An exercise in "Be careful what you ask for, depending upon who you are." Voters were asked, and voters did.

 

not that great an idea, other than for the blue wave -- it goes to show

 A reckoning is due.

 

IN MINNESOTA, Strib, owned by rich former Republican legislator Glen Taylor, who showed his wisdom by underpricing the Timberwolves in selling them, that paper of his, online, has two items that ring really false with Minnesota voters actually not as dumb as the items imply.

Two, in the order read -

A blue wave and a quiet campaign tanked Tafoya’s Senate bid

National Republican money never arrived in force, and critics say the former broadcaster spent too little time connecting with Minnesota voters.

By Walker Orenstein -- The Minnesota Star Tribune -- November 6, 2026

* * *

Demuth and Tafoya stress political independence. These suburban voters still see Trump.

Some right-leaning voters aren’t sure there’s enough distance between the increasingly unpopular president and the Republican candidates at the top of the ticket in Minnesota.

By Nathaniel Minor, Betsy Lecy, Josie Albertson-Grove andSarah Ritter

The Minnesota Star Tribune -- November 2, 2026

The simple fact is neither was that bright, having no charisma or talent, and unpopular because both surely looked as if so feckless as to be Trump rubberstamps if given the chance. Those voters seeing them that way were likely spot on. "Likely" being ueed because they said they would not be rubberstamps, but nobody believed that. What appeared most likely was what voters expressed.

 Crabgrass hence is projecting a degree of true perceptiveness and wisdom to the blue vote.

The Republicans will have to do better, but their primaries suggested they've little to work with.

That they in Congressional districts got Stauber and Emmer into the House shows District weakness of a majority of District voter minds, not strength. Opinions may differ.

 

Try search = hegseth impeachment

Throwing Hegseth under the bus will not sanitize a thing. There is necessary and sufficient.

Ridding us of Hegseth is necessary. It is not sufficient. 

UPDATE: The same is true for Schumer. 

 

Now that the midterm elections are over, the federal goverenment is going to have to govern. That means with Trump, with a war hanging fire, and with tariff mayhem.

 EmptyWheel has an item suggesting Hakim Jeffries will be okay, and Congress will upgrade a few notches. Let us hope for the best. Link -

https://emptywheel.net/2026/11/05/on-congress/ 

Strange times will sort out to more level ground over the next month. 

But it cannot go back to business as usual. There has to be movement to giving people what the want.

Which is what they deserve. Trump messed everything up big time but that and the voting allow for progress to happen. Change for the better. But there is a mess to resolve.

Hope for the best nationwide and worldwide. It is a unique chance. But it is not a time to forgive.

We are past that. It is a time to improve while demanding accountability for all the harm. Trump has to face justice. It is long overdue. 

 

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/