A Mostly Slow News Day

Yesterday, Democrats posted big, predictable wins in several very "blue" areas. The biggest news of the day was New York electing its first socialist mayor -- although even I was able to predict that. Somewhat surprisingly, Zohran Mamdani won by a big-enough margin that beret-wearing MAGA kook Curtis Sliwa's sliver of the vote wouldn't have been enough to put Andrew Cuomo over the top.

Equally predictably, MAGA are at each other's throats prompting their champion to proclaim:

"TRUMP WASN'T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT," according to Pollsters.

Sure. Like Trump would ever be on an off-year ballot, or Democrats always lose when he is on ballot, or yesterday was the kind of bloodbath the Republicans deserve.

And these are the people quickest to throw the word snowflake around as an insult...

That said, there was some cause for concern for Republicans yesterday, in the forms of a couple of seats on Georgia's Public Utility Commission flipping to Democrats, and the passage of Prop 50 in California. The former occurred on the basis of high electricity rates, and indicates that the message isn't getting out enough about Trump's energy agenda (one of his few overall strong points).

The latter represents an attempt to counteract Republican gerrymandering, and is especially interesting in light of the following admonition by Justin Amash:

Republicans are pursuing a highly risky strategy on redistricting. The White House seems unaware you can't just "draw" more GOP seats. You must win them. By diluting the GOP base, you are less likely to win any given seat, so the worst time to redraw is during a strong Dem cycle.

This raises the possibility of Republican redistricting backfiring quite spectacularly in the next election if a few "new red" seats turn out to be blue instead, and California's "new blue" seats all end up being blue.

-- CAV