Matt, are there not 2 senate seats each up for elections in Ohio (JD Vance's Seat) and Florida (Rubio's Seat)? Do the Dems have a second candidate in Ohio?
Kind of wild the gap in coverage between "the GOP nominates crazies in primaries and then lose in the general" and a very similar paradigm for the Democrats. My bet is that it hasn't gotten bad enough under Trump for anyone in Democratic leadership, national or local, to truly reverse any of their priors. We'll have to see if a 2028 loss shakes it.
Matt! You brought our attention to the messy race in Maine, but you didn’t tell us your thoughts on the candidates! We need your take!
Like you, I’m somebody who knows Maine well (lots of family in Old Orchard Beach where I spent summers and in Skowhegan) and I’m from Worcester, MA, which culturally is pretty close.
Based on his policy positions, I’d normally say Platner is too far left. But culturally he doesn’t read that way, which to mind my is more important in working class New England. Working class New Englanders are basically ok with progressive policies. They just don’t like Boston snobs. Platner fits that bill to a tee.
There's one other thing that a Democrat win approaching or exceeding 10 points can do besides win low-probability Senate states:
It can break gerrymanders.
A gerrymander intentionally creates a lot of districts that are in the range of +5 - +10 for a party. I don't think you need to be a math major to figure out what happens when a party that has heavily gerrymandered loses by 10 or more points nationally.
One fun example: 10 points in Wisconsin would leave their previously-unstoppable Republican supermajority state government as a little skid mark on the floor.
"Nope" is a perhaps fair but incomplete response. My numbers are imprecise but there are a lot of sub-55s on there and they would all be in trouble. 2018 was only +8.6; the TN special election was +13 with a terrible candidate for the district.
And while the point of this isn't Wisconsin specifically, it's worth noting that Evers won by more in 2022 than 2018, despite a worse national environment for Dems (though better than most expected.) The nature of incumbency makes it hard to draw a lot of conclusions from that, though.
A centrist might do better in Tennessee, but what sane person takes on an R+22 district? Here in Ohio, there's a lady that took on Jim Jordan 2 times. Tamie Wilson. She's nuts, but she's awesome.
The Democratic party is basically non-existent in the deep South and only hopeless deadenders or VRA protected candidates are willing to run on the party ticket.
> And it’s gross! I genuinely don’t understand how they purport to be Christians while behaving this way.
This doesn't seem very hard to comprehend -- generations of slaveholders, witch burners etc etc were fully convinced they were christian (arguably with better direct textual support).
Whatever you may believe about Christianity it is clear that (perhaps apart from a few fundamentalist) everyone interprets the bible in line with whatever they believe is moral and that there is a huge latitude to do that. If you can read out the parts of the bible where it demands stoning or authorizes keeping slaves (even the new testament doesn't condemn slavery) why would it be hard for Vance to read it in line with whatever moral excuses he uses?
I mean it seems clear that the bible can be read to agree with almost any moral view once you are willing to understand it in a non-fundamentalist fashion. Doesn't mean he isn't wrong about it but it shouldn't be surprising.
In fairness, so did every other religion at the time. One could argue that it was the values derived from Christianity itself (the belief in the divine spark in every human) that led to the abolition of slavery.
That's a weird 'in fairness' I mean people don't believe in a religion because it's 'good enough' or better than alternatives. It is supposed to be true and the problem with your divinely inspired guide to morality giving you horrific moral advice is that it calls into question why you should trust it elsewhere.
I mean if your friend suggested it was perfectly fine to rape someone at a college party than you probably shouldn't trust their advice about cheating on your taxes.
I wanted to avoid the whole debate about the status of commandments in the old testament. The new testament never comes out against slavery and whether or not that tacit acceptance counts as endorsement is something that christians obviously dispute.
I mean ultimately I do agree with you but I was trying to put the point in a way that didn't rest on that kind of controversial point.
"The new testament never comes out against slavery "
Quite the opposite - it clearly endorses it. Let's turn our pages to Ephesians 6:5-9 and the Lord sayeth
"Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6 Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, 8 because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free.
9 And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him."
That doesn't say "it is moral to take slaves" it tells slaves to obey their masters. That is a different claim. The old testament has god actually commanding the Israelites to take slaves.
I personally think the implication here is strongly that slavery isn't wrong but it is an implication not a direct statement. And while it might seem implausible to take that POV I don't think it even rates compared to the gymnastics needed to make John and the synoptic gospels cohere.
Look I don't buy it...but I don't think it even rates compared to what you already need to do to deal with the direct inconsistencies between the various parts of the new testament. But my goal here wasn't to convince christians to give up their faith...that turns out to be difficult.
I would argue that there has been a real and measurable decline in morality amongst religious conservatives in the Trump era. Part of this is because conservatives see Donald Trump as a tribal leader and are following his own immoral example.
But part of it is also the decline in religiousity even amongst the religious, that actually preceeded the ascension of Trump to power, and has only accelerated after the pandemic.
As conservatives have become less religious, they have become more dedicated to the ideas and conspiracies of Trumpism. In a way Trumpism is superseding Christianity as their new religion. And cruelty is the currency of this new religion.
Depends what you mean. I mean if you ask them they would say they are being moral.
Has there been a decline in what I would call morality? Sure. Has their been a decline in the extent to which they feel that personal moral failings are a disqualification from office. Yup, but that is a particular belief about leadership.
Has there been a decrease in the extent to which external authorities or rules are seen as dictating what is moral. Probably yes.
But I don't know if any of those things inherently means a decline in morality as they are all positions where the left has traditionally generally scored lower and I wouldn't say that made the left less moral because they were less enamored with authority or felt personal immorality was less relevant to leadership.
So other than just saying "I think they are behaving badly" -- which I do but isn't very illuminating -- it's not clear how to give that statement clear meaning
I guess to be more clear what I mean is that religious conservatives have actually become more secular in the last 10-15 years, and the advent of Trump has only hastened this trend. So instead of a good Christian being a guy who reads his Bible daily, prays, is kind to everyone he meets, etc. - a good Christian now is just a redneck with a family, who supports the troops, owns a gun, and celebrates that he is not gay.
I certainly agree that conservatives have become more secular but I just don't agree that is particularly indictive of how they react and behave. I'm not convinced that those who do read their bible every day and pray are any less likely to be Trump supporters or have any particular political belifs. Religious belief is pretty flexible and maybe those who still belong feel more pressure to have the same views as the rest of their community.
Having said that I think the secularization may play an important role, just perhaps a slightly different one. People have a need for community and to express shared values and if religion is no longer filling that role for many people on the right maybe they need something else to take that role.
David French in the NYT has written extensively about the correlation between being a truly devout Christian and a more lukewarm Trump supporter vis a vis being a Lukewarm Christian and being a devout Trump supporter.
Could it be that -- out of all republicans who regularly attended church in 2000 -- those that became MAGA are now relatively less likely to attend frequently? That seems plausible... people go MAGA, especially extreme maga, to fill in something missing .
But what I was trying to say (and failed...reading what I wrote it is obv wrong as written) was that amoung whites, frequent church attendees are still more likely than not to vote Trump and that frequent churchgoers still make up a massive fraction of his voters. Remember the context was whether it should be surprising Vance etc can think of themselves as christian.
Of course, if you have a particular view about what it means to be devout that reads in a moral standard not just attendance then it's easy to say devout people aren't MAGA because they aren't behaving the way you think a Christian should.
I didn't really follow the TN special election race and was only barely aware of it, but when I found out more about Behn after the fact the only thing I could think was "Holy shit, Democrats are STILL doing this??? Still running unelectable progs in this environment???"
So I don't see her mere 9 point loss as a harbinger of destruction for the Republicans. I see it as a harbinger of defeat for Democrats when the DNC & Soros-backed groups annoint a bunch of Behn-like progs so they can go on to lose to Republicans by slim margins!
And then we can all say "Aww....that prog candidate only lost by 6 points! So close! We ALMOST saved democracy!"
Sometimes I just want to scream: "You guys had 60, that's SIX-ZERO, seats in the Senate in 2009! Figure it out!" Everyone who will be voting in 2026 was alive when this happened. Like a third of the current Senate Dem caucus was ALREADY in the Senate when this happened. This isn't ancient history. Democratic Party disadvantage in the Senate is not written into the constitution. It's the result of choices and it's possible to make different choices. Losing is a choice. Make better choices.
Your point is totally valid and I basically agree with you in the short term. But we can't be blinded to the bigger picture by short term exigencies. Control of the Senate is inherently a long-term project under our constitutional system. The media environment may be "different now" but it's constantly changing and it will be different still in 10 years. Predicting exactly how that will interact with all the other currents of our culture is probably a fool's errand. Dems need to focus on what they can control, not what they can't (like media technology), which mainly means building a broad coalition that can appeal in enough parts of the country such that they aren't lamenting the "bad Senate map" every two years.
I mean, what happened was a lot less people knew what their Senators did in office, a lot of older Democratic voters died off to be replaced by Republican voters, and people within those states changed their electoral choices after gaining knowledge of what other Democratic and Republican voters were like.
You could run exact clones of all of those 2006 red state Senators and they'd all lose by 5-10 points and ironically, they'd all do much better in many urban and suburban areas than they did in 2006 and they'd all do far worse in rural areas.
Mark Warner is basically the same guy he was when he won the Governor of Virginia nearly 20 years ago - despite this, he now wins Northern Virginia and loses SW VA by landslide numbers despite the exact opposite being true in 2005 or whatever.
I think that's a reasonable top-level summary of what happened and of course I agree you couldn't just copy and paste the 2006 red state senators to 2026 and win (bearing in mind that there are many more "red" states today than in 2006, which is sort of what I'm getting at). My point is merely that such a coalition is *possible* even in the modern era. There is clearly no world in which the Dems get to 60 seats in the Senate in 2026 or 2028 but who's to say they couldn't achieve that in 2036 if they become significantly more ecumenical in their approach and the Republicans continue down the dead end they are currently on?
No, because a majority of people in states like North Dakota, Arkansas, etc. do not want to be in coalition with The Other, whether the Other are black people, immigrants, LGBT people, etc. and it's now far more well-known that the Democratic Party is the party that is aligned with those people.
It's the same reason no Republican will likely win in Massachusetts, Hawaii, etc. despite their being GOP Governors in those states fairly recently.
It took until Obama's election for a majority of the population to continually correctly say Democrats were the party African-Americans voted for!
I don’t agree with that characterization of “most people” in North Dakota and Arkansas (though I’ve only briefly driven through the former but I doubt it’s much different than say, Montana, where I have spent time). Certainly there are incorrigible ideologues and partisans on both sides, as you concede by pointing out a republican isn’t going to get elected in Massachusetts or Hawaii anytime soon. Those people are not the majority makers though. What drives the ever-deeper partisan affiliation of most voters in those deep red or deep blue states is a perception that the other party is “against us and our way of life.” That’s the perception that Dems need to defuse in red states. Keeping in mind that millions of people enter and leave the electorate every two years, you don’t even have to change that many people’s minds. You just change the national perception and as new voters enter the electorate and old voters leave you can see huge swings in the partisan affiliation of a state over a decade or two. That’s my point about 2009. Such a thing is possible again but it will take a lot of time and discipline.
I mean, if your way of life is limiting women's right to choose, LGBT people's civil rights, deporting undocumented folks who aren't committing any more crimes, slashing the welfare state, and so on, I am against their way of life.
2009 was a watershed moment but it was not planned or controlled by anyone. 2008 was the GFC which caused great economic distress.
Obama's weak response to the GFC then led to an exodus of poor working class people from the Democratic party. Or maybe they were just racist.
At any rate, 2008 was seismic. If Trump crashes the economy so badly by 2027 that 2028 feels like another 2008 then a new-realignment might be possible and maybe Dems in that new paradigm will get to 60 by 2036, but it will not happen because Dems engineer it.
Who said anything about engineering it? Have you seen my handle?
No one could even engineer something that large. Just like in a market, the broader political shift will be the result of the agglomeration of choices by millions of people. If people like Matt and others can convince a critical mass of the elites in the Democratic party to make slightly different choices about the national positioning of the party on certain issues, then it's entirely possible that there could be a preference cascade toward the Dems that could lead to a significant Democratic majority somewhere down the road. My only point was this has happened, in quite recent memory.
Of course, man plans and God laughs, and exogenous events will always have their say in things. But Dems should try to control what they can control and not worry so much about what they can't.
My actual view on Texas, which I said on Twitter is that neither Talarico or Crockett win because the median Texan voter doesn't want to vote for anybody their liberal neighbor or cousin likes, and in shocking news, people don't want as a nominee, somebody they don't like.
The Democrats’ revealed preference is that they don’t care about economic growth at all. I don’t see how that changes until they spend a decade or two in the political wilderness.
Considering that approximately all recent economic growth in the US has occurred under Democratic administrations, I would describe this comment as "undertheorized." Because it's more polite than "pack of lies."
I assume the person you’re replying to measures from beginning to end of terms, and you might recall that late 2020 was dealing with some issues. (Similarly, Bush II got hit with the dotcom bust in his first term and Great Recession in his second, so neither term was that great on net from beginning to end.)
It’s true that 2017-2019 were pretty good, but they really seem like they should be counted as the Obama years - Trump didn’t do anything to help.
I share most of Matt's moderate Democratic politics and his moral revulsion at the likes of Vance and Stephen Miller. I, too, would like to see Democrats seize this political moment and make the choices necessary to trounce Trumpist Republican candidates wherever they can.
That said, every time Matt mentions the possibility of a Democrat winning the 2026 US Senate race in Texas, a state I know well, I question whether he's at all grounded in polical reality (as opposed to the hopes of DC operatives and pundits). Democrats are not going to win that race, no matter how many specials in TN they have lost more narrowly this year than last. Talarico is a bad candidate, Crockett is an abysmal one--and you know what? Neither of those things matters, because the Republican nominee is going to win in 2026. Someday we'll get Democrats in statewide offices in TX, but that day is not coming next year.
The absolute best thing you can do, if you are a non-Texan Slow Boring reader who shares Matt's goals and mine, is to refuse to donate a single red cent to the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, redirect your giving to the best non-horse race cause of your choice (I like refugee relief and international aid), and pray fervently that national Democrats do not dump money into Ken Paxton's campaign because they erroneously think Democrats will beat him more easily than John Cornyn.
ETA: Democrats are always hoping for another Beto but better, and while that's understandable, I think that situation is unlikely to materialize this cycle.
I think SB-type Democrats will be very tempted to see him as a moderate compared to Crockett and thus donate to him. But Crockett’s presence in the race doesn't actually make Talarico a suitable candidate for the TX electorate.
I am skeptical that Crockett will actually win the Texas primary, but there needs to be a concerted effort to push her out by the establishment.
Democratic primary voters have shown a strong willingness to prioritize electability, that is how Joe Biden won the primary in 2020. But the primary needs to receive a lot of attention in order to prioritize electability. Without that attention primary voters are likely to default to whomever they hear the most about, which is often a more progressive voice.
So far Crockett has floundered when she has been asked about how she plans to win over Trump voters to win the general election, and that needs to remain the main question she is asked.
What concerns me the most is that Schumer said that he isn't going to take a side in the Texas primary. We need establishment figures to get involved and endorse the candidate likeliest to win. My hope is that Obama endorses Talarico, which would be a very strong signal to primary voters.
I'm guessing that part of what's happening is that nobody outside of Texas likes any of the Democrats who have already announced their Senate candidacy.
Now, Before the Midterms: There should be a massive effort to place a billboard on every major highway on the outskirts of every major town in every Red District in the Country identifying by name the U.S. Representative who voted for the Big Ugly Bill listing the eventual damages it will do to its citizens. The same should be done in every State with a Republican Senator up for reelection. Much of the bad stuff will not be apparent to voters until after the midterms; consequently, Democratic Party messaging between now and then is critical! We need to be in Republican Faces Every Day like they are in ours. I Think Mobile Billboards Would Also Work Well.
JUST AN EXAMPLE: "Your Representative in Congress, (first name, last name) Just Voted to slash Your Medicaid, Medicare, and SNAP Benefits to Pay for Tax Cuts for the Rich! VOTE HIM (HER) OUT."
Is that a slight overstatement of facts? Certainly, but that's what Republicans do all the time and we need to counterattack using the same tactics and be UBIQUITOUS about it, e.g., Billboards.
Each Billboard's message presupposes that Democrats in each District/State are smart enough to identity the hot button issues that will resonate with the intended Republican audience, be it Taxes, FEMA Support, Economy, ICE Overreach, Medical Coverage, infrastructure, Tariffs, etc. If Dems can't pinpoint the right issues, then billboards will have little effect.
I do not want to get my hopes up but this has convinced me to donate to James Talarico despite not being that high on him. Democrats need to start beating Republicans (badly) to restore balance to American politics. I will do what I can to help make that happen.
Matt, are there not 2 senate seats each up for elections in Ohio (JD Vance's Seat) and Florida (Rubio's Seat)? Do the Dems have a second candidate in Ohio?
Kind of wild the gap in coverage between "the GOP nominates crazies in primaries and then lose in the general" and a very similar paradigm for the Democrats. My bet is that it hasn't gotten bad enough under Trump for anyone in Democratic leadership, national or local, to truly reverse any of their priors. We'll have to see if a 2028 loss shakes it.
Matt! You brought our attention to the messy race in Maine, but you didn’t tell us your thoughts on the candidates! We need your take!
Like you, I’m somebody who knows Maine well (lots of family in Old Orchard Beach where I spent summers and in Skowhegan) and I’m from Worcester, MA, which culturally is pretty close.
Based on his policy positions, I’d normally say Platner is too far left. But culturally he doesn’t read that way, which to mind my is more important in working class New England. Working class New Englanders are basically ok with progressive policies. They just don’t like Boston snobs. Platner fits that bill to a tee.
Its early days, primary polls are all over the place
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/poll-gives-platner-20-point-lead-over-mills-in-senate-primary/ar-AA1RJnKt?ocid=BingNewsSerp
https://www.pressherald.com/2025/12/10/janet-mills-leads-graham-platner-in-maines-u-s-senate-primary-new-poll-says/
Also both seem statistically tied with Collins which is good news.
There's one other thing that a Democrat win approaching or exceeding 10 points can do besides win low-probability Senate states:
It can break gerrymanders.
A gerrymander intentionally creates a lot of districts that are in the range of +5 - +10 for a party. I don't think you need to be a math major to figure out what happens when a party that has heavily gerrymandered loses by 10 or more points nationally.
One fun example: 10 points in Wisconsin would leave their previously-unstoppable Republican supermajority state government as a little skid mark on the floor.
Nope: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Wisconsin_State_Assembly_election.
"Nope" is a perhaps fair but incomplete response. My numbers are imprecise but there are a lot of sub-55s on there and they would all be in trouble. 2018 was only +8.6; the TN special election was +13 with a terrible candidate for the district.
And while the point of this isn't Wisconsin specifically, it's worth noting that Evers won by more in 2022 than 2018, despite a worse national environment for Dems (though better than most expected.) The nature of incumbency makes it hard to draw a lot of conclusions from that, though.
any guesses about what is happening with venezuela now?
A centrist might do better in Tennessee, but what sane person takes on an R+22 district? Here in Ohio, there's a lady that took on Jim Jordan 2 times. Tamie Wilson. She's nuts, but she's awesome.
If the insane one lost by 9 in an R+22 district then presumably a normie could have won.
The Democratic party is basically non-existent in the deep South and only hopeless deadenders or VRA protected candidates are willing to run on the party ticket.
> And it’s gross! I genuinely don’t understand how they purport to be Christians while behaving this way.
This doesn't seem very hard to comprehend -- generations of slaveholders, witch burners etc etc were fully convinced they were christian (arguably with better direct textual support).
Whatever you may believe about Christianity it is clear that (perhaps apart from a few fundamentalist) everyone interprets the bible in line with whatever they believe is moral and that there is a huge latitude to do that. If you can read out the parts of the bible where it demands stoning or authorizes keeping slaves (even the new testament doesn't condemn slavery) why would it be hard for Vance to read it in line with whatever moral excuses he uses?
I mean it seems clear that the bible can be read to agree with almost any moral view once you are willing to understand it in a non-fundamentalist fashion. Doesn't mean he isn't wrong about it but it shouldn't be surprising.
"arguably with better direct textual support)."
Arguably? The Bible clearly condones slavery.
In fairness, so did every other religion at the time. One could argue that it was the values derived from Christianity itself (the belief in the divine spark in every human) that led to the abolition of slavery.
That's a weird 'in fairness' I mean people don't believe in a religion because it's 'good enough' or better than alternatives. It is supposed to be true and the problem with your divinely inspired guide to morality giving you horrific moral advice is that it calls into question why you should trust it elsewhere.
I mean if your friend suggested it was perfectly fine to rape someone at a college party than you probably shouldn't trust their advice about cheating on your taxes.
My point is that before Christianity, you would have never found the idea of raping a girl at party to be bad.
I wanted to avoid the whole debate about the status of commandments in the old testament. The new testament never comes out against slavery and whether or not that tacit acceptance counts as endorsement is something that christians obviously dispute.
I mean ultimately I do agree with you but I was trying to put the point in a way that didn't rest on that kind of controversial point.
"The new testament never comes out against slavery "
Quite the opposite - it clearly endorses it. Let's turn our pages to Ephesians 6:5-9 and the Lord sayeth
"Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6 Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, 8 because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free.
9 And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and there is no favoritism with him."
That doesn't say "it is moral to take slaves" it tells slaves to obey their masters. That is a different claim. The old testament has god actually commanding the Israelites to take slaves.
I personally think the implication here is strongly that slavery isn't wrong but it is an implication not a direct statement. And while it might seem implausible to take that POV I don't think it even rates compared to the gymnastics needed to make John and the synoptic gospels cohere.
Uh huh....
Look I don't buy it...but I don't think it even rates compared to what you already need to do to deal with the direct inconsistencies between the various parts of the new testament. But my goal here wasn't to convince christians to give up their faith...that turns out to be difficult.
I would argue that there has been a real and measurable decline in morality amongst religious conservatives in the Trump era. Part of this is because conservatives see Donald Trump as a tribal leader and are following his own immoral example.
But part of it is also the decline in religiousity even amongst the religious, that actually preceeded the ascension of Trump to power, and has only accelerated after the pandemic.
As conservatives have become less religious, they have become more dedicated to the ideas and conspiracies of Trumpism. In a way Trumpism is superseding Christianity as their new religion. And cruelty is the currency of this new religion.
Depends what you mean. I mean if you ask them they would say they are being moral.
Has there been a decline in what I would call morality? Sure. Has their been a decline in the extent to which they feel that personal moral failings are a disqualification from office. Yup, but that is a particular belief about leadership.
Has there been a decrease in the extent to which external authorities or rules are seen as dictating what is moral. Probably yes.
But I don't know if any of those things inherently means a decline in morality as they are all positions where the left has traditionally generally scored lower and I wouldn't say that made the left less moral because they were less enamored with authority or felt personal immorality was less relevant to leadership.
So other than just saying "I think they are behaving badly" -- which I do but isn't very illuminating -- it's not clear how to give that statement clear meaning
I guess to be more clear what I mean is that religious conservatives have actually become more secular in the last 10-15 years, and the advent of Trump has only hastened this trend. So instead of a good Christian being a guy who reads his Bible daily, prays, is kind to everyone he meets, etc. - a good Christian now is just a redneck with a family, who supports the troops, owns a gun, and celebrates that he is not gay.
I certainly agree that conservatives have become more secular but I just don't agree that is particularly indictive of how they react and behave. I'm not convinced that those who do read their bible every day and pray are any less likely to be Trump supporters or have any particular political belifs. Religious belief is pretty flexible and maybe those who still belong feel more pressure to have the same views as the rest of their community.
Having said that I think the secularization may play an important role, just perhaps a slightly different one. People have a need for community and to express shared values and if religion is no longer filling that role for many people on the right maybe they need something else to take that role.
David French in the NYT has written extensively about the correlation between being a truly devout Christian and a more lukewarm Trump supporter vis a vis being a Lukewarm Christian and being a devout Trump supporter.
Could it be that -- out of all republicans who regularly attended church in 2000 -- those that became MAGA are now relatively less likely to attend frequently? That seems plausible... people go MAGA, especially extreme maga, to fill in something missing .
But what I was trying to say (and failed...reading what I wrote it is obv wrong as written) was that amoung whites, frequent church attendees are still more likely than not to vote Trump and that frequent churchgoers still make up a massive fraction of his voters. Remember the context was whether it should be surprising Vance etc can think of themselves as christian.
Of course, if you have a particular view about what it means to be devout that reads in a moral standard not just attendance then it's easy to say devout people aren't MAGA because they aren't behaving the way you think a Christian should.
I didn't really follow the TN special election race and was only barely aware of it, but when I found out more about Behn after the fact the only thing I could think was "Holy shit, Democrats are STILL doing this??? Still running unelectable progs in this environment???"
So I don't see her mere 9 point loss as a harbinger of destruction for the Republicans. I see it as a harbinger of defeat for Democrats when the DNC & Soros-backed groups annoint a bunch of Behn-like progs so they can go on to lose to Republicans by slim margins!
And then we can all say "Aww....that prog candidate only lost by 6 points! So close! We ALMOST saved democracy!"
More encouraging election results last night:
Eric Gisler won a Georgia state House seat, flipping a seat the previous Republican candidate had won by 20 points.
And Miami voters elected a Dem mayor for the first time in 30 years - Ellen Higgins
Sometimes I just want to scream: "You guys had 60, that's SIX-ZERO, seats in the Senate in 2009! Figure it out!" Everyone who will be voting in 2026 was alive when this happened. Like a third of the current Senate Dem caucus was ALREADY in the Senate when this happened. This isn't ancient history. Democratic Party disadvantage in the Senate is not written into the constitution. It's the result of choices and it's possible to make different choices. Losing is a choice. Make better choices.
The Facebook feed was barely 2 years old in 2008: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_(Facebook)
The media environment is entirely different now, and you can’t run a local campaign any more the way you could then.
Your point is totally valid and I basically agree with you in the short term. But we can't be blinded to the bigger picture by short term exigencies. Control of the Senate is inherently a long-term project under our constitutional system. The media environment may be "different now" but it's constantly changing and it will be different still in 10 years. Predicting exactly how that will interact with all the other currents of our culture is probably a fool's errand. Dems need to focus on what they can control, not what they can't (like media technology), which mainly means building a broad coalition that can appeal in enough parts of the country such that they aren't lamenting the "bad Senate map" every two years.
I mean, what happened was a lot less people knew what their Senators did in office, a lot of older Democratic voters died off to be replaced by Republican voters, and people within those states changed their electoral choices after gaining knowledge of what other Democratic and Republican voters were like.
You could run exact clones of all of those 2006 red state Senators and they'd all lose by 5-10 points and ironically, they'd all do much better in many urban and suburban areas than they did in 2006 and they'd all do far worse in rural areas.
Mark Warner is basically the same guy he was when he won the Governor of Virginia nearly 20 years ago - despite this, he now wins Northern Virginia and loses SW VA by landslide numbers despite the exact opposite being true in 2005 or whatever.
I think that's a reasonable top-level summary of what happened and of course I agree you couldn't just copy and paste the 2006 red state senators to 2026 and win (bearing in mind that there are many more "red" states today than in 2006, which is sort of what I'm getting at). My point is merely that such a coalition is *possible* even in the modern era. There is clearly no world in which the Dems get to 60 seats in the Senate in 2026 or 2028 but who's to say they couldn't achieve that in 2036 if they become significantly more ecumenical in their approach and the Republicans continue down the dead end they are currently on?
No, because a majority of people in states like North Dakota, Arkansas, etc. do not want to be in coalition with The Other, whether the Other are black people, immigrants, LGBT people, etc. and it's now far more well-known that the Democratic Party is the party that is aligned with those people.
It's the same reason no Republican will likely win in Massachusetts, Hawaii, etc. despite their being GOP Governors in those states fairly recently.
It took until Obama's election for a majority of the population to continually correctly say Democrats were the party African-Americans voted for!
I don’t agree with that characterization of “most people” in North Dakota and Arkansas (though I’ve only briefly driven through the former but I doubt it’s much different than say, Montana, where I have spent time). Certainly there are incorrigible ideologues and partisans on both sides, as you concede by pointing out a republican isn’t going to get elected in Massachusetts or Hawaii anytime soon. Those people are not the majority makers though. What drives the ever-deeper partisan affiliation of most voters in those deep red or deep blue states is a perception that the other party is “against us and our way of life.” That’s the perception that Dems need to defuse in red states. Keeping in mind that millions of people enter and leave the electorate every two years, you don’t even have to change that many people’s minds. You just change the national perception and as new voters enter the electorate and old voters leave you can see huge swings in the partisan affiliation of a state over a decade or two. That’s my point about 2009. Such a thing is possible again but it will take a lot of time and discipline.
I mean, if your way of life is limiting women's right to choose, LGBT people's civil rights, deporting undocumented folks who aren't committing any more crimes, slashing the welfare state, and so on, I am against their way of life.
Then you should not run for Senate in Arkansas, my friend :)
2009 was a watershed moment but it was not planned or controlled by anyone. 2008 was the GFC which caused great economic distress.
Obama's weak response to the GFC then led to an exodus of poor working class people from the Democratic party. Or maybe they were just racist.
At any rate, 2008 was seismic. If Trump crashes the economy so badly by 2027 that 2028 feels like another 2008 then a new-realignment might be possible and maybe Dems in that new paradigm will get to 60 by 2036, but it will not happen because Dems engineer it.
Who said anything about engineering it? Have you seen my handle?
No one could even engineer something that large. Just like in a market, the broader political shift will be the result of the agglomeration of choices by millions of people. If people like Matt and others can convince a critical mass of the elites in the Democratic party to make slightly different choices about the national positioning of the party on certain issues, then it's entirely possible that there could be a preference cascade toward the Dems that could lead to a significant Democratic majority somewhere down the road. My only point was this has happened, in quite recent memory.
Of course, man plans and God laughs, and exogenous events will always have their say in things. But Dems should try to control what they can control and not worry so much about what they can't.
My actual view on Texas, which I said on Twitter is that neither Talarico or Crockett win because the median Texan voter doesn't want to vote for anybody their liberal neighbor or cousin likes, and in shocking news, people don't want as a nominee, somebody they don't like.
The Democrats’ revealed preference is that they don’t care about economic growth at all. I don’t see how that changes until they spend a decade or two in the political wilderness.
Considering that approximately all recent economic growth in the US has occurred under Democratic administrations, I would describe this comment as "undertheorized." Because it's more polite than "pack of lies."
We had plenty of economic growth during Trump’s first term
I assume the person you’re replying to measures from beginning to end of terms, and you might recall that late 2020 was dealing with some issues. (Similarly, Bush II got hit with the dotcom bust in his first term and Great Recession in his second, so neither term was that great on net from beginning to end.)
It’s true that 2017-2019 were pretty good, but they really seem like they should be counted as the Obama years - Trump didn’t do anything to help.
I share most of Matt's moderate Democratic politics and his moral revulsion at the likes of Vance and Stephen Miller. I, too, would like to see Democrats seize this political moment and make the choices necessary to trounce Trumpist Republican candidates wherever they can.
That said, every time Matt mentions the possibility of a Democrat winning the 2026 US Senate race in Texas, a state I know well, I question whether he's at all grounded in polical reality (as opposed to the hopes of DC operatives and pundits). Democrats are not going to win that race, no matter how many specials in TN they have lost more narrowly this year than last. Talarico is a bad candidate, Crockett is an abysmal one--and you know what? Neither of those things matters, because the Republican nominee is going to win in 2026. Someday we'll get Democrats in statewide offices in TX, but that day is not coming next year.
The absolute best thing you can do, if you are a non-Texan Slow Boring reader who shares Matt's goals and mine, is to refuse to donate a single red cent to the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas, redirect your giving to the best non-horse race cause of your choice (I like refugee relief and international aid), and pray fervently that national Democrats do not dump money into Ken Paxton's campaign because they erroneously think Democrats will beat him more easily than John Cornyn.
Better or worse candidate than Beto O’Rourke, who came within 3% of winning in 2018?
Beto was also running against Cruz, who was unpopular himself, and during a different Trump midterm.
Paxton might be unpopular enough and the swing might be big enough but that's close
If Cornyn can win the primary I don't expect him to lose the general
Probably worse.
ETA: Democrats are always hoping for another Beto but better, and while that's understandable, I think that situation is unlikely to materialize this cycle.
Why is Talarico a bad candidate (other than “duh, he’s a Democrat in Texas, that makes him bad by definition”)?
Josh Barro’s piece is spot on: https://www.joshbarro.com/p/the-first-step-to-winning-back-the. (See also the top comment from Virginia Postrel.)
I think SB-type Democrats will be very tempted to see him as a moderate compared to Crockett and thus donate to him. But Crockett’s presence in the race doesn't actually make Talarico a suitable candidate for the TX electorate.
I am skeptical that Crockett will actually win the Texas primary, but there needs to be a concerted effort to push her out by the establishment.
Democratic primary voters have shown a strong willingness to prioritize electability, that is how Joe Biden won the primary in 2020. But the primary needs to receive a lot of attention in order to prioritize electability. Without that attention primary voters are likely to default to whomever they hear the most about, which is often a more progressive voice.
So far Crockett has floundered when she has been asked about how she plans to win over Trump voters to win the general election, and that needs to remain the main question she is asked.
What concerns me the most is that Schumer said that he isn't going to take a side in the Texas primary. We need establishment figures to get involved and endorse the candidate likeliest to win. My hope is that Obama endorses Talarico, which would be a very strong signal to primary voters.
Schumer taking a side against Crockett would almost certainly improve her chances of winning.
I'm guessing that part of what's happening is that nobody outside of Texas likes any of the Democrats who have already announced their Senate candidacy.
Now, Before the Midterms: There should be a massive effort to place a billboard on every major highway on the outskirts of every major town in every Red District in the Country identifying by name the U.S. Representative who voted for the Big Ugly Bill listing the eventual damages it will do to its citizens. The same should be done in every State with a Republican Senator up for reelection. Much of the bad stuff will not be apparent to voters until after the midterms; consequently, Democratic Party messaging between now and then is critical! We need to be in Republican Faces Every Day like they are in ours. I Think Mobile Billboards Would Also Work Well.
JUST AN EXAMPLE: "Your Representative in Congress, (first name, last name) Just Voted to slash Your Medicaid, Medicare, and SNAP Benefits to Pay for Tax Cuts for the Rich! VOTE HIM (HER) OUT."
Is that a slight overstatement of facts? Certainly, but that's what Republicans do all the time and we need to counterattack using the same tactics and be UBIQUITOUS about it, e.g., Billboards.
Each Billboard's message presupposes that Democrats in each District/State are smart enough to identity the hot button issues that will resonate with the intended Republican audience, be it Taxes, FEMA Support, Economy, ICE Overreach, Medical Coverage, infrastructure, Tariffs, etc. If Dems can't pinpoint the right issues, then billboards will have little effect.
I do not want to get my hopes up but this has convinced me to donate to James Talarico despite not being that high on him. Democrats need to start beating Republicans (badly) to restore balance to American politics. I will do what I can to help make that happen.