Whatever he does propose probably won’t pass First Amendment muster, not that that’s ever stopped angry legislators before.
The D’s won the 2018 midterms and 2020 election but still lost in 2024 to Trump. So I would not read too much into Tuesday results.
As far as providing a bulwark against court-endorsed election theft in 2028, the victory in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court elections are extremely significant.
Otherwise, it’s good news, but very much expected good news. The default expectation is that the opposition party wins off-year elections, especially with an unpopular President. Right now the Dems seem like heavy favorites in the midterm elections, and these election results confirm that. Which is obviously good, but the prior assumption should already have been that they were heavy favorites, so in that sense it’s not especially “significant”.
Or Republicans will be talking about “see what happens when Democrats are in charge” if Democrats do gain control of the House and / or Senate in 2026. And depending on how things are going at the time, the American people as a whole just might fall for it again (see Charlie Brown as a prime example 
).
ETA: When was the last time the American people didn’t fall for it? We have to go back all the way to FDR and Truman for an example of the people making a good decision. Even if we include the wrong decision, we have to go back to Bush Sr. in 1988.
As I said in another thread a couple of days ago: 37%, more or less, appears to be his support floor. His popularity never really gets any lower than this, as you note, and I do think that that percentage represents who his diehard MAGA loyalists are; they are very likely immune to being swayed away from him, and I have a difficult time envisioning a scenario, short of his death or clear incapacitation, in which his support/approval rating goes much lower than it is right now.
Right. It’s the flip floppers and the sometimes I’ll show up (if the other guys are in charge so voting means I’m throwing the bums out) sometimes I’ll stay home (if my side is in charge so voting means that I’m showing approval of someone that disappointed me because I didn’t get everything I wanted) voters that really determine the outcome. What will those people do in 2028? It’s too early to tell.
This is true. Though the election results are encouraging for 2026, I don’t allow myself the luxury of hope anymore, so I try to be pragmatic about what 2025 meant.
But there’s absolutely a ton of good things that happened in the 2025 election. Some of it has national implications, but a lot of it just validates that at the local level, when consequences are thrown in people’s faces, Republicans aren’t popular. When Trump isn’t on the ballot, he’s not popular.
This is also discouraging in a way, because I think it shows how powerful the media has become as a force to put their thumb on the scales during Presidential election years.
Why? No matter how they rule it will go to SCOTUS anyways.
My rural town in Connecticut is about equally split between Republicans and Democrats.
The First Selectman position (similar to a mayor) has gone back and forth between Republican and Democrat repeatedly over the last few years. (The terms are two years in length.)
Four years ago a young firebrand MAGA-type got elected as First Selectman, and he proceeded to slash and burn the town government, including lowering taxes, destroying the town’s bond rating, firing employees, silencing critics at town meetings, refusing to meet with constituents, etc. He was challenged two years ago by a Democrat who won pretty decisively.
Nonetheless, in the current local election, we might have expected the tide to turn back. Not so. The now-incumbent Democrat First Selectman won reelection by a two-to-one margin, getting over twice the votes of the new Republican challenger. And every other Democrat on the ballot won as well, which is pretty unprecedented.
One other data point. Someone has been paying for a billboard in town for at least the last four years that read: “HAD ENOUGH? VOTE REPUBLICAN”. 
I used to flip off the sign every morning when I drove by it on the way to work. On Wednesday of this week, I flipped the sign off for the last time, because yesterday they had finally taken the billboard down.
One can never predict exactly how low the current SCOTUS might stoop, but it would be completely unprecedented for the Court to overturn an election result that had been certified by a State. That’s exactly what they didn’t do in Bush v. Gore; they didn’t rule that Bush’s arguments were better than Gore’s, they ruled that it was entirely up to the Florida Supreme Court to make that call.
In my local elections here in Ohio (albeit one of the blue areas of Ohio) we had 4 of us running for 3 seats on city council. The ballot says “non-partisan” as it’s a non-partisan race. I was included in the county Democrats mailer, as I have a public voting record of D. Another woman who was running was also added to their mailer. The two of us got the most votes.
The guy who won the third seat is a Millennial. He is a Democrat but wasn’t on the mailer as he had pulled an R ballot for the ‘16 primary. He’s kind of shy, like me. Not very interested in going door-to-door, but he did put out a couple of Facebook ads to get his name out there.
The guy who lost is an Independent but he did pull an R ballot in 2023 to vote for a friend in a local primary. He was not on any sort of Republican literature. He is very well known in the community, an 8-year incumbent, actually does go door-to-door, actually helps people, an Army veteran and a retired police officer. He was on a “slate” with me and the Millennial guy and we talked each other up to voters.
We’re still kind of baffled about how he lost out to the Millennial guy, but that’s how it played out. Only thing we can think is that it’s not a good time for Old White Guys. I’m proud of him - he is not sour about it. He knows what’s up. He’ll be back to run in 2 years.
Our school board had a strong strong candidate in a guy who’s whole personality is “union proud” and wants to do more for non-college tracks in schools (but also has always supported public schools). He won by a landslide.
The other seats went to the only incumbent who ran, a Black guy who is great and also in education, and a woman no one seems to know. The guy who lost is a white cop who didn’t put any effort into anything.
Anyway, our two big local elections went very very blue. (With me at the tippy top, yay!)
Wow, congrats!
Let me introduce one set of results that are less encouraging, but I suspect involve mainly local issues: In Nassau County, the county on Long Island just outside of NYC, the results were decisively in favor of the Republicans. Bruce Blakeman, the MAGA county executive, was reelected 55% to 45%, and other county-wide races had similar results. Even my north shore town easily reelected its Republican Supervisor, and the north shore is the more Democratic part of the island. (In New York State, a “town” is a good-sized political entity, above the villages it contains but below the county in which it lies.)
There were a lot of factors involved, including the Republicans being better funded, but the big one was probably that they were campaigning as if they were running against Mamdani. There’s a strong feeling among the suburbanites here that they desperately don’t want Long Island turning into NYC, whatever that means to them. (And for many, it means what you imagine it means.)
I think it is likely to go lower. As I said, 36% was the lowest he got in his first term, when he had a few rickety guardrails holding back his worst impulses. He’s at 37% now, barely a year into his second term, and nothing or nobody is holding back his worst decisions and terrible excesses this time around. He may not go below his rock-bottom base of the low 30s, but I think he will be considered politically toxic by even many Repubs toward the end of this term.
One thing not being discussed in Colorado that I think is huge.
We hate taxes. We have TABOR so that a surplus of tax money goes back to the taxpayers rather than services. We have voted to reduce the state income tax and then complain how the state doesn’t pay to fix highways and other services. You get the idea.
Tuesday we voted to reduce our TABOR refund to feed students. If you are like well of course you guys are willing to pay to feed kids, you don’t know the Colorado voter.
Over the long haul (looking to the next presidential election), I don’t think this week’s results are very significant, but it depends on how the parties react. One MAGAt suggested that the GOP core must double down on the MAGA agenda and close ranks around the Dear Leader to show unity and solidarity. Mamdani’s election might be an indicator of a progressive shift on the left, but only if the Democratic Party recognizes it and changes direction and leadership accordingly. If Schumer remains in place as the de facto Talking Head, for instance, it will signal to everybody left of center that it’s going to be business as usual for Democrats and the moment will be lost. We won’t know, though, until we can look back and see how November 4 affected things afterward. When you’re in the middle of the ocean, it’s hard to tell if you’re riding a tsunami.
The results are far better than they could have been.
I think we’re agreeing, but I’m not sure.
We absolutely need better sustained Democratic turnout if we’re going to make changes, and Tuesday’s results were more hopeful than I expected. But it’s a long way to midterms, much less 2028, so I think most of us are right to be very cautious in our optimism.
As you know if you read my posts I blame non-voting Dems as the reason Harris lost in 2024. With that biased view, I took the commentators’ point as “The Dems realized they F’ed up in 2024 so they made sure they voted.” But to your point, even if I’m right how does that get sustained in 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential elections.
A combination of two things. One is Trump and the Republicans continuing to do what they’re doing right now. Obviously I don’t want that, but that is part of what motivates those Democrats. It wasn’t just 2024 when they stayed home. It was also 2000, 2016, and to a lesser extent 1996 and 2012. These are people who are all about “throwing the bums out” but have little interest in keeping the other (Democratic) “bums”, presumably as they define the term, in office once they are there. To go along with that, the Democrats need to start nominating people more like Mamdani and less like Cuomo.