Looking ahead to the 2026 Senate, I would love for us to secure some major candidates, even in some red states. At this point we have to try. Assuming we can hold CO, GA, NH, PA and VA, I would like the following candidates for swing to medium red states:
Alaska: Mary Peltola (whether or not she holds her House seat)
Iowa: Rob Sand or Cindy Axne
Kansas: Laura Kelly
Maine: Jared Golden or Troy Jackson
Montana: Zeno Baucus or Whitney Williams
North Carolina: Roy Cooper, Don Davis, Wiley Nickel, or Jeff Jackson.
Ohio: Tim Ryan or Greg Landsman
Texas: Lizzie Fletcher, Joaquin or Julian Castro, or a state legislator from the Rio Grande area who can help try to curb the trend there.
Blood-red state unlikely to happen wishlist:
Kentucky: Jacqueline Coleman (Andy Beshear said he won't run)
Louisiana: John Bel Edwards
Mississippi: Jim Hood or Brandon Presley
Nebraska: Dan Osborn (he held Fischer to a close race than any D ever could, and is probably our only option here)
South Carolina: Thomas McElveen
South Dakota: Stephanie Herseth Sandlin
West Virginia: Richard Ojeda
We might as well run Osborn-type independents in AL, AR, ID, OK, TN, and WY since no one obvious come to mind for those.
5-10% chance that he runs, he'd have to be convinced that (i) he almost certainly WOULD win; and (ii) almost certainly anyone else would lose.
Hard to square that circle. He's an excellent retail politician, but very, very cautious. I suspect his strong preference is to retire and go back home. My impression is that even living in Raleigh represented a tough ask for him, he'd hate DC.
Nickel is the one left without anything to run for in 2024, he likely got "soft" assurances that the establishment would let him have its 2026 Senate lane. I'm not sure anyone else (outside the usual grifter and rando lanes) really would want it. Jackson and Hunt just got elected, and will bide their time. The rest of the state bench is anonymous at best.
NC has always had lots of transplants, I don't expect that will be an issue. Nickel just strikes me as "generic, urban NC Democrat" (not meant pejoratively, that's pretty much what I am). There's nothing sketchy about him, but nothing really charismatic or memorable either.
It's a decent, safe choice for losing a federal race without burning your bench. You can go back to "Helms v. Hunt" to see how state-level popularity usually doesn't translate federally.
Edwards won as a charismatic outsider, and of course he turned out to be a shyster and a...piece of excrement. Kay Hagan kind of came out of nowhere, and won by a perfect storm of circumstance (political tailwinds), excellent campaigning, and a bad/cocky opponent.
Nickel could win like Hagan did, it's just not particularly likely.
I completely disagree; the 2026 election for all competitive Senate and House seats will depend on how bad Trump performs in the first 2 years of the second term
Any notable state legislators in Montana we can recruit for a statewide election? I know the state level Montana Democratic Party has been significantly weakened over the past decades, but the recent redistricting laws led them to gain more seats this year. So hopefully they should have some credible candidates soon if not already for statewide races.
I'd rather not run Landsman for a longshot Senate race as it could put his House seat at risk. If Peltola wins I might be reluctant to run her too. Davis and Golden are different because their potential Senate races would start out as much more winnable, but I'd prefer someone with less to lose than Davis if they would be about equally strong. I think Golden would clearly be the strongest possible candidate for Maine, so that's a tough one.
It is quite unfortunate the fair redistricting ballot measure failed in OH, if they redrew OH-01 to become a Cincinnati-only seat it would be borderline safe-D and free up Landsman to run statewide.
Peltola should still run, the replacement value of a US Senate seat is too high (we could easily take another Biden20/Harris24 house seat in CA or the northeast to make up for losing AK)
We just won a bunch of statewide races in NC, plenty of options there.
Golden used to work for Collins, so just convincing him to run would be difficult, unless she retires of course.
I always thought Peltola's plan was to stay in the House for a few terms until Alaska looked pinkish enough to go for a Senate run. Which is why I really hope she prevails; I fear that 26 may be too early for the jump.
Please, no, not Jared Golden! That proposal is misreading Maine’s political map. While Golden is an excellent fit for ME-02 and probably the best Democrats can achieve in this Red district, he is far too conservative for Maine as a whole. Besides, already in the House, Jared Golden has proved himself to be a Manchin-like figure, voting against certain key Democratic policy positions.
Maine has an excellent Democratic-caucusing senator in Angus King – and he is much more moderate. That is the sort of candidate we should be looking for to challenge Susan Collins.
Rob Sand would be an excellent get. Iowa may be too far gone, but the state could be one of the most adversely affected by Trump's tariffs if other countries aggressively retaliate.
We did well here during the 2018 midterm, so the right candidate could make it close.
CO isn’t even going to be a contest. Kamala Harris won the state by 16% points and Senator George Hickenlooper unseated Cory Gardner by nearly 10% points. This indicates the state is moving further to the left.
Which ultimately is a win for Democrats despite the major losses. They get more representation and visibility, plus a larger pool of potential candidates for Congressional and statewide offices in the future. It's easy to forget that Jon Tester himself started off as a state senator and later became the President of the Senate. Perhaps in future Montana Democrats can recruit an equally, if not superior candidate from the state legislature for statewide office and perhaps win again.
With the CA amendments sharpening penalties for non-violent crime and continuing the use of prison labor as allowed under the 13th Amendment, I think we have QED on what the people want w/r/t law enforcement. Just stop fighting it and roll with it. Chesa's expulsion is not some glitch you can rationalize away. Alameda County and LA County declared they want DAs that actually prosecute.
While there are some compromises I'm willing to make mentally (I'm not a politician so I'm not "making compromises" on policy per se), I worry about the road this "hard on crime" stance will take. Have we all forgotten the Kids for Cash scandal?
I think we should first separate the goal of electing DAs vs. the actual legislative process of getting new laws instituted when it comes to criminal justice reform. Frankly, I think progressives in this election spent way too much energy on trying to fight the recalls and didn't look at themselves in the mirror by realizing they don't have control over their narrative.
What Pamela Price was doing as DA was irrational and not progressive. She showed a bias when it came to reducing sentences for the accused who were black by lowering their sentences regardless of what they were arrested for. This goes against the values I learned as liberal in high school in Berkeley when I was taking ethnic studies back in the mid 90s. One of my family members also has an attorney who worked for a long time in the Alameda County DA's office, is pro-criminal justice reform, but was not a fan of Price in how she handled her cases.
On the other hand, legislatively criminal justice reform has legs. The notion that progressives think there's a blow to criminal justice reform by recalling DAs like Chesa Boudin and Pamela Price is just absolute BS, especially considering Trump as POTUS signed The First Step Act back in 2018 which the majority of Democrats & Republicans in the House and Senate voted for. Criminal justice reform legislatively isn't strictly partisan and is an ongoing process.
We have a messaging problem not a policy problem. The public is not made up of policy wonks. They just want things to feel fair to their monkey brains. They know/think mostly what they see on TV and their phones. We are losing in the propaganda space to cop unions and billionaires. I live with a blue collar black guy who is a state employee and a two strike felon, who just spent about $70k and several years on legal defense of a malicious prosecution of a self-defense incident that would have counted as a 3rd strike as charged, and he’d have voted against Gascon if we lived in L.A. County because of the propaganda.
Sometimes you gotta let the baby have his bottle (i.e. stricter law enforcement). When law enforcement vastly oversteps the boundaries again, please suppress any wacko who promotes "defund the police." Also, don't let anyone shriek at normies just living their life. Maybe we'll end up in a better place then.
As a constituent in his state Senate district and CD 47, I was livid at the DUI, but did vote for him in the primary. Fortunate for us, the Republican candidate was highly flawed including a criminal past himself.
A pretty red day in Arizona as the R counties finish counting. The big news though was a 100,000 vote drop from Maricopa. About 50,000 came from R districts, 30,000 from D districts, and 20,000 from AZ-01 (Schweikert’s toss-up district).
Out of that mix, somehow Lake only netted *2,000 votes.* Yikes. The batch was Trump +11 but only Lake+2.
Hopefully she will grow up. She can say that type of stuff and win her own district, but when said 2 weeks before an election when crime is on the ballot, it sure can hurt candidates in swing districts.
LA news was harping on it for at least a 3 day news cycle.
It's a stupid thing to say anytime but agree with you about especially at that time in a political race which can be broadcast non-stop to hurt the entire slate
Part of "growing up" is being on the council and having to deal with real issues and try to accomplish her goals. She is more than just her worst soundbite. Ysabel Jurado is a tenants rights attorney who built a multiethnic winning coalition against a powerful politician while being a member of a small minority in the district (Filipina). KDL is part of the majority ethnic group of the Eastside and was pitching an appeal to keep the district Latino. The best of L.A. politics is when people are able to build coalitions among different groups to work for a better future for all Angelenos.
I am willing to give Ysabel Jurado a chance, and I thank her for taking out the trash by retiring Kevin DeLeon.
Looks like NBC has called the Nevada senate race tonight for Jacky Rosen. A bit odd how AP has yet to call the race, despite the very clear remainder of the outstanding votes being in Washoe and Clark that strongly favor Rosen. Yet they seemed all too willing to call the Pennsylvania senate race for McCormick despite the fact that the secretary himself stated that there were over 100k outstanding ballots yet to be counted and the margin continues to narrow.
Why did the Latino vote shift so far to the right in almost every state? I think we can rule out a number of explanations at least as primary factors.
I don't think it was racism, because most of the same voters overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama.
I don't think it was sexism, because most of the same voters overwhelmingly supported Hillary Clinton.
I don't buy that more than a handful of voters of any race are willing to vote for a black man or a white woman, but not a black woman.
I don't think it was Harris' perceived ideology or personal qualities, in part because she consistently polled better than Biden did. The trans bashing may have hurt her, but I wouldn't think that it would have hurt her more among Latinos than among other voters.
So what's left? I suspect there were two main things. The first is inflation, which especially hurt Dems among less engaged voters, and Latinos tend to be less engaged than other groups. The second is that there seems to be an informal permission structure to vote GOP that wasn't there as recently as 2016. The border issue probably hurt Dems somewhat in border counties, although the shifts there weren't that much bigger than in other heavily Latino counties. What does this mean for the future? Any dissatisfaction with the economy or other current conditions will hurt the GOP at least in 2026 and 2028. But the permission structure won't go away. Unless something else changes, I think the Dem ceiling among Latinos is lower now than it was in 2016 and we aren't likely to approach 2016-type margins for the foreseeable future. The analogue on the other side is that the GOP ceiling among college-educated suburbanites is lower than in 2012, and they won't again approach their pre-Trump margins.
I know that’s what everyone is saying, but why then vote for the candidate whose two most important policies are highly inflationary? You don’t have to be an economist to realize that tarrffs and deporting the people who harvest and process food and who build houses will result in large price increase.
Voters tend to be backward looking. Most casual voters have no idea what tariffs are, and probably just didn't believe Dems' warnings that they're inflationary. Likewise they don't have experience with severe immigration restrictions outside the context of the pandemic, when there wasn't much demand so the labor supply contraction didn't really show up in prices. I suspect that if Trump goes through with this the results will be highly unpopular, but it's hard to warn people about things that don't confirm their priors and that they haven't experienced before.
My first guess would be a shift in social structures.
Historically there were many specific white ethnicities that were looked down upon in generations past: Italians, Irish, Poles, and many others, were othered for their or their ancestors' country of origin. As cultural perceptions of race and ethnicity changed and those groups were brought under the larger umbrella of "white", their voting behaviors shifted.
I'd hazard a guess that Latinos, especially those with lighter skin, are seeing cultural perceptions of race and ethnicity change again, in their favor, and they are given less of an other treatment as a result. That cultural change is a good thing, of course, but it would come with the consequence of them no longer perceiving conservatives' xenophobia as targeting them. That in turn would result in changed voting behavior, which is bad for us, even if the root cause is from society improving.
If this is what is happening it would require more or less a complete rewrite of the foundations of how our party appeals to them for their vote.
I just strongly hope that the next candidate doesn't come out with a "plan for Latino men" or for any other group. No one wants to have a plan for help specifically targeted at them. They don't want to be singled out. I think Trump speaking more broadly -even though it was gaslighting- about everyone's economic success under him, to your point, didn't make Latinos feel "othered".
It would be a mistake for Democrats to come out with a specific plan for every damn demographic. People want to feel part of a rising tide. Not singled out.
Democrats have become way too focused on lasering in on specific demographics and then speaking to them which also has the affect of making other demographics feel alienated I think.
For example, Harris came out with a plan for black men. Well OK, but maybe Latino men then felt shafted. And maybe black men just want shared economic success like everyone else.
Just doesn't seem effective to keep micro-targeting.
Yep. At the very minimum people want to have the illusion that we are a classless and color blind society where the only things that matter are ability and the willingness to work. The fact that the number of people who can “bootstrap” their way out of poverty is the exception not the rule is irrelevant. They want that illusion. Microtargeting and DEI rob them of that illusion.
I think microtargeting makes sense in terms of running ads calculated to appeal to the audience of whatever show/channel/etc the ad is running on, but I agree that any sort of identity politics needs to go. Everything I've seen suggests that swing voters just don't want to hear it.
My own thought is that the best rhetorical appeal on this is to emphasize the multi-ethnic, class-based appeal of the Democratic coalition, and work on rebuilding that. It's hard to exactly spell out the nuances that I'm picturing in mind, but... we need to keep being anti-racist, while (to borrow your words) avoiding micro-targeting in the political appeals.
I think 'Latinx' ended up offending a lot of people low key. Latinos are very proud of their individual heritage but don't want to feel singled out about it either.
That and the fact that in Spanish, Latinos is THE correct way to refer to a plural of Latin American people (unless they are all female). For many, “Latinx” is a violation of their native tongue.
I get the impression a good chunk of the Latino community, "Latinx" is viewed as something rich white hipsters came up with, so why should they embrace it? It comes across as white "elitists" trying to speak for them.
Ruben Gallego is strongly against the term Latinx and is one of those Latinos you're referring to who gets offended by the name.
Also, let's be frank: It doesn't sound great to have a term sound like Kleenex. We've used Latino for decades and there's no reason why we need to be "more inclusive" by saying Latinx.
Better to focus on bread-and-butter issues affecting the Hispanic and Latino community instead of trying to sound hip and cool.
If you do use the term, pronounce it Lah-TEEN-ay, and not LA-tin-ecks. The second one is like nails on chalkboard and not at all what is actually said by Spanish speakers who use the term.
(I agree that Latino is sufficiently inclusive in most situations. I would only use Latinx I was specifically highlighting gender neutrality. eg. "The Trans Latinx community")
I suspect most Hispanics are pocketbook voters instead of culture war voters. A campaign centered around reproductive rights and January 6 had no salience to them.
If ever there was a time (and I'm not sure there ever was) that Hispanics were partial to the open border position that Democrats have been incrementally moving toward since 2013, that time passed its expiration date but the Biden administration got the memo a few years too late.
Every survey I've seen indicates that they're mostly interested in kitchen-table issues. I don't agree that Dems are moving left on immigration as the party's current position is to pass the enforcement-only bill that Trump blocked, which puts them to the right of where they've been at any previous point this century.
Well they're no longer moving left on immigration in 2024 but did for a decade preceding it before finally getting the hint that there wasn't a constituency for it outside of university faculty lounges. By the time Democrats finally got the message, the cake was baked and the opposition was able to completely and unequivocally roll them.
When Biden first came into office and basically undid what Trump had done instead of implementing a tenable border policy, he created chaos in Arizona and Texas.
Every Arizona Democratic politician was screaming about what he was doing to them including the D governor and D mayors of Phoenix and Tucson, both US senators and Senate candidate to be Gallego.
This was the major reason for the lurch to the right in Arizona, and the only reason we are even in the running in the Senate race is that Kari Lake is such a horrible candidate. Even people who can stomach Trump can't stomach her, and it's so close we could lose that lead.
This shift caused us to lose sheriff and recorder in Maricopa to right wing candidates that can now cause harm to our side in future elections.
We had a slate of candidates in Arizona that were as crazy or worse than Lake, Lake being the R candidate for governor, and we narrowly won the seats we did. The effect is also cumulative.
Not only do people hear RW media screaming this stuff, but liberal help organizations are on news and public affairs programs begging for money and volunteers because they are overwhelmed
Then the problem gets hyped beyond how bad it is by RW media, blogs and social media.
Most people then start blaming Phoenix's massive homeless problems and drug problems on immigrants where there is little known tie. You see very few Latinos in the homeless encampments in Phoenix.
Dobbs + very popular governor candidates in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. Other than that, the two elections are turning out to be remarkably similar downballot.
Well, a stage full of Democratic Presidential candidates raised their hands in 2019 when asked if they supported decriminalized border crossings. When the top emissaries for the highest office in the land convey their support for it, I'd say that's a good representation of the party's position.
And for all intents and purposes, Biden's asylum policy amounted to de facto open borders. All comers get to put in an asylum request and then stay in-country for multiple years until their asylum hearings, are granted work permits, and face effectively zero chance of deportation even if they don't qualify for asylum, provided they don't commit felonies. We can split hairs on whether that qualifies as "open borders" or not, but the public sure perceived it to be and that's what matters.
As far as I know, "decriminalizing" something is not synonymous with making it legal. I can think of many things that are illegal but won’t land me in jail or prison. That said, I appreciate your key points.
It's a distinction without a difference. The old adage is that if you're explaining, you're losing. If the Democrats want to spend their time breaking down the distinction between their past calls to decriminalize border crossings and how it's different from voter demands to close the borders, then they're gonna do a lot more losing.
Many of my Hispanic friends are the least offended people in the world. They're straight forward and can take jokes, even if they make fun of them (in a good way, not a Tony Hinchcliffe kind of joke). Certainly, there are exceptions of them who are liberal and reliable votes for Democrats but overall, many of them care less about politics and are more about making a living and providing for their families.
Good analysis. For those who shifted, I think it came down to their personal economic circumstances.
Gamarra said the U.S. has the best economy in the world based on figures, “but what we don’t realize is that people don’t consume those figures. People go to the supermarket. They go to the gas pump. They’re trying to buy a home. And if any group has been affected by the economy, it has been Hispanics.”
Also, with inflation, it’s made voters less likely to have the ability to save given they are having to spend more on purchases than they’ve typically done in the past.
Hispanic families are very much middle class, the ideal type of voters Democrats should win over. However, if being in the middle class is made harder with inflation, then it’s a problem for the Democratic Party.
I feel like the challenge is threading the needle of not coming off as uber-liberal on, say, trans issues, while also not throwing that community under the bus.
Yes, but part of the problem we had this cycle was keeping our coalition together. If you throw trans people, or other groups, under the bus, you risk losing other segments that you absolutely need to win.
It's a tightrope, and I think there's a way to do it, but she didn't.
has anyone said anything about throwing anyone under any bus? I know for a fact I haven't, and I am confident that it won't happen; it's the other guys that do the demonizing
Starting a series about trends in the 2024, now that most votes are counted. First up: looking at the state-level results.
Very pleasantly surprised by Maine. Shifted right only by 1.5, the least of the New England states. This likely saved Golden and the Dem majorities in the state leg. Maine is the whitest and heavily working-class of the NE, can anyone explain what happened here?
Gillibrand put in another vintage upstate NY overperformance. Despite losing Nassau, she won every other county Biden carried 4 years ago and added a few more that he narrowly missed. I know some on the left hate her for various reasons, but this is now the 3rd cycle (2012, 2018) where she has run top of the ticket and carried at least 3 House seats over the line each time.
Despite my pre-election prediction that DePasquale would win PA attorney general, he not only lost an open-seat race, but did as poorly as the other two Ds in auditor/treasurer who were running against incumbent Rs. As for the comment thread yesterday that trends in PA are bad for Dems, I counter with the numbers in the south-central part of the state. Lancaster/York/Cumberland are all at the same margins as 2020, despite both the state and national environment shifting far to the right. Those three will be crucial for winning the legislative trifecta in the future as well.
Not sure if this was the hurricane, or the sprawl from Ashville spilling over, but several counties in Western NC trended Dem.
If you look at the NYT nationwide swing map (with arrows), the Atlanta metro area stands out for being the one region to move left (despite Harris not flipping Fayette County as many predicted).
I guess Republicans knew what they were doing when they made state supreme court races partisan in Ohio, as we lost all 3. Meanwhile Dems won the (nonpartisan) races in Michigan in landslides. Seriously, 60-40? Even better than the Obama victories.
After Kansas voted slightly to the left of Missouri in 2020 for the first time ever, some were wondering if the trend would hold, and it certainly did. KS is now 2 points bluer than its neighbor.
I had a suspicion Dems would lose the remaining rural Biden counties on the Rio Grande region in south TX, but we ended up keeping 4 while losing the 3 big urban ones?!!! (Hidalgo, Cameron, and Webb). This will also scramble how the VRA (if it survives) draws the 3 House seats there I assume.
Utah is still counting mail, but so far the margins are the same as 2020. Another anomaly like Maine? Mormons may still be a bit wary of Trump, is my guess.
The California map is very weird, a combination of the Bush 2004 map in the Central Valley (due to Latinos going R), while coastal SoCal is more like the 2016/2020 map (all blue). Harris may flip a few Biden-counties back, though it may take a while to finalize. Some county election offices are off until Nov 14!
Notably, in terms of PVI, Michigan and Wisconsin will now be to the left of the nation (after two cycles being right), if the popular vote ends up being R+2. And true to its nature of being the tipping point, the Keystone state is a tossup of which side it ends up on.
It's really interesting that this happens, especially this time around. I work adjacent to politics in NYC, and am way more plugged in than most people and she just seems kind of invisible here, but is a proven vote getter. I'd love to learn more on why and how she does it.
Without knowing directly(I am not in New York); I'd say favorable rating and constituent service(folks like her and she does her job); let's be real, did anyone pay attention to the NY Senate race this cycle?
No, certainly wasn't at the top of my list and I live here! She had a terrible opponent, but that's besides the point. I'm more curious about this because the conventional wisdom is she's unknown to most of the voters here. Maybe that's part of being in Schumer's shadow, but the last Siena poll showed that she was unknown by 30% of voters and her approval rating was generally positive (44-26).
Further digging reveals she's also competitive in Suffolk County as well; if a statewide Republican doesn't dominate Suffolk and Nassau, they have zero chance
Looking at the results(counting still taking place); Gillibrand can still win Nassau County; if any Republicans running statewide are struggling in Nassau County, put a fork in them, their done
Totally agree here. Gaining back more voters in Nassau is ciritical. Also, the strength of Lawler in Westchester is a cannary in the coal mine. You need big turnout downstate to offset Suffolk, and the upstate rural areas, and new population centers that lean red like Rockland.
I still remember something of a panic when she was initially appointed to the Senate in 2009, partly because it was a mild surprise that Patterson (was he governor at that time? I'm not certain) appointed her, but largely from some parochial-infighting in the state. Her election performance in 2010 settled that pretty well, ultimately.
I don't believe that is true. They might not be updating results until then, but they will be doing the work. I would want to know which counties and why they are off. Doesn't pass the smell test.
Certainly an odd election of terms of where and how states and districts/regions shifted. Really for all the gnashing of teeth about the Blue Wall trending right, IMO it's looking pretty good in the long run for us.
Harris lost the White House by 250,000 votes(out of over 150,000,000 votes cast);Trump will be our friend by chaos and doubling down and maximum overreach; the long run looks great(it's the short-term we have to just endure)
Yep. Trump may be a magician when it comes to the popularity and PR game, but his biggest weakness is that he has no clue about the whole governing thing. In his first term, he basically let the other Rs do all the work while he played President on Twitter (which is why his only big legislative achievement was the tax cut bill). That was an OK plan when the McConnell’s of the world were still in charge and knew how to run things - good luck doing that with this current bunch.
looking at some of the first time candidates in House races, quite a few lost by razor thin margins; the DCCC needs to continue recruiting them for 2026(and honestly, discourage any potential divisive primary); I normally like contested primary races, but these candidates have earned a pass imo
Interesting to me that Trump has still not surpassed his raw vote total from 2020(I assume he will shortly); Harris is way behind Biden in raw votes(yes millions of votes aren't counted but huge portions of the Biden coalition simply stayed home)
Over on DKOS in a diary there is an imbedded tweet purporting to show roughly the map that Biden's polling was showing before he dropped out. Trump was getting 400 electoral votes. New York, NJ, NM, etc. it was a stark disaster and I guess it's amazing Harris did as well as she did. But we need to create more Democrats.
I don't think the map would have looked that different tbh, most dems would have come home to Biden eventually. That's why i think it's silly for anyone complaining about Harris, she ran a pretty solid campaign she just couldn't outrun the fundamentals of people wanting change even if it meant Don Trump.
I don't know. I feel like NY and NJ would have come home to Biden but the other states... considering inflation and considering the condition he was in. I think the map is close to accurate and I think it obviously would have been an apocalypse for the Senate and, to a lesser degree, the house. All these close Senate seats that bounced our way and some of the not so close ones.
Sherrod Brown was an old school labor rights Democrat and he lost decisively to a car dealership owner who had to settle several wage theft lawsuits before running for office. This election was not about working class discontent.
Agreed! Democrats had four years to prepare a "changing of the guard", to groom a new generation of leaders and highlight them to the American public. Joe Biden has been a great president, imho the most consequential since LBJ – but he failed at this, and his administration failed at controlling the narrative so he and the Democrats got credit for their many accomplishments on his watch.
Biden’s tragedy is that all or most of his medium- and long-term accomplishments are about to be undone by a vindictive malignant narcissist, Trump.
To pass legislation addressing so-called "election integrity" is a very high MAGA priority. This, of course, is synonymous with disenfranchisement of Democratic-leaning demographics, as well as putting in place hindrances to their participation and turnout in elections.
It should have been earlier. Especially now that we know that at the same time they said he was fine post-debate, and was the only one who could beat Trump, their internal polling had Trump winning 400 EVs.
And then Biden's campaign manager got put in charge of Harris's campaign, despite clearly not knowing what she was doing.
Not to mention dropping out before the primary would have allowed us to find out before it was too late which candidates and platforms appealed best to which voters.
Because if Biden had dropped out before the primaries we could have found out if Kamala was even the best candidate we had. Different candidates with different platforms would also help us see which ones resonated the most with voters.
Instead, Biden dropped out 107 days before the election, putting us in a position where A) Harris was the only feasible option, and B) She had to guess, on the fly, which messaging would most help her with which parts of our coalition.
It's entirely possible that Harris would still have been our best option, and still would have lost, but I'm not convinced either of those things are true.
But because we didn't have a prior election, in the primaries, to figure out how best to turn out all of our base, we had no way of knowing until the general election. And even then, all we do know is that the combination of that candidate and that messaging was inadequate. Having time to change one or the other may have put us in a very different situation right now.
That has to be post-debate. The language of the team insisting Biden was still a strong candidate lines up with their post-debate communications. The debate is also what shifted things against him dramatically.
VOTER REGISTRATION: Field Team 6 invested significant resources and mobilized a large number of volunteers to register Democratic-leaning voters, especially in swing states.
I would like to see the numbers, with a state-by-state breakdown. I’ve repeatedly asked people involved in FT6 about this, but for some reason reliable information – or even estimates – is incredibly hard to come by.
Looking ahead to the 2026 Senate, I would love for us to secure some major candidates, even in some red states. At this point we have to try. Assuming we can hold CO, GA, NH, PA and VA, I would like the following candidates for swing to medium red states:
Alaska: Mary Peltola (whether or not she holds her House seat)
Iowa: Rob Sand or Cindy Axne
Kansas: Laura Kelly
Maine: Jared Golden or Troy Jackson
Montana: Zeno Baucus or Whitney Williams
North Carolina: Roy Cooper, Don Davis, Wiley Nickel, or Jeff Jackson.
Ohio: Tim Ryan or Greg Landsman
Texas: Lizzie Fletcher, Joaquin or Julian Castro, or a state legislator from the Rio Grande area who can help try to curb the trend there.
Blood-red state unlikely to happen wishlist:
Kentucky: Jacqueline Coleman (Andy Beshear said he won't run)
Louisiana: John Bel Edwards
Mississippi: Jim Hood or Brandon Presley
Nebraska: Dan Osborn (he held Fischer to a close race than any D ever could, and is probably our only option here)
South Carolina: Thomas McElveen
South Dakota: Stephanie Herseth Sandlin
West Virginia: Richard Ojeda
We might as well run Osborn-type independents in AL, AR, ID, OK, TN, and WY since no one obvious come to mind for those.
I believe Nickel is already semi-confirmed lining himself up (don’t quote me on that)
Landsman would be solid. I’d also propose James Talarico in Texas
Nickel will run, lose (respectably in best case scenario). Which is fine, Tillis isn't going to lose here outside a tsunami of epic proportions.
What’s your take if Cooper jumps in? And his chance?
5-10% chance that he runs, he'd have to be convinced that (i) he almost certainly WOULD win; and (ii) almost certainly anyone else would lose.
Hard to square that circle. He's an excellent retail politician, but very, very cautious. I suspect his strong preference is to retire and go back home. My impression is that even living in Raleigh represented a tough ask for him, he'd hate DC.
Nickel is the one left without anything to run for in 2024, he likely got "soft" assurances that the establishment would let him have its 2026 Senate lane. I'm not sure anyone else (outside the usual grifter and rando lanes) really would want it. Jackson and Hunt just got elected, and will bide their time. The rest of the state bench is anonymous at best.
Nickel is a transplant, right? Tillis is one as well, but from Tennessee, if I remember correctly. So that doesn’t matter.
I agree Nickel stands little chance statewide, unless there is another huge anti Trump backlash.
NC has always had lots of transplants, I don't expect that will be an issue. Nickel just strikes me as "generic, urban NC Democrat" (not meant pejoratively, that's pretty much what I am). There's nothing sketchy about him, but nothing really charismatic or memorable either.
It's a decent, safe choice for losing a federal race without burning your bench. You can go back to "Helms v. Hunt" to see how state-level popularity usually doesn't translate federally.
Edwards won as a charismatic outsider, and of course he turned out to be a shyster and a...piece of excrement. Kay Hagan kind of came out of nowhere, and won by a perfect storm of circumstance (political tailwinds), excellent campaigning, and a bad/cocky opponent.
Nickel could win like Hagan did, it's just not particularly likely.
Cooper should be our pick(if he decides to run)
I completely disagree; the 2026 election for all competitive Senate and House seats will depend on how bad Trump performs in the first 2 years of the second term
I’d like to see Sherrod Brown give it another try.
2018 midterms he won 53% - 47% (300,000 votes thereabouts). Only reason he lost was sharing a ballot with Trump!! 💙🇺🇲
He may run sooner than 2026. I'm in favor of it.
Sooner than 2026?
There will be a vacancy in the other OH-Sen seat soon. The couch guy is getting an undeserved promotion...
That's 2026
2026 is the first race
He's the obvious first choice(if he wants to run)
Brown or Tim Ryan. Tim Ryan is 20 years younger and hopefully can hold down the seat for a while.
Any notable state legislators in Montana we can recruit for a statewide election? I know the state level Montana Democratic Party has been significantly weakened over the past decades, but the recent redistricting laws led them to gain more seats this year. So hopefully they should have some credible candidates soon if not already for statewide races.
Tester and Tranell actually did pretty damn good(not sure if they are through with electoral politics)
What does Zeno Baucus do besides being a former senators son?
He's an Assistant US Attorney in the state.
I'd rather not run Landsman for a longshot Senate race as it could put his House seat at risk. If Peltola wins I might be reluctant to run her too. Davis and Golden are different because their potential Senate races would start out as much more winnable, but I'd prefer someone with less to lose than Davis if they would be about equally strong. I think Golden would clearly be the strongest possible candidate for Maine, so that's a tough one.
It is quite unfortunate the fair redistricting ballot measure failed in OH, if they redrew OH-01 to become a Cincinnati-only seat it would be borderline safe-D and free up Landsman to run statewide.
Peltola should still run, the replacement value of a US Senate seat is too high (we could easily take another Biden20/Harris24 house seat in CA or the northeast to make up for losing AK)
We just won a bunch of statewide races in NC, plenty of options there.
Golden used to work for Collins, so just convincing him to run would be difficult, unless she retires of course.
I’d rather take a shot with Jackson anyway. We don’t need a slightly less conservative version of Joe Manchin to win in Maine.
yeah, Jackson seems the play here.
I think Golden would easily become a Gillibrand type figure and adapt to the state.
A pretense of progressivism isn’t what progressives are looking for, tyvm.
I think Landsman would be l less likely to win than Ryan or Brown anyway.
I always thought Peltola's plan was to stay in the House for a few terms until Alaska looked pinkish enough to go for a Senate run. Which is why I really hope she prevails; I fear that 26 may be too early for the jump.
Please, no, not Jared Golden! That proposal is misreading Maine’s political map. While Golden is an excellent fit for ME-02 and probably the best Democrats can achieve in this Red district, he is far too conservative for Maine as a whole. Besides, already in the House, Jared Golden has proved himself to be a Manchin-like figure, voting against certain key Democratic policy positions.
Maine has an excellent Democratic-caucusing senator in Angus King – and he is much more moderate. That is the sort of candidate we should be looking for to challenge Susan Collins.
Gillibrand was moderate too and then became very progressive once she wasn't relying on getting elected only in upstate NY.
Gillibrand was more moderate but I don't think she would have gone around saying that it didn't matter if Trump or Biden won.
Do not know if it's a long shot though; that depends on Trump 2.0
Rob Sand would be an excellent get. Iowa may be too far gone, but the state could be one of the most adversely affected by Trump's tariffs if other countries aggressively retaliate.
We did well here during the 2018 midterm, so the right candidate could make it close.
too be fair, A lot of these races mainly come into play due to only one thing; Trump screwing up, which is highly likely
If Rubio is in Trump cabinet, Florida also will have a race
I thought Hagerty had inside track for SOS? (Wouldn’t be much difference between him or Rubio tbh)
Agreed👍
CO isn’t even going to be a contest. Kamala Harris won the state by 16% points and Senator George Hickenlooper unseated Cory Gardner by nearly 10% points. This indicates the state is moving further to the left.
George?
Anybody have a good read on how Democrats were able to do so wel in the Montana legislature considering how poorly we did otherwise in that state?
The map was redrawn to be better for Democrats. It's really nothing more complicated than that.
Which ultimately is a win for Democrats despite the major losses. They get more representation and visibility, plus a larger pool of potential candidates for Congressional and statewide offices in the future. It's easy to forget that Jon Tester himself started off as a state senator and later became the President of the Senate. Perhaps in future Montana Democrats can recruit an equally, if not superior candidate from the state legislature for statewide office and perhaps win again.
I doubt currently if anyone there is a Jon Tester(we can only hope)
What happened? Do you have a quick rundown
With the CA amendments sharpening penalties for non-violent crime and continuing the use of prison labor as allowed under the 13th Amendment, I think we have QED on what the people want w/r/t law enforcement. Just stop fighting it and roll with it. Chesa's expulsion is not some glitch you can rationalize away. Alameda County and LA County declared they want DAs that actually prosecute.
While there are some compromises I'm willing to make mentally (I'm not a politician so I'm not "making compromises" on policy per se), I worry about the road this "hard on crime" stance will take. Have we all forgotten the Kids for Cash scandal?
That was corruption.
It was corruption that couldn't have happened without a public that valued being hard on crime and celebrated judges who ruled as such.
Activists should have thought of that before they contaminated their cause with terrible PR.
I think we should first separate the goal of electing DAs vs. the actual legislative process of getting new laws instituted when it comes to criminal justice reform. Frankly, I think progressives in this election spent way too much energy on trying to fight the recalls and didn't look at themselves in the mirror by realizing they don't have control over their narrative.
What Pamela Price was doing as DA was irrational and not progressive. She showed a bias when it came to reducing sentences for the accused who were black by lowering their sentences regardless of what they were arrested for. This goes against the values I learned as liberal in high school in Berkeley when I was taking ethnic studies back in the mid 90s. One of my family members also has an attorney who worked for a long time in the Alameda County DA's office, is pro-criminal justice reform, but was not a fan of Price in how she handled her cases.
On the other hand, legislatively criminal justice reform has legs. The notion that progressives think there's a blow to criminal justice reform by recalling DAs like Chesa Boudin and Pamela Price is just absolute BS, especially considering Trump as POTUS signed The First Step Act back in 2018 which the majority of Democrats & Republicans in the House and Senate voted for. Criminal justice reform legislatively isn't strictly partisan and is an ongoing process.
We have a messaging problem not a policy problem. The public is not made up of policy wonks. They just want things to feel fair to their monkey brains. They know/think mostly what they see on TV and their phones. We are losing in the propaganda space to cop unions and billionaires. I live with a blue collar black guy who is a state employee and a two strike felon, who just spent about $70k and several years on legal defense of a malicious prosecution of a self-defense incident that would have counted as a 3rd strike as charged, and he’d have voted against Gascon if we lived in L.A. County because of the propaganda.
Sometimes you gotta let the baby have his bottle (i.e. stricter law enforcement). When law enforcement vastly oversteps the boundaries again, please suppress any wacko who promotes "defund the police." Also, don't let anyone shriek at normies just living their life. Maybe we'll end up in a better place then.
Not when the bottle is a poisoned chalice.
Let them suffer it.
Leopards eating our faces?
Nope, just theirs. Thank heavens for federalism.
LA County and Orange County had updates within the last 30 minutes, Min took the lead and Whitesides and Tran narrowed their deficits.
I’m guessing there’s not much chance of Rollins closing on Calvert?
No updates from Riverside yet
CA-47 Dave Min pulled ahead with 50.2%.
Late votes are coming in very blue, so he'll more than likely hold this (Porter's old OC district).
That would be interesting. He was declared instantly dead on DKE when he got his DUI.
As a constituent in his state Senate district and CD 47, I was livid at the DUI, but did vote for him in the primary. Fortunate for us, the Republican candidate was highly flawed including a criminal past himself.
I guess voters this year were quite forgiving of electing politicians with criminal histories, even elevating a convicted felon to commander in chief.
Or maybe it is just a Southern California thing, Calvert and Issa also have histories.
Not by me
Maricopa incoming!!
A pretty red day in Arizona as the R counties finish counting. The big news though was a 100,000 vote drop from Maricopa. About 50,000 came from R districts, 30,000 from D districts, and 20,000 from AZ-01 (Schweikert’s toss-up district).
Out of that mix, somehow Lake only netted *2,000 votes.* Yikes. The batch was Trump +11 but only Lake+2.
Gallego currently up around 33,000. Remaining votes (not including provisionals):
Maricopa - 330,000
D counties - 120,000
R counties - 90,000
Please can the Republicans keep nominating Lake for statewide office !!
Forget statewide office! The GOP should have her run for POTUS in 2028.
CA SoS's Unprocessed Ballots report Friday evening:
4,953,569 estimated, Plus 142,335 ballots left to cure.
Any ideas about the CDPs ballot cure operations ?
Los Angeles City 14th district Councilmember Kevin de León (racist) concedes to Ysabel Jurado (F--- the Police).
Hopefully Jurado can grow
Hopefully she will grow up. She can say that type of stuff and win her own district, but when said 2 weeks before an election when crime is on the ballot, it sure can hurt candidates in swing districts.
LA news was harping on it for at least a 3 day news cycle.
It's a stupid thing to say anytime but agree with you about especially at that time in a political race which can be broadcast non-stop to hurt the entire slate
Part of "growing up" is being on the council and having to deal with real issues and try to accomplish her goals. She is more than just her worst soundbite. Ysabel Jurado is a tenants rights attorney who built a multiethnic winning coalition against a powerful politician while being a member of a small minority in the district (Filipina). KDL is part of the majority ethnic group of the Eastside and was pitching an appeal to keep the district Latino. The best of L.A. politics is when people are able to build coalitions among different groups to work for a better future for all Angelenos.
I am willing to give Ysabel Jurado a chance, and I thank her for taking out the trash by retiring Kevin DeLeon.
Looks like NBC has called the Nevada senate race tonight for Jacky Rosen. A bit odd how AP has yet to call the race, despite the very clear remainder of the outstanding votes being in Washoe and Clark that strongly favor Rosen. Yet they seemed all too willing to call the Pennsylvania senate race for McCormick despite the fact that the secretary himself stated that there were over 100k outstanding ballots yet to be counted and the margin continues to narrow.
CNN has called NV for Rosen, too.
Could AP now be a bit gun-shy after their possibly premature PA call?
Is not the first time the AP messed up a call too early.
In 2018, they called CA-21 for Valadao, but 3 weeks later he ended up losing.
AP has called it.
Why did the Latino vote shift so far to the right in almost every state? I think we can rule out a number of explanations at least as primary factors.
I don't think it was racism, because most of the same voters overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama.
I don't think it was sexism, because most of the same voters overwhelmingly supported Hillary Clinton.
I don't buy that more than a handful of voters of any race are willing to vote for a black man or a white woman, but not a black woman.
I don't think it was Harris' perceived ideology or personal qualities, in part because she consistently polled better than Biden did. The trans bashing may have hurt her, but I wouldn't think that it would have hurt her more among Latinos than among other voters.
So what's left? I suspect there were two main things. The first is inflation, which especially hurt Dems among less engaged voters, and Latinos tend to be less engaged than other groups. The second is that there seems to be an informal permission structure to vote GOP that wasn't there as recently as 2016. The border issue probably hurt Dems somewhat in border counties, although the shifts there weren't that much bigger than in other heavily Latino counties. What does this mean for the future? Any dissatisfaction with the economy or other current conditions will hurt the GOP at least in 2026 and 2028. But the permission structure won't go away. Unless something else changes, I think the Dem ceiling among Latinos is lower now than it was in 2016 and we aren't likely to approach 2016-type margins for the foreseeable future. The analogue on the other side is that the GOP ceiling among college-educated suburbanites is lower than in 2012, and they won't again approach their pre-Trump margins.
My guess is it’s almost certainly cost of living.
I know that’s what everyone is saying, but why then vote for the candidate whose two most important policies are highly inflationary? You don’t have to be an economist to realize that tarrffs and deporting the people who harvest and process food and who build houses will result in large price increase.
Voters tend to be backward looking. Most casual voters have no idea what tariffs are, and probably just didn't believe Dems' warnings that they're inflationary. Likewise they don't have experience with severe immigration restrictions outside the context of the pandemic, when there wasn't much demand so the labor supply contraction didn't really show up in prices. I suspect that if Trump goes through with this the results will be highly unpopular, but it's hard to warn people about things that don't confirm their priors and that they haven't experienced before.
My first guess would be a shift in social structures.
Historically there were many specific white ethnicities that were looked down upon in generations past: Italians, Irish, Poles, and many others, were othered for their or their ancestors' country of origin. As cultural perceptions of race and ethnicity changed and those groups were brought under the larger umbrella of "white", their voting behaviors shifted.
I'd hazard a guess that Latinos, especially those with lighter skin, are seeing cultural perceptions of race and ethnicity change again, in their favor, and they are given less of an other treatment as a result. That cultural change is a good thing, of course, but it would come with the consequence of them no longer perceiving conservatives' xenophobia as targeting them. That in turn would result in changed voting behavior, which is bad for us, even if the root cause is from society improving.
If this is what is happening it would require more or less a complete rewrite of the foundations of how our party appeals to them for their vote.
I just strongly hope that the next candidate doesn't come out with a "plan for Latino men" or for any other group. No one wants to have a plan for help specifically targeted at them. They don't want to be singled out. I think Trump speaking more broadly -even though it was gaslighting- about everyone's economic success under him, to your point, didn't make Latinos feel "othered".
It would be a mistake for Democrats to come out with a specific plan for every damn demographic. People want to feel part of a rising tide. Not singled out.
Democrats have become way too focused on lasering in on specific demographics and then speaking to them which also has the affect of making other demographics feel alienated I think.
For example, Harris came out with a plan for black men. Well OK, but maybe Latino men then felt shafted. And maybe black men just want shared economic success like everyone else.
Just doesn't seem effective to keep micro-targeting.
Yep. At the very minimum people want to have the illusion that we are a classless and color blind society where the only things that matter are ability and the willingness to work. The fact that the number of people who can “bootstrap” their way out of poverty is the exception not the rule is irrelevant. They want that illusion. Microtargeting and DEI rob them of that illusion.
I think microtargeting makes sense in terms of running ads calculated to appeal to the audience of whatever show/channel/etc the ad is running on, but I agree that any sort of identity politics needs to go. Everything I've seen suggests that swing voters just don't want to hear it.
My own thought is that the best rhetorical appeal on this is to emphasize the multi-ethnic, class-based appeal of the Democratic coalition, and work on rebuilding that. It's hard to exactly spell out the nuances that I'm picturing in mind, but... we need to keep being anti-racist, while (to borrow your words) avoiding micro-targeting in the political appeals.
Not to mention words like “patriarchy” “Latinx” and “pronouns” which scare just about everyone.
I think 'Latinx' ended up offending a lot of people low key. Latinos are very proud of their individual heritage but don't want to feel singled out about it either.
That and the fact that in Spanish, Latinos is THE correct way to refer to a plural of Latin American people (unless they are all female). For many, “Latinx” is a violation of their native tongue.
I get the impression a good chunk of the Latino community, "Latinx" is viewed as something rich white hipsters came up with, so why should they embrace it? It comes across as white "elitists" trying to speak for them.
Ruben Gallego is strongly against the term Latinx and is one of those Latinos you're referring to who gets offended by the name.
Also, let's be frank: It doesn't sound great to have a term sound like Kleenex. We've used Latino for decades and there's no reason why we need to be "more inclusive" by saying Latinx.
Better to focus on bread-and-butter issues affecting the Hispanic and Latino community instead of trying to sound hip and cool.
If you do use the term, pronounce it Lah-TEEN-ay, and not LA-tin-ecks. The second one is like nails on chalkboard and not at all what is actually said by Spanish speakers who use the term.
(I agree that Latino is sufficiently inclusive in most situations. I would only use Latinx I was specifically highlighting gender neutrality. eg. "The Trans Latinx community")
I suspect most Hispanics are pocketbook voters instead of culture war voters. A campaign centered around reproductive rights and January 6 had no salience to them.
If ever there was a time (and I'm not sure there ever was) that Hispanics were partial to the open border position that Democrats have been incrementally moving toward since 2013, that time passed its expiration date but the Biden administration got the memo a few years too late.
Every survey I've seen indicates that they're mostly interested in kitchen-table issues. I don't agree that Dems are moving left on immigration as the party's current position is to pass the enforcement-only bill that Trump blocked, which puts them to the right of where they've been at any previous point this century.
Well they're no longer moving left on immigration in 2024 but did for a decade preceding it before finally getting the hint that there wasn't a constituency for it outside of university faculty lounges. By the time Democrats finally got the message, the cake was baked and the opposition was able to completely and unequivocally roll them.
When Biden first came into office and basically undid what Trump had done instead of implementing a tenable border policy, he created chaos in Arizona and Texas.
Every Arizona Democratic politician was screaming about what he was doing to them including the D governor and D mayors of Phoenix and Tucson, both US senators and Senate candidate to be Gallego.
This was the major reason for the lurch to the right in Arizona, and the only reason we are even in the running in the Senate race is that Kari Lake is such a horrible candidate. Even people who can stomach Trump can't stomach her, and it's so close we could lose that lead.
This shift caused us to lose sheriff and recorder in Maricopa to right wing candidates that can now cause harm to our side in future elections.
If he created chaos in 2021, how did we win nearly every statewide race in 2022?
We had a slate of candidates in Arizona that were as crazy or worse than Lake, Lake being the R candidate for governor, and we narrowly won the seats we did. The effect is also cumulative.
Not only do people hear RW media screaming this stuff, but liberal help organizations are on news and public affairs programs begging for money and volunteers because they are overwhelmed
Then the problem gets hyped beyond how bad it is by RW media, blogs and social media.
Most people then start blaming Phoenix's massive homeless problems and drug problems on immigrants where there is little known tie. You see very few Latinos in the homeless encampments in Phoenix.
Even going beyond border control issues, how 2022 managed to be less disastrous than 2024 is something hard for me to wrap my head around.
Lower white non-college turnout.
Dobbs + very popular governor candidates in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. Other than that, the two elections are turning out to be remarkably similar downballot.
When have Democrats advocated for open borders?
Well, a stage full of Democratic Presidential candidates raised their hands in 2019 when asked if they supported decriminalized border crossings. When the top emissaries for the highest office in the land convey their support for it, I'd say that's a good representation of the party's position.
And for all intents and purposes, Biden's asylum policy amounted to de facto open borders. All comers get to put in an asylum request and then stay in-country for multiple years until their asylum hearings, are granted work permits, and face effectively zero chance of deportation even if they don't qualify for asylum, provided they don't commit felonies. We can split hairs on whether that qualifies as "open borders" or not, but the public sure perceived it to be and that's what matters.
As far as I know, "decriminalizing" something is not synonymous with making it legal. I can think of many things that are illegal but won’t land me in jail or prison. That said, I appreciate your key points.
It's a distinction without a difference. The old adage is that if you're explaining, you're losing. If the Democrats want to spend their time breaking down the distinction between their past calls to decriminalize border crossings and how it's different from voter demands to close the borders, then they're gonna do a lot more losing.
It's not their problem now; fortunately for the Democratic party
never
Indeed, you are correct.
Many of my Hispanic friends are the least offended people in the world. They're straight forward and can take jokes, even if they make fun of them (in a good way, not a Tony Hinchcliffe kind of joke). Certainly, there are exceptions of them who are liberal and reliable votes for Democrats but overall, many of them care less about politics and are more about making a living and providing for their families.
Agree with the prediction that Hispanic voting patterns will converge with whites' eventually.
The corollary being, that similar to whites, there will be a divergence between college-educated and non-college voters.
Depends what you mean by eventually.
Good analysis. For those who shifted, I think it came down to their personal economic circumstances.
Gamarra said the U.S. has the best economy in the world based on figures, “but what we don’t realize is that people don’t consume those figures. People go to the supermarket. They go to the gas pump. They’re trying to buy a home. And if any group has been affected by the economy, it has been Hispanics.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/trump-economy-latino-vote-2024-election-rcna178951
Also, with inflation, it’s made voters less likely to have the ability to save given they are having to spend more on purchases than they’ve typically done in the past.
Hispanic families are very much middle class, the ideal type of voters Democrats should win over. However, if being in the middle class is made harder with inflation, then it’s a problem for the Democratic Party.
It's a variety of things but people are fooling themselves if they think being perceived as uber-liberal on cultural issues wasn't a major factor.
Definitely a factor but this race was about economic policy(perceived inflation)
They intersect; it all leads to a permission structure to vote GOP.
Most definitely but pocketbook issues always dominate real voter choices
I feel like the challenge is threading the needle of not coming off as uber-liberal on, say, trans issues, while also not throwing that community under the bus.
pocketbook issues always have been the dominant ones(and always will be); the Harris campaign lost on inflation(actually, the perception of inflation)
Yes, but part of the problem we had this cycle was keeping our coalition together. If you throw trans people, or other groups, under the bus, you risk losing other segments that you absolutely need to win.
It's a tightrope, and I think there's a way to do it, but she didn't.
has anyone said anything about throwing anyone under any bus? I know for a fact I haven't, and I am confident that it won't happen; it's the other guys that do the demonizing
Looks like Caraveo has fallen behind in CO-8 by about 2,500 votes, she'll need Adams county to come in big for her to retain her seat.
Garcia’s lead under 1000 votes in CA 27.
Starting a series about trends in the 2024, now that most votes are counted. First up: looking at the state-level results.
Very pleasantly surprised by Maine. Shifted right only by 1.5, the least of the New England states. This likely saved Golden and the Dem majorities in the state leg. Maine is the whitest and heavily working-class of the NE, can anyone explain what happened here?
Gillibrand put in another vintage upstate NY overperformance. Despite losing Nassau, she won every other county Biden carried 4 years ago and added a few more that he narrowly missed. I know some on the left hate her for various reasons, but this is now the 3rd cycle (2012, 2018) where she has run top of the ticket and carried at least 3 House seats over the line each time.
Despite my pre-election prediction that DePasquale would win PA attorney general, he not only lost an open-seat race, but did as poorly as the other two Ds in auditor/treasurer who were running against incumbent Rs. As for the comment thread yesterday that trends in PA are bad for Dems, I counter with the numbers in the south-central part of the state. Lancaster/York/Cumberland are all at the same margins as 2020, despite both the state and national environment shifting far to the right. Those three will be crucial for winning the legislative trifecta in the future as well.
Not sure if this was the hurricane, or the sprawl from Ashville spilling over, but several counties in Western NC trended Dem.
If you look at the NYT nationwide swing map (with arrows), the Atlanta metro area stands out for being the one region to move left (despite Harris not flipping Fayette County as many predicted).
I guess Republicans knew what they were doing when they made state supreme court races partisan in Ohio, as we lost all 3. Meanwhile Dems won the (nonpartisan) races in Michigan in landslides. Seriously, 60-40? Even better than the Obama victories.
After Kansas voted slightly to the left of Missouri in 2020 for the first time ever, some were wondering if the trend would hold, and it certainly did. KS is now 2 points bluer than its neighbor.
I had a suspicion Dems would lose the remaining rural Biden counties on the Rio Grande region in south TX, but we ended up keeping 4 while losing the 3 big urban ones?!!! (Hidalgo, Cameron, and Webb). This will also scramble how the VRA (if it survives) draws the 3 House seats there I assume.
Utah is still counting mail, but so far the margins are the same as 2020. Another anomaly like Maine? Mormons may still be a bit wary of Trump, is my guess.
The California map is very weird, a combination of the Bush 2004 map in the Central Valley (due to Latinos going R), while coastal SoCal is more like the 2016/2020 map (all blue). Harris may flip a few Biden-counties back, though it may take a while to finalize. Some county election offices are off until Nov 14!
Notably, in terms of PVI, Michigan and Wisconsin will now be to the left of the nation (after two cycles being right), if the popular vote ends up being R+2. And true to its nature of being the tipping point, the Keystone state is a tossup of which side it ends up on.
Next installment will be looking at House seats.
Maine being the whitest May be the reason it shifted the least.
Gillibrand gets votes; full stop
It's really interesting that this happens, especially this time around. I work adjacent to politics in NYC, and am way more plugged in than most people and she just seems kind of invisible here, but is a proven vote getter. I'd love to learn more on why and how she does it.
Without knowing directly(I am not in New York); I'd say favorable rating and constituent service(folks like her and she does her job); let's be real, did anyone pay attention to the NY Senate race this cycle?
No, certainly wasn't at the top of my list and I live here! She had a terrible opponent, but that's besides the point. I'm more curious about this because the conventional wisdom is she's unknown to most of the voters here. Maybe that's part of being in Schumer's shadow, but the last Siena poll showed that she was unknown by 30% of voters and her approval rating was generally positive (44-26).
https://scri.siena.edu/2024/10/22/harris-opens-19-point-lead-over-trump-58-39-up-from-55-42-in-september-her-largest-lead-to-date/
Further digging reveals she's also competitive in Suffolk County as well; if a statewide Republican doesn't dominate Suffolk and Nassau, they have zero chance
Looking at the results(counting still taking place); Gillibrand can still win Nassau County; if any Republicans running statewide are struggling in Nassau County, put a fork in them, their done
Totally agree here. Gaining back more voters in Nassau is ciritical. Also, the strength of Lawler in Westchester is a cannary in the coal mine. You need big turnout downstate to offset Suffolk, and the upstate rural areas, and new population centers that lean red like Rockland.
Lawler benefited from having an incompetent opponent, but I get your point(and Lawler must be targeted going forward; it's a winnable seat imo)
I wish Latimer had been able to run in this seat rather than the 16th. He would have almost certainly won.
I still remember something of a panic when she was initially appointed to the Senate in 2009, partly because it was a mild surprise that Patterson (was he governor at that time? I'm not certain) appointed her, but largely from some parochial-infighting in the state. Her election performance in 2010 settled that pretty well, ultimately.
Exactly because Hillary became SOS
Dems did remarkably well downballot in Upstate NY. Beyond picking up two house seats, Pat Ryan also won by double digits.
In an awful overall environment(more of this👆👆👆👆; as opposed to the other)
Why are the county employees off work? Did I miss something! ?
I don't believe that is true. They might not be updating results until then, but they will be doing the work. I would want to know which counties and why they are off. Doesn't pass the smell test.
Agreed(I didn't think that was actually true; made no sense)
Merced County says they will update no later than Nov. 14, but that leaves it ambiguous as to whether they are just buying some time or actually off.
https://x.com/rpyers/status/1855009692793069611
https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/CA/Merced/122862/web.345435/#/summary
Certainly an odd election of terms of where and how states and districts/regions shifted. Really for all the gnashing of teeth about the Blue Wall trending right, IMO it's looking pretty good in the long run for us.
Harris lost the White House by 250,000 votes(out of over 150,000,000 votes cast);Trump will be our friend by chaos and doubling down and maximum overreach; the long run looks great(it's the short-term we have to just endure)
Yep. Trump may be a magician when it comes to the popularity and PR game, but his biggest weakness is that he has no clue about the whole governing thing. In his first term, he basically let the other Rs do all the work while he played President on Twitter (which is why his only big legislative achievement was the tax cut bill). That was an OK plan when the McConnell’s of the world were still in charge and knew how to run things - good luck doing that with this current bunch.
Georgia likely to be to the left of the nation too!
I think it will still end up slightly to the right of the nation, but by less than a point. As recently as 2016 it was about 8 points to the right.
Georgia will be a light blue state by 2032. North Carolina won't be far behind either.
A light blue state matters only if there are real elections.
looking at some of the first time candidates in House races, quite a few lost by razor thin margins; the DCCC needs to continue recruiting them for 2026(and honestly, discourage any potential divisive primary); I normally like contested primary races, but these candidates have earned a pass imo
Interesting to me that Trump has still not surpassed his raw vote total from 2020(I assume he will shortly); Harris is way behind Biden in raw votes(yes millions of votes aren't counted but huge portions of the Biden coalition simply stayed home)
Some stayed home, some (Latinos) switched
Absolutely
Over on DKOS in a diary there is an imbedded tweet purporting to show roughly the map that Biden's polling was showing before he dropped out. Trump was getting 400 electoral votes. New York, NJ, NM, etc. it was a stark disaster and I guess it's amazing Harris did as well as she did. But we need to create more Democrats.
Link?
https://www.dailykos.com/comments/2284623/90086322#comment_90086322
I think that should get you there.
I don't think the map would have looked that different tbh, most dems would have come home to Biden eventually. That's why i think it's silly for anyone complaining about Harris, she ran a pretty solid campaign she just couldn't outrun the fundamentals of people wanting change even if it meant Don Trump.
I don't know. I feel like NY and NJ would have come home to Biden but the other states... considering inflation and considering the condition he was in. I think the map is close to accurate and I think it obviously would have been an apocalypse for the Senate and, to a lesser degree, the house. All these close Senate seats that bounced our way and some of the not so close ones.
New Jersey only voted for Harris by 6 points, I could easily imagine Biden losing it.
I mean i think she lost the voters he would have lost so i don't believe Trump would have carried New Jersey.
Sherrod Brown was an old school labor rights Democrat and he lost decisively to a car dealership owner who had to settle several wage theft lawsuits before running for office. This election was not about working class discontent.
It’s likely that Trump’s presence in OH was a bigger factor than anything Brown had as far as vulnerabilities.
No, this election was about highly successful working-class disinformation.
Still think dropping out was one of the best things Biden did. May not have saved the Presidency, but certainly saved us downballot.
Yes. But he never should have run in the first place.
you are both 100% correct
Agreed! Democrats had four years to prepare a "changing of the guard", to groom a new generation of leaders and highlight them to the American public. Joe Biden has been a great president, imho the most consequential since LBJ – but he failed at this, and his administration failed at controlling the narrative so he and the Democrats got credit for their many accomplishments on his watch.
Biden’s tragedy is that all or most of his medium- and long-term accomplishments are about to be undone by a vindictive malignant narcissist, Trump.
not convinced that Trump can do anything yet(we shall see); but imo everything Trump does do will eventually help our election efforts in2026
To pass legislation addressing so-called "election integrity" is a very high MAGA priority. This, of course, is synonymous with disenfranchisement of Democratic-leaning demographics, as well as putting in place hindrances to their participation and turnout in elections.
I do not believe he has any way to pass anything remotely like that; we shall see
By "the first place," you mean he should have stayed out in 2020, the race he won?
In 2024.
It should have been earlier. Especially now that we know that at the same time they said he was fine post-debate, and was the only one who could beat Trump, their internal polling had Trump winning 400 EVs.
And then Biden's campaign manager got put in charge of Harris's campaign, despite clearly not knowing what she was doing.
Not to mention dropping out before the primary would have allowed us to find out before it was too late which candidates and platforms appealed best to which voters.
Why do you think any of this matters? She was going to lose if he wouldn't have even run.
Because if Biden had dropped out before the primaries we could have found out if Kamala was even the best candidate we had. Different candidates with different platforms would also help us see which ones resonated the most with voters.
Instead, Biden dropped out 107 days before the election, putting us in a position where A) Harris was the only feasible option, and B) She had to guess, on the fly, which messaging would most help her with which parts of our coalition.
It's entirely possible that Harris would still have been our best option, and still would have lost, but I'm not convinced either of those things are true.
But because we didn't have a prior election, in the primaries, to figure out how best to turn out all of our base, we had no way of knowing until the general election. And even then, all we do know is that the combination of that candidate and that messaging was inadequate. Having time to change one or the other may have put us in a very different situation right now.
That’s not not clear by any means. And there’s no guarantee she would have won the nomination.
I so much disagree
I wonder if this before or after the debate.
Trump'steam was thinking "1972" after the Biden debate.
That has to be post-debate. The language of the team insisting Biden was still a strong candidate lines up with their post-debate communications. The debate is also what shifted things against him dramatically.
VOTER REGISTRATION: Field Team 6 invested significant resources and mobilized a large number of volunteers to register Democratic-leaning voters, especially in swing states.
I would like to see the numbers, with a state-by-state breakdown. I’ve repeatedly asked people involved in FT6 about this, but for some reason reliable information – or even estimates – is incredibly hard to come by.
I am not convinced you'd get valid information(I have no proof here)
Could be, but as of now I am getting Zero information.