MONDAY: Has Mississippi dared to go Blue?

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2026

A less-than-clearcut report: Did Scott Colom, to his vast credit, "dare to struggle, dare to win?" 

Putting it a different way:

Has the great (Republican) state of Mississippi really gone Black and Blue? 

Votes are still being counted! Watching cable, we've seen a succession of murky explanations of how many ballots remain uncounted. This very day, at the Washington Post, the news report excerpted below leaves a bit of confusion in place:   

Mississippi Senate ballot deadline looms, as Democrat’s lead remains steady   

Mississippi’s edge-of-the-seat Senate race will come into focus this week as Democrat Scott Colom maintains his lead over Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R) on Monday morning, up by 2,574 votes in the unofficial tally, according to the Associated Press.    

Tuesday is the deadline for counting provisional ballots, known in Mississippi as affidavit ballots, which are required if there is any question about a voter’s status at the polling place. Tuesday is also the deadline for receiving absentee ballots by mail, as long as they were postmarked by Election Day.

[...]

The trends have been in Colom’s favor. The highest number of outstanding votes Monday were in Hinds County, a blue stronghold around the state capital of Jackson, with another chunk remaining in nearby Holmes County, which is even bluer.

Michael Watson (R), the secretary of state, said on social media Sunday that there were slightly more than 2,800 absentee ballots still out. About 12,767 outstanding affidavit ballots had been processed, Watson said, and about 77 percent were accepted.  

And so on from there. Meanwhile:

Ooh boy! The murk and the gloaming infest that account!  This is why we say that:

Friend, Candidate Colom is ahead by 2,574 votes. The inquiring mind may want to know many ballots remain to be counted, but that's where the mystery creeps in! 

There are said to be "slightly more than 2,800 absentee ballots still out." But how many "outstanding affadavit ballots" potentially remain to be counted?  

As best we can tell, that passage gives you no way to know. Werewolves of London again!

AMERICANA: Did Texas produce the biggest change...

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2026

..in a spate of ch-ch-ch-changes? Did Texas produce the biggest change on an evening of ch-ch-ch-changes? 

As we ponder that opening question, just consider this passel of facts:

The state of Texas—a large, distinct and distinctive state—has a very large number of counties. In fact, there are 254 such jurisdictions in all. 

No other state has that many counties! In terms of population, these are the half dozen smallest, or so Wikipedia says:

Smallest Texas counties by population
Loving County: 64
King County: 265
Kenedy County: 350
McMullen County: 400
Borden County: 631
Kent County: 753

That is correct! According to Wikipedia, the 2020 census shows Loving County with a population of 64 persons—or possibly people or souls, depending on who does the telling. 

On the other extreme, the population of Harris County (county seat, Houston) is now estimated to be a bit over 5 million people—officially, a bit more than 4.7 million as of the 2020 census.

Texas is a large and extremely varied place. We did a week at the Houston Punchline at some point in the 1990s, not knowing that our dates coincided with those of the Houston Rodeo itself. 

Had we ever heard of the Houston Rodeo? We don't think we had. We'd certainly never heard of the  "trail rides," nor have they been forgotten.

As we begin a journey through Americana, we offer a background report:

Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo  

The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is the largest livestock exhibition and rodeo in the world. It was originally created to promote livestock production and agriculture in Texas, providing a space for farmers and ranchers to showcase their work. Over time, the event has grown from a small regional exhibition into one of the largest cultural and economic events in the United States. It includes one of the richest regular-season professional rodeo events. It has been held at Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas, since 2003... It was previously held at the Astrodome.

...The event is 20 days long. It is kicked off by the Downtown Rodeo Roundup held near Houston City Hall, the Downtown Rodeo parade, and the ConocoPhillips Rodeo Run – a 10k and 5k walk & run and the World's Championship Bar-B-Que Contest.    

And so on, at length, from there.

This event is part of the sprawling creature known as Americana. During the week when we were headlining right there at the Punchline, we did in fact make a point of going to view what must have been the Downtown Rodeo Roundup held near Houston City Hall and/or the Downtown Rodeo Parade. 

We saw long lines of bewildered cattle parading down the wide boulevards beneath Houston's gleaming skyscrapers. On a weekend afternoon, we also went to the rodeo itself, at that time at the Astrodome. 

Upon our arrival in Houston one night, we don't think we knew about the rodeo. But we danged sure didn't know a lick about this:

(continuing from above)
Trail Rides 

From 1952 [to the present], traditional trail rides have been a part of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. The trail rides have grown past 2,000 participants managing over 100 wagons across roughly 1,300 total collective miles. The trail rides range in size from a dozen to over one thousand people who ride on horseback or in horse-drawn wagons from various areas of the state to Houston...

The trail rides last from a few days to three weeks, depending on the distance they cover...Participants can bring their own provisions, or, in some cases, purchase meals at a chuck wagon that is also following the trail.

The rides converge at Memorial Park in Houston on Go Texan Day, the Friday before the livestock show and rodeo begins. The city closes some roads downtown to allow the riders to reach their destination safely.   

We didn't know from the trail rides! On our first morning, we emerged from our impossibly chic Houston hotel to see, to our substantial surprise, a large number of covered wagons moving through the streets, or were they camped in a nearby park?. 

This too is part of our sprawling country.  Our question:

Did Texas, this famous state-unto-itself, provide last week's biggest surprise? Of all the nation's ch-ch-ch-changes, were these changes in Texas the biggest?

How Democrats Turned Texas Blue

It wasn’t just that James Talarico won the U.S. Senate race or that Gina Hinojosa defeated Greg Abbott, the three-term governor. Up and down the ballot, Democrats swept Texas, winning all of the top statewide offices. They also flipped the Texas House of Representatives.

Every county in Texas shifted left, voting more Democratic than two years ago when President Trump was on the ballot. Rural counties like Jefferson in the Piney Woods region of deep red East Texas, Lubbock just south of the Panhandle and Midland in the Permian Basin, known as the epicenter of Texas oil and gas, all moved to the left. So did suburban counties outside Houston and Dallas. Even big cities, already centers of Democratic power, saw further gains.

Redistricting efforts undertaken by Republican state legislators to redraw a more favorable map left their own candidates vulnerable in a Democratic wave election. Democrats won four of the five districts that Republicans had redrawn to favor them, and they also reversed many of the gains Republicans made along the border in 2024.

In the race for U.S. Senate, every single county in Texas shifted toward Democrats. In total, Democrats won 28 counties that voted for Mr. Trump in 2024.  

Does the New York Times have it right? If so, of the 254 counties, every single one shifted left! 

That doesn't mean that every county in Texas voted Blue. But if the New York Times has it right, they all swung in that same direction.   

As we noted last week, Governor-elect Hinojosa is a second-generation state political figure. She won her race by a full seven points. James Talarico, 37 years old, strikes us as a more surprising figure. 

A bit cherubic, 37 years young, the candidate didn't look the type to bring down Big Red. But much like the even younger Dr. King a great many years before him, he was talking Love Thy Neighbor with substantial fluency. 

Even as the TrumpWorld mutts and the mutts at Fox slimed him in every conceivable grimy fashion, Talarico rolled to a 12-point win over the candidate President Trump himself had selected.  Reportedly, the way the former seminarian talked was said to have rung a lot of bells with many of the state's Hispanic voters. 

Plus, four of the five rejiggered House districts ended up falling to Dems! Was the sweep of Texas the day's biggest change? Also, will this large change hold?   

Texas isn't just like your own state, unless you live in Texas. But it's part of the sprawling American tableau and it's full of American people.

Tomorrow: The governors of Kansas

SELF GOVERNMENT: We've been thinking of Kevin Drum this week!

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2026

He was an American journalist: We start with a speculation about the late Kevin Drum:  

He would have loved to see this.   

Last Tuesday night, he would have loved to see the election results roll in. Almost surely, he would have loved the beauty of the messaging which had emerged from the emerging talent—from the new, newly scrappy faces and names who were suddenly winning elections. 

("Talent" is a word we rarely use. We're willing to use it to describe the week's emerging public figures.)   

As reported here by his wife ("with a heavy heart," in a Health Update), Kevin left this life in early March of last year. It was a gloomy, challenging time for the forces of Blue America.   

Roughly a month before his passing, as his health continued to worsen, Kevin himself had included this note to his readers in this brief Health Update:

"Take care of Donald Trump for me."

So said the late Kevin Drum. 

In Tuesday's elections, it may seem that the electorate did take care of the sitting president. But large political gains can quickly turn into political backslides. How do we find a way to move (successfully) forward? 

If only briefly, Kevin resumed normal posting after the update to which we've just linked. As we continue to think about his work, here's the start of an overview he offered on February 15, 2025—four weeks into the sitting president's second term:

Madness

Before Trump was elected, I figured there were a a range of possibilities if he won.

1) On one end: he's a blowhard. He says lots of stuff he never follows up on.

2) On the other end: He's dead serious this time. He's going to deport millions; put tariffs on everyone; take a sledgehammer to DEI; and nominate lunatics to his cabinet. It would be a bloodbath, but the courts and Republicans in the Senate would rein in the worst of it.

But it's been so much worse—though not on stuff he ran on. Deportations have been low and he's backed off on a bunch of tariffs. But DEI has turned into a jihad against anything that so much as mentions Black accomplishment—or women or Hispanics or anything else. USAID has been demolished for no reason and the medical research community is being torn to pieces. The entire federal workforce is being given a haircut with a blowtorch, with no apparent rhyme or reason. Elon Musk is tearing through federal agencies doing God knows what—he won't tell anyone...

Kevin continued from there at some length. As you can see from part of that excerpt—"Deportations have been low and he's backed off on a bunch of tariffs"—much of the "madness" in question hadn't started at that time.

"Madness" is a colloquial term. As readers of this site will know, we think the recent state of American politics does involve issues of (literal) "mental illness."  (Also, we regard a diagnosable "mental illness" as an actual illness—often, as an illness with a physiological basis.)

Tragically but dangerously, we assume that the recent state of our politics involves issues of "mental illness." Once again, the New York Times has taken a total pass on that obvious possibility:

It did so in last Sunday's front-page pseudo-report about the recent weird behaviors of the sitting president. To peruse that report, just click here.

Sad! The "front-page report" was, in fact, on the front page of that day's print editions. But most people read the Times online, and in the kind of braindead behavior in which this paper often engages, the very existence of that lengthy report went unrecorded in the site which the Times headlines as "Today's Paper." 

(We know—you think we have to be joking. But go ahead—click this.)

Sad! For readers who work from the "Today's Paper" site, that relatively toothless report didn't even exist! Persistent haplessness of this type has impeded American attempts at self-government during the (more than) 28 years in which we've maintained this site.

(Then too, there's what the later Wittgenstein alleged about the persistent haplessness of the heralded work performed by the western world's most heralded alleged thinkers! We began to wonder about that possible version of systemic error during our first year out of Aragon High. To see what Professor Horwich wrote for the Times, you can click right here.)

How can we, the American people, build a better, stronger polity? 

The sitting president remains in office. He's now decided to elevate Stephen Miller. How might we the people of Blue America build better outreach to our millions of neighbors and friends? 

How can we build that more durable outreach? The late Kevin Drum left this life at the age of 66. He'd typed and typed and typed and typed. That question remains unanswered today.   

We've been thinking of Kevin this week. We assume that he would have loved what happened on Tuesday night. We assume that he would have liked the messaging which had emerged from a lot of emerging talent. 

The leading authority offers its bio of Kevin right here. The authority starts by saying this:   

"Kevin Drum (October 19, 1958 – March 7, 2025) was an American journalist."

 

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