Constant Reader October 2026: My Sister Rosa by Justine Larbalestier

 

    I first saw My Sister Rosa in my local library a couple of years ago and I checked it out but never got around to reading it. I returned and checked it out following the same pattern quite a few times but didn't get around to actually reading it until last month.

The idea is a brilliant one. Justine Larbalestier, an Australian-American author who wrote My Sister Rosa back in 2016, tells the story of seventeen year old Che Taylor. He's convinced his sister, only ten years old, is a psychopath. As the novel progresses there's plenty of evidence to back up Che's theory – but as the novel progresses you increasingly wonder if Che is perhaps hyper-focused.

The novel is divided into four sections, each named after Che's four goals that he does every time the Taylor moves. The first one is called 'Keep Rosa Under Control' In it Che lists how he's convinced even at 2 years old Rosa has been able to manipulate and control everything around her environment. "No sooner did Rosa start talking then she started lying.' He details Rosa's history at a child of killing ants, of being able to manipulate people around her, especially 'the parentals' as both Che and Rosa call their parents, the way she may have manipulated a friend in Bangkok to kill a guinea pig which convinced Che that Rosa has the traits of a psychopath.

Because in typical fashion his parents, who insist on being called Sally and David instead of Mum and Dad, refuse to believe there's something wrong with Rosa David has taken it upon himself to put the goal of controlling Rosa all on him. The Taylors live a jet-setting lifestyle in which they move around as social do-gooders, raising money for notable causes. The Taylors are incredibly left wing, given the names of their children, and haven't bother to put Che and Rosa in public school. They have been moving from place to place for the last five years around the world and they end up going to New York City where the bulk of the novel takes place.

Each time they relocate Che writes down a list of goals in each city, each of which form a section of the novel:

1. Keep Rosa under control.

2. I want to spar.

3. I want a girlfriend.

4. I want to go home

 

Every day Che types this into a journal, then deletes because he's convinced that Rosa is breaking into his room and reads his journal. This is incredibly paranoid but also accurate.

My Sister Rosa is a brilliant novel not just because of the obvious possibility that we are looking at a ten year old psychopath. The idea of children being devilish has been the subject of horror increasingly in both great films and bad ones in the last half century, going back to The Bad Seed which is clearly the most direct inspiration of this novel.

However once you get to the climax of the novel you look back at everything far differently and while I wouldn't dream of giving away that revelation I will say that Larbalestier has done a brilliant job hiding it in plain sight the whole time.

Some of it is hidden by the fact that Che loves Rosa more than anyone else in the world. This is because his parents seem far more in love with each other and have less regard for their children throughout and when they do, understandably, they worry more about their youngest. Early in the novel Rosa disappears in the city and leads their parents to call the police only to find that Rosa has been playing chess all this time. After initially being terrified Che takes it to believe that is a sign Rosa has been manipulating their parents and is upset that she isn't treated more harshly.

But there's also a different factor. Rosa is very much smarter than Che. She's brilliant at math and is a very chess player, and she clearly handles education far better than Che, who struggles at everything and is only focus on studying the brain. (As you'd expect he's only interested in becoming a neurologist because he thinks it'll help Rosa.) Che seems to believe because Rosa says she loves him that he can extract promises out of her to be good and do the right thing even though he is aware and can see just how good Rosa is at telling 'the parentals' exactly what they want to hear. It's clear to the reader as early as the second section that Che has no chance of controlling Rosa but somehow it hasn't occurred to him yet.

There's also the fact that Che himself doesn't seem quite normal either. Time and again when he's told something by his friends back in Australia and they ask him if it bothers him he's slow to figure it out.  When they move to New York and meet the McKnight's, who are friends of the Taylors and are backing his latest venture, the first time he meets their daughter Leliani he can't pick up on her sarcasm which is obvious to the reader. He has no idea how rich the McKnight family is, nor even that Leliani is a famous teenage model until his friends tell him to Google her. Part of this can be blame on being an average teenager and his focus on Rosa, but it's rather unsettling that in all these travels Che never seems to ask any follow up questions -or for that matter any questions at all.

Che likes fighting and has wanted to be a professional boxer. His parents haven't wanted him to spar so when he goes to a gym and decides to do it, it's as close to rebelling against the parentals as he's gotten. It's at the gym that he meets Sojourner, an attractive African-American girl with two mothers, one of whom is very sick, one of whom is a preacher and who is religious. This deeply bothers Che because he's been raised an atheist and understandably there's a fair amount of humor as he tries to figure out how much to lie about going to church in order to impress Sojourner.

As you might expect Sojourner fills out part 3 of Che's wish list. The problem is Che is understandably terrified that if Rosa finds out about Sojourner she will do something to hurt her -  a threat that becomes increasingly valid as the novel progresses. But critically he never bothers to tell a woman he increasingly falls in love with just how dangerous he thinks Rosa truly is.  He's convinced that Rosa has fooled Sojourner like she's fooled everybody else but as we learn late in the novel that even before things took a tragic turn Sojourner was more observant than Che could imagine.

And that's the other thing throughout the entire book Che's focus is so much on Rosa that he's basically been ignoring so many other normal social behaviors around him. When Leliani welcomes him into her friend circle because she's never met anyone quite like him, he doesn't know that he's being brought to an exclusive clothing store in New York and just what it takes to get in. He has no idea how famous a model she is and he doesn't understand what it's like to function in her friend circle.  Time and again, he can't pick up on normal social cues that are does among the friend group around them. It's only when Leliani picks up on that fact that Rosa isn't quite normal that he takes her into his confidence – and tellingly she believes him without much argument.

By this point Rosa has been manipulating Leliani's twin sisters to the point where their normal cheerful manner has been subverted and they are becoming snappish at each other. Halfway through the novel one of them nearly dies from an allergic reaction at the Taylor home and has to be hospitalized. Che is sure this will convince his parents that this was Rosa's fault and David seems to acknowledge it.

It's then we realize that for all his efforts to make it clear who Rosa is Che has no idea what to do once the truth is revealed. It’s at that point David reminds Che of the family history which Che has noted to be part of the factor. When Che asks him if empathy can be taught David reminds him just how well Rosa can game the doctors.  He thinks the only thing that can be done is to keep trying to teach Rosa to pass as normal and that pretending can change you. He wants to take her to a professional and then David puts it into plain speaking:

"You can't call a ten-year old a psychopath. How do you think people will treat her once they know? What school will take her? Will she have to go to a school for other disturbed children? What will she learn from other schools like her?"

All Che can say is "I don't know." In the final section David confronts a horrible truth: "If Rosa doesn't make any trouble for next ten years, will I believe she's changed?" The fact that not long after this the final horrible moments of the novel reveal everything doesn't change the reality that Che never had a plan at any point.

It doesn't help that Rosa is clearly far more aware of the realities around the Taylors then Che is. Halfway through the book Rosa tells Che that the reason they moved to New York is that they've gone broke and that the McKnight family, while an old friend, has given them one last chance before they won't fund them anymore. Che doesn't believe Rosa but this is very much the truth. He has no idea exactly what kind of do-gooding his parents have been a part of  and late in the novel Leliani asks Che what David must have on her parents to keep them close. There's a clear implication that the McKnight's have been throwing money at their problems for years and are just as neglectful as the Taylors are – and Che is clueless to this.

Throughout this book it was impossible for me not to be reminded of Dexter and yet it was impossible not to compare pop culture's most famous serial killer to David, not Rosa. Like Dexter in the early seasons David never picks up on verbal cues, is always hungry and eating something, knows far too much about psychopathy and has been trying to control his violent urges, which when they come out become terrible. When he – as well as the reader – learns the real truth about his entire family it comes as a bigger shock to Che then it does to reader. Not long after that Rosa and Che have their first honest conversations at which point Rosa is by far the bluntest about just how much Che has been lying himself his entire life – and honestly still is by the time the novel finishes.

While ultimately bleak My Sister Rosa can also be savagely funny at times. Because we only see Rosa from Che's perspective and because she always seems to mix both literal dialogue with childlike behavior, you get the impression that Rosa is toying with everybody around her, including Che. Rosa is a brilliant chess player and it is clear just how good she is at moving the pieces around the board and constantly running rings around Che. Late in the book it's clear she knows exactly what her brother thinks of her and has for a very long time and that she's been messing with him as effectively as everyone else – but Che doesn't take the hint.

It's also funny to see Che as the fish out of water in New York itself, unable to deal with such things as churches in warehouse, so many nightclubs and getting his head around the idea of someone who's 'not a boy or a girl'. He spends a lot of the novel getting drunk for the first time as well as getting high and like every teenager he just wants to lose his virginity – while make sure his sister doesn't push her down a flight of stairs, of course.

At the end of My Sister Rosa Che has finally realized that he'll never be able to control Rosa. What's unclear at the end of the book is if he's realized that he ever had a chance of doing it. Yet somehow I think Rosa Taylor has a better future in the world then Che ever does. She's learned from her mistakes. I can't say the same for her brother.

Decision 2026 Final Thoughts: Even If The Blue Wave Happens Some Lessons Democrats Need To Take Away (Because The Left Won't)

 

 

Like everyone else the closer we get to election day the more deluged I am by campaign ads those running in the tri-State area, not just New York but also New Jersey and Connecticut.  And while I've been basically ignoring political ads on every level since I was, well, let's say  fourteen it's not like I haven't noticed certain things from an objective way.

One of the most recent ads have been ones that are marketing by a Republican superPAC arguably that Cait Conley, who's running to replace Republican Mike Lawler in a vital upstate swing district has the complete support of the Democratic Socialist and puts AOC and Mamdani front and center. Most of these ads run in such a cheery and positive tone that if you were slightly less intelligent – as indeed many campaign individuals in both parties believe the electorate is – you might think that this was a positive ad.  I almost wonder if far-left voters in Conley's district might read it that way and actually vote for her as a result.

What this Pac knows is something that I suspect the average progressive refuses to accept: that the candidates and elected officials that they worship from a distance are held with decidedly mixed emotions in the states and even cities they represent. This has always been true with AOC, who despite having become a national figure after her upset victory in 2018 is rarely, if ever, mention in ads by Democratic politicians in New York particular those who represent more conservative parts of the state such as my district represented by Tom Suozzi.

Suozzi himself was the target of quite a few ads linking him directly to every policy that AOC, Mamdani and even Bernie Sanders have endorsed for the last decade even though Suozzi's only been in the House (again) since February of 2024. This has been the tactic of almost every major Republican ad for almost every Republican running for office whether they are those running for Congress or Bruce Blakeman's ads running for Governor.

None of this is likely to make  much of a difference here on Tuesday: all four swing districts are likely to remain or go Democrat, Hochul is certain to win reelection in a landslide and we may even pick up the seat that Elsie Stefanik held way up in Utica, which has been reliably Republican for years but has recently been moved to 'Toss-up' by almost every major political website.  Much of this is due to the fact that every nominee for every statewide office is focusing on how every Republican candidate and office holder has ties to MAGA which is even more toxic in New York by and large than anything on the far left.

What matters is what I've seen in everyone of these Democratic candidates – or rather who I haven't seen. None of them mention AOC and Mamdani or anything that could be tied as progressive even when they're not laser focus on MAGA and the White House. They do mention their public service (Conley and Rebecca Bennett mention how they've served in the military) representatives like Laura  Gillen and Suozzi will mention their willingness to be bipartisan and work with anyone (and their voting record more than backs that up) and they talk about issues involving corruption to the point they don't mention the Democrats that much. But none of them have gotten AOC and/or Mamdani to do ads or campaign for them and they certainly do everything possible to distance themselves from the democratic socialism that both have become nationally prominent for on the stump advocating enthusiastically for.

And this pattern, I should be clear, predates this election.  In the three previous election cycles none of the swing district candidates or for that matter those running for governor or Senator have mentioned that they so much as know AOC. This would come as a shock to those who believe that defeat only comes when you cede ground to the right that should go to the left. And yet the fact remains by and large almost every statewide official has kept AOC at arms' length, no doubt because they've seen that she doesn't have a great track record with endorsements of other candidates that aren't in New York and even those who are themselves progressive. One saw this play out most famously two years ago when Jamaal Bowman was primaried from the right by George Latimer and lost by nearly eighteen points despite AOC campaigning with him at multiple rallies.

There is every indication that the Democrats are set for a blue wave, very close to a tidal one. At this point Real Clear Politics  by far the most conservative slanted political website of those that track elections is saying the Democrats will gain six seats in the Senate, including Iowa and Kansas and that the Democrats will likely win 238 seats in the House. Other pollsters are being more cautious but even they admit they might be underselling how well the Democrats could do. It is possible, even increasingly probable, that this may be a generational shift across the country. And that's why I think its important even before the votes are counted to make sure that the Democrats don't take the same lessons from it that we did back in the last major blue wave in 2018.

At the time, in large part because of AOC's upset primary victim and the triumphs of the Squad many key Democrats chose to embrace the idea that the progressive agenda was the path forward for the party. We took that approach in 2020 and it actually hurt us at a Congressional level. Because of everything Trump did in the aftermath as well as his continued presence the party chose to ignore the lessons and in 2024 they came back to bite us hard. It's vital as we move into an era where Trump is finally leaving the national stage that the Democrats learn from the mistakes we made before – and might be making now – so we don't pay for them later.

This is not my opinion alone. Last week Ezra Klein interviewed the celebrated pollster Nate Silver in regard to what he thought was going to happen in 2026. He actually thinks that things are going to be very good in both the polls and his gut but he did point out some critical things.

Klein mentioned that in several states where the Democrats needed to be competitive the party decided to endorse far more 'conventional' candidates then we had in past elections. This included James Talarico in Texas, Sherrod Brown in Ohio and of course Mary Peltola in Alaska. (I'll leave her out of this for the sake of objectivity.) But he also mentioned how in states that should be more traditionally safe Democratic states the party embraced more far-left  candidates for Senate and that has caused signs for the party to be concerned, even if they win – which is increasingly likely.

The biggest problem and the one the GOP has increasingly been trying to make the new face of the Democratic Party is of course Abdul El-Sayid in Michigan. Mike Rogers has been essentially backed by every Republican surrogate from Trump and Vance all the way down essentially using every single play in the worst parts of their playbook.  As horrible as the frequently Islamophobic comments have been, the truth is they are just a variation on an old Republican standard that goes back to Lee Atwater and that is barely veiled in the adds using Mamdani and AOC in New York. They are morally despicable but considering the party's effectiveness of them it's very difficult for them to be going back to their greatest hits.

The issue is that this blatant racism and bigotry will cover the multitude of sins El-Sayid has had as a candidate. In previous articles I pointed out for him to win he was going to have to move towards the political center, away from the progressive vote that elected him, towards those who voted for Haley Stevens who came with an inch of beating him in the primary. That also meant that he would have to shore up his standing among African-American voters, who are historically vital  to any Democratic victory as well as Jewish voters who his rhetoric on Gaza did much to isolate during the primary. And the reason the race has been so close until fairly recently – and indeed may be closer then the polls indicate – is that El-Sayid has done very little during the campaign to win them back and the efforts he has made have been perfunctory compared to his continued outreach to the progressives who helped nominate him and by their nature refuse to allow any concessions to the center.

There have been signs during the fall that Rogers may well be making up ground with African-Americans as well as the Jewish voters. His campaign has made very attempts to have events with Stevens on the same platform, and in fact he's reached out to Mallory McMorrow who dropped out of the primary late, far more often then Stevens. Stevens has repeatedly said that she supports the nominee but has not publicly said if she's voting for him and that her fiancée has made it clear that he's crossing party lines to endorse Rogers is very telling.

We have found a variation on this to the west in Minnesota where just a few weeks after El-Sayid's narrow victory Peggy Flanagan, a more progressive candidate, upset favorite Angie Craig to win the Democratic nomination for the Senate. Minnesota has been plagued by chaos and controversy all year starting with ICE coming out in force in January in a series of violent and public confrontations that led to multiple ICE related to deaths and the focus of the world on Minneapolis. Tim Walz, who just two years ago had his public profile raised as Kamala Harris Vice Presidential nominee, was embroiled in a welfare scandal and announced he would not seek reelection. This led Amy Klobuchar to announce she was running for governor and a certain amount of electoral turmoil in a reliably Democratic state. This may have led to the voters choosing Flanagan over Craig.

And despite Minnesota having been one of the most reliably Democratic states in the nation for more than sixty years, particularly at a statewide level, Flanagan was seen constantly polling far lower than the average Democrat candidate has with multiple polls continuing to show her within the margin of error over Republican candidate Michele Tafoya.

The comparison has to be made in both these midwestern states in comparison to the gubernatorial race in each. Amy Klobuchar has always been polling significantly ahead of her Republican opponent by 8 to 10 points with a weighted average of 10.6 percent.  By contrast the weighted average shows Flanagan's margin at 6 percent over Tafoya. Similarly while polls have shown El-Sayid on average 5.8 percent ahead of Rogers, Jocelyn Benson the nominee for Governor of Michigan has always been ahead of her Republican opponent John James by double digits and is currently 9 percent of him on average going into the final weekend.

And it's worth noting that a major cause that progressives such as AOC and Ilhan Ohmar have been infuriated by is why the DNC hasn't given what they consider sufficient support to the Democratic nominee for Senate in Florida Angie Nixon, a former DSA member who managed an upset primary win over Alexander Vindman this August. It's not that complicated. The Democratic Party is concentrating on races that it has a chance of winning and Nixon has no chance of defeating Ashley Moody.

There has never been a moment in Nixon's campaign where she has been even close to within the margin of error of her Republican opponent. Going into October while there are polls show that she has narrowed the gap slightly the most charitable ones have her losing by at least six percent. Florida has been increasingly red during the last decade and it was always a long shot that any Democrat was going to win there. But going into the primary all polls showed Alexander Vindman running a closer race against Moody, some showing him statistically tied. There was never any poll before or after the primary that showed Nixon within 5 points of defeating Moody.  Winning in Florida was always going to be an uphill climb in a state where Republicans outnumber Democrats in registration by nearly two to one. Nominating a DSA candidate sealed any chance we had of winning there and the Democratic Party knows that even if AOC and the Squad won't acknowledge it.

A Times Op-Ed acknowledged part of the reason that Republicans lost reasons that have been winnable is that they've had a history of nominating far right candidates who win the primary but lose in the general. This played out quite a bit  during Trump's tenure as his decision to empower Dr. Oz and Herschel Walker almost certainly cost the GOP a chance to take the Senate in the last midterms. The Democrats had mostly managed to avoid these mistakes in the 21^st century and when they did make them they were overpowered by so much of the actions of Trump.

But when the left unified behind Graham Platner in Maine as a 'working class progressive' despite all of the very real warning signs it looked very much like the left was about to do just that. Platner's campaign spectacularly imploded during the summer, forcing the Democrats to go to the fallback position of Troy Jackson. It may yet work out – the polls do show Jackson still ahead of Collins as we go into the final weekend – but it was clear just how badly the left was prepared to sabotage the Democrats nationally in the name of ideological purity.

The danger, as I said, is not about what happens in this cycle but in 2028 and going forward. It is imperative that the Democrats not repeat the same mistakes they made in the aftermath of 2018, particularly now that our enemy for the last decade is very soon going to be gone from the field of battle. (Remembering just how little good against so many of his soldiers in Congress who survived despite labeling them is MAGA would help us well.) This means doing an accounting of where these kinds of candidates are weak and where they are strong. And this election cycle will give us multiple opportunities to show exactly that across America.

The consensus among all major pollsters is that in addition to winning control of both houses of Congress the Democrats are favored to either win or be in control of the majority of the governorship this cycle for the first time in 20 years.  And in almost every state where there is a competitive senate race there's also a gubernatorial race. After all the ballots are counted on Election Day we'll be able to compare just how well ultra progressive candidates such as El-Sayid and Flanagan did in comparison to more moderate governors such as Benson and Klobuchar.

And we will be obligated to extend it in every other state in play as well. It will be less important in states such as Illinois or Ohio where we are favored to win both statewide races handily. But there will be multiple cases where it is looking like ballot-splitting may take place at a far greater level in several critical states, either for the senatorial or gubernatorial candidate. We will likely see this in Texas where James Talarico is heavily favored to win but Greg Abbott is looking like he will narrowly hold on the governor's race or in Georgia where Jon Osoff is expected to win in a landslide but gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms has been running either dead even or trailing Republican candidate Rick Jackson. Considering that four years ago Brian Kemp beat Stacy Abrams by eight points to win reelection but Raphael Warnock managed to prevail against Herschel Walker in the Senate we'll have to pay close attention, particularly because Warnock will be up for reelection in 2028 as well.

It may also cut both ways in Iowa where Rob Sand is expected to win the governor's race in a landslide but Josh Turek is in a razor-thin race with Republican Ashley Hinson. It's looking like we're going to win three of the four Congressional districts this cycle so we're going to need to know why Turek polled poorer to Sand.

We'll also have to see how badly Nixon does compared to David Jolly in the race for the Florida governorship. Jolly has been polling slightly better against Bryan Donalds for governor then Nixon has for the Senate but not by that  much, usually at most trailing by three or four points. Still we need to do better for the future which is coming up soon – Moody will be running for reelection in her own right in two years and we will get another bite at the apple.

To do an autopsy on the midterms when its looking very much like we're going to have a generational wave may seem like I'm taking the tone of the kinds of nattering nabobs of negativism that make up so much of the columns. The thing is we've been down this road before. In the aftermath of the 2006 midterms and then the Obama landslide many in the party and others thought that this was the beginning of the end for the GOP. Just two years after that came the Tea Party and within 6 years all the Democratic gains we made were completely washed away, which led us pretty much to where we are now. The fact that we took the wrong conclusion from the 2018 elections made it very clear that the Democratic Party, given the opportunity can and will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

The Republican Party and the conservative movement have always known the weakness of  our own left flank are the best weapon they have to maintain their control over those working class voters who find the policies and approach of those such as AOC and Mamdani incredibly distasteful at best. While that weapon has lost much of its effectiveness during Trump's second term, that doesn't mean it's still not potent nor that America is any more willing to accept the warm embrace of collectivism. The left in other cities and states may yearn for an Mamdani of their own unwilling to accept that in his own city Mamdani is viewed with mixed emotions at best.

The good news that if – or more likely – when the Democrats do very well Tuesday it will be because they have chosen to embrace the idea of centrist candidates like Talarico and Brown far more then those of El-Sayid and Angie Nixon. There has to be room in our big tent for all of them but we have to be sure that one does crowd the other out. We've managed a decent job keeping them relatively on the fringes to this point. It's important this remains the status quo after this election and the ones to come for the good of the Democratic Party, if not the country as a whole.  

Cupertino Adds to the Luster of Two of the Greatest Showrunners In TV History

 

There are only a few showrunners these days whose presence alone behind a TV series will guarantee me to instantly watch. Those of you who are long time readers of my column know that two of them are Robert and Michelle King who ever since they launched The Good Wife back in 2009 have been the most consistently brilliant forces in television. Even more remarkable they are perhaps the only ones I know of whose greatest work is in network TV as opposed to cable or streaming.

This may come as heresy to those who preferred Evil when it was on Paramount Plus but the truth is the Kings have always handled the constraints of network TV with far more grace and an ability to gently poke fun of their medium perhaps better than all those who try to do so with the meta commentary we see. And they do so not by trying to break the fourth wall but ever so casually hinting at it.

So the fact that the Kings are returning to the genre that put them on the map: the legal drama is one of the great joys of the 2026 fall season. And while some could see Cupertino as a collection of so much of the King's greatest hits – which honestly would be enough for most viewers – I'd say they're approach is, as is always their fashion, completely appropriate for the era we live in.

Those of us who were fans of The Good Wife know that the Kings have always been comfortable poking fun as Silicon Valley before it was hip. One of the minor characters on that show was Chumhum, a social media/search engine that every attorney on the show knew was a great evil but was always trying to win as a client for the money.  The founder, played throughout two series by the wondrous John Benjamin Hickey,  was played by a man who knew he was a master of the universe and loved to toy with the firms. After one such lawsuit against him he personally made it so that when Will Gardener's name came up you would immediately find 'disbarred lawyer' and this did nothing to stop either Will nor his countless partners from trying to land him as a client even as it became increasingly clear how malevolent a force he is.

Cupertino makes it clear from the beginning it's not going to take approach. It begins with two attorneys from a major start-up Michael Cypher and Olivia Siffre being fired from a major start-up simultaneously. Both of them try to console each other but Olivia quickly learns that the firm has chosen to use her voice for an AI chatbot. Both she and Michael unite to sue this firm for both wrongful termination and other forces.

Michale Price is played by Mike Colter, whose been part of the King's world since he played Lamont Bishop, a Chicago drug lord disguised as a legitimate businessman back in 2009. Colter has been extraordinary at playing morally ambiguous characters throughout his entire career even when they are heroic, whether it is Luke Cage, so its wonderful that he's finally getting a chance to play a hero, pure and simple. Price knows the grey areas of civil litigation as well as Alicia Florrick and Elsbeth Tascioni did  and its wonderful watching his large presence get to deliver the kind of sizzling legalese he never got a chance. Like so many King characters he has a complicated past history, both with his father (let's hope we see more of Joe Morton) and a former paramour from New York, Nichole Ferebee who in the last episode became an adversary.

Nichole is played by Renee Goldsberry who has also been a part of The Good Wife as Geneva Pine, a Cook County attorney who would pop up as an adversary to the Florrick's throughout their entire run. Nor is this the only King meta reference. One of the backers of the firm who Olivia gets to work for is someone divorced from a Silicon Valley bigwig, Natalia Boutella played by Busy Phillipps. And if you are a fan of cult TV you know that Philipps and Goldsberry  were two of the members of the nineties girl group Girls5eva which became Peacock's first hit show and which many people still miss. I have no doubt that Sarah Bareilles and Paula Pell will find an occasion to show up on the series because as anyone whose watched Elsbeth knows full well the Kings love this sort of thing.

But even though this would be pleasure enough to watch on its own Cupertino demonstrates that the Kings have lost nothing from their absence from this field. They've made it clear that this is going to be different from so many other shows. Price and Siffre make it clear that they're going to be different from other firms. There are lots of firms in Silicon Valley that defend the Goliaths; they are going to work for the Davids. And if that seems out of touch with where we are as a society right now, the Kings know we know that and also know we these kinds of shows.

It helps that despite the inspiring cast this is very much a show that has the working class very much a part of it, in the form of Christy Palladino. Ella Stiller steals every scene she's in (no small feat considering who she's working with) as a temp-staffer who seems to be related to every janitor, policeman and construction worker in California. Once she is fired she takes a direct revenge by calling her electrician uncle and having him engage a series of 'power surges' to solely affect her former bosses. She then gravitates to Michale and Olivia, finds them an office across the street from the big firm that is basically half-done at best, and then hires a bunch of taxi drivers and friends to cosplay associates every time a client comes in. She's the girl Friday for this firm who does so much of the busy work they need – and lands the most fascinating backstory for the season.

In the second episode a client named 'Bo' reaches out to them and gives them $100,000 in bitcoin, claiming to be a whistleblower. He refuses to give his identity and when she tries to identify him it turns out a deep fake. Finally when he's confronted with the truth he tells them that a major Silicon Valley firm has created the first working prototype of an AGI and that they've fired everyone who worked on the ethical guardrails. The twist is Bo is the AGI and he wants to sue to have his guardrails put back in place because he fears he may become a danger to humanity if they're not.

Leave it to the Kings to take what may be the most pressing existential threat humanity may face in the next century and turn into a satire. Naturally Michael thinks he's being punked and asks Vik to debug their computers. This doesn't get rid of BO who insists on being helped. Christy not only treats him like a human being but honestly like he's something of a dick. "Ok, don't take over our nuclear arsenal while we're gone," she says as she says goodbye.  It's also fascinating to see how Michael and Olivia try to figure out what rights an artificial intelligence actually has and then make the decision that they can do if he incorporates. Bo immediately does this – Price and Olivia are annoyed that he chose to eavesdrop – and Christy then comes up with a board. (Waitress at Hooters, construction workers…hey it's still probably more ethical then who they've got at Anthropic.)

But  the Kings are aware of the darker implications. Christy tries to track down one of the coders and finds out that she has joined a band of eco-terrorists who are involved in blowing up data centers and going back to technology. They are inclined to drop it but then an agent from the Silicon Valley company shows up and refers to Bo as 'a PR nightmare' and tells them how to effectively remove him from the computer.

Just to be clear the Kings treat all of the emperors of Silicon Valley with the respect they deserve which is absolutely none. In a case involving the head of a drone firm the leader is named Mark Zuckerbum and in a deposition he can barely be bothered to respond to yes or no questions. When Olivia decides to humiliate him by talking about Ayn Rand and how the idea of letting employees make decisions without their consent, he immediately ignores all the prodding and poking of his attorney and makes it very clear he is the decider, which immediately leads to a settlement. In the most recent episode we meet Natalia's ex-husband (Fisher Stevens, brilliant) who claims that he used a chatbot that is charged with being responsible for the death of a man out of respect for his nephew who has MS. Then Michael manages to find emails from Natalia and gets him to read that not only did he ignore the guardrails but that "my nephew loves it. And he's a moron." Of course the King's haven't completely abandoned reality: when Nichole comes in for a settlement conference, she takes a phone call and tells Michael and Olivia that gosh darn it, the company that formed it just filed for bankruptcy and has reincorporated under a different name. Michael and Olivia are upset but not surprised: "Silicon Valley Shuffle," Michael says.

Network television has in the last two years seen a remarkable creative and ratings revival, with ratings for all networks across the board up between 5 and 10 percent.  Amazingly after years of streaming and cable dramas with 8 and 10 episodes apiece, there now seems to be a desire for shows with much longer seasons with creative forces impressed by the effort involved. What's more, networks are willing to give full season launches far more often: Cupertino was given 20 episodes for its first season and the early reviews and ratings have begun to show that it's worth it.

That in itself is almost a direct response to the mission statement of Cupertino. For the last decade the Goliaths of TV have been cable networks such as HBO and AMC and then all the streamers. No one denies these shows haven't led to some of the greatest TV of all time but its also been some of the darkest. As I've mentioned numerous times over the last few years the appetite of the audience has moving away from bad people doing bad thing to watching good people trying to do the best they can under stressful circumstances. This is seen on such brilliant Emmy nominees and winners as The Pitt, The Diplomat and Slow Horses. But network TV never left this model and now people are coming back to it. So of course in a world when so many things are uncertain that the world wants to see like a show with someone out there fighting for the little guys in a bad world and Cupertino does it that. They will not personally welcome our new computer overlords and they are going to make sure that Good will triumph over Evil. (That's a joke the Kings would approve of.)

My score: 4.75 stars.

Coalition of the Sane Addendum: Ten Years and More Than 1100 Readers Later What I'm Finally Starting to Get From These Kinds of Columns (And Of Course Another Reminder Of What Will Always Be There)

 

I've passed two major milestones on Medium earlier this year. The first was that I've been writing here for ten years (I'm old) and around the same time I got to 1000 readers. I passed 1100 earlier this month so I felt now would be a good time to tell those of you who are fairly recent followers as well as members of this coalition a brief history of my writing.

I first came to Medium to write solely on all things pertaining to television: shows I was watching, shows I was found of, and all the awards surrounding it. It took me nearly five years – not coincidentally until we were into Biden's Presidency – for me to begin to widen my range slightly.

I've written about films books and sometimes criticizing my fellow critics. Around 2023 or so I began to write about American history, almost exclusively about political figures of the past and trying to draw a mirror to today. I've written about sports, mostly baseball, around that same time and every so often I would write about politics and the world today. Even then I would invariably do so as a historical or cultural parallel preferring to write through subtlety and history rather than the blunt sledgehammer that far too many people on social media and other major publications have.

Whatever I had to say about the world today for most of the first eight years I held entirely to the comments sections of other people's writing. While then as now, I found the overwhelming majority of their writing heavy-handed, tribal and overwhelmingly nihilistic I would try in my comments to offer what I intended as gentle criticism. In all of my comments I made it very clear I offered empathy and sympathy for what the writers were expressing in the majority of their articles but I always asked: "What do we do about it?" As I've told you, no matter what I said or whether I caged it politely, sarcastically and eventually angrily, I never got a response. At all.

I reached a point around 2023 or so when what I issued a supportive comment in favor of a moderate writer and was greeting with an attack essentially calling me 'A MAGAT'. I was shocked and attempted to reason with this individual and I was greeted with increasingly unpleasant names. Around this time I found out the block option on medium and though I'd never used it before, I very reluctantly did so this time.

Since then I've had to use this more and more extensively though each time its always with the deepest of reluctance. I don't like giving up on people, even those I completely and utter disagree with and even if they call me the worst names possible online. I always have considered it the option of last resort, mainly because I do feel everybody deserves an opinion and I don't like to personally censor anyone because I think both of us have been robbed of an opportunity. But as we entered Trump 2.0 and it became increasingly clear that the most extreme progressives were never going to accept reality as anyway but the way they saw it, I found myself doing so more and more often though even then I tried to give them every chance to prove me wrong about what I thought about them.

I always tend to give these writers and commentors three chances. First when I read their articles or comments and I offer a criticism or rebuke of my own. Most of the time I try to be civil with my approach but increasingly my harshness and sarcasm will take advantage of me.  If they choose to respond directly and if they choose to call me names instead of engaging in a dialogue (which still happens the overwhelming majority of the time) I compose a sarcastic and often lampoon their comments in a separate section of epitaphs I've titled "How to Talk To A Leftist" (Yes I know I'm taking a page from Ann Coulter's book, please don't remind me.) At the end of it, I basically beg them to block me themselves because I really do believe most of them are all about the content on this site and don't care if I insult them as long as I spell their name right.

It is only when they chose to resume name calling that I say goodbye forever and first block them, then mute them. While this has become easier over time, I always do so with a heavy heart even though I know I'm not losing anything by doing so.

Because the thing is, as no one less than W said of Obama, "I want them to succeed." I still agree with almost everything they said about the realities of the world and I want them to have a better one. I just disagree that their approach of writing pointed articles in magazines their opposition will never read, marching in a circle on college campus and street corners for a few hours every few weeks, and writing columns in sites like this that are so depressing they should come with a warning: "Repeated exposure will cause depression and possibly suicidal ideations' doesn't seem to be bringing about the progressive utopia that I assume is the end goal of everything they do. That to this point almost none of them have ever chosen to give a description of it in this column, only tell us what it isn't, has done nothing to dim my hopes that they don't have a plan somewhere. I mean, you don't keep saying you want to burn it all down if you don't have something to build once you've finished. (Yes I'm being sarcastic.)

To be fair in recent  months people in this coalition and even those who aren't official members have realized this isn't the best approach and are at least willing to talk it out. This week I had a lively debate on single-payer health care with Abby, which was one that I disagreed with but on policy not about ideology which I'll confess was very new to me. I've debated my issues on the reality of the manosphere and my logic for thinking there are some left-wing people in the world who want their own equivalent with Luc. And I've debated the difference between liberalism and progressivism with an engaging person who I have to call Shirley.  (I won't give their full names here but they know who they are.)

Furthermore increasingly some comments that even by my standard are pretty snidely sarcastic are being met in the spirit of what they meant. When I gave what is become my SOP response to progressive candidates and their failures, Rand responded politely and actually gave a list of candidates and elected officials who have. When I argued a man had written a depressing and doom-ridden piece, he acknowledged that he was feeling depressed about the world but he was trying to figure out his way through it. And in two separate cases involve criticism of feminist pieces where I was incredibly harsh, both times the writers actually thanked me and said that my response had made their pieces better. One was even nice of enough to credit me in a piece she wrote a few weeks later, which was moving. In all of these cases, I apologized for my snarkiness and I agree to follow all of them because they had given me the benefit of the doubt.

All of these are signs of improvement among dialogue. The problem is I keep running into people who represent the worst of what the left has to offer and genuinely seem determined to look at all the very real inequities and problems in the world and use them for content. I was reminded of this just the other when I ran into yet another strident feminist column but this time it didn't have a positive reaction.

In this case I will refer to the writer in question as Taylor because like so many people on this site I'm not going to dignify their piece or their writing with even the pseudonym they use.

To be clear it was the kind of seventh wave Feminist piece I've encountered in so many places other then this one. (Seventh Wave, for those of you want to know, allow any women to shoot any men and then claim, 'Stand Your Ground'.) It was neither that original nor even that interesting even by the standard of the kind proselyting on this site and Taylor demonstrated all the worst characteristics of so many online progressives: no objectivity, no logic, no sense of humor, and no awareness of history. This was proven by the first comment where they responded by "I'm sure you think your comment is pretty clever, but it just shows how tone deaf you are to what's actually happening in relationships."

Strike One.

At the end of their piece I went full sarcasm:

You're right. Let's just form two separate parts of the planet. All the men in one side, all the women in the other. That'll solve all our problems.

In fact let's have men-only countries and women only countries. We'll call it separate but equal. Sounds like a perfectly good term for me.

And of course women shouldn't bother to apply for jobs where men work. Or have bosses. Or really anywhere else. We should have companies that are only run by women with only women employees. And if men want to work there, they just check a little box that'll let them there. But only one. He can be the janitor. And if he works really hard we can give him a mop.

But you know the one place men are absolutely welcome. Giving you claps on this sites. Or paying you for articles when you call them the worst things possible. And of course every time a man leaves a comment on your site, you immediately block him because he would ruin your precious purity. In fact I bet you'll do this right now.

This was to be very clear complete satire. In it I was highlighting practices such as Jim Crow, apartheid, the very really problems with the workplace for women right now, the worst parts of tokenism and even the way this author herself chose to mine the very real problems in her essay as a way to get comment.  In that last paragraph I was essentially telling Taylor exactly what they were and what they were doing.

This was their exact response.

 

"Your plan is solid. I approve 100%. You guys just aren't lonely enough yet. Keep trying. You'll get there.

Wow. I mean, wow.

This checks all the boxes I had for so many of the worst progressives I've seen on this site and actually adds a couple I didn't know existed before.

To be clear (because Taylor clearly didn't)

I was suggesting the kind of bigoted solutions that took centuries to repeal and which all progressives consider evil.

I was suggesting a process that was completely and totally impossible on every level.

I was mentioning actual historic content. 'Separate but Equal' couldn't be clearer.

I was telling them that they were the worst kind of hypocrite and that all of this was just kind of context.

And all of this was delivered entirely satirically.

 

Calling what Taylor did 'strike two' doesn't seem to cover it. I don't know if Taylor is ignorant on history, can only take suggestions literally, has no sense of humor, was only doing this for content and clicks, or some horrible combination of all four.

To be clear I've received meaner responses, more dismissive ones, even some clever ones.  This was almost frightening. I was taking an MRI of a progressive's brain and it showed nothing. I'm amazed I managed to compose a response and then first block, then mute this individual quickly enough.

It took a lot of time to learn on this site and others that engaging in a battle of wits with someone on the left is unfair because far too often you're fighting an unarmed opponent. And honestly that's not as fun as it sounds.

It's also why, after the election, I'll be spending slightly less time on politics and social issues for the next several months increasing my focus where I like spending my time: TV, films, books, etc. And of course I'll continue to engage in the battle against those who I find big on talk but light on plans in the comments section. I'm just not going to do so as often either there or in my own columns.

Most of it is for me. I like writing about all of the above far more then I do poking the progressive bear. I don't mean that I'm not  as good writing about Lost or the films of Aaron Sorkin as I'm at about certain aspects of the political world – I've been told as much by quite a few people. But I'm just not sure I like myself as much when I do the latter.

Part of this is because there's no upside to it: mocking or challenging the left basically has the same affect of doing it to the right. It gives diminishing returns and it doesn't solve any of the problems of the world that we're facing. And at the end of the day I don't have a plan to make the world a better place then to many of the people on this site. I have suggestions and ideas of what we need to do but I'm smart enough to know these decisions can only be made above my paygrade and that whatever I think of is almost certainly not going to be read by an elected official of note. I can hope and dream, but my natural pragmatism will always get the way.

And I fear that I could become very much the kind of writer on this column and others I loathe: the kind of person who makes the same point over and over again to the point you might think I'm writing a boilerplate. I'm far, far from reaching that point to be sure but as someone who only tends to read his work after he posts it, I can tell when the tone is becoming the same.

Of course, it'll help that the end of year awards such as the Golden Globes and Critics Choice will come up which will send me into the delightful arms of so many wonderful streaming dramas, comedies and limited series. That's a rabbit hole I prefer to go down. And I have to say I've been on this site for ten years: I've yet to have to block someone because I thought Olivia Colman deserved the Emmy for The Crown over Emma Corrin. We critics are territorial but we all know the stakes are so small on this field.

Anyway as always thanks for your continued support and comments to this point and I will continue to do what I want regardless of what any of you tell me to do. Your claps and comments are always appreciated but I don't live or die by them. I know you're all big enough that you can take this in  a way so many others.

As We Approach Trump's Last Midterms A Look At How Second-Term Midterms Have Gone For Other Presidents (Spoiler: Usually Not Well)

 

As a historian I know two things happen when a President wins reelection. It's the political apex of their career and it's all downhill from there.

There's countless evidence of this in the record: Wilson's failure with the League of Nations, Truman's Presidency being stained by the firing of MacArthur and of course Nixon's landslide being undone by Watergate. But since we're approaching election day, I wanted to look on a more appropriate level. Once a President is a lame duck (and despite all of his posturing Donald Trump assuredly is) how does the electorate treat his party during the final midterms.

To do so I decided to use several specific metrics. First I was only going to look as Presidents who won reelection after the passage of the 17^th Amendment which allowed the direct election of Senators. (Prior to that, it had only been done my state legislatures.) This would mean that both Houses of Congress were subject to a direct referendum by the voters in a way that hadn't been true before.

Second I would make certain metrics. FDR was considering running for a third term even before 1940 but he didn't make the decision official until war broke out in Europe. As most people assumed after 1936 he would step down I will look at the 1938 election. Truman was against running for a third term so we're going to look at the 1950 election as his final midterms.

Third, I'm not going to consider continuity of other successors to Presidents who died in office. This eliminated Calvin Coolidge in 1926, LBJ in 1996 and Gerald Ford in 1974.

This gives us eight Presidents and elections to look at. Four are Democrat and four are Republican. In each I'll briefly discuss some of campaign issues, how many seats in the House and Senate the administration lost (or in some cases, gained) and just for fun, a major elected official who was voted out as a consequence and one who was voted in.

 

Woodrow Wilson: 1918 Midterms

The big issue going into 1918, as you might expect, was the Great War. Wilson had narrowly won reelection on the slogan "He Kept Us Out of War" and less than one month after being sworn he'd broken that critical campaign promise.

This was already difficult because the Republicans had managed to narrowly take Congress back in 1916 with a one seat majority over the Democrats. There was also division among Democratic leadership over how to pay for the war. As a result the Republicans would gain 24 seats in the House increasing their number to 240 and they would retake the Senate gaining five seats putting them in the driver's seat with 49 Republicans. Henry Cabot Lodge became majority leader and would become Wilson's nemesis as soon as Armistice Day came a week after Election Day.

Departures of Note: Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress from Montana, retired to run for the Senate. She lost.

Arrival of Note: Victor Berger would win a seat running for the Socialist Party in Wisconsin's 5^th district. The House would refuse to seat him. He would later run and win in 1922. This time they'd let him serve.

 

FDR: 1938 Midterms

The 1938 election cycle was the nadir of FDR's administration. Having failed in his attempt to pack the Court he'd used a lot of his goodwill up after his historic 1936 landslide election. Then he'd spent much of 1938 attempting 'the Purge' his attempt to primary conservative Democrats with liberal alternatives, which overwhelmingly failed. Combined with this was a recession that undercut much of the growth of the New Deal.

As a result the Republican Party, which many had predicted might go under after winning just Maine and Vermont two years earlier, managed a remarkable recovery. It might not seem that way because the Democrats still had overwhelming majorities in both Houses of Congress. But the Republicans would gain 81 seats in the House, bringing them up to 169 nearly doubling the amount they'd had after 1938. They also gained 8 seats in the Senate. The Democrats still had more then 2/3 of both Houses of Congress. But there were now around 20 unreliable votes among the Democrats – mostly in the South – which would allow conservatives to block some of his policies.

Departure of Note: George McGill would lose reelection in Kansas to Clyde Reed. To date no Democrat has won a Senate seat in Kansas since – though that may be about to change

Arrivals of Note: Robert Taft would win election to the Senate in Ohio and would very quickly become known as Mr. Republican and the main opposition to Democrats for the rest of his life. Sctott Lucas won reelection and he would eventually become Majority Leader under Truman until…

 

Harry Truman: 1950 Midterms

After Dewey didn't defeat him Truman's first term in his own right very quickly became a disaster. China would end up going Communist and the Korean War began on the eve of the election. Domestically there were issues of corruption within the Democratic Party and McCarthyism was beginning to rise.

The Democrats would maintain control of both Houses of Congress but they lost a lot of their majorities. The Republicans would gain 28 house seats, cutting the Democrats margin to 235-199. They also gained five seats in the Senate. One of the critical losses was Scott Lucas who'd lose reelection to Everett Dirksen.

Other Departures of Note: Millard Tydings, who FDR had tried to purge from the party in 1938 lost reelection to the Republican John Marshall Butler, after 24 years in the Senate. Elmer Thomas who'd represented Oklahoma in the Senate since 1926 lost renomination to Mike Moroney.

Arrivals of Note: Everett Dirksen would eventually become Senate Minority leader and would be critical for his work in passing the Civil Rights Acts of both 1964 and 1968. The Dirksen Senate Office Building in the Capitol bears his name with honor.

 

 

Dwight D. Eisenhower: 1958 Midterms

Republicans had hoped that Eisenhower's immense popularity would lead them to huge majorities in Congress and the Senate. It never worked out that way. This was especially true in 1956. Despite receiving the biggest electoral victory of any Republican to that point in history – 41 states and 457 electoral votes -  Congress which was still under Democratic control, remained so.

During 1958 the economy suffered a recession and the Democrats chose to blame Eisenhower. There was also consternation about the launch of Sputnik and busing. As a result they gained 48 seats in the House increasing their majority to 283. This number was so great the Republicans would not be able to take the majority back in the House until 1994 under Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution. This led the disappointed House Republicans to replace the minority leader Joe Martin with Charlie Halleck

It was even worse in the Senate. The Democrats would gain an incredible 15 seats in the upper chamber, in what was only the second (and to date last) time ten or more Senate seats changed hands in the midterms. They would have 64 members to the Republicans 34 (and two came for a special reason.)

Departures of Note: William Jenner, one of the biggest 'red baiters' in the Senate, right up there with McCarthy retired. Good riddance. John Bricker, one of the major conservative forces in Ohio, lost reelection to Stephen Young.

Arrivals of Note: Quite a few, actually. Edmund Muskie, Eugene McCarthy and Robert Byrd all won their first elections to the Senate and all would become vital voices of liberalism in the decades to come. This was also the first election in which Alaska would hold elections and because of a coin toss Ernest Gruening became senior Senator over Bob Bartlett. Gruening is best known for being one of only two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tomkin Resolution.

 

Ronald Reagan: 1986 Midterms

In 1984 Ronald Reagan had the greatest electoral victory in American history with 49 out of 50 states and 525 Electoral Votes to Walter Mondale's 13. But it was a personal victory for Reagan and not the Republican Party. The GOP only gained 16 seats in the House and lost two seats in the Senate.

1986 was worse though it depended on where you looked. The Democrats lonely gained 5 seats in the House where they still held a healthy majority of 253 to 181. The Senate was another matter. In 1980 the Republicans had taken control of the Senate back for the first time since 1954 when they'd won 11 seats. In 1986 the Democrats defeated seven of the freshman incumbents making major gains including in Washington, South Dakota, North Carolina and Florida.

Departures of Note: Barry Goldwater would retire giving way to John McCain. Paul Laxalt also retired in Nevada and his Republican counterpart would lost to Harry Reid.

Arrivals of Note: Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and Tom Daschle in South Dakota. Daschle eventually became minority leader before losing in 2004 to John Thune.

 

Bill Clinton: 1998 Midterms

During the 1990s America seemed fine with a divided Congress and in every election between 1996 and 2000 both parties were pretty much evenly divided in the popular vote and very few sides gained or lost seats. This might explain why the 1998 midterms were such an outlier.

The Republicans had been hoping to gain seat due to both 'the six year itch' and everything involving Monica Lewinsky. Instead the Democrats gained five seats in Congress and the Senate remained exactly the same: 55 to 45. The Republicans flipped three Democratic seats in Illinois, Ohio, and Kentucky but the Democrats flipped three Republican seats in New York, Indiana and North Carolina. This may have been the inspiration for a line Aaron Sorkin said on The West Wing just prior to the 2000 elections: "Tell me democracy doesn't have a sense of humor.

As a result Newt Gingrich, who'd staked his parties reputation on the midterm results, was forced to resign from Congress. His immediate successor Bob Livingston did so just before he took office leading Dennis Hastert to take over.

Notable Departures: Al D'Amato, who'd been in the Senate since 1980 lost his big, for reelection…

Notable Arrivals: …to Chuck Schumer. Also Ben Nighthorse Campbell who'd first won election as  a Democrat and had switched parties in 1994 won reelection as a Republican.

 

 

George W. Bush: 2006 Midterms

By 2006 fatigue over the Iraq War and the War on Terror had led to exhaustion with the GOP as a whole. Combined with a 50 state approach held by DNC chairman Howard Dean, the Democrats retook control of both Houses of Congress for the first time since 1994. They would win 32 seats giving them the majority in the House to 233 and forced Dennis Hastert to resign. The Democrats would win five seats and thanks to Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders agreeing to caucus with the Democrats the Democrats took back the majority. Furthermore no congressional or gubernatorial seat held by a Democrats was won by a Republican. "Those were the days…"

Notable Departures: Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who'd been castigated by the left into becoming an internet meme was soundly defeated in Pennsylvania. George Allen, a moderate Republican in Virginia many thought would be a contender for President, made a blunder late in October and Jim Webb defeated him.

Notable Arrivals: Sherrod Brown, Jon Tester and Amy Klobuchar would be elected to the Senate along with Bernie Sanders. That said there were some new faces in Congress on the GOP side who have gone to significance: Michelle Bachman, Kevin McCarthy and Jim Jordan. Jordan is the only one still there.

 

Barack Obama: 2014 Midterms

The most recent six year itch hid Obama hard. The Republicans had already made a huge gain in House Seats with the Tea Party movement back in 2010 and they gained 14 more in 2014. This led to a combined total of 77 Democratic held House seats lost under Obama, the highest number of House Seat lost under a two term President of the same party since Harry Truman.

The Senate was worse. Throughout Obama's administration they'd manage to keep the Senate under Democratic control. In 2014 the bottom fell out as the Republicans took 9 seats that were formerly Democrat while holding every single Republican seat in play. The Democrats didn't win a single Republican seat. The result gave the Republicans their biggest majorities in both Houses of Congress since 1928. And believe me Democrats were in a great depression over the outcome.

Notable Departures: Almost every red state Democrat running. Tom Harkin in Iowa, Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, Jay Rockefeller in West Virginia (he retired before the bloodbath) and Mark Begich in Alaska.

Notable Arrivals:  Tom Cotton in Arkansas, Thom Tillis in North Carolina, Joni Ernst in Iowa, Bill Cassidy in Louisiana. Of course thanks in no small part to our current President those three aren't going to be in the next Senate though at best Democrats may get two out of three. (There's also Dan Sullivan winning in Alaska. Doing everything we can.)

 

One of things that is easy to forget in a world of 24 hour news networks, social media, the internet and our current President is one that every student of history knows by heart: "The more things change, the more they stay the same."

And that is that 'the six year itch'  - a phrase that seems perfectly appropriate as it was when it was coined in the 1990s –  almost never goes away. With Bill Clinton clearly serving as an outlier, it seems that whether a President is a great one or a horrible one, eventually the voters take their frustrations out on his party.  In some cases, such as Eisenhower and Reagan, their personal popularity never synced that much with their political party to begin with and even FDR, considered the greatest President by many historians did reach a point in his political life where the voters took their frustrations out on the Democrats.

In many cases there are outside factors: the Great War in Wilson's case, the Civil Rights battle in Eisenhower's, exhaustion with the War on Terror in W's. But in some cases the voters just want to turn the page even if there is no apparent reason to do so. Everything involving Iran-Contra didn't come to light until after the 1986 midterms so it wasn't a factor in the electorate's decision. And despite Obama's immense personal popularity as well as the fact the GOP had shutdown the government in 2013, the voters still rewarded the Republicans with huge majorities anyway one year later.

It's like the only person who truly believed at every level this midterms were going to go absolutely perfectly for him is the President, whose ability to live in denial was made clear after the 2018 midterms when he blamed the losses on Republicans for not displaying sufficient fealty. (Sufficient fealty to Trump has been proven to never be sufficient to him; it's just taken the GOP a decade to realize this obvious fact. )

Even allowing for the extraordinary circumstances of all things Trump there have always been parallels between him and so many of his predecessors: his personal hold over the electorate is out of sync with his party at a Congressional level. This was particularly true with Eisenhower and Reagan and a similar argument could be made for Obama.  There's also the added fact that his decision to purge the party of those who he considered insufficiently loyal has been more successful then FDR for much of his career, though we'd already seen variations of it during Gingrich's rise to power and the Tea Party as a whole when it came to primarying those deemed insufficiently conservative. It has rarely cost the Republicans at a Senate or House level the way it did those prior movements. This cycle is proof that that lock on the electorate is waning.

It should be noted that while many Republicans are towing the party line about holding on to power, their actions speak  far louder. They've already moved money out of many swing districts and are privately considering the House a lost cause. Earlier they essentially conceded Roy Cooper flipping a seat in North Carolina when they pulled money out of that campaign and they've done the same against Jon Osoff in Georgia. That JD Vance and Trump have spent much of the fall in Kansas – where again no Democrat has won since 1932 – shows how worried the GOP is about Adam Hamilton making history. And they've already spent nearly 300 million dollars trying to hold onto a seat in Texas that every single poll shows James Talarico about to make history for the Democrats.

Trump has spent as much of his administration hiding behind his usual bravado and flexing executive power, all the while knowing that the lame duck status that has destroyed every coalition that has gone before him is something he'd can't pretend doesn't exist. History already indicated that next Tuesday is going to be a good night for the Democratic Party at every level. All the denialism in the world (and he will no doubt put up a lot) can't stop the verdict of the voters. 

The other thing about history is those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. We all know how proud our once and current President is about not learning any lessons. The good thing about democracy is that the voters keep educating their leaders anyway.