Victory has a hundred fathers, defeat is an orphan. If the Democrats suffer the "mid-term bloodbath" you speak of, no one in the party will accept the blame for it. Instead, each of them will complain "If they had only listened to me!"
I see very different midterm numbers out there. Cook has Rs with 212 "safe" seats. TX will redistrict in at least four more, OH, 2. That's 218 before Rs flip a single "tossup." But MO, IN, and FL may all also redistrict, adding another (minimum) 4, perhaps 6.
All this does NOT COUNT the staggering voter registration shifts which HAVE. NOT. ABATED. in over a year. Latest from PA? Ds down to just _53,000 in active voters (from 1.1 MILLION in 2015). NJ closer, NM closer, AZ now up to R +328,000, or 4,000 since I last posted. The only state not in this trend is NV, yet even there, Washoe R margin grew and Clark D margin shrank. Stanislaus Co. CA has just dumped another 43,000 off its rolls. Already the state had slashed 3.1 million, and by normal voting stats, that's 2:1 D. LA and Orange Co have yet to report, so factor in another 1m Ds off the rolls there.
Then you have, as I keep pointing out and no one listens, easily over 2 MILLION illegals gone by then. How many of those were D registered voters?
GOP midterms, barring a massive and continued spike in inflation, will come in around GOP +5-10 seats. But once inflation cools and the Trump-caused investments begin to ramp up with a soaring economy, fuggedaboudit.
Well, what's "going to hit" are #16 TRILLION in US investment that Trump has lined up. These will be breaking ground very soon. Jobs won't be the problem. Inflation will be.
Lack of employment is a trailing indicator - if we're seeing this, the damage already happened. I suppose events could mitigate it, but if someone ultimately calls a start of recession around the first quarter of this year, i'm not going to be shocked.
Ah but there is this to consider: virtually ALL of the unemployment is "foreign born" while all of the new employment is native born. We are witnessing a "recession" of illegals leaving and Americans replacing them---1.6m in the last report. Somehow, I don't think this will be felt the way most people think it will.
A political party, whether unable or unwilling to change, to moderate its ways in the face of growing and overwhelming opposition from once key constituent groups, does not deserve to have its marginalized, even humiliated agenda advanced by election success.
A political strategy that rests on taunting and resisting President Trump into stumbling is a fool's errand that only exposes the Democratic Left's desperate radicalization.
I would think twice before betting the farm on today's Democratic Party achieving what traditionally are midterm political gains.
"To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee," Trump is their white whale. They will destroy everything in their efforts to get rid of him.
As always spot on. The largest arrows in the Dem quiver are hope tariffs either spark huge inflation or just the normal business cycle, retracts after years of a sugar high. The other is the lack of Rep messaging. Reps have fumbled immigration, by failing to address it as the economic issue it is.
The US immigrant population, naturalized , legal and illegal, will likely hit 50 million people by the 2028 election. 54% of which are enrolled in US welfare programs. Few will ever leave them. Had Americans realized as 10K people a day walked into Texas, more than 5K would soon become welfare recipients, they would have demanded a closed border long before Trump.
Social Security is, literally, a handful of years from a 1/3 drop in benefits, even as welfare programs consume 22% of the budget and Medicaid costs have rocketed by nearly 1/3, just since 2019. When Dems are presented with the choice of continued importation of future and permanent welfare recipients, or their own SS checks, or that of their parents or friends shrinking by 33%, immigration is going to become a very different issue, very quickly.
Instead of getting ahead of train wreck, and proposing larger payoffs for new migrants willing to voluntarily depart, in exchange for migrants here for decades, lacking criminality and welfare enrollment, being made legal permanent resident aliens, Dems are doubling down. Beto O Rourke has promised immediate citizenship to all migrants, the day Dems take power. Others a packed SCOTUS and 2 new Blue States.
Nor is immigration the only Dem problem. Dems are banging pots and pans in DC, like toddlers, inexplicably protesting less crime. No Dem has mentioned, if it is unethical to give breast implants to a 12 year old, it is likely a bad idea to remove healthy breasts, as well. They are too busy repeating "Nazi" and "tariffs bad", as inflation stubbornly refuses to comply with Dem requests, to run.
The midterms nearly always favors the Party out of power , but if Reps learn to message better, this one might not.
I could accept 2 new blue states in return for two new red ones, like downstate IL or E. WA. This is the way the Missouri Compromise worked back in the day. Doesn't change the national balance of power and provides self-government for subject populations.
Women have also been fleeing the Democratic Party, which is an ominous sign. But instead of examining why, what do the Dems do? Double down, insist that everyone who doesn't go along with them is congenitally stupid, and keep screaming that Trump is a fascist.
Well, I agree that Trump is a fascist. A dangerous loon. A threat to democracy. He is. I know. I agree. I also know that unless the Democrats wake up and start taking more than half the population -- women -- seriously, they're going to keep losing. The Dems give with one hand and take away with the other: they support reproductive rights and women's bodily autonomy, and then insist that men can become women.
At DIAG -- Democrats for An Informed Approach to Gender -- we're trying to pull the Democratic Party back from the brink. We're trying to protect women from men being housed with them in women's prisons; from boys physically harming girls on sports teams and taking away their honors and opportunities; from sex offenders invading women's toilets and locker rooms because they say they "feel" like women; and we're trying to protect vulnerable young people from being set on a lifelong path of serious medical complications from chemical and/or surgical alteration. All of these injustices are going on all over the country.
This is a huge issue among women voters, whether the Dems want to recognize it or not.
In addition, the Democrats are facing an antigeriatric revolt from the left led by David Hogg. That will energize the progressive Democrats in primaries, just as Trump energized the populist Republicans. As you are closer to the scene of battle your remarks on Mister Hogg would be of interest.
The Democrats need some serious issues, not "Trump Bad. Trump crazy.' I commend to your attention reindustrialization. I lift some of these policy steps from CDR Salamander on X. He has more. Immediate full deductibility of spending on structures and machines. Pell, etc., grants for young people going to trade schools or apprenticeships. Infrastructure replacement. Why was the Alaska Oil Pipeline not litigated to death? Because its construction/environmental...was removed from the jurisdiction of the Federal Courts. Do it again. Remove the Army Corps of Engineers from environmental issues; limit it to places where freighters sail. College loans limited to STEM and IT.
Then there are some radical steps (yes, I am a retired Physics professor). Does your university want to be eligible for student loans? You must eliminate your general education requirement, and replace it with serious courses in STEM fields. You must eliminate student evaluation of teaching, whose main function is to dumb down courses. Stock buybacks are insider trading, and should be illegal again. All income is equal, and should be taxed the same way. That include capital gains. There is also the non-winner: Social Security must be saved. Cranking up the retirement age does not work for carpenters, brick layers, hod carriers, stoop laborers...those joints wear out. Instead, start cranking up the social security tax rate, a tenth or two of a percent a year, until things go into balance.
And for those of you who complain about college professors, when I taught I sometimes told students my teaching philosophy, from which you need to guess the impolite word.
KATANA -- Kick ... Take Names. My students did several times as much homework, collected in every lecture, as in other courses. And I did get a teaching evaluation from a student who thanks to scheduling was in his third term "This is the first college level course I ever took here".
There is no better indication of my beloved Democratic Party's failure to grasp the big picture (i.e., denial), as Rui notes, than the sugar high many progressives are getting from Mamdani.
In all of the liberal publications writers and commenters think he's the next coming of Obama. We've "turned the corner." We've "thrown out all of the old timers in the party." We're "appealing to the young voter."
Yet, even in far left NYC he got less than 9% of the votes from eligible voters.
Thanks Ruy, BUT I think if Trump continues to make the next year about LAW AND ORDER in big cities and succeeds, watch out Dems!!! History may not repeat itself at the mid-term ballot box.
In DC the police force is down 800 officers. This happened after the BLM and Defunders got going. Police in large cities retired, quit, or moved to "safer" rural areas where a chance meeting with a minority person they are arresting didn't result in a life time of problems for them. Cities can't hire even with giving bonuses, raises, and lowering standards.
And police started "depolicing."
Bowser touts that the murder rate is down in DC, but its only down to very high levels. And all data show that people are not reporting crimes like they used to.
Once Trump gets started, he will make a difference. And more people might be willing to join up. All data show, as the DC police chief indicated, that more police means more safety.
This could be a real wild card in the mid terms, as you indicate.
The best thing for Democrats would be a mid-term bloodbath. Probably won't happen but it might wake them up.
Victory has a hundred fathers, defeat is an orphan. If the Democrats suffer the "mid-term bloodbath" you speak of, no one in the party will accept the blame for it. Instead, each of them will complain "If they had only listened to me!"
I see very different midterm numbers out there. Cook has Rs with 212 "safe" seats. TX will redistrict in at least four more, OH, 2. That's 218 before Rs flip a single "tossup." But MO, IN, and FL may all also redistrict, adding another (minimum) 4, perhaps 6.
All this does NOT COUNT the staggering voter registration shifts which HAVE. NOT. ABATED. in over a year. Latest from PA? Ds down to just _53,000 in active voters (from 1.1 MILLION in 2015). NJ closer, NM closer, AZ now up to R +328,000, or 4,000 since I last posted. The only state not in this trend is NV, yet even there, Washoe R margin grew and Clark D margin shrank. Stanislaus Co. CA has just dumped another 43,000 off its rolls. Already the state had slashed 3.1 million, and by normal voting stats, that's 2:1 D. LA and Orange Co have yet to report, so factor in another 1m Ds off the rolls there.
Then you have, as I keep pointing out and no one listens, easily over 2 MILLION illegals gone by then. How many of those were D registered voters?
GOP midterms, barring a massive and continued spike in inflation, will come in around GOP +5-10 seats. But once inflation cools and the Trump-caused investments begin to ramp up with a soaring economy, fuggedaboudit.
Those jobs numbers that got revised are recessionary. We've been staving one off for years now, eventually it is going to hit.
Well, what's "going to hit" are #16 TRILLION in US investment that Trump has lined up. These will be breaking ground very soon. Jobs won't be the problem. Inflation will be.
Lack of employment is a trailing indicator - if we're seeing this, the damage already happened. I suppose events could mitigate it, but if someone ultimately calls a start of recession around the first quarter of this year, i'm not going to be shocked.
Ah but there is this to consider: virtually ALL of the unemployment is "foreign born" while all of the new employment is native born. We are witnessing a "recession" of illegals leaving and Americans replacing them---1.6m in the last report. Somehow, I don't think this will be felt the way most people think it will.
Always good to do a deep dive into the numbers rather than depending on the headlines.
A political party, whether unable or unwilling to change, to moderate its ways in the face of growing and overwhelming opposition from once key constituent groups, does not deserve to have its marginalized, even humiliated agenda advanced by election success.
A political strategy that rests on taunting and resisting President Trump into stumbling is a fool's errand that only exposes the Democratic Left's desperate radicalization.
I would think twice before betting the farm on today's Democratic Party achieving what traditionally are midterm political gains.
"To the last, I grapple with thee; From Hell's heart, I stab at thee; For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee," Trump is their white whale. They will destroy everything in their efforts to get rid of him.
Democrats are still the AWFL party and they will remain in the minority until that changes.
As always spot on. The largest arrows in the Dem quiver are hope tariffs either spark huge inflation or just the normal business cycle, retracts after years of a sugar high. The other is the lack of Rep messaging. Reps have fumbled immigration, by failing to address it as the economic issue it is.
The US immigrant population, naturalized , legal and illegal, will likely hit 50 million people by the 2028 election. 54% of which are enrolled in US welfare programs. Few will ever leave them. Had Americans realized as 10K people a day walked into Texas, more than 5K would soon become welfare recipients, they would have demanded a closed border long before Trump.
Social Security is, literally, a handful of years from a 1/3 drop in benefits, even as welfare programs consume 22% of the budget and Medicaid costs have rocketed by nearly 1/3, just since 2019. When Dems are presented with the choice of continued importation of future and permanent welfare recipients, or their own SS checks, or that of their parents or friends shrinking by 33%, immigration is going to become a very different issue, very quickly.
Instead of getting ahead of train wreck, and proposing larger payoffs for new migrants willing to voluntarily depart, in exchange for migrants here for decades, lacking criminality and welfare enrollment, being made legal permanent resident aliens, Dems are doubling down. Beto O Rourke has promised immediate citizenship to all migrants, the day Dems take power. Others a packed SCOTUS and 2 new Blue States.
Nor is immigration the only Dem problem. Dems are banging pots and pans in DC, like toddlers, inexplicably protesting less crime. No Dem has mentioned, if it is unethical to give breast implants to a 12 year old, it is likely a bad idea to remove healthy breasts, as well. They are too busy repeating "Nazi" and "tariffs bad", as inflation stubbornly refuses to comply with Dem requests, to run.
The midterms nearly always favors the Party out of power , but if Reps learn to message better, this one might not.
I could accept 2 new blue states in return for two new red ones, like downstate IL or E. WA. This is the way the Missouri Compromise worked back in the day. Doesn't change the national balance of power and provides self-government for subject populations.
I think this post is right on, Ruy.
Women have also been fleeing the Democratic Party, which is an ominous sign. But instead of examining why, what do the Dems do? Double down, insist that everyone who doesn't go along with them is congenitally stupid, and keep screaming that Trump is a fascist.
Well, I agree that Trump is a fascist. A dangerous loon. A threat to democracy. He is. I know. I agree. I also know that unless the Democrats wake up and start taking more than half the population -- women -- seriously, they're going to keep losing. The Dems give with one hand and take away with the other: they support reproductive rights and women's bodily autonomy, and then insist that men can become women.
At DIAG -- Democrats for An Informed Approach to Gender -- we're trying to pull the Democratic Party back from the brink. We're trying to protect women from men being housed with them in women's prisons; from boys physically harming girls on sports teams and taking away their honors and opportunities; from sex offenders invading women's toilets and locker rooms because they say they "feel" like women; and we're trying to protect vulnerable young people from being set on a lifelong path of serious medical complications from chemical and/or surgical alteration. All of these injustices are going on all over the country.
This is a huge issue among women voters, whether the Dems want to recognize it or not.
https://www.di-ag.org/
In addition, the Democrats are facing an antigeriatric revolt from the left led by David Hogg. That will energize the progressive Democrats in primaries, just as Trump energized the populist Republicans. As you are closer to the scene of battle your remarks on Mister Hogg would be of interest.
The Democrats need some serious issues, not "Trump Bad. Trump crazy.' I commend to your attention reindustrialization. I lift some of these policy steps from CDR Salamander on X. He has more. Immediate full deductibility of spending on structures and machines. Pell, etc., grants for young people going to trade schools or apprenticeships. Infrastructure replacement. Why was the Alaska Oil Pipeline not litigated to death? Because its construction/environmental...was removed from the jurisdiction of the Federal Courts. Do it again. Remove the Army Corps of Engineers from environmental issues; limit it to places where freighters sail. College loans limited to STEM and IT.
Then there are some radical steps (yes, I am a retired Physics professor). Does your university want to be eligible for student loans? You must eliminate your general education requirement, and replace it with serious courses in STEM fields. You must eliminate student evaluation of teaching, whose main function is to dumb down courses. Stock buybacks are insider trading, and should be illegal again. All income is equal, and should be taxed the same way. That include capital gains. There is also the non-winner: Social Security must be saved. Cranking up the retirement age does not work for carpenters, brick layers, hod carriers, stoop laborers...those joints wear out. Instead, start cranking up the social security tax rate, a tenth or two of a percent a year, until things go into balance.
And for those of you who complain about college professors, when I taught I sometimes told students my teaching philosophy, from which you need to guess the impolite word.
KATANA -- Kick ... Take Names. My students did several times as much homework, collected in every lecture, as in other courses. And I did get a teaching evaluation from a student who thanks to scheduling was in his third term "This is the first college level course I ever took here".
an influx of low-information and more persuadable voters motivated by an entirely different issue set…
Rather a cavalier and harmful opinion of Independents and the disaffected Dem minority voters that were pushed out of the party.
Aren't there numerous saying about underestimating people or groups?
There is no better indication of my beloved Democratic Party's failure to grasp the big picture (i.e., denial), as Rui notes, than the sugar high many progressives are getting from Mamdani.
In all of the liberal publications writers and commenters think he's the next coming of Obama. We've "turned the corner." We've "thrown out all of the old timers in the party." We're "appealing to the young voter."
Yet, even in far left NYC he got less than 9% of the votes from eligible voters.
Thanks Ruy, BUT I think if Trump continues to make the next year about LAW AND ORDER in big cities and succeeds, watch out Dems!!! History may not repeat itself at the mid-term ballot box.
In DC the police force is down 800 officers. This happened after the BLM and Defunders got going. Police in large cities retired, quit, or moved to "safer" rural areas where a chance meeting with a minority person they are arresting didn't result in a life time of problems for them. Cities can't hire even with giving bonuses, raises, and lowering standards.
And police started "depolicing."
Bowser touts that the murder rate is down in DC, but its only down to very high levels. And all data show that people are not reporting crimes like they used to.
DC has laws that totally coddle criminals:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/08/12/jeanine-pirro-juvenile-adult-crime/
Once Trump gets started, he will make a difference. And more people might be willing to join up. All data show, as the DC police chief indicated, that more police means more safety.
This could be a real wild card in the mid terms, as you indicate.
Here's looking to se if Mamdani changes this picture