A few notes about the Wisconsin Supreme Court election:
1) The large, heavily populated Waukesha County suburbs of Brookfield and Menomonee Falls continue to trend Democratic. Both used to be heavily Republican - Brookfield voted 64% for John McCain in 2008, and was 3-1 Republican in that infamous 2011 Supreme Court election where conservative David Prosser barely beat liberal JoAnn Kloppenburg. But both have gradually but steadily shifted left during the Trump era. Last year, Trump won Brookfield by 5 and Menomonee Falls by 7, and both voted for Dan Kelly in 2023 by 53-47 margins. This time, Schimel's margins in both Brookfield and Menomonee Falls were less than 2 percent. It's a reasonable assumption that the next time a Democrat wins Wisconsin by a 55-45 margin, they'll carry both Brookfield and Menomonee Falls. And in 10 years, Dems will probably be routinely winning both in most elections. What an insane shift that would be - to see all that blue in Waukesha County. (And Crawford replicated Protasiewicz's victory in the city of Waukesha - expanding the margin of victory from 0.6% to 2%.)
2) Several rural counties swung from Protasiewicz in 2023 to Schimel this year, including Lafayette, Grant, Jackson, Dunn, and Pierce. However, Crawford was able to pull out a victory in Racine County, just south of Milwaukee, despite the fact that none of the previous Democratic Supreme Court winners (Dallet, Karofsky, and Protasiewicz) won it. This important county flip came about largely due to increased minority turnout in the city of Racine - it swung from 66% Protasiewicz to 70% Crawford.
3) It is honestly quite encouraging that, despite rural areas continuing to trend Republican, the topline of the election result remained mostly unchanged.
Turnout overall was higher this go-around., which may explain some of the shifts from 2023.
Apparently Republicans turnout target was based on the number of votes they would have needed to beat Protasiewicz, which they met, but Crawford got almost 300,000 more votes, so they didn't come close to actually winning.
Doesn’t it usually work the other way in Wisconsin, where there is usually an after midnight drop of Milwaukee and Green Bay absentees that give the Democrat a boost?
Baldwin's opponent, Leah Vukmir, was from the WOW counties, so that skewed the results there a bit. Vukmir won Brookfield by 19 and Menomonee Falls by 15. (Vukmir also won Mequon, in Ozaukee County by 11, while Crawford won it by 7 now.)
Plus, 2018 was right when the suburbs really started turning and the WOW ones started off much redder. When I went to Milwaukee and drove through Waukesha, I was expecting to see some suburbs. I was expecting a bigger city out of Milwaukee so doesn’t seem like they have the makings of blue suburbs due to a lack of major employers which creates the big box McMansion suburbs that have flipped blue.
People often forget that there are a lot of suburbs in Milwaukee county, with a population of around 350k compared to about 650k in WOW. The Milwaukee county suburbs have shifted blue just as WOW has, and most of them were fairly blue to start with. Same general pattern in most metros with inner suburbs being blue and outer suburbs red.
And they go on and on about Elon Musk as if he were the GOP's only liability, quoting data about his unpopularity and several Republicans who admit he's less popular than Trump--while overlooking the fact that Trump ain't exactly popular himself.
It’s an added bonus though for more readers not normally contributors such as ourselves are paying attention. If they read what we are discussing, even better!
Yes, but people don't die from reading Fox News or posting on X (okay, the second one is arguable)-they do die regularly from the idiotic "challenges" that are exclusively on TikTok.
Not so sure about that. On the basis of stuff they saw or read on Fox News, including semi-literate posts on their forums, quite a few people declined to be vaccinated – only to die of Covid.
Refusing to take a vaccine isn't automatically fatal. Is it monumentally stupid? Of course (why get sick when you don't have ro?), but don't tell me it's a death sentence.
Lethal would be shit like the Tide Pods challenge that was big on TikTok a few years ago.
The idea that the Tide Pod Challenge was exclusive to TikTok is very mistaken, it spread mostly on Twitter, Youtube, and Reddit, but can obviously be found all across social media, cause that's how social media works.
As always, any justification provided for banning TikTok can be applied at least equally well to things like Twitter and Facebook.
Also think you're overestimating the number of poisonings resulting from the challenge. The vast majority of people ingesting tide pods are either very small kids or elderly dementia patients.
And that's a good argument for stripping FOX of it's broadcast license and defying the courts if/when they rule against us (at this point, the first amendment is a dead letter anyways).
Yes, agreed. It boils down to the dependency on large corporations, particularly as they have gotten bigger and bigger.
It’s the risk taking that is the greatest concern. I would not just focus on separating investment banking from banks like BofA, Chase, Wells Fargo, etc. but also deemphasize certain digital technologies such as algorithms in the stock market environment. Overall, rational management of the financial system.
Warren Buffett at previous Berkshire Hathaway annual meetings talked about how he preferred the old system pre-Glass Steagall. The late Charlie Munger criticized those in finance who have the mindset of making money instead of being skilled at banking.
VA-Gov: It's set between Abigail Spanberger and Winsome Earle-Sears. Amanda Chase, like Dave LaRock, failed to get enough valid signatures to qualify on the Republican side, and neither Bobby Scott nor any other serious Democrat even tried after Levar Stoney withdrew.
Interesting that signature requirements knocked out those fringe people. Here in California no signatures are needed for candidates, you can simply write a check in lieu of signatures (amount depends on the office). Those two would easily be on the ballot.
I attended my first protest today and for a pretty small suburb the turnout was great! And Kim Schrier was there too which was cool, much better public speaker than I anticipated
Her district in Washington's 8th isn't safe by a long shot as it voted for every Republican statewide downballot at the state level.
Due to ticket-splitting, in the Governor's race, Dave Reichert who used to represent it for 7 terms (14 years) carried it by the same comfortable 54% - 46% margin Kim Schrier was simultaneously reelected by. 2026 I'm expecting it to be Likely D at the very least given the likely environment. If Sen. Patty Murray retires in 2028, she should make the leap like Chris Pappas is doing in New Hampshire now!! 💙🇺🇲
Any tea leaves on Murray's plans? She'll be 78 in Nov. 2028, and 84 at the end of that term. We really don't need another potential DiFi situation. I'm still traumatized by that.
Agreed on your point. I'd hope she retires in 2028. Unfortunately it doesn't look like we have any particularly young prominent officials in WA that could run. Our congressional delegation will all be in their 60s by then except for two. Gluesenkamp-Perez, who is far too moderate for a senate seat in a state that blue. And Randall, who I know nothing about and is in her first term in the house. Governor is also be in his 60s, LG is in his 70s. I don't know anything about the state's other statewide officials, maybe some of them would be a good choice.
As a side note to Murray's age... Cantwell is surprisingly young for someone that has been in the senate for 25 years. Not young at all, mind you, at 66 years old. But she's been around for a long time. Must be in contention for one of the senior-most junior senators in history. A flipside of Warren becoming MA's senior senator with only half a year of seniority.
Yeah, I'm sure there are some state officials who could run. Everyone will remember when State Senator Kay Hagan beat Elizabeth Dole to become Senator from North Carolina.
Yeah, that was a fun one. No one wanted to run so she took one for the team and ended destroying Dole and became a Senator. She was even one of the few races we felt somewhat good about going into E-Day but 2014 was a mess.
Elizabeth Dole was always pretty weak as a politician. It was clear that she was used to having cushy gigs handed to her, rather than having to campaign for them. (And it didn't help that she hadn't lived in North Carolina since she was an undergraduate at Duke.)
And of all the Senate races we lost in 2014, Hagan's was the true heartbreaker.
Washington is a much bluer state than New Hampshire. Therefore, we don't need a swing district representative to ensure we hold the seat. If Kim Schrier is popular in WA-08, then I'd say it's better she run for reelection to her House seat and let someone else run for Senate. Even in a Republican wave year, we wouldn't be in too much danger of losing a Senate seat in Washington.
Schrier has that seat as long as she wants it. State GOP always outruns Federal, usually by quite. Bit. And it was Reichert’s old seat and Inslee did not leave office particularly popular.
NY-22 John Mannion is the first Democratic House candidate in my district to outrun the presidem baseline in my lifetime. His potential opponents Salka and Abbott do not scare me at all, especially in a midterm with a Republican in the WH.
Maffei had already lost to a much weaker candidate as an incumbent in 2010. And only managed to unseat her with a plurality, in one of the rare districts that actually swung towards Obama in 2012. 2014 wasn't that much of a shock.
US Attorney whose focus was on using RICO to put gangs in jail? Yeah. I'm not saying he was Rudy Guliani, but he had some local cred.
And the Maffei campaign tried to make a big deal about how Katko brought his gun to court improperly one time or something. Remember, this was when ISIS was storming across the Mexican border to infect us all with Ebola. It not only fell flat, it played into Katko's strength. The margin was unexpected, but not shocking to me.
While characterized as a "red wave" overall, 2014 was such a weird cycle. On one hand was Maffei's huge loss, the Democratic wipeout in Nevada, and Larry Hogan coming out of nowhere to win the governorship of Maryland; on the other hand, there were the gubernatorial defeats of Tom Corbett and Sean Parnell, the near-defeats of Sam Brownback and Rick Snyder, Gwen Graham and Patrick Murphy winning Republican districts in Florida (the latter by nearly 20 points), and Democrats winning the Omaha district for the only time this century.
You're right, flipping nine seats in the Senate was the big story, but there were a lot of undercurrents. I'd argue that there is a Democratic governor of Kansas now because of the 2014 election.
Oh pfffft, hostile work environments and yelling at top aids only matters if it’s a woman doing it. And even then, it’s just a news story that goes away eventually.
The stories that come out of the erratic one from IN, now one of her staffers should put her in her place and cause a big uproar. She needs to go for so many reasons.
It shouldn't be. Mannion flipped a long held Republican seat in the state senate that votes blue for president and is almost completely based in the Syracuse suburbs. It helps to run a seasoned campaigner for a House seat rather than the random congressional aides, activists, lawyers, and a veteran who haven't ever even run for office before, let alone held one.
Democrats were in control of the House for all of Hanley's career, so once he was swept in on LBJ's coattails it was easier to keep hanging on as he gained seniority and committee assignments.
Similarly, Walsh was able to continue winning reelection as a Republican after the district went for Clinton and never looked back in 1992 in part because Republicans flipped the House in 94 and since he was already a three-term incumbent with seniority over a bunch of new members, he was able to quickly become one of the Appropriations "cardinals". Lo and behold, when Democrats took the House back in 2006, he didn't run for reelection. Weird, right?
Mannion benefited from Republicans losing control of the NY state senate and thus their best argument to crossover voters, allowing him to flip a long held blue Republican seat, while it took his potential opponent Salka three tries to unseat a Democrat in a deep red Assembly district because that guy chaired the Agriculture committee in a body Republicans basically have no hope of ever controlling.
Nowadays being in control of the house probably hurts republicans more than it helps them in districts like this. It means they would be forced to vote on unpopular Republican legislation and be tied to the unpopular Republican leadership in this district.
Salka never represented any of Onondaga county and the only real overlap between his old district and Manion’s is already red Madison county which is only a small part of the district.
That's why Salka doesn't scare me, but his Assembly seat is in the Oneida county media market and he's held a slew of lower offices. He'd be a stronger candidate than Williams, but that doesn't say much.
Illinois Republicans Suffer Losses Throughout the State
"In local elections Tuesday, 79 percent of the candidates backed by the Illinois Democratic Party won. Several Republican mayors were unseated, pointing to problems for the GOP in the suburbs."
Blues break a franchise record, as they win for the 12th straight game for the first time ever. They held off the Avs 5-4 after holding a seemingly safe 4-0 lead. 💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙
Deborah Norville will end her tenure as the host of Inside Edition after 30 years. Norville is set to host a new syndicated game show called The Perfect Line that will arrive this Fall.
I think the tariffs chaos finally lit a firecracker up Dems collective rears to fight Trump/GOP hard. I hate the man with the passion of 1000 fiery suns, but when Trump’s in office, Democrats seem to get their stuff together, swing voters remember why they hate him/GOP for not stopping him and the party gains a ton of ground in every state, growing the elected bench.
Don’t ask me why it has to be him in office when it happens and not before he can be actually stopped during the campaign, because I don’t have a clue, I really don’t.
Sadly, I think PA-8 is probably slipping away from Democrats, while PA-7 remains competitive. PA-1 and PA-10 are perpetually, tantalizingly out of reach.
It’s easy to see PA-10 falling in an anti-GOP midterm. Fitzpatrick’s personal appeal so far has held PA-01; he’s something like the House version of Susan Collins.
Last March, when Rob Bresnahan, Jr., a wealthy Republican business executive, was running to represent a competitive House district in northeastern Pennsylvania, he published a letter to the editor in a local newspaper demanding an end to stock trading by members of Congress.
More than two months after being sworn in, Mr. Bresnahan, who defeated a Democratic incumbent last November in one of the most expensive House races in the country, has not introduced or co-sponsored such a bill. Over that time, he has emerged as one of the most active stock traders in the freshman class, according to Capitol Trades, a site that monitors the stock market activity of lawmakers.
BOEING’s 787 is a great example of how manufacturing often is a complex international effort involving partners in many countries. This illustration highlights that – and thus underscores the insanity of Trump’s ill-conceived tariffs.
If anything, if a Democratic POTUS replaces Trump in 2028, there will likely be an even greater push to make international trade more equitable instead of the traditional "free trade" point of view that has led NAFTA and other trade laws to have lose loopholes corporations have capitalized on.
I'm glad trade is getting more attention in the news as far as the benefits as well as obvious inequalities it's presenting. I just wish we didn't have to go through this tariff madness in order for the discussion to be had.
They've been interviewing the same six people at different times on different issues, apparently. Among them is someone who voted for Jill Stein in a swing state (Michigan), for reasons not to be discussed here, but he and similar voters deserve nothing but contempt IMO.
That Jill Stein voter could be a David Duke supporter. After all, David Duke, the prominent former KKK official, soured on Trump and instead endorsed Stein – triggered by yet another topic we won‘t go into here.
A few notes about the Wisconsin Supreme Court election:
1) The large, heavily populated Waukesha County suburbs of Brookfield and Menomonee Falls continue to trend Democratic. Both used to be heavily Republican - Brookfield voted 64% for John McCain in 2008, and was 3-1 Republican in that infamous 2011 Supreme Court election where conservative David Prosser barely beat liberal JoAnn Kloppenburg. But both have gradually but steadily shifted left during the Trump era. Last year, Trump won Brookfield by 5 and Menomonee Falls by 7, and both voted for Dan Kelly in 2023 by 53-47 margins. This time, Schimel's margins in both Brookfield and Menomonee Falls were less than 2 percent. It's a reasonable assumption that the next time a Democrat wins Wisconsin by a 55-45 margin, they'll carry both Brookfield and Menomonee Falls. And in 10 years, Dems will probably be routinely winning both in most elections. What an insane shift that would be - to see all that blue in Waukesha County. (And Crawford replicated Protasiewicz's victory in the city of Waukesha - expanding the margin of victory from 0.6% to 2%.)
2) Several rural counties swung from Protasiewicz in 2023 to Schimel this year, including Lafayette, Grant, Jackson, Dunn, and Pierce. However, Crawford was able to pull out a victory in Racine County, just south of Milwaukee, despite the fact that none of the previous Democratic Supreme Court winners (Dallet, Karofsky, and Protasiewicz) won it. This important county flip came about largely due to increased minority turnout in the city of Racine - it swung from 66% Protasiewicz to 70% Crawford.
3) It is honestly quite encouraging that, despite rural areas continuing to trend Republican, the topline of the election result remained mostly unchanged.
Turnout overall was higher this go-around., which may explain some of the shifts from 2023.
Apparently Republicans turnout target was based on the number of votes they would have needed to beat Protasiewicz, which they met, but Crawford got almost 300,000 more votes, so they didn't come close to actually winning.
Instead of winning by 10.48% (Karofsky) or 11.04% (Protasiewicz), Elon Musk's money held Crawford to a mere 10.06% margin of victory.
If only he'd invested a few tens of millions more, he might have gotten the margin below double digits!
Make him spend it all! That might produce a tie.
This gives me flashbacks to 2017 VA races. GOP turnout was up, but Dem turnout was up much more.
The media (including the obnoxious Morning Joe panel) wanted Gillespie to win SOOOOO badly...
Brookfield was infamously decisive in the 2011 WI SC race. Their votes were unaccounted for and came late.
Doesn’t it usually work the other way in Wisconsin, where there is usually an after midnight drop of Milwaukee and Green Bay absentees that give the Democrat a boost?
Yes, but not that time. The Waukesha County Clerk was incompetent.
Yup. Kathy Nickolaus. Still haven't forgotten that name 14 years later.
Ah yes, the most-hated county clerk in the whole country (until Kim Davis came along!).
The last Democrat to win in Wisconsin 55% - 45% was Tammy Baldwin in 2018, check that map for comparison!! 💙🇺🇲
Baldwin's opponent, Leah Vukmir, was from the WOW counties, so that skewed the results there a bit. Vukmir won Brookfield by 19 and Menomonee Falls by 15. (Vukmir also won Mequon, in Ozaukee County by 11, while Crawford won it by 7 now.)
Plus, 2018 was right when the suburbs really started turning and the WOW ones started off much redder. When I went to Milwaukee and drove through Waukesha, I was expecting to see some suburbs. I was expecting a bigger city out of Milwaukee so doesn’t seem like they have the makings of blue suburbs due to a lack of major employers which creates the big box McMansion suburbs that have flipped blue.
People often forget that there are a lot of suburbs in Milwaukee county, with a population of around 350k compared to about 650k in WOW. The Milwaukee county suburbs have shifted blue just as WOW has, and most of them were fairly blue to start with. Same general pattern in most metros with inner suburbs being blue and outer suburbs red.
Yeah, aren't the WOW counties more exurban than suburban? The former types of areas tend to be a lot redder than the latter.
I thought you all might like to see this mention of The Downballot.
https://bsky.app/profile/nbcnews.com/post/3llznmmb5gt23
Love the "weary party look[ing] for signs of hope" description. *rolleyes*
We lost a close election under difficult circumstances and the media act as if we got blown out like Goldwater.
And they go on and on about Elon Musk as if he were the GOP's only liability, quoting data about his unpopularity and several Republicans who admit he's less popular than Trump--while overlooking the fact that Trump ain't exactly popular himself.
Looks like our dialog and discussion is making an impact!
I don't disagree, but I think it's the admin posts that are being referenced at the link.
Sure.
It’s an added bonus though for more readers not normally contributors such as ourselves are paying attention. If they read what we are discussing, even better!
Alexander Ovechkin ties the NHL all-time goals record held by Wayne Gretzky with his 894th goal. His next one puts Ovi all alone.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Tiktok-deal-us-china-trade-war/story?id=120494441
On second thought, let the tariffs continue-if it means getting rid of the menace that is TikTok for good.
Menace? Fox News is a menace. X is a menace.
Yes, but people don't die from reading Fox News or posting on X (okay, the second one is arguable)-they do die regularly from the idiotic "challenges" that are exclusively on TikTok.
Not so sure about that. On the basis of stuff they saw or read on Fox News, including semi-literate posts on their forums, quite a few people declined to be vaccinated – only to die of Covid.
Refusing to take a vaccine isn't automatically fatal. Is it monumentally stupid? Of course (why get sick when you don't have ro?), but don't tell me it's a death sentence.
Lethal would be shit like the Tide Pods challenge that was big on TikTok a few years ago.
Please don’t twist my words.
The idea that the Tide Pod Challenge was exclusive to TikTok is very mistaken, it spread mostly on Twitter, Youtube, and Reddit, but can obviously be found all across social media, cause that's how social media works.
As always, any justification provided for banning TikTok can be applied at least equally well to things like Twitter and Facebook.
Also think you're overestimating the number of poisonings resulting from the challenge. The vast majority of people ingesting tide pods are either very small kids or elderly dementia patients.
Democracy is on life support because of Fox.
And that's a good argument for stripping FOX of it's broadcast license and defying the courts if/when they rule against us (at this point, the first amendment is a dead letter anyways).
But that isn't lethal to human health.
Fox News doesn’t need a broadcast license because it’s cable.
So, then it should be easier to shut it down, right?
Also why the Fairness Doctrine wouldn’t have covered it
Break up the media companies - All of them, not just Fox News.
As long as the giant media companies dominate the news, we don't get enough real truth all the time.
We need trust busting in general. The concentration of banks is pretty much a guarantee of a repetition of the 2008 crisis.
Yes, agreed. It boils down to the dependency on large corporations, particularly as they have gotten bigger and bigger.
It’s the risk taking that is the greatest concern. I would not just focus on separating investment banking from banks like BofA, Chase, Wells Fargo, etc. but also deemphasize certain digital technologies such as algorithms in the stock market environment. Overall, rational management of the financial system.
Warren Buffett at previous Berkshire Hathaway annual meetings talked about how he preferred the old system pre-Glass Steagall. The late Charlie Munger criticized those in finance who have the mindset of making money instead of being skilled at banking.
I wouldn’t discount TikTok entirely. It has helped struggling novelists like this one in particular become best-selling authors.
That said, TikTok should alongside the rest of social media companies be regulated so that those crazy contests go away.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2025/04/02/booktok-jonathan-stanley-viral-signing/
I am skeptical of that. Because the Tiktok ban is due to the marriage between China hawks and Pro-Israel lobby.
More so: Musk and Zuckerberg being eager to get rid of the competition.
VA-Gov: It's set between Abigail Spanberger and Winsome Earle-Sears. Amanda Chase, like Dave LaRock, failed to get enough valid signatures to qualify on the Republican side, and neither Bobby Scott nor any other serious Democrat even tried after Levar Stoney withdrew.
https://bluevirginia.us/2025/04/potential-primary-challenger-dave-larock-says-hes-failed-to-gather-enough-signatures-blames-glenn-youngkin-if-amanda-chase-also-fails-to-make-the-ballot-winsome-earle-sears-will-be-unopposed-for#comment-6683070353
Interesting that signature requirements knocked out those fringe people. Here in California no signatures are needed for candidates, you can simply write a check in lieu of signatures (amount depends on the office). Those two would easily be on the ballot.
No, not fair! We want a primary battle against Winsome Earle-Sears so it makes it worse for her to win the general election. /s
Winsome Earle-Sears's most formidable election opponent is...Winsome Earle-Sears.
That about sums it up!
The name "Amanda Chase" always reminds me of that old Simpsons prank name "Amanda Huggenkiss."
I attended my first protest today and for a pretty small suburb the turnout was great! And Kim Schrier was there too which was cool, much better public speaker than I anticipated
Her district in Washington's 8th isn't safe by a long shot as it voted for every Republican statewide downballot at the state level.
Due to ticket-splitting, in the Governor's race, Dave Reichert who used to represent it for 7 terms (14 years) carried it by the same comfortable 54% - 46% margin Kim Schrier was simultaneously reelected by. 2026 I'm expecting it to be Likely D at the very least given the likely environment. If Sen. Patty Murray retires in 2028, she should make the leap like Chris Pappas is doing in New Hampshire now!! 💙🇺🇲
Any tea leaves on Murray's plans? She'll be 78 in Nov. 2028, and 84 at the end of that term. We really don't need another potential DiFi situation. I'm still traumatized by that.
Agreed on your point. I'd hope she retires in 2028. Unfortunately it doesn't look like we have any particularly young prominent officials in WA that could run. Our congressional delegation will all be in their 60s by then except for two. Gluesenkamp-Perez, who is far too moderate for a senate seat in a state that blue. And Randall, who I know nothing about and is in her first term in the house. Governor is also be in his 60s, LG is in his 70s. I don't know anything about the state's other statewide officials, maybe some of them would be a good choice.
As a side note to Murray's age... Cantwell is surprisingly young for someone that has been in the senate for 25 years. Not young at all, mind you, at 66 years old. But she's been around for a long time. Must be in contention for one of the senior-most junior senators in history. A flipside of Warren becoming MA's senior senator with only half a year of seniority.
Yeah, I'm sure there are some state officials who could run. Everyone will remember when State Senator Kay Hagan beat Elizabeth Dole to become Senator from North Carolina.
Yeah, that was a fun one. No one wanted to run so she took one for the team and ended destroying Dole and became a Senator. She was even one of the few races we felt somewhat good about going into E-Day but 2014 was a mess.
Elizabeth Dole was always pretty weak as a politician. It was clear that she was used to having cushy gigs handed to her, rather than having to campaign for them. (And it didn't help that she hadn't lived in North Carolina since she was an undergraduate at Duke.)
And of all the Senate races we lost in 2014, Hagan's was the true heartbreaker.
Cantwell is definitely surprisingly young, especially since she was first elected to Congress in 1992!
Fun fact: Cantwell and her state-mate Patty Murray were both (barely) 42 when they were first elected to the Senate (in 2000 and 1992, respectively).
I personally doubt she runs again but my guess is that DelBene is the anointed one when she dips out
Washington is a much bluer state than New Hampshire. Therefore, we don't need a swing district representative to ensure we hold the seat. If Kim Schrier is popular in WA-08, then I'd say it's better she run for reelection to her House seat and let someone else run for Senate. Even in a Republican wave year, we wouldn't be in too much danger of losing a Senate seat in Washington.
Also, Kim Schrier improved her margin a bit in 2024 vs 2022 in her re-election wins. She got 54% in 2024 vs. 53.3% in 2022.
Not bad for a Democratic incumbent in a swing district!
Yes, I’m aware, I’m her constituent.
Schrier has that seat as long as she wants it. State GOP always outruns Federal, usually by quite. Bit. And it was Reichert’s old seat and Inslee did not leave office particularly popular.
NY-22 John Mannion is the first Democratic House candidate in my district to outrun the presidem baseline in my lifetime. His potential opponents Salka and Abbott do not scare me at all, especially in a midterm with a Republican in the WH.
Yeah, it's a shame Maffei couldn't hack it.
I love Dan Maffei, he's been to my house! But yeah, he was just riding Obama's coattails in hindsight.
That near 20 point loss in 2014 was the kind of loss that only an incumbent under indictment should see in a district that favorable to their party.
Maffei had already lost to a much weaker candidate as an incumbent in 2010. And only managed to unseat her with a plurality, in one of the rare districts that actually swung towards Obama in 2012. 2014 wasn't that much of a shock.
I think the margin of defeat was rather unexpected. Was Katko a particularly high-profile prosecutor?
US Attorney whose focus was on using RICO to put gangs in jail? Yeah. I'm not saying he was Rudy Guliani, but he had some local cred.
And the Maffei campaign tried to make a big deal about how Katko brought his gun to court improperly one time or something. Remember, this was when ISIS was storming across the Mexican border to infect us all with Ebola. It not only fell flat, it played into Katko's strength. The margin was unexpected, but not shocking to me.
While characterized as a "red wave" overall, 2014 was such a weird cycle. On one hand was Maffei's huge loss, the Democratic wipeout in Nevada, and Larry Hogan coming out of nowhere to win the governorship of Maryland; on the other hand, there were the gubernatorial defeats of Tom Corbett and Sean Parnell, the near-defeats of Sam Brownback and Rick Snyder, Gwen Graham and Patrick Murphy winning Republican districts in Florida (the latter by nearly 20 points), and Democrats winning the Omaha district for the only time this century.
You're right, flipping nine seats in the Senate was the big story, but there were a lot of undercurrents. I'd argue that there is a Democratic governor of Kansas now because of the 2014 election.
That was a big surprise to me, especially considering Mannion's scandal. How did he do it?
No one cared about the scandal.
What was the scandal again? I mean I’ll go google it but yeah, exactly.
Oh pfffft, hostile work environments and yelling at top aids only matters if it’s a woman doing it. And even then, it’s just a news story that goes away eventually.
The stories that come out of the erratic one from IN, now one of her staffers should put her in her place and cause a big uproar. She needs to go for so many reasons.
It shouldn't be. Mannion flipped a long held Republican seat in the state senate that votes blue for president and is almost completely based in the Syracuse suburbs. It helps to run a seasoned campaigner for a House seat rather than the random congressional aides, activists, lawyers, and a veteran who haven't ever even run for office before, let alone held one.
Another way to look at is that Williams was a MAGA guy and he basically got the Trump vote. He was a very weak incumbent.
The district oddly enough had a Dem incumbent from 1964 to 1980 back when it was far more Republican (Ford got like 60% there in 1976).
But Ford was a very moderate Republican, and partisanship was much less hard in those days.
Democrats were in control of the House for all of Hanley's career, so once he was swept in on LBJ's coattails it was easier to keep hanging on as he gained seniority and committee assignments.
Similarly, Walsh was able to continue winning reelection as a Republican after the district went for Clinton and never looked back in 1992 in part because Republicans flipped the House in 94 and since he was already a three-term incumbent with seniority over a bunch of new members, he was able to quickly become one of the Appropriations "cardinals". Lo and behold, when Democrats took the House back in 2006, he didn't run for reelection. Weird, right?
Mannion benefited from Republicans losing control of the NY state senate and thus their best argument to crossover voters, allowing him to flip a long held blue Republican seat, while it took his potential opponent Salka three tries to unseat a Democrat in a deep red Assembly district because that guy chaired the Agriculture committee in a body Republicans basically have no hope of ever controlling.
Apparently we're still that way around here :)
Nowadays being in control of the house probably hurts republicans more than it helps them in districts like this. It means they would be forced to vote on unpopular Republican legislation and be tied to the unpopular Republican leadership in this district.
Part of that equation too is that being in control doesn't help as much anymore either, thanks to John McCain demonizing porkbarrel spending.
Salka never represented any of Onondaga county and the only real overlap between his old district and Manion’s is already red Madison county which is only a small part of the district.
That's why Salka doesn't scare me, but his Assembly seat is in the Oneida county media market and he's held a slew of lower offices. He'd be a stronger candidate than Williams, but that doesn't say much.
These are amazing under-the-radar results from the Chicago collar counties.
From: https://x.com/Uncrewed/status/1908226311635783988
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Tuesday was a great night for the Dems in the Chicagoland Township elections. Here's how many offices they flipped from the GOP by county:
Cook- 14
DuPage- 36(!)
Kane- 11
McHenry- 3
In fact, by my math, the Dems only lost three out of nearly 100 contested Township elections!
11:33 AM · Apr 4, 2025
22K Views
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More on Illinois: A really great article on the beatdown Republicans got on Tuesday in Illinois statewide.
https://www.governing.com/politics/illinois-republicans-suffer-losses-throughout-the-state
Illinois Republicans Suffer Losses Throughout the State
"In local elections Tuesday, 79 percent of the candidates backed by the Illinois Democratic Party won. Several Republican mayors were unseated, pointing to problems for the GOP in the suburbs."
Shit…. It’s way too far out but the GOP should expect a drubbing in 2026. Let’s see how this goes when that Trump is destroying the economy.
Blues break a franchise record, as they win for the 12th straight game for the first time ever. They held off the Avs 5-4 after holding a seemingly safe 4-0 lead. 💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙
Deborah Norville will end her tenure as the host of Inside Edition after 30 years. Norville is set to host a new syndicated game show called The Perfect Line that will arrive this Fall.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2025/04/02/deborah-norville-leaving-inside-edition/82781532007/
For those without a Politico account:
Democrats look to push into GOP turf with buzzy candidate recruits for the midterms
“This puts a lot more on the field,” said Rep. Morgan McGarvey (D-Ky.), a co-chair tasked with recruitment for the party campaign arm.
https://archive.ph/rFY5a
I think the tariffs chaos finally lit a firecracker up Dems collective rears to fight Trump/GOP hard. I hate the man with the passion of 1000 fiery suns, but when Trump’s in office, Democrats seem to get their stuff together, swing voters remember why they hate him/GOP for not stopping him and the party gains a ton of ground in every state, growing the elected bench.
Don’t ask me why it has to be him in office when it happens and not before he can be actually stopped during the campaign, because I don’t have a clue, I really don’t.
Good article. Matt Cartwright is thinking about making a run in PA 8 but Susan Wild is not running in PA 7.
Sadly, I think PA-8 is probably slipping away from Democrats, while PA-7 remains competitive. PA-1 and PA-10 are perpetually, tantalizingly out of reach.
I don’t think any of them would be immune to a blue wave aside from maybe PA-01 with Fitzpatrick,
I wouldn’t object if the next non-insane POTUS gave Fitzpatrick a cushy job and opened up that seat…
It’s easy to see PA-10 falling in an anti-GOP midterm. Fitzpatrick’s personal appeal so far has held PA-01; he’s something like the House version of Susan Collins.
Speaking of PA 8:
Last March, when Rob Bresnahan, Jr., a wealthy Republican business executive, was running to represent a competitive House district in northeastern Pennsylvania, he published a letter to the editor in a local newspaper demanding an end to stock trading by members of Congress.
More than two months after being sworn in, Mr. Bresnahan, who defeated a Democratic incumbent last November in one of the most expensive House races in the country, has not introduced or co-sponsored such a bill. Over that time, he has emerged as one of the most active stock traders in the freshman class, according to Capitol Trades, a site that monitors the stock market activity of lawmakers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/05/us/politics/congress-stock-trading-ban.html
Everything changed when he met Nicole "MallioStockTips".../s
BOEING’s 787 is a great example of how manufacturing often is a complex international effort involving partners in many countries. This illustration highlights that – and thus underscores the insanity of Trump’s ill-conceived tariffs.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/df/43/a6/df43a6c68b26f08ad569437256afdf89.jpg
If anything, if a Democratic POTUS replaces Trump in 2028, there will likely be an even greater push to make international trade more equitable instead of the traditional "free trade" point of view that has led NAFTA and other trade laws to have lose loopholes corporations have capitalized on.
I'm glad trade is getting more attention in the news as far as the benefits as well as obvious inequalities it's presenting. I just wish we didn't have to go through this tariff madness in order for the discussion to be had.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/05/us/tariffs-trump-voters-reaction.html
It's a cult, helps explain the 40 percent baseline of his support in any given poll topic.
Interesting how many of those interviewed found the Salvadoran dad case more troubling than tariffs
They think he is an economics expert lmao.
He has, admittedly, mastered Bankruptcy Laws – in multiple states.
They've been interviewing the same six people at different times on different issues, apparently. Among them is someone who voted for Jill Stein in a swing state (Michigan), for reasons not to be discussed here, but he and similar voters deserve nothing but contempt IMO.
That Jill Stein voter could be a David Duke supporter. After all, David Duke, the prominent former KKK official, soured on Trump and instead endorsed Stein – triggered by yet another topic we won‘t go into here.
https://www.newsweek.com/former-kkk-leader-david-duke-endorses-jill-stein-trashes-donald-trump-1969710
Wisconsin: A deep dive into the meaning and implications of last week's elections by a local journalist.
https://www.therecombobulationarea.news/p/10-takeaways-from-the-2025-spring