Democratic party

The dust is still settling around the congressional midterms, but it looks like Republicans will retake the House by a very slim margin and Democrats will have an ever-so-slight lead in the Senate. But with stubbornly moderate Democrats such as Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, Republicans can be fairly confident the upper chamber will not try to advance the most extreme parts of President Biden’s agenda, even if they do increase their majority by one seat in the December runoff in Georgia. And of course, because of the flip in the House, those uber-progressive proposals will never make it up to the Senate. The governor’s houses in Maryland and Massachusetts may have flipped blue, but Republicans knew they were lucky to be holding them in the first place.

Is he a stone cold loser? The Wall Street Journal editorial page, not to mention its owner Rupert Murdoch, certainly appear to think so. The verdict on Thursday was crushing: “He has now flopped in 2018, 2020, 2021 and 2022.” The “he” in question is, of course, Donald J. Trump, or, as President Joe Biden likes to put it, the former guy. Except that he isn’t really. So far, the Trump balloon has failed to pop, at least in the GOP, propelled ever upwards by fresh injections of helium, or, more prosaically, cash from an obedient base. The conundrum that Trump presents has long been that the only thing worse than him serving as leader of the GOP might be him not heading it.

If all indications are correct, Election Day will see a massive red wave, sweeping Republicans into power in the House, Senate, governorships, and statehouses across the country. The mood will be grim for Democrats — the night is dark and the knives are long — but there is hope right around the corner in the form of a tool they have long had at the ready: the return of Covid. Understand, there will be no actual return of Covid in anything resembling its initial offering. It is unlikely to kill more people than it has in recent months. But what will change is Democratic acceptance of the idea that Covid is over, or that it can no longer be used as justification for emergency steps and massive spending packages.

Atlanta, Georgia “Ms. Abrams, public opinion polls in our state show support for the right to abortion, Medicaid expansion and banning assault weapons. You are on the side of public opinion on each of these issues, yet you are behind in almost every poll. Why?” Conservatives snorted at veteran Georgia newsman Chuck Williams when, in his decidedly Appalachian tones, he asked that as his opening question during Stacey Abrams’s first debate with Brian Kemp. Many on Twitter considered it the ultimate softball: why don’t voters like you as much as us journalists, Ms. Abrams? You’re so great! I didn’t see it that way — Williams’s question could be read as a damning indictment of Abrams’s fortunes in the years since she first stood for the Georgia governorship.

San Francisco mayor London Breed held a press conference on October 5 concerning her city’s most deadly problem: the open air drug market in the Tenderloin neighborhood. The speakers included the police chief and two newly appointed allies of the mayor: the district attorney, Brooke Jenkins, and the supervisor for the district adjacent to the Tenderloin, Matt Dorsey. The message from each of them was clear: the police and the district attorney would no longer ignore open drug dealing and public drug use, which has become endemic in downtown San Francisco. “Let’s be clear: selling drugs is not legal,” the mayor said. “Using drugs out in the open is completely unacceptable.” The city could be forgiven for needing the reminder.

In New Hampshire, the race between Democratic senator Maggie Hassan and retired Army Brigadier General Donald Bolduc is heating up. Politico revealed on Friday that the GOP super PAC Sentinel Action Fund, encouraged by Bolduc’s recent surge in the polls, confirmed a $1 million ad buy for the Republican. Do Democrats still think Bolduc’s defeat is a sure thing? During the primaries, Democrat-aligned groups sure seemed to. They found the idea of a Hassan-Bolduc matchup so appealing that they actually boosted the pro-Trump Bolduc by donating to his campaign. Why did they like him so much more than his opponent Chuck Morse? Well, Bolduc is an "election denier.

College Park, Georgia Former president Barack Obama came down to Georgia stump for Senator Raphael Warnock and gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. But more significantly, the 44th president of the United States dedicated a good chunk of his stage time on Friday to mocking Warnock’s opponent Herschel Walker. In a move reminiscent of his 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner speech — which supposedly provoked Donald Trump to run for the presidency in 2016 — Obama performed a stand-up bit to demonstrate that Walker’s proficiency as a Heisman Trophy-winning football star did not equip him to serve in the US Senate. “Let’s do a thought experiment,” Obama said. “Let’s say you were at the airport, and you see Mr. Walker, and you say, ‘hey!

Beto O’Rourke’s campaign for Texas governor is, to put it mildly, not going so well. The latest polls have him trailing Greg Abbott by seven or eight percentage points. The Democratic candidate, and enthusiastic furry, could really use a shot in the arm from his old pal and political ally Beyoncé. But Cockburn is skeptical about how likely that is. When Robert Francis O’Rourke, aka Beto, ran to be one of Texas’s senators in 2018, high-profile Texan and Democrat Beyoncé Knowles-Carter waited until the day of the midterm elections to endorse him, after many had already voted. Donning a “Beto For Senate” hat in an Instagram post, the singer encouraged her fans to run along to the polling station.

You know the old expression “too clever by half?” It’s not a compliment. And though I am loathe to describe Democratic strategists as “clever,” I grudgingly acknowledge that they exhibit a certain low cunning that, on occasion, can be effective. We saw it on full display early on in the 2016 presidential election campaign when clever Dems were falling all over themselves to support the ridiculous candidate Donald Trump. He could never win, of course, but the ploy was good for a laugh and would hurt whatever serious candidates were running against Hillary. To almost everyone’s surprise, things didn’t work out quite as expected that time. But old habits are hard to break.