SELF GOVERNMENT: Hinojosa, Talarico emerged oh my!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2026

But can we steer clear of the backslide? In the wake of Tuesday's rout, Ron DeSantis was pulling no punches.

On Wednesday morning, in Tallahassee, the governor spoke to the press. In her report for Mediaite, Stephanie Kaloi provides videotape of what the governor said:

Ron DeSantis Goes Scorched Earth on the State of the GOP After Party’s Election Debacle: ‘Extinction-Level Event’

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) delivered a strong speech against the state of the GOP following the results of the 2026 midterm elections on Wednesday.

After first acknowledging that Florida, unlike many states previously considered safe by the Republican Party, managed to pull gains and retain power, DeSantis lit into other states and the GOP as a whole.

That's the way the report began. Here's what DeSantis said: 

"Let's just be clear about what happened last night. This is as close to an extinction-level event for Republicans in many parts of the country as we have seen probably in the last 100 years. In January, when everyone in office leaves, who were either term-limited or voted out, of the ten largest states in this union, only one state will have Republican control of their state—the state of Florida.    

"If you look at our chief rival—in a healthy sense, the state of Texas—and I would say over my lifetime, Texas has been the crown jewel of Republican politics. I think we’ve been the leader for Republicans and conservatives since I’ve been governor, but you go over the whole generation, no one holds a candle on the Republican side to the Lone Star State. And yet, not only did they lose a highly publicized U.S. Senate race, they lost everything. The governor, attorney general, all the other statewide [offices]...   

"Let's just be clear. That is going to hurt, not just for the next two years. That's something that can reverberate for the next decade or more—and if the Republican Party doesn’t have Texas as an anchor, we won’t be viable nationally going forward." 

It was (almost) "an extinction-level event," the Florida governor said. He described the way the GOP had been wiped off the map in Texas, the party's anchor state.

And sure enough! In Florida, the GOP had managed to hold on. But in Texas, the rout had been total. In Texas, it had been Hinojosa and Talarico and many others oh my! 

Across the country, new talent had emerged. In Texas, it was the endlessly slandered young seminarian, and it was this gubernatorial emergence:

Gina Hinojosa   

Regina Inez Hinojosa (born December 8, 1973) is an American politician and lawyer who is the governor-elect of Texas. A member of the Democratic Party, she has represented the 49th district in the Texas House of Representatives since 2017...

Before becoming a state legislator, Hinojosa was a labor and civil rights lawyer. She worked for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and for the law firm of Kator, Parks & Weiser. In 2005, she was part of the legal team that sued U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. She was also a member of the Austin Independent School District's school board and has worked part-time for Catholic Charities USA, Texas Rural Legal Aid, and the Equal Justice Center.

Hinojosa was elected governor of Texas in the 2026 election, defeating incumbent Republican governor Greg Abbott and becoming the first Democrat to be elected governor of Texas since Ann Richards in 1990...   

[...]

Hinojosa is the daughter of politician Gilberto Hinojosa, a former chair of the Texas Democratic Party, and Crisanta Guerra Lozano, a legal aid attorney. She is of Mexican descent.   

Whatever a person might think of his policies, Abbott has always been highly capable. This year, it wasn't enough. Hinojosa beat him by more than seven points. Talarico beat Paxton by twelve.

Across the country, life rafts of new political talent emerged on this new morning. That said, it's important for us the people of Blue America to understand who and what we (finally) put to rout.  

Miscalculation is a basic part of our flawed human wiring. It's important for us Blues to understand that this is the profoundly malfunctioning person we finally did turn back:

BURNETT (2/26/26): You've known him your whole life. Do you actually see a decline?

MARY L. TRUMP: I do, but I think it's important to remember that Donald has never been fit in any capacity. Obviously, what we're dealing with now are age-related cognitive declines. We're dealing with physical issues that the White House tries to cover over.

But this is somebody who for decades now has had serious, undiagnosed and untreated psychiatric disorders, which are only going to worsen, especially given the pressure he's under and given the cognitive and physical declines.

That's who we seem to have bested. The president who was put to rout has long been seriously disordered, in ways which went untreated. And in part due to the "obvious cognitive declines" which were also cited, his behavior has become more and more visibly nutty all through the course of this year.   

He's been putting his name on every structure. He tore down part of the White House after swearing he wouldn't.  He staged UFC fights on the White House lawn. He won't stop talking about that freaking ballroom of his, along with that freaking arch. 

He flies around on the plane which he's going to steal. He was down at the Reflecting Pool again on Monday, yammering in ways which everyone knows to be nuts.

As this year has stumbled ahead, his disordered thinking and his weird behaviors have become stunningly obvious. On a personal level, that vast disorder, which seems to stretch back to his childhood, is an obvious human tragedy. But it made it possible for lunkheads like us to finally turn him back.   

Mary Trump described the history of this vast disorder in her 2020 best-seller, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man. It's the report of a human tragedy—a human tragedy which gets its start when the subject is two years old, or perhaps as a matter of physiological inheritance.  

For extended passages from her book, you can just click here.

We Blues! That book was over our press corps' heads. Our "press corps" chose to disappear the bulk of what it said. Last Sunday, at the top of page one. the New York Times was still playing dumb about this state of affairs, even as it pretended to offer its latest report on this struggling man's endless behaviors.

(More on that front-page report to come.)   

It was (almost) "an extinction-level event," the Florida governor said. And of course, it always seems, at times like these, that the millennium has arrived—that there will be no going back to the mess from which we seem to have escaped. 

In fact, we Blues are capable of miscalculation as we move forward from here. It will fall to newly emerged talents like Hinojosa and Talarico—and Acton and Bottoms and El-Sayed and Hamilton—to show us the way past that backslide.

A whole lot of voters voted our way. Where do we go from here?

Tomorrow: The garbage continues at Fox