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2025 & 2026 Elections

  • Thread starter Thread starter nycfan
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Three have name recognition and deserve plaudits for the roles they have played as public servants. Texas should feel proud to have any of those three men as a senator. For my money, in this political hellscape, I’ll take the 36yo Opie looking, highly educated, deeply religious, ordained minister, son of a Southern Baptist preacher, with biblical Jesus progressive beliefs, and a multi-viral social media presence.

Beto has been beaten multiple times, and has been around a long time. Castro, different, but similar. Allred has a good profile, but what about this environment suggests he’ll overcome the 8.6% he lost by last time? That’s not exactly a squeaker.
 
Healing said:
Three have name recognition and deserve plaudits for the roles they have played as public servants. Texas should feel proud to have any of those three men as a senator. For my money, in this political hellscape, I’ll take the 36yo Opie looking, highly educated, deeply religious, ordained minister, son of a Southern Baptist preacher, with biblical Jesus progressive beliefs, and a multi-viral social media presence.

Beto has been beaten multiple times, and has been around a long time. Castro, different, but similar. Allred has a good profile, but what about this environment suggests he’ll overcome the 8.6% he lost by last time? That’s not exactly a squeaker.
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Yeah, bring on the new blood. Unfortunately, all the techies are leaving Austin and moving back to California. The Californians that are remaining in Texas are the ones that think Ken Paxton would be a good senator.
 
DiehardHeelFan said:

Into the MAGA-verse: What the algorithm feeds Gen Z​

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I get the concern, but this article feels a little over the top. It’s written more to scare people not on TikTok than to actually explain what’s happening. Yeah, right-wing creators know how to game the algorithm, and that’s a problem, but it’s not like every Gen Z kid is getting sucked into extremism just by opening the app. Most of it depends on what you engage with. The bigger issue is that the left still hasn’t figured out how to meet people where they are with content that actually hits.
 
Paine said:
I get the concern, but this article feels a little over the top. It’s written more to scare people not on TikTok than to actually explain what’s happening. Yeah, right-wing creators know how to game the algorithm, and that’s a problem, but it’s not like every Gen Z kid is getting sucked into extremism just by opening the app. Most of it depends on what you engage with. The bigger issue is that the left still hasn’t figured out how to meet people where they are with content that actually hits.
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Curious...do you mean The Left or Democrats?
 
donbosco said:
Curious...do you mean The Left or Democrats?
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I mean the broader left. There is left-wing content out there, smart, emotional, working-class stuff, but it’s not being embraced by the mainstream Democratic Party yet. In fact, it’s often treated like a threat. Meanwhile, right-wing influencers are getting boosted by billionaire money and have years of experience gaming these platforms. The left is starting to catch up, but the Democratic establishment still seems more comfortable ignoring or sidelining it.

The Majority Report is a good example. It has been around for years, Sam Seder literally started it as a direct response to the dominance of right-wing talk radio. The left’s been trying to build independent media for a long time, but the Democratic establishment never took it seriously. They ignored it, didn’t go on those shows, didn’t promote them. Meanwhile, the right was building an entire content machine, funded by billionaires and tailored for digital. By the time Democrats realized what was happening in 2024, they were already ten steps behind.
 
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Healing said:
Three have name recognition and deserve plaudits for the roles they have played as public servants. Texas should feel proud to have any of those three men as a senator. For my money, in this political hellscape, I’ll take the 36yo Opie looking, highly educated, deeply religious, ordained minister, son of a Southern Baptist preacher, with biblical Jesus progressive beliefs, and a multi-viral social media presence.

Beto has been beaten multiple times, and has been around a long time. Castro, different, but similar. Allred has a good profile, but what about this environment suggests he’ll overcome the 8.6% he lost by last time? That’s not exactly a squeaker.
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I’m guessing you mean Talarico? I know nothing about him. Never heard of him (but doesn’t mean much).
 
superrific said:
No, you really do need to be there. We have a poster here saying that he thinks the result was mostly reflective of Gaza/Israel. You've said that was wrong, but on what basis? I suspect that there were a lot of "never Cuomo" voters and that might be a complete explanation of the result. How many? Well, hard to say -- but it's easier to say if you're living there and surrounded by New Yorkers.

I'm not native to NYC. I was born in NC. I spent much of my childhood there. I didn't move to NYC until after grad school, and the city was different than my expectations. Here's one illustrative example: when we were getting ready to move there, I was talking with a NYer who had relocated. He said, "don't bring your shorts, nobody in NYC wears shorts." I figured he was exaggerating, because it just can't be that the rest of the country wears shorts but not in NYC. It was true. You wear shorts to play sports. Otherwise it's long pants. And I internalized that so much that I still don't like to wear shorts outside.

The point isn't that shorts versus long pants is important. It's that there are unknown unknowns: things you don't know about a place, and you have no idea that you don't know them. It would never have occurred to me that shorts are not a thing in New York. It was different in a way that I couldn't foresee. So maybe it's a good idea to have a bit more humility when making pronouncements about a place that is sui generis if you haven't been there. Hell, even if you have lived there your whole life . . .

P.S. I don't know if the "no shorts" thing is still true. But in the 90s and 2000s, it absolutely was.
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Nobody used to wear jeans out either. Black pants or you weren’t getting in. No longer true, but your point still stands.
 

Scoop: Roy Cooper leans toward N.C. Senate bid, potential Trump showdown​


North Carolina Democrats are getting closer to the gift they've have been asking for all year, with former Gov. Roy Cooper (D) leaning toward a Senate run in the state President Trump has won three times.

Why it matters: The field is essentially frozen until Cooper and Lara Trump, the president's daughter-in-law, decide if they want to be their party's nominees.
  • In their own way, they both have the "right of first refusal" in their party's primaries.
What they're saying: "Governor Cooper continues to strongly consider a run for the Senate and will decide in the coming weeks," said Morgan Jackson, Cooper's top political adviser told Axios.
 
Roy Cooper running for US Senate in 2026 is akin to Terry Sanford running in 1986.

The North Carolina Democratic Party was desperate in 1986. Uncle Terry hadn’t run for political office in 10-15 years. Mrs. Sanford, Margaret Rose, had ZERO interest in the political life going forward - she liked being Mrs. Wife of President of Duke University……..

We Democrats were desperate for boring ass Uncle Terry to run against Jim Broyhill in 1986. Terry Sanford in 1986 wasn’t the Liberal he’d been in 1960 or 1964 or 1972 or ‘76.

In 2026, we’re desperate for boring ass Roy Cooper to run……..at best, he’ll be a one-term senator.
 

Unprecedented’ national cash: North Carolina Dems have tunnel vision for Roy Cooper​


Roy Cooper would solve a lot of Democrats’ problems in North Carolina — and it’d still be an uphill battle.

The state’s soon-to-be-vacated U.S. Senate seat is the party’s most tantalizing pickup opportunity on a difficult 2026 Senate map. Democrats haven’t won the state in nearly two decades, and for months, they’ve been waiting for the two-term former governor to decide whether he’ll enter the race and immediately boost their prospects through his strong approval ratings and fundraising network. Cooper’s looming decision has effectively frozen recruitment in the state and no one else, many Democrats privately concede, can match his chances.

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Cooper’s backers believe he “would clear the field” and avoid infighting on the Democratic side, Butterfield said, “I’m rather confident of that.”

At least one Democrat hasn’t waited for Cooper: Former Rep. Wiley Nickel, who didn’t run for reelection to his House seat in 2024 after a redrawing of his district, entered the race in April. In an interview, he argued that his experience flipping a swing seat in 2022 prepared him to do the same statewide against “no matter which MAGA loyalist Donald Trump handpicks to run in North Carolina.”

When asked whether he would continue to run were Cooper to jump in, Nickel said, “right now, [Cooper] is not a candidate and I’m running for the Senate, so any kind of hypotheticals, I don’t want to go there.”

Should Cooper not run, several other Democrats are also eager to jump in. Among the North Carolina Democrats being whispered about as potential candidates are former Rep. Dan McCready, former Environmental Protection Agency Director Michael Regan, Lt. Gov. Rachel Hunt, state Rep. Sarah Crawford and Canton, N.C., Mayor Zeb Smathers.

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Even progressives — riding high after democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani toppled former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the New York City mayoral race last week — are likely to hold their fire if Cooper mounts a bid.

“If it’s Roy Cooper, there’s no point for anyone else to run,” said a progressive strategist who helps recruit candidates and was granted anonymity to discuss the race candidly. “But no one is getting out the way for Wiley fucking Nickel.”
 
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