Thus far, the U.S. mid-term election year of 2026 is defined by two competing trends: Trump’s stochastic attacks against the election process itself vs. a surging Democratic party on a special election win streak.
Trump Muses About Nationalizing Elections
Last week POTUS Trump guested on Dan Bongino’s podcast and said something about “we ought to nationalize the voting” that got quite a bit of attention, helping Bongino to draw 3.3 million viewers on Rumble.
Bongino, returning to podcastland after his tenure as Deputy Director of the FBI ended in December, got Trump talking about elections:
President Donald Trump: I won in a landslide. I won every swing state. I won the popular vote by millions. I won everything. I won a thing called counties, the counties that were, it’s such a big vote.
That’s why the map was entirely red when you looked, it had two little purple lines or two blue lines on each side, but it was all red.
And counties I won by 2,750, think of this, to 550, 2,750 to 550. It’s becoming a very good count because it’s accurate. You know, it covers the whole country. It’s like a landslide.
But you’re never gonna have that again if you don’t get these people out. These people were brought to our country to vote, and they vote illegally. And the, you know, amazing that the Republicans aren’t tougher on it.
The Republicans should say, “We wanna take over. We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many, 15 places.” The Republicans aught to nationalize the voting.
And then we have states that are so crooked and they’re counting votes.
We have states that I won that show I didn’t win. Now you’re gonna see something in Georgia where they were able to get with a court order and the ballots, you’re gonna see some interesting things come out. But, you know, like the 2020 election, I won that election by so much. Everybody knows it.
This is the latest of many Trump attacks on American election integrity. The New York Times chronicled his transgressions:
In March, Mr. Trump signed an executive order that tried to make significant changes to the electoral process, including requiring documentary proof of citizenship and demanding that all mail ballots be received by the time polls close on Election Day. But that effort has largely been rebuffed by courts.
On social media, Mr. Trump has pushed for even more drastic changes. In August, he wrote that he wanted to end the use of mail-in ballots and potentially the use of voting machines.
Trump’s Truth social screed about mail-in ballots is worth a peek just to get a feel for Trump’s paranoid style in full bloom.
Tulsi Gabbard Teams Up with the FBI
Last week Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) sent the FBI to search a Georgia election center, per the NYT:
F.B.I. agents executed a search warrant on (January 28) for an election center in Fulton County, Ga., seeking to seize ballots in a significant escalation of the administration’s efforts to investigate a jurisdiction that President Trump has continued to criticize over his 2020 defeat in the state.
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The search warrant authorized F.B.I. agents to search for all “physical ballots from the 2020 general election” in the county, according to a copy viewed by The New York Times, as well as all ballot images produced by scanning ballots, all voter rolls from that year, and all tabulator tapes, which serve as a kind of voting machine receipt for election results.
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In an unusual twist, the prosecutor listed on the warrant is not from Georgia, but the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, Thomas Albus. It is unclear what would connect prosecutors in Missouri to Mr. Trump’s longstanding complaints about how the 2020 election in Georgia was conducted.
The raid featured a special guest star, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, who is running her own separate investigation into the 2020 elections (“she’s doing her own thing” one administration official said), but came along to watch the FBI raid in Georgia, per The Guardian:
The review led by the office of the director of national intelligence (ODNI), authorized on the basis that it is assessing election integrity, has been focused for months on potential vulnerabilities in voting machines and the possibility of foreign interference.
As part of that effort, Gabbard has been briefing Trump and senior White House advisers every few weeks. Officials said Trump directed her to travel to Fulton county, Georgia, so she could observe the FBI executing a search warrant on Wednesday.
The raid itself was overseen by Andrew Bailey, the deputy FBI director, who was also sent by Trump to Georgia.
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The ODNI review was initially overseen by the Director’s Initiatives Group, or Dig, a taskforce that Gabbard established within her agency, which focused on vulnerabilities with voting machines used in the 2020 election, according to a person familiar with the matter.But Dig was dissolved late last year after it misidentified the person who placed pipe bombs outside Democratic and Republican party headquarters before the January 6 Capitol riot, the person said. In December, the justice department charged a different individual over the pipe bombs.
CNN chronicled six different explanations from the Trump administration as to why DNI Gabbard was down in Georgia.
There’s also a super-double extra incredibly top secret whistleblower allegation against Gabbard, per the WSJ:
A U.S. intelligence official has alleged wrongdoing by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in a whistleblower complaint that is so highly classified it has sparked months of wrangling over how to share it with Congress, according to U.S. officials and others familiar with the matter.
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The complaint was filed last May with the intelligence community’s inspector general, according to a November letter that the whistleblower’s lawyer addressed to Gabbard. The letter, which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal, accused Gabbard’s office of hindering the dissemination of the complaint to lawmakers by failing to provide necessary security guidance on how to do so.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for Gabbard’s office confirmed that the complaint concerned Gabbard but dismissed it as “baseless and politically motivated.”
Today the NYT had some new details:
Members of Congress were briefed this week on a whistle-blower report about an intelligence intercept of a call between two foreign nationals discussing a person close to President Trump, according to people familiar with the material.
It is not clear what country the two foreign nationals were from, but the discussion involved Iran. The whistle-blower report was drafted last May, around the time the Trump administration was deliberating about a strike on Iran. Mr. Trump ordered a military attack on Iranian nuclear facilities in June.
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The whistle-blower accused Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, of limiting who could see the report and of blocking wider distribution among the nation’s spy agencies, according to people familiar with the complaint.People who have reviewed the whistle-blower report have differed about the importance of the underlying intelligence, which was collected by the National Security Agency.
As always, it’s challenging to parse disputes between Trump, Gabbard and the incumbent intelligence agency staffers. Neither side is trustworthy or well-intentioned and both are constantly pre-occupied with nonsense.
While the specific investigations may go nowhere and most of Trump’s various musings about what “Republicans ought to do” don’t amount to much, the net effect is pretty damaging.
Some might even call it a stochastic attack on American elections.
American Election Officials Quitting in Droves
Politico has the latest on the impact of Trump’s vociferous election skepticism on the people who monitor American elections:
Increasingly violent threats toward and harassment of public officials — from county clerks up to the president — are driving more and more of those figures out of their jobs, a particular concern among local election officials, who have struggled with attrition for years.
In the years since the 2020 election, roughly 50 percent of top local election officials across 11 western states have left their jobs since November 2020, according to a new report from Issue One, a bipartisan organization that tracks election issues and supports campaign finance reforms.
The election administration world has been grappling with a significant brain drain since the one-two punch of the 2020 pandemic and threats arising from conspiracy theories surrounding that year’s election. But the new report — which focuses on election offices in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming — is particularly concerning because it shows departures haven’t tapered off, marking a 10 percentage point uptick since the group’s 2023 report survey.
The new data on election officials comes at the same time as another report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue — shared first with POLITICO — found a more than 200 percent increase in violent rhetoric toward public officials when comparing Oct. 2021 to Sept. 2022 with Oct. 2024 to Sept. 2025.
As dispiriting as all of the above may be, Bill Scher at the Washington Monthly reassures his liberal readers it will all be ok:
Trump’s call for a partisan takeover of the electoral apparatus understandably triggered reciprocal panic in Democratic circles about voter suppression and outright vote stealing. Considering how far Trump was willing to go to steal the 2020 election—from disparaging mail ballots to pursuing dubious litigation to egging on an unruly mob hellbent on obstructing the Electoral College count—every American committed to free and fair elections must remain on the highest alert until Trump has fully left the political sphere.
But what Trump precisely said, how the White House is cleaning it up, and what congressional Republicans are doing, suggests less of a coordinated plan to commandeer the midterms and more of a Republican Party in disarray amid a rising Blue Wave.
…Why—aside from respect for democracy—should Republicans refrain from voter suppression tactics? Because, as I detailed for the Washington Monthly four years ago, 21st-century voter suppression tactics have been repeatedly shown to flop.
An academic study analyzing 10 years of strict voter identification laws found that they had “no significant negative effect on registration or turnout, overall or for any subgroup defined by age, gender, race, or party affiliation.” And we have anecdotal examples of Democrats cannily exploiting attempted voter suppression by Republicans to galvanize base turnout. Look at President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election or Senator Raphael Warnock’s 2022 re-election in Georgia, which came one year after the GOP-controlled state government enacted a flurry of restrictive voting policies, prompting Democratic outrage that was wisely channeled into get-out-the-vote efforts.
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Last March, the president issued an executive order imposing restrictive voting rules on states. The Justice Department has been trying to piece together a national voter database from unredacted state voter roll data, which the Brennan Center says is an “attempt to force states to remove voters from the rolls based on incomplete and likely inaccurate information.” Last week, FBI agents, with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard creepily looking over their shoulders, seized 2020 voting records from Fulton County, Georgia. Trump, based on what he told Bongino (“you’re going to see something in Georgia”), is planning to use the records to further his gaslighting claims that Joe Biden stole the election in Georgia when we have plenty of evidence that Trump was plotting the theft. And considering how Trump has already abused his power with National Guard and ICE deployments designed to punish Democratic-run cities, we can’t discount the possibility that he will try to send armed agents to election sites with the intent of intimidating voters.But, as with any bully, these real and potential acts of force and intimidation mask underlying weakness. A president simply doesn’t have the power to take over a Constitutionally designed, decentralized, 50-state managed election system. And as with any bully, the way to respond is to have your eyes wide open, but also have no fear.
Now About that Blue Tide
I posted last week about the 31 point swing away from Republicans in a Texas State Senate special election.
This weekend saw a special state house election in Louisiana go the Democrats’ way:
Louisiana Democrat Chasity Verret Martinez defeated her Republican opponent by double digits in the special election Saturday night for a state House seat in a district President Trump won by 13 points in 2024.
Martinez won 62% of the vote compared to 38% for her Republican opponent, Brad Daigle, according to unofficial results from the Louisiana Secretary of State.
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Martinez’s win is not a flip since Democrats already held the seat, but Republicans had seen it as a prime pickup opportunity since Mr. Trump won the district three times. Her win was a 37-point swing from the 2024 results, although the district has voted for Democrats at the state and local levels previously.
Trump’s collapsing popularity is likely playing the biggest role in these Dem wins, since the contending elements within the party have come to no accord.
AIPAC Steps on a Rake
A special election in New Jersey didn’t have much partisan significance, since there was no hope of a Republican winning the race, but it was significant in terms of the Democrats’ internal battles over Israel.
Responsible Statecraft wrote it up:
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, better known as AIPAC, launched a $4 million campaign to discredit former Rep. Tom Malinowski, a moderate Democrat who has entertained the idea of placing conditions on aid to Israel. The group hoped that its investment in countering Malinowski would help elevate more staunchly pro-Israel candidates in the race. But the effort appears to have had the opposite effect, bolstering the campaign of left-wing candidate Analilia Mejia, who has called Israel’s military campaign in Gaza a genocide.
Now, with more than 91% of votes tallied, Malinowski and Mejia are nearly deadlocked with roughly 28% of votes each. AIPAC’s preferred candidate, former New Jersey Lieutenant Governor Tehana Way, is in a distant third, winning 17% of votes counted so far. The winner of the Democratic primary is widely expected to win the special election against Republican candidate Joe Hathaway.
Politico had more on the reaction to the election results and AIPAC’s role:
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee uncorked $2 million to try to sink a mainstream Democrat in a multi-candidate special House election primary in New Jersey — and it’s infuriating mainstream Democrats and some of the pro-Israel lobby’s supporters.
“It’s pissing people off,” said Steve Schale, a longtime Democratic strategist and former Obama campaign adviser, who described it as “maddening.”
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AIPAC’s interventions in the New Jersey special election for Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s House seat was the first test of the group’s muscle ahead of the 2026 primary season, when they are expected to spend millions on Democratic primaries across the country. AIPAC’s super PAC is expected to weigh in on House primaries, starting in Illinois’ March primaries. Democratic candidates and strategists are also bracing for them to potentially wade into contentious Senate primaries in Michigan and Minnesota.And their first foray of 2026 backfired spectacularly.
Matt Bennett, the co-founder of the center-left think tank Third Way, called their efforts “one of the greatest own-goals in American political history,” and warned that “It hurt everybody in the moderate movement” as they head into a competitive primary season.
Thais kind of blowback illustrates why AIPAC is using stealthier strategies in many races.
AIPAC road-tested its stealth approach in a 2024 House primary in Oregon that pitted Susheela Jayapal, the sister of Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), against physician Maxine Dexter. Dexter raised relatively little money throughout much of her campaign, then saw a last-minute deluge organized by AIPAC coupled with outside spending through super PACs, which themselves turned out to be funded by AIPAC. The timing of the donations meant that there was no meaningful transparency before voters went to the polls, and Dexter expressed a mixture of ignorance and umbrage when her opponents suggested the money actually came from AIPAC.
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the same pattern is emerging in three competitive House primaries in Illinois. The pieces of the puzzle can be found in the campaign disclosures of House candidates Laura Fine, a state legislator running in Illinois’s Ninth Congressional District for the open seat vacated by Rep. Jan Schakowsky on the North Side of Chicago and its northern suburbs; Donna Miller, a Cook County commissioner running in Illinois’s Second District to replace Rep. Robin Kelly on Chicago’s South Side and southern suburbs; and Melissa Bean, a banker and former member of Congress making a comeback in Illinois’s Eighth District in the western suburbs of Chicago. Bean is also running for an open seat to replace Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, who like Kelly is running for Senate.Putting the pieces together, it is clear that AIPAC is again funding super PACs in order to secretly funnel money to its preferred candidates, while also coordinating donors to give to those candidates directly.
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A look at Miller, Fine, and Bean’s filings betrays an impressively coordinated operation at work. Sixty-five donors who previously gave to AIPAC or its affiliated super PAC United Democracy Project (UDP) have given to both Miller and Fine. These donors delivered $88,066.66 to the Fine campaign. They also contributed $119,746.33 to Miller. A whopping 237 former AIPAC/UDP donors have given to both Miller and Bean, contributing $396,288.01 to Bean and $429,083.00 to Miller. Forty-four of these donors have given to all three candidates, sending a total of $208,753.33 to them.
Time will tell if AIPAC can get back to their winning ways in American elections.
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I would like to see an end to the use of voting machines, their only advantage is in making graft (Mostly kickbacks) and fraud much easier.
Hand marked paper ballots with a clear chain of custody, hand counted in public gets my vote.
Amen. Machine counting only introduces opportunity to cheat.
Tammany Hall begs to differ.
Machines, touchscreen computerized voting, vote total aggregation by computer (remember all those MS Access databases?)…really any form of automation benefits the bad actors as much or more than it benefits honest election officials and voters. There can still be cheating with hand marked and counted ballots, even with mandatory ballot retention for recounts and forensic purposes, but there can be cheating at scale with more automated processes. And the only thing it buys you is having the results reported more quickly. But how important is that? How many election winners take office immediately after the election? For processes like elections we should do things the inefficient, expensive way: multiple days for voting, voting places within easy commute distance from every large neighborhood, adequate staffing so there are no long lines and delays, etc. If our pretense of democracy is to have any reality underlying it, it should very much be worth the extra cost and time to see it done right.
I mean, paper ballots never impeded copious amounts of fraud throughout history. All that changes with computer ballots is that fraud has to take a different axis (possibly making the old fraudsters incapable of doing so, but empowering new prospective fraudsters to enter the fray). The real solution to fraud? Back to Athenian democracy: just have it all decided by lottery! (The Greeks were sensible enough not to leave generals and admirals to be chosen by such means, though.) Of course, that might come with its own set of problems…
Disagree. Go look at UK elections. You can have end to end supervision of ballot conveyance and tabulation with paper ballots. This is simply not obtainable with computers or machine scanned ballots.
What is/are the historical levels of fraud at the ballot box.
I have not looked at it for a long time but, election fraud was really never a big thing – more a microscopic thing – until it became a shrill cry from some Chicken Little.
The sky is falling where?
Sure thing – elections should be easily validated and secure.
The reality is – fraud is not and has not been a thing – where the real attempt at fraud and voter suppression is coming from is, from those squawking the loudest from their roost. Maybe be they are not chickens but, they are chicken sh$ts
Depends as to where. I suppose in the US besides the political machines in Chicago and the like it wasn’t much of a deal. On places that are superficially democratic (i.e. much of the Third World) ballots haven’t been much of a protection, afaik. I didn’t want to move the goalposts obviously so in that sense I think Yves is correct in principle. The easiest way to fraud, in my view, is simply coercing voters to vote a particular way (something in theory prevented by secret ballots, whether digital or otherwise) or simply stealing elections outright through juridical means (see Bush Jr.’s Florida gambit).
My point was simply that ballots are not necessarily a guarantee of non-fraud by themselves (see Latin America’s long woes with elections for a small sample of every single conceivable kind of fraud possible) and what guarantees election fairness is all the system devised around the ballots. That said, if there is no trust in whomever oversees the digital elections, more people would have to be convinced to “look the other way” when doing shenanigans with paper ballots.
True dat.
Congress for a long time has tried to strangle the USPS and Louis DeJoy removing the optical character read sorters (delayed mailing) and trashing the availability of rural post offices.
In the USA, the post office is the place for whatever court documents service must through.
So, for a long time, the nibbling away at collateral systems for placing and widenng access to vote has ben going on –
Take the Georgia 2020 Presential vote. They tabulated the count by machine and then supported that with a hand count that was virtually dead on identical.
Here in California we submit paper ballots which are then tabulated by machine. Any close calls can be challenged and manually counted by hand.
Considering all the ballot measures, local & state propositions, Judges, school boards, etc. hand counting is completely impractical. Especially considering the deterioration in the number of workers willing to take on this assignment.
Ending the use of voting machines seems like a dangerous idea at this point in our country.
Thanks Nat. Interesting times.
Re:AIPAC: That taking their money is now something that needs to be hidden and denied by Dem candidates seems like progress of a sort.
Re: Tulsi: She remains an enigma. I remember first knowing much about during the Syria stuff, and she seemed like a genuine hope for those of us on the anti-war left. Since then I’m not so sure. A lot on her CV suggests spook-adjacent and I wonder if she has been coopted by (or was always part of) the CIA-Palantir blob. Puzzling.
Re: Georgia: I’d guess they hope to gin up something from this, and try to use it as a wedge to undermine/”nationalise” elections. It might work!
If this is the best government that money can buy, then I want a refund!
The election fraud issue can be a winner for Trump if he plays his cards right. If he advocates for paper ballots hand counted in public, then he can sweep the field. Making the case that anything electronically mediated is ipso facto corruptible, eliminating same in elections will come across as All American.
I am seeing more signs “on the street” that the issue of the emerging American Panopticon is gaining traction among the public. CBDCs have become a subject of conversation in several venues I have been to recently. The dogs really don’t like this new brand of dog food.
Stay safe.
I don’t know why no-one mentions the Help America Vote Act, passed in response to the Bush v. Gore (2000) Supreme Court decision:
If I understand correctly, no State will stop using electronic voting machines as long as that statute is valid. I’ve distrusted the law since it was passed (following 9/11 there were many laws passed that I don’t trust). Why haven’t I seen any movement pressing for repeal of it?
The voting machines are extremely vulnerable to
manipulation, and this has been well known in security circles for 20 years. I listened to presentations on hacking voting machines in the late 2000s at a large conference. These are scams on top of scams. Sure, the vulnerabilities could be exploited by foreign actors, but the fact that known problems haven’t been remediated for decades – such as by going with publicly hand-counted ballots – shows the whole concern with voting machines is disingenuous.
As I recall one of the big controversies of the 2020 election was some MAGA observers seeing election workers put a box under a table. These were hand counted ballots. They made a big stink. It turned out to be perfectly legit.
In recent history there has been no remotely significant voter fraud in counting or voting. No one has ever produced any evidence of actual vote machine hacking. I’m sure many are hopeful the Fulton raid will produce the desired results. Your comment offers no actual evidence
Anyone with knowledge of vote counting in, say Chicago, 100 years ago knows voting fraud was rampant within “machine controlled” big cities. Those machines were organic and were extremely vulnerable to manipulation.
You think that can’t happen now a days?
People can keep a close eye on election “officials” when they have to do their jobs in full sight. Machines, on the other hand, can be hacked in the dark, so to speak.
Just as old time cheating vote counts developed into riots between meat people, so can machine cheating involve riots between robots?
It’s a brave new world full of the same old Terrans.
I would not be surprised to see ICE agents and border patrol agents at voting station checking the identity of any tinted American that turns up to vote. You prove your citizenship or else they will arrest you and have you shipped to some center on the other side of the country. Of course they do not have the numbers to be in every voting station in the country so I would expect them to be stationed in swing States and the like.
Even the threat of finding Stormtroopers at one’s polling stations will depress turnout of less Ayran-looking voters.
Unless the Black Panthers or La Raza decide to get involved. He–. I would not be surprised to see the Tongs out in force.
And no, the Triads are not devotees of the Third Way.
In which case you get martial law
How is the spectre of ICE Goons “monitoring” voting places much different from martial law? Either case is an example of “Law and Order” being imposed from the top, which is the antithesis of democracy.
Stay safe.
What Black Panthers?
Periodically and predictably, a bunch of camera-hungry opportunists don black leather jackets and berets and try to take over the mantle of The Party, only to disappear quickly.
As Adolph Reed has pointed out, the Panthers couldn’t save us then, so why should we expect them to magically reappear and do so now? Even in their heyday, between COINTELPRO, local Red Squads and shady characters looking for a vehicle for their own hustles, the Panthers never had the influence, support and impact that has since been projected on to them by Leftists. And please don’t tell me about Fred Hampton: one young martyr, no matter how brave or brilliant an organizer, does not a revolutionary movement make. Likewise, the Panthers’ breakfast program, which has been hyped all out proportion to its prevalence at the time. There was much to admire about the Panthers, and they sure had style, but they are as much a cautionary tale as a source of inspiration.
We’re on our own, kiddies, and mythologizing supposed past glories ain’t gonna cut it.
As I see it, myths like that of the Black Panthers are teaching stories to spur the younger cohorts to exceed their guardrails. Belittling and shaming legitimate culture heros does no good thing for the morale and resolve of the young. Indeed, it denies the very concept of ‘The Hero’ to the young. What then is left but cynicism and nihilism?
I counter with the competing myths of the defeat of the Fascist Axis during WW-2. While the real heavy lifting was done by the Red Army, the competing myth of the Greatest Generation has been used and abused to engender and support the present day cohorts of America H— Yeah super patriots. Convince the youth that their granddaddies really won the war all by themselves and you pave the way for the very politically useful Myth of Invincibility.
At the end of the day, it will be necessary to have a counter narrative up and running so as to take maximum political advantage of the disasters coming to a town near you soon. I feel certain that the Right has this idea fully internalized and is preparing to act when the stars are aligned. The Left must be similarly prepared or it will become a footnote in history. One way to prepare the people for this turning is to popularize the very concept of resistance and struggle.
Stay safe.
You’re absolutely right about these current-day cos-players, but I’d like to push back on a couple of counts.
I had a nerdy high school math teacher who revealed his surprising political sympathies–especially for a boys’ prep school–when he invited any of us who were interested to join him in a visit to the local Panther headquarters in K.C. on a Saturday in the spring of ’69. On that day, a dozen of so of us assembled in a school parking lot to allot rides and get directions. Before we left, our teacher gave us some preparatory advice about driving carefully and acting respectfully, and off we went. It was in the northeast part of KC, not far from the then-active Municipal Stadium where the Monarchs had played, and the brand-new Royals were learning the ropes.
I remember we were given a tour, including where the breakfasts were served, and that we were encouraged to ask questions, which some of the boys older than I did. I do wish I remembered that interchange in any kind of detail because it was quite a remarkable occasion, all thanks to our teacher and the open hospitality of the Panthers. I did buy one of those fantastic Huey Newton posters with him sitting on a wicker throne holding a trident in one hand and an M-1 in the other. I do have a vague recollection that we were told about Huey’s plight and that our purchase money would go to help his legal troubles and to support the breakfasts.
Readers will be relieved to know my second point is shorter because it’s an endorsement of what ambrit writes above. There is a strong tradition on the Left that sees the rise of revolutionary movements as purely a product of the forces of history,, but I lean more to the an@r*hist side of things with the propaganda of the deed and the critical importance of myth and ritual to create social solidarity rather than relying on class alone. I’d also strongly agree with ambrit that the time is ripe. Many of the narratives seeking to capture hearts and minds are already out there, well-funded and pushed for nefarious ends.
I guess not that much shorter.
Myth and ritual have their place, but, politically speaking, they are empty unless embedded in the struggles of the material world and working people. The Panthers themselves, as open Marxist-Leninists, recognized this. I don’t think it’s an accident that David Hilliard, a prominent Panther leader in the Bay Area, went on to work as an organizer for the SEIU, or that the West Coast Longshoreman, led by the great and now mostly forgotten Harry Bridges, provided union jobs to ex-Panthers. When the Party collapsed – and it was not just COINTELPRO and local law enforcement harrassment that led to its collapse – it was often the labor movement that took in those for whom the Party was a life commitment.
Personally, even though (like you, Henry, I believe) I am of that generation of young white radicals that venerated the Panthers at the time (and still admire their courage and Internationalism), and had friends and acquaintances in the Party, over time I’ve come to shift my deepest respect and admiration for the now mostly-forgotten people who built the CIO and the great industrial unions in the 1930’s and ‘40’s. Those people, composing a multi-ethnic, multi-racial movement, planted and nurtured a giant tree that provided shelter for millions over decades. Where is the myth and ritual for them?
Maybe the Democrats can bring in Bubba to keep an eye on ICE at the voting stations. This time the grandstanding near the booths would not even be illegal.
OK, I get it the potential is there for voting fraud. However, so far there has been only suspicion. That suspension was engendered by the biggest vote fraud of all time, Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election. Only it is all flipped. Trump put it in everyone’s head that the vote was rigged but it was Trump that was trying to rig it.
All serious investigations have shown only miniscule voting irregularities that were basically mistakes and when there was outright fraud it was mainly with republican votes. Never the less there is a huge amount of concern generated over this potential issue as evidenced by comments on this site. This is a lot of koolaid consumed over something that hasn’t happened. That is playing right into the hand of those who are actively working on voter suppression not vote rigging.
Vote counting was working just fine in this country. Trump has poisoned the water and the american electorate, led by the nose, is too ignorant to put it back together.
Malinowski has conceded to Mejia. https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/elections/former-rep-tom-malinowski-concedes-to-analilia-mejia-in-nj-11-primary/ar-AA1W4nLy
I live in NJ-11. I don’t know what other factors contributed to Mejia winning. None of the earlier poll numbers I’ve seen had Mejia as one of the front runners. I doubt significant numbers of people who switched their vote from Malinowski due to the negative ads went for Mejia. Shades of Mandani?
The district is fairly wealthy and educated with median household income $141,429, and median $667,900 for owner occupied housing, with 60.1% population with bachelor’s degree. It’s also diverse. My town of 50k is a little less than 40% Asian (mostly Indian), and 10% Hispanic (which I suspect is an undercount).
Thanks for the update. I agree that “shades of Mamdani” is as good an explanation for Mejia’s win as any (well, that and AIPAC kneecapping Malinowski).