DL Open Thread: Wednesday, December 10, 2025

When Does The Anecdotal Become The Empirical?  Rethugs lose two more elections:

Georgia:

Georgia Democrats scored a major upset in a special election on Tuesday night, flipping a conservative legislative district in the Athens area—the 25th such gain for the party nationwide this year, against zero for the GOP.

Democrat Eric Gisler, who works in the insurance technology industry, defeated Republican Mack “Dutch” Guest IV, the owner of a trucking company, to win the 121st House District in the Athens area by a 51-49 margin.

The district had been in Republican hands ever since its previous occupant, Marcus Wiedower, unseated a Democratic incumbent in 2018. In recent years, it had shifted rightward, supporting Donald Trump by a 56-43 spread in 2024, according to calculations by The Downballot, and handing Wiedower a dominant 61-39 win over Gisler.

Florida:

Democrat Eileen Higgins won the Miami mayor’s race on Tuesday, defeating a Republican endorsed by President Donald Trump to end her party’s nearly three-decade losing streak and give Democrats a boost in one of the last electoral battles ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Higgins, 61, will be the first woman to lead the city of Miami. She spoke frequently in the Hispanic-majority city about Trump’s immigration crackdown, saying she has heard of many people in Miami who were worried about family members being detained. She campaigned as a proud Democrat despite the race being officially nonpartisan and beat Trump-backed candidate Emilio Gonzalez, a former city manager, who said he called Higgins to congratulate her.

“We are facing rhetoric from elected officials that is so dehumanizing and cruel, especially against immigrant populations,” Higgins told The Associated Press after her victory speech. “The residents of Miami were ready to be done with that.”

With nearly all votes counted Tuesday, Higgins led the Republican by about 19 percentage points.

I’ll answer my own rhetorical question:  We’re already at that point.  While we’re at it, Texas may not be the electoral gold mine the Rethugs have redistricted it as.  The recent gerrymander used the 2024 results to carve out more ‘safe’ districts.  However:

Let’s begin with those electoral maps that Republicans redrew this summer, a move that took on additional salience last week after the Supreme Court upheld them for the upcoming election. It’s not clear that this power grab will actually yield the party the five new seats it’s hoping to snag—particularly if the national political environment continues to favor Democrats in 2026. As elections analyst Eli McKown-Dawson noted, two of those five districts aren’t actually safe red: Texas’ 28^th District can easily fall in a blue-wave environment, and its 34^th could fall too if the Hispanic vote shifts back to Democrats. Given Hispanic and Latino Texans’ status as swing voters and their already-observable leftward shift in the 2025 elections, this hardly seems like a safe bet for the GOP. And considering that the recent Tennessee special election showed a district moving 13 points to the left, these 2024 Texas margins just aren’t that impressive.

Right on cue:

“In addition to all of that, I go out of my way to do long, thorough, and very boring Medical Examinations at the Great Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, seen and supervised by top doctors, all of whom have given me PERFECT Marks — Some have even said they have never seen such Strong Results. I do these Tests because I owe it to our Country. In addition to the Medical, I have done something that no other President has done, on three separate occasions, the last one being recently, by taking what is known as a Cognitive Examination, something which few people would be able to do very well, including those working at The New York Times, and I ACED all three of them in front of large numbers of doctors and experts, most of whom I do not know. I have been told that few people have been able to ‘ace’ this Examination and, in fact, most do very poorly, which is why many other Presidents have decided not to take it at all.”

“Despite all of this, the time and work involved, The New York Times, and some others, like to pretend that I am ‘slowing up,’ am maybe not as sharp as I once was, or am in poor physical health, knowing that it is not true, and knowing that I work very hard, probably harder than I have ever worked before. I will know when I am ‘slowing up,’ but it’s not now!”

“After all of the work I have done with Medical Exams, Cognitive Exams, and everything else, I actually believe it’s seditious, perhaps even treasonous, for The New York Times, and others, to consistently do FAKE reports in order to libel and demean ‘THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.’ They are true Enemies of the People, and we should do something about it.”