One More Elsie Post Before She Fades Away

By Zamboni

Remember how we recently reminded everyone of Elise "Elsie" Stefanik's epic fail on her pet project, electing more Republican women to Congress? Ah, those were heady days for our girl! With great swaggering confidence, she launched "E-PAC" in 2018 to help boost the paltry number of women on the GOP's side of the aisle. (Back then, there were only 13.) Elise obviously fancied herself a queenmaker and party builder extraordinaire — a sure path to a brilliant political career.

Well, we all know what happened since. Elsie went full MAGA for Benedict Donald, who briefly nominated her as ambassador to the UN, but then yanked it out from under her just four months later. Undaunted, she declared her candidacy for New York governor, which went "poof" after only 42 days. Then she announced she was taking her ball and going home — and she promptly disappeared for nearly the entire 2026 election.

What kind of legacy will Elsie leave? Not much. The number of GOP women in the upcoming 120th Congress will be about 20. Meanwhile, as we also noted earlier, Democrats have just surpassed 100.

"Elect Democratic Women (EDW), the campaign arm of the House Democratic Women's Caucus, has had its sights set on achieving that goal since the beginning of the cycle," The Minnesota Reformer said. "The milestone is the culmination of decades' worth of work recruiting and fundraising for Democratic women by groups like EDW and EMILY's List, founded in the 1980s."

So, we have another reason to be thrilled about the outcome of the midterms: Not only do Democrats hit their goal of women in the House, but we all get to say bye-bye to Elsie in a few weeks. Yes, she'll be back — probably to run for Senate in 2028. But she has such a hamfisted political touch that we almost can't wait. We cats PURR. 

Onboarding

By Baxter

Here are the incoming Democratic US Senators who were on Capitol Hill today for freshman orientation. (Yes, one was returning after a Trump-Vance-induced hiatus, so he knew the ropes already. "Sherrod Brown having to attend Senate orientation is hilarious," one Twitter wag joked. "It’s like getting rehired at a job you worked at for 18 years and being forced to sit through new employee training.")

Or maybe Sherrod just wanted to do something fun on his birthday. It sure looks like a hoot!

Left to right in this selfie by Illinois Senator-elect Juliana Stratton are: Abdul El-Sayed (Michigan), Adam Hamilton (Kansas), Josh Turek (Iowa), James Talarico (Texas), Peggy Flanagan (Minnesota), Annie Andrews (South Carolina), Roy Cooper (North Carolina), Chris Pappas (New Hampshire), and the birthday boy from Ohio. We're not sure where Maine's Troy Jackson was — maybe in the men's room?

This photo sparks joy. And just imagine adding two more faces to it. Right now, Scott Colom is 2,536 votes ahead of Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi, and Mary Peltola is leading Dan Sullivan in Alaska by 2,517. Tomorrow should bring more exciting updates. Meanwhile, we cats are proud of all these smiling, shiny kids, and we PURR.

Tuesday Afternoon

By Sniffles

We cats are looking forward to Tuesday, when the political situation in both Alaska and Mississippi will become clearer. Election Day ballots, and absentee and provisional ballots, will be counted and/or dealt with by then. And Alaska's electorate is rural, wild, and far-flung, so let's all have a little patience there.

Rumors are that, by Tuesday, after the absentees and affidavit ballots are dealt with in Mississippi, Scott Colom will lead by approximately 4,000 votes, and Cindy Hyde-Smith will be forced to concede by Wednesday. (It's also been pointed out that Mississippi tends to elect its Senators for life. Scott Colom is only 43 years old.) What an incredible result, if it happens — Mississippi hasn't had a Black Senator since Reconstruction.

Colom plus Peltola should put the Democrats at 56 seats in the Senate. Can we all just take a break from the Russian-bot-induced argument over House and Senate leaders to acknowledge how incredible that is? Particularly when you look back at how inhospitable the Senate map was for Democrats in 2026. Thank you, Ken Martin and DNC; thank you, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries; and most of all, thank you, Black women, for organizing and making all this possible. We cats PURR. 

America, November 2026

  

This must drive Benedict Donald and his MAGA minions crazy. Which means we love it. We cats PURR.

Signs Of The Times

  

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.

Florida, You're About To Be Kansas

By Hubie and Bertie

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)

Icons In Blue

 

Thank you, Canada, for lighting up Niagara Falls and Toronto's CN Tower in blue to celebrate America's midterms. And thank you, interwebs, for keeping the Sapphire Slippers meme going. Did the Eiffel Tower bathe itself en bleu because of the midterms, too? The French aren't saying. But we cats PURR anyway.

Cat Fight! Brucie vs. Elsie

By Miss Kubelik

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. 

Thank God For Candidates Like Adam Hamilton

By Zamboni

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. 

CATABUNGA!

By Baxter

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.)