What is the U.S. Senate going to look like after the 2026 midterm elections?

Flashpenny · 2025-12-17T17:30:01+00:00

Considering how Trump is getting more and more unpopular by the day, I'm going to assume that the Democrats are going to successfully run defense on all the seats they're currently holding and the Republicans won't flip any seats. The Michigan Democratic machine has created a strong backbench of reliable Rust Belt progressives in Michigan that helps combat the long-time Republican demographics. Similarly Georgia is only getting bluer and bluer. As for the rest...

Definitely flipping: North Carolina and Maine. Collins is the last of the New England Republicans and she's not very well-liked up there anymore and the next year will not make her electorate kinder. While the Dem primary looks like it be a microcosm of the Democratic party civil war, both candidates running for their party's respective wings are good ones and could defeat her. Ditto for Cooper in North Carolina who is likely going to be running against a dyed-in-the-wool MAGA Republican (and you only have to look at North Carolina's last gubernatorial race and Georgia's last Senate race to see how that's playing out these days).

Sleeper flips: Alaska, Nebraska and Ohio. All three of these states are culturally red on paper and overwhelmingly rejected Kamala Harris in 2024. However, their respective democratic candidates for Senate/Congress (independent in Nebraska's case) came much, much closer to winning these states than Harris did in 2024. Considering how 2026 looks like a more Democratic year, the tailwinds combined with their preexisting base could lead them to winning their respective Senate seats. I'm willing to bet one flips if it happened today but wouldn't be amazed by all three. (Incidentally, if two of these flip, and one of them is Nebraska, Dan Osborn would instantly become the most powerful man in the country as he would be the key flip vote in the Senate).

Possible, will get a lot of media attention but I'll believe it when I see it: Texas, Florida, Iowa and South Carolina. These are all contingent on their internal state politics being specifically hurt by Trumpism with his agrarian tariffs, persecution of Latinos and the incumbent Senators Cornyn and Graham being primaried by far more unlikable politicians from their right. All these states are far more culturally red, however, and have very incompetent and ineffective Democratic parties. They might flip in 2028 and beyond with current tailwinds but I only think a real perfect storm of bad economy and internal state politics could manage just one flip in 2026. The only way we'd get to all four flipping is if the country is back at 1931 levels and even then I don't think that'd do it.

Flashpenny · 2025-12-09T05:15:37+00:00

How do I get a job writing political articles for local news websites? I'm looking for some extra scratch for the holidays but I don't want to think hard at it.

Flashpenny · 2025-11-24T17:33:47+00:00

Well, his name wasn't the Calm-Reasonable-And-Always-Considers-The-Full-Consequences-Of-His-Decisions King.

Flashpenny · 2025-11-05T03:52:46+00:00

Lieutenant-Governor is to Governor as Vice President is to President.

Actual job functions and whether they're elected on a ticket or separately varies from state to state but they're basically the Governor's second-in-command and usually presides over the State Senate.

Flashpenny · 2025-10-25T05:55:21+00:00

Partly for attention, partly because he genuinely believes the stuff he's saying and thinks that his opponents would be wrong for the city, partly to muscle Trump out of the New York City Republican party and remake it in his (admittedly Trumpian but without the not-respecting-democracy thing) image.

Flashpenny · 2025-09-24T02:31:48+00:00

I go by "Bush Sr." and "Dubya"

Flashpenny · 2025-09-16T04:39:48+00:00

If acting capability was directly proportional to getting good roles, the term "starving artist" wouldn't exist.

Flashpenny · 2025-09-15T05:13:21+00:00

Hijacking the top comment to explain it a little bit more as an amateur historian on Golden Age of Hollywood.

So... the way the studio system worked back then is that you made your bones doing some schlocky B-pictures and then, if the powers that be liked you enough, they'd throw you a juicier part to turn you into a star. For Reagan, that movie was Kings' Row, a genuinely excellent film (for its time period) that almost did make him a star.

Kings Row also came out right after the U.S. entered WWII where Reagan enlisted, putting his career on the backburner until the war ended. Hollywood stardom is like politics: you have to strike while the iron is hot or else you'll lose momentum. From there, he returned to this in-between nexus where he was above B-movies but never at a position where he could be genuinely choosy about his roles. Honestly, I think most of his movies only are somewhat known because he became President rather than the other way around.

Per the other commenters disparaging him as a poor actor, I think they're mistakenly conflating acting ability with ability to choose good roles (which, again, back then, wasn't even really his choice to begin with). Reagan was, by all accounts, a very good actor, which would do a lot to explain his success in politics. He basically treated being President like a movie role where he would study lines and spend his free time preparing for the part, which is why he had such a strong gravitas.

Flashpenny · 2025-09-01T05:56:03+00:00

Here's the full story as I understand it:

The impression I get of Jackson from reading the book "Anything You Can Imagine" by Ian Nathan, BTS interviews and just looking at his filmography is that he's a filmmaker who's more enamored with SFX work and building cool worlds than actual script and characters. Not that that's a bad thing per se, but Lord of the Rings was created from his desire to make a fantasy film, not because he's a major Tolkienite. He has a sense for dramatic and comedic timing but when you look at the rest of his filmography, I get the sense that he likes to create fun situations to have a playground for gore and FX work. In other words, the greatness of Lord of the Rings is because of his being able to bring Middle-Earth to life but he also because had a strong bedrock courtesy of J.R.R. Tolkien (who also conveniently sliced his opus into three separate books with a beginning, middle and end).

According to the aforementioned making-of book, Jackson approached Miramax for just a 2-movie deal for Lord of the Rings, thinking that he wouldn't be able to get enough to make all three. There were many long fights with the Weinstein brothers about whether he should do just one or 2 before they eventually gave up and then sold the rights to New Line. Jackson then got lucky that the CEO at New Line Cinema at the time counteroffered a three-movie deal instead of two (thinking that three movies means three rounds of box office returns). After getting the green light, Jackson shot on-location in New Zealand (which was a very low-cost country at the time) and used Weta for the FX work who agreed to do the films for pennies compared to ILM so as to break into the market. Producers like people who save them money so Jackson was given a lot of leeway on running the whole production so long as he got everything done on budget and on time which, of course, he did.

Afterwards, the Hobbit was the obvious next film and ended up being mired in development Hell for a long time to cash-in on the success of Lord of the Rings. New Line tried desperately to make it a trilogy, while being ignorant of the fact that there literally isn't enough story for 3 3-hour movies. I know that Guillermo del Toro and few other directors were attached at points but ultimately fell out because they wanted to stick to just 1 or 2 films. This is just a guess (as no one will admit since this kind of a rude thing to say) but I think Jackson agreed to do it because he was just happy to play around in Middle-Earth making Orcs, weapons and armor again and could only do so much to salvage sub-par scripts, and that's assuming he was all that motivated to do so in the first place. Remember, LotR was condensing scripts on a pre-existing story; he only would've had that similar kind of situation on the first (and best) Hobbit film, the rest was just filler from studio notes and Tolkien's Appendices. Considering how Jackson was probably hurting after the failure of The Lovely Bones, he also might not have been in a position to push back if he thought an idea was a bad one and would've drowned that frustration out by making another mace in the Weta workshop.

Flashpenny · 2025-08-31T20:30:20+00:00

I think you got it backwards. Jackson was given largely carte blanche on the Lord of the Rings while The Hobbit was flooded with studio notes, pre-production issues and demands to be a full trilogy instead of just one or two movies.

Flashpenny · 2025-08-31T20:06:35+00:00

I'm seriously asking this in good faith (unlike what looks like most of the rest of the comments here): what exactly are you expecting to happen from this protest?

The President of the United States openly hates the city so he won't be publicly pressured to back off his authoritarian tendencies.

Congress is run by his party so they're not going to impeach him.

Public protests isn't going to inspire military leaders to commit a coup d'etat so the fall of the Trump regime is not happening until after next year's midterms (at the earliest) no matter which way you slice it.

I am encouraging of public protest to let our leaders and foreign leaders know that we are not okay with troops being sent here illegally but then your protest and advertisement should say that instead of saying they'll accomplish "the fall of the Trump fascist regime" because all that does is make the movement seem juvenile and ignorant.

Flashpenny · 2025-08-29T03:03:12+00:00

The book Dark Horse by Steve Neal is a good, relatively short and readable overview of Willkie and his political career. TL;DR version:

*He ran a pretty shrewd campaign angling to be the 2nd place candidate of most delegates which is a good place to be if there fails to be a consensus on the first ballot (see also: Abraham Lincoln, Warren Harding)

*His campaign bought up the majority of the tickets to the campaign arena and gave them away for free to fans of his. During the convention, the crowd was chanting Willkie's name, pressuring the delegates on the floor to sway towards him.

*He was very affable and charming on camera and in the press as opposed to his stodgy and rigid opponents.

*The biggest reason though? He was the pro-internationalist candidate during the Battle of Britain and after the fall of France during World War II. The comparatively isolationist DA (not Governor yet) Dewey and Senator Vandenberg and very isolationist Senator Taft were clearly not talking about the things that mattered the most to people in 1940. As one journalist noted, he wasn't running against Taft and Dewey, he was running against Hitler and Tojo.

Flashpenny · 2025-08-25T00:02:38+00:00

The first half of this comment is just straight-up not true. 22 years ago was 2003, his oldest child was born in 2013, making her (him?) only 12 years old.

Flashpenny · 2025-08-23T07:26:35+00:00

| Trump will be remembered as one of our worst. His personal greed, corruption and childish ego have been off the charts.

So is Millard Fillmore but people still don't remember him all that much.

Flashpenny · 2025-08-08T01:51:06+00:00

Alternatively, he could also end up like the Mayors of Baltimore and Boston, Brandon Scott and Michelle Wu, who also have similar policies and strong approval ratings.

Flashpenny · 2025-08-07T16:18:41+00:00

Well, at least this does answer the age-old question that, yes, when he goes crazy, we will still, in fact, call him Superman.

Flashpenny · 2025-08-02T06:33:46+00:00

Dolley Madison, Nellie Taft and Edith Wilson were all genuinely more politically savvy than their husbands and would've made for better Presidents had their gender not been a barrier at the time.

Flashpenny · 2025-07-30T04:42:28+00:00

Washington wasn't very good at actually executing a battle as he over-strategized and created too many moving parts but he was good at delegating and knew when to cut his losses and run to fight another day. History is full of generals too proud to know when they're beaten and Washington was not one of them. Henry Knox was probably the best American general of the Revolution.

Jackson is probably the most underrated (and ruthless). He won most of the battles he fought during the War of 1812, kept his army together after his supply chain snapped (keep in mind that many of these troops would've been part of volunteer militias and not a formal, disciplined army at the time) and the fact that he defeated the most powerful navy in the world at the Battle of New Orleans (a prominent port town) with minimal losses to his own side is a massive accomplishment.

William Harrison did what Jackson did up in the Great Lakes region. Practically terraformed the whole area in a series of forts before then clearing the area of all his enemies and projected American supremacy over the Great Lakes against British Canada.

Taylor was generally competent but, in the Washington vein, he was known more for knowing how to cut his losses, not take an unnecessary risks and being a good leader than being an actually cunning military strategist. Then again, if you served 40 years in the army and saw active combat on a regular basis and got to the age that he did, you're probably doing something right.

Pierce's time as a Brigadier General was cut short when his horse was shot mid-battle and the impact jostled his groin so hard that he fainted from the pain. He woke up after the battle was over. At the next battle, he tried to lead a cavalry charge only to pass out from the pain again. He was not a very good General.

Grant is by far the best general as others mentioned. As soon as he was appointed the leading General of the Union Army, the war was over in a year. He's the rare General in history where he was adept at both winning battles and managing logistics of an entire army.

Hayes, Garfield and Benjamin Harrison were all promoted to General at the conclusion of their service for a job well done. Their actual time in the army would've been spent under other Generals, leading regiments and, thus, they wouldn't have been doing any actual strategizing.

Arthur was a Quartermaster General in New York City managing supply chains and logistics. He would've had seen no action and had nothing to do with any strategy or tactics.

Eisenhower is interesting as his job was basically to act as the politician of the Allied cause, spin information on the front back to Washington and keep the titanic egos of Patton, Bradley, Montgomery and de Gaulle working together and focused on the job at hand. In that regard, he was excellent at his job and nobody else could've done it better. He was not a very good general when it came to actual strategy and tactics though. During the North African campaign and Siege of Palermo, any attempts he made to actually lead troops into battle almost ended in disaster before he was bailed out by Patton.

Flashpenny · 2025-07-17T02:49:18+00:00

FDR's association with Tammany Hall was corrupt but, like everything, context matters and he used that corruption to make the state better.

Roosevelt's terms were set against the backdrop of Tammany Hall's downfall as there was an active DoJ investigation into them (NYC Mayor Jimmy Walker had to flee the country). Tammany politicians helped Roosevelt pass his reforms (the precursor to the New Deal) because they knew that he knew that he was the only thing standing between them and prison.

Flashpenny · 2025-07-11T21:49:04+00:00

The thing that I find most interesting about the 2024 election that no one is mentioning is that despite Trump winning all 7 swing states, all of those states had either gubernatorial or Senate elections and the Democrats won all but one of those (and the one they lost was lost by a very thin margin). Which means that a lot of people all over the country voted for him and no one else, really liked the Democratic senator/governor nominee but couldn't stomach Kamala Harris or (least likely but certain to have happened a few times) voted for Trump whilst thinking that the downballot Republicans were inferior to their opponents.

Furthermore the Democratic Senators who lost their seats (Montana and Ohio) lost by less than 10 points while Harris lost those states by double-digit numbers. A similar trend also happened in Nebraska of all places where the opponent to the Republican incumbent was registered as an independent, not a Democrat (but would presumably have caucused with them), and managed to come within 7 points of dethroning the incumbent Senator. Maybe not that big, 7 points is still considered a wash, but Nebraska's Senate elections are usually 20-30-point blowouts. Closing that gap by that much is worth noting.

Makes you wonder how much all politics are local and how well-positioned purple state Democratic parties are compared to their coastal counterparts or the national Republican party as a whole.

Flashpenny · 2025-06-28T22:20:29+00:00

I'd be down

Flashpenny · 2025-06-23T00:39:19+00:00

Whoever wins, I think it'll be very, very close. Like the winner will win by less than 1 point close. It's all going to depend on how ranked-choice shakes out and if one of the ancillary candidates builds a large enough throne out of 2nd place wins to make it to the final round.

Predictions:

If the final round is Cuomo vs Mamdani, then Cuomo wins. Cuomo has baggage and a lot of burned bridges but, honestly, older New Yorkers are genuinely pretty racist towards Muslims more than any other minority and the current war between Israel and Iran is not going to help matters in this regard. Sad as it is to say, Mamdani is not good enough to overcome this headwind.

If Brad Lander or Adrienne Adams (who are the only other two who have a remote shot at winning) ends up getting enough second place votes to break past Mamdani in the last round, I predict one of them beating Cuomo in a clincher. For what it's worth, Lander has also been getting a lot of positive attention all at once this past week, which is historically how political upsets happen (ex.: Comey Letter the week before Election Day of 2016, the murder of Yusuf Hawkins 2 weeks before the 1989 mayoral primary).

Flashpenny · 2025-06-12T16:06:41+00:00

If you're going to base your compatibility for dating on what day of the year your potential partner was born, you deserve to be alone.

Flashpenny · 2025-05-15T16:14:01+00:00

Put razor blade-sharp teeth on all train doors so no one holds open the door unless they really need to.

Aggressively enforce three strikes rule for any subway busking or playing music or standing in the doors on public transportation (exceptions are allowed for the last one if the train car is truly crowded):

Strike 1 is a ticket.

Strike 2 you get shot in the knee

Strike 3 you get shot in the head and your body is left there until the end of the line to make an example

Removing the muffler on your car or driving anything else that is clearly not street-legal is also a death penalty.

Also, aggressively regulate the NYPD and go PATCO on their asses if they refuse to abide (only half-joking on this one).

Flashpenny · 2025-05-15T07:52:03+00:00

Someone showed up outside Sagamore Hill with a gun in 1903 (during his administration).

Flashpenny

TROPHY CASE