Morning.
Quite the week in the US.
What can only be described as a blue hurricane obliterated Republicans in Midterm elections.
Democrats took both the House and Senate, flipping seven Republican Senate seats across Texas, Kansas, Ohio, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina and South Carolina.
They also picked up more than two dozen House districts. These losses reached well beyond the usual battleground states and districts.
James Talarico beat Ken Paxton in Texas, Sherrod Brown won in Ohio, and Kansas elected its first Democratic senator since 1932.
Greg Abbott also lost the Texas governor’s mansion to Gina Hinojosa, absolute beatings in territories where Republicans were supposed to win.
In Alabama a Transgendered Democrat beat an incumbent Republican in the state house.
I won’t say I predicted this, but it’s definitely not shocking given the Trump Administration’s departure from core campaign promises AND working on the cost of living (which was an evident catalyst in Mamdani’s NYC election). Prices go up, homes become unaffordable, gas soars because of an aimless war in Iran, and suddenly you have droves of young voters who are willing to embrace something more extreme.
And it certainly is extreme as we will discuss today.
But the Trump era is over now. Which allows us to zoom out a bit.
The US is in a dangerous place. There’s no denying it. And there’s plenty of blame to go around as well as outside factors accelerating this phenomenon.
Mass migration has completely changed the make up of voting districts and states.
Endless military campaigns have exhausted the public.
Political extremists and foreigners which we will dub progressive insurgents today, have worked their way into a vulnerable system and are no longer feeling they need to hide their views or intentions from the American people (or what’s left of them).
The Democratic establishment itself is being infiltrated by these individuals and what was left of their message is being entirely rewritten.
In Colorado, democratic socialist Melat Kiros defeated Diana DeGette, a 15-term Democratic incumbent.
In New York, Darializa Avila Chevalier defeated Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, while Brad Lander beat Dan Goldman. Both New York challengers had Zohran Mamdani’s backing.
These weren’t Republicans losing seats guys, they were established Democrats losing control of their own nominations.
Five DSA-backed candidates (Democratic Socialists of America) Avila Chevalier, Claire Valdez, Kiros, Donavan McKinney, and Chris Rabb — won House races, campaigning on platforms that included universal healthcare, abolishing ICE, and targeting political opponents.
The DSA’s long term goal of course isn’t political representation but to overhaul the American system as we know it.
Even Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei of Iran knew what the election result meant tweeting:
The process of the US's collapse has accelerated.
Pretty telling when even some lunatic in Iran knows you’re cooked.
I know most of us are probably tired of the trope of” this time it is so over” but there’s certainly a case to be made this time around that the stage is being set for some very bad things to play out.
Before the Dems/left leaners that read this lash out and assume I am saying this purely because there was a blue wave, I want to emphasize that this is about so much more than a fairly predictable Midterm election result.
This spans demographics, culture, race, global events, and ethnic voting blocs.
And that’s the concerning part I don’t think people get. They are stuck, in this case in the “never Trump” “take down Trump at all costs” tunnel view and the remotely moderate ones left are missing the bigger picture. They don’t know what’s in store for us if we continue to let these radical candidates steer one of the countries oldest political parties.
The ones that do see where this is going and relish in it will be your enemies down the line.
I mean that whole heartedly.
We are entering a world you don’t easily come back from, where political power can and will be cemented, making an ironic and dark mockery of the campaign slogans “Protect Democracy” and “No Kings”.
Buckle up, because we’ve got some turbulent times headed our way.
The Markets and Iran
Before we get into the heavier stuff I suppose we should touch on financial markets.
Initially markets looked primed for lower as the odds of a Democratic sweep grew on Tuesday night, but Wednesday’s session was a different story.
Gold and Bitcoin rallied. Stocks moved higher, Treasury yields fell, and oil sold off sharply as investors and traders started to weigh in the possibility of a path out of the Iran war, which is obviously a major political risk moving forward.
My read?