AMERICANA: Are these the days of miracle, wonder?

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2026

Republican voters choose Donalds: "These are the days of miracle and wonder?"   

Paul Simon said it long ago. It was a key take-away from his Graceland album, (in part) an album about the miracle of worldwide human connection. 

Could that statement be true today? The New York Times has imagined just that, in a lengthy report by Jess Bidgood which starts exactly like this:   

Blue Texas? Battleground Kansas? Both Parties Wonder if the Map Has Shifted.  

Texas. Kansas. Mississippi.

Democrats’ surprising midterm victories in states that had long seemed out of reach for them have dangled a fundamental question in front of both parties, one with major implications for the 2028 presidential election and maybe for the country’s understanding of itself: Could America’s political map, long defined by tribalism and calcification, be changing?

Since the Obama era, just seven states have really been battlegrounds in presidential elections. In the Senate, red-state Democrats and blue-state Republicans became endangered species. State lawmakers narrowed the amount of competitive House seats through redistricting. The nation was dug in.

But this year, seven of Democrats’ eight Senate flips have come in states that their party has not won in a presidential election since 2012. In another historically red state, Alaska, the Democrat is narrowly ahead but the race is uncalled. Democrats flipped House seats in districts President Trump won by more than 15 percentage points two years ago. They won every statewide office in Texas, broke the Republican gerrymander of North Carolina and even won two statewide races in deep-red Indiana.     

Has the (political) map of America shifted? In the text of her essay, Bidgood mentioned Mississippi only once, right there in the opening line shown above. Almost surely, Scott Colom's historic win in that state's Senate race hadn't been decided or declared when Bidgood created her text. 

Has the map of America changed? Has Texas turned blue? Have we moved on to Battleground Kansas?

In the most astounding question of all, has Mississippi turned purple? We're going to guess that the answer is no, for a fairly obvious reason:   

Senator-elect Colom dared to struggle and dared to win, but he narrowly beat a stunningly unskilled incumbent in a very unusual year. The political backdrop of this year involved the endless bizarre behavior of a sitting president who is mentally ill in an untreated way—bizarre behavior which was so relentless that it surely drove many voters away from the Red American team.   

That bizarre behavior isn't likely to stop, nor is it likely that Blue America's upper end press corps will ever be willing to discuss the fairly obvious medical source of that endless, unhinged conduct. 

No one knows where his (untreated) disorders will take us. We note this report, for example:

Trump Says He Wants to Get Cuba ‘Done’ Before Leaving Office

President Donald Trump told conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt that he’s not ruling out military intervention to accomplish regime change in Cuba.

“I want to get Cuba done before I leave,” Trump told Hewitt in a phone call on Thursday.

“And we have a very good, talented guy for Cuba named Marco, because Marco’s parents are from—Marco Rubio—his parents are from Cuba, as you probably know and he would love to do that,” Trump continued. “So we’re watching it very closely. It’s doing very poorly. It’s essentially a failed, you know place, nation, whatever you want to call it.”

“It’s failed and we’re watching it. I would like to be able to do it. I won the Cuban vote by 94% in Florida and I think I’m more popular now than I was then and, frankly, I’d love to be able to do it..."

And so on from there. o, we aren'''t making that up.

For the medical reason cited above, the person in question will almost surely never come to realize that his judgment and instincts are disastrously poor. He thought Iran would be a snap, and he'll likely feel the same way about Cuba. 

Domestic turmoil would likely follow as we head toward November 2028.   Back to the Magnolia State:  

Senator Colom, who dared to struggle, won by only one point. If we ever escape the force field of a president who is mentally ill, that fact suggests that Mississippi will still be a Republican state, if we ever make it that far.  

For right now, consider this. Once again, consider the passage which opened Jia Lynn Yang's news analysis in that same New York Times:   

NEWS ANALYSIS
They Made History as ‘Firsts.’ That’s Not What They Ran On.  

The first Muslim senator. The first Black woman to be elected governor of any state. The first openly gay male senator. The first Black governor of Florida. The first elected Hispanic governors in Texas and in California.

The number of “firsts” achieved on Tuesday’s elections was extraordinary. Barriers came crashing down across the country. And yet during the campaigns, the candidates themselves hardly uttered a word about being on the precipice of history. There were no exhortations to vote for a particular person because “representation matters.”   

The first Black governor of Florida? That of course is Governor-elect Byron Donalds, the incoming Republican governor of the Sunshine State, the red state which hung on. 

It was Republicans who voted Donalds in, making history as they did. Up in Michigan, that state's Republicans voted for another Black nominee, Candidate John James—but where Candidate Donalds won, Candidate James lost.   

We wouldn't have voted for Donalds or James, but we note that Republicans in two major states did. Let's move to South Carolina, which elected a Democrat, Dr. Annie Andrews, in its Senate race:

This year, South Carolina's Republicans foolishly followed the sitting president's nutty advice in that Senate race. They nominated a poorly qualified candidate. Almost surely, that helped Andrews win.

Earlier, though, South Carolina's Republican voters sent Tim Scott to the Senate. They did so in a 2014 special election. They re-elected him in 2016 and 2022. In November 2028, they may even do it again.   

(How was Scott first elected to the House? In the 2010 Republican primary, a run-off was held between Scott and Paul Thurmond, who was—yes!—Senator Strom Thurmond's son! Were those the days of miracle and wonder? South Carolina's Republican voters could have elected the son of Strom Thurmond. But they decided, way back then, that they'd go with the Black guy instead.)    

We wouldn't have voted for Scott, but South Carolina's Republican voters did. 

There's much, much more to be said about South Carolina's Republican voters, who sent Nikki Haley to the governor's mansion when she was just 39. There's mountains more to say about the larger topic of race in America. 

We're omitting the mystery ride of Frederick Douglass—his history-altering, daring train ride out of the city in which we live. We're omitting the letter the Los Angeles pen pal sent to one of our own fifth grade students long ago, in the bicentennial year. 

("You must be very proud to be growing up in the city where a great man like Frederick Douglass lived," that Los Angeles girl had written, after being told that the Baltimore girl was reading a book about Douglass. If memory serves, she and her family were living in Westwood. The letters of those antique pen pals were being written across the "racial" lines the pair had been forced to grow up with. The Baltimore girl to whom we refer, like her friends NAME WITHHELD and NAME WITHHELD, had an extremely kind heart. When we were shown the letter she'd written, the Los Angeles girl impressed us in a way we haven't forgotten.)  

This year, Democrats ran candidates who grew from the cultural soil of their respective states. It turned out very well in this, a spectacular, sprawling continental nation with a wide array of varying culture zones. 

Almost surely, the untreated disorders of the sitting president helped pull some of those candidates into the winner's circle. With respect to Governor-elect Donalds, we wouldn't have voted for him ourselves. On the other hand, we Blues haven't always been gracious enough to take yes for an answer when it comes to the way Red America's Republican voters have moved away from the past.

The state of Nebraska didn't come through in this year's Senate races. Tomorrow, without disrespecting the candidate in question, we'll consider one possible reason. We'll also recall what Paul Thurmond later said.

Democrats went with Colom.  Republicans went with Donalds.

Tomorrow: What Paul Thurmond said

THURSDAY: Sitting president reverts to form, part 2!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2026

The problem we're still all facing: David French says that Pete Hegseth should have been impeached this week. 

Beyond that, he says that Hegseth should be impeached next year, after Democrats take control of both Houses of Congress.  He gives detailed reasons for his view—and French, as you know, is smart.   

His reasoning may make technical sense. On the other hand, we give you this latest reversion to form by the sitting president:

Trump Erupts at ‘CORRUPT AND EVIL’ Democrats, Others in Flurry of Early-Morning Truth Social Posts

President Donald Trump was up early on Thursday, unleashing several Truth Social screeds to eviscerate the “CORRUPT AND EVIL” Democrats who have accused his White House of corruption.

Posting to Truth Social just before 6 a.m., Trump called Democrats “the most Corrupt and anti-American groups of political leaders and hacks,” and accused the party of calling his administration corrupt to distract from “TREMENDOUS & UNPRECEDENTED” fraud in blue states.   

And so on from there. 

Below, you see the first of five such posts by the disordered president. In his report for Mediaite, Tom Durante posts the texts of four of the Truth Social posts:  

Truth Details   

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump

The Democrat Party, lead by one of the most Corrupt and anti-American groups of political leaders and hacks in the history of our Country, and even the World, is doing everything in their power to get away from MASSIVE BLUE STATE CORRUPTION by saying, over and over again, that the Trump Administration is corrupt. It is a sound bite that they viciously use, over and over again, in order to nullify the TREMENDOUS & UNPRECEDENTED theft that has taken place in our Blue States – Minnesota, California, and others, all over the U.S.A. I, perhaps foolishly because the Fake News refuses to write about it, including in my First Term, don’t even take a Salary, worth Millions of Dollars. I am the only President to have done so! In any event, THE DEMOCRATS ARE CORRUPT AND EVIL, and I am the exact opposite! Fight hard, Republicans, or you won’t have a Country left! President DONALD J. TRUMP    

This man will function as sitting president for more than two more years. How do you think he'll choose to run the Department of Defense if Hegseth is suddenly gone?

On its face, the president's presence in office seems dangerous. It would help if Democrats and denizens of  Blue America understood the various ways our own bad judgment, and  our own dishonesty, helped send him to the Oval Office for each of his two terms.   

Sadly, we Blues helped create this dangerous situation; we aren't always perfectly sharp. And even now, our political and journalistic leaders still refuse to discuss the president's likely medical / mental health situation in a serious way.  

In the meantime, factions are already starting to form among us Blues, as factions are wont to do. Wisely or otherwise, some Dems already seem to be hoping for one, two, many trials.

Will last week's astounding electoral sweep turn into something more lasting? In significant part, Democrats were able to win so many elections, in so many locales, because the sitting president  was making an undisguised fool of himself on a daily basis, every day, for the bulk of the past year.  

That helped Blue candidates flip red states. The sitting president may still be behaving that way by November 2028, but who knows what he may have decided to do before we could manage to get there?

French says Hegseth should be impeached. It's possible that he's right.

AMERICANA: Mississippi, no longer burning!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2026

Then too, what happened in Florida: Will this unusual election year become a key part of the story? A key part of the evolving, imperfect American story?

A logger in Maine, a preacher in Kansas? An improbable giant-slayer in the former nation known as Texas? A pair of (lady) Democratic doctors flipping states believed to be red?

Will this year become a part of American history? For obvious reasons, Scott Colom's win in Mississippi is generating headlines like these, as seen online today in the New York Times:

Scott Colom, a Democrat, Wins Mississippi Senate Seat in Historic Upset
Mr. Colom, a prosecutor, will be the first Black senator elected from Mississippi since the post-Civil War Reconstruction period.  

Even there, those headlines stress the fact of party offer the fact of race. Atop the front page of today's print editions, the pair of headlines flips the point of emphasis: 

Colom Attains A Major Upset In Mississippi 
Elected As Its First Black Senator Since 1800s 

As indeed he was, at the age of 43. But which is the more newsworthy part of this upset? His party or his "race?"

Candidate Colom came through for the win. A great deal of the pain of American history is centered in Deep South states like the state from which he's emerged.

That said, we were struck last night, watching reaction on cable news shows, by the numbers of young Black Mississippians expressing their ongoing dedication to the state they regard as their home. Colom himself, at the end of his victory speech, made it clear that he was there to serve "every Mississippian—the ones that voted for me, the ones that didn't vote for me, and the ones that didn't vote."   

"Mississippi matters," he said. He didn't sound like someone who saw himself as part of a winning tribe.

There were "firsts" all over the electoral map this year. In fact, there were so many that many such "firsts" have attracted barely a word of notice. We think, for example, David Crowley, governor-elect of Wisconsin, and of Debra Haaland, governor-elect of New Mexico. 

Crowley and Haaland are both firsts, but in the flood of other such firsts, that fact has received little notice. For the record, Governor-elect Crowley will be the first Black governor of his state. Governor-elect Haaland will be the first Native American woman governor of any American state—and so on from there.

There were many firsts this year. That said, is the age of firsts perhaps reaching its end? Will that be a part of this year's story—a part of the evolving American story?

"These are the days of miracle and wonder?"  (Paul Simon, Graceland album.) In a report last week for the New York Times, Jia Lynn Yang starts trying to puzzle it out:

NEWS ANALYSIS
They Made History as ‘Firsts.’ That’s Not What They Ran On.  

The first Muslim senator. The first Black woman to be elected governor of any state. The first openly gay male senator. The first Black governor of Florida. The first elected Hispanic governors in Texas and in California.

The number of “firsts” achieved on Tuesday’s elections was extraordinary. Barriers came crashing down across the country. And yet during the campaigns, the candidates themselves hardly uttered a word about being on the precipice of history. There were no exhortations to vote for a particular person because “representation matters.”

Instead, most of them spoke relentlessly about household finances that had become impossible to manage, an unpopular war and corruption. They did not—and could not—hide their identities. But these facts were not central to their pitches to voters.

This is a major shift in the politics of identity...  

Yang goes on in somewhat jumbled fashion from there, suggesting that we live in a new and different America: Even as the sitting president "has continued insulting entire racial and ethnic groups," Yang says that Democratic candidates "have downplayed identity" in the course of this year's campaigns.   

It seems to us that Yang is hearing something which is actually there. She closes with a possible explanation for what she believes she has heard:    

[I]n a way, the long-awaited demographic turnover finally arrived in American politics this week. The slate of winners broke so many barriers in part because the country itself has become far more diverse. Since opening up to immigrants from around the world in the second half of the 20th century, the country is now generations deep into a whole new demographic reality.

Baby Boomers, who have long dominated the country’s political scene, are about 70 percent white. Millennials are around half. Gen-Z is more ethnically and racially diverse than any generation in American history. People like Mr. El-Sayed (42 years old), Sen. Jon Ossoff in Georgia (39) and James Talarico in Texas (37) have simply grown up in a different country.

The story this week, then, is not only about racial or gender demographics. It’s about the arrival of a new generation. For these Americans, diversity is not a campaign slogan. It’s a simple fact of life.    

In this portrait, America is moving away from "identity." Increasingly, talent is understood to emerge from every part of this sprawling, demographically complex nation, from every identifiable group.  

Increasingly, voters understand this fact. Increasingly, nobody cares about which group a talented candidate hails from.

Inevitably, some firsts are still more noteworthy than others. Colom's first in Mississippi is a difficult first to ignore. Last night, he promised to carry his whole state into its future, not just members of his own political or racial group.

That said, another first should perhaps be hard to ignore—and Yang mentions it in her opening paragraph.  We refer to her citation of "the first Black governor of Florida." 

We wouldn't have voted for him ourselves, but a lot of Republicans did. We think his election helps flesh out an American story we Blues have unwisely ignored.

Tomorrow: What Paul Thurmond said

WEDNESDAY: Hegseth could have been impeached!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2026

Did every Democrat want that? Pete Hegseth could have been impeached. That would have led to a Senate trial. 

Is that the way Democrats wanted to start the new political era? To us, that wouldn't necessarily seem like the best possible way to proceed. 

Other people feel very differently, as you can see below.

At any rate, eleven Democrats missed the vote, including Nancy Pelosi. Where was the former Speaker? We link you to Newsweek's report:   

Nancy Pelosi Explains Why She Missed Pete Hegseth Impeachment Vote  

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi missed a key vote on articles of impeachment against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after leaving Washington, D.C., to attend a veterans event in San Francisco, where she was receiving an award.

The House voted 211-204 on Tuesday to refer eight articles of impeachment introduced by Republican Representative Thomas Massie to the House Judiciary Committee, effectively halting the effort.  

Eleven Democrats, including Pelosi, were recorded as not voting. Eight additional votes against the motion would have been enough to defeat it.   

Pelosi's absence was notable because the former speaker has previously called for Hegseth to leave office, saying in an October 9 social media post that he was "beyond unfit" to lead the military and declaring: "He must go."   

And so on from there. 

Has last week's triumphal Blue American unity come to an instant end? More pungently, is it possible that elements of the Democratic Party didn't want to start the new regime with an impeachment of Hegseth?  

We have no way of knowing the answer to that. But as Mediaite reports, Blue American unity did take a bit of a tumble:

‘Embarrassing!’ Progressives Erupt at Jeffries and 11 Dems Who Blew Off Hegseth Impeachment Vote   

Progressives erupted at House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and the 11 Democrats who failed to show up for Tuesday’s vote on impeaching Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, allowing Republicans to kill the effort despite their narrow House majority.

The House voted 211-204 to send eight articles of impeachment introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to committee, effectively ending the push to remove Hegseth. Massie was the only Republican to oppose the procedural maneuver.

According to The New York Times, Republican leaders had initially worried they lacked the votes to defeat the measure. Instead, 11 absent Democrats handed them a victory.   

Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-CA) blasted her absent colleagues in remarks to MeidasTouch’s Pablo Manríquez following the vote.

And so on from there, with other examples of blasting noted. 

"Shameful," Rep. Kamlager-Dove said. Quite a few other people seemed to feel completely sure about their own assessments.

The eleven Dems are being attacked, at least by a certain number of people. So is the future Speaker Jeffries. 

"Embarrassing," at least one person has said. At fault, some Democrats say, is some sort of a traffic delay caused by some sort of alleged police escort.  

To us, it didn't necessarily seem like the best way to go. To others, the matter seemed different. For better or worse, this is how things tend to work.   

Did every Democrat want him impeached? We have no idea!

AMERICANA: Love thy neighbor, the Texan said!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 202\

But also, Warnock in Georgia: Every county in Texas shifted blue last week. 

Meanwhile, Kansas, home of Democratic (lady) governors, decided to let a Democratic senator escape the borders of the state. 

In those two states, religious messaging was suddenly back in the year's election campaigns—religious messaging from Democratic candidates! Also, God had a plan in Texas, the governor-elect has said:   

“I am a daughter of the Rio Grande Valley, where the people embody the work ethic and values of our great state, where no one would have imagined that one day, a little girl from the RGV would stand before you here as the next governor of the greatest state, Texas. But God had a plan, and the people of Texas had a plan, too.” 

In terms of straight-ahead Americana, that was straight-ahead American speech. When Lauren Jackson sought to explain in the New York Times, she moved it on over to Georgia: 

The Bible Chapter That Helps Explain the New Christian Left

Senator Raphael Warnock, a pastor from Georgia, has called himself a “Matthew 25 Christian” for years. It’s his boilerplate, invoked in response to questions about health care, immigration and even Fidel Castro.

In the New Testament’s book of Matthew, chapter 25, Jesus tells his disciples that if they offer care to the most vulnerable in society, they are also offering devotion to him. “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,” Jesus said, according to Matthew’s author. “I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”

It’s a famous passage of scripture...

In the recent political context, it starts with Senator Warnock, she says. That takes us over to Georgia, home state to Dr. King, who filled his first book, Stride Toward Freedom, with references to his devotion to "the love ethic of Jesus."    

Democrats have sometimes been a bit stand-offish with respect to these realms. More than once, it could be that Blue American eyes have rolled in the face of such testimony.  

In this way, denizens of Blue America have sometimes looked for ways to encourage political defeat. As she continues, Jackson starts to describe what the heck she's talking about:  

(Continued from above)
It’s a famous passage of scripture. It’s also a favorite reference for the new wave of religious Democrats heading to Washington. James Talarico of Texas, Adam Hamilton of Kansas and Sarah Trone Garriott of Iowa all wove the verses into their campaigns—and won.

If Christian nationalism is a shorthand for the dominant religious politics of the right, Matthew 25 may be the key to understanding the new religious left.   

[...]

Several of the new Christian Democrats regularly cite scripture, and Matthew 25 in particular. Talarico used it to argue “that health care is a human right.” Hamilton applied it to make the case for welcoming immigrants.

And so on from there.

Jackson is citing "the new religious left" which helped the Democratic Party romp to a 12-point win in deep red Texas, along with a 5-point win in a state which hadn't sent a Democrat to the Senate in almost a hundred years. This suggests that there may be electoral power in Matthew 25.

Lauren Jackson's role at the New York Times is a bit hard to define. Officially, she herself is "a deputy editorial director for newsletters and the host of Believing." 

In turn, Believing is "a weekly newsletter about how people live religion and spirituality now." As for Jackson herself, she's a former Rhodes scholar who grew up Mormon in Arkansas, as we Americans sometimes do.   

On its face, Talarico's win in Texas may have been most surprising of all the wins last week. He hardly looks the part of the giant-slayer who could subdue that big, brawling, deep red state.  

In this second report in the New York Times, Ruth Graham starts to explain the power, the force, of the messaging—messaging which comes live and direct from long American experience:   

What Talarico’s Win Reveals About Christianity in Texas

James Talarico, a onetime Sunday school teacher, opened his acceptance speech on Tuesday night with a Bible story.

“I’m reminded of that story from Scripture of a shepherd boy who goes up against a giant,” he told an ebullient crowd in Austin, Texas. In the end, of course, the shepherd boy defeats the well-armed Goliath with only a slingshot.

Mr. Talarico slew his own giant this week, ending decades of Republican control in Texas with a decisive win that carried multiple other Democrats in the state to victory. He did it in part by speaking easily and openly about how his Christian beliefs inform his politics, starting with the biblical command to love God and “love thy neighbor,” as the sign on his lectern read on Tuesday night.

Talarico is only 37, but he plainly knows his brief. By all accounts, he was able to speak to many different people in Texas—people who fit within a complex cultural framework.

"More than a quarter of adult Texans are self-described evangelicals," Ruth Graham notes in her report. But then again, also this:

[T]he state is also home to progressive Protestants like Mr. Talarico, millions of Catholics, and politically active Black congregations, including one in Dallas whose pastor was elected to Congress as a Democrat this week.

Mr. Talarico, an eighth-generation Texan and onetime seminarian, understood all that. His own grandfather, once a Baptist preacher, found himself on the “moderate” side when conservatives took over the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1970s and ’80s, a move masterminded in Texas. Mr. Talarico was raised in a church that has been known locally for its progressive activism for decades.   

In a town hall hosted by CNN in October, a voter from his hometown of Round Rock, Texas, pressed him “Christian to Christian” about provocative past statements like “God is nonbinary.”    

“Do you believe that the Bible is the absolute source of truth and God’s final authoritative word, even when our culture says otherwise?” she asked.

“Yes,” Mr. Talarico answered.   

We ourselves don't understand the cosmos that way. As a matter of fact, we can't say that we understand the cosmos at all! But should it bother us here, on this sprawling campus, if someone can preach the virtue of kindness the way this young candidate did? 

We Americans! Our three Great Awakenings don't get discussed much, but they're stone-cold Americana. Religious belief has worked in various ways over time. With Talarico from Texas joining Warnock from Georgia, is a new morning upon us?

We see a well-known Texan, online in today's Times, offering this overview about such matters. Try to ignore that headline:

You May All Go to Hell, and Tommy Lee Jones Will Go to Texas

[...]

Jones’s sense of humor reveals itself unexpectedly. Asked what he made of the dispute over a border wall in the Big Bend region, where Jones has spent considerable time both filming and living, he offered a characteristically terse, diplomatic response: “I don’t like bigotry, and I love people.”

Diplomatic, or inscrutable? Each reader gets to decide.

At any rate, We Blues! We've sometimes mocked religious people. On the extremely rare occasion, We Blues can almost seem to have tiny small shortcomings too.   

Tomorrow: Frederick Douglass' ride