Governor-Elect Gina Hinojosa and Senator-Elect James Talarico toast to their historic victories in Texas Tuesday night
There’s not much more to say that hasn’t already been said about Democrats’ incredible, overwhelming and historic electoral Bluenami this past week and, after the bitter disappointment of 2024 and the ensuing daily horrors of the Trump Regime, we certainly deserved a night like Tuesday night. So convincing was Democratic dominance everywhere that Trump’s attempts to undermine the election results simply melted away. Riding a wave of Black, Hispanic and young voter turnout, Democrats not only took control of the House of Representatives, they did so by flipping 43 Republican seats (so far) and, with 21 seats still undecided as of this writing, Democrats currently hold a 90-seat edge and are on track to hold the largest majority in more than 30 years. On the way to this massive majority, Democrats vanquished not only Mike Lawler in NY-17, but a host of other odious chuds like Scott Perry, Max Miller, and probably even Lauren Boebert. A year ago, Democratic control of the United States Senate seemed like a pipe dream. Now, Democrats will hold at least 54 seats after flipping Maine, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina (!), Iowa, Kansas and Texas, and look to be on track to take both Alaska and Mississippi (!). Scott Colom’s likely victory over Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi will be particularly delicious, given that Hyde-Smith once blocked Colom from a federal judgeship. Three Democrat Senate victors — Roy Cooper in North Carolina, James Talarico in Texas and Jon Ossoff in Georgia — won so convincingly that their races were over before Election Day even started. Not only did Democrats finally get their Texas white whale by taking a Senate seat, they also broke 30 years of Republican hegemony in the state by taking the Governorship, every other statewide race, and the Texas House. In North Carolina, Democrats overcame GOP gerrymandering efforts to likely win at least 10 of the state’s 14 Congressional seats and will control the state House for the first time in 16 years. Democrats took the Governor’s mansion in six states and more than 500 state legislative seats, establishing governing trifectas in Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Nevada. And then there are the historic firsts: the first Black woman Governor in American history, Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia; the first Latina governor in Texas, Gina Hinojosa; the first indigenous female Governor, Deb Haaland in New Mexico; the first woman elected Governor in Ohio, Amy Acton; the first female Senator in South Carolina, Dr. Annie Andrews; America’s first indigenous woman Senators, Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota and (probably) Mary Peltola in Alaska; the first openly gay male Senator, Chris Pappas in New Hampshire; three Black women Senators for the first time thanks to the election of Illinois’ Juliana Stratton; and, of course, the first Muslim US Senator, Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. Even the disappointing Democratic losses had a silver lining; the electric Angie Nixon came within three percentage points of winning Marco Rubio’s former Florida Senate seat and hinted that she’ll be coming for a rematch with Ashley Moody in 2028.
Here in New York, there was more good news. Kathy Hochul stomped Bruce Blakeman by 20 and even beat him on his home turf of Long Island. Sarah Rogerson sent Jim Tedisco into retirement, helping to secure a Democratic supermajority in the State Senate. Chloe Pierce won her rematch with Scott Bendett, taking an Assembly seat that Republicans have controlled since 1996. Meanwhile, the race for State Senate in the 43rd Senate District between Republican incumbent Jake Ashby and historian Devin Lander appears headed to a recount, with Lander trailing by only 93 votes as of this writing. Sadly, though, the North Country will now have to suffer the profound embarrassment of being represented by Anthony Constantino for the next two years; maybe there is a silver lining in the Adirondacks — Constantino lost in Saratoga, Franklin, Essex, Warren, St. Lawrence and Clinton Counties — if the Democratic establishment in New York can learn the lessons of 2026 and not put up another bland and uninspiring centrist to oppose Constantino in 2028. As for the Republican Party in New York State, you know you are in the political wilderness when Anthony Constantino is your new standard bearer.
Now comes the hard part, of course, the actual governing. Donald Trump is still POTUS and, if his elevation of “reactionary ideologue and white supremacist” Stephen Miller to the role of Chief of Staff suggests anything, it is that Trump plans to double down on all his worst impulses despite the complete and utter repudiation of MAGA by the American electorate. Trump and his personal law firm, formerly known as the United States Department of Justice, have declared that they will “prosecute” any Democrats in Congress that seek to perform their constitutional oversight obligations. And the Democratic to-do list goes well beyond holding the Regime and its corporate enablers accountable; voters will expect Democrats to tackle the affordability crisis by reversing Trump’s tariffs and the GOP cuts to SNAP and Medicaid. Restoration of aid to Ukraine needs to be on the table. There will be pressure to raise the minimum wage and enact the increasingly popular Medicare for All, particularly given the influx of pro-universal health care legislators coming into Congress. ICE must be abolished, of course, and with data centers now only slightly less unpopular than ICE, the incoming Congress is already hearing credible calls to nationalize the AI industry and strip the tech oligarchs of their currently unbridled power. If this sounds like too much or too unachievable, you’re clearly not hearing the message that voters sent on November 3. As the Mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania — and soon-to-be Member of Congress — Paige Cognetti has put it, “this is not a Democratic mandate; it's a directive to get to work.” Nihilism and defeatism are the enemy and, as this election season once again proved, when we fight, we win. So fight we shall.
Or else. The danger of the Great Bluenami of 2026 is complacency. For those of us old enough to remember the election of Barack Obama, 2008 is a reminder of how a movement of hope and change can quickly dissipate when it is put into the hands of centrists and neoliberal incrementalists. The columnist David Rothkopf says it better than we can:
“But now the big question is: was the election just a striking one-off, a mandate but little more, or was it a watershed, the beginning of a new era in US politics driven by demographic shifts, anger at the abuses of the past decades, a new set of priorities of a rapidly transforming electorate? The key will be what happens next. Now what must happen is that the changes that have taken place in who represents us translate into changes in how our government operates and into programs that actually deliver what voters want and need. Getting there will not be easy. It won’t be easy because Donald Trump will remain president for the next two years, and he has vowed to block the initiatives of the newly Democratic majorities in the Senate and the House. . . But it also won’t be easy because we have no assurance that the leaders of the Democratic Party in Washington understand what has just happened, what the people demand…or whether they would act on it even if they did understand it given their own ties to corporate and special interests. Will they wimp out and seek tepid compromises in an effort to create the illusion of progress without offending their big donors? (We mean you, AIPAC and you tech bros and Wall Street, etc.) There are already disturbing signs that is the case. Will they falter simply because they do not have character or background for the kind of change the electorate demands? (Which also seems to be the case.) Or will they respond to grass roots pressure and the new voices that the voters have elevated and rise to the moment?”
Which brings us, naturally, to the question of leadership. Who, precisely, will be the leaders of this newly invigorated Democratic Party? Who will lead the left into battle against Trump, Miller and the oligarchs? Who will we trust to fulfill the promise and hope that November 3 gave to us all? When we contemplate the path forward, we keep coming back to the same analogy; imagine putting in the hardest, sweatiest, most grueling workday of your life, a day you nearly thought you’d never make it through. But at the end of that day, there comes an invigorating and cleansing shower that washes away the grime and allows you the freedom to enjoy the spoils of your hard work. At the end of that shower, would you put the same dirty work clothes back on?
Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are those filthy clothes. They are products of a bygone era, married to corporate interests and an old way of doing things. Chuck and Hakeem were an integral part of the neoliberal system that exploded wealth inequality and begat the disaffection that allowed Trumpism to take hold. Chuck and Hakeem are not the leaders this moment demands.
We are clearly not alone in this view. No sooner did the schadenfreude of Tuesday begin to fade, the social media narrative quickly turned to the big question of what to do about Chuck and Hakeem. While Jeffries’s leadership position seems more stable than Schumer’s, more than half a million individuals have nonetheless signed on to a petition to replace Jeffries as Speaker, and hundreds marched through Chuck and Hakeem’s home turf of New York City on Saturday demanding that they both step aside from their leadership positions. Many of the incoming Democratic Senators who helped lead the Bluenami — including El-Sayed, Talarico, Stratton, Andrews, Flanagan, Pappas, Maine’s Troy Jackson and Adam Hamilton of Kansas — have already voiced skepticism or been noncommittal about Schumer’s leadership, and Maryland’s senior Senator, Chris Van Hollen, has repeatedly called for an open and transparent discussion among the Senate Democratic caucus before Schumer is simply anointed as Majority Leader. And, in our view, the skepticism about Schumer in particular is warranted. Schumer’s network is deeply tied to private equity lobbyists and Schumer’s own daughter, Jessica, is a lobbyist for OpenAI (after recently leaving a similar position at Amazon). Schumer’s (and Jeffries’s) relationship to AIPAC is well documented and, as Jon Stewart reminds us, it was the keen political mind of Chuck Schumer that gave us the Haley Stevens Senate campaign in Michigan, and Janet Mills’s failed Senate campaign in Maine. Schumer also picked the wrong horse on the Florida Senatorial primary and then proceeded to under resource Angie Nixon’s campaign when she prevailed over Schumer’s candidate. And, for God’s sake, can we really rely upon Schumer’s leadership when his guiding muse is a fictional Long Island couple named the Baileys? As Qasim Rashid writes, Chuck Schumer must not be Majority Leader. If you agree, contact Kirsten Gillibrand — or any Senator, for that matter — and urge Senate Democrats to demand new leadership. No Kings. No Coronations.
Odds & Ends
Oh Albany. Amid a growing divide between the Applyrs administration and the Albany Common Council over the City of Albany’s budgetary woes, news broke yesterday that the City is entering into a $10 million revenue anticipation note — a payday loan, essentially — in order to cover employee salaries and other expenses over the remainder of 2026. Common Councillor Deirdre Brodie has lambasted the borrowing plan, declaring that “the City is broke.”
This morning at 11, Assembly Standing Committees on Local Government, Consumer Affairs and Protection and Governmental Operations are holding a joint hearing on automatic license plate reader data collection and usage in New York State.
Alyssa Cappello is being sued by Community Bank for $88k after she defaulted on a loan payment associated with her “She’s Yar Beauty Bar” franchise.
The Troy City Council rejected a plan to try and drive the City’s iconic crow population away. Bravo.
Amid longstanding concerns about understaffing and declining resources at VA Stratton Medical Center, the facility nursing staff is planning a rally on Friday 11/13 at 2:00 outside 113 Holland Avenue to demand better working conditions and better care for our nation’s veterans. If you want to support the Stratton VA nurses, wear red and come stand beside them this Friday.
RCV Albany has secured nearly 2,000 signatures on its second, ranked-choice voting, unified election petition, virtually assuring that the proposal will be put before City of Albany voters in 2027. RCV Albany will be celebrating its achievement at the Copper Crow tomorrow night.
The Great Bluenami of 2026 could spell the end of the Electoral College.
In a development sure to catch the attention of Democrat Representatives Jamie Raskin and Robert Garcia, ProPublica has amassed a database of the financial disclosures of Trump and 2300 of his appointees.
Elon Musk spent half a billion in vein to try and buy the midterm elections, and now his modern-day Edsel, the Cybertruck, is coming to an ignominious end. Lol.