The consequences of anti-vaxxer extremism and anti-public health sentiments being normalized by Republicans: Louisiana bans the state's Department of Health from promoting COVID, flu, or mpox vaccines.
I don't think John Bel Edwards can break the pattern of popular opposition party governors (where the other party wins at the top of the ticket by 10+) flaming out in a senate race but maybe he could run for governor in 2027 if things really go belly up in the state. Louisiana has term limits for consecutive terms but he can run again after one term out of office.
I think Edwards would have a far better shot at a third term as governor than LePage did when he went up against Janet Mills here in Maine. Paul "I-was-Trump-before-Trump" LePage got crushed, losing by almost 14 percent.
Edwards is probably the highest profile Democrat in LA right now.
If not him, Mitch Landrieu would be an alternative as a Senate candidate. On the other hand, his sister, former Senator Mary Landrieu, lost re-election in 2014 so the Landrieu family name isn’t exactly fresh.
Reposting from the last weekly thread: I’m very interested in NC’s US Senate election in 2026. Cooper seems more likely to run now than before this year’s election, but I’m also interested in our backups: Wiley Nickel is definitely running if Cooper doesn’t, but he might even try to run anyways. Personally, if Cooper sits it out, I’d prefer Jeff Jackson take a shot at it. However, I see him as more likely to run against Budd in ‘28.
Mecklenburg and Cabarrus Counties’ municipal elections next year and the General Assembly races in 2026 are also high priorities. As a local Democratic Party officer, the North Meck towns are important to me—we just took total control in Huntersville and have held Davidson for some time. Cornelius continues to be difficult, though. Our NC house district, HD98 flipped to the Dems by ~5%. Christy Clark (now Huntersville’s Mayor) won in ‘18 by a few hundred votes and John Bradford regained it in ‘20 by ~2000, before defeating her in ‘22 by ~650 (I managed her campaign that year).
Charlotte is safe for Dems, but City Councilman Tariq Bokhari (R) is likely to face his toughest race yet in the affluent District 6 now that Trump is back in office.
Roy Cooper will be 69 years old in 2026. I seriously wish he would not run.
Governors do not have a great track record running for Senate either but even so I would prefer if he was even 10 years younger. He won't be a very inspiring candidate.
I'm possibly the poster-child of arguing that we need younger candidates across the board. Yet, it is important to know when that doesn't apply. Cooper would be our strongest candidate by a clear margin. He would be older but not so old as to be unable to do the job; he could definitely handle at least one term in the senate and very likely could handle two. This isn't like Welch becoming a freshman senator at 75 in one of the bluest states in the country.
I'm fully on board with wanting younger candidates in general, but it's important for us to know when to make exceptions.
there's also a difference between the Senate and the Presidency. The actual workload for a Senator is not that intense and a healthy 80 year old can handle it. That's largely untrue of 80 year old Presidents, or Governors and CEOs for that matter.
Have you all noticed what Biden's been doing since the election? Contrary to how he seemed in and in some cases after the debate, his actions seem to show that he is really on top of things in terms of policy and government administration, and he's continued to do great things for the American people and American interests and not succumb to bitterness or apathy. Public perceptions and doubts about how he might have done as an 86-year-old shouldn't cloud these points.
yeah I think that's totally fair, and I think he was probably up to doing another four years. But the rigors of his presidency specifically clearly took a huge toll on him, and a 70 year old would've been much better able to handle them than an 80 year old, let alone a 50 or 60 year old. Covid, recession, inflation, ukraine, Gaza, January 6th, a difficult reelection all come together to be a particularly brutal four year stretch. Probably the most challenging since FDR, especially when accounting for how duplicitous his opposition was about every single issue. Plus running for President and being President are two different things.
none of our senate candidates this year were "inspiring candidates". It really doesn't matter, he's a popular two term governor and has won six times statewide. He could serve two terms and be younger than Trump will be at the end of his presidency or than Biden is now. We don't need to overlearn the lessons of the last four years.
John Hickenlooper was around the same age as Roy Cooper when he ran for the Senate in 2020 and unseated Cory Gardner in the CO-SEN race. He had served as Governor of Colorado for two terms prior to being in the Senate.
Hickerlooper unseated Gardner by close to 10% points (9.3% to be exact). That's appropriate considering how much CO as a state has moved to the left since then.
"Governors do not have a great track record running for Senate..."
This has only been true for Democratic Governors who run for Senate in solidly red states or Republican Governors who run for Senate in solidly blue states. North Carolina is not solidly red at the federal level, and we won six statewide offices this year (Governor, LG, AG, Secretary of State, Superintendent of Public Instruction, and a state Supreme Court seat).
Whatever happened to Larry.... who beat Robin .... of Belk's fame? Did he go back to teaching or is he a lobbyist now? Would be nice if the research park in Kannapolis turned Kannapolis and Concord blue.
Larry Kissell? He’s been out of office for 12 years and doesn’t have a great reputation in NC Dem circles. We have a good bench of current and recent office holders, including in Cabarrus county—we really don’t need to go back.
I was just curious, not suggesting we dig him up. More of a WATN question. We lived in Kannapolis for awhile. I don't recall Dems having much traction there. Was surprised when he won. Not surprised when he lost.
I've gotten two mailings (I live in Nickel's old district) in the past 4-6 weeks. Every indication is that he's running, and is reasonably sure Gov. Cooper will not.
Cooper hasn't grown fonder of Washington, DC (or big cities in general) as he's gotten older, I think is safe to presume.
He at the very least didn't shut down the idea. This was published yesterday.
"“I’m going to take the next two months and not make any decisions about going forward. I’ve been in public service a while. I’m going to take some time to see what the next chapter is. For me, I want to continue to make a difference,” Cooper told The N&O in mid-December. And, (running for Senate) “will be one of the things I look at as a potential.”
Next time I am in the office, I will try to run down one of my lobbyist buddies (one for each side of the aisle, they both voted for Stein, though) and see if there's anything to it. They always have told me unequivaocally that Cooper would never "go national."
Yep. He was the one left without a "chair" after all that (Jeff Jackson went for AG, Rachel Hunt kept the LG lane), so I expect all the normies had a deal to let him basically coast to Senate nomination.
My working theory for the Cooper thing is that he's freezing donors for a few months, allowing Nickel to consolidate his position.
Nickel is basically "generic NC Democrat" so he will stand or fall based on the overall political environment in 2026.
He may be "generic NC Dem" but he has a great and memorable name. "Wiley Nickel" is a much more interesting name than "Jeff Jackson" though of course I wish them both success. I have supported Jeff with small donations since I started reading his emails about his experiences in Congress. The main thing I know about Wiley Nickel is that I guessed wrong in the babka contest two years ago and was pleasantly surprised that he won.
“We reached an agreement…and a tweet changed all of it? Can you imagine what the next two years are going to be like if every time Congress works its will and then there's a tweet…from an individual who has no official portfolio who threatens members on the Republican side with a primary, and they succumb?”
– Richard Neal (MA-02, Democrat)
.
Elon Musk has called for Germans to vote for Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the neo-Nazi party that has downplayed the Holocaust. In the upcoming elections, the AfD hopes to strengthen its hand in the Bundestag – and perhaps play a key role in the next government.
Members of the AfD spent Election Day at Mar-a-Lago and have underscored that they "hope to have a close relationship with the incoming Trump administration".
It’s not just Musk and Trump who are AfD supporters. So is the Saudi psychiatrist (!) who rammed his SUV into a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, speeding over 400 meters into the crowd and injuring 200 people and killing at least five.
WHAT WAS STRIPPED from the original bipartisan budget bill?
o Crackdown on junk fees
o A fix for stolen food stamp funds
o Money for children’s cancer research
o Curtailing Pharmaceutical Benefit Managers (PBM)
o Criminalization of revenge porn and some deepfake images
o Restriction on investments in China
o Cost-of-living pay raise for Congress
The items that were stripped out had negligible, if any, budgetary impact. In fact, PBM reform would have saved patients and taxpayers significant money by curtailing the greed of Pharmaceutical Benefit Managers. Although removed from the bill, funding for pediatric cancer research was approved separately.
Two items on this list were set to have an impact on the business operations of Elon Musk. First, the original bipartisan bill required X and other social media sites to implement policies to deal with revenge porn and certain deepfake images. Second, Musk would have seen the proposed restriction on investments in China as problematic.
Democrat Rosa DeLauro (CT-03) has accused Elon Musk of pushing Speaker Mike Johnson to kill the initial bipartisan spending proposal that was agreed to – precisely because it would have imposed new regulations on his considerable investments in China.
Tesla’s gigafactory in Shanghai accounts for half of its worldwide car production. In addition, Chinese factories produce over 90 percent of the parts for Tesla cars. Moreover, Tesla has roughly 300 stores throughout China.
Axing the revenge porn and cancer research is disgusting, but on its face (I don't know the details) I think enabling American investment in China is good policy for a variety of reasons (the Chinese have clearly set their sights on investing/buying property in the U.S.)
If DeLauro is correct, and Musk’s objections to new regulations on investments in China was his reason for manipulating the House to kill this bill – and having the power to do so! – then I would say that is worrisome in the extreme.
He did not need to say that it didn't matter if Trump was elected or not. We don't need Dems in tough districts to kiss the party's ass but they don't need to kick it either.
There is a fine line and some walk it better than others. I think it's always ultimately counterproductive to trash the party you belong to (if you plan on staying in that party and want it to win and be in power). The best pols find ways to accentuate their own brand without attacking the overarching brand they belong to.
TBC, I'm glad Golden is in Congress and not the NASCAR guy he beat.
I don't know. Considering that Senator Brown of Ohio was one of the best at that and he lost, maybe Golden wouldn't have had a chance if he hadn't trashed his party as hard as he did. Look at Tester's results, too.
Collins won re-election back in 2020 by the smallest margin of victory since her original Senate election back in 1996. It’s not out of the realm of possibilities to unseat her in 2026.
That said, as long as the campaign and messaging don’t mirror Sara Gideon’s in 2020 then it’ll be easier to challenge Collins. Maine can’t be targeted by Democrats like other states.
Sara Gideon was also handicapped by the fact that Mainers saw her as "not one of us". First of all, she is from Rhode Island and didn’t move to Maine until the age of 33. Second, Gideon is obviously not Caucasian; her father is from India and her mother, while her mother’s parents came from Armenia.
Sadly, such things matter to all-too-many Mainers, a significant portion of whom form a rather insular crowd.
Thanks for sharing the information. I didn’t know that history about Gideon.
What I understand is that the DSCC endorsing Gideon’s Senate campaign doomed the Democratic Party’s chances at winning the race. This is crazy considering she cut Collins’ margin of victory to single digits!
Angus King by contrast got re-elected in the 2024 Senate Race by nearly 18% points and happens to be an Independent Senator who caucuses with Democrats and is a reliable vote for the party. He’s also had a long history in Maine as he was Governor prior to being Senator.
I'm actually pretty bullish on taking Collins' seat in 2026. I think it's going to be an electoral bloodbath that year (pro-Dem that is) whereas 2020 was basically neutral politically. In addition, I subscribe to the theory that the Dem coalition is better served to relatively lower turnout elections these days (which I think 2026 will be - people are just tired of politics). Finally, I think our messaging will be much better - we'll focus on more than just abortion...
She can be defeated and we need to do so given the senate math. She won reelection with just 51% her worse performance since her first election in 1996.
I'm very skeptical. I'll literally believe it only if I see it. She could go the way of Senator Brown, but Downeasters are a lot more independent-minded and cross-voting than Buckeyes.
Maybe, but I think that is waning, Susan Collins being the only Republican from New England in either House of Congress is evidence of it. Maine is probably target #2 after NC specially if Cooper gets in and we can't give her a pass given the math and map of the Senate.
Curious as to the fundraising ability of the Democratic challengers in FL-6; as a member of the Volusia county DEC, I will be attending a meeting with all 3 candidates for our side(if none of them mention money at that meeting, I'll know right away that we have zero chance here even though Fine is a carpetbagger, he'll have millions $$$$$$)
Let us know how it goes if you're allowed to share anything. I grew up in Brevard county been gone for over a decade now but still keep some tabs and know very well what a genuinely awful person Randy Fine is.
absolutely; I'm not optimistic about the chances; I'm betting that all 3 prospects are lightweights that should probably be running for local city council; Agreed about randy fine; horrible but with the Trump endorsement I'm pretty convinced he wins in a walk
TX-12: Kay Granger has spent the last six months living at a care facility for dementia patients. Her staff refused to answer any questions about her whereabouts. I know House members are less visible than Senators but compare and contrast Granger's disappearance to DiFi.
The seat could be declared vacant by Congress. This happened in the early 80s when Rep. Gladys Noon Spellman (D-MD) had a heart attack and fell into a coma shortly before the 1980 election. She was reelected anyway, but after the next Congress convened and it became clear she would never re-awaken, the seat was declared vacant and a special election was held. (Steny Hoyer then won the seat and has held it ever since.)
If Granger had been reelected then this or something similar would probably be under consideration. As it is, this sounds like they pulled off something like a real life version of "Weekend At Bernie's" in which she was still physically alive but unable to serve and somehow it was kept secret until it no longer mattered.
Honestly, think she should aim to become a singer. Hopefully limiting her venue to Mar-a-Lago and its audiences, and not inflicting any more of her recorded songs on Americans at large.
Hmmm...though it was George H.W. Bush who launched that invasion; Reagan invaded Grenada, but it was basically the same type of imperialism and bullying of the Americas.
I have no clue why everyone including the media continues to freak out when Trump does this. It is a play for media attention and him saying outrageous stuff for this reason is his entire brand and entirely his shtick.
It means nothing. The Greenland stuff, the Canada state stuff. None of it.
Ignore this nonsense and deprive him of oxygen. Save it for the real shit he does, not says.
MN State House - Judge rules against DFLer’s residency throwing House majority to the GOP until a special election. Not the final ruling as it still has to get up to the MN Supreme Court. The seat is safe blue.
This stuff needs to be litigated *before* the election. Parties and campaigns shouldn't be allowed to wait until after the election to challenge whether a candidate meets the eligibility requirements.
Why is it okay for Bernie Sanders, who is not even a member of the Democratic Party, to have his entire brand be focused around bashing it, as he sits in a Safe Democratic seat, but for Jared Golden it is not?
Very strange double standards by some members here that will make moral pretzels in order to make something fit their own worldview.
What is good for the goose is good for the gander boys.
I am not criticizing Jared Golden nor have I made it an agenda of doing so.
However, Bernie Sanders has a massive influence on the left and is, I believe, under pressure to try to keep his base active so as to fire them up. After all, Sanders drove many of the Green Party members in states like CA to the Democratic Party because of his presidential primary campaign back in 2016.
That said, Sanders isn’t the only one who is criticizing the Democratic Party. Labor leaders as well as Senator Chris Murphy have been echoing what Sanders has said although differing views former House Minority Whip Jim Clyburn and Nancy Pelosi are evident.
Harris’ margin of win in VT was only .6% points higher than Sanders. Hardly much improvement over what Sanders got in his Senate re-election.
I don’t know if Sanders has a working class problem. However, it appears Harris does, at least if the Teamsters President’s statement of his meeting with Harris during the campaign suggests anything.
You mentioned two bits of information in your previous comment that need to be addressed:
1) A better comparison should be the 2022 Senate Race where Senator Peter Welch by roughly 68% points in the open race. This means Sanders got at least 5%+ points less than Welch did, even while 2024 is the presidential election year. Welch actually did 2% points higher than Biden did in 2020.
However, Sanders likely got the drop in margin of victory vs his previous Senate elections because of the national environment, not as much any underlying issues he had as an incumbent Senator. A tiny margin of difference between Sanders and Harris doesn’t particularly suggest anything other than the national environment impacted Sanders’ margin of victory a bit.
2) Harris was perceived to be arrogant by the Teamster’s President, which pretty much is in the same boat of being elitist. There is no data I have seen as of yet (unless anyone wants to share) that Sanders had issues with working class voters, at least in VT. VT is not a rust belt state although I am not too familiar with its blue collar sector.
It is possible Sanders by association with Harris and the Democratic Party did see a drop in enthusiasm in his Senate race. However, this is a 5+% point swing away from Democrats, which isn’t in my view something to be too concerned about.
If Sanders won re-election by 20% or less, then I’d be concerned.
No, I agree with the original comment and the best comparison is comparing Harris and Sanders in 2024. She did better than he did in his own state so why should we listen to his critiques?
Sanders and Warren, in particular, were the only incumbents to underperform Harris. Warren did so by around 5 points, off the top of my head. I think that is significant. Why were the two most visibly left wing members of the Senate the worst performers?
Warren is weak by mass dem standards. Coming in third in your home state presidential primary was not pretty. Right wing populism is a bigger sale these days than left wing populism
Because populism at its heart is about exclusion. Going against a central tenet of the Democratic Party. For populism to be successful regardless of ideology, it requires “punching down.” People don’t want to be at the bottom, they want someone below them.
I'm not sold on your argument. The way I've assessed things, Warren suffered in the presidential primary race because Sanders entered the race and took away all the energy from her campaign.
Also, Warren had similar appeal as Sanders did towards Trump supporters during early stages of the primaries. Even Tucker Carlson of all people at one point was considering voting for Warren because of her economic agenda and even referenced her Two-Income Trap book.
Warren underperformed Harris by 1.4% points, which is slightly worse than how Sanders did his Senate Race. However, Warren's percentage of victory in 2024 is actually .6% points lower than her re-election victory back in 2018.
In other words, not really much difference for Warren.
I think someone in a previous thread pointed out that Warren did worse in upscale communities vs. Harris and better in "working class" areas but I don't think Warren is all that problematic in terms of throwing unnecessary rock throwing and i'm glad she is in the Senate.
Warren didn't have a real race..this is such a simplistic thread that has no real way of examination.. Massachusetts wasn't competitive at all in basically every race
Entire brand? LOL. It’s a very small portion. His “brand” has always been fighting powerful economic interests and fighting for economic and social Justice.
I think it's bad from both of them. It's part of why I've never been as fond of Sanders as would otherwise be assumed based on how far on the left I am ideologically.
It's poor behavior from both of them and makes it harder for the party in net. It's not a surprise that so many people have a poor opinion of the dem party when so many of our elected officials seem borderline ashamed to be a party member.
He’s never been pro Democratic Party if you look at his life. The only reason he caucuses with Democrats is so he can go back to Vermont and say he did things. You have to keep in mind that his political hero is not FDR, but Eugene Debs. If he were the old school New Deal Democrat that his apologists claim him to be, he would have been best buddies with Tip O’Neill in the 1970s and 1980s. Not trashing JFK for trashing Castro back in the day.
I have no problem whatsoever with a fellow socialist identifying with Eugene V. Debs. I do have a problem with his current unjustified and highly untimely trashing of the Democratic Party. But no, he doesn't caucus with Democrats to "say he did things"; he does it to actually have an effect on Democratic legislation and Executive action - which he did have.
Two reasons why. #1. We now have two generations of American voters who didn't grow up in the Cold War, thus the word "socialist" is no longer poison in some mainstream political circles now, though it still remain very much a minority political sentiment in the USA. #2. The 2008 Wall Street crash did open the door to some left populism in this country, albeit not nearly as much as in 1929. Those two factors don't happen and he has no national audience, and today he'd struggle to have a Vermont audience.
You're talking about political effectiveness. I have no problem with socialists advocating their positions, regardless of whether they are widely accepted or not. That's not my issue with Bernie and never has been.
I do because the Democratic Party simply does not get away with perceived extremism the way the Republican Party does. That's not changing anytime soon.
Bernie Sanders is NOT a socialist – despite the fact that he professes to be one. Not once have I heard Senator Sanders loudly propose that the state should take over the means of production and distribution.
Sanders is a social democrat. And I wish he would be intellectually honest enough to use that term, instead of "socialist" which is inaccurate as well as toxic in American public discourse.
Social democrats are a type of socialist, but aside from that, my main objection to how Bernie campaigned for president is that he tried to argue that all governmental organizations including the military were socialism but never laid out his vision of the ideal society that's his end goal. It's entirely unclear to me whether a classless society in which the people collectively own the means of production through a democratic government is or is not his ideal and the end goal he'd like to strive towards, and if it is, I'd like to see him explain why he considers that vital.
Back in the day, I favored Bernie over Hillary. Four years later, I was extremely disappointed to realize that Bernie had done nothing to build bridges and enlarge his campaign coalition. Bernie had four years to prepare but did squat!
So glad we elected Joe Biden, who certainly exceeded my expectations. While Bernie has a heart of gold and many worthwhile ideas, I believe he would have been a catastrophe as president. Why? I see little if any evidence that Bernie Sanders knows how to build bridges, nor how to compromise and win legislative support. We would have had four years of his rhetoric from the Oval Office bully pulpit – but few if any accomplishments.
PS. In 2020, I strongly supported Elizabeth Warren for President. That said, imho Warren has been far more impactful than Bernie on Biden’s policies and personnel choices. Kudos to her!
Bernie has collaborated with people far to his right on legislation, so he's definitely capable of compromise, but Biden's ability to get legislation through Congress was unmatched for a Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson and there's no way any other Democrat would have been as successful, and certainly not Bernie.
She's right. Biden was by far the best president for workers and the most progressive president since Lyndon Johnson. Bernie had a lot to do with that, as his conversations with Biden gave him a lot of ideas he implemented, yet the way Bernie talks often suggests that he was asleep for the last 4 years. And Biden and Harris not being outright socialists isn't a reason why it's not surprising people voted for a fascist felon.
I'm talking about what he's said -after- the election, and you know where you can put your allegations that I'm addressing a straw man. I had been a fan of Sanders since his days as Mayor of Burlington, but his campaign against the Democrats, blaming them and the Republicans for oligarchy, etc, etc, after the last 4 years made me so angry, I attempted - seemingly unsuccessfully - to unsubscribe from his emails.
I don't think this was a particularly ideologically driven result. Blaming progressives seems silly. Blaming moderates also seems silly. Both are actively counterproductive, because we need both groups to win elections.
What I mean is that the voters who were decisive in this election were not particularly concerned with ideology. As such, I think this election tells us very little about the Great Pie Fight between moderates/progressives and should be treated accordingly.
I'm not sure I'd go quite that far, but I do think she ran an above average campaign given the situation we were in. Did a pretty good job clawing back our losses among high-propensity voters. Couldn't overcome the undertow among low-propensity ones.
"Among other things, two of our last three presidential nominees were women. Two of our last four were Black. If you don’t see that as change, you’re kind of missing something.
Joe Biden is wrapping up the most economically progressive presidency since LBJ’s."
"on the economic front, think back to the DLC centrism of Bill Clinton's presidency and compare it to Biden's."
I firmly believe historians will see Joe Biden as the most consequential President since LBJ. It’s deeply impressive how much he got done while he had such small majorities in the House and Senate – and, more recently, with a GOP-controlled House.
The tragedy is that Team Biden failed to successfully communicate their great accomplishments to voters. Granted, it was nearly impossible for Biden to really be heard above the loud right-wing ecosystem and the bothsiderist infotainment news media. The mainstream press utterly failed to do its job, and they normalized Trump.
The double tragedy is that Kamala Harris did not win the 2024 election. We’ll see four years of backsliding and worse.
Maybe. But how much do we hear about the achievements of the Weimar Republic's leaders? To be fair, Germany was in a depression in 1933 and democracy was under attack from the Communists as well as the Nazis, so the situation was very different.
Merry Christmas to all those on The Downballot. We got two big NFL games today: Chiefs v. Steelers at 1PM ET/12PM CT and Ravens v. Texans at 4:30PM ET/3:30PM CT, both on Netflix and on CBS in the participating teams' primary markets.
A Christmas Story is currently being marathoned on both TBS and TNT.
An aside: As immigrants having eaten turkey for our first Thanksgiving in California, my parents and siblings and I held a family council before our second Thanksgiving. We unanimously decided turkey was off the menu. Thereafter, and for most years of my childhood and youth, we enjoyed stuffed Cornish game hen. Which as you probably know are tasty and nice and juicy – but neither "Cornish" nor "game" nor "hen".
I thought Cornish hens were little chickens, no? When I was a kid, I thought they were gornisht game hens, because gornisht is Yiddish for "nothing." I always preferred normal-sized chickens. But what my family had in commons with yours is that we always preferred chicken to turkey, and after a while, we stopped making a turkey when we hosted Thanksgiving. We also had fantastic duck in Beijing!
Thanks for the links! Your wife's work looks interesting on my phone, but I think I need to look again on my largish external monitor after work today. :-)
I was watching the Harry Potter marathon with my parents on USA. This was in Northern Virginia, where my dad was disappointed he couldn't see the Ravens-Texans game as they don't get Baltimore TV and don't have Netflix. He must have been pleased with the 31-2 result, as Lamar Jackson set a new record as NFL rushing quarterback. The Texans' MVP was in effect Beyonce, as her halftime show was the only thing that went right for them.
Yes, Rahm Emmanuel would surely do work – but I am doubtful he would do the work that is needed at this moment in time. We need an honest discussion of how best to renew the party. The DNC Chair needs to lead that work; imho, it would be a mistake if the main focus of the Chair continues to be fundraising.
In my opinion, the Democratic Party needs to develop a serious 50-State Strategy, which means rebuilding many state-level organizations. The way to do that is to invite to the table the many groups that invested heavily and worked hard to win this election.
I am convinced that Ben Wikler is the best person for that job!
Rahm's served well, but I think he's a bit too much rooted in the past to be what the party needs now. It should be someone less shopworn--but not TOO new or inexperienced, and not too closely associated with any particular past or potential future candidate or faction of the party.
Ben Wikler and Ken Martin both fit the description well; so probably does Martin O'Malley though his electoral run was some time ago. There are several dark horses either running or considering doing so that may have potential (Marianne WIlliamson is of course not a serious candidate for anything.)
All I can say is that when Emanuel started becoming a dick as DCCC Chair to Howard Dean who had a great 50-state strategy vision as DNC Chair, that’s when it was over for me.
Also, Emanuel was possessed the wrong tone as Mayor of Chicago and behaved arrogantly towards teachers unions. He’s likely going to get serious pushback from such unions if he runs for DNC Chair.
The consequences of anti-vaxxer extremism and anti-public health sentiments being normalized by Republicans: Louisiana bans the state's Department of Health from promoting COVID, flu, or mpox vaccines.
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/12/20/nx-s1-5223440/louisiana-ban-public-health-promoting-covid-flu-mpox-vaccines-landry-rfk-jr-anti-vaccine
Interesting because it's Trump himself who pushed vaccines for COVID-19.
He's always tried to have it both ways with the vaccine.
As with many issues!
Louisiana following West Virginia into just perpetual decline.
The two slowest growing states in the nation since 2021, and two of just four with outright declines over that period.
I don't think John Bel Edwards can break the pattern of popular opposition party governors (where the other party wins at the top of the ticket by 10+) flaming out in a senate race but maybe he could run for governor in 2027 if things really go belly up in the state. Louisiana has term limits for consecutive terms but he can run again after one term out of office.
I think Edwards would have a far better shot at a third term as governor than LePage did when he went up against Janet Mills here in Maine. Paul "I-was-Trump-before-Trump" LePage got crushed, losing by almost 14 percent.
Edwards is probably the highest profile Democrat in LA right now.
If not him, Mitch Landrieu would be an alternative as a Senate candidate. On the other hand, his sister, former Senator Mary Landrieu, lost re-election in 2014 so the Landrieu family name isn’t exactly fresh.
Reposting from the last weekly thread: I’m very interested in NC’s US Senate election in 2026. Cooper seems more likely to run now than before this year’s election, but I’m also interested in our backups: Wiley Nickel is definitely running if Cooper doesn’t, but he might even try to run anyways. Personally, if Cooper sits it out, I’d prefer Jeff Jackson take a shot at it. However, I see him as more likely to run against Budd in ‘28.
Mecklenburg and Cabarrus Counties’ municipal elections next year and the General Assembly races in 2026 are also high priorities. As a local Democratic Party officer, the North Meck towns are important to me—we just took total control in Huntersville and have held Davidson for some time. Cornelius continues to be difficult, though. Our NC house district, HD98 flipped to the Dems by ~5%. Christy Clark (now Huntersville’s Mayor) won in ‘18 by a few hundred votes and John Bradford regained it in ‘20 by ~2000, before defeating her in ‘22 by ~650 (I managed her campaign that year).
Charlotte is safe for Dems, but City Councilman Tariq Bokhari (R) is likely to face his toughest race yet in the affluent District 6 now that Trump is back in office.
Roy Cooper will be 69 years old in 2026. I seriously wish he would not run.
Governors do not have a great track record running for Senate either but even so I would prefer if he was even 10 years younger. He won't be a very inspiring candidate.
Nonsense; Cooper is clearly our best available candidate
I'm possibly the poster-child of arguing that we need younger candidates across the board. Yet, it is important to know when that doesn't apply. Cooper would be our strongest candidate by a clear margin. He would be older but not so old as to be unable to do the job; he could definitely handle at least one term in the senate and very likely could handle two. This isn't like Welch becoming a freshman senator at 75 in one of the bluest states in the country.
I'm fully on board with wanting younger candidates in general, but it's important for us to know when to make exceptions.
there's also a difference between the Senate and the Presidency. The actual workload for a Senator is not that intense and a healthy 80 year old can handle it. That's largely untrue of 80 year old Presidents, or Governors and CEOs for that matter.
Have you all noticed what Biden's been doing since the election? Contrary to how he seemed in and in some cases after the debate, his actions seem to show that he is really on top of things in terms of policy and government administration, and he's continued to do great things for the American people and American interests and not succumb to bitterness or apathy. Public perceptions and doubts about how he might have done as an 86-year-old shouldn't cloud these points.
yeah I think that's totally fair, and I think he was probably up to doing another four years. But the rigors of his presidency specifically clearly took a huge toll on him, and a 70 year old would've been much better able to handle them than an 80 year old, let alone a 50 or 60 year old. Covid, recession, inflation, ukraine, Gaza, January 6th, a difficult reelection all come together to be a particularly brutal four year stretch. Probably the most challenging since FDR, especially when accounting for how duplicitous his opposition was about every single issue. Plus running for President and being President are two different things.
They certainly are. I think LBJ was president during very difficult times, though partly of his own making.
none of our senate candidates this year were "inspiring candidates". It really doesn't matter, he's a popular two term governor and has won six times statewide. He could serve two terms and be younger than Trump will be at the end of his presidency or than Biden is now. We don't need to overlearn the lessons of the last four years.
John Hickenlooper was around the same age as Roy Cooper when he ran for the Senate in 2020 and unseated Cory Gardner in the CO-SEN race. He had served as Governor of Colorado for two terms prior to being in the Senate.
Hickerlooper unseated Gardner by close to 10% points (9.3% to be exact). That's appropriate considering how much CO as a state has moved to the left since then.
69 is young for a new Senator these days, could get 2 terms out of him!!
💙🇺🇲
"Governors do not have a great track record running for Senate..."
This has only been true for Democratic Governors who run for Senate in solidly red states or Republican Governors who run for Senate in solidly blue states. North Carolina is not solidly red at the federal level, and we won six statewide offices this year (Governor, LG, AG, Secretary of State, Superintendent of Public Instruction, and a state Supreme Court seat).
We are in a crisis now. We need our best candidates now. We can worry about 2032 if and when we make it that far.
Whatever happened to Larry.... who beat Robin .... of Belk's fame? Did he go back to teaching or is he a lobbyist now? Would be nice if the research park in Kannapolis turned Kannapolis and Concord blue.
Larry Kissell? He’s been out of office for 12 years and doesn’t have a great reputation in NC Dem circles. We have a good bench of current and recent office holders, including in Cabarrus county—we really don’t need to go back.
Plus he didn’t even vote for Obamacare.
I was just curious, not suggesting we dig him up. More of a WATN question. We lived in Kannapolis for awhile. I don't recall Dems having much traction there. Was surprised when he won. Not surprised when he lost.
Speaking as a North Carolinian - at least 90% likely that Nickel runs and the rest of the "normie lane" stands down for him.
If Cooper doesn't run Nickel seems like a good choice has experience running in a swing seat in 2022.
I've gotten two mailings (I live in Nickel's old district) in the past 4-6 weeks. Every indication is that he's running, and is reasonably sure Gov. Cooper will not.
Cooper hasn't grown fonder of Washington, DC (or big cities in general) as he's gotten older, I think is safe to presume.
He at the very least didn't shut down the idea. This was published yesterday.
"“I’m going to take the next two months and not make any decisions about going forward. I’ve been in public service a while. I’m going to take some time to see what the next chapter is. For me, I want to continue to make a difference,” Cooper told The N&O in mid-December. And, (running for Senate) “will be one of the things I look at as a potential.”
Read more at: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/article297315994.html#storylink=cpy
Next time I am in the office, I will try to run down one of my lobbyist buddies (one for each side of the aisle, they both voted for Stein, though) and see if there's anything to it. They always have told me unequivaocally that Cooper would never "go national."
Who is Nickel?
Rep. Wiley Nickel, who was elected two years ago and was screwed out of a second term by unneeded GOP redistricting.
Yep. He was the one left without a "chair" after all that (Jeff Jackson went for AG, Rachel Hunt kept the LG lane), so I expect all the normies had a deal to let him basically coast to Senate nomination.
My working theory for the Cooper thing is that he's freezing donors for a few months, allowing Nickel to consolidate his position.
Nickel is basically "generic NC Democrat" so he will stand or fall based on the overall political environment in 2026.
He may be "generic NC Dem" but he has a great and memorable name. "Wiley Nickel" is a much more interesting name than "Jeff Jackson" though of course I wish them both success. I have supported Jeff with small donations since I started reading his emails about his experiences in Congress. The main thing I know about Wiley Nickel is that I guessed wrong in the babka contest two years ago and was pleasantly surprised that he won.
“We reached an agreement…and a tweet changed all of it? Can you imagine what the next two years are going to be like if every time Congress works its will and then there's a tweet…from an individual who has no official portfolio who threatens members on the Republican side with a primary, and they succumb?”
– Richard Neal (MA-02, Democrat)
.
Elon Musk has called for Germans to vote for Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), the neo-Nazi party that has downplayed the Holocaust. In the upcoming elections, the AfD hopes to strengthen its hand in the Bundestag – and perhaps play a key role in the next government.
Members of the AfD spent Election Day at Mar-a-Lago and have underscored that they "hope to have a close relationship with the incoming Trump administration".
.
"X is just a swastika, sans serif."
It’s not just Musk and Trump who are AfD supporters. So is the Saudi psychiatrist (!) who rammed his SUV into a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, speeding over 400 meters into the crowd and injuring 200 people and killing at least five.
Last I heard, no other German party was willing to be in a coalition with AfD, so they are very unlikely to play a role in the next German government.
WHAT WAS STRIPPED from the original bipartisan budget bill?
o Crackdown on junk fees
o A fix for stolen food stamp funds
o Money for children’s cancer research
o Curtailing Pharmaceutical Benefit Managers (PBM)
o Criminalization of revenge porn and some deepfake images
o Restriction on investments in China
o Cost-of-living pay raise for Congress
The items that were stripped out had negligible, if any, budgetary impact. In fact, PBM reform would have saved patients and taxpayers significant money by curtailing the greed of Pharmaceutical Benefit Managers. Although removed from the bill, funding for pediatric cancer research was approved separately.
Two items on this list were set to have an impact on the business operations of Elon Musk. First, the original bipartisan bill required X and other social media sites to implement policies to deal with revenge porn and certain deepfake images. Second, Musk would have seen the proposed restriction on investments in China as problematic.
https://wapo.st/41JKEX5
FOLLOW THE MONEY: Why Musk killed the bill
Democrat Rosa DeLauro (CT-03) has accused Elon Musk of pushing Speaker Mike Johnson to kill the initial bipartisan spending proposal that was agreed to – precisely because it would have imposed new regulations on his considerable investments in China.
Tesla’s gigafactory in Shanghai accounts for half of its worldwide car production. In addition, Chinese factories produce over 90 percent of the parts for Tesla cars. Moreover, Tesla has roughly 300 stores throughout China.
https://thehill.com/business/5051709-musk-delauro-spending-bill-china/
Axing the revenge porn and cancer research is disgusting, but on its face (I don't know the details) I think enabling American investment in China is good policy for a variety of reasons (the Chinese have clearly set their sights on investing/buying property in the U.S.)
If DeLauro is correct, and Musk’s objections to new regulations on investments in China was his reason for manipulating the House to kill this bill – and having the power to do so! – then I would say that is worrisome in the extreme.
Make childhood cancer great again!
about time somebody cracked down on them mooching cancer kids amirite???
Everyone who complains about Jared Golden:
Congressman Golden voted in lockstep with Hakeem Jeffries for every vote during this funding mess.
Just sayin.
Golden is a star and should be respected as such; it's idiotic to not realize the difficulty of that district
He did not need to say that it didn't matter if Trump was elected or not. We don't need Dems in tough districts to kiss the party's ass but they don't need to kick it either.
Easy for you to say..Monday morning quarterbacking is just that
There is a fine line and some walk it better than others. I think it's always ultimately counterproductive to trash the party you belong to (if you plan on staying in that party and want it to win and be in power). The best pols find ways to accentuate their own brand without attacking the overarching brand they belong to.
TBC, I'm glad Golden is in Congress and not the NASCAR guy he beat.
I don't know. Considering that Senator Brown of Ohio was one of the best at that and he lost, maybe Golden wouldn't have had a chance if he hadn't trashed his party as hard as he did. Look at Tester's results, too.
A star?
In that district?? Yes, absolutely
Credit where it's due. I'm surprised he won this year.
Social Security Act is about to save seniors a lot of money.
Just in time for Trump to take credit for that too. Smfh. He's about to benefit from a ton of Biden Era policies.
he takes credit for everything; you do know he's better than Lincoln right?..just ask him
Per Susan Collins, she says she's been fighting to get this done since 2003.
I am willing to give Collins a break for her efforts in this. However, this doesn't mean she shouldn't be challenged hard for re-election in 2026.
Without picking up her seat in 2026, I see no path back to the majority!! 😢🇺🇲
Collins won re-election back in 2020 by the smallest margin of victory since her original Senate election back in 1996. It’s not out of the realm of possibilities to unseat her in 2026.
That said, as long as the campaign and messaging don’t mirror Sara Gideon’s in 2020 then it’ll be easier to challenge Collins. Maine can’t be targeted by Democrats like other states.
Sara Gideon was also handicapped by the fact that Mainers saw her as "not one of us". First of all, she is from Rhode Island and didn’t move to Maine until the age of 33. Second, Gideon is obviously not Caucasian; her father is from India and her mother, while her mother’s parents came from Armenia.
Sadly, such things matter to all-too-many Mainers, a significant portion of whom form a rather insular crowd.
Thanks for sharing the information. I didn’t know that history about Gideon.
What I understand is that the DSCC endorsing Gideon’s Senate campaign doomed the Democratic Party’s chances at winning the race. This is crazy considering she cut Collins’ margin of victory to single digits!
Angus King by contrast got re-elected in the 2024 Senate Race by nearly 18% points and happens to be an Independent Senator who caucuses with Democrats and is a reliable vote for the party. He’s also had a long history in Maine as he was Governor prior to being Senator.
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/why-sara-gideon-lost-senator-susan-collins-maine/
I'm actually pretty bullish on taking Collins' seat in 2026. I think it's going to be an electoral bloodbath that year (pro-Dem that is) whereas 2020 was basically neutral politically. In addition, I subscribe to the theory that the Dem coalition is better served to relatively lower turnout elections these days (which I think 2026 will be - people are just tired of politics). Finally, I think our messaging will be much better - we'll focus on more than just abortion...
Then they're very unlikely to flip the Senate unless she chooses to retire.
She can be defeated and we need to do so given the senate math. She won reelection with just 51% her worse performance since her first election in 1996.
I'm very skeptical. I'll literally believe it only if I see it. She could go the way of Senator Brown, but Downeasters are a lot more independent-minded and cross-voting than Buckeyes.
Maybe, but I think that is waning, Susan Collins being the only Republican from New England in either House of Congress is evidence of it. Maine is probably target #2 after NC specially if Cooper gets in and we can't give her a pass given the math and map of the Senate.
Curious as to the fundraising ability of the Democratic challengers in FL-6; as a member of the Volusia county DEC, I will be attending a meeting with all 3 candidates for our side(if none of them mention money at that meeting, I'll know right away that we have zero chance here even though Fine is a carpetbagger, he'll have millions $$$$$$)
Let us know how it goes if you're allowed to share anything. I grew up in Brevard county been gone for over a decade now but still keep some tabs and know very well what a genuinely awful person Randy Fine is.
absolutely; I'm not optimistic about the chances; I'm betting that all 3 prospects are lightweights that should probably be running for local city council; Agreed about randy fine; horrible but with the Trump endorsement I'm pretty convinced he wins in a walk
TX-12: Kay Granger has spent the last six months living at a care facility for dementia patients. Her staff refused to answer any questions about her whereabouts. I know House members are less visible than Senators but compare and contrast Granger's disappearance to DiFi.
https://dallasexpress.com/tarrant/exclusive-where-is-congresswoman-kay-granger/
Yes, extraordinary! There should be some way to create a vacancy when a member of Congress is no longer mentally able to resign.
The seat could be declared vacant by Congress. This happened in the early 80s when Rep. Gladys Noon Spellman (D-MD) had a heart attack and fell into a coma shortly before the 1980 election. She was reelected anyway, but after the next Congress convened and it became clear she would never re-awaken, the seat was declared vacant and a special election was held. (Steny Hoyer then won the seat and has held it ever since.)
If Granger had been reelected then this or something similar would probably be under consideration. As it is, this sounds like they pulled off something like a real life version of "Weekend At Bernie's" in which she was still physically alive but unable to serve and somehow it was kept secret until it no longer mattered.
FL-Sen: Lara Trump not seeking Senate seat.
https://www.rawstory.com/lara-trump-not-becoming-senator/
Honestly, think she should aim to become a singer. Hopefully limiting her venue to Mar-a-Lago and its audiences, and not inflicting any more of her recorded songs on Americans at large.
Good
Full-time grifting is an easier and much more profitable job than US Senator.
Moron-elect Donald Trump threatens to undermine Panamanian territorial sovereignty by threatening to bring the Panama Canal back under US rule.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/22/trump-panama-canal
It's like he's playing a Civilization game and just mashing "I demand 50 gold as tribute" over and over.
Comment of the year...
Ronald Reagan would be proud.
“When it comes to the Canal,we bought it, we paid for it, it's ours, and we should tellTorrijos and company that we are going to keep it”
https://www.nytimes.com/1976/02/29/archives/reagan-sharpens-his-criticism-of-ford-citing-canal-talks-and-two-in.html
Tragically, a lot of the Latin American and South American despots were also bought and paid for. Including Pinochet, Somoza...
Reagan was a terrible president, and you are right to point to his aggression against Panama.
Hmmm...though it was George H.W. Bush who launched that invasion; Reagan invaded Grenada, but it was basically the same type of imperialism and bullying of the Americas.
I was not aware of Panama invasion I was born in 91 though so before my time but was interesting to read about. Thanks.
I have no clue why everyone including the media continues to freak out when Trump does this. It is a play for media attention and him saying outrageous stuff for this reason is his entire brand and entirely his shtick.
It means nothing. The Greenland stuff, the Canada state stuff. None of it.
Ignore this nonsense and deprive him of oxygen. Save it for the real shit he does, not says.
Because it will prompt Panama to draw closer to powers like China. Don't think Trump's threats have no consequences abroad.
MN State House - Judge rules against DFLer’s residency throwing House majority to the GOP until a special election. Not the final ruling as it still has to get up to the MN Supreme Court. The seat is safe blue.
https://www.startribune.com/judge-rules-dfl-house-candidate-didnt-meet-residency-requirement-is-ineligible-to-serve/601197508
This stuff needs to be litigated *before* the election. Parties and campaigns shouldn't be allowed to wait until after the election to challenge whether a candidate meets the eligibility requirements.
Why is it okay for Bernie Sanders, who is not even a member of the Democratic Party, to have his entire brand be focused around bashing it, as he sits in a Safe Democratic seat, but for Jared Golden it is not?
Very strange double standards by some members here that will make moral pretzels in order to make something fit their own worldview.
What is good for the goose is good for the gander boys.
It's not good for either one of them to do it, and generally self-defeating int he long term. "We suck, vote for us" is not the most amazing message.
I am not criticizing Jared Golden nor have I made it an agenda of doing so.
However, Bernie Sanders has a massive influence on the left and is, I believe, under pressure to try to keep his base active so as to fire them up. After all, Sanders drove many of the Green Party members in states like CA to the Democratic Party because of his presidential primary campaign back in 2016.
That said, Sanders isn’t the only one who is criticizing the Democratic Party. Labor leaders as well as Senator Chris Murphy have been echoing what Sanders has said although differing views former House Minority Whip Jim Clyburn and Nancy Pelosi are evident.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/bernie-sanders-democrats-working-class/tnamp/
Kamala got more votes in Vermont than Bernie. Maybe Sanders has a working class voter problem
Harris’ margin of win in VT was only .6% points higher than Sanders. Hardly much improvement over what Sanders got in his Senate re-election.
I don’t know if Sanders has a working class problem. However, it appears Harris does, at least if the Teamsters President’s statement of his meeting with Harris during the campaign suggests anything.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/vermont-president-results
https://ballotpedia.org/Bernie_Sanders
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/arrogant-kamala-harris-told-teamsters-president-i-will-win-without-you/amp_articleshow/116636032.cms
I just think it's interesting that the guy throwing rocks after the election didn't get more votes in his home state than the "elitist" candidate.
You mentioned two bits of information in your previous comment that need to be addressed:
1) A better comparison should be the 2022 Senate Race where Senator Peter Welch by roughly 68% points in the open race. This means Sanders got at least 5%+ points less than Welch did, even while 2024 is the presidential election year. Welch actually did 2% points higher than Biden did in 2020.
However, Sanders likely got the drop in margin of victory vs his previous Senate elections because of the national environment, not as much any underlying issues he had as an incumbent Senator. A tiny margin of difference between Sanders and Harris doesn’t particularly suggest anything other than the national environment impacted Sanders’ margin of victory a bit.
2) Harris was perceived to be arrogant by the Teamster’s President, which pretty much is in the same boat of being elitist. There is no data I have seen as of yet (unless anyone wants to share) that Sanders had issues with working class voters, at least in VT. VT is not a rust belt state although I am not too familiar with its blue collar sector.
It is possible Sanders by association with Harris and the Democratic Party did see a drop in enthusiasm in his Senate race. However, this is a 5+% point swing away from Democrats, which isn’t in my view something to be too concerned about.
If Sanders won re-election by 20% or less, then I’d be concerned.
No, I agree with the original comment and the best comparison is comparing Harris and Sanders in 2024. She did better than he did in his own state so why should we listen to his critiques?
Sanders and Warren, in particular, were the only incumbents to underperform Harris. Warren did so by around 5 points, off the top of my head. I think that is significant. Why were the two most visibly left wing members of the Senate the worst performers?
Warren is weak by mass dem standards. Coming in third in your home state presidential primary was not pretty. Right wing populism is a bigger sale these days than left wing populism
Because populism at its heart is about exclusion. Going against a central tenet of the Democratic Party. For populism to be successful regardless of ideology, it requires “punching down.” People don’t want to be at the bottom, they want someone below them.
I'm not sold on your argument. The way I've assessed things, Warren suffered in the presidential primary race because Sanders entered the race and took away all the energy from her campaign.
Also, Warren had similar appeal as Sanders did towards Trump supporters during early stages of the primaries. Even Tucker Carlson of all people at one point was considering voting for Warren because of her economic agenda and even referenced her Two-Income Trap book.
https://www.salon.com/2019/01/26/salon-interview-tucker-carlson-bashes-capitalism-says-he-might-vote-for-elizabeth-warren/
Warren underperformed Harris by 1.4% points, which is slightly worse than how Sanders did his Senate Race. However, Warren's percentage of victory in 2024 is actually .6% points lower than her re-election victory back in 2018.
In other words, not really much difference for Warren.
2024 US Presidency in Massachusetts
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-elections/massachusetts-senate-results
2024 U.S. Senate Race in Massachusetts
https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_Senate_election_in_Massachusetts,_2024
2018 U.S. Senate Race in Massachusetts
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2018-election/midterms/ma/
I think someone in a previous thread pointed out that Warren did worse in upscale communities vs. Harris and better in "working class" areas but I don't think Warren is all that problematic in terms of throwing unnecessary rock throwing and i'm glad she is in the Senate.
Warren didn't have a real race..this is such a simplistic thread that has no real way of examination.. Massachusetts wasn't competitive at all in basically every race
I love Warren, but election results are what they are.
Entire brand? LOL. It’s a very small portion. His “brand” has always been fighting powerful economic interests and fighting for economic and social Justice.
Yes. But now, he's posturing in what strikes me as an insincere and somewhat demogagic way.
I think it's bad from both of them. It's part of why I've never been as fond of Sanders as would otherwise be assumed based on how far on the left I am ideologically.
It's poor behavior from both of them and makes it harder for the party in net. It's not a surprise that so many people have a poor opinion of the dem party when so many of our elected officials seem borderline ashamed to be a party member.
What he's done since the election certainly is not good, and as a fellow socialist, I'm very angry at him.
He’s never been pro Democratic Party if you look at his life. The only reason he caucuses with Democrats is so he can go back to Vermont and say he did things. You have to keep in mind that his political hero is not FDR, but Eugene Debs. If he were the old school New Deal Democrat that his apologists claim him to be, he would have been best buddies with Tip O’Neill in the 1970s and 1980s. Not trashing JFK for trashing Castro back in the day.
I have no problem whatsoever with a fellow socialist identifying with Eugene V. Debs. I do have a problem with his current unjustified and highly untimely trashing of the Democratic Party. But no, he doesn't caucus with Democrats to "say he did things"; he does it to actually have an effect on Democratic legislation and Executive action - which he did have.
Two reasons why. #1. We now have two generations of American voters who didn't grow up in the Cold War, thus the word "socialist" is no longer poison in some mainstream political circles now, though it still remain very much a minority political sentiment in the USA. #2. The 2008 Wall Street crash did open the door to some left populism in this country, albeit not nearly as much as in 1929. Those two factors don't happen and he has no national audience, and today he'd struggle to have a Vermont audience.
Trump is better at populism.. we should acknowledge that
Never said he wasn't. It's easy to be good at populism when your voters let you get away with "punching down."
You're talking about political effectiveness. I have no problem with socialists advocating their positions, regardless of whether they are widely accepted or not. That's not my issue with Bernie and never has been.
I do because the Democratic Party simply does not get away with perceived extremism the way the Republican Party does. That's not changing anytime soon.
Bernie Sanders is NOT a socialist – despite the fact that he professes to be one. Not once have I heard Senator Sanders loudly propose that the state should take over the means of production and distribution.
Sanders is a social democrat. And I wish he would be intellectually honest enough to use that term, instead of "socialist" which is inaccurate as well as toxic in American public discourse.
Social democrats are a type of socialist, but aside from that, my main objection to how Bernie campaigned for president is that he tried to argue that all governmental organizations including the military were socialism but never laid out his vision of the ideal society that's his end goal. It's entirely unclear to me whether a classless society in which the people collectively own the means of production through a democratic government is or is not his ideal and the end goal he'd like to strive towards, and if it is, I'd like to see him explain why he considers that vital.
Back in the day, I favored Bernie over Hillary. Four years later, I was extremely disappointed to realize that Bernie had done nothing to build bridges and enlarge his campaign coalition. Bernie had four years to prepare but did squat!
So glad we elected Joe Biden, who certainly exceeded my expectations. While Bernie has a heart of gold and many worthwhile ideas, I believe he would have been a catastrophe as president. Why? I see little if any evidence that Bernie Sanders knows how to build bridges, nor how to compromise and win legislative support. We would have had four years of his rhetoric from the Oval Office bully pulpit – but few if any accomplishments.
PS. In 2020, I strongly supported Elizabeth Warren for President. That said, imho Warren has been far more impactful than Bernie on Biden’s policies and personnel choices. Kudos to her!
Bernie has collaborated with people far to his right on legislation, so he's definitely capable of compromise, but Biden's ability to get legislation through Congress was unmatched for a Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson and there's no way any other Democrat would have been as successful, and certainly not Bernie.
Also, in the 2020 primaries, I favored Inslee, then Warren and then Bernie.
The way Biden delivered for progressives and they just let him rot on the curb has got to be one of the most depressing betrayals in history.
I’m just in shock. But, it’s a movement of entitled children who just want mommy to buy the next new toy for them so it’s not surprising.
Are you done with your baiting?
She's right. Biden was by far the best president for workers and the most progressive president since Lyndon Johnson. Bernie had a lot to do with that, as his conversations with Biden gave him a lot of ideas he implemented, yet the way Bernie talks often suggests that he was asleep for the last 4 years. And Biden and Harris not being outright socialists isn't a reason why it's not surprising people voted for a fascist felon.
Nice strawman. And the criticism goes to tactics and strategy. Sanders campaigned hard for both of those candidates.
Biden was fine as a domestic policy president
I'm talking about what he's said -after- the election, and you know where you can put your allegations that I'm addressing a straw man. I had been a fan of Sanders since his days as Mayor of Burlington, but his campaign against the Democrats, blaming them and the Republicans for oligarchy, etc, etc, after the last 4 years made me so angry, I attempted - seemingly unsuccessfully - to unsubscribe from his emails.
I haven't seen any evidence that Harris's loss/Trump's win had anything to do with progressives abandoning ship over Biden. Stein only got 0.5%
I don't think this was a particularly ideologically driven result. Blaming progressives seems silly. Blaming moderates also seems silly. Both are actively counterproductive, because we need both groups to win elections.
You don't think sexism, racism and xenophobia are ideological?
What I mean is that the voters who were decisive in this election were not particularly concerned with ideology. As such, I think this election tells us very little about the Great Pie Fight between moderates/progressives and should be treated accordingly.
well put..this election was over before it began(imo Harris did the best she could)
I'm not sure I'd go quite that far, but I do think she ran an above average campaign given the situation we were in. Did a pretty good job clawing back our losses among high-propensity voters. Couldn't overcome the undertow among low-propensity ones.
I'm skeptical. You think this election was only about inflation?
I thought this was a decent piece: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/12/24/2293583/-If-you-don-t-think-Democrats-can-change-you-haven-t-been-paying-attention?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
"Among other things, two of our last three presidential nominees were women. Two of our last four were Black. If you don’t see that as change, you’re kind of missing something.
Joe Biden is wrapping up the most economically progressive presidency since LBJ’s."
"on the economic front, think back to the DLC centrism of Bill Clinton's presidency and compare it to Biden's."
Hear, hear!
I firmly believe historians will see Joe Biden as the most consequential President since LBJ. It’s deeply impressive how much he got done while he had such small majorities in the House and Senate – and, more recently, with a GOP-controlled House.
The tragedy is that Team Biden failed to successfully communicate their great accomplishments to voters. Granted, it was nearly impossible for Biden to really be heard above the loud right-wing ecosystem and the bothsiderist infotainment news media. The mainstream press utterly failed to do its job, and they normalized Trump.
The double tragedy is that Kamala Harris did not win the 2024 election. We’ll see four years of backsliding and worse.
He'll be helped by how bad Trump screws up the second term
Maybe. But how much do we hear about the achievements of the Weimar Republic's leaders? To be fair, Germany was in a depression in 1933 and democracy was under attack from the Communists as well as the Nazis, so the situation was very different.
Merry Christmas to all those on The Downballot. We got two big NFL games today: Chiefs v. Steelers at 1PM ET/12PM CT and Ravens v. Texans at 4:30PM ET/3:30PM CT, both on Netflix and on CBS in the participating teams' primary markets.
A Christmas Story is currently being marathoned on both TBS and TNT.
Merry Christmas everyone. !!
Also Happy Chanukah to whomever is celebrating. Tonight is the first night of Chanukah, which is rarely this late in the solar calendar.
Apparently this is only the fourth time since 1900 that Hanukkah and Christmas Day coincide. My wife made delicious duck for dinner.
Happy Hanukkah and Happy Christmas, all!
Yum, duck! How did you cook it?
The most amazing duck I’ve ever had was in Beijing in 2000, but last night’s dinner was, as you say, yummie! Here is the recipe Shelah followed.
https://mapleleaffarms.com/recipes/roasted-whole-duck-basic-recipe-for-crispy-skin
By the way, if you’re interested, here is my wife’s artist page & Instagram:
https://www.shelah-horvitz-art.com/
https://www.instagram.com/shelah.horvitz/
An aside: As immigrants having eaten turkey for our first Thanksgiving in California, my parents and siblings and I held a family council before our second Thanksgiving. We unanimously decided turkey was off the menu. Thereafter, and for most years of my childhood and youth, we enjoyed stuffed Cornish game hen. Which as you probably know are tasty and nice and juicy – but neither "Cornish" nor "game" nor "hen".
I thought Cornish hens were little chickens, no? When I was a kid, I thought they were gornisht game hens, because gornisht is Yiddish for "nothing." I always preferred normal-sized chickens. But what my family had in commons with yours is that we always preferred chicken to turkey, and after a while, we stopped making a turkey when we hosted Thanksgiving. We also had fantastic duck in Beijing!
Thanks for the links! Your wife's work looks interesting on my phone, but I think I need to look again on my largish external monitor after work today. :-)
Thanks for those details. Hilarious about "gornisht".
Another pastime of mine: contemplating the core points Martin Buber makes in his great work, "I and Thou".
The Texans were brutal today.
Seriously. Best part of the day was the Kay Adams/Mina Kimes-led analyst panel. Such solid pros, both.
I was watching the Harry Potter marathon with my parents on USA. This was in Northern Virginia, where my dad was disappointed he couldn't see the Ravens-Texans game as they don't get Baltimore TV and don't have Netflix. He must have been pleased with the 31-2 result, as Lamar Jackson set a new record as NFL rushing quarterback. The Texans' MVP was in effect Beyonce, as her halftime show was the only thing that went right for them.
Lamar Jackson is one of the most absurd athletes in recent American history. What a talent
Marianne Williamson launches bid for DNC Chair.
Lol.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/26/marianne-williamson-launches-bid-for-dnc-chair-00196043
Please, no! Far better if she and Rahm Emmanuel just quietly disappear.
He at least would do the work. She would be tweaked out on psychedelics at committee meetings and babble incoherently.
Yes, Rahm Emmanuel would surely do work – but I am doubtful he would do the work that is needed at this moment in time. We need an honest discussion of how best to renew the party. The DNC Chair needs to lead that work; imho, it would be a mistake if the main focus of the Chair continues to be fundraising.
In my opinion, the Democratic Party needs to develop a serious 50-State Strategy, which means rebuilding many state-level organizations. The way to do that is to invite to the table the many groups that invested heavily and worked hard to win this election.
I am convinced that Ben Wikler is the best person for that job!
Rahm's served well, but I think he's a bit too much rooted in the past to be what the party needs now. It should be someone less shopworn--but not TOO new or inexperienced, and not too closely associated with any particular past or potential future candidate or faction of the party.
Ben Wikler and Ken Martin both fit the description well; so probably does Martin O'Malley though his electoral run was some time ago. There are several dark horses either running or considering doing so that may have potential (Marianne WIlliamson is of course not a serious candidate for anything.)
All I can say is that when Emanuel started becoming a dick as DCCC Chair to Howard Dean who had a great 50-state strategy vision as DNC Chair, that’s when it was over for me.
Also, Emanuel was possessed the wrong tone as Mayor of Chicago and behaved arrogantly towards teachers unions. He’s likely going to get serious pushback from such unions if he runs for DNC Chair.
Didn't he support police brutality and/or stop & frisk, too?
If this was 2014 not 2024 I’d be all for Rahm taking over but I think he’s been out of the game just a bit too long
Agreed! When most Democrats these days want a 50 state strategy, Emanuel will likely not be focused as much on this.
Behind the hippie New Age facade she’s actually a vicious person who routinely verbally abuses staffers and is prone to violent outbursts.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/16/marianne-williamson-abusive-treatment-2020-campaign-staff-00087268
Mars must have been in Cancer a lot then.
Oh man.
We certainly don’t want a DNC Chair like Marianne Williamson with this kind of attitude.
This story should definitely bury her chances.
Pffft, hahaha! Did she consult "I Ching" or astrology texts to come to this decision?
Dear god.
Hasn’t Williamson ever learned that Democratic primary voters not once but twice overwhelming did NOT vote for her?
I guess she hasn’t!