Lindsey Graham's Complicated Legacy (and the Future of His Senate Seat)

Senators Darline and Lindsey Graham (R-SC)

I've been so out-of-practice in writing political articles in recent memory that I have largely been foregoing any discussion of it here, and I think that while I'm fully in the "writing quotas are not a part of this blog" era post 2024 as I'm focusing on other writing tasks...there's too much going on in the world of politics right now, and I want to talk about it.

The biggest story of the past week (now exactly one week ago) was the untimely death of US Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.  I've talked about how, with me having followed politics since the mid-1990's, that there are very, very few politicians in DC who have basically been part of my vernacular since I made this a hobby (i.e. I have no memory of following politics where they weren't players), but Graham was one of them.  My first memories of Graham were probably during the Clinton impeachment trials, where Graham was the only Republican on the House Judiciary Committee to vote against at least one of the four articles of impeachment against Clinton (in Graham's case, it was that Clinton had committed perjury during the Paula Jones case, one of the two articles of impeachment that did not have enough votes to get to the US Senate which is why it might not sound familiar).

Being a Clinton impeachment manager was something of a curse on most of the 13 men who did it from the House.  Within five years of the trial, Ed Bryant, George Gekas, Bill McCollum, & Bob Barr would all lose continued bids for Congress, and eventually Chris Cannon & Steve Chabot would follow (Steve Buyer just a few weeks ago required a presidential pardon, proving this curse is still alive-and-well).  But not Lindsey Graham.  Graham skated through easily into the Senate (despite polling showing a closer race against University President Alex Sanders), and never struggled to win reelection.  He spent much of his career straddling a strange line between moderate (he regularly supported judges nominated by Democratic presidents, including Elena Kagan who spoke about Graham during a House testimony this past week) and almost sycophantic devotion to Donald Trump, a man of whom he once said "if we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed...and we will deserve it."  Graham's legacy is odd-his slavish devotion to Trump followed a career where he was often compared (favorably) to the maverick nature of John McCain, and was very popular amongst his colleagues.  I once was at an event with a US Senator (whom I'm going to not name because it was related to my job, and I don't think it'd be appropriate to name as a result) and someone asked her (she was a Democrat) who her favorite Republican was.  She replied pretty much instantly, saying "Lindsey Graham...he's great to work with, he just plays a crazy person on TV."

Graham's legacy is one that is severely tarnished by Trump, and one wonders if he (in part) figured he'd outlive the Trump Era and could rebrand after it.  He was running for reelection this fall, for a term that would extend not just outside of the Trump presidency but likely outside of Trump's expected life range, and like many Republicans, one wonders if he figured the stain of his devotion to him would disappear in the same way much of the Bush administration's worst elements have disappeared from public memory.  But that is not to be the case, though the Graham legacy is very much alive in his sister Darline, who became the first woman to ever represent South Carolina in the US Senate on Tuesday.

Despite what Twitter (heaven forbid they look up something before tweeting) may think, it's relatively common in the United States for a family member to succeed a member of Congress to complete their term, and while it is unusual for a sister to succeed a brother (it's never happened in the US Senate, in fact), Graham was a lifelong bachelor (which invited a lot of speculation about his sexuality, which also may have been a part of his lasting legacy) and didn't have a wife or children who could step in, and had indicated during his 2016 presidential run that his sister would have served as his First Lady had he won, so it makes sense she'd succeed him for the remaining months of his term.

What I did not expect with Darline Graham was that she planned on running for a full term, which was indicated when President Trump (who pushed for her appointment) endorsed her publicly and encouraged her to run.  Now-Senator Graham is not a practiced politician like her brother.  She has worked with people with disabilities and has a Master of Arts, but the extent of her political tenure is literally just involving her brother, doing ads and speeches for his various runs.  Her running was not expected, and is clearly riling up South Carolina Republicans, who haven't had an open seat for the US Senate in 22 years.  Already Rep. Ralph Norman has jumped in, and Rep. Nancy Mace is actively exploring a bid.  I wouldn't doubt LG Pamela Evette might also look at the contest.

Norman, Evette, & Mace, though, are coming off of losses in the gubernatorial primary, where Trump's endorsement mattered, and all of them running against even a novice like Graham will be hard to beat if she has Trump's full backing given the state does not have ranked-choice voting.  This seat is not expected to be competitive even if the Democrats have a relatively quality nominee (Dr. Annie Andrews), as only Mace would put this into "Lean R" territory, and honestly Andrews might've had a better shot against the late senator than most of these other contenders.  If my belief that Lindsey Graham was planning on trying to outrun Trump's legacy by reforming after he left office is to be believed, the only possible way that could happen is through his sister...who seems likely to try and follow in those footsteps by doing what her brother did best in the past ten years: clinging as hard as possible to President Trump.

Can Susan Collins Pull a "Never Trump" in Maine?

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)

Ten years into his presidency, the "Never Trump" movement feels like a weird thing to discuss.  Ten years ago, headed into the 2016 general election, it was a much bigger deal that Donald Trump was not the choice of many Republicans, and it's worth noting that the list of Republicans who didn't support him publicly was very long.  From refusals to endorse from figures like the Bush Family (both former presidents, as well as Governor Jeb Bush), to then sitting officeholders like Govs. John Kasich, Larry Hogan, & Brian Sandoval, to members of Congress like Rob Portman, Ben Sasse, & Mark Kirk, the Never Trump movement in many ways was a group of people who assumed that Trump was a flash-in-the-pan, someone that they could survive with one loss in 2016 (putting up with Hillary Clinton for four years), and pretend never happened in 2020 when someone more appropriate was the nominee.

But Trump won the 2016 election, and took much of the Never Trump movement with him.  Of the dozens of members of the US House who refused to endorse Trump in 2016, only two (David Valadao & Mike Simpson) are still in office.  Many of these figures either lost future elections (Barbara Comstock, Eric Paulsen, & Mia Love, for example, all went down in general elections during the 2018 blue wave), or were driven out of the party.  People like Portman & Jeff Flake chose to forego running for reelection all-together rather than deal with the fallout.  Some senators survived, mostly in states like Utah & Alaska where (despite being red states) MAGA isn't nearly as powerful as it is in most of the rest of the country, but by-and-large the movement dissipated.  Liz Cheney & Adam Kinzinger in 2024 were pretty much the last prominent Republicans to help a Democratic nominee.  At this point, all of the Never Trump Republicans are relegated to history, are out of office, or are now Democrats.

All except one: Susan Collins.  Collins has never publicly backed Trump in any of his three presidential elections.  Collins publicly said she wrote in Paul Ryan's name in 2016 and Nikki Haley's name in 2024 (it's worth noting that, as far as I can find, Collins never publicly stated whom she voted for, Trump/Biden/otherwise, in 2020).  Collins is also one of the only federal Republicans (possibly the only Republican) to have survived the entire Trump era in a blue state.  Collins had the good luck to not be on the ballot in 2018 (when I think she would've lost), and had the even better luck in 2020 to be able to vote against Amy Coney Barrett, a crucial bipartisan moment for Collins that may have won her the race against House Speaker Sara Gideon that year.  Part of this is skill (Collins is, in my opinion, the most talented cross-party federal politician still in office in the country of either party at this point), but it's worth noting I think Collins would've lost in 2018, and probably loses in 2020 if Ruth Bader Ginsburg hadn't died.

But recent polling in Maine seems to be spelling out something that might help Collins in a way I never would've imagined.  A recent Emerson poll showed that in the Maine Democratic Primary, Graham Platner enjoyed an incredible lead over Janet Mills (55-28%), and had a 7-point lead over Collins in the general.  This is one of many such polls for Platner, who has essentially taken on the distinctive frontrunner status in Maine, a Senate race we've talked about a lot here.  What was interesting to me in this Emerson poll was the favorability ratings across the Democratic Party between Mills & Platner.  Platner's voters generally liked Mills (56-36% favorability rating, a solid position to be in in a tough race).  But Mills voters seem to hate Platner, with only 18% of them having a favorable viewpoint of him and 56% disliking him.

Normally, these numbers are things that people shouldn't worry about, and that I wouldn't normally care about-the Never Trump movement is maybe the best indication of that.  Given a general election matchup that's competitive, the party gets in-line even if they don't love the nominee, and while there were a lot of very prominent Never Trump endorsees in 2016, the GOP largely just voted for their nominee en masse (it's how he won).  In this case, I would normally think that the Mills voters would see Platner winning, complain for a minute, and get in-line.

But there's a problem here-Collins is famous for peeling off disaffected Democratic voters, and Platner is a uniquely tough candidate to swallow if you aren't already backing him (I have said, for the first time in my life, that he's a federal Democrat in a major federal race that I simply could not vote for & would ultimately leave the ballot blank if I lived in Maine).  He has been deeply critical of the kinds of Democrats that don't like him (hence why they don't like him), and most of these Democrats, particularly those over 40, have likely voted for Collins in at least one of her elections.  They are very comfortable with splitting the vote for her (Collins won with both Barack Obama and Joe Biden at the top of the ticket), so it begs the question-can Collins do something Hillary Clinton couldn't?  Can she get the NeverPlatner voters to come to her side?

These Emerson numbers make me think that she can.  Collins is in a position where, if the Republicans are so bad off in November (and with the rise of both oil prices & unemployment, they might get there) she can't win at all; she needs Trump in better shape than he is to have a shot (in some ways, she might mirror Norm Coleman in 2008 where a large swath of Democratic voters didn't back their Senate nominee because they actively disliked him, but it was too blue of a year for that to ultimately make the difference).  But if she does win (and she has never lost a Senate race in nearly 30 years), it will almost certainly be because of this contingent: Democrats who have voted for her before (and also voted for Janet Mills before), but who have shown an outward dislike of the man the Democrats are about to nominate.  If I'm the Collins team, I have to like what I'm seeing in this polling...and am surely prepared to try to do the reverse of what the NeverTrump movement never could.

Steve Daines Dangerous Move in Montana

Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT)

A few months ago, Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez got into serious hot water for calling out Rep. Chuy Garcia for essentially eliminating a primary away from his constituents, retiring at the last second so that his Chief of Staff Patty Garcia (no relation) would be able to take his place without having to go through a primary.  Many Democrats at the time criticized Perez, saying that it was not fair to attack Garcia and claiming that Garcia being a "strong progressive Latino leader" meant that he was impervious to criticism from Perez (a moderate).  You will note at the time that I didn't approve of this (and wrote so here), agreeing wholeheartedly with Perez.  I said this was wrong, and no public figure is impervious to criticism, and Garcia had essentially stolen a seat away from the people, depriving them of a real choice.  This was wrong...but I also knew that Republicans were going to take the Democrats insane hypocrisy on the matter and use it to their advantage, which is what they did this week in an escalated version of what Garcia did in the state of Montana.

For those who haven't heard, in the Montana US Senate race, Republican Sen. Steve Daines (soon to finish up his second term), became the 10th US Senator this cycle to call it quits.  However, Daines did so in as unceremonious way as possible.  While people like Dick Durbin or Thom Tillis garnered major headlines and conversations about their careers when they retired, Daines didn't have that moment, and instead retired at the literal last second, on the final day of filing for major party ballot access, and did so in conjunction with both the Trump White House and his now-likely successor, US Attorney Kurt Alme.

This is bad for a variety of reasons, and so I'm going to illustrate them all right now.  For starters, Garcia and Daines now doing this sets up a super dangerous precedent, because it now feels like it will be duplicated since it was successful twice and no part of the party is really going to be above it (and so I suspect this happens more so until there are rules to prevent it, which will be hard to enforce).  It is unlikely that the voters in these constituencies punish Patty Garcia or Alme, as they are of the party that was likely to win these seats anyway, so in safely blue or red seats, there's little incentive to care that this has happened.  It's not the only time they've done this (Dan Lipinski famously had the same thing happen years ago with his father), and though Lipinski did eventually succumb to a primary challenger, it was years after the switch, and more had to do with his view on abortion than the swap.  As a general rule, if you don't make a politician in the US pay a political price for doing something bad, they'll keep doing it.  So this continues to upend the primary process (and why Democrats had no business letting this slide when Chuy Garcia did it).

But Montana is worse for a couple of reasons, none of which have to do with the party label.  For starters, this is for a six-year term (unlike Garcia's with two), and for a significantly more powerful role.  Being a US Senator makes you one of the most powerful people in America, and by proxy, in the world.  Alme has never held elected office in Montana, and was literally hand-selected by a backroom committee process involving President Trump and Sen. Daines.  Partially, this was done not just to let Daines pick his successor, but also to ensure that there was no MAGA extremist in the primary.  Had this been an open party, considering the rightward shift of the GOP in the Rocky Mountain states in recent years, it's unlikely that someone of Alme's relatively mild MAGA brand would've won-we would've been looking for someone like a Lauren Boebert instead.

The worst part of this, though, is that (and Daines has said this publicly now), this was done to prevent the Democrats from running a better candidate.  The Democrats are currently in a terrible situation in Montana.  They have a moderate independent running with Sen. Jon Tester's endorsement (Seth Bodnar), but also a Democratic Primary with candidates, the frontrunner being State Rep. Reilly Neill, and there's no way you can win with both in the race.  This didn't really matter in a situation where they were running against Daines.  Both would've lost to him, even in a blue year, so the fact that they're running and splitting the vote becomes a big "who cares?" when Daines is going to clear 50% anyway.  But in an open seat situation, the blue wave calculus here gets different-the possibility of a situation like Texas (where a MAGA extremist might open up the race) would've made this contest different.

So as Daines said, the real target here wasn't just to get Alme the seat, but also to keep three Democrats (former Sen. Jon Tester, as well as former Govs. Steve Bullock & Brian Schweitzer) out of the race.  Tester quickly rebutted this saying "I don't believe that, as none of us were running.  He fucked his own party."  But given Chuck Schumer's near perfect record this cycle of recruiting the candidates he wanted, it's hard not to believe one of them would've been heavily courted by Schumer and brought into the race.  All three men lost high-profile races the last time they ran for the US Senate, and similar to Sherrod Brown, Janet Mills, & Roy Cooper, despite their age, they might've been talked into one last race to solidify their legacies and go out a congressional winner.  The blue wave would've made that possible, and while they were nowhere near a guarantee to win, against them, Bodnar surely wouldn't have run and Neill would've dropped out because she would've lost the primary.  This race would've moved into the same echelon that Alaska, Texas, & Iowa sit right now-theoretically competitive, even if the Republicans are still favored.  And so Daines' decision was essentially to rob both parties of a chance at this seat, a truly heinous and undemocratic act, that thanks to the bulk of the Democratic Party's tacit endorsement of Chuy Garcia, they have little leg to stand upon and criticize.

5 Thoughts on Last Night's Primaries

Tuesday we had the first major primaries of the year, and while I know I'm a day late in getting this out, we're going to continue our "morning after" series anyway with my five thoughts on the elections in Texas & North Carolina

1. James Talarico Wins in Texas

The biggest story last night was the Senate race, which ended with the Democrats getting their man, and the Republicans getting a runoff.  Let's focus first on the Democrats.  A race that going into the night I genuinely had no idea how it'd turn out emerged with the Democrats getting State Rep. James Talarico as their nominee.  I don't entirely know whom this is a win for in terms of establishment vs. outsider politics (I feel like, like most things in politics, those lines are more complicated than they seem), but Talarico is the candidate whom most pundits (including me) thought would have a better shot in the general election, and so from that perspective this feels like the Democrats playing with their A-Game come November.  Talarico will have a lot of work to do to ensure he wins back Black voters in November, though, as Rep. Jasmine Crockett overperformed with this group and he'll need overwhelming support from them if he has any hope of winning.  Complicating that matter is that there was clear chicanery in Dallas County, where it appears that there was confusion over where voters were to cast ballots, and that (despite a court order), Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-TX) is trying to invalidate ballots that were cast as a result of extended voting hours.  Given that Crockett's base-of-support is Dallas County, it's likely she would've done better had there not been voter discrepancies, though probably not enough to win.

I will note that this puts Crockett, who has been a rising star for the past few years, into an inevitable position: out of work.  It was clear that the general election was such a stretch it didn't make sense to get into this race (she would need hundreds of thousands of Trump voters in her corner to win, and she was not going to do that), so this shouldn't be a surprise, but it does make me question what she does next given the primary should've been an easier victory given her fame & popularity with the base.  I would imagine she becomes a talking head on cable news (and very much to her credit, even with the Dallas County issues, she endorsed Talarico immediately), but likely her salary will be less than it would've been had she won, and will honestly be even less if Talarico wins in November.  I also think it's worth noting that former Vice President Kamala Harris made a calculated risk in endorsing Crockett at the last minute, and given she's trying to run for president in 2028, and her biggest liability is voters worried she can't win, endorsing a candidate who loses a tight race is not a great look for her.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX)

2. Cornyn Gets Second Chance in a Runoff

While Talarico is for sure on the ballot now in November, the Republicans are still debating.  Going into last night, incumbent-Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) was viewed as an underdog, to the point that some assumed he might not even make the Top 2 in a runoff.  Instead, it looks increasingly likely that Cornyn will come out of the primary with the lead, or very close to it.  This is still relatively pathetic for an incumbent senator, but given that people were writing Cornyn's political obituary a few days ago, this is good news for him, and the NRSC which is heartily endorsing him.

The question now is around President Trump.  It appears likely that Trump will endorse (he said as much yesterday), and pretty much everyone's belief is that he'll back Cornyn.  This would be a godsend to Cornyn, and honestly a huge slap in the face to his opponent Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has been about as loyal of a MAGA supporter as you can get (proof, once again, that Trump's only loyalty is to himself).  I assume that Trump's endorsement will carry more weight than MAGA's clear antipathy of Cornyn, and Cornyn would make it through (in which case he'd be the frontrunner, but not the total one given his lack of popularity), but I wouldn't totally discount Paxton given that Trump's endorsement has less juice than it used to, and while MAGA isn't willing to rebuff him directly, they are seemingly more inclined than they used to be to ignore him when it comes to a primary.  A big question is what happens to the votes of Rep. Wesley Hunt, who got third-are they going to back Trump's endorsed candidate or Paxton...given they just voted against an incumbent US Senator by casting their support for Hunt, that's a harder question than it seems.

Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX)

3. Colin Allred Positioned for a Comeback

If there's a silver lining for Jasmine Crockett, it might be that she now has a very strong ally that looks to be winning back a seat in the US House.  In Dallas County, former Rep. Colin Allred came out in the lead, but not by enough to avoid a runoff, against the woman who replaced him in the House, Rep. Julie Johnson.  This was in part a result of a redraw, and in part because Allred, after losing a Senate race in 2024 and initially running for the Senate in 2026, went scorched earth in the primary, trying to tank the campaign of James Talarico by implying that he was racist.  Allred's gambit didn't help Crockett (if anything, it may well have hurt her), but in a bluer constituency, it does appear he's in the driver's seat in a bid to win back his seat.  Similar to the Republican primary, part of Johnson's uphill (I'd say she's very much an underdog now despite being the incumbent) climb is going to be trying to pick up the votes of third place challenger Carlos Quintanilla, but given the issues in Dallas County (and his strong support in her primary), I would assume that Jasmine Crockett will want to get a victory and will also make Allred's victory a top priority.  If Johnson doesn't become the first incumbent House Democrat to lose a primary this year, I would be surprised.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX)

4. Crenshaw Falls While Foushee Goes to a Recount

She won't be the first incumbent member of the House to go down in a primary, though, as that distinction this cycle goes to Rep. Dan Crenshaw.  Crenshaw's loss to State Rep. Steve Toth was not a surprise (I figured this was coming), but it does mean that Toth, who first ran for Congress in 2016, is finally headed to the chamber.  Toth is one of the most conservative members of the Texas legislature (let that sink in for a second), and ran in large part on Crenshaw's vote to certify the 2020 election for Joe Biden, the incumbent not buying into the Trump-led conspiracy that the election was stolen.  This is a reverse of some of the age-focused politics we've seen in the Democratic Party in recent years (Toth is 24 years Crenshaw's senior), and also the end of a career that started really impressively for Crenshaw, with him having a (I'll admit it) quite funny Weekend Update sketch with Pete Davidson after Davidson had mocked his eyepatch the previous week.  It's also proof that MAGA politics can take down some of the Republican Party's most impressive bench candidates, hardly a good plan in a state that is looking to at least be flirting with purple status this year.

On the flip side, the one notable race in North Carolina will likely end with Rep. Valerie Foushee winning another term.  In a very blue seat (the primary is tantamount to a victory), Foushee has a slight (it'll go to a recount) win margin, but not enough for a recount to realistically make much of a difference.  Democrat Nida Allam, a Durham County Commissioner, was backed by a number of progressive groups (including David Hogg's Leaders We Deserve PAC), and Foushee had a lot of last minute help from a number of organizations, including AIPAC and some PAC's that support AI (not meant to be confusing word play-those are two separate things).  While an incumbent losing by this much is not a great look, this was one of the best options on the map for Hogg's movement (which is trying to oust aging Democrats out of office-Foushee is 69 and Allam is 32), and they weren't able to win.

Rep. Christian Menefee (D-TX)

5. Is Age a Number in Texas-18?

Arguably the best option to beat an incumbent member of the House with a younger member is with an incumbent member of the House.  In Texas's 18th district, the question of whether that will happen extended into a runoff.  Just a few weeks after winning his seat, Rep. Christian Menefee appears to be on top in his race against Rep. Al Green, but it's close enough that (unlike Allred/Johnson) I can't tell who will ultimately be the nominee.  Green is 78-years-old while Menefee is just 37-years-old, and this was seen as a chance for Democrats to support a younger candidate, even though Green was far more established & has stronger roots in the district.

The big question here, like with the other two runoffs, is what happens with the third-place candidate (Amanda Edwards).  Edwards has been struggling to get to Congress for years.  She ran for the US Senate in 2020, and the US House in 2024 & in 2026; in all three races a candidate billed as a rising star couldn't make it out of the primary, and she had actually withdrawn from this race even though her name was still on the ballot.  I'm curious to see what she does here-Edwards, by pretty much every estimation, has too many losses at this point to ever make it to Congress and her career as a serious candidate is done.  So does she go with the guy who is clearly the future (Menefee), or does she hang onto the idea that she has a future in electoral politics and back Green, in hopes that he retires in 2028 and she can run another campaign?  The answer may decide the sole member vs. member primary this year for the Democrats.

Can Trump Beat the Six-Year Midterm Senate Curse?

Sen. John Thune (R-SD) & Donald Trump

The conventional wisdom about November's elections from most pundits seems to be that the House flipping blue is a foregone conclusion (perhaps even exacerbated by the mid-decade redistricting arms race President Trump insisted upon), but the Senate remains a very steep climb.  This feels accurate on its surface.  Of the competitive races, it does feel like Democrats are in-line to hold all of their current seats (with Michigan or Georgia the toughest hold, but even then Team Blue is in the driver's seat), and that there are true tossups in Maine & North Carolina that, with a blue wave, probably tilt to the Democrats (this past week Republicans got their best recruit of the cycle in the form of Susan Collins running for another term, but even then Collins is in for the toughest environment she's run in since 2008, a cycle she was largely ignored despite the Dems having a good recruit...something that won't be the case in 2026 even if she might arguably have a lesser opponent).

But beyond that, people seem to be operating under the assumption that the Senate contest will not be an even playing field, and that the Republicans seem likely to lose seats, but not their majority.  This is fair-other than Maine & North Carolina, there is no seat on the map that Kamala Harris won by less-than 10-points that the Democrats can target, with the next bluest state (for Harris) being Ohio which she missed by just over 11-points.  This is exacerbated by recent presidential midterms for Donald Trump & Joe Biden where their party actually had a net gain of Senate seats (in 2018 & 2022), with the assumption being that we just don't see swings like that anymore.

However, I want to introduce a new idea here that I don't see discussed a lot, and that's because we haven't really experienced since 2014: the six-year midterm itch.  The second midterm is typically when the public becomes tired of the sitting president-six years of having to endure the same face as a fickle American public results in the American electorate getting restless, and it has historically done some odd things for the president's party in the Senate.

For the sake of this article, we're going to look at the four most recent six-year midterms: 1986 (Reagan), 1998 (Clinton), 2006 (Bush), and 2014 (Obama).  In these cycles, with the sole exception of Clinton (more on that in a second), the president's party got destroyed at the ballot box.  In 1986, the Democrats picked up 8 Senate seats, in 2006 the Democrats won an additional six seats (I'm counting Joe Lieberman as a Democrat here), and in 2014 the Republicans netted 9 seats.  This is a gargantuan turn, and in all three cases, it was worse than what the president endured in the Senate for his first midterm.

This is partially because the Senate, which is a six-year cycle, was anniversarying a really good year for the presidency-the first year that he came into office (and in the case of all but Bush, they came in with landslide victories).  This isn't true for 2026, which is perhaps the biggest nuance here-in 2020, the last time most of this year's senators was up for reelection, Trump lost, and it was a much better cycle for the Democrats.  But the idea that the public is tired of the president was very evident in all but one of these cases: like Trump, Obama & Bush were under-water in their approval ratings, and Reagan had also seen a huge decrease in his popularity.  Again, only Clinton (who had the best approval ratings of the quartet) was popular, and that was reflected in a Senate cycle where 3/5 of the closest Senate races ended up going blue (and the two that didn't involved a deeply unpopular, scandal-prone Senator who nearly won despite that, and a state that was in a transformation into one of the reddest in the nation...that still nearly stayed blue despite polling showing it a likely flip).

I will note that Republicans can feel comfortable to a degree here.  In 1986, eight of the nine Senate races that flipped (all but Maryland) were states that Reagan had won by double digits, but partisanship got in the way more in 2006 and 2014.  In 2006, only one race (Montana) was one Bush had won by double digits the previous cycle, and in 2014 there were none that Obama had won by that margin.  Admittedly, Tennessee in 2006 nearly flipped (and Bush won that by double digits), and in 2014 the problem may have been that there just weren't that many states to begin with that the Republicans might have flipped in this scenario because Obama had won so few of them by double-digits (only six states that went for Obama for double digits were held by Democratic senators in 2014, in part because 2008 had been such a blood bath for the GOP, something that was not the case to the same degree for Trump in 2020).

All of this is to say that we don't know what impact that this will have.  Historically, six-year midterms are rough for the incumbent party, and I think Republicans (or pundits who favor their chances) are taking a bit too much comfort in Trump's impressive turnout in 2024.  I'll close with this-in 2018, a year where Republicans inexplicably picked up two Senate seats, all but one of those seats (Florida, its own universe electorally) were in states that Trump won by 18+ points in 2016.  Do you know what Alaska, Ohio, Maine, Iowa, North Carolina, Texas, & Kansas all have in common?  They're all states with Senate elections this fall...that Donald Trump won by less than 18-points.  Food for thought.

Box Office Debate: Is Melania a Success?

It is not often that the two passions of this blog (politics & movies) overlap in a very real way, so I don't want to let this past weekend's premiere of the movie Melania pass without mention.  For the curious, on principal I have refused to see the movie, as I don't want to give the Trump family more of my money than I have to (I'm already inevitably doing that with these lawsuits the president is granting himself through the Department of Justice with our tax dollars).  But I am curious about the rather odd debate over the film itself, and its success.  While I always assumed that the Trump family would claim the movie was a big hit (as is their wont), the mainstream media (or what's left of it) hasn't been able to settle on a question of whether it exceeded expectations or counts as a box office hit, and as that is a pet hobby of mine, I thought we'd tackle it here.

First off, a couple of things to note.  Primarily, this is not the first time that an incumbent First Lady has dabbled in the mainstream world of entertainment.  While the First Lady has become a pop culture mainstay through her sheer existence (following the First Lady's fashion and details about her life are extremely common, and have been for well over a century), pop culture has been a big part of their planned lives as well.  Frances Cleveland was so popular advertisers used to put her face on everything from soap to tobacco to liver pills, and Jackie Kennedy's Tour of the White House won her an Emmy Award.  Nancy Reagan & Michelle Obama made guest appearances on television programs while they were in office, and Hillary Clinton won a Grammy Award.  In fact, by most measures Melania Trump has largely avoided (or been unable to break through) with her being the only First Lady since Bess Truman not to be photographed by Vogue magazine in some capacity (some, like Jill Biden, Michelle Obama, & Hillary Clinton, were on the cover something Melania only was before her husband entered politics), and she's also the only First Lady since Sesame Street began to not have publicly met a Muppet (one of my favorite bits of political trivia).  This documentary in many ways feels overdue, not in terms of me wanting it, but in terms of my surprise it hadn't happened yet.

But in terms of its success, I think we need to think of it by two definitions: did it beat expectations, and did it make a profit, because for a film like Melania, these are two very different answers.  Over the opening weekend the film made a worldwide total of $7.1 million.  By way of a documentary, that's really good.  Not counting things like concert films (where figures like Taylor Swift, Michael Jackson, and One Direction have had indisputable success at the box office), this is the biggest opening-weekend box office for a documentary since 2012, when DisneyNature's Chimpanzee came out (only because I'll never get this chance again to plug this on this blog, I have seen every single one of the DisneyNature films, and Chimpanzee is one of the better ones-my ranking is here).  That's impressive, I have to admit.  I don't know that I doubted it'd hit that number (more on that in a second), but it's on-its-surface a laudable achievement, particularly in an era where documentaries can't even get theatrical runs.  Also, given its universally bad reviews, it's hard not to be impressed that word-of-mouth didn't kill it.

It's also worth noting that this opens up a conversation about an untapped movie theater market: conservative filmgoers.  The biopic Reagan made $30 million last year (starring Dennis Quaid, it also hit those numbers while being crucified by critics), the Matt Walsh documentary Am I Racist? made $12 million (and turned a decent profit), and conspiracy theorist Dinesh D'Souza's Obama's America cleared $33 million (and made a large profit).  And then there's Sound of Freedom, a narrative film that had connections to the QAnon conspiracy theory that made a fortune at the box office, over $250 million, which honestly has allowed for production company Angel Studios to have created a cottage industry of MAGA-friendly dramas.  All of this is happening in markets like West Palm Beach, Dallas, and Miami that don't usually clock as some of the most profitable in the country for mainstream features (that favor places like Los Angeles, Boston, & New York).  If I was a studio executive, there would be lessons here I'd be taking in terms of finding a new crowd in an industry desperate to find levers to increase theater attendance.

But while you could argue straight-faced that it exceeded expectations, it is decidedly not a "hit" movie.  The film appears to have cost $40 million, and reportedly Ms. Trump herself will pocket $28 million of that in appearance fees from Amazon.  The rule of thumb for a movie is that it needs to make double the cost in order to make a profit (to account for marketing expenses), which would mean that for Amazon to see a return on its investment, the film would need to gross $80 million.  Not counting concert films and documentaries largely made to attract large format iMax audiences (i.e. the kinds of films that run in museums for decades), only four documentaries have made that much money: three animal-themed documentaries (March of the Penguins and two DisneyNature films-Oceans and Earth), and the political documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 from Michael Moore, which stands apart as a sort of elusive, untouchable film in terms of box office in the way Gone with the Wind does (i.e. no one is ever beating that).  Melania will not come close to those movies in terms of their gross...

...and I suspect everyone involved knew that.  Brett Ratner appears to have signed on to direct the film solely because Trump then called Paramount to pressure them, despite Ratner's sexual assault charges, to greenlight Rush Hour 4, the follow-up to the massively successful film franchise (and probably the only way Ratner was ever going to get a movie of that type of budget, and with that kind of back-end potential, again).  Jeff Bezos funded the entire operation, including signing that $28 million check to Melania Trump...and then got a $581 million contract with the Air Force just a few days before the film's release.  It's hard not to see all of this as a pretty obvious money-laundering front for Trump to take private equity cash that both parties know will not end up making anyone a profit, and in turn giving out tax payer dollars without any personal harm (i.e. a multi-million dollar bribe) and giving the First Lady the sort of glamorous vanity project that mainstream media organizations like Vogue or broadcast television have pointedly refuse to provide.  Melania is, therefore, a film that, taken on its surface, is impressive in terms of its audience (and savvy movie executives might be able to see this and, with a slimmer budget, try and recreate the same formula to make a real profit-you could easily see, say, an Erika Kirk documentary about her life after Charlie Kirk's death doing similar numbers), but it's also not a successful film by any measure of it actually making money in the traditional sense...and is so obviously a con job that it's hard to take any conversation of it super seriously as the president openly trades in tax payer dollars to fill his (and his wife's) wallet.

Bill Cassidy's Inevitable Fall

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA)

Donald Trump is not a politician who is easily predictable.  The man is currently complaining why he never won the Nobel Peace Prize while literally having an armed militia going through and illegally arresting his own citizens (and threatening to go to war over Greenland with some of his country's most historically loyal allies).  In fact, if you wanted to use the word "insane" to describe him, I'd allow you to use that word without having an MD.  But there is one thing that virtually every person who has ever crossed his path can say without fail: he will find a way to screw you over if you try to placate him.

We have seen this countless times, with everyone from Elon Musk to Mitt Romney to Chris Christie who have attempted to placate Trump and have ended up the lesser for it.  It's almost inevitable in every relationship he's had (it's why perhaps the only friendship he seems to have maintained for an extended period of time was with Jeffrey Epstein, a man who probably was blackmailing him given how much the Trump administration is slow-walking his criminal files).  The list of people who have gotten away with mixing with Trump and gotten exactly what they wanted are few-and-far-between.  There's Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who ended up Governor of Arkansas for her troubles.  There's Jared Kushner & Ivanka Trump, who spent the first administration of Ivanka's father setting up business connections that will ensure she doesn't have to fight for a spot in his will like her four siblings.  And then there's Stephen Miller, who has gotten everything he could ever dream of in the second administration...but given he's still in office, so I doubt he's out of the woods yet.

And that's about it.  Everyone else ended up, at best, barely scraping by, and at worst, became national punchlines like Sean Spicer or having a literal angry mob headed toward them like Mike Pence.  Which brings us to Sen. Bill Cassidy, who this weekend found out that nothing will get you into Trump's good graces forever, as Trump endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow before she even announced she was running for the Senate as Cassidy attempts to win a third term this November in Louisiana.

For those with short memories wondering why Trump might do this, you have to recall what Bill Cassidy did in between the Trump administrations.  Cassidy was an ardent Trump supporter in 2016 & 2020, but after the terrorist attacks on the US Capitol on January 6th, when Trump supporters attempted to stop the counting of the electoral college, Cassidy was publicly horrified.  He said that those who did this should be tried for sedition, and was one of only seven Republicans to vote to impeach Trump for his involvement with the attacks.  Cassidy would later refuse to endorse Trump in 2024.

But Trump won in 2024 without Cassidy's help, and the senator realized pretty quickly that he needed to make amends with Donald Trump if he ever wanted a chance at another term.  And so he did what so many before him had done-tried to get on Trump's good side by doing something he clearly didn't want to do.  In this case, Cassidy, a medical doctor and a lifelong advocate for immunizations, decided to vote for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to be HHS Secretary.  Cassidy had the ability to slow-walk, and potentially even tank the nomination if he were to vote with the Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee to not recommend the nomination.  Cassidy also had the ability to push for Kennedy to be rejected on the floor of the Senate.  It's easy to see a world where Cassidy (joining with the Democrats and Mitch McConnell, the only Republican to ultimately vote against Cassidy), might've woken up Susan Collins & Lisa Murkowski, and the three of them banding together would say they wouldn't back an anti-vaxxer to run the nation's health system.  But Cassidy instead sought worthless assurances from Kennedy that he would not change immunization schedules (which he would do within a week of confirmation), and has since thrown the entire country's immunization system at risk.  The greatest medical advancement in the history of the world, Bill Cassidy was willing to throw it away in hopes of it getting him on Donald Trump's good side.

But of course, that was never going to work, because there's only one MAGA absolute: Trump is the only person who gets to win.  Trump's active endorsement against Cassidy is coupled with the very real possibility that he'll push for a MAGA challenger to Susan Collins should she run (Collins, like Cassidy, voted to impeach Trump), and even John Cornyn (Trump has refused to endorse Cornyn...who has almost completely backed him but Trump doesn't view as loyalist enough when he has an option like Ken Paxton...if this goes to a primary runoff I wouldn't be surprised if Trump decided to endorse Paxton outright).  Cassidy could've gone down a hero (albeit a tarnished one), admitting at the age of 68 that he was never going to win another term, and fought to preserve the medical oath he took on a Baton Rouge campus many moons ago.  Instead, he's just another one of Trump's victims...and like all of his victims, the rest of us suffer because he couldn't see the devil in plain sight.

JD Vance, Heritage Americans, and the GOP's Emerging 2028 Primary

Vice President JD Vance (R-OH)

Racism is always rearing its ugly head in the MAGA movement (its basically the source code for its political computations), and it has taken on an unusual form in the past few months in the wake of Charlie Kirk's death.  Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist figure in the MAGA movement, one who has gained an enormous online following, particularly of far-right, young white men, has used racial slurs to attack Second Lady Usha Vance publicly, and drawn rebukes from both Vice President Vance as well as Ohio gubernatorial frontrunner Vivek Ramasawamy.  Both Ms. Vance and Mr. Ramaswamy were both born in America, but were born to immigrants (in this case from India), a relatively common situation, but one that people like Fuentes have attacked, popularizing the term "Heritage American."  Despite his wife getting attacks from Fuentes and his supporters (nicknamed "groypers"), Vice President Vance has tacitly catered to this crowd, and hinted at his knowledge of the growing usage of the term.  In a speech at Claremont Institute in July, Vance used the line "this is our heritage as Americans," a pretty obvious acknowledgement of the phrase, and during a podcast interview with Theo Von in June, Vance promoted a website where Americans could look up to see how many people with their last names fought in the American Civil War.

There's a lot to unpack here, and part of me wouldn't normally be writing this article because I don't find it appropriate, and I think that promoting someone like Fuentes (whom, despite his fame, is getting his first ever mention on this blog with this article), even through a blog post talking about his growing power in the conservative movement, feels a bit icky.  I will state, categorically, that I find the concept of "Heritage Americans" having a special distinction in the United States to be the antithesis of the American experiment.  President Reagan has a famous quote that Ramaswamy recently paraphrased that I like, "you can go to France, but you cannot become a Frenchman.  You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot became a German, a Turk, or Japanese.  But anyone, from any corner of the earth, can come to live in America and become an American."  The idea of America is that it is an ideal, one of equality for all and freedom for all and success for all, no matter your background, and while it is not a country that has always lived up to that ideal, that it is is the ideal it strives for is the single greatest attribute about our political sphere.  Nick Fuentes is just plain wrong to think otherwise, and the Founding Fathers that he idolizes would agree with me, not him, in this regard.

It's worth noting, of course, that while I agree with Ramaswamy and Vance in their criticisms of Fuentes, Ramaswamy is doing this fight in a party that increasingly has no place for him.  It's been noted that he is severely underperforming in the Ohio gubernatorial race, and it's hard not to wonder if racism is playing a part in that.  Ramaswamy and his wife Apoorva have talked about how surprised they were by the focus on their race when he ran for president in Iowa last year, and his continued focus on this underlines a potentially ugly (but real) truth about his campaign: he will need Nick Fuentes' increasingly vocal component in his party to win a close race in Ohio, and it's not clear he knows how to do that.  His play here seems to be for moderate Republicans who voted for Trump in 2024, but are not appreciative of his second term, to back him as well...but that's a risky gambit when he also has his right flank so vulnerable.

But, speaking of Trump, I think the most interesting aspect of the popularizing of the frame Heritage American is whom it leaves out.  Despite his own administration using the phrase in so many words (there was a tweet by the DHS that said "a heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth defending" a clear hint at the term) by pretty much every definition of the phrase, a very key member of the administration would not be able to to be considered one: President Trump himself.

The phrase, like so many on the internet, is one without a clear definition, but generally it means someone whose ancestors were American citizens during at least the Civil War, and more commonly the Revolutionary War.  The phrase doesn't seem to acknowledge that Native Americans and many African-Americans would more than qualify under this definition of residing in America before 1865 (it's hard to think that someone like Fuentes would care that much about the specifics of how this would apply to Americans who are not white), but if you go with the idea that it was at least by the Civil War, Donald Trump doesn't even come close to qualifying.  Trump's mother emigrated to the United States in 1930 from Germany, so he is a first-generation child of an immigrant on his mother's side.  On his father's side, his grandparents emigrated here from Germany as well, but the earliest of these (his paternal grandfather Frederick Trump) came to the United States in 1885 (by pretty much every account he came here illegally by shirking his military duty, a good factoid maybe for a different story, but given Trump's politics of projection, one to keep in mind for a future cocktail party anecdote).  1885, for those not super familiar with American history, is two decades after the end of the Civil War and over 100 years after the end of the Revolutionary War.  Donald Trump, the MAGA leader, would not qualify for the movement's new favorite phrase.

You might be asking yourself if this is uncommon, given America is a country of immigrants.  But for recent political figures in the White House-yeah, it's actually less common than you'd think to have such a recent American history.  Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and both Bush's can trace their direct ancestry in this country to before the Revolutionary War, as can Vice President Vance.  A common trope in America is bragging about being descended from someone who came over in the Mayflower (over 10 million Americans are estimated to be descended from people who came over on the Mayflower), and by some estimates over 180 million Americans have some ancestry that predates the Revolutionary War.  Even looking at my own family history, my great-great-great-great grandfather took part in the Boston Tea Party and he & his sons and grandsons fought in the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and Civil War (for the North), respectively.  

None of this makes any of these people "more American" than anyone else-there is no such thing as being "more American"-we are a country where everyone is equal.  But it is fascinating to me that JD Vance, who has rarely done much to step out of the shadow of the powerful men who serve as his benefactor to power (which right now is Trump) is making a point of highlighting a conservative conversation that not just discriminates against his wife, but also decidedly excludes his boss...but not him.  That Vance is bringing this conversation forward in one hand while disparaging Nick Fuentes in another is a telling sign from a man who seems to already be running a shadow campaign for the 2028 Republican nomination for the presidency, and who understands he'll need Fuentes' supporters to get there.

The Shifting Politics of Marjorie Taylor Greene

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)

Few figures in American politics today create quite as much passion as Marjorie Taylor Greene.  Most three-term House members, to be honest, even someone as into politics I am would not really know much more than their names, but Greene is as well-known as pretty much any member of Congress, including more so than most of the US Senate (I've mentioned her in 43 articles on this blog...for comparison's sake, a US Senator like Maria Cantwell who has been in office the entire 13 years that I've written here I've only mentioned 17 times, including this example).  Greene's incendiary brand is marked not just by slavish devotion to President Trump, but also continual moments of embarrassment that would bring shame to pretty much any other normal human being, ranging from harassing the survivors of the Parkland School Shooting to right-wing conspiracy theories about the January 6th terrorist attacks on the US Capitol to being removed from her Congressional committees during the 117th Congress.  She has threatened private businesses for not being supportive enough of Republicans, and was so controversial she was voted out of the House Freedom Caucus for allegedly calling her fellow congresswoman Lauren Boebert "a little bitch."

Greene, though, during the government shutdown, has been shockingly amenable to Democrats, in many ways echoing the talking points of the party.  She has criticized President Trump's strikes against Iran, stated that she supports expanding Amtrak spending, and has said that she is concerned about the rising costs of healthcare if the Republican spending plan takes place.  Along with Boebert, Thomas Massie, & Nancy Mace, she is one of just four House Republicans who are putting forth a discharge petition to ensure that the Epstein list goes public.  She has stated that the Republicans are to blame for not putting forth an alternate plan to Obamacare, and on Thursday in an interview with CNN's Kaitlin Collins, she stated unequivocally that Adelita Grijalva, who has not been sworn into office yet by Speaker Mike Johnson despite being elected over six weeks ago, deserves to be sworn into office.

Greene's approach is notable not just because of the content, but also the tone.  In her interview with Collins (you can see the clip about Grijalva here), there is no excuse made for Johnson's actions or even posturing about how much she might "disagree" with Grijalva-she says "point blank" that Grijalva should be allowed to be a member of Congress after winning her election (honestly I was so surprised by the straight-forwardness of this answer that it inspired me to write this article).  Greene has appeared on The View (generally a left-leaning program), denouncing QAnon and stating that there are paid MAGA influencers (which of course is common sense, but still something you don't normally hear from Republicans).  Greene is not normally this composed, she is not this kind to the media (or to Democrats).  Hell, she said on CNN that she was impressed with Nancy Pelosi in the wake of the latter's retirement, something unthinkable a few years ago.

There are a few things that this could be leading to, so I want to say right away that, as a Democrat, I'm not dumb (and I suspect after watching her the past few days, neither is Greene).  This is not an about-face.  Greene is not suddenly a moderate, even if she is making some moderate views official (and through her support of the discharge petition, is tangibly going on record with a "moderate viewpoint"...though how we've gone so far with the GOP that wanting accused pedophiles to be named publicly is moderate for their party is beyond me).  I'm not stupid enough not to appreciate that we couldn't do this discharge petition without her, and that these comments aren't helpful for our cause right now...but don't think that I view Greene any better after this, even if I do think she might be craftier than I gave her credit for being, and anyone who changes their mind about her after this deserves to be sold a bridge in Brooklyn.

Greene is doing this for a few reasons.  The most charitable is that she might actually know some of the names on the Epstein list, one of which is almost certainly Donald Trump, and has become disillusioned with a man she once worshipped...though I doubt she's that honorable.  I think a likelier case is that she's out for revenge.  Greene was heavily interested in running against Sen. Jon Ossoff for the US Senate next year, and (given her ardent backing of him) likely saw Donald Trump as an easy ally in this campaign.  But Trump pushed to get her out of the contest, instead wanting someone with a lower-profile (who might be able to more believably gain moderate voters), and so Greene's colleagues Buddy Carter & Mike Collins are now running.  Greene dropped out, but it's clear she has regrets about it, and might be trying to court a moderate position to run in 2028 for the Republican Senate nomination against Raphael Warnock, or to get a bit of payback against Trump for not supporting her bid for higher office from the get-go.

But if we're going to give Greene credit for being wily (and this pivot and the way the media is lapping it up makes me think this is something she deserves), I think something more potent than honor or revenge might be at play: ambition.  Greene, I have long thought, is one of the strongest options to succeed Donald Trump in the Republican Party in 2028.  She has long-mirrored Trump's ability with MAGA, inspiring headlines wherever she went, frequently through a lack of shame, and seems to be able to actually emulate his rather rare talent of energizing the MAGA crowd.  As we saw on Tuesday, MAGA doesn't show up if Trump isn't on the ballot, but Greene is the kind of figure (angry, indulgent, unpolished, and, yes, disturbingly entertaining) that feels in Trump's arena.  No other leading contender in 2028 (not Marco Rubio, not Ron DeSantis, not even JD Vance) has that combination...

...and it's worth noting that Greene seems to be taking a play not from modern-day Trump, but from 2016 Trump in this move to the middle.  It's worth remembering that in 2016, Trump was not nearly as conservative as a candidate as he ended up being as a president.  He ran on not touching Social Security & Medicare, and was willing to go after Republicans like Jeb Bush & John McCain just as much as he went after Democrats.  This made him a plausible option against Hillary Clinton in part because he didn't seem as evil as Clinton was making him out to be-hell, in their final debate, he said of her "she doesn't quit, she doesn't give up, I respect that...she's a fighter...and I consider that to be a very good trait" (compare that to him calling Nancy Pelosi an "evil woman" this past week when asked about her retirement).  At one point, Trump was much more willing to be kind to his opponents to score points with the media, and with Greene complimenting Nancy Pelosi and saying that Adelita Grijalva should be sworn-in, that's what she's copying.  This is the bare minimum.  20 years ago it would've been expected that George W. Bush compliments Nancy Pelosi or wants a duly-elected member of Congress sworn in...now it's considered a surprise or even "moderate" to do such things.  But Greene doing them, when she loses nothing but gains a moderate aura that would be useful in a future general election in Georgia (as a presidential challenger or a Senate candidate) is smart politics.  I expect, given he is the sitting Vice President, that JD Vance would be the Republican nominee in 2028...but if it's not him, if you asked me to name a name, I'd say Marjorie Taylor Greene.  Because honestly-she's the only person thinking like a presidential candidate at this point (rather than just someone hoping for Trump's endorsement), willing to stand up to an increasingly unpopular president by acting just like he did when he was popular enough to win.

Gerrymandering: Why Both Sides are Not Equal

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA)

Mid-decade redistricting is such a touchstone right now that you'd think we just had a census, but in fact that happened almost four years ago.  Just this week, conversations in Indiana, Virginia, Illinois, Maryland, and New Hampshire have come out, with new maps now certain in Ohio, joining Texas, Missouri, and (after next week) likely California with increasingly gerrymandered maps.  This has brought out the worst in people, both in terms of "what-aboutism" and a further decline in the state of modern politics.  I'm going to say a few very simple facts before we get to the purpose of this article.

First, there was gerrymandering prior to 2024, and it was done by both sides of the aisle-this is an undisputed fact, and it is going to be the central tenet of this article as a result.  Gerrymandering has existed for decades, centuries even but with more consistent down-ballot voting and better technology, even laymen can draw shockingly effective gerrymanders that a few decades ago would've been impossible to keep intact.

Second, the current round of mid-decade redistricting is 100% the fault of Donald Trump, and more specifically the Texas state legislature's acquiescing to a request from President Trump to redraw the maps.  Had Trump not done this, Gavin Newsom would not have pushed to redraw the lines in California, and the over a dozen or more states that are currently frantically stretching their power to the limit would not have done so.  Any Republican who says this is in retaliation for, say, Illinois's very clear Democratic-favored gerrymander in 2024 is gaslighting you-this specific bout of redistricting is entirely the fault of the Republicans (that Illinois line is not even remotely the silliest thing I've heard about redistricting, by the way-Sen. Jim Banks said "they killed Charlie Kirk, the least that we can do is go through a legal process and redistrict Indiana into a nine-to-zero map" which, and I don't say this lightly, may be the most mind-numbingly stupid sentence I've ever heard an American politician utter in my ENTIRE life...even typing it made me lose IQ points).  The reason that they are thrown off by it is that I think neither the Republicans nor the media (nor, to be fair, many Democrats) thought that the left had the guts to retaliate against the Texas Republicans, and there's a reason for that...

...the third thing, that only one party is trying to stop this gerrymandering on a national level.  Anti-gerrymandering laws on a national level are not new, and Democrats have tried to pass them to some degree for decades.  While there have been Republicans have cosigned (usually those impacted by Democratic attempts at gerrymandering, like Rep. Kevin Kiley), this is a one-sided affair, and one Republicans have taken advantage of.  While Democrats have implemented bipartisan redistricting commissions in states like Virginia & Colorado, Republicans have oftentimes tried to supplant the ability of similar commissions or advisory councils in places like Ohio, Utah, & Iowa to get maps that favor them.  This is important to note because none of what is happening here is good or healthy for the country-these gerrymanders are anti-ethical to democracy, and we need a nationwide ban on gerrymandering.  So it must be noted (as fact), the Democrats are on stronger moral ground here in my opinion, because they'd be willing to end all of this federally today if the Republicans were willing...the GOP is mad because they used to have their cake and eat it too, and now their cake is gone.

Rep. Eric Sorensen (D-IL), one of the biggest
beneficiaries of Democratic gerrymandering

Which brings us to the goal of this article-what side of the aisle genuinely should be maddest about redistricting right now?  While we are still waiting for the chips to fall where they may, it's a good question to know if, for example, states like Illinois are enough that they are costing Republicans a stronger majority & they should rebalance in retaliation.  Looking at the House popular vote (which is not as strong of a metric as the presidential election given some seats are uncontested, which is why in this article we'll use the 2024 presidential race so it's fairer), the House popular vote generally predicts who gets the House majority.  In the past fifty years, only twice (in 1996 & 2012) has the House popular majority vote not match the eventual winners of the House; it's worth noting (because it's going to be a theme) that in both cases the Democrats ended up on the short end of the stick, though I will also state that in both cases the Democrats did gain seats in the US House those cycles.

So what I will do here is break down, looking at both the House maps in 2024 and the presidential election in 2024, which states should qualify as an outright partisan gerrymander, and which party (overall) gains the most from it.  What you'll find is that while both sides are correct in the sense that partisan gerrymanders existed in 2024 & before that favored either party, there's a pretty indisputable party that is gaining a disproportionately large advantage over the maps compared to the other if you used fair maps...and that party is the one that is actively trying to stop any efforts to ban gerrymandering nationally.

Let's start with ruling out the at-large states.  There are six states that don't have more than one congressional district (Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, & Wyoming)-it is impossible to gerrymander these states.  I have consistently seen Republicans post about how Vermont & Delaware are gerrymandered because they have no Republicans in Congress, and, well, this is basically just proclaiming at the top of your lungs that you're an idiot because without a change to the Constitution (or Congress passing the Wyoming Rule, which I think they should do), there's no possible way to gerrymander an at-large state.

For the 44 remaining states (where gerrymandering is possible), it's worth looking at whether the percentage of the state's congressional districts is significantly different than their share of the party's share of the popular vote in the 2024 presidential election.  You're never going to match exactly (the Wyoming Rule would help this, but it's impossible to do it exactly), but in my opinion it would qualify as a potential gerrymander if the party's share of the House seats won by the presidential party divided by the party's share of the presidential vote statewide is either greater than 1 or less than -1.  Anything in-between that would indicate that the House makeup is roughly matching the presidential race, and this isn't really a mathematical gerrymander.

This gets rid of 18 additional states (Alabama, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, & West Virginia).  I will note two issues with this.  First, states that only have two seats using this process it is impossible to mathematically gerrymander.  In New Hampshire, specifically, it does feel on-paper that the Republicans are probably short a seat, but given the map was literally passed by Republicans...it's hard to say "this is a gerrymander" enough to change my logic.  This means that there are a few states (not just New Hampshire, but states like Hawaii, Idaho, & West Virginia) where I think it makes total mathematical sense that one party gets all of the House seats since they are so overwhelmingly favored on a presidential level.

Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV), an over-performer helping
Nevada look bluer than it is

Second, this is based off of seats won in a presidential election, not seats won in a House election.  This is critical because if you look at this list, there are some seats that are pretty universally agreed upon to be gerrymanders, specifically Nevada & New Mexico, and objectively, I agree with that assessment-both of these maps are drawn to clearly favor the Democrats, and in both states the Republicans should have one more seat.  But, the reason they don't qualify as gerrymanders under this project is because in both states, Donald Trump won a district that the Democrats (Gabe Vasquez & Susie Lee in this case) over-performed the top-of-the-ticket enough by to win a crossover seat.  Had Republicans matched Trump, these would have the allotted the number they need...that the seats are not redder definitely makes these gerrymanders, but my focus here is more on mathematically-significant gerrymanders, which to me these are not because Trump was able to win.  This cuts both ways, too, by the way-Kamala Harris got the numbers in Nebraska to win that seat, but the House Dem didn't, so it's not a gerrymander in my book that matters enough to be angry about.  If you want to be angry in these states...blame candidate recruitment.

This leaves us with 26 states that are mathematical gerrymanders, but that does not mean that there are 26 states drawn with the clear indication of favoring one party over another.  Two other things should be taken into account.  First, which states have independent commissions to prevent gerrymandering.  No state is going to be perfect unless we move to an entirely parliamentary system, and five states (Arizona, California, Michigan, New York, & Washington) all have independent redistricting commissions, and in the case of all but New York, those commissions drew the current lines, so it feels unfair to include the four of them.  This takes away the single state with the biggest discrepancy in favor of the Democrats (California), but there's a reason for that-we are not considering the maps involved here.

In order to gerrymander, you need to be able to draw communities with a strong partisan makeup together to take advantage.  However, if you have densely populated communities with a large number of one party but an even larger portion of the other party, it's hard to draw maps that reflect the state's partisan makeup (i.e. it feels like a mathematical, but it's not a geographic one).  On paper, I agree-California should have more Republicans.  But California has SO MANY Democratic voters, many of them who live alongside Republicans, it's hard to draw the latter enough seats.  Los Angeles County, the largest county in the nation, had 1.2 million Trump voters in 2024, and yet no Republicans in the House because there are 2.4 million Harris voters sitting alongside them, and they live too spread out to help.  So I think, to a degree, California isn't so much a gerrymander as it's hard to draw fair lines that don't favor the Democrats.

Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN), who would not have a seat
under a fair map

This is true in reverse, btw.  Of the 22 remaining states, there are a few states that stand out to me as states where it is very hard to draw more blue or red districts.  In Oklahoma, for example, drawing a map where Democrats get a House seat consistently (which based on their popular vote they should) is darn near impossible without drawing a very bizarre district from Oklahoma City to Tulsa, which makes little sense.  Conversely, it is almost impossible to draw a Republican seat in Massachusetts without it looking like spaghetti, much less the three seats that the GOP deserves if you look solely at the Trump vote.

Before I parcel through which to throw out, though, I'll give you the raw data of where these 22 states sit.  7 states favor the Democrats: Connecticut (by 2), Illinois (4), Maryland (1), Massachusetts (3), New Jersey (1), New York (4), and Oregon (1), for a total of 16 seats.  On the flip, 15 states favor the Republicans: Arkansas (by 1), Florida (4), Georgia (1), Indiana (1), Iowa (1), Kentucky (1), Missouri (1), North Carolina (3), Ohio (2), Oklahoma (1), South Carolina (1), Tennessee (2), Texas (5), Utah (1), and Wisconsin (1), for a total of 26.  Similar to the New Hampshire example above, there are some states that are really close to deserving another additional seat for the other party (in particular Maryland, South Carolina, & Wisconsin), but this is where it lands.

So if you look at the math, on net, the Republicans in 2024 had ten more seats than they deserved.  It's worth noting that this would run a-front of the national popular vote, as Trump won the national popular vote, and yet by this math Democrats arguably deserved the House majority (this is in part because Trump was much more popular than House Republicans were on a whole, but that's not the whole story as you'll see below), something that the Wyoming Rule (or proportional representation at the state level) almost certainly would've helped.  

Ten is an average though.  Like I said, there are states in that bunch that are very hard to draw proper representation like Massachusetts, and so it's worth looking further.  I would break it out in the following ways:

• States Where It's Nearly Impossible to Hit These Proportional Numbers Without Reverse Gerrymandering (in parentheses is the number that's relatively logical to add if you draw common sense maps): Massachusetts (0), Connecticut (1), New York (2 is easy, getting 3 more is doable...to get 4 you basically have to screw over upstate Democrats with a hard reverse gerrymander to make up for the Manhattan & Bronx Republicans, and even that's with essentially drawing a reverse gerrymander across Brooklyn), Kentucky (0-you could easily draw a pink district, but a second blue district is going to take gerrymandering), Oklahoma (0-same story-a pink district is achievable, a blue district is not without reverse gerrymandering), Tennessee (1-drawing a sapphire blue district in Nashville is a piece of cake, but a second one is next to impossible), Texas (similar to New York, I think you could easily get 3 more seats, probably should be able to get 4...to get to 5 you're going to need to reverse gerrymander, but similar to New York getting a pink district for the last one is an option)
• States Where It's Super Easy to Hit these Targets (i.e. there's no excuse for the gerrymandering other than partisan greed): Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, Oregon, Arkansas, Florida (this might change as Miami gets redder, but you could do it currently), Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Utah, Wisconsin

It's worth noting that some of the states in the second bullet (specifically Arkansas) are like New Mexico & Nebraska (i.e. a redraw would create swingy seats that I could see ticket-splitting), but this would be fairer.  If you take this into account, it's a net of about 11 seats to the GOP rather than 10.  Part of the reason I'm harsher on Republicans in this regard as their gerrymanders are achieved by smashing metro areas like Nashville, Salt Lake City, & Jacksonville (i.e. there's a built-in district in the way there just isn't in New England and Mid-Atlantic states where the state's overall density makes it more challenging).

In conclusion, while Trump is the reason that we're doing this round of mid-decade redistricting, the reality is that the Republicans should already be happy.  Even without this 2026 election rigging, they are arguably benefiting by 10-11 seats over the Democrats, more than enough of a majority to have won them the left the House in both 2022 and 2024.  Quite frankly, a truly fair House would be the opposite of the Senate-it would structurally lean to the left in most cycles. 

Thoughts on the Political Shootings in Utah

As a general rule we don't talk about gun violence on this blog.  I have a sort of personal choice that I don't write a lot about hot-button issues here...this is not a place that's really for that type of "podcast-style, one-sided debate" given it's just me writing this.  It doesn't interest me, and it's not how I want to spend my free time-I like talking about movies and elections, and occasionally other topics, but generally I think that spending time talking about political issues is dull (and overdone online), and so we don't talk about it very often.  If you ever want to know my opinion, just ask it.

But gun violence is so omnipresent in the United States that a cursory look at some of the 4200+ articles on this blog obviously include commentary on it, particularly when it comes to its aftermath in regard to famous figures.  And so I'm breaking that rule to talk about the shocking death today of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated earlier today at Utah Valley University.

When discussing the dead, I think it's worth noting here that I have a pretty strict aversion to the adage "don't speak ill of the dead."  While I, given how often we talk about movies on this blog, am fine separating the artist from the art (we can talk about the films of everyone from Roman Polanski to Mel Gibson to DW Griffith on this blog without needing to constantly clarify that we're talking about their movies, rather than their real-life behavior), politicians are not artists.  They leave behind their voting records and the views they espoused, and that's it.  Charlie Kirk, I'm going to be honest, was not a good person.  His views on his social media posts & videos were racist, xenophobic, bigoted, and antisemitic.  He regularly said defamatory things about Jews, African-Americans, and LGBTQ+ communities, and promoted false conspiracy theories to his followers.

He also was outspoken about gun violence, frequently viewing it as inevitable.  A quote that circulated from 2023 in the wake of his death read (in the aftermath of a school shooting in Nashville), in regard to the Second Amendment: "I think it's worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.  That is a prudent deal.  It is rational."  Kirk was, in fact, talking about conspiracy theories regarding transgender people in association with gun violence literally seconds before he died.  His last words were a retort to someone correcting him about how many mass shooters in the last 10 years were transgendered Americans.

I point this out because this is the body of Charlie Kirk's life, at this point his only tangible legacy.  I also point it out because I disagree with Charlie Kirk, and do not think what happened today is rational or prudent-it is instead sad and horrifying.  No person in America should be the victim of gun violence, full stop, no if's, and's, or but's.  There is no joy or hubris in this moment, only sadness, another young man who died on the other side of a bullet, a far, far, far too common story in a country where gun violence is so common that there was literally another shooting in Colorado earlier today at a high school.  Today is very sad, just like all acts of gun violence are sad, and I want to be clear that that's not something I'm going to debate (and any comments who say otherwise will be deleted).

I think it's worth noting that Democratic elected officials agree with me.  Condemnations from across the Democratic Party, from figures as diverse as Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar & Nancy Pelosi swiftly condemned the shooter in Utah.  While I am confident you can find jokes and memes that court the line (or cross it) into bad taste or hubris online, I am not a madman who thinks that Democrats are accountable for every single liberal on the internet, and I can find no Democratic public official or prominent activist who did anything other than uniformly condemn this, call for action to stop gun violence, and/or offer their sympathies to Kirk's family.

I would be derelict if I did not point out that Republicans have not offered the same courtesy when Democrats have been the victims of political violence.  When House Speaker Melissa Hortman was killed earlier this year, Sen. Mike Lee went to Twitter and mocked the assassination, posting memes about Tim Walz, a close friend of Hortman's.  Rep. Derrick van Orden, former Gov. Scott Walker, Elon Musk & Laura Loomer, both prominent members of Trump's inner circle (at least at the time), promoted conspiracy theories about the assassin, and Trump himself refused to speak to Gov. Walz in the wake of the killings (he also did not attend any of the services, which I noted at the time felt the wrong message to send to the nation-I believe fully that President Reagan or either President Bush would've made a point of going to the funeral as a sign of nationwide unity had this happened under their presidencies).  When former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband Paul was the victim of an attempted assassination, Republicans found it a time for mockery rather than a moment to condemn the violence.  Donald Trump, Jr. posted a meme alluding to how he wanted to dress as the assailant for Halloween, and Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) claimed (baselessly, and eventually incorrectly) that the assailant was a "male nudist hippie prostitute."  President Trump made jokes about Pelosi's attacks at a state party convention, and, yes, Charlie Kirk also mocked Pelosi, saying "some amazing patriot out there in San Francisco or the Bay Area wants to really be a midterm hero, someone should go and bail [the attacker] out."

These are not random, gadfly members of the Republican Party.  They are regular, well-known ambassadors of the party at conventions & on major news networks, some of them even sitting elected officials, who have normalized mockery of violence against the Democratic Party, something that categorically is not true of the Democratic Party.  For all of the "calmer heads need to prevail" talk, there is no major Democratic official who has mocked some of the political violence that Republicans like Kirk, President Trump, and Steve Scalise have endured in recent years.  This is not a both sides issue, and bizarrely the Republicans aren't framing it that way.  In the wake of Kirk's death, Republicans blamed the left for this despite the left universally condemning this type of behavior.  Utah Republican Party Chairman Robert Axson stated "Schools and social media have become breeding grounds for liberal hate.  Enough!" while Katie Miller (wife of White House advisor Stephen Miller) said that liberals "have blood on your hands."  Elon Musk said "the left is the party of murder" while Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) yelled on the floor of Congress "y'all caused this."

It's worth noting that Kirk's assassin has not been caught, though I have confidence they will be (there's no universe where a crowd of hundreds, all carrying around cell phones, didn't get the person's face on camera).  But it should also be noted that if you look at the history of political assassination in America, assuming that the person's politics are the reason for their crime is not necessarily true.  In the cases of figures like Sirhan Sirhan and James Earl Ray, there was a clear political motivation associated with the men they shot.  However, Arthur Bremer & John Hinckley did it in an attempt at fame, while others like Squeaky Fromme & Sarah Jane Moore's motives didn't feel directly connected to President Ford (whom both of them attempted to assassinate in 1975), but rather unrelated political activism.  With other figures like Thomas Matthew Crooks & Lee Harvey Oswald, there was no clear indication as to why they shot the president.  This is all to say that any assumptions about the assassin's political beliefs are premature and dangerous-we don't know what we don't know.  They're also not important in the grand scheme of things-the person is a criminal and should be brought to justice.

Charlie Kirk's death today is yet another in a (far, far) too long list of incidents involving gun deaths in the 21st Century in the United States, and a disturbing recent trend of violence in the United States against public figures.  We need to come together and find a way to end it through legislation, and by setting an example collectively that this is wrong, and will not be tolerated toward anyone, regardless of their political beliefs.  The Democrats are doing that.  If the Republicans are serious about this, they will condemn the statements by people like Axson, Musk, & Miller, and call for a new conversation.  Anything otherwise feels hollow as citizens are forced to process yet another tragedy.