Joe Wrote✓

The Free Press @TheFP

Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed gave his victory speech in Arabic last night. Rep. Ilhan Omar addressed her victory party in Somali. And this morning, Iran's supreme leader posted that America's collapse "has accelerated." What should we make of these acceptance speeches? @SulkinMaya

Acyn @Acyn

Hinojosa: I say that the left right paradigm just does not meet the moment of our time. What this is about is about 99.9% of us in the same boat against like 15 billionaire tech guys who are controlling government…

Pamphlets @PamphletsY

🚨🇺🇸 MICHIGAN — Sen. Elissa Slotkin: “Jeffries and Schumer should step aside... I am a big believer in new leadership... Democrats need new leaders in the House and Senate.”

Darializa for Congress @DarializaforNY

From the bottom of my heart, thank you. DC, I’ll see you in January.

Joe Wrote @joewrote

Free Press reporter @Olivia_Reingold misreported her own fake AI image. Paramount paid $150 million for this.

Clipping Wings @ClippingWings

Ezra Klein on the electoral performance of El-Sayed, Peggy Flanagan and Angie Nixon: Angie Nixon—I don't think there's any reason to look at the results and say it was a brilliant strategic move to run the DSA candidate in Florida. Sometimes people take statements about electoral performance as moral statements about the worth of a candidate or the ideas. That's crazy in my view.

Diana Moreno @DianaforQueens

We just won our third election in nine months. Thanks to the strength of our movement, a socialist immigrant mom will represent Astoria and Long Island City in the State Assembly for a full term. Join us: we have a world to win.

Politics & Poll Tracker 📡 @PollTracker2024

#KansasSenate Adam Hamilton on transgender rights: “I don’t think we should take a small group of people and bully them, pick on them, and hurt them. I understand one thing really clearly when it comes to transgender people, and that is Jesus told me I was to love my neighbor as I love myself.” “I’m gonna love the trans person as well as the straight person, male or female. We have to do better than picking on small groups. What’s happened is we’ve turned a group of people into a campaign issue because it polls well.”

JD Vance @JDVance

One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up. So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us." Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026. There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true. But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone. Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were: 1) End the war 2) Focus on cost of living/inflation 3) Put America First 4) Change our relationship to Israel Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.) In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you. The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night. If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest. But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there. I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.

RedTeamReview ✪ @RedTeamReview

Democratic candidate Deb Haaland, who was endorsed by George R.R. Martin, has now won the New Mexico gubernatorial election to become the nation's first female Native American governor

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

It’s great that all kinds of Democrats who El-Sayed and his supporters have spent years demeaning dug deep to put him over the top but I regret to inform you that quibbling about margins of victory is very relevant to assessing the viability of this style of politics.