Today is the midterm midterm election day, when judges in Pennsylvania, governors in New Jersey and Virginia, mayor in New York City and a referendum in California, are on the ballot. What, if anything, will it mean?
Usually, elections that don’t involve federal positions don’t garner much interest and attention, but today’s election is being touted as a referendum on Donald Trump’s first year in office. The New Jersey gubernatorial election pits a third timer Trump sycophant against a lackluster Democrat whose foremost claim to the office is that she flew helicopters in the Navy. The Virginia Democrat is tainted by the attorney general candidate’s text messages about killing the children of his opponent, which she failed to condemn, while the Republican opponent is just plain wacky.
In California, the governor put a referendum on the ballot to obtain voter approval of a gerrymandering plan for the purpose of countering Texas’ manipulation of congressional districts to give Trump five more House seats at the expense of its citizens’ will.
In New York City, the charismatic and perpetually smiling 34-year-old Democratic Socialist with grand schemes of remaking the City into a socialist paradise runs against the tainted former governor and a Republican so goofy that even Trump won’t endorse him. Will Mamdani, or the Democrats greatest gift to the Republicans imaginable, matter on a national stage or just fizzle as a New York City peculiarity running against candidates even worse than him?
At the end of the day, there will be winners and there will be losers. Will it matter? Will anything that happens today have any impact on what happens a year from today when the midterms roll around? Or will it all be forgotten, subsumed in the hundreds, if not thousands, of Trumpian shenanigans, lies, orders, murders, beatings and the Democrats’ failure to offer any serious alternative?
*Tuesday talk rules apply.
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Robert Heinlein.
“If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for … but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong.”
We have finally reached the point in our society where no one who is of sound mind wants to subject themselves, their family, or their friends and colleagues to the horror that is called elective public service. The only people willing to go thru this process have delusions of grandeur, a craving for power, serious legal, moral, and financial problems, or a messiah complex.
It is not a good situation.
Great choice!
New York City’s gonna be … interesting.
Between today and a year from now, Trumpworld will rotate a thousand times. It’s impossible to know where we’ll be then, but one thing is for sure. Trump will violate rules, norms, laws and the constitution over and over. Do enough people care now? Will they care then? Will the Democrats get their heads out of their asses long enough to be a credible alternative. Who the hell knows with these people?
Being Tuesday I hope this passes. I also don’t know how to embed links so please make fun of me…..
But The Dead Kennedy’s seem to be appropriate today.
I think the fiscal and governance realities will force Mamdami to moderate in his positions. I dont know how that translates, if at all, to the midterms. Perhaps his prior statements will still be used against him regardless of the positions he actually ends up taking.
You and your elitist sensibilities don’t like it, but Mamdani and his safety net policies, a far cry from socialism I might add, are an alternative to Trumpism from the left. There’s a crossover element of anti-establishment in both, and a brazenness in announcing “take from those bloated with obscene wealth derived from the labor of others and give to the laborers and poor among us” which rings similar as well. A different flavor of the same populism, maybe. Sorry you’re a plain vanilla kind of guy.
Being that I like history, Huey Long deserves a mention as a potential precursor to the type of bottom-up, American as apple pie populism which might arise. And look! All the doors are wide open for a new Kingfish to seize control and throw open the coffers unilaterally. There’s now precedent for recruiting a private army too, how swell. Imagine the possibilities.
Or or or, even more horrible, Trump pivots to head these foolish utopians off at the pass by writing Trumpchecks, again, this time putatively from his nonexistent government savings and our bizarro world has him doing exactly what idiotic centrists feared from their left, that being entirely gratuitous government spending. And for what return? He’ll do whatever is popular, and free money is the most popular thing there is. What are you gonna do? Say no?
Let’s not forget that Huey Long was assassinated.
Huey Louis is under-appreciated. When asked why he dodged the draft for World War I, his reply was “I wasn’t mad at anyone.”
Smart Man, that Huey.
“In the Age of Augustus, elections for magistrates continued, but their nature was fundamentally altered as Augustus established an autocratic system while maintaining the facade of the Roman Republic. The competitive elections and popular assemblies of the Roman Republic lost their real power and became a mere rubber stamp for the emperor’s choices.”
I suspect that Our Agusutus, (Hail Caesar!), may have hand selected these candidates for greater purposes. Very deep chess moves.
Perhaps in 2029 following what will probably prove to be a disasterous four years under Mamdani, Our Augustus will deign to run for Mayor of New York. Get the self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist (some say Communist) established as Mayor in 2025, and defeat him in 2029. (Our Ausgustus can still function as President behind the scenes anyway).
The original Augustus, amateur that he was, never went this deep. Fools laugh. Remember what Augustus Trump said in his 60 Minutes interview Sunday night, “I’m better looking than [Mamdani].”
In America, especially New York City, looks are everything.
Was it Mark Twain? Was it Will Rogers?
“Don’t vote for politicians it only encourages them”….