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."
If prices were falling and people were feeling generally better about the economy after Trump took office, people would be fine with his East Wing shenanigans. But the combination of "we hate the economy" with Trump spending time on crap like this is a terrible look for him.
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.
Apparently, with our withdrawal, the ANA lost all their air support which meant they were completely vulnerable to the Taliban Air Force. Or something.
I remember the fall of Kabul. I was buying a car, because my old one straight up died. I was seeing sticker shock at the insane price, and to top it off, I had to wear a mask, because, even though I was vaccinated, the Delta strain was going around.
I didn't blame this stuff on Biden. I thought that he handled this stuff at least ok. But it really put a damper on the good vibes from the last six months.
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 ...
Kind of reminiscent of how photos and videos of Viktor Yanukovych's ridiculously opulent mansion were a major factor leading to Maidan. People had to see it to believe it.
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.
They don't have to understand the Gatsby allusion, you just have to know it's bizarre for a President to have scantily clad dancers rolling around in a giant wine glass.
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 a general matter one should not be surprised that some symbolic visual turns out to be a tipping point.
However reading it as The Thing that caused X is almost certainly wrong - the simple visual may be The Thing that enables a percentage of people to use it as a symbolic trigger "change of mind" and a mental justification, where generally it is not really "just that' but it's really more the proverbial Straw that Broke the Camel's Back that's really a mental permission trigger.
Probably should've called it a conference center... no one builds ballrooms anymore because no one goes to balls (I'm not saying this in absolute terms, more a vibes thing).
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.
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.
Sorry I'll add one additional point, do you think getting rid of the filibuster for the judiciary is good?
I would argue that it has made lower court judges more extreme as now the way to audition for higher court positions is you just need to worry about impressing your side.
I think the same will apply to legislation
I don't want Trump to have free rein. I don't want whomever the Dems get to win next to have free rein
I don't really have a sense of how the filibuster has interacted with the behavior of judges. I think norms of voting for nominees, and norms of applying the filibuster to everything you can, have changed enough over the past few decades that there was really only a decade or two that the filibuster was around and heavily used. I don't know what the systematic differences are between judges nominated and confirmed during that period, compared to the decade before or after.
I think the relationship between the filibuster and moderation/extremism is extremely complex. There are certain extreme ideas that both parties feel happy about proposing, because they know the filibuster will stop them before they have to actually implement it. If you got rid of the filibuster, you would get rid of some of those extreme proposals that get 51-53 votes. On the other hand, there are other cases where a party actually compromises on something to get a bill that can get 60 votes. I can't remember the last time that actually happened, but I do think it used to happen sometimes. Getting rid of the filibuster might get rid of those compromises.
Fundamentally, I don't think the filibuster is a good mechanism for a stated goal of achieving moderation and compromise - it occasionally does, but it also turns congress into more of a venue for posturing than a body that is supposed to actually pass bills.
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.
I don't think the filibuster really forces moderation, so much as forcing parties to structure their agenda to work around the filibuster. For example, putting everything they want to do over the dead bodies of the other party into one giant bill, or using aggressive executive action, rather than laws, for things not subject to budget reconciliation.
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.
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.
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.
Did I say that? It is possible to do things that help you lose elections with "fundamentally transforming" the country. I think Biden's border policy was bad and it clearly hurt Harris's chances
Biden was actually on track to not overreach and invite backlash until Doris Kearns-Goodwin, Jon Meachum, and Michael Beschloss told him he could be FDR (with a 1-seat majority in Congress). Then he tried to pass every Democratic wish-list policy.
Since 2008, only 30 percent of Americans think we are on the right track according to Gallup. The status quo is not going to win reelection in this environment.
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.
One would hope that the BBC would inform their listeners that New York was named after the Duke of York (Ex-Prince Andrew currently) while New Jersey was named after some dumb island. Virginia, by contrast, was named after the Virgin Queen, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I, and how fitting that its current sovereign ruler is Abigail Spanberger likewise of the female persuasion and the first of her kind in Virginian history (probably not a virgin though).
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.
We saw some of that behavior on city council in my town around 2020 ("resisting" Trump by passing ordinances on issues that are actually controlled by the state legislature, recalling a perfectly fine councilman who was perceived as not progressive enough on national issues, etc.). It's quieted down a bit since, but I wouldn't be surprised if we get more of that when we hold elections again in 2026.
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.
Good one from Conway: "George Conway, a former Republican lawyer, responded: “There is a distinct possibility that some people are too stupid to participate in a democracy.”
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.
Perhaps even more to the point, there was a much larger shift toward Republicans in New Jersey between 2020 and 2024 than in Virginia (16 to 5.9 Democratic vote versus 10 to 5.8). There was lots of talk about New Jersey possibly becoming a swing state.
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.
Right. Virginia was ground zero for Trump's attack on federal government employees. Nothing like that in New Jersey. That's why everyone expected a bigger margin in Virginia.
Also, Spanberger faced an idiot opponent while Sherrill's was very competent.
Also, New Jersey shifted much more toward Trump between 2020 and 2024 than Virginia did.
In all, while both victories were awesome, Mikie's was much more impressive.
Youngkin was governor because schools stayed closed too long; there were definitely some Dems that voted for him for that reason. Four years on, that's not really a problem.
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.
I suspect it will bounce back and forth like Brownian motion until something truly big happens to shift power more permanently toward one party. I have no idea what that would be.
It's worth taking into consideration a couple of facts. Trump's performance is relevant, but less dirctly parallel than the prior governors' races; NJ: from D+3 to D+13 = +10; VA: from D-4 to D+15 = +19, the shift was almost twice as large. Also, Spanberger's margin shift was much more consistent in all counties in the state, even red counties--it wasn't just angry federal workers in NOVA.
Presumably Matt wrote his 13 takeaways on the election after, you know, the election. It's weird that he wrote all those things putting Spanberger over Sherrill when the facts were clearly in front of him. Didn't fit his narrative so maybe just ignore the facts?
I have one takeaway from the election: a lot of people really hate Trump right now and wanted to stick it to him. That is all.
Probably the first time people knew or paid attention to the ltgov race, and we all know why.
Nope, I have no numbers. However, I spent my career working with folks in the Pentagon and other parts of the national security network in the DC area and those folks by and large aren't true blue Democrats. I "suspect" again that many of them are royally pissed at the whole Trump clown show.
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.
Sometimes Matt force fits the facts into his strategic vision. "Spanberger gives the back of the hand to the groups [the AFL-CIO? really?] and therefore does better than Sherrill."
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.
I forgot to post this comment I wrote back on Oct. 31:
"Despite a painful loss in Game 6, the Blue Jays showed their pluck by coming back to win Game 7 and the World Series with a devastating defeat of the Los Angeles Dodgers."
"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 think G. Elliott Morris has gotten really radicalized by his moderation isn't a big deal take. And that lens leads him to shitty conclusions like that.
I think that it demonstrates that there are multiple paths to being perceived as in-touch with your voters, and Matt's takes implying that Democrats should broadly take on the cultural values of people in northern Maine are overly narrow.
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.
Not to immediately restart the moderation wars, but -the- main reason democrats in Iowa can’t outrun the Democratic Party is that everybody knows that Democratic leadership calls the shots, and they are far from moderate. Joe Manchin distinguished himself by breaking with national Dems on a lot of issues, but it’s hard to do that when you’re not in office, and it’s harder to get the kinds of donations that more ideological candidates do. The national leadership and organizers need to moderate for Dems to be competitive in Iowa and Ohio.
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.
Copying this comment from The Argument because it's relevant to this crowd too--
One under-the-radar mayoral race to be excited about: Miami, Florida.
It’s headed to a runoff, but the frontrunner, Eileen Higgins, is someone this publication should be genuinely excited about.
Higgins first won office in 2018 in a major upset, taking a runoff in a district that includes Little Havana against a well-connected GOP establishment figure.
She’s a real housing + transportation wonk. Because of her service on the county Commission, Dade County has seen tens of thousands of new housing units built on publicly owned land. She’s pushed to clear underutilized land around rail stations to allow Hudson Yards-scaled developments, secured federal funding for new rail lines, and generally pushes a "maximum YIMBY" vision, with high-rises around rail lines modeled after cities like Vancouver, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
She's a technocrat, an engineer by training, and a moderate who isn't an establishmentarian.
If she wins, she could become a real rising star: Florida’s answer to Matt Mahan or Daniel Lurie. She could run statewide or be a highly successful HUD or DOT Secretary in the next Democratic administration. If you want to throw a few dollars at a candidate, she's my pick.
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
>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.
"Paid to lose" centrism is what Cuomo did in NYC, i.e., being unable to figure out what the voters actually wanted and hoping that taking money from big donors and painting his opponents as "extreme" is enough to win just like Hillary and Harris.
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.
I have been calling for Chuck "Zombie" Schumer who famously predicted that for every blue collar working class voter Dems lose, they will pick up two suburban Republicans to be removed from leadership.
Since you are concerned about Ohio, you should be outraged at the "genius" of Chuck Schumer.
I would like to earnestly pursue this strategy and adopt issue positions that allow us to win Scottsdale, AZ; Dade County, FL; Frisco, TX; Sunrise UT; Forsyth County, GA; Sarasota County, FL; and Cinco Ranch, TX much as we win their counterparts in the Northeast and California such that we can in fact afford to not pander to the Rust Belt.
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...
Trump probably took great satisfaction from the results as it shows that voters will flock to vote for *him* but not for Republicans in general. The only thing that would make happier is some replacement like Vance getting absolutely blown out of the water in 2028.
"But it’s a reminder that the South Texas Hispanic voters who Trump did so well with in 2020 and 2024 shouldn’t be viewed as unwinnable by Democrats."
...can I humbly suggest that Democrats not view ANY demographic group as "unwinnable"? Do they realize that getting 45% of the white vote is a lot better than 40%? For that matter, that getting 45% of the white vote and 85% of the black vote is MUCH better than 40/90? (So maybe recalibrate that pandering scope a little bit?!)
The obsession with demographics among our strategists is embarrassing at this point, and the apparent lack of numeracy that goes with it just compounds the weakness.
Since Matt was shut up sufficiently by Dem wins to have any "smart" takes, here is something to mull over.
Every time time Trump sneaked past our electoral college by either outright losing the NPV or winning only a plurality NPV (49.5% in 2024) Matt likes to bring out his retroactive tautological fitting model and claims that Trump won because he "moderated".
By that same logic, Jay Jones who was shall we say Trumpian in rhetoric pulled off a whopping 5% win because he "moderated".
Of course people on here will stand up immediately point out that Jay Jones underperformed on the WAR score or other fundamental benchmarks.
- But Trump underperformed economic fundamentals in 2016
- He slightly overperformed fundamentals in 2020 but still lost
- He very slightly underperformed fundamentals in a terrible year for incumbents
Everyone understands the core logical fallacy Matt is pushing when it is encountered in a different context i.e, with respect to cyclonic storms. Warming temperatures have a detectable statistical correlation with storm intensity but that does not mean every big storm is a direct result of global warming.
"Moderation" as in "heterodoxy" may have a detectable signal in WAR scores but it does not mean you can retroactively claim that any individual politician won because they "moderated".
Trump "moderated" in 2016 is the most idiotic retroactive fitting in history because the whole pundit industrial complex (other than leftists) were predicting that Queen HRC would win and Trump would lose because in real time they did not perceive Trump as a "moderate". They perceived Hillary as the moderate until she lost.
Trump "moderated" on social security/Medicare ignores the fact that Trump ran far to the right of the GOP moderates like Rubio on immigration and it simply was the case that the professional moderates misread where voters were on immigration and had zero ability to predict whether or not Trump's outrageous immigration takes would be disqualifying or not.
In summary, "moderation" is weak to useless term especially so if it is used retroactively. Winning as a "moderate" requires first of all that you decipher correctly where the median voter is on the most salient issues of that election.
But professional moderates because of status quo bias are unable to detect it when the median voter actually moves on any issue (like say on immigration in 2016) and are left flailing like Hillary. Always retroactively labeling the winner as having "moderated" is 100% brain dead.
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.
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.
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.
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."
If prices were falling and people were feeling generally better about the economy after Trump took office, people would be fine with his East Wing shenanigans. But the combination of "we hate the economy" with Trump spending time on crap like this is a terrible look for him.
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.
Nah.
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.
Apparently, with our withdrawal, the ANA lost all their air support which meant they were completely vulnerable to the Taliban Air Force. Or something.
I think the moral support was an important part of the support. Knowing the USA has your back is HUGE
They required a brains trust of something like 17 of their wisest men to decipher 68 x100 so not *that* much capacity...
Very closely related to how the availability of cell phone videos has totally transformed politics across the world (often for the worse).
I remember the fall of Kabul. I was buying a car, because my old one straight up died. I was seeing sticker shock at the insane price, and to top it off, I had to wear a mask, because, even though I was vaccinated, the Delta strain was going around.
I didn't blame this stuff on Biden. I thought that he handled this stuff at least ok. But it really put a damper on the good vibes from the last six months.
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.
Not the savior America needs, but rather, the savior it deserves.
Comment of the week!
Kind of reminiscent of how photos and videos of Viktor Yanukovych's ridiculously opulent mansion were a major factor leading to Maidan. People had to see it to believe it.
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.
They don't have to understand the Gatsby allusion, you just have to know it's bizarre for a President to have scantily clad dancers rolling around in a giant wine glass.
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 a general matter one should not be surprised that some symbolic visual turns out to be a tipping point.
However reading it as The Thing that caused X is almost certainly wrong - the simple visual may be The Thing that enables a percentage of people to use it as a symbolic trigger "change of mind" and a mental justification, where generally it is not really "just that' but it's really more the proverbial Straw that Broke the Camel's Back that's really a mental permission trigger.
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.
Probably should've called it a conference center... no one builds ballrooms anymore because no one goes to balls (I'm not saying this in absolute terms, more a vibes thing).
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?
Do you mean East Wing spinoff?
Good ol’ IPNaPDAIEW theory
The Administration can't fly on one wing.
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.
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.
Sorry I'll add one additional point, do you think getting rid of the filibuster for the judiciary is good?
I would argue that it has made lower court judges more extreme as now the way to audition for higher court positions is you just need to worry about impressing your side.
I think the same will apply to legislation
I don't want Trump to have free rein. I don't want whomever the Dems get to win next to have free rein
I don't really have a sense of how the filibuster has interacted with the behavior of judges. I think norms of voting for nominees, and norms of applying the filibuster to everything you can, have changed enough over the past few decades that there was really only a decade or two that the filibuster was around and heavily used. I don't know what the systematic differences are between judges nominated and confirmed during that period, compared to the decade before or after.
You think the lack of the filibuster would make people moderate???
I just don't believe that for a second.
I think the relationship between the filibuster and moderation/extremism is extremely complex. There are certain extreme ideas that both parties feel happy about proposing, because they know the filibuster will stop them before they have to actually implement it. If you got rid of the filibuster, you would get rid of some of those extreme proposals that get 51-53 votes. On the other hand, there are other cases where a party actually compromises on something to get a bill that can get 60 votes. I can't remember the last time that actually happened, but I do think it used to happen sometimes. Getting rid of the filibuster might get rid of those compromises.
Fundamentally, I don't think the filibuster is a good mechanism for a stated goal of achieving moderation and compromise - it occasionally does, but it also turns congress into more of a venue for posturing than a body that is supposed to actually pass bills.
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.
The solution to that is to stop letting the president do so much via executive order. Make congress pass laws
It would certainly be nice if congress would start doing its job. Im not sure how we make them though
The courts stop allowing the president to do stuff that is congresses job
I don't think the filibuster really forces moderation, so much as forcing parties to structure their agenda to work around the filibuster. For example, putting everything they want to do over the dead bodies of the other party into one giant bill, or using aggressive executive action, rather than laws, for things not subject to budget reconciliation.
Moving policymaking from the legislature to the President and the courts doesn't do this.
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.
1605
Agree. Dems might take a slight electoral hit with DC and PR statehood, but that'd be outweighed by 4 more Dem Senators!
Give it a few years and everyone will be used to it.
how does statehood blow everything up? since the founding over 30 states have been admitted
It's a transparent ploy to stack the deck.
I have some news for you.
why do you think there are so many tiny western states?
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.
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?"
Medicare For All, Green New Deal, Equality Act, Cap and Trade, etc.
Dem candidates have talked about those things, but elected officials have not even tried to pass most of them. Meanwhile Republicans and Trump...
The both-sidesing this comment section will endure is incredible to behold
So Democrats' losses in 1994, 2010, and 2022 had nothing to with what Democrats did or tried to do while in power?
Did I say that? It is possible to do things that help you lose elections with "fundamentally transforming" the country. I think Biden's border policy was bad and it clearly hurt Harris's chances
Biden was actually on track to not overreach and invite backlash until Doris Kearns-Goodwin, Jon Meachum, and Michael Beschloss told him he could be FDR (with a 1-seat majority in Congress). Then he tried to pass every Democratic wish-list policy.
Since 2008, only 30 percent of Americans think we are on the right track according to Gallup. The status quo is not going to win reelection in this environment.
Well, neither does going for broke.
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."
Props to a statewide official who answers a random Twitter guy's question about what bourbon he prefers.
(I hope that's not a poll-tested response.)
What did he say? My vote is Wild Turkey 101 for Manhattans (with a rich vermouth like Cocchi). Old Fashioneds, too.
Other bourbons are great, of course.
Michter's.
I know nothing about bourbon.
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.
One would hope that the BBC would inform their listeners that New York was named after the Duke of York (Ex-Prince Andrew currently) while New Jersey was named after some dumb island. Virginia, by contrast, was named after the Virgin Queen, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I, and how fitting that its current sovereign ruler is Abigail Spanberger likewise of the female persuasion and the first of her kind in Virginian history (probably not a virgin though).
There is no back of the throat sound. Zohran is spelled with the Arabic letter that produces /h/, not /ħ/ or /x/.
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.
We saw some of that behavior on city council in my town around 2020 ("resisting" Trump by passing ordinances on issues that are actually controlled by the state legislature, recalling a perfectly fine councilman who was perceived as not progressive enough on national issues, etc.). It's quieted down a bit since, but I wouldn't be surprised if we get more of that when we hold elections again in 2026.
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.
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.
Good one from Conway: "George Conway, a former Republican lawyer, responded: “There is a distinct possibility that some people are too stupid to participate in a democracy.”
"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
Perhaps even more to the point, there was a much larger shift toward Republicans in New Jersey between 2020 and 2024 than in Virginia (16 to 5.9 Democratic vote versus 10 to 5.8). There was lots of talk about New Jersey possibly becoming a swing state.
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.
Right. Virginia was ground zero for Trump's attack on federal government employees. Nothing like that in New Jersey. That's why everyone expected a bigger margin in Virginia.
Also, Spanberger faced an idiot opponent while Sherrill's was very competent.
Also, New Jersey shifted much more toward Trump between 2020 and 2024 than Virginia did.
In all, while both victories were awesome, Mikie's was much more impressive.
Youngkin was governor because schools stayed closed too long; there were definitely some Dems that voted for him for that reason. Four years on, that's not really a problem.
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.
I suspect it will bounce back and forth like Brownian motion until something truly big happens to shift power more permanently toward one party. I have no idea what that would be.
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.
It's worth taking into consideration a couple of facts. Trump's performance is relevant, but less dirctly parallel than the prior governors' races; NJ: from D+3 to D+13 = +10; VA: from D-4 to D+15 = +19, the shift was almost twice as large. Also, Spanberger's margin shift was much more consistent in all counties in the state, even red counties--it wasn't just angry federal workers in NOVA.
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.
Presumably Matt wrote his 13 takeaways on the election after, you know, the election. It's weird that he wrote all those things putting Spanberger over Sherrill when the facts were clearly in front of him. Didn't fit his narrative so maybe just ignore the facts?
I have one takeaway from the election: a lot of people really hate Trump right now and wanted to stick it to him. That is all.
Sometimes a race is called and you confidently go to bed, then the Hoboken vote or whatever comes in and changes the board.
The early returns for NJ showed Sherrill up about 30 points.
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.
A little bigger. Lots of super mad government employees in Virginia. Braindead opponent.
Sherrill's win was more impressive.
That "braindead opponent" won in 2021 by roughly the same margin as Youngkin.
And how many of those super mad government employees weren't already reliably Democratic voters prior to 2025?
The numbers all point to a better performance by Spanberger. Everything else is just anecdotes and punditry.
Have you ever paid attention to a Lieutenant Governor race? I sure haven't. You vote for Youngkin and then check the box for that Winsome lady too.
I suspect a lot more of those pissed off Democratic federal government employees got off their couches to vote than they might otherwise have.
Spanberger outperformed the Democratic LTGOV candidate, so apparently some do pay attention.
"I suspect"
If you have actual numbers to back that up, then I'd love to see them.
Probably the first time people knew or paid attention to the ltgov race, and we all know why.
Nope, I have no numbers. However, I spent my career working with folks in the Pentagon and other parts of the national security network in the DC area and those folks by and large aren't true blue Democrats. I "suspect" again that many of them are royally pissed at the whole Trump clown show.
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.
Sometimes Matt force fits the facts into his strategic vision. "Spanberger gives the back of the hand to the groups [the AFL-CIO? really?] and therefore does better than Sherrill."
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
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.
Matt admitted (maybe only on Twitter?) that he was pre-writing this piece based on the strength of polling in the various races alone.
I forgot to post this comment I wrote back on Oct. 31:
"Despite a painful loss in Game 6, the Blue Jays showed their pluck by coming back to win Game 7 and the World Series with a devastating defeat of the Los Angeles Dodgers."
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.
"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 think G. Elliott Morris has gotten really radicalized by his moderation isn't a big deal take. And that lens leads him to shitty conclusions like that.
I think that it demonstrates that there are multiple paths to being perceived as in-touch with your voters, and Matt's takes implying that Democrats should broadly take on the cultural values of people in northern Maine are overly narrow.
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.
Not to immediately restart the moderation wars, but -the- main reason democrats in Iowa can’t outrun the Democratic Party is that everybody knows that Democratic leadership calls the shots, and they are far from moderate. Joe Manchin distinguished himself by breaking with national Dems on a lot of issues, but it’s hard to do that when you’re not in office, and it’s harder to get the kinds of donations that more ideological candidates do. The national leadership and organizers need to moderate for Dems to be competitive in Iowa and Ohio.
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.
Maybe he read it as 5.62%.
Copying this comment from The Argument because it's relevant to this crowd too--
One under-the-radar mayoral race to be excited about: Miami, Florida.
It’s headed to a runoff, but the frontrunner, Eileen Higgins, is someone this publication should be genuinely excited about.
Higgins first won office in 2018 in a major upset, taking a runoff in a district that includes Little Havana against a well-connected GOP establishment figure.
She’s a real housing + transportation wonk. Because of her service on the county Commission, Dade County has seen tens of thousands of new housing units built on publicly owned land. She’s pushed to clear underutilized land around rail stations to allow Hudson Yards-scaled developments, secured federal funding for new rail lines, and generally pushes a "maximum YIMBY" vision, with high-rises around rail lines modeled after cities like Vancouver, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
She's a technocrat, an engineer by training, and a moderate who isn't an establishmentarian.
If she wins, she could become a real rising star: Florida’s answer to Matt Mahan or Daniel Lurie. She could run statewide or be a highly successful HUD or DOT Secretary in the next Democratic administration. If you want to throw a few dollars at a candidate, she's my pick.
It would be nice to have a Democratic party with a heartbeat in Florida.
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.
Kind of feels like this was pre-written before we knew that Sherrill and Spanberger would win by similar margins.
>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).
His first term would be considered quite differently if he had succeeded in repealing Obamacare
As always, Trump to his voters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYQCb3qrBpo
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.
That's the so called "paid to lose centrism"
"Paid to lose" centrism is what Cuomo did in NYC, i.e., being unable to figure out what the voters actually wanted and hoping that taking money from big donors and painting his opponents as "extreme" is enough to win just like Hillary and Harris.
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.
I have been calling for Chuck "Zombie" Schumer who famously predicted that for every blue collar working class voter Dems lose, they will pick up two suburban Republicans to be removed from leadership.
Since you are concerned about Ohio, you should be outraged at the "genius" of Chuck Schumer.
I would like to earnestly pursue this strategy and adopt issue positions that allow us to win Scottsdale, AZ; Dade County, FL; Frisco, TX; Sunrise UT; Forsyth County, GA; Sarasota County, FL; and Cinco Ranch, TX much as we win their counterparts in the Northeast and California such that we can in fact afford to not pander to the Rust Belt.
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. 🤣🤣🤣
I love a comment section where that pun actually works!
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)
Trump probably took great satisfaction from the results as it shows that voters will flock to vote for *him* but not for Republicans in general. The only thing that would make happier is some replacement like Vance getting absolutely blown out of the water in 2028.
"But it’s a reminder that the South Texas Hispanic voters who Trump did so well with in 2020 and 2024 shouldn’t be viewed as unwinnable by Democrats."
...can I humbly suggest that Democrats not view ANY demographic group as "unwinnable"? Do they realize that getting 45% of the white vote is a lot better than 40%? For that matter, that getting 45% of the white vote and 85% of the black vote is MUCH better than 40/90? (So maybe recalibrate that pandering scope a little bit?!)
The obsession with demographics among our strategists is embarrassing at this point, and the apparent lack of numeracy that goes with it just compounds the weakness.
Since Matt was shut up sufficiently by Dem wins to have any "smart" takes, here is something to mull over.
Every time time Trump sneaked past our electoral college by either outright losing the NPV or winning only a plurality NPV (49.5% in 2024) Matt likes to bring out his retroactive tautological fitting model and claims that Trump won because he "moderated".
By that same logic, Jay Jones who was shall we say Trumpian in rhetoric pulled off a whopping 5% win because he "moderated".
Of course people on here will stand up immediately point out that Jay Jones underperformed on the WAR score or other fundamental benchmarks.
- But Trump underperformed economic fundamentals in 2016
- He slightly overperformed fundamentals in 2020 but still lost
- He very slightly underperformed fundamentals in a terrible year for incumbents
Everyone understands the core logical fallacy Matt is pushing when it is encountered in a different context i.e, with respect to cyclonic storms. Warming temperatures have a detectable statistical correlation with storm intensity but that does not mean every big storm is a direct result of global warming.
"Moderation" as in "heterodoxy" may have a detectable signal in WAR scores but it does not mean you can retroactively claim that any individual politician won because they "moderated".
Trump "moderated" in 2016 is the most idiotic retroactive fitting in history because the whole pundit industrial complex (other than leftists) were predicting that Queen HRC would win and Trump would lose because in real time they did not perceive Trump as a "moderate". They perceived Hillary as the moderate until she lost.
Trump "moderated" on social security/Medicare ignores the fact that Trump ran far to the right of the GOP moderates like Rubio on immigration and it simply was the case that the professional moderates misread where voters were on immigration and had zero ability to predict whether or not Trump's outrageous immigration takes would be disqualifying or not.
In summary, "moderation" is weak to useless term especially so if it is used retroactively. Winning as a "moderate" requires first of all that you decipher correctly where the median voter is on the most salient issues of that election.
But professional moderates because of status quo bias are unable to detect it when the median voter actually moves on any issue (like say on immigration in 2016) and are left flailing like Hillary. Always retroactively labeling the winner as having "moderated" is 100% brain dead.