Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Thursday, November 5, 2026

Two More Points on the Tsunami

 The first point is really important going forward. This was "too big to rig", in that these margins are crazy. There's the race in NC-5 that's about 100 votes, but Virginia Foxx - who is a bigot and blowhard - might contest the election within her rights, but there's no way that her seat matters enough to do a January 6th. It also negated both the hundreds of millions that Elon Musk lit on fire to keep Texas and other parts of the country Republican. Gerrymanders - especially in North Carolina - became dummymanders. I don't know if this could be enough to get some sort of bipartisan bill against gerrymanders, but that would be nice.

Also, there were a ton of doomers prepared for Trump to mess with the midterm elections. Soldiers at the polling places, stolen ballot boxes, that sort of thing. Didn't happen. You should always prepare for the worst, but the doomers saying that America is a wholly fascist state can go sit in the corner for awhile. 

The second point is about Israel. Yglesias, who is Jewish, makes the case that AIPAC is done as a political force. The point he makes is that the pro-Israel lobby had two things going for it: money and the fact that people generally saw Israel as a good ally. Netanyahu pretty much scorched the latter. There is zero reason for a Democratic politician to fear that opposing Israel's conduct in Gaza and the West Bank will hurt them politically. In fact, "AIPAC" is now a powerful bludgeon to use against both primary and general election opponents. It looks like Netanyahu's position is in peril, but it also feel unlikely that any post-Netanyahu government will embrace Palestinian statehood. That should be the bright line around any future Democratic support for Israel.

The Republicans fucked themselves by embracing Trump; Israel has done the same by embracing Netanyahu.

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