Today's Takeaways

Laura Hollis
Wed, 05 Nov 2025 17:32:34 -0800
Opinion

I had two different topics I intended to cover this week, but the election results across the country, and the events leading up to them, warrant some observations. So here are a few of mine:

1. Those who are downplaying this week's results as merely "blue-state voters being blue-state voters" are missing the point. It's not that Democrats are voting for candidates running as Democrats. It's what the Democratic Party now stands for and what their voters are voting for. In New York City, it's an unqualified, wealthy, spoiled communist who wants to defund the police, take away private property, give government control over the means of production, and use public dollars to fund child mutilation tourism.

2. The same people caterwauling "No Kings!" are all kinds of excited about Zohran Mamdani, a man who unapologetically promotes a totalitarian ideology and gleefully announces that there's nothing too big or too small for the government to get involved in. Have fun with that.
Updated: Thu Nov 06, 2025

I had two different topics I intended to cover this week, but the election results across the country, and the events leading up to them, warrant some observations. So here are a few of mine:

1. Those who are downplaying this week's results as merely "blue-state voters being blue-state voters" are missing the point. It's not that Democrats are voting for candidates running as Democrats. It's what the Democratic Party now stands for and what their voters are voting for. In New York City, it's an unqualified, wealthy, spoiled communist who wants to defund the police, take away private property, give government control over the means of production, and use public dollars to fund child mutilation tourism.

2. The same people caterwauling "No Kings!" are all kinds of excited about Zohran Mamdani, a man who unapologetically promotes a totalitarian ideology and gleefully announces that there's nothing too big or too small for the government to get involved in. Have fun with that.

3. In Virginia, voters chose for governor a Democrat woman who remained painfully silent when asked by her political opponent whether she would protect little girls from sexual predators in their bathrooms and locker rooms. In response to this most reasonable of questions, Abigail Spanberger said nothing; she just stared straight ahead like she was in some sort of catatonic state.

4. It gets better. Virginia voters also chose for attorney general a Democrat who bragged about wanting to put two bullets in a political opponent's head, and who insisted that that same political opponent's wife should be forced to watch their murdered children die in her arms. Jay Jones was just elected to be the highest-ranking law enforcement officer in the state. The question here isn't whether Jones will ever shoot and kill someone; that is wholly implausible. But it is worth asking how he would treat someone else who did. Would they be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, or put back on the street where they are free to attack new victims? Would their charges be plea-bargained down to something minor? Would they be released early on parole? Jones' likeminded comrades in other blue states and cities have done all of that and worse.

5. A more pressing question is why so many Democrat voters are undisturbed by violence and chaos. There have been two attempts to assassinate President Donald Trump, and leftists complain that the would-be assassins missed. Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was murdered in broad daylight, and Democrats have celebrated and mocked his death with T-shirts, TikTok videos and protests at which they pretend to shoot themselves in the neck as a thinly-veiled threat. UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot in the back on a New York City street, and leftists across the country have made his killer a cult hero.

6. California voters passed Proposition 50, an initiative Gov. Gavin Newsom and former President Barack Obama heralded as putting control over elections "back in the hands of the people" but which does exactly the opposite, disenfranchising California Republicans.

7. People saying "I don't care what happens in New York or Virginia or California — I don't live there, and it doesn't affect me" are wrong. What Prop 50 and the election of Mamdani do is deepen the rift between Americans and, increasingly, between the governments of the states. Newsom wants to give Democrats in California more congressional seats to compensate for the representatives Democrats are losing because of Republican redistricting in states like Texas. Never mind that California (and other states) already has more congressional representatives than it would have if illegal aliens were not counted in the census for that purpose. Mamdani will not only send New Yorkers fleeing to red states; he can effectively invite millions more sharia-believing Muslims into the country via New York City, thwarting — as other Democrat mayors and governors are doing — the ability of the federal government to identify and deport them. And once they are here, they can go anywhere.

8. While the Democratic Party is busy capitulating to communists and promoters of murder and child mutilation, conservatives have decided this would be a good time to attack each other. The Right needs to stop the ridiculous infighting over "Christian Zionists," Israel and absurd conspiracy theories about "the Jews"; marginalize and ignore self-absorbed idiots like Nick Fuentes, and unite against the ideologies that actually threaten the survival of the United States.

9. We are in the midst of a revolution that has been brewing in our institutions of higher education for at least 30 years. And you cannot stave off a revolution by offering limp-wristed, half-hearted compromises to the revolutionaries. They will use you, step on you to get where they want to go, and then cast you aside. Republicans had better figure that out. They can start by reading some history.

10. Abolishing the filibuster is a bad idea, and a good example of short-term thinking. Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made the same mistake in 2013, when he triggered the "nuclear option," changing Senate rules so that a bare majority of 51 senators could confirm a president's judicial nominees — other than for the U.S. Supreme Court. Reid arrogantly assumed that Democrats would always have a majority in the Senate. But in 2014, they lost that majority and Republicans extended the Reid rule to the Supreme Court. In 2016 Donald Trump was elected president, and by the end of his first term, Trump had been given three SCOTUS vacancies to fill.

11. One final thought: Trump needs to focus on the American economy. One can appreciate his concern for resolving conflicts abroad, but he was elected to address Americans' needs. Right now, Americans' primary concerns are economic, and it is those concerns that are propelling grifters like Mamdani to political office.