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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025

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Who else up watching election results? As of the time of this writing Decision Desk has called all of:

  • The Virginia governor race in favor of Abigail Spanberger (D).

  • The Virginia lieutenant governor race in favor of Ghazala Hashmi (D and the first Muslim woman elected to statewide office).

  • The Virginia Attorney General race in favor of Jay Jones (D lmao).

  • The New Jersey governor race in favor of Mickie Sherrill (D).

  • The NYC mayoral race for Zohran Mamdani (D, projecting a majority of the vote too lmao).

  • Both statewide Georgia Public Service Commissioner races for the Democratic candidates.

Polls are still open in California so no word yet there on the redistricting ballot measure. In other Jay Jones news the house delegate who leaked his texts is on track to lose her re-election, as part of dems winning a trifecta in the Virginia government.

The county by county level results I've seen show pretty much all of the above running ahead of Harris and Spanberger even running ahead of Biden in 2020. Is this indicative of what we might see going forward? Dems had previously overperformed in special elections this year but this is the closest to a general until next years actual federal elections. If these trends hold up not a good sign for Republicans!

How does that fit into a wider context? I see 7/7 Democrat wins. Were there just seven meaningful races? Were they expected to go D regardless of the current trends? Anything special about any of those races?

Jay Jones's win -- and lackluster to nonexistent pushback from the 'moderate centrist's -- is pretty radicalizing.

Don't worry. I'm sure all of our stalwart norms enjoyers will pop in to excoriate the Democrats for liking Jones even more after his comments came out.

Sure - I'm a "norms enjoyer". Let's have a look at the texts,

I think Jones clearly wishes death upon Republicans (and with the "breeding little fascists" comment, he also harbours an extreme hatred towards White people) And if Gilbert, or any other Republican were assassinated, he would secretly celebrate their deaths.

I think it's a bad thing that the Democrats elected such a person as a State AG. Even though he said he was sorry, the texts were egregiously hateful, so non-progressives will likely see his future uses of discretion as illegitimate, and stuff like this encourages escalation because it makes people feel unsafe.

The only caveat I'd add is that I'm opposed to the leaking of private messages between friends. But the messages were leaked, and we can see them: an immoral source for the evidence does not make the inference drawn any less valid. EDIT: I misunderstood the (non-existent) nature of his relationship with Coyner.

private messages between friends.

This is a lie. They were not friends, unless you think everyone you work with, even in an adversarial manner, is your "friend". This was sheer gloating directly to a political rival on the other team. He directly said these things, while a Democrat state legislator, to another Republican state legislator, while they were both serving, in the aftermath of a 3rd state legislators funeral.

That's the sort of unhinged psychopath that now has top legal authority over me and my growing family of "little fascist".

Right, I had initially thought this was the case because the articles I found never mentioned a long-standing relationship. But I dismissed this as being too insane... it seems not, and the reason there was no mention was because he went out of his way to harass her.

Yes, the enemy of the people are excellent at telling only the truth, but still leaving you believing a lie.