I Am Still a Secessionist

A lot of pundits are hailing Tuesday's election results - in which the Republicans got slaughtered - as a sign that America has bottomed out and advocates of democracy are fighting back.  Well, that's as may be.  I still say that the United States should be broken up into smaller countries.

Why?

Well, for one thing, this guy is still President.

This guy, the same guy who stood silently by like a mannequin during a Health and Human Services Department event in the Oval Office when a man collapsed and a gaggle of folks at the event - including Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Medicare and Medicaid administrator, who is in fact a medical doctor - rushed over to help him.  We are still being "led" by a psychopathic sociopath who has about as much empathy as a stuffed lion.   

And even if the military overthrew Trump and his gang of MAGA morons tomorrow, too much damage has already been done.  The United States is the most distrusted and most despised nation in the world because of Trump's foreign policy - USAID gone, NATO weakened, deference to Putin - and the U.S. would not be welcome if it ever tries to re-enter the Paris Agreement or the World Health Organization.  At home, he has eviscerated social services and destroyed the the law enforcement and national security apparatuses, and these systems will take generations to rebuild - if they can be rebuilt.  And what Trump and Project 2025 didn't decimate, the ongoing government shutdown did.  Heck, since the government is shut down with no hope of reopening it, why don't we just terminate it right now by dissolving the damn Union?

What has been done to this country is irreparable.  The 2026 midterms aren't for another year, yet it is already too late to undo the damage that's been done.  It is all in smoldering ruins.  Which is why I still believe it is time to break up the U.S. into separate countries.

And, again, here's my map of what I think a post-Union central North America should look like. 
 

I am serious about this.  You might say I'm dead serious.

Trump Trumped

Abigail Spanberger, as expected, won the Virginia governorship by a comfortable margin.  Zohran Mandami was easily (again, as expected) elected the first Muslim mayor of New York City, defeating Andrew Cuomo decisively.

But the biggest surprise was - you guessed it - Mikie Sherrill winning the governorship of New Jersey. 

By thirteen percentage points.

Wow, how did she do it?

I mean, seriously, the pundits agreed that Sherrill, a former federal prosecutor, ran a campaign that was lackluster, and her Republican opponent was everything a Jersey guy is supposed to be, while she, just as assuredly, was nothing a Jersey girl is supposed to be.  Her opponent was in no danger of being unable to attract the typical New Jersey voter with big hair and gold chains.

Not to mention their girlfriends and wives.

I really thought Sherrill was going to lose because the polls were so close and the polls showing her ahead by an average of 5.5 points probably underestimated the number of voters casting ballots for her Republican opponent Jack Ciattarelli.  What happened?  My guess is that pollsters and pundits were basing their polling and projections, respectively, on the New Jersey electorate in 2021, in which Ciattarelli was far behind Governor Phil Murphy in the polls but ended up losing by only three points.  Also, Sherrill was a woman and a Democrat.  But the electorate in this state today is not the one that existed four years ago, and the 2021 election didn't have the specter of Donald Trump hanging over it like the sword of Damocles. 

And no, I don't regret not joining her campaign.  I mean, she clearly didn't need me except for my vote. 

Meanwhile, California voters endorsed Proposition 50, allowing the state to redistrict U.S. House seats to counteract redistricting in other states (*cough cough*, Texas, *cough cough*) to give a partisan advantage to one side (*cough cough*, the GOP, *cough cough*) and possibly saving the 2026 midterm elections for Democrats.  Two Democrats were elected to the state public utilities commission in Georgia.  Three liberal state Supreme Court justices were retained in Pennsylvania, and conservatives lost ground significantly.  The right-wing white ring of Stepford Wives Moms For Liberty, also known as Klan Karenhood, targeted 31 local elections in the country; they won all but 31 of them. 😆

Donald Trump is ticked off.  His hope of expanding his power through, say, a Ciattarelli administration in New Jersey or a more conservative Pennsylvania Supreme Court has been dashed, and his efforts to retard Democratic progress toward taking back the House have itself been stymied.  Right now he's thinking anew about how to dissolve the Constitution and outlaw the Democratic Party so he can make sure that the Republicans can win the 2026 elections simply by having no opposition on the ballots.  Because whenever the voters reject Trump, Trump rejects them.    

Oh yeah, in New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill is the first gubernatorial candidate to win a third straight election for her party since 1961, when the biggest sports story was Roger Maris breaking Babe Ruth's season home run record.  Her victory, and several electoral victories this past Tuesday, have made it clear that the old guard in American politics, still trying to practice politics as usual, is on borrowed time.

And may I make an observation regarding Andrew Cuomo and his quixotic effort at a comeback in the New York City mayoral campaign?

Can anyone imagine a man so desperate for a political comeback that, not only does he run to be chief executive of five counties in New York - the five boroughs of NYC - when he had previously been a chief executive of all of the 62 counties of New York, he has to resort to Islamophobia against his opponent, even though his own father had to deal with virulent anti-Italian prejudice? This gentleman needs an enema.