They've got NY-01, my district, as likely Republican even though they don't know who that nasty piece of lying trash Nick LaLota will face. I would be ecstatic to see that change.
NEW YORK - EARLY PRIMARY VOTING STARTS SATURDAY... VOTE BLUE.
Six years ago, the polls all summer long showed that Susan Collins was dead woman walking. Then she somehow pulled a last minute surge to win. I hope history doesn’t repeat itself. The people of Maine seem to really like Platner, so let’s hope she finally falls and we can stop hearing about her bullshit “concerns.”
Ta, Evan. No Democrat or democracy minded Independent voter can afford to be apathetic. VOTE! Your life may or may not depend on it, but the quality of that life surely does. Among other things depending on the outcome of this Senate race are female bodily autonomy, marriage equality, and trans rights, which are HUMAN rights. We're all in a small boat in heavy weather. Join a phone bank, send postcards, offer rides to the polls for your neighbors, talk to your friends, colleagues, and associates, donate if you're able, and keep checking that your registration is current. VOTE!
I will never, ever fall into the trap of sending money to the campaign of a Dem in a statewide TX race, but the U.S. Senate race in my state is a foregone conclusion, so any money I would have spent here goes to Sherrod Brown's campaign, not just because he's a Dem but also because he's a terrific public servant and genuinely good dude.
We're getting murdered by out-of-pocket medical expenses this year, but whatever I can shake loose will go to the Brown campaign.
Of course I'm voting for Sherrod Brown. He seems like a decent enough senator and bloke. And Husted is on the Mango Mussolini train, the twat. I'm also voting for Dr Acton rather than the dogebro.
Democratic US Senate candidate in North Carolina, Roy Cooper, has been in the driver's seat for months. He's sitting on real assets: having actually won several statewide races in North Carolina, a nearly unimpeachable record of public service, a competent style and steady temperament that appeals across the political spectrum, and a mountain of campaign cash.
His opponent is, and this is a highly technical term, a nobody. Not that newcomers and politics can't win. The Republican nominee is literally a non-person. He's tight with that asshole in the White House ™️ and he has had service as a Republican party insider. Why even the big man came down to a North Carolina Republican state convention to apply his greasy finger of endorsement on a person who nearly everyone in the room asked the pertinent question, "who?"
Oh, his name is Michael Whatley. The best that unfortunate fucker can muster are streaming TV ads paid for by one of the Koch astroturf groups that laughably claim that Whatley is a "political outsider." Another Koch TV campaign uses grainy photos and scary music to claim that the guy everybody knows as good old Roy is responsible for raising taxes. Well, everybody in the state knows that tax policy is the exclusive purview of the republican-controlled state legislature and that that legislature has done little but reduce tax rates (except for applying sales tax to more things to ensure that poor people pay more than their fair share).
To the state's community of seasoned political observers, the tax raising charge is a classic of North Carolina political warfare. Republicans love accusing people of tax increases, but when you examine the footnotes in the fine print of their advertising, it's always to the text of a bill that would have cut tax rates that the target of the smear voted against or vetoed. This has been one of the longest and strangest arguments to State politics since the resurrection of the Republicans in the mid-1990s. The charge is that failing to cut taxes is to support a tax increase. Nobody is tricked by that anymore.
The senate seat was always Roy's to lose. Despite their more than a decade in power, the Republican bench is remarkably thin. The only figure of statewide prominence they have is former Charlotte mayor and former Governor Pat McCrory, who's absolutely detested by his own Republican elite. Trump came to the state Republican convention in person precisely to destroy McCrory's political ambitions in McCrory's own face. The former Governor, who was denied reelection by Roy Cooper in the first place, had thought that he was next in line for the Republican nomination for United States Senate.
The only other statewide Republican of note is Thom Tillis, who after years in the United States Senate is finally coming into his own because he had the good sense to announce that he would not seek reelection. And now he's become a politician with pithy quotable comments that make the national news and a new spine that seems to have appeared only after he announced he was leaving politics. North Carolina finally got the morally-led, combative US senator it needed, just in time for him to return to private life. Tillis is largely a waste of meat.
There's really no structural way for North Carolina to return to a predictably Democratic State. And one must remember that when it was, it was a gerrymandered single party conspiracy built around a core of state lawmakers whose origins were in cliques tied to furious opposition to equal rights for Americans regardless of race or color. You know, Southern Democrats. But let's give credit where credit is due, in the governor's mansion. The Democrats have been uniformly progressive since the election of Terry Sanford in 1960. The legislature is another animal entirely.
The mythical progressive Democratic North Carolina did exist, but for a very short time, essentially between the return of Jim hunt to the governor's mansion during the Clinton years and the end of the Mike Easley administration in the aughts.
Truly progressive Democrats, although of the pro-business North Carolina vintage, did run things in that rough decade, but they were carried along by the remaining momentum of democratic gerrymandering, which during those years formed the basis of several adverse state and federal supreme Court rulings regarding redistricting.
So all this to say that Roy Cooper is the odds on favorite to win the US Senate seat. But a big part of that is his singular appeal, and not very much of it is an indicator of any kind of greater political shift in the state.
The war between Democrats and Republicans in North Carolina will continue even after Cooper's victory. The ground will shift, momentum will move to the Democrats, but the iron defense of gerrymandering and capture of the judiciary by the Republicans will carry on the war into a new decade.
NC will need to draw new legislative maps for anything good to happen, and that's going to be a hard grind to get enough Democrats into the state legislature to redistrict. The Republican supermajority is so ridiculous given the vote share of each party.
NC can turn blue once in a while if a Republican Pres and Congress screw up real bad, the R incumbent is not particularly loved, if there's 1 or 2 big issues that wake the fuk up all Dems and Independents, and the Tar Heels have a good year.
Alaskan Republicans are having conniptions over the entry of a Republican candidate for Senate with the same name as incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan - and are charging that the second Sullivan is a "Democratic plant".
Even if he is a plant, do Republicans remember the several times they ran candidates with the same name as the Democratic candidate?
Sometimes people say they vote with their feet. Little Feller does, but his feet are kinda pointy on the ends. When he votes, people reeeeeallly listen.
In positive news, I am moving from NJ to PA in 3 weeks, and will immediately register to vote bc priorities, man...so we have 1 more Dem vote in a purple state. As my late daddy used to say, better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
Here's some amusing news to watch in Alaska. A man in Petersburg, AK, named Dan Sullivan, has entered the race, and the state GOP is trying to disqualify him based on his name. It should turn into an interesting fight as they have nothing to stand on except his name. He's lived in Alaska 45 years, way longer than Ohio Dan Sullivan. https://www.dermotcole.com/reportingfromalaska/2026/6/10/kj95wlxgod4lx3fjx7k50q0eaxrjo3
Let's all get to work and help GOTV if we can! I believe anything we can do to help the cause is worthwhile, and I know I'm continuing my efforts. Hey, it beats gloom and doom!
They've got NY-01, my district, as likely Republican even though they don't know who that nasty piece of lying trash Nick LaLota will face. I would be ecstatic to see that change.
NEW YORK - EARLY PRIMARY VOTING STARTS SATURDAY... VOTE BLUE.
Six years ago, the polls all summer long showed that Susan Collins was dead woman walking. Then she somehow pulled a last minute surge to win. I hope history doesn’t repeat itself. The people of Maine seem to really like Platner, so let’s hope she finally falls and we can stop hearing about her bullshit “concerns.”
I hope so. I don't have any faith in your average voter though.
I want ads saying Paxton is trying to kill college football. Worst thing you can do in Texas, and it's true.
Ta, Evan. No Democrat or democracy minded Independent voter can afford to be apathetic. VOTE! Your life may or may not depend on it, but the quality of that life surely does. Among other things depending on the outcome of this Senate race are female bodily autonomy, marriage equality, and trans rights, which are HUMAN rights. We're all in a small boat in heavy weather. Join a phone bank, send postcards, offer rides to the polls for your neighbors, talk to your friends, colleagues, and associates, donate if you're able, and keep checking that your registration is current. VOTE!
in their rush to rig the midterms the GOP forgot that you can't gerrymander a senate seat
Thank you for covering Sherrod and Ohio, I have been hollering about paying attention to this race and glad it is finally happening.
Giving Sherrod that extra attention (and money!) can make a huge difference.
Ohio could end up with a Dem senator and governor but we need to fight for it.
I am an Ohioan now and I very much want to see my new home shift a bit more blue.
Go Mudhens!
I will never, ever fall into the trap of sending money to the campaign of a Dem in a statewide TX race, but the U.S. Senate race in my state is a foregone conclusion, so any money I would have spent here goes to Sherrod Brown's campaign, not just because he's a Dem but also because he's a terrific public servant and genuinely good dude.
We're getting murdered by out-of-pocket medical expenses this year, but whatever I can shake loose will go to the Brown campaign.
Of course I'm voting for Sherrod Brown. He seems like a decent enough senator and bloke. And Husted is on the Mango Mussolini train, the twat. I'm also voting for Dr Acton rather than the dogebro.
Democratic US Senate candidate in North Carolina, Roy Cooper, has been in the driver's seat for months. He's sitting on real assets: having actually won several statewide races in North Carolina, a nearly unimpeachable record of public service, a competent style and steady temperament that appeals across the political spectrum, and a mountain of campaign cash.
His opponent is, and this is a highly technical term, a nobody. Not that newcomers and politics can't win. The Republican nominee is literally a non-person. He's tight with that asshole in the White House ™️ and he has had service as a Republican party insider. Why even the big man came down to a North Carolina Republican state convention to apply his greasy finger of endorsement on a person who nearly everyone in the room asked the pertinent question, "who?"
Oh, his name is Michael Whatley. The best that unfortunate fucker can muster are streaming TV ads paid for by one of the Koch astroturf groups that laughably claim that Whatley is a "political outsider." Another Koch TV campaign uses grainy photos and scary music to claim that the guy everybody knows as good old Roy is responsible for raising taxes. Well, everybody in the state knows that tax policy is the exclusive purview of the republican-controlled state legislature and that that legislature has done little but reduce tax rates (except for applying sales tax to more things to ensure that poor people pay more than their fair share).
To the state's community of seasoned political observers, the tax raising charge is a classic of North Carolina political warfare. Republicans love accusing people of tax increases, but when you examine the footnotes in the fine print of their advertising, it's always to the text of a bill that would have cut tax rates that the target of the smear voted against or vetoed. This has been one of the longest and strangest arguments to State politics since the resurrection of the Republicans in the mid-1990s. The charge is that failing to cut taxes is to support a tax increase. Nobody is tricked by that anymore.
The senate seat was always Roy's to lose. Despite their more than a decade in power, the Republican bench is remarkably thin. The only figure of statewide prominence they have is former Charlotte mayor and former Governor Pat McCrory, who's absolutely detested by his own Republican elite. Trump came to the state Republican convention in person precisely to destroy McCrory's political ambitions in McCrory's own face. The former Governor, who was denied reelection by Roy Cooper in the first place, had thought that he was next in line for the Republican nomination for United States Senate.
The only other statewide Republican of note is Thom Tillis, who after years in the United States Senate is finally coming into his own because he had the good sense to announce that he would not seek reelection. And now he's become a politician with pithy quotable comments that make the national news and a new spine that seems to have appeared only after he announced he was leaving politics. North Carolina finally got the morally-led, combative US senator it needed, just in time for him to return to private life. Tillis is largely a waste of meat.
There's really no structural way for North Carolina to return to a predictably Democratic State. And one must remember that when it was, it was a gerrymandered single party conspiracy built around a core of state lawmakers whose origins were in cliques tied to furious opposition to equal rights for Americans regardless of race or color. You know, Southern Democrats. But let's give credit where credit is due, in the governor's mansion. The Democrats have been uniformly progressive since the election of Terry Sanford in 1960. The legislature is another animal entirely.
The mythical progressive Democratic North Carolina did exist, but for a very short time, essentially between the return of Jim hunt to the governor's mansion during the Clinton years and the end of the Mike Easley administration in the aughts.
Truly progressive Democrats, although of the pro-business North Carolina vintage, did run things in that rough decade, but they were carried along by the remaining momentum of democratic gerrymandering, which during those years formed the basis of several adverse state and federal supreme Court rulings regarding redistricting.
So all this to say that Roy Cooper is the odds on favorite to win the US Senate seat. But a big part of that is his singular appeal, and not very much of it is an indicator of any kind of greater political shift in the state.
The war between Democrats and Republicans in North Carolina will continue even after Cooper's victory. The ground will shift, momentum will move to the Democrats, but the iron defense of gerrymandering and capture of the judiciary by the Republicans will carry on the war into a new decade.
NC will need to draw new legislative maps for anything good to happen, and that's going to be a hard grind to get enough Democrats into the state legislature to redistrict. The Republican supermajority is so ridiculous given the vote share of each party.
Great analysis, thanks.
I agree with you on that.
NC can turn blue once in a while if a Republican Pres and Congress screw up real bad, the R incumbent is not particularly loved, if there's 1 or 2 big issues that wake the fuk up all Dems and Independents, and the Tar Heels have a good year.
It would have been fun to vote against McCrory again.
Alaskan Republicans are having conniptions over the entry of a Republican candidate for Senate with the same name as incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan - and are charging that the second Sullivan is a "Democratic plant".
Even if he is a plant, do Republicans remember the several times they ran candidates with the same name as the Democratic candidate?
Link: https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2024/06/florida-dem-latest-victim-of-same-name-ballot-confusion-scheme/
Sure, that's Florida, not Alaska, but fuck 'em.
Sometimes people say they vote with their feet. Little Feller does, but his feet are kinda pointy on the ends. When he votes, people reeeeeallly listen.
In positive news, I am moving from NJ to PA in 3 weeks, and will immediately register to vote bc priorities, man...so we have 1 more Dem vote in a purple state. As my late daddy used to say, better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
🙌🏾
Throttle Rethugs with defeat until they're wading through the puddles of their own bitter tears.
Here's some amusing news to watch in Alaska. A man in Petersburg, AK, named Dan Sullivan, has entered the race, and the state GOP is trying to disqualify him based on his name. It should turn into an interesting fight as they have nothing to stand on except his name. He's lived in Alaska 45 years, way longer than Ohio Dan Sullivan. https://www.dermotcole.com/reportingfromalaska/2026/6/10/kj95wlxgod4lx3fjx7k50q0eaxrjo3
Let's all get to work and help GOTV if we can! I believe anything we can do to help the cause is worthwhile, and I know I'm continuing my efforts. Hey, it beats gloom and doom!