I noticed that we have a thread for the 2028 elections now.
We still have to survive the 2026 midterms, so…
The optimist in me thinks “in 20 months, the balance of power will shift and we’ll start to re-establish checks on the federal branch, even if it tries to ignore those checks and at least 5/9ths of COTUS decides to green light the federal branch to do whatever it wants under some bizarre originalist theory.”
The pessimist in me thinks “there’s 20 months for Democrats to fuck this up, and they’re well on the way to giving voters a reason to vote for more Republicans.”
1 Like
Kat Abugazaleh has announced that she is trying to primary Jan Schakowsky in IL-9. Both are very progressive, but Schakowsky is 80 and has been in the seat since before Abugazaleh (26) was born. Abugazaleh used to cover Fox News for Media Matters before Musk sued MM into oblivion and understands modern media. She is also hot, half Palestinian, and will get a disproportionate amount of media attention for both should she win.
The old folks in IL are stepping down. Schakowsky has announced that she will not run for reelection to the house at age 80, and Dick Durbin, also 80, is also stepping aside.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/23/jan-schakowsky-retirement-announcement-00306181
I’m a lot closer to 80 than you are. Trust me, neither one runs for anything. Not even the bathroom.
I don’t feel like digging back and finding a 2024 election thread, so will put it here as it has a big impact on the 2026 elections: a federal judge has ruled that the Democrat who won the NC supreme court race (and thus put Democrats in the majority) did indeed win. I assume yet more appeals to follow.
all appeals do (if nothing else) shorten the time the majority exists. until the next election when the republican appointed election committee replaces the prior model that was appointed by the gov (who is D).
I was wrong — the issue is whether the NC court will be 5-2 Republican or 6-1. Judge in this case was a Trump nominee, so it’s presumably a pretty clear ruling.
I suspect there isn’t enough time for this to have an impact for 2026…if it could even pass…but it looks like MTG has an idea on how to give the GOP an advantage…
“Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame! And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth,” he wrote on Twitter.
Perhaps more accurately, he doesn’t like that electric cars aren’t getting a piece of the boondoggle.
I think that actually might be an expression of a genuine opinion rather than a temper tantrum over tax credits.
Elmo’s expressed some fairly libertarian sentiments before he dalliance with Team Trump. Google’s AI, when I was checking my recollection, suggested that he could be described as a “techno libertarian”.
There’s also been the theory that Tesla could actually stand to gain from the ending of EV credits, because its demand, economies of scale, etc. were far enough along that it didn’t need subsidized buyers to be profitable…but that assessment was before we started referring to Tesla’s products as Swasticars and Wankpanzers.
If he didn’t expect them to do exactly this kind of budget bill he’s even stupider than I thought. It’s been their constant project for his entire lifetime.
Aaaaand we’re back!
TSLA apparently fell 6% pre-market.
Republicans lost their supermajority in IA senate because they lost a special election. The district had gone for Trump by 11 points, Democratic candidate won 55-45.
1 Like
I just looked at the municipal election results for my town in solid blue Connecticut. On the ballot yesterday were town council (D’s ran 5 candidates, R’s ran 5 candidates, voters cast votes for 5), school board (same counts and patters), and two other town offices (2 candidates/votes instead of 5).
(Late edit: Town council and school board have 9 seats. Our municipal elections end up being votes to see which one of the 10 candidates lose.)
When I moved to town a little over 20 years ago, votes tended to be roughly 55/45 D/R.
During Trump 1.0 and Biden days, that shifted to be more like 60/40 or 65/35 D/R.
Yesterday’s election: roughly 80/20 D/R, without any burning local issues (other than lingering grumbling over how recent revaluation shifted property tax burden to residential properties) or polarizing personalities that would cause someone to vote for reasons other than party preference.
I hope that some political stats geek gathers up some of these local election results to see whether anything might be inferred about political attitudes among actual voters.
(Sadly, the municipal election results mean that my property tax bill, which is up 33% from a couple of years ago, will probably go higher…)
Prop 50 in CA passed by a near 2-1 margin. Largely seen as gerrymandering counter to a similar move made by the Texas government, though without direct vote by the people.
I suspect we will see similar moves by both red and blue legislatures in the early part of next year before primaries.
Pelosi’s retiring at the end of the current term.