Where do we go from here?

Okay -- I can't make a case that this woman is going to win her campaign. (Maybe someone from Florida can show me I'm too pessimistic?) But that the Democratic voters of the Sunshine State chose her for their US Senate nominee is delicious and probably instructive.

 

The lady in pink wearing tennis shoes lets it all hang out. If winning is such an uphill slog, why not just tell the voters what you really think?

 

Obama political operative Dan Pfeiffer thinks he knows what he is seeing:

Despite being outspent by more than 10 to 1, Nixon beat [Lt. Colonel Alex] Vindman to become the Democratic nominee to take on Senator Ashley Moody.

And Nixon didn’t just beat him; she romped, winning by more than 11 points. ...

...  She is a dynamic candidate who ran on the exact message that has been resonating in Democratic primaries this cycle — a progressive, populist approach focused on lowering prices for working families.

...  Like Vindman, she made fighting a centerpiece of her identity — but it wasn’t just fighting Trump. Nixon was fighting for working people.

Embedded in Nixon’s success is a model for progressive populists. Candidates like [Wisconsin's Francesca] Hong ran up huge margins among younger, college-educated, and mostly white liberals, but struggled mightily with Black voters, who have historically resisted more liberal candidates in Democratic primaries.

Nixon did not. Like Hong, Nixon did very well in areas with college campuses and younger, more progressive voters. But [in the Florida state senate] she represents Jacksonville, in Duval County, and won that county — which has a large population of Black voters — by roughly 60 points. She also did well in the I-4 corridor and in Miami-Dade County, which also have significant numbers of Black voters.

There was a skinny Black guy with a funny name whose success Pfeiffer understood. That guy won, in part, by riding a popular wave of desire to move on beyond George W, Bush and also Democratic conventions. Might we, in Nixon, be seeing foreshadowing of the next wave, the one that comes after the Orange Man slinks from the scene?

Angie Nixon campaign: 

 

Greg Abbott's theater of bigotry

Things I didn't have a mental picture of, but am glad to have learned -- from basketball great and good man Kareem Abdul Jabbar: 

Wudu is the Muslim ritual of washing before prayer, which we do five times daily, at dawn, midday, afternoon, sunset, and night. We begin by saying “Bismillah,” which means “In the name of God,” then wash our hands to the wrist three times, rinse the mouth and nose, wash the face, wash our arms to the elbow, wipe the head and ears with our wet hands, and finally wash our feet to the ankles. It takes just a couple of minutes but is an essential and sacred part of our religious practice.

While wudu can be done in a restroom sink, it’s hardly ideal, and some public spaces, such as universities and hospitals that serve diverse populations, provide dedicated stations as an accommodation to Muslims. That is what two airports in Texas (Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth) have done, to little fanfare or controversy until Governor Greg Abbott decided to make it his personal crusade to end this small act of courtesy. Earlier this month, Abbott sent a letter to Dallas-Fort Worth, which was planning a second station, threatening to cut off grants to the airport if it went ahead with the project, calling such facilities “illegal” and a form of “discrimination.”

Kareem's short paragraphs explain what I used to see around the corner from my mother-in-law's apartment in Manhattan -- lines of cabs parked every which way while their drivers ran briefly into the Islamic Center on the corner ...

Texas should be as bigoted as possible if you are the Republican governor. So Abbott, running for reelection, grandstands against his Muslim citizens. He won't admit that this is just ugly hate theater.  

Abbott ... he should know better. As a paraplegic who has been confined to a wheelchair since 1984, he needs special accommodations on a daily basis. When he goes to Houston or Dallas-Fort Worth airports, he surely uses the ramps designed to make life easier for disabled people like him. Why, then, is he so eager to make life harder for other people who need accommodation, in this case Muslims?

People get ready ...

In the auditorium of San Francisco's Mission High School, a leftish segment of the Bay Area activist population was in the house this morning -- immigrant workers, organized teachers and nurses, the gray haired stalwarts of a hundred campaigns. Led by Bay Resistance, plans were laid out for the fall season. 

Here staffer Jane Martin lays out what we already know we have to do; I'll interpret her points in my own words.

• Work to win the election of anti-fascist Democrats in contested districts wherever located

• Make sure you are connected to whichever organization is available to do the work in your neighborhood and on your issues

• Join a pod; get into regular supportive contact with like-minded people

• More specific to the Bay: remind our tech oligarchs that the people won't give them a free ride on the road to ruinous rule!

Such meetings are how winning campaigns build!

• • •

And above all, resistance succeeds when there is room for everyone and we all find our own lanes. I'll give the last word here to one of my favorites in the broad national resistance movement, elder operative Simon Rosenberg. He's the last believing FDR Democrat and we could only wish there were more of him, even if some of us find a home elsewhere: 

There is nothing Trump and MAGA wants more than for us to be fighting with each other and not with him. We have one job now - elect as many of these [Democratic] candidates running for the House and Senate as we can. It’s where our focus must be. It’s a year of opportunity for us across the country. We must seize it, together. 

It's crunch time! 

When the shouting ends, it will be time to focus

Tonight -- the first Tuesday in August -- we'll find out who won the Michigan Democratic Party primary for the chance to contest an open US Senate seat in November. Polls and tea leaves tell us it will be a win for Dr. Abdul El-Sayed over Rep. Haley Stevens. If it comes out as expected, the good Doc with the fighting agenda will have knocked off the perfectly adequate candidate of the professional Democratic class. There will be rejoicing in one camp and hair pulling in the other. 

And then, if Michiganders can lean into what's good for them and us all, they'll get back to work promoting whichever candidate comes out on top as their state's contribution to taking their country back from the GOP MAGAs. 

Journalist Paul Waldman offers some smart and thoughtful commentary on this year's intra-party kerfuffles.

... While centrists often complain that Democrats are trapped in their self-reinforcing bubbles and disconnected from reg’lar, salt-of-the-earth Americans, nearly all the centrists that I’m aware of are just as disconnected, if not more so.

They live in Washington or other major cities, they’re immersed in politics, and they suffer from the Pundit Brain ailment that makes its victims believe ordinary voters have coherent ideological beliefs and respond to subtle changes in the policy-based appeals candidates make. There’s something else going on, too: Their view of the political world is dominated by their contempt for the far left, which convinces them that what we used to call hippie-punching is the cleverest of political strategies.

This is a phenomenon I’ve noticed in many normie Democrats I know who live in very liberal places. They can’t stand Trump, of course, but the people who really drive them up a wall are the ones they encounter all the time where they live: the lefties. ...

... the reason is familiarity. If you’re a mainstream Democrat who lives in San Francisco or New York, you almost never encounter MAGA-hatted, immigrant-hating, misogynistic far-right troglodytes in person. You see them online, you know they’re there, but you don’t have to pay more than a moment’s attention to them if you don’t want to. On the other hand, far-lefties are everywhere in your actual life, and everything you find annoying about them is right in your face, all the time. ...

Yup. I recognize that condition, being a long time San Franciscan. That's not the world of most Michiganders -- well maybe in Ann Arbor. It not easy for those of us who live, by choice, in blue state bubbles to imagine what these things look like beyond our context, just as other Americans don't get how we live. 

I hope lots of blue staters really do what I've done in the past and many plan to do this year: take some time to go talk election with people in more contested places. The candidates have to meet the people where they are, and volunteers can to. 

Internal refugees and the return of the ballot measure wars

Transgender folk are fleeing to blue states. This didn't begin with Trump coming back into office; aggressive persecution in red states revved up the push out at the beginning of this decade.

Silvaria Lysandra Zemaitis provides a statistical picture.

The American Transgender Refugee Crisis
If this were occurring abroad, to an ethnic minority, we would call it ethnic cleansing. 

... Annualized, what we are seeing is a displacement rate of roughly 15% a year. And because trans people are largely not fleeing blue states (which means that the pool of leavers would actually be the 47% of trans adults who live in the 29 states with at least one restrictive law), the rate among trans people in the states doing the persecuting is closer to 29%. Nearly a third, in a year.  

... the sheer scale of this movement is breathtaking. Hundreds of thousands of trans people have had to flee persecution within the borders of the United States ....

... To put this in perspective, the last time an American subgroup migrated at these rates was the Great Migration, in which roughly 6 million Southern Black people fled Jim Crow violence and repression. This occurred over a period of decades, in the face of political repression, systematic violence, and legal apartheid. In its fastest decade, the 1940s, 1.5 million left the South—against a Southern Black population of roughly 10 million. Black America fled Jim Crow at about 1.5% a year, at a time when baseline inter-state mobility was higher than it was today. Trans America is fleeing red-state persecution at ten to twenty times that. ....

This should be seen as appropriately alarming to every decent person in the country.

... trans people who cannot afford to run are forced to hide.

Since November 2024, 55% of transgender adults report taking steps to be less visible as an LGBTQ person in their community—at work, at school—compared to 24% of LGBTQ people overall. This is what “eradication” looks like in practice. Instead of forcing the trans person to leave the state, the fascists are forcing the trans person to leave themselves. ...

To subject some of us to this level of terror -- along with migrants and all people of color -- is simply not okay.

• • •

In general, many Democratic politicians know they have to hold the line on trans rights -- however little actual sympathy they may feel. But those who break ranks with trans rights should feel heat. It's sad to see this happening in Ohio where there's an actual contest for governor: Top Ohio Democrats retreat on trans issues, leaving some transgender activists feeling abandoned.

I can begin to understand Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur's defection; she's ancient, a good labor stalwart, and yet uniquely continues to hold a district that has been redrawn many times by Republicans to make it more hostile to her. But for the Democratic candidate for Governor, Amy Acton, to adopt a transphobic trope about "boys playing in girls sports" crosses the decency line.

• • •

Meanwhile, it seems that the trans haters are experimenting with the ballot box. In five states --Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, and Washington -- citizen initiative petitions have put anti-trans measures up for a vote this fall. This feels awfully familiar to anyone who lived through the gay marriage wars of the early 2000s. For a long time during that period, fear and ignorant revulsion enforced by initiative succeeded across the country -- until it didn't. Before the Supreme Court got around to upholding gay marriage, very blue states had legalized marriage and then voters in Colorado repealed one of these bans which they had passed a decade earlier -- marking the turning tide.

Erin in the Morning warns of this new danger from the transphobes and other all purpose MAGA zealots.

... For transgender people who have sought refuge in blue states to escape the bans spreading through Republican-controlled legislatures, these measures represent a new and more direct threat: the possibility that their neighbors, not distant lawmakers, will vote to strip their rights.

Erin's description of the Washington state proposition suggests to me that it might well encounter successful opposition. 

... a ballot initiative funded by conservative hedge fund manager Brian Heywood would institute a K-12 sports ban—and require every girl who wants to play to have her sex verified by a doctor first. The measure’s language is explicit: to be eligible, a student must provide a statement from her health care provider “that verifies the student’s biological sex, relying only on one or more of the following: the student’s reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels.” That requirement applies not to transgender students specifically but to every girl in the state who wants to play any sport with a sex-separate classification—from basketball and soccer to cheerleading, bowling, and golf.  ...

Yeah, sure -- subject every girl child to physical sex verification! I can imagine some resistant kids and parents. 

Washington state has a proud history of fighting terrible initiatives. I'm pretty hopeful about the voter's finding their way to turning down this one. 

The Missouri trans-hate initiative is a sneaky one. Republican pols have added the anti-trans stuff to an anti-abortion measure as a sweetener. Considering Missouri voters passed a citizen measure protecting abortion rights a couple of year ago, they've got resistance to overcome. Might transphobia get a new batch of abortion restrictions across the finish line? Read about Missouri trials and tribulations here.

• • •

Something delightful to close this catalogue of horrors; how about a little joy? Here's Dylan Mulvaney, a transwoman who appeared in a beer commercial and has been subjected to unrelenting persecution by MAGA bigots ever since, delighting in being herself: 

What is it that I have that they don’t? Oh my God, freedom. I am free in a way that they will never have the privilege to experience. And they want to use their power to take away my freedom. But what they don’t understand is that my freedom has zero contingency on what they can provide for me, because my freedom is fully dependent on the moment that I acknowledged my real, authentic self, and every day since. And sharing that with the world? It’s just icing on the cake. But they don’t want me to be able to share that, because it would mean young people realizing that if someone like me can be themselves and find success and freedom, then they can find success and freedom for themselves too.

You go, girl! 

If you are looking for a fighter ...

I was born an underdog. 21 surgeries by the age of 12. I had spina bifida caused by my dad's exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam. Was a kid wearing Goodwill handme-downs with the wrong color lunch ticket. I knew nothing would come easy.

But I never doubted my right to the American dream. Sitting in my wheelchair, 9 years old, watching the Olympics, I dreamed of winning gold for my country, too. In 2016, I did just that in with the basketball team in the Paraolympic Games ... [then it he did again four years later.] ...

Josh Turek won his primary last Tuesday to run as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate in Iowa. A state legislator, he's known for campaigning door-to-door in his hilly Council Bluffs district, along with his wheel chair. Watch him in the clip. He won his first contest by 6 votes. Six!! He knows in both body and mind what a tough campaign feels like.

Can an inspiring, hard working Democrat win in Iowa?  It's hard to recall now, but the Senate seat he is contesting was held by Democrat Tom Harkin for 30 years until retirement in 2014. The state followed him with Republican Joni --"we're all are going to die"-- Ernst, but now she's quitting; Turek's run may seem a long-shot, but polls show a good Democratic year in Iowa. The farm economy has taken awful hits from Trump's tariff policies. It seems he might have an opening.

Learn more about Turek's accomplishments here. 

All hands out for democracy!

The Movement Voter Project passes along this graphic which illustrates a blunt truth: if you really want to help a candidate or campaign by donating money, the earlier you give, the more your contribution helps. 

Our money, even tiny sums, does much more for candidates and causes we support when we give in June than when we join the last minute rush in October. 

Oh, they'll keep asking all the way until election day in November. But, once primary elections are completed, this is the time when our cash enables campaigns to turn a trickle of interest into a torrent of support.  

If you are going to give any candidate cash for their campaign, do it now!

And then, when we get to the fall, do more later. Those of us whose small donations may feel like nothing can help campaigns directly with voter contact, whether in person or on phones. 

Democracy is not a spectator sport. 

• • •

Here's an assessment of where US democracy stands since the Supremes did their bit to break the coming elections. From Democratic Party stalwart Simon Rosenberg:

... what the Rs have found is a way to steal more Congressional seats, giving them a brief respite from the unrelenting bad news and terrible polling data; but the overall political landscape has gotten far worse for them in recent weeks. 

Trump’s war has failed, and he and America are far weaker today; his tariffs were declared illegal (again); the new inflation data was much worse than expected, and the chance of inflation returning to a comfortable place before the election has become very, very unlikely; the damage from their health care cuts are starting to be felt far more acutely; their close, vital ally Orban fell, and Magyar has become a new potent global symbol of democracy; like Trump’s war Putin’s war is failing too, further weakening the Putin-Trump-MAGA political project...

Trump’s poll numbers keep dropping, we keep winning elections and overperforming everywhere; and we could very well flip two Supreme Court seats in Georgia on Tuesday, something that will be rightly seen as a powerful rebuke of the corruption of the courts by Trump, Roberts and their allies.

It is also critical that we see the right’s spasm of racist gerrymandering as a sign of weakness, desperation, and fear, not strength and confidence. They are scared of the American people and of us.

As they should be, for these MAGAs have done more harm to the country and to our democracy than perhaps any other political leaders in our history, and the American people are right to be pissed, highly motivated to vote and throw them out of office.

Despite their illicit gaming of our electoral system Democrats are still favored to win the House, perhaps by not the same margins, and the Senate is still very much in play.

 We knew taking power away from Trump and the Rs this year would be hard so what is happening now is nothing new. We must stay resolute and determined, and keep working as hard as we can. 

This remains a year of extraordinary opportunity for us, one where we can expand our maps and win in red places and red states where we have not been regularly competitive in many, many years….

My emphasis. I think this is more than spin, though watching southern racist whites crow about getting rid of the Black members in Congress is rage inducing. It's  on all of us to work harder. We know we can have a better country if we make it.

Friday cat blogging under a Congressional endorsement

 

Janeway peaks out hopefully under the sign of the choice of this household.

 

Here in San Francisco, this feels a dreary electoral season. The California governor contest risks becoming a fiasco. 

 

Then there's the Congressional race to succeed Nancy Pelosi. We're not used to having to make a real choice. Pelosi has been our Congresscritter, through too many wars and too much tumult, since 1987 -- sometimes annoying, usually honest, and sometimes brave.

Now we're choosing a new U.S. Representative. Several choices are repulsive. Scott Weiner is the candidate of the real estate developer establishment. Saikat Chakrabarti is a carpetbagger, a tech bro millionaire who parachuted into town and thinks he can repeat lefty slogans and buy a Congress seat. Connie Chan is the work horse of the bunch. A first generation immigrant, she has toiled in the minutia of city government on the Board of Supervisors since 2021. She's tried to keep this town livable for ordinary people, for those of us for whom San Francisco is home, neither a stage set for a party nor a gold field to be mined. She's a stalwart friend of the unions -- and unions still matter in this town. She shows up -- for picket lines, for marches against ICE and the Trump regime. Yet she also runs a mean Budget committee meeting with fellow legislators. Chan is not perfect, but what candidate is? I differ with her on some issues, including keeping the former Great Highway as a park, not a commuter freeway. But she is by far the best option.

 

In elections, you do your best to elect whoever seems a better choice. In this one, Connie Chan is my choice and a solid one. Janeway seems to agree. so long as she can look out ...

On corruption

Corruption is a descriptor that commentators throw up endlessly in relation to the Trump shit show -- but what do they mean?

As I read around the news, I've realized I'm often confused by how the word is being used.

I know instinctively what corruption means: it's what is going on when a powerful person's favor can be bought, when the recipient of a gift is bribed, is "for sale." Certainly we see plenty of that from the regime, from immigration enforcer Tom Homan's taking a fifty thousand dollar bribe in a paper bag, to the Trump spawn hitting up oil sheiks for billions, to the Orange Toddler demanding tribute from corporations, ostensibly for his ballroom. 

But the word "corruption" carries a lot of connotations less instinctive to me that are even more applicable to the Trump regime. I see the Justice Department prosecution of James Comey for seashells called "corrupt", for example and wonder how that is meant.

So -- on to the dictionary. To my surprise, in an online dictionary, the equation of "corruption" with bribery doesn't emerge until fifth definition. The first few meanings cited are "corrupt" instances of impurity whether in metals or other objects, or of sexual morals, or of integrity and honesty. 

I guess I need to revamp my internal definition. "Corruption" means first and foremost "rot on the inside," which the Donald displays extravagantly and encourages in the people who surround him. 

Democratic politicians denouncing Donald Trump use the label "corruption" -- meaning rotten at the core -- constantly. For example, I got this today in a fund appeal from Gavin Newsom: "the Trump administration is a corruption story."

• 8 or 9 countries he's done major golf course or development deals with.
• Meme coins and stablecoins.
• The Peace Board is about getting a piece for Witkoff and Kushner.
• Donald Trump Jr. with the drone and mineral companies.
• This isn't about bibles, sneakers and watches on the Trump store ...It's the greatest grift we've seen in our lifetime.

Gavin is not my guy, but he knows where GOP rot is and calls it out.

The deepest example I've seen of using the label "corruption" to describe expansively what decent citizens are up against comes from James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for the US Senate in Texas. 

"We are living in an era of corruption. When I say corruption, I don't just mean illegal activity. I mean corruption in the deeper sense -- the rotting of something from the inside. 

Politicians serving billionaire mega donors instead of their constituents. That's political corruption. the top one percent owning more wealth than the entire middle class -- that's economic corruption. For profit social media algorithms sowing division in our communities and turning neighbor against neighbor -- that's social corruption. Our systems are rotting from the inside out. The ties that bind us together are unraveling. 

The most powerful people in this country are profiting off our pain. Profiting off our division. Profiting off our disconnection from one another. This is, at its root, a spiritual crisis. And it will require a spiritual solution." 

Clip by way of Simon Rosenberg. Talarico sees rot and claims to want to help us do better; maybe he will, though his electoral challenge is great.

Waiting game

Our ballots for the California June primary have arrived -- and I'm not going to do a damn thing with mine for the next few weeks. 

It's not my usual practice to delay voting. Usually I deposit the ballot in our nearby drop box right away and sigh with relief, or at least resignation.

But given the chance that our stupid "top two" primary voting system means we could get stuck with two Republicans as the only choices for governor if they come out ahead of the gaggle of Dems running, I have to wait and probably go with the Dem who seems most likely to make the November ballot. Even if that individual is not my top choice of governor. 

The combination of the state's electorate having done away with party primaries for this dumb system and the indiscipline of the Democratic Party in throwing up so many candidates leaves me in this absurd position. Let me offer applause to Betty Yee who had the decency to pull out when her campaign didn't catch fire. Let me denounce Mat Mahan who jumped in at the last minute with a ton of billionaire money, making this mess worse. Forget that guy!

If this were a time when I could vote my true choice, I'd vote for Katie Porter. That woman is enough a policy wonk to be able to be a good governor, after a learning curve. I don't care if she is sometimes abrasive; that's often the rap on very sharp women.

But responsible citizenship may force me to vote for whichever Dem looks able to be one of the top two when we get to June. This silly election system robs me and many Californians of their chance to support their first choice of candidate for governor. That's an improvement?

Popularity discontents

This morning while dipping into the endless stream of punditry, this from Obama's communications guy Dan Pfeiffer caught my eye: 

The best way to protect democracy is to punch fascism in the mouth. ... If there’s one lesson of the Trump era, it’s that moral victories aren’t really victories at all.

This definitely makes me sad. Pfeiffer's boss, Barack Obama, the very election of a Black president (who was rather good at the job), was a moral victory. We need more of those, more demonstrations of the positive potential of the American story.

But Pfeiffer is also certainly correct. Trumpism needs a punch in the kisser. 

Polling guru G. Elliot Morris has been investigating Democratic discontent. His national findings: 

Democrats are not unpopular. They’re unsatisfying.

What all of this suggests is that Democrats do not have the problem many political narratives say they do. The party’s core weakness is not that voters see it as elitist or too extreme; it is that too many voters, including their own, see Democratic politicians as unmoored, passive, and ineffective. Republicans, by contrast, still project the kind of strength and clarity that voters often reward — though their extremism is a huge drag on votes.

More Americans see the GOP as extreme, out of touch, and worthy of intense dislike. That is why Democrats can be underwater on their favorability and still in a stronger electoral position overall.

His research leads him to conclude that Dems currently really do have strong chances going into the 2026 election, despite how little most of us thrill to their candidates.

The California gubernatorial race seems to have all the worst features of this moment. 

Defeated by arithmetic

Los Angeles basketball great Kareem Abdul Jabbar is disgusted by the current California primary election kerfuffle: five quasi-plausible aspirants whose self-serving continuation of egotistical campaigns might give this blue state a MAGA governor. He calls bullshit.

The California Democrats have pulled off a rare feat: they’ve turned a massive home-court advantage into a self-made crisis. In sports, we call this “hero ball.” It’s what happens when a team has all the talent in the world, but five guys are trying to drive to the hoop at the exact same time. The result is usually a turnover, and right now, the Democratic party is handing the ball directly to the opposition.

Seven Democratic candidates are currently splitting the vote. None will drop out, no one will pivot, and two Republicans are watching the whole thing fall apart from a very comfortable lead.

The problem is the “jungle primary.” It’s a rule that sends the top two finishers to the general election, regardless of their jersey color. It works fine when you’re organized, but it becomes a trap the moment you splinter. Strategist Paul Mitchell calculated the odds of an all-Republican November at 27% back in March. In the NBA, if you have a 27% chance of turning the ball over on every possession, you aren’t going to win many championships.

Every Democrat left in this race has convinced themselves they are the “chosen one.” Matt Mahan actually said, “I plan to be the one,” while polling in the low single digits. That’s either extraordinary confidence or a complete break from basic arithmetic. Nobody wants to be the first to head to the bench, so they stay on the floor, and the combined result is that they all lose together.

Then there is Tom Steyer. He’s spent over $130 million on ads and he’s still tied at 14% with a county sheriff. I’ve seen this before, owners who think they can buy a championship by just throwing money at the roster without checking if the players actually fit the system. Steyer spent $345 million on his 2020 presidential run and walked away with zero delegates. He’s currently on track for a repeat performance. The most jarring part? He told a reporter he hasn’t followed Governor Newsom’s record “closely enough to give him a grade.” Imagine walking into a locker room and telling your teammates you haven’t bothered to watch the game film. You’d lose the respect of the room before you even laced up your sneakers.  ...

Let's applaud former state Controller Betty Yee (a controller oversees the state accounting) who can read numbers and did have the decency to get out! How about some more of them taking one for the team -- that is, the people of California.

Kareem looks to Gov. Gavin to lead Dems out of this dead end alley. Gavin has never been much of a team player, but Kareem is probably right that Newsom is the only one in the party who might be able to knock some sense into this field of ambitious infants. We've already got an Orange Toddler in DC;  California should be able to do better.

It's Katie Porter time

Until Eric Swalwell's implosion (good riddance to another abuser of women), I hadn't paid much attention to the California governor's race. Any of the candidates might do...

Now I'm forced to dig in a bit -- and a very little reflection makes me realize what an odd contest this is.

• California has enjoyed extraordinary stability in the governor's office for the last 16 years. That's amazing to recognize. First we elected a used governor who had matured  and already knew the ropes (Jerry Brown 2011-2019), then his ambitious understudy who had cooled his jets watching Brown for eight years as Lieutenant Governor (Gavin Newsom 2019-2026). Love 'em or hate 'em, that experience mattered.

• Disposing of Swalwell helps, but there are still too damn many non-viable Dem also-rans on the June primary ballot. (Any who drop out will still appear at this point.) Sacramento denizens Tony Thurmond and Betty Yee never took flight. Xavier Becerra had a Sacramento background, but had been out of state for four years. Antonio Villaraigosa has been out of sight for longer. The tech bros got a late candidate in San Jose's Matt Mahan, but who is he? Can money elevate any of these non-starters?

• None of the three original contenders (now two) came out of experience with California government. California has a huge government, not easily mastered by any pol; ask Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sacramento is its own world, far removed from the daily lives of people, especially in the southern part of this huge state. But here we are left with Tom Steyer and Katie Porter who've never worked in state government. (Neither had Swalwell.)

• I think we can hope the combination of Trump endorsing one of the GOP cranks and getting rid of one of the genuine Dem contenders will ensure we will have some Democrat to vote for in November. But the Democratic Party circus sure doesn't inspire confidence.

So, out of Steyer and Porter, who am I for? 

To be blunt, Steyer has excellent issue positions, but this is no year to elect a billionaire to anything. It's a year to reject billionaires across the board; we need to stoke the populist backlash to the criminals in the national GOP, not default to a money guy in a Democratic stronghold. Steyer is a very good donor wanting to be a real player -- but that doesn't qualify him for me. 

That means I'm continuing to throw down for Katie Porter. I think she is getting the dismissive treatment from a lot of the punditocracy because she's a sharp woman. Her detractors brush her off with what amounts to "nice fat lady; should stay in her place." She made it abundantly clear in her service in Congress that she understands how money works in the lives of working Americans. That should matter in a governor. Yes, she's apparently abrasive; women who succeed in a power job tend to be tough cookies. Can we, finally, get to where women of ambition no longer have to present a charming public face that soothes egos? 

I'll vote in November for any Democrat who survives this shit show. But it is hard to be impressed with the politics of my state.

They make 'em fierce in Chicago ...

Still too sick to think cogently, but this caught my fancy.

This violates my rule that I don't engage with primaries in other peoples' states. What do I know? This woman seems to have a good chance of winning a Senate seat. Anyway, she's blunt. Here's her Wikipedia page. The primary election is March 17.

St. Paul voters defy risks to send a message

Something remarkable just happened in St. Paul, Minnesota. If you don't know, St. Paul is the twin city to Minneapolis, the other side of the upper Mississippi River. These are two jurisdictions, yet one city.

The miraculous thing that happened was that on last Tuesday, Meg Luger-Nikolai won a special election to the state legislature. Yes, she's a Democrat. Democrats win here.

I have more than once spent short bits of time in the Twin Cities on various organizing jobs. I've seen a little of this very Democratic city; I've even seen what kind of people show up to the political party nominating caucuses. Here's what some of them looked like in 2006; I doubt Luger-Nikolai's new constituents look much different now: a little cold with a lot of opinions.

But, as David Nir of the Downballot -- a site that analyzes local elections -- writes, St. Paul voters came out in the middle of violent federal repression that might have been expected to reduce turnout. Not so.

On Tuesday night, Meg Luger-Nikolai, a labor lawyer and Democrat, won a special election for her state legislature with 95.3% of the vote.

Like I said, that could never really happen, right? ... what matters above all else is where the race took place: St. Paul, Minnesota.

Like its sibling on the western bank of the Mississippi, the state capital of St. Paul has been just as much a victim of another would-be dictator, Donald Trump.

The smaller of the Twin Cities has been under siege by ICE for months, its new mayor, Kaohly Her, told The Guardian last week. And the savagery unleashed in Minneapolis, which has reverberated throughout the country and worldwide, has been felt especially keenly in its closest of sister cities.

It was Her’s former seat in the state House that Luger-Nikolai ran for and won, a supersized victory that helps answer a grim and difficult question on many minds: What would happen if Trump tried to send troops into cities right before Election Day?

It turns out, as election law expert Justin Levitt put it, voters will “crawl over broken glass to punish the street gangs gassing and disappearing children.” Despite Trump’s terror campaign, the regime’s opponents overcame whatever fears they might have had to turn out en masse—even though, thanks to ICE’s penchant for smashing car windows, the broken glass is all too literal. Its supporters, meanwhile, seem to have stayed home.

It was by no means easy. In fact, Democrats had to toss the usual campaign trail playbook.
“This election took place while our neighbors were, and still are, being terrorized by ICE agents during this federal occupation,” Luger-Nikolai said in a statement to The Downballot. 

“It made it impossible to run a normal campaign. People were afraid to open their doors or talk to someone they didn’t know, and we pulled back from those typical strategies out of respect and care for our neighbors.”

“Yet in the conversations we did have, voters raised the same concern: deep disgust with what they are seeing and fear for families, schools, and small businesses in their communities,” she continued. “Families have been destabilized, students pushed into uncertainty, and livelihoods disrupted.”

But, said Luger-Nikolai, the end result was “not only a win at the ballot box, but a powerful affirmation of community resilience in the face of extraordinary circumstances.” Luger-Nikolai’s new district has long been a deep shade of blue, but that backdrop only heightens her achievement.

In the 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris carried it 84-13, offering little room to improve on those numbers. ... Though Harris won by 71 percentage points, Luger-Nikolai won by 91. That 20-point overperformance would be stellar anywhere. In a district like this? Astonishing hardly covers it.

... Recently, my good friend G. Elliott Morris from Strength In Numbers asked me that same question I posed earlier during a livestream: What would happen if Trump deployed troops to intimidate voters just ahead of an election?

It’s a scary thought, made much scarier by ICE’s blithe killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. But as I told Elliott, such an attempt could backfire badly, generating even hotter anger with Trump and firing up voters as never before. 

Tuesday’s experience in the Twin Cities is the most vivid evidence we’ve seen of precisely that sort of ballot box backlash. Just as we’ve seen Minnesotans bravely confront Trump’s goon squad despite the grave dangers, they’re not hesitating to make their feelings known at the polling place, too.

If Trump was expecting ordinary Americans to cower at home while his thugs roam the streets, he’s already been proven wrong. And if he imagines that that same army of thugs might save him from electoral catastrophe, voters in St. Paul likewise just showed how very wrong that calculation may be. 

It's gonna be a long year. Meanwhile, let's push Dems to prove that the risks we may have to take to elect them are worth it.

From the Department of Plain Speaking Politicians

 

A career foreign service officer, Bridget Brink served as US ambassador to Ukraine under Biden. Now she's running for Congress in her home state of Michigan. It seems possible that having been witness up close to a genuinely existential struggle leaves this observer with "no fucks to give" in a political race. 

Over images from the Russian assault on Ukraine, Brink declares: "Appeasing a dictator will never achieve a lasting peace..."

The House district is competitive. There will be other Democratic contestants. I have no idea whether this approach will "work" for Brink, but I find it refreshing.

• • • 

As we watch helplessly while Donald Trump playacts the strongman in the most volatile arena in today's world, it doesn't hurt to be reminded of what war, even a "small" war, looks like.

Public health crisis: too much sh*t

This truth-telling US Senate candidate, Dr. Annie Andrews, is very unlikely to defeat sitting South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham. In addition to this Democrat, he's also being challenged from his right (!) and will no doubt double down on MAGA. And the state's voters may think that is just fine.

But Andrews sure offers a delicious introduction; she knows how to stick it to the mean-spirited essence that is the contemporary Republican brand. Enjoy. 

Musing on a couple of maps

Seven states voted for reproductive freedom -- that's significant. It's particularly good to see Missouri among the places where abortion rights won; at every level, the state is blood red Republican, but women still had their say.

The losses in South Dakota look to have been about strategic/tactical misfires. The Florida loss, where abortion freedom got 57 percent of the vote, came from the state's unusual 60 percent requirement to pass a measure. Look for more GOP states to try to implant that.

But all in all, this was more demonstration that women, of all political inclinations, don't want the state telling us what we may do with our bodies. 

All these initiatives don't make legal abortion safe though. With the Republicans in power across the federal level, it's a sure thing that many of them will come after reproductive health care... To be continued. ...

• • •

Meanwhile, here's a picture of the fact that elections mostly don't end in split verdicts any more. The states in yellow each have one US Senator from each party. The others are solid Blue or Red.

... only Maine, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin will send a split-party delegation of one Democrat and one Republican to the Senate. That is the lowest number since Americans began directly electing senators more than a century ago.

Yet there's still some mixing at the presidential level. Michigan, Georgia and Arizona went for the the Reps this time, but they send two Dem Senators to Washington. 

We know why Maine is a mixed bag -- Susan Collins refuses to go away. She's safe until she retires. In 2026, Dem Senators in Georgia and Michigan will be up for re-election. Can Dems put any other states in play? Possibly North Carolina, but winning back the Senate will be a stretch.