This is how you storm the Capitol legally

Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported the Kennedy family, without the one in the administration, has filed a lawsuit to stop the construction of the nasty guy’s arch. Their objection is that the arch would interfere with the sightlines from the President John F Kennedy Memorial and Eternal Flame in Arlington National Cemetery to the Lincoln Memorial. The Kennedy memorial was placed where it is and the flame designed as it because the planning report said it “must be large enough to be visible at night from the Lincoln Memorial end of the Memorial Bridge.” And the arch would block that view. Thankfully, the courts have already blocked the arch from being built, at least for now. I’ve been to Washington DC a few times. I haven’t been to Arlington Cemetery. So I took a look at Google Street View. And from the plaza near the JFK Memorial one can indeed see down Memorial Ave, across the Arlington Memorial Bridge, and to the Lincoln Memorial. Alix Breeden of Kos reported that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an Anti-DEI bill. Delray Beach was forced to cancel its Pride Parade. It was also forced to cancel its St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Many other cities across the state had to do the same. Delray Beach residents are quite angry. The city said it hopes that outside private interests will step forward to sponsor the parades. Yesterday I wrote about the House’s attempt to impeach Pete Hegseth. Kos community member sepiasiren referenced a TikTok video which sepiasiren summarized as saying if the House vote had passed the current Republican led Senate could have acquitted him. That would have prevented Democrats from doing it next year with higher Senate majorities, though Democrats would still need about a dozen Republican votes to convict. So this effort was too soon. In the comments Onomastic posted a tweet from Morgan J. Freeman of No Kings that said the vote was not for impeachment, but to refer it to committee, a standard way to postpone a vote.

It didn’t fail because of missing Democrats. It failed because Republicans had the votes to send the resolution to committee, which effectively ended the push for now.

I’ve also heard several Republicans also missed the vote. Even if this vote isn’t a reason, I still think Democrats would do better with someone else as Speaker instead of Hakeem Jeffries. On Monday Emily Singer of Kos reported the nasty guy started tweeting about election denialism. Before then he had appeared to make peace with the loss.

But now that he realizes this means Congress will investigate his corrupt actions, thwart his unconstitutional moves, and put legislation on his desk that is popular among the electorate writ large but will anger his MAGA base, he is spinning with rage. So far, it’s unclear if Trump will act on his lies about a stolen election.

But we would be foolish to assume he would not direct federal agencies and his MAGA minions to act. So far, three days later, he hasn’t acted. Also on Monday Kos of Kos discussed the current crop of election deniers, perhaps encouraged by the nasty guy’s comments. They’re still dumb. Or dishonest. A tweet calls the Texas vote fraudulent and shows five state maps from recent elections, all mostly red, and the last one all blue. Readers called foul, saying the last map is colored by a different metric. Another tweet claims Paxton winning Galveston but Talarico winning the whole state implies fraud. A third tweet compares the 2022 vote with the 2026 and says no way Democrats “materialized” another 20 million votes. But add in the 2024 vote count and the Democrats total then was a bit higher than this year. Thee are a couple more examples. Kos summarized:

Keep telling your supporters that elections are rigged—that their votes don’t matter and even GOP control can’t stop Democrats from stealing victories—and they may eventually take you at your word. Why keep voting in a system you believe can never deliver an honest result? Why keep supporting Republicans who supposedly know about the theft but do nothing to stop it? So if they want to conspiracy theory themselves out of the electorate, by all means, please proceed.

Bill Scher, politics editor for the Washington Monthly tweeted a comment by Jacob Rubashkin:

The 2026 midterms marked the first time since the advent of the two-party system that Democrats have fielded candidates in every single House race across the country.

Kos also wrote about voters connecting high prices to corruption. In 2024 the nasty guy ran the campaign ad, “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you.” At the time Kos wrote voters heard that Democrats were more interested in the culture war instead of making their lives better. But since that election voters have watched the nasty guy, his family, and his administration openly cash in. They also heard him say he didn’t, “think about people’s financial situations.” That was while Republicans ran endless ads about trans people. Voters saw Republicans were interested in the culture war and enriching themselves instead of making their lives better. Democrats can change things up by pursuing both affordability and corruption. But they also need to impose ethics to end the belief that all politicians are corrupt. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos for Tuesday included a tweet showing a diagram of the House with the 435 dots colored by the estimated number of seats each party won, showing 259 for Democrats (the current tally is 258 with 13 seats still to call). The chart’s caption: “Just for point of clarification, this is how you storm the Capitol legally.” On Sunday Chitown Kev couldn’t post a pundit roundup for Kos, so the usual post is just the comments. A tweet posted by randym77 and from wongmjane:

BREAKING: Muslim Senator Abdul El-Sayed backs plan to teach Arabic numerals in public schools.

If you’re not chuckling, you may have forgotten the numerals used by the Western world for likely more than a thousand years came from the Arab world. A reply from swimbikerrunmd1:

Yea, but watch out for the radical group Al-Gebra and their weapons of maths destruction.

Yup, the Arab world also invented algebra. Way down in the comments Rambler797 included a video posted by James Tate. This video is from deardata1 and shows through color how various groups voted. White men voted Republican in nearly every state. Women voted Democratic in nearly every state, though white women were closer to divided. Independents went almost entirely blue. Rural voters were red in 41 states. We get to suburban voters and we see a ring of red around Montana that also shows up for voters 30-44 and Latino voters. Voters under 30 went blue in every state, as did black voters. There are a few more categories. In Wednesday’s pundit roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Sarah Posner of Talking Points Memo:

With the blue tsunami that inundated Texas on Election Day, the Christian right has lost the state that made it one of the most powerful forces in modern American politics. Since forging an unbreakable pact with the Republican Party in the Reagan era, for decades the Christian right purposefully notched its national successes by building robust state-level legislative and electoral machinery across the country. Texas was the crown jewel of this strategy, where operatives and elected officials together hatched plans to kill off church-state separation, Christianize the public schools, criminalize abortion, and eviscerate the civil rights of LGBTQ people. For three decades, Republicans with close ties with the Christian right — George W. Bush, Rick Perry, and the outgoing Greg Abbott — have occupied the governor’s mansion. The latter two, in particular, have worked hand in glove with the Christian right to make the country’s second most populous state the proving ground for a white Christian nationalist agenda. Abbott’s lieutenant governor Dan Patrick, who was first elected to the office in 2014, wielded enormous power over the state legislature to enact it. Like Abbott, he went down to defeat, on Tuesday, losing, like Abbott, to a woman. Up and down the ballot, those decades of calculated power consolidation throughout the state government collapsed. What comes next will be crucial to watch. The Christian right is a movement with formidable staying power, owing to the determination of its funders and dedication of its foot soldiers. That is why this is not, by any means, a column about the demise of the Christian right. But it is about what we learn about how movements consolidate and later lose control.

EJ Dionne of the New York Times discussed various iterations of a “New South.” One was declared in 1886, in the 1930s, in 1949, and in the 1970s and 1980s.

This history ought to inspire humility in anyone tempted to declare yet another new era in the South. But something truly new did happen in the states of the Old Confederacy in last week’s elections. The elections of 2026 could be remembered as the moment when the Republican Party’s “red wall” of Southern states came tumbling down

. In today’s pundit roundup Chitown Kev quoted Patrician Caro of El País in English discussing the new members of Congress going through orientation.

“It really is like high school — but it’s fun high school,” representative-elect Dan Koh (Democrat from Massachusetts) told the political outlet Roll Call. The back-to-school analogy has been repeated often since the lawmakers arrived in the nation’s capital on Sunday. This week and next they have a packed orientation schedule with briefings, seminars, office selection, lessons on team building, and how to navigate the labyrinthine halls at the political heart of the U.S.

In the comments Doctor Who posted his favorite photo of these midterms and orientation. It shows Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan talking to Rev. Adam Hamilton of Kansas. Doctor Who wrote, “It exemplifies both religious freedom and religious tolerance, two core principles upon which this country was founded.” Greg Dworkin posted a tweet by Parker Butler with a campaign ad by Scott Colom of Mississippi. The ad starts with incumbent Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith saying yeah, the price of beef is high, so pick a different meat. That is followed by a few people saying variations of, “Pick another protein? I’d rather pick another senator.” It was very effective. After a week of counting Colom was recently declared the winner, the first black senator from Mississippi since Reconstruction.

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.