Maybe America just won’t elect a woman, a black woman, President. I thought we would.
Or maybe a slim majority of Americans really do want what Trump and his Party are promising. Mass deportations of immigrants. Tariffs which will raise prices even higher and ruin the economy, combined with big tax cuts on the wealthy and corporations. Endless “retribution” on those of us considered enemies. Pardons of himself and the Jan 6 rioters. RFK Jr. in charge of public health, Elon Musk in charge of the economy, Tulsi Gabbard in charge of foreign policy.
A Trump supporter talked my head off last night. We shouldn’t take Trump’s “rhetoric” so seriously, he says. The economy was better under Trump, he insists (referring to the 2017-18 afterglow of Obama’s economy.) We persecuted him relentlessly over NOTHING, he bitches. And on and on – we stole the 2020 election, Biden and Kamala stopped drilling for oil, they want our kids to have sex changes, all the lies those people have swallowed.
This should be a grim next two years AT LEAST. If you slept through it, Trump took the Presidency with all the swing states (he may even have finally won the popular vote); the Senate was taken by wealthy self-funded Trump loyalists, guaranteeing another generation of a shitty Supreme Court; House control is still up in the air but slipping away.
Rare good news from Arizona where Ruben Gallegos beat the certifiable Kari Lake – certified to dispute these results till the cows come home. But they’ve got all three branches of government now, and we should all study Project 2025 which is no longer science fiction.
I still predict they’ll pull the 25th Amendment on the clearly unfit President Trump, and let JD Vance lead us into the future. Bad news for Ukraine and Palestinians alike. I don’t recognize my country this week. It has become the Huntington Beach of the World. That’s all for now…
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Original Post Tuesday night
In this live blog we’ll be breathlessly following, like probably most of you but maybe a little quicker (keep checking back, this is a live blog)
1. Do We Still Have a Country?
Will Harris take the electoral majority? How goes Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Georgia? Oh and maybe Texas and Florida? What, Iowa???
6pm – forget Texas and Florida. And in Florida, the pro-choice ballot initiative sadly failed – it needed 60% to pass and only got 57%. Apparently a lotta stoopid Floridians voted for Trump but also for abortion.
8pm – waiting on tenterhooks for Pennsylvania, Michigan & Wisconsin.
9pm – Kamala takes Virginia, Trump takes North Carolina (the first “swing state” called.)
9:49 Trump takes Georgia; all down to the “Blue Wall” states, and AZ/NV
2. Will We Have a Congress?
Mainly we’ll be fixated on Derek Tran’s race against Michelle Steel which we feel personally invested in, but also Dave Min, and Mondaire Jones in New York.
3. Will We Have a Senate?
In which we root for:
- Ohio’s Sherrod Brown
- Montana’s Jon Tester
- Arizona’s Ruben Gallego
- Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey
- Texas’ Colin Allred
- Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin
- and the races in Florida, Nevada & Nebraska.
6pm – early news on the Senate – as expected, weak Democrat Manchin’s seat has been won by Trumpy Republican Jim Justice, BUT – good news here – in Maryland Democrat Alsobrooks has beaten popular Republican governor Larry Hogan.
9pm – Senate not looking good. The great Sherrod defeated. Bob Casey too (soon after saying he supports Trump’s stupid tariffs.) Congrats to Ruben Gallego at least.
This could mean a shitty Supreme Court for a generation.
Latino blue letdown
Let’s see how they like those deportations.
Or how the knuckledraggers will like seeing it not happen.
I have five words for you: “Deputy Press Secretary Gustavo Arellano.”
No entiendo.
Gustavo warned us at the time of the Newsom recall election that Latinos were moving to the right. I give him credit for the prophecy (which, frankly, he helped to make true), and I’m sure that Trump could use a guy like him in the press room.
For who? Ysabel Jurado??
I voted for her because Jimmy did.
But Kamala was not the answer.
Its looking real bad for Harris- she has a lot to overcome in Pennsylvania. Tran is still holding stong after the last OC ballot drop and so is Min!
Glad to see Ryan Dack doing well again! I really hope PYLSD doesnt end up with Blades but she is ahead by a couple hundred votes. Glad Swartz is still holding her lead down south tho!
Ahmad barely seemed like a serious candidate and her numbers show it. Less than 200 votes between Jamarillo and Valencia, I wonder how close it will end up! Lopez might have too much baggage to pull it out this time even though shes leading currently.. Hernandez is still holding it after the most recent vote drop, so we’ll see if he can finish strong.
I wonder if Cunningham’s witch hunt cut into Alyce, its close but unless there’s some mail-in or vdrives out there its gonna be tough. Funny enough it seems like Fink’s controversy didnt hurt him much.
The mission viejo measure was a weird one and I wonder why its so close. DD was destined for failure and it’s gonna be touted nationwide (not for good reasons). Even ABC7 is sensationalizing it saying “santa ana is 100% reported” (not true) to emphasize how badly it was trounced.
Congratulations to Kamala Harris. She ran an excellent campaign. This is mostly on the American voter. As I implied in my “Open Letter to Friends,” so many voters are completely unqualified to vote responsibly. Now, we’re fucked. Hollywood could not have created a worse character than Trump or the group of cretins (the Steves, RFK, Jr., Musk, the Project 2025 bros. et al) to support him. No one would have believed it. I think Judge Merchan better seriously consider imprisonment when he doles out Trump’s sentence in a few weeks. Merrick Garland? Epic FAIL! More later …
Missed replying to this. Thank you, Rev. This is one of the better takes I’ve seen on the whole mess. And yes, she did run a good campaign, given the constrains. But she will be second-guessed to death regardless.
Ton of votes dropping in OC the past hour, I guess they finally processed a lot of the vdrives. Not looking good for Tran, his LA number wont carry him and he lost ground in OC.. Dave Min also lost a LOT of ground with that big vote drop. Even Newman is suffering after processing these in-person votes!
Jamarillo and Valencia are within 100 votes now! Can Kitty hold her off? My guess is Lopez aint gonna hold off Katz, her numbers just tanked. Alyce aint gonna pull it off either. Fink is barely holding on, I wonder if mail-ins will make the difference (although same could be said for some other council races I mentioned).
Huntington Beach is cooked, theyre gonna be spending so much money on litigation for the next few years with an incompetent clerk to boot!
Shoulda drafted Newsom, told you so.
I think I had Harris losing the popular vote by 5 pts?
I wondered aloud if America would elect a black woman. I think the answer is pretty clear.
Sure we would — in a normal election. But we’re simply not ready for a candidate throwing so much sand in the gears of people’s minds. Trump found the weak point.
Ryan, we’ve talked about this before. Newsom was way more vulnerable than Harris, not just because of the French Laundry and the common misperception that he’s some far-out liberal, but because they’d have counterprogrammed her with his screaming wife Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Jr.’s fiancee, who would have been screaming shamelessly about his moral failings and probably sexual quirks into every microphone she could reach — and she seems to have a lot of stamina.
He will never be President while she’s alive and able to kick him.
Edited to add: If you’re saying that this was your prediction ex ante, you should have bet on it. She’s now down by about 4.3MM.
He’ll be your nominee in four years and he’ll beat whoever the GOP puts up by 6pts or more in the popular vote.
All America wants to see is mic drops and pretty people. He’ll slam daily and win.
I gave you analysis and you give me just conclusions and predictions we’ll all have forgotten about in 1,400+ days. You get no credit for that.
Go back and watch video of Guilfoyle until you understand what 2028 would be like. I don’t get your obsession with him.
Hey hey ho ho. That fat ass Ada has got to go.
The DPOC has some soul searching and house cleaning to go through in its immediate future.
You don’t understand Democratic Party establishment politics. That cannot happen without, at a minimum, a coup from within. And there are guardrails to prevent that.
Democratic soul searching was the catch of the day today over on CNN.
Katie Porter even got some run and said DUI Dave the yellow-bellied, race-baiting douchebag was sure to win.
And she may be right – latest results Min is ahead 50.19% to 49.81%.
Not enough to take the House, but get us a LITTLE closer.
Don’t know when it changed, but now the Secretary of State has Min 50.2, Baugh 49.8. DUI beats career-long sleaze!
Good week now I think of it for OC candidates with DUIs!
I’m going back to paying work for a few hours. I just posted a new full rundown of results; if you’re on the SOS site you can do the updating of legislative races that I have not had time to do. Shouldn’t have even spent the hours on this one today, but it sort of had to be done.
Now Ruben Gallego is barely holding onto his lead over Kari Lake.
But it was good to see Eugene Vindman, the Ukranian-American Trump whistleblower, win a Congressional seat in Virginia today!
And UPDATE Saturday: It’s called for Ruben. Let the six years of Kari Lake claiming to be the real Arizona Senator begin!