid-if-mamdani-become-nyc-mayor/
Cuomo will move to Florida if Mamdani wins
Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out Andy.
That sounds like a dumb joke he made.
The report on WINS said that he said it was a joke.
“Well now I definitely am voting for Mamdani”.
- signed New York Democrats probably.
Promise?
It was a joke. Still Cuomo shouldn't even joke about this. He has already weak ties to the city and gives off the impression he doesn't really like NYC.
Really wild how there are two housing markets now.
If you live in the northeast or Midwest, prices are rising, everywhere around you.
If you live in the south or west, prices are falling, everywhere around you.
And if you live in Florida, the bottom’s falling out.
https://x.com/DKThomp/status/1946983726828691784
Why could this be happening? It's falling even in California and Oregon. while rising in Kentucky, Indiana and West Virginia!
Northeast has been atrociously bad about building more housing for generations. The demand to live up here is completely mismatched with the supply of places to live. There's been some efforts to improve this but they're middling at best and often get stuck in court as rich old people sue to avoid changing the "neighborhood character." The south has been a lot better about that. Not sure about the other regions.
There has been massive building in the northeast for years.
The data I've seen shows that it's much less than everywhere else in the country per capita, especially so in the most populous states in the northeast.
Even if you were completely right, the point doesn't change: we're not building enough to meet demand. Take a hypothetical scenario with 1000 housing units and demand for 2000 housing units. If 200 additional units are built, that helps, but is wholly and woefully insufficient to meet that demand.
Our part of the country needs to build way, way more housing.
I know that it is popular on here to believe that housing is pretty simply an issue of supply. it really isn't. There are many factors that impact the cost of housing, and building supply absolutely induces demand. New construction sells at a large premium over existing housing, and helps to drive prices up. I feel like home builders have done a number on the discourse around housing. I've sat in meetings with actual homebuilders who are being honest "the neighbors will thank us for raising their housing prices". We're probably going to have a a general recession and a housing recession. It's the best way of actually reducing housing costs
Induced demand is absolutely a thing, but with housing that's a factor that ties into the more specific components of demand. Demand is not really an intrinsic property in and of itself, it's a property in relation to another: price. The proper system to map it out is price vs demand curves.
If we want to go into more detail, you can induce demand by creating more units that exist at a specific price point. Supply needs to be build in excess to get pricing to go down. You see similar to this with the classic example of induced demand, highway lanes. People will drive on the highway if it enables them to get to work during rush hour in, e.g., 30 minutes. Before two lanes are added, it takes them 33 minutes. After two lanes are added, it takes them 30 minutes. This brings the highway immediately back up to capacity.
That all expanded on... it really is an issue of supply. Do you honestly think that if, hypothetically, we magically doubled the number of housing units available across the northeast, perfectly matched with current housing distribution, that prices would do anything other than go down? Do you think it would get more expensive to live in NYC if there were twice as many homes there?
This isn't even something we need to discuss in the abstract, in hypothetical terms. Austin TX made a huge effort to increase housing construction, after years and years of cost increases. They added >10k apartments per year across this decade. Rent and housing costs have gone down. This isn't hypothetical. This is real. It 100%, absolutely and undeniably is a matter of supply. https://www.npr.org/2024/10/08/nx-s1-5118345/how-austin-texas-was-about-lower-the-cost-of-rent
Like the old adage with brute force, this one is simple: if you find more supply isn't working, you're not adding enough. Austin added enough, and they're reaping the benefits.
If there are 2000 families that want to live somewhere and 1000 homes for them to live in, there's no way around it. The first 1000 of them will bid prices up to the point that they can bear, and the second 1000 of them will leave for cheaper — conservative — states. Further diluting our political power and making elections harder for us to win.
What is happening in Austin right now is arguably the start of the bust part of the boom and bust cycle and a couple of years people will be screaming about being underwater and demanding to know how anyone could let this happen. And yes, if you magically doubled the supply of housing in NYC and didn't allow a new influx of people, prices would drop. But you can't double it and you can't completely prevent people from moving in.
New York City's population wouldn't double to 16,000,000 if housing supply doubled.
It would.
It certainly would not. Where would they all work?
Not overnight. But the system would balance.
It would not, as double the housing would not actually accommodate double the population, as the current housing supply does not accommodate the current population.
There are, it should be noted, a finite number of people in this country. There are 40-60m people in the northeast, depending on how you want to define it. Induced demand is limited by the number of people available to be induced. You won’t see 40m+ people leave for the northeast fast enough to see anything but a dramatic housing cost decrease.
The handwave on Austin is ridiculous. They did exactly what your argument insists would cause increased prices and you want me to believe it is an entirely hyper localized bust with nothing to do with increased supply? Please. That is not an argument, that is denial.
Where did I say it had "nothing to do with increased supply"". I said it was more complicated than that.
Where did I say it had "nothing to do with increased supply"? I said it was more complicated than that. The bursting of the tech bubble in the city helped.
This makes no sense. Demand is determined by the population, it's not like more people magically appear when new housing gets built.
People don't "magically appear" they move.
This is the first I've heard about housing prices declining in California!
Because the northeast usually trails the rest of the country in housing trends. It is more stable in general than the rest of the country. Much of the rest of the country is heading into a buyers' market and possibly a housing recession. The northeast will likely catch up. This was largely inevitable
Huh? Isn't a sellers market when prices are going up?
Sorry, meant buyers' market.
Florida’s insurance problems are compounding Hurricane by hurricane.
It’ll be really interesting to see what happens there by 2030, to say nothing of 2040 and beyond
prices are not falling in south OC in California
Update for anyone interested: I live in south Orange County. Condo community; not age restricted but 90% over 65. A 2200 sq ft 180 degree ocean view condo, 45 years old, some upgrades, on the market this week for $1,925,000....SOLD!