Okay, now I've seen two "Gatsby party" references in the comments. And this one has higher engagement, so you're in charge of explaining: what is a/the Gatsby party?
“The Friday night fête at Mar-a-Lago was themed "A little party never killed nobody,” according to the White House, referencing the song from the 2013 film adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.”
I mean, I don't like The Great Gatsby, but tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people had to read the book in high school, so I understand that choice of descriptor.
You joke, but I do wonder if there is a real lesson which is "a picture is worth a thousand words".
If you remember during the Biden administration, the demarcation point when his approval started tanking was the Afghanistan withdrawal. Which if you know anything about polling and what Americans think about most in how they vote or judge a President is kind of wild; foreign policy is usually way down on the list of things Americans care about unless it involves large numbers of American troops in a hot war. But I think the key key thing about the withdrawal was those images of Afghans running on the tarmac at the airport absolutely desperate to hitch a ride on American transport plane (in a few cases literally jumping on the wheel and then falling to their deaths). It just looked so...chaotic. In retrospect, the withdrawal probably went as well as it could have (the fact that Afghan army collapsed so easily without American troops was all the proof I needed this was the right decision). But those images were STRIKING. And why did that matter so much? Because so so much of the promise of the Biden campaign was "back to normal". Didn't like the chaos of Trump? Well Uncle Joe is now in charge as the calm old hand. But there we see this image of.....well chaos. And then Delta variant hit and then inflation hit (almost certainly the real reason polling never rebounded). It was all part of a story that undercut a central (sort of unspoken) promise of Biden's election campaign.
With Trump. Resist Libs like me yell our heads off at how much Trump is destroying American government, rule of law and norms and just generally acting like a "king". And just generally destroying the foundations of our government. But a lot of that is very esoteric to a lot Americans. Even if in theory they care about Presidential overreach, it's all a little removed from their lives. But destroying the East Wing and seeing it just wiped away in a few days? That is striking and just "on the nose" of literally destroying the foundations of government. Something more understandable to a regular person than something Matt might write in a substack post.
Yeah, I don't think that if this had gone through a normal Congressional approval with debate and discussion ahead of time, there would have been any backlash. But the suddenness, the visual of the people's house demolished, against with the backdrop of the No King's Rallies seems like it could have moved the needle for a few people. And that's all you need ultimately, a half dozen needle movements away from Republicans
Especially with the president being a gaudy billionaire building himself a ballroom. If a President Mitch Daniels had done this, people would probably react like "that's weird, but he's mostly decent, so whatever."
For some, it's an image of him "literally destroying the foundations of government"; for others, it's him being distracted and focusing on palace renovations/ballroom construction while government workers aren't being paid, SNAP benefits are held up, inflation remains a problem, etc (i.e., his general inattentiveness to the thing that many lower-information-voters voted for him for -- the economy and lowering the cost of living).
The Afghan army collapsed because it was built to run with American support. We had not build the needed capacity within the Afghan army. Once that support was withdrawn collapse was both foreseeable AND foreseen.
The occupation of Afghanistan after the end of the combat mission in 2015 saw remarkably little bloodshed (despite polling showing that Americans believed there were far more casualties than there actually were). It was almost a textbook situation of low-information voters not having an accurate conception of reality.
For the sake of being able to say that we withdrew from Afghanistan, we abandoned 20 million women to some of the most wretched and horrific material conditions recorded in modern history. Genuinely awful. I would beg anyone who blindly follows the heuristic of “occupation bad, isolationism good” to please understand this point. Look into their current material conditions yourself. There is a reason Afghans surveyed now under the Taliban have reported the lowest well-being in recorded history.
I suppose that was all “a waste” to you, but far greater tragedy seems to have been that we damned these women to their contemptible and brutally repressive fate for the sake of domestic optics, which didn’t even work. Voters saw the withdrawal as being chaotic and did not give Biden the polling win he sought.
How much capacity did the Taliban have? Even absent US support, the Afghan army still had some of their own air support, their own artillery, greater mechanization, and American satellite and other intelligence.
At a minimum they should have been able to fight the Talibs to a draw over an extended period. Sudden collapse just shows there was no will, and absent that nothing matters.
It's all about optics. No one knows or cares what the east wing was used for. But the idea of Trump demolishing an entire wing of our nation's symbolic building, with little notice or care says everything about him as a President.
I think it's also a shutdown messaging failure. Regardless of the renovation money coming from private donors, "we can't pay for SNAP, but look at my new palace renovations" is difficult to message, and Trump isn't thr guy to do it.
Lost in the discussion: the Government (Trump) cannot constitutionally expend funds unless APPROPRIATED by Congress, regardless of the source. Where are the conservative constitutionalists?
Also the guy has seen his net worth increase by billions since last year and the grift is an open secret at this point. Very hard for people to not be pissed off or irritated when he doesn't not only follow decorum, but his family and friends are enriching themselves in the billions of dollar range while they are still struggling.
It's a dramatic visual, and for low-info or conservative voters who are really into keeping their Confederate monuments and old-timey stuff, knocking down part of a thing they consider untouchable (in a "this is a historic thing that must be preserved" kind of way) is much easier to grasp than destroying democratic norms, I guess. That, and the Gatsby party, are a good example of how Trump and Co.'s general "fuck you" attitude applies to pretty much everyone on the planet, not just the libs, and they really don't care how anything looks. I mean, it's clear from Trump's taste in interior design that he REALLY doesn't care how anything looks ...
I'm not sure the Gatsby party matters for anyone who doesn't already hate Trump because I'm pretty sure the modal Trump voter has no awareness of "The Great Gatsby" except at most as something they skimmed the Cliff Notes for in high school.
People missed it in the way of "Trump won by 1.5% so he's now an unstoppable juggernaut" post-election stuff but the Gulf of Mexico name change was also unpopular.
The dumb own the libs stuff is usually unpopular, it's just not high salience.
I really don't know how important this was, but it wouldn't surprise me. The kinds of people who come here are generally concerned with substance and policy. But for lots and lots of people, it's the look of things.
Tearing down national symbols is not a good look. Especially if you are appealing to the half of the country that really wants to go back in time. Hates the left's tendency to shit on our country's past.
Much like the young, handsome, constantly smiling face of Mamdani, excavators demolishing the White House was an image that just kinda spoke beyond words.
Both parties need to stop trying to fundamentally transform America when they win. Most voters like America and are distrustful of politicians. So when a party starts to rock the boat, voters run to the people trying to stop the rocking.
Totally reminds me of that time when Paul Ryan went on national TV and said that the Republican party needed to learn how to govern when he was in office. Like dude, wtf do you do all day? People seemingly forgot that this is what you get when you elect Trump though, you get no governance and chaos. The chaos and lack of leadership is why he fumbled 2020 in what should've been a layup for any other President dealing with Covid.
Does it actually? My impression was that it enables extremism, because you don't have to think about whether your ideas will work - you just count on the filibuster to stop it.
It also means that when the ruling party wants to do something moderate and broadly popular that can improve people's lives, the minority party has an incentive to stop it with just 41 non-votes.
Its hard to say what congress would look like without it in today's environment, but it doesnt seem to be promoting compromise currently. Instead it just means congress does nothing, and everything is done via executive orders and court challenges, which means even less compromise most of the time.
On the contrary: the clear lesson from on Matt's "you'll never win Iowa even in a blowout" warnings and all these troop deployments is that Democrats should absolutely have used their Senate majority to pass statehood for DC and PR (if the latter wanted it.) Being non-transformative has been both a policy disaster and a political one.
Oh no, we decided to blow everything up on November 5, 2024, and quite possibly several years before that. At this point we're just trying to decide how to clean up the wreckage.
The problem is, the more each party rocks the boat one direction, the more the other party has to rock the boat the other direction to maintain balance. If they don't do it, overall policy tilts toward the side that rocks the boat the most, even if both sides take turns winning elections.
1.) The point of political parties is to enact changes their various voters want. Plenty of Democrats vote for the ACA knowing it was dooming them, but was happy to do so because of the positive changes. The only difference is disagreement over what's important enough to walk the plank for.
2.) Lots of things have initial electoral backlash, but are eventually very popular. Reagan had a horrible '82 mid-term, but won reelection and shifted American politics forever so that tax hikes back to pre-Reagan levels that people like Nixon largely supported are basically considered socialism.
Conspiracy laden right-wing Republicans now attack their own party over the ACA.
The sheer number of people who followed the NYC mayoral race with the fervor of a Presidential campaign is disheartening. More than anything, it seems like people want something to do during the offseason.
I happened to catch a little bit of the BBC World Service in the car today, and it was heavily focused on Mamdani. I can on one hand see why clueless foreigners would fall into that trap ("NJ is just the hinterland to NYC, right? And who knows where Virginia even is?"). On the other hand, surely they can draw analogies to how Red Ken Livingston once won the mayoral election in London, but that didn't signify anything broader about the UK?
That said, I give them extra credit for pronouncing Zohran in the technically proper way, with the back of the throat sound in the middle.
I will say, the fact that you know the name Ken Livingstone and that I first heard of Boris Johnson when he became mayor of London tells us what utterly outsized culture importance London has in the world.
In some ways, I actually think its somewhat defensible that someone in London would care about who's mayor of NYC. The two are obviously peer cities; the closest equivalent to NYC is London and vice versa. And there is clearly a lot of competition to be the financial capitol of the world and just general a lot of interdependencies (a lot of London finance people work at least for a time in NYC and vice versa). I don't think I'm crazy in saying that someone in living London in a lot of ways has more in common with someone living in NYC than someone living in Kentucky.
Having said all that, you're general point is a good one that it doesn't make much sense for the lead story on the BBC to be about the NYC mayoral election given it's very tenuous impact on UK generally. Not sure it makes much sense that I know the names Ken Livingstone or Sadiq Khan but couldn't tell you the name of any mayor of Dallas, Texas.
Also another example of how national issues can infect a local race in a way that doesn't really make sense. Whatever you're feelings on the Israel/Palestine conflict, the mayor of NYC has basically no control whatsoever as how that conflict plays out.
I remember reading an article like 10 years ago about how this phenomenon started occurring on the GOP side starting around the Obama presidency. Candidates for local dog catcher would start getting attack ads about whether or not they supported overturning Roe vs. Wade or start feeling the need to base their campaign message on whether they were committed to overturning Roe vs. Wade.
At least in the NYC mayoral election, it was a bit more understandable why national or international issues around Israel/Palestine became a talking point in this race given Mamdani's previous statements and given the realities of the demographic make up of the city. But man, I really hope Dems don't go down the path of deciding primaries for local town council based on whether the candidate is committed to Medicare for All or not.
It has surprised me that, in the UK, a lot of my (largely lefty) peers have posted celebrations of Mamdani's win. They are not particularly political nerds - they don't even go on Twitter, really - but I think they are the kind of people who see politics predominantly as a battle between hope for the good guys, and the overwhelming success of "the bad guys", and one thing Mamdani really had is the good guy representing hope vibe.
A lot of leftists in the US cheered when Jeremy Corbyn won (before, y’know). They’re perpetually on the verge of winning it all; you have to envy the optimism.
After JD Vance's brother being demolished in Cincinnati, my favorite bit of news this morning was that the Kentucky Sec. of State went on social media to remind voters (who had apparently been calling his office) that polls were closed because Kentucky was not voting yesterday, so therefore they could not cast their ballots for mayor of New York City.
Maybe this is outdated but I feel like winning by 14.6 in light blue VA is a lot more impressive than 13 in (what has been until recently) dark blue NJ.
Spanberger is taking over from a popular Republican incumbent though, and Sherrill is taking over from an extremly unpopular Dem incumbent. I think it's hard to make sweeping statements about candidate quality in the circumstances.
I really don't think the Republican brand is very good in northern Virginia right now. Granted most people DOGEd weren't Republicans to begin with, but given the numbers involved, it shouldn't take a lot to move the needle.
Virginia is a blue state now - has been going that way a long time and crossed over a while ago. Youngkin was an outlier made possible by some one-off dynamics around COVID, peak wokeness, and teacher's unions. Then he destroyed his party's statewide brand by governing as a Republican presidential primary candidate rather than as a blue state moderate checking a progressive legislature.
15 years ago Virginia was absolutely light blue and NJ was absolutely dark blue. But I think during the Trump era, Virginia has solidified and NJ has gotten shaky.
Yeah, I guess the big question for me is whether 2024 was a mirage for Republicans (in NJ and perhaps elsewhere?) as hispanic voters leaned towards trump but appear to be shifting back.
It is positive but I think it's still important for Spanberger to govern in a way that is moderate and defensible on the policy merits. VA is lean blue but I also doubt there is a single jurisdiction in the country that has been more directly, immediately, and negatively impacted by Trump. It won't always be that way and treating it as a given is a path for another Youngkin situation.
I was hiking last week. The views were absolutely spectacular. I had to remember to stop watching my feet and look around.
This morning it's great to embrace this moment and stop and breath after a toxic 6 months. There's hard work ahead, but isn't this beautiful!! Democrats for the win!!
Yeah, the quality of polls in NJ seemed to indicate a horserace that wasn't actually there imo... That said, I'm not going to read too far into winning the Gov race in a state that Dems should win in the first place.
"New Jersey and Virginia have similar underlying partisanship. But Spanberger did considerably better, in no small part because Mikie Sherrill’s opponent was able to tie her to the state’s unpopular two-term Democratic governor in a way that didn’t apply in Virginia. Sherrill’s campaign message would likely have fared better in the Garden State if Phil Murphy had made different choices that led to outcomes New Jersey liked better."
Spanberger got 57.2% of the vote; Sherrill got 56.2%. That's "considerably better"?
“The results of last night’s elections also poured cold water on the tired argument among elite Democratic Party strategists that the party needs to seek out the moderate middle to win elections. Matt Yglesias, perhaps the loudest proponent of this theory, argued before the election that we should expect Mikie Sherrill to do worse than Abigail Spanberger because the latter alienated the (progressive-coded?) AFL-CIO in Virginia during her campaign…
“Spanberger and Sherrill are both winning roughly 56-57% of the vote in their respective states. So maybe a moderate “ideology” isn’t related much to vote margin, as I have argued. Or, maybe Matt would argue that the candidate’s issue positions aren’t a great reflection of their true ideology anyway. That’s my argument!”
I guess if you squint hard enough you can fit any results into the trend you want. But if the takeaway is that Mikie Sherrill winning somehow pours cold water on the idea of moderating to win, I’m not sure the word “moderating” has any meaning. Mamdani she ain’t.
I find the “should the Dems moderate” discourse to be frustrating. The Dems should absolutely moderate by welcoming more conservative candidates in more conservative jurisdictions. For example, Iowa. I don’t think Dems who are winning their races need to moderate, other than that the party as a whole needs to make room for candidates who can expand their map.
Sherrill is also a moderate, just slightly to the left of Spanberger. They both flipped GOP-held seats in 2018 and had a history of outperforming the partisan baseline in their elections and were members of the Blue Dog and New Democrat coalitions in Congress.
I voted for Spanberger in the primary and the general and have followed her career for years. I didn't even know the AFL-CIO issue even came up in this election. Too many of the things MY has focused on when it comes to factionalism or reaching swing voters are the types of things that would end up in Trivial Pursuit than something even high info voters would notice.
Object to the Phil Murphy hate—Sherrill did just barely worse than Spannerger, while running to be his third term vs Spanberger was replacing an R. If anything this reflects well on Murphy.
You mention the demo of the east wing. I think it’s perhaps equally important that the government has been shut down for weeks. Not a good look for Trump and his band
The party of the President has lost every NJ gov election since the mid 80s except for Murphy’s win in 2021; and every gov election in VA since 1977 was except for McAuliffe in 2013. Variance in differential to prior year has been declining over time but has been as high as in the 20s. These results are totally expected and consistent, but a little disappointing in the margin, if anything. Media made way too much of 2021 resulting VA. It was consistent.
>A Democratic sweep so total it’s hard to make a lot of smart points about it
Not having to listen to "paid to lose" centrists making "smart points" about why Dems needed to prostrate more in front of Trump and kiss more billionaire butt is the best thing about winning elections.
If you had actually read what people here think the Dems should do, you would know that "prostrate more in front of Trump and kiss more billionaire butt" is not it.
Matt keeps pushing the statistically idiotic and asinine idea that "Trump moderated" which is why he won. He is very much implicitly telling Dems to kiss Trump's rear-end and also that of the billionaire network that funds Trump, Cuomo and the Clintonite wing of the party.
People really seem to have a problem distinguishing between the concepts of "Trump campaigned as a moderate" (a true statement, particularly in 2016) versus "Trump governed as a moderate" (which he by and large has not and especially not in 2025).
>Spanberger refused to repeal Virginia's "right to work" laws
You seem to think that the median voter is worried about some vote that Spanberger did not support on a low salience topic. I don't think this election would have been affected outside of the sixth decimal place by that vote.
> and earned the endorsement of Virginia's biggest police union
If the police union is powerful in Virginia and crime is a big problem, sure one should seek their endorsement. Do what is right locally for that time and place.
>Mikie Sherrill voted for the NDAA, which made trans rights activists really angry.
No problem. As long as she can defend her vote in a coherent manner and not put out some kind of Hakeem Jeffries style word salad. Also GOP trans attacks did not move the needle yesterday at all, so that position she took may or may not have been utterly irrelevant. Even Jay Jones pulled it off.
I appreciate the sentiment, but I disagree: being able to *accomplish things* is the best part of winning elections; what you describe is the second best part.
thermostatic reaction is still a thing. But it doesn't solve Dems long term problems. Winning in blue states like NY and VA isn't the thing Dems need to do. It's winning in places like Ohio.
For #6: Hank Green did a video around Public Service Commissions and specifically that Georgia race. The video (https://youtu.be/UgvE_gPi7Kc?si=k1fx4jRubSgWhCUk) has 800k views on YouTube and I don't know how many on other socials. Nerdfighteria (the community surrounding the Green brothers) have a lot of clout, including getting J&J to not enforce parents on TB treatments in non-high-income countries and Cepheid to lower the prices of their TB tests. Wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this was him, at least getting the ball rolling for people to care and share about it.
No takes on the implications of the election for Trump's sanity and the filibuster? Despite hating to back an obvious loser, he apparently couldn't help himself from jumping on the Cuomentum bandwagon...
But happy as I am about last night's wins, I'd be even more happy to trade them for a Republican senate voting to dismantle the filibuster. So far the odds don't seem too good though...
My worry is that Democrats, being the home of the last huddled remnants of empiricism, will learn that lower turnout helps them while Republicans remain opposed to voting rights on principle. Voting will get harder, and while that's not the End of Democracy or anything, it makes life harder for no good reason.
The age old popular wisdom proves correct again "The Incumbent President's National Prospects Depends on the Achitectual Integrity of the East Wing."
This is not an issue I really care about, but at least in terms of timing it has, to me, a kind of “fiddling while Rome burns” quality.
The Gatsby party on the day people got kicked off food stamps was an interesting choice
Okay, now I've seen two "Gatsby party" references in the comments. And this one has higher engagement, so you're in charge of explaining: what is a/the Gatsby party?
No, I will not go on f***ing Twitter.
It was a costume party around Halloween. Liberal media is spinning it as thumbing its nose at the poors.
I continue to be surprised that non-political actions sway people as much as they do.
Trump had a Great Gatsby-themed party at Mar a Lago. Matt quoted the “careless people” line from the book.
Wait, it was literally Gatsby themed?! I thought Gatsby and Art Deco were in a decade ago.
Gatsby is eternal for people who want gaudy aesthetics but never actually read the book.
A "Roaring 20s" style party
“The Friday night fête at Mar-a-Lago was themed "A little party never killed nobody,” according to the White House, referencing the song from the 2013 film adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.”
I am begging Democrats to be normal for thirty fucking seconds
I mean, I don't like The Great Gatsby, but tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people had to read the book in high school, so I understand that choice of descriptor.
You joke, but I do wonder if there is a real lesson which is "a picture is worth a thousand words".
If you remember during the Biden administration, the demarcation point when his approval started tanking was the Afghanistan withdrawal. Which if you know anything about polling and what Americans think about most in how they vote or judge a President is kind of wild; foreign policy is usually way down on the list of things Americans care about unless it involves large numbers of American troops in a hot war. But I think the key key thing about the withdrawal was those images of Afghans running on the tarmac at the airport absolutely desperate to hitch a ride on American transport plane (in a few cases literally jumping on the wheel and then falling to their deaths). It just looked so...chaotic. In retrospect, the withdrawal probably went as well as it could have (the fact that Afghan army collapsed so easily without American troops was all the proof I needed this was the right decision). But those images were STRIKING. And why did that matter so much? Because so so much of the promise of the Biden campaign was "back to normal". Didn't like the chaos of Trump? Well Uncle Joe is now in charge as the calm old hand. But there we see this image of.....well chaos. And then Delta variant hit and then inflation hit (almost certainly the real reason polling never rebounded). It was all part of a story that undercut a central (sort of unspoken) promise of Biden's election campaign.
With Trump. Resist Libs like me yell our heads off at how much Trump is destroying American government, rule of law and norms and just generally acting like a "king". And just generally destroying the foundations of our government. But a lot of that is very esoteric to a lot Americans. Even if in theory they care about Presidential overreach, it's all a little removed from their lives. But destroying the East Wing and seeing it just wiped away in a few days? That is striking and just "on the nose" of literally destroying the foundations of government. Something more understandable to a regular person than something Matt might write in a substack post.
Yeah, I don't think that if this had gone through a normal Congressional approval with debate and discussion ahead of time, there would have been any backlash. But the suddenness, the visual of the people's house demolished, against with the backdrop of the No King's Rallies seems like it could have moved the needle for a few people. And that's all you need ultimately, a half dozen needle movements away from Republicans
Especially with the president being a gaudy billionaire building himself a ballroom. If a President Mitch Daniels had done this, people would probably react like "that's weird, but he's mostly decent, so whatever."
For some, it's an image of him "literally destroying the foundations of government"; for others, it's him being distracted and focusing on palace renovations/ballroom construction while government workers aren't being paid, SNAP benefits are held up, inflation remains a problem, etc (i.e., his general inattentiveness to the thing that many lower-information-voters voted for him for -- the economy and lowering the cost of living).
The Afghan army collapsed because it was built to run with American support. We had not build the needed capacity within the Afghan army. Once that support was withdrawn collapse was both foreseeable AND foreseen.
Just twenty more years, boys!
The Biden withdrawal from Afghanistan will be seen in retrospect as one of the worst parts of his legacy.
Very best, and every drop of blood we pissed away there was a waste and a tragedy.
The occupation of Afghanistan after the end of the combat mission in 2015 saw remarkably little bloodshed (despite polling showing that Americans believed there were far more casualties than there actually were). It was almost a textbook situation of low-information voters not having an accurate conception of reality.
For the sake of being able to say that we withdrew from Afghanistan, we abandoned 20 million women to some of the most wretched and horrific material conditions recorded in modern history. Genuinely awful. I would beg anyone who blindly follows the heuristic of “occupation bad, isolationism good” to please understand this point. Look into their current material conditions yourself. There is a reason Afghans surveyed now under the Taliban have reported the lowest well-being in recorded history.
I suppose that was all “a waste” to you, but far greater tragedy seems to have been that we damned these women to their contemptible and brutally repressive fate for the sake of domestic optics, which didn’t even work. Voters saw the withdrawal as being chaotic and did not give Biden the polling win he sought.
How much capacity did the Taliban have? Even absent US support, the Afghan army still had some of their own air support, their own artillery, greater mechanization, and American satellite and other intelligence.
At a minimum they should have been able to fight the Talibs to a draw over an extended period. Sudden collapse just shows there was no will, and absent that nothing matters.
Very closely related to how the availability of cell phone videos has totally transformed politics across the world (often for the worse).
I didn't realize a non-descript office building was so beloved.
It's all about optics. No one knows or cares what the east wing was used for. But the idea of Trump demolishing an entire wing of our nation's symbolic building, with little notice or care says everything about him as a President.
I think it's also a shutdown messaging failure. Regardless of the renovation money coming from private donors, "we can't pay for SNAP, but look at my new palace renovations" is difficult to message, and Trump isn't thr guy to do it.
I think this is the bigger deal. Essentially nobody cares about the east wing qua east wing. But I thought we couldn't pass a budget?
Lost in the discussion: the Government (Trump) cannot constitutionally expend funds unless APPROPRIATED by Congress, regardless of the source. Where are the conservative constitutionalists?
Also the guy has seen his net worth increase by billions since last year and the grift is an open secret at this point. Very hard for people to not be pissed off or irritated when he doesn't not only follow decorum, but his family and friends are enriching themselves in the billions of dollar range while they are still struggling.
It is amazing that *this* is what caused people to realize Trump is selfish and narcissistic.
It's a dramatic visual, and for low-info or conservative voters who are really into keeping their Confederate monuments and old-timey stuff, knocking down part of a thing they consider untouchable (in a "this is a historic thing that must be preserved" kind of way) is much easier to grasp than destroying democratic norms, I guess. That, and the Gatsby party, are a good example of how Trump and Co.'s general "fuck you" attitude applies to pretty much everyone on the planet, not just the libs, and they really don't care how anything looks. I mean, it's clear from Trump's taste in interior design that he REALLY doesn't care how anything looks ...
NIMBYism saves the republic would be an appropriately stupid way to conclude this chapter in our history
Particularly NIMBYism saving the republic from a real estate developer.
Comment of the week!
I'm not sure the Gatsby party matters for anyone who doesn't already hate Trump because I'm pretty sure the modal Trump voter has no awareness of "The Great Gatsby" except at most as something they skimmed the Cliff Notes for in high school.
People missed it in the way of "Trump won by 1.5% so he's now an unstoppable juggernaut" post-election stuff but the Gulf of Mexico name change was also unpopular.
The dumb own the libs stuff is usually unpopular, it's just not high salience.
As someone who didn't give a crap about a building, I'm pleasantly surprised that *this* is what finally gets people fed up.
... and us as a nation.
Look on the bright side. Finally managed to defeat those pesky community input meetings and NEPA regulations, right?
And demolishing it to build a "ballroom." Not new or better offices, but something associated with wealthy, elite, cocktail parties.
I really don't know how important this was, but it wouldn't surprise me. The kinds of people who come here are generally concerned with substance and policy. But for lots and lots of people, it's the look of things.
Tearing down national symbols is not a good look. Especially if you are appealing to the half of the country that really wants to go back in time. Hates the left's tendency to shit on our country's past.
Much like the young, handsome, constantly smiling face of Mamdani, excavators demolishing the White House was an image that just kinda spoke beyond words.
Add it to the keys
Surely it is reason enough for a west wing spinoff?
Good one.
Both parties need to stop trying to fundamentally transform America when they win. Most voters like America and are distrustful of politicians. So when a party starts to rock the boat, voters run to the people trying to stop the rocking.
Yeah, if spending political capital comes at the expense of competent governance, I'll take door number two.
Totally reminds me of that time when Paul Ryan went on national TV and said that the Republican party needed to learn how to govern when he was in office. Like dude, wtf do you do all day? People seemingly forgot that this is what you get when you elect Trump though, you get no governance and chaos. The chaos and lack of leadership is why he fumbled 2020 in what should've been a layup for any other President dealing with Covid.
I honestly blame the filibuster. Voters reach for extremists when moderates can't make changes at all.
The filibuster is the only thing that forces moderation at all
Does it actually? My impression was that it enables extremism, because you don't have to think about whether your ideas will work - you just count on the filibuster to stop it.
It also means that when the ruling party wants to do something moderate and broadly popular that can improve people's lives, the minority party has an incentive to stop it with just 41 non-votes.
Its hard to say what congress would look like without it in today's environment, but it doesnt seem to be promoting compromise currently. Instead it just means congress does nothing, and everything is done via executive orders and court challenges, which means even less compromise most of the time.
Luckily, the current president now has a plan for that!
On the contrary: the clear lesson from on Matt's "you'll never win Iowa even in a blowout" warnings and all these troop deployments is that Democrats should absolutely have used their Senate majority to pass statehood for DC and PR (if the latter wanted it.) Being non-transformative has been both a policy disaster and a political one.
So you really just want to blow everything up.
Oh no, we decided to blow everything up on November 5, 2024, and quite possibly several years before that. At this point we're just trying to decide how to clean up the wreckage.
*2016.
The problem is, the more each party rocks the boat one direction, the more the other party has to rock the boat the other direction to maintain balance. If they don't do it, overall policy tilts toward the side that rocks the boat the most, even if both sides take turns winning elections.
1.) The point of political parties is to enact changes their various voters want. Plenty of Democrats vote for the ACA knowing it was dooming them, but was happy to do so because of the positive changes. The only difference is disagreement over what's important enough to walk the plank for.
2.) Lots of things have initial electoral backlash, but are eventually very popular. Reagan had a horrible '82 mid-term, but won reelection and shifted American politics forever so that tax hikes back to pre-Reagan levels that people like Nixon largely supported are basically considered socialism.
Conspiracy laden right-wing Republicans now attack their own party over the ACA.
How have the Democrats tried to "fundamentally transform America?"
The sheer number of people who followed the NYC mayoral race with the fervor of a Presidential campaign is disheartening. More than anything, it seems like people want something to do during the offseason.
https://x.com/KYSecState/status/1985734353515671601
I like how it ends with "Sorry." and you know he really, really wanted to add "...you idiots."
I was extra surprised to learn the KY SOS is a Republican too.
I happened to catch a little bit of the BBC World Service in the car today, and it was heavily focused on Mamdani. I can on one hand see why clueless foreigners would fall into that trap ("NJ is just the hinterland to NYC, right? And who knows where Virginia even is?"). On the other hand, surely they can draw analogies to how Red Ken Livingston once won the mayoral election in London, but that didn't signify anything broader about the UK?
That said, I give them extra credit for pronouncing Zohran in the technically proper way, with the back of the throat sound in the middle.
I will say, the fact that you know the name Ken Livingstone and that I first heard of Boris Johnson when he became mayor of London tells us what utterly outsized culture importance London has in the world.
In some ways, I actually think its somewhat defensible that someone in London would care about who's mayor of NYC. The two are obviously peer cities; the closest equivalent to NYC is London and vice versa. And there is clearly a lot of competition to be the financial capitol of the world and just general a lot of interdependencies (a lot of London finance people work at least for a time in NYC and vice versa). I don't think I'm crazy in saying that someone in living London in a lot of ways has more in common with someone living in NYC than someone living in Kentucky.
Having said all that, you're general point is a good one that it doesn't make much sense for the lead story on the BBC to be about the NYC mayoral election given it's very tenuous impact on UK generally. Not sure it makes much sense that I know the names Ken Livingstone or Sadiq Khan but couldn't tell you the name of any mayor of Dallas, Texas.
Guy had a great nickname, to be fair. Sometimes the simple nicknames are the best.
Just a reminder though....
> https://www.newsweek.com/kentucky-official-reminds-residents-they-cant-vote-new-york-city-mayor-10991423
> Kentucky Official Reminds Residents They Can’t Vote for New York City Mayor
It's crazy how cooked we are lol.
Also another example of how national issues can infect a local race in a way that doesn't really make sense. Whatever you're feelings on the Israel/Palestine conflict, the mayor of NYC has basically no control whatsoever as how that conflict plays out.
I remember reading an article like 10 years ago about how this phenomenon started occurring on the GOP side starting around the Obama presidency. Candidates for local dog catcher would start getting attack ads about whether or not they supported overturning Roe vs. Wade or start feeling the need to base their campaign message on whether they were committed to overturning Roe vs. Wade.
At least in the NYC mayoral election, it was a bit more understandable why national or international issues around Israel/Palestine became a talking point in this race given Mamdani's previous statements and given the realities of the demographic make up of the city. But man, I really hope Dems don't go down the path of deciding primaries for local town council based on whether the candidate is committed to Medicare for All or not.
Eh, this is just an inevitable consequence of the New Yorkification of essentially all discourse.
It has surprised me that, in the UK, a lot of my (largely lefty) peers have posted celebrations of Mamdani's win. They are not particularly political nerds - they don't even go on Twitter, really - but I think they are the kind of people who see politics predominantly as a battle between hope for the good guys, and the overwhelming success of "the bad guys", and one thing Mamdani really had is the good guy representing hope vibe.
A lot of leftists in the US cheered when Jeremy Corbyn won (before, y’know). They’re perpetually on the verge of winning it all; you have to envy the optimism.
After JD Vance's brother being demolished in Cincinnati, my favorite bit of news this morning was that the Kentucky Sec. of State went on social media to remind voters (who had apparently been calling his office) that polls were closed because Kentucky was not voting yesterday, so therefore they could not cast their ballots for mayor of New York City.
Link for those interested: https://www.newsweek.com/kentucky-official-reminds-residents-they-cant-vote-new-york-city-mayor-10991423
I sincerely thought it was an Onion headline when I first heard this yesterday.
"2. But Spanberger did considerably better [than Mikie Sherrill]"
Spanberger won by 14.6 points, Sherrill won by 13 points. Is that what you're counting as "considerably better"?
Maybe this is outdated but I feel like winning by 14.6 in light blue VA is a lot more impressive than 13 in (what has been until recently) dark blue NJ.
Trump lost Virginia by 5.8% in 2024. He lost New Jersey by 5.9%.
Given the anti-incumbent sentiment in a lot of places, I'd say Sherrill's win is considerably more impressive.
I'm not sure the pendulum has swung so far that incumbency is now a notable disadvantage
Spanberger is taking over from a popular Republican incumbent though, and Sherrill is taking over from an extremly unpopular Dem incumbent. I think it's hard to make sweeping statements about candidate quality in the circumstances.
I really don't think the Republican brand is very good in northern Virginia right now. Granted most people DOGEd weren't Republicans to begin with, but given the numbers involved, it shouldn't take a lot to move the needle.
Virginia is a blue state now - has been going that way a long time and crossed over a while ago. Youngkin was an outlier made possible by some one-off dynamics around COVID, peak wokeness, and teacher's unions. Then he destroyed his party's statewide brand by governing as a Republican presidential primary candidate rather than as a blue state moderate checking a progressive legislature.
Youngkin is still fairly popular in Virginia
Emerson poll released 11/2/25 had Youngkin at 49% approval rating, with Trump at 45% in Va. I’m not sure I’d call that popular.
15 years ago Virginia was absolutely light blue and NJ was absolutely dark blue. But I think during the Trump era, Virginia has solidified and NJ has gotten shaky.
Yeah, I guess the big question for me is whether 2024 was a mirage for Republicans (in NJ and perhaps elsewhere?) as hispanic voters leaned towards trump but appear to be shifting back.
For what it's worth, Cook PVI (which I think at least tries to correct for anomalies) currently has Virginia at D+3 and New Jersey at D+4.
I now suspect this take was pre-written based on the polls that showed Sherrill's race as much closer, and wasn't updated to reflect reality.
Yep, Matt was sucker punched by the polls. A rethink is in order.
There is literally no signal in these results. It could just as easily have been caused by a slightly different distribution of cold and flu viruses.
Spanberger winning the less blue state by a bigger margin maybe isn't "considerably better", but it definitely is better.
It is positive but I think it's still important for Spanberger to govern in a way that is moderate and defensible on the policy merits. VA is lean blue but I also doubt there is a single jurisdiction in the country that has been more directly, immediately, and negatively impacted by Trump. It won't always be that way and treating it as a given is a path for another Youngkin situation.
I was hiking last week. The views were absolutely spectacular. I had to remember to stop watching my feet and look around.
This morning it's great to embrace this moment and stop and breath after a toxic 6 months. There's hard work ahead, but isn't this beautiful!! Democrats for the win!!
Mikie did NOT run significantly behind Abigail. You must have written this piece based on polling, not actual results
Matt admitted (maybe only on Twitter?) that he was pre-writing this piece based on the strength of polling in the various races alone.
Matt pulling a Mitch Albom. Will his editor discipline him? https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/11/business/media/meeting-a-deadline-repenting-at-leisure.html.
Yeah, the quality of polls in NJ seemed to indicate a horserace that wasn't actually there imo... That said, I'm not going to read too far into winning the Gov race in a state that Dems should win in the first place.
"New Jersey and Virginia have similar underlying partisanship. But Spanberger did considerably better, in no small part because Mikie Sherrill’s opponent was able to tie her to the state’s unpopular two-term Democratic governor in a way that didn’t apply in Virginia. Sherrill’s campaign message would likely have fared better in the Garden State if Phil Murphy had made different choices that led to outcomes New Jersey liked better."
Spanberger got 57.2% of the vote; Sherrill got 56.2%. That's "considerably better"?
Right. G. Elliott Morris may have a point:
“The results of last night’s elections also poured cold water on the tired argument among elite Democratic Party strategists that the party needs to seek out the moderate middle to win elections. Matt Yglesias, perhaps the loudest proponent of this theory, argued before the election that we should expect Mikie Sherrill to do worse than Abigail Spanberger because the latter alienated the (progressive-coded?) AFL-CIO in Virginia during her campaign…
“Spanberger and Sherrill are both winning roughly 56-57% of the vote in their respective states. So maybe a moderate “ideology” isn’t related much to vote margin, as I have argued. Or, maybe Matt would argue that the candidate’s issue positions aren’t a great reflection of their true ideology anyway. That’s my argument!”
https://substack.com/@gelliottmorris/p-178051880
I guess if you squint hard enough you can fit any results into the trend you want. But if the takeaway is that Mikie Sherrill winning somehow pours cold water on the idea of moderating to win, I’m not sure the word “moderating” has any meaning. Mamdani she ain’t.
This is a bizarre take.
I find the “should the Dems moderate” discourse to be frustrating. The Dems should absolutely moderate by welcoming more conservative candidates in more conservative jurisdictions. For example, Iowa. I don’t think Dems who are winning their races need to moderate, other than that the party as a whole needs to make room for candidates who can expand their map.
I call for a truce in the moderation wars. It’s taking up way too much oxygen. Seems to me Matt, Morris et al agree on more than it seems.
“What you run on” is only part of the story - voters judge more broadly and are right to do so.
“Moderation” confers some advantage, but it’s not a silver bullet.
Democrats have a serious brand/perception problem on certain issues.
What to do? Hard to say.
Sherrill is also a moderate, just slightly to the left of Spanberger. They both flipped GOP-held seats in 2018 and had a history of outperforming the partisan baseline in their elections and were members of the Blue Dog and New Democrat coalitions in Congress.
I voted for Spanberger in the primary and the general and have followed her career for years. I didn't even know the AFL-CIO issue even came up in this election. Too many of the things MY has focused on when it comes to factionalism or reaching swing voters are the types of things that would end up in Trivial Pursuit than something even high info voters would notice.
Kind of feels like this was pre-written before we knew that Sherrill and Spanberger would win by similar margins.
Object to the Phil Murphy hate—Sherrill did just barely worse than Spannerger, while running to be his third term vs Spanberger was replacing an R. If anything this reflects well on Murphy.
You mention the demo of the east wing. I think it’s perhaps equally important that the government has been shut down for weeks. Not a good look for Trump and his band
Yeah, taking advantage of a government shutdown to bulldoze the architectural symbol of US elections is not a good look.
The party of the President has lost every NJ gov election since the mid 80s except for Murphy’s win in 2021; and every gov election in VA since 1977 was except for McAuliffe in 2013. Variance in differential to prior year has been declining over time but has been as high as in the 20s. These results are totally expected and consistent, but a little disappointing in the margin, if anything. Media made way too much of 2021 resulting VA. It was consistent.
>A Democratic sweep so total it’s hard to make a lot of smart points about it
Not having to listen to "paid to lose" centrists making "smart points" about why Dems needed to prostrate more in front of Trump and kiss more billionaire butt is the best thing about winning elections.
If you had actually read what people here think the Dems should do, you would know that "prostrate more in front of Trump and kiss more billionaire butt" is not it.
Matt keeps pushing the statistically idiotic and asinine idea that "Trump moderated" which is why he won. He is very much implicitly telling Dems to kiss Trump's rear-end and also that of the billionaire network that funds Trump, Cuomo and the Clintonite wing of the party.
People really seem to have a problem distinguishing between the concepts of "Trump campaigned as a moderate" (a true statement, particularly in 2016) versus "Trump governed as a moderate" (which he by and large has not and especially not in 2025).
I’m sorry, but genuinely what are you talking about.
Those "paid to lose centrists" are now governors of Virginia and New Jersey
"Run people suitable for their states and localities" is not paid to lose centrism.
In a wave election that goes your way everyone is a genius...just as in a bull market everyone is Warren Buffet.
Spanberger refused to repeal Virginia's "right to work" laws and earned the endorsement of Virginia's biggest police union and said this back in 2020:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/06/politics/abigail-spanberger-house-democrats-2020-election
Mikie Sherrill voted for the NDAA, which made trans rights activists really angry.
I'm not sure how that isn't moderating?
>Spanberger refused to repeal Virginia's "right to work" laws
You seem to think that the median voter is worried about some vote that Spanberger did not support on a low salience topic. I don't think this election would have been affected outside of the sixth decimal place by that vote.
> and earned the endorsement of Virginia's biggest police union
If the police union is powerful in Virginia and crime is a big problem, sure one should seek their endorsement. Do what is right locally for that time and place.
>Mikie Sherrill voted for the NDAA, which made trans rights activists really angry.
No problem. As long as she can defend her vote in a coherent manner and not put out some kind of Hakeem Jeffries style word salad. Also GOP trans attacks did not move the needle yesterday at all, so that position she took may or may not have been utterly irrelevant. Even Jay Jones pulled it off.
I appreciate the sentiment, but I disagree: being able to *accomplish things* is the best part of winning elections; what you describe is the second best part.
I have no problem with that ordering.
thermostatic reaction is still a thing. But it doesn't solve Dems long term problems. Winning in blue states like NY and VA isn't the thing Dems need to do. It's winning in places like Ohio.
For #6: Hank Green did a video around Public Service Commissions and specifically that Georgia race. The video (https://youtu.be/UgvE_gPi7Kc?si=k1fx4jRubSgWhCUk) has 800k views on YouTube and I don't know how many on other socials. Nerdfighteria (the community surrounding the Green brothers) have a lot of clout, including getting J&J to not enforce parents on TB treatments in non-high-income countries and Cepheid to lower the prices of their TB tests. Wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this was him, at least getting the ball rolling for people to care and share about it.
No takes on the implications of the election for Trump's sanity and the filibuster? Despite hating to back an obvious loser, he apparently couldn't help himself from jumping on the Cuomentum bandwagon...
But happy as I am about last night's wins, I'd be even more happy to trade them for a Republican senate voting to dismantle the filibuster. So far the odds don't seem too good though...
Mamdani gives him a good foil to rail against.
This is 100% why
Imagine telling people in November 2020 that in 2025, still-President Donald Trump would be endorsing Andrew Cuomo for Mayor of New York!
Was the Cuomentum bandwagon made up of Cuomosexuals?
Someone tweeted about the retreat of the Cuomomintang, that was funny
This means that Staten Island will manufacture the world's best semiconductors in the 2090s.
Attention everyone, Sean just won the thread. 🤣🤣🤣
He wasn't even a Sliwaphile. Sad.
It does seem that he had a build-in advantage with the sexual-predator demographic - Trump, Musk, ...
(https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2013/03/mario-cuomo-was-disappointed-homo-signs-or-not-007262)
My worry is that Democrats, being the home of the last huddled remnants of empiricism, will learn that lower turnout helps them while Republicans remain opposed to voting rights on principle. Voting will get harder, and while that's not the End of Democracy or anything, it makes life harder for no good reason.
Even mail in elections can have super low turnouts.