Celebrating Our Victories

Political Notes

by Jon Fuhrman

Tuesday, November 10. Here we are, a scant 5 days after our historic win last Tuesday, and instead of exuberant unity we’re kvetching about the “surrender” of Senate Dems agreeing to reopen the government.

First, let me go back to Tuesday’s election. We’ve celebrated the marquee wins in Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia and California. Yet still I think the national media is too focused on the top line and not fully appreciating the depth of the victory.

I want to highlight two sets of observations. I noted in my last column that in the Virginia House of Delegates we flipped 13 seats, the equivalent of about 60 seats in the US House. I went back to analyze their PVI scores – the Partisan Voting Index scores that rank the district nationally in comparison, not to party registration, but to their actual voting pattern. For example, an R+8 score would place the district about 8 percentage points more Republican than the national average (and thus much more difficult for a Democrat to win or flip).

Looking at those 13 seats we flipped, two had D+1 or D+2 scores, meaning they were more Democratic than districts on average. But all the others were more Republican; in fact, three of the districts were R+7, and three were R+8, meaning they were quite a bit more Republican than the national average, and we still flipped them.

If one extends that analysis to the U.S. House of Representatives, and asks how many incumbent Republicans are in districts that are R+8 or less favorable for them (or more favorable for Dems), the answer is 61. So if the Virginia results were to play out nationally, there are 61 incumbents GOP Representatives who are looking at a real chance of losing office. This is well above any of the estimates being talked about in the national media and something that might well influence future votes.

Secondly, let’s look at Ohio – not a state that anyone had been talking about, but they had regular local city and school board and county elections on Tuesday. I’ve already talked about Cory Bowman’s loss (he’s JD Vance’s step-brother) in Cincinnati, but the Dems also swept all the City Council races and flipped control of the Hamilton County municipal court. Hilliard, a suburb just outside Columbus, now has an entirely Democratic City Council and School Board, and Dems now have a majority of the township trustee positions (the township includes more rural areas outside the city proper). In the city of Hudson, a suburb of Akron, 3 Democrats won their City Council races, and the Republican President of the City Council resigned the next day. In Akron, voters flipped control of their school board and elected a relatively far left progressive Democrat to the City Council. LEAD Ohio is a non-profit group that grooms and trains local activists to run for office; 77 of their program’s graduates were on the ballot in November, all over the state, and 59 won their elections. Ohioans Against Extremism is a civic organization that flags and tracks extremists candidates, particularly those running for local school boards who were endorsed by groups like Moms for Liberty or Ohio Value Voters. They flagged nearly 90 troubling candidates, and 75% of those candidates were defeated, again, all across the state.

This represents real grass-roots breakthroughs, and in a state that Trump won by 11 points in 2024 and 8 points in both 2020 and 2016. It provides pretty strong evidence that the Democratic resurgence is not limited to the coastal blue states; rather, it suggests a nation-wide tidal movement against the Trump administration that carries down to a generalized anger at local GOP candidates as well.

So, enough for the good news. On to the sort of good news – the government seems about to reopen. But at what cost?

Yes, it’s true that Senate Democrats didn’t get much of a commitment on the top-line issue of health care premiums. And that issue is enormously important and impactful for millions of American families. They did, however, get the SNAP benefits restored for the rest of the fiscal year, by approving three appropriations bills that had relatively widespread bi-partisan support (out of a total of 12 bills that cover all parts of the government), with an extension until January 30 for funding the rest of the government. Also, the extension includes language prohibiting the firing of any of the federal employees laid off during the shutdown, and a guarantee of full back-pay for all employees.

That’s not nothing. But some progressives are bitterly attacking the Democratic Senators for giving up the fight for healthcare, even using provocative language like sentencing poor people to die rather than fight.

I’ll go out on a limb here, but I think the Senate Dems were exactly right to get what they could and reopen the government.

The crux of the issue is that the GOP was, and is, perfectly happy to have the government closed, to have SNAP benefits terminated and to force government workers out of their jobs by virtue of long-term “temporary” layoffs. Critics are unfairly, and I think even irresponsibly, ignoring the real “pain points”, particularly the end of SNAP benefits, that as of November 1 became excruciatingly real for many people.

It was perfectly clear, even after Tuesday’s electoral trouncing, that the Reps were not going to compromise. In fact, they saw no need to reopen the government ever! When do we think they would have given in? In a week, a month, three months, six months? What if we went a whole year with the government closed? What would happen? We would have government by executive fiat, with President Donald Trump the only functioning arm of the government. That, in fact, would be his fondest dream.

So we got what we could for our most vulnerable voters -- permanent resumption of SNAP (by approving the full-year appropriations for the Ag Dept.) and a promise of a vote on our top-line issue of health care subsidies. In fact, this is a huge win for us. We know we won't win the health-care vote, but we were never, ever going to get the Reps to give in on that one. It may be incredibly depressing, but they have the power, and we had nothing for which they wanted to trade. Our best long-term strategy is to let them vote against the health care subsidies and then challenge them on that in November 2026.

Lastly, our work is not done and the excitement is not over for this year. On December 2, there will be another special election for an open Congressional seat, the 7th CD in Tennessee. The former Republican incumbent, Mark Green, resigned to pursue opportunities in the private sector. He had held the seat since 2019, winning with 60% margins in 2022 and 2024 (the lowest margins of any Republican Congressional winner in Tennessee).

No question this election would be a heavy lift; the district has an R+10 PVI index, just beyond our best flip in Virginia. But the DNC National Chair was in Tennessee last weekend walking precincts, so the national Dems are doing a full-court press on behalf of the local candidate, Aftyn Behn. She is a member of Tennessee’s House of Representatives, so she has some significant name recognition and local base.

Is a win here likely? Well, no, but neither were 16% wins in Virginia, or 12% wins in New Jersey, or 60% state-wide majorities in Georgia. If Behn wins, it will surely complicate life for Speaker Mike Johnson.