Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has called six federal by-elections for December 7, to help augment his majority in Parliament. One of them is in Laurier-Sainte-Marie (our neck of the woods, Canadian-wise). Which means that as we toddle around, we're seeing a lot of campaign posters like this one. Kind of cool to run across the current Leader of the Free World on the streets of Montreal. We cats PURR.
The world is agog that the state of Kansas has elected its first Democratic Senator in nearly 100 years. And while votes are still being counted, Kansas might end up with a Democratic governor, attorney general, and secretary of state. How agog-y can you get?
Thing is, Donald Trump wasn't the guy who broke Kansas for the GOP.
No, that honor goes to former Senator and then Governor Sam Brownback, who implemented a half-baked, tax-and-spending-cut scheme that ended up in chaos. (The Kansas Supreme Court had to order the legislature to meet its constitutional obligation to fund education.) Things unraveled for the Republicans from there.
Brownback begat Democrat Laura Kelly, a moderate former Republican, as a two-term governor. He begat the beginning of the a slow shift in the makeup of the state legislature. And now we have not just Laura Kelly and Sharice Davids, but Adam Hamilton and Cindy Holscher and an almost-flip in one of the three remaining Republican-held Congressional districts. Pretty amazing.
Florida should pay attention. They've passed a Brownback-on-steroids constitutional amendment to abolish property taxes, and the impact on the entire range of municipal services will be immediate. It will turn out to be a long-term loss for Republicans as classroom sizes explode, schools, libraries, and municipal parks close, streets aren't cleaned, public hospitals are forced to cut services, etc. etc.
How will the hapless governor-elect Byron Donalds navigate all this? We cats wait and watch — but because we believe in government and the idea that we're all in the same boat together, we HISS.
(IMAGE: Original illustration for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by W.W. Denslow, 1900)
Quite an election in New York this week. Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Tish James both steamrolled to victory, and Democrats snagged supermajorities in the state legislature. And everyone's excited that Cait Conley ousted the weaselly Mike Lawler in NY-17.
In our neck of the woods, NY-21 is still uncalled by the AP, although the repulsive Trumpster Anthony Constantino, with his doughy, punchable face, is claiming victory. If Blake Gendebien, our candidate in that district, ends up losing, we hope he'll run again. Blake carried every one of the district's counties on the Canadian border, and with a 250-plus Democratic majority in the US House — maybe as many as 265 — Constantino won't have anything to do for the next two years except bomb-throw. (He certainly isn't going to DC to legislate.)
Meanwhile, the outgoing occupant of that House seat, Elise "Elsie" Stefanik, has caused a big kerfuffle in the New York Republican Party, which is in, um, disarray anyway. (Everybody hates everybody else, including party chair Ed Cox. It's a glorious sight.) Elsie poured gas on the fire when she told The New York Post that her GOP primary rival Bruce Blakeman's loss to Hochul is what happens "when you have a low-energy campaign with limited resources that lacked apparatus."
She added, "I know feelings are raw...so I will cut some slack because...I don't know from experience, as I have never lost any of my seven elections." Meeeee-OWWWWW! Claws out much, Elsie?
Blakeman went nuts.
"Elise Stefanik is a selfish, do-nothing politician that didn't lift a finger to help Republican candidates in New York this year," he tweeted in a rage. "She had one moment of glory in what was otherwise an unremarkable career."
We're obviously not fans of either Brucie or Elsie, but we'll give Blakeman this: He's absolutely right that Stefanik did nothing to help during the general election. Many times this fall, we found ourselves asking where Elsie was — she dropped her bid for governor, and basically disappeared. Is she even going to bother to show up in Washington for the House's lame-duck session? Keep an eye on that.
Alas, New York is probably not rid of Elise Stefanik — she'll come back like a herpes sore, maybe running for Senate in 2028. But her road will be bumpy: She's tainted by Trumpiness in a deep-blue state, and her failings are many. Her pet project in Congress was electing more Republican women to office. But come January, the number of GOP women will be down to 20 or fewer, while the number of Democratic women in the House will surge pass 100. Lame! We cats PURR.
Several versions of this image are going around the interwebs, but we like this one because it has Toto (even though, yes, he's a dog). An excellent way to celebrate the fact that Kansas will send a Democratic Senator to Washington for the first time in nearly 100 years.
Adam Hamilton is a pastor. And he was a perfect fit for his state — although he was obviously helped by how simply terrible his Republican opponent Roger Marshall was (and is). At the same time, observers need to acknowledge that despite the MAGAts' insistence that the Democratic Party is the party of anti-Semites and commies — Abdul El-Sayed's name comes up the most often — many, many of the candidates we chose to run in races across the country were moderates.
And in many cases, openly and unapologetically devout. A Canadian Anglican priest we follow had this to say:
"One of the remarkable things about the midterms was the number of clergy elected as Democrats. It did my heart good to see progressive Christians like James Talarico being elected. The Right doesn't have a monopoly on Christianity. The Left isn’t against religion. We’re against the weaponization of it.
"As a Christian, I think it's beautiful to see Christians, Muslims, Jews, secular humanists, and atheists working together in government. It's what America was always supposed to be about. Christians like Talarico are more representative of the faith I was raised in than anything MAGA has shown me." We cats agree, and we PURR.
We cats need to catch up on our sleep. But first, here are some thoughts on the 2026 Blue Tsunami:
Dave Wasserman from The Cook Political Report, who is not given to overstatement, tweeted just a few hours ago. "I've seen enough," he said. "Generational wipeout." (Excellent!)
Back in March, the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee boldly issued a list of 26 House seats they were targeting as ripe for the picking. Smugly, they insisted they would work to flip 'em all. The list included Democrats like Derek Tran in California, Jared Moskowitz in Florida, and Marcy Kaptur in Ohio. Well, guess what: They haven't flipped a single one. The Democrat either has won or is leading in the nine races that haven't been called yet. (#SAD!)
We are hearing rumors that Amy Acton did not answer Vivek Ramaswamy's concession call. (Delightful!)
It's hard to choose among the Republicans that we're happiest to have booted out of Congress, but North Carolina's Virginia Foxx and Indiana's Victoria Spartz are battling for first place on our list. (Cat fight!)
Finally, the most touching aspects of the election were the messages of support from other countries. People posted on social media from Canada, Germany, Norway, and the UK, to name a few. It's so nice that they understand that Benedict Donald is not us. (We cats PURR.)
Well, everybody, Election Day is almost here. There are lots of promising prognostications out there right now, from folks with long political resumes who are truly worthy of respect. But of course none of their predictions will come true if we all don't get out and vote.
Republicans like to make the process as endless, unfair and inefficient as possible. If you didn't early vote, please do it tomorrow, no matter how long it takes. Let's knock 'em off the table! We cats PURR.
The New York Times and Siena University published new set of Senate polls today, and goodness gracious. Adam Hamilton in Kansas is up five points, James Talarico in Texas is up by seven, and Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Troy Jackson in Maine are leading by six. In Alaska, Mary Peltola is just ahead by one. (Come on, Mary, you can do it.)
And Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is leading Mike Rogers in Michigan by 11 points. So can someone explain why Haley Stevens chose today of all days to politically self-immolate?
El-Sayed has been ahead of Rogers by more modest margins in other surveys, so this one's a real eye-catcher. But whether El-Sayed's ahead by that much or not, the fallout for Stevens today has been epic. Her Congressional staffers are resigning, folks who worked on her campaigns are ripping her to shreds on social media, and people are telling tales that they had resolved to keep under wraps even as her long, drawn-out unraveling tested their patience.
A lot of the stories involve Stevens's fiancé, Jason Turkish, who she only met after Michigan's August primary. Now they're engaged, and he's the only one whose political advice she'll follow — all of it bad. Can you imagine throwing your entire career away for... this guy? Barf.
Stevens's behavior is inexplicable, of course, and would be in any year, but in 2026 — with the very survival of democracy on the line — it's unforgivable. But it helped El-Sayed raise $1.2 million in four hours this afternoon. Backfire of the year? You be the judge. We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.
