Your generous
donations help keep
this site running.
Visa/MC/PayPal accepted.
So the longest federal government shutdown in American history ended last weekend, not with a bang but a whimper. Seven Democrat senators and one Independent voted with the Republicans to reopen the government without securing the goal that Democrats had been fighting for. This has outraged many other Democrats, since it was seen as "pulling defeat out of the jaws of victory," once again.
Are Republicans actually shooting themselves in the foot with their newfound love of gerrymandering? That question is beginning to pop up more and more frequently, although at this point nobody knows the answer to it. But the possibility does exist that what the Republicans are now engaged in might turn out to be "dummymandering" rather than gerrymandering. I have to admit, this was a new political term for me to learn, so allow me to explain it.
The federal government is about to reopen once again. But as everyone gets back to work again, I have to wonder how much data has been lost and how much will be reconstructed. Specifically, how big a gap will there be in the official data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics? One month? Two months? Three months? Hopefully the gap will be as small as possible, but it seems like we're going to miss at least one month of data on the jobs market and unemployment, with the possibility of a gap in the official inflation numbers as well.
Donald Trump has apparently woken up and realized he is getting beaten badly on a big political issue -- and one that he leaned on heavily during his last presidential campaign. So he's been complaining about Democrats hitting him on affordability since last week's election (where Republicans got spanked in pretty much every race they ran in). Trump insists that all prices are way, way down and Democrats are just lying about affordability being a big issue.
Eight Senate Democrats are leading America on a spelunking tour. They desperately point out all the wonderful natural features of the cavern to everyone, as they lead us all lower and lower beneath the ground. However, to the rest of their Democratic colleagues (and millions of Democratic voters), no natural formation or mineral oddity can distract from seeing the truth of the situation as just a handful of weak "moderates" completely caving.
This week, a major vibe shift took place in American politics. For the first time in an entire year, Democrats got up off the mat. Or maybe: they now have the wind at their backs. There are plenty of other metaphors to choose from, but the reality is that Democrats emerged stronger from the first major election since Donald Trump started his second term, and both Trump and his Republicans emerged weaker.
Democrats had a very good night last night. That's even an understatement -- in actual fact, Democrats had a blowout night last night, as they romped home in just about every election everywhere. One year from Donald Trump's electoral victory, the Democratic Party came back strong. What it all means for the future is anyone's guess, but for the first time in an entire year, it's better to be a Democrat than a Republican, looking towards that future.
Tonight, political wonks will all be waiting to see the results of the off-off-year election come rolling in. There will be big races and small to keep track of, and much will be made of any demographic shifts in voting patterns. But there is also another thing Democrats will be waiting to hear, which is the political future of (as she is called now) Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. The rumor mill is expecting an announcement from Pelosi on whether she will be running for re-election next year to her House seat, or whether she will be retiring from politics and passing the torch to someone younger to take over.
New York City is in the midst of holding a sort of hybrid election to choose its new mayor. The Democratic primary used "ranked-choice voting" (R.C.V.), while the general election tomorrow will be the traditional "whichever candidate gets the most votes wins" sort of contest. I saw an article today in Salon which contrasted how these two contests played out, which pointed out how the Democratic primary was a less-vicious affair, with candidates not only vying to be the first selection on people's ballots but also the "number two" choice for voters backing other candidates. It posited that the general election would have been a much more civil affair if R.C.V. had been in place, since the same sort of effect might have changed the way the candidates campaigned. The article was probably right to some degree or another, but it missed a rather large point -- one that might be pertinent for Republican voters: if the N.Y.C. mayoral general election had indeed been held under R.C.V. rules, then frontrunner Zohran Mamdani might have wound up losing.
Next Tuesday is Election Day. No matter what happens in this off-off-year election, this will produce a flurry of speculation about the current state of the political landscape in America, and what it will all mean for the election that is going to happen next year, when all of the House and one-third of the Senate will be on the ballot. As usual, though, drawing sweeping conclusions this far out is likely to prove laughably mistaken, since a year's time in a normal political atmosphere is still an eternity, and an entire year in the Trump era feels like an even longer time than that.