Say the Dems manage to field enough centrist moderates and win control of the Senate. Then what? That handful of centrist senators would have to swim upstream against the party’s own entrenched ideological purity. They’d be isolated and sneered at.
The Dems’ problem is much larger and more profound than simply needing to elect a few moderates in swing- and red states. The party as a whole is suffering from TDS and is all-in on positions that aren’t based in reality, like men are women just because they say so, and progressive-style racism is virtuous.
I don’t follow the author’s first premise: why would he claim that someone wanting to primary Golden from the left would be a good candidate to run against Collins?
I was a lifelong Democrat until re-registering as an independent last year. I only waited that long because I wanted to vote against Biden in the primaries. I still see Republican cruelty as sickening (eg, Medicaid), yet I also see Democratic denial of reality and its embrace of Stalinist tendencies as a real and very serious threat to the country. Sure, it’s nascent softball Stalinism right now, but given power and time, I don’t want to think about the damage they could inflict on this country. Bring this up, and the reply from the left is “Trump is a Nazi fascist!!” As long as the Dems can’t see past their hatred of the other side, they’ll never be able to see their own very significant faults.
The Dems need a reboot. I don’t know how that will happen outside of losing, again and again. It makes me ill to see what the party of FDR and LBJ and MLK has turned into.
Yes the hatred is very unhealthy and troubling … it is hard for me to understand. It is very sad also - these people cannot be happy. I do think however that these extreme progressives are the minority yet somehow they control the show.
My opinion also is this hate will be directed at anyone who doesn’t completely share their beliefs
Maybe the Dems need a reboot or maybe they continue to migrate to other parties a la the Whig party. From my reading, northern abolitionist Whigs joined the new Republican Party and southern Whigs migrated to other parties or remained independent. That is what is and has been happening. Look at the former Democrats who were elected president (Reagan and Trump), elected as independent senators (Senator Angus King, Bernie Sanders), or are influential bloggers like Joe Rogan.
'Sure, it’s nascent softball Stalinism right now, but given power and time, I don’t want to think about the damage they could inflict on this country. Bring this up, and the reply from the left is “Trump is a Nazi fascist!!”'
Sure, but clearly you can also see the 'soft-ball Stalinism' at work in the GOP as well? Cutting Medicaid isn't the most alarming thing the party's doing.
I mean, look at the last week alone. Marines are marching in the streets of LA on Trump's orders, over the objections of the CA governor and the advice of the LAPD chief, pursuant to incidents the chief of police said himself didn't warrant such a response. And this morning Trump literally posted
"we must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center"
...and barely a shrug of the shoulders will ensue from his own party. This is the essence of Stalinism and the infrastructure of Orbanian 'soft fascism'. Use the state (including the army) to go after your political opponents, justified on the basis that they are "counter-revolutionaries" (for Stalin) or "Communist radicals". (for the fascists and, apparently, Trump)
I mean, tell me one time Biden or a major Democratic presidential contender explicitly called for attacking "Republican power centers" and sending in troops into a Republican state over the governors' and police's objections to, I don't know, "apprehend potential Proud Boy seditionists". There's simply no proportionate comparison.
Like I said, Democrats have a lot of trouble accepting criticism. The default response is to avoid honest introspection and say “But Trump!” I’m not talking about Trump. I’m talking g about the Dems. If they want to be the party of ethics and integrity, they need to act that way.
I agree the latter part about introspection is true, but when you criticize both parties asymmetrically, you make it artificially harder for Democrats to meet that standard for you--which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If two parties are "embracing Stalinist tendencies", and that is a bad thing, (as we agree it is) why do you think only one of these parties must come to grips with it to possess "ethics and integrity", while the other is exempt from that requirement? Shouldn't the ethical standard apply across the partisan divide?
You are Exhibit A as to why Dems will not be elected nationwide. The L.A. police chief admitted they were overwhelmed. And buffoons like Alex Padilla aren't helping.
"The L.A. police chief admitted they were overwhelmed."
*And* elaborated by explicitly stating that calling in the military was not necessary and not helpful, particularly since apparently Trump didn't even bother to coordinate with him:
***McDonnell:***
"We’re nowhere near a level where we would be reaching out to the governor for National Guard at this stage.”
McDonnell: "What I see is the National Guard and now the marines are there. And I read the statement that they put out there to facilitate the federal agents that are out there. Our role here is, like I said, very different. It's to restore order to the streets of Los Angeles and that very small part of Los Angeles that is impacted. And we have a protocol for that with our mutual aid partners."
Q: "The Marines are here, they're used to war zones. Are you concerned about them interfacing with protesters?"
McDonnell: "Certainly a concern, you know. *Any time anybody comes in the city and we're not clear on what roles and responsibilities are, there's a concern. I worry for our own people, I worry for residents of the city,* and for those impacted military partners that are in here and working hard at what they're doing, but it is very separate from what we're doing.
Dems don’t need the national guard because they don’t care about stopping rioting. At least, not when it’s in favor of their pet causes. And no, I’m not defending January 6. I’m talking about the Dems.
I’m saying that California officials will look the other way as much as possible. They weren’t controlling the riots. Either they couldn’t or they didn’t want to.
Newsom is hard left. The state gives free medical insurance to people living here illegally while taxpayers go without. They effectively encourage illegal immigrants to stay and be exploited.
Lest you think I’m some kind of xenophobe, I’m married to an immigrant and oppose the illegal kind because it allows employers and others to exploit people who have no recourse to complain about violations to their rights. They’re underpaid, and they drive wages for citizens and non-citizens with a right to work here.
Orbanian? Hungary has far fewer people than the combined population of Dallas and Houston. It's influence on the world is limited, to say the least.
Dems are welcome to keep waiting for Brownshirts at the door. It is an extension of Biden's "fine people"hoax , that was supposedly the reason Joe ran for President. Trump said 'Fine people on both sides ", and in, literally, the next breath said he wasn't talking about Skin Heads, White Supremacists or neo Nazis, that should be totally condemned. Video makes what Trump said plain as day, but it does not matter. For a half decade, Dems have been using the myth as proof Trump is an irredeemable wannabe Dictator.
Finally removing people who do not qualify , but are enrolled in Medicaid anyway, is not cutting care, it is cutting fraud.
Yes but Hungary is the modern model for the illiberal, 'soft' fascist state. There, the populist strongman has used the powers of the federal government to directly and explicitly target his political enemies, engaged in obscene gerrymandering (so that his party can command two-thirds of the legislature despite receiving under half of the vote), ended the independence of its universities, partnered with the country's techno-oligarchs to capture its media, and used his supermajority to continually amend the constitution in ways that make it extremely difficult for political competitors to gain power. Elections happen in Hungary, but--as in Russia--there is little doubt of the outcome, and critics of Orban are targeted by its Orban-oligarch-owned media apparatus, the courts (loaded now with Orban loyalists), and the government.
If you can't see that a sitting American president saying out loud "we must use the federal government to go after the power centers of the opposition party" isn't authoritarian in character, and doesn't mimic the methods of the Orbanian state, then I'm not sure you're properly understanding the concept.
The notion that Trump is going to morph into the next Orban seems more than a bit of a stretch. Our Constitution will not allow it. Moreover, playing Strongman in a country of 10 million homogeneous people, is different than one with 330 million diverse residents, and the largest economy on earth.
Trump says a lot of things. He is hardly the first President to do so. I seem to remember Obama promising to part the seas and roll back Climate Change. To say nothing of the infamous "if you like your doctor . . .
The Democratic Party isn't a conservative organization and has no prospect of becoming one. So what is a hypothetical candidate supposed to do to appeal to conservative voters. Lie about what he will do once in office? Admittedly, that tactic has had some success in the past in places like Montana but the opposition is catching on. Better to have an actual policy platform beyond anti-Trump. And it has to be something beyond the normal left-right distinction. I suggest populist fusion. An actual populist like Sherrod Brown missed the fusion part and got sucked down by the toxic brand of the Democratic Party. He lost to a car dealer, for God's sake.
Right! Can we trust Democrats after they presented Biden as a middle of the road candidate and then went hard left after he was elected. Can we trust Democrats after they opened the border and let in millions of illegal, unvetted, and unvaccinated migrants to invade our cities and get free welfare assistance, Medicaid and SNAP. I am an unaffiliated voter who voted for Obama twice and will have a hard time voting for a Democrat in the near term.
Yes we have caught on. Jared Golden campaigned as if he might think and vote in our best interest. But he was just another Democrat soldier. Nancy Pelosi occasionally gave him permission to vote with the Republicans, when his vote didn’t change the outcome. In his first run he came in second, but Rank Choice Voting dragged him over the finish line. Golden has never been a good fit in Maine’ second district.
Say what you will about Republican infighting; but recognize ii is independence. They can and do vote as their constituents want and oppose leadership pressure.
With this “inside baseball “ analysis, it reinforces to me that Democrats still hope to appease their (let’s face it) far left progressive base and finesse their way to a Senate majority with candidates who pass the moderate duck test. That sounds like a cacophony of policy noise to me. The Democrats have to put their big boy pants on and call out the unelectable nonsense from their uber ideological progressive base and reconcile their policy platform into something coherent. So far only Senator Fetterman seems willing to do so.
What damage has the Republican Party caused to Medicare or Medicaid? All there is, is supposition while CA and IL are proven factual cases that the entities doing the most damage to both those programs are from states who grossly illegally over spend on illegals. That is the perception of what the Democrat party is and pointing out one or two outlier candidates does nothing to assure they would be effective alternatives. Retired Schumer and Jeffries. The latter being a joke every time he goes public and the former a has been to proud to see he is a mill wheel hung around the Dems neck. Until there is a total party shift on policies, as other commentators have pointed out, the Dems are dead in the water. No one wants to bet on, she changed her stances to get elected candidates any more.
Matt Dunlap is 60. Roy Cooper is 68. Sharrod Brown is 72. Of those mentioned only JD. Scholten qualifies as young at age 45. What you should be writing about is whether there are any young up-and-comer Democrats in states like Iowa and Ohio that the party has let slip away from them. The ‘26 Senate races wouldn’t look so impossible if there was real party-building going on in the states.
I'm guessing that all or most of the 2026 candidates will look like the candidates of recent years. They will just be louder in their opposition to Trump, they will still be socially and culturally left, and they might try to do the fake moderate act like Kamala. Because of how mid terms go, the Democrats may still pick up a couple of seats, but probably not enough. They will continue to not do the things needed for a sustainable majority.
I'm a moderate Republican. Looking for an excuse to vote Democratic since I'm probably more in alignment with them economically. They won't give me that excuse. I refuse to vote for a party that is far left on social and cultural issues, and it's even worse if they try to fake it.
More Democrats might come to understand that while defeating a Republican can be satisfying, primarying and defeating the progressive Left Democrats who represent the greater long-term threat to the party's viability is the more immediate critical task at hand.
While Trump's goal of re-shoring manufacturing is popular there will not be any visible achievements by 2026. Instead, the tariffs that are required will inflict significant economic harm, particularly on Trump voters. Support for deporting violent criminals enjoys almost universal support. Deporting farmworkers, cooks, dishwashers, janitors and hotel staff does not. Trump understands this, Stephen Miller does not.
The 70 undocumented immigrants arrested in Omaha were all using forged papers and were charged with identity theft (because the real owners of the social security numbers filed complaints). And we're still getting "the poor children who are being separated from their parents" sob stories every day.
Omaha is a blue city in a red state. Glen Valley Foods uses eVerify, but these employees were using stolen/forged paperwork. Employers are NOT allowed to challenge documents.
I agree with the guest worker program, with the caveats that immigrants can only stay if they have full-time jobs, they provide their own medical insurance, no criminal activity (including DWIs, and any violent or no-violent crime), and the only tax-payer funded benefits they can receive is schooling for the kids. No pathway to citizenship, ever.
I was wondering why Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins made the effort to convince President Trump to instruct ICE to stop raiding agricultural activities, including meat packing plants. I never thought it was because of the raids on strawberry farms in Oxnard. There is a bigger story here. Somebody helped the workers in Glen Valley Foods to get through the e-verify program. Stephen Miller is not happy.
The Omaha NBC station says the Glen Valley Food president Chad Hartmann wishes government officials would consider creating a limited period of amnesty for undocumented people who “meet certain qualifications” such as never having committed a crime, a desire to work, pay taxes and be part of the community. This could be a temporary remedy for people looking to get legal immigration status, he suggested.
To still call Kari Lake a "kook" is ridiculous and disgusting, and shows no understanding of AZ politics, where there is a BIG contingent of both Mormons (whom Lake irritated simply by beating Karrin Taylor Robson) and McTurdites. (In 2020, over 100,000 McTurdites voted for Kim Yee as Treasurer, but not Lake. That is how evil they are).
But to the larger point, Nate, you and Ruy are going to have to understand this: the Democrat Party originated in slavery and terror. It cannot change. That's who it is. Jesus said you cannot get good fruit from a bad tree, no matter how much you water it. What you are asking of the modern Democrat Party---which managed to conceal itself pretty well for a few decades---is to deny its very origins and its current character. For Pete's sake they booted out a loony (talk about a kook!) radical, David Hogg, because he wasn't a black woman!
I've outlined in my own substacks the (now) FIVE civil wars the Democrats face, none of them winnable. The political violence and murder of the Walz acolyte only underscores the fundamental character of the party. Instead of seeing EVERY. SINGLE. D. GOVERNOR. sign a letter against President Trump's deployment of National Guard to protect the citizens of LA, we should have seen a letter where every single one applauded. ONLY when you get to that point will you have a chance again---and yes, Democrats will pick off one or two seats. But be warned . . .
The California voter registration purge is going to come down like an anvil on top of the already MASSIVE (1.05 MILLION since November) shift to the GOP in voter registrations. At that point, you can run JFK himself or Captain Marvel and it won't make any difference.
I have to say I think this badly misstates the meaning of Mikie Sherrill's win in NJ. NJ, though shifting to the right, is still a largely blue state. To expect voters in a closed primary to go for Gottheimer who really is only marginally a Democrat is silly. I wholeheartedly support moving the Dems to the center and kicking the culture warrior far lef to the curb....but c'mon man we're still Democrats.
Mikie Sherrill is a great choice...she is exactly the sort of center-left Democrat the party needs. And Mr. Moore here totally ignores the fact that she also soundly defeated two left wing candidates...Ras Baraka who ran far to the left and Steve Fullup who ran as a a sort of Obama era big city progressive.
I think the NJ results are a big step in the right direction for the Dems. Sadly I think the NYC Dems are about to go in exactly the opposite direction with Mamdani...one step forward, one giant leap back
If she's center-left Democrat, what's a far-left Democrat? She's pro men in women's sports, locker rooms and prisons, pro abortion any time any place, Trump hater, she wants New Jersey to continue it's sanctuary state status, she's all in on green energy agenda. Seems like a progressive dream.
Though it may seem counterintuitive given we’re talking about election to the legislature, one wild card here is just how much more imperial Trump makes the presidency, and whether Democrats are really willing to roll that back if they win the presidency, or if they will instead use all the precedents being set to enact their own agenda.
Trump is showing how you essentially bypass Congress, and approximate governance by fiat in the U.S. system. Congress has barely passed any legislation and his agenda has been implemented regardless.
If that holds, and you can essentially govern the nation by issuing executive orders and treating them like legislation while the courts take months to work them out—and especially if Trump finds some subterfuge whereby you can ignore injunctions issued by lower courts—then winning majorities in Congress is a “nice to have” rather than a “must have”, unless the next Democratic president decides not to use all the power Trump will have concentrated in the executive branch. And seeing as all that power will have been normalized, and it will be expected for the GOP to use it when they next win the presidency, I don’t see why they would. In that case, winning the presidency will be all that matters—and Democrats still have a good chance of doing so. Much better than winning seats in red states. (Note: the country will be totally screwed in such a situation, but we’re talking in the context of realpolitik here, not in terms of what would be in the country’s best long-term interest)
You continue to be a one-note poster. Your brand is toxic and you think you have a shot at the presidency? Gavin Newsom? Cory Booker? "Congress has barely passed any legislation and his agenda has been implemented regardless." With 200 lawsuits in the first 100 days, that's a total crock.
There are tons of lawsuits because laws aren't being passed to give Trump the proper authority to do much of what he's doing--instead the executive is issuing questionably legal declarations and then acting as if they are law. Are you really saying that when the courts say "um what you're doing isn't legal, you need to go to Congress and pass a law to do that" it's some kind of obstructionist tactic?
The courts' job is not to rubber-stamp the president's executive orders. If the next president issues an executive order nationalizing the healthcare system, and begins acting on it, and then a court issues an injunction saying "that's not legal, you have to pass laws to nationalize the healthcare system", and he has to desist in his nationalization until the Supreme Court rules on it, are you going to be upset about such "obstructionist" measures?
What I'm saying is that claiming that Trump has implemented his agenda is ridiculous.
And again, you can't win with just anti-Trump, all the time. How are the Dems going to win elections with that platform? It's been a loser now for years.
The Democrats have three issues they keep talking about. "Reproductive rights", transgender rights, and hatred of Trump. It isn't a winning strategy, yet they keep doubling down on it. Even Biden's win in 2020 was probably primarily because of Covid. Why they don't lead with kitchen table issues, and genuinely moderate their social and cultural views is beyond me.
Democrats should have a distinct turn out advantage in the midterms. Plus while some of the things Trump is trying to do I like, I've seen no results in the form of income yet.
Then there is the Republican Party, which in many ways is as bad as or worse than Democrats on things like Medicaid, fine tuning the ACA, huge massive stupid tax cuts for the wealthy that bust the budget wide open, the debt, selling our public lands a national treasure, gutting scientific research the real kind, kicking out foreign students not just Hamas supporters, flakey Kennedy the anti science chemtrails type head of HHS.
The Vance/Hawley/Rubio coalition is small, and while Trump is in the right place on immigration and tariffs he lacks the legislative support of his own party.
About public lands... For years we lived off the elk I shot on public lands, 200 lbs of meat per critter, and I'd get one or two per year, plus smaller animals. The Republican Congress led by Mike Lee of Utah wants to sell off some of Wyoming and Colorado, exempting Montana for the vote of former Int Sec Zinke of Montana, a Republican. Selling public lands is enough to get camo clad rednecks to vote D. Just saying incase any R is reading this.
Trump 1.0 was opposed to selling public lands. Haven't heard from 2.0 yet. Hikers, hunters, ATV riders and other sorts of recreational users of public lands far outnumber ranchers, miners and lumberjacks. Fixing NFS and BLM so they don't engage in regulatory excess is far superior to selling the land. More leases for minerals and timber would be OK as the land would revert. The minerals are needed for electric cars and more logging would help with wildfires. People should look at TX. Since it came in via treaty, the public lands were allocated to the state which went bankrupt in the late 1800s and sold them. Now TX looks like an Eastern state in terms of access. Big Bend was donated by private interests, some NF land was bought by the Feds during the Depression to bail out local government since taxes weren't being paid. There are a collection of small state parks. The one big one was a goat ranch for 150 years and looks like it. And that's it.
It's in the budget bill and it's not ranchers, miners, or lumberjacks who are covetous of public lands, all of them can already use public lands for a nominal charge.
The people out to steal our land are developers investors etc. More McMansions with next door access to National Parks. Their stated purpose is lower cost housing which is hilarious when they already have "ranches" with private airstrips, thousands of acres, and not enough time to even vacation at one per year.
Senate bill not the House. If that stays in, it will have to go to conference. For sure, around Vegas, it is developers but that is empty desert that solar farm people also lust after. Some huge portion of NV is slated for solar farms. The primary industry people don't hate the direct cost of using public lands. It is the regulations that come with it. Starting with Clinton, every Democrat would create BLM national monuments to kill mining projects. At any rate states are less likely to keep public lands public than the Feds are.
"Lee says it will open up “underused” federal land for housing and help communities manage growth —...... 2.2 million to 3.3 million acres. State and local governments would be allowed to nominate parcels of land, and would be granted priority to purchase.......Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. Notably, Montana is exempt,.....Lee’s reasoning behind the proposal is the same as Maloy and Amodei’s — identify parcels of federal land near high-growth areas, and sell them at market value to local governments to use for housing, water infrastructure, roads and other development."
Never heard mention of solar panels. What it is, is a land grab. I'd much rather take any private landowner over 10,000 acres and lottery it off in 10 acre lots. Ted Turner owns a couple million acres, just take it.
Just for scale, public lands in the West total 582M acres and decreased by 5M between 2010 and 2013. This does include Montana and NPS but doesn't include DoE and Bureau of Reclamation. It doesn't appear to include Indian lands or military bases. There is some DoD land but I think that is Corps of Engineers which has a lot of lakes. As for the solar farms, that would stay public but be covered with panels. BLM alone has identified 19M acres. Probably illegal to expropriate Ted Turner though it would be fun. You could, however, do eminent domain. If the housing is so valuable, the developers would be willing to pay. Supreme Court says you can seize private property for higher value private use.
Say the Dems manage to field enough centrist moderates and win control of the Senate. Then what? That handful of centrist senators would have to swim upstream against the party’s own entrenched ideological purity. They’d be isolated and sneered at.
The Dems’ problem is much larger and more profound than simply needing to elect a few moderates in swing- and red states. The party as a whole is suffering from TDS and is all-in on positions that aren’t based in reality, like men are women just because they say so, and progressive-style racism is virtuous.
I don’t follow the author’s first premise: why would he claim that someone wanting to primary Golden from the left would be a good candidate to run against Collins?
I was a lifelong Democrat until re-registering as an independent last year. I only waited that long because I wanted to vote against Biden in the primaries. I still see Republican cruelty as sickening (eg, Medicaid), yet I also see Democratic denial of reality and its embrace of Stalinist tendencies as a real and very serious threat to the country. Sure, it’s nascent softball Stalinism right now, but given power and time, I don’t want to think about the damage they could inflict on this country. Bring this up, and the reply from the left is “Trump is a Nazi fascist!!” As long as the Dems can’t see past their hatred of the other side, they’ll never be able to see their own very significant faults.
The Dems need a reboot. I don’t know how that will happen outside of losing, again and again. It makes me ill to see what the party of FDR and LBJ and MLK has turned into.
Yes the hatred is very unhealthy and troubling … it is hard for me to understand. It is very sad also - these people cannot be happy. I do think however that these extreme progressives are the minority yet somehow they control the show.
My opinion also is this hate will be directed at anyone who doesn’t completely share their beliefs
Maybe the Dems need a reboot or maybe they continue to migrate to other parties a la the Whig party. From my reading, northern abolitionist Whigs joined the new Republican Party and southern Whigs migrated to other parties or remained independent. That is what is and has been happening. Look at the former Democrats who were elected president (Reagan and Trump), elected as independent senators (Senator Angus King, Bernie Sanders), or are influential bloggers like Joe Rogan.
'Sure, it’s nascent softball Stalinism right now, but given power and time, I don’t want to think about the damage they could inflict on this country. Bring this up, and the reply from the left is “Trump is a Nazi fascist!!”'
Sure, but clearly you can also see the 'soft-ball Stalinism' at work in the GOP as well? Cutting Medicaid isn't the most alarming thing the party's doing.
I mean, look at the last week alone. Marines are marching in the streets of LA on Trump's orders, over the objections of the CA governor and the advice of the LAPD chief, pursuant to incidents the chief of police said himself didn't warrant such a response. And this morning Trump literally posted
"we must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center"
...and barely a shrug of the shoulders will ensue from his own party. This is the essence of Stalinism and the infrastructure of Orbanian 'soft fascism'. Use the state (including the army) to go after your political opponents, justified on the basis that they are "counter-revolutionaries" (for Stalin) or "Communist radicals". (for the fascists and, apparently, Trump)
I mean, tell me one time Biden or a major Democratic presidential contender explicitly called for attacking "Republican power centers" and sending in troops into a Republican state over the governors' and police's objections to, I don't know, "apprehend potential Proud Boy seditionists". There's simply no proportionate comparison.
Like I said, Democrats have a lot of trouble accepting criticism. The default response is to avoid honest introspection and say “But Trump!” I’m not talking about Trump. I’m talking g about the Dems. If they want to be the party of ethics and integrity, they need to act that way.
I agree the latter part about introspection is true, but when you criticize both parties asymmetrically, you make it artificially harder for Democrats to meet that standard for you--which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. If two parties are "embracing Stalinist tendencies", and that is a bad thing, (as we agree it is) why do you think only one of these parties must come to grips with it to possess "ethics and integrity", while the other is exempt from that requirement? Shouldn't the ethical standard apply across the partisan divide?
You are Exhibit A as to why Dems will not be elected nationwide. The L.A. police chief admitted they were overwhelmed. And buffoons like Alex Padilla aren't helping.
"The L.A. police chief admitted they were overwhelmed."
*And* elaborated by explicitly stating that calling in the military was not necessary and not helpful, particularly since apparently Trump didn't even bother to coordinate with him:
***McDonnell:***
"We’re nowhere near a level where we would be reaching out to the governor for National Guard at this stage.”
https://youtube.com/shorts/tVb1ZEC9NoE?si=gltIgHy62J3KukDb
***Also McDonnell:***
"Collins played the clip for McDonnell and asked whether he agrees with Trump’s characterization of his past statement.
“No, we were not in a position to request the National Guard,” McDonnell reiterated."
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5346247-lapd-chief-donald-trump-national-guard-la-protests/
https://youtube.com/shorts/tVb1ZEC9NoE?si=gltIgHy62J3KukDb
***Also McDonnell:***
McDonnell: "What I see is the National Guard and now the marines are there. And I read the statement that they put out there to facilitate the federal agents that are out there. Our role here is, like I said, very different. It's to restore order to the streets of Los Angeles and that very small part of Los Angeles that is impacted. And we have a protocol for that with our mutual aid partners."
Q: "The Marines are here, they're used to war zones. Are you concerned about them interfacing with protesters?"
McDonnell: "Certainly a concern, you know. *Any time anybody comes in the city and we're not clear on what roles and responsibilities are, there's a concern. I worry for our own people, I worry for residents of the city,* and for those impacted military partners that are in here and working hard at what they're doing, but it is very separate from what we're doing.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/la-police-chief-national-guard-focused-on-immigration-agenda-not-helping-with-protests/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab6a&linkId=829759875&fbclid=IwY2xjawK4aF5leHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFoR2ZuNmdUVmFFd2l1VlpDAR70s20pAFYiHlRqwpn19IY0q7PwTvQbF4i8uNFlWrOHabiEc-HsZ5xkvrcZZw_aem_9nMq0436qonmERV-MrMYcQ
Dems don’t need the national guard because they don’t care about stopping rioting. At least, not when it’s in favor of their pet causes. And no, I’m not defending January 6. I’m talking about the Dems.
Are you saying the chief of the LAPD "doesn't care about stopping rioting"? Because he said he didn't need the national guard, either.
I’m saying that California officials will look the other way as much as possible. They weren’t controlling the riots. Either they couldn’t or they didn’t want to.
Newsom is hard left. The state gives free medical insurance to people living here illegally while taxpayers go without. They effectively encourage illegal immigrants to stay and be exploited.
Lest you think I’m some kind of xenophobe, I’m married to an immigrant and oppose the illegal kind because it allows employers and others to exploit people who have no recourse to complain about violations to their rights. They’re underpaid, and they drive wages for citizens and non-citizens with a right to work here.
Orbanian? Hungary has far fewer people than the combined population of Dallas and Houston. It's influence on the world is limited, to say the least.
Dems are welcome to keep waiting for Brownshirts at the door. It is an extension of Biden's "fine people"hoax , that was supposedly the reason Joe ran for President. Trump said 'Fine people on both sides ", and in, literally, the next breath said he wasn't talking about Skin Heads, White Supremacists or neo Nazis, that should be totally condemned. Video makes what Trump said plain as day, but it does not matter. For a half decade, Dems have been using the myth as proof Trump is an irredeemable wannabe Dictator.
Finally removing people who do not qualify , but are enrolled in Medicaid anyway, is not cutting care, it is cutting fraud.
Yes but Hungary is the modern model for the illiberal, 'soft' fascist state. There, the populist strongman has used the powers of the federal government to directly and explicitly target his political enemies, engaged in obscene gerrymandering (so that his party can command two-thirds of the legislature despite receiving under half of the vote), ended the independence of its universities, partnered with the country's techno-oligarchs to capture its media, and used his supermajority to continually amend the constitution in ways that make it extremely difficult for political competitors to gain power. Elections happen in Hungary, but--as in Russia--there is little doubt of the outcome, and critics of Orban are targeted by its Orban-oligarch-owned media apparatus, the courts (loaded now with Orban loyalists), and the government.
If you can't see that a sitting American president saying out loud "we must use the federal government to go after the power centers of the opposition party" isn't authoritarian in character, and doesn't mimic the methods of the Orbanian state, then I'm not sure you're properly understanding the concept.
The notion that Trump is going to morph into the next Orban seems more than a bit of a stretch. Our Constitution will not allow it. Moreover, playing Strongman in a country of 10 million homogeneous people, is different than one with 330 million diverse residents, and the largest economy on earth.
Trump says a lot of things. He is hardly the first President to do so. I seem to remember Obama promising to part the seas and roll back Climate Change. To say nothing of the infamous "if you like your doctor . . .
The Democratic Party isn't a conservative organization and has no prospect of becoming one. So what is a hypothetical candidate supposed to do to appeal to conservative voters. Lie about what he will do once in office? Admittedly, that tactic has had some success in the past in places like Montana but the opposition is catching on. Better to have an actual policy platform beyond anti-Trump. And it has to be something beyond the normal left-right distinction. I suggest populist fusion. An actual populist like Sherrod Brown missed the fusion part and got sucked down by the toxic brand of the Democratic Party. He lost to a car dealer, for God's sake.
Right! Can we trust Democrats after they presented Biden as a middle of the road candidate and then went hard left after he was elected. Can we trust Democrats after they opened the border and let in millions of illegal, unvetted, and unvaccinated migrants to invade our cities and get free welfare assistance, Medicaid and SNAP. I am an unaffiliated voter who voted for Obama twice and will have a hard time voting for a Democrat in the near term.
Need to get beyond TDS. No actual policy. The media is not helping.
When Ruy talks about The Groups as being the problem, I think about the media.
Yes we have caught on. Jared Golden campaigned as if he might think and vote in our best interest. But he was just another Democrat soldier. Nancy Pelosi occasionally gave him permission to vote with the Republicans, when his vote didn’t change the outcome. In his first run he came in second, but Rank Choice Voting dragged him over the finish line. Golden has never been a good fit in Maine’ second district.
Say what you will about Republican infighting; but recognize ii is independence. They can and do vote as their constituents want and oppose leadership pressure.
With this “inside baseball “ analysis, it reinforces to me that Democrats still hope to appease their (let’s face it) far left progressive base and finesse their way to a Senate majority with candidates who pass the moderate duck test. That sounds like a cacophony of policy noise to me. The Democrats have to put their big boy pants on and call out the unelectable nonsense from their uber ideological progressive base and reconcile their policy platform into something coherent. So far only Senator Fetterman seems willing to do so.
What damage has the Republican Party caused to Medicare or Medicaid? All there is, is supposition while CA and IL are proven factual cases that the entities doing the most damage to both those programs are from states who grossly illegally over spend on illegals. That is the perception of what the Democrat party is and pointing out one or two outlier candidates does nothing to assure they would be effective alternatives. Retired Schumer and Jeffries. The latter being a joke every time he goes public and the former a has been to proud to see he is a mill wheel hung around the Dems neck. Until there is a total party shift on policies, as other commentators have pointed out, the Dems are dead in the water. No one wants to bet on, she changed her stances to get elected candidates any more.
Josh Shapiro ran on school choice, and as soon as he was elected he was bending his knee to the teacher unions.
Never gonna happen the Democrat party has been taken over by the far left
Matt Dunlap is 60. Roy Cooper is 68. Sharrod Brown is 72. Of those mentioned only JD. Scholten qualifies as young at age 45. What you should be writing about is whether there are any young up-and-comer Democrats in states like Iowa and Ohio that the party has let slip away from them. The ‘26 Senate races wouldn’t look so impossible if there was real party-building going on in the states.
I'm guessing that all or most of the 2026 candidates will look like the candidates of recent years. They will just be louder in their opposition to Trump, they will still be socially and culturally left, and they might try to do the fake moderate act like Kamala. Because of how mid terms go, the Democrats may still pick up a couple of seats, but probably not enough. They will continue to not do the things needed for a sustainable majority.
People forget that Trump will be gone. Democrats are fighting the last war, to their peril.
I'm a moderate Republican. Looking for an excuse to vote Democratic since I'm probably more in alignment with them economically. They won't give me that excuse. I refuse to vote for a party that is far left on social and cultural issues, and it's even worse if they try to fake it.
More Democrats might come to understand that while defeating a Republican can be satisfying, primarying and defeating the progressive Left Democrats who represent the greater long-term threat to the party's viability is the more immediate critical task at hand.
Two issues will define the 2026 midterms - the economy and deportations. The majority of voters support Trump's goals on both but oppose his methods.
While Trump's goal of re-shoring manufacturing is popular there will not be any visible achievements by 2026. Instead, the tariffs that are required will inflict significant economic harm, particularly on Trump voters. Support for deporting violent criminals enjoys almost universal support. Deporting farmworkers, cooks, dishwashers, janitors and hotel staff does not. Trump understands this, Stephen Miller does not.
The 70 undocumented immigrants arrested in Omaha were all using forged papers and were charged with identity theft (because the real owners of the social security numbers filed complaints). And we're still getting "the poor children who are being separated from their parents" sob stories every day.
Do you live in Omaha? How is the community reacting? Is Glen Valley Foods complicit in the identify theft?
Omaha is a blue city in a red state. Glen Valley Foods uses eVerify, but these employees were using stolen/forged paperwork. Employers are NOT allowed to challenge documents.
I agree with the guest worker program, with the caveats that immigrants can only stay if they have full-time jobs, they provide their own medical insurance, no criminal activity (including DWIs, and any violent or no-violent crime), and the only tax-payer funded benefits they can receive is schooling for the kids. No pathway to citizenship, ever.
I was wondering why Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins made the effort to convince President Trump to instruct ICE to stop raiding agricultural activities, including meat packing plants. I never thought it was because of the raids on strawberry farms in Oxnard. There is a bigger story here. Somebody helped the workers in Glen Valley Foods to get through the e-verify program. Stephen Miller is not happy.
Agree!
The Omaha NBC station says the Glen Valley Food president Chad Hartmann wishes government officials would consider creating a limited period of amnesty for undocumented people who “meet certain qualifications” such as never having committed a crime, a desire to work, pay taxes and be part of the community. This could be a temporary remedy for people looking to get legal immigration status, he suggested.
"Right now, these highly engaged Democrats want a fighter. Someone who will call Trump names and vote against him 100 percent of the time."
Yeah... that is a winning strategy.
To still call Kari Lake a "kook" is ridiculous and disgusting, and shows no understanding of AZ politics, where there is a BIG contingent of both Mormons (whom Lake irritated simply by beating Karrin Taylor Robson) and McTurdites. (In 2020, over 100,000 McTurdites voted for Kim Yee as Treasurer, but not Lake. That is how evil they are).
But to the larger point, Nate, you and Ruy are going to have to understand this: the Democrat Party originated in slavery and terror. It cannot change. That's who it is. Jesus said you cannot get good fruit from a bad tree, no matter how much you water it. What you are asking of the modern Democrat Party---which managed to conceal itself pretty well for a few decades---is to deny its very origins and its current character. For Pete's sake they booted out a loony (talk about a kook!) radical, David Hogg, because he wasn't a black woman!
I've outlined in my own substacks the (now) FIVE civil wars the Democrats face, none of them winnable. The political violence and murder of the Walz acolyte only underscores the fundamental character of the party. Instead of seeing EVERY. SINGLE. D. GOVERNOR. sign a letter against President Trump's deployment of National Guard to protect the citizens of LA, we should have seen a letter where every single one applauded. ONLY when you get to that point will you have a chance again---and yes, Democrats will pick off one or two seats. But be warned . . .
The California voter registration purge is going to come down like an anvil on top of the already MASSIVE (1.05 MILLION since November) shift to the GOP in voter registrations. At that point, you can run JFK himself or Captain Marvel and it won't make any difference.
Larry - I usually agree with you, but Kari Lake was not electable.
I have to say I think this badly misstates the meaning of Mikie Sherrill's win in NJ. NJ, though shifting to the right, is still a largely blue state. To expect voters in a closed primary to go for Gottheimer who really is only marginally a Democrat is silly. I wholeheartedly support moving the Dems to the center and kicking the culture warrior far lef to the curb....but c'mon man we're still Democrats.
Mikie Sherrill is a great choice...she is exactly the sort of center-left Democrat the party needs. And Mr. Moore here totally ignores the fact that she also soundly defeated two left wing candidates...Ras Baraka who ran far to the left and Steve Fullup who ran as a a sort of Obama era big city progressive.
I think the NJ results are a big step in the right direction for the Dems. Sadly I think the NYC Dems are about to go in exactly the opposite direction with Mamdani...one step forward, one giant leap back
If she's center-left Democrat, what's a far-left Democrat? She's pro men in women's sports, locker rooms and prisons, pro abortion any time any place, Trump hater, she wants New Jersey to continue it's sanctuary state status, she's all in on green energy agenda. Seems like a progressive dream.
Though it may seem counterintuitive given we’re talking about election to the legislature, one wild card here is just how much more imperial Trump makes the presidency, and whether Democrats are really willing to roll that back if they win the presidency, or if they will instead use all the precedents being set to enact their own agenda.
Trump is showing how you essentially bypass Congress, and approximate governance by fiat in the U.S. system. Congress has barely passed any legislation and his agenda has been implemented regardless.
If that holds, and you can essentially govern the nation by issuing executive orders and treating them like legislation while the courts take months to work them out—and especially if Trump finds some subterfuge whereby you can ignore injunctions issued by lower courts—then winning majorities in Congress is a “nice to have” rather than a “must have”, unless the next Democratic president decides not to use all the power Trump will have concentrated in the executive branch. And seeing as all that power will have been normalized, and it will be expected for the GOP to use it when they next win the presidency, I don’t see why they would. In that case, winning the presidency will be all that matters—and Democrats still have a good chance of doing so. Much better than winning seats in red states. (Note: the country will be totally screwed in such a situation, but we’re talking in the context of realpolitik here, not in terms of what would be in the country’s best long-term interest)
You continue to be a one-note poster. Your brand is toxic and you think you have a shot at the presidency? Gavin Newsom? Cory Booker? "Congress has barely passed any legislation and his agenda has been implemented regardless." With 200 lawsuits in the first 100 days, that's a total crock.
There are tons of lawsuits because laws aren't being passed to give Trump the proper authority to do much of what he's doing--instead the executive is issuing questionably legal declarations and then acting as if they are law. Are you really saying that when the courts say "um what you're doing isn't legal, you need to go to Congress and pass a law to do that" it's some kind of obstructionist tactic?
The courts' job is not to rubber-stamp the president's executive orders. If the next president issues an executive order nationalizing the healthcare system, and begins acting on it, and then a court issues an injunction saying "that's not legal, you have to pass laws to nationalize the healthcare system", and he has to desist in his nationalization until the Supreme Court rules on it, are you going to be upset about such "obstructionist" measures?
What I'm saying is that claiming that Trump has implemented his agenda is ridiculous.
And again, you can't win with just anti-Trump, all the time. How are the Dems going to win elections with that platform? It's been a loser now for years.
The Democrats have three issues they keep talking about. "Reproductive rights", transgender rights, and hatred of Trump. It isn't a winning strategy, yet they keep doubling down on it. Even Biden's win in 2020 was probably primarily because of Covid. Why they don't lead with kitchen table issues, and genuinely moderate their social and cultural views is beyond me.
Democrats should have a distinct turn out advantage in the midterms. Plus while some of the things Trump is trying to do I like, I've seen no results in the form of income yet.
Then there is the Republican Party, which in many ways is as bad as or worse than Democrats on things like Medicaid, fine tuning the ACA, huge massive stupid tax cuts for the wealthy that bust the budget wide open, the debt, selling our public lands a national treasure, gutting scientific research the real kind, kicking out foreign students not just Hamas supporters, flakey Kennedy the anti science chemtrails type head of HHS.
The Vance/Hawley/Rubio coalition is small, and while Trump is in the right place on immigration and tariffs he lacks the legislative support of his own party.
About public lands... For years we lived off the elk I shot on public lands, 200 lbs of meat per critter, and I'd get one or two per year, plus smaller animals. The Republican Congress led by Mike Lee of Utah wants to sell off some of Wyoming and Colorado, exempting Montana for the vote of former Int Sec Zinke of Montana, a Republican. Selling public lands is enough to get camo clad rednecks to vote D. Just saying incase any R is reading this.
Trump 1.0 was opposed to selling public lands. Haven't heard from 2.0 yet. Hikers, hunters, ATV riders and other sorts of recreational users of public lands far outnumber ranchers, miners and lumberjacks. Fixing NFS and BLM so they don't engage in regulatory excess is far superior to selling the land. More leases for minerals and timber would be OK as the land would revert. The minerals are needed for electric cars and more logging would help with wildfires. People should look at TX. Since it came in via treaty, the public lands were allocated to the state which went bankrupt in the late 1800s and sold them. Now TX looks like an Eastern state in terms of access. Big Bend was donated by private interests, some NF land was bought by the Feds during the Depression to bail out local government since taxes weren't being paid. There are a collection of small state parks. The one big one was a goat ranch for 150 years and looks like it. And that's it.
It's in the budget bill and it's not ranchers, miners, or lumberjacks who are covetous of public lands, all of them can already use public lands for a nominal charge.
The people out to steal our land are developers investors etc. More McMansions with next door access to National Parks. Their stated purpose is lower cost housing which is hilarious when they already have "ranches" with private airstrips, thousands of acres, and not enough time to even vacation at one per year.
Senate bill not the House. If that stays in, it will have to go to conference. For sure, around Vegas, it is developers but that is empty desert that solar farm people also lust after. Some huge portion of NV is slated for solar farms. The primary industry people don't hate the direct cost of using public lands. It is the regulations that come with it. Starting with Clinton, every Democrat would create BLM national monuments to kill mining projects. At any rate states are less likely to keep public lands public than the Feds are.
"Lee says it will open up “underused” federal land for housing and help communities manage growth —...... 2.2 million to 3.3 million acres. State and local governments would be allowed to nominate parcels of land, and would be granted priority to purchase.......Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. Notably, Montana is exempt,.....Lee’s reasoning behind the proposal is the same as Maloy and Amodei’s — identify parcels of federal land near high-growth areas, and sell them at market value to local governments to use for housing, water infrastructure, roads and other development."
Never heard mention of solar panels. What it is, is a land grab. I'd much rather take any private landowner over 10,000 acres and lottery it off in 10 acre lots. Ted Turner owns a couple million acres, just take it.
https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2025/06/13/utah-sen-mike-lee-brings-back-proposal-to-sell-public-land-in-western-states/
Just for scale, public lands in the West total 582M acres and decreased by 5M between 2010 and 2013. This does include Montana and NPS but doesn't include DoE and Bureau of Reclamation. It doesn't appear to include Indian lands or military bases. There is some DoD land but I think that is Corps of Engineers which has a lot of lakes. As for the solar farms, that would stay public but be covered with panels. BLM alone has identified 19M acres. Probably illegal to expropriate Ted Turner though it would be fun. You could, however, do eminent domain. If the housing is so valuable, the developers would be willing to pay. Supreme Court says you can seize private property for higher value private use.