2025 & 2026 Elections

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StrangePackage said:
Taking bets on if it's a racial slur or a homophobic one that gets them banned?
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Doubtful. Most likely it will be posting facts that the group think on here do not want to acknowledge.

Ignorance is bliss on this site. Worse than the old one btw.

I was MoCoRam there. Got banned for disputes with Vojak before you ask.
 
FreeGuy said:
Doubtful. Most likely it will be posting facts that the group think on here do not want to acknowledge.

Ignorance is bliss on this site. Worse than the old one btw.

I was MoCoRam there. Got banned for disputes with Vojak before you ask.
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I remember that asshole.

I'm going to have to shift the odds to transphobic comment.
 
FreeGuy said:
Doubtful. Most likely it will be posting facts that the group think on here do not want to acknowledge.

Ignorance is bliss on this site. Worse than the old one btw.

I was MoCoRam there. Got banned for disputes with Vojak before you ask.
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Lots of judgments for a poster who’s been posting a few hours … long time lurker, first day poster?
 
superrific said:
Did you get permission from OGtruthhurts to use this line? He's the OG, you know.

And I suspect you do know. You probably live together, you two funny guys.
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Grammar and capitalization are too good for OG. This is a different “free thinker”.
 

‘It’s going to be tough’: Virginia Republicans brace for a grim November​

Winsome Earle-Sears has had a sluggish start to her campaign. Republicans are urging her to turn it around — or face a bloodbath this fall.

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www.politico.com

“… Virginia Republicans always knew this would be a challenging election year. In the gubernatorial race, Democrat Abigail Spanberger is a well-positioned candidate with a record of winning competitive races.

But Virginia Republicans are growing increasingly worried about Earle-Sears’ slow start to the campaign. According to nearly a dozen Republican strategists and officials in the state, her sluggish fundraising, a controversial speech in which she compared Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs to slavery and her frosty relationship with MAGA rising star John Reid, who is running for lieutenant governor, could make a bad year worse.

… Earle-Sears, a Jamaican American woman running alongside an openly gay man for her lieutenant governor seat and the son of a Cuban refugee for attorney general, also represents an opportunity for Republicans to emphasize diverse credentials.

“It sounds like a Democratic ticket, right?’” said former U.S. Rep. Tom Davis, a Republican from Northern Virginia. “That’s the Republican ticket.”

“Look, there’s always grumbling,” said Katie Gorka, chair of the Fairfax Republicans, who attributes Earle-Sears’ fundraising earlier in the cycle to being hamstrung by her duties presiding over the state Senate and the Virginia legislature not wrapping its 2025 session until late February. Spanberger, no longer in elected office, could raise money for her campaign full time. So far, Spanberger has a big advantage: she raised $16.3 million in the first quarter compared with Earle-Sears’ $5.6 million, according to campaign finance reports.

… The lack of a competitive primary means that Earle-Sears has more work to do to introduce herself to Virginians, multiple Republicans said.

“I don’t think the average voter knows there’s a campaign on either side right now, to be honest,” Davis, the Northern Virginia Republican, said.

“We used to say voters aren’t stupid, they’re just not informed. This will come down as: Are they comfortable with the direction of the state, and how much does the national bleed over into this?””
 
Paine said:
Not really what you should take away from this election. This is much more about the educated, liberal segments of the Democratic Party being much more inclined to turn out in off year and special elections than the current Republican base.
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True, but that's been the situation for both parties for a long while now. When one party holds the White House the other party tends to do well - sometimes very well - in midterm elections. The party in power seems to become complacent and doesn't turn out in large numbers in the midterms, while the other party's base gets angry at the actions of the party in power and turns out in much greater numbers. There have been a few exceptions to this trend, but not many. I actually expect Democrats will do very well - surprisingly well to judge from the pessimism of many people and the gloating of Trumpers that the Democrats are finished - in the 2026 midterms, provided that we actually have fair elections, which unfortunately is a very real question at this point. If they're not then all bets are off of course.
 
Paine said:
Not really what you should take away from this election. This is much more about the educated, liberal segments of the Democratic Party being much more inclined to turn out in off year and special elections than the current Republican base.
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It's actually more about Israel. Boro Park (aka Borough Park) is the heart of that district. Boro Park is one of the biggest, if not biggest, Hasidic populations in America. Their votes for Trump were almost certainly about the Israel/Gaza war. I would imagine few communities in America approve more heartily of Greater Israel (I would imagine) than this one (though on the Jewish far right, things get complicated because some of them see the state of Israel as an abomination; I don't really follow the nuances of these discourses even if I could).

But this is Schumer's old stomping ground, and after Schumer, Anthony Weiner. In local politics, the community tends to be centrist Democrat and they like Schumer. There are some hard core orthodox conservatives but for the most part, Jewish fundamentalism doesn't map cleanly on American politics. For one thing, Jews don't tend to be fanatical anti-abortionists.

It's also possible that the tariffs are hitting them especially hard. I know it's a stereotype, but I promise you it's true (I lived not far from this area, and I had a good friend who subletted a rent-controlled apartment in an area where all the street signs are in Hebrew) -- a lot of people in that area are in the diamond business. I have no idea what the tariffs on diamonds are going to look like, but I would imagine it's not good for business.
 
Paine said:
Well, it actually hasn’t been the case for Democrats until fairly recently re: special elections and off-year elections.

You’re right that there has somewhat always been the dynamic of the president’s party performing poorly in their first midterm. I’m more so referring to the dynamic of highly engaged and educated voters turning out to vote for Democrats in large numbers, as this wasn’t the case until relatively recently.

As class dealignment has continued, Democrats have found themselves as the party that most educated professionals feel at home in. This demographic tends to be more engaged in politics, especially in off year and special elections, than their working class counterparts.

This dynamic has been most visible since 2016, and has even bled into the midterm dynamics a bit (see Democratic over performance in 2022 when many expected a “red wave.”). Democrats have routinely outperformed special election expectations in the Trump era because of these factors.
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Actually Democrats did really well in the 2006 midterms under Dubya, which was a clear backlash election, and in 2018 they gained over 40 seats in the House and regained control. I remember in 1986 under Reagan the Democrats gained 8 Senate seats to win back control of the Senate and they also did well in the 1990 midterms under Bush I. This has been a trend for a long time, with a few exceptions, such as the Democrats doing surprisingly well in 1998 (thanks to the backlash over the GOP's attempts to impeach Clinton) and the Republicans did surprisingly well in the 2002 midterms.
 
nycfan said:

‘It’s going to be tough’: Virginia Republicans brace for a grim November​

Winsome Earle-Sears has had a sluggish start to her campaign. Republicans are urging her to turn it around — or face a bloodbath this fall.

Loading…

www.politico.com

“… Virginia Republicans always knew this would be a challenging election year. In the gubernatorial race, Democrat Abigail Spanberger is a well-positioned candidate with a record of winning competitive races.

But Virginia Republicans are growing increasingly worried about Earle-Sears’ slow start to the campaign. According to nearly a dozen Republican strategists and officials in the state, her sluggish fundraising, a controversial speech in which she compared Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs to slavery and her frosty relationship with MAGA rising star John Reid, who is running for lieutenant governor, could make a bad year worse.

… Earle-Sears, a Jamaican American woman running alongside an openly gay man for her lieutenant governor seat and the son of a Cuban refugee for attorney general, also represents an opportunity for Republicans to emphasize diverse credentials.

“It sounds like a Democratic ticket, right?’” said former U.S. Rep. Tom Davis, a Republican from Northern Virginia. “That’s the Republican ticket.”

“Look, there’s always grumbling,” said Katie Gorka, chair of the Fairfax Republicans, who attributes Earle-Sears’ fundraising earlier in the cycle to being hamstrung by her duties presiding over the state Senate and the Virginia legislature not wrapping its 2025 session until late February. Spanberger, no longer in elected office, could raise money for her campaign full time. So far, Spanberger has a big advantage: she raised $16.3 million in the first quarter compared with Earle-Sears’ $5.6 million, according to campaign finance reports.

… The lack of a competitive primary means that Earle-Sears has more work to do to introduce herself to Virginians, multiple Republicans said.

“I don’t think the average voter knows there’s a campaign on either side right now, to be honest,” Davis, the Northern Virginia Republican, said.

“We used to say voters aren’t stupid, they’re just not informed. This will come down as: Are they comfortable with the direction of the state, and how much does the national bleed over into this?””
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Should be a dem sweep.
 
Paine said:
I’m not sure this contradicts what I’m saying. My initial assumption would be that Hasidic Jews don’t feel the need to turn out in a special election because they already got what they wanted in Trump. Educated liberal Jews in this district likely hate Trump and are looking for a way to express their dissatisfaction.

Overall though, I get what you’re saying. The district supporting Trump in 2024 was more of an aberration than this result.
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Yes, I agree about 2024. Surely the margin of victory was aberrational. I don't think the Hasidic Jews got what they wanted with Trump so much as avoided what they feared with Kamala.

Also, Hasidim are generally pretty racist, but it's especially bad in Brooklyn because there is historically a lot of bad blood between the Hasidic communities in Boro Park and Crown Heights and the surrounding, Caribbean island population (in Crown Heights -- Boro Park is bordered at least on one side by a small Chinatown/Little Hanoi).
 
There have been some pretty stunning special election results this year. All should come with the caveat that ever since 2017, special elections have favored Democrats, but what has happened so far this year has accelerated that trend. The week after Trump’s inauguration, Democrats won a special election for a State Senate seat in Iowa’s District 35, which Trump won by 21 points in November. A couple of months later, Democrats won a State Senate seat in Pennsylvania’s 36th district, which has voted for a Democratic president just once since 1856. The Downballot has an excellent tracker for every special election this year, and so far on average, Democrats are running 15.5 percent ahead of their 2024 results, faring worse than their 2024 margin in just 2 of 22 special elections, both coming in South Dakota.

That average was raised two days ago when New York’s State Senate District 22 produced a margin that defies all conventional political logic and wisdom. Trump won this south Brooklyn district 77 percent to 22 percent in November, then Democrat Sam Sutton won his election this week by a margin of 35 points—a gobsmacking 90 percent swing from how this district voted in the presidential election just a little over six months ago.


All politics is local so you can’t just look at everything as a direct repudiation of Trumpism. The previous congressperson Sen. Simcha Felder was a conservative Democrat who caucused with the GOP, and Sutton’s nonprofit work for years has made him a “fixture” in the community according to the local Democratic Party. The Republican he defeated, Nachman Caller, is an attorney who ran for the state Assembly ten years ago. Candidates matter and it seems as if the Democrats had a real advantage on that front in this race.

The dynamics of a Trumpy district with a conservative Democrat who caucuses with the GOP are very unique, but the margin that Sutton won by is impossible to ignore. I don’t care how popular you are locally or how rooted you are in the community, a 90 point swing in six months is telling you that something significant has occurred.
 
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