Give him an ideal to aspire to, not a group to hate

I finished the book Toni at Random, the Iconic Writer’s Legendary Editorship by Dana A. Williams. Even with the subject’s distinctive face on the cover a person saw the title and essentially said, “Huh?” So I’ll expand it a bit to Toni Morrison at Random House Publishing. Yes, Morrison was a book editor, 1965-1980, before and while her writing career took off. She saw her job there as getting black authors published while also creating books to serve as resources for the growing Black Studies programs at universities. Those programs needed such things as anthologies of African (not just African American) writers to help dispel the idea that African culture was inferior to European culture. They also needed books of stories and essays where black people talked to black people while not actually explaining themselves to white people or dealing with racism as an underlying issue in everything. For some of these books Morrison conceived of the need for a particular book and went looking for people, frequently academics, who could create it under her guidance. Other times an author’s work would come to her attention and she saw the basic beauty of the writing and helped shape the work into a coherent book. We also learn how the editor guides the book through the publishing process: Convince management the book is worth the effort. Keep track of the contract and propose the size of advance. Work with the sales team to figure out what kind of sales the book might get and from that to determine how many pages the sales could support. Work with the art department for the cover and interior layout. Send out review copies and incorporate good quotes into the book’s advertising. Help schedule author appearances. Deal with agents and writers who fall behind schedule, then adjust the schedule as needed. There is much more. Some of the books discussed are a biography of boxer Muhammad Ali and an autobiography of Angela Davis. It is an enjoyable and informative book. But there were times I thought I really don’t need this much detail. One of those times was when she suggested to an author to get an agent and they chose one that became highly uncooperative. During that battle I skipped a few pages. My Sunday movie was Cactus Pears. The story takes place in India. Anand is 30 and unmarried, living in Mumbai where he has a pretty good corporate job. His father dies and he and his mother take the body back to their village to complete the ten-day mourning ritual. So a good part of the story is about rural Indian life. There is talk that since Anand is unmarried maybe he isn’t the right one to do all the rituals. His mother insists he is. During those ten days Anand renews his friendship with Balya, a childhood friend and now a local farmer and goat herder, struggling to earn enough. Also during that time there are a lot of offers to connect Anand and Balya with this girl or that. Both resist. As the mourning time ends the two men must decide whether Balya goes with Anand back to Mumbai. The title comes from Balya giving Anand a cactus pear fruit to show there is interest in deepening the relationship. I enjoyed the story, though I thought the pacing rather slow. In my election stories I briefly mentioned Haley Stevens. I said I would discuss the incident in more detail, then didn’t get to it. Back on November 1 Kos of Daily Kos reported, based in a CNN story:

Michigan Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens has stunned the political world by endorsing Republican Mike Rogers in the Senate race. Stevens narrowly lost the Democratic Senate primary to Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in August, after a bitter campaign that featured more than $30 million in spending by groups affiliated with the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC supporting Stevens. ... Things escalated Wednesday when Stevens’ fiancé, Jason Turkish, told The Detroit News that he would vote for Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers, citing concerns about El-Sayed’s positions on Israel.

Stevens’ staff quickly resigned. In the opinion of Kos she effectively ended her career as a Democrat without making any difference in the outcome of the race. In the opinion of the nasty guy she went from “Radical Left Socialist” to “Highly Respected.” I included the little bit about her fiancé because many are suggesting he had a great deal of influence over this announcement. The next day Walter Einenkel of Kos discussed Stevens’ appearance on CNN with Anderson Cooper to defend her decision. It did not go well. Here’s Einenkel’s summary:

Cooper continued trying to get Stevens to explain how she could justify endorsing a man who has conducted one of the most bigoted campaigns in modern history while suggesting that her own party’s nominee is somehow more racist.

I heard Democrats in Congress quickly isolated her, essentially booting her from the party. She leaves at the end of the year anyway because she ran for the Senate rather than to keep her House seat. I saw a meme about Stevens in the comments of the pundit roundup for Kos for October 31, but don’t see them now. There are a lot of comments condemning her. Madisonian of the Kos community wrote that the House held a vote on the first step to impeaching Pete Hegseth. Republican Rep. Thomas Massie filed the articles of impeachment on his way to retiring from the House. This should have been an easy win for Democrats, but it lost by 7 votes. The articles of impeachment were referred to committee where nothing will be done until at least January. Why did it fail? Wrote Madisonian:

11 Democrats decided not to show up and do their job. They decided that Pete Hegseth’s war crimes and repeated violations of Constitutional law, that his blundering and bluster, were fine by them. Here’s the Democrats who thought that they had better things to do that to hold the worst SecDef in American history accountable for his many, many crimes.

Madisonian pulls in the larger view and says those 11 weren’t there because Hakeem Jeffries, the current minority leader and the guy most likely to be the next Speaker, didn’t do his job. And that is a very disturbing indication that he’s not the right guy to lead the caucus in confronting the nasty guy. Madisonian gives several reasons why this is a bad sign for Jeffries’ leadership. I won’t go into details. I will mention the excuse he gave:

I haven’t had a conversation with anyone on the floor team about what may or may not have happened in terms of the Hegseth resolution, but this is not the end of it. It’s just the beginning.

That prompted Madisonian to reply:

Are you kidding me? This is a disaster for party morale, a giant middle finger to a huge number of people who turned out last week to vote. How dare you not have your ducks in a row on this? Either he’s incompetent, or he’s trying to keep Hegseth in power and the Iran War running. ... This fecklessness in service to never-ending wars in Iran, in service to the kind of horrors that Hegseth has committed in our name, this complete inability to read the temperature of the country and keep his caucus in line, should disqualify Hakeem Jeffries from the Speaker’s gavel. You cannot look at an impeachment vote for a monster like Hegseth and let your party off the hook. There has never been a clearer election in my entire voting lifetime, and Jeffries just proved that he’s not the man to carry forward what the people demanded.

In Monday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin had several interesting quotes. Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark about talking to committed Republican voters after the election.

In my conversation with these voters, one thing became abundantly clear in their cacophony of cope: They were not blaming Trump. Instead, they were blaming the GOP candidates on the ticket for being terrible. They were blaming social media for pushing Trump Derangement Syndrome. And they were blaming their fellow Americans, who they insisted were just too brainwashed and emotional to just hold their noses and vote for the terrible candidates that Republicans offered them. ... More often than not, these voters were appalled that their fellow voters could back Democrats—and suspected they simply weren’t educated in all the ways those Democrats were evil.

Michael McFaul tweeted a chart showing the ways voters in 2024 voted in 2026. A large chunk of Harris voters voted for Democrats, a small number voted for Republicans, and a few didn’t vote. A majority who voted for the nasty guy voted for Republicans, a small chunk voted for Democrats and a few didn’t vote at all. Of those who didn’t vote in 2024 roughly two-thirds voted for Democrats. This seems to have made the biggest difference. Matt McDermott tweeted a chart of which party won the various statewide races – governor, AG, Secretary of State, treasurer, school superintendent, head of Agriculture, etc. in Georgia, Texas, Nevada, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Ohio. Not all offices are voted on in each state. 9 of these offices were Democrat holds, 1 was a Republican hold, and 25 were Democrat pickups. Here is the key sentence in what Grace Panetta wrote for 19th News discussing election results: “But the results also show that voters were fed up with misbehaving men of both parties.” David French of the New York Times:

Since I became a journalist, I’ve been writing about the challenges facing young men. One of the first columns I wrote at The Times was about that very topic — that men were falling behind women in school and that they were dying deaths of despair. The antidote wasn’t for young men to demand respect or assert their power but for them to find a purpose, a virtuous purpose in loving and serving others, that would provide deep meaning to their lives. And no, I don’t think that the left has always approached young men with an open heart and an open mind. I appreciate what my friend Richard Reeves wrote in his invaluable book, “Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It.” Phrases like toxic masculinity wrongly taught young men that there was “something toxic inside them that needs to be exorcised.” As the MAGA right knows, it’s possible to motivate young men through rage and fear. In fact, it’s possible to motivate anyone through rage and fear, at least for a while. But if you really want to reach a young man’s heart, you need to inspire him, not enrage him. Give him an ideal to aspire to, not a person or group to hate.

A tweet by Neil Shenvi:

Bo French getting Community Noted for being racist while also getting dunked on by Groypers for not being racist enough is peak 2026.

Tweets by Chaz Nuttycombe:

Democrats have around a 500-seat net gain currently in state legislatures nationwide. 229 seats remain to be called, but the final tally will likely be a ~575-seat net gain for Democrats in the 2026 state legislative elections. In 1974, they gained 628. 2026 is not only the largest Democratic wave in state legislatures since the 1974 Watergate Wave. 2026 is probably the 7th-largest Democratic net gain in state legislatures over the last 100 years. It's likely going to beat Landslide Lyndon's 1964 win.

In the comments is a meme posted by exlrrp. It shows the nasty guy and a turkey with the caption:

We’re hearing Donald Trump may not pardon the Thanksgiving Turkey at the White House this year because the turkey is having trouble raising the two million dollars pardons cost.

This is not a realignment. This is a rental.

As of 9:45 this evening Real Clear Politics shows 312 US House races have been called, 23 still being counted. Of those called, 252 went for Democrats, 160 for Republicans. Both parties will likely gain a few more. Alas, the site doesn’t say which races were declared since I last checked. Emily Singer of Daily Kos wrote about what she thinks are the nine most stunning outcomes of the election. Here are some of them. James Talarico, new senator from Texas, got more votes in early voting, 4.4 million, than his opponent Ken Paxton got for the whole election, 4.2 million. “Every House district that Trump won by 11 percentage points or less in 2024 flipped to Democrats.” And a few the nasty guy won by 15 points and more. In their gerrymandering spree last year Republicans drew 15 House seats in their favor. They lost 13 of them. Every House district along the US-Mexico border will be represented by a Democrat. Forrest County, Mississippi is named for Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate general and first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Scott Colom, a black Democrat candidate for the Senate, won the county 54%-43%. The state as a whole hasn’t been called yet. Mike Luckovich posted a cartoon on Kos showing a tree with fruit labeled with the names of black women who won statewide offices in Georgia – Keisha Lance Bottoms for Governor, Tanya Miller for AG, Penny Brown Reynolds for Secretary of State, and several more. Luckovich named the cartoon “Strong roots” and across the trunk of the tree is “Stacy Abrams,” the black woman who ran for governor a few years back and is a strong advocate for keeping elections accessible. Drew Sheneman posted a cartoon on Kos showing the nasty guy in royal regalia as a donkey reaches for his scepter. The donkey says, “What’s wrong? I thought you liked regime change.” In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet by Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas posted back in July. It shows Abbott and eight other Republican candidates. Abbott wrote:

Last night, for the first time ever, ALL statewide Republican candidates (non-judicial) gathered to chart the course to victory in November. We will ensure Texas remains solid Red and we will preserve common sense over the chaotic policies promoted by radical Democrats.

After the election Christopher Hale added:

Every one of these candidates lost.

From Democracy Now:

In addition to taking back the House and Senate, Democrats also made major gains at the state level and will control a majority of governorships for the first time in 16 years. Democrats also flipped 12 state legislative chambers.

A series of tweets about one of the two Senate races not yet called. From La Soule: “What takes Mississippi so gahdamn long to count votes??” Mr. Make It Happens: “We have to say ‘Mississippi’ after each number.” Scott Colom, the Dem. candidate: “This may be the most Mississippi tweet I’ve ever seen. In the comments exlrrp posted a tweet from Dr. Annie Andrews, who just won the Senate seat from South Carolina:

The party that elevates Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17 yr old killer, & tears down Gus Walz, a 17 yr old with special needs who loves his dad, is a party that needs to be lit on fire & thrown in the dumpster & plunged into the deepest depths of the ocean never to be seen again.

Rambler797 posted a tweet by Wajahat Ali:

Democrats, you're on the clock starting tomorrow. You must stand up, fight and deliver. This is not a realignment. This is a rental.

In the pundit roundup from Friday a week ago (before the election) there were lots of interesting tweets and memes way down in the comments. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/10/30/800119398/community/ab/ A tweet from Christopher Hale:

The Democratic Party is poised to send a Christian pastor, a Christian seminarian, a Jewish southerner, a Muslim doctor, and several Catholics to the United States Congress to win a commanding majority. Only in America.

They all won. A meme posted by exlrrp:

Donald Trump, in South Carolina: “In fact, hospitals now are doing reverse surgery at my order. They’re doing reverse surgery. Nobody ever heard about it.” If you genuinely think hospitals across the US are reversing gender surgeries at the personal order of Donald Trump you have actual mashed potatoes in your skull instead of brains.

Another meme posted by exlrrp:

Republicans wanted complete power. And now that they have it, they’re demonstrating why they should never have any power again.

I wrote yesterday that a big problem Democrats and the country face is being bought out by billionaires. Gaslit Nation has sent a couple emails about the election. Their general opinion is Democratic wins are great! But Chuck Schumer in the Senate and Hakeem Jeffries in the House are too establishment – too close to billionaire money – to want to do the major overhaul that is needed to protect the country from billionaire assaults on democracy. New leadership is necessary. Emily Singer of Kos reported that Stephen Miller has been appointed to be the nasty guy’s chief of staff. Susie Wiles, who had been in the job, will move over to the Trump Political Operation.

Miller is the architect behind Trump’s cruel, violent, deadly, and unpopular immigration enforcement agenda, which includes hiring a bunch of unqualified maniacs as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and sending them out to round up anyone who looks Hispanic. The strategy led to massive blowback in the midterms, with Hispanic voters who had supported Trump and the GOP in 2024 swinging back hard to Democrats.

That the nasty guy is promoting Miller, rather than getting rid of him, is a sign this administration is going to continue the racist policies that brought the massive Republican loss. And Wiles in a political role? She was quite wrong in her opinion of what the election outcome would be. So, in my opinion, putting her into a political operation sounds like a fine idea. Lisa Needham of Kos reported the nasty guy was hit with a big loss over his triumphal arch. He’s been good at manipulating “standing,” the right to sue, over his building projects. A project must be imminent, beyond the planning stages. No need to sue over something that might not happen. The person must show they will be harmed, not just upset the project will be ugly. The nasty guy fouls that up by starting to build while saying there is no final plan yet, then declaring the person bringing the suit doesn’t have standing. While the issue is sorted out in court the building continues and soon he’s saying it’s too late to stop it. The National Capital Planning Commission is full of lackeys. They approved the arch on Nov. 5 and he notified the court, saying he was ready to build. US District Judge Tanya Chutkan was lying in wait and issued a restraining order 75 minutes later. There are two suits against the arch. The first is that it will destroy sightlines that signify post Civil War unity. That’s much different than saying the arch is ugly. The second is that the arch would massively snarl traffic, requiring millions to mitigate, something the arch planners appear to have not considered. Again, this is real harm. Also, he’s supposed to consult Congress who always has standing. And claiming Congress approved it 100 years ago doesn’t cut it. The new Congress is much less likely to approve this monstrosity.

If Democrats don't deliver again, Woke 2.0 becomes MAGA 2.0

Kelli Anne Busey of TransAction in an article posted on Daily Kos reported Democrat Allison Montgomery made history in Alabama by being the first transgender legislator in the state. Yes, in red Alabama where Tommy Tuberville was just elected governor. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos listed the 13 women who were elected as governors. Some take over from other women, some from men, some elected to another term. The list includes Amy Klobuchar who follows Tim Walz in Minnesota. And commentary about the election, starting with what to do next. A major part of the discussion of what comes next is about what Democrats should and can do, knowing important bills will get vetoed. Some suggestions from Paul Krugman, as discussed by xaxnar of the Kos community: Investigate the full extent of the nasty guy family corruption. Pass popular bills that will improve the lives of Americans. If vetoed, call for a vote to override the veto to record Republican loyalty. Do not make a deal with the nasty guy or reach across the aisle to Republicans. Do not return to status quo governing. In a second post xaxnar speculated whether Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas will retire while the nasty guy can get their replacement through in the lame duck session. First, replacements probably can’t get through by the end of the year. Second, Alito and Thomas are not going to give up power until they have to. The bigger issue is Supreme Court reform, including adding members, curbing the shadow docket, and perhaps adding term limits. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported new Michigan senator Abdul El-Sayed laid out his priorities on Morning Joe. Basically: Affordability, including a job that pays a living wage. A war powers resolution and returning to diplomacy. Ending the tariff regime and tussle with Canada. Stopping the collapse of healthcare because of the Medicaid cuts. And pass a “Crap Lettuce Elimination Act, to restore the parts of the FDA and CDC that protected food safety. Kos of Kos quoted conservative pundit Erick Erickson who listed reasons why voters turned against Republicans. Erickson came up with a decent list (according to Kos), including corruption, incompetence, tariffs, cruelty, aggressive deportations, arrogance, and the ballroom. Even with a long list, Kos thinks Erickson left out a few things: gutting healthcare, expensive spectacles for his birthday, trying to get his name on the Kennedy Center, and desperate attempts to manufacture culture-war distractions.

Now it’s time for Democrats to govern as a serious, sensible, measured, and pragmatic party—laser-focused on affordability and clean government. Less performative outrage. Less culture-war bullshit. More improving people’s lives. Because if Democrats fail to deliver again, Woke 2.0 will eventually give way to MAGA 2.0. And we already know what that hell looks like.

Another post by xaxnar, from before the election, discusses a Reuters article by Nandita Bose and Tim Reid about plans by the nasty guy administration to govern [rule] without input from Democrats and Congress. The power Democrats have is small compared to the nasty guy as the head of the executive branch and of the military. The summary of the article (xaxnar doesn’t clearly say if he wrote it or quoted it)

Officials identifying executive actions on immigration, tariffs, housing and spending, sources say. Trump says he would become “Mr. Veto”. Plans under consideration include tariffs on critical minerals and wind turbines. White House lawyers brief appointees on handling subpoenas and document requests, one source says.

Emily Singer of Kos has heard anonymous Republicans say that the election losses show the nasty guy’s power is waning. The party can now start to break from him. Singer can only laugh. Those comments were anonymous.

If Republicans are afraid to put their names to even the idea that they may have leeway to ignore Trump and stand up against his whims, on what planet should that give any of us any confidence that they will break with Trump when it actually matters? ... Ultimately, after a decade of wondering when Republicans would finally break with Trump, I’ve stopped waiting for that day to come. I refuse to be tricked by Lucy and the football any more.

Oliver Willis of Kos as part of his series of explaining the right asks why Republicans never learn from their election losses. It isn’t just a nasty guy thing, this has been going on for a long time.

The root cause of this unresponsiveness is an idea at the core of the modern conservative movement, which first came to the fore when conservative upstart Sen. Barry Goldwater secured the Republican Party presidential nomination in 1964. It is the idea that conservatism is always perfect. It cannot fail. The way the GOP sees it, if a conservative candidate loses an election, that is on the voters for not fully understanding the wonders of conservative ideology, not because those ideas are bad for the country and the world.

In the comments of today’s pundit roundup for Kos is a meme posted by exlrrp showing the nasty guy and the words, “[He] got beat so bad he didn’t even try calling it rigged.” Greg Dworkin posted a tweet by Degan Sports that appears to be from the TV show Breaking Points in which the host uses a half-minute to summarize why Republicans lost. This is an attempt at a transcript:

If you run a child sex trafficking ring, cover it up by waging a war after promising not to, and that war drives up the price of oil and breaks the global economy, and you spend the time getting rich and pushing money towards AI and data centers, you won’t do well in the elections.

A meme by the Fiber Friend and posted by exlrrp is about the Democrat who won the US Senate seat in South Carolina. I included a correction supplied by exlrrp. The text:

Dr. Annie Andrews is getting ready to sit in a seat that has been held by only two elected individuals in the last [72] years. 1. Lindsey Graham 2. Strom Thurmond. Thank you.

I had an important comment on what we face in the future. But I can’t find it. It was by The Geogre in the comment section of a pundit roundup on Kos, though perhaps working from someone else. The quote goes something like this: Money doesn’t defeat its opposition, it purchases them. A great many of the severe problems in America right now are because of the extremely wealthy wanting to destroy democracy so they can oppress everyone else with impunity. I’m glad Democrats won big, but I fear they won’t enact the necessary big reforms because they will be bought out by the rich. A cartoon by Drew Sheneman posted on Kos. It shows a rich man on a private jet saying, “I’ve spent more buying elections trying to avoid taxes than it would cost to just pay the taxes. Sometimes it’s the principle.”