srbal votes 🗳️

Some of my immediate takeaways from the midterms: 1. This wasn’t a blue wave. This wasn’t even a blue tsunami. This was a blue mass extinction event. The Republican coalition which seemingly gave Trump a mandate 2 years ago fell apart everywhere, on all sides. There was a big polling error, but what happened is that polls underestimated Democrats. The generic ballot will seemingly end at D+13. This goes above and beyond what the rosiest Dem forecasts thought could happen. 2. Trumpism has been conclusively smashed at the polls, not even just Trump himself. The Rust Belt didn’t have any sympathy for tariffs, hawkish voters had no sympathy for the Iran War, and non-college educated whites had no sympathy for the attacks on colleges and mass ICE raids. Republicans might’ve lost young men for a generation. All types of Republicans across the country faced the wrath of voters. The GOP has been completely transformed into MAGA’s fashion, but that will be a detriment for voters. Turns out, Trump only broke the laws of political gravity when he had the benefit of the doubt regarding a (relatively) peaceful world and a good economy. 3. Zohran Mamdani is the most influential Dem politician of the decade already. His message, though very much altered for different states and different candidates, became the Democratic Party’s midterm platform. The idea that Mamdani would be some fringe figure in the Dem coalition, as proffered by some pundits last year, has been thoroughly disproven. He will be only next to Obama and Bernie as the models for all Dem politicians, particularly on the left, going forward 4. Israel took a drubbing at the polls. The Iran War created the high gas prices and inflation that drew the floor out from underneath the GOP coalition. We already know how Dem voters view Israel as being the worst thing on Earth. But now Republicans (even JD Vance as we’ve seen today) are also mad at Israel for pushing them into a war that’s remarkably unpopular, and that America will ultimately lose. The GOP will continue to be institutionally pro-Israel, due to donors and other factors, but GOP politicians and particularly pollsters now view Israel as a liability, both personally and politically. 5. The effect on the 2028 Dem primary sweepstakes is as such: Josh Shapiro’s case is over (why would Dems care about nominating an electorally skillful moderate after THIS kind of anti-GOP drubbing?), Gavin Newsom might now just become irrelevant, and the stock of such characters as Mark Kelly, Ro Khanna, Andy Beshear, Elissa Slotkin, Cory Booker, Jared Polis, Gretchen Whitmer, and Pete Buttigieg has gone down (Chris Murphy’s stock has also gone down too, for other reasons). Kamala Harris’ stock has gone up, as Dems now begin to feel that Kamala’s loss has been properly avenged and she can now start planning her reconquest. James Talarico is ascendant (Beto had a serious 2020 campaign just by *barely losing* a Texas senate seat, and a Dem Texas Governor removes the issue of losing his senate seat to the GOP), and AOC had her best night possible. Primary voters will now care less about electability, and care more about totally repudiating Trumpism and policy. Those are the lanes progressives do best in. AOC, even she prefers to become a Senator, is now positioned to be the Barry Goldwater or even Ronald Reagan of the Dem left. But the best night goes to Jon Ossoff. 18 point victory in a swing state. He is now the frontrunner, no ifs or buts. (1/2)