Blue Wave Surfin' USA
You’d be forgiven for assuming I used AI to write this post. After years of suffering from electile dysfunction, I’m hardly trained in the art of writing positive political stories. But I’m not sure AI could handle this task either. Even after solving for some of the most convoluted equations, it’s not clear that we have enough data center number-crunching computing power online to fully measure the scope of the blue wave that Democrats just surfed from the redwood forest to the Reflecting Pool waters. Even some of the deepest red districts were somehow left tangled up in blue, as the Dems took the House and Senate by margins, and in places, that stunned even the most optimistic prognosticators. For two years, the traditional corporations didn’t stand up for democracy. Big tech didn’t stand up for democracy. The powerful didn’t stand up for democracy. The people stood. Stood up against corruption, cruelty, cowardice and cluelessness, in a complete repudiation of Trumpism; one so sweeping that even the election denier in chief has to accept the results. So to those who stood — from the streets of Minneapolis to courtrooms across America to campaign war rooms to voting lines in towns where the unthinkable was achieved — I mean it when I say: Thank you for your attention to this matter.
+ Knock, Knock. Blue’s there. That’s it. That’s the whole joke. The shift in voting patterns was so dramatic, it’s all you need. NYT (Gift Article): How Americans Voted in 2026. (The exit polls suggested people knew dumb had a b at the end.)
+ “Trump has been forced to face his political mortality. He asked voters to make these midterm elections a referendum on him, to imagine that his name was on the ballot. They listened—and then rejected him. It is a stunning, widespread rebuke.” Jonathan Lemire in The Atlantic (Gift Article): Repudiation. And from Helen Lewis in The Atlantic (Gift Article): A Night of Pure Trumpenfreude. “In the end, not even Jon Husted’s phenomenal ass was enough to save the Republicans. Nor Elon Musk’s $500 million in campaign donations. Nor those helpful visual aids showing the great improvement in the caulking of the Reflecting Pool.” (Trump is still dangerous as hell, but less so, and there’s electoral light at the end of the tunnel.)
+ “The resurgence penetrated states long thought of as bedrocks of conservatism, with Democrats pulling off unexpected upsets in Kansas and South Carolina and clinching Texas, which until Tuesday had been the nation’s most populous conservative state and a symbolic center for the Republican Party.” The 7 States That Flipped and Broke Republican Control of the Senate. And it wasn’t just the House and Senate. Republican Implosion Flips State Control to Unlikely Democrats. Plus, Ten historic firsts: the winning US midterm candidates making waves.
+ As the smoke clears, let the extremely small finger pointing begin. After Midterm Drubbing, Trump and Republicans Start Pointing Fingers. JD Vance has already jumped ship in an effort to distance himself from the stain of Trumpism. But JD, you are the stain. WaPo (Gift Article): Vance blames Republicans’ midterm losses on Iran war, cost of living.
+ After telling voters to “pretend I’m on the ballot” at least 47 times, Trump is trying to pretend this wasn’t about him. “I wasn’t on the ticket, and because I wasn’t on the ticket, we couldn’t get enough people out to vote.” Not even Natalie Harp’s printer believes that at this point. I guess that’s why they call it the blues…
All the Exes in Texas
While Texas is hardly the reddest place to go blue, they felt the dramatic voting shift there in Texas-sized proportions. “Texas’ governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and every other statewide candidate fell, upending the state’s political power structure in one night.” Texas Tribune: Democrats seize power in Texas, ending decades of GOP dominance. This shellacking follows years of particularly cruel and occasionally tragic attacks on women’s health. Let’s hope those policies change as quickly as the political winds they stirred.
+ And if Texas leans blue in 2028, it changes everything.
Elon and Short of It
“Here are a few things $474 million can buy: roughly 77 million Big Macs, about 12,814 Tesla Model 3s, or approximately 2,724 years of a U.S. senator’s average salary. If you’re Elon Musk, it could also buy you one deeply disappointing evening in November.” $500 Million Bought Elon Nothing. (It also basically amounts to nothing for him.)
+ “Elon Musk spent nearly $500 million supporting Republican candidates in the midterm elections, especially in his home state of Texas. After Democrats won sweeping victories in the midterm elections, gaining control of both houses of Congress and capturing other important state races, shares of SpaceX and Tesla, which are both run by Mr. Musk, fell sharply on Wednesday.” Elon lost big. But I wouldn’t worry about him. The money he spent was a rounding error. There’s a bigger story here, though. We’ve learned that money alone, especially when it comes from a largely despised source, doesn’t win elections. Thankfully, neither does gerrymandering.
The Cast and the Couch
“What is your favorite way to spend an evening? … Last year, when more than 2,000 survey participants answered this open-ended query, many of them described a very different kind of scene: a night at home, cozied up with family. When researchers analyzed the long answers, they found that 43 percent of respondents mentioned time with family or a romantic partner—the most common activity, tied with watching a TV show.” (This was exactly how my wife and I spent our evenings, until we watched all of TV. Now we’re in a holding pattern.) The Socializing That’s Replacing Friend Time.
Extra, Extra
Data Crunching: “Combining Hinojosa’s victory with those of other Democrats who won gubernatorial races from Georgia to Ohio and Pennsylvania could leave half of proposed AI data center additions across the US vulnerable to stricter local scrutiny and pushback. All of them made more aggressive data center regulation a central part of their campaigns.” Bloomberg (Gift Article): AI Data Center Boom Set for Upheaval After US Election Rout. And from The Atlantic: Americans Really Don’t Like Data Centers.
+ Down for a Count? There are still many races in play. Democrat Scott Colom leads the Mississippi Senate race by 43 votes against Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith. (Colom having a chance in Mississippi was on exactly no one’s bingo card.) Plus, Navy admiral fired by Hegseth flips Mace’s South Carolina seat. By the time she’s sworn in for her job, he may be out of his.
+ Dow for a Count? The market seems to like the election results. Bigly.
+ Out for Blood: “A cyberattack on several blood banks sought to raise temperatures to extremely high levels but was thwarted before it could do any damage to blood products or samples, French authorities said.” I covered this last week. AI-powered hackers are out to be destructive just to destroy things. Teach a Man to Phish.
+ A Colonel of Truth? “Thanat Tantinam, a colorectal surgeon in Thailand, knows a lot of things from his medical training, like the ins and outs of the human digestive system, or bowel cancer rates. But also: Never eat Kentucky Fried Chicken at work. Since he was a medical student, around a decade ago, the American fast food franchise has been the subject of an odd superstition among Thai doctors, many of whom believe that eating its chicken at work will lead to intolerably busy shifts.” NYT (Gift Article): Why Doctors in Thailand Fear KFC.
Bottom of the News
Let’s take a brief break from politics and spend the five minute respite between political texts about the 2026 election and political texts about the 2028 election with a look at this year’s Winners of the 2026 Good Dog Photo Contest.
