Back in the days of fast mail by rail, many trains left the big city union stations ’round midnight with literally hot off the press election results to be delivered in the morning across the states.
I been worried- Democratic Socialists are not the preferred answer when voters simply want fair pay and reasonable prices. To put it simply, give Americans a union job, pension, and a home of their own and they’ll lose all interest in socialist fantasies, no matter how colorful the unicorns. Thus in normal election cycles democratic socialists are viable candidates only in D+20 or better districts.
Wisconsin is 94% counted and defying the polls, moderate David Crowley is leading Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong by about 3000 votes with most of Milwaukee’s absentee ballots still out. Looks like Wisconsin democrats took a hard look at Hong and decided she’d given the GOP too much ad material to use against her.
Minnesota is 95% counted with Amy Klobuchar easily winning the nomination for governor while the least crazy GOP candidate, Lisa DeMuth, sent Pillow Man back to Texas and endorsed candidate Qualls into 3rd place, ouch! In the US Senate race Peggy Flanagan scored an upset win over Angie Craig by a 20% margin, and on the GOP side former Football reporter Michele Tafoya handily beat endorsed candidate Adam Schwarze and 3 time Order for Protection recipient Royce White.
The governor’s race is pretty much over and Klobuchar will insure that even if the GOP controls the legislature Minnesota won’t sink into the abyss of backward GOP “governance”. The US Senate worries me though- We need to win 4 seats to take back the senate and the Democratic Socialist candidate in Michigan is likely to lose the seat we hold there. We’ve a democratic seat to lose in Minnesota too, and the GOP has plenty of Democratic Socialist misstatements to turn into attack ads against Flanagan.
But with strong turnout even “yellow dog democrats” and Democratic Socialists can win outside of progressive strongholds. In Minnesota the closest analogue to the 2026 race is 2018, and it took about 1,200,000 votes to win that year which we democrats handily did. Despite having two competitive statewide primary races to the democrats one, the GOP side of the primary had about 410,000 votes cast while on the democratic side about 689,000 votes were cast. Most of those will carry over to the general election, giving the democratic statewide candidates about 500,000 general election voters to win over while the GOP needs to win over about 800,000 to win. So while the GOP can spend millions broadcasting baseless fraud charges against Flanagan, Even playing the GOP moderate with no political past Tafoya has to win over nearly twice as many general election voters- That’s a tall order! The democratic turnout advantage will resonate all down the ticket- unsubstantiated charges of fraud, decency to trans folks and immigrants, and making a better state flag are unlikely to succeed when the democrats are turning out half again as many voters as the GOP!
Sassy Democrat 