Organized people can still defeat organized money

The results are quite delightful! Yes, the US elections ended yesterday and results were posted last night and this morning. I’d love to bask in every wonderful detail, but you can get most of the results from traditional news outlets. So I’ll mention the top numbers and then turn to results harder to find and to what some pundits are saying. Real Clear Politics (I learned about this site only recently) shows the top numbers. It also gives details on each race. As of 9:20 pm today it reported: Democrats gained 39 seats in the US House for 247 to 152 Republicans. There are 36 seats that haven’t been called yet. Democrats gained 7 seats in the US Senate for 54 to 44 with two seats too close to call. Those seven gains are almost all in red states. They are: Maine, not so red, but goodbye Susan Collins! Ohio. Both North and South Carolina, goodbye Darlene Graham, unqualified sister of the late Senator Lindsay Graham pushed into the position by the nasty guy. Iowa. Kansas, which hasn’t voted for a Democratic Senator since 1932, where pastor Adam Hamilton will take the seat. And Texas, where Seminarian James Talarico won. Democrats gained five governor’s mansions, in Ohio (I like this!), Iowa, Georgia (Jon Ossoff returning to the Senate has long coattails), Texas (even better!), and Nevada. Kalloli Bhatt of Michigan Public has the Michigan results. Democrats kept the governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, the two contested seats in the state Supreme Court, and elected Abdul El-Sayed as the first Muslim senator in Washington. His opponent didn’t succeed in trying to smear him as a terrorist. Two seats in the US house also flipped. The Michigan constitution requires citizens be asked every 16 years whether it should be rewritten. But we now have too many wonderful amendments (independent redistricting, voter rights, abortion protection) to risk a complete rewrite most likely controlled by billionaires. There was fear at the start of the campaign season when it polled at 47% for a rewrite. Thankfully, no rewrite got 73.8%. I had helped gather signatures (all together more than a half-million) on a proposal to get money out of politics, especially from utilities and government contractors. It passed decisively with 81.3% of the vote! Already, one provision is the target of a lawsuit. Democrats widened their hold on the state Senate (their majority had been a single seat) and retook the state House, giving Michigan a trifecta again. There are still a few seats too close to call. The Daily Kos staff posted a chart (as of this morning) showing the Senate races that were not rated as safe for either party. It’s good to see all that have a “DEM. FLIP” designation. Sarah Bricker Hunt of Pridesource has results for Michigan’s LGBTQ candidates:

State Sen. Jeremy Moss became the first out LGBTQ+ person Michigan has ever elected to Congress, and Joanna Whaley will be the first openly trans member of the Michigan House. All nine out LGBTQ+ candidates for the Legislature won.

Whaley was in the news back in July when a suit tried to require the use of her deadname on the ballot. Moss won the seat vacated by Haley Stevens when she ran for the US senate. I’ll have more on her downfall likely in another post. Other firsts in this election:

Michigan was part of a night of national firsts. Chris Pappas of New Hampshire will be the first out gay man elected to the U.S. Senate, Keisha Lance Bottoms will be the first Black woman to serve as governor of any state after winning in Georgia and New Mexico's Deb Haaland will be the first Native American woman governor.

The 9 LGBTQ candidates for state legislature are also listed. One is shown as too close to call. The others won, some getting as much as 71% of the vote. Emily Singer of Kos listed her ten most satisfying results. Here are some of them: Max Miller, Republican candidate for Congress in Ohio and accused of domestic violence, lost by ten points to Brian Poindexter. Vivek Ramaswamy lost the race for governor in Ohio. He had run an ad showing his opponent Amy Acton’s mother denouncing her while not mentioning Amy had been pulled from her mother’s home at age 12. The ever concerned Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was known for her “independence” from the nasty guy when her vote didn’t matter, lost by nearly 8 points. I had noted Texas had voted for Democrat James Talarico for Senate. The state also voted for Democrats for Governor (goodbye Greg Abbott!) and other statewide races and flipping the state House. Texas is no longer a Republican stronghold. Lauren Boebert, racist MAGA warrior of Colorado, is on track to lose her House seat. It hasn’t been officially called yet. Democrats won almost all seats Republicans gerrymandered to be in their favor. Wisconsin, perhaps the most gerrymandered state for Republicans, flipped its House, Senate, and governor for a Democrat trifecta. Oliver Willis of Kos reported that Elon Musk spent at least $440 million to help Republicans win. A big chunk of that went to Texas in hopes of preventing a Talarico win. Of the candidates Musk supported 20 lost, one won, and 20 are too close to call. Shares of Tesla and SpaceX dropped on the news because Musk’s contracts with the government will be scrutinized by incoming Democrat majorities. Musk moved company headquarters from California to Texas to avoid state oversight. And now Texas is controlled by Democrats. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin had, of course, election commentary. A tweet by Chaz Nuttycombe:

Arkansas Republicans got absolutely nuked in the state legislative races. Seats where they had 80, 90% odds of winning, just gone.

A tweet by Drew Savicki

Dummymander moment: Democrats are going to win 10/14 congressional districts in North Carolina on map that was drawn to be 11-3 Republican.

A tweet by Jesse Ferguson:

Welp. Democrats have just flipped control of the City Council in Lynchburg, Virginia. That's the home of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.

In the comments, a tweet by Wendell Pierce:

THE NEW RECONSTRUCTION ERA FIRST BLACK HOUSE SPEAKER FIRST BLACK WOMAN GOVERNOR 3 BLACK WOMEN SENATORS 3 BLACK GOVERNORS CONCURRENTLY IN OFFICE FIRST MUSLIM SENATOR FIRST OPENLY GAY SENATOR

A tweet from Robert Reich:

The richest man in the world spent more money that most people will see in a lifetime, only to lose a Senate race and governor’s race in Texas by double digits. This is a reminder that we must overturn Citizens United. But it’s also a reminder that organized people can still defeat organized money.

A tweet from Armand Domalewski:

The mandatory sex change surgeries begin TONIGHT. All Republican voters, please report to your local abortion clinic voluntarily or a bisexual MS-13 member will be sent to your home. Somehow, pansexual org-es and shariah law are simultaneously in effect as of this moment.

Dan K of the Kos community commented on a New York Times report that at 10:30 last night the nasty guy said he would accept election results. He is looking forward to working with Democrats. Or maybe that’s a bit inside out. From the NYT

“I think they’re gonna want to work with me,” he said. “Otherwise I’d just veto everything and they’re not gonna want that.”

And from Dan K:

We’ve said all along we needed to win by so large a margin that trump couldn’t steal it away from us. We got that margin!!!!! (and we’re getting it bigger!!!!!), and it was enough to shock trump into a semblance of comity. For the moment.

Will his staff and cabinet allow him to not fight the results? Or maybe he is too old, tired, and sick to sustain a fight? I’ve been thinking a lot about not hearing anything in the news about putting in action the plan to contest the election, which I wrote about in my previous post last Friday. I’m delighted it doesn’t appear to be happening. Or maybe the nasty guy is content to turn his attention to his ballroom. This afternoon he held a news event inside the unfinished structure, as reported by Walter Einenkel of Kos. Dartagnan of the Kos community quoted a Republican strategist from mid October discussing polls showing a huge Democratic win.

It would be so historically unprecedented you’d have to presuppose we’re staring down the barrel of a generational national trauma that no one is aware of.

Dartagnan emphasized “no one is aware of” as evidence that conservatives live in a bubble. He explained:

They lost because they were living in a bubble. They were living in a media ecosystem that told them everything they were doing — everything that Trump was doing — was just peachy. The bubble was reinforced over and over on Fox News, and in all their social media feeds. That bubble brooked no dissent, not a hint of doubt or introspection. It was the same bubble all cult members live in. It was a big bubble, and it was an amazingly popular bubble (for them). They would go to bubbled events where they would only interact and talk to the people in the same bubble. They stared into their phones and read the same happy talk, tailored and curated for their bubble. And before too long — quite understandably — they all forgot about the bubble. No, they thought. This was reality. And Trump was happy to reinforce it for them, so much that acting– or even thinking — outside the bubble became unthinkable. But it wasn’t reality. It was still a bubble.

The moment the gavel changes hands, they are witnesses

Thursday evening I went to the Fisher Theater in Detroit to see the show Maybe Happy Ending. It won Tony Awards for Best Musical and five other categories out of ten nominations in 2025. It’s creators are South Korean and American. It’s first production was in Seoul. The story is about two HelperBots, robots that look human (and played by humans), who do domestic chores for their owners. These bots, Oliver and Claire, live in the company’s “retirement” community because they are obsolete. Oliver sings about how he loves his little room and is waiting for James, his owner, to come back and return him to service. He’s been waiting for a dozen years. Claire lives across the hall. She’s a later model but isn’t as durable and needs to use his charger because she can’t get repair parts for her own. They become friends and soon have a plan to go out and find James. Yes, the show shows robots with feelings, including eventually falling in love, and my friend and debate partner would strongly object to that. But go with it, the story makes a very good point about human emotions, including love, and solves a dilemma in a way only robots could. Which is why the happy ending is a maybe. This is pretty much a two character show. There are a few moments with other characters, such as James and his son, but they aren’t on stage for very long. And some of the characters appear only in video flashbacks, so while there are seven actors listed in the cast only four take bows at the end. I enjoyed the show. The music is pleasant, though the songs aren’t memorable. The set is memorable with screens pulling up and to the sides to reveal the active part of the stage and outline it with a border of light. We’ve seen some efforts to disrupt the midterm elections. So far the efforts have been rejected by a court or remain tied up there. But the nasty guy and his Republican minions will still keep trying. Daily Kos community member xaxnar quoted Dean Blundell of his own Substack discussing a calendar of seven steps the nasty guy plans to take to disrupt and steal the election. Blundell does not link to the source of his information (it may be leaked and not on a website). Blundell did post a graphic attributed to Brian and Ed Krassenstein, which xaxnar also included (though I won’t). The seven steps: Nov. 3 – Start declaring fraud while votes are still being counted. Immediately created doubt. Nov. 4-6 – Hold press conferences to push the allegations and highlight any voting anomalies. Make it look like a nationwide problem. Nov. 7-12 – Direct Department of Justice to investigate, subpoena voter records, threaten lawsuits to slow down the certification. Nov. 13-20 – Pressure states to not certify results, demand investigations to delay certification in close races. Nov. 21-Dec. 5 – Escalate legal battles, file lawsuits, claim voting machines were hacked, keep disputes in the news. Dec. 6-20 – Push Congress not to seat certain elected members, pressure other members to support the objections, block the new members from being seated. Up to Jan. 3 – Keep all this in the news, dispute the legitimacy of the new Congress, undermine public trust in the opposition. Blundell explained why the nasty guy is doing this:

Because losing the House is not a political problem for Trump. It is a legal one. A Democratic House means subpoena power. It means the Epstein files in their entirety, not the redacted scraps. It means the oligarchs who bought the crypto coin, the pardons, the Qatari jet, and the cabinet of cable hosts all get hauled under oath. It means the ICE contracts, the Pentagon slush, the family’s billions. Every person who has spent two years protecting him understands that the moment the gavel changes hands, they are witnesses. He is not fighting for a majority. He is fighting for his own skin and the skins of everyone standing behind him, and a man fighting for his skin will burn the house down and call it a renovation.

One way to fight this is to make the margins too big to deny. Another is to be ready for each step as it begins by having countermeasures ready to go. Kos of Kos discussed a report on Fox News that some Republicans are contemplating using a maneuver to challenge the oath of members of the Democratic Socialists of America. This oath is to uphold the Constitution and is taken by every member. The claim is that the DSA platform calls for scrapping the current US Constitution. That means they can’t swear an oath to uphold it. But the Constitution itself has articles explaining how to amend it, even calling for a convention to propose amendments. So, yeah, calling for scrapping the current one is perfectly constitutional. Thankfully, Speaker Mike Johnson said refusing to seat any Democrats is a “nonsense narrative” and the Supreme Court has previously ruled that the House can’t refuse to seat members who meet the requirements of being 25, a citizen for 7 years, and a resident of the state that elected them. Republicans are very good at performative outrage. It gets them on Fox News. Kos community member Hopeforthefuture says there might be an effort to unseat Johnson before the end of the year. A reason for that could be because of arcane rules. The only carryover from one House session to the next is the Clerk. One task is to accept the state election certification and list the new House membership. A very routine process.

However, the Clerk can, in theory, deliberately omit names from the list. For example, every new representative from the state of California. Clerks are normally elected by the full House and no normal Clerk would ever do this. However, when the House is not in session, the Speaker has the authority to dismiss the Clerk and appoint an acting Clerk. If the Speaker is Mike Johnson, there’s certainly a chance he would dismiss the current Clerk during the Christmas recess and appoint some corrupt, craven toady who would. I think this is exactly why the DOJ presented California with the illegal and impossible demand to disenfranchise 20,000 voters. They knew how California’s leaders would react, and they knew they could use that as a pretext for not seating California’s newly elected representatives.

Replacing Johnson with someone loyal to the Constitution could stop that effort. Am I chasing conspiracies? We’ll see. I’d be happy if this was wrong. Kos of Kos discussed a Gallup survey about which values Americans thought the country needed most. All Americans: Honesty (34%), responsibility (32%), integrity (31%), equality (29%), and fairness (26%). Democrats: Equality (44%), fairness (34%), honesty (32%), integrity (29%), and kindness (25%). Republicans: Patriotism (46%), responsibility (41%), honesty (38%), integrity (33%), respect (28%). Democrats put patriotism at 6%, independents at 15%. Kos questions Republicans about their honesty. They elected the nasty guy twice and an Economist/YouGov poll in September found of registered voters 53% described him as corrupt, 51% as dangerous, and 46% as cruel. And of Republicans 10% described him as corrupt, 49% as honest, and 41% as cruel. That doesn’t sound like they value honesty.

In a late September YouGov poll, just 26% of Republicans said Trump had “set a high moral standard.” That’s such a low bar for the president of the United States to meet, yet his own supporters couldn’t give it to him. So what happens when Republicans claim to value honesty, integrity, and responsibility, yet won’t hold their own president to those standards? What happens when their political loyalties matter more than the principles they insist America needs?

They won’t admit the nasty guy is a mistake. But what about the next guy? Such as the vice nasty. Or any of the Republicans currently in office. At least Republicans believe values exist and they say honesty and integrity are important. But they aren’t living by those values. They don’t influence what they’ll sacrifice for or condemn. They aren’t committed to the values they claim are important. Emily Singer of Kos reported last Monday that news outlet Puck reported that Sen. Marsha Blackburn is running to be governor of Tennessee. If she gets the job Pete Hegseth wants her to appoint him to fill her vacancy in the Senate. His reasons for his request (which he has not confirmed): It will help him launch a bid to be president. It also would avoid being impeached and removed, or perhaps fired, from his job at the Pentagon. The House is already working on articles of impeachment to be voted on after the midterms. Being impeached would stain his chance to run for president. If impeachment and trial happen it puts Republicans in a bind, whether to vote to keep the guy who goaded the nasty guy into war with Iran that is damaging the global economy. For that reason Blackburn could decide there are much better people to appoint to the Senate. Lisa Needham of Kos discussed the state of those articles of impeachment in the House. Kos discussed Obama on the campaign trail, rallying for Democrats in tight races. In Cleveland he packed a 10,000 seat venue for Amy Acton, running for governor. Kos included clips supplied by Aaron Rupar and HQNews. Some of Obama’s lines:

Remember draining the swamp? The only thing they drained was the reflecting pool after a no bid contract, and they messed it up. When I was president, all these Republicans are all deficits, deficits, debt, debt. You got to do something about it. And now—$40 trillion—Crickets. Somehow deficits only matter when a Democratic president is in office. Trump should be on HGTV. He's building a ballroom, paved over the Rose Garden, put a helicopter pad on the South Lawn, and what's up with the gold? He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened up a Cheesecake Factory!

Sheesh, that last one. Stirred up a storm. I’ve eaten at a Cheesecake Factory once and was with Sister and Niece. Sister said her food was bland and returning was not worth it. I agreed. Kos wrote that a CF restaurant is indeed gaudy and over-the-top. It looks like “several ancient civilizations collided with a Las Vegas casino.” Which for CF is the point. It’s glorious excess is its charm (according to Kos). But the White House should have dignity. Ah, conservatives hyperventilated over the Cheesecake Factory and how elitist Obama must be. Kos provided several examples. Nate Silver called these people “performative humorless scolds.” The contrast between Obama and the nasty guy is a good reason for Republicans to “spend their weekend pretending to be offended by a Cheesecake Factory joke than talking about what Obama actually said.” Kos continued the discussion in a second post:

During the Obama years, conservatives could manufacture outrage and largely control the ensuing narrative. These days, liberals have the platforms and reach to turn that outrage right back on them, making the performative freakout itself the object of ridicule.

Such as this tweet from John Couger Colleencamp:

The right: “The left can’t take a joke!” Obama: makes a joke The right: starts a brand new culture war over…The Cheesecake Factory

And a tweet by Stephen Moran showing the nasty guy in a gilded room squirting ketchup on a steak while...

Saddam Hussein: I like what you’ve done with the place! Liberace: Me too!

A tweet from The Viscount:

The entire right wing media apparatus taking up pistols at 40 paces to defend the honor of the Cheesecake Factory is exactly how I want to close out the election cycle. Thank you all for this.

And in a third post Kos shows Obama’s reaction to the uproar, given in Atlanta while helping Sen. Jon Ossoff and Keisha Lance Bottoms, running for governor. Kos included a full transcript of his remarks. Here’s part of it:

I accused this administration, based on the facts, that they were engaging in unprecedented levels of corruption. They didn’t say anything about that. The president wasn’t even mad about the Saddam Hussein comparison. That part didn’t bother him! But he was very upset about the Cheesecake Factory comments. He took great umbrage. He said I didn’t understand the work of the artisans in the White House. And they mobilized—this was, I mean it’s all crazy, but this is the really crazy part—they mobilized a whole-of-government response to that joke. Not to inflation, but to that joke! ... To everybody out there, including the press, I want you to understand this. This is what I mean when I say these are not serious people. They don’t have solutions to actual problems. So they’d rather have the media and you talking about the Cheesecake Factory. That’s the game they’ve been playing for the last two years.

They want a doctor that knows them and sees their humanity

I finished the book Rough Sleepers, Dr. Jim O’Connell’s Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People, by Tracy Kidder. I had mentioned back in April that Kidder died at the age of 80, so this was his last book. Rough Sleepers refers to people sleeping on the street. Kidder spent quite a bit of time with Jim (as he’s referred to in the book) and his work. This is the way Kidder had worked with his previous books. Jim’s work included driving around downtown Boston with a small team looking for homeless people and offering them soup, extra blankets, and a bit of money. Other days he worked at the Mass General Hospital in a clinic for homeless people or at a separate clinic with rooms that cared for the homeless while they recovered from an illness. Jim found that the homeless want to see the same doctor each time, a doctor that would know them from one visit to the next and spend as much time as needed rather than limit themselves to the allotted time a medical system has as its standard. They want a doctor who cares for them as people rather than seeing them as a body to be treated. They want a doctor that treats them like a human rather than the dregs of society. I think we all want that. A couple of the staff at the clinic worked to get their people into housing. They know the system well enough they sometimes have success. Sometimes they don’t. Kidder includes a discussion of the housing first movement – get a person housed and that will make all their other issues easier to manage. In many places that works quite well, in others it doesn’t. Some communities try to spend the funds to end homelessness, again with good results. Other times it doesn’t work as well. A big issue is many lawmakers (I add: usually Republicans) who simply don’t want to spend the money, no matter the great benefits. And, yes, that implies they want people to be homeless. Kidder describes Tony, one of the homeless men. He’s a big man and a kind soul, one who will do all he can to help out his fellow rough sleepers. Homeless women appreciate him because he will protect and not exploit them. But he is also an addict. Using frequently lands him in the live-in clinic. When he recovers enough to function he’ll serve as a social director – helping other residents, stepping in to break up arguments, and just being a friend to everyone. After a few days he’s back on the streets using again. Attempts at getting him housed don’t succeed because of things in his troubled past. I very much enjoyed the book and recommend it. Kidder is a very good writer, able to explain things well while maintaining his subject’s humanity. Michigan news has periodic stories of the Palisades nuclear power plant in southwest Michigan. The plant reached the end of its useful life and was sold to Holtec, a company that would decommission it and, presumably, tear it down in a manner that would minimize radiation exposure. But perhaps a year or two later that same company decided instead of decommissioning the plant they would return it to operation. The stories I hear are about the latest steps in the process, something that has not been done before. Karl Grossman and Harvey Wasserman of the Daily Kos community discussed an open letter to Congress by Arnie Gundersen that explains the plant isn’t and cannot be made safe. Gundersen has extensive experience and certification in the nuclear industry. But in the last three years, as long has this venture has been going on, he has been rebuffed by the The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and many other people in the nasty guy’s administration. The issue: Holtec has experience decommissioning reactors. It does not have experience running them. Staff members are not certified for that. The reason Holtec wants to run this one is that nuclear plants have never been profitable and never been as safe as they claim. They run with a great deal of government subsidy. And getting hands on that cash appears to be profitable for Holtec. In contrast to the significant subsidies needed by nuclear energy wind and solar are much cheaper. Gundersen goes into detail on the problems in the plant. I’ll skip that. The likelihood of a failure within the first 18 months is high, a failure that would prompt an evacuation out to ten miles. Fortunately, there is no city in that zone, but Detroit is only 180 miles downwind with Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Jackson, Ann Arbor, and me in between. Gundersen hopes that Congress (or the one that takes control in January) will take him more seriously than the NRC has and stop Holtec’s efforts to revive the Palisades plant. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoting Jon Stewart’s response to the vice nasty blaming the French riots on Muslim immigrants. Those riots began with students protesting conditions at their schools and expanded to include people protesting the cost of living. Stewart said:

I’m sorry, Vance, are you seriously suggesting that immigrants have brought a culture of revolution and protest to France??? Have you not been to the theater? Can you not hear the people sing? Do you know why Versailles is a museum? It used to be someone’s house, full of people with heads! Do you want to know how French these protests were? They stormed the Bastille! Other than adultery, it’s the most French thing you can do.