WHOOPS -- DID WE SUGGEST THAT IT WAS A PERMANENT REALIGNMENT? SORRY ABOUT THAT!

In The New York Times, Christine Zhang and Shane Goldmacher note that the Hispanic vote in this year's New Jersey gubernatorial election tacked sharply to the left:

In the recent New Jersey governor’s race, the Democratic Party clawed back much of the ground it had lost with Hispanic voters in the 2024 presidential race, according to a township-level analysis of results by The New York Times.

The results are stark: The heavily Hispanic areas that shifted the most to the left in 2025 were virtually a mirror image of the places that had swung the farthest to the right in 2024. The outcome suggests that President Trump’s surge of support among Hispanic voters last year may have been fleeting, or at least not transferable to other candidates in his party.

Here are some of the numbers:

The two cities that shifted the most toward Democrats were those with the highest percentage of Hispanic voters in the state: Union City and Perth Amboy.

Ms. Sherrill won Union City by 69 percentage points, just a year after Ms. Harris had carried it by only 17 points. And Ms. Sherrill won Perth Amboy by 56 points, a year after Ms. Harris had beaten Mr. Trump by less than nine points there....

All told, nine of the 10 townships that shifted the most toward Democrats from 2024 to 2025 had a Hispanic population of at least 60 percent.

This is fascinating, because less than six months ago, Goldmacher was telling us that America had undergone a long-term voter realignment that spelled doom for Democrats:

Donald J. Trump’s victory in 2024 was not an outlier.

It was the culmination of continuous gains by Republicans in much of the country each time he has run for president, a sea of red that amounts to a flashing warning sign for a Democratic Party out of power and hoping for a comeback.

... Mr. Trump has steadily gained steam across a broad swath of the nation, with swelling support not just in white working-class communities but also in counties with sizable Black and Hispanic populations....

Of the 67 counties in America with a majority Hispanic population, 66 voted more Republican in 2024 than in 2012.

Even more arresting is that the average swing toward the G.O.P. in those 66 Hispanic-majority counties was 23 percentage points — a political earthquake with which both parties are still coming to terms.

Most of the Very Smart People told us this would be a long-lasting realignment. A week after the 2024 election, Goldmacher's Times colleague Thomas Edsall wrote:

Developing trends favorable to the Republicans and threatening to Democrats have evolved over the past three presidential elections in a way that signals strength and durability. It will be difficult for Democrats to reverse these dynamics.

That was a couple of days after CNN's Eric Braudner told us that the 2024 election results

paint a daunting picture of a party whose national coalition has fractured — with suburbs where they’ve won squeezed as tight as they can be, Latinos rapidly realigning with the GOP, and Trump posting the sorts of marginal gains among both urban and rural voters that are difficult to overcome.

The Atlantic asked Patrick Ruffini, a Republican-aligned pollster, to write about all this in May, and he concluded:

In an era of nationalized politics and growing polarization, the social basis for Democratic majorities is looking more and more tenuous. Yes, the particular appeal with which Trump was able to attract Hispanics and young Black men may last for only an election cycle or two, but the fact that those communities are realigning to a party that matches their views on issues, particularly on cultural issues such as gender, means that many are likely to stick around.

A populist shift in the form of Donald Trump’s larger-than-life persona was enough to make many nonwhite voters shed decades-long partisan loyalties. Absent a big change in how these voters perceive the Democratic Party, they aren’t going back.

The conventional wisdom was that Democrats were extremely out of step with Hispanics and couldn't win their votes without a massive overhaul of their policy positions and public messaging. This past spring, Edsall quoted Rodolfo Solis, a Ph.D. candidate at UCLA, who said:

Many Latino Republicans express growing disillusionment with the Democratic Party, particularly around its perceived emphasis on racial identity politics and progressive social agendas. There is a sense that the party has moved away from the working-class, religious and family-oriented values that resonate in South Texas.

At the same time, the Republican Party is increasingly viewed as a space where conservative Latinos feel culturally and ideologically at home. What’s happening is a process of partisan and ideological sorting: Democratic disaffection leads voters to reassess their identity, and the G.O.P. offers a clear, affirming alternative that aligns with their views on religion, personal responsibility, gender roles and national identity.

Shortly after the 2024 election, Edsall quoted a tweet from Ritchie Torres, a left-centrist New York congressman:

Donald Trump has no greater friend than the far left, which has managed to alienate historic numbers of Latinos, Blacks, Asians, and Jews from the Democratic Party with absurdities like “Defund the Police” or “From the River to the Sea” or “Latinx.”

There is more to lose than there is to gain politically from pandering to a far left that is more representative of Twitter, Twitch, and TikTok than it is of the real world. The working class is not buying the ivory-towered nonsense that the far left is selling.

Obviously, Democrats were doomed -- until they won several elections on November 4 that proved they aren't.

Very Smart politics-knowers didn't have to leap to the conclusion that the apparent realignment was durable. They could have said the numbers look bad for Democrats while keeping an open mind about the durability of the realignment, and also while -- here's a radical thought -- entertaining the possibility that the actions of the Republican president might have an impact on how Hispanic voters see the Republican Party. I know that Murc's Law is in effect and only Democrats are seen as having agency in American politics, but New York magazine's Ed Kilgore got the situation exactly right last December:

... while Democrats should be worried about the future of Latino voting behavior, Republicans have no reason for complacency. It’s now Trump and the GOP who are fully responsible for economic conditions which could turn out to be much worse than vague positive memories of the first Trump administration might suggest. And while (as some polling indicates) Latino citizens may have a negative attitude towards the recent surge of migrants that has become so central to Trump’s grip on his MAGA base, it’s less clear the mass deportation regime Trump has pledged to undertake immediately is going to go over well among Latinos, even those who voted for him. A recent Pew survey showed that Latinos were significantly less supportive of a major deportation program than other voters. And if the Trump administration pursues deportation round-ups in a cruel and ham-handed way (which elements of Trump’s base would welcome as a virtue rather than as a vice), or by methods that affect Latino legal immigrants and native citizens (most likely via ethnic profiling by law enforcement officials), we could see a pretty significant Latino backlash.

In other words, while some Latino trend towards the GOP may be inevitable all things being equal, it’s hardly guaranteed and could be sharply reversed.

Nailed it.

Everyone who focuses on politics knew that Trump had pledged to run a radical, disruptive government if he won in 2024. They knew his second term wouldn't be at all like the first three years of his first term, when Establishment aides acted as constraints on his worst instincts. They knew he was planning a horrific roundup of immigrants. They knew that he couldn't keep his promises to lower prices and that the tariffs he touted would fuel inflation. And yet they contended that nothing he did would have an impact on the behavior of voters who'd moved right in previous elections.

All they had to do was express doubt about the permanence of the realignment, but apparently that was too much to ask when a more satisfying story -- Democrats in disarray! -- was right there.

I THINK TRUMP'S POLL NUMBERS HAVE BOTTOMED OUT

President Trump's job approval numbers are quite bad right now: 42.3% approval/54.7% disapproval (-12.4%) at Real Clear Polling, 41.4%/54.8% (-13.4%) at Nate Silver's site, 40.0%/56.1% (-16.1%) according to G. Elliott Morris, 39%/57% (-18%) according to The Economist. I'd love to believe that this is an irreversible downward spiral, but I suspect that Trump's numbers have bottomed out, at least for now.

One obvious reason is the end of the government shutdown. Shutdowns always drag down the approval ratings of the politicians in charge, and those numbers tend to bounce back after the shutdowns end. Of course, there could be another shutdown early next year, but for now, this won't be a drag on Trump's approval.

I know you'll say that Trump is handling the Jeffrey Epstein situation badly, and that all of America knows this, but I think Trump has begun shoring up his base, even if the rest of us recognize that he's acting like a man with a lot to hide. CNN's Harry Enten recently made note of a late-September Marist poll in which only 45% of Republicans said they approved of how the Trump administration is handling the Epstein situation. But remember what I told you yesterday: the one thing Republicans care about in the Epstein case is punishing Democrats. Trump is doing exactly what they want him do: ordering Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Epstein's ties to Democratic politicians, donors, and advisers. This seems like a shameless attempt at blame-shifting, but when I see reporters on the still-respectable news side of The Washington Post prominently playing up the story of a non-voting House Democrat, Stacey Plaskett of the Virgin Islands, texting with Epstein during a 2019 congressional hearing -- which, to be fair, is very bad! -- I realize that the mainstream media will leap at any Epstein story that embarrasses Democrats, right alongside the right-wing media. Even if the general public isn't distracted, GOP voters will be.

Trump's retreat on some food tariffs is a move I wasn't expecting from him, and it makes me wonder whether Trump would decide not to reimpose tariffs that are likely to be blocked by the Supreme Court, even though, as The New York Times has reported, he'll be able to do so under laws that aren't at issue in the case currently before the Court. Prices are highly unlikely to fall as much as they've risen, but he might at least interrupt some of the increases.

Trumpism will continue to be a disaster, and the president will soon find fresh new ways to alienate voters. But within the next few weeks, I think his numbers will stop declining, and will probably improve, sad to say.

CONFIRMED: MAGA HATES NON-WHITE PEOPLE MORE THAN PEDOPHILES

I told you yesterday that MAGA influencers are angry at President Trump because he wants to enable businesses to hire more foreign white-collar workers -- angrier than they are about Trump's friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. -- Now a story in The Washington Post confirms this:

MAGA leaders erupted this week over President Donald Trump’s assertion that the United States needs foreign workers because it does not have enough “talented people” ... even as Republicans overwhelmingly dismissed newly released emails Epstein wrote, including some about Trump....

Conservative radio host Erick Erickson remarked on his Wednesday show that this was the “first time” he had seen so many longtime Trump supporters “furious with the president.”

“Saying that we don’t have talent in America doesn’t sound very ‘America First,’” Erickson said....

Tim Pool, a right-wing YouTuber, wrote sarcastically Wednesday on X: “Dont worry Trump is bringing in more H1Bs to make sure our young people are f----d.”

Laura Loomer, a far-right influencer known for her loyalty to Trump, said in an interview that the MAGA base “has every right to feel disappointed” over the Trump administration’s approach. “We need to make sure that promises made are promises kept,” she said.

Meanwhile, MSNBC'S Brandy Zadrozny writes that MAGA's response to the newly released Epstein emails is, as she puts it, "Yawn."

... instead of firing up conspiracists, the unearthed communications met with a reaction on the right that was swift and uncharacteristically dismissive: Nothing to see here....

“It just shows there’s nothing there,” radio host Alex Jones said on his show, launching into a defense of Trump’s innocence. Jones claimed to have “every angle” covered and said it was clear to him that Trump knew nothing of Epstein’s crimes....

Jack Posobiec, a onetime “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorist and current host of a show on the Real America’s Voice network, said he believed the emails showed Epstein was trying to use Trump to protect himself.

... Epstein’s emails were old news, Posobiec said: “Once again, ultimately, it’s just Epstein trying to pull Trump in and implicate him in his own crimes.”

Mike Cernovich, a ... former men’s rights activist turned self-described journalist, asserted Trump’s innocence and called for the release of the complete Epstein files, blaming “billionaires and donors” for blocking it. (The administration has consistently opposed the release of the files.)

“Trump is being led to slaughter,” Cernovich posted.

MAGA conspiracists agreed on blaming Democrats — even if they weren’t ready to leave it at that.

“These drip-drip Democrat disclosures are nothing but distractions to once again smear a good man’s name,” posted Rogan O’Handley, known by the handle DC Draino. “Release the entire Epstein files and let’s start putting the *real* criminals behind bars.”

MAGA loves Trump's brutal immigration crackdown and can't imagine that the immigrants being deported are actually contributing to our economy by providing labor and buying goods and services. MAGA despises the idea of allowing white-collar immigrants to come to America, finding the notion that these workers might contribute to the economy and create jobs for Americans unimaginable. MAGA just hates immigrants.

Does MAGA hate pedophilia? Does MAGA hate "the swamp"? It sure seemed that way for a while -- so if you were from another planet, you might imagine that MAGA would find it thoroughly repulsive that Trump had any connections whatsoever to Epstein's world of high-status pedophiles. But we know that MAGA influencers (and the MAGA rank-and-file) have no problem watching Trump hang out with elitists in general -- there's been criticism of his lavish lifestyle, but never from MAGA -- and MAGA clearly doesn't think that everyone in the general vicinity of a pedophile sex trafficker is guilty of at least tolerating or enabling sex crimes.

By contrast, MAGA clearly believes that all immigrants, or at least all non-white immigrants, are bad for America, regardless of how they conduct their lives. To MAGA, they've all got to go.

MAGA has never cared about pedophilia. The people of MAGA became interested in the Epstein story for only one reason: They believed it had the potential to bring down a large number of Democrats and Democratic-aligned elitists. Belief in QAnon's pedophilia narrative spread for the same reason. It wasn't about "the children." It was about damaging Democrats.

And why do these people hate Democrats? Because they believe Democrats want to enrich and empower non-white Americans and non-whites in other countries. Domestically, they associate Democrats with public assistance, which they think goes exclusively to people of color (even when they themselves are recipients). They think Epstein's network and the mythical QAnon pedophilia network are linked to a globalism that wants to replace white right-wing Christians with people who aren't white and who practice other faiths. Zadrozny draws out attention to this Laura Loomer tweet:

You can’t be outraged by the Epstein saga and simultaneously not be outraged by the fact that we have Muslims serving in Congress.

Their “prophet” was an infamous pedophile!

Nobody wants to talk about that.

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) November 12, 2025

For the record, there are four Muslims currently serving in the House of Representatives, none of whom are white -- and every one of them signed the discharge petition seeking the release of the Epstein files. White Christians in the House signed the petition at a much lower rate.

Obviously, MAGA lost interest in the Epstein story as soon as it became clear that the political figure most likely to be damaged by it was Trump. But please recognize that MAGA becme interested in Epstein in the first place only because they hate Democrats -- and the people Democrats are believed to champion.

MAGA INFLUENCERS TURN ON TRUMP -- BUT NOT BECAUSE OF EPSTEIN

If you're MAGA, the most consequential news of the week had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein or the reopening of the government. It was this:

President Donald Trump defended H-1B visas during an interview that aired Tuesday night, arguing foreign labor is needed at times because U.S. workers do not have "certain talents."

Trump made the remarks during a Fox News interview when asked whether his administration would prioritize the costly visas that allow skilled workers from overseas to temporarily work in the United States. He said the United States has to “bring in talent.”

When pressed by Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who said, "We have plenty of talented people here," Trump responded: “No, you don’t have — you don’t have certain talents. And you have to — people have to learn.”

How offensive is this to MAGA? Consider Anthony Sabatini, a former Florida state legislator who was so MAGA that he proposed naming a Florida highway for Trump two weeks after January 6. He now says:

This is insane—we are going to lose the mid-terms so badly

We’ve never seen an administration crash & burn in its first year so badly—for no reason other than to appease donors & special interests

Trump has surrounded himself with the worst people 👇 https://t.co/4tgIpgX62t

— Anthony Sabatini (@AnthonySabatini) November 12, 2025

The messages get nastier. Here's one from Andrew Torba, founder of the right-wing social media site Gab (which uses an anti-Indian slur in its first bullet point):

Here's a Twitter poll from Mr. Pizzagate, Jack Posobiec:

Official Poll:

Should America expand the H-1B Program or focus on American workers?

— Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) November 12, 2025

This is from a podcaster with more than a quarter million Twitter followers:

No Epstein disclosures. No J6 justice. No peace in Ukraine. 600K Chinese students. Maximum H1-B's. But at least I can take out a 50 year mortgage to buy a $800,000 starter home assuming I don't get deported for antisemitism.

MAGA isn't divided. It's dead.

— Clint Russell (@LibertyLockPod) November 12, 2025

This one has more than a hundred thousand followers:

MAGA is dead.

Assassinated by Trump and his Israeli interests.

It was a psyop. And we fell for it.

No time to grieve.

We need to regroup.

Where do we go from here?

— ThePatrioticBlonde🇺🇸 (@ImBreckWorsham) November 12, 2025

Here's a former Infowars correspondent:

Take note of all the individuals who have co-opted & turned MAGA against us.

When we create another populist political movement that defeats them again, they will be there, waiting, to steal & subvert again just as they are doing now.

We let them in, not the other way around.

— Owen Shroyer (@OwenShroyer1776) November 12, 2025

And while I'm not sure the account where this appears is the authentic account of Aleksandr Dugin, the ultra-nationalist philosopher known as "Putin's Brain," it has approximately 375,000 followers:

More from the Dugin account:

Maybe Elon Musk has abandoned too early his idea to start an America party. Trump is destroying MAGA each day more and more efficiently. But MAGA is essential element in GOP victory. Without it Dems will win and this time forever. There is no more hope on Trump. Why not America?

— Alexander Dugin (@AGDugin) November 12, 2025

The commemoration of Charlie Kirk tragically martyrdom was a cynical simulacrum. Nothing really followed. No unity, no victory, no Trump’s return to original MAGA-plan. Just more obvious rise of neocons and Israel lobby.

— Alexander Dugin (@AGDugin) November 12, 2025

So you can see where this comes from:

(I think Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is right when she says that Greene is angry at Trump because he put the kibosh on her ambition to run for Jon Ossoff's Senate seat in Georgia, but I think Greene's conspiratorialist paleoconservatism is increasingly at odds with Trumpism.)

MAGA influencers know that the economy sucks. They know that Trump is trying to cover up his relationship with Epstein. They know Trump takes advice from CEOs who don't think immigrants are evil. And they know that the GOP mainstream is pushing back against open anti-Semitism on the right. In The New York Times today, Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, shamelessly and unconvincingly proclaims that he didn't know enough about Nick Fuentes's racism when he defended Tucker Carlson's softball interview with Fuentes. I don't know which is worse: the fact that the Times describes this as a mere "gaffe" or the fact that Roberts will probably hang on to his job after this recantation. But the fact that he felt compelled to recant is clearly infuriating to many anti-Semitic influencers.

Anti-Semitism is probably the future of MAGA. I was poking around the right-o-sphere this morning and came upon this post from Rod Dreher, good buddy to J.D. Vance and Ross Douthat. He sees anti-Semitism as deeply embedded in right-wing culture, especially in Gen Z, a fact that was confirmed for him after a visit to Washington, where he hung out with Vance:

The claim that I first floated in this space last week, quoting a DC insider who said that in his estimation, “between 30 and 40 percent” of the Zoomers who work in official Republican Washington are fans of Nick Fuentes — that’s true. Was confirmed multiple times by Zoomers who live in that world.

... Even young Christians — especially trad Catholics, I learned — are neck-deep in anti-Semitism. They even use it as a litmus test of who can and can’t join their informal social groups.

Not every DC Zoomercon who identifies with Fuentes agrees with everything he says, or the way he says it. What they like most of all is his rage, and willingness to violate taboos. I asked one astute Zoomer what the Groypers actually wanted (meaning, what were their demands). He said, “They don’t have any. They just want to tear everything down.”

More:

I told one very smart and decent Zoomercon who despises the anti-Semitic turn in his circles that I’ve been hearing that fascism — actual ideological fascism, not the media’s idea of anybody to the Right of Lindsey Graham — is gaining traction among young white British males.

He said, innocently, “So what’s wrong with fascism?” He meant it, not in a challenging way, but in a way that conveyed the sense of we have to think about this now. He talked about how the disintegration of our culture is accelerating, and liberal democracy seems impotent to stop it. He went on to explain that if he had to choose between living under left-wing authoritarianism or the right-wing version, then that wouldn’t be much of a choice. To be clear, he wants neither, but he fears that the disintegration of our culture is going to put us all in the position to have to reconcile ourselves to one or the other.

I don't know the extent to which this influences rank-and-file Trump fans, but we may be heading for the moment when Trump is rejected for not being right-wing enough. Remember: Conservatives believe that conservatism can never fail. It can only be failed.

A NEW POLL SAYS AMERICANS DON'T LIKE DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM, BUT THINK MAMDANI'S AGENDA IS AWESOME

YouGov has been polling Americans on the subject of Zohran Mamdani, and they seem surprisingly but not overwhelmingly positive about him.

However, they don't seem particularly fond of democratic socialism.

These aren't people who've spent a great deal of time thinking about the race -- 43% said they've heard "a lot" about the results of New York's mayoral contest, while 36% say they've heard "a little" and 20% say they've heard "nothing at all." It's unsurprising that 23% of respondents answer "not sure" to both questions.

But what's fascinating to me is how popular Mamdani's agenda is. Take a look at this chart:

"Raising taxes on corporations and millionaires" is supported by 69% of respondents; only 24% are opposed.

Free childcare gets 66% support; again, opposition is 24%.

A $30 minimum wage is favored 56%-31%. A rent freeze is favored 65%-24%. Not-for-profit government-owned grocery stores are favored 57%-30%. Free buses are favored 53%-35%.

Obviously, Democratic survey respondents favor the proposals by wide margins. But independents support the policies also: 71% favor higher taxes on corporations and the rich, 68% favor free childcare, 52% favor a $30 minimum wage, 66% support a rent freeze, 55% support government grocery stores, and 53% support free buses.

And the policies have a surprising amount of Republican support: 40% favor taxing corporations and the rich, 45% support free childcare, 35% favor a $30 minimum wage, 42% support a rent freeze, 37% support government grocery stores, and 30% support free buses.

The usual caveats apply: It's just one survey; Americans generally say they want more from government while also complaining about government debt and high taxes.

But the big margins in favor of even controversial proposals (government supermarkets!) are evidence that the American people feel screwed by the system and want government to do more for ordinary people.

This is one reason I'm not writing about Topic A at this moment -- the release of three emails that discuss Donald Trump's knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein's pedophilia, in one of which Epstein wrote that a victim "spent hours at my house with" Trump. On this and many other subjects, I've developed an impatience with the belief that one "bombshell" story will Make The Scales Fall From Americans' Eyes and suddenly compel them to see the world the way those of who despise Trump see it. The public knows quite a bit about Trump and Epstein already, and it hasn't been enough to undermine his remaining 40-or-so-percent public support. This won't do it either, though the drip-drip-drip of revelations hurts him and might eventually be part of the reason Trump becomes overwhelmingly unpopular.

I think voters are focused on themselves right now. Life in America is hard. Americans knew Trump was a snake a year ago and voted for him anyway because they fell for his bunkum and thought he'd make their lives better. A better life is what matters to voters now. That's how Zohran Mamdani came from nowhere to win his race.

NEWSOM ISN'T WINNING YOUNG MALE VOTERS -- TRUMP AND THE GOP ARE LOSING THEM

We're being told that Gavin Newsom has cracked the bro code. Newsweek reports:

California Governor Gavin Newsom holds an early edge over Vice President JD Vance among young male voters for the 2028 presidency, according to new polling from a Republican-affiliated firm.

The latest League of American Workers/TIPP survey, conducted October 22-28, shows that among young men, 38 percent would vote for Newsom compared to 33 percent for Vance.

Newsom's success is said to be the result of his outreach to young men and partial embrace of the right:

... Newsom has sought to improve his party's image with young men, launching a podcast where he has interviewed leading MAGA figures like the late Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon.

He has also publicly criticized his party on some issues. In his conversation with conservative commentator Kirk, Newsom criticized how the Democratic Party has handled debates over transgender rights.

Mediaite also credits Newsom's rightward moves for his success in this poll, as well as his Trump-like social media presence:

Newsom got a lot of heat from his fellow Democrats for his podcast chats with controversial figures on the right, but a new poll shows he seems to be making headway with a demographic where the left lost ground to President Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans: young men.

The governor was undeterred by the criticism, saying that Democrats needed to “get out of our own damn bubble” on a May episode of his podcast. Over the past few months, Newsom has also taken a notably sharper and snarkier tone on his social media, blasting Trump and other key Republicans with a seemingly endless wave of memes, parodies, and mockery written in caps lock to mimic one of the president’s personal writing foibles.

But you have to read several paragraphs into the Mediaite story to see even a hint of what's really going on: President Trump and his party have lost young men.

Trump (38% approval, 52% disapproval, and 10% unsure) and Vance (34% approval, 45% disapproval, and 21% unsure) were underwater with young men, but Newsom was viewed more favorably (36% approval, 32% disapproval, and 32% unsure).

That's the real story here: Young men are now noticeably less Republican and more Democratic -- and young women are very, very Democratic.

The poll results are here, in three spreadsheets. Among young men, it's not just Newsom who's seen favorably -- they want Democrats to control Congress by a 44%-34% margin, and if you include leaners, they're Democratic by a 46%-40% margin.

And they also approve of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's job performance by a 36%-27% margin. Even Kamala Harris gets a positive score on job performance (43%-39%), while Marco Rubio and Robert Kennedy Jr. are slightly underwater (28%-34% and 37%-40%, respectively).

But we should also be focusing on the massive rejection of the GOP by young women. We saw that in the exit polls Tuesday: 82% of female voters aged 18-29 voted for Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, 81% voted for Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, 82% for Zohran Mamdani in New York City, and 85% for California redistricting. (The numbers for young men weren't shabby: 58% for Spanberger, 57% for Sherrill, 65% for Mamdani, and 76% for the California redistricting.)

In the TIPP survey, Newsom beats Vance among young women 47%-25%. Trump's job approval is an abysmal 24%-66%, while Vance's is 22%-56%. RFK Jr. is at 22%-48%. Marco Rubio is at 14%-30%. Newsom is at 31%-21% and AOC is at 34%-18%. Harris is at an impressive 56%-27%.

Young women want Democrats to control Congress by a whopping 56%-25% margin.

These young women don't see themselves as fire-breathing leftists -- 41% call themselves moderate, 35% liberal, and 18% conservative. (Among the young men, 45% say they're moderate, 27% liberal, and 22% conservative.)

So my takeaway is this: The GOP is dead to young women -- and is also struggling with young men. The 2024 election was an anomaly.

THE REAL DEMOCRATIC DIVIDE IS BETWEEN FIGHTERS AND CAVERS

I don't have anything good to say about the sellout by seven Democratic senators and one Democratic-aligned independent that brings us close to the end of the government shutdown. The issue that Democrats focused on, Affordable Care Act subsidies, will get a vote in December under the plan, but the vote is likely to fail and there'll be no relief for skyrocketing premiums. John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, and first-term Donald Trump couldn't kill Obamacare, but in Trump's second term, it's on life support.

The one small silver lining I see is that the popular front we thought we saw in Tuesday's elections -- progressive and moderate Democrats agreeing on the importance of affordability and economic relief for the non-rich -- genuinely seems to unite the party ... or most of it. The Judases who voted to end the shutdown are on the wrong side, but quite a few moderates seem as angry as the lefties right now.

Hakeem Jeffries is angry. Hakeem Jeffries!

In a statement, the Democratic leader dug his heels in on his party’s position that any legislation to reopen the government must include an extension of the enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits, which are set to expire at the end of the year, raising premiums for millions of Americans.

“House Democrats have consistently maintained that bipartisan legislation that funds the government must also decisively address the Republican healthcare crisis. For seven weeks, Democrats in the House and Senate have waged a valiant fight on behalf of the American people,” Jeffries wrote in a statement.

“It now appears that Senate Republicans will send the House of Representatives a spending bill that fails to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits,” he continued.

So is New Jersey's governor-elect, Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill:

Even the "centrist" Sherrill is against the caving.

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— Wajahat Ali (@wajali.bsky.social) November 9, 2025 at 11:54 PM

So is Senator Elissa Slotkin:

You'll say this is all theater. You'll insist that the outcome we're getting is what Establishment Democrats wanted all along, because they're crypto-Republicans.

All I can say in response is that it's a sign that we're pushing the party to the left, at least on affordability, if centrist Democrats are merely pretending to fight hard. They know we're angry. They know quite a few of us would love to primary every last one of them. That's a step in the right direction, even if this was a big loss. And you should at least consider the pssibility that some of these moderates mean what they're saying.

It's also interesting to me that quite a few centrist pundits -- Ezra Klein, Jonathan Chait, Nate Silver -- think the Democrats should have kept fighting. All of them are impressed -- and surprised -- that Democrats were winning the public relations war: Klein says it's "remarkable that Democrats were winning this one," Chait says it's an "odd thing ... that the shutdown was actually working for Democrats," and Silver argues that the shutdown wasn't working for them, according to the polls, until the SNAP deadline was hit, at which point, he says, President Trump's poll numbers plummeted. None of them seemed to think Democrats could win, exactly, but they all believed that Democrats should have made Republicans own the pain they're inflicting. Chait writes:

Republicans were unlikely ever to give in on the tax credits, because their ideological opposition to universal health care is so overwhelming that they would rather suffer defeat than surrender. But that is just the thing: They were taking the hit. Democrats succeeded in drawing news coverage to health care, and even baited Republicans into floating more of their toxic and radical ideas for changing the system.

Klein writes:

If I were in the Senate, I wouldn’t vote for this compromise. Shutdowns are an opportunity to make an argument, and the country was just starting to pay attention. If Trump wanted to cancel flights over Thanksgiving rather than keep health care costs down, I don’t see why Democrats should save him from making his priorities so exquisitely clear.

Democrats don't agree on healthcare. Incrementalists disagree with advocates of single payer. But moderates agree with progressives that we shouldn't be making healthcare massively less affordable. And even middle-of-the-road pundits agree on that.

But eight moderates thought it wasn't worth continuing the fight. And that's where the battle lines are drawn in the Democratic Party now: between fighters and cavers. Democratic voters forced Democrats to fight this long and will demand fighters in the future. This is a huge loss, but maybe the days of get-along-to-go-along Democrats are numbered.

IT'S OKAY IF DEMOCRATS CHOOSE A COUPLE OF "WRONG" CANDIDATES

For about 48 hours after we learned the results of Tuesday's elections, mainstream media agenda-setters grudgingly conceded that, yes, okay, maybe the Democratic Party isn't a collection of pathetic losers after all. But that's over now. The lead story at the New York Times website at this moment foresees a 2026 "battle over the future of the Democratic Party" that's portrayed as big trouble for the party:

“What you are seeing is a growing division among Democrats as to what the future of the Democratic Party should look like,” Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who finished as the runner-up in the last two open Democratic presidential primary races, said in an interview....

An impatient next generation of ambitious politicians is ratcheting up the pressure on the old guard. These Democrats are chafing over style, substance and strategy — just as the party’s ideological direction is at an inflection point.

On Friday, The Atlantic gave us "Democratic Momentum Could Be a Mirage," and now follows up with "The Limits of the Democrats’ Big Tent," in which Elaine Godfrey attends a convention thrown by Crooked Media, the company behind the Obamaist podcast Pod Save America. Perhaps because Ezra Klein wasn't available for comment, Godfrey quotes Matthew Yglesias:

But on which issues will Democrats accept disagreement—and on which will they stand firm? No speaker at Friday’s convention offered any real specifics. Meanwhile, the no-shows were notable. “John Bel Edwards is not here. Mary Peltola is not here. Jared Golden is not here,” the panelist and Substack author Matt Yglesias told me about the past Louisiana governor, former representative from Alaska, and current Maine congressman, all of whom have won in red areas. Those lawmakers don’t have a secret sauce—they simply “have more conservative voting records,” Yglesias said. “And people just don’t like that answer.”

John Bel Edwards, who left the governorship in 2023 because of term limits, presumably wasn't at this confab because he's no longer in politics; he announced last month that he won't run for Bill Cassidy's Senate seat next year. Jared Golden announced in May that he wouldn't run for the Senate seat currently held by Susan Collins and just announced that he won't seek reelection in his House district, probably because recent polling shows that he's extraordinarily unpopular in his district and would lose to troglodytic ex-governor Paul LePage if he ran. Peltola might run for governor or senator next year, but why the hell would an Alaska politician want to be seen at a gathering of pasty-faced East Coast Democrats?

The implication of the media's renewed sneering is that Democrats need to pick their lane, but it really doesn't matter, because whichever lane they pick, left-centrist or progressive, they'll inevitably alienate voters and lose again (which would return "liberal" pundits to their happy place, where Democrats are for bashing).

My take is that Democrats should remember the lessons of 2010.

That was the year of the first Tea Party elections, and Republicans had their own fights between Establishmentarians and rabble-rousers. Some of the Tea Party candidates failed miserably -- see for instance, Christine ("I'm not a witch") O'Donnell, who lost a race for Joe Biden's old Senate seat that Republicans could have won with a different candidate. Republicans also lost a close race in Colorado because they nominated Ken Buck, who opposed abortion even in cases of rape and incest.

But overall, Republicans gained 6 seats in the Senate and 62 seats in the House. They had a net gain of 6 governorships even though one of their gubernatorial nominees, Carl Paladino, was found to have been a serial recirculator of racist and obscene email forwards, and another candidate, the aforementioned LePage, revealed himself as a foul-mouthed Obama-basher in a state Barack Obama had won by more than 17 points. (Paladino lost badly to Andrew Cuomo, while LePage won a three-way race.)

The moral: A party doesn't have to be perfect to win. It just has to do better than the other party.

Democrats need to win a greater percentage of the close races in 2026 than Republicans did in 2010 in order to win the Senate, and redistricting could mean that the same is true for the House. But they won't benefit from endless self-criticism, or endless criticism from their favorite news outlets and Substackers. Democrats just need to get on with it -- hold the primaries, rally the voters after the primaries, and refuse to cooperate with any journalist writing a "Democrats are doomed" article or post. They'll make mistakes -- but they'll make fewer if they hold their heads up and run as if they think they deserve to win.

TRUMP'S FOX NEWS BRAIN MIGHT LEAD TO HIS DOWNFALL

Here's a headline at Axios right now:

Trump says GOP would never lose an election again if filibuster is eliminated

What exactly did the president say? I went to the transcript of his remarks at a White House meeting with Viktor Orbán. He said:

Here's some of the things that we pass if we terminated the filibuster, voter ID, no mail in voting, no cash bail, no men in women's sports, no welfare for illegals. You could go on and on. This is two pages of things I would do if you did that. Without it, I don't know that you passed anything because you can't deal with them [Democrats].

A bit later, he said:

And if we do it, we will never lose the midterms and we will never lose the general election because we will have produced so many different things for our people, for the people, for the country, that it would be impossible to lose an election.

(Senate Republicans, of course, don't want to eliminate the filibuster.)

Some presidents change course after bad off-year elections. In 2006, when George W. Bush suffered what he called a midterm "thumping," he fired his widely reviled defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Barack Obama called his party's losses in the 2010 midterms a "shellacking." The following summer, he attempted to negotiate a "grand bargain" with congressional Republicans that would have included significant cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security in return for increased taxes on the wealthy.

Will Trump pivot after Tuesday's blowout? Nahhh.

His remarks confirm the fact that he thinks Democrats win elections dishonestly because mail voting exists and not every locale requires an ID to vote. He simply doesn't believe that the public ever gets fed up with him or his party. He also said,

The Democrats are good at a few things, cheating on elections and conning people with facts that aren't true.

Trump rattled off assertions about prices in America, in an effort to prove that Democratic candidates' focus on affordability was dishonest. Nearly everything he said was a lie. Nevertheless, he insisted that Democrats are the liars. When Trump accused Democrats of "cheating on elections," he clearly included these (non-)lies as acts of cheating. But he primarily believes that Democrats cheat procedurally.

Trump also believes that the average American's list of political priorities exactly matches the list in every Fox viewer's head: "no cash bail, no men in women's sports, no welfare for illegals." Those are, in fact, fairly popular GOP positions. But voters didn't vote on them in 2024, because they're broke. They care about the economy.

Day to day, it's bad for Americans that Trump doesn't see any reason to moderate his views. It's bad that he believes everyone loves what he's doing and wants him to continue. Trump's policies are hurting Americans profoundly.

But politically, it's excellent news for the Democrats. It suggests that Trump won't change, because the most influential commentators in his bubble keep telling him that all of America wants what hardcore Republicans want.

And oddly, he doesn't seem to want to shut down the electoral process or make it Orbánesque or Putinesque. His administration is investigating Democratic institutions such as ActBlue, but he seems to believe that simply tweaking the voting process and passing a 100% Fox News agenda would lead his party to glorious victories. So it's possible that we'll have legitimate elections in 2026, with a persistently unpopular Trump effectively on the ballot, because he really can't believe the public hates him.

2024 WASN'T PERMANENT AND 2025 WON'T BE PERMANENT EITHER

This morning, The New York Times posted a conversation between Ezra Klein and his editor, Aaron Retica. I wondered whether Klein would be chastened by the fact that Tuesday's election results didn't match up with his recent doomsaying about Democrats. While Klein acknowledges the magnitude of the Democratic wins, he's sticking with his theory that Democrats need to do more to regain the voters they've lost. He cites a fellow pundit's math:

I don’t think the question of what you would need to do to win an election in Ohio, Florida and Iowa is answered yet. Matt Yglesias made this point where he says: If you look at how Sherrill and Spanberger ran and how Harris ran, they both ran about five points ahead of her.

And if you just say: OK, what that tells us is that the off-cycle electorate right now — and this would be a big extrapolation, but just for the sake of argument — is plus-five Democratic compared to 2024. That is almost certainly enough to win you the House, but it is only maybe enough to win you Ohio. And it is not enough to win you Iowa, Alaska and places like that.

When I read that, I thought Klein was cooking the books -- Kamala Harris won both New Jersey and Virginia by just under six points, while Abigail's Spanberger's lead in the Virginia governor's race is 14.4%. And Mikie Sherrill's lead in New Jersey is 13.4%. But Yglesias was talking about percentage of the vote, not margin of victory. On Wednesday, he wrote:

Harris got 52 percent in Virginia versus a projected 57 percent for Spanberger. Harris got 44 percent in Ohio and 43 percent in Iowa. If you add five to those numbers, Democrats maybe win Ohio and still almost certainly lose Iowa. And this is the Senate problem in a nutshell: a really strong national climate isn’t good enough.

That math, regrettably, makes sense. If you add five points to a sub-45% Democratic vote percentage, you don't get enough to win the state. In 2024, an additional five points would have given Harris a victory in the popular vote and in the Electoral College -- she would have won all seven swing states -- but Senate races are tougher. John Cornyn's last opponent, M.J. Hegar, got 43.87% of the vote in 2020. The #2 finisher in Alaska the last time Dan Sullivan ran got 41.19% of the vote. Add five points and it's still not enough to win.

But just as 2024's apparent realignment in favor of the GOP proved to be a mirage, 2025 won't last forever either.

Some of the changes over the next year could favor the GOP -- for instance, the government won't be shut down a year from now (probably!). On the other hand, you have to ask youself: Does it really seem possible that America will be better off in 2026 than it is now? An America in which job numbers suggest we're heading for a recession while the markets seem to be headed for a AI-bubble crash?

I know that the Supreme Court's hostility toward President Trump's tariffs is a hopeful sign, but you really need to read this New York Times story (gift link), which makes clear that the Court is ruling on one method of imposing tariffs while Trump has many more ways of imposing them.

Multiple trade authorities exist that would allow the president to impose tariffs that are not subject to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, the law at issue in the Supreme Court case....

Some of those provisions are in use today, while others are more obscure. Together, they could be employed to impose tariffs on foreign countries or products, or even the entire globe. They could also be used to reinforce the trade deals that Mr. Trump has negotiated globally, which are based on tariffs issued under the IEEPA authority.

After reading the article, you might not be ready to take a pop quiz on all the laws Trump can use, but you'll be persuaded that he will use them, and they'll keep prices high.

Will Trump stop militarizing cities and brutalizing their residents? No. Will he stop using the presidency to indulge his own sense of grandiosity? No. Will he stop threatening wars? No -- we might be in a war (or more than one) a year from now.

Among the lessons we learned on Tuesday were these two: Trump's horrible presidency can drive anti-Trump voters to the polls in large numbers and, at least so far, Trump isn't trying to interfere with the vote. The election monitors we were told the Department of Justice was sending to California and New Jersey didn't prevent fair elections in those states. I think Trump genuinely believes he's massively popular and the public is on his side, and that's prevented him from the kind of authoritarian election tampering we all fear. Will that still be the case next year? I don't know -- but it's possible that Trump's ego will be what saves us from a serious shutdown of democracy.

Democrats already have Senate candidates who are beating Republicans in red states in some early polling. Former governor Roy Cooper leads in every poll of the 2026 North Carolina Senate race. In the most recent Senate poll in Ohio, Sherrod Brown beats incumbent Jon Husted. A recent poll shows Mary Peltola beating Dan Sullivan in Alaska. And while it's a long shot, a couple of polls show Democratic contenders beating Republican candidates in Texas.

Democrats need good candidates and good messaging in 2026. But Trump might continue to make their job easier -- and might not use his authoritarian muscle to deprive them of the chance to win.

WHOOPS! NEVER MIND.

I'm pleased that the mainstream media is acknowledging the significance of the Democratic Party's victories on Tuesday. I'm pleased, for instance, that Nate Cohn of The New York Times is noting that the Democratic gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia appear to have flipped 7% of Trump voters, based on exit poll data. I'm pleased that Hispanic voters' return to the Democratic Party is being widely acknowledged. I'm pleased that some media outlets are acknowledging that the wins weren't limited to blue states and cities.

But I'd like an acknowledgment that the same mainstream media was wrong when it was telling us just before the elections that the Democratic Party couldn't possibly dig itself out of the deep hole it was in without massive policy and messaging changes. Just eight days before the election, we were all reading that Semafor story headlined "Left-Wing Ideas Have Wrecked Democrats’ Brand, New Report Warns." Wrecked! The brand was wrecked! And yet a "wrecked" party romped a little more than a week after that story appeared. It was only a few weeks after a series of Ezra Klein interviews in which he monomaniacally focused on the Democrats' apparent electability crisis, which included a discussion with Ta-Nehisi Coates that should have been about Charlie Kirk's bigotry but was instead hijacked by Klein so he could obsess over the notion that Democrats must jettison some liberal policy positions in order to win elections. Will Klein admit that he was wrong about the hopelessness of Democrats' position? Will the rest of the media acknowledge that maybe young men and Hispanic men weren't lost to the GOP forever when Trump won in 2024? Will they admit that maybe Republicans also have policy positions that make them vulnerable, and that this is particularly a problem when they're in charge, as they are nationwide and in Virginia?

I made some mistakes. I thought the left-centrism of Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia would be uninspiring and would lead to close gubernatorial races in those states. I was wrong about that. But I've always assumed that discontent within the Democratic Party could be coming from a lot of people who'll turn out for the party regardless. I wasn't surprised when I read about an NBC poll conducted just before Election Day in which only 28% of voters said they had a positive view of Democrats, but Democrats had a 7-point lead in enthusiasm about voting in the 2026 midterms, comparable to the 9-point lead they had a year before the very successful 2018 midterms.

The press should have acknowledged that the results of the 2024 election might not be signs of a permanent voter realignment, that grumbling about Democrats might be accompanied by votes for Democrats, and that Republicans are capable of alienating voters, too. Every "Democrats are doomed" story should have come with the caveat that maybe Democrats weren't doomed.

Now we know they weren't, but the people who said they weren't won't own up to their mistakes.

TRUMP GAVE CARROTS TO ARGENTINA. MILEI WON. HE GAVE STICKS TO DEMOCRATIC STATES AND CITIES. DEMOCRATS WON.

Last month, just before an Argentinian election that MAGA-esque president Javier Milei's party was expected to lose, President Trump offered the country $20 billion in aid and an additional $20 billion currency swap, with a threat to withhold the money if Milei's party lost. Milei's party won.

So what carrots did Trump extend to the Democratic-leaning cities and states that held elections yesterday? There weren't any -- only sticks. Trump's message to New York City, New Jersey, Virginia, and California was what the young Michael Corleone said to Senator Geary:



New York got threats of a federal funding freeze and a military occupation. California has already seen a military occupation of its largest city. Virginia has seen massive layoffs of federal workers and paychecks withheld from those who are still employed. New Jersey saw the termination of a much-needed rail project that would connect the states' commuters to New York City.

And everyone got higher prices, as well as, in Jamelle Bouie's words,

soldiers on the streets, masked agents leading violent immigration raids, arbitrary tariffs, new conflicts abroad, dictatorial aspirations, endless chaos and a president more interested in taking a wrecking ball to the White House to build his garish ballroom than delivering anything of value to the public.

Some of this is incompetence -- Trump seems to have genuinely believed that he was capable of ushering in an economic Golden Age based on his cockamamie theories about tariffs. Some of it is his narcissistic grandiosity, which is encouraged by the right-wing media he eagerly consumes: He thought that, like his base, the rest of us would delight in his self-indulgent Gatsby party and destruction of the East Wing to build a ballroom reportedly funded by bribes disguised as construction contributions.

But to a large extent, Trump and his party behaved the way they did in the run-up to the election because they hate Democrats. They hate the left, they hate liberalism, they hate any group they identify with Democrats -- Blacks, Hispanics, people of non-European descent, immigrants, LGBTQ people, feminists, librarians, teachers, professors, anyone from Hollywood or the mainstream media -- and they've simply stopped trying to govern as if this is one country that includes groups they despise as full citizens. Not all of them make pronouncements in obscure journals about how evil we are and how necessary our destruction is, like this one from Charles Haywood, a wealthy right-wing donor and movement figure:

What is our end? That is easy — winning. What is the winning condition? It is the total, permanent defeat of the Left, of the ideology at the heart of the Enlightenment, with its two core principles of total emancipation from all bonds not continuously chosen, and of total forced equality of all people. When this defeat is accomplished, Right principles, those based in reality and recognizing the nature of man, his limitations, and his capabilities, can again become ascendant.

Winning does not mean electoral victory such that Right principles may be voted into law, and then nullified or voted out again. It means the total, permanent elimination of all Left power, and, even more importantly, the total discrediting, both on a moral and practical basis, of all Left ideology. What is Left should be seen for what it is, evil, and it should be seen as not only destructive in practice, but laughable, the ideology of losers and idiots, or at most something from the discredited past, viewed with vague curiosity, as the cult of Mithras is today.

On Fox News this past summer, Stephen Miller put it more simply:

“The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization."

This has been the message of the right-wing media for decades: that there are heroes and villains in our culture, and all the heroes are Republicans in good standing (or their allies overseas), while the villains are ... everyone else.

Now we have a Republican Party openly governing according to this worldview. Trump unabashedly attacks places and institutions identified as Democratic -- and then he's surprised when voters who aren't Republican go to the polls to reject more of the same.

Democrats had a message of affordability that came in both center-left and progressive-left varieties; they won elections both ways. Democrats won back groups who, according to hand-wringing pundits and consultants, were said to be permanently lost to the party after the 2024 elections -- including young voters and Hispanics. Punchbowl News notes:

Two heavily Latino counties in New Jersey that Trump won in 2024 swung back to the left. [New Jersey governor-elect Mikie] Sherrill flipped Passaic and Cumberland counties and improved [Kamala] Harris’ margin in Hudson County by a double-digit advantage. That’s an early sign for Democrats that Trump’s inroads with Latino voters may not last in the face of ICE’s national immigration raids. That has huge implications for the battle for the House.

And the issue that was supposed to mean instant death for Democrats -- the alleged trans menance -- utterly failed Republicans. We're told that "Republicans in the Virginia race have dedicated 57 percent of all their paid media campaigning toward transgender-related issues," but Winsome Earle-Sears lost the governor's race by double digits because that wasn't a key issue for voters.

Hard to overstate lack of salience of trans issue in new Washington Post/Schar poll of Virginia It actually went down in importance since their last poll It is top concern of 3% of voters This is after months of ads and posts about it Economy top concern at 18%

[image or embed]

— Sam Shirazi (@samshirazi.bsky.social) October 23, 2025 at 11:55 AM

The Democrats who won yesterday might struggle to deliver real change, but at least they want to make voters' lives better. It's clear now that Republicans hate a large portion of the electorate and don't want to make their lives better -- and are so focused on consolidating power that they're not even trying to make the lives of anyone else (except themselves and their friends) better.

THE NEW YORK POST THINKS THE NAZI FIGHT IN THE GOP IS ALARMING. RESPONSE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯?

There's a Nazi crisis in the GOP, and the New York Post is taking it seriously:

One of the largest conservative think tanks in Washington, DC, has been roiled by its president’s embrace of Tucker Carlson after the conservative podcaster hosted white nationalist Nick Fuentes on his show, prompting an outcry from senior staff.

Internal chats reviewed by The Post show high-ranking members of the Heritage Foundation told each other privately how “embarrassed” and “disgusted” they were by Kevin Roberts’ “ridiculous” decision to come to Carlson’s defense over the sitdown with Fuentes....

In Carlson’s two-hour interview, which has racked up more than 17 million views on X, Fuentes called himself “a fan” of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and denounced the influence of “organized Jewry” in US politics, while Carlson accused American Christians who support the state of Israel of being heretics with a “brain virus.”

Roberts, 51, released a video statement Oct. 30, three days after the Carlson-Fuentes interview was posted, condemning efforts by movement conservatives aimed at “canceling our own people.” ...

The ripple effect from Roberts’ statement has gone beyond staff issues, with sources close to the think tank saying that it has been “hemorrhaging” evangelical Christian and Jewish contributors....

We're told that Princeton's Robert P. George, an influential Heritage board member, has tried to oust Kevin Roberts as president.

But the take on this story at The New York Times is: Republican officeholders reassure us that there's nothing to see here.

Republican lawmakers and influencers continued on Monday to distance themselves from Tucker Carlson after his sympathetic interview with the prominent white supremacist Nick Fuentes....

On Capitol Hill, Republicans were quick to disavow antisemitism and declare unbending support for Israel....

“There’s already the Democratic Party that is anti-Israel, and is OK with antisemitism,” Senator Rick Scott, Republican of Florida, said in an interview. “We’ve got to be very clear we don’t support antisemitism and we do support Israel.” ...

“I’m in the ‘Hitler sucks’ wing of the Republican Party,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said over the weekend....

For years, the Republican Party has embraced greater and greater degrees of extremism, but the press has continued to turn to soft-spoken Republican Senate and House leaders who reassure the journalistic establishment that the party is full of fine, moderate fellows who'd never do anything out of bounds. That's worked for so long that we now have a White House full of extremist freaks tearing away at the foundations of our democracy and the Republican Party still isn't seen as significantly more extreme than the Democratic Party.

The Times story briefly mentions the fact that the rot extends to the vice president's office, then drops that subject quickly.

When a cache of leaked antisemitic, misogynistic and other bigoted texts that circulated among a group of Republican operatives recently surfaced, Vice President JD Vance ridiculed the outraged reaction as “pearl clutching.”

But others, including Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, have argued that Republicans must rid their movement of such viewpoints. Mr. Cruz has positioned himself as one of the party’s loudest voices denouncing antisemitism and appeared especially eager for a hand-to-hand fight with Mr. Carlson.

Vance is one blocked presidential artery away from the Oval Office. Cruz isn't. But the story never mentions Vance again.

And there appears to be nothing in the Times about the racist reaction to this innocuous tweet:

Happy Halloween! 🎃 pic.twitter.com/e8PeD0SXQx

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) October 31, 2025

Get out of our country, you scamming piece of shit.

— painmute (@painmute) November 3, 2025

holy shit, you dressed them up as the scariest thing I can imagine, H1B visa workers!

— TardFax (@Tard_Fax) October 31, 2025

Politely

Go back

Your making my white country unrecognizable

There are also MILLIONS of Indians suffering back at your home
That need you BADLY to fix their land and save them

— tony4America (@Tony4_America) November 1, 2025

This is not an isolated incident:

During the recent Diwali period, FBI Director Kash Patel ... posted on X: “Happy Diwali — celebrating the Festival of Lights around the world, as good triumphs over evil.”

Among the many hateful comments he received were:

* “Reject this false religion’s Diwali nonsense. Hinduism is idolatry, not truth.”

* "Dude we are a Christian nation. Assimilate or leave.”

* And a popular comment, whose visibility has been limited by X: “I’ve seen that one. Is that the festival where they all s**t in the street?”

There was at least one fecal response to Ramaswamy's tweet as well:

Is this before or after you bathe in shit? 😂😂😂

Kiddingggg

— John Quigg II (@CatofFable) November 3, 2025

But to the mainstream media, this racism doesn't exist. Republican rank-and-file voters are Carhartt-wearing Real Americans who drive pickup trucks and have dirt under their fingernails from long days of honest labor. They're noble -- and Democratic voters aren't.

Nick Fuentes could be the future of the GOP. Even if he isn't, opposition to religious pluralism probably is the future, even if many non-Christians are potential Republican voters (or actual Republican candidates or top aides). But the mainstream press might continue to tell us that everything is fine.

ALL THE PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT AS GOOD-LOOKING AS DONALD TRUMP, ACCORDING TO DONALD TRUMP

That was a weird moment in Donald Trump's 60 Minutes interview:

In a wide-ranging interview on CBS' "60 Minutes" that aired Nov. 2 ... Norah O'Donnell asked Trump what he thought of comparisons to [Zohran] Mamdani, 34, as a left-wing version of the 79-year-old Republican president. They are both seen as charismatic leaders breaking old rules.

"Well, I think I'm a much better looking person than him," Trump responded.

Some have called Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic socialist front-runner for New York City mayor, a left-wing version of President Trump.

"I think I'm a much better looking person than him," says Trump, after calling Mamdani a "communist." pic.twitter.com/p9FDWNcoGs

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) November 2, 2025

Trump does this a lot. In August of last year, Trump said at a campaign appearance that he was better-looking than Kamala Harris.

Trump then goes after a “Ronald Reagan speechwriter,” presumptively Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan. Noonan has written about Harris’s appearance in recent weeks, saying that, “Her beauty, plus the social warmth that all who have known her over the years speak of, combines to produce: radiance.”

“She said one thing that got me,” Trump began, seemingly talking about Noonan’s columns. “She said Kamala has one big advantage, she’s a very beautiful woman. She’s a beautiful woman.” The crowd boos.

“But I say that I’m much better looking than her. Much better. Much better. I’m a better looking person than Kamala,” Trump continued, to cheers.

He also said it to Elon Musk:

... Trump claimed he was "better looking" than the vice president, after previously calling her "beautiful," during a conversation with Elon Musk last week.

"Don't ever call a woman beautiful, because that'll be the end of your political career, please." Trump began, later going on to say, "But I say that I am much better looking. I'm a better-looking person than Kamala."

"They said, 'No, her biggest advantage is that she's a beautiful woman.' I'm going, huh? I never thought of that. I'm better looking than she is."

In 2018, during Democrat Conor Lamb's successful campaign in a special House election in Pennsylvania, Trump said this about Lamb at a campaign appearance for his opponent, Rick Saccone:

"And Conor Lamb, Lamb the Sham, right? Lamb the Sham. He's trying to act like a Republican, so he gets—He won't give me one vote," Trump said. "Look, I don't know him. He looks like a nice guy. I hear he's nice looking. I think I'm better looking than him. I do. I do. I do, and he's slightly younger than me...."

In November 2015, Trump said he was better looking than one of his opponents in the Republican presidential primaries, Marco Rubio.

Trump made the comments on Bloomberg Television's "With All Due Respect," referencing the media fawning over Rubio, who had a successful performance at last week's Republican debate.

"I watched someone on [MSNBC's 'Morning Joe'] this morning...He's fawning over him. He says how handsome he is," Trump said.

"I don’t know, I think I’m better looking than he is."

And Trump said this, in the third person, about billionaire Mark Cuban, a frequent Trump critic:

Sorry folks, but Donald Trump is far richer and much better looking than dopey @mcuban!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 19, 2013

This message was even worked into a staged shouting match between Trump and World Wrestling's Vince McMahon in 2007:

"I'm taller than you, I'm better looking than you—and I will kick your ass!"

Trump does a lot of self-soothing on the subject of his looks. He likes telling himself he's handsome:

"@Matt_Cad: @realDonaldTrump Why do so many people despise you?" Because I am so handsome!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2013

And he likes it when other people (or bots) call him handsome.

"@HMunjal: You're one of the most educated, handsome and sophisticated men that I know of. Men should aspire to be like you." Thank you!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 8, 2013

"@m_i_c_h_a_e_l_m: @realDonaldTrump you are a very handsome man" I know, but the haters and losers never give me credit for that! Too bad.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 6, 2013

"@WeLoveTheDonald @DonaldJTrumpJr @realDonaldTrump @EricTrump Such handsome men! Great pic!" Thank you.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 4, 2015

In 2018, Annie Karni reported:

Tall and broad-shouldered, Trump sees himself as a leading man and has told friends in recent years: “Can you believe I’m better looking in my 70s than when I was 35.”

Occasionally he dials it down, saying only that he once was handsome:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Independent (@the.independent)

A thought I had while reading the transcript of Trump's 60 Minutes interview is that self-soothing is how Trump gets through the day, and it's also how the Republican Party maintains its grip on its voter base. Trump continually tells himself that he's the best:

I rebuilt the military during my first term. My first term was a tremendous success. We had the greatest economy in the history of our country.

But my second term is blowing it away. It's blowing it away when you look at the numbers, the stock market, the jobs. Look at the job numbers, how good they've been. And, again, I have costs down.

And his enemies are evil:

Joe Biden was the worst president in the history of our country. We had the worst inflation, we had the worst of everything....

If [Democrats] get into power and someday I guess they will. Who knows? It's hard to believe when they have men in women's sports, open borders, open everything, a transgender for everyone....

... from the standpoint of winning is, they have the worst policy of-- it's hard to believe. Think of it. Open borders, men playing in women's sports, transgender for everybody.

Trump's self-soothing habit and the right-wing propaganda machine work well together because they work the same way: At every point where a reasonable person might say, Maybe this is a mistake and we should take a different course, the response is a series of hyperbolic claims of brilliance, accompanied by equally hyperbolic claims of the calamity that would result from abandoning the current course.

America sucks right now, and most Americans understand that. Trump's poll numbers are beginning to plummet. A majority of Americans think we're on the wrong track. But Trump soothes himself, and the GOP base is soothed with him, as the Republican propaganda operation repeats Trump's claims as fact or allows them to stand unchallenged, as 60 Minutes largely did last night,