CA GOP: Dead Parrot

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  The  passage of Prop 50 in CA will offset the Texas gerrymander.  The D victory in VA will partly offset GOP gerrymanders elsewhere.

Maya C. Miller at CalMatters:

Proposition 50’s landslide win owes its success in part to the abject failure of a disarrayed No on 50 campaign low on funds and unable to keep up with the Yes side’s deluge of savvy advertising.

McCarthy reportedly told his former Republican congressional colleagues that he would help raise up to $100 million to defeat the measure. But that money never materialized. Instead, his No on 50: Stop the Sacramento Power Grab committee only pulled in $11.6 million, with $1 million of that from McCarthy’s defunct congressional campaign account.

While the House Republicans’ super PAC pitched in $5 million to the Stop the Power Grab committee and $8 million to the state Republican Party, no financial help came from President Donald Trump or the White House donor circle, and the president only engaged at the last minute to call the election “rigged” and discourage Republicans from trusting mail-in voting.

Rob Stutzman, a California Republican political strategist, said he didn’t know what happened to the promised $100 million, but his best guess is the decision came from Trump and the White House to not open the fundraising floodgates. After all, a Republican from Texas, Missouri or North Carolina is just as valuable to building a House majority as a Republican from California — and far less expensive to elect.

Charting World War G

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  The  passage of Prop 50 in CA will offset the Texas gerrymander.  The D victory in VA will partly offset GOP gerrymanders elsewhere.

 Bruce Mehlman:

Big Blue Night

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Elena Schneider, Erin Doherty and Jessica Piper at Politico:

Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill cruised to double-digit victories in Virginia and New Jersey. Two Georgia Democrats flipped seats on the state’s Public Service Commission, the first non-federal statewide wins for a Democrat in nearly two decades. Democrats flipped a pair of Republican-held state Senate seats in Mississippi, cracking the GOP supermajority in a deep-red state. And a successful California ballot measure delivered five additional seats for the party’s House margins ahead of the 2026 midterms, offsetting Texas’ redistricting push.

It was an injection of life into a depleted, depressed Democratic Party that had been cast into the political wilderness by Donald Trump’s decisive victory a year ago. Democrats, locked out of power in Washington, have spent the last year soul-searching and data-digging, as their brand sagged to historic lows.

But they also started to overperform in special elections, hinting that the tide was turning. And on Tuesday, their first big electoral test of the second Trump era, they didn’t just match the wins from eight years ago that had been a harbinger of a blue wave in the 2018 midterms — in several key races, they exceeded them.

Trump Lies about Retribution

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments.

Trump directed the Justice Department to go after his opponents.   Last week, he lied about what he had done.

On October 31, 2025, CBC correspondent Norah O'Donnell spoke with President Donald J. Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, FL, and this is a transcript of that conversation

 PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Wait, wait, wait. And then you tell me about me. Just so you understand, you say I went after these people. These people are bad people. They're dishonest people.

NORAH O'DONNELL: No, I was just asking, is it political retribution--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And Comey's a dirty cop. Look, Comey's known as a dirty cop. I'm not known as a dirty person. They indicted me many times, indicted me. They were after me. I'm lookin' at you now. I'm President of the United States. I went through numerous indictments and two impeachments. And you tell me that I went after people? These people are dishonest.

Look. Biden didn't have a clue. He illegally used, as you know, a machine, the autopen in order to give pardons to people. The only pardon he signed it looks like was his son, Hunter. He signed Hunter's, so, "Hunter, you're free, con-- congratulations, Hunter." But everyone else, I think those pardons are all just, were just a waste of time. Those pardons--

NORAH O'DONNELL: Did you instruct--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: --wait a minute, those pardons--

NORAH O'DONNELL: --the Department of Justice to go after them?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Did I what?

NORAH O'DONNELL: Did you instruct the Department of Justice to go after them?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No, and not in any way, shape or form. No. You don't have to instruct 'em because they were so dirty, they were so crooked, they were so corrupt that the honest people we have, Pam Bondi's doin' a very good job. Kash Patel's doing a very good job.

...

NORAH O'DONNELL: But I was just asking, has this--

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: For that, you should be ashamed.

Trump cited 3 Democrats in his Sept. 20 Truth Social post urging Bondi to prosecute them (that the WSJ reported was supposed to be a DM).

Less than 20 days later, the US attorney Trump installed to replace one who resisted that has indicted 2 of the 3. pic.twitter.com/jhfSgzvQ4u

— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) October 9, 2025

Expecting Violence

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments 

Erin Dohery at Politico:

A majority of Americans, 55 percent, expect political violence to increase, according to a new poll from POLITICO and Public First. That figure underscores just how much the spate of attacks — from the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk earlier this year to the attempts on President Donald Trump’s life in 2024 — have rattled the nation.

It’s a view held by majorities of Americans all across lines like gender, age, party affiliation and level of education, though Democrats and older voters expressed particular concern.

Perhaps most troubling, a significant minority of the population — 24 percent — believes that there are some instances where violence is justified.

There was little partisan divide in that belief, but a strong generational one: Younger Americans were significantly more likely than older ones to say violence can be justified. More than one in three Americans under the age of 45 agreed with that belief.

While political violence can take many forms, more than half of Americans say that it is very or somewhat likely that a political candidate gets assassinated in the next five years, according to the exclusive survey. That view cuts across party lines, with agreement from 51 percent of last year’s Trump voters and 53 percent of Americans who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris.

The Decline of Heritage

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments -- including a tranche of racist and anti-Semitic chats by prominent Young Republicans.  Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, defended Tucker Carlson after his softball interview with Nazi wannabe Nick Fuentes.

 Jonah Goldberg:

Harvard, MIT, Columbia, et al., should be ashamed of their records of policing speech and providing cover for people who incite hatred. But you know what Harvard doesn’t have that Heritage does? A “one voice” policy.

Unlike other think tanks, scholars at Heritage are not permitted to publicly deviate from the party line. It shouldn’t surprise us that Roberts thinks the whole of the right should have a one-voice policy too. His statement is a call for a popular front on the right. He doesn’t think conservatives should actually argue among themselves because that “sows division” and serves the interests of those “bad actors” serving “someone else’s agenda.” For Roberts, Tucker Carlson is the right made flesh, so if his policy is to bring neo-Nazis inside the tent, we should all honor the “one voice” policy and stay focused on attacking the left. “Speaking with one voice is a distinguishing piece of the Heritage Foundation’s strategic advantage. While other organizations may have experts advocating contradictory points of view, Heritage employees are always rowing in the same direction.”

I have real sympathy for the scholars, staffers, and board members of the Heritage Foundation, because I know many of them have problems with this. Some obviously don’t. But some must. And because the Heritage Foundation has a “one voice” policy that rejects the robust debate Roberts claims to cherish, they are left with a dilemma. I am free to disagree with my colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute. I’m expected—rightly—to be professional and respectful in my disagreements, but disagreement—public or private—is actually valued and protected.

Not so at Heritage, which is why so many people left when Heritage changed many of its traditional stances to better align with Donald Trump and MAGA small donors. Now the people still at Heritage are left in a similar bind. Do you stick around as the president of your institution labors to carve out a safe space inside the tent for bigots and anti-American cranks? If you stay, you can’t complain too loudly—literally and figuratively—when outside observers assume you, too, speak with that same, single voice. That is, again literally, the whole point of the “one voice” policy. And Kevin Roberts has put everyone who works for him in a moral and intellectual trap. All because he loves Tucker Carlson so much.

I am one of those people who left Heritage for this reason. And I was Executive Vice President. https://t.co/rdRvQBuUym

— Kim R. Holmes (@kimsmithholmes) November 2, 2025

The National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, a project of @Heritage, has done valuable work. But free speech includes the right to associate—and not to.
I cannot serve under someone who thinks Nazis are worth debating. Here is my resignation letter: pic.twitter.com/ccVHMdlDbO

— Mark Goldfeder (@MarkGoldfeder) November 2, 2025

Antisemitism on the Right

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration  has been full of ominous developments -- including a tranche of racist and anti-Semitic chats by prominent Young Republicans.

Nicholas Riccardi at AP:

As Republicans accuse Democrats of tolerating antisemitism in their party, the GOP on Friday was roiled by its own schism after the leader of a powerful right-wing think tank defended prominent conservative commentator Tucker Carlson for his friendly podcast interview with a far-right activist known for his antisemitic views.

The comments from Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, sparked outrage from some Heritage staffers, senators and conservative activists. But they also reflect increasing skepticism toward Israel and of Jews among some on the right, complicating the GOP’s efforts to cast the Democratic Party as antisemitic.

The outrage began when Roberts on Thursday posted a video in which he denied his group was “distancing itself” from the former Fox News host, one of the most powerful voices on the right, after Carlson’s podcast hosted Nick Fuentes , whose followers see themselves as working to preserve America’s white, Christian identify.

“The American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right,” said Roberts, adding that, while antisemitism is wrong, conservatives do not need to always support Israel.

...

Earlier this month, Vice President JD Vance dismissed criticism of a Telegram chat among members of a New York Young Republicans group that included racist comments and flippant remarks about gas chambers.

He raised eyebrows again this week for his response to an attendee at a Turning Point USA event who asked why the U.S. was spending foreign aid on the “ethnic cleansing in Gaza” and said Judaism, as a religion, “openly supports the prosecution of ours.”

Vance responded without addressing the premise of the question and instead stressed the administration’s “America First” approach.

“Sometimes they have similar interests to the United States and we’re going to work with them in that case. Sometimes they don’t have similar interests to the United States,” Vance said of Israel.