With all of the Democratic wins yesterday, one of the biggest victories belong to the Geese! If you want to eat foie gras in DC, you have to stuff yourself by July 1, 2027. By a vote of 3 to 1, force feeding of geese, or the sale of products of will then be illegal. And, by the way, this 3 to 1 vote was the closest vote in the District of Columbia.
It will be interesting to see what our new mayor, Janeese (she will be, by the way, the first mayor in DC history to be named Janeese – no easy feat) Lewis George. She is an avowed Democratic Socialist (who says she disagrees with the DSA position on Israel), and has plans to do all sorts of things, including kicking ICE out of the city. I think that Muriel Bowser has done quite a good job in her 12 years as mayor, and now we will have someone with a different political philosophy, perhaps more in line with most city residents, but certainly not more in line with the president of the United States, who thinks it is he, not she, who runs the show. She is a 38 year old woman, who has been the Ward 4 member of the City Council. I know a number of Ward 4 residents, and they all speak very highly of her constituent services, so we will see what happens.
I don’t have to add my voice to the remarkable Democratic victory yesterday. There are two Senate races still to be decided, in Alaska and Mississippi. In Alaska, where as of now 72% of the vote has been counted, and Daniel Sullivan the First was ahead. But when the New York Times told its political reporters to go home and go to bed at 3 a.m., its unofficial projection was that, when all the votes are counted, Peltola will be ahead. We will see (hopefully today), but the votes to be counted are votes cast yesterday, and so far the in-person votes were more in favor of Sullivan. I am happy to report that all of the places in Alaska which we visited this summer voted blue – not a real surprise, I guess, although I had no idea of the politics when we were there.
Mississippi is the other one, and as of this morning with “virtually all” (I think that is what I read in the Times) votes counted, the Democrat Scott Colom, is 43 votes ahead. 43 votes! Here, we really don’t know what will happen. I assume there will be a recount. I did look at the vote mix. About 75% of the Whites voted for the Republican. But Black women, who constituted 20% of the total vote, voted 99 to 1 for Colom, according to exit polls. Remarkable. Unfortunately, Black men in Mississippi tended not to vote (this is historically the case); had they voted as much as Black women, Colom would have been a shoe-in.
Other contests of interest? Missouri Congressional District 2, most of St. Louis County, in a surprise vote, elected a Democrat, Fred Wellman. Even when I lived in the St. Louis County in the 1950s and 1960s, the district’s representative was a Republican, Tom Curtis.
Digression: Curtis, who had been a classmate of my mother’s, always amused me. He never seemed to vote in favor of any legislation, and he always explained it to his exasperated constituents by saying something like: “I thought that was a great piece of legislation, and I would have voted for it, but I just didn’t like Section 14(B)(ii)(3), which should have said…….” End of digression.
Texas now a blue state? Democratic candidates won not only the Senate race, but the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor and the Attorney General will now be Democrats. The Texas Congressional delegation next year will be just about the same as it has been. And that is after the GOP redistricted five Congressional delegations to make them Democrat-proof. Four of those gerrymandered districts elected Democrats.
I could go on and on, but last night was a very late night for me (and I enjoyed every minute of it), and I have to be in Rockville for a Haberman Institute meeting in about an hour.
So, let’s keep our eyes on Alaska and Mississippi today. And let’s put our eyes on Florida for 2028 – the Democrats came close in Florida, but didn’t get over the line. They say (an interesting thought) that Florida is red because conservative Midwesterners have moved to Florida, and Texas is blue because liberal Californians have moved to Texas. Maybe so.
Of course, for Democrats, the job is just starting. There is no guarantee that the Democrats will repeat 2026 in 2028. The history of the Democrats is that they know how to self-destruct. Hopefully, that will change.
