Category: politics

Ruy Teixiera warns Democrats not to get too sure of political victory after Trump’s screwups

April 9, 2026 • 10:30 am

Most readers here (and I) are keen on getting a Democrat elected as President in 2028, and it would be nice as well if the Democrats took over both houses of Congress this fall.  And, indeed, with Trump’s ratings in the dumpster, that may well happen.  But Ruy Texiera is worried that that is not enough: he thinks the Democrats feel that they don’t have to do more than sit back and let Trump self-destruct.  His thesis in this Substack article (the last one in the five years the site has been going), is that the Democrats are jaded and have failed to learn the lessons of the last few years—lessons about what the public wants. This obtuseness, he says, will eventually come back to haunt them, and may even affect Democratic chances for victory in the next few years.

I recommend that you read this article: the message may sound old, but Teixeira expresses it in detail and writes extremely clearly.  The sub-message for Democrats is this: “Don’t let the ‘progressives’ take over the party!”

If you don’t know Teixeira. here’s from his Wikipedia bio (he seems to be pretty much of a centrist):

Ruy Teixeira born December 15, 1951) is an American political scientist and commentator. He is a senior fellow at the centre-right think tank American Enterprise Institute and co-founder and politics editor of the Substack newsletter The Liberal Patriot, along with John Halpin.

He is known for his work on political demography, particularly for the book The Emerging Democratic Majority (2002), which he co-wrote with John Judis. In it, they argue that the US Democratic Party is demographically destined to become a majority party in the early 21st century, a thesis that he later disavowed, citing the rise of the progressive movement in the United States.

. . . Since 2020, Teixeira has written critically about a leftward shift within the Democratic Party.  He has argued that the progressive movement in the United States is over and finished after the 2024 United States elections, positing that Democrats still do not realise it as of 2025.

Click the screenshot to read for free (it’s the lack of money that has apparently killed the site, but it’s too late to subscribe):

Last year he wrote a related piece about Democratic obtuseness, “Is our Democrats learning?“, which gets its ungrammatical title from a G. W. Bush query, “Is our children learning?”.

On to the present piece; my comments are flush left; Teixeira’s quotes are indented.

The problem 

Posing this question again in early spring 2026, it is my sad duty to inform you that our Democrats continue not to learn. If anything, they are increasingly adamant that such learning is not even necessary. Their mantra now might be, paraphrasing that old joke about the British: “No learning please, we’re Democrats.”

The proximate reasons for this complacency are not hard to discern. Trump and many of his administration’s actions are very unpopular and voters’ views on the economy, their most important issue, are dire. Consistent with these sentiments, Democrats did well in the 2025 elections, continue to clean up in special elections, and appear poised to have a very good election this coming November.

These favorable political winds have made it a great deal easier for Democrats to ignore the need for change. Surely the American people have now woken up, are rejecting Trump and Trumpism once and for all and will never be seduced by right populism again.

. . . Currently, the desire for change seems to be hovering around zero, as more and more Democrats have convinced themselves that their problems have essentially been solved. Here at The Liberal Patriot, we know all about that. Funding for our modest enterprise, always precarious, has now completely dried up. Our view that the party has neither solved its problems nor is even very close to doing so has tanked our appeal among partisan Democratic donors, even reform-oriented ones, who now tend to regard us with suspicion. A little heterodoxy is fine but there’s a limit! Hence: no money.

Teixiera then singles out five areas in which, he argues—convincingly—that Democrats haven’t learned. Immigration and trans rights are the most thorough areas he analyzes (though economics will be more decisive), but of course I can’t quote the whole piece. A bit of each:

The culture problem. This is a big one. The yawning gap between the cultural views of the Democratic Party, dominated by liberal professionals, and those of the median working class voter is screamingly obvious. One approach to this problem would be to actually change some of the Democratic Party positions that are so alienating to those voters.

Nah! That would be way too simple plus would create fights within our coalition plus…we’re on the right side of history aren’t we so why the hell would we change our correct, righteous positions? Democrats have instead chosen a different path, aptly summed up by Lauren Egan:

It didn’t take long after the 2024 election—in which their party lost the White House and the Senate—for Democratic leaders to identify the problem: The party had drifted too far to the left on social and cultural issues.

It also didn’t take them long to come up with a solution: simply to shut up about it…

The working-class and rural voter problem. This brings us to the Democrats’ working-class and rural voter problem, also screamingly obvious from long-term trends and the results of the 2024 election. Of course, Democrats take comfort from the copious evidence that many of these voters are now having second thoughts about their support for Trump and the GOP. This can be seen both in low Trump approval and future Republican voting intentions relative to those voters’ 2024 levels of Trump support.

But there is little evidence that declining enthusiasm for Trump has been matched by increased enthusiasm for the Democrats among these voters. Indeed, a careful recent study by Jared Abbott and Joan C. Williams for the invaluable Center for Working-Class Politics finds that “waverers”—those Trump supporters who now say they are not planning to vote Republican in 2028—are overwhelmingly not supporting the Democrats but rather supporting neither party or generally disengaging from politics.

The trans “rights” problem. Every once in a while, some Democratic politician ventures a mild dissent from the trans activist agenda. Without exception, they are met with a brick wall of intense intra-party opposition which typically results in a hasty retreat by said politician. It is truly a litmus test issue.

This is remarkable. Perhaps nothing would surprise a Democratic time traveler from the 20th century as much as the incorporation of transgender “rights” into the Democrats’ 21st century project. Going far beyond basic civil rights in housing, employment, and marriage, Democrats have uncritically embraced the ideological agenda of trans activists who believe gender identity trumps biological sex, and that therefore, for example, transwomen—trans-identified males—are literally women and must be able to access all women’s spaces and opportunities: sports, changing rooms, bathrooms, jails, crisis centers, institutions, etc. . . .

. . . . In reality, sex is a binary; males cannot become females and females cannot become males. Transwomen are not women. They are males who choose to identify as women and may dress, act, and be medically treated so they resemble their biological sex less. But that does not make them women. It makes them males who choose a different lifestyle.

As noted, the remarkably radical approach of trans activists and gender ideologues has been met with little resistance in the Democratic Party. But as evidence mounts that the medicalization of children is not a benign and life-saving approach, but rather a life-changing treatment with many negative effects, and voters stubbornly refuse to endorse the idea that biological sex is just a technicality and more and more strongly oppose the trans activist agenda, Democrats’ identification with gender ideology has become a massive political liability.

Indeed, for many, many voters the Democrats’ embrace of radical transgender ideology and its associated policy agenda has become the most potent exemplar of Democrats’ lack of connection to the real world of ordinary Americans. For these voters, Democrats have definitely strayed into “who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes” territory. And if they’re not realistic about something as fundamental as human biology, why should they be trusted about anything else?

Of course trans people deserve those “basic civil rights,” but the clash among the Left is about the “ideological agenda of trans activists.”  I am not aware of any Democratic politican being asked outright by the press, “Do you think that trans women are actually women, and should, for example, be able to compete in women’s sports or be confined in women’s jails?” The press is not doing its job here; after all, part of its duty is to make Americans aware of where their politicians stand. But the mainstream media, being pretty “progressive” itself, is loath to even pose these questions.

Here’s another example of where the press has failed to do its job:

The immigration problem. The immigration issue has been a total disaster for the Democrats. They encouraged mass immigration through lax border and interior enforcement and porous asylum systems that effectively legalized illegal immigration and made a mockery of controlled, legal immigration. Over time, the intense unpopularity of these policies has contributed hugely to tanking Democrats’ working-class support. But to this day where are the Democratic politicians who are willing to unapologetically proclaim the following fundamentals of a realistic immigration policy?

There follows a list of ten reasonable propositions about immigration that no Democrat will touch.  Teixeira rightly sees the Democrats as effectly espousing an “open border” policy, with the possible exception of immigrants who have committed crimes in their home country or have done so after illegal entry into America.

But so far what has happened? Clearly Democrats are much happier denouncing ICE (including calling for its abolition) and Trump than they are grappling with the immigration issue and making clear, unambiguous commitments to radical reform. Noah Smith rightly sums up the situation:

I have seen zero evidence that progressives have reckoned with their immigration failures of 2021-23. I have not seen any progressive or prominent Democrat articulate a firm set of principles on the issue of who should be allowed into the country and who should be kicked out.

This was not always the case. Bill Clinton had no problem differentiating between legal and illegal immigration in 1995, and declaring that America had a right to kick out people who come illegally.

I have seen no equivalent expression of principle [JAC: remember, he’s talking about the Democrats] during the second Trump presidency. Every Democrat and progressive thinker can articulate a principled opposition to the brutality and excesses of ICE and to the racism that animates Trump’s immigration policy. But when it comes to the question of whether illegal immigration itself should be punished with deportation, Democrats and progressives alike lapse into an uncomfortable silence.

Every Democratic policy proposal I’ve seen calls to refocus immigration enforcement on those who commit crimes other than crossing the border illegally. But what about those who commit no such crime? If someone who crosses illegally and then lives peacefully and otherwise lawfully in America should be protected from deportation, how is the right-wing charge of “open borders” a false one?

Why can’t a reporter ask Elizabeth Warren or AOC this question: “Do you favor unrestricted immigration into America, and, if not, who would you exempt?”

And a big problem that’s only going to get worse:

The economic program (or lack thereof) problem. Democrats seem to think that the well-documented discontent with the Trump administration’s economic management now makes the economy “their” issue. In a thermostatic, opposition party sense that may be true, but it remains the case that Democrats do not have an advantage over Republicans on handling the economy.

This makes sense since voters viewed the previous Democratic administration quite negatively on economic management. They may not like what Trump has done, but they have not forgotten what Democrats did.

And let’s face it: the current Democratic economic program is quite thin; voters can reasonably question whether Democratic plans for the economy would be much of an improvement over what the previous Democratic administration delivered. Take energy.

. . . Rounding out the hit parade of Democratic economic policy ideas is that old favorite, “tax the rich.” There are now several versions in circulation whose policy defects we will pass over in charitable silence. But if this is what now passes for an innovative Democratic economic policy idea, they are perhaps in more trouble than I thought.

Feel free to agree or disagree below, but I recommend reading the whole article. I’m not only worried about the Democratic prospects in the next two years, but also about whether if Democrats do get in, it will be “progressive” Democrats or disguised progressives like Kamala Harris.

Here are Teixeira’s last words ever on this website:

Looking over this list of problems, one thing that stands out to me is that Democrats have never come to terms with how profoundly mistaken many of their priorities have been. These haven’t just been minor errors in implementing an otherwise fine program. Much of the program was simply wrong and, arguably, not even progressive.

It’s time—past time—for Democrats to discard the conceit that they are on the right side of history and that therefore their positions are, and have been, noble and correct. Until they do so, I do not expect them to develop the dominant majority coalition they seek and vanquish right populism. Indeed, it could be the other way around. That’s a sobering thought.

I’m not as pessimistic as Teixeira, but it’s time for liberals to speak out against illiberalism in their party, and demand that their candidates listen to their constituents.

In a 6-3 vote, Supreme Court tanks Trump tariffs

February 20, 2026 • 4:57 pm

Lordy be, now we have Trump attacking the conservative Supreme Court because it struck down the tariffs he imposed on nearly every country. I am delighted for two reasons. First, because I always said that if anybody is going to stop Trump, it wound have to be the courts, who have now demonstrated some rare unanimity against his nonsense.  It heartens me that the Court, right-wing as it is, can still be rational.  Second, I have also argued (along with all rational economists) that tariffs are never good, and in the end it is the consumers who suffer.

The 3 dissenters in the vote were Kavanaugh, Alito, and Thomas, with the last two predictable.

So now Trump is frothing at the mouth at the court he though he could count on. And it is the Court of Last Resort. Though he swears he will find a way to circumvent this ruling, I do not think he will. Click below to read, or find the article archived here.

At last, some happy political news. An excerpt, and note that the Chief Justice wrote the opinion, as he can reserve that right for himself:

A Supreme Court decision on Friday striking down President Trump’s sweeping global tariffs dealt a major blow to his economic agenda and brought new uncertainty to global markets struggling to adapt to his whipsawing trade policies.

The court, in a 6-3 decision written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., ruled that Mr. Trump had exceeded his authority when he imposed tariffs on nearly every U.S. trading partner last year. The ruling prompted a defiant response from the president: In a news conference at the White House, he vowed to restore tariffs using other authority and excoriated the justices who had ruled against him as “fools and lap dogs.”

The ruling threw into doubt a series of trade deals with countries around the world that the administration struck in recent months, and left unclear whether U.S. companies or consumers would be able to reclaim some of the more than $200 billion in fees the federal government has collected since the start of last year. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh warned in a dissent that any refund process could be a substantial “mess.”

Mr. Trump was the first president to claim that the 1977 emergency statute, which does not mention the word “tariffs,” allowed him to unilaterally impose the duties without congressional approval. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts said that statute did not. The court’s ruling, backed by justices from across the ideological spectrum, was a rare and significant example of the Supreme Court pushing back on Mr. Trump’s agenda.

A small but vocal group of Republicans in Congress joined Democrats in celebrating the court’s ruling, reflecting frustration that their branch of government has ceded its authority over trade matters to the White House. Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican and former longtime party leader, said the ruling left “no room for doubt” that Mr. Trump’s circumventing of Congress was “illegal.”

Trump learned the bad news at a meeting in the White House, when an aide passed him a note as he was answering questions:

The ruling, Mr. Trump said, was a “disgrace.” Speaking to a crowd of governors, cabinet officials and White House aides, the president lashed out at the court but insisted that he had a contingency plan.

He took one more question from Gov. Josh Stein of North Carolina, a Democrat, about hurricane assistance, but then ended the meeting early. He wanted to work on his response to the ruling, he said.

For Mr. Trump, the Supreme Court decision was not just a political setback, but a personal one. He has promoted tariffs for decades, and has claimed that his sweeping levies resuscitated the economy and revived American manufacturing.

“Tariff is my favorite word in the whole dictionary,” he said Thursday at an event in Rome, Ga.

Data released on Thursday showed Mr. Trump’s tariffs were not having the effect he had promised they would. U.S. imports grew last year, and the trade deficit in goods hit a record high. U.S. manufacturers have also cut more than 80,000 jobs in the past year.

From the WSJ:

The administration does have other laws it can rely on to try to re-enact the tariffs, but those laws have procedural constraints and might not allow tariffs as expansive as those struck down by the court.

The emergency-economic law invoked by Trump “was designed to address national security concerns and so was designed for flexibility and speed,” said Everett Eissenstat, deputy director of the National Economic Council in Trump’s first term. “Other statutory authorities are not as flexible.”

The president could also seek explicit authorization from Congress to reimpose the sweeping tariffs, though that route appears politically unlikely.

Where is he gonna go now?

 

Bill Maher is back with New Roolz

January 31, 2026 • 11:30 am

Bill Maher is back, and this week he has a particularly good comedy bit: “New Rule: Eyeroll Activism.” His topic is similar to Ricky Gervais’s scathing remarks at the 2020 Golden Globes in that both men excoriate Hollywood for its virtue signaling, with Maher beginning with the wearing of anti-ICE pins at the Golden Globes. And since Hollywood is identified with the Democratic Party, Maher claims that this virtue-signaling, in which celebrities weigh in on political issues they know little or nothing about—but thinking that their “star power” gives them extra credibility—is said to turn off the average viewer.  Maher argues that such “Golden Globe activism” actually works against liberals.

Here are the two money quotes. First, referring to ideological lapel pins:

“Get out of here with your virtue-signaling body ornaments. They are just crucifixes for liberals, because every time I see one I think, ‘Jesus Christ!'”

and to the signalers:

“I know it’s very important to you that you feel you’re making a difference, so let me assure you that are. You’re making independents vote Republican.”

The longer (23-minute) overtime segment with guests Marjorie Taylor Greene and MS Now host and former congressman Joe Scarborough, is not as funny, but Maher gets into it with Scarborough about attitudes towards America, and also shows a bit of the attitude that gets Maher labeled as an anti-vaxer.  He seems to be pretty ignorant of the science attesting to the safety and efficacy of vaccinations.

This is why Democrats are in trouble

January 15, 2026 • 9:30 am

Here we have a five-minute video that, I think, goes some way towards understanding why the Democrats lost the last Presidential election and have dropped in public approval to the lowest point in several decades. The graph below, which appears in The Liberal Patriot’s post “Why is Democratic Favorability at a 25-year Low?“, shows that both parties have fallen in ratings since 2000,, but as of mid-2025 Democrats have done worse than Republicans. (Note that the latest data might not correspond to this.) But there’s enough unfavorability of “our” party that Democratic strategist David Plouffe argues in today’s NYT that “To win everywhere, Democrats must change everything” (op-ed archived here).

UPDATE: Some more recent data:

Now I’m no political pundit, but I’m not the only person to suggest that the wokeness of the Democratic party as espoused by its more vocal “progressive” wing is hurting the party as a whole. The implicit call for open borders, the explicit claim that biological sex is simply the way one identifies rather than a physical reality (a stand that conflates gender and reality), and the Kendi-an viewpoint criticized in John McWhorter’s book Woke Racism—all of this seems to me to turn off centrist voters or the more sensible Republicans who aren’t firm MAGA-its.

The video below, which I found on YouTube after someone sent me a clip, instantiates the kind of view that alienates reasonable people.  Here we have Dr. Nisha Verma refusing to admit that men cannot get pregnant. She is clearly conflating gender (sex-identification) with biological sex, which involves the ability to produce either large, immobile gametes (females) or small mobile ones (males).  Only biological women can get pregnant, for they have the reproductive apparatus evolved to produce eggs and carry fetuses. (Note that removing that apparatus, as during a hysterectomy, does not suddenly change a female into a male).

This is part of a Senate hearing on the safety of abortion medication.  AcademyHealth gives Dr. Verma’s credentials this way:

Dr. Nisha Verma is a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist and complex family planning subspecialist. She currently serves as Senior Advisor for Reproductive Health Policy & Advocacy at ACOG. She is Adjunct Assistant Professor at Emory University School of Medicine and provides clinical care in Georgia and Maryland. She has testified in front of Congress on the harms of abortion restrictions and currently has a research grant to explore the impact of Georgia’s six-week abortion ban on people with high-risk pregnancies in the state. Dr. Verma has traveled the country training physicians on building evidence-based skills for effective conversations about abortion and has spearheaded ACOG efforts to support physicians and their institutions post-Dobbs.

Take five minutes to hear Verma’s masterpiece of equivocation as Hawley drills into her asking if men can get pregnant. Verma refuses to answer the question with a straightforward “no,” because she doesn’t want to get into trouble by denying that trans-identified women (also known as “trans men”) count as what most people think of as “men”, and thus some “men” can get pregnant.  It’s painful to watch Verma squirm and wriggle, all because she wants to equate “identity” with biological reality. Hawley even gives her an opening, referring not just to “men,” but biological men. If you use the biological construal, then of course “men” cannot get pregnant. But Verna still won’t even answer that unambiguous question, accusing Hawley of trying to be “polarizing”. Perhaps he is, but he is on the right side in this exchange.

This question is a byproduct of Hawley trying to emphasize the dangers of medications designed to produce abortion (“abortifacients” like mifepristone and misoprostol).  These are generally quite safe, which is why they’re widely prescribed. And, as someone who’s pro-choice, I have no problem with these drugs, and probably agree with Verma on this issue.  Hawley is trying, however, to attack her credibility by trying to pin her down on the biological definition of “woman.” She comes off looking ideological rather than “science based.”

Verma would have been much better off had she answered this way:

“If one adheres to the biological definition of ‘woman’ and ‘man,” involving reproductive systems, then no, men cannot get pregnant. Some people believe, however, that biological women who identify as men, called ‘trans men’ or ‘trans-identified women’, also count as ‘men.’ If you have that construal, which is really gender-based and not biology-based, then yes, some people who identify as ‘men’ can get pregnant.”

But she can’t answer that way because even saying this palpable truth is enough to get you deemed a “transphobe” by “progressives”. (I speak here from personal experience.)

I’ll add that self-identification equates to biological reality only when sex is involved. As Rebecca Tuvel found to her dismay, progressives won’t allow you to identify as a member of a race or ethnic group different from your natal group. Nor can you do it with age, or height, or anything else. I am still mysified why equating self-identity with biological reality is possible only when sex is at issue, not age, race, or species.

But I digress. Listen to Verma embarrassing herself below. This is what happens when you equate sex with gender, and I urge fellow scientists not to conflate the terms this way, for the public will not be fooled.

Here are the YouTube notes:

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO): “Can men get pregnant?”

Dr. Nisha Verma: “I’m not really sure what the goal of the question is.”
Hawley: “The goal is just to establish a biological reality. You said just a moment ago that science and evidence should control, not politics. So, let’s test that. Can men get pregnant?”
Dr. Verma: “I take care of people with many identities…I’m also someone here to represent the complex experiences of my patients. I don’t think polarized language or questions serve that goal…
” Hawley: “It is not polarizing to say that there is a scientific difference between men and women…It is not polarizing to say that women are a biological reality and should be treated and protected as such.”

Full Senate hearing here: https://www.c-span.org/event/senate-c…

After I wrote this, I asked Emma Hilton if she’d seen the video and of course she had tweeted about it.  Emma’s a bit more charitable than I, but is clear-eyed about Verma’s moment in the spotlight.  Coincidentally, both of us confected what Verma should have said. I still have no idea if Verma really believes what she says, or is playing to the progressive public.

Trump’s speech last night and Jimmy Kimmel’s response

December 18, 2025 • 9:45 am

Last night Trump did one of his prime-time self-justifications speeches. I skipped it but listened to the 18-minute bit of bombast and braggadocio just now. It’s the usual palaver, extolling his administration as having effected more positive change than any other administration in American history. (He settled eight wars in ten months!!)  There’s a lot of Biden-bashing. I suppose this is a response to his slipping approval ratings.

If you didn’t hear it, you can listen to the one below.

Here’s Jimmy Kimmel’s 16-minute response from the same night, as well as his intro to his show. The video below has garnered over 1.5 million views since it was put up last night.  Here’s the YouTube intro, but it’s no substitute for the clip, which you should watch (h/t Bat).

We had a surprise national address from Donald Trump tonight, former special counsel Jack Smith testified that his team gathered “powerful evidence” to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump broke the law, Trump has been spending his time putting up plaques on the White House insulting and trolling other Presidents, there was a Senate hearing this morning about the little incident with the FCC that got us an unwanted vacation a couple of months back, Ted Cruz took the opportunity to call Jimmy “profoundly unfunny,” the new footage from the soon-to-be released documentary about Melania came out today, the Oscars are now moving to YouTube starting in 2029, and we sent Mark Hamill out to Hollywood Blvd to stand on his star and see who noticed and who did not!

It’s pretty heavy-handed, and not as funny as Bill Maher would have been, but it’s decent satire, with a lot of truth in it. Trump definitely has a loony side: bave a look at the plaques he put under the photos of previous Presidents. So much narcissism!

Kimmel also discusses yesterday’s Senate hearing about the FCC’s temporary ban on Kimmel’s show, with Kimmel lambasting Senator Ted Cruz.  Don’t miss the made-up exchange at 8:55, and then a funny bit at the end with Mark Hamill.

Bill Maher’s New Rules

November 11, 2025 • 10:50 am

Here’s the latest installment of Bill Maher’s comedy-and-politics segment of “Real Time”; this one’s called “New Rule: Democracy’s Last line of Defense.”

The last line of defense is in fact the Supreme Court, which is supposed to be a “check on executive power”.  Maher asserts that while Trump has lost a ton of cases (82 out of 87) in lower federal courts, he’s been victorious in 17 straight cases. And while the Court did in fact rule against Biden repeatedly, they’re bowing before Trump (I’m not sure about which 17 cases Maher’s referring to).  Trump apparently has, to override limitations on his powers, declared nine national emergencies, which you can see here.

The definitive decision, says Maher, will involve Trump’s levying of tariffs, which are taxes on imports; and the imposition of taxes is limited to Congress. Even if tariffs can have good results, the President still does not have the Constitutional right to levy them. Maher analogizes the Constitution to the Bible, something that can, at least for Trump, be ignored if he doesn’t like its stipulations.

The guests are Kenny Chesney, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D), and Bill O’Reilly.

This is a serious bit, lacking the usual humor, but it should quiet down those people who still demonize Maher for having dinner with Trump at the White House and, worse, finding the President to be a genial host. (Remember that Maher went after Trump’s policies during that dinner.)

I am still hoping that the Justices will take seriously their duty to uphold the Constitution, but my confidence is wavering. . . .

 

Dems win big, take NYC mayorship, NJ and VA governorships, and CA passes prop 50, giving a big boost to Newsom

November 5, 2025 • 6:30 am

In what can be seen as a major rebuke to Trump and his policies, the Democrats won big last night. Below are the NYT headlines from this morning; click each to see an archived version:

Every vote that was seen as “close” turned out to be, as you can see from the figures above, not very close.  Democratic Socialist Mamdani became mayor of NYC, beating Cuomo by nine points, Mikie Sherrill won the governorship of New Jersey by 13 points, and Abigail Spanberger became Virginia’s first female governor, beating her Republican opponent by 15 points.  Perhaps the most lopsided win was in California, where Proposition 50, designed to created more Democratic seats in Congress via redistricting, won by nearly 28 points.

For each race I’ve quoted the NYT:

New York City

Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old state lawmaker, was elected New York’s 111th mayor on Tuesday, riding a historic surge of enthusiasm as the nation’s largest city embraced generational and ideological change.

The Associated Press called the race just 35 minutes after polls closed, cementing a stunning upset that took root in June’s Democratic primary. Then and now, Mr. Mamdani handily dispatched former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the scion of a New York dynasty, and the big-money super PACs backing him.

Tuesday’s results underscored how thoroughly Mr. Mamdani has built his own new coalition of support, uniting younger voters with working-class immigrant enclaves in Queens. But he also made gains in working-class Black and Latino communities compared with the primary.

New Jersey

The race was expected to be close. In fact, it was a blowout.

Representative Mikie Sherrill beat Jack Ciattarelli by a wide margin, becoming the second woman to be elected governor of New Jersey.

Ms. Sherrill, a Democrat, made her opposition to President Trump the cornerstone of her campaign against Mr. Ciattarelli, a Republican who crisscrossed the state with fervor, trying to replicate the inroads Mr. Trump made with Latino and Black voters in New Jersey last November.

Mr. Ciattarelli, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump in May, had gambled that his new alliance with a president he once called a charlatan would help him run up the score, even in a left-leaning state.

The risky strategy fell apart for several reasons.

Virginia:

Abigail Spanberger did not just make history on Tuesday as the first woman to be elected governor of Virginia. She won the office by the largest margin of any Democratic candidate in Virginia in decades.

And the way Ms. Spanberger described it in her victory speech, she won, essentially, by being levelheaded.

“Virginia chose pragmatism over partisanship,” she said to the crowd of boisterous Democrats, who seemed to be in a much more partisan mood than the woman they had just elected. “You all chose leadership that will focus relentlessly on what matters most: lowering costs, keeping our community safe and strengthening our economy for every Virginian.”

With more than 95 percent of the vote in, she was beating her Republican opponent, the lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, by a more than 14 -point margin.

Favored from the start, Ms. Spanberger, 46, ran a disciplined campaign focused on jobs and the cost of living. She also emphasized her support for abortion rights and she vowed to roll back an order directing state police to cooperate with the federal government on immigration enforcement. But she rarely veered far from the center. In August, she welcomed the endorsement of the Virginia Police Benevolent Association, the state’s largest police organization.

California:

At a time when Democrats have been searching for a win against President Trump, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California gave them one.

California voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly supported Proposition 50, Mr. Newsom’s measure to create more Democratic congressional seats, countering a similar redistricting effort pushed by Mr. Trump in other states to protect Republican control of the House next year.

The result has sharply lifted Mr. Newsom’s political profile at a moment when he is considering running for president. And it has provided what many Democrats praised as a road map on how to fight for a party that remains adrift one year after Mr. Trump captured the White House.

“It shows that he can get stuff done,” said the chairwoman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, Christale Spain, who hosted Mr. Newsom on a swing through her state in July. She added, “Democrats want somebody to fight back. He’s pushing back and fighting back. That is what is helping him break through.”

The election has now freed Mr. Newsom, whose term as governor ends in January 2027, to turn his attention to elevating his presence on the national stage, presenting himself as a leader who scored a high-profile electoral win for Democrats at a bleak moment for the party.

I am no pundit, but my view is that the two governorship victories, both by centrists, are a sign of what Democrats really must do to win, while Mamdani, whose programs are impractical rather than centrist, and whom I see as somewhat of an antisemite, is (I hope) a one-off.

I’m hoping that last night’s results will be a sign to Trump to stop futzing around and trying to get us into foreign wars, and instead concentrate on the problems of the electorate (and that does not mean more tariffs).  I’m not a huge fan of Newsom, but I’ll take him over Vance—or any Republic candidate—any day.

All in all, it was a good night for the Democrats, particularly for the more centrists ones like me.  The road to victory travels along Sherrill and Spanger Streets, not the Mamdami Highway. As for Newsom, he’s now much more viable as a candidate, and if he runs he should take a lesson from New Jersey and Virginia. Americans will be dubious of a left-wing governor from California, but he’s already been creeping towards the center.

Finally, as for Congress, well, it will remain relatively powerless so long as Trump is President and has veto power, but if the President continues his antics and narcissism, both houses may flip in next year’s midterms. I do think the results last night will force an end to the government shutdown, now the longest in American history.