Originally published at: How Ruben Gallego Won A Senate Seat In A State That Swung Hard For Trump
Democrats at the national level were soundly defeated in all seven presidential swing states when voters went to the polls ten weeks ago. But Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House is just one part of the story. Down-ballot, Democratic candidates in statewide contests consistently won more votes than the top of the ticket,…
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I was happy to vote for Ruben Gallego. To move him into the Senate. I approved of him beyond the crazy lady he ran against… Kari Lake. She is plain weird in the head.
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I was proud to canvass for Ruben Gallego. I really thought he was going to beat Lake by a wider margin, but I’ll definitely take this win.
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Lake being creepy as fuck wasn’t enough. see Ted Cruz
Creepy as fuck and crazy as fuck? Enough. Barely.
I’m glad I donated to Gallego. I hope he’s as good as I think he is.
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Thanks for posting this interview. The guy makes an interesting point that I think Democrats need to latch on to more clearly and convincingly: control at the border, but provide better pathways to legal immigration and eventual citizenship. MAGA wants to shut the border AND make it virtually impossible for anyone but rich, blonde Norwegians to immigrate legally. The tough border talk is popular, but the second part isn’t really, especially with recent immigrant groups. The Biden administration remained in a defensive crouch on both issues – worried that talking tough on border control would alienate Latinos (quite the opposite, actually) and that talking up improving access to legal immigration would play into Trump’s xenophobic hands (again, not really).
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Gallego did a lot of thing right – but so did a lot of other Dems who lost in '24.
Given a deck so inanely stacked against Dems (don’t get me started!) I’m not at all convinced anything he did, smart as it was, would’ve mattered without his opponent being so deeply, deeply unpopular.
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Thanks for the article. Interesting to me is a local Democratic house member, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez won reelection in WA #5, a republican leaning district, and she used a very similar approach. Vocally campaigned on border security and grass roots economic issues, on logging sites and in car repair shops. She takes some progressive flak for this but she won, and is a solid Democratic vote on all the key issues. She and Mr Gallego know how to win
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Calling for of all things more cops in Arizona to use against immigrants. How Democrat. The article avoids the elephant in the room, the advantage of having the nut job Kari Lake as Gallego’s opponent.
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Reuben was blessed with a nutter opponent. Perhaps a more fun article would be Kari Lake’s top strategists explaining how they lost a senate seat in a Trumpy year.
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I had the same thoughts as I read this article. If you win, any strategy becomes a winning strategy. Colin Alred did much the same in Texas and got stomped. It’s just as likely that the Arizona voters finally saw past Kari Lake’s TV persona and realized how b… sh… crazy she is.
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election results in Arizona show the state has a mix of what are typically seen as progressive and conservative priorities
Doesn’t every state? Isn’t every person such a mix?
Holy cow, are we still criticizing Bill Clinton for telling people in the 90s that responsibility goes hand-in-hand with freedom? That includes policing, because not every choirboy comes out of the confessional intending to never sin again.
Campaigning isn’t picking the right items in a poll result and arguing for their criticality, that everyone should prioritize them and only them the same. Campaigning is a demonstration of balance in word and deed – which Kari Lake failed gloriously – left and right, liberal and conservative, a lot or a little, wealth or grace, land or sea. And it’s a big world.
Trump’s re-election shows both parties in America – along with many of the parties around the world (hello, Taliban) – are way the hell out of balance, mostly BECAUSE OF MONEY.
SEE: the Richest Man in the World. No, the real one. Putin.
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x1000!
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I’ve been proud to support her in both her runs for office, and strongly feel that while she may not be in lockstep with the full Democratic agenda, if she was, she would not be electable in that district or one like it. We have a solid vote on things that matter from her, and that’s what counts in this era.
I don’t doubt that if others followed her and Gallego’s paths, there would be more D’s in “red” states and there wouldn’t be quite so many nut cases in Congress.
Regarding Gallego “looking for improvements in long wait times for passport renewals,” my passport expired during the Covid shutdown and I wanted to renew it after the most recent election, for obvious reasons.
The Government recently created an online renewal option for passports expired no later than five years ago and for people who met certain stipulations, which I did.
The most complicated part was getting a picture that met their needs. The online part meant that if the picture didn’t meet their needs, it was instantly rejected and you could try again until you succeeded. The key was using a flash on the camera, so no shadows, and a white home movie screen background. And you don’t have to send in your old passport, you just have to enter some of the numbers that are on it.
From the moment I pushed “send” on the application form to the time I received the new passport was exactly 10 days.
So no longer a long wait for most/many passport renewals. I don’t know about the more complicated ones, but those have never been easy or quick.
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New poll out says the #1 reason given by Biden voters from 2020 who chose not to vote in 2024 was Gaza. Over the economy, over immigration. In Arizona, 38% of Biden voters who stayed home in 2024 listed it as their #1 reason.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/harris-gaza
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Yep. Gallego won even though he got 100,000 fewer votes than Trump. It helps to have the right opponent!
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As long as that’s clear. I guess all that “Trump is the end of democracy” stuff was bullshit.
The surest way to actually bring that outcome to reality is for all the actual (small d) democrats to vacate the field.
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It’s the messaging. Literally every time the border came up, the response should have been ‘We had the strongest border protections in history ready to go. We had everything the Border Patrol wanted ready to go. Why did Republicans vote it down? Because Donald Trump told them to.’
Yeah, it got said, but not enough. Billboards should’ve gone up as soon as that deal got killed of ‘Donald Trump killed the Border Security act’, everywhere.
It needed to get hammered on. Over and over. There should’ve been surrogates whose only job was to turn every conversation into ‘You can’t trust this guy, look at how he killed the Border bill.’
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Agree with everything but for Gluesenkanp catching flak
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All our senate folks did better than top of the ticket.
The ones that didn’t make it over the hump were incumbents.
Not sure its really more complicated than that.
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