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Notes -
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!
I am pretty happy about Mamdani. I have a somewhat radical opinion about democracy that is rarely held in the intelligentsia circles - that if voters want something, let them have it. The other thing that said circles never learn is - don't talk down to the voters. They have no choice but to vote Cuomo - guess what they did have a choice. And it was not voting for Cuomo.
The squeals of the anti Mamdani factions are a balm on the soul. And the ADL worst nightmare seems to be coming true - antisemitic as a label is sliding into indifference. Which is kinda amusing when right now for the first time in probably 60 years in the West there is proper 14 karat antisemitism showing its head.
I do hope that he will be able to hurt NY City enough to push things toward R in 2026 and 2028, but I doubt it - the mayor just doesn't have that many powers to ruin something that fast.
I wasn't really paying attention to the NY election race, but for some of the World Series I was watching the Fox NY stream - and boy oh boy were some of the ads airing totally unhinged.
I'm vaguely aware that Mamdani is a sort of DSA-type, so I think it's fairly safe to bet policy-wise he's a bit out there, but also won't accomplish much. But it's hard not to root for him a little given the kind of frothing, incoherent rage he was generating.
I only saw bits of some ads online, and "unhinged" was a thought that came to my mind as well, reminiscent of the type of things thrown at Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024, which ostensibly helped him get elected in 2/3 of those cases. The past decade or so, I'd been worried that President AOC was going to be the Dems' President Trump, but it looks like Mamdani being that might be more likely. The Republicans might MDS their way into creating enough political will to change the Constitution to allow someone naturalized into US citizenship to become POTUS for the sake of Mamdani.
I’m old enough to remember when people thought the Republicans might do this so that their own guy (Schwarzenegger) could run for president.
President Schwarzenegger would have been so so cool.
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