Rich

Please let us do this thing we don't know how to do - and even if we did, we don't have time to get it done - please.

Overheard

Let's be clear on this. If Trump decides to run in 2028 - even if he runs unopposed as either a Republican or an Independent - he loses by default.

Every vote cast for Trump can be disregarded, because votes for an ineligible candidate don't count. And there's a high probability that enough states will keep him off the ballot to preclude him from getting the Electoral Votes he'd need to win anyway.

So say it - proud and out loud.

Donald Trump will leave office at noon on January 20, 2029.

The GOP Clown Car

Knives are out for Vance in the GOP. His allies say it’s a coordinated ‘op.’

The vice president has faced a barrage of attacks recently that are unusual for their intensity and how early in the political calendar they are taking place.

As JD Vance prepares to make a decision about his 2028 plans, the vice president is facing a barrage of online attacks from within his party, criticism his allies say appears to be part of a coordinated attempt to poison the well for him politically.

His detractors have adopted the “Never Vance” slogan and flooded social media, especially over the past week, with attacks including claims that Vance is “unfit” to be vice president due to his efforts to negotiate a peace deal with Iran. They have asserted, without evidence, that Vance is making policy decisions not supported by President Donald Trump. They have likened him to former president Barack Obama and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont).

The sustained public hostility from Vance’s own side of the aisle is unlike that faced by other vice presidents in decades, both in intensity and in the early timing — two years before the party will choose its next presidential nominee. The unusual nature is a product of the central role that social media plays in today’s political discourse, as well as the high stakes as Republicans prepare to select a new standard-bearer after Trump, Vance allies and critics say.

Vance’s political team remains dismissive of the social media onslaught and its impact on Republican voters, believing that many of the attacks are not organic, a close ally of the vice president told The Washington Post — a sentiment echoed by two other people with knowledge of Vance’s strategy. The ally and other advisers spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Vance’s allies are keenly aware of and monitoring the online attacks, but his team says the criticism sends a signal to the conservative base that establishment Republicans and opponents they label as neoconservatives hate Vance. That, they say, could ultimately strengthen his standing in a GOP primary.

“Loud Washington establishment voices form an online cacophony,” said Steve Cortes, a conservative commentator supportive of Vance, “but they do not remotely represent the consensus views of Republican voters.”

Vance, whose brand of politics is populist and skeptical of foreign wars, has remained the front-runner in 2028 Republican primary polling. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the favorite of many more traditional, business-minded Republicans, has gained ground in recent months, however, although Rubio has insisted he will support Vance if he runs.

The knives have long been out for Vance within the GOP, since before Trump selected him as his running mate. At the time, hawkish donors and conservative media personalities lobbied for Trump to reject Vance in favor of Rubio or Doug Burgum, now secretary of the interior.

Polling of Republican voters shows Vance’s favorability within the party as roughly on par with Trump’s.

Intense criticism from some Republicans, largely over Vance’s foreign policy views, has ebbed and flowed since the start of the second Trump term. The criticism reached a first peak in the fall as neoconservatives and pro-Israel activists portrayed Vance as antisemitic for sympathizing with figures who expressed skepticism over the U.S. relationship with Israel. More recently, attacks ticked up again after Vance sat for a nearly three-hour interview July 15 on Joe Rogan’s widely watched podcast.

During the show, Vance described himself as a “reasonable moderate” in the debate over the U.S.-Israel relationship. He also cited a recent Time report about an online pro-Israel influence operation run by a former Trump campaign official, through which Vance said he was being attacked “in dishonest ways” by paid influencers.

“You know, my response to that is, ‘Well, go to hell,’” Vance told Rogan. “I’m going to do what I have to do for the American people. I represent Americans first, and that’s the way that I’ve tried to do this job.”

Pro-Israel conservatives erupted. A Washington Post analysis of conservative influencers’ posts on X found that criticism of Vance spiked immediately after his appearance on Rogan’s podcast.

Critical posts poured in from prominent commentators including Ben Shapiro, Marc Thiessen and Batya Ungar-Sargon, as well as online right-wing influencers and little-known X users whose anti-Vance posts quickly gained traction. Some of the users who pledged to oppose Vance and support Rubio in 2028 had profiles that strongly suggested they aren’t American voters and are based in other countries.

It was “obvious to anyone with an IQ above 70″ that the barrage of attacks has been “totally inauthentic and probably coordinated to a certain extent,” the close Vance ally said.

The upsurge in online criticism “hasn’t been reflected in any data correlating with Vance’s image among GOP voters, which currently tracks President Trump’s image to a T,” the person said. “If it were organic, authentic or effective,” Vance’s favorability rating with Republican voters would have cratered over the past nine months, since the intense online criticism first peaked, the person said. “And that just hasn’t happened.”

A spokesperson for the vice president said Vance’s only focus is “fighting for the president’s agenda and delivering wins for the American people,” and that he is not concerned with social media.

Vance allies have pushed back publicly against some of the attacks, at times calling attention to common language used among those posting insults.

Jon Schweppe, a Vance supporter and senior adviser at the American Principles Project, who worked for Trump’s Federal Trade Commission until earlier this year, posted a chart on X last week that showed the vice president’s favorability among Republicans had remained steady despite an “anti-Vance op.” His post quickly received dozens of replies from accounts that didn’t follow him — all attacking Vance. Schweppe described the response as curious, since his post had not been shared by any high-follower accounts.

“Primary season — I guess it’s beginning before the midterms this year,” Schweppe said, adding that Vance’s detractors are “trying to create a divide and separate him from the president.”

“There’s going to be folks within the party structure, within the influencer structure, who are going to try to knock him down a few pegs in hope that a challenger can emerge to beat him, and that’s just what we’re seeing,” Schweppe said. “But it’s absolutely organized.”

The intense focus on the vice president is unusual. Trump’s first vice president, Mike Pence, didn’t face intense backlash from Republicans until the final weeks of his term, as the president and his supporters blamed Pence for failing to act to overturn the 2020 election results. Before that, Pence had been widely liked by Republicans, with few prominent conservatives raising their heads to harshly criticize him.

For a significant stretch of her vice presidency, Kamala Harris faced a version of the succession anxiety now surrounding Vance. Democratic donors, strategists and commentators questioned whether her low favorability ratings, uneven political performance and widely reported management problems left her prepared to become president — an especially consequential concern given President Joe Biden’s age.

But there are significant differences: Vance is confronting a public, ideological revolt from prominent figures within the conservative coalition. The criticism of Harris, by contrast, generally was framed around competence and electability with jabs at what critics considered misstatements and gaffes. Few major Democratic figures publicly demanded that Biden remove her.

Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to Pence in the White House, acknowledged that the attacks against Vance are far more intense than what Pence endured for nearly four years in office — at least until Trump turned against him at the end of his term.

Pence, however, was adamant throughout that term not to show any distance between himself and Trump, even to staff or other Cabinet officials, Short said. Vance has at times signaled a different perspective regarding the war with Iran, he noted.

Trump has confirmed that Vance is “philosophically a little bit different” than him on Iran, and “maybe less enthusiastic about going” to war, although Vance has publicly expressed support for Trump’s decisions.

“I think that there’s been a difference in the way that the current team has made clear their policy differences,” Short said. “So I think that does create more scrutiny when you do that.”

The Republican primary in 2028 may not be as large and unwieldy as the Democratic field, but political observers on both sides of the aisle say that doesn’t mean it won’t be as compelling.

For months, speculation has been building over who will inherit the Republican mantle after President Trump leaves office. The conversation has only intensified as Trump has quietly asked allies at dinners and closed-door meetings whom they prefer.

While it’s still early, here are our rankings for the Republican nomination.

JD Vance

The vice president, for now at least, is the heir apparent to Trump.

Most recently, he took the lead role in negotiations on a long-term peace deal with Iran that would curb that country’s nuclear ambitions. It was a war Vance was hesitant to have, allies have said, and the negotiations in recent days have been overcome by new fighting between the U.S. and Iran.

Last month, Vance released a new book, “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,” and subsequently appeared in a string of interviews further boosting his profile.

Vance remains the front-runner in all of the early polls, with one survey from Echelon Insights showing him leading Secretary of State Marco Rubio by 27 points. That, at least temporarily, put to rest any speculation that Rubio is the favorite among Republicans.

But it remains to be seen how the on-again, off-again war in Iran and inflation will translate in the 2028 election and how Vance will be tethered to them.

“There are a lot of factors,” one Republican strategist said. “How the war plays out, what the economy looks like in a couple of years, what the end of the Trump administration looks like, but also who Trump wants to carry his legacy.”

Marco Rubio

As secretary of State, Rubio has become one of the administration’s prominent voices on foreign policy, including the war in Iran and the U.S. military operation to capture former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

But his stature in the administration and within the party has grown exponentially, and some say that would work in his favor if he chooses to launch a 2028 presidential bid.

While polling indicates Vance is on top of the field, there are some Republicans who say the secretary of State will emerge as the front-runner in due course, particularly for those who say the party will move away from the MAGA movement when the Trump administration ends.

“Certainly it feels like Marco is situated to have the best chance of victory come 2028, but here’s the question I ask: What’s the nomination worth?” one Trump ally said. “If the Democrats nominate a noncrazy, if they nominate a centrist, it may be tough for us after four years of Trump.”

Republican strategist Susan Del Percio agreed with that assessment.

“Rubio becomes the strongest candidate because people remember him before he was secretary of State, and while he has to be loyal to Trump, he has a record that precedes that,” she said.

Ted Cruz

The Texas senator has been eyeing the presidency since the 2016 race, and some say he could be a good alternative for Republicans who want something different from Vance and Rubio.

Since his first White House run, Cruz has built an impressive governing resume including serving as chair of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, where he has helped shape Republican policy on artificial intelligence and transportation issues.

He has also built a broader audience through his popular podcast, “Verdict,” providing him with a direct pipeline to his listeners across the country.

Still, Del Percio and other Republicans say while Cruz could at the very least launch an exploratory committee, it’s unlikely he’ll gain much traction.

“I don’t see it happening now, but it doesn’t mean it can’t,” Del Percio said.

Ron DeSantis

After losing the 2024 presidential campaign, the Florida governor lost some political capital. But he has been quietly building a story he could tell on the campaign trail if he does make another bid for the White House.

“Who took a state that had more Democrats than Republicans by 300,000 when he got elected and now has 1.5 million more Republicans? Who had a state that had a trillion-dollar economy and now has $1.8 trillion?” DeSantis said at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles.

Asked at the conference if he would run in 2028, the governor replied, “You never know.”

But Republicans say the term-limited governor, who leaves office in January, won’t have a platform to command attention, so “he’s going to have to get creative,” one strategist said.

Donald Trump Jr.

While most Republicans say 2028 is really a race about two men — Vance and Rubio — early polls consistently show Trump’s eldest son in the top five of Republican contenders. And Republicans acknowledge that it makes sense.

“It’s still very much Trump’s party and voters want someone who is most like Trump, and so why not his own blood?” one strategist said. “You can’t dismiss him.”

Donald Trump Jr. has repeatedly said he has no plans to run in 2028, but he does remain among the most influential voices in the MAGA movement through both endorsements and his loud megaphone on social media.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders

The Arkansas governor and former White House press secretary has been seen for some time as a presidential hopeful — particularly by those who would like to see a woman at the top of the ticket.

Republicans say she can point to her education overhaul in Arkansas that increased pay for teachers, as well as her income tax cuts in her state.

But Sanders has been hesitant to say she’s interested in wading into 2028 waters, saying she is focused on her state.

Asked by Politico about the 2028 race, she said, “It would be a mistake to focus on ’28 until we get finished with the ’26 midterms.”

Belle

IMHO, Republicans go on making a play for Plutocratic rule.

They push radical wackos in their primary elections - people who aren't very likely to win in the general election. And they have to know their wacko candidates don't appeal to most voters.

So it would seem they really are counting on a Jim Crow style scheme to keep people away from the polls.

With all the shit they're trying to pull - the campaign against Mail-In, threatening to order the USPS not to deliver ballots, vote roll purges, closing polling places, threatening to post armed "officers" at polling places, and and and. They're working hard to carve off a few percentage points - votes that would normally go to the Democrats - in order to eke out a few wins here and there.

It's the ugliest kind of politics, and I don't blame anybody for being repulsed by the process, and more than a little reluctant to participate.

But we have to show up for it.

No matter what else, don't stay home. Go vote.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Trump may be trying to win by losing.

He goes for revenge against Cassidy and Massie, et al, and endorses the weirdest sickest fucks out there on the Flaky Fringey Right.

But since Republicans stand to take it in the shorts and get voted out of 35 or 40 or 50 seats in the House, and maybe 6 or 8 in the Senate, that gives Trump a shit load of losers he can count on to jump up and down screaming "Rigged election!!! Voter fraud!!! We was robbed!!!"

I don't know what all that means in terms of getting things squared away, and winners installed, but delay is Trump's go-to maneuver, and there's not that much 'business time' in government between Nov 3rd and Jan 3rd.

We'll see what we'll see, because the question remains:

Are there still people of honor in the GOP who'll stand up in defense of our little experiment in democratic self-governance?

Maine Senate Race

Janet Mills will always be a hero for the way she stood up to Trump in the Oval Office when he threatened her with a bullshit demand to blow up Trans Rights in exchange for federal support.

That said, oldies ain't goodies no more.

I don't know all that much about Platner, but from what little I've seen, he's plain-spoken and brings a new feisty energy to the fight.

Janet Mills Bows Out of Maine Senate Race as an Insurgent Democrat Rises

Her withdrawal reflects the energy of the party’s left and voters’ unease with older candidates and paves the way for Graham Platner to challenge Senator Susan Collins in November.

Gov. Janet Mills of Maine, the Democratic establishment’s choice to run for the Senate seat long held by Senator Susan Collins, a Republican, suspended her campaign on Thursday, saying she no longer had the financial resources to compete against Graham Platner, a progressive political newcomer.

Her exit paves the way for Mr. Platner, 41, an oysterman who has led her in polls, to become the Democratic nominee in a crucial Senate race that the party must win to regain control of the chamber.

“While I have the drive and passion, commitment and experience, and above all else — the fight — to continue on, I very simply do not have the one thing that political campaigns unfortunately require today: the financial resources,” Ms. Mills, 78, said in a statement.

She did not endorse Mr. Platner; in an interview on Monday, she had declined to commit to backing him if he became the nominee. A representative for Ms. Mills did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday morning.

Surrounded by supporters, Mr. Platner claimed victory on Thursday morning in Augusta. After praising Ms. Mills’s experience in the state, he said his campaign was in the process of “taking back what is ours.”

“We will defeat Susan Collins,” Mr. Platner said. “We will go to Washington and we still start tearing down the system that for far too long has forgotten and written off the people who make Maine and this country what it is.”

The effective coronation of Mr. Platner as the Democratic nominee is a blow not only to the two-term sitting governor but also to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and the Democratic Party establishment that he leads. Mr. Schumer, the minority leader, has for almost two decades chosen his party’s Senate candidates with little internal opposition, and he encouraged Ms. Mills to enter the race.

Her decision to withdraw reflects a political environment being rapidly reshaped by a restive Democratic grass-roots that is demanding a new, younger and far more combative generation of leadership. Her failure to gain traction also underscores how the mechanics of campaigns have shifted: Ms. Mills, who had insisted that the state already knew her well, struggled to break through Mr. Platner’s dominance on social media and liberal podcasts, and she did not try to match his far more robust campaign schedule.

Almost instantly, attention turned to the expected matchup between Mr. Platner and Ms. Collins, a battle-tested lawmaker who has repeatedly dashed Democratic dreams of seizing her seat during her three decades in office. Democrats argue that this year is different because of President Trump’s sinking approval ratings and Ms. Collins’s votes for some of his cabinet and Supreme Court nominees.

Mr. Platner’s candidacy has emerged as a key test of whether Democrats trying to flip Republican seats should run to the center or to the left.

Mr. Platner is aligned with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, considers himself an ideological ally of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and is running as an economic populist. Democrats hope he can appeal to blue-collar workers who have become disaffected with the party.

But he has also called to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, strongly defended the rights of transgender Americans and promised voters that he would be arrested protesting Mr. Trump. His candidacy will measure how much sway cultural issues have among the working-class voters Democrats are trying to claw back.

Mr. Platner, who has a long history of making inflammatory statements online — he has apologized for many of them — is also untested on the national stage. At a campaign event on Tuesday night, at least two voters expressed concerns to him about whether he would be able to withstand the scrutiny and Republican attacks; he insisted he would.

“They will tear him apart if he’s the nominee,” Ms. Mills told The New York Times in an interview last month. In January, the main super PAC for Senate Republicans announced its largest-ever investment in Maine — $42 million — to support Ms. Collins.

On the ground, though, Ms. Mills’s struggles were palpable. And her light campaign schedule, complete absence from the airwaves and lagging fund-raising had worried and bewildered supporters from Washington to Maine.

They wondered why the pugilistic two-term governor — the daughter of a prominent political family who has spent decades in public life — wasn’t taking a more vigorous approach to a race that had appeared, for weeks, to be slipping out of reach.

She left the race just a week before the candidates were scheduled to meet for their first debate, a moment her supporters hoped could move the race back toward Ms. Mills.

The next big question is how rapidly the party coalesces around Mr. Platner.

Mr. Schumer and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, the chair of Senate Democrats’ campaign arm, praised Ms. Mills on Thursday as she departed the race.

“We are grateful for her hard-fought and principled campaign, and we respect her decision to continue her service to Maine as governor,” they said in a statement. “After years of allowing Trump’s abuses of power, Senator Collins has never been more vulnerable, and we will work with the presumptive Democratic nominee, Graham Platner, to defeat her.”

Ms. Mills had been more circumspect in an interview on Monday evening, saying she would not support Ms. Collins but declining to explicitly commit to backing his candidacy should she lose the primary race.

She had spent the day at a low-key housing policy round-table in a fluorescent-lit room, followed by a modest meet-and-greet at a brewery in Portland. There, she mingled with a mix of anxious supporters and other bar-goers, sipping a beer, snacking on popcorn and snagging a few fries from an attendee’s order. But she did not make remarks.

Even before Ms. Mills’s announcement, Mr. Platner’s campaign had all but declared victory in the primary race. At a town-hall meeting on Wednesday evening, he made no mention of his Democratic opponent, focusing his attacks on billionaires, technology moguls and Ms. Collins.

“I don’t know if we’re moving past — I don’t even know if we were ever, like, focused,” he said, when asked in an interview after the event if he was already looking beyond the primary. “The only time I really talk about the governor is when people ask what are the distinctions and I lay them out.”

The Democratic establishment’s challenges are becoming increasingly apparent. In a year when the party has grown increasingly bullish about its chances of winning back a Senate majority, some of Mr. Schumer’s preferred candidates have struggled to gain traction in their primary contests.

His explicit and subtle efforts to influence competitive primary races have prompted pushback from a group of liberal Senate colleagues who have made a point of endorsing rivals to his preferred candidates.

Several candidates have made opposition to Mr. Schumer’s leadership central to their campaigns. In Illinois in March, Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton won her state’s Senate primary race while pledging to oppose a future Schumer bid to be party leader.

The rebuke will only grow stronger if those candidates do well in November, after which Mr. Schumer could face a serious challenge to his leadership post in the Senate.

Mr. Schumer has also recruited candidates in Alaska, North Carolina and Ohio who are on glide paths to the general election.

In Maine, Mr. Schumer saw Ms. Mills, an eighth-generation Mainer with deep political roots in the state, as a proven candidate with the renown and popularity to challenge Ms. Collins.

But Ms. Mills, whose delay in entering the race last year raised questions about her hunger for the job, could not catch up with Mr. Platner’s fund-raising or his standing in polls of Maine Democrats. Her campaign announced it had raised $2.6 million during the first three months of 2026, a relative pittance for a top-tier Senate candidate backed by Mr. Schumer and party leaders.

Ms. Mills and her allies tried to knock Mr. Platner out of the primary with a series of damaging stories and then advertisements about offensive things he had written online about women and rape, as well as a tattoo on his chest that resembled a Nazi symbol. Mr. Platner later obscured the image with a new tattoo.

Ms. Mills faced criticism from some fellow Democrats for pressing those issues, since they could potentially damage Mr. Platner if he became the Democratic nominee.

But in the general election, Ms. Collins and her Republican allies will face no such constraints as they try to defeat Mr. Platner.

“Washington Democrats always fall short in Maine and will again, because they just nominated a dishonest radical,” said Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the chairman of Senate Republicans’ campaign arm.

We live in the material realities of policy decisions made by people we've never met, and shouldn't trust - until they prove themselves.

It's Us, America

We're the problem.

• We never had trouble with election security before Trump
• We never had trouble with Russian interference before Trump
• We never had trouble with candidates conceding defeat before Trump
• Trump is a liar
• Trump is a thief
• Trump is a cheater
• Trump is a rapist
• Trump is a pedophile

Trump is a criminal and a traitor

TRUMP IS THE ENEMY WITHIN

5 Things

The Games They Play

So, I guess my questions:

• What is making Paxton think that fighting over the filibuster is a good issue for him?
• Has something come up that tells him he's going to lose, and so this is a Hail Mary of some kind?
• Is this his claim to Über MAGA status?

Paxton offers conditions for potential exit from Texas Senate race

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) suggested Thursday that he would be open to dropping out of the hotly contested Texas Senate primary against Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) if Senate Republicans met several conditions.

Paxton said on Thursday he would consider exiting the race if Senate leadership eliminated the filibuster — the 60-vote threshold needed to clear most legislation in the upper chamber — and passed a bill that would require voters to show proof of citizenship to register to vote.

The shift from Paxton comes after President Trump on Wednesday said he plans to endorse in the Senate GOP primary “soon” and called for whomever he doesn’t endorse to drop out of the race.

“John Cornyn is a coward who has refused to support abolishing the filibuster to pass this bill. Now, Fake News reporters and the establishment are trying to destroy me with misinformation,” Paxton wrote on the social media platform X.

“The truth is clear: No one has been more loyal to Donald Trump than me—fighting the stolen 2020 election, being in Mar-a-Lago when he announced his 2024 campaign, and standing with him in NY in the face of lawfare,” he added. “For the good of our country and for the good of passing President Trump’s agenda, I am determined to help him get this done.”

Cornyn responded to Paxton’s statement and argued he’s been supportive of getting the voter registration legislation passed.

“I repeat what I have consistently said: I support the bill and have encouraged Senate Republicans to get it done,” Cornyn wrote on X.

However, Paxton’s conditions were quickly shot down by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.).

“You guys know where the votes are on the filibuster. That’s not going to happen,” he told reporters on Thursday.

Cornyn has expressed some openness to changing the filibuster rules — which Trump backed as lawmakers looked to reopen the government during its shutdown last year. However, Cornyn also expressed concern that eliminating the 60-vote threshold rule could be abused by Democrats if they were to return to power.

The incumbent senator has also supported the SAVE America Act, the legislation that would require voters to show proof of citizenship in order to vote in addition to a photo ID requirement to cast a ballot.

The legislation has passed the House but has stalled in the Senate as Republicans don’t have the 60 votes needed to pass the bill. Some Republicans have floated a “talking filibuster,” which would require Democrats to continue talking on the floor in order to halt its passage. The talking filibuster would only require 51 votes in order to pass legislation once Democrats finished on the floor.

Senate GOP leadership has pressed Trump to endorse Cornyn in the May 26 runoff in an effort to avoid an ugly contest against Paxton.

Iran Clusterfuck

Some things:

• As someone who's been known to attempt an inappropriate joke at an inappropriate time, I get the Huckabee thing - but damn, son - I never did that shit
• "...do no rely on the US government..." has become the entire world's motto
• If the reporting on what you're doing is making you look bad, maybe you should be doing something that won't make you look bad when somebody reports on it

Today's Rich

And BTW, Trump is now 8,760 hours behind schedule on his project of Ending The War In Ukraine In 24 Hours.

About Last Night

Somebody said: "Americans will always do the right thing - once they've tried everything else."

That was a wipeout yesterday. That was not a simple rejection, or even a big-ass repudiation of this Trumpian GOP Fuckery thing. That was a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, inside a total ass-kickin', all wrapped up tight with a Fuck You And The horse You Rode In On.

First, all politics is local.

And when it works locally, you can apply it generally, tailoring it to suit the needs of a given area, or city, or constituency. But the message for 'small d' democrats is that we are not all that divided. We've allowed some very bad-faith assholes to convince us we need to split ourselves off from everybody else, and fear each other - to the point where we're in real danger of believing we have nothing in common with anyone but the few people who think and believe and behave exactly the way we do.

"For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures."

-- JFK

Like the lady said: "When we fight, we win."

The only way we can't win is if we don't show up to fight.

Across the country Tuesday, state and local elections served as the first major test of how the public feels about President Donald Trump’s second term ahead of major national elections next year for control of Congress.

It didn’t go well for him.

Here are winners and losers from these elections.

Winners

Democrats: They took back a governor’s mansion in a critical swing state, Virginia, and kept control of another in New Jersey, while winning a mayoral race in New York City and holding onto three critical state Supreme Court seats in Pennsylvania. Voters in California agreed to allow Democrats to redraw their congressional districts to match Republicans doing the same in other states. Democrats also won in state and local elections in Georgia and Mississippi and expanded their majorities in the Virginia state legislature.

These were exactly the results Democrats wanted a year before the next big referendum on Trump, which will be nationwide elections where control of Congress is up for grabs. On Democrats’ big night, turnout in Virginia, New Jersey and New York City was up.

“Tonight we sent a message, ” Abigail Spanberger, the next governor of Virginia — and the state’s first woman to win the office — said in her victory speech. She won almost every coveted voter group: women, independents, younger voters and voters who said the economy was their main concern, according to network exit polls reported by CNN.

Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill (D) speaks alongside her family at her election night watch party in East Brunswick, New Jersey, on Tuesday. (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images)
In New Jersey, Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill’s win suggests real momentum for Democrats. She won in a state where Black and Hispanic voters have become more open to Trumpism — and overcame history as well: For the first time in 50 years, New Jersey Democrats have won the governor’s mansion for three straight terms.

There are caveats to Democratic wins. Virginia, with its large federal employee workforce, has been uniquely hurt by the government shutdown and Trump’s mass firings of federal workers.

“I tend to think we overrate the impact of these off-year elections,” said Doug Heye, a veteran Republican strategist. “New Jersey and Virginia are more blue than purple.” Democrats I talked to agreed with him.

The poles of the Democratic Party: Virginia and New Jersey elected moderate Democrats with national security backgrounds — Spanberger served in the CIA and Sherrill was a Navy pilot.

After losing to Trump twice, many Democrats approve of this direction as the 2028 presidential election comes into view. “At the end of the day, Democratic voters get really pragmatic about who can win,” one veteran Democratic strategist told me.

But the liberal wing of the party had a great night, too. America’s largest city elected a democratic socialist, Zohran Mamdani, who supports redistributing wealth to provide free bus fare and child care in the city, among many other services.

Republican attack ads for the next year: In Mamdani, Trump and Republicans feel they’ve found the perfect foil for next year’s midterm elections. He’s so far to the left that the top two Democrats in Congress, also from New York, hesitated to endorse him or just didn’t.

“Many people are petrified by the Radical Left,” Trump said on social media, “but I’m not, they keep getting me, and other Republicans, elected!”

Some Democrats say they’re worried about the socialist label sticking, especially in the wake of successful “woke” attacks the past few elections that framed their party as too concerned about special classes of Americans over others.

Stop being afraid of their words, Democrats. You won by (finally) smackin' the other guy right in his fat smug face.

"Oh - you say I'm a socialist? So what? You don't like it? Fuck you - make me stop."

You lose because you're timid. You've developed a bad habit of buckling under the slightest pressure. Knock that shit off. Be bold. Be assertive.

 

And point out the truth:

"We've put together several 'socialist' things in this country that we all know and love."

• The US military's a good socialist thing
• Every local cop shop is a good socialist thing
• Streets and highways and dams and sewer systems are good socialist things
• Public schools are good socialist things
• and and and

Free and fair elections: In the days before the election, Trump floated an allegation without evidence that Democrats were somehow “shipping” votes, and his Justice Department sent monitors to polling locations, in a move that some Democrats viewed as menacing. Despite that tension, millions of voters from New York to California had their say in elections run by states and municipalities. Tuesday night underscored what election experts have been saying for years amid Trump’s fraud claims: It’s very hard to rig an election, especially because they are so decentralized.

Losers

Trump: This election was about Trump. He endorsed major Republican candidates and tied all of these elections to his efforts to lower the cost of living: “If affordability is your issue, VOTE REPUBLICAN!” he posted on social media. But prices are up, Trump is broadly unpopular, and Democratic candidates welcomed making their elections about Trump. Network exit polls showed that most voters in Virginia and New Jersey voters disapproved of Trump.

Republican hopes of keeping control of Congress next year: House Republicans have one of the smallest House majorities ever, and history suggests that whatever party controls the White House tends to lose the midterms. Tuesday did little to dispel that trend: Since the 1970s, when one party has swept these off-year elections — as Democrats did Tuesday — that party has done well in the next year’s congressional elections.

The Senate, which Republicans also control, is a higher reach for Democrats, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility. Senate Democrats are holding the line against reopening the government without assurances that programs such as food assistance will be restored. As the shutdown becomes the longest ever on Wednesday, Trump is expressing concerns his party will get blamed for it if they don’t make drastic moves to end it. “The Democrats are far more likely to win the Midterms, and the next Presidential Election,” he warned his party Tuesday.

Nothing’s a done deal. A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that while voters broadly disapprove of Trump, they’re more open to voting for Republicans in Congress. But to the extent you can read into these elections, analysts say you’d rather be a Democrat than a Republican going into next year.

“There’s a lot of anger on the left,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) warned his party recently. “And elections can be dangerous when one side is mobilized, is angry.”

Holy Crap

Democrats sweep all 30 House of Delegates seats in Northern Virginia, flip 13 seats statewide

Democratic candidates won all 30 of Northern Virginia's seats in the Virginia House of Delegates on Tuesday as the party was set to significantly expand its 51-49 majority in the state's lower chamber.

As of 11 p.m., Democrats had picked up 13 seats statewide, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. With only one race undecided, the Democrats will hold at least 64 of the 100 seats, the most they have held in nearly 40 years.

Two of the pickups were in Northern Virginia, including in western Prince William's 21st District, where former Del. Elizabeth Guzman ousted first-term incumbent Ian Lovejoy.

And in the 30th District -- western Loudoun County and northern Fauquier County -- Democrat John McAuliff defeated Republican incumbent Geary Higgins by about 600 votes, or 1.5 percentage points.

After years of Republican control, Democrats took the majority in the House of Delegates in 2019 only to lose it in 2021, when Republican Glenn Youngkin was elected governor. However, the party won control back in 2023, following redistricting in late 2021.

“Tonight, Virginians sent a clear message across the nation: Donald Trump and Virginia Republicans’ politics of chaos and cruelty have no home in the Commonwealth,” House Speaker Don Scott of Portsmouth said in a statement. “House Democrats expanded our majority because we stood up for Virginians and built a vision that puts people first — lowering costs, growing our economy and protecting our rights."

In districts that include parts of Prince William County, results Tuesday were as follows.

19th District (northeastern Prince William and southeastern Fairfax County)

Democrat Rozia Henson, a Woodbridge native, was reelected to a second term without opposition. Henson is the first openly gay Black man to serve in the House.

20th District (Manassas area)

Democrat Michelle Maldonado was elected to a third term in the House with 67.8% of the vote. The name of Republican Christopher Stone appeared on the ballot, but Stone withdrew last month.

21st District (western Prince William, including Haymarket)

In a race that was considered to be tight, Democrat Josh Thomas easily won a second term over Republican challenger Gregory Lee Gorham by more than 5,000 votes, or nearly 17 percentage points.

22nd District (western Prince William, including Bristow and Brentsville)

In one of the most closely watched and most expensive races in the state, Lovejoy didn't survive a challenge from Guzman. The Democrat, returning to the House of Delegates after previously serving two terms, won 54.6% of the vote to Lovejoy's 45.3%, a margin of 3,400 votes.

23rd District (southeastern Prince William and northern Stafford County)

Democrat Candi King was elected to her third full term in the House. She was first elected in a special election in January 2021 to fill the seat vacated by Jennifer Carroll Foy, who resigned to run for governor that year, and then was elected to her first full term that fall.

King defeated Republican James Tully with 76.5% of the vote.

24th District (southern Prince William, including Montclair and portions of Dale City)

Powerful Democratic Del. Luke Torian, who has served in the House since 2010, did not have a challenger. Torian chairs the House Appropriations Committee, which determines how the state spends its tax dollars.

25th District (north central Prince William, including Lake Ridge and the County Center area)

Democrat Briana Sewell was unopposed for a third term.

Closer Than It Looks

394 days until the mid-terms.

Well That Sucks

But no - we ain't done yet. With each one of these shitty moves, Republicans show us they've got no good cards to play.

And that takes me back to that fucked up meeting with Zelensky when they ambushed the guy and tried to push him around, saying, "You don't have the cards. You don't have the cards."

Daddy State Awareness Guide, Rule 1:

Every accusation is a confession.

Researcher who has distorted voter data appointed to Homeland Security election integrity role

NEW YORK (AP) — A conservative election researcher whose faulty findings on voter data were cited by President Donald Trump as he tried to overturn his 2020 election loss has been appointed to an election integrity role at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Pennsylvania activist Heather Honey is now serving as the deputy assistant secretary for election integrity in the department’s Office of Strategy, Policy and Plans, an organizational chart on its website shows.

The political appointment, first reported by Democracy Docket, shows how self-styled election investigators who have thrown themselves into election conspiracy theories since 2020 are now being celebrated by a presidential administration that indulges their false claims.

Her new role, which didn’t exist under President Joe Biden, also comes as Trump has used election integrity concerns as a pretext to try to give his administration power over how elections are run in the U.S.

The president has ordered sweeping changes to election processes and vowed to do away with mail ballots and voting machines to promote “honesty” in the 2026 midterms, despite a lack of constitutional authority to do so. Trump’s Department of Justice also has demanded complete state voter lists, raising concerns about voter privacy and questions about how the federal government plans to use the sensitive data.

Neither Honey nor DHS immediately responded to requests for comment on Tuesday.

Honey runs an investigations and auditing consulting firm called Haystack Investigations, according to contact information provided on her LinkedIn profile. Since 2020, she also has led a variety of election research groups whose flawed analyses of election data have fueled right-wing attacks on voting procedures, including in battleground states Pennsylvania and Arizona.

In 2020, her election research misrepresented incomplete state voter data to falsely claim that Pennsylvania had more votes reported than voters. Trump echoed the falsehood during his speech to supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, saying Pennsylvania “had 205,000 more votes than you had voters.” Shortly after, his supporters violently attacked the U.S. Capitol in an effort to prevent Biden from becoming president.

In 2021, Honey was involved in the Arizona Senate’s partisan audit of election results in Maricopa County, she confirmed in a podcast interview with a GOP lawyer. That review in the state’s most populous county, which spent six months searching for evidence of fraud, was described by experts as riddled with errors, bias and flawed methodology. Still, it came up with a vote tally that would not have altered the outcome, finding that Biden actually won by more votes than the official results certified in 2020.

In 2022, Honey’s organization Verity Vote issued a report claiming that Pennsylvania had sent some 250,000 “unverified” mail ballots to voters who provided invalid identification or no identification at all.

Officials in Pennsylvania said the claim flagrantly misrepresented the way the state classified applications for mail-in and absentee ballots. The “not verified” designation did not mean the voter didn’t provide accurate identification information, nor did it mean their ID wasn’t later verified.

Former Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer said he received dozens of public records requests related to elections from Honey during his time in office, which took up “scores of hours of staff time.” He said he was surprised to hear she had been elevated to a position of such “authority and responsibility.”

From what he saw, Richer said, she’s “not a serious auditor.”

Honey’s hiring at the Department of Homeland Security comes amid reports that Trump’s administration has met with several other election conspiracy theorists in recent months. Mike Lindell, the founder of MyPillow and one of the most prominent election conspiracy theorists, said in an email to supporters in June that he had met with the president twice in the previous eight weeks. In June, a federal jury in Colorado found that Lindell had defamed a former worker for a company that makes election equipment by making false claims related to the 2020 election.

Seth Keshel, an election modeler whose work on the 2020 election prompted challenges that were later dismissed, presented his research to White House personnel in May, he said on his Substack account.

David Becker, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research, said DHS used to have real credibility in its advisory role on elections. Its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency had collaborated with states to shore up their elections from foreign attacks and disinformation, he said.

Now, the agency has fired its “real experts” on elections, he said. Trump’s administration also has done away with much of its work tracking foreign influence campaigns targeting voters, both at CISA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

“What I’m concerned about is that it seems like DHS is being poised to use the vast power and megaphone of the federal government to spread disinformation rather than combat it,” Becker said. “It’s going to really harm DHS’s credibility overall.”

Today's Skepchick

Russiagate is a real thing. It's just not what some would have us believe.

10 Things

1. Know stuff
2. Tell people about the stuff you know
3. Run for something
4. Volunteer to help somebody who's running for something
5. Join or actively support pro-democracy groups
6. Become a poll Watcher or a Poll Worker
7. Call / write / visit elected officials
8. Show up and vote every chance you get
9. Stay at it
10. Support independent media

Today's Pete

First - stop putting these dog-ass Republicans in office.

Warrior Spirit

Mallory McMorrow brought the fire 2 years ago, and she continues the good fight.

This is the warrior spirit that we have to internalize in order to wield it against the dark forces.

Current Sen Gary Peters is not running for re-election in 2026.

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Bringing The Fire