New York City Mayor Eric Adams will run for reelection as an independent, opting out of the Democratic primary just one day after a federal judge dismissed corruption charges against him.
If Adams actually wants to win, he'd be better off outright switching to the Republicans (I doubt he'd get a Wilson Pakula otherwise-assuming we haven't gotten rid of those yet), and basically modeling his campaign after Rudy Guiliani's 1993 campaign.
I'm not convinced Cuomo will win the primary. His lead appears to be mostly name recognition. Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer both lost in 2013 despite having far more name recognition in the Mayoral and Comptroller's races.
I'll take it. This makes it easier for a not-Cuomo candidate to get enough of the spotlight in the dem primary to get the win.
It makes sense for him to do for his own self interest, as he has a 0% chance of winning the dem primary and probably not any better of winning the republican primary. He won't win the general election as an independent, but it does allow him to stay a candidate for longer and pull off more grift.
I guess the court decided that letting Trump's goons keep possible charges in play the moment he's out of office is the bigger of two evils since they cannot force the DOJ to reopen the case.
Got to say I'd prefer Becerra over Harris for the Governor's race in California-both served well in the Biden Administration, but Becerra doesn't have a loss in a Presidential race weighing him down.
As for Katie Porter...if I were her, I would look into running against Karen Bass instead.
Katie Porter is from OC, not L.A. These are two very different places, despite Orange County's misnamed baseball team. The idea of her moving to Los Angeles to run for mayor is not a good one. First of all, who would want that job at this point? We have a lot of serious issues here without easy solutions. Karen Bass is not perfect, but she is doing the best she can under difficult circumstances. In terms of elections, there will be two candidates in the runoff. Most likely that will be Mayor Bass and a challenger running to her right. Maybe it will be a rerun with Rick Caruso, a rich developer of shopping centers, who Bass defeated last time with a margin of about ten points. There is no upside for Katie to move and then come in third place in the primary. If she were to leave the gubernatorial race the best backup would probably be to run for Insurance Commissioner. Either that or stay as a law professor.
The news from my region of L.A. is interesting, with a potentially strong opponent for Rep. Brad Sherman. While I no longer live in that district since I moved out of Sherman Oaks (which was not named after his family, lol), I try to keep track of politics in that area. While Brad is potentially vulnerable in a primary the most likely result is the runoff featuring Sherman and one of our local GOP perennial candidates (Lucie Volotsky? Susan Shelley? What fun!). I am skeptical that this former staffer has much of a chance, but time will tell. Now I live in CA-29, where our new Representative, Luz Rivas, is in her first of many terms in the House. (She replaced Tony Cardenas, who retired.)
Judging by how Caruso did against Bass, I suspect if the 2026 Mayoral election was Bass, Porter, Caruso, it would be Caruso finishing in third-he doesn't really have a constituency in Los Angeles, whereas Porter could at least get local progressives behind her.
Los Angeles is not uniformly progressive or liberal. Caruso has a constituency; he got 45% of the vote last time. L.A. County recently elected a GOP District Attorney. Not all the right-wingers have moved to Idaho...
I agree again. It might be Bass against Caruso. If so, Caruso may well win. Caruso used to be a moderate Republican, but now he's a pro-business Democrat. It wouldn't be the end of the world if he won.
I agree with everything here. There is no real possibility Porter would run for LA mayor. Insurance commissioner or one of the other statewide offices would be more likely if her run for governor turns sour, but I don't foresee that happening.
No. She's identified with southern Orange County. She would be a weaker LA mayor candidate than a gubernatorial candidate. She has never involved herself in LA issues, if she even cares about them. I think she'll be the front runner for governor.
I like Becerra as well, but I don't think Harris' loss will affect her negatively in California. It's not hard to imagine a lot of voters wanting to see her as governor of the largest state standing up to the guy who defeated her and presenting a vision of a world we could have had (and can still have), which is exactly what the Dems need to be doing.
I honestly think Harris's political future is tied to a Democrat winning the White House again-she'd be an obvious choice for Attorney General or Secretary of Homeland Security for many potential candidates.
Why would anyone want to be a cabinet member after already having been vice president? It's such a stark downgrade in prestige. I cannot see her doing that.
At least governor comes with being the biggest fish in the pond and is still an executive role.
Depending on what she's nominated for it's a minimal downgrade (if even that-both Trump Presidencies have been a huge step backwards in the relevancy of the Vice Presidency so far)-something like Attorney General or Secretary of State would be suitably high-profile, plus it comes with the benefit of not having to face voters.
I'm not convinced. Political actors do genuinely care about prestige. There's a reason only one president has gone to congress after their presidency (John Quincy Adams). People do not want to deal with the downgrade if they can afford not to, and someone that is able to be VP can absolutely afford to stay away.
If Harris wants to boost her historical legacy, it's California or bust. If she doesn't want to, then she will retire and maybe write a book or two to get some extra money. I cannot imagine her taking a cabinet position that is inherently lesser in every way than her prior job.
If she wants to run for President again, doesn't she have to do something to improve the public's view of her? Governor of California is one possibility, but a very high-level Cabinet position (AG or maybe State) is also possible.
I get your point, but I'd argue that on the metric of "prestige" alone, it's a bigger deal to have been a Presidential nominee than to be Vice-President. The job is nearly invisible to most Americans for four years....at least until the Vice-President inevitably runs for President.
And of course Walter Mondale had been Vice President and ran for Senate in 2002, but obviously that was an extreme circumstance.
Regardless of how the house falls, unless there's a GOP Tsunami, it will be closely divided, so throwing away swing districts like this is not a good thing.
I'd rather Rebecca Kwoka or Karen Liot Hill run instead.
I really don’t think we have to worry much about holding seats that Harris won in the midterm, we didn’t lose any seats we held in Clinton districts in 2018, and in a much worse environment in 2022 we didn’t lose many seats we held that Biden won. Obviously we still need to work to hold those seats, but we shouldn’t avoid running candidates just because they’re slightly stronger options to hold a district we’d likely win regardless.
There's a possibility that they might get Gerrymandered anyway, now that Sununu's out, though I think NH's two year term for Governor makes that somewhat less likely.
Last time I checked Ayotte was opposed to mid-decade redistricting, so the earliest this could happen would be after the 2030 census (assuming the GOP Trifecta there remains intact).
That might have been me? I mentioned over the weekend thread that I was polled recently and the poll spent an inordinate amount of time on the prospect of a mid-decade redistricting. Enough so that I had to imagine that the chance of it isn't zero. Ayotte took it off the table in November and to my knowledge has said nothing since.
Only one of the two of them can be gerrymandered out. Either NH-01 or NH-02 would be made redder, and the other seat would get proportionally bluer. Silver lining of the state only having two seats: votes taken from A have to go to B.
Historically republicans have wanted Pappas' seat to be red, and Goodlander's seat to be blue.
Ah, sorry I read your first sentence wrong in the prior comment. That makes more sense! My bad.
I'm not sure that they could make a wave-proof seat, but I don't think it's impossible either. A lot of the NH/MA border is full of towns that vote ~60-30 for republicans. Not Manchester or Nashua sized but decently populated. Most of these are currently in NH-02 and could be squeezed into NH-01 at the expense of some blue areas.
Either way they could make it a major headache for us overall, even if we could win it in a wave.
I was able to make a 58% R composite district pretty easily in Dave's Redistricting, without splitting any cities or towns. That's somewhat bluer than it sounds, since it includes Sununu's 65-33 win in the average. I would guess it roughly corresponds to Trump in the 54% range.
Somebody has to hold that Senate seat for us, and Pappas is one of the strongest candidates we have. The two people you mention who no one outside of NH has ever heard of can run for Pappas' seat.
Also we really do want a strong candidate here. Sununu's denials aside I am not convinced he is absolutely not running. If we run a weaker candidate, and yes a state senator and state executive council is a much weaker candidate than a US rep, Sununu is a lot more likely to run. Even in wave years exceptions happen, especially with insanely popular candidates like Sununu. We shouldn't take this seat for granted.
Pappas is about what we could hope for out of NH. Much more moderate than I'd like but I suspect he'd be less likely to make terrible votes than Shaheen or Hassan have been. He'd easily be our strongest candidate and would be a generational change.
There are 4 Executive Council districts, right? That would make each councillor on average half as well known as one of the two U.S. Representatives, but that won't always be the case.
Five districts. They each represent a good chunk of people, but I'd argue voters take much less notice of them than a simple proportionality argument would suggest.
They still are a decent launching pad for higher office. Pappas was on the executive council before he ran for the house. Sununu was there before he ran for governor. Collin van Ostern was before his 2016 run for governor. Probably some other recent-ish examples that I am forgetting. Even if voters don't know them they will have needed better campaign skills, fundraising abilities, and will have more connections than someone in lower office. Decent as they are as launching pads, they're a good bit worse than being a member of congress.
Also right now there's literally only one democrat on the executive council due to it being gerrymandered. Democrats controlled the council 3-2 for part of Sununu's time as governor and he hated them. If I remember right it was due to the council blocking some of his judicial nominations over abortion rights. Republicans didn't want a repeat of that.
Lmao, we are going to be real competitive in Texas and Ohio and you are sweating about New Hampshire. Trump's approval just before Liberation Day was horrible enough.
That 2012 race was the "Congressman, Schmongressman" race with rhyming incumbents in a post-redistricting contest. I wrote a story about it at the time on the Daily Kos. It was also the only time that my picture ever got on a campaign mailer. (I was for Brad. That was my last election before moving to North Hollywood.)
James Surowiecki: "Just figured out where [Trump’s] fake tariff rates come from. They didn't actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country's exports to us.
"So we have a $17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. Its exports to us are $28 billion. $17.9/$28 = 64%, which Trump claims is the tariff rate Indonesia charges us. What extraordinary nonsense this is.
"It's important to understand that the tariff rates that foreign countries are supposedly charging us are just made-up numbers. South Korea, with which we have a trade agreement, is not charging a 50% tariff on U.S. exports. Nor is the EU charging a 39% tariff."
Today, the Norwegian news site NRK.no has a great article by the journalist Vilde Skorpen Wikan where economics professors dissect the real math behind Trump’s tariffs. Utterly divorced from reality and absolutely insane!
Here is a rough English version via Google Translate.
Like, to me the problem with the tariffs isn't that they exist-countries have been doing that forever and they're going to keep doing that long after we're gone-it's that Trump is using them as extortion to get his way, rather than an actual economic policy.
I think part of it is the idea that the revenue will to some extent replace revenue lost by the tax cuts. And the general theory that it will help spur domestic manufacturing.
Except that's not how Trump's been applying these tariffs at all. He's literally using them to extort other countries to do his bidding-not any sort of coherent economic policy.
We're never going to revert to making apparel, shoes, auto/plane parts etc. primarily in the U.S. This idea that we can tariff our way back to a 19th century economy is not only dumb, but not a destination we should want to be getting to anyway.
I don't necessarily agree that we wouldn't want as much manufacturing as we can get but I agree there's no way to tariff yourself back to 1955 or 1895. Even if this gambit was to work in restoring wide swaths of domestic manufacturing, the plants would be mostly automated. The manufacturers would settle for nothing less given the emaciated short-term and long-term potential for available workers in a country with plummeting birth rates and immigration numbers.
"with plummeting birth rates and immigration numbers"
Ahh . . .therein lies the rub. The MAGA agenda is so dumb because it basically guarantees lower population growth and a more rapidly aging society. Add in tariffs/gutting the free trade system, and if you're a multinational firm, what are you going to do . . .invest hundreds of millions/billions into intensive, long-term higher capital costs going all-in on the richer (compared to the rest of the world) 300 million American consumers, with the assumptions the tariffs will last past 2030/won't be rescinded due to political forces (oh, and the growth of that consumer base is dropping)?
Or invest somewhere else, retain lower capital costs, focus on the billions of other consumers worldwide, and know that the richer Americans will likely just eat those higher costs anyway because they have no alternative?
The Administration is also laser-focused on AI as a replacement tool for human workers . . of course any new factories would be 90% automated. Literally the most anti-worker government in over 100 years.
Right. I’m fairly pro free trade but tariffs and protectionist policy more generally have their place as both tactical and strategic tools.
This is neither, and the rates being developed the way as described is Argentina levels of economically illiterate. If Wall Street hasn’t fully revolted against this admin it will soon
That's incredibly short sighted of him to support it.
Tariffs are going to hurt US manufacturing too. Auto plants rely on a non-zero amount of imported goods, or the US manufacturer of those sub-components relies on imports. Countries are going to apply tariffs to US goods, tanking our export markets.
Even if there's literally no direct impact on them through some convergence of factors, the indirect impact will hit them all the same: prices are going to go up on most goods, and American consumers are going to have less money to spread around. Car sales are going to go down, and with it so will UAW jobs.
Why not? This is what “arbitrary and capricious” was designed for and tax policy - which this is - belongs to Congress. I’m deeply skeptical the IEEPA is constitutional or that this follows it
Congress authorized what Trump is doing. They foolishly made a declaration of a national emergency too open ended. It may be bad policy, but it's not unconstitutional. Any curtailment will have to come through new legislation.
If we ever get a trifecta again banning declarations of national emergency and banning the declaration of martial law need to be atop the list of priorities (right up there with removing the ability for the President/Governor's to pardon/commute sentences-arguably that power should either be in the hands of non-elected officials, or should not exist at all).
It absolutely should happen, but I have no optimism that it will. Humans and legislatures do not want to dwell on past issues if they can pretend that it will not happen again.
For pardons I like the idea of having an oversight board or similar that has to approve pardons. With an explicit requirement that they block pardons that have any conflict of interest.
More cabined argument about tariffs and the APA found here. I think Secrion 301 tariffs would be on strong legal footing but of course you can’t shock and awe trade partners to feed your ego with those.
Trump is invoking his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) to address the national emergency posed by the large and persistent trade deficit that is driven by the absence of reciprocity in our trade relationships and other harmful policies like currency manipulation.
Any Republican in Congress who does not oppose this absurd, gratuitious, self-inflicted wound to the American economy needs to be tied to it in the 2026 elections.
The Economist ran the headline "Ruination Day" (i.e. instead of Liberation Day, as Trump claimed), and now I have the Gillian Welch song stuck in my head...
It gets even worse. If you were to ask almost any AI chatbot the easiest way to implement tariffs, this is what it comes up with. It starts with "a straightforward (if nieve) method..." and spells out basically what was done. Mind boggling.
THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: Trump is igniting trade wars on every imaginable (and unimaginable) front. What does Trump and America do if the Chinese simply respond:
"Ok, starting today we are no longer exporting *anything* to the USA. We’ll resume exports when Trump abandons his hostile and destructive tariffs against China and the rest of the world."
Xi's more likely to try to invade Taiwan now than pull that-in that scenario invading Taiwan would arguably be less damaging to China-they actually make more money trading with us than they would if they didn't (even with the tariffs in effect).
China just has to ban critical mineral exports not even all trade to kneecap us. And their dependence on US trade is much much smaller today than it was in 2018
Good point! Add to that critical parts used in American automotive and other manufacturing. The economic wheels here would quickly grind to a screeching halt!
So much of the RE magnet industry is in China now. Even military equipment uses Chinese manufactured magnets.
So much of the electronics industry, including major industrial applications and power generation, would be up shit creek with a sudden loss of access there.
One of the big things Biden's policies were working on was creating a non-Chinese source for both the raw materials and the magnets themselves...
Each and every day makes the argument for calling this the Trump Sales Tax easier and easier.
The best case scenario with this is that we see massive price increases. More likely we're going to see a lot of economic damage and possibly permanently so. Democrats need to consistently make it clear that this is on him and that he gets the blame.
The US’s demographic and market advantages and head start in a number of fields will take a long time to erode. But this will definitely leave us poorer four years from now than we would have been otherwise, and for no good reason. And we’re going to fall further behind the rest of the world in clean tech
Time wise a lot of things won't disappear overnight, but what can happen overnight is setting in motion the process that will end them two, five, ten years down the line.
If the EU decides to de-risk themselves of relying on the US for major economic sectors, once they complete that transition how can be win them back over? By that time they'll have spent however many billions of Euros on the move and will have a domestic source of whatever item in question. At the same time our industry will have a smaller market share, lowering our ability to improve and compete going forward. Even sectors like CPUs that we have dominated from their inception can be changed with enough money. RISC-V is out of Switzerland and ARM is in the UK. Spend €100b on that over a decade and the consumer ecosystem will look enormously different, with the US as the loser by default. €100b is a lot of money, but it's chump change across the EU and in the grand scheme of things would be a bargain to insulate their computing markets from external threats.
I am legitimately worried about long term, permanent damage that is effectively impossible to undo. I'm not convinced it's certain to happen but I think it's plausible enough that I am worried about it.
I definitely share your worries on a number of fronts. That Grassley today already came out as a cosponsor of a bill to claw back tariff authority and conservative legal types are seeking plaintiffs to challenge unilateral tariff authority under Major Questions is a sign that the admin has badly misread the field on this and may find a face-saving off-ramp before long. Even autocratic systems have to keep internal factions of the in-party happy.
PAUL KRUGMAN: "Where is this stuff coming from? One of these days we’ll probably get the full story, but it looks to me like something thrown together by a junior staffer with only a couple of hours’ notice. That USTR note, in particular, reads like something written by a student who hasn’t done the reading and is trying to bullshit their way through an exam."
(In other words, it’s as though Trump’s Tariff Plan came from asking ChatGPT how to impose tariffs the easy way.)
"The tariffs Trump announced were higher than almost anyone expected. This is a much bigger shock to the economy than the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930, especially when you bear in mind that international trade is about three times as important now as it was then."
"There’s no such think as a "trade deficit". It’s called "buying things". You do not have a trade deficit with your dentist just because he never buys anything from you."
Ironically, Trump will bring Social Democracy to America!🇺🇸💙 I am a Trump accelerationist since the election.
We had to go through Hoover to get FDR like the viral tweet. I don't care if this has communist connotations but "Things will get worse before they get better". Already we see RW populism on the run in UK, Canada and Australia.
Note: Written again for clarity and more thoughts.
Some form of universal healthcare and a public option, higher minimum wage, assault rifle ban, labor rights bill, voting rights bill, filibuster gutted, abortion codified, immigration reform, Puerto Rico and DC become states, paid family leave for all, solid climate action, continued state spending on infrastructure with subsidies for manufacturing and a rewritten tax code with higher taxes on the 10 percent. This happens through a True Trifecta. Basically what Mitch McConnell has always been warning Americans what we'll do. I'll be happy even if 75 percent of this checklist gets ticked.
Isn't that what supporters of a certain vermont senator were saying as a reason Trump wasn't so bad? All this backlash will result in amazing progressive legislative advancements we were told by the likes of Susan Sarandon.
When? I didn't support either Bernie 16 or 20. I will die on this hill but Comey doomed Hillary. I don't understand how people said that she was not progressive, she literally had one of the most liberal voting records on everything but Palestine. I think the progressive era you say they predicted didn't happen was because of Trump inheriting the Obama economy. ( Something similar happened in Hungary when Orban inherited the post 2008 bounce back) Also many Sanders-Trump voters were socially conservative and economically left, they just wanted someone to channel their populism and shake up the system so yeah Sanders would have won 2016.
FL-SD-15: In an extremely rare occurrence, a pair of siblings, LaVon Bracy Davis and her brother, Randolph Bracy III, are running against each other in the Democratic primary for the special election to succeed the late Florida State Senator Geraldine Thompson: https://www.instagram.com/p/DH-4yPGxdVh/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
This is happening all over the country as progressives get fed up with "leadership" from both sides of the aisle in congress outright ignoring their constituents.
I work for the KallasForCongress Campaign for ILs 8th Congressional District and he announced his run for the same reason as McMorrow, so working people can finally, actually have representation in Congress.
Reach out if you'd like to chat with me or the candidate about the reasons for running.
Just to be clear, this person (who appears to have no web presence whatsoever) is planning to run against Krishnamoorthi on a platform of kicking current Dem leadership out? Please confirm so I can go send some money to Krishnamoorthi some money...
A small web presence right now, but it's larger than when he decided to run 2 weeks ago and it'll be further along two weeks from now.
And we believe having more voices in the is better, especially progressive voices. Democratic party support is at an all time low; a large number of people are unhappy with leadership on both sides. It's time for a change and a look towards candidates with similar lived experiences to their constituents.
Out of anyone in IL, Raja has the best ability to challenge Dick Durbin even if he does not step down, so we believe IL-08 will be a wide-open race. Either way, we can't wait on the whims of an 80 year old to decide our future.
But I understand the skepticism and I'd be happy if you gave a bit more to Raja since a rising tide lifts all boats.
Wow, what a great answer, and now I feel guilty for my snarky response. Although I think we may sit on different sides of the Democratic party continuum, we need people like you fighting for us. I wish you, and your candidate all the very best.
Anyone else take note that in today's digest that two separate potential/actual democratic candidates for senate called out Schumer negatively?
I think his capitulation in the budget talks is reverberating into the electoral sphere more than most of us would have expected. People who want to run for office generally don't shit talk the person that indirectly influences the purse strings that determine how much outside funding they get, and who also has sway over many large donors. They must see some kind of benefit to themselves, even if only in a primary, to be anti-Schumer so openly.
Real talk: What is the worst that could happen with primary challenges from the “fight, not surrender” side of things everywhere (I don’t care what wing of the party you’re from)? Like seriously, Democrats are locked out of power at all levels, Republicans hold everything and they did so after they got rid of any member willing to work with the other side in primaries or forcing them to retire.
So they got their cake and ate it too. The worst that could happen is that Republicans hold complete control over America, which is exactly what we have right now. There really isn’t anything to lose. Primary them all (and I know this is completely out of character for me, always being against primaries). If a Democrat in elected office isn’t running every campaign to win every vote instead of just knowing they’re safe, they need to go!
How much stronger would our bench be if every Democrat in safe districts/states ran like Brian Stack in New Jersey at all levels of elected office every election? How many more allies would we have using their elected power to fight Trump’s tyranny? Enough is enough. The tea party of the left’s time has come and is desperately needed to right the ship. All imo of course.
Formerly known as Albany county democrat on the old site, but now that I live in Jersey and am enmeshed politically here gotta change my name to Essex County Democrat. Senator Stack is the absolute gold standard when it comes to voter turnout. Hoping he can get some more blood out of the stone for this year's governor election. Union City is lucky tohave him as Mayor.
Fair, but Hard to find anyone other than senator Kim or should be congresswoman altman that didn’t cave to Christie. That said my biggest fear is Sweeney winning the primary, stacks on sherills side this time around
I think being anti-Schumer actually helps more in a general election at the moment.
There really aren't great alternatives to Schumer within our caucus right now (I think the most likely Majority/Minority Leader if Schumer stepped down would be one of the Democrats who ran for President in 2020, and I'd like to avoid a Hickenlooper or Klobuchar as our floor leader in the Senate.).
For years I’ve been saying Sheldon Whitehouse should have been Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, replacing Durbin. Now after losing our majority, ranking Democrat.
It's official, Abigail Spanberger is THE Democratic nominee for Governor of Virginia. The deadline was today, nobody filed to run against her on our side, so she wins automatically. Her name will NOT be on the Democratic primary ballot here in the Old Dominion! #Spanberger2025
Chase thinks she submitted enough signatures to qualify; it remains to be seen if enough are valid. Another potential GOP primary challenger, Dave LaRock, fell short.
Nobody other than Spanberger filed on the Democratic side; Rep. Bobby Scott had been talked about but he never really seemed to do anything to actually set up a campaign. Which means that whatever happens VA is probably guaranteed its first woman governor.
Hopefully, Chase makes it onto the ballot. Would be great if the GOP has an ugly, nasty primary brawl , while our candidate Spanberger can start her general election campaign now: Fundraising and campaigning around the state and organizing resources and volenteers for November.
Also, it would be interesting which of those 2 horrible women, Chase or Earle-Sears, Trump endorses.
How do our LG and AG primaries look? On wiki it looks like our primary for LG is busy while there's only two democrats running for AG. Are there any interesting delegate primaries?
New York City Mayor Eric Adams will run for reelection as an independent, opting out of the Democratic primary just one day after a federal judge dismissed corruption charges against him.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/eric-adams-announces-will-run-independent-new-york-mayoral-race-rcna199448?link_source=ta_bluesky_link&taid=67ee750cb4a2540001c9474d&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=bluesky
That's still a boneheaded move.
If Adams actually wants to win, he'd be better off outright switching to the Republicans (I doubt he'd get a Wilson Pakula otherwise-assuming we haven't gotten rid of those yet), and basically modeling his campaign after Rudy Guiliani's 1993 campaign.
With New York's cross endorsement rules, couldn't the Republicans nominate him anyway? Or does that not work for municipal elections?
That would be a Wilson Pakula, and I wasn't sure if they still existed. Besides, it's likely that an actual Republican will run (who, I have no clue).
Ah thanks. I didn't recognize that term.
It's going to be Sliwa again, all the county orgs have endorsed him I think
Sliwa has said he's running and the NYC Republicans are likely to let him
Also, this Walden guy is in the mix.
Curious what the WFP does/is doing? A Cuomo-Adams-Silwa general would make me want to vomit.
I'm not convinced Cuomo will win the primary. His lead appears to be mostly name recognition. Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer both lost in 2013 despite having far more name recognition in the Mayoral and Comptroller's races.
They have two months and three weeks to find an alternative to rally around.
I'll take it. This makes it easier for a not-Cuomo candidate to get enough of the spotlight in the dem primary to get the win.
It makes sense for him to do for his own self interest, as he has a 0% chance of winning the dem primary and probably not any better of winning the republican primary. He won't win the general election as an independent, but it does allow him to stay a candidate for longer and pull off more grift.
I guess the court decided that letting Trump's goons keep possible charges in play the moment he's out of office is the bigger of two evils since they cannot force the DOJ to reopen the case.
Umm...correct my legal knowledge, but I thought a judge could compel prosecutors to continue a prosecution of a defendant against their wishes.
Maybe a federal judge, but then there would be a concern they would just deliberately sabotage the case.
Got to say I'd prefer Becerra over Harris for the Governor's race in California-both served well in the Biden Administration, but Becerra doesn't have a loss in a Presidential race weighing him down.
As for Katie Porter...if I were her, I would look into running against Karen Bass instead.
Is she an LA resident?
Not at present, but depending on what the jurisdiction requirements are, she still has time to move into the LA City limits.
Katie Porter is from OC, not L.A. These are two very different places, despite Orange County's misnamed baseball team. The idea of her moving to Los Angeles to run for mayor is not a good one. First of all, who would want that job at this point? We have a lot of serious issues here without easy solutions. Karen Bass is not perfect, but she is doing the best she can under difficult circumstances. In terms of elections, there will be two candidates in the runoff. Most likely that will be Mayor Bass and a challenger running to her right. Maybe it will be a rerun with Rick Caruso, a rich developer of shopping centers, who Bass defeated last time with a margin of about ten points. There is no upside for Katie to move and then come in third place in the primary. If she were to leave the gubernatorial race the best backup would probably be to run for Insurance Commissioner. Either that or stay as a law professor.
The news from my region of L.A. is interesting, with a potentially strong opponent for Rep. Brad Sherman. While I no longer live in that district since I moved out of Sherman Oaks (which was not named after his family, lol), I try to keep track of politics in that area. While Brad is potentially vulnerable in a primary the most likely result is the runoff featuring Sherman and one of our local GOP perennial candidates (Lucie Volotsky? Susan Shelley? What fun!). I am skeptical that this former staffer has much of a chance, but time will tell. Now I live in CA-29, where our new Representative, Luz Rivas, is in her first of many terms in the House. (She replaced Tony Cardenas, who retired.)
Judging by how Caruso did against Bass, I suspect if the 2026 Mayoral election was Bass, Porter, Caruso, it would be Caruso finishing in third-he doesn't really have a constituency in Los Angeles, whereas Porter could at least get local progressives behind her.
Los Angeles is not uniformly progressive or liberal. Caruso has a constituency; he got 45% of the vote last time. L.A. County recently elected a GOP District Attorney. Not all the right-wingers have moved to Idaho...
I agree again. It might be Bass against Caruso. If so, Caruso may well win. Caruso used to be a moderate Republican, but now he's a pro-business Democrat. It wouldn't be the end of the world if he won.
I agree with everything here. There is no real possibility Porter would run for LA mayor. Insurance commissioner or one of the other statewide offices would be more likely if her run for governor turns sour, but I don't foresee that happening.
No. She's identified with southern Orange County. She would be a weaker LA mayor candidate than a gubernatorial candidate. She has never involved herself in LA issues, if she even cares about them. I think she'll be the front runner for governor.
I like Becerra as well, but I don't think Harris' loss will affect her negatively in California. It's not hard to imagine a lot of voters wanting to see her as governor of the largest state standing up to the guy who defeated her and presenting a vision of a world we could have had (and can still have), which is exactly what the Dems need to be doing.
I honestly think Harris's political future is tied to a Democrat winning the White House again-she'd be an obvious choice for Attorney General or Secretary of Homeland Security for many potential candidates.
Why would anyone want to be a cabinet member after already having been vice president? It's such a stark downgrade in prestige. I cannot see her doing that.
At least governor comes with being the biggest fish in the pond and is still an executive role.
Depending on what she's nominated for it's a minimal downgrade (if even that-both Trump Presidencies have been a huge step backwards in the relevancy of the Vice Presidency so far)-something like Attorney General or Secretary of State would be suitably high-profile, plus it comes with the benefit of not having to face voters.
I'm not convinced. Political actors do genuinely care about prestige. There's a reason only one president has gone to congress after their presidency (John Quincy Adams). People do not want to deal with the downgrade if they can afford not to, and someone that is able to be VP can absolutely afford to stay away.
If Harris wants to boost her historical legacy, it's California or bust. If she doesn't want to, then she will retire and maybe write a book or two to get some extra money. I cannot imagine her taking a cabinet position that is inherently lesser in every way than her prior job.
If she wants to run for President again, doesn't she have to do something to improve the public's view of her? Governor of California is one possibility, but a very high-level Cabinet position (AG or maybe State) is also possible.
In many ways AG is a more powerful role than VP.
More powerful? Debatable. AG can be fired by president; VP cannot.
More prestigious? Absolutely not. Not in the same ballpark. VP is far more prestigious than AG.
To the median person? Sure, but historically VPs always complain about feeling like showpiece errandboys and not having actual important things to do.
I don't know. Mitt Romney became a Senator. He wasn't Vice-President, but he was a Presidential nominee.
I would argue there is a clear distinction between failed presidential candidate and failed presidential candidate who is a former VP.
Romney still stuck to the general concept of not taking a major prestige downgrade from his prior job. He was governor and then senator.
I get your point, but I'd argue that on the metric of "prestige" alone, it's a bigger deal to have been a Presidential nominee than to be Vice-President. The job is nearly invisible to most Americans for four years....at least until the Vice-President inevitably runs for President.
And of course Walter Mondale had been Vice President and ran for Senate in 2002, but obviously that was an extreme circumstance.
And Jerry Brown went from governor of California to mayor of Oakland.
I could see Attorney General. Not a chance for Homeland Security, in my opinion.
Encouraging to see quality candidates like Wahls and Turek seriously considering taking on Ernst.
I think we're going to see a lot of quality candidates decide to take the plunge after Tuesday's results...
And to the surprise of nobody paying attention, Chris Pappas is running for the US Senate: https://www.wmur.com/article/chris-pappas-announces-run-for-us-senate-04032025/64370925
I'd rather he and Goodlander run for reelection.
Regardless of how the house falls, unless there's a GOP Tsunami, it will be closely divided, so throwing away swing districts like this is not a good thing.
I'd rather Rebecca Kwoka or Karen Liot Hill run instead.
I really don’t think we have to worry much about holding seats that Harris won in the midterm, we didn’t lose any seats we held in Clinton districts in 2018, and in a much worse environment in 2022 we didn’t lose many seats we held that Biden won. Obviously we still need to work to hold those seats, but we shouldn’t avoid running candidates just because they’re slightly stronger options to hold a district we’d likely win regardless.
There's a possibility that they might get Gerrymandered anyway, now that Sununu's out, though I think NH's two year term for Governor makes that somewhat less likely.
Last time I checked Ayotte was opposed to mid-decade redistricting, so the earliest this could happen would be after the 2030 census (assuming the GOP Trifecta there remains intact).
I read some suggestion that she might flip-flop on that, though I don't remember where now.
I think it's more likely she loses a primary in 2028 than she flip-flops on this particular subject.
That might have been me? I mentioned over the weekend thread that I was polled recently and the poll spent an inordinate amount of time on the prospect of a mid-decade redistricting. Enough so that I had to imagine that the chance of it isn't zero. Ayotte took it off the table in November and to my knowledge has said nothing since.
Only one of the two of them can be gerrymandered out. Either NH-01 or NH-02 would be made redder, and the other seat would get proportionally bluer. Silver lining of the state only having two seats: votes taken from A have to go to B.
Historically republicans have wanted Pappas' seat to be red, and Goodlander's seat to be blue.
My point is that if that happens the concern about open seats would diminish.
Though I am skeptical of the ability of the Republicans to create a wave safe Red seat in NH. There just aren't enough blood red communities there.
Ah, sorry I read your first sentence wrong in the prior comment. That makes more sense! My bad.
I'm not sure that they could make a wave-proof seat, but I don't think it's impossible either. A lot of the NH/MA border is full of towns that vote ~60-30 for republicans. Not Manchester or Nashua sized but decently populated. Most of these are currently in NH-02 and could be squeezed into NH-01 at the expense of some blue areas.
Either way they could make it a major headache for us overall, even if we could win it in a wave.
I was able to make a 58% R composite district pretty easily in Dave's Redistricting, without splitting any cities or towns. That's somewhat bluer than it sounds, since it includes Sununu's 65-33 win in the average. I would guess it roughly corresponds to Trump in the 54% range.
Somebody has to hold that Senate seat for us, and Pappas is one of the strongest candidates we have. The two people you mention who no one outside of NH has ever heard of can run for Pappas' seat.
Also we really do want a strong candidate here. Sununu's denials aside I am not convinced he is absolutely not running. If we run a weaker candidate, and yes a state senator and state executive council is a much weaker candidate than a US rep, Sununu is a lot more likely to run. Even in wave years exceptions happen, especially with insanely popular candidates like Sununu. We shouldn't take this seat for granted.
Pappas is about what we could hope for out of NH. Much more moderate than I'd like but I suspect he'd be less likely to make terrible votes than Shaheen or Hassan have been. He'd easily be our strongest candidate and would be a generational change.
There are 4 Executive Council districts, right? That would make each councillor on average half as well known as one of the two U.S. Representatives, but that won't always be the case.
Five districts. They each represent a good chunk of people, but I'd argue voters take much less notice of them than a simple proportionality argument would suggest.
They still are a decent launching pad for higher office. Pappas was on the executive council before he ran for the house. Sununu was there before he ran for governor. Collin van Ostern was before his 2016 run for governor. Probably some other recent-ish examples that I am forgetting. Even if voters don't know them they will have needed better campaign skills, fundraising abilities, and will have more connections than someone in lower office. Decent as they are as launching pads, they're a good bit worse than being a member of congress.
Also right now there's literally only one democrat on the executive council due to it being gerrymandered. Democrats controlled the council 3-2 for part of Sununu's time as governor and he hated them. If I remember right it was due to the council blocking some of his judicial nominations over abortion rights. Republicans didn't want a repeat of that.
Lmao, we are going to be real competitive in Texas and Ohio and you are sweating about New Hampshire. Trump's approval just before Liberation Day was horrible enough.
His campaign texted me. Somehow, every politician seems to text me, even though my response is always to reply "stop."
CA-32: Real ones remember Howbrad Shberman
That 2012 race was the "Congressman, Schmongressman" race with rhyming incumbents in a post-redistricting contest. I wrote a story about it at the time on the Daily Kos. It was also the only time that my picture ever got on a campaign mailer. (I was for Brad. That was my last election before moving to North Hollywood.)
TRUMP’s INSANE TARIFF MATH, REVEALED
James Surowiecki: "Just figured out where [Trump’s] fake tariff rates come from. They didn't actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff barriers, as they say they did. Instead, for every country, they just took our trade deficit with that country and divided it by the country's exports to us.
"So we have a $17.9 billion trade deficit with Indonesia. Its exports to us are $28 billion. $17.9/$28 = 64%, which Trump claims is the tariff rate Indonesia charges us. What extraordinary nonsense this is.
https://nitter.poast.org/JamesSurowiecki/status/1907559189234196942#m
"It's important to understand that the tariff rates that foreign countries are supposedly charging us are just made-up numbers. South Korea, with which we have a trade agreement, is not charging a 50% tariff on U.S. exports. Nor is the EU charging a 39% tariff."
NORWEGIANS SEE CLEARLY...
Today, the Norwegian news site NRK.no has a great article by the journalist Vilde Skorpen Wikan where economics professors dissect the real math behind Trump’s tariffs. Utterly divorced from reality and absolutely insane!
Here is a rough English version via Google Translate.
https://www-nrk-no.translate.goog/urix/trump-hevdet-tollen-var-et-motsvar_-_-ingen-voksne-mennesker-mener-dette-henger-pa-greip-1.17368533?_x_tr_sl=no&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdjl3k1we8vo
If you needed more proof that our President is planning to turn our country into fifty Russian Oblasts...Russia is not on the tariff list.
Nor Cuba, Belarus or North Korea. Sigh!
According to his logic, they don't have a trade surplus or a deficit with us because there is no trade so no tariff.
Like, to me the problem with the tariffs isn't that they exist-countries have been doing that forever and they're going to keep doing that long after we're gone-it's that Trump is using them as extortion to get his way, rather than an actual economic policy.
I think part of it is the idea that the revenue will to some extent replace revenue lost by the tax cuts. And the general theory that it will help spur domestic manufacturing.
Except that's not how Trump's been applying these tariffs at all. He's literally using them to extort other countries to do his bidding-not any sort of coherent economic policy.
Not this latest one.
We're never going to revert to making apparel, shoes, auto/plane parts etc. primarily in the U.S. This idea that we can tariff our way back to a 19th century economy is not only dumb, but not a destination we should want to be getting to anyway.
I don't necessarily agree that we wouldn't want as much manufacturing as we can get but I agree there's no way to tariff yourself back to 1955 or 1895. Even if this gambit was to work in restoring wide swaths of domestic manufacturing, the plants would be mostly automated. The manufacturers would settle for nothing less given the emaciated short-term and long-term potential for available workers in a country with plummeting birth rates and immigration numbers.
"with plummeting birth rates and immigration numbers"
Ahh . . .therein lies the rub. The MAGA agenda is so dumb because it basically guarantees lower population growth and a more rapidly aging society. Add in tariffs/gutting the free trade system, and if you're a multinational firm, what are you going to do . . .invest hundreds of millions/billions into intensive, long-term higher capital costs going all-in on the richer (compared to the rest of the world) 300 million American consumers, with the assumptions the tariffs will last past 2030/won't be rescinded due to political forces (oh, and the growth of that consumer base is dropping)?
Or invest somewhere else, retain lower capital costs, focus on the billions of other consumers worldwide, and know that the richer Americans will likely just eat those higher costs anyway because they have no alternative?
The Administration is also laser-focused on AI as a replacement tool for human workers . . of course any new factories would be 90% automated. Literally the most anti-worker government in over 100 years.
The 1890s were also an awful decade for the average American. The "Gay '90s" expression was either sarcasm or immense nostalgia bias.
I always thought the 1890s were so-called because of the wealth of the Robber Barons that created a boom economy for the wealthy.
Child labor wages just have to become competitive with industrial robots.
/s
Right. I’m fairly pro free trade but tariffs and protectionist policy more generally have their place as both tactical and strategic tools.
This is neither, and the rates being developed the way as described is Argentina levels of economically illiterate. If Wall Street hasn’t fully revolted against this admin it will soon
The actual tariff rates our allies charge us is somewhere between 1-7 percent for most countries.
My problem is that it's bad for the American people and sprung on countries without any real negotiations, and shame on Sean Fain for supporting it!
That's incredibly short sighted of him to support it.
Tariffs are going to hurt US manufacturing too. Auto plants rely on a non-zero amount of imported goods, or the US manufacturer of those sub-components relies on imports. Countries are going to apply tariffs to US goods, tanking our export markets.
Even if there's literally no direct impact on them through some convergence of factors, the indirect impact will hit them all the same: prices are going to go up on most goods, and American consumers are going to have less money to spread around. Car sales are going to go down, and with it so will UAW jobs.
The fuck is he thinking.
This is so slapdash it may actually be challengable in court
I would think only a foreign government would have standing though?
They’re not the ones paying it?
No.
Why not? This is what “arbitrary and capricious” was designed for and tax policy - which this is - belongs to Congress. I’m deeply skeptical the IEEPA is constitutional or that this follows it
Congress authorized what Trump is doing. They foolishly made a declaration of a national emergency too open ended. It may be bad policy, but it's not unconstitutional. Any curtailment will have to come through new legislation.
If we ever get a trifecta again banning declarations of national emergency and banning the declaration of martial law need to be atop the list of priorities (right up there with removing the ability for the President/Governor's to pardon/commute sentences-arguably that power should either be in the hands of non-elected officials, or should not exist at all).
Agreed. I don’t care if it ends up hurting us, we need to seriously reign in presidential power next time we’re in control.
You'd need a constitutional amendment to get rid of the pardon power.
It absolutely should happen, but I have no optimism that it will. Humans and legislatures do not want to dwell on past issues if they can pretend that it will not happen again.
For pardons I like the idea of having an oversight board or similar that has to approve pardons. With an explicit requirement that they block pardons that have any conflict of interest.
Albeit a right-leaning source but a credible argument that disagrees with you:
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-case-against-ieepa-tariffs
More cabined argument about tariffs and the APA found here. I think Secrion 301 tariffs would be on strong legal footing but of course you can’t shock and awe trade partners to feed your ego with those.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/are-president-trumps-trade-actions-exempt-administrative-procedure-act
I know Congress did, but under what act was it? Was it an old law that seldom saw use until now?
Old laws are still in force if not repealed or overruled by the courts.
Trump is invoking his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (IEEPA) to address the national emergency posed by the large and persistent trade deficit that is driven by the absence of reciprocity in our trade relationships and other harmful policies like currency manipulation.
Any Republican in Congress who does not oppose this absurd, gratuitious, self-inflicted wound to the American economy needs to be tied to it in the 2026 elections.
The Economist ran the headline "Ruination Day" (i.e. instead of Liberation Day, as Trump claimed), and now I have the Gillian Welch song stuck in my head...
It gets even worse. If you were to ask almost any AI chatbot the easiest way to implement tariffs, this is what it comes up with. It starts with "a straightforward (if nieve) method..." and spells out basically what was done. Mind boggling.
https://x.com/krishnanrohit/status/1907587352157106292
It spells that word "nieve"?
lol, no no that was user error on my part
THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: Trump is igniting trade wars on every imaginable (and unimaginable) front. What does Trump and America do if the Chinese simply respond:
"Ok, starting today we are no longer exporting *anything* to the USA. We’ll resume exports when Trump abandons his hostile and destructive tariffs against China and the rest of the world."
Thoughts?
Xi's more likely to try to invade Taiwan now than pull that-in that scenario invading Taiwan would arguably be less damaging to China-they actually make more money trading with us than they would if they didn't (even with the tariffs in effect).
China just has to ban critical mineral exports not even all trade to kneecap us. And their dependence on US trade is much much smaller today than it was in 2018
Good point! Add to that critical parts used in American automotive and other manufacturing. The economic wheels here would quickly grind to a screeching halt!
So much of the RE magnet industry is in China now. Even military equipment uses Chinese manufactured magnets.
So much of the electronics industry, including major industrial applications and power generation, would be up shit creek with a sudden loss of access there.
One of the big things Biden's policies were working on was creating a non-Chinese source for both the raw materials and the magnets themselves...
Yes, but that’s woke communism, not manly tariffs
Excellent live interview right now, Simon Rosenberg in conversation with Robert Shapiro. Topic: Trump’s tariffs.
https://open.substack.com/live-stream/19715
Each and every day makes the argument for calling this the Trump Sales Tax easier and easier.
The best case scenario with this is that we see massive price increases. More likely we're going to see a lot of economic damage and possibly permanently so. Democrats need to consistently make it clear that this is on him and that he gets the blame.
And with everyone’s 401k taking a nosedive: a huge tax on your retirement funds!
The US’s demographic and market advantages and head start in a number of fields will take a long time to erode. But this will definitely leave us poorer four years from now than we would have been otherwise, and for no good reason. And we’re going to fall further behind the rest of the world in clean tech
Time wise a lot of things won't disappear overnight, but what can happen overnight is setting in motion the process that will end them two, five, ten years down the line.
If the EU decides to de-risk themselves of relying on the US for major economic sectors, once they complete that transition how can be win them back over? By that time they'll have spent however many billions of Euros on the move and will have a domestic source of whatever item in question. At the same time our industry will have a smaller market share, lowering our ability to improve and compete going forward. Even sectors like CPUs that we have dominated from their inception can be changed with enough money. RISC-V is out of Switzerland and ARM is in the UK. Spend €100b on that over a decade and the consumer ecosystem will look enormously different, with the US as the loser by default. €100b is a lot of money, but it's chump change across the EU and in the grand scheme of things would be a bargain to insulate their computing markets from external threats.
I am legitimately worried about long term, permanent damage that is effectively impossible to undo. I'm not convinced it's certain to happen but I think it's plausible enough that I am worried about it.
I definitely share your worries on a number of fronts. That Grassley today already came out as a cosponsor of a bill to claw back tariff authority and conservative legal types are seeking plaintiffs to challenge unilateral tariff authority under Major Questions is a sign that the admin has badly misread the field on this and may find a face-saving off-ramp before long. Even autocratic systems have to keep internal factions of the in-party happy.
But we’ll see.
Those are heartening to hear. I guess there is one benefit to having a 91 year old Grassley around: he isn't worried about primaries.
PAUL KRUGMAN: "Where is this stuff coming from? One of these days we’ll probably get the full story, but it looks to me like something thrown together by a junior staffer with only a couple of hours’ notice. That USTR note, in particular, reads like something written by a student who hasn’t done the reading and is trying to bullshit their way through an exam."
(In other words, it’s as though Trump’s Tariff Plan came from asking ChatGPT how to impose tariffs the easy way.)
"The tariffs Trump announced were higher than almost anyone expected. This is a much bigger shock to the economy than the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930, especially when you bear in mind that international trade is about three times as important now as it was then."
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/will-careless-stupidity-kill-the
My favorite notes from this pandemonium:
-10% tariff on Heard Island in Antarctica, despite only penguins living there
-Tariffs on Syria and Iran despite there being a complete ban on trade with those countries
-A tariff on the British Indian Ocean Territory, despite the only inhabitants being US soldiers on a US base
-A 10% tariff on Australia, but 29% on various remote islands owned by Australia that do no business with the US
-Accidental recognition of Taiwan as a separate sovereign country
"There’s no such think as a "trade deficit". It’s called "buying things". You do not have a trade deficit with your dentist just because he never buys anything from you."
– Daniel A. Horwitz
Ironically, Trump will bring Social Democracy to America!🇺🇸💙 I am a Trump accelerationist since the election.
We had to go through Hoover to get FDR like the viral tweet. I don't care if this has communist connotations but "Things will get worse before they get better". Already we see RW populism on the run in UK, Canada and Australia.
Note: Written again for clarity and more thoughts.
Explain how it will bring social democracy. As a socialist, I'm not seeing that as likely.
Probably a version of, after Hitler, us.
Some form of universal healthcare and a public option, higher minimum wage, assault rifle ban, labor rights bill, voting rights bill, filibuster gutted, abortion codified, immigration reform, Puerto Rico and DC become states, paid family leave for all, solid climate action, continued state spending on infrastructure with subsidies for manufacturing and a rewritten tax code with higher taxes on the 10 percent. This happens through a True Trifecta. Basically what Mitch McConnell has always been warning Americans what we'll do. I'll be happy even if 75 percent of this checklist gets ticked.
In other words, there will be pie in the sky. You didn't explain how.
Isn't that what supporters of a certain vermont senator were saying as a reason Trump wasn't so bad? All this backlash will result in amazing progressive legislative advancements we were told by the likes of Susan Sarandon.
When? I didn't support either Bernie 16 or 20. I will die on this hill but Comey doomed Hillary. I don't understand how people said that she was not progressive, she literally had one of the most liberal voting records on everything but Palestine. I think the progressive era you say they predicted didn't happen was because of Trump inheriting the Obama economy. ( Something similar happened in Hungary when Orban inherited the post 2008 bounce back) Also many Sanders-Trump voters were socially conservative and economically left, they just wanted someone to channel their populism and shake up the system so yeah Sanders would have won 2016.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/04/trump-tariffs-political-capital/682274/
https://apnews.com/article/minot-north-dakota-aa59ccb5b37fbc55e1e974dcf8dbbc6c
The Mayor of Minot, North Dakota, Tom Ross resigned after getting caught sending a lewd video to the City Attorney.
In case anyone's wondering what Party Ross belongs too, Minot's mayoral office is non-partisian.
IIRC, all of North Dakota's elections below the state legislative level (county, municipal, etc.) are officially nonpartisan.
FL-SD-15: In an extremely rare occurrence, a pair of siblings, LaVon Bracy Davis and her brother, Randolph Bracy III, are running against each other in the Democratic primary for the special election to succeed the late Florida State Senator Geraldine Thompson: https://www.instagram.com/p/DH-4yPGxdVh/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
SD-15 is an Orlando-area state senate district.
This is happening all over the country as progressives get fed up with "leadership" from both sides of the aisle in congress outright ignoring their constituents.
I work for the KallasForCongress Campaign for ILs 8th Congressional District and he announced his run for the same reason as McMorrow, so working people can finally, actually have representation in Congress.
Reach out if you'd like to chat with me or the candidate about the reasons for running.
Tory - Press Volunteer
Just to be clear, this person (who appears to have no web presence whatsoever) is planning to run against Krishnamoorthi on a platform of kicking current Dem leadership out? Please confirm so I can go send some money to Krishnamoorthi some money...
Steve, happy to answer!
A small web presence right now, but it's larger than when he decided to run 2 weeks ago and it'll be further along two weeks from now.
And we believe having more voices in the is better, especially progressive voices. Democratic party support is at an all time low; a large number of people are unhappy with leadership on both sides. It's time for a change and a look towards candidates with similar lived experiences to their constituents.
Out of anyone in IL, Raja has the best ability to challenge Dick Durbin even if he does not step down, so we believe IL-08 will be a wide-open race. Either way, we can't wait on the whims of an 80 year old to decide our future.
But I understand the skepticism and I'd be happy if you gave a bit more to Raja since a rising tide lifts all boats.
Wow, what a great answer, and now I feel guilty for my snarky response. Although I think we may sit on different sides of the Democratic party continuum, we need people like you fighting for us. I wish you, and your candidate all the very best.
That's a gracious answer. I like Raja, but it makes sense to get in a race that might open up.
Anyone else take note that in today's digest that two separate potential/actual democratic candidates for senate called out Schumer negatively?
I think his capitulation in the budget talks is reverberating into the electoral sphere more than most of us would have expected. People who want to run for office generally don't shit talk the person that indirectly influences the purse strings that determine how much outside funding they get, and who also has sway over many large donors. They must see some kind of benefit to themselves, even if only in a primary, to be anti-Schumer so openly.
Real talk: What is the worst that could happen with primary challenges from the “fight, not surrender” side of things everywhere (I don’t care what wing of the party you’re from)? Like seriously, Democrats are locked out of power at all levels, Republicans hold everything and they did so after they got rid of any member willing to work with the other side in primaries or forcing them to retire.
So they got their cake and ate it too. The worst that could happen is that Republicans hold complete control over America, which is exactly what we have right now. There really isn’t anything to lose. Primary them all (and I know this is completely out of character for me, always being against primaries). If a Democrat in elected office isn’t running every campaign to win every vote instead of just knowing they’re safe, they need to go!
How much stronger would our bench be if every Democrat in safe districts/states ran like Brian Stack in New Jersey at all levels of elected office every election? How many more allies would we have using their elected power to fight Trump’s tyranny? Enough is enough. The tea party of the left’s time has come and is desperately needed to right the ship. All imo of course.
Formerly known as Albany county democrat on the old site, but now that I live in Jersey and am enmeshed politically here gotta change my name to Essex County Democrat. Senator Stack is the absolute gold standard when it comes to voter turnout. Hoping he can get some more blood out of the stone for this year's governor election. Union City is lucky tohave him as Mayor.
He may be good at turning out voters, but not too long ago he was one of the biggest Christiecrats in New Jersey.
That would explain why his name is familiar. I really don't remember specifics about him.
Fair, but Hard to find anyone other than senator Kim or should be congresswoman altman that didn’t cave to Christie. That said my biggest fear is Sweeney winning the primary, stacks on sherills side this time around
My biggest fear is Gottheimer winning it. But I’m with Stack on this one.
I think being anti-Schumer actually helps more in a general election at the moment.
There really aren't great alternatives to Schumer within our caucus right now (I think the most likely Majority/Minority Leader if Schumer stepped down would be one of the Democrats who ran for President in 2020, and I'd like to avoid a Hickenlooper or Klobuchar as our floor leader in the Senate.).
Not disagreeing with you but he has a lower approval than Andrew Tate at this point. Not joking.
That’s not surprising. I’m pretty sure Andrew Tate has close to 100% favorable ratings among Republicans.
Both of them were in – 30 to 40 range. The breakup would obviously be much higher among Republicans.
I think there are plenty of better alternatives. Anyone with a backbone. Sheldon Whitehouse, anyone?
For years I’ve been saying Sheldon Whitehouse should have been Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, replacing Durbin. Now after losing our majority, ranking Democrat.
He would be good. Chris Murphy too.
And you can contribute without going through actblue https://secure.numero.ai/contribute/McMorrow-for-Michigan
At The Contrarian, Jennifer Rubin is interviewing Garry Kasparov!
https://open.substack.com/live-stream/19849
It's official, Abigail Spanberger is THE Democratic nominee for Governor of Virginia. The deadline was today, nobody filed to run against her on our side, so she wins automatically. Her name will NOT be on the Democratic primary ballot here in the Old Dominion! #Spanberger2025
Did Amanda Chase and Merle Rutledge get enough signatures to make the Republican primary?
Chase thinks she submitted enough signatures to qualify; it remains to be seen if enough are valid. Another potential GOP primary challenger, Dave LaRock, fell short.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/04/03/virginia-governor-chase-earle-sears/
Nobody other than Spanberger filed on the Democratic side; Rep. Bobby Scott had been talked about but he never really seemed to do anything to actually set up a campaign. Which means that whatever happens VA is probably guaranteed its first woman governor.
Hopefully, Chase makes it onto the ballot. Would be great if the GOP has an ugly, nasty primary brawl , while our candidate Spanberger can start her general election campaign now: Fundraising and campaigning around the state and organizing resources and volenteers for November.
Also, it would be interesting which of those 2 horrible women, Chase or Earle-Sears, Trump endorses.
How do our LG and AG primaries look? On wiki it looks like our primary for LG is busy while there's only two democrats running for AG. Are there any interesting delegate primaries?
David and Jeff, y'all missed this!
"We could replace a billionaire with a mechanic,"
https://x.com/OsbornForNE/status/1907780822624616947
https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2025/04/03/nebraskas-dan-osborn-exploring-midterm-bid-against-u-s-sen-pete-ricketts/
https://www.commondreams.org/news/dan-osborn-senate-run-ricketts
I love left wing populists especially someone as unpolished and genuine as this guy.
I guess it got lost in the shuffle, but I didn’t realize he got 47%. Hope he does take a shot at it next year.