Blue By You
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…
