In Victory, Magnanimity

Oh, whom are we kidding?

MAGA and its Republican enablers were dealt an historic drubbing this week. Not even their most racist, overtly fascistic culture war BS could save them in the face of *gesturing* all of this.

As a prologue, I say “all of this” because, as you may have noticed, I don’t blog much anymore. Not because I stopped caring, but because whenever Trump is in office any sort of political commentary turns into a full-time endeavor and I don’t have the capacity for that.

Anyhow, lets start with the image I used above. I’ve seen a lot of that the last couple of days. Even here in New York – wElL iF iT wAsN’t fOr NyC bLaKeMaN cOuLdA wOn. Except Hochul won upstate, too. Those blue areas you see on state-level maps typically reveal where the greatest density of people are. People in population-dense areas have perhaps a clearer understanding of the concept of “we’re all in this together” than, say, a MAGA flag-waver in a rural area who has to burn a gallon of diesel before he hits the next house over. Just facts – corn and wheat don’t vote. People do. Maybe those people didn’t like what your preferred candidate was selling. Stop whining like weird creepy toddlers and deal with it.

So, post-drubbing Trump has retreated to his bunker where Natalie can print out for him some good vibes. He can rant and ramble about needless ballrooms, melting gold, and failed reflecting pools while his goons send out plainclothes masked paramilitary bandits to murder Americans in the streets with impunity. He can entrust the most complex, expansive, and expensive military on Earth to a buffoon whose prior job was “Fox News weekend host”.

To paraphrase something I once said about a local newscaster-turned-politician here in WNY, Pete Hegseth isn’t just unqualified to be Secretary of Defense (or “Secretary of War” as he prefers), he is barely qualified to be Pete Hegseth.

Trump can enrich himself and his family on pump & dump crypto scams, backroom deals with Emiratis and Saudis and Russians as he sharts his way through the last two lame-duck years of his execrable second term of office.

The outcome Tuesday night was beyond historic. I will let the Beltway folks debate whether this represents more a rebuke of Trump versus a genuine shift to the left. Younger people coming into their own or reaching middle age find themselves worse off than the Trump-boomer generation on its way out. This largely informs the rise of people like Talarico, El-Sayed, Mamdani, and others. After a decade of unrelenting right-wing populism with its crony capitalism, grift, nativism, racism, and anti-“woke” backlash, the rise of left-leaning populists to counter that was inevitable. Each of these people is Peter Magyar to MAGA’s Orbanism. While right-wing populism lends itself to nepotistic oligarchy, folks like Zohran Mamdani show that government exists – and should exist – to make people’s lives better.

Here are some random observations:

It was hilarious to me to see Blakeman’s pathetic, whiny ads linking Hochul to Mamdani, as if that was a bad thing. Mamdani has a 70% approval rating in New York City and his policies have little-to-no effect on people in Buffalo. Maybe that stuff works on Long Island, but Blakeman even managed to lose in his native Nassau County, where they know him best. The “Fire Hochul” signs I saw throughout suburban and rural WNY were funny to me. Fire her for what? For being a reasonably centrist and competent governor, who is not only from upstate but able to handle all of the competing interests and characters in this wildly complex place with some aplomb? Yeah, fire her for what? She’s fine. Is Joe Taxpayer in Wheatfield really that incensed about congestion pricing? All the talk about affordability can be laid squarely on the shoulders of Trump and his idiotic tariff-extrajudicial killing-war policy trifecta.

Taughrin will win in A-143. Chludzinski fought dirty against Monica Wallace and he fought dirty against Taughrin and he must have had very little to tout as an accomplishment in his term of office.

Nate McMurray lost to Rebecca Wydysh to replace Angelo Morinello in A-145. McMurray would do himself some favors by staying out of electoral politics for the time being. I can’t imagine that he should keep trying after successive various electorates reject him. He’s burned just about every bridge he’s ever grudgingly built which really shows you that while he may be a savvy businessguy, he is bad at politics.

Steve Meyer beat Mickey Kearns to become Erie County Clerk-elect. It is a ministerial role, free from policy considerations, and one’s only job is to make things work efficiently and competently. Kearns, a nominal Democrat who ran as a Republican, was fine with the “efficiency” bit, but failed at “competently”. Also, maybe the folks who run gun shows in Erie County could do a better job keeping the Nazis out.

Nick Langworthy should thank all the socialist freaks in Albany who deign to grant him a solid red district. I’m not sure why he is entitled to that, as Republicans have gone out of their way to deny Democrats the same courtesies elsewhere. He is a Trump toady and it’s a shame Aaron Gies could not unseat him, but Langworthy returns to Washington where he can rediscover perhaps an aversion to deficit spending that escaped him these past couple of years.

Speaking of former-TV-reporters-turned-failed-politicians-turned-internet-troll that guy was recently on the Vivek Ramaswamy payroll. There were more than a few western New Yorkers who felt a particular level of gratificaton at seeing Ramaswamy sink his own ship with one of the most egregiously offensive, pro-child-rape campaign ads, ever. Vivek can ride off into the sunset with his jet and his billions but never again should he threaten any population with any sort of political campaign.

Sticker magnate Anthony Constantino seems poised to replace Elise Stefanik in the house. He appears to be a wildly immature diaper baby and I’m willing to bet he lasts one term or fewer. I have no doubt his apparent narrow victory was aided by the fact that it’s an overwhelmingly red district, and even so he barely eked out a W. (Stefanik last won that district by 24 points. Constantino won by about 2. Not exactly some dramatic mandate). He gives off serious batterer vibes and his unhinged “victory speech” really solidified that.

What I see happening overall is really heartening. I don’t mean yay hooray blue team won. I mean that we have taken a very long step away from Trumpist MAGA nihilism – that ethos where the only thing that matters is to “own the libs.” Well, who owns whom now, MFers? I had Trump clocked as a nascent fascist as early as 2015. But in 2026, with gas prices historically high, a government that ceased to function except to please the dictator, unprecedented open corruption, and rank incompetence paired with performative cruelty. It’s nihilism, and people are tired of it.

Nice work, America. Let the restoration of democracy and the rule of law continue apace.