Trump Said He Could do “Bad things to Hillary” Why that Matters (it isn’t why you think) GNR

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Facebook Share on Bluesky (Opens in new window)Bluesky Share on X (Opens in new window)X Share using Native toolsShareCopied to clipboard Save 188 Comments Add Daily Kos to Google GNR This week, Trump said something really awful, and somewhat confusing, in the oval office (what else is new). He talked about how he could do bad things to Hillary and Obama and Biden.

There were many people upset with this weird threat to former presidents and a former secretary of state. And with good reason. It was wrong and weird.

But what I saw less was people talking about why he said it.

He said it because he is scared. He said it because he knows he is going to lose the House (and maybe the Senate) in November and he has done things for which he could be in a lot of trouble and he is desperate for Democrats to feel like it is “wrong” to go after a president for bad things.

It is a sign that we can and should win in November.

My friends, we have just 23 days until the midterms!! We have 23 days to save our democracy. Let’s lock in on the prize and ignore the noise. Let’s turn out numbers so big that they cannot be ignored.

What can you do? You can donate. One way to do it: I set up a fundraiser for down ballot races. 

Amanda Nelson has an amazing checklist that recommends one thing to do a day from right now until the midterms. You can find it here

Vote Save America has all kinds of opportunities — big and small — to make a difference in the midterms. Sign up here to learn more.

And you can cheer yourself up and get ready for the fight by reading about these reasons for hope.

A Senate Majority is Squarely in Democrats’ Sights as Kansas Moves to Toss Up; Two Other Races Shift Left

Four weeks out from Election Day, the Senate map is shifting further in Democrats’ favor — and with it, their odds of winning back the majority.

While Republicans continue to have a financial edge in almost every competitive state, President Donald Trump is a drag across the board even in deep red states due to rising fuel prices and the persistent high cost of living.

At this point, the question isn’t whether Democrats will gain seats, but how many. As such, we are revising our estimate of potential pickups to two to six seats for Democrats — squarely within the range of the four seats they need to net for a majority.

And we are moving three Senate ratings, all in Democrats’ direction: Kansas from Lean Republican to Toss Up, New Hampshire from Toss Up to Lean Democrat, and North Carolina from Lean Democrat to Likely Democrat.

Democrats add 6 more targets, 2 in districts Trump carried by 20 points

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s political director told POLITICO the party could end up with as many as 240 House seats after Election Day.

Eighteen More House Race Ratings Move in Democrats’ Favor

In the final weeks of the election, Republicans have hoped that a massive ad campaign effort could dent Democratic candidates’ images and shore up Republicans struggling to free themselves of the anchor of President Donald Trump.

With less than four weeks to go, that heavy spending has yet to move the needle.

That is a key factor prompting us to move ratings for 18 more House races, all in Democrats’ favor. Four GOP incumbents who previously sat in the Toss Up column are shifting into Lean Democrat — three of these members won their races by less than two points in 2024 and should be the easiest seats for Democrats to pick up in a favorable environment. And four more races previously rated Lean Republican are shifting into the Toss Up column.

With these new moves, we’re also adjusting our range: the most likely outcome is now that Democrats will pick up nine to 19 seats. That would give them 224 seats on the lower end and 234 on the upper end.

Democratic Voters Are More Engaged in Midterms

Trump approval drops to 30%, as 44% of voters see their vote as ‘against’ him

Democratic candidates now hold an 8 percentage point edge over Republican candidates in preferences for the House of Representatives among all registered voters nationally.

And while many registered voters will not turn out to vote this fall, Democratic candidates are also buoyed by their supporters’ relatively high levels of engagement and stated motivation to vote when compared with those who are backing Republican candidates.

Republicans Shell Out Millions to Win Red Districts They Just Redrew

Republicans are investing millions of dollars into House seats they redrew to become more conservative during a round of mid-decade redistricting that scrambled the congressional map ahead of the 2026 midterms, according to a new report.

GOP-controlled legislatures redrew maps in states like Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas ahead of the midterms in hopes of averting losses. While Democrats redrew their map in California and are likely to net a seat in Utah, Republicans were seen as the winners of the redistricting arms race.

But as the November 3 elections approach, Republicans are finding themselves having to invest significant money into some of the seats they hoped would be easy flips under their new configurations.

View on Threads The House battleground has moved deep into Trump turf

Both parties are spending heavily in House districts that Donald Trump carried by double digits, broadening the battlefield to include turf that Democrats have not seriously contested in many years.

Republicans are giving up on races that would have once been unthinkable to abandon—and rushing to save candidates in states we can scarcely believe are competitive. On this week’s episode of The Downballot podcast, co-hosts David Nir and David Beard examine the fallout from the GOP’s decision to abandon North Carolina’s Senate contest, combined with its last-minute rescue mission in Kansas of all places. Perhaps the most amazing thing: The Republican spending spree doesn’t even seem to be working.

“Minnesota Republicans are trying to buy their way through this election because they can’t get their own volunteers to show up,” said DFL Party Chair Richard Carlbom. “Meanwhile, our movement has grown because Minnesotans have put in the work."

Republicans enter triage mode as their election hopes continue to dim

Republicans are flooding the electoral map with a deluge of advertising to defend their House and Senate majorities. But their once-towering financial advantage is starting to show its limits.

In recent days, Republican campaign groups began to make concessions to the punishing political environment, shifting money away from races they no longer believe to be winnable and falling back to reinforce another tier of seats in solidly red states that no longer look safe.

After abandoning a GOP-held Senate seat in North Carolina — a state President Donald Trump won three times — the outside groups began spending money to defend a seat in South Carolina. And they’re intensifying their advertising in Kansas, where Democrats haven’t won a Senate race in nearly a century.

In the battle for control of the House, national Republicans gave up on defending a blue-leaning seat in Nebraska held for a decade by retiring GOP Rep. Don Bacon.

Those dispiriting setbacks signal that the party’s defensive position is weakening with a month still left in the campaign.

One national Republican strategist, granted anonymity to speak freely about the party’s predicament, said the GOP could wind up facing even worse losses than in President George W. Bush’s disastrous second term.

“If the bottom continues falling out like it has been,” this operative said, “this will be worse than 2006.”

View on Threads What we are seeing in the early Early Vote so far is exactly what we thought we would see in the data – Democrats running ahead of 2022 and 2024

the venerable Gallup quarterly Party ID series dropped this am. It has Dems up 50%-39% in the third quarter of 2026, fully 15 points higher than q4 of 2024.

Obama Delivers New Battleground Gut Punch to Trump

Barack Obama is preparing to further boost Democrats ahead of midterm elections where Donald Trump’s plummeting ratings have already handed them a staggering advantage.

Obama’s team told Politico on Tuesday that the 65-year-old former president has contributed to ads for two dozen Senate and gubernatorial candidates across the country, which are expected to air in the coming days.

View on Threads things are going well for Democrats and poorly for Republicans

Multiple polls are being released daily. In general, they show that Trump’s dismal favorability ratings continue to drag down GOP prospects in the midterms. The danger for Democrats is that they might erroneously extrapolate encouraging polls and draw a straight line to victory for underdog candidates in red states. That would be a mistake. If the past is prologue, polls will tighten, and momentum will slow as Election Day nears—which is why early voting matters. Early voters are removed from canvassing and call lists. GOTV volunteers can then focus their efforts on the shrinking pool of voters who have not yet voted.

In short, things are going well for Democrats and poorly for Republicans—facts that guarantee nothing. But those facts should give us confidence and hope as we keep working to ensure a blue wave washes over the country on November 3rd.

We are on the right path, but we need to keep up the hard work that brought us to this point.

View on Threads They are a mess GOP efforts to lower gas prices derailed by Republican infighting

Republican efforts to reduce national gas prices in the weeks before Election Day were derailed in the Senate by infighting among GOP lawmakers and members of the administration who could not agree on how to ease consumers’ pain at the pump.

View on Threads Trump faces his worst bankruptcy yet

His political capital is gone and the repo man is on the way.

Trump is bleeding political capital across the board: among independents, non-MAGA Republicans, even among some of his most devout, red hat-wearing followers. A small but growing contingent of Republican politicians have also begun to openly criticize and even vote against Trump before the midterm results.

Should November 3 be the disaster for Republicans that analysts are predicting, Trump will morph overnight into something less than a lame duck president with a ticking, two-year expiration clock: he will become politically bankrupt in ways all-too-familiar to him as a businessman.

A variety of anecdotal developments confirm Trump’s polling collapse, especially among his longstanding supporters and allies

So just how toxic is Trump these days? 

Heinous Texas Governor Greg Abbott, MS NOW reports, who has spent the last decade lodging himself firmly up Trump’s ample ass, suddenly doesn’t want Gramps around anymore. The vile Abbott announced today that he’s not going to be able to attend Trump’s San Antonio hate rally later this week because something, something, has to wash his hair, something, something, scheduling conflict. LOLOL

Data Center Backlash Is MAGA’s Comeuppance

Even with all the bad ideas that pop into his head, Donald Trump cannot be persuaded to keep his trap shut. His latest obsession is blabbing about his unyielding faith in unregulated (“self-regulated” is a misnomer) artificial intelligence and unlimited data center construction.

The Associated Press reported that Trump dwelled on data centers in his campaign stop in Ohio over the weekend, where Democrats are leading in polls in the Senate and gubernatorial races

Democrats can barely hide their delight. “‘Senator Jon Husted gave billions in tax breaks to Big Tech to make sure they would build their data centers in Ohio,’ [Sherrod] Brown wrote on X on Friday, ahead of Trump’s visit. ‘Now, he’s making Ohioans foot the bill.’”

That is it for today. Take care of yourselves.

I am so lucky and grateful to be in this with all of you ✊🏻✊🏽✊🏿✊🏾✊🏼❤️💙💚💛💜 ✊🏻✊🏽✊🏿✊🏾✊🏼

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