Looking for the Small Victories In a By-Election Gone Wrong

Regarding the by-election in the United Kingdom between Nigel "How Much Is 5 Million In British Money" Farage and Count Binface that happened this week...

Sigh. GODDAMMIT CLACTON VOTERS, YOU HAD ONE JOB (via Alexandra Topping with The Guardian (UK)).

Dawn had long broken in the Essex town of Clacton-on-Sea when the results for the byelection came in. After a gruelling count, an atmosphere of deep exhaustion had settled over the room. Even the man with a dustbin on his head looked weary.

As it was declared that Nigel Farage had won, as expected, there was no cheering in the room, which had been boycotted by the Reform UK leader and his supporters; instead there was only an overwhelming sense of futility.

Farage forced the byelection at the start of July in an attempt take control of a narrative tide that had turned against him. After the Guardian revealed he had received a £5m personal gift from Christopher Harborne, a Thailand-based crypto billionaire, in April 2024, he had been dogged by questions about his financial backing. Other revelations followed and questions mounted...

And while the people of Clacton did back Farage again, it was no overwhelming victory. He won 22,239 votes, 63.34% of the vote. Convincing, yes, but significantly short of the 72% won by David Davis in 2008 when he resigned his seat and stood again as a protest over the issue of civil liberties.

With no other mainstream options, the parody candidate Count Binface, was Farage’s nearest competitor, winning 9,455 votes, or one in four of the votes cast. In his “victory speech” posted on X, he noted that this was a 10,000% increase on the 95 votes he managed against Andy Burnham in the Makerfield byelection. “A new dawn has broken, has it not?” he wrote, echoing Tony Blair’s 1997 victory speech. “Literally, because it’s past 6:30 in the morning here in Clacton-on-Sea.”

If there's any good news, it's in the "At least Farage suffered" category. A better measurement of how poorly Farage did this by-election is to look at the results of the more formal election that happened in 2024: In that election Farage secured 21,225 votes, which means he barely garnered a thousand more voters (22,239) who showed up this time around. It's a meager increase in a field where the only legitimate electoral threat was the court jester wearing the trash can. 

The overall vote count in 2024 was 45,958 people showing up, a better turnout than what showed for 2026 with 35,111. Farage did not prove himself a greater draw nor a good incumbent: Indeed, a large chunk of voters refused to show up for what was basically a circus. Without the major parties - Labour, Tories - and the viable third parties like Lib Dems and Greens to give Farage any targets, all he had going for him was a bland, racist campaign against "The Establishment" which exposed the reality that in this by-election he was the Establishment candidate.

The by-election also didn't save Farage from the fate he was facing when he resigned and forced this whole farce. He's still under investigation for his alleged financial misdeeds (from Rowena Mason and Peter Walker, also The Guardian (UK)):

Nigel Farage’s attempt to draw the sting from inquiries into his financial affairs appeared to have backfired on Friday as the standards watchdog reopened its investigation and MPs from all sides condemned the needless byelection.

The Reform UK leader declared victory in the Clacton vote as he was returned with an increased majority and gained more votes than in 2024, saying he had “stuck two fingers up at the entire political establishment”.

However, parliament’s standards commissioner immediately reopened an investigation into whether he should have declared a series of gifts provided to him shortly before the last general election.

These include a £5m personal gift from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, first revealed by the Guardian, and further financial support from his friend and convicted fraudster George Cottrell.

I'm not a political expert on how elections work in the UK, but I doubt they are going to let Farage resign again and force another by-election so soon. From what I've read, the investigation can lead to his suspension from Parliament (not outright removal or criminal arrest) and if it's longer than 10 days it would trigger a recall petition and if successful another by-election. However, in this scenario he won't control the by-election, he'll be publicly exposed for his sins, and the major parties will jump in with better odds - probably for the Tories - to defeat him then.

It might depend on how severe the investigations against Farage would go, if it's bad enough for the legal system to charge him criminally (given Farage's arrogance and knee-jerk reactions to the matter, he's hiding something worse). He could try to make himself a political martyr and run again for the seat in a borough that's "safe" for him, but Farage has made so many political enemies across the landscape that he'll likely lose.

In sadder news, the world could have had an elected trash bin in the British Parliament. Millions are mourning the lost opportunity. /weeps

In Florida, the Exemption Amendment Will Get Too Costly

When the Florida Republicans have lost Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, you know DeSantis and his lackeys really f-cked up (via Bay News 9 Spectrum staff):

Polk county Sheriff Grady Judd is urging voters to reject Amendment 3.

He came out against the measure Tuesday during a news conference.

Judd argued that the Florida House made significant changes to the proposal Gov. Ron DeSantis initially made. He says the legislature then passed the measure without doing a proper financial analysis of the effect it would have.

"It's going to affect response times. It does not protect law enforcement, fire emergency services as earlier editions of it supposedly did," Judd said. "It doesn't provide for money to fix roads adequately, to clean stormwater adequately. It doesn't do any of that. It says what you can fund. It doesn't talk about libraries or parks. It's a train wreck."

Judd also suggested that for smaller counties, Amendment 3 could eliminate nearly half of their taxes, saying he would recommend voters reject the measure and instead called on lawmakers to revisit property tax reform that is "reasonable and responsible."

Judd - well-known among Floridians for hogging the spotlight whenever possible - normally is a staunch conservative figure in local politics... and yet here he is talking about paying for county/city services and defending the need for taxes like a New Deal liberal.

To provide some background: Florida is one of those states that does not have its own income tax to build revenues. The state relies on a statewide sales tax (at 6 percent) and separate corporate tax (at 5 percent, boooooooo hiss, they pay a lesser rate than us residents boooooooo), and then for the counties (and cities) a property tax that covers the local needs.

Thing is, at the state level - controlled by hardcore anti-tax Republicans since the late 1990s - they can interfere with property taxes by creating and expanding homestead exemptions. If you own one residence and call it home, you get a base $50,000 exemption: Say I own a house or condo worth $500,000, I will only be on the hook with the county/city for $450,000 when they apply millage rates to various expenditures like roads, water/sewage, trash pickup, libraries, fire rescue, law enforcement, etc. It's a way of reducing my tax burden as a resident.

Over the decades, the Florida GOP has pushed very specific exemptions - for veterans, widows of veterans, select classes of persons - through state amendment referendums to give those groups - many of them the Republican voting base - extra tax cuts. I've never really agreed or supported them over the years if you've ever kept track of my bi-annual "For the Love of God" election previews, but a lot of them still passed because most Florida residents didn't see the overall harm those exemptions caused for their local public services.

This latest amendment could seriously cause more damage to our state counties/cities than any hurricane ever would. It raises the exemption amount to $150,000 for 2027 and then $250,000 by 2028, with increases tied to inflation starting in 2029. It doesn't apply this exemption to new residents (or will that be new homeowners?) - only to those here for five or more years - who'll end up carrying a greater tax burden. 

All of a sudden, our counties and large cities could lose tens of millions in revenues. For example, Orange County (Orlando metro) one of our heaviest populated counties with millions rolling in from tourism and other major industries recorded $58.5 million in property tax for 2023/24, a huge chunk (81 percent!) of their overall $71.7 million intake.

Screenshotting this so I don't lose it

Just to keep county/city services the same as previous years, Orange County and the others would have to increase their millage rates to counterbalance... except this Amendment gives the state power to limit how the counties can spend their money on public services. The implication here is that the governor and legislature - currently in the grip of Far Right Republicans eager to prove their anti-tax bona fides - can stop the counties from adjusting their millage rates, or trying to maintain any ability to pay for any public services at all. 

The wingnuts in Tallahassee are determined to force spending cuts on social services wherever they want (mostly in any Democratic-friendly metros or minority-heavy rural counties: I doubt they want to anger their voting base in the Villages, the Panhandle, Naples, etc.). I wouldn't be surprised if their ultimate goal is to force all Florida residents - by squeezing local governments - to accept their Culture War bullshit against our own beliefs and existence.

As a Florida homeowner, for me that boost to a $150,000 exemption would be a boon... except for the fact that from that point on, my make that our roads won't be paved, the drinking water won't be clean, the trash won't get picked up, the fire department won't stop all the wildfires (we're in a drought right now and wildfires are a serious problem), my neighbors' kids are at greater risk of abuse, animal control won't keep up with rabid ferals, and Grady Judd won't be able to send out the sheriff cars to the surrounding rural areas where they're blowing up meth labs and running sex trafficking rings. I really will NOT save all that much from what I will pay in property taxes. These services matter. 

And as a city employee for a public library, if this amendment passes a lot of my co-workers (and maybe myself) are going to be out of jobs. In terms of essential services at the city and county levels, libraries and parks/recreation get hit with cuts first and hardest. You think libraries are just checking out books? Libraries provide public computer access, activities for kids and adults, means of doing your own work (we get a lot of self-employed people using our study rooms as temp office space), taking care of a lot of personal needs, above all a community hub. I wrote this back in 2018: You get a greater return on investment with public libraries than a lot of other privatized services out there. DeSantis' Amendment 3 will kill all of that, statewide. Mass unemployment just as half of everything goes to shit.

There is no goddamn way I am supporting this Amendment. I sure as hell do not want any of my fellow Floridians voting for this disaster, because it's going to hurt us all a lot more than any money you think you're saving from an unjustified and painful tax cut.

This is what Florida Republicans have wanted for decades: a tax-free "utopia" to gut any help for the poor people, and where the local communities won't be able to fight back against any Far Right social agendas - hurting gays, hurting women, hurting Blacks and Latinos, and shoving their toxic brand of Christianity down our throats - they wish to impose.

But I've noted this before: Utopias don't work. Tax cuts don't work. What the Florida Republicans - under DeSantis and other extremists - will get is a state falling apart faster than Mississippi, recreating that wonderful libertarian experience in New Hampshire of no functioning government and rampaging bears.

It's not a tax cut, Floridians: It's a massive expense you're going to have to pay in other ways. PLEASE VOTE NO on this.

Addendum: I just realized something - although someone better versed on the issue can explain otherwise - one thing that could happen with the increased exemptions is that the county property appraisers could scale the value of properties higher to compensate. A rundown house honestly worth less than that $150,000 exemption could get reappraised to $200,000 just so there's something to tax. This would have the effect of ruining the housing market across the board as property values skyrocket to unjustified values. I doubt the state-level Republicans will care much if houses get more expensive because their buddies the land developers could see more money out of it. But it's going to make it harder for anyone to buy a house - especially low-income first-time buyers - and it's going to make it harder for some to sell their houses if the appraisers make them too expensive for middle-income people. And if the property values go up, so do the insurance rates, which are pretty high in Florida already thanks to hurricane and flood risks.

It feels similar to how homes in California are over-valued to where there's a serious housing crisis in that state. Florida can well see the same problem.

The Only Truth That Is Also A Fact: The Republicans Are Beyond Saving

Over on Bluesky I reposted this skeet, because it spells out in easy terms why the Republicans cannot be redeemed.

This is an apt descriptions of Republicans now.

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— migas7.bsky.social (@migas7.bsky.social) July 25, 2026 at 10:11 AM

In case the embed fails

The modern Republican Party defends no virtue, performs no service to others, provides no leadership to our nation in any way.

In every respect, the Republican Party is still dead as a functioning political force. It is now an occupying army, treating other Americans - other humans - as targets for their greed, fear, and hate. Anyone in that party that can claim any rational capability cannot be turned around as a force for good: They have had a DECADE of trumpism to walk away, deny any support of such criminality... and they refused. They are too beholden to "owning the libs" that they cannot break from a corrupt, destructive faction.

This is why I've been screaming to the nation FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP VOTING REPUBLICAN. There is nothing there to vote for, only against (against Blacks, against women, against Latinos, against gays/lesbians/trans, against fiscal sanity, against vaccines, against foreign allies, against holding any person of power/wealth accountable for their crimes).

I'm not taking crazy pills. The Republican downward spiral has been going on for decades now, and it's dragging the United States - and the world - down with it.

Just stop pandering to any Right-leaning faction you think you can appeal to. The Republicans killed the better angels of their nature ages ago. They'll just waste your time (and take your money). Just stop that. There's millions of Democratic and Independent voters to reach for to get them motivated to vote. There's millions more who aren't even registered to vote - and who can - that the Dems and other center-Left forces need to reach to get them in enough numbers to drive the corrupt GOP out of power at the state and federal levels.

Those are the Americans we need to stand up for the nation. Go talk to them, get them on board. Save the true Republic, Dems.

trump and His Cronies Aren't Even Hiding the Theft Anymore

This is how corrupt trump's administration is: he sued his own government for billions of dollars so he could then weasel out of the lawsuit and claim an imaginary settlement for a mere billion to pay off his foot soldiers among the insurrectionist ranks (from Katherine Faulders, Peter Charalambous, and Alexander Mallin at ABC News):

The Justice Department announced Monday that as part of a settlement agreement in President Donald Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, the attorney general is establishing an $1.776 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" to compensate those who allege they were wrongly targeted under the Biden administration. 

The announcement came after attorneys representing Trump informed a federal judge in a court filing earlier Monday that the president was dropping his suit against the IRS.

The judge overseeing the case, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, subsequently ordered the case closed -- signaling that she does not plan to challenge the controversial settlement. 

In a brief order issued Monday, Judge Williams said she was "stripped of jurisdiction" to continue overseeing the case. She noted that the settlement agreement was never docketed in the case, so there is no "settlement of record" -- leaving her with no authority to adjudicate the private settlement. 

Do you see it? There's no official settlement of record. There's no paper trail the legal system is supposed to rely on. And yet, there's a billion dollars that Congress never approved of getting set up in a slush fund that I doubt will have any real oversight to where it gets turned into a funnel of illegality where even more money gets siphoned off to gods know where.

As thought making the payment amount symbolic to make it say 1776 like it's for FREEDOM on our nation's 250th birthday is going to patch things over. GODDAMN THIS IS CORRUPT.

This is Paul Krugman over at the National Memo:

So the Trump administration is creating a $1.776 billion slush fund — 1776, get it? — to pay off victims of “lawfare and weaponization.” Just to be clear, if you’re a U.S. taxpayer, this action means that almost $1.8 billion of your money will be handed out to whomever a panel appointed by Donald Trump decides to reward. The beneficiaries are likely to include January 6 insurrectionists, as well as Trump, his family, and his allies.

Few things shock me these days, but this development — in which a Justice Department that works for Trump is paying a vast sum to “settle” a lawsuit brought by Trump himself — is a new nadir in self-dealing, further revealing Trump’s utter contempt for the American people.

Now, massive corruption on the part of Trump and his minions isn’t new. But the shamelessness of this latest episode of looting takes it to a new level. Until now, we’ve seen a combination of crony capitalism and insider trading. Plutocrats and corporations have been enriching Trump through back channels, especially crypto, in return for government contracts and policy favors, while Trump himself and people close to Trump have been making hugely profitable market bets thanks to advance knowledge of government policies.

But now Trump has eliminated the middlemen, effectively telling his officials to pay money directly to him or anyone else he favors.

Granted, we already knew that Trump was, by orders of magnitude, the most corrupt president in U.S. history. But now Trump is the most explicitly corrupt leader in today’s world. After all, Vladimir Putin has obviously stolen billions, but never this brazenly. Even Third World dictators normally try to mask their corruption.

If there's any true justice, trump's move here should get tied up in the courts - especially over that fact that there's no judge-approved agreement on record - long enough for the Democrats to win back Congress this midterms well enough to guarantee they will use their Article I constitutional powers to block trump and his cronies from stealing one more nickel from our nation's coffers.

This is why the Republicans are so desperate to gerrymander the hell out of congressional districts, this is why the Republicans are so desperate to suppress voter turnout to keep their Senate seats safe from statewide anger. They're not that stupid to ignore the polls showing how unpopular they've gotten among even independent voters (and even enough registered Republicans willing to flip their ballots).

Voter turnout still matters: that's the good news. The Republicans can't rig enough barricades and tip enough scales to stop all of us angry at them and trump. Everyone needs to understand the mission this midterms: GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT FOR DEMOCRATS. VOTE EVERY REPUBLICAN OUT AT EVERY LEVEL OF THE BALLOT.

We can save this nation from an eternal void of Far Right grifting and greed, if we show up and vote goddammit.

The Gerrymander Wars Escalate

Any regular follower here knows I am not a fan of the gerrymander.

I've railed about it often: how it distorts true representation, suppresses voter interest and turnout, and drives the major political parties to pander more to the monied powers than to genuinely represent their districts and states.

For some time there in the late 2010s, I had some hope that legal fighting over the gerrymandering efforts by Republicans in key battleground states like Florida would end the issue: That the skewing of representation and denial of voters rights would irk even conservative-leaning courts to level the electoral field and letting sanity prevail.

Alas, the Roberts Court in 2019 nuked those hopes from orbit. All I had left were my observations that even by 2022 the GOP efforts to rig the congressional elections in their favor had turned farcical and clinging to a diminishing returns cliff - all those distorted districts and they still only have a 4-5 seat lead in the House - of their own making.

With the 2026 midterms looming - and with growing evidence that the slim Republican holdings in both the US House and Senate are slipping away - you can taste the desperation of the Far Right to impose their minority rule with escalating efforts across GOP-controlled states to skew their gerrymandered districts even more. Especially as trump himself - openly noting that losing Congress this 2026 would end his reign of madness and sadism - has been running around since 2025 - when his polling numbers slipped as ICE thuggery and tariffs increased - demanding states like Texas and Indiana redraw their districts to keep Democrats from gaining control of a divided House.

The big difference this election cycle - and a big reason why the Republicans are panicking in public - is that the Democratic Party finally decided to take the gloves off and do their own extreme gerrymandering to counter the decades of GOP mapmaking that drove us to this cliff.

I've noted before that yes, Democrats were guilty of gerrymandering in states their legislatures controlled, especially in Maryland, Illinois, and California. It's just that the Dems never pulled it to the extremes the way Republicans did in Texas, Ohio, and Florida. 

Until now: California passed a voter referendum in 2025 allowing them - the most populous state - to skew their congressional districts to where Republicans may not have any seats left; and Virginia passed a voter referendum this month allowing them to redraw districts to where mathematically speaking the Democrats can win the US House by 1-2 seats.

The Virginia results are under legal scrutiny at the moment, so it may not be settled for this midterms. In the meantime, the GOP panic that they could lose the House - and lose it for a long time, because they don't have as many nationwide voters as they'd like to keep skewing the results - has resulted in map madness in the large-population states they still control.

Florida, for example, called an emergency legislative session: Not about data centers, or AI, or education needs, or funding for the upcoming hurricane season; but about redrawing a map they already skewed 20-to-8 in their favor back in 2022. It's bad enough that they're planning to divide the Tampa metro - as huge a Democratic Party stronghold in the state you can find - so that none of the seats representing that metro will favor Dems: A clear partisan attempt to negate the rights and powers of a large number of American citizens.

The funny thing about all this? All of these Republican efforts to gerrymander themselves into permanent victory could actually help them lose it all (via David A. Graham at The Atlantic):

But partisan gerrymandering does have one ultimate weakness—a foe that doesn’t always win, but whose victories are especially satisfying. That foe is gerrymandering itself. If you have never heard of a dummymander, this is probably a good time to learn the word. Dummymander is the term that the political scientists Bernard Grofman and Thomas L. Brunell coined for what happens when a gerrymander backfires, hurting the party that it was designed to help. Dummymanders are nothing new, but the bunch of new districts drawn in recent months mean that they could play an important role in the outcome of the midterms...

Now the action is mostly reaching its end as the deadline for finalizing 2026 maps nears, although some questions remain. (Among them: Will the Supreme Court issue a ruling weakening the Voting Rights Act in time for Republicans to draw new maps for this cycle? (editor's note: goddamn this foreshadowing...) The consensus among election analysts is that the redistricting will end up giving Republicans only three or four new seats, if any. But Democratic prowess in recent special elections raises the possibility that rather than a cold-blooded political hit, the GOP’s efforts could end up as a Pyrrhic victory.

In late January, a Democrat won a Texas state Senate seat in Tarrant County—in a district that Trump won by 17 points in 2024. Most House districts won’t see a shift that big, but victories like these have raised the possibility of Democrats catching enough of a blue wave that maps drawn to help Republicans might actually hurt them. The math is simple: In order to draw more districts favoring Republicans, GOP legislators had to spread their own voters a little thinner. But if they spread them too thin and Democrats have a good year, Republican candidates will become vulnerable.

One thing that keeps getting overlooked in these gerrymander wars is the role no-party-affiliate (NPA) or independent voters play in how districts get won. When they're drawing these maps, the Republicans (and Democrats) look at how much they can spread out their registered voters they expect to show up, and then pray that the third-party indy voters either side with them or fail to show... which is a huge gamble to take if you're trump's party when polling shows a lot of independent voters are pissed at trump right now. You can survive independent voter outrage if your district is +5 or +8 in favor of your party, but you can't if you've got the percentages at +1 or +2.

Many of Grofman and Brunell’s examples of dummymanders come from late in the 20th century, when Democrats still held lots of southern seats because of historic party support, but were on the verge of losing them to Republicans. For example, they write that the map Georgia Democrats drew after the 1990 census looks more like a Republican gerrymander than one drawn to help Democrats, which the authors blame on “the belief that it is good to be as thin as possible as long as you still remain breathing.” Entering the 1992 election, Georgia had nine Democratic House members. Three won, but three lost, and three more retired.

In the wake of those 1990 redistricting, the Republicans rose on the demographic - and racist - shifts from social conservative Democrats fleeing a party more inclined to defend civil (Black) rights. Those shifts were accelerated in the 2000s by the War on Terror of 9/11 and the growing evangelical Christianist voting base, which led to the Tea Party/anti-Obama fervor that drives the modern Republican base to this day.

Thing is, that partisan shift is pretty much played out. For all the ongoing outrage and demonizing the Far Right produces and consumes within their own circles, they can't increase their voting base any further. At best, they can bamboozle or enrage certain voting blocs - Latino men for example in 2024 - to side with them for one or two election cycles before their hypocritical true selves emerge and drive those blocs off.

This is one of the reasons the Republicans are not only struggling to gerrymander every state they can to favor themselves, they're also desperate to take away voting rights from everyone - Blacks, women, college-age, LGBTQA+ - they don't want voting. The conservative mindset on full display that only THEIR side should have power and rights, and everyone else needs to sit there in our cages being grateful for the crumbs thrown our way.

I'm terrified of the damage these gerrymanders are going to inflict: the lack of honest representation that will ignore the needs of our communities just as we need help from government the most.

The only true way in my opinion to end these gerrymander wars is for the rest of us - all of us - to show the fuck up at the polling stations during the midterms and vote the Republicans - the ones most responsible for propping up that child-raping, grifting, sadistic trump - out of office. As much as the Democrats are playing these mapmaking games, they're not the ones responsible for this monstrous tyrannical regime arresting families, crashing economies, and bombing schools.

We are long past due holding the Far Right accountable for all the sins they've inflicted on the rest of us. To hell with their games: VOTE THE REPUBLICANS OUT.

Then we'll see an end to these fucking partisan maps.

The Fraying Far Right in Europe, A Potential Shift Away from Fascism as Hungary Ousts Orban

If there's any good news for western liberal-democratic systems, it's that elections still matter. Hungary just held a parliamentary vote with huge turnout and even bigger global ramifications (via NPR):

Hungarian voters turned out in the greatest numbers since the fall of communism in the 1990s to turn away from Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party, with exit polls indicating possible "super-majority" victory for Péter Magyar's Tisza movement. The movement rallied various opposition forces around the themes of fighting corruption and re-integrating the European mainstream. 

Prime Minister Viktor Orbán congratulated Magyar in a concession speech less than three hours after polls closed. Ballots continue to be counted but the trend suggests a possible two-thirds majority for Magyar and his Tisza movement. If that happens, he would be able to undo constitutional changes made by Orbán to weaken the independence of the judiciary and entrench the Fidesz party's control of political life.

I don't blog much about Orban, but he's been a major figure in the anti-democratic movement across most of the western world since the 2010s. As part of a "populist nationalist" ideology, Orban has really been a dictator in all but name: shutting down free speech and political opposition within Hungary, rewriting laws to keep himself and his party in power, pushing an anti-immigrant agenda that openly relied on racism, and basically providing a blueprint to every other Far Right autocrat seeking absolute rule (SEE trump, Bolsonaro, trump again, wannabe rules like Le Pen and Farage, and more trump).

Orban has been held as a model for success among the Far Right factions across most of what we'd call the western world. As Isaac Chotiner documented in 2021 at New Yorker:

Still, over the past decade, Orbán has become something of a hero to conservatives throughout Europe, and has piqued the interest of the American right wing as well. Last week, Tucker Carlson visited Hungary and, over dinner, lauded the Prime Minister as someone that the West could learn from. On Sunday, in the Times, the conservative columnist Ross Douthat explained some of Orbán’s appeal. “It’s not just his anti-immigration stance or his moral traditionalism,” Douthat wrote. “It’s that his interventions in Hungarian cultural life, the attacks on liberal academic centers and the spending on conservative ideological projects, are seen as examples of how political power might curb progressivism’s influence...”

The likes of Seb Gorka has been pushing the US government under trump to pursue a partisan hunt against "left-wing terrorism" like Antifa (which is, by the by, Anti-Fascism something Gorka and other wingnuts don't want you to realize) based exactly on how Orban attacked center-left and far left parties in Hungary. Orban's efforts to stifle his nation's media - through intimidation and allies buying up outlets - mirror the same efforts happening here in the United States.

Tied up into all this is how tied up all of these nationalist movements are to each other: Not just moral support but also money and influence backing each other's attempts to win elections so that the Far Right can control more nations to fulfill a global agenda. Orban is - well, was - a keystone among the other Far Right factions; ironically trying to seize control by promoting isolationist pro-nativism hatreds within their own nations, using international support to do so.

For Orban to fall, and to fall so openly and decisively (losing by double-digits!) even after rigging the electoral system wtih gerrymandering - is a harsh rebuke to the Far Right ideologues convinced they were an unstoppable juggernaut across the globe. Making it harsher - well, funnier to the rest of us - is how trump and his administration panicked over how poorly Orban was doing in the polls leading up to the election, to where JD Vance visited multiple times in person to campaign for Orban and where trump openly tried to bribe Hungarians with promises of boosting their economy.

The hilarious thing is that Orban's polling sank lower after Vance's visit and after trump's promises, proving that Europeans even in conservative-leaning nations really HATE trump.

There's also the reality that a lot of Hungarians got tired of inept corrupt rule by an inept corrupt autocrat. Under Orban, their economy suffers to high inflation and worsening conditions. For all of Orban's railing against migrants, refugees, dread Others, and liberals; after 16 years the people understand the problem has been Orban and his cronies all along.

Orban's loss is a sign that for all their efforts to rig the game in their countries, the other Far Right parties and factions across Europe have no guarantee of winning and holding onto power. Whatever appeal the nationalist/populist/racist groups offer to the angrier sections of their populations, they cannot expect inevitability or winning over any moderates that modern-day fascists can be effective if they control high office.

Orban's loss is also a huge blow to Putin: the Hungarian prime minister had been the Russian dictator's most useful ally puppet in European affairs. Hungary's position within both the EU and NATO gave Orban the means to disrupt and sabotage those organizations to serve Putin's needs. In the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia, Orban routinely denied stronger EU / NATO support for Ukraine and even withheld funds - literally stealing it in a heist - Ukraine was supposed to get for their war effort.

The incoming prime minister, Peter Magyar, hasn't openly committed to supporting Ukraine in full - I saw a social media post he was willing to return the stolen funds, but I can't verify it - but he does want closer relations to the rest of the EU (in order to fix Hungary's failing economy), which should mean getting on the rest of Europe's good side. Magyar shouldn't be fully obstructionist the way Orban was. 

This election ousting Orban is - simply put - a huge punch in the face to fascists and dictators across the globe.

This is why turnout matters, Americans.

Fun times, people.

Quick update: Europeans really have a knack for partying when authoritarian/totalitarian regimes fall:

went to check out the techno rave outside Parliament and I don't think I have the data allowance to share a video from it but let me tell you: there sure is a techno rave outside Parliament right now, celebrating Orban getting ousted

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— Marie Le Conte (@youngvulgarian.marieleconte.com) April 12, 2026 at 3:57 PM

If The Smoke Comes Out Turquoise, I Think That Means They Ordered Mexican For Dinner (Ow Stop Hitting Me)

In what are very dark times indeed, I know I shouldn't be snarking on stuff but the whole "Elect a New Pope" thing is just open for humor. 

For example, the news report that the Vatican had to re-install the smokestack they use to announce to the crowds if they elected a new pope or not (via Clare Marie Schneider at NPR):

Throughout this secretive, locked-door affair, the recently installed chimney will be the only indication to the public about how the process is going. After a ceremony within the Sistine Chapel is held to mark the beginning of the conclave, the doors are locked, Bry Jensen, host of the long-running Pontifacts podcast, told NPR.

That's when "the verbal and communicative gates go down," Jensen said. "There is no further communication until a pope has been elected, aside from smoke."

As the cardinals deliberate, they vote until they reach a two-thirds majority agreement on who to elect. With each vote, they burn their ballots in a stove installed in the Sistine Chapel for this purpose. If black smoke plumes from the chimney, the cardinals aren't in agreement and will need to vote again. Once white smoke can be seen from the chimney, it signals to the public that the Roman Catholic Church has a new leader. The process relies on chemicals to produce the desired color...

When that article popped up on Bluesky, I just HAD to Reply Guy with this:

This time, it's been set to provide a vast array of colored smoke: Black = no pope Blue = the pancakes were soggy Red = they've decided on watching "Sinners" Green = they've found the hidden stash of Irish whiskey Pink = it's Roan Chappell! Purple = Prince has returned! White = pope

— Witty Librarian Resistance (@paulwartenberg.bsky.social) May 4, 2025 at 9:21 PM

(I'm Unitarian. I'm *allowed* this amount of levity towards my Catholic brethren. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it)

That said, there's a few more colored smokes that the cardinals can send to signal their intents:

• Violet = They've agreed to buy for Janis Joplin her Mercedes Benz
• Beige = They've narrowed the selection of Pope down to a White guy
• Taupe = They've narrowed the selection of Pope down to a Latino guy
• Onyx = They've narrowed the selection of Pope down to a Black guy
• Fuchsia = They're just messing with us. Seriously, is fuchsia even a real word?
• Olo = How are there even new colors to be found? Don't we have a full palette of 256 blends and tints and gods know how many options to choose from in the RGB chart?

There will be no Orange smoke. There is no way the cardinals will vote in trump after his ill-humored and tone-deaf mockery of their papacy.

That all said, to the cardinals getting locked in with each other over the next couple of days - they rarely elect a pope on the first go, there's too many candidates and factions to winnow down thanks to the two-thirds majority requirement, and I doubt one of them will get over 50 percent the first round - and we're all praying they select a new Pope who does look to the future, towards the more positive virtues of faith such as charity, humility, love of others, and grace.

Never Forget: trump's Treason

On January 6th, 2021, donald trump betrayed his oath of office and incited a mass riot to break into Congress and disrupt the vote count certification so he could steal the presidential election results.

In a sane and just universe, trump would never have been allowed anywhere NEAR the White House again. he should have been put on trial within weeks of the assault on our political institutions and the sanctity of the Constitution. Hundreds of the MAGA rioters - around 1,600 of them - had gone through exactly that, either pleading out or getting convicted with serious jail time. trump should be rotting in prison alongside them.

And yet, no. Biden's Justice Department led by Merrick Garland dragged their feet, resisting the necessity of holding trump accountable because of whatever "good faith" political decorum - the refusal to hold presidents accountable for ANY acts at all - still informed their world-view. It took a hotly contested congressional inquiry to force Garland's hand and appoint a special prosecutor to pursue the matter. And while Jack Smith did bring charges eventually, the electoral calendar swung back around to where trump ran for the presidency again - in spite of his insurrectionist misdeeds - and won the damn thing even with a majority of Americans knowing he was a crook, rendering any further federal criminal charges moot (because the courts determined Presidents are immune from criminal charges while sitting in office).

And now, trump is trying to rewrite history. he lies about the level of violence that happened that January 6th, declaring it was all "a day of love". he calls each of the imprisoned rioters "patriots" and "heroes" and will likely pardon every one of them as soon as he's in the Oval Office (arguably after he issues executive orders confirming mass deportations, declaring war on Mexico, and insane tariffs on Canada).

There were 140 police officers assaulted that day. Property damage in the millions. Seven people dead, including one Capitol Police officer who was driven to suicide from the trauma of that day. There was no love that January 6th. Just violence, rage, fear, and the closest collapse of our nation's existence since the Civil War.

trump reveled in that violence, enjoyed spinning the narrative to twist it into his great day of dominance over the American spirit, and will do everything in his power to relive that moment through further acts of violence and illegality upon our nation and the world.

To the 77 million Americans who voted for this insurrectionist: what the actual hell. You saw this. January 6th was on the front page of every paper, on the news broadcasts of every channel. And you STILL VOTED for the son of a bitch.

There will come a future when we are free of this trumpian madness, and there will be a reckoning for you and this nation for the sins trump will inflict upon us.

Until that day, fuck you. You're going to earn the nightmare we're all about to endure. 

Unhappy Thoughts Part II

Update: I need to get back into the mood to blog, as Steve in Manhattan ended up using this from two weeks ago to share at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. Blame it on the boogey(man) that is trump... /rage

The post-election blues continue on, obviously.

One of the things still haunting me a month later is how the results just did not fit the enthusiasm I saw among fellow Harris/Walz voters, how it just didn't seem possible that a deeply unpopular figure like trump could add to a popular vote count to win.

And now we have to cope with the "autopsy" as it were with people yelling and screaming where things went wrong.

Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up this Monday pointed me to another blog where the artist created a cartoon basically highlighting all the (hindsight) armchair quarterbacking taking place among the Democratic ranks after the loss:

 

Visit Amp's blog to view the full image, please

As the artist Ampersand noted:

Lacking any clear-cut truth, most people just go ahead and say that the election proves that the Democrats have to endorse whatever policy stance they prefer or they’ll never win an election again...

I understand the impulse. I think the Biden administration has been horrifically bad on Gaza. Now that Harris has lost, it would be very convenient for me if everyone agreed that Harris lost because of the Biden administration’s terrible policies on Gaza.

But “convenient for me” isn’t the same as “true.” (Which is a very unfortunate way to set up a universe, and as soon as I locate the management I will make a complaint)...

Everybody's got a pet peeve and policy issue to defend. I've encountered a number of the ones presented in that comic: I've met people who are obsessed over reports how Elon Musk's Starlink system got election counting data before any official counting was done; I know a few people online who were genuinely upset about Biden's failure to rein in Israel's genocide of Palestinian families in Gaza and West Bank; I've read the arguments from the media pundits who think Biden (and by proxy Harris) were getting punished for higher prices even as inflation was trending down.

I myself am convinced that the mainstream media - led by the cowards at New York Times and Washington Post - failed to keep voters informed about how criminal and corrupt donald trump was, underplaying his scandals while punishing Biden/Harris/Democrats with a "both siderism" narrative that made Democrats look old and broken themselves.

But even I know that's not the entirety of the problem.

The real answer why Democrats failed to win this 2024 election cycle is that donald trump - leading a squalid and cruel army of Republican officials and voting base - appealed to the worst nature of a large plurality of our fellow Americans and got them to back his election. He stuck to his decades-long campaign hating on immigrants, hating on Blacks, hating on women; getting more and more Republican figures and media cheerleaders to push that fear and rage. And he got more and more voters - and not just angry Whites but also angry men and angry women from the very ethnic groups he's attacking - to buy in, spreading Hate like a plague. 

trump went from 63 million voters - when we could explain it away as a failure of a broken Electoral College - to 74 million - where we could avoid it by accepting Biden's popular vote win of 81 million - to 77 million where there's no other way to avoid this.

Democrats lost because Republicans appealed to sadists and assholes who are greater in number than we realized. The Cruelty was the point, and now it's policy. 

Every attempt to appeal to any rational Republican or centrist voting group wasn't going to work. Trying to get more liberal and progressive voters to show up seems limiting, and not enough of them were willing to buy in to the Big Tent Biden and Harris tried to build.

The reason why a lot of us who voted for Harris - who voted for competency and sanity and justice and an America we thought we knew - are skittish and unhappy today is that we've learned our neighbors, families, and communities are full of people who knew trump was a monster - a convicted felon and sex offender, openly willing to commit more crimes as President - and voted for him anyway.

Gods help us.

The Willful Blindness

Update: Steve in Manhattan, thank you again for sharing this blog to Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-up! And to those of you stopping by, can you do me a favor and Follow Me if you can? It's... I'd like to know people out there are supporting each other. P.S. As soon as I can get a selfie of it made, I'm going to quit Twitter with both middle fingers aimed at Elon while I head off to Bluesky Social! Look for me there.

This is the thing driving me insane at this moment, and will likely keep me insane for a thousand lifetimes.

Due to the Republicans' effort to overturn Roe with the Dobbs decision, there were ten states this election cycle that had pro-abortion rights amendments for their state constitutions. The results showed that most of those states' voters - even dominated by Far Right powers - sided in favor of abortion rights (via Geoff Mulvihill and Christine Fernando at AP News):

Voters in Missouri cleared the way to undo one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion bans in one of seven victories for abortion rights advocates, while Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota defeated similar constitutional amendments, leaving bans in place.

Abortion rights amendments also passed in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland and Montana. Nevada voters also approved an amendment, but they’ll need to pass it again it 2026 for it to take effect. Another that bans discrimination on the basis of “pregnancy outcomes” prevailed in New York.

The results include firsts for the abortion landscape, which underwent a seismic shift in 2022 when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a ruling that ended a nationwide right to abortion and cleared the way for bans to take effect in most Republican-controlled states...

For me the sad news is that Florida's pro-abortion amendment didn't pass, but only due to a super-majority (60 percent) requirement for state amendments. It still received 57 percent support, showing a clear number of residents - including other Republicans! - wanted women to have that right to abortion based on medical and psychological needs. If only 3 percent more had any more understanding of how rape victims and women suffering miscarriage are now burdened - or worse, forced to die - because Amendment Four didn't pass.

But what's driving me insane is how many of those same voters - here in Florida, and in Missouri, and Montana, and several others like Kansas and Ohio that saw pro-abortion support in voter referenda - went and voted back into office the same Republican bastards who took away abortion rights in the first place.

It's like those voters refused to pay attention to who caused this problem with women's rights. They didn't blame donald trump for appointing three anti-abortion Justices to the Supreme Court that passed the Dobbs ruling. They didn't hold accountable the Republican Senators who approved those Justices, and in fact gave the GOP control of the incoming Senate term. And they certainly didn't vote out of office the state-level Republicans who are so partisan in their Far Right agenda that they will ignore, obstruct, or defy those state amendments however they can.

In Florida's case, the pro-abortion amendment's failure is likely going to encourage DeSantis - that bastard - and the legislators still controlling Tallahassee to pursue even harsher measures such as going after birth control. They are going to double down on punishing women for being women, I guarantee you this.

How self-defeating can you get? Did ANY of you pay attention?

It wasn't just on abortion that the majority of American voters showed this schizoid desire to support relatively liberal positions while voting into office extremist conservative SOBs.

trump and the Republican Party pretty much campaigned on demonizing immigrants, not just the illegals crossing the border but lawful migrants like Haitians. For the love of God, trump held a last-minute Hate Rally in Madison Square Garden where Puerto Ricans - official citizens since 1917! - were insulted to their faces. And yet more Latinos ended up voting for trump and Republicans, in spite of the reality that trump and the likes of Stephen Miller are openly planning to attack birthright citizenship and attempt "denaturalization" of those who already cleared legal hurdles to citizenship. It's as though those Latino voters - and American voters whose communities rely on migrant workers to survive - don't believe the leopards will be coming to eat their own faces.

Most of the voters' ire towards the Democrats revolved around the high inflation that hit the nation in the Post-COVID economy. Nevermind the fact President Biden passed an Inflation Reduction Act that generated jobs and worked - slowly, alas - to reduce the inflation rate. And those angry voters sided with trump who wants to replace our income tax system with high tariffs that will create WORSE inflation - we're talking Great Depression levels - than we've ever known.

And in spite of the relative success of the ACA (Obamacare) that aid most Americans with their health care costs, those Americans just gave power back to a Republican Party eager to repeal the whole thing (and this time with no clear Replace plan to offer). The same Republican Party that literally DID NOTHING this past term of Congress (the lowest level of legislative activity ever seen).

This isn't about me being some "elitist" liberal snob - I'm barely middle class, goddammit - wondering why my fellow Americans just won't vote the way I want them to. This is me genuinely wondering HOW my fellow Americans haven't paid attention to who (evangelical Far Right greedheads) - and what (racism and sexism) - are causing the problems and turmoil that do affect them as much as all of us.

This is why I'm screaming into the void anymore. The willful blindness of my neighbors and even some family members to the real problems out there and how the Republicans they just voted for are the cause of those problems looking to double down on that madness.

It's like nobody among those 73 million trump voters remembered the madness, the cruelty, the broken acts of poor governance that trump and his Far Right cohorts brought about the first time around between 2017 to 2020. It's like they refuse to remember how since 1988 every time a Republican-led government broke things - Bush the Elder's recession, Bush the Lesser's failed wars and financial meltdowns, trump's excessive tax cuts and refusal to handle the COVID emergency with ANY level of competency or compassion - their partisan extremism made it impossible to solve those crises and were disastrous AND deadly for our nation.

What the hell, America. Seriously. Did you pay ANY attention at ALL?

Screaming Into the Void

I went to bed early on Election Night because I didn't want the stress to get the worst of me.

I wake up to a goddamn nightmare.

I thought the worst case nightmare of a trump "win" was that he was going to fight legal challenges all the way up to the Supreme Court. I didn't consider even the possibility trump would claim more popular votes than Harris. trump lost the popular vote in 2016 by three million votes, and lost it more by seven million in 2020. trump had done nothing to improve his favorability numbers in all that time, and yet... what the hell?

And it's not that trump's winning by garnering a higher count than the 74 million he got in 2020: his current total is below that (last saw it was 71 million) and even after all the final tallying is done by this weekend it doesn't look like it'll be any higher than that 74 million from last time.

What's horrifying is how Kamala's vote total - based off the 81 million Biden got earlier - dropped off a literal cliff down to 66 million(!). That total should increase slightly during the final ballot counting, but there's no way she's finding 15 million votes hiding away under a sofa or something to regain the popular vote or flip the Electoral College. This is... wrong. This is broken.

WHERE THE HELL DID 15 MILLION DEMOCRATIC VOTES GO?

This was after all the reports of increased voter registration, this was after all the early voting reports of higher turnout. Pennsylvania and Florida in particular were reporting big turnout overall. There were few signs that the turnout numbers were favoring trump or Republicans. If anything, most of the turnout numbers were matching - if not exceeding in some states - 2020 numbers. AND YET. There's 15 million votes unaccounted for.

This can't be right.

By all accounts, Harris ran the final stages of the campaign - taking over from President Biden when he dropped out from media pressure to do so - just right. She fundraised better than trump. Her rallies drew bigger crowds. The ground game was knocking on every door in the battleground states and then some. There weren't any signs from the voting base itself that they disapproved of Harris (other than the pro-Palestinians fearing the year-long war Israel was inflicting on the Gaza and West Bank citizenry).

There wasn't any evidence that turnout was going to drop this bad. Where the hell did 15 million voters from 2020 go?

Other than grappling at the conspiracy train of thought that the voting machines were rigged - across every battleground state, even the ones where Democrats held local control - the only other thought is that all that voter turnout was a mirage, or that voters avoided marking off a choice for President on the ballots either way.

Looking at the results nationwide, it's not as though that 15 million votes went towards the Libertarian or Green candidates (the Libertarians had barely 540,000 votes, and the Greens got 611,000). Those 15 million votes are just... gone.

What the hell happened to the 81 million voters who showed up for Biden where 15 million of them refused - in an election that could have stopped a known felon and sex offender in trump - to show up for Harris?

This is both frustrating and alarming as hell.

And now we're stuck in hell.

I am regretting ever getting this emotionally invested into my nation's own well-being and survival against the forces of darkness that trump (and his BFF Putin) represent.

For a long time, I thought the Far Right was too extreme, too cruel, too corrupt to truly represent what the United States could be (even with all the racism and sexism dripping through our history books).

I believed the Republican Party wasn't truly reflective of the majority of Americans - not since the 1990s when the sheen of Reaganism fell away - and that they were really a minority party surviving on gerrymandering and voter suppression. The possibility that massive voter suppression happened last night is there, but on this scale? Considering how so many Americans ARE happy voting for a known criminal felon, tax fraud, and sex offender in trump, the only honest reality is that GODS HELP US a majority of Americans are truly this blind, truly this cruel, truly this spiteful towards their own communities and families.

I'm despairing for the poor, for the Blacks facing law enforcement crackdowns to serve trump's obsession for violence against them, for the Latinos and Arabs about to suffer hardships under a vicious anti-immigrant regime, for the women who are about to lose even more rights to an evangelical mob, for the children about to see their personal lives and their safety violated by anti-trans and anti-gay haters.

I'm not despairing for America though. Those sons of bitches voted for a monster about to blow everything up to feed their fear and hate, and they will get caught in the chaos and destruction they thought was going to inflict everyone else.

Goddamn us tonight. History and humanity will never forgive us.

Everybody Hold On Tight Election Day 2024 Edition

Update: Goddammit.

This is what we know going into Election Day this November 5th.

There is a gender gap in the voting trends, with more women showing up to vote than men.

There is a Dobbs Effect, where a number of deeply-held Republican states are seeing a massive shift of votes towards Democratic candidates and pro-abortion state referenda after the Dobbs ruling in 2022 allowed those Republican states to enact harsh anti-abortion laws. What we don't know is how massive those shifts will be and if they will flip enough Red states Blue.

There will be a harsh rebuke from Latino voters - especially Puerto Rican voters - towards Republicans in key battleground states Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Florida. When you have 85 percent of Puerto Ricans telling pollsters they're siding with Harris, that's a huge voting bloc numbering hundreds of thousands in each state giving Democrats advantages in places that were decided by mere thousands of votes.

The governors and Attorneys General in some of the Red states are going to do everything they can to block federal officials from the Justice Department to oversee vote counting, because they dare not let honest tallying take place. So we know the Republicans are going to try and disenfranchise voters they don't like as much as possible.

trump will claim he's winning in every state, and then when a state's counting starts shifting to Harris he will scream "Stop the Steal" and that there's mass voter fraud in that state. Then again, he did this LAST time during the 2020 count, and he threatened to do it in 2016 before that election, so this was going to happen anyway. trump can never admit he's losing.

What people should know going into tomorrow's election: When you get in line before the polls close, STAY IN LINE. It helps to get there as early as possible. Bring your own bottle of water or something because some of the Republican-controlled states banned people from providing drinks and health aid for people stuck in long lines.

If some Proud Boy asshole challenges your right to vote, defend your vote (and see if the precinct security guard can charge that SOB for election interference). If a poll worker challenges your right to vote, demand a provisional ballot. Bring a friend - go with a group of neighbors or family members who can vote at that precinct with you - so you won't be alone and easy to intimidate.

Do be prepared for the craziest election day our nation's ever seen: Crazier than 1968, more chaotic than 1876, and - oh gods, help us - probably more violent than anything (and it's shocking how many violent elections - at least at the local level - we've had).

Stay safe. Use your power to vote. And here's hoping for a strong Blue Wave to wash trump and his criminal ways from our land.

I Need to Blog Something to Open This Month of November So...

I don't want to stress.

I don't want to stress.

I don't want to stress.

I don't want to stress.

(grabs a Gatorade and guzzles it all in one gulp)

via GIPHY

I DON'T WANT TO STRESS.

I AM PERFECTLY FINE.

via GIPHY

ALL THE EARLY VOTING REPORTS AND FINAL WEEK OF POLLING, I DON'T CARE ABOUT ANY OF THAT.

(stops self from writing a prolonged blog essay freaking out over the post-election scenarios)

I AM AN OASIS OF CALM.

I'M FINE. I'M PERFECTLY FINE.

GODDAMMIT WILL WE JUST CONFIRM KAMALA HAS 99 MILLION VOTES ALREADY AND BE DONE WITH THIS?!

(slap)

via GIPHY

Okay. Okay. Whew. Better now.

(grabs the edge of the computer monitor to scream at the nine blog readers here) GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT FOR KAMALA AND EVERY DEMOCRAT ON THE BALLOT! GET IT DONE! 

via GIPHY

As Spock would say, "Party hard, you Vulcan motherf-ckers."

We're gonna need ALL the Romulan Ale by Tuesday night.

The Nightmare of 2024

As befits the day of All Hallows Eve, I need to describe the recurring nightmare that keeps haunting me as we get closer to Election Day.

The absolute utter dread that somehow donald motherfucking trump might sneak his way back into the White House.

It's been a nightmare being stuck in the Darkest Timeline since November 2016, not just coping with the reality that a solid plurality of my fellow Americans are happily siding with a known racist sexist idiotic shitgibbon like him. It's watching time and again trump committing public faux pas and mental meltdowns, and getting exposed as a financial fraud and adjudicated rapist; all the while violating every known rule of political gravity that should have ended this madness ages ago.

It's unnerving to even contemplate trump could win. Not through any honest means, obviously, but through deceit, rigging, and overt bullying.

I know it can't happen through the popular vote. trump never won the popular vote in 2016 or 2020 in spite of all his gaslighting lies, and there is no sign that trump can win the people over this 2024. 

It could happen through the Electoral College's broken system. For all the hope of a Blue Wave - for all the signs of higher voter turnout leaning towards Kamala Harris and the Democrats - there is still the nagging reality that nobody's really going to know until voters actually vote how the battleground states will play out. All it can take is three or four of the key states - Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, North Carolina - to go in favor of trump to have the Electoral College negate the popular vote. Much like how Hillary in 2016 clearly won the popular vote by 3 million nationwide but lost the Electoral by 30,000 votes in Wisconsin and Michigan: Kamala could be up by 7 million over trump but if she loses Pennsylvania AND Georgia AND Wisconsin by 7,000... The absolute EVIL of the Electoral College will tear this nation apart.

If there's any good news about the likelihood of the Electoral College failing (AGAIN) is that most of the battleground states have polls and early turnout trending away from trump. trump is already complaining about "stolen votes" in Pennsylvania so there may be internal polling suggesting he's about to lose that state (it is considered the key battleground state: Winning it points towards winning states with similar populations like Michigan and Wisconsin).

If trump is hoping to stage another chaotic mess of fake electors or getting his allies in certain states to refuse to certify the results - anything to force chaos and make the system convert to the fallback option of having the US House choose a winner - that is unlikely to happen: The current election laws and mechanisms point towards having it all resolved in the Electoral College anyway.

None of that is the real nightmare.

The nightmare scenario is that Kamala Harris wins both the popular and Electoral votes in a decisive manner - it could be by 500,000 votes and a slim EV count, it could be by 20 million and an Electoral blowout - and yet still "loses" because trump gets his allies in the court system - especially the Supreme Court - to buy his false claims of stolen votes and throw the results to him.

Considering how this Roberts Court already bent over backwards to undo previous court rulings - and run roughshod over established norms - all to give trump a Get Out of Jail Free card - LITERALLY - we can't ignore the possibility that the six Conservative Justices on the high court will ignore the basic facts of 1) trump never having evidence that the elections are rigged, and 2) the clear majority of voting Americans sided with Harris and the Democrats on who should lead this nation.

What will happen if Harris gets over 90 million voters - as I'm hoping - while trump gets barely over 50 million, with a majority of states flipping Democratic Blue in the process, only to have six Justices whom no one directly elected tell that American majority their votes and their voices and their power don't count?

That's what terrifies me heading into next Tuesday: The response by angry American voters - not just Democrats but the Indy and anti-trump Republicans - betrayed by a corrupt Supreme Court. What the hell do we do if Harris and the Democrats honestly win and yet trump and the Republicans steal it away?

What If: the 2024 President Election Is an Honest-to-God Harris Landslide

Update: All of this was wrong. All of this was a lie. All of America is fucked up, don't tell me otherwise.

I'm still thinking about that USA Today report about early voting where Kamala Harris has a 63 percent lead in the ballots over trump's anemic 34 percent (with the difference going to third parties, natch).

Given how most of the modern - at least 21st Century - Presidential elections were not so heavily favored either way - balancing between 52-47 percent or closer - seeing THAT huge of a lead is stunning (and stirring up way too much hope for my own good, I admit it).

Logic dictates that the early voting is not a full representation of the likely voter turnout for this cycle. We're barely at a quarter of expected turnout - although with a week to go the numbers will go up - and more than half of the voters tend to wait until Election Day (some because they're still undecided, many because it's kinda traditional) anyway. We should expect a downward shift on that percentage lead to where the voting share fits the trends of a closer (say 55-45) election result.

We could be looking at the likelihood that a large number of Democratic - or Dem-leaning Independents - are voting earlier than the more traditional Republican voters who wait... except those early voting numbers show a near-level balance of Dem and GOP voters. So that narrative's a bit off.

The implications I'm seeing are 1) this is how the voting trends are going, and 2) there's a shocking number of Republican voters adding to that 63 percent Harris lead that can't be ignored.

So (dammit, my giddiness is getting the better of me), we are within the realm of positing a "What If": What if Harris really is getting close to 63 percent of the national vote this November?

One thing we shouldn't do is speculate on the final turnout numbers. Although there's signs of increased voter registration, there's still no guarantee of increased voter turnout (although the turnout numbers did go up in 2020 due to excessive use of mail-in ballots that made it easier to do so).

So let's go by the 2020 total turnout count, which was 158,429,631 Americans.

If that percentage trend (63) persists for Harris, she's looking at roughly 99,810,667 votes.

(jaw drops)

Considering Biden got roughly 51 percent and a total of 81,283,501 votes, I'd say that's a huge boost to the collective Democratic ego.

By comparison, trump's possible 34 percent will garner around 53,866,704 votes. It will be a decided drop off from the 74,223,975 he got in 2020 and also below his 2016 numbers of 62,984,828. It would be a massive rejection by voters tired of trump's antics the third time around.

Not only would the percentage difference be huge (Harris will win by 29 percent) but the vote total will be embarrassing (Harris will win by 45,943,963 votes). trump and the Republicans will try to scream "stolen votes," but on a scale that large there's no way even Far Right judges will buy that (or risk challenging it). 

(Also: Try imagining trump calling the Georgia Secretary of State and begging him to "find me 45 million votes.")

It would be a legitimate blowout for a Presidential election, something we haven't seen in decades. Looking back, the next closest election with that huge a percentage win gap was in 1984 when Reagan demolished Mondale 58 to 40 percent. Reagan won the Electoral votes of 49(!) states with roughly 54 million over 37 million. There's a reason why Democrats have campaigned with little joy until now, and that smackdown inflicted a ton of PTSD for years afterward.

You could consider Nixon's victory in 1972 over McGovern one of the biggest results in all of U.S. history - where he won 60 percent over McGovern's 37 for a massive popular vote win 47 million over 29 million - but then you have to remember Nixon and his CREEPs orchestrated a dirty tricks campaign to guarantee running against a massively unpopular McGovern.

The most recent Democratic win on this scale would be in 1964, with LBJ riding on Kennedy's legacy and against an (then) extreme conservative opponent in Goldwater where Johnson got 61 percent over Goldwater's 38 percent and a 43 million over 27 million popular vote turnout. 

I could go back to 1936 when FDR blew Alf Landon out of the water with a 60 percent vs. 36 percent result, but you get my drift. Harris getting 63 percent would top every other electoral trouncing to achieve a Blowout For the Ages. Even if that percentage slides down, if she's anywhere near Reagan's 58 percent turnout we're still talking a huge win trump and the GOP can't lie about.

One other thing that accompanied those big blowouts in 1984, 1972, 1964, and 1936 (and even the milder landslides we'd see from Eisenhower's 1952-1956 wins for example) were the Electoral College results (maps are from the 270towin website):

It would be pretty to see a Harris/Walz Electoral Map where most of the United States will color in as Blue...

I would argue that back in those days the geographic divisions between Democratic and Republican - or Liberal and Conservative - voters were not as severe as we have today. Back then, the states were pretty well mixed between the major parties, and moderates between them would slide one election to the next between candidates without fear of being disloyal. 

You could get an Electoral College map that would overexaggerate the popular vote wins because the winning candidate got past the bare minimum to win there (Mondale almost lost his home state in 1984 by 2000 votes! And we know how Hillary lost Wisconsin and Michigan by similar margins to our detriment...). In today's partisan environment - and where liberals and conservatives relocated to states more attuned to their worldviews - it's not as likely for Harris to flip so many states Democratic the way LBJ and FDR did in their day. 

Having said that, if Harris is garnering - and keeping - 63 percent of voters by Election Day, that HAS to mean a large number of once-solid Republicans are abandoning their partisan stance (at least for this cycle), and across a number of otherwise solid Republican-held Red states to where a massive Electoral College win is in the pipeline. Not just Harris keeping the states Biden won in 2020, and not just flipping key battleground states like North Carolina and maybe Florida, and not just the almost-real possibility of finally flipping Texas: I'm talking nearly every Red state could be in play with those numbers (save for of course deep Red states like West Virginia, South Carolina, Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho). Dear 9 readers of this blog: Even ALASKA is in play.

...

Okay, with all THAT said, this "What If" fantasy is pretty to think so, but in the real world my track record for predicting things hasn't been all that great to begin with.

Like I said near the beginning of this wishful thinking, that early 63 percent lead can easily slide down as more voters show up and if more of them are leaning Republican and trump. The trend may look nice but actual voter turnout is what counts, and the early pro-Harris counts from Republican voters could just be that voting bloc getting their ballots done before they change their minds.

But... given that a sizable GOP voter bloc IS voting Harris and getting away from the once-rigid partisan voting habits, we ought to consider the reality that Harris is getting way above the now-standard 50-to-52 percent of winning we've seen in recent cycles. Even if Harris matches the more modest result of Obama's big win in 2008 of 53 percent, we're talking 83 million votes (a nice boost over 2020) and numbers that trump can't challenge.

Voter turnout remains key, fellow Americans.

We need 99 million or so of y'all to show up and vote Harris/Walz for the blowout we need to keep America free from trumpian misrule.

This is what 99 million Harris votes could look like

Let's do this.