Trump claims US will end military aid to Israel by end of this year.
I've long been pretty skeptical that US public opinion is, as often gets claimed, swinging dramatically against Israel at the current time. But if Trump is willing to make a stunt-announcement(*) like this the day of the election(**), I gotta think that he, at least, senses a real shift.
(*) For now, I'm putting this in the same category as "I will mail cheques to everyone if I get re-elected!", and likely to convince about as many people.
(**) I think three or four days woulda been better in terms of giving the promise time to circulate in the public consciousness, but doing it on e-day allows less time for any denials or equivocations(from Netanyahu, the Israel lobby, or other interested players players) to take hold as well.
My guess is that Trump has decided that Netanyahu is to blame for convincing him to start a war with Iran (because Trump himself cannot fail, he can only be failed), which is at least partly to blame for a lot of the electoral drag on Republicans this year. Hence the outburst, which Trump himself has likely already forgotten about.
From this side of the pond, I couldn’t be happier. Especially for many US Shipmates who have expressed, rightly, that Trumpism does not accurately represent a very large number of US citizens.
I have felt that as a foreigner I should not hitherto have even been following, yet alone commenting on, this thread. With the wonderful news for you now it has happened, I feel I just have to share a Facebook comment from over here that I saw this morning.
"For once, the American people did as he asked, without question.
He said, "Vote as if my name were on the ballot."
They did!
That's the frustrating thing. The marginal voters who put Trump in back in the White House two years ago watched him do what he said he was going to do and voted against that agenda because Trump did what he told them he would do.
Fair enough, @stetson. I thought @mousethief and I were saying slightly different things, but maybe not.
Meanwhile, returning to the gerrymander vs. dummymander question, it’s turning out interesting here in North Carolina.
The 2024 election yielded a 10 Republicans-4 Democrats state delegation to the US House.
Our Republican-controlled legislature heeded Trump’s demands and redistricted our congressional districts to make the seat of an African American incumbent, Don Davis, a safe seat for Republicans, yielding a map designed to be favor the GOP 11-3. (This was a Voting Rights Act district, but thanks to SCOTUS, such districts are no longer required.)
As the dust settles here, three districts are close enough that recounts may be coming. (Republicans incumbents lead in two of those districts, and the Democratic challenger leads in the third.) If the numbers hold, North Carolina will be sending a delegation to the 120th Congress of 10 Democrats and 4 Republicans.
For those who don't pay close attention to North Carolina politics, the boundaries of that state's congressional districts have changed between 2024 and 2026, so it's not exactly a like-for-like comparison. I've heard the term "dummymander" applied to North Carolina's mid-decade redistricting this morning. The goal of the typical gerrymander is to pack as many of the opposing party's voters into as few districts as possible while spreading your own voters out as much as possible while still maintaining a district-level majority. The problem is that the gerrymanderer doesn't know what the electorate is going to look like in the next election. They can only guess based on past elections, and the assumption most of the Republican legislatures who engaged in mid-decade redistricting made was that the electorate going forward was going to look a lot like the 2024 electorate, with a lot of Republican gains with young men and black and Hispanic voters. That seems like a bad bet now. The misjudgement seems to be even worse in Texas than it was in North Carolina.
Slate.com had an article up yesterday arguing(with a focus on Texas) that Trump's Islamophobia is alienating conservative Muslims who would otherwise be natural fits for the GOP's current coalition. It would almost seem like one of Trump's aides saw that article and pushed the aid-cutoff forward as a response.
It's not just Trump and it's not just conservative Muslims. A lot of immigrants who have come to the US in the last 50 years are natural conservatives, and if the Republicans weren't so flipping racist, they could have scooped up a lot of those new voters. They did get some, like the Cubans in Florida and Vietnamese in Southern California (and elsewhere, @Lamb Chopped will know more than me) -- people fleeing communism were naturally more drawn to the Republicans. But Republicans could have picked up a lot of the Catholics and evangelical Protestants who came up from Mexico and Central and South America; instead they preferred racism over a broad coalition of like-minded voters.
I think if Trump had only done his draconian shut down of immigration, Republicans could have held onto a lot of the Latino voters they picked up in 2024. But he also sent goons to terrorize their neighborhoods, which in addition to being immoral and inhumane is bad politics.
From CBC website: It appears Vance is positioning himself for 2028 already. "Vance's lengthy, 600-word post cited four things Republicans would have had to do to retain their majority in Congress: ending the war, focusing more sharply on cost of living and inflation, putting "America first" and changing the U.S.'s relationship with Israel."
For those who don't pay close attention to North Carolina politics, the boundaries of that state's congressional districts have changed between 2024 and 2026, so it's not exactly a like-for-like comparison.
Wow. The price of oil is cratering today. I wonder if the traders are assuming a new congress means a more tranquil situatuion in the Strait. Granted, I think the drop was already underway before the vote, but it seems to have been especially drastic today.
Slate.com had an article up yesterday arguing(with a focus on Texas) that Trump's Islamophobia is alienating conservative Muslims who would otherwise be natural fits for the GOP's current coalition. It would almost seem like one of Trump's aides saw that article and pushed the aid-cutoff forward as a response.
It's not just Trump and it's not just conservative Muslims. A lot of immigrants who have come to the US in the last 50 years are natural conservatives, and if the Republicans weren't so flipping racist, they could have scooped up a lot of those new voters. They did get some, like the Cubans in Florida and Vietnamese in Southern California (and elsewhere, @Lamb Chopped will know more than me) -- people fleeing communism were naturally more drawn to the Republicans. But Republicans could have picked up a lot of the Catholics and evangelical Protestants who came up from Mexico and Central and South America; instead they preferred racism over a broad coalition of like-minded voters.
I think if Trump had only done his draconian shut down of immigration, Republicans could have held onto a lot of the Latino voters they picked up in 2024. But he also sent goons to terrorize their neighborhoods, which in addition to being immoral and inhumane is bad politics.
Indeed; it's terribly hard getting Vietnamese here to vote non-Republican because of their other-country experiences, AND because the one Vietnamese-language news station (on Youtube, I think?) is a Fox News derivative, God help us all. I have to keep looking up shit that my husband hears on that channel and coming back to tell him what the truth of the matter is, some of it is close to "the moon is made of green cheese" level veracity. The one thing that has helped the most toward shifting votes in my opinion is having those assholes drag away human beings they know and care about, without sufficient justification for the harm they've inflicted on the whole community--let alone families. EVERYONE knows when Thanh/Nguyen/whoever got grabbed at his immigration hearing and his wife and kids haven't heard from him for a month. And it's terrifying, all the more because T/N/whoever was legally in the U.S., and had no major brushes with the law, and was a decent upstanding human being--and so there's nothing at all to blame his abduction on--other than "Those people really hate immigrants like me."
From CBC website: It appears Vance is positioning himself for 2028 already. "Vance's lengthy, 600-word post cited four things Republicans would have had to do to retain their majority in Congress: ending the war, focusing more sharply on cost of living and inflation, putting "America first" and changing the U.S.'s relationship with Israel."
Vance's dislike of the current war against Iran has been an open secret since the war started, so I guess he might think himself well-positioned to coast on the backlash.
And I was intrigued by his suggestion to mitigate the electoral blowback from the supposedly otherwise popular immigration crackdown by "focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labour". I think there's probably a reason you weren't doing that already, JD.
While Florida will remain under Republican control, MSNBC is saying the Democrats will have enough legislators to break their supermajority in both houses of the legislature. Breaking the supermajority would not automatically give Democrats power, but it could restore some legislative checks and make bipartisan votes more important on certain high-stakes matters. (I had typed this last night. I think I interrupted my thought when they announced Talerico had won.)
This morning it is amazing how many of the statewide offices in Texas went blue. This can portend what will happen in 2028; namely Texas, with 40 electoral votes, w
CNN is reporting there are only 55 votes separating Dem Colom from Rep. Hyde Smith. Thing of it is I do not think Mississippi can recount the votes. It is said the vote will not be decided until Nov 10 when absentee vote can come in.
Just looked at a Bing political map of Mississippi. It is amazing to see how many counties there are blue.
This morning it is amazing how many of the statewide offices in Texas went blue. This can portend what will happen in 2028; namely Texas, with 40 electoral votes, w
"...will swing to the Democrats in the presidential election"?
If so, maybe, but a lot can change between now and then. Last night certainly showed that Democrats are now at least competitive in Texas.
This morning it is amazing how many of the statewide offices in Texas went blue. This can portend what will happen in 2028; namely Texas, with 40 electoral votes, w
"...will swing to the Democrats in the presidential election"?
If so, maybe, but a lot can change between now and then. Last night certainly showed that Democrats are now at least competitive in Texas.
Yep. Historically speaking, midterm elections are not reliable indicators of what will happen in the next presidential election. Particularly good midterms for a party might be followed by a good presidential election, but they just as often if not more often might not.
I think the biggest thing for Democrats to remember, and I may have said this already, is not to read the results of this midterm as a ringing endorsement of the Democratic Party. It was a massive rejection of the Republican Party generally and of Trump specifically, not an endorsement of Democrats as such. So if Democrats want 2028 to be another good year, they need to focus on fixing the things Trump and the GOP caused and/or failed to fix. It needs to be clear that the priorities voters had when they voted are also the Democratic Party’s priorities.
The other lesson is that candidate quality matters. At least in Senate races, Democrats nominated mostly likable and scandalous-free candidates, while Republicans took the “it’s fine as long as they have an R behind their name and have Trump’s endorsement” approach. Turned out, that wasn’t at all fine.
The price of gasoline dropped 4 cents a litre overnight in New Brunswick.
And petrol (gasoline) by a penny or two today. That is about £1.70 GBP but diesel is still around £1.96. Note that the price at the pump includes the cost of fuel, transport to the service station, overheads, fuel duty of £0.53, a profit margin and VAT of 20% on top of all of that.
<snip>
That's the frustrating thing. The marginal voters who put Trump in back in the White House two years ago watched him do what he said he was going to do and voted against that agenda because Trump did what he told them he would do.</snip>
But he didn't do what he said he would do. He said he'd bring grocery prices down. They are up. He said he'd keep us out of war. We're at war with Iran, forced regime change in Venezuela, and are strangling Cuba. He said he'd release the Epstein files. He has not. He said he'd end the war in the Ukraine. He has not. He said he would lower inflation. He has not. Maybe he did some other things he promised, but these were foremost in MAGA minds, and he failed to come through.
Some speculation around about Hegseth somehow taking the blame for yesterday's debacle.
I am not just engaging in slapdash anti-MAGA hyperbole when I say that the Hegseth ministry in particular has been a consistent masterpiece of unintenional comedy, going back at least as far as whiskeyleaks(a scandal calculated to piss off the tough-talking security dads). However, also starting with whiskeyleaks, it was increasingly apparent that he was the object of an unusally high degree of loyalty from Trump, which perversely has allowed the slapstick to continue right up to the present day, with anti-Mormon paperwork purges, the ghost ship Lincoln, testosterone cults, state-produced gore videos, etc.
So there may or may not be a reservoir of public hostility to the guy and his antics for his nemeses, Democratic or Republican, to exploit. To me, and I suspect to a lot of others among the smart-set, the guy just screams stolen-valour, but I don't know what percentage of the public has that perception as well. In any case, I don't think he's the sorta personality that would thrive under hostile criticism and questioning.
<snip>
That's the frustrating thing. The marginal voters who put Trump in back in the White House two years ago watched him do what he said he was going to do and voted against that agenda because Trump did what he told them he would do.</snip>
But he didn't do what he said he would do. He said he'd bring grocery prices down. They are up. He said he'd keep us out of war. We're at war with Iran, forced regime change in Venezuela, and are strangling Cuba. He said he'd release the Epstein files. He has not. He said he'd end the war in the Ukraine. He has not. He said he would lower inflation. He has not. Maybe he did some other things he promised, but these were foremost in MAGA minds, and he failed to come through.
He promised revenge against his political enemies and surely delivered generously on that one.
I have felt that as a foreigner I should not hitherto have even been following, yet alone commenting on, this thread. With the wonderful news for you now it has happened, I feel I just have to share a Facebook comment from over here that I saw this morning.
"For once, the American people did as he asked, without question.
He said, "Vote as if my name were on the ballot."
They did!
Surely being at least interested in the politics of another country - let alone one whose politics has such a huge impact on the rest of the world - is a universally good thing. Why would following the US midterms be a bad thing?
The Democrats having control of Congress most certainly has an impact on the UK, and the rest of the world (my Brasilian friends are particularly relieved, for instance).
This morning it is amazing how many of the statewide offices in Texas went blue. This can portend what will happen in 2028; namely Texas, with 40 electoral votes, w
"...will swing to the Democrats in the presidential election"?
If so, maybe, but a lot can change between now and then. Last night certainly showed that Democrats are now at least competitive in Texas.
Yep. Historically speaking, midterm elections are not reliable indicators of what will happen in the next presidential election. Particularly good midterms for a party might be followed by a good presidential election, but they just as often if not more often might not.
I think the biggest thing for Democrats to remember, and I may have said this already, is not to read the results of this midterm as a ringing endorsement of the Democratic Party. It was a massive rejection of the Republican Party generally and of Trump specifically, not an endorsement of Democrats as such. So if Democrats want 2028 to be another good year, they need to focus on fixing the things Trump and the GOP caused and/or failed to fix. It needs to be clear that the priorities voters had when they voted are also the Democratic Party’s priorities.
The other lesson is that candidate quality matters. At least in Senate races, Democrats nominated mostly likable and scandalous-free candidates, while Republicans took the “it’s fine as long as they have an R behind their name and have Trump’s endorsement” approach. Turned out, that wasn’t at all fine.
For me it's been such a lesson in the power of "your vote really does matter", especially for younger voters, in a way I don't think I've ever seen an equivalent for in the UK (there are lots of memes/jokes online about this being the year that people did "Pokemon Go to the polls" which I have really enjoyed). I think it's one of the first times in my teen/adult life that US democracy as a system has (for me personally) really outshone UK democracy - and of course it was built on the work of so many people.
I am left wondering how the UK could pull off a similar swing left, but I think our emphasis on parties rather than individuals aligned to a party (if that makes sense) and of course just having fewer elections period makes it harder.
<snip>
That's the frustrating thing. The marginal voters who put Trump in back in the White House two years ago watched him do what he said he was going to do and voted against that agenda because Trump did what he told them he would do.</snip>
But he didn't do what he said he would do. He said he'd bring grocery prices down. They are up. He said he'd keep us out of war. We're at war with Iran, forced regime change in Venezuela, and are strangling Cuba. He said he'd release the Epstein files. He has not. He said he'd end the war in the Ukraine. He has not. He said he would lower inflation. He has not. Maybe he did some other things he promised, but these were foremost in MAGA minds, and he failed to come through.
He promised revenge against his political enemies and surely delivered generously on that one.
Who do you mean by "political enemies"? If you mean people in the political arena who oppose Trump, I doubt there are that many coupon-clippers in Peoria who are preoccupied with eg. seeing John Bolton sent to jail.
OTOH, if you mean generally apolitical classes of people like immigrants, yeah, he's gone after them BIG TIME, which might impress the white-identified among couple-clippers. Though that's possibly cancelled out by losses in the previously MAGA-curious sections of various brown communities.
Slate.com had an article up yesterday arguing(with a focus on Texas) that Trump's Islamophobia is alienating conservative Muslims who would otherwise be natural fits for the GOP's current coalition. It would almost seem like one of Trump's aides saw that article and pushed the aid-cutoff forward as a response.
It's not just Trump and it's not just conservative Muslims. A lot of immigrants who have come to the US in the last 50 years are natural conservatives, and if the Republicans weren't so flipping racist, they could have scooped up a lot of those new voters. They did get some, like the Cubans in Florida and Vietnamese in Southern California (and elsewhere, @Lamb Chopped will know more than me) -- people fleeing communism were naturally more drawn to the Republicans. But Republicans could have picked up a lot of the Catholics and evangelical Protestants who came up from Mexico and Central and South America; instead they preferred racism over a broad coalition of like-minded voters.
I think if Trump had only done his draconian shut down of immigration, Republicans could have held onto a lot of the Latino voters they picked up in 2024. But he also sent goons to terrorize their neighborhoods, which in addition to being immoral and inhumane is bad politics.
Indeed; it's terribly hard getting Vietnamese here to vote non-Republican because of their other-country experiences, AND because the one Vietnamese-language news station (on Youtube, I think?) is a Fox News derivative, God help us all. I have to keep looking up shit that my husband hears on that channel and coming back to tell him what the truth of the matter is, some of it is close to "the moon is made of green cheese" level veracity. The one thing that has helped the most toward shifting votes in my opinion is having those assholes drag away human beings they know and care about, without sufficient justification for the harm they've inflicted on the whole community--let alone families. EVERYONE knows when Thanh/Nguyen/whoever got grabbed at his immigration hearing and his wife and kids haven't heard from him for a month. And it's terrifying, all the more because T/N/whoever was legally in the U.S., and had no major brushes with the law, and was a decent upstanding human being--and so there's nothing at all to blame his abduction on--other than "Those people really hate immigrants like me."
Are Vietnamese people more or less Republican-leaning than Cubans? Because a dang socialist (not even just a Democrat!) won Miami-Dade. Granted, I get that St Louis is not Miami and that Vietnamese culture is not Cuban culture, but if Angie Freaking Nixon can do what she did in Florida then all is surely not lost.
Also, congratulations on Amendment 3 not passing 🙂
FWIW, I am kind in the middle of the debate over whether Trump's problems with his base stem from him keeping his promises OR not keeping his promises. I will say that a lot of the stuff under the kept-but-unpopular column eg. cuts to medicare and SNAP, dickensian data-centre policies etc, are really just traditional GOP neoliberalism, not MAGA radicalism, though MAGA in particular may percieve it all as a special betrayal, given how bought-in they were to the image of Trump as the heroic champion of the little guy.
FWIW, I am kind in the middle of the debate over whether Trump's problems with his base stem from him keeping his promises OR not keeping his promises. I will say that a lot of the stuff under the kept-but-unpopular column eg. cuts to medicare and SNAP, dickensian data-centre policies etc, are really just traditional GOP neoliberalism, not MAGA radicalism, though MAGA in particular may percieve it all as a special betrayal, given how bought-in they were to the image of Trump as the champion of the little guy.
FWIW, I am kind in the middle of the debate over whether Trump's problems with his base stem from him keeping his promises OR not keeping his promises. I will say that a lot of the stuff under the kept-but-unpopular column eg. cuts to medicare and SNAP, dickensian data-centre policies etc, are really just traditional GOP neoliberalism, not MAGA radicalism, though MAGA in particular may percieve it all as a special betrayal, given how bought-in they were to the image of Trump as the champion of the little guy.
Surely it's a combination of both?
You mean it's a combination of promises kept and promises unkept that has alienated Trump's base? Quite likely, but I don't at the moment have the data on hand to do any firm analysis of which category might predominate.
If the internet is correct, Trump 2.0 first promised extensive tariffs in the low-mid range during the 2024 campaign, so Liberation Day would be an example of a promise made and then kept, that alienated at least a portion of the electorate. By contrast, the 50% anti-Canadian tariffs were never promised before the election, though one may argue that that kind of erraticism is something voters should have foreseen as a general outcome of Trump's re-elevation.
I am left wondering how the UK could pull off a similar swing left, but I think our emphasis on parties rather than individuals aligned to a party (if that makes sense) and of course just having fewer elections period makes it harder.
I suspect that we would first need the far(ther) right to con their way to victory and fuck things up as happened in the US. Not an appealing prospect.
I am left wondering how the UK could pull off a similar swing left, but I think our emphasis on parties rather than individuals aligned to a party (if that makes sense) and of course just having fewer elections period makes it harder.
I suspect that we would first need the far(ther) right to con their way to victory and fuck things up as happened in the US. Not an appealing prospect.
Also I guess we kind of had an equivalent at the last General Election, but without the kind of local impact that the US midterms have on smaller areas.
The GOP postmortem strongly indicates that Hegseth’s days are numbered.
I see that the Democrats are now forecast to get close to 260 seats in the House. And may well get 56 seats in the Senate (including 2 Independents very likely to support them). Results beyond their wildest dreams (and a very low probability according to the polls). A very big Blue Wave.
But I think it is a massive repudiation of Trump’s policies and actions. Time will tell whether the Democrats are able to take decisive actions on affordability and accountability. I’m sure there will be some action on corruption but if the next two years become dominated by retribution, that will look like politics as usual. And that would definitely endanger future Democratic support.
I am left wondering how the UK could pull off a similar swing left, but I think our emphasis on parties rather than individuals aligned to a party (if that makes sense) and of course just having fewer elections period makes it harder.
I suspect that we would first need the far(ther) right to con their way to victory and fuck things up as happened in the US. Not an appealing prospect.
The recent local elections saw lots of Reform candidates elected and number of county (and other) counties are now run by Reform. The signs are that Reform is 1) recognised as a single issue group and 2) isn’t much good at leading local government entities which don’t have much to do with refugees except causing a kerfuffle regarding HMOs which may be used for refugee housing, typically after they have been granted leave to remain.
Their incompetence, laziness and the past record of a fair number of Reform councillors (and members of the Senedd here in Wales) is becoming increasingly clear and the mainstream parties, especially Labour need to oppose them vigorously rather than pander to their racist populism.
Let’s hope the Dems play their cards right. Retribution by the winners is never smart: if the GOP collectively throws Hegseth to the wolves then fine: that’s their affair. It is beyond hope that that Trump falls on his sword. I still recall watching Nixon’s resignation on my granny’s black & white telly back in 1974: almost as good as the ALP romping in here in Oz 2 years earlier.
I think the other repudiation is of cruelty. Yes, there was big support for improved border and immigration control. But ICE actions have been too much for people to stomach.
Talarico's stunning success in Texas was in no small way related to that and other cruelties. The assertion that the politics of love, however naive that might sound in this cynical age, was a better way to go than cruelty and polarisation, seems to have struck a chord. I watched a fascinating interview of Talarico by CNN's Erin Burnett. She clearly had some difficulty in coming to terms with the idea that the Christian assertion of °love your neighbour° might have serious value in the political world.
Made me smile. I remembered the extended title of a book by Jim Wallis.
"God's Politics. Why the Right gets it Wrong and the Left doesn't Get It".
I think it would be news to many non-white leftists that religion and politics supposedly don't mix, or that the left is allergic to religious leftists. Black churches have been supporting progressive Black politicians in the US for decades.
Let’s hope the Dems play their cards right. Retribution by the winners is never smart: if the GOP collectively throws Hegseth to the wolves then fine: that’s their affair.
Yeah. There's a pretty good chance that this election was just 2024 in reverse, ie. voters pissed off at the incumbent party over the economy, so swing en masse to the opposition. If that's the case, excessive litigation of the regime's corruption might be seen as an unwelcome distraction from the "real issues".
That said, as you allude to with the GOP trashing of Hegseth, there are ways to smuggle other issues into the discourse without sounding like you're obsessed with the past at the expense of the present economy. The Iran War works well, 'cuz it's a foreign-policy blunder that definitely involves incompetence, probably corruption, AND is widely seen as the cause of the economic malaise.
I think it would be news to many non-white leftists that religion and politics supposedly don't mix, or that the left is allergic to religious leftists. Black churches have been supporting progressive Black politicians in the US for decades.
To a point. African American Democrats tend to be not as progressive as many other Democrats when it comes to some Dead Horse issues.
I think it would be news to many non-white leftists that religion and politics supposedly don't mix, or that the left is allergic to religious leftists. Black churches have been supporting progressive Black politicians in the US for decades.
With the historical background of the Civil Rights Movement, of course US Black churches knew that religion and politics did mix and needed to. And of course Jim Wallis is a left wing evangelical, which some folks think is a contradiction in terms.
I think it would be news to many non-white leftists that religion and politics supposedly don't mix, or that the left is allergic to religious leftists. Black churches have been supporting progressive Black politicians in the US for decades.
To a point. African American Democrats tend to be not as progressive as many other Democrats when it comes to some Dead Horse issues.
True, as far as Black voters go. But I think most of the Black Democratic politicians who get elected, at least to national office, are about as progrsssive as the party average on social issues.
Slate.com had an article up yesterday arguing(with a focus on Texas) that Trump's Islamophobia is alienating conservative Muslims who would otherwise be natural fits for the GOP's current coalition. It would almost seem like one of Trump's aides saw that article and pushed the aid-cutoff forward as a response.
It's not just Trump and it's not just conservative Muslims. A lot of immigrants who have come to the US in the last 50 years are natural conservatives, and if the Republicans weren't so flipping racist, they could have scooped up a lot of those new voters. They did get some, like the Cubans in Florida and Vietnamese in Southern California (and elsewhere, @Lamb Chopped will know more than me) -- people fleeing communism were naturally more drawn to the Republicans. But Republicans could have picked up a lot of the Catholics and evangelical Protestants who came up from Mexico and Central and South America; instead they preferred racism over a broad coalition of like-minded voters.
I think if Trump had only done his draconian shut down of immigration, Republicans could have held onto a lot of the Latino voters they picked up in 2024. But he also sent goons to terrorize their neighborhoods, which in addition to being immoral and inhumane is bad politics.
Indeed; it's terribly hard getting Vietnamese here to vote non-Republican because of their other-country experiences, AND because the one Vietnamese-language news station (on Youtube, I think?) is a Fox News derivative, God help us all. I have to keep looking up shit that my husband hears on that channel and coming back to tell him what the truth of the matter is, some of it is close to "the moon is made of green cheese" level veracity. The one thing that has helped the most toward shifting votes in my opinion is having those assholes drag away human beings they know and care about, without sufficient justification for the harm they've inflicted on the whole community--let alone families. EVERYONE knows when Thanh/Nguyen/whoever got grabbed at his immigration hearing and his wife and kids haven't heard from him for a month. And it's terrifying, all the more because T/N/whoever was legally in the U.S., and had no major brushes with the law, and was a decent upstanding human being--and so there's nothing at all to blame his abduction on--other than "Those people really hate immigrants like me."
Are Vietnamese people more or less Republican-leaning than Cubans? Because a dang socialist (not even just a Democrat!) won Miami-Dade. Granted, I get that St Louis is not Miami and that Vietnamese culture is not Cuban culture, but if Angie Freaking Nixon can do what she did in Florida then all is surely not lost.
Also, congratulations on Amendment 3 not passing 🙂
I'm afraid I don't know Cubans well enough to say.
. . . but if Angie Freaking Nixon can do what she did in Florida then all is surely not lost.
I would class Angie Nixon’s very good performance in the Florida US Senate race as riding the Blue Wave and as anti-Trump/anti-GOP rather than as wide endorsement of her socialist positions. I can’t help but think that, given the Blue Wave, a more moderate Democrat might have been a better fit for Florida and done better.
Grateful for the midterms in general in the US, though really wish here in Florida we’d gotten the Democratic governor to succeed DeSantis… the one we will have is a fan of DeSantis and Trump… 😢
Grateful for the midterms in general in the US, though really wish here in Florida we’d gotten the Democratic governor to succeed DeSantis… the one we will have is a fan of DeSantis and Trump… 😢
The gubernatorial race was incredibly close though! Florida is now a lot more purple than it was before. Florida Dems did an amazing job despite the challenges.
Trump is widely depicted on political cartoons on YouTube (awash with them at the moment!) as a lame (Donald) duck, but the word 'veto' occurs frequently, too.
I take it, therefore, that his power is considerably reduced, but that he still has the capacity to put the mockers on any proposal he doesn't like or agree with. Is that a correct reading?
. . . but if Angie Freaking Nixon can do what she did in Florida then all is surely not lost.
I would class Angie Nixon’s very good performance in the Florida US Senate race as riding the Blue Wave and as anti-Trump/anti-GOP rather than as wide endorsement of her socialist positions. I can’t help but think that, given the Blue Wave, a more moderate Democrat might have been a better fit for Florida and done better.
But Florida used to be solidly purple only a generation or two ago, it's not Texas - and surely a Blue Wave is the ideal time for less moderate candidates anyway?
. . . but if Angie Freaking Nixon can do what she did in Florida then all is surely not lost.
I would class Angie Nixon’s very good performance in the Florida US Senate race as riding the Blue Wave and as anti-Trump/anti-GOP rather than as wide endorsement of her socialist positions. I can’t help but think that, given the Blue Wave, a more moderate Democrat might have been a better fit for Florida and done better.
But Florida used to be solidly purple only a generation or two ago, it's not Texas - and surely a Blue Wave is the ideal time for less moderate candidates anyway?
Not if the Blue Wave can’t carry that progressive the finish line but might have carried a moderate across it. Part of what typically makes a state purple is centrists.
Are Vietnamese people more or less Republican-leaning than Cubans? Because a dang socialist (not even just a Democrat!) won Miami-Dade. Granted, I get that St Louis is not Miami and that Vietnamese culture is not Cuban culture, but if Angie Freaking Nixon can do what she did in Florida then all is surely not lost.
I'm wondering if you're under the impression that there are a lot of Vietnamese Americans in St. Louis, so them going left would pull St. Louis left? According to Wikipedia they're less than 1% of the population there.
By far the largest groups of Vietnamese Americans are in California, followed by Texas. In California the largest groups are in Orange County, which was ruby red when I lived there 1984-93. Vietnamese immigrants and their descendants are less Republican now than they were 30-40 years ago, one of several reasons why Orange County is purple these days (a bigger reason, I'd guess, is that college-educated whites are way more Democrat than they used to be). Now the congressional district that includes Little Saigon is represented by a Democrat who is the son of Vietnamese immigrants.
So, should the Dem ticket in 2028 contain a centrist for president and a progressive for vp?
I think the last succesful Democratic ticket with that clear of a contrast between prez and veep was Carter/Mondale in 1976. As far as public perception went, I believe Clinton and Gore were viewed as ideologically about the same, as were Obama and Biden, albeit allowing for Biden's old-stock demographics and slightly dixiecratish history. Biden and Harris were about the same as Obama/Biden, but with the positions reversed.
Dukakis/Bentsen was a reversed version of Carter/Mondale, and we all saw how that worked out. So I wouldn't say there's any strong precedent for assuming a balanced ticket is neccessary to win.
Are Vietnamese people more or less Republican-leaning than Cubans? Because a dang socialist (not even just a Democrat!) won Miami-Dade. Granted, I get that St Louis is not Miami and that Vietnamese culture is not Cuban culture, but if Angie Freaking Nixon can do what she did in Florida then all is surely not lost.
I'm wondering if you're under the impression that there are a lot of Vietnamese Americans in St. Louis, so them going left would pull St. Louis left? According to Wikipedia they're less than 1% of the population there.
By far the largest groups of Vietnamese Americans are in California, followed by Texas. In California the largest groups are in Orange County, which was ruby red when I lived there 1984-93. Vietnamese immigrants and their descendants are less Republican now than they were 30-40 years ago, one of several reasons why Orange County is purple these days (a bigger reason, I'd guess, is that college-educated whites are way more Democrat than they used to be). Now the congressional district that includes Little Saigon is represented by a Democrat who is the son of Vietnamese immigrants.
I wasn't trying to suggest that there are a lot of Vietnamese in St Louis, I was just using it as my example because it's where LambChopped is and I was responding to her comment specifically.
It depends on how ugly the primary race is. If it's a bruising battle and there's a strong runner-up with a constituency that the nominee really needs to get on board for the general election, picking that person could be really important. Getting their endorsement might be enough, though -- it really depends on specifics that don't exist yet.
One of the important lessons of this election for Democrats is that good candidates know how to talk to people who are not like themselves. Democrats won in places like Iowa and Kansas because they listened to and said the right things to people who are not Democrats. That rules out both Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom for 2028, because most Democrats in California don't even have to acknowledge the existence of Republicans when running for office, never mind talk to them.
Comments
My guess is that Trump has decided that Netanyahu is to blame for convincing him to start a war with Iran (because Trump himself cannot fail, he can only be failed), which is at least partly to blame for a lot of the electoral drag on Republicans this year. Hence the outburst, which Trump himself has likely already forgotten about.
Thank you!
That's the frustrating thing. The marginal voters who put Trump in back in the White House two years ago watched him do what he said he was going to do and voted against that agenda because Trump did what he told them he would do.
For those who don't pay close attention to North Carolina politics, the boundaries of that state's congressional districts have changed between 2024 and 2026, so it's not exactly a like-for-like comparison. I've heard the term "dummymander" applied to North Carolina's mid-decade redistricting this morning. The goal of the typical gerrymander is to pack as many of the opposing party's voters into as few districts as possible while spreading your own voters out as much as possible while still maintaining a district-level majority. The problem is that the gerrymanderer doesn't know what the electorate is going to look like in the next election. They can only guess based on past elections, and the assumption most of the Republican legislatures who engaged in mid-decade redistricting made was that the electorate going forward was going to look a lot like the 2024 electorate, with a lot of Republican gains with young men and black and Hispanic voters. That seems like a bad bet now. The misjudgement seems to be even worse in Texas than it was in North Carolina.
It's not just Trump and it's not just conservative Muslims. A lot of immigrants who have come to the US in the last 50 years are natural conservatives, and if the Republicans weren't so flipping racist, they could have scooped up a lot of those new voters. They did get some, like the Cubans in Florida and Vietnamese in Southern California (and elsewhere, @Lamb Chopped will know more than me) -- people fleeing communism were naturally more drawn to the Republicans. But Republicans could have picked up a lot of the Catholics and evangelical Protestants who came up from Mexico and Central and South America; instead they preferred racism over a broad coalition of like-minded voters.
I think if Trump had only done his draconian shut down of immigration, Republicans could have held onto a lot of the Latino voters they picked up in 2024. But he also sent goons to terrorize their neighborhoods, which in addition to being immoral and inhumane is bad politics.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/livestory/us-midterm-election-results-reaction-live-updates-november-4-2026-9.7408406
Indeed; it's terribly hard getting Vietnamese here to vote non-Republican because of their other-country experiences, AND because the one Vietnamese-language news station (on Youtube, I think?) is a Fox News derivative, God help us all. I have to keep looking up shit that my husband hears on that channel and coming back to tell him what the truth of the matter is, some of it is close to "the moon is made of green cheese" level veracity. The one thing that has helped the most toward shifting votes in my opinion is having those assholes drag away human beings they know and care about, without sufficient justification for the harm they've inflicted on the whole community--let alone families. EVERYONE knows when Thanh/Nguyen/whoever got grabbed at his immigration hearing and his wife and kids haven't heard from him for a month. And it's terrifying, all the more because T/N/whoever was legally in the U.S., and had no major brushes with the law, and was a decent upstanding human being--and so there's nothing at all to blame his abduction on--other than "Those people really hate immigrants like me."
Vance's dislike of the current war against Iran has been an open secret since the war started, so I guess he might think himself well-positioned to coast on the backlash.
And I was intrigued by his suggestion to mitigate the electoral blowback from the supposedly otherwise popular immigration crackdown by "focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labour". I think there's probably a reason you weren't doing that already, JD.
This morning it is amazing how many of the statewide offices in Texas went blue. This can portend what will happen in 2028; namely Texas, with 40 electoral votes, w
CNN is reporting there are only 55 votes separating Dem Colom from Rep. Hyde Smith. Thing of it is I do not think Mississippi can recount the votes. It is said the vote will not be decided until Nov 10 when absentee vote can come in.
Just looked at a Bing political map of Mississippi. It is amazing to see how many counties there are blue.
"...will swing to the Democrats in the presidential election"?
If so, maybe, but a lot can change between now and then. Last night certainly showed that Democrats are now at least competitive in Texas.
I think the biggest thing for Democrats to remember, and I may have said this already, is not to read the results of this midterm as a ringing endorsement of the Democratic Party. It was a massive rejection of the Republican Party generally and of Trump specifically, not an endorsement of Democrats as such. So if Democrats want 2028 to be another good year, they need to focus on fixing the things Trump and the GOP caused and/or failed to fix. It needs to be clear that the priorities voters had when they voted are also the Democratic Party’s priorities.
The other lesson is that candidate quality matters. At least in Senate races, Democrats nominated mostly likable and scandalous-free candidates, while Republicans took the “it’s fine as long as they have an R behind their name and have Trump’s endorsement” approach. Turned out, that wasn’t at all fine.
And petrol (gasoline) by a penny or two today. That is about £1.70 GBP but diesel is still around £1.96. Note that the price at the pump includes the cost of fuel, transport to the service station, overheads, fuel duty of £0.53, a profit margin and VAT of 20% on top of all of that.
But he didn't do what he said he would do. He said he'd bring grocery prices down. They are up. He said he'd keep us out of war. We're at war with Iran, forced regime change in Venezuela, and are strangling Cuba. He said he'd release the Epstein files. He has not. He said he'd end the war in the Ukraine. He has not. He said he would lower inflation. He has not. Maybe he did some other things he promised, but these were foremost in MAGA minds, and he failed to come through.
I am not just engaging in slapdash anti-MAGA hyperbole when I say that the Hegseth ministry in particular has been a consistent masterpiece of unintenional comedy, going back at least as far as whiskeyleaks(a scandal calculated to piss off the tough-talking security dads). However, also starting with whiskeyleaks, it was increasingly apparent that he was the object of an unusally high degree of loyalty from Trump, which perversely has allowed the slapstick to continue right up to the present day, with anti-Mormon paperwork purges, the ghost ship Lincoln, testosterone cults, state-produced gore videos, etc.
So there may or may not be a reservoir of public hostility to the guy and his antics for his nemeses, Democratic or Republican, to exploit. To me, and I suspect to a lot of others among the smart-set, the guy just screams stolen-valour, but I don't know what percentage of the public has that perception as well. In any case, I don't think he's the sorta personality that would thrive under hostile criticism and questioning.
He promised revenge against his political enemies and surely delivered generously on that one.
Surely being at least interested in the politics of another country - let alone one whose politics has such a huge impact on the rest of the world - is a universally good thing. Why would following the US midterms be a bad thing?
The Democrats having control of Congress most certainly has an impact on the UK, and the rest of the world (my Brasilian friends are particularly relieved, for instance).
For me it's been such a lesson in the power of "your vote really does matter", especially for younger voters, in a way I don't think I've ever seen an equivalent for in the UK (there are lots of memes/jokes online about this being the year that people did "Pokemon Go to the polls" which I have really enjoyed). I think it's one of the first times in my teen/adult life that US democracy as a system has (for me personally) really outshone UK democracy - and of course it was built on the work of so many people.
I am left wondering how the UK could pull off a similar swing left, but I think our emphasis on parties rather than individuals aligned to a party (if that makes sense) and of course just having fewer elections period makes it harder.
Who do you mean by "political enemies"? If you mean people in the political arena who oppose Trump, I doubt there are that many coupon-clippers in Peoria who are preoccupied with eg. seeing John Bolton sent to jail.
OTOH, if you mean generally apolitical classes of people like immigrants, yeah, he's gone after them BIG TIME, which might impress the white-identified among couple-clippers. Though that's possibly cancelled out by losses in the previously MAGA-curious sections of various brown communities.
Are Vietnamese people more or less Republican-leaning than Cubans? Because a dang socialist (not even just a Democrat!) won Miami-Dade. Granted, I get that St Louis is not Miami and that Vietnamese culture is not Cuban culture, but if Angie Freaking Nixon can do what she did in Florida then all is surely not lost.
Also, congratulations on Amendment 3 not passing 🙂
Surely it's a combination of both?
You mean it's a combination of promises kept and promises unkept that has alienated Trump's base? Quite likely, but I don't at the moment have the data on hand to do any firm analysis of which category might predominate.
If the internet is correct, Trump 2.0 first promised extensive tariffs in the low-mid range during the 2024 campaign, so Liberation Day would be an example of a promise made and then kept, that alienated at least a portion of the electorate. By contrast, the 50% anti-Canadian tariffs were never promised before the election, though one may argue that that kind of erraticism is something voters should have foreseen as a general outcome of Trump's re-elevation.
I suspect that we would first need the far(ther) right to con their way to victory and fuck things up as happened in the US. Not an appealing prospect.
Also I guess we kind of had an equivalent at the last General Election, but without the kind of local impact that the US midterms have on smaller areas.
I see that the Democrats are now forecast to get close to 260 seats in the House. And may well get 56 seats in the Senate (including 2 Independents very likely to support them). Results beyond their wildest dreams (and a very low probability according to the polls). A very big Blue Wave.
But I think it is a massive repudiation of Trump’s policies and actions. Time will tell whether the Democrats are able to take decisive actions on affordability and accountability. I’m sure there will be some action on corruption but if the next two years become dominated by retribution, that will look like politics as usual. And that would definitely endanger future Democratic support.
The recent local elections saw lots of Reform candidates elected and number of county (and other) counties are now run by Reform. The signs are that Reform is 1) recognised as a single issue group and 2) isn’t much good at leading local government entities which don’t have much to do with refugees except causing a kerfuffle regarding HMOs which may be used for refugee housing, typically after they have been granted leave to remain.
Their incompetence, laziness and the past record of a fair number of Reform councillors (and members of the Senedd here in Wales) is becoming increasingly clear and the mainstream parties, especially Labour need to oppose them vigorously rather than pander to their racist populism.
Talarico's stunning success in Texas was in no small way related to that and other cruelties. The assertion that the politics of love, however naive that might sound in this cynical age, was a better way to go than cruelty and polarisation, seems to have struck a chord. I watched a fascinating interview of Talarico by CNN's Erin Burnett. She clearly had some difficulty in coming to terms with the idea that the Christian assertion of °love your neighbour° might have serious value in the political world.
Made me smile. I remembered the extended title of a book by Jim Wallis.
"God's Politics. Why the Right gets it Wrong and the Left doesn't Get It".
Yeah. There's a pretty good chance that this election was just 2024 in reverse, ie. voters pissed off at the incumbent party over the economy, so swing en masse to the opposition. If that's the case, excessive litigation of the regime's corruption might be seen as an unwelcome distraction from the "real issues".
That said, as you allude to with the GOP trashing of Hegseth, there are ways to smuggle other issues into the discourse without sounding like you're obsessed with the past at the expense of the present economy. The Iran War works well, 'cuz it's a foreign-policy blunder that definitely involves incompetence, probably corruption, AND is widely seen as the cause of the economic malaise.
With the historical background of the Civil Rights Movement, of course US Black churches knew that religion and politics did mix and needed to. And of course Jim Wallis is a left wing evangelical, which some folks think is a contradiction in terms.
True, as far as Black voters go. But I think most of the Black Democratic politicians who get elected, at least to national office, are about as progrsssive as the party average on social issues.
I'm afraid I don't know Cubans well enough to say.
The gubernatorial race was incredibly close though! Florida is now a lot more purple than it was before. Florida Dems did an amazing job despite the challenges.
I take it, therefore, that his power is considerably reduced, but that he still has the capacity to put the mockers on any proposal he doesn't like or agree with. Is that a correct reading?
But Florida used to be solidly purple only a generation or two ago, it's not Texas - and surely a Blue Wave is the ideal time for less moderate candidates anyway?
I'm wondering if you're under the impression that there are a lot of Vietnamese Americans in St. Louis, so them going left would pull St. Louis left? According to Wikipedia they're less than 1% of the population there.
By far the largest groups of Vietnamese Americans are in California, followed by Texas. In California the largest groups are in Orange County, which was ruby red when I lived there 1984-93. Vietnamese immigrants and their descendants are less Republican now than they were 30-40 years ago, one of several reasons why Orange County is purple these days (a bigger reason, I'd guess, is that college-educated whites are way more Democrat than they used to be). Now the congressional district that includes Little Saigon is represented by a Democrat who is the son of Vietnamese immigrants.
I think the last succesful Democratic ticket with that clear of a contrast between prez and veep was Carter/Mondale in 1976. As far as public perception went, I believe Clinton and Gore were viewed as ideologically about the same, as were Obama and Biden, albeit allowing for Biden's old-stock demographics and slightly dixiecratish history. Biden and Harris were about the same as Obama/Biden, but with the positions reversed.
Dukakis/Bentsen was a reversed version of Carter/Mondale, and we all saw how that worked out. So I wouldn't say there's any strong precedent for assuming a balanced ticket is neccessary to win.
I wasn't trying to suggest that there are a lot of Vietnamese in St Louis, I was just using it as my example because it's where LambChopped is and I was responding to her comment specifically.
One of the important lessons of this election for Democrats is that good candidates know how to talk to people who are not like themselves. Democrats won in places like Iowa and Kansas because they listened to and said the right things to people who are not Democrats. That rules out both Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom for 2028, because most Democrats in California don't even have to acknowledge the existence of Republicans when running for office, never mind talk to them.