They can be, sometimes, an indicator of things to come.
June 25, 2025
New York City Mayoral Race
Progressive Zohran Mamdani beat Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic Primary.
Mamdani, who immigrated with his parents as a child from Uganda to the US, is a self declared democratic socialist. He's a Shi'a Muslim. All of these things are setting off the populist far right.
Curtis Sliwa, founder of Guardian Angels, won the Republican primary for New York City mayor, but was unopposed. He stands no chancing of winning the general election.
September 22, 2025
Texas
Texas has an election this year, and it includes a bunch of ballot propositions, which are:
- Proposition 1 (SJR 59): Texas State Technical College funding
- Proposition 2 (SJR 18): Capital gains tax ban
- Proposition 3 (SJR 5): Bail reform
- Proposition 4 (HJR 7): Water infrastructure funding
- Proposition 5 (HJR 99): Tax exemption on animal feed
- Proposition 6 (HJR 4): Securities tax ban
- Proposition 7 (HJR 133): Tax exemption for veterans’ spouses
- Proposition 8 (HJR 2): Inheritance tax ban
- Proposition 9 (HJR 1): Inventory and equipment tax exemption
- Proposition 10 (SJR 84): Tax exemption for homes destroyed by fire
- Proposition 11 (SJR 85): School tax exemption for the elderly or disabled homeowners
- Proposition 12 (SJR 27): Changing the State Judicial Conduct Commission
- Proposition 13 (SJR 2): Increased school tax exemption for homeowners
- Proposition 14 (SJR 3): Funding for dementia research and prevention
- Proposition 15 (SJR 34): Codifying parental rights
- Proposition 16 (SJR 37): Clarifying citizenship requirement for voters
- Proposition 17 (HJR 34): Property tax exemption for border security infrastructure
November 4, 2025
The kiss of death:
And so the demented New York octogenarian made it clear to thousands that they were going to vote for New York Democratic Socialist Mamdani.
New York has actually had a prior Democratic Socialist Mayor, David Dinkins, who served from 1990 to 1993. Trump made minor contributions to the Dinkin's election campaign and reelection campaign, the latter of which failed. The current mayor of Cheektowaga, New York, Brian Nowak, is a Democratic Socialist.
Trump made another post last night:
Early indications are that this election is going to be an utter disaster for the Republican Party, setting up a potential disaster next year, and causing those who wish to evade disaster to potentially start moving away from MAGA now.
Prop 50 will be on California's ballot, which may end up countering the anti Democratic moves of the Texas legislature.
Cont:
New York State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani won the race for Mayor of New York City, becoming the first Muslim to occupy that position, and the first Democratic Socialist since Dinkens to occupy it.
It's a generational change with Mamdani defeating two elderly opponents.
It's an important mayoral seat, but nobody who has occupied it has ever been President, and for the most part, its occupants do not rise further in politics.
Democrat Abigail Spanberger took the Virginia Governor's race, causing it to go from Republican to Democratic control. She's the first female governor of Virginia. Democrat Mikie Sherill took the Governor's race in New Jersey.
Democrats are going to take Texas' 18th Congressional District, Houston, but they already held that.
Proposition 50 passed in California.
The Democrats won everywhere they were running. It's a dope slap in the face for Donald Trump.
November 5, 2025
So Donald Trump, since I know you're watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up.
Zohran Mamdani.
Cont:
A race we weren't following was that for Virginian AG. T he race was won by Jay Jones. Jones made headline news because some absolutely horrible things he said about another member of Virginia's legislature came to light. They were awful.
Jones beat the Republican incumbent Miyares, which suggest a pretty significant move away from the GOP in Virginia. Jones is a practicing African American Catholic, which is interesting in various ways.
Notable in the races last night Hispanics began to pull away from the GOP. Catholics had been attracted to the Republican Party for various reasons that I've noted here on numerous occasions, the principal one being that they're social conservatives as a rule. The interesting thing here is that the GOP, which only recently attracted them, has treated them much like the Democratic Party treated ethnic minorities, which is to say to ignore them and more particularly, to offend them. Merely being Hispanic is putting people in the target zone for ICE and the GOP has broken out into outright open feuds of race recently, with some figures in the pundit class being openly racist.
This gets back for a moment to noting that Jones is a Catholic. The populist far right is strongly Evangelical, and Evangelicalism has attracted a lot of American Hispanics. But the nature of the Evangelicalism and MAGA has not been sorted out and now, in the wake of Charlie Kirk's assassination, the pot is really boiling. Quite a few on the populist far right have barely hidden contempt for women working, which most Hispanic women have to do by default. Some MAGA pundits are openly racist with Nick Fuentes now openly going after J. D. Vance, a Catholic married to an Indian, on the basis that he's a "race mixer".
This doesn't explain last night's results overall, but it fits into it. The price of things, a major factor in Trump's win, is now starting to be a major factor in a retreat from the GOP. The brutality and lawlessness of the Trump administration is disgusting many people. The outright stupidity of some the things the Trump Administration says is taking a toll. The Government shutdown is being blamed, rightfully, on the Republican Party.
The 2026 election is a long ways off but so far the Administration and MAGA's reaction to everything is to double down on it. That probably won't change, but what might is the extent to which Republicans who don't have to go down with the ship begin to abandon it. Some already have. Marjorie Taylor Green, who was a MAGA fanatic, now is an opponent, for example. Thune is suddenly, as of yesterday, sounding more moderate.
But you can't moderate a demented narcissist surrounded by sycophants.
Related threads:
Labels: 2025 Off Year U.S. Elections, Donald Trump, Mike Johnson, New York, Politics, Predictions, Republican Party, Social Democracy, Socialism, Zeitgeist, Zohran Mamdani
