Good morning, C&C, it’s Saturday! I’m hotel blogging this morning from Chattanooga, where you can See Rock City! And if you haven’t seen it yet, whatever you think Rock City might be is wrong. Nor is it misnamed. It’s as quintessential an example of roadside Americana as you could ask for. Pro tip: entering the park’s Fairy Cave might be the closest thing to dropping acid without taking drugs. Since I’m speaking on a Brownstone panel this morning, my blogging deadlines are compressed. I will keep it brief and punchy. Also— breaking news requires me to push the jab study story. Don’t worry: we’ll get to it soon, and it’ll be worth the wait.
⛑️ C&C ARMY BRIEFING ⛑️
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Since President Trump is accepting Tuesday’s results, I’ll cap off my series Astonishing Election Miracles and then move on, having done our part for the ongoing analysis. But I will keep you posted if and when any real election news appears. To wrap things up for now, here are a few final examples that I dredged up from Tuesday’s election swamp.
🎉 Charles Glover (D), Charleston County Council District 8, SC. A true election miracle! Charles’ financial disclosures showed he spent zero dollars ($0). He did almost no campaigning, and his campaign platform consisted only of saying that he’d work out his policies once he’s in office. Charles beat the incumbent Republican council chairman 11,837 to 11,358. Ouch. Good luck, Charlestonians!
🎉 LaKesha Womack (D), NC-14 (U.S. House). Axios called the outcome a “stunning upset.” Like many of the others, LaKesha has never held office. She only raised about $56K against Tim Moore’s $1.9M. This is even more shocking since, according to Axios, Tim Moore is “one of North Carolina’s most prominent Republicans and its longest-serving House Speaker.” For her part, LaKesha is one of North Carolina’s most prominent unknowns. Oh! I almost forgot: She is also currently fighting a pending felony charge (over an ‘unreturned’ rental car), with her next court date coming up on November 10th.
Once again, this race is hard to explain. “Few considered District 14, covering six western counties, including part of Mecklenburg, as a potential flip,” Axios marveled. No kidding! Having never held office, she was outspent 35 to 1, ran against a popular, experienced Republican incumbent, and still won 147,388 to 140,973 in a Trump +15 district that Moore had handily won two years ago by 65,000 votes.
🎉 Victoria Broderick (D), TN-4 (U.S. House). She’d never been elected to any office. But Victoria just became Tennessee’s first gay Congresswoman in history. Victoria is a tech-support worker and openly queer progressive who raised less than $100K and still beat eight-term Scott DesJarlais 95,585 to 95,305. It was a repeat: They ran against each other two years ago, when DesJarlais trounced her by 43 percent. She was such a longshot that the Democratic Congressional Committee completely ignored her. “I’m not angry that I didn’t get support,” Broderick said, “because I got to just pull off a complete upset. Nobody expected it.” That’s putting it mildly. WPLN’s headline:
🎉 Leticia Gutierrez (D), TX-9 (U.S. House). An “environmental advocate,” Leticia is another first-timer, elected to the U.S. Congress with only about $150K— against Trump-endorsed Alex Mealer’s $2M-plus, in one of Texas’s newly gerrymandered seats, drawn to win at nearly Trump +20, in the Houston “oil and gas” region. Leticia won easily, it wasn’t even close: 98,079 to 72,340.
To be clear: weird stuff happens every cycle. You can find the odd story about a recently deceased candidate winning here or there. But a whole series of these types of wins —all going the same way— seems pretty unlikely if conventional election theory means anything. Oh well. First time for everything. Never say never again. Miracles never cease. Et cetera.
Don’t expect to read about these kinds of anomalous results in corporate media, since they don’t advance the media narrative; they only increase election hesitation; and trying to explain them gives the Grey Lady the ick.
Meanwhile, life goes on. So our only rational choice is to burn down some Prius dealerships, light police cars on fire, have a massive looting spree, and occupy state capitals with bullhorn brigades. Of course, since many of us have jobs, productive hobbies, and social engagements, we’ll have to work the protests around everyone’s schedule. Stand by. I’ll get back to you.
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Call me a “last word junkie” if you want, but I have one more point to add about the elections, and the New York Times helpfully teed it up this morning. Its headline asked, “Southern Democrats Now Have a Chance to Lead. What Will They Do With It?” The subheadline added, “Sweeping midterm successes have given the party an opportunity, and a test, to lay out a vision for governing in the South.”
“Democrats,” the Times explained, “will have to navigate differing instincts on whether to build alliances with Republicans or punish them.” You would not be blamed if you wondered where the Times found an instinct to build alliances with Republicans. But I digress. The point: “The opportunity comes with enormous stakes.”
Before you laugh hyena-like at the idea that Democrats would take an opportunity to build alliances, just wait. This is a bigger story than even the Times framed. There’s a narrow path open to Democrats just now; a generational chance. It will be their greatest trial. And they know it, which is why the Times called it “an opportunity and a test.”
See if you can detect a theme.
David Crowley, Wisconsin’s new governor-elect, told WPR, “As Democrats, this is an opportunity to really prove that we can not just win, but that we can govern.” He added, “we can’t be stupid, or we’re not going to have these majorities in two years.” Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, often included in lists of Democrat presidential hopefuls, said, “we’ve got to celebrate today, but we’ve got to govern tomorrow. It’s now on us. So no getting cocky, no getting arrogant.”
True. Don’t get cocky. Nobody likes an arrogant cocky.
In last year’s New York Times bestseller Abundance, progressive darlings Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson made the point that, “Democrats have to show Americans that voting for liberals actually works.” Klein and Thompson noted the growing list of recent big-blue government failures: California’s stillborn high-speed rail project and Biden’s rural broadband and national EV charging networks.
Democrats may lack the ability to build anything. But the party of “saving democracy” can do mandates to beat the band. Of course, mandates are easy. But I’m digressing again.
Though it makes me chuckle and spit up coffee whenever I type the words “moderate Democrats,” we now have them thanks to the rise of the DSA and the socialist wing. And some of them are already fretting. They are terrified by the specter of far-left lunacy, which is right now rising out of the blue foam like a bearded trans woman on a crusted seashell.
🪖 A couple of days ago, the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed penned by Representative Tom Suozzi (D-NY) headlined, “Democrats Won—Now Don’t Blow It.” Don’t blow it is not particularly sage, since as advice it applies to basically anyone in any situation, and invites unwanted mental images, but you get the point. “We must resist a third impeachment,” Suozzi warned, “and focus on governing.” There’s that word again.
“Running headlong into impeachment would be politically self-destructive,” Suozzi cautioned. He wrote, “I will oppose any impeachment process based on political anger, revenge or retribution,” and “Americans didn’t vote for another two years of political warfare.”
As a theme, “Don’t blow it” is elongating. Yesterday, NPR’s Firing Line interviewed progressive icon, former Chicago mayor, and Democrat presidential possibility Rahm Emanuel. He warned, “This was a repudiation (of Trumpism), not a vindication (of Democrats).”
“Our brand is bad,” Rahm explained, “because people think we’re too extreme. What we do in 2027 will determine whether we have won.” NPR reported, “His prescription: Deliver results—and fast—or risk squandering a historic opportunity.” There’s that word opportunity again, too. In his own inimitable style and cajun accent, antique Democrat strategist James Carville said, “They tried DEI. The country hated it. Just hated it. It cost us seats.” He warned, “if we bring this bulls--- language back, we’re going to pay for it.”
Other liberals agreed. On Thursday, for example, BabyBoomer.org published an editorial by Bob Gatty headlined, “A Stern Warning to Democrats, My Preferred Party.” Gatty doesn’t want revenge. He wants governance. “Hear the political machinery warming up? Investigations! Hearings! Subpoenas! Impeachment! Retribution! Stop. Please.” (Italics and bold in the original.) “You have two years to prove that government can work,” he warned. “Use them.”
On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal ran an Editorial Board op-ed wondering, “Will Democrats Misread Their Victory?” (Probably. Next question.) The Editors offered Dems a suggestion: “If Hakeem Jeffries and likely Senate leader Chuck Schumer want a better path, they could seek compromise with Republicans to benefit the country.” (Breath-holding not suggested.)
“The political danger,” the Editors warned, donning their Captain Obvious cap, “is that Democrats won’t be able to control themselves.” You think? As the Editors immediately pointed out, “They didn’t control themselves in Mr. Trump’s first term, and it cost them politically.” I’d add that Democrats also did not control themselves during Biden’s term, at all, and it cost them even more dearly.
They risk re-encountering the Biden Backlash. Dems face two Choose Your Own Adventure paths. Both offer hope for us.
🪖 The first path is the easiest one for them, their real instinct, which pretty much everyone expects: revenge, in the form of impeachments, investigations, subpoenas, chaos, and general dimwittery. This seems most likely. It will be a difficult two years, but Republicans could then sail into 2028 on the hurricane winds of the restless, frustrated electorate that just blew Democrats’ way, and would be primed to blow back.
The second path is cooperation. Unlikely, but possible. If Democrats seize the opportunity, they can work with President Trump instead of against him, patch a fractured nation back together, and finally land the role they’ve been auditioning for: proving they can govern. The President has opened the door. “I can work with them on many things,” Trump said on Wednesday, “many more things than people understand.”
Voters expect lower gas prices. Trump has no reason to prioritize gas prices now, absent Democrats working with him. (Iran: take note.)
Either path, revenge or cooperation, whichever the Democrats choose, offers hope for the GOP, which will enjoy two years in political purgatory, which will sharpen its consideration of what might’ve been different had Congress been more productive when it had the chance.
Currently, they are leaning toward chaos. Democrats on the Hill were easily provoked into fury yesterday when President Trump hired Stephen Miller as his new Chief of Staff. Which brings us to our first breaking story.
🌍🇺🇸 ESSENTIAL NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🇺🇸🌍
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Yesterday’s biggest news, which many of you have already heard, was headlined atop the New York Times’ website like this: “In Elevating Stephen Miller, Trump Doubles Down on Hard-Line Agenda.” It only took four days to whipsaw from euphoric triumphalism back to complaining about President Trump.
Trump’s promotion of MAGA favorite Stephen Miller to chief of staff produced the predictable corporate media diagnosis: he isn’t surrendering enough. Miller replaced Susie Wiles, who stepped down after Tuesday’s shellacking and a breast cancer diagnosis earlier this year. President Trump called Miller an “MVP every year.”
Cue instantaneous Democrat disgruntlement. “Donald Trump learned nothing from his historic defeat,” Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) fumed. “Our Democratic majorities will fight him every step of the way.” The Times wrote, “instead of ceding to the clear evidence of voter displeasure, Mr. Trump pivoted to a familiar move: more MAGA.”
The Times seemed to think the right response to losing Congress was hiring a grief counselor instead of a popular fighter.
“Mr. Miller has been the driver of the president’s most muscular actions,” the Times explained, “including the use of increasingly hostile tactics to capture immigrants across the country and the bombing of small boats in the Caribbean Sea.”
The Times warned its readers that Miller “knows how the levers of government function.” His “top priority,” the Times said, “is rebuilding the fractured MAGA coalition and pursuing policies that will energize the voters who elected Mr. Trump in 2024.” Let’s hope the Times is right for a change. Its angst is our encouragement.
🔥 But the most encouraging reaction to the news came neither from Chuck Schumer nor the greasy pages of the New York Times. It came from HHS Secretary Bobby Kennedy, who in a few short words managed to both signal who’s actually been stymying him and simultaneously invoke the ghost of 2020’s stolen election.
Kennedy tweeted, “Next to me, Stephen Miller is the strongest MAHA supporter in the administration. It’s time to unleash the Kraken.”
That was a somewhat different personnel assessment than the Times provided. There is only one way to read this. Kennedy indirectly blamed former Chief of Staff Susie Wiles for holding back the MAHA agenda, as many folks have long suspected.
For medical-freedom readers, this is not a minor footnote. Miller’s America First Legal joined the MAHA coalition that took Biden’s private-employer vaccine mandate to the Supreme Court and separately challenged the federal-worker mandate. Back in January 2022, Miller said, “America First Legal is proud to stand in the breach fighting unconstitutional medical mandates that violate the fundamental rights of our people.” So.
In other words, Miller’s and Kennedy’s bonds predate the fashionable discovery that a majority of Americans dislike being medically bossed around. They share goals and objectives. (The ones we like the most.)
Thus, Kennedy’s strongest White House ally, by Kennedy’s own account, is moving into the office that runs the whole machinery. It doesn’t guarantee any particular reform. But there is a massive difference when we have a sympathetic Cabinet secretary and a sympathetic chief of staff deciding which problems reach the President’s desk.
The other clue is that the staffing change wasn’t a hasty improvisation after Tuesday’s electoral root canal. Reuters reported before the election that Miller, Russ Vought, and White House lawyers had spent months identifying actions Trump can take without any help from a Democrat-controlled Congress.
Here’s my read: Miller’s hiring means Trump is preparing to negotiate with Democrats— with leverage.
That makes Miller’s promotion less contradictory to Trump’s offers of cooperation than Chuck Schumer assumed. On Friday, discussing working with Democrats on immigration, taxes, and economic development, Trump said, “I’m very much open to it.” Before the election, he put the expected sequence more plainly: “I guess I’ll become Mr. Veto. And then at some point, we’ll probably make deals.”
The invitation is open. There is no surrender option. (Sorry, Times.) Trump intends to negotiate from strength with a muscular MAHA lawyer.
Democrats must now choose their next adventure: cooperate on legislation and share the credit, or turn the next two years into a streaming subpoena subscription service. Miller’s appointment signaled that the White House intends to keep moving under either scenario, subject of course to the statutes and the courts, an orchestra that lawyer Miller has so far played masterfully.
And for the medical-freedom coalition, Kennedy just supplied the buried lede. He’s ready to move, Kraken-style. Unleash it already.
Have a wonderful weekend! Monday’s post may run late, since we’re getting back on a morning plane to return to Florida HQ. But hang in there. More essential news and caffeinated commentary is out for delivery.
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I plan to get to this entire column later, but there are two races where Rs came from behind to win, one in GA statehouse 154 (Greene) and one in AZ2 (Eli Crane). Savor it. This rarely, rarely happens. I can recall Boebert (CO), Valladeo (CA), and I think there was one other R recently who won after trailing in "late counting."
I have yet to read this but could not help pasting in this ref to the MW Doc.
It explains a lot why Susie Wiles is gone and why THAT is so good, and also, why I have just now resolved not to send money to any national politician EVER again.
I have friggin' had it.
https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/why-washington-ignores-what-90-of