VA-AG: Major scandal involving Dem AG nominee Jay Jones. For some reason he texted a GOP delegate some years ago and joked about shooting the former GOP VA House speaker. Predictably that GOP delegate held on to the texts and released them weeks before the election.
First of all nothing angers me more than a politician who knows they have huge skeletons in their closet running anyway. Jones won his primary 51-49 over well-qualified and respected Shannon Taylor by concealing stuff like this only for it to come out and hurt the party. Spanberger and Hashmi have already put out statements distancing themselves from Jones. He still can win but it will be super dicey and we may miss out on a statewide sweep because of his arrogance.
We had Northam's and Herring's blackface scandal, and Farifax's sexual assault scandal. Now Jones' joking about political violence. What is going on with Virginia dems? This is a lot scandals in too short a time period.
I guess he's this year's winner of the Cal Cunningham award for fucking up an election. Even if he wins his future career is toast. With the political environment and the decline of split ticket voting he has a decent chance of winning still, but man, what a selfish moron.
If I were advising him I would've told him to deny, deny, deny. There's no audio or video of this stuff and texts can be manipulated doctored etc. Best way forward would be to muddy the waters on this but he appears to have admitted to it which makes it harder to get ahead of this.
Voters don't like that. We shouldn't do things that hurt the party brand just because Republicans do them. With few exceptions, Republicans are idiots and they did well in 2024 only because downscale voters were upset with Biden over inflation.
I think in this case the acknowledgement is the wisest course of action. Jones' best chance is for this end up a short lived story. Unless there's another shoe to drop, then his response means there's nothing else to cover. There will be a few days of outrage and then, maybe, it will go away. The timing is particularly bad because it's October, but it's early enough it could work.
If he denied it then the story stays in the news longer as they try to get an admission or cover if he's lying, etc., for a while.
Luckily, early voting in Virginia has been underway for a couple of weeks, so a substantial number of ballots have already been cast before this scandal broke, and thus are unaffected by it.
Interestingly, nowadays "October surprises" like this need to drop extra early, thanks to the growth of early voting.
Imagine: If in 2016 there was the same level of early voting that exists today, Comey's Oct. 28th letter probably would've been too late to cause Hillary's defeat...
The key question is whether Jones loses financial support or not. He is already being outspent on the airwaves so it'll be really hard to pull off what's looking like a dicey win with no money.
At least the Cal Cunningham award for f*cking up an election isn't as bad as the Martha Coakley award for losing an unloseable election. (Roy Moore is also a recipient of that award.)
Coakley, at least, didn't lie by omission. All her flaws were readily on display for the state party and primary electorate to work with. Cunningham and Jones knew they had fuckups in their past and ran anyway, deceiving the electorate.
Well, in Cunningham’s case, I’ve heard that his daughter pushed him to do something about running for office. Then he joined the Senate race.
Oh and he happened to have skeletons in the form of cheating. Like, he didn’t bother to share this with his daughter before he ran for the Senate race?
To be clear, Cunningham’s daughter is not the official reason why he ran for the Senate. I recall reading that she was an influence on him running but I cannot say whether this was before or after Schumer or anyone else who persuaded Cunningham to run.
The craziest thing about this IMO is that Jones sent these texts to a *Republican*!!! It really doesn't take a genius to figure that the Republican would release the texts if Jones ran for higher office.
Jones needs to start running ads bashing the "Trump-Miyares agenda" and focusing all his attention on the government shutdown to take people's attention away from this.
He sent those texts only a couple of years ago, at least Northam likely sincerely forgot about his yearbook pics from the 80s. Jones knew full well a Republican lawmaker had these texts saved on their phone and still ran anyway.
Henrico County Prosecutor Shannon Taylor Raises Nearly $350,000 in Just 3 Weeks Since Launching Campaign for Congress to Unseat Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA01)
You're assuming there won't be one. Trump's approval rating is atrocious and his and the GOP's antics during this shutdown are endearing them to no one. Don't discount people yet.
He’s still serving his first term in the state Senate, so I doubt he was planning to run. However, if Taylor loses in 2026, then I can see VanValkenburg running for VA-01 in 2028.
I don't know anything about this guy but I do see that he first ran for AG 4 years ago, about 6 years out of law school. Call me crazy, but that alone shows a bit of a lack of judgement.
In the primary I couldn't understand why so many prominent VA Dems were backing him over Taylor. Shannon Taylor had 25 years of experience as a prosecutor and was district attorney for over a decade of 5th most populous county in VA . Jones was 6 years out of law school and delegate for a few short years and somehow got the backing of Northam, McAuliffe, the speaker of the HoD, and senate majority leader?
Here's a scenario. What if he wins the election, but then decides to resign in shame. How is the vacancy filled? Does Gov. Spanberger appoint someone (who's not an idiot) for the whole 4 year term?
As best I can tell the governor is allowed to make a temporary appointment that will then be filled in a special election, unless there is less than a year left in the term.
There's a bit mentioned about it here on the wiki page about the 2019 scandals.
It was a joke in poor taste. And he was stupid to send it to a Republican. But I don’t think it’s the disaster some of you seem to think. He’s fully apologized. And you know what Republicans would be doing in the same situation? Attacking the recipient for waiting until now to disclose it.
You actually could be right. We've seen in previous elections that we don't really know what scandals will and won't affect voting. We will see how this plays out.
California "Election Rigging Response Act" (btw, great name)
My VBM ballot came today. It's easily the shortest ballot of my life: it's just one yes/no question. This will take about 1 minute: vote, then put the ballot in the return envelope, and sign & date it.
I'm not sure if the ballot drop boxes have been unlocked yet, but I'll find out tomorrow when I walk over to the library (I'll never use the post office for it).
From ABC News Australia: "Ms Takaichi won a party ballot in a run-off against Shinjiro Koizumi, who hoped to become the youngest prime minister in post-war Japan.
Ms Takaichi is a conservative and regards former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher as a role model."
In Australia, the Liberals are having problems with potential leader contender Andrew Hastie quitting the shadow cabinet. This comes on the heels of Jacinta Price being removed from the shadow cabinet last month.
In Canada, Newfoundland and Labrador goes to the polls on Oct. 14. The Liberals have been in power since 2015. The first and so far only poll was just released, but it's from August. It showed the Liberals with 59%, PCs 31%, and the NDP at 9%. The poll is highlighted here in The Writ's write up: https://www.thewrit.ca/p/weekly-writ-102-has-the-liberal-path
Well, she’s about as close as you’ll get to an actual Le Pen in Japanese politics regardless of who she cites as an influence (Meloni cites Thatcher as an influence too!) so this is definitely a tell of the LDP shifting even further right in the age of Sanseito
It must be a weird thing in Japan’s political system but from from my standpoint, Liberal Democratic Party is an oxymoron considering it’s actually about being conservative and right wing.
Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party was known for many decades as a conservative, corrupt, election-stealing party.
But I'd like to point out that in international terms, "liberal" refers in theory to the liberal capitalism of Adam Smith (though monopolism or even quasi-fascist corporatism is much closer to the organization of political economics in Japan), and I believe it's really only in the U.S. that liberal is left and not clearly right of center.
"liberal" as in the free market classical liberalism or neoliberalism or soft libertarianism. In Australia and Japan, "Liberal" parties combine social conservatism with classical liberalism.
"Liberal" in America means "Social liberalism" i.e left on social issues and left of center, moderate economic interventionism in economic issues.
To be fair, for someone who represents a party that came out of the actual Fascist party, Meloni has been far better than Trump. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe she's weakened Italian democracy, and she's been very strongly pro-Ukraine.
This is like saying that it's customary for conservative politicians in America to use the N-word while denying their racism. Just because they do it frequently doesn't mean it's OK.
From what I've heard, similar. Both centrists. Foulkes has the added downside of being a CVS executive during their big opioid lawsuit, as Primary School noted.
"Republicans Have a Senate Map Without the Meltdowns
Trump may be the kingmaker, but with Thune working behind the scenes, Republicans are avoiding the messy primaries that once cost them winnable Senate seats."
Of course, that doesn’t guarantee wins in the general. Especially in this environment.
Also, I love how Politico is constantly like “but don’t worry, X won’t be so bad” for the GOP but with Dems it’s like “this may look good, but here’s why it actually isn’t and Dems are screwed!” Fuck Politico.
Politico didn’t also consider that candidate scandals can suddenly pop up and upend a race later on. See: Roy Moore’s pedophilia, Cal Cunningham sexting, Jay Jones’ whole recent scandal, etc.
Are we really inclined to believe anything Politico is trying to speculate or deliberate at face value on GOP Senate midterm election strategy when we have candidates like IA GOP Senate Candidate Ashley Hinson who are doing nothing to change the overall image of Trump and the GOP?
Hinson’s campaign kickoff event showed her ass kissing Trump like the NXIVM followers did to its ringleader Keith Raniere. Is this what Politico believes is a real strategy compared to Joni Ernst pulling crap from her ass in giving it straight to Iowans over Medicare cuts?
General question for those here: of the various swing seats/associated candidates running for office so far, which ones should we donate to more than others? Could be Senate, House, Governor, state legislative, local, other.
I cannot claim it is the best approach, but what I do for the general election is I look throughout the competitive races, generally the ones rated tossup by prognosticators, and try to make a mental evaluation.
If I think any of those ratings are overinflating our chances due to institutional reasons, something like a statewide office in Florida, I discard them from the list. From the remainder I try to find the candidates that best meet the criteria of (a) being closer to me ideologically, and (b) needing the money. Since I'm limiting myself to the most competitive races to begin with I do not feel bad about (a). And (b) is there to try to maximize the benefit of my donations: if one candidate has raised $200m and and another has raised $20m, both for statewide office in vaguely similarly sized states, then the latter candidate will get far more marginal utility from a donation.
I haven't had the spare money to justify it recently, but when I last did this I picked one candidate each for senate, governor, and house. All three came in close, which felt validating for my determination of not sending money to doomed candidates or to candidates all but certain to win.
Oh definitely. My Dem State Assemblyman (Chris Burdick)'s office actually helped me get disability aid for school/jobs back after the agency that was supposed to help me cut me off illegitimately. Local government matters!
Stevens was an a union event today. I cannot find any event that the picture might have come from. You seem awfully convinced it was at least a recent event and no one showed. Seems a big leap of faith. Where? When?
AES reminds me alot of Mandela Barnes who totally blew a winnable race because of his baggage. Sorry but he is too liberal to win statewide and is going to be hammered on his past views like Barnes was. Not to mention the likely prejudices he will face (not his fault) but that is the society we live in.
Barnes had other problems beyond ideology -- the national Dems didn't invest the money they should have been investing, and there's also the unfortunate race issue (hence why other progressives like Feingold and Baldwin have had the success that evaded Barnes) -- but I do see the concern.
The problem is, Stevens is worse. I wasn't defending Abdul. I was saying that we really shouldn't be fronting Stevens if she is this unpopular.
El-Sayed has not called for defunding the police. On searching Abolish ICE, I find him wearing an Abolish ICE tee in 2018 with no statements on record. Would a single Abolish ICE pic matter in these times with public opinion against ICE?
Abolish ICE has always polled poorly even back in 2018 when the politics of immigration were alot better for Dems. The fact that AES was proudly wearing an Abolish ICE t-shirt in a swing state tells he he doesnt have good political instincts. He has a really scant electoral record and seems like a wildcard.
My problem with Al-Sayed is that he supported the Uncommitted movement in the primary (thankfully not the general election), and without talking about IP too much, a movement that while well-intentioned, was always going to cause some voters to become disillusioned with Biden/Harris more generally.
Whitmer could step in tomorrow and easily take this seat off the table for Republicans. She has no chance of winning a prez primary IMO. Even Mayor Pete might be able to do it at this stage.
As a side note, this is a testament to how we’ve managed to avoid most Senate primary clusterfucks over the past several cycles. We could really blow this one.
It's a picture of a Stevens event where there's only one person visible in the audience. Who could easily be a tracker from another campaign.
It amazes me how often people will insist on playing it safe but only in a superficial way. Schumer et al preferring Stevens looks safe when you only care about bullet point summaries of candidates. Real world data does not corroborate that assumption of being the safe candidate.
+ the fact that according to Lakshya Jain's WAR models, she has been the worst performing House dem in Michigan since years, underperforming the Presidential and senatorial races. Even Rashida Tlaib overperforms her.
Stevens didn't really underperform in 2024, she won by 22.6 when Harris won her district by 16.1. (Hilary Scholten was worse on that count at 13.4/7.9 although her district is ancestrally red). For an underperformer, try Ilhan Omar. She won by 50.4 when Harris won her district by 61.9.
I was thinking this too. Not to say I like Stevens, or to say this couldn't be true, but is this verified in any way? Cause otherwise it might be misrepresentation
Based on the fact that, on social media platforms, both moderates and progressives equally hate her; she is an electoral underperformer; her non-PAC fundraising has been weak; her state has the largest Arab minority in the country; she doesn’t have organic volunteers; she bombed cable TV interviews; and there are videos of her shouting in the House that the GOP will play on loop—she is, overall, a terrible politician. Even Adam Jentleson, the arch-moderate, is astounded by her and the establishment. Yet Schumer still wants to force her down our throats.
Her campaign event attracted only a tracker and if she wins the primary, we might be in trouble. I still think that Whitmer should jump in. This Senate election would have been a slam dunk if Whitmer or Buttigieg had run.
I agree about Stevens being a lackluster candidate.
But unless this is an official analyst or user who has a history of covering events, this is all just subjective interpretation at this point from just one random X user.
Also, the MI Primary is in August 2026. Loads of time.
I like Buttigieg as sort of a general party spokesman but I think his electoral appeal is vastly overrated. He appeals mainly to technocratic good-government types who always vote Democratic anyway.
The Dem field in Michigan does not give me much confidence at all tbh. McMorrow seems like the only one who I'd be confident in winning a GE, but no guarantee she's the nominee. With the filing deadline being next April there is plenty of time for someone like the AG Nessel or Whitmer to jump in and bring some clarity to this race.
They were pics of Haley Stevens on stage, seemingly speaking to just two people in a field. I do wonder if it turned out that was from a mic test or something, and not the real event.
Since it’s the weekend thread, might as well post this.
I was thinking about my fear-posting about Trump last weekend, and I’ve sort of come to a conclusion about that.
We have to have hope that there could be a way out. All of us. If we don’t have that, we give up and resign ourselves to a horrible fate we can fight against. Hope is the only way we’re going to be able to fight back. Hoping for a better future. Hoping for a way to fight back, and hope is the DNA of resistance. Even in brutal dictatorships, hope for a way out has fueled the protest movements that have toppled some of the worst of the worst. Hoping that our countrymen will join us. If we give up, they’ve already won. Incidents like Kimmel and the TACO trade saga show that even the current admin. and their allies will back off if something is so despised, it threatens their stability. And the public do despise Trump - his approval rating is awful, the GOP is having to rig the maps to win (which also disproves the theory that they won’t hold/don’t care about elections), and there have been many protests - not all of which get media coverage.
I don’t think it’s over. We have to keep fighting. We have to fight to the very end if that’s what it comes to. We would be doing a disservice to democracy if we give up. They can’t get rid of all of us, even if they try. Now everyone go out and vote and protest and get involved!
I mean Germany was fine 50 years after a much worse regime than the Trump admin. History doesn't stop. Things can be really bad for four years but we're not going to be in some historically unprecedented situation in 2029. It might be historically unprecedented for the US, but we're more than capable of rebuilding if we choose to do so.
"fine" may have been the wrong word. My point is that human societies have rebuilt and reaffirmed commitments to freedom and diversity from positions that will be much worse than the one that we will be in come 2029. I genuinely do not think we will experience a Holocaust-esque event here over the next three years. Our immigrant communities are critical to the lifeblood of our country but large swaths of them are very difficult to remove and the Trump admin is imply not moving fast enough to make a huge dent in the ~13 million undocumented people who are here. We will have some rebuilding to do, especially in our law enforcement and nat sec institutions, but if we win a trifecta in 2029 we can do a lot of the important work over the course of a two term Presidency. That's my only point.
Believe me, I got your point the first time, but I'd like to point out that the first -Nazi- mayor of Berlin was content to make things somewhat unpleasant for the local Jewish community while looking the other way while they organized their economic affairs, knowing that the lifeblood of Berlin's economy was Jewish-owned business. He was fired in 1936, and it was his successor, a Nazi ideologue who didn't give a damn about the economy of Berlin, who organized Kristallnacht. Trump has very quickly gotten the beginnings of the infrastructure of concentration and therefore possible mass murder constructed. Don't assume any of us knows what he and his co-conspirators will do in the coming years.
The Nazis faced far fewer obstacles to the Holocaust, as they basically controlled all government down to the local level and Germany was pretty tolerant of anti-Semitism at the time.
Meanwhile Trump’s ICE raids have been generating widespread outrage and pushback.
And that needs to continue. I'd point out that the Catholic Church in Germany opposed the Nazis' campaign to annihilate physically and mentally handicapped people, so the Nazis pretended to stop it after killing a huge number of people, but continued it on the sly.
There’s myriad ways for the Feds to enhance security at federal facilities if they so desire without federalizing the national guard. The correct outcome here, obviously
Happy October everyone. It's a beautiful crisp Sunday on Boston's north shore.
I've been thinking about preliminary (primary) elections. Ballotpedia has a map, linked below. Massachusetts, along with NC, AZ, have a semi-closed primary. In a semi-closed primary, registered party members are prohibited from selecting a ballot outside their party. But unaffiliated persons may choose either ballot.
The incentives of semi-closed electoral law is to push people to register as independent. Thoughts?
I'm ambivalent about it. We have two conflicting goals at hand.
The first goal is we want elections, including primaries, to have higher participation. Democracy works best the more engaged the populace is, the more accurately it reflects the will of the people. Making it easier for people to vote in the "interesting" primary elections is more likely to get them to turn out and vote.
The second goal is we want party registration to be accurate and reflective of people's preferences. Pushing individuals towards being an independent is providing us with bad information if those individuals have a strong lean towards a party. Which most of them do.
It also dilutes the primary of being an accurate reflection of the party if we have democrats voting in republican primaries or vice versa.
I expect the impact on those factors is small enough to not really matter. As such I don't care all that much either way.
An additional consideration -- ratfucking by Dem/GOP members towards GOP/Dem members respectively. I remember there was an attempt to recruit GOP voters in the Philly DA primary in 2021 against Krasner (which backfired), and way back in the 2000s something similar happened with former Rep./current deranged conspiracy theorist and Putin sympathizer Cynthia McKinney.
While McKinney was nuts and clearly needed to go, by and large such efforts are harmful to us because they can result in worse candidates being promoted. I can imagine a similar argument is present for the other side, just look at how the lunatic GOP members Dems secretly promoted did in Senate/Governor races (Oz, Mastriano, Masters, Lake, etc.) Keeping primaries closed prevents ratfucking on both ends.
The person who posted this seems to believe this will help Jones, as Trump isn’t exactly liked in Virginia. Thoughts? I can’t imagine this statement is much of a gift to Miyares.
This is exactly what Jones wants. If the attention is on him, then he could lose support from this, but the more attention there is on Trump instead, the more Jones's supporters will be reminded of why they were supporting him in the first place.
This is Trump's gift to Dems - he always has to have the attention on him at all times, even when this harms his own party's electoral prospects.
Yeah if I’m Jones go all in on “I’d date my daughter” “2nd amendment remedies” “I can shoot someone on 5th avenue” “grab em by the pussy” etc. this is the man my opponent still supports.
Regarding the Jay Jones scandal, I don't know if Jones can get his name off the ballot if he wants to drop out of the race (for now, I've seen no indication of Jones considering suspending his campaign). Early voting has already begun in Virginia.
There's a nonzero possibility that Jones suspends his campaign and wins anyway, although Jones indicated in his apology statement that he intended to continue his campaign.
https://www.wric.com/news/politics/capitol-connection/delegate-says-jay-jones-joked-about-shooting-former-virginia-gop-house-speaker-in-text-messages/
VA-AG: Major scandal involving Dem AG nominee Jay Jones. For some reason he texted a GOP delegate some years ago and joked about shooting the former GOP VA House speaker. Predictably that GOP delegate held on to the texts and released them weeks before the election.
First of all nothing angers me more than a politician who knows they have huge skeletons in their closet running anyway. Jones won his primary 51-49 over well-qualified and respected Shannon Taylor by concealing stuff like this only for it to come out and hurt the party. Spanberger and Hashmi have already put out statements distancing themselves from Jones. He still can win but it will be super dicey and we may miss out on a statewide sweep because of his arrogance.
We had Northam's and Herring's blackface scandal, and Farifax's sexual assault scandal. Now Jones' joking about political violence. What is going on with Virginia dems? This is a lot scandals in too short a time period.
I guess he's this year's winner of the Cal Cunningham award for fucking up an election. Even if he wins his future career is toast. With the political environment and the decline of split ticket voting he has a decent chance of winning still, but man, what a selfish moron.
Was about to say. If Spanberger wins by the margins we think she will he probably gets over the line but, jeez. What a dumbass
If I were advising him I would've told him to deny, deny, deny. There's no audio or video of this stuff and texts can be manipulated doctored etc. Best way forward would be to muddy the waters on this but he appears to have admitted to it which makes it harder to get ahead of this.
In other words, you would have advised him to lie.
Yes, act like a Republican.
What makes you think a Democrat could do that convincingly and satisfy voters?
Voters don't like that. We shouldn't do things that hurt the party brand just because Republicans do them. With few exceptions, Republicans are idiots and they did well in 2024 only because downscale voters were upset with Biden over inflation.
I think in this case the acknowledgement is the wisest course of action. Jones' best chance is for this end up a short lived story. Unless there's another shoe to drop, then his response means there's nothing else to cover. There will be a few days of outrage and then, maybe, it will go away. The timing is particularly bad because it's October, but it's early enough it could work.
If he denied it then the story stays in the news longer as they try to get an admission or cover if he's lying, etc., for a while.
Luckily, early voting in Virginia has been underway for a couple of weeks, so a substantial number of ballots have already been cast before this scandal broke, and thus are unaffected by it.
Interestingly, nowadays "October surprises" like this need to drop extra early, thanks to the growth of early voting.
Imagine: If in 2016 there was the same level of early voting that exists today, Comey's Oct. 28th letter probably would've been too late to cause Hillary's defeat...
I can easily imagine her winning by 10 and him still losing.
The key question is whether Jones loses financial support or not. He is already being outspent on the airwaves so it'll be really hard to pull off what's looking like a dicey win with no money.
And the fact that he texted this to a Republican legislator. Why is he texting with a Republican in the first place?
At least the Cal Cunningham award for f*cking up an election isn't as bad as the Martha Coakley award for losing an unloseable election. (Roy Moore is also a recipient of that award.)
And yet Dems nominated her again in 2014 governors race, which she also lost.
Coakley, at least, didn't lie by omission. All her flaws were readily on display for the state party and primary electorate to work with. Cunningham and Jones knew they had fuckups in their past and ran anyway, deceiving the electorate.
Well, in Cunningham’s case, I’ve heard that his daughter pushed him to do something about running for office. Then he joined the Senate race.
Oh and he happened to have skeletons in the form of cheating. Like, he didn’t bother to share this with his daughter before he ran for the Senate race?
No Schumer searched for white veteran moderate and found him after Jeff Jackson refused to run due to Schumer's mafioso antics.
To be clear, Cunningham’s daughter is not the official reason why he ran for the Senate. I recall reading that she was an influence on him running but I cannot say whether this was before or after Schumer or anyone else who persuaded Cunningham to run.
The craziest thing about this IMO is that Jones sent these texts to a *Republican*!!! It really doesn't take a genius to figure that the Republican would release the texts if Jones ran for higher office.
Jones needs to start running ads bashing the "Trump-Miyares agenda" and focusing all his attention on the government shutdown to take people's attention away from this.
He sent those texts only a couple of years ago, at least Northam likely sincerely forgot about his yearbook pics from the 80s. Jones knew full well a Republican lawmaker had these texts saved on their phone and still ran anyway.
Yeah if Jones did this even 10 years ago, It would be stupid to make a big deal out of this. However, he did it only like 3 years ago.
It still wouldn't be stupid to make a big deal out of it.
There is a silver lining here. Taylor losing the AG race also means she might be able to flip VA-1, where she’s now running.
Although the alternative there would have been the similarly strong Schuyler VanValkenburg, so I could be wrong.
Henrico County Prosecutor Shannon Taylor Raises Nearly $350,000 in Just 3 Weeks Since Launching Campaign for Congress to Unseat Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA01)
https://bluevirginia.us/2025/10/henrico-county-prosecutor-shannon-taylor-raises-nearly-350000-in-just-3-weeks-since-launching-campaign-for-congress-to-unseat-rep-rob-wittman-r-va01/
There you go. That seat has been getting bluer so now may be our chance.
I don’t see Wittman losing in anything other than a blue wave.
There would have to be at least somewhat of one, but that's certainly possible.
You're assuming there won't be one. Trump's approval rating is atrocious and his and the GOP's antics during this shutdown are endearing them to no one. Don't discount people yet.
He endorsed Taylor the day she got in. Was he even considering running himself?
He was the only other candidate that was being speculated. I suspect he would have run had Taylor not.
He’s still serving his first term in the state Senate, so I doubt he was planning to run. However, if Taylor loses in 2026, then I can see VanValkenburg running for VA-01 in 2028.
I don't know anything about this guy but I do see that he first ran for AG 4 years ago, about 6 years out of law school. Call me crazy, but that alone shows a bit of a lack of judgement.
In the primary I couldn't understand why so many prominent VA Dems were backing him over Taylor. Shannon Taylor had 25 years of experience as a prosecutor and was district attorney for over a decade of 5th most populous county in VA . Jones was 6 years out of law school and delegate for a few short years and somehow got the backing of Northam, McAuliffe, the speaker of the HoD, and senate majority leader?
There was concern over Dominion Energy’s influence in the primary. Not sure if it was worth it in hindsight, to put it mildly.
Taylor always ran an explicitly centrist campaign on the criminal legal system with the support of cretins like Dick Saslaw and Eileen Filler-Corn.
That too. Jones had progressive support to boot.
This is why I voted for Jones in the AG primary. Taylor was backed heavily by Dominion, while Jones was backed by Clean Virginia.
Here's a scenario. What if he wins the election, but then decides to resign in shame. How is the vacancy filled? Does Gov. Spanberger appoint someone (who's not an idiot) for the whole 4 year term?
As best I can tell the governor is allowed to make a temporary appointment that will then be filled in a special election, unless there is less than a year left in the term.
There's a bit mentioned about it here on the wiki page about the 2019 scandals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Virginia_political_crisis#Line_of_succession
If he wins there is no way he resigns. He would've beaten the scandal and he'd have 4 full years to move past it and do his job.
It was a joke in poor taste. And he was stupid to send it to a Republican. But I don’t think it’s the disaster some of you seem to think. He’s fully apologized. And you know what Republicans would be doing in the same situation? Attacking the recipient for waiting until now to disclose it.
You actually could be right. We've seen in previous elections that we don't really know what scandals will and won't affect voting. We will see how this plays out.
Exactly. Will also be hard to overcome a 10-point Dem lead at the top of the ticket for Republicans.
California "Election Rigging Response Act" (btw, great name)
My VBM ballot came today. It's easily the shortest ballot of my life: it's just one yes/no question. This will take about 1 minute: vote, then put the ballot in the return envelope, and sign & date it.
I'm not sure if the ballot drop boxes have been unlocked yet, but I'll find out tomorrow when I walk over to the library (I'll never use the post office for it).
With Republicans tampering with drop boxes, I would just take mine straight to the election office.
Haven’t got mine yet.
Some international political news....
Japan will get it's first female PM with the LDP selecting Senae Takaichi.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-04/japan-ldp-leadership-election-results/105852408
From ABC News Australia: "Ms Takaichi won a party ballot in a run-off against Shinjiro Koizumi, who hoped to become the youngest prime minister in post-war Japan.
Ms Takaichi is a conservative and regards former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher as a role model."
In Australia, the Liberals are having problems with potential leader contender Andrew Hastie quitting the shadow cabinet. This comes on the heels of Jacinta Price being removed from the shadow cabinet last month.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-03/andrew-hastie-quits-shadow-cabinet/105850958
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-04/andrew-hastie-resignation-bad-timing-for-sussan-ley/105852022
In Canada, Newfoundland and Labrador goes to the polls on Oct. 14. The Liberals have been in power since 2015. The first and so far only poll was just released, but it's from August. It showed the Liberals with 59%, PCs 31%, and the NDP at 9%. The poll is highlighted here in The Writ's write up: https://www.thewrit.ca/p/weekly-writ-102-has-the-liberal-path
Great about a Japanese woman as PM; not so great about her being a Thatcher fan.
Japan is the ultimate “take what you can get” when it comes to who emerges from the LDP’s dinosaurium
Considering Takaichi is citing Thatcher as an influence as opposed to Marine Le Pen, I look at this as kind of the lesser of two evils.
Also, what real change would Takaichi bring to Japan that previous PMs did not?
Well, she’s about as close as you’ll get to an actual Le Pen in Japanese politics regardless of who she cites as an influence (Meloni cites Thatcher as an influence too!) so this is definitely a tell of the LDP shifting even further right in the age of Sanseito
It must be a weird thing in Japan’s political system but from from my standpoint, Liberal Democratic Party is an oxymoron considering it’s actually about being conservative and right wing.
Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party was known for many decades as a conservative, corrupt, election-stealing party.
But I'd like to point out that in international terms, "liberal" refers in theory to the liberal capitalism of Adam Smith (though monopolism or even quasi-fascist corporatism is much closer to the organization of political economics in Japan), and I believe it's really only in the U.S. that liberal is left and not clearly right of center.
"liberal" as in the free market classical liberalism or neoliberalism or soft libertarianism. In Australia and Japan, "Liberal" parties combine social conservatism with classical liberalism.
"Liberal" in America means "Social liberalism" i.e left on social issues and left of center, moderate economic interventionism in economic issues.
To be fair, for someone who represents a party that came out of the actual Fascist party, Meloni has been far better than Trump. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe she's weakened Italian democracy, and she's been very strongly pro-Ukraine.
She hasn't been as bad as I thought. She supports Ukraine, NATO, and the EU.
Is she virulently anti-immigrant and anti-immigration? That would hurt Japan greatly.
It’s hard to find Japanese politicians who aren’t pretty anti-immigration, even on the center-left
Takaichi was the worst possible winner lol
Even I lived in Japan for five years, their politics are still opaque to me. Why is Takaichi the worst possible?
She prays to war criminals.
https://x.com/Dispropoganda/status/1974545632280162416
https://x.com/DrewSav/status/1974356199857631552
Sounds like she’s brainwashed.
Horrible. So really like the AfD in Germany. Or Trump.
She is from the right wing of the right-wing party so yes.
She’s as, if not more, of a Yasakuni visitor than Abe was.
It’s a shame Koizumi didn’t win, his dad was a fairly decent PM
It is customary for conservative politicians to visit Yasukuni shrine. I wouldn't look too much deep on that.
This is like saying that it's customary for conservative politicians in America to use the N-word while denying their racism. Just because they do it frequently doesn't mean it's OK.
That's like saying it's customary for German politicians to glorify the Nazis - except that it's NOT!!!!
RI-Gov:
https://rhodeislandcurrent.com/briefs/rhode-island-ag-neronha-will-not-run-for-governor/
Update: AG Peter Neronha isn’t running for Governor. Damn.
Not sure what Foulkes' politics are, but how does she compare to McKee?
From what I've heard, similar. Both centrists. Foulkes has the added downside of being a CVS executive during their big opioid lawsuit, as Primary School noted.
"Republicans Have a Senate Map Without the Meltdowns
Trump may be the kingmaker, but with Thune working behind the scenes, Republicans are avoiding the messy primaries that once cost them winnable Senate seats."
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/10/04/republicans-senate-2026-primaries-thune-trump-00593428
Of course, that doesn’t guarantee wins in the general. Especially in this environment.
Also, I love how Politico is constantly like “but don’t worry, X won’t be so bad” for the GOP but with Dems it’s like “this may look good, but here’s why it actually isn’t and Dems are screwed!” Fuck Politico.
Politico is the ultimate distillation of DC insider thinking. That it's clearly republican biased is informative on that.
Indeed.
Politico didn’t also consider that candidate scandals can suddenly pop up and upend a race later on. See: Roy Moore’s pedophilia, Cal Cunningham sexting, Jay Jones’ whole recent scandal, etc.
Seriously!
Are we really inclined to believe anything Politico is trying to speculate or deliberate at face value on GOP Senate midterm election strategy when we have candidates like IA GOP Senate Candidate Ashley Hinson who are doing nothing to change the overall image of Trump and the GOP?
Hinson’s campaign kickoff event showed her ass kissing Trump like the NXIVM followers did to its ringleader Keith Raniere. Is this what Politico believes is a real strategy compared to Joni Ernst pulling crap from her ass in giving it straight to Iowans over Medicare cuts?
Indeed, anyone reading Politico without acres and acres of salt flat is doing it wrong.
General question for those here: of the various swing seats/associated candidates running for office so far, which ones should we donate to more than others? Could be Senate, House, Governor, state legislative, local, other.
I cannot claim it is the best approach, but what I do for the general election is I look throughout the competitive races, generally the ones rated tossup by prognosticators, and try to make a mental evaluation.
If I think any of those ratings are overinflating our chances due to institutional reasons, something like a statewide office in Florida, I discard them from the list. From the remainder I try to find the candidates that best meet the criteria of (a) being closer to me ideologically, and (b) needing the money. Since I'm limiting myself to the most competitive races to begin with I do not feel bad about (a). And (b) is there to try to maximize the benefit of my donations: if one candidate has raised $200m and and another has raised $20m, both for statewide office in vaguely similarly sized states, then the latter candidate will get far more marginal utility from a donation.
I haven't had the spare money to justify it recently, but when I last did this I picked one candidate each for senate, governor, and house. All three came in close, which felt validating for my determination of not sending money to doomed candidates or to candidates all but certain to win.
Yeah, I agree. Please support SC and legislature in your state!
Oh definitely. My Dem State Assemblyman (Chris Burdick)'s office actually helped me get disability aid for school/jobs back after the agency that was supposed to help me cut me off illegitimately. Local government matters!
https://x.com/umichvoter/status/1974555597648593337
https://x.com/Kasen_Wooters/status/1974573882574245951
There is a real chance we lose Michigan with Stevens
If she’s the nominee.
Hence why McMorrow needs to win.
The only people in attendance are trackers lmao
Stevens was an a union event today. I cannot find any event that the picture might have come from. You seem awfully convinced it was at least a recent event and no one showed. Seems a big leap of faith. Where? When?
Edmore https://www.instagram.com/p/DPZIfFcDe8N/
Or Al-Sayed, right?
I’m a little more worried about his chances but if Stevens is this unpopular he’s still better.
AES reminds me alot of Mandela Barnes who totally blew a winnable race because of his baggage. Sorry but he is too liberal to win statewide and is going to be hammered on his past views like Barnes was. Not to mention the likely prejudices he will face (not his fault) but that is the society we live in.
Barnes had other problems beyond ideology -- the national Dems didn't invest the money they should have been investing, and there's also the unfortunate race issue (hence why other progressives like Feingold and Baldwin have had the success that evaded Barnes) -- but I do see the concern.
The problem is, Stevens is worse. I wasn't defending Abdul. I was saying that we really shouldn't be fronting Stevens if she is this unpopular.
El-Sayed has not called for defunding the police. On searching Abolish ICE, I find him wearing an Abolish ICE tee in 2018 with no statements on record. Would a single Abolish ICE pic matter in these times with public opinion against ICE?
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/07/politics/kfile-mandela-barnes-signaled-support-abolish-ice Barnes on the other hand....
Abolish ICE has always polled poorly even back in 2018 when the politics of immigration were alot better for Dems. The fact that AES was proudly wearing an Abolish ICE t-shirt in a swing state tells he he doesnt have good political instincts. He has a really scant electoral record and seems like a wildcard.
My problem with Al-Sayed is that he supported the Uncommitted movement in the primary (thankfully not the general election), and without talking about IP too much, a movement that while well-intentioned, was always going to cause some voters to become disillusioned with Biden/Harris more generally.
Whitmer could step in tomorrow and easily take this seat off the table for Republicans. She has no chance of winning a prez primary IMO. Even Mayor Pete might be able to do it at this stage.
As a side note, this is a testament to how we’ve managed to avoid most Senate primary clusterfucks over the past several cycles. We could really blow this one.
It's a picture of a Stevens event where there's only one person visible in the audience. Who could easily be a tracker from another campaign.
It amazes me how often people will insist on playing it safe but only in a superficial way. Schumer et al preferring Stevens looks safe when you only care about bullet point summaries of candidates. Real world data does not corroborate that assumption of being the safe candidate.
+ the fact that according to Lakshya Jain's WAR models, she has been the worst performing House dem in Michigan since years, underperforming the Presidential and senatorial races. Even Rashida Tlaib overperforms her.
Stevens didn't really underperform in 2024, she won by 22.6 when Harris won her district by 16.1. (Hilary Scholten was worse on that count at 13.4/7.9 although her district is ancestrally red). For an underperformer, try Ilhan Omar. She won by 50.4 when Harris won her district by 61.9.
This is not true at all.
2024: Stevens +19.6D
Harris +16
Slotkin +17
2022: Stevens +23D
Whitmer +29
Benson +34
Nessel +27
2020: Stevens +2.4D
Biden: +4.5D
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan%27s_11th_congressional_district
The 2020 version of Steven’s’ district was not Biden + 20. I believe it was more like Biden + 4.
I think your source might be a bit off...
Scholten won by just about 10 points in 2024, and Harris won MI-3 by 8 points
I think my spreadsheet had 2022 results which I read as 2024 results.
Is there any evidence re when the photo was taken? For example, could it have been long before the rally?
I was thinking this too. Not to say I like Stevens, or to say this couldn't be true, but is this verified in any way? Cause otherwise it might be misrepresentation
Based on this one tweet?
I’d say we are arriving to premature conclusions, especially considering this is just one random user posting this.
Based on the fact that, on social media platforms, both moderates and progressives equally hate her; she is an electoral underperformer; her non-PAC fundraising has been weak; her state has the largest Arab minority in the country; she doesn’t have organic volunteers; she bombed cable TV interviews; and there are videos of her shouting in the House that the GOP will play on loop—she is, overall, a terrible politician. Even Adam Jentleson, the arch-moderate, is astounded by her and the establishment. Yet Schumer still wants to force her down our throats.
https://x.com/Senate_Fund/status/1974192174314237977 GOP is already drawing attention to her old videos
But what does this have to do with the picture the user is posting?
For all I know, this is just a random user on X giving a perspective.
Her campaign event attracted only a tracker and if she wins the primary, we might be in trouble. I still think that Whitmer should jump in. This Senate election would have been a slam dunk if Whitmer or Buttigieg had run.
Why do you think Buttigieg would be such a great candidate or even won a primary in Michigan?
His husband is a born-Michigander, high name recognition, can raise money, inoffensive moderate and generally a good speaker.
I agree about Stevens being a lackluster candidate.
But unless this is an official analyst or user who has a history of covering events, this is all just subjective interpretation at this point from just one random X user.
Also, the MI Primary is in August 2026. Loads of time.
umichvoter 🏳️🌈
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Many other influencers/analysts from the Democratic left to the Democratic right like Yglesias, Jain, Adam Carlson etc have criticized her candidacy.
Polling shows the MI-SEN race is quite close and competitive. Mallory McMorrow and Abdul El-Sayed are neck to neck right now.
I like Buttigieg as sort of a general party spokesman but I think his electoral appeal is vastly overrated. He appeals mainly to technocratic good-government types who always vote Democratic anyway.
The Dem field in Michigan does not give me much confidence at all tbh. McMorrow seems like the only one who I'd be confident in winning a GE, but no guarantee she's the nominee. With the filing deadline being next April there is plenty of time for someone like the AG Nessel or Whitmer to jump in and bring some clarity to this race.
Both links are dead. What was that all about?
They were pics of Haley Stevens on stage, seemingly speaking to just two people in a field. I do wonder if it turned out that was from a mic test or something, and not the real event.
Since it’s the weekend thread, might as well post this.
I was thinking about my fear-posting about Trump last weekend, and I’ve sort of come to a conclusion about that.
We have to have hope that there could be a way out. All of us. If we don’t have that, we give up and resign ourselves to a horrible fate we can fight against. Hope is the only way we’re going to be able to fight back. Hoping for a better future. Hoping for a way to fight back, and hope is the DNA of resistance. Even in brutal dictatorships, hope for a way out has fueled the protest movements that have toppled some of the worst of the worst. Hoping that our countrymen will join us. If we give up, they’ve already won. Incidents like Kimmel and the TACO trade saga show that even the current admin. and their allies will back off if something is so despised, it threatens their stability. And the public do despise Trump - his approval rating is awful, the GOP is having to rig the maps to win (which also disproves the theory that they won’t hold/don’t care about elections), and there have been many protests - not all of which get media coverage.
I don’t think it’s over. We have to keep fighting. We have to fight to the very end if that’s what it comes to. We would be doing a disservice to democracy if we give up. They can’t get rid of all of us, even if they try. Now everyone go out and vote and protest and get involved!
I mean Germany was fine 50 years after a much worse regime than the Trump admin. History doesn't stop. Things can be really bad for four years but we're not going to be in some historically unprecedented situation in 2029. It might be historically unprecedented for the US, but we're more than capable of rebuilding if we choose to do so.
I don't think many Germans agree with you. They suffered an irreversible loss of diversity, creativity, productivity, pride, etc., etc.
"fine" may have been the wrong word. My point is that human societies have rebuilt and reaffirmed commitments to freedom and diversity from positions that will be much worse than the one that we will be in come 2029. I genuinely do not think we will experience a Holocaust-esque event here over the next three years. Our immigrant communities are critical to the lifeblood of our country but large swaths of them are very difficult to remove and the Trump admin is imply not moving fast enough to make a huge dent in the ~13 million undocumented people who are here. We will have some rebuilding to do, especially in our law enforcement and nat sec institutions, but if we win a trifecta in 2029 we can do a lot of the important work over the course of a two term Presidency. That's my only point.
Believe me, I got your point the first time, but I'd like to point out that the first -Nazi- mayor of Berlin was content to make things somewhat unpleasant for the local Jewish community while looking the other way while they organized their economic affairs, knowing that the lifeblood of Berlin's economy was Jewish-owned business. He was fired in 1936, and it was his successor, a Nazi ideologue who didn't give a damn about the economy of Berlin, who organized Kristallnacht. Trump has very quickly gotten the beginnings of the infrastructure of concentration and therefore possible mass murder constructed. Don't assume any of us knows what he and his co-conspirators will do in the coming years.
The Nazis faced far fewer obstacles to the Holocaust, as they basically controlled all government down to the local level and Germany was pretty tolerant of anti-Semitism at the time.
Meanwhile Trump’s ICE raids have been generating widespread outrage and pushback.
And that needs to continue. I'd point out that the Catholic Church in Germany opposed the Nazis' campaign to annihilate physically and mentally handicapped people, so the Nazis pretended to stop it after killing a huge number of people, but continued it on the sly.
NEW DATA: Unemployment Rate Skyrockets in Northern Virginia as Trump Attacks Virginia Workers & Promises Mass Firings
https://bluevirginia.us/2025/10/new-data-unemployment-rate-skyrockets-in-northern-virginia-as-trump-attacks-virginia-workers-promises-mass-firings/
No National Guard in OR. Trump judge grants TRO. https://x.com/kyledcheney/status/1974621605482672213?s=61&t=5copDbz1aPl7ASsRCUclLg
There’s myriad ways for the Feds to enhance security at federal facilities if they so desire without federalizing the national guard. The correct outcome here, obviously
Of course, this has nothing whatsoever to do with enhancing security, and we shouldn't ever use lying framing of an authoritarian.
Important to note, Judge Immergut is a Trump appointee
TRUMP: “The system is rigged!”
GAVIN NEWSOM: “It’s rigged from the person you appointed! You want it to be rigged, even for you.”
Trump/Miller tried to get around it by sending California national guard, but judge enjoined that as well.
https://bsky.app/profile/annabower.bsky.social/post/3m2isoumfs22s
Dodgers win! Yankees, well out of respect for Yankee fans here I will refrain....
Just hoping the Ms can hang on against Detroit
Tell Trump "The North remembers"
Happy October everyone. It's a beautiful crisp Sunday on Boston's north shore.
I've been thinking about preliminary (primary) elections. Ballotpedia has a map, linked below. Massachusetts, along with NC, AZ, have a semi-closed primary. In a semi-closed primary, registered party members are prohibited from selecting a ballot outside their party. But unaffiliated persons may choose either ballot.
The incentives of semi-closed electoral law is to push people to register as independent. Thoughts?
Forgot the link. Would a "preview" link be too much? https://ballotpedia.org/Primary_election_types_by_state
Unlike on DKE, comments here can be edited after they're posted. So IMO that obviates the need for a "preview" link.
I'm ambivalent about it. We have two conflicting goals at hand.
The first goal is we want elections, including primaries, to have higher participation. Democracy works best the more engaged the populace is, the more accurately it reflects the will of the people. Making it easier for people to vote in the "interesting" primary elections is more likely to get them to turn out and vote.
The second goal is we want party registration to be accurate and reflective of people's preferences. Pushing individuals towards being an independent is providing us with bad information if those individuals have a strong lean towards a party. Which most of them do.
It also dilutes the primary of being an accurate reflection of the party if we have democrats voting in republican primaries or vice versa.
I expect the impact on those factors is small enough to not really matter. As such I don't care all that much either way.
An additional consideration -- ratfucking by Dem/GOP members towards GOP/Dem members respectively. I remember there was an attempt to recruit GOP voters in the Philly DA primary in 2021 against Krasner (which backfired), and way back in the 2000s something similar happened with former Rep./current deranged conspiracy theorist and Putin sympathizer Cynthia McKinney.
While McKinney was nuts and clearly needed to go, by and large such efforts are harmful to us because they can result in worse candidates being promoted. I can imagine a similar argument is present for the other side, just look at how the lunatic GOP members Dems secretly promoted did in Senate/Governor races (Oz, Mastriano, Masters, Lake, etc.) Keeping primaries closed prevents ratfucking on both ends.
Trump weighs in on the Jay Jones scandal.
https://bsky.app/profile/marechalberthier.bsky.social/post/3m2htifl6j22q
The person who posted this seems to believe this will help Jones, as Trump isn’t exactly liked in Virginia. Thoughts? I can’t imagine this statement is much of a gift to Miyares.
This is exactly what Jones wants. If the attention is on him, then he could lose support from this, but the more attention there is on Trump instead, the more Jones's supporters will be reminded of why they were supporting him in the first place.
This is Trump's gift to Dems - he always has to have the attention on him at all times, even when this harms his own party's electoral prospects.
Yeah if I’m Jones go all in on “I’d date my daughter” “2nd amendment remedies” “I can shoot someone on 5th avenue” “grab em by the pussy” etc. this is the man my opponent still supports.
Regarding the Jay Jones scandal, I don't know if Jones can get his name off the ballot if he wants to drop out of the race (for now, I've seen no indication of Jones considering suspending his campaign). Early voting has already begun in Virginia.
There's a nonzero possibility that Jones suspends his campaign and wins anyway, although Jones indicated in his apology statement that he intended to continue his campaign.
I think "scandal" is a strong term for one (very) stupid text.