I don't agree with every conclusion here but there are some interesting words on advocacy polling and @SeanMcElwee's big miss on #NY15. As the only poll out there, it helped harden the narrative that a vote for @SamelysLopez would help Diaz. Wasn't true.
My gut and reporting on #NY15 told me @RitchieTorres was a clear front-runner because he was a sitting elected who had raised so much money. But he was good at exploiting a narrative that only *his* votes could beat Diaz. Diaz, though, wasn't running a modern House campaign
In the end @SamelysLopez and Diaz ran neck and neck. There were plenty of votes left for Torres and Blake.
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You become right-coded once you break from any consensus, which is very stupid. Taibbi criticizes the left often, but he's fundamentally a liberal on virtually every social and economic question of note. His free speeh absolutism would've made him a leftist into the 2000s.
The media is dumb about ideology. Bari Weiss can be called a conservative writer. She's an Israel hawk, skeptical of heavy government spending. Taibbi is none of those things. He's a liberal w/ a Bernie affinity who often criticizes the mainstream left on free speech grounds
Matt Taibbi wrote an entire book on how Donald Trump is an asshole. Honestly, the book wasn't my favorite - a collection of 2016 stuff, got repetitive at times - but it's not something a right-wing writer would do...
I'm in the middle of writing a story on Asian American voters moving to the right in New York. Ron Kim, one of the most progressive members of the state legislature, had some fascinating things to say.
Kim is unique in that he has genuine left view but is not enamored with large nonprofits and labor unions, which govern most talking points of Democratic pols. There are a lot of great nonprofits and unions but they aren't infallible. Many NY Dems treat them like the church.
The two most interesting pols running right now may exist on opposite coasts. @RoKhanna in CA and @rontkim in NY.
Taibbi has a lot of explaining to do on why he wrote out a whole story on Twitter - seems to be it was some deal with Musk, but TBD - but the ferocity of liberals toward his work and career continues to astound me. Many of these people probably haven't read him in the last decade
A writer I respect a while back denounced Taibbi somewhat furiously on Twitter, pointing to a Substack piece he'd written. I *assumed* the writer had read the piece and it turned out, no, the denouncement was based on a headline. A single headline.
I asked the writer if he planned to read the piece and the response was like 'lol no I'm not subscribing to Taibbi!!!" and, well, isn't that the perfect intellectual situation we're in now? Imagine paying to read something you might not agree with always
The red wave in NY, for a variety of reasons, didn't come for the State Senate. The special master drew favorable maps for them and they survived the Long Island losses. There will be, at the minimum, a 40-member majority. This is big for the left.
There are two ways Democrats in Albany can go. They can look at the disaster on Long Island and attempt some weakening of criminal justice reforms - or they can simply give conservatives and moderates the finger. They got 40 seats. Why bother?
Consider NY Senate Democrats are now able to build what looks like a durable majority *without* Long Island. For progressives, this was the dream. City Democrats + liberals in the Hudson Valley to freeze out LI moderates.
One odd reality of Tuesday night is that New York may have experienced a red wave but not the rest of America. In NY, Republicans took almost every single toss up House seats and came closer to winning the governor's race than in purple states like Michigan.
It's funny to think my feelings of a red wave building were probably skewed by living in deep-blue New York. A red wave absolutely built here. It just didn't crest as high in many other states.
My first pass on Hochul's win for @CrainsNewYork. My stuff from me to come!
It's notable Zeldin is already at 45%, with Suffolk County yet to report. He has already performed better than any Republican candidate in NY in two decades. Had he not been a hardcore Trumper - or a moderate run instead - Hochul may have lost.
The alarm around Hochul was real, as well as the Zeldin energy. It's plausible he ends the night in the high 40s. It just was not enough in a very Democratic state.
It seems Zeldin just didn't carry Nassau County by enough. He's winning there 54-46%. Overall, statewide, he is about to hit 46% against Hochul.