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Notes -
Election Grab Bag Post
These are just a few unrelated observations about last night's election that don't really fit anywhere else. One of the first things that struck my attention that hasn't gotten much traction is the PA judicial retention elections. All judges here are elected in partisan races to ten-year terms, after which they have to be "retained" by voters to continue serving for another ten years. They can serve an unlimited number of terms, but must retire at 75. When a judge appears on the ballot for retention, it's technically nonpartisan—there's no R or D next to the name, no opposing candidate, just a Yes or No if they should continue serving. If a justice is not retained, the governor appoints a replacement who serves until the next odd-year election, when a full replacement is selected.
The effect of this is that judges are effectively elected to life terms. A judge not being retained is very rare, and has only happened once at the Supreme Court level since the current state constitution went into effect in 1968. In 2005, both houses of the state legislature voted themselves a pay raise in a midnight session just before the term ended. This was a huge deal at the time and the public was outraged. With no other elections that year, voters took out their anger on Justice Russell Nigro, who narrowly lost retention. Another justice won her retention race by only 8 points, when 40 points is the typical margin.
The PA Supreme Court is composed of 5 Democrats and 2 Republicans. The court has, in recent years, issued a number of controversial left-leaning decisions. Three of the Democrats were up for retention this year, and activist groups attempted a "Vote No" campaign. They started running TV ads a few months ago making themselves sound non-partisan, arguing about how it was time for a change and judges should have term limits and we should force an election. This was thin cover for the fact that these were Republicans looking to change the partisan makeup of the court by, if they were successful, possibly winning a couple of those seats in 2027. The fight took on somewhat of a national character, with Trump calling the justices "radicals" and "activists" and urging "NO NO NO". Democrats were forced to counterattack, with Governor Shapiro appearing in ads highlighting their records and commitment to protecting civil rights.
For all the efforts the GOP took to politicize a normally sleepy race, they successfully managed to whittle a 40 point Yes down to a 23 point Yes. This has to go down as one of the most underappreciated lead balloons in political history. This was an unprecedented gambit that took up most of the oxygen it what is usually an uneventful year; no one has ever run commercials about retention before, no one sunk that much money into it, it was just a given that a judge was going to be retained. Even the Nigro thing was more of a grassroots effort that had more to do with anger at the system than partisan politics. The moral of the story here is that you can't get voters fired up about something they don't want to get fired up about, even if there's nothing else interesting happening, especially if you try to trick them into getting fired up about it.
In other PA news, Pine-Richland, a heavily Republican school district in Allegheny County's northern tier, had its school board flip from an 8–1 Republican majority to a 5–4 Democrat majority. It should be noted that, of the 8 Republicans, 5 were raging Moms for Liberty-style MAGA conservatives, and 3 were normal, moderate Republicans. Four of the MAGA members were elected in 2023 in a campaign funded by outside conservative groups with the intention of revising the school's library policy. Which is basically code for removing woke library books. One of the guys had sued the district a few years earlier over their trans bathroom policy. What ensued was an ever-escalating shit show where it took them a year and a half to approve a new English curriculum, culminating in a 7-hour-long board meeting where they denied students the right to speak (over repeated motions) until nearly midnight, the night before midterms. They were regularly confronted by hostile audiences and refused to explain any of their decisions. After a long fight to wrest control over books from the superintendent, they ended up approving all of the LGBT-themed books that had been challenged anyway. Then they decided to ban a book about a black girl's experience during the Tulsa Race Riot from the English curriculum on the grounds that it wasn't difficult enough for ninth graders, necessitating a long retooling of reading assignments (the book is recommended for ages 12 to 17). Residents eventually got fed up with the negative publicity and the last several meetings turned into forums where residents would rip the board for creating a circus. Now they can turn their energies to things like taxes and re-turfing the football field.
While last night's elections weren't particularly meaningful for those not directly affected, they're useful as prodromes for what to expect in the future. While it's expected that the pendulum would shift back toward the left at some point, I doubt many expected that it would happen this quickly or decisively. some in the comments below have brushed these victories off as liberals winning in liberal states, nothing to see here. But I think that attitude is whistling past the graveyard. During Trump's first term, when I would criticize him to a Republican friend and the friend would ask me what he's done that's so bad, I could come up with any number of criticisms, but none that he, as a conservative would care about. And probably none that a moderate with conservative tendencies would care too much about. Democrats could roast him on plenty of things, but the kinds of things they could roast any Republican about and the electorate broadly wouldn't care about because that's what they expect from a Republican. That and personal scandals and gaffes that can easily be reasoned away by anyone inclined to.
He lost in 2020, and didn't take it well. But by the Democrats fumbled the opportunity to right the ship by Joe Biden fucking up Afghanistan, the border, and any number of other things, all the while governing significantly further to the left than one would have suspected based on his campaign. Add in inflation, and despite things not being too bad overall, it was easy to brush away whatever controversy Trump caused four years earlier and look on the pre-COVID past with rose-colored glasses. Was Trump really so bad? All of the terrible things you said would happen never happened. Biden is a disaster. Give the man another chance.
If the Trump of 2025 were similar to the Trump of 2017, things wouldn't have changed. But his time he is doing things that are genuinely unpopular and hard for his base to defend. Tariffs. Aggressive immigration enforcement. Troop deployments to US cities. The George Santos pardon. Mass firings. The Epstein Files. Withholding grant money. Ending healthcare subsidies. This isn't merely bungling like we saw under Biden, but conscious policymaking that could stop at any time. He's making a similar mistake as Biden in treating a narrow victory like a mandate, except he can't even pass a budget let alone achieve any real legislative accomplishments, even with an undivided legislature. At least Biden had the infrastructure bill. He's using the Steve Bannon Flood the Zone with Shit strategy, forgetting that voters don't like being served shit.
Republicans will have to defend every one of those policies next year. Some may be defensible to some people, but Trump's actual policies are broadly unpopular, and there's no unifying ideology to bind them. Maybe there's enough hardcore MAGA sentiment out there that the Republicans can ride through 2026 with minimal damage, but I don't know if I'd be willing to bet on it. Trump certainly isn't, hence the redistricting push. The trouble is that if these policies turn out to be losers it's hard for Republican incumbents to distance themselves from them, even if they want to. I don't see the GOP turning away from Trump en masse, and individual politicians have supplicated to the point that they can't credibly repudiate him. MTG can fight against these things and make nice with the ladies on The View, but she has enough MAGA cachet that it won't hurt her much. Trump himself could, of course, back away from his policies, but that would be an admission of defeat, and Trump will never admit defeat. He might chicken out on the implementation, but what would be involved is a complete repudiation, and that's not going to happen, especially when nothing can affect him personally.
A lot can happen within the next year, so I don't want to make any predictions, but I wouldn't rule out a midterm wipeout. We've heard this before, and it hasn't come to fruition, but all I'm saying is that I wouldn't be surprised if it happened, and I wouldn't be surprised if it happened and took the GOP completely by surprise. By wipeout, I don't mean that the Democrats merely win both houses or win all of the "contested" seats, but that they also pick up a few surprise House seats in presumably safe districts that nobody polls, and a few Senate races become spicier than one would expect. Beyond that I don't want to say anything else, because I don't know what will happen, but the amount of personal fealty Trump demands would make things very difficult for Republicans if the electorate turns against him. What will JD Vance do if it become apparent that his chances of winning the nomination in 2028 are akin to those of Dick Cheney in 2008? Are there any John McCain types in the GOP who have national profile but haven't kissed Trump's ring? I don't know the answers to these questions, but htings will sure be interesting.
My impression of the last 10 months is this:
Trump wins, most radical conservatives and even many centrists and liberals expect a continuation of Trump I, ideologically and politically. Sure, that means a move moderately rightward on immigration and maybe a reduction in support for Ukraine, but broadly not much is going to change, since most presidents don’t change radically in a second term and even though Trump’s is non-continuous, that is the general assumption. The dissident right already has Trump at arms length, not just the groyper factions but also the BAPists and even Heritage AmCon types, in part because of Trump’s disavowal of the hardcore pro-life crowd and his seeming ambivalence toward Project 2025.
Come late Jan and early Feb, the new administration seems to embark on things with a zeal that was completely absent in the first Trump administration. Not only are many cabinet picks radical or unusual, but DOGE starts shutting down things that he never touched previously, and doing so very publicly. The ideological tests come out for some federal employees, people get fired visibly, the press is outside federal buildings as employees wait outside locked doors.
Most importantly of all, as the press tries previous Trump tactics like trying to cancel DOGE staffers for previous racist or sexist tweets or posts, nothing happens. The Vice President even defends the staffers. The Jan 6 protesters get the widest possible pardon, more than many even on the right expected. Rhetoric against mass immigration heats up with the Homan appointment and some high profile raids. Non-groyper dissident rightists start celebrating, even many Trump-ambivalent people come onside, hope accelerates rapidly.
The tariff situation happens, which again is vastly more radical than anything in the first administration. The market crash is reversed when Trump rolls some things back, but that only cements the impression of this administration as fundamentally unstoppable. Democrat protests fade away or are smaller in size than in the first administration.
Trump passes a budget that gives him almost everything he wants, which feels like the high point for him and his support (so far). The liberal and progressive press is full “it’s over” in a way they never were from 2016-2020. The administration openly cancels media figures, and the leaders of major corporations and tech companies who were full prog #dei in term 1 are now scrapping diversity programs and swearing fealty to the president and even saying in interviews, self-servingly of course, that the left went way too far. This includes industries that are notoriously progressive like Hollywood and Big Tech. White shoe law firms are pressured to abandon legal assistance to the left under threat of sanction and no government contracts, which finally feels like the right is playing hardball in a way they haven’t at any time in modern American history.
The exuberance results in some infighting on the right, especially in the wake of the Kirk assassination. Miller and other senior figures are hyperborea-posting on Twitter, DHS is posting 80s synthwave and Halo remixes on top of videos of illegal immigrants being led onto planes in handcuffs, the shitposters are in charge. All the while the economy is deteriorating, graduates (including young white and Hispanic men who did vote for Trump in large numbers) find it much harder to be employed. I agree with a lot of the policies (and am in full alignment with Miller) but there does seem to have been a certain ignorance from the admin about how this is perceived. Many people don’t like illegal immigrants, but there are a surprising number who are too squeamish for certain kinds of imagery the admin was pushing out.
Now, some defeats happen. It’s not disastrous at all. The GOP still polls ahead on many issues, including immigration and crime. I don’t think the groyper war on X over Israel is particularly important for these national results. But the economy is concerning, and its effect is larger. A downturn will make it impossible to hold congress in 2026 even with favorable maps. Big tech that is being AI automating jobs now being ‘on the side of’ the right will make a populist economic message much harder.
One hidden aspect of this is that BigLaw provided a large amount of pro bono legal work to NGOs, so now many NGOs bringing leftist litigation are finding themselves without hours and hours of high-quality free legal work.
Apparently, the chill has gone so far that the ABA itself had trouble finding help to sue the Trump admin. Some lulz to be had there. Also:
I wonder how some of those clients paying $1000/hour for legal services feel about the money going to subsidize "activist nonprofits." I have to suspect that's finally playing a role, too.
Is it just me, or has the vibe of "nonprofit" shifted in the last couple years? A decade back, "I work with a nonprofit" was generally seen as a positive contribution, but it seems today there is a lot more cynicism about how those nonprofits compensate their management (sometimes heavily), and whether their mission is even good (no, the world doesn't need even more puppies).
It has definitely shifted among some people, but I can't tell how widespread the attitude shift is. I work in criminal defense, and I find it impossible to take most non-profits seriously, which puts my poker face to the test at times. If someone like me has decided that a solid 95% of NGOs are useless makework facilities at best and seriously detrimental to society at worst, then I suspect many normies are not fans either.
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