There is a long tweet under JD's name - it could be AI generated, JD is not above that - but it, and analysis dismiss the words "corrupt' and "corruption" as if irrelevant to any analysis of the Trump midterm loss. There's stuff online. Try search = jarad phone hack dutch mbs mbt matthew cole .

The JD screed - absent corruption as a theme - rings as if skirting around truth, with limited truth. Go figure. It is JD after all, so total truth cannot really be expected. Nobody eating pets in the thing, but, still, JD.  

Here is the tweet. 

• 

  JD Vance

  @JDVance

  One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up. So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us." Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026. There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true. But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone. Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were: 1) End the war 2) Focus on cost of living/inflation 3) Put America First 4) Change our relationship to Israel Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.) In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you. The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night. If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest. But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there. I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.

  9:38 AM · Nov 4, 2026·

  62.4M

  Views

One comment -

Jared Washington

@JaredFisher1112

21h

You didn’t lose because of the war. You lost because you’re part of a regime that’s been acting like an authoritarian group of fascists for the past two years. And America fucking hates it. Fuck you.

There always will be critics. St Cloud, MN blogger Gary Gross opines. With a final paragraph some might disagree with.

AJ opines in mixed reporting of JD tweeting. Crabgrass word searching all three - none use the word "corruption" as if Trump's being the biggest thief since Jesse James did not matter. That is a point to debate.

Do the Jarad phone hack search as headlined and find out about slush funds, Arab top dogs set up for Jarad in Trump 45, and how Qatar bought the Kushners out of 666. Sordid? You tell me.

Moving on - https://minnesotareformer.com/2026/11/04/senator-elect-peggy-flanagan-calls-for-new-leadership-of-senate-democrats/ titled: Senator-elect Peggy Flanagan calls for new leadership of Senate Democrats --- By Max Nesterak - November 4, 2026 2:17 pm

That would be a progressive looking at a six-year term with the next two years in focus. In part:

All those new voices need a new leader, Flanagan said.

“I am tremendously grateful for Chuck Schumer’s leadership … and I think it is time for new leadership,” Flanagan said, repeating a campaign promise to support an alternative.

She did not say who she thinks should replace Schumer, the soon-to-be 76-year-old senator from New York who has led the Democratic caucus in the upper chamber for the past decade and first arrived in Congress in 1981.

Yes, gratitude given a nod, but get the fuck out of the way, dude. More -

All are eager to push the party to use their new majorities in Congress to advance sweeping economic proposals: Medicare for All, universal childcare, raising the federal minimum wage.

Flanagan also said there’s opportunity to pass popular legislation with Republican support, which will generally be necessary to overcome the Senate filibuster, such as forcing an end to the war in Iran, banning prior authorization in health insurance, guaranteeing farmers the right to repair their equipment.

“We are going to pass some pretty bold legislation. If the president decides that he wants to screw over the American people and veto those bills, I guess that’s his choice,” Flanagan said.

Grade school recess had lines drawn with a toe, and with a dare to step over the line. Next, a key paragraph about media - 

Polls showed Flanagan in a tight race with Michele Tafoya, a retired sports broadcaster whom Republicans saw as their best chance in years of winning statewide. Unofficial results from the secretary of state, however, show her winning by 10 percentage points, nearly matching the margin of victory of moderate Gov.-elect Amy Klobuchar’s victory.

The pattern of wanting a horse race when a blowout seems coming is to sell media, and not to be truthful. It was enough to have Crabgrass worried that a potato like Michelle Tafoya had a chance, which was never, thankfully, true. Sideline Susie, all that, Tafoya was a mess of a candidate, with a name people knew and no ideas to go with it. More, getting to Trump - 

That will fuel Flanagan’s argument that Democrats must show they’re not just “nibbling around the edges” in order to continue building momentum to retake the White House in 2028.

She said Democrats also have a mandate to investigate the Trump family’s sprawling business empire that’s grown markedly since Trump took office in 2025, including crypto, international real estate and mineral deals, defense contracts and presidential pardons for campaign contributors.

And, she said, Democrats must hold the Trump administration accountable for its violent immigration crackdown that left two American citizens dead in Minneapolis.

“There’s a long list of things that this administration needs to answer for,” Flanagan said. “In Minnesota, Renee Good’s family and Alex Pretti’s family deserve justice.”

That arguably says we will grab him by the balls and squeeze hard for the whole of his lame duck two years, relentlessly - and the fucker deserves every moment of grief we'll give him. Which is true.

Trump has much failed hubris and chutzpah to answer for - with the NO KINGS events being well themed. Keep up the pressure. Do not ease up. Give him what is deserved, ditto, his grubbing greedy offspring and others.

Why JD could not name corruption as a factor likely has many explanations, but mainly JD is a wuss. One distant from a ton of truth. Turn them each inside out and upside down, as much as each deserves.

Progressives are the only future the Democratic Party has, and if the corporate establishment Dems deny and fight that, it will be error of an enormous magnitude. Yes deep pocket Dem donors might rebel, but  fuck them, they have gotten away with crass class warfare for decades and it is time they be forced to stop and pay up a fair share for all to prosper. 

The Republicans have a short list future per the St Cloud blogging - Rubio and DeSantis. Crabgrass sees that as a narrow wish list, not a reality. Some other Republican sophists will show up to lie. 

End of story. Let it be.

 

 

El Sayed

Guardian - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/nov/03/abdul-el-sayed-mike-rogers-michigan-senate  --- in part:

He credited a movement built over a year and a half of campaigning in Michigan’s biggest cities and smallest towns, and said voters gave him strength in his lowest moments.

His opponent and detractors, including Donald Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance, led a largely Islamophobic campaign against him, often pointing to his name and faith, including the president alleging he was a “jihadist” and that he would need to walk through a metal detector to get into the Senate.

El-Sayed said his denigrators chose to be divisive rather than address the cost of gas and groceries because they didn’t have an answer to the problems he said they created.

Abdul El-Sayed and his wife, Sarah Jukaku, on stage after his victory in the US midterm elections. Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters

“They want an America that is too small for some of us,” El-Sayed said. “We know that America is big enough for all of us.”

Addressing Vance, he noted: “JD, habibi, there is this delicious irony in the fact that you’re constitutionally obligated to swear me in January.”

Rogers, a former congressman who was endorsed by Trump and ran as his close ally, previously lost the 2024 Senate race to Elissa Slotkin by roughly 0.3 percentage points.

This time he ran against El-Sayed, a former Wayne county health director who upset the Democratic establishment favourite Haley Stevens in the primary earlier this year. He advocated for the Medicare for All proposal for universal healthcare and called for an end to US military aid for Israel.

Schumer needs very much to be held to task over his hand-picked Michigan Senate candidate, Stevems, and her uncertain endorsement BS. Schumer can really pick losers, and that needs to be said and then reemphasized. He's part of the problem, not part of any solution. 

 

 

Ken Martin

 https://www.npr.org/2026/11/04/nx-s1-6022528/democrats-midterm-election-results-senate-house-congress

Democrats won control of the Senate after flipping Republican-held seats in some of the nation's most conservative states, a dramatic reversal from 2024 that gives the party new power to challenge President Trump.

The party also captured the House, key governorships and state legislatures, strengthening Democrats' position for the final two years of Trump's presidency.

Ken Martin, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told Morning Edition the results were the party's best in a century.

"This was a change election, and Americans sent a very clear message that they're looking for leaders who are fighting for them, not just the wealthy and well-connected," Martin said.

He said that voters gave Democrats a mandate to address affordability, health care and what he called a "corrupt system" benefiting wealthy Americans.

But how Democrats will turn those promises into policy remains an open question, with Trump still holding veto power.

"I think the reality is we have great leverage here," Martin said, pointing to Democrats' control of Congress and state governments.

He acknowledged that opposition to Trump helped drive the results but argued that voters also embraced Democrats' message.

"Our candidates across the board ran for something, not against something," he said. "They gave people a sense of a positive vision of what Democrats would do while we're in power."

Listen to the full interview by clicking the blue button above. 

Supplemental to that the DNC issued a public statement after the election results were in, the statement beginning -

Tonight, as votes continue to be counted, Democrats have already swept races across the country, from Florida to Pennsylvania, Ohio to South Carolina, North Carolina to Georgia and Texas. Democrats won these tough races because we ran strong candidates focused on what matters most to Americans — affordability and kitchen table issues. The cost of living and corruption were the top issues for voters, which is why Democrats dominated across the map.

For the entire statement: https://democrats.org/statement-from-dnc-chair-ken-martin-on-midterm-election-results/ 

 

Flanagan's decisive victory was an affirmation that the people really want what progressives are running on, and the establishment corporate Dems must take notice and loosen up on their hate for any progressive agenda..

https://emptywheel.net/2026/10/22/open-thread-someones-not-living-in-fascist-reality-with-us/ is a thread criticizing James Carville's standing too deep in the hole corporate-establishment Dems have dug themselves. They - Carville types from the 1990's need to grow up.

That said as a preliminary matter, the focus of the post is represented by:  https://www.twincities.com/2026/11/04/lt-gov-peggy-flanagan-wins-minnesotas-us-senate-seat/ -- stating in part:

Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan has won the race for Tina Smith’s U.S. Senate seat, according to unofficial results late Tuesday, Nov. 3.

Democrat Flanagan, 47, of St. Louis Park, had 54% of the vote to Republican Michele Tafoya’s 43%, with 2,749,612 votes counted by 12:12 a.m. Wednesday.

Tafoya, 61, of Edina, conceded the race to Flanagan late Tuesday night.

In her victory speech late Tuesday night, Flanagan said Minnesota “just beat Donald Trump again” and that “America did too.”

“You said no more war, no more healthcare cuts,” she said. “No more taking food away from children and seniors. No more selling this country off to the highest bidder. And you said no more masked goons shooting our neighbors and terrorizing our communities.”

In her concession speech, Tafoya said the “voters spoke, and so we’re going to respect the voters.” She said, “Now we’ve got to move on.”

“One thing that we did do in this race, folks, is we made it very clear that there should be consequences when you deceive the people of a state, when you rob the people of the state, when you do not serve the people of the state,” she said. “We didn’t see those consequences the way that we wanted to tonight, but we’re going to continue to send that message.”

Tafoya asked her supporters to hold their heads up high with her and pointed to the blue wave seen around the nation Tuesday.

“We fought like hell. We did the best that we could do in the circumstances, and as has been seen all over the country tonight, the circumstances were tough,” Tafoya said.

It was a grueling campaign that led them both to election night.

Flanagan centered her campaign on affordability and pushing back against President Donald Trump, saying Tafoya would be a “rubber stamp” on Trump and attempting to tie her opponent to his policies.

Flanagan was kinder to Tafoya than Crabgrass has been, Tafoya looking here to be a simple opportunist.

No real issues position, jumping on the "fraud" bandwagon in a crass way. No future because there was no substance. Opinions can differ.

UPDATE: Readers, and the nation as a whole need to also remember, Flanagan decisively won her primary against a more vanilla establishment type, Angie Craig. Craig was not a bad choice. Just not the best choice. Again, establishemt Dems need to grow into an understanding that if you stand for giving regular people a fair shake, you can win. Money in politics is not all it's about. Schumer can show an upward sloping learning curve. Gillibrand too. Amy as gov - will she be the same as Amy as Senator, or can we hope her learning curve is also upward sloping to where people get a good feeling enough so that she will have earned a second term as gov.

_____________FURTHER UPDATE_____________

Crabgrass is taking the liberty of republishing here the post Dan Burns wrote at left.mn 

Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan won the US Senate race in Minnesota by about nine and a half percent. This was after much of Minnesota’s corporate media claimed the race was tight, though they did back off on that somewhat during the last week or two. Yeah, we were really supposed to believe, for a while there, that a massive upset could be brewing. And to believe that on behalf of a slick, smug, privileged phony like Michele Tafoya.

The election in Minnesota was never primarily about wildly overblown, racist dog-whistle rants about fraud, however much Republicans and their media allies, especially the StarTribune and MPR, tried to make it that. It was mostly about entirely, absolutely, unequivocally deserved loathing of and contempt for both the policies and the person of Donald J. Trump, and of the MAGA GOP, among a solid majority of Minnesota voters as in much of the rest of the country.

And there’s no reason to believe that that wasn’t the case all along. We were subjected to the same kind of crap before the primary election, which Flanagan ended up winning quite handily over Rep. Angie Craig.

And, maybe, hopefully, we’re finally seeing the long-awaited shift in the electorate really start to manifest, as the most important part of the GOP base goes to their eternal rewards in increasing numbers. Note how the 2022 midterm was supposed to be a huge Republican blowout according to much of corporate media, and instead was in some ways the best midterm for a sitting president’s party since 1934. A lot of people realize they made a big mistake in 2024, and I for one am pretty confident that many won’t make such a mistake again. They’re finding out, all too often in hard, personal ways, that voting against wingnuts in every election does matter. And that far too much of our traditional media really is just absolutely full of shit these days.

This rant is not about the actual boots on the ground in corporate media in this state. When I was a civil engineer, and before that learning to be one out in the field, I regularly played a role in wetlands destruction and urban sprawl. So I have no business criticizing others for doing their jobs that they need. The problems with corporate media go a lot deeper than that. They always have.

And there you have it. Burns appears to have a similar Tafoya opinion as held here. Moreover, his focus upon the corporate media here wanting to suggest a horse race when there was none is a sound lesson to Crabgrass readers in Minnesota, the nation, and internationally.. There is a media problem here.

 

Elon did not get election results he tried to buy.

https://electrek.co/2026/11/04/what-does-a-blue-texas-sweep-mean-for-tesla-spacex-elon-musk/ 

The US midterm election was yesterday, and ended up in a stunning result, with Democrats taking control of both houses of Congress by wide margins, and flipping seats that had been considered safe around the nation.

Perhaps most notably, many of these seats were in Texas – a republican stronghold which saw a clean sweep, with the Democrats winning every statewide contest. Republicans maintained some state legislative power and won the State Senate, but as of this writing Democrats are currently ahead in the count for the State House.

Despite huge spending, Democrats won almost everything

The highest profile contest was for Texas Senate, where James Talarico won by a 55-43 margin. This race set the record for the most expensive Senate race in the nation’s history, with over half a billion dollars spent on this one seat alone.

About half of the total money spent on the race came courtesy of republican PACs, a method by which companies and the ultra-wealthy can launder money into bribes to buy elections. And most of the PAC money in the race came from one man, Elon Musk, who spent $212 million to support the enormously unpopular and scandal-ridden outgoing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton

That’s nearly half of the $474 million dollars that Musk put into this election cycle, suggesting that he saw this race of particular importance. And yet, his candidate lost miserably.

But the rout did not stop with Paxton. Paxton’s old job as AG is now going to be filled by Democrat Nathan Johnson. And Greg Abbott, the outgoing Governor, was defeated by Gina Hinojosa. Even the less high-profile races for court seats were swept by Democrats – three seats on the 15th Court of Appeals and four seats on the Texas Supreme Court.

And those results, even beyond the big-spending Senate race, could all matter quite a lot to Elon Musk.

Republicans rolled out the red carpet for Musk in Texas

In 2021, Musk announced that Tesla would move its headquarters to Texas, after Musk got in a spat with California government because he didn’t want to follow COVID restrictions for worker safety.

But the move wasn’t only about COVID restrictions – it was also about Musk’s vision of having more control over the business environment. And, by making allies with Ken Paxton and Greg Abbott, he has had quite a bit of control in Texas.

The two have rolled out the red carpet for Musk, giving him carte blanche in his adopted state.

Autonomous vehicle regulations have been changed, allowing driverless Robotaxis to operate where other states with more advanced regulations and transparency requirements would not. And many other laws benefitting Tesla and SpaceX have been passed. Paxton even sued Sam Altman, Musk’s chief AI rival, just weeks ago.

Perhaps more notably for Musk personally, Texas has promised to allow Musk to get away with more financial shenanigans than states with more established business regulations might.

With Tesla both headquartered and incorporated in Texas, it can now use special “business courts” instituted by Abbott at Musk’s own urging. If cases from these courts are appealed, they go to the 15th Court of Appeals, a court created by Abbott and filled with 3 hand-picked judges, intended to reduce the chance that a Democratic district court (say, one in Austin, whereTesla is headquartered) gets final say on any issue.

Several specific seats overseeing Musk went blue

But, the 15th Court of Appeals just had elections last night – and its three seats were flipped to Democratic control.

The 15th Court of Appeals also, just last week, stopped an inquiry into thousands of pages of emails between Abbott and Musk. The emails had been released, but are heavily redacted, with Abbott referring to the redacted portions as having “intimate” information in them.

And who made that request for inquiry into the emails? Gina Hinojosa, a name you might recognize, as she is the next Governor of Texas, as of last night.

As of yet, those emails have not all been released, so we don’t actually know exactly how much influence Musk was able to exercise over the state’s outgoing Governor. But given the changes we know about, the money Musk spent in Texas, and the thousands of pages of emails that have been redacted, it seems likely that there is something more to be found in them.

What does this mean for Musk’s companies?

So what does this all mean for Tesla, our main area of coverage here at Electrek?

On a Texas state level, probably not all that much. There’s no reason that Democrats in the state would interfere with Tesla’s production of electric vehicles – in fact, they’d probably encourage it more than republicans do. Talarico has stated that he supports Tesla – it is a large employer in the state, after all.

There is more to the item but the excerpt is already long. The paragraph that the Dems will not kill the goose laying gold eggs is a suitable stopping point. Musk's politics are ideological, from his Boer South African background. He will do okay. He also in 2028 will spend a ton of money. It's an addiction with him. 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/elon-musks-millions-fail-deliver-134322954.html 

This item is carry of a BBC original on Musk and the midterm outcomes. There is more online. 

Yahoo also posted https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/elon-musk-responds-record-474-133616980.html  --- which in part states:

In Wednesday's early morning hours, shares of SpaceX and Tesla both tumbled around 6 percent in premarket trading.

Musk took to X to joke: "Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn't work this time" along with a shrug emoji. He also posted, "Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now." According to Gizmodo, he also deleted a post that encouraged his followers to "vote red today."

Not every candidate backed by Musk lost, however. According to Forbes, 18 Musk-backed candidates in lower races won their seats.

His space laser comment is a reference to a debunked conspiracy theory that circulated after Donald Trump's 2024 election victory accusing Musk of having used his Starlink satellite network to somehow manipulate vote totals in Trump's favor. The data centers refer to SpaceX's controversial plan to put AI computer centers into orbit (and, presumably, away from states controlled by Democratic politicians — Hinojosa supports a moratorium on building AI data centers in Texas).

 

 

 

TruthOut, Oct 27, 2026 -- headlined, Report: Trump Admin Backing Far Right Viktor Orbán for UN Secretary-General -- The former Hungarian prime minister is “the dream MAGA-conservative candidate,” one US official said.

The item's lead image:

Rub-a-dub-dub

https://truthout.org/articles/report-trump-admin-backing-far-right-viktor-orban-for-un-secretary-general/ 

 

Fucking Tom Emmer and Harry Niska ruined what was basically a good election.

 Locally, dunderheads voted. Not that Crabgrass is a sore loser.

The Ramsey City Council vote also sucked. But we got both houses of Congress as a referendum against war mongering stupidity, tariffs and outrageous economic conditions. That matters.

The Orange Menace is now for certain a lame duck.