Updated Thoughts on 2026 Senate Races

In the five months since I last visited the Senate races for the 2026 midterms, the political environment has dramatically worsened for the incumbent party.  It's not surprising that the environment worsened for a long list of reasons.   But maybe it is a bit surprising that the President who ran aggressively on ending foreign policy entanglements has led the charge for two regime change misadventures so far in 2026, one in Venezuela and one Iran.  Avoidance of "stupid wars" was the centerpiece of Trump's political profile....right up until the point where he did a heel turn to become the most hawkish provocateur of military might since Teddy Roosevelt.

It shouldn't be that surprising though if you analyze the basic psychological profile of a malignant narcissist who gets elevated to a position of unprecedented power.  Anybody with the kind of unquenchable lust for power that Trump has will always need to raise the stakes to satiate that lust.  Taking "ownership" of your political rivals is the ultimate raising of those stakes by those who fancy themselves messiahs. That may take the form of deploying paramilitary assassins to your domestic political rivals' home turf to terrorize and exterminate their citizens.  Or it may take the form of crossing international borders to show uncooperative foreign leaders who's boss.  In Trump's case, it's both...and the consequences have been predictable.

Trump's favorability, which was never that great to begin with, has taken a hit at every stage of his would-be providential interventions for which he intended to take ownership of those he deemed disciples instead of messiahs.  Even those who couldn't be bothered to care about Trump's Praetorian guard imposing de facto martial law through the barrel of a false army's gun in somebody else's city have now suddenly come to realize that Trump's messianic grandstanding on the global stage could make their daily commutes and summer vacation plans more expensive.  Now he's really gone and done it!

And still others who couldn't be bothered to care about Trump's self-deification against enemies domestic or foreign finally reached their limit when he took the next obvious step and projected imagery of himself as a literal messiah after a decade of positioning himself a mere metaphorical messiah.  Blasphemy, they decried, as if it wasn't obvious that he always felt that way about himself.  Either way, it's all resulted in another demographic who has piled on in their expression of disapproval of the President's job performance.

Absolutely all of this was entirely predictable.  An electorate that was mature enough to look for and detect the stunningly obvious signs of advanced and malignant mental illness would have figured that out in 2015 let alone 2024.   Anybody who believed 18 months ago that America would be in a situation other than the one it's in right now after electing this narcissist needs to seriously reassess their critical thinking skills as it applies to any and all future choices, particularly one as consequential as electing a President.

With that said, there's ample indication that people are reassessing.  It's no easy task to get a Trump voter to admit a mistake, but an interrupted string of special elections coupled with a rising tide of polling data indicates that people are choosing with their feet....by going to the voting booth and choosing to elect Democrats.  Just as was the case when I first discussed this last November, I continue to submit that the magnitude of cheating and obstruction by Trump and his party will be staggering and unprecedented, almost assuredly limiting the Democrats a significant share of the gains they would have attained if it was a fair fight.  I wouldn't be a bit surprised if a coup attempt even bolder than what we saw on January 6, 2021, unfolds.

Nonetheless, the Democrats seem positioned to launch at a higher starting point than I anticipated, and with the way wave elections work, it's not likely that the wave will ebb rather than flow in the nearly seven months ahead.  Most consequential this midterm cycle will be the Senate races, and I'll offer my amended take on how the relevant races in the battleground (or even the periphery of the battleground) seem poised to unfold with the current information.  Here goes:

Alaska--If 2026 resembles a wave election in any way, then Democrat Mary Peltola has to defeat Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan in The Last Frontier.  I would say Alaska represents the third most likely Republican-held seat to flip this year, but that's not to say it will be easy.  Sullivan is a noncontroversial two-term incumbent and Alaska will be unique among the 50 states in that its economy can be expected to improve rather than contract based on higher oil prices.  With that said, Peltola was a great recruit and has won statewide office twice, both in more challenging environments than the 2026 midterms seem poised to be.  And Alaska has been trending Democrat and shown signs of being more independent and elastic than other states with similar PVIs.  Polling is already showing the race as basically 50-50 with the usual caveats about how hard Alaska is to poll.  Hard to imagine an incumbent gaining ground in an environment as defensive as this one, which is enough for me to qualify Sullivan as at least a slight underdog here.  I wouldn't wager a paycheck on it but making a call now, I'm leaning toward a Peltola upset.  Prediction:  Dem +1

Florida--There are at least seven GOP-held seats more likely to flip than the Sunshine State in the special election to fill Rubio's vacant seat.  Alexander Vindman is a relatively solid recruit for Democrats and will probably have some solid fundraising to put up a fight against Republican Ashley Moody, but with Florida having spent the better part of a decade as a sponge for conservative retirees across the country, the math is just too lopsided even in the most favorable environment.  Now it's possible that the South Florida Cubans and central Florida Puerto Ricans swing far enough back to Democrats to narrow the margins from the ugly 2022 and 2024 cycles, but unless we start seeing a radical shift away from Republicans in those brutal party registration numbers leading up to November, I'd still expect to see a high-single-digit win for Moody.

Georgia--Of all the seats on the board, the one I've changed my mind about most is the Peach State, and for good reason.  Freshman Democrat Jon Ossoff has kept his approval numbers up, his fund-raising in the stratosphere, and is running for re-election in a state that gets more difficult for the GOP opposition each cycle.  Back in November, I was worried about black turnout being insufficient for Ossoff to win in a midterm, particularly if he wasn't sharing the ballot with a prominent black candidate and proven vote-getter.  But my feelings have evolved just as the voter enthusiasm metrics keep evolving toward Democrats.  None of the multiple Republican contenders challenging him look very intimidating right now, either in terms of fund-raising or profile.  Former NFL coach Derek Dooley has thus far not lived up to expectations and may not even be well-positioned to win the primary at this point and show us what he's got against Ossoff.  Hopefully, overconfidence doesn't make a fool out of me with this one, but I think Ossoff's fortunes have improved significantly so far in 2026.  If he was to end up winning by 5 points or more, it'd be one of the best signs of the night that Republican voters stayed home in droves.

Illinois--You never know what might happen in an open seat so this race is one to keep an eye on, but the surprise primary win by Democratic Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton was probably a good development for Democrats in greasing the skids to increase their base turnout in November.  Given the ongoing partisan identification shift in Illinois, I'm still imagining that the Democratic wave largely bypasses Illinois as the downstate jurisdictions continue lurching further to the right, but it's extremely doubtful this race will even be close and very likely remains in double-digits for Stratton with a lightweight GOP party chair as the Republican challenger.

Iowa--The race for Republican Joni Ernst's open seat will likely hinge entirely on who wins the Democratic primary.  If Josh Turek wins the nomination, I'd put him at even money with Republican Congresswoman Ashley Hinson for victory.  If Zach Wahls wins the nomination, he'll probably win nothing more than the same five counties that Kamala Harris won in 2024.  The choice seems that obvious to me regarding who will and will not connect with the Obama-Trump voters that are so plentiful in the Hawkeye State.  Turek has an early blitz on the airwaves that should help him given that Wahls remains silent.  That competitive advantage won't last though, and much of the party establishment has lined up in support of Wahls.  Ashley Hinson is a transparently empty pantsuit and imminently beatable in an environment like this, but it's up to Democrats on how serious they are about defeating her.  Right now, the perception of advantage for Wahls is enough to keep me predicting this seat stays red.

Kansas--Democrats have done a good job of recruiting candidates in most races, but one of two big exceptions is the Sunflower State.  There's a long list of candidates on the Democratic line but none in the top tier.  They couldn't get retiring two-term Democrat Laura Kelly to run and it seems increasingly less likely that Democratic Congresswoman Sharice Davids will run.  The bench is pretty thin beyond that, but there's some reason to believe Democratic State Senator Patrick Schmidt who is in the race could be a decent candidate.  It would take a solid fundraising haul though and, for whatever reason, neither Kansas nor its freshman Republican Senator Roger Marshall seem to be on too many insiders' radars.  That's their mistake.  Kansas is a state that's been trending less red for a decade now.  Roger Marshall is intractably wedded to the worst MAGA instincts amidst a farm crisis of Trump's making.  And Marshall has zero legacy connection of any of Kansas's Democrat-trending population centers, be it Wichita, Topeka, or metro Kansas City.  The Laura Kelly coalition is right there for the taking in a year like this if Democrats applied themselves.  They'll have to move fast if they want to secure the resources to make it happen though and there still seems to be too many naysayers.  If a third-rate challenger running a shoestring campaign ends up getting within 5 points of Roger Marshall in November, heads to deserve to roll for not taking this one seriously.

Kentucky--There's a cluster of perennial candidates on the Democratic side attempting to flip the seat of the retiring Mitch McConnell.  It's an extreme long shot given how red the Bluegrass State has gotten.  Republican Congressman Andy Barr seems to be the frontrunner for the GOP nomination and is very likely to be Kentucky's next Senator.  Horse trainer Dale Romans intrigues me most on the Democratic side but I think he'll struggle to advance given the superior name identification of past losing Democratic Senate nominee Charles Booker and Amy McGrath, who are both running again and poised to be future losing Democratic Senate nominees if nominated.

Louisiana--The real excitement here is in the Republican primary field as two-term GOP incumbent and Trump apostate Bill Cassidy is attempting a third term but doesn't seem very likely to get it at this point.  Trump-endorsed Republican Congresswoman Julia Letlow seems to have the upper hand, but her recorded comments in support of DEI in the days before she became a Congresswoman are unlikely to sit well with Republican primary voters.  This gives State Treasurer John Fleming a potential in and might even keep hope alive for Cassidy, but I could just as easily imagine him coming in a distant third place after being disowned by Trump in a place like the Pelican State.  The Democratic field is a lost cause of nobodies so there's little hope for a Mary Landrieu or John Bel Edwards-style miracle even in this environment.  My preference would be Cassidy as the least awful person we could get in Louisiana, particularly if re-elected and not having to live in fear of Trump.

Maine--To be sure, oyster farmer and likely Democratic nominee for Senate Graham Platner is an extremely risky bet given his controversial past.  Even if Mainers seem willing to accept his considerable warts in polling today, who's to say more won't come out or that his propensity for impulsive choices won't manifest itself in disqualifying ways in the general election campaign.  But make no mistake that Platner is going to be the Democratic nominee for Senate in the state of Maine as Governor Janet Mills, once lauded as the Democratic recruit of the cycle, is about to have a massive, humiliating primary defeat delivered to her by Platner.  As for Collins, I feel like she's at the point in her career where Collin Peterson was in 2020.  As much latitude as generally unfriendly voters had given Peterson in the past, they reached a limit and turned against the incumbent from the "wrong" party.  If I'm right that Mainers are at that point now with Susan Collins, then she could lose by high single digits.  She's an underdog either way, and Platner would really have to blow it to not be the next Senator of Maine.  Running Total:  Dems +2

Massachusetts--All the action here will be in the Democratic primary.  Will geriatric Democratic incumbent Ed Markey get another term or will Congressman Seth Moulton unseat him?  In this environment, my money is on the guy running on the left.  If Markey was able to beat a Kennedy, I think he'll have no problem beating a Moulton.

Michigan--This one makes me nervous.  Three Democratic candidates are locked in an extremely tight three-way race for retiring Democrat Gary Peters' seat, and each of them will carry their own weaknesses in a general election if they get nominated.  The least problematic choice is Mallory McMorrow, a progressive state legislator who electrifies the wine-track left but will have a relatively narrow coalition.  If this was 2024, McMorrow would never win with that coalition, but in 2026 she'd probably be able to bridge the opposing factions of metro Detroit enough for a statewide win.  The other of the three who I think would "probably" win is suburban Detroit Congresswoman Haley Stevens, a moderate and an Israel apologist running in a state where a cozy relationship with Israel cost Kamala Harris their electoral votes.  In a prior era, I'd be more confident of Stevens running up the score upstate and canceling out whatever losses she'll incur in Dearborn and adjacent Palestinian-heavy areas, but I'm just not confident Democrats are gonna win enough of those voters back even in a wave environment.  Most problematic is Wayne County Health Director Abdul El-Sayed who I doubt would win in November because of both Islamophobia and his past progressive statements ("defund the police").  Any of the three could win the nomination according to recent polling.  Meanwhile, the GOP field was cleared for 2024 nominee Mike Rogers who barely lost that year and will face a weaker challenger than Elissa Slotkin this cycle no matter which Democrat prevails for the nomination.  It all adds up to being the most vulnerable Democratic hold in the country and by no small measure now that Jon Ossoff seems to have so much momentum in Georgia.  Given the volatility of the Palestinian vote and the fact that Trump's tariffs are probably less unpopular in Michigan than any other state and Rogers has a path to victory here.  Given the environment and my supposition that two of the three Democrats would be positioned to win, I'll still give the Democrats a narrow edge here, but watch this space, particularly if El-Sayed somehow gets the nomination.

Minnesota--If Iowa presents the clearest choice in the country between a possible Democratic win and a certain Democratic defeat, the Gopher State presents the clearest choice between a Democratic overperformance and a Democratic underperformance.  Given the political environment, I don't see any realistic scenario where sportscaster and (maybe) likely GOP nominee Michele Tafoya can win in Minnesota, but whether she'll be able to make it marginally competitive or not depends on who Democrats nominate.  If Dems go with Congresswoman Angie Craig, I can imagine a Democratic victory comparable to Amy Klobuchar's 2024 win over Royce White.  If they go with Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan, I envision a Democratic victory that, at best, is comparable to Tina Smith's win over Jason Lewis in 2020.  It'd be a win without coattails and without any buy-in from outstate aside from possible heightened turnout on Indian reservations on behalf of Flanagan.  If Minnesotans want the 2026 Senate election to be all about whether the old Minnesota flag still flapping in hundreds of thousands of Minnesota lawns represents "Manifest Destiny", then by all means nominate Flanagan!  Right now, polls suggest that Minnesota Democrats intend to do just that, but Craig's overwhelming financial advantage means she shouldn't be counted out.  Interesting that neither is on the airwaves yet though.  A likely Democratic win either way.

Mississippi--I don't blame Democrat Brandon Presley for choosing not to burn through the political capital he earned by coming within 3 points of victory in the 2023 gubernatorial election on a long shot Senate bid, but when you look at the fundamentals of this election cycle--intense Democratic enthusiasm, historically lethargic Republican enthusiasm, and long-standing antipathy to perennially underperforming GOP incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith--it makes you wonder if they're missing their chance of taking advantage of a perfect storm.  Even in the best-case scenario for Democrats, Hyde-Smith would be an overwhelming favorite here, but the Democrats seem poised to have a less-than-best-case scenario based on their candidate recruitment or lack thereof.

Montana--The calculus for this race changed substantially when two-term Republican Senator Steve Daines retired just before the filing deadline and assuring that his hand-picked replacement had no competition for the GOP nomination.  Former U.S. Attorney Kurt Alme is now the likely Republican nominee running in a challenging environment but without any strong Democratic challengers.  Would a top-tier Democratic challenger have gotten into the race if Daines' retirement hadn't been handled in such a greasy way?  Possibly.  As I said in November, Democrats have a good bench in Montana, including a former three-term Senator who outperformed the top of the ticket in defeat more strongly than any other Democrat in the country in 2024.  But alas, that's not where we are.  Instead, the Democrats are likely to pin their hopes on an independent candidate named Seth Bodnar, the former President of the University of Montana who was actually endorsed by former Democratic Senator Jon Tester.  Can he win?  Highly unlikely, particularly given that there's likely to be a fourth-tier Democrat who remains on the ballot competing for scarce votes with Bodnar.  Plus, I'm not sure how well a university President would be received running statewide in Montana.  The Republicans had to play dirty to get themselves an advantage in this race but it probably will work.  And, of course, Republicans will play dirty in similar races all over the country so Daines' stunt was a good example of what to expect.  Republicans would have been favored to win Montana in just about any scenario but in a year like this, there was considerable potential for the race to unfold competitively.

Nebraska--If Montana is an example of a Democratic-coded independent candidacy poised for oblivion, the Cornhusker State is an example of a Democratic-coded independent candidacy with a rising tide of electoral firepower.  Dan Osborn was arguably the discovery of the year in 2024 when he fought Deb Fischer to within 7 points in a Presidential cycle where Kamala Harris was getting crushed at the top of the ticket.  Fast-forward two years and the same charismatic every man who overperformed in 2024 is running again in an environment where he gets to play offense.  Incumbent Republican Senator Pete Ricketts MIGHT be stronger, at least on paper, than the underperforming Fischer was in 2024, but with the environment vastly worse and the turnout differential so lopsided, I honestly think it's a wash at best for Ricketts.  As impressed as I was with Osborn's showing two years ago, I'm going into this cycle tipping the race narrowly in his favor.  He'll have to pitch a perfect game and still catch some lucky breaks to avoid getting joined at the hip with Schumer and AOC in a hostile state, but he seems like the right man at the right time to win enough Republicans for an upset.  Prediction:  Independent win, R -1 and de facto D+3 seats.

New Hampshire--If former Republican Senator John Sununu was gonna mount a comeback, he should have done it in 2022.  The environment then would have made it far more practical for him to beat Maggie Hassan than fighting the Trump headwinds to pull out a victory four years later.  I'm not fully counting him out having not seen likely Democratic nominee Chris Pappas in action yet, but it's really hard to believe that the Granite State, which has voted Democrat in the last six Presidential elections, is gonna trade Jeanne Shaheen in for a Trump ally later this year.  If Scott Brown somehow wrestles the nomination from Sununu, then the GOP's goose is really cooked.

New Mexico--One of the more stunning developments since last November is that Republicans failed to get a single qualifying candidate to take on freshman Democrat Ben Lujan.  Back in 2020, Lujan had one of the limpest Senate victories in the country proportional to the top of the ticket.  If the Hispanic vote has really turned on Trump to the degree most believe it has, then Republican victory in New Mexico was never gonna be likely this year.  But without any Republican on the ballot, Republican victory is vastly more unlikely!

North Carolina--I'm not buying some of the polls showing former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper crushing his Republican challenger, former Republican Party Chair Mike Whatley, by double digits, but I have seen enough to believe that Cooper is ahead in his pursuit to flip retiring Republican Thom Tillis's Senate seat.  Back in November, I speculated that even in a strong Democratic environment, I anticipated that Cooper had a lower ceiling than most believed in pursuit of federal office in the Tar Heel State.  But the environment has improved much more since then and I can envision Cooper more than merely squeaking by with a narrow win.  I suspect it'll be closer than most currently expect but it will require lethargic Republican voters to find some enthusiasm to vote to even keep their loss narrow let alone win.  There's no indication now that they have the kind of enthusiasm to avoid turning a 2-point defeat against Cooper into a 7-8 point defeat against Cooper.  Prediction:  Dems +4 seats.

Ohio--I've observed enough elections in the Buckeye State in the last dozen years to know that if polls are tied leading up to election day, Republicans are gonna win decisively on election day.  Right now, the best former Democrat Senator Sherrod Brown can do against interim Senator Jon Husted in the special election for J.D. Vance's old seat is a tie in the polls.  Might the rules have changed with the enthusiasm gap seemingly favoring Democrats so strongly this year?  Maybe, but until I see Sherrod Brown with consistent mid-single-digit leads in the polls, I'm gonna operate under the assumption that Jon Husted is gonna win.  Prove me wrong, Ohio!

South Carolina--I never predicted that Republican Senator Lindsey Graham would be felled in 2020 despite the hype, but damn if I didn't let myself daydream about hearing a concession speech from that asshat.  Of course it didn't happen....or even come close for that matter.  And it won't this year.  Democratic challenger Annie Andrews seems best poised to win the nomination to run against him, and her introduction to voters was a clunky roast on Graham's sexuality ("Lindsey Graham has a secret") that seemed like a tasteless opening bid.  Even if she somehow catches on, I just can't envision a scenario where there are enough elastic white voters in the Palmetto State for a Democrat to win federal office.

Texas--The consensus viewpoint as of mid-April 2026 is that Republican Senator John Cornyn is about to lose his primary runoff against odious right-wing challenger Ken Paxton, but the consensus viewpoint was that Paxton would get more votes than Cornyn in the first round of voting.  That didn't happen, and I'm not yet convinced that when Republican voters actually step into the voting booth that they won't decide Cornyn is a better option than a Democratic alternative.  I'm no worse than 50-50 on Cornyn hanging on for the nomination, but no matter who prevails between Cornyn and Paxton, I think they're overwhelmingly more likely than Democrat James Talarico to be the next Senator of Texas.  I just don't see the numbers being there for a Democrat to win in Texas, and as much as the media and the Democratic donor class loves them some James Talarico, his on-tape alignment with vegans and critics of the Texas beef industry told me all I needed to know about his compatibility with the electorate he's attempting to serve.  I never bought into Beto O'Rourke being the next big thing eight years ago and don't with Talarico today.  The wild card as to whether the race will even be close is if Talarico can pull back the Hispanics that migrated en masse to Trump in 2024.  While I can imagine considerable improvement among Texas Hispanics, I can't see that kind of realignment do a heel turn back to the Hispanic numbers that O'Rourke got in 2018, and Talarico would need those numbers and higher to actually win.  Crazier things have happened, I suppose, but right now, I have a failure of imagination when it comes to envisioning a scenario where Talarico does more than merely "come close", but actually score a win.

 

So you there you go.  I have Democrats picking up three seats along with a Democratic-coded independent who can be reasonably expected to caucus with Democrats if he wins.  Democratic Senate majority, here we come right?  Maybe.  There's chatter that Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski might switch parties if Peltola wins her state and if she would be the deciding vote to flip the caucus away from Trump.  And while there aren't necessarily rumors yet suggesting that John Fetterman might switch parties to the Republicans to keep them in control, it wouldn't surprise me in the least at this point given Fetterman's transformation.  Only if Democrats win at least five seats am I gonna operate under the assumption that Chuck Schumer will be the Senate Majority Leader next year, and given that Osborn's allegiance is no sure thing, even a five-seat win that includes him wouldn't entirely make it a slam dunk.

At the same time, it's entirely possible that the tide hasn't yet crested for Democrats.  Ohio and Iowa in particular strike me as potentially being on the board if things fall in line perfectly.  On the other hand, Michigan could still blow up.  And there are 14 Senate races I didn't even discuss here because I'm assuming they'll be safe holds for their party.  Given the environment and the general unpredictable nature of political campaigns, that may not hold.  After all, who would ever have imagined at this time two years ago that the Senate race in Nebraska would enter the battleground?  I'm not counting on a curveball of that magnitude rearing itself in the next seven months, but I'm certainly not discounting it either.  We'll see how well these predictions hold up by the time fall gets here.

And while I haven't exhibited a ton of mental energy on the midterm gubernatorial race landscape, it'll be high time for me to do just that next month when I take a look at all the Governor races taking form.

 

 

 

What Is The Right Approach On Immigration?

I grew up in a small meatpacking town in the Upper Midwest in the 1980s and 1990s.  As was the case in every Midwestern meatpacking town in this era, the union was crushed, the local workers were used up and thrown in the trash, and the industry titans held wages down with a revolving door of immigrant labor that continued to be piped in for generations.  If ever there was a blueprint for turning a young person into an immigration skeptic, my adolescent experience was it.  

Indeed, I spent most of my formative years pushing back against the growing consensus in my party that more immigration served anybody well except greedy employers, and also warning the electoral ramifications would at some point become devastating.  And as more communities experienced the kind of transformation that mine did, skepticism about immigration became more universal, more strident, and more visceral.  That's why when Donald Trump came down the escalator in 2015 and made immigration skepticism the centerpiece of his campaign, he instantly and permanently realigned almost every square inch of the United States that isn't formally designated a metropolitan area.

Is the skepticism more about culture or economics?  For most people, it's a mixture of both, even though most stick with paying lip service to the economics part.....or at least they did until Trump made overt bigotry acceptable.  Either way, the verdict was rendered by the public and it fell on entirely deaf ears on the previous administration who tried to gaslight the country into accepting that bottomless "asylum" claims guaranteed to everyone who entered the country without permission were somehow different than mere illegal border crossings.  Over 10 million people crossed the border during Biden's administration, and the country predictably revolted.

Trump promised to not only seal the borders but to deport those who were here illegally.  A decisive majority of Americans indicated to pollsters that they were onboard.  Critics on the left argued it would be ugly and the public wouldn't have the stomach for it.  I had assumed the administration was bluffing and merely intended to do a few months of high-profile deportations before declaring victory and moving on to the business of tax cuts for the rich and ten-figure self-enrichment plunders.

But on this, the left turned out to be closer to right than I was, and the administration wasn't bluffing.  It turns out that heavy-handed deportation campaigns not only served the administration's ferocious anti-immigrant agenda, but it also allowed them to test-drive the country's willingness to endure paramilitary occupations in their neighborhoods where administration critics are executed with prejudice on the streets.  

The public appears to have reached its limit, at least according to polling.  Trump's version of "deporting the illegals" exceeded what they had in mind, both in scope and in practice.   They believed Trump would limit his deportations to MS-13 thugs with face tattoos and not the dishwasher at their favorite Mexican restaurant, and they have some measure of buyer's remorse.  Indeed, the polling consensus now shows that most people want to limit deportations to those with criminal records while leaving undocumented workers alone.

This shifting center of gravity nationally perfectly contextualizes how complicated the immigration issue is and reinforces that the sweet spot will be very hard to find.  To most people, it passes the general smell test to not waste resources on deporting hard-working immigrants living here illegally as long as they keep their noses clean.  But the Trump administration's instinct is not entirely wrong in regards to the incentive structure for entering the country illegally being intractably connected to activity on the border.  If we choose to allow undocumented workers to stay as long as they don't break additional laws when here, the incentive remains for them to continue coming here and we'll never get the border situation under control.  If we return to limiting deportations to habitual lawbreakers, our border descends into unmanageable chaos again.  

On the other hand, we need workers to do the work that illegal immigrants do.  For a generation, I bristled at this argument because the pipeline of foreign labor suppressed wages for American workers.  That's still true to a degree, but it's not the 1990s anymore.  The labor force is shrinking as the Baby Boomers retire and their grandkids are no longer making babies to replace them.  The cake is baked in regards to precipitous population decline, with the decline being most aggressive with working-age Americans. A generation ago, factory floors full of food processing workers were relieved of their duties and replaced by immigrants for 50% lower wages.  That scenario is hard to replicate today because few factories would be able to part with the existing workers on their floor and expect to find replacements.  

And I just don't see a scenario where economies are sustainable with a population in sustained retreat.  Visit any small farm town on any back road anywhere in America and you'll find what population loss does to a business sector.  Single-street downtowns vibrant with a dozen businesses 30 years ago typically have nothing left but the bar when revisited today.  Consider this the canary in the coal mine of what the national economy will look like if population decline becomes the national standard and new people don't enter the labor force to replace those who leave it.   

So is the solution a surge in the number of legal immigrant visas?  A pretty strong case can be made for this, but between the intense vetting requirements of those seeking work visas and the extremely dynamic labor market needs of an economy constantly in transition, accepting new legal immigrants comes with its own serious challenges and a molasses-slow processing timeline.  The AI revolution will make employment need identification only more challenging moving forward.  By the time a would-be immigrant has his visa granted and processed, the field of work he's pursuing might be rendered obsolete by AI or automation.  And then what?

Furthermore, it's not as if a surge in supply of legal work visas is gonna diminish demand among those from impoverished countries who want to migrate here.  If anything, the opposite will happen.  The number of people who want to flee a hostile homeland will always exceed the number of legal visas we have to offer.  There will definitely still be illegal immigration if we signal a willingness to grant more legal immigration.  The likelihood is that there will be even more of it. 

Then there's the matter of Donald Trump, undoubtedly speaking for millions who pretend they're for immigration "as long as it's legal", asking out loud why we can't have more immigrants from "nice countries" like Norway or Denmark.  Yeah, we're not gonna get any immigrants from "nice countries".  They have no interest in giving up the standard of living they enjoy where they are for the vastly worse standard of living afforded to them as a worker in the United States.  Between the medieval social values, the embarrassing political paralysis, the images of school hallways splattered with the blood of children slaughtered by guns, and having to pay $30,000 a year for a health insurance plan, America has nothing to offer people from "nice countries".

This means that virtually none of our new immigrants are gonna be white.   Given the degree to which people choose to divide themselves by identity groups, and the degree to which elected officials tend to exploit that division, one doesn't have to be overtly bigoted to be concerned about the implications of accelerated demographic changes on national unity.  Of course, this has been a concern going back to the nation's origins and tends to work itself out a generation later, but let's not pretend that the people saying "they're fine with legal immigration" won't continue to foment a ferocious backlash if the country called their bluff and boosted the number of people eligible for immigrant visas.

And ultimately, this is the biggest reason why nothing will get done on immigration despite the undisputed brokenness of our current policy.  Whatever kind of reform that polls well in concept will be deeply unpopular in practice.  Negative externalities will unfold from whatever policy is adopted and they will happen quickly and uncontrollably.  Nobody wants to be holding the hot potato when it happens because they know a voter backlash will be right around the corner.  

The inevitability of that voter backlash assures that immigration will continue to be a catastrophic loser for the Democratic Party, potentially even for 2026 when the country now says they disapprove of Trump's immigration policy.  Just because voters are uncomfortable with Trump's deportation tactics doesn't mean the issue will have any salience at all among voters whose lives aren't directly impacted by immigration policy.  Just as it's proven impossible to get voters to care about other people's kids being killed by gun violence, they will be equally unmoved by the call to cast their ballot on behalf of those sent to detention camps by ICE.  Voters decide elections based on self-interest and community interest, and even in the most favorable possible political environment, most people are not gonna perceive immigration liberalization serves that interest.  In other words, if the Democrats allow their 2026 messaging to lean too heavily on avenging ICE's excesses, they're unlikely to swing votes even amongst those who casually agree.

And that's in the rare instance where the Democrats are not playing defense on immigration.  In most cases, they will be playing defense.  They will have to answer for surges of humanity on the border.  They will have to answer for the perceptions of eroding national demographic unity.  They will have to answer for the latest crime committed by an illegal immigrant that's made the national headlines.   And they'll pay the price for it politically even with a policy approach less insane than the Biden-era "asylum for all comers".  They'll have to pay for it politically even in the hypothetical aftermath of a seemingly moderate immigration reform legislation that will lead to an inevitable repetition of the vicious cycle of unmanageable borders invaded by people who want to get in on the next round of amnesty.

This probably means a close variation of Trumpism will be our default immigration policy for the foreseeable future.  His supporters are likely incapable of grasping that this will come with medium-term and long-term implications on economic sustainability as our labor force drops through the floor, but it will likely happen in a slow-motion pattern that they will deem more acceptable than the alternative of poorly regulated borders, abrupt demographic change, and a loss of national familiarity.  Given the absence of any better options, I'd like to see us at least try coupling a surge in legal immigrant visas with tight border control and hope I'm proven wrong that it's a logistical impossibility to sustain, but I struggle to see how such a dynamic won't come apart amidst the unyielding gravity of incentive structures that starts the ugly cycle all over again.

 

  

Would Wellstone Have Won In 2002?

It seems like a good time to avoid the poisonous discourse infecting the national dialogue and look in the rear view mirror for some retroactive electoral analysis.  It's not that 2002 was necessarily "a more innocent time" being on the eve of the biggest foreign policy mistake of my lifetime, but election outcomes felt a little less existential and the coalitions were vastly more interesting and less predictable.  Counterfactuals are usually fun and I haven't done a deep on the 2002 Minnesota Senate election...until now.    Simple question:  if Paul Wellstone hadn't died in a plane crash 11 days before the election, would he have won a third term?

The conventional wisdom about this election has endured for nearly a quarter century, particularly in the minds of Democrats.  The general breakdown of the CW is that Wellstone and Republican challenger Norm Coleman had been effectively tied for most of the year, but when Wellstone cast his vote against the resolution for military force in Iraq in October, Minnesotans respected his integrity and migrated in his direction.  Wellstone was poised to win before he died, but when voters perceived his televised memorial service to have turned into a tasteless campaign rally, they recoiled in disgust and censured the Democratic Party by voting for Coleman.

I've never fully bought this conventional wisdom for a number of reasons.  Foremost among them, I'm skeptical of the weight of individual events in generating wholesale transformations in voters' decisions.  My skepticism about campaign missteps and media-fueled controversies moving voters in meaningful numbers has only hardened in the Trump era, but I suspect it was quite relevant in 2002 as well.  The polling suggested Wellstone got a five-point bounce after casting his vote against military action in Iraq....and the election night tally suggested Coleman got a five-point bounce in the closing days of the election.  Few people seemed to consider that the common denominator may have been questionable polling samples rather than dithering voters.

And far as I can tell, most of the narrative surrounding the momentum shifts was tied to a single Mason Dixon poll released by the Minneapolis Star Tribune in mid-October.   Previous samples had shown Wellstone and Coleman deadlocked, but the poll released after Wellstone's Iraq vote showed him leading by 6 points.  It was a relief to those of us on Team Wellstone but there was scant polling data beyond that backing up the premise of Wellstone pulling away.

Following the exasperated responses of local and national media, as well as then-Governor Jesse Ventura, to the tone of Wellstone's October 29 memorial service, Democrats were nervous that there would be fallout.  They were relieved when the poll released the Sunday before the election, taken entirely after the memorial, had replacement Democratic nominee Walter Mondale leading by 5 points.  The only problem:  it was the same pollster (Mason Dixon on behalf of the Star Tribune).  If there was additional reliable public polling backing up Mason Dixon's findings, I wasn't aware of it then and am struggling to discover any record of it now.

So were Minnesota voters really this fickle in October and early November 2002?  Did they really flock to Wellstone to reward his courageous vote against invading Iraq only to do a heel turn back to Coleman in response to Wellstone's memorial service?  That seems less likely to me than Mason Dixon simply having polling samples that were too friendly to Wellstone (in October) and Mondale (in November).

No shade is intended to Mason Dixon if they did because it was a hard race to poll, with an unusually dynamic Minnesota electorate diverging in unpredictable ways.  Wellstone's campaign was upfront that the only reason they were hanging in there against Coleman was Wellstone's strength in rural Minnesota.  The Coleman campaign telegraphed the same dynamic as they were on the airwaves with ads lobbying hard to cut Wellstone's rural advantage and were funding full-page color ads about the "death tax" in weekly rural newspapers to further land a foothold among voters who were ambivalent toward him.

Anecdotally, I was observing the same thing working at the time as a farm reporter in southwestern Minnesota.  Wellstone's decades of advocacy on behalf of farmers and workers had broken through and he won considerable crossover support from otherwise rock-ribbed conservatives in farm country in a race against the former mayor of St. Paul.  Given the trajectory of ideological loyalties in the generation since, it seems all the more remarkable that a Senator as unapologetically progressive as Paul Wellstone put together such a comprehensive downscale coalition in a Midwestern state.

Every indication is that this rural advantage transferred to Mondale, who also punched above the DFL's weight in the majority of farm and factory towns throughout the state and across media markets.  Mondale's coalition looked very similar to what Wellstone's campaign teased that they expected their own coalition to look like.  There's no way of knowing if the familiar Mondale name increased that outstate Minnesota advantage by a tick or if Wellstone's absence on the ballot compelled some pro-Wellstone Republicans back to the GOP, but it's reasonable to assume the difference was negligible.

Whatever the case, the real action was going on in the metro area, which saw a massive swing to Coleman.  The Minneapolis-St. Paul suburbs and exurbs experienced both blistering population growth and a political realignment in the late 90s and early 2000s.  It was hard to get a good read on this realignment in 1998 because of the third-party factor with Jesse Ventura, but it was harder to ignore when George W. Bush managed double-digit gains in nearly all of the Twin Cities collar counties.  Senator Rod Grams scored margins nearly identical to Bush that cycle, prevailing in every suburban and exurban county even while losing decisively statewide.  It was a worrying pattern for Democrats that seemed likely to persist in 2002, but the magnitude of the GOP suburban advantage come election night was genuinely shocking even to those expecting the worst.

The double-digit swing toward the GOP in suburban Minnesota in 2000 was matched by another double-digit swing in 2002.  And this one wasn't limited to the collar counties.  It touched every corner of the metro area, with wimpy margins (slightly less than 2-1 Mondale) even in the city of Minneapolis.  And all this in a midterm with a Republican President!  What in the hell was going on in Minnesota in 2002?

Whatever it was, it seemed significantly bigger than backlash to Paul Wellstone's memorial service.  The arithmetic was fuzzy because Wellstone had already banked thousands of votes before he died and it's not clear how many of his absentee voters cast another ballot, but the final outcome was by no means extremely close.  Coleman beat Mondale by nearly 50,000 votes and a margin of 2.2%.  Furthermore, turnout was high at 64.9%.  That's a higher turnout percentage than any of the five midterm cycles since then.

Does it seem credible that Wellstone's memorial had THAT big of an impact?  Did it promote a metro-specific turnout surge that went overwhelmingly to Coleman, a surge that didn't touch adjacent outstate counties in the same media market where Mondale outperformed Gore, and in most cases outperformed Dayton, two years earlier? 

I mean...maybe.  But it seems more likely that this cake was baked before Wellstone died and the polls showing him with a comfortable mid-single-digit lead three weeks before the election were just as wrong as the polls that showed Mondale with a mid-single-digit lead three days before the election.  It seems more likely that polling models weren't accurately gauging the magnitude of suburban shift toward Coleman and the GOP that year.  It seems more likely that Minnesota was on the tipping point of becoming a red-tilting state until Bush's misadventures in Iraq triggered a reversion to the Democrats beginning in the 2004 cycle.

I have 23 additional years of election nights and poll-watching under my belt since 2002, and they've led me to conclude that Norm Coleman would more likely than not have won this election against Wellstone just as he did against Mondale.  The notion that backlash to the Wellstone memorial alone cost the Democratic Senate nominee scores of thousands of votes--almost all of them specific to a dozen counties in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area--is too far-fetched to accept in retrospect.  The far more believable scenario is that those massive Coleman margins in the suburbs were gonna happen anyway.

 

Trump Gets His Trophy From The City Of Lakes

For nearly a year now, the sociopaths of the Trump administration have been doing everything imaginable to incite an escalation of the ruinous culture war.  The backlash from their critics has been largely, and inconveniently, peaceful for most of the last 12 months as liberals have more or less recognized they have no cards to play and have held their fire.  Unsatisfied with the number of gazelles roaming the savannah, the apex predators of the administration just kept laying out more tempting bait so that the lionesses among them can have their chance to bloody their feral fangs upon a fresh kill.

It was inevitable that they would eventually induce enough fury that they'd be get their green light to "own a lib" by way of emptying their clip upon them, and it should come as no surprise to anybody that this inevitable outcome played out in the form of a blood-soaked snowbank in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Am I exaggerating?  In normal times, it would be fair game to say so.  Renee Good was quite stupidly obstructing federal law enforcement from carrying out their work, and when you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.   But these aren't normal times or anything close to them.  The only reason ICE had a serious presence in Minneapolis in the first place was for Trump to settle a score against Minnesota's Governor over an unrelated political rivalry.  Their electoral prospects sagging amidst growing disapproval, the administration was counting on a localized backlash where they could simultaneously flex the might of the federal government upon a protestor and reset the culture war on terms they believe are favorable to them.

The clearest visual cue of the administration's giddiness about this outcome was Kristi Noem emerging almost instantly after the shooting in a press conference decked out in a 10-gallon cowboy hat.  Kristi Noem enjoyed gunning down her dog so much that she wrote about the incident glowingly in an autobiography two years ago.  And now, Kristi Noem enjoyed gunning down Renee Good so much that she cosplayed Wyatt Earp meets Annie Oakley, signaling that she was untouchable and signaling that she fully intends to kill again....and will continue to enjoy it when she does.

And then we get J.D. Vance absolving the ICE agent shooter of his sins in real time with maximal condescension and horrifyingly prescient proclamations of the agent having "absolute immunity" for all past, present, and future lawbreaking he might indulge behind the cover of his badge.  This is enough to mollify the half of the country that he cares about, aware that there won't be a nanosecond of critical thinking about the binary choice he's presented us by those who reflexively side with the conquistadors.  To this half of the country, there's no reason at all to be concerned about the formation of a Praetorian Guard allowed to shoot first and ask questions later without any fear of reprisal, confident that it's always gonna be "those people" on the other side of their gun barrels.

The worst-case scenario for the national recriminations here?  I keep refreshing my computer wondering if I'll see a headline of a protest in Minneapolis that triggers a Trump-approved mass annihilation that exceeds the body count that the Islamic Republic has piled up among Iranian protestors this very day.  I'd bet my paycheck that Trump is in the White House today vocally expressing his jealousy of Khamenei for being able to kill hundreds of protestors that Trump has not YET had the opportunity to.  I really hope that the Minneapolis protestors pull back before they give Trump and Noem the excuse they're looking for to "own" a whole bunch more libs than just Renee Good.

The best-case scenario for the national recriminations here?  The still-ugly alternative of voters doubling down on siding with the fascists on the binary choice they're been given on liberty versus security.  The public is expressing exhaustion with Trump's excesses on a wide range of issues, but Trump and his people are savvy enough to realize that they'll be positioned to pounce on the reaction of the left who can be counted upon to overplay their hand as they always do. Expect the left to once again reframe their anger and grief as cluelessly as they did over George Floyd.  Yesterday's calls for defunding the police and institutionalizing collective guilt in the form of expansion-pack DEI will likely be reinvented with a renewed call for ending immigration enforcement.

Needless to say, this is not only a fight that the Trump administration wants, it's a fight they're actively fomenting, baiting the left into taking the stupidest possible positions as they did in 2019 and 2020.  And it will probably work.  The majority of voters value personal security and hate cultural change.  While most outside the MAGA hivemind might be uncomfortable with much of what they see from the Trump administration, they're ultimately gonna side with law enforcement and border enforcement over those who think we should have less of both.  And since most people are comfortable that it won't ever be one of their own loved ones whose blood is spilled all over the snowbank at the hands of a law enforcement officer who is bequeathed "absolute immunity", they're comfortable looking the other way and trade their liberty for security.

Here's your latest reminder that I predicted only 14 months ago that the future was autocracy.   The forever autocracy is upon us, and only in its infancy.  The path back to whatever America was 14 months ago couldn't possibly be more elusive.

Ranking The Eight Midterm Elections of My Lifetime

A large percentage of American voters can only be bothered to pay attention to Presidential elections.  They have little patience for or interest in midterm cycles where Governors, Senators, and legislatures are decided.  Believe it or not, I used to be one of them, but in my defense, that only lasted into my mid-teens.  My engagement in midterm cycles was modest at best as a boy.  That's probably true of most children, but given my reflexive fascination with partisan elections as far back as I can remember, it's a bit surprising that I hardly remember anything about the 1986 midterms and my engagement in the 1990 midterms wasn't high enough to justify inclusion on this list.  The surprise election of Senator Paul Wellstone on November 6, 1990, was a big of catalyst as anything in propelling me into downballot election fascination, but it was more the planting of a seed than instantaneous jubilation at the result.

Even four years later, I was caught napping by the consequential midterm cycle that for all intents and purposes ushered in the combative culture of contemporary politics.  I would never again ignore or downplay midterm election cycles and, in many ways, have grown to like them as much as Presidential election cycles.  Let's take a look back at the eight midterm cycles that got me there.  

#8.  1994

Before the Internet era had begun, I lacked the information to measure the country's political temperature the way that I can now.  I was a junior in high school in the fall of 1994 and had other things going on in my life than a midterm election cycle, but I was picking up on murmurs that a Republican wave was building.  Some evening news broadcasts teased momentum for the GOP, fronted by Newt Gingrich, in backlash to single-party Democratic control and particularly to President Clinton's failed health care reform plan and passage of the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement.  The week before the election, some talking head broke down a poll in which voters indicated their party preferences on a wide range of policies, and Republicans had the edge on issue after issue.

Things didn't look good, but I was still in denial.  When friends and classmates asked me if I thought Republicans would win control of Congress on November 8, 1994, I expressed with confidence that the Senate might fall but I couldn't imagine the GOP would be able to win enough seats to dislodge the Democrats' seemingly impenetrable hold on the House.

Clearly, I was insufficiently plugged in to the pending geographic realignment that had been simmering for quite some time.  Millions of conservative Americans in conservative jurisdictions had been casting ballots for Democrats out of muscle memory for a generation but the party was no longer their natural home.  What's astonishing looking back is that this realignment still managed to play out in phases, and even in 1994, plenty of Democratic Congressman held on in places that became Republican strongholds in the 30 years to come.  In other words, 1994 could have been much, much worse for Democrats.

I was nonetheless awakened about the tectonic impact of midterm cycles and had a tough night watching so much territory turn red, including Minnesota.  Democratic figures as iconic as Ann Richards, Mario Cuomo, and Speaker of the House Tom Foley were getting felled in front of my eyes and it felt like I was getting hit by a freight train.  It certainly gave me a good lesson about what painful election nights from hell feel like, and also set the stage for the brand of vicious, brinksmanship politics that kept escalating to its natural conclusion:  a sociopath and street fighter as President who is as adept in bringing out the worst in people as any other figure in geopolitical history. 

#7.  2002

The high of the exciting 2000 Presidential election loomed large as the next midterm cycle approached, but the marquee race of the 2002 midterm was poised to be the Minnesota Senate race.  The death of Paul Wellstone was like a pin to my balloon, taking all of the fun out of the final weeks of the campaign.  And that was before the electoral drubbing that followed....

In retrospect, it was pretty remarkable how elastic the electorate still was in 2002, despite the cycle's reputation for being realigning.  Far as I can tell, that realignment was limited to Georgia.  Beyond that, most Blue Dog Democrats held on to their Congressional seats, and in some cases even picked seats up such as Lincoln Davis in Middle Tennessee.  Democrats were winning open gubernatorial races in Tennessee, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming, while Republicans were finding ways to win gubernatorial races in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Hawaii.  And the South Dakota Senate race was one of the all-time greatest cliffhangers I ever experienced.  In that sense, 2002 was kind of an interesting cycle, but the cycle still stuck in my craw for two primary reasons.

First, the Democrats lost control of the U.S. Senate, yielding full control of the federal government to the architects of the Iraq war.  Second, one of the reasons Democrats lost the Senate was the state of Minnesota, where Paul Wellstone enthusiasts got one final kick in the teeth surrendering his Senate seat to Norm Coleman.  This cycle was the peak of the GOP's suburban surge in the Gopher State, where it appeared as though Minnesota might be poised to realign as a red state.  The degree to which this was backlash to the overreach of Paul Wellstone's memorial service is debatable, and I just might do a deep dive into that in a coming entry on this site, but whatever the case, Minnesota's outsized role in the country's shift still further to the right made November 5, 2002, a particularly dark night at my residence.

#6.  2010

There were a few distinct differences between the Democratic wipeout of 1994 and its follow-up 16 years later.  By 2010, I was old enough and plugged in enough to see the Republican tsunami coming months ahead of schedule.  I sounded the alarm on Democratic websites when most people were still whistling past graveyards and predicted a much larger disaster than actually materialized.  By the time November 2, 2010, came around, I was actually kind of relieved that things didn't end up worse.

There was a lot of Democratic driftwood from 2008 like Frank Kratovil, Bobby Bright, and Walt Minnick who I always knew wouldn't be long for this world.  It hurt more to see a lot of the class of 2006 wiped out, or humiliated with disastrous runs for the Senate like Brad Ellsworth and Paul Hodes, but much of the class of 2006 still managed to hang on, including high-profile names like Tim Walz, Bruce Braley, and Gabby Giffords (we won't talk about what happened next with Giffords).  But the biggest sigh of relief in 2010 was how well the Democrats held up in the Senate, keeping West Virginia while re-electing Harry Reid and Michael Bennet when both were underdogs to survive.  I went into the night expecting Republicans would have between 49 and 51 Senate seats, so holding them to 47 wasn't a bad outcome at all.

It was a split decision in my home state and adopted home state.  Democrats won an open-seat Governor's race and held all statewide offices while somehow managing to lose legislative supermajorities in Minnesota.  They also turned out long-time Democratic Congressman Jim Oberstar and replaced him with a grifter, which I credit myself as being the first to see coming.  It was also a less than comprehensive Republican wave in Iowa, with Democrats hanging onto the state Senate and all three Democratic House members narrowly winning reelection.

A rough night to be sure, but one that was entirely foreseeable to anybody who understands the laws of political gravity.  And again, a night that could have been and by all historical metrics should have been worse.  It had the additional benefit of setting up a foil for Obama and improving his chances for re-election. 

#5.  2014

I was wavering back and forth on whether to rate 2010 or 2014 as the worse midterm election.  Both were sub-optimal for Democrats, and in many ways 2014 was worse.  Absolutely abysmal turnout nationally led to some shock defeats and a number of near-defeats by heavy hitters like Mark Warner and Louise Slaughter.  Democrats lost nine Senate seats, an outcome worse than even the most pessimistic prognosticators predicted and boxing them out of any hopes of controlling the upper body for the foreseeable future.  And, of course, it was a preview of regional realignment heading into the Trump era, with states like Iowa, Ohio, and Maine coming in a darker shade of red than anticipated.

I almost talked myself out of placing 2014 ahead of 2010 as I wrote that, and I'll explain the thin reed for which I didn't after a bit more reflection.  I recall the odd lack of media engagement in the weeks leading up to the 2014 midterms.  In late September and early October, the usually elections-heavy Sunday morning shows like "Meet the Press" and "Face the Nation" weren't discussing the elections as the front-and-center topic.  That should have been a red flag, particularly since they were instead talking about the surge of illegal border crossings and doom-trolling about "Ebola".  The mirage of a steady environment where the Democrats might incur only modest losses held until the last couple of weeks when the polls turned against them.

And the mirage of even manageable losses in that year's challenging battleground was quickly felled on November 4, 2014, as the results came in with flashing red trouble signs in Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina.  The Obama coalition had sat on its hands while angry, old white guys came out in droves to ensure Obama would spend his last two years in office as a lame duck.  Nonetheless, the 2014 Republican wave bypassed plenty of places, and that's why my memories aren't entirely bleak about the cycle.

I could hardly have asked for a better year for Democrats in Minnesota.  Mark Dayton and Al Franken were comfortably re-elected.  Three additional statewide offices remained in Democratic hands even if Steve Simon got a close shave in his first run for Secretary of State.  And Collin Peterson decisively held off his first top-tier GOP challenger while Rick Nolan somewhat unexpectedly prevailed next door.  Even in Minnesota, there were a couple of warning signs though as Tim Walz was held to single-digits by a third-rate challenger and the state House flipped to the GOP with some geographic canaries in the coal mine among the lost seats.  Still, this was the last time my beloved DFL coalition of yore held in Minnesota before the 2016 realignment, and I will always cherish that I got one last hurrah.  That alone keeps 2014 from rating beneath 2010.

#4.  2018

I've never understood why so many Democrats look back upon 2018 as such a spectacular cycle.  If you're judging 2018 entirely by how many House seats Democrats were able to pick up, then the cycle does seem pretty good.  But even accounting for the impressive 41 Democratic House pickups, the most promising newcomers like Kendra Horn, Abbey Finkenauer, Joe Cunningham, and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell were wiped out the very next time voters stood in judgment of them. Our 2018 legacy is mostly grifters and troublemakers like Jeff Van Drew, Katie Porter, and AOC, who hurt the party's reputation and narrowed its coalition.

The news was mixed at best elsewhere on the ballot.  The Democrats picked up some needed statehouses such as Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico and (narrowly) Wisconsin, but failed to pick them up in key states like Ohio, Georgia, and Florida where they could have averted redistricting disasters. 

The state of play was much worse in the Senate, where Democrats were defending a tough map and held on to some key states but still saw four incumbents get felled, including two of my favorites, Claire McCaskill and Heidi Heitkamp. None of these four were perceived to be particularly endangered at the beginning of the 2018 cycle when it was expected that there would be a more uniform backlash to Trump. You don't get to call it a "wave election" when you lose four incumbent Senators, particularly when it ultimately costs you control of the Supreme Court for a generation.  The Democrats' perception of redemption quickly pivoted to eternal damnation.  Most weren't able to hear the siren call at the time and still don't seem to identify 2018 as their requiem seven years later.

In other words, 2018 doesn't hold up well at all, but compared to the other midterms cited thus far on this list, it at least felt kinda-sorta good that night to be piling on some wins.  Still, a darkness loomed under the surface.  While Democratic inroads in upscale suburbia played out as expected, I was more interested to see if their losses in rural areas and small industrial cities would continue.  For the most part, they did, foreshadowing a more durable realignment of downscale voters into the GOP column that would ultimately prove to be a much bigger and more impactful story than the suburban shift as we progressed into the 2020s.

#3.   2022

It's really rare to go into an election cycle expecting an ugly wipeout but ending the night with an outcome closely resembling neutrality.  The last thing I expected going into November 8, 2022, was to walk away thinking that it didn't go badly at all, and that's what made it the most satisfying election night since 2012.

The Republicans did a pretty masterful job of pregame spin this cycle, leaking chatter about internal polls showing alleged battleground races as Republican blowouts and alleged safe Democratic races being the real battlegrounds.  My anticipation was that the first couple hours of the night would be headlined by Herschel Walker getting the 50% needed to avoid a runoff in Georgia, Don Bolduc unseating Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire, and double-digit wins for Ron DeSantis and Marco Rubio in Florida.  Only one of these things happened, but even as a number of things started to go the Democrats' way as the night progressed, I still wouldn't have imagined Democrats would net a Senate seat, hold the new Republican House majority to a handful of seats, win governing trifectas in Minnesota and Michigan, and keep just about every nutjob election denier away from the reins of power in swing states.

As I find is often the case, my original instinct was right all along...that Democrats were positioned for a wipeout but were saved by juiced turnout from young women incensed about the repeal of Roe vs. Wade.  The fact that low-propensity MAGA voters stayed home in droves created a perfect storm limiting Democratic losses, but it also taught Democrats the wrong lessons and gave them undue confidence heading into the Presidential cycle.

Democrats wrote Trump's obituary on November 8, 2022, and decreed Ron DeSantis the new leader of the Republican Party, completely misjudging the sleeping lion that was MAGA still poised to return to the prowl.  They continued to self-immolate on the border, assuming voters didn't care and dragged their feet on fixing their bottomless asylum policy.  And most damagingly, they decided that abortion rights needed to be the centerpiece of their 2024 campaign after having success litigating the issue in 2022.  So while November 8, 2022, turned out to be a pretty good night for Democrats, it set them up to go into 2024 clueless and tone-deaf, underestimating their opponent and having no idea what was making the American voter tick.

Still, it had been a decade since I went through an election night that didn't hurt, so I enjoyed it while it lasted.

#2.  1998

The midterm cycle where I was most pleasantly surprised by the result was 2022, but a close second was Bill Clinton's second midterm in 1998.  And ultimately, November 3, 1998, was more satisfying because it felt like a rejection of the Gingrich Congress and the dark shadow of Donald Trump was nowhere in sight compared to 2022 where it still unmistakably lingered.  Plus, I was still in college, so the cyclical nature of elections had not yet hardened me.  It genuinely felt like the country was embracing my political ideology and that brighter days were ahead, quite possibly in a straight line.

In the weeks leading up to the 1998 midterms, I watched CNN's afternoon politics show almost daily and was far more engaged about the electoral landscape than I had been in any previous midterm.  There was a fair amount of ambiguity but the general consensus was that Democrats were facing headwinds and in a perfect storm Republicans could gain two dozen House seats and get a veto-proof majority in the Senate.  But as election day approached, it seemed as though things were starting to break the Democrats way more places than not and my Republican-leaning college roommate predicted the Dems were gonna do okay.

He was right.  And it didn't take long into the evening to appreciate that Democrats were outperforming expectations and vastly outperforming the fundamentals of the incumbent party in the second midterm cycle.  By 7 p.m. central, the Kentucky Senate race was neck and neck while Democrats were scoring several wins in Deep South battlegrounds, be it gubernatorial races in South Carolina and Alabama or the Senate races in North Carolina and South Carolina.  The Senate race I was most invested in was Wisconsin, but if John Edwards and Fritz Hollings were pulling out wins in their states, I was much more confident that Russ Feingold would hold on for a second term, which he did.  It hadn't even occurred to me that Democrats wouldn't lose a single seat and would actually gain a handful of House seats in Clinton's second midterm, but that's exactly what happened.

But the two races that rocked my world the most in 1998, in different directions, were the gubernatorial races in my home state of Minnesota and my adopted home state of Iowa.  It was genuinely surprising that Democrat Tom Vilsack came from behind to win in Iowa, even though his momentum in the final week was undeniable.  But the most surreal result was in Minnesota, where late momentum for Jesse Ventura was also undeniable, but it was still hard to fully process that the Gopher State elected a mercurial former pro wrestler as Governor.  It was a better outcome than a Governor Norm Coleman, but it was nonetheless the only complication to an otherwise unconditional positive night, one where my shouts of delight at every called race echoed down the hallway of my college dorm building.

Unfortunately, it didn't occur to me at the time that voters had simply punted their judgment on Bill Clinton for another two years. 

#1.  2006 

And now we get to the sweet spot....the midterm masterclass of my lifetime.  I mentioned in my review of the Presidential elections that 2004 was my first "online" election and that I was crushed when it ended badly.  It took a while to recover, but by the fall of 2005 I had election fever again and plenty of indicators were pointing to a very good midterm ahead for Democrats with Senate races in particular starting to shape up favorably.  I dove into the new cycle right around the dawn of this blog's formation in late 2005 and stayed highly engaged for the next year amidst the "Culture of Corruption" backdrop and the rise of Nancy Pelosi and Rahm Emanuel as national figures.

Having been beaten down by three consecutive ugly election night outcomes, I was long overdue for a win on November 7, 2006.  There were times when I was cynical that the country would do the right thing but they mostly delivered with sweeping Democratic wins in all corners of the country.  Most satisfying, Democrats picked up the six seats they needed to take control of the U.S. Senate, giving rise to some of my favorite Senators of the last generation, including Sherrod Brown, Claire McCaskill, Jon Tester, and Jim Webb.  

Interestingly, when I look back at the 30 seats the Democrats gained in the House, my reaction is:  that was it?!?  Given how dominating the Democratic performance was in so many gubernatorial and Senate races, and even in downballot legislative races, it just felt like the number of House pickups should have been higher.  Of course, there were quite a few near misses and the majority of the seats narrowly lost in 2006 went the Democrats' way two years later. 

But the 2006 midterm was about more for me than just stacking up impressive Democratic wins.  It was about a version of the Democratic Party being exactly as I prefer it to be and wish it still was.  The Democratic Party of 2006 was an ideologically diverse national party with compelling, charismatic figures from the left, center, and even the center-right capable of winning elections in just about any zip code.  Urban liberals and people of color were voting the same way as rural, white conservatives in southern Ohio, Middle Tennessee, and southeastern Oklahoma, all while the last remaining redoubt of the Republican Party could be found in the upscale suburbs in almost every city and state.  Again, this partisan breakdown will always be my comfort zone.

The nation was governable with the Democrats being the coalition party that it was in 2006, and it makes me sad that I'm not likely to ever see another election like it or be a member of a political party that brought together such a diverse faction of people to govern our states and the country.  A generation removed from 2006, it's hard to ignore the extent of the rot that has emerged since this coalition has disbanded.

 

It just hit me as I was writing this that "Mark My Words!" is 20 years old.  I can't say that I would have been surprised in November 2005 to discover that I'd still be submitting posts to this site a generation later, but its a benchmark that merits citation.  I'm also not surprised that the electoral culture and partisan coalitions have evolved much more than I evolved in the last 20 years, regrettably not in a way that pleases me.  Still, thanks to those who have joined me for any part or the duration of my two decades of blogging.  With luck, I'll still be around and still posting here 20 years from now and have something to say that somebody considers worth paying attention to. 

 

 

Ranking The Ten Presidential Elections of My Lifetime

Whether it's a Presidential cycle, a midterm cycle, or those cruel off years that end with odd numbers like this one, I always get election nostalgia in November.  I recorded network coverage of most Presidential elections of my lifetime on VHS and routinely revisit those cassettes each autumn, or at least I did until I reached an impasse with my 20+ year old VCR.  Fortunately, You Tube exists as a replacement option, featuring recorded coverage from past election cycles.  I took a trip down memory lane this past month and watched a couple of old election night broadcasts.  The trip down memory lane is always a thrill, particularly testing how well your memory serves you in recalling the timing and pecking order of events.

I figured it would be a fun exercise to break down the 10 Presidential elections of my lifetime, or at least the elections that I recollect going back to age 11.  It was an even split with Democrats victorious in five of them and Republicans victorious in the other five.  My nostalgia for them doesn't necessarily break down strictly on partisan lines though.  Without further adieu....

#10.  2016

I had a really bad feeling on the eve of election 2016.  Not only were some polls getting too close for comfort, the vibe was really, really off at Hillary's election eve party in Philadelphia.  I remember warning coworkers that with polls tightening in Michigan and Pennsylvania, they should be prepared to wait until after midnight to find out who our next President would be, contrary to the conventional wisdom that Hillary would wrap things up early.  

But even though I had that sinking feeling on election eve, it never occurred to me that Trump might still win.  Even if Michigan and Pennsylvania went off the rails, there was no indication that Hillary was in any trouble in Florida, North Carolina, or Wisconsin.  Not a single poll showed Trump winning there.  It seemed as though she had every pathway to 270 electoral votes locked down.

Unfortunately for our republic, the polls were wrong.  They were weighted too heavily to 2008 and 2012 turnout models and didn't correctly measure the tectonic shift to Trump by the white working class.  When things had started to go haywire in Florida and North Carolina early in the evening, and with bellwether counties in red states like Vigo County, Indiana, shifting dramatically toward Trump compared to Romney, I knew we were in the deepest imaginable trouble.  By 8 p.m. central when exit polls showed Hillary and Trump tied in Minnesota and Michigan, I knew Trump was gonna win.  

It was a gut punch unlike anything I've ever felt on an election night.  Not only was it a worst-case scenario, it was an entirely unexpected worst-case scenario that came from entirely out of right field.  I try to never go into an election night thinking I have the country figured out, but after November 8, 2016, I've taken my own advice on that to an even further heightened level of paranoia....and apparently for good reason!

Ever since I was a teenager, I've stayed up all night on election nights, knowing votes typically keep rolling in until daybreak before a cooling period first thing in the morning.  But I went to bed at 4 a.m. the day after the 2016 election, having seen all I could bear to see and feeling an ache in my gut that demanded me to power down.  And honestly, election nights have never really been much fun after November 8, 2016.  I lost my innocence along with the country.

#9. 2024

I went into election 2024 recognizing that America was about to do the unthinkable and reelect Donald Trump even after all he put the country through and how much worse he openly promised to be if given a second term.  I recognized the multiple layers of ruinous darkness that awaited us with the world's biggest and most sociopathic con man on the precipice of governing with unlimited court-bequeathed impunity.  We've only scratched the surface of the consequences of the decision American voters made in November 2024 by reelecting this man.

And while the consequences of the 2024 election will almost certainly be more devastating than the consequences of the 2016 election, I was less distraught on election night because I saw November 5, 2024, coming in a way I didn't eight years earlier.  There's something to be said about making peace with one's own mortality in advance of the moment of reckoning, and I guess that's true with a country just as it is individually.  Dying of a house fire on election night 2016 still hit harder than dying from a long-spiraling asteroid on election night 2024.

#8. 2020

As the election results began to roll in on November 3, 2020, it was deja vu all over again.  Biden was further ahead of Trump in virtually every poll than Hillary had been four years earlier, but it was abundantly clear very early in the night that the polls were even more wrong than they had been in 2016.  I'd been warned of the "red mirage" we were expected to see in the swing states on election night because so many ballots were coming by mail, but I also knew enough about elections to sniff out problems in the early results even before the more Democratic surge of mail ballots flowed in.

Even if Biden had performed consistent with 2020 polling, that election still would have been a drag.  Deep into the throes of the pandemic, the country was already in a very dark place and the election winner would be governing an embittered country with a tidal wave of problems.  And at a more superficial level, it just isn't fun when no calls can be made on election night because of the uncertainty of ballots delivered by mail, an uncertainty that wouldn't be resolved for days to come.

And while it became a bit more clear in the a.m. hours on Wednesday that Biden was poised to come back and win, Trump set the poisonous tone in the wee hours of the night by defying the pending election outcome, declaring himself the winner, and setting up the bowling pins for what would inevitably become January 6.  It all just felt gross, especially since Biden ended up only winning by a 43,000-vote margin in three states whose electoral votes got him to 270.  And it felt even more gross as I could feel it in my bones that this monster who's darkened the country's doorstep like the Grim Reaper for more than a decade was probably poised for a comeback.  

#7. 1988

My cynicism about American politics and the judgment of voters can be easily explained by the era in which I came of age.  Whatever economic boom that was allegedly going on nationally after two terms of Ronald Reagan could just as well have been occurring on Mars for those of us living in the rural Midwest and experiencing the worst economy since the Great Depression.  It was inexplicable to a fifth-grade Mark--growing up in a staunchly Democratic home and being dealt one economic body blow after another--why voters would ever choose to stick with the same team for another four years.

It didn't help that old man Bush came across as such as a prickly smartass, much more so than the son who despite my distaste for his Presidency generally seemed affable.  It defied belief to me that anyone could compare the mild-mannered Michael Dukakis with the sneering Bush-41 and decide they wanted to vote for the latter, but heading into November 8, 1988, I was plugged in enough to acknowledge that that seemed likely.  My dad was the eternal optimist and kept predicting Dukakis victory, but my mom was realistic enough to keep him in check and prevent me from getting my heart broken too badly.

I rode with my parents as they went to the polls around 6 p.m. that night to vote.  Before we left, only Indiana and Kentucky had been called, both for Bush.  It was less than an hour when we returned and the map was full of red, with Bush already beginning to close in on 270 electoral votes.  Things had gone badly earlier than I was prepared to accept, and if I recall, it was the call for Maryland of all places that formally tipped the race to Bush.  I remember tears flowing after the Bush win, but I also remember bouncing back as the night went on and being fascinated by the states yet to come, cheering for Dukakis to save as much face as possible and score some wins.  I think he actually overperformed expectations by winning 10 states, which made him the most successful Democratic Presidential nominee since the year before I was born.  

The 1988 election did little to quell my early cynicism about elections, but it set up a more satisfying claim of victory the next go-round.

#6. 2004

This was my first "online election", and my goodness was it ever exciting.  There was a trio of now-defunct election-themed websites of all ideological stripes that I frequented daily, and along with Real Clear Politics and their poll aggregators, I barely remember anything else I did in the summer and fall of 2004.  Presidential politics was the fuel that kept my engine running, and I was refilling the tank constantly.

I was by no means convinced of John Kerry's victory at any point in that campaign, but there was no point where a Kerry win seemed out of reach, and the rather rudimentary conventional wisdom that I clung to was that undecideds overwhelmingly broke for the challenger.  When the polls were tied on the final weekend of the election, I went into November 2, 2004, thinking Kerry would pull it out.  It didn't take long after the returns started rolling in for me to realize that my preferred scenario--and the rosy early exit polls--were gonna come up short.  

Still, it was an exciting night with a lot of swing-state cliffhangers.  In the end, Kerry didn't even do as well as Gore in most of the swing states but still won more than he lost.  Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to get to 270 electoral votes, blocked primarily by a 100,000-vote Bush win in Ohio that ostensibly came down to provisional ballots that were supposed to be counted in the days ahead.  I went to my newspaper job before sunrise to fill in the election return grid before press time, but I was despondent knowing the hill was almost certainly too high for Kerry to crest.

I went home at noon as Bush was declaring victory and bragging about "earning political capital to privatize Social Security".  Then I crashed in bed for seven hours and wondered how everything had gone so wrong, realizing that with expanded GOP majorities in the House and Senate that little was standing in the way to stop Bush.  Part of me wasn't surprised that Bush began to slump quickly in his second term, and as he finished that second-term neck deep in an Iraqi quagmire and a paralyzing financial crisis, I also appreciated that it was a good thing for the Democratic Party that Kerry didn't win that one.

#5. 1992

I was most excited about the 1992 election during primary season.  I had an early favorite in Iowa Senator Tom Harkin and watched every news program, read every primary-related story, and watched every candidate debate cheering on my guy.  Alas, Harkin's campaign was over by March and I had limited enthusiasm for presumptive nominee Bill Clinton.

As is so often the case, partisan tribalism prevailed and I ultimately came around.  Still, it was never the same.  After living under Republican Presidents for most of my 15-year-old life, it took a while for me to accept that Clinton was poised to end that streak.  Further, I was never fully convinced that Clinton's victory wouldn't be spoiled by Ross Perot, who remains the biggest Presidential cycle wild card of my lifetime.  For better or for worse, I went into the evening November 3, 1992, largely at peace that Clinton was likely to win.  

And it was satisfying...sort of.  Even though exit polls showed Perot drew evenly from would-be Bush voters and would-be Clinton voters, it never really felt as though Clinton got the mandate that the Electoral College victory implied given that he prevailed with only 43% of the popular vote.  As I reflect upon election night 1992, my two primary takeaways have been that my best memories of that election cycle occurred several months before November 1992, and that George H.W. Bush's one-term Presidency holds up quite a bit better with the passage of time.

#4. 2008

I'm guessing most Democrats of my vintage would declare 2008 as their favorite election night of their lifetimes, and would probably be surprised that it's not at the top of my list, or at least closer to the top.  Make no mistake that I enjoyed the decisive, map-expanding Obama win even if part of me was a little disappointed that it wasn't even a bigger blowout.  So why does election 2008 only rank fourth of the 10 elections of my lifetime?

First, I was exhausted and demoralized by the extended primary fight where my preferred candidate (Obama) limped to the finish line, even losing the final primary of the year in South Dakota when he had already locked up the nomination but a majority of Democratic voters still came out to cast a vote of no confidence against him.  In retrospect, I think the drawn-out primary slugfest made Obama a better candidate by the time the general came around, but the magnitude of weakness it exposed toward our nominee by a huge chunk of the Democratic coalition kept me checked out of election season until after Labor Day.

Second, the financial crisis that preceded election 2008 lurked like the Grim Reaper.  I knew the election winner would be inheriting a calamity and would see his political capital drained quickly.  

Still, it was an emotional night listening to the acceptance speech of the first black President and witnessing how many others were genuinely moved by it.  If only for a moment, it felt like maybe the nation's racial sins were absolved, and that felt good for about five minutes.  But there was no lingering buzz on November 5, 2008.  There was no sunshine on the horizon or general feeling of immense satisfaction that should come after a victory that comprehensive. Compared to the last three election nights, I'd take 2008 a thousand times over, but I didn't feel as much love toward it as most of my ideology and I don't think it holds up particularly well in retrospect.

#3. 1996

I wasn't exactly loving life during my freshman year of college, but the 1996 Presidential election gave me something to be passionate about that fall.  "Passionate" might be kind of a strong word for an election in which the architect of NAFTA was running for reelection, but I had long predicted that the overreach of the Gingrich Congress would help Clinton look like a moderate, and election 1996 vindicated me.  It also didn't help that Republicans ran the fossilized and charisma-free Bob Dole as Clinton's challenger.

Nonetheless, it was exciting going into an election night confident of a Democratic blowout.  My two favorite Senators--Paul Wellstone and Tom Harkin--were up for reelection that year and their prospects also looked increasingly sunnier as the election drew closer.

I couldn't help but be a little disappointed though as the aforementioned lack of "passion" surrounding Clinton was evident by the lethargic turnout, the lowest for a Presidential election since 1924.  This led to Dole beating expectations on election night and avoiding the GOP equivalent of 1988 that I went into the night anticipating.  The polling average had Clinton prevailing by 15 points, but he ended up winning by barely half that, and ultimately losing three states he'd won in 1992 while picking up two that he didn't.  

Furthermore, there was an astounding lack of coattails to go with Clinton's big win, with the GOP actually netting a couple of Senate seats.  Democrats failed to hang onto open seats even in friendly places like Oregon and Clinton's home state of Arkansas.  Voters seemed to be making a conscious split decision and hedging their bets against Clinton's first-term agenda being realized.

Still, Clinton won.  Wellstone won.  Harkin won.  It was a great election night at a time in my life when I needed something to celebrate.

#2. 2012

Democrats were crowing about their narrow but steady polling advantage in the lead-up to the 2012 election.  They've made a habit of this for most of my adult life and have had to eat plenty of crow over the years due to their irrational exuberance.  But they delivered in 2012...big time!

An election night that was supposed to be a cliffhanger turned into a perfect storm for Democrats, with Obama knocking down steady and decisive victories in just about every swing state.  How did they do it?  By turning out black voters at a rate higher than their share of the overall population for the only time in recorded history.  By improving upon Obama's already overwhelming advantage among Hispanics four years earlier.  By maintaining shockingly steady numbers among working-class whites, especially in the battleground Midwest.  And by depressing turnout among Republicans who either couldn't abide Romney's Mormonism or didn't deem his private equity persona compatible with the rising tide of right-wing populism.

The story was even more joyous in the Senate as Democrats overperformed across the board in a substantial battleground map, winning effectively every race on the table and managing to pick up two seats in a cycle where they were very exposed going in.  They managed to hold seats in North Dakota and West Virginia at a time when support for Democrats was in collapse in both places at the top of the ballot.

2012 was what an incredible election night felt like, and I was old enough to know it at the time.  It was more satisfying to me than Obama's first win in 2008, and by no small amount.  I couldn't have predicted how quickly and how severely it would all fall apart, but at least I had one last hurrah before the American electoral landscape became unthinkably ugly.  I'm skeptical I'll ever experience an election night this comprehensively satisfying again.

#1. 2000

I was 23 years old and recently out of college when the first Presidential election of the new millennium was on the cusp of shaking me to my core.  Despite the early lack of enthusiasm by pretty much everybody, this race was getting interesting as it approached the finish line.  The polls swung dramatically after each convention but by the time of the debates had settled into an evenly split affair.  I had never experienced a Presidential election that was too close to call going into election night, and the prospect of the electoral vote going one way and the popular vote going the other seemed very real. I sensed that something special was about to happen on November 7, 2000, but I still wasn't mentally prepared for the roller coaster ride that evening afforded me.

My suspicion was that Bush would win the popular vote but Gore would eke out the Electoral College with the Florida win that most people thought seemed likely.  The opposite happened of course, with Gore finding the kind of late momentum that seldom goes to the incumbent party in an open-seat election.  I suspect this was fueled by a bunch of would-be Nader voters who got the willies at the prospect of a Bush Presidency and changed their vote to Gore at the last minute.  As a result, Gore was able to hang on to some states that Nader was expected to cost him, and thus remain competitive nationally even with Florida on the knife's edge.

The monthlong recount in Florida is what lives on in everybody's memories about election 2000, but there were a half dozen states won by less than one percentage point that year, leading to multiple cliffhangers extending well after midnight.  And while the networks' malpractice in calling states far earlier than the tabulated data justified was annoying at the time, it also lent itself to the high drama of the night.  For hours, the electoral vote was just as close as the popular vote, with Bush pulling narrowly ahead, and then Gore, and then Bush again.  I never could have imagined an election night being this exciting until I lived it, and at the perfect age to really soak it all in.

Election 2000 did not go the way I hoped it would, and in less than a year, the stakes of America's choice manifested itself in ways vastly more serious than anyone who went to the polls in November 2000 could have possibly imagined.  But even knowing all of that, I feel fortunate to have lived through the most thrilling election night in American history, and to do so as a young man who was able to ride that wave for the rest of my life.  

 

I'm pretty sure the best elections of my lifetime are all in the past.  That's not just a matter of nostalgia.  It's a matter of polarization making elections less fun, more nasty, and vastly more consequential.  Hardened partisanship also makes things less interesting.  It's increasingly rare to see candidates from one party outperform the top of the ticket by more than 1 or 2 points.  Hardscrabble working-class voters in Ohio will toss out an incumbent like Sherrod Brown, an avatar of a blue-collar Democrat, and replace him with a Mercedes dealership owner like Bernie Moreno because it's now unthinkable to deviate from your tribe.  This not only makes for poisonous politics.  It makes for boring election nights.

Even on logistical matters, the media is more conservative about making calls than they were a quarter century ago, in large part after getting egg on their face from premature calls in the past.  But there doesn't seem to be a good balance between calling Florida 45 minutes after poll closing time in 2000 and waiting five hours after poll closing time to call Rhode Island in 2024.  Again, this makes for boring election nights.

Perhaps I'll live long enough to usher in a new era of elections where things become fun again.  I'm not counting on it, but it would be lovely for both democracy and my own preferences if election nights once again resembled a civic affair and a fair-fight competition.  Who can say if that time will ever return, but I feel very confident in proclaiming we shouldn't expect it for 2028.