It isnt much yet but "Donald Trump forgets about the price of eggs and tries to declare war on Denmark" is a much, much better vibe for us.

The trick is that you can't reach low-prop voters in the 3 months before the election. You need to lay groundwork far in advance.

The least engaged voters go off vibes. Harris ran a great race but the vibes of 2021-24 were awful.

(And I do argue that.)

There will be other specials that might reveal something meaningful about 2026 but this wasn't it.

If I had to name a single thing to think about here, maybe urban/rural polarization looks less bad without Trump on the ballot?

Keep waiting.

Even Elon Musk, the Second Least Subtle Human on Earth, knows that he needs to prepare Americans for hard times under his agenda.

Trump is amazing at rabble rousing but bad at the expectations game. You rabble rouse as a candidate. The Oval Office is all about the expectations game.

More specifically though, Trump will probably fall into the trap of trumpting just how good things are starting Jan 21.

His supporters will know the orders. They will parrot the talking points. But it's going to piss off a lot of voters that Everything Is Amazing Now when nothing has happened.

Trump has, in the absence of his camapign team, apparently set his sights on moving lines around on a map as his agenda, which hasn't really been a political winner in America since Polk. But you do you homeslice.

Or at least, there isn't much value to doing anything other than waking up tomorrow with full results and evaluating that.

Have you ever run numbers on the diminishing returns of running the same candidate multiple times?

Def feel like a problem with the post-2016 Democratic party is falling in love with candidates and running then over and over despite losing.

I feel like being on record so often about using the FBI to go after people sets him up to not be confirmed.

Which is just the greater argument everything ties back to: Harris could never separate herself from Biden enough. The votes were clearly there downballot for Dems to win. Harris got weighed down by an unpopular admin despite running away as much as she could get away with.

Maybe maybe no. I haven't seen a lot of evidence that Progressives stayed home over Gaza outside the clear issues in Arab-majority areas.

Harris probably suffered worse from the perception that Biden mismanaged the conflict in Gaza, and that Trump could solve it quickly. Moderate persuasion.

Just goes to show, nobody knows the issues that will define the 26/28 campaigns. Most of the issues will be new and unanticipated. It's unclear what part of the Dem platform needs changing, and what tactics aren't working.

Wait and see is the only thing that makes sense.

He's got an SoS who criticized his decision abandon the Kurds. His DNI loves Assad. His allies will want to counter Iran without angering Russia. Israel will have demands. He ran on a platform of disentanglement in the ME.

Real chance this is messy and bad for Trump politically.

Trump's 1st term was a very quiet 4 period for the world. Trump 1.0's crises were created internally. Inability to make policy ended up being a net benefit because "doing nothing and letting inertia carry the administration forward" turned into a viable strategy.

Can't count on that again.

Like it's kinda good news! Millions of people are actually persuaded by arguments and material conditions! They aren't just Team Blue or Team Red! They changed their minds but you can change them back!

Losing a Harris+1 seat by <1% is not an emergency or anything. But it does mean we're going to be waiting a little while longer for a victory.

Hopefully we see Dems pick up steam in specials after January 20.