I’m not yet convinced that el donald is as bad as Hitler but, we may be able to draw some parallels. In the early 1930’s, Hitler’s base was large enough to get him elected. Eventually, things got bad enough that, according to Merkel, D-Day was seen as a rescue. West Germany is one of the few places where an invading army installed a democracy that survived.
That base, the Nazis, seems to be still around. There are enough of them that Germany sees the need to make them illegal. That makes it hard to see how big it really is.
Hitler consolidated his power and eliminated elections. We can’t really tell when public opinion turned against him. In those days, it was also unthinkable to question a war. For most of the period, he did not really need popular support. Fear was a good substitute.
If it gets bad enough that el donald loses a large chunk of his base we could see him removed from office. It needs to be so big that it is in the interest of those Republican senators. It’s not really clear how bad that will need to be. He will put up more resistance than he did with the Epstein files.
As expected (since it was Dem vs. Dem), a Democrat was elected to TX-18. That makes the House
Rep: 218
Dem: 214
Vacant: 3
That cuts the number of defections the Rs can have to one, since two would make for a tie, which is a loss in trying to pass legislation.
More interesting is a different result from Texas: a Democrat won a special election for the Texas Senate in a district that Trump won by 17 points. Trump posted about it several times, but that wasn’t enough to get out the R vote. Also, the Republican heavily outspent the Democrat. The weather likely had something to do with it, since turnout was way down from the primary back in November.
But this round, they’re overperforming by more than usual and in this race even more. The average for special elections is 13 points more than the 2024 election. Trump won this district by 17%; Rehmet, the Democrat, won by 14%. That’s about a 30 point flip!
The weather may have an effect (it’s a lot colder in Fort Worth now than it was last November), but the recent events in Minnesota probably had more. I understand the Ds won in the votes cast on election day (which usually go more R than D), not just the absentee votes.
The Democrats need to run fewer lawyers and more trades people. Of course, if the Republicans would run more cell phone executives, that might also help
A couple things about that special election for a Texas State Senator: the Texas legislature only meets in odd numbered years. And the seat is up for election this year. So Rehmet has to run for reelection almost immediately (the primary is March 3) and, barring a special session this year, he won’t be able to cast a vote in the legislature until he’s been elected twice!
OK, I doubt anyone is going to challenge him in the primary, but he still has to win in November.
It affects the turnout of low-propensity voters. Right now, those are mostly Republicans, for two reasons, one of which is temporary (Republicans are in control right now, and it’s usually the out-party that is unhappy about how things are going and more motivated to vote). The other may be more permanent, but it’s still not an iron law: well-educated people who are comfortably middle-class or above are much more likely to turn out, especially in situations like this one (special election, at an odd time of year, for a low-level office). Right now, that is a Democratic demographic, but it wasn’t that long ago that it was a fairly Republican one, and in some ways both parties haven’t completely caught up.
