Let’s do a little tidying up around the YSDA office before we get out of here for the weekend.
Here are some observations about this week’s events that didn’t merit (or I just didn’t feel like) writing a whole blog about.
Money can’t buy you votes. Okay. Okay. Maybe in Cook County it still can, but as a rule it’s not what a lot of League of Women Voters types make it out to be. A lot of rich Republicans gathered their receipts and lined up at the local GOP office even before it opened on Wednesday morning to see if they could get a refund. Republicans and affiliated shadowy organizations spent about three times more than Democrats and their affiliated shadowy organizations. Elon Musk blew about half a billion dollars on the GOP, which is more than he spent for lunch one day last week. And three Wisconsin-adjacent billionaires (two of them actually live in Illinois) pretty much funded the entire Tiffany campaign. When money can’t buy public offices what has this country come to? What can we count on? What is even real any more?
Wisconsin is not yet a blue state. Tommy Thompson likes to get his name in the paper so he said that it’s all over for his party here. We’re not red or even purple, but bright blue says the irrepressible Tommy. His finer point was that we were blue before he was governor and now we’ve become blue again since he’s been gone. I’m sure he didn’t mean to imply that only he could turn the state purple as if he were a big vat of political grape juice, but there you have it. Not so fast, TT. Trump won here just 24 months ago and our Congressional delegation is now split right down the middle with one U.S. Senator and four House members from each party. On the other hand, it’s true that Democrats have dominated statewide races since 2018. But before we officially change colors let’s wait and see what happens in the Senate race coming up in 2028. (Yes, the damn thing never, ever ends.)
DSA on the rise. With Nithya Raman’s victory in L.A. there are now at least five major American cities with Socialist mayors: Los Angeles, New York, Washington DC, Seattle and Providence, RI. Wisconsin has more experience with that than any other state. Milwaukee Mayor Dan Hoan was the most successful Socialist politician in U.S. history. He served from 1916 to 1940 and was preceded and succeeded by Socialist mayors. All of them did a hell of a nice job. Milwaukee gained national recognition for high quality services and frugality, just the opposite of what we’re expecting from this new generation of the hard-left.
Didn’t get the memo. Incoming House Oversight Committee Chair Robert Garcia told Trump administration officials and hangers on that they’d better “lawyer up.” Garcia is from California, which really is deep blue, so maybe he can be excused for having a left coast view of reality. His take is somewhat different from the tone struck by people who actually won in purple and red places and therefore delivered the majorities that will put guys like Garcia in position to blow this for Democrats two years hence. Moderates like James Talarico in Texas and Rebecca Cooke here in Wisconsin say they are okay with some investigations, but they don’t want that to define the next two years. Instead, they want to focus on the cost of living issues that were the main reason for the blue wave. There has to be some balance between reestablishing the norms and accountability that Trump has dismantled while not going so far as to lose the plot that got Democrats where they are.
You really hate data centers/AI that much? We here at YSDA have been, if not bullish on data centers and AI, skeptical of the widespread panic. This feels like hysteria to us. Sure, there are some legitimate concerns about the local impacts of the centers and about jobs related to AI. But none of those things looks to be insurmountable. In fact, the latest jobs numbers are robust. But Democrats came to power in part on promises to regulate data centers (and our economy) back to the Stone Age. And the markets are responding with hysteria to match. The day after the election they soared, apparently on the theory that Trump would be there to stop anything nuts. Yesterday they plummeted perhaps once they realized that a lot of statehouses went blue and they could actually do more damage. Democrats need to take a deep breath and look at the numbers. Yes, data centers are unpopular, but they were nowhere near a top of mind concern for voters. Let’s do some sensible regulation and move the hell on. Do NOT tank the economy over this, people.
That’s it for this historic week, readers. I’m going bow hunting now. See you next week.
