Life be lifing recently, so I've been hiding my head in the sand playing Path of Exile 1.
But I did manage to see former Democratic Senate hopeful Haley Stevens toss her political career in the toilet by endorsing Republican Senate hopeful Mike "I hate you all" Rogers.
According to Scott MacFarlane, this late forced error on Stevens' part seems to have backfired on Rogers.
The Haley Stevens mess in Michigan triggers huge fundraising for Abdul El-Sayed …. and might be counterproductive for Mike Rogers https://t.co/MCaddWfZwi
— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) November 2, 2026
Abdul El-Sayed responded to the SourStevens...
Abdul El-Sayed:
My focus has never wavered. I have been clear about what our responsibilities are. So rather than focus on a distraction about who said what to whom, where they went, I've been consistent.
I want to get money out of politics. I want to put money back in pockets. I want Medicare for all. I want to take on the heinous price of gas, the ridiculous price of groceries, the fact that people in the richest, most powerful country in the world cannot see a doctor. The notion that we should continue to breathe unclean air or unclean water.
That has been the focus of this campaign since April of 2025 when we kicked it off. It's what we said in rooms across the state. 700 public events, 120 different cities now. It's what I've said in every interview with probably every single one of you, right? It's what I said on TV. It's what I said while I was trying to fall asleep at night. It is the goal of this campaign.
At the end of the day, I actually don't think about Haley Stevens. See what I'm saying? Like, I, I think about the, like I said, the 9,999,998 people who are not those two. 'Cause you know what? I'm just less interested in the politics of it all than I am in the policy of it all.
And so, look, if you're somebody who believes that we ought to have more rights, not less, then I would think you would support me in this race.
If you are somebody who believes that we should stand up to hate and you have watched this last campaign, I think we probably would not want to support Mike Rogers and Donald Trump and JD Vance.
Source: MLive YouTube auto-generated transcript, 11/01/2026.
El-Sayed expanded on his thoughts on MS NOW:
It's 12 minutes long. I'm not gonna provide a transcript.
Speaking of backfiring...
Tick Tock --> How Trump put the Senate in play - Picked JD Vance as his running mate, opening up tough expensive special election that GOP could lose. DeWine appointed Husted, who originally wanted to run for governor. Close race that wouldn't have been up til '28 otherwise - Tangled with Tillis over healthcare cuts in 2025, prompting his retirement. Thune said then Tillis "knew how to run and win in North Carolina." Trump cleared field for Whatley, who is down by large margin. - Cold-shouldered Cornyn then backed Paxton. Cornyn: “Texas was an unforced error, I think, on the part of the president... if I won the nomination, then that would be a layup in November. That’s all off the table.” - Backed Sen. Darline Graham in crowded SC race, most senators thought she'd be an interim senator. Now in toss-up race against Annie Andrews with state GOP divided. Andrews: "Darline was going to be easier for me.” - Tried to oust Kemp in '22; when Georgia race came up this cycle, Kemp passed on the race. Trump backed Rep. Mike Collins over Kemp's pick Dooley, now huge underdog to Sen. Ossoff - Tariffs, filibuster pressure and of course, the Iran War: “Every negative for the GOP this cycle is a downstream effect of Iran" w/ @ShelbyTalcott https://t.co/5IFAI5kerG
— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) November 2, 2026
The whole tweet says:
- Picked JD Vance as his running mate, opening up tough expensive special election that GOP could lose. DeWine appointed Husted, who originally wanted to run for governor. Close race that wouldn't have been up til '28 otherwise
- Tangled with Tillis over healthcare cuts in 2025, prompting his retirement. Thune said then Tillis "knew how to run and win in North Carolina." Trump cleared field for Whatley, who is down by large margin.
- Cold-shouldered Cornyn then backed Paxton. Cornyn: “Texas was an unforced error, I think, on the part of the president… if I won the nomination, then that would be a layup in November. That’s all off the table.”
- Backed Sen. Darline Graham in crowded SC race, most senators thought she'd be an interim senator. Now in toss-up race against Annie Andrews with state GOP divided. Andrews: "Darline was going to be easier for me.”
- Tried to oust Kemp in '22; when Georgia race came up this cycle, Kemp passed on the race. Trump backed Rep. Mike Collins over Kemp's pick Dooley, now huge underdog to Sen. Ossoff
- Tariffs, filibuster pressure and of course, the Iran War: “Every negative for the GOP this cycle is a downstream effect of Iran"
SEMAFOR (11/02/2026): How Trump’s iron grip on the Republican Party put the Senate in play:
Americans are angry about war and prices, and a president’s second midterm is always difficult — but a series of decisions by President Donald Trump has made Republicans’ Senate majority ever-more vulnerable.
The mark Trump made on the midterms began in the summer of 2024, when he selected former Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate. Since then, the president’s personnel and political decisions have reshaped the Senate battleground from what looked like an impenetrable red wall into a toss-up.
His decision to pick Vance opened up a special election in Ohio that will by the end of this week cost the GOP hundreds of millions of dollars and potentially a Senate seat. Trump’s party-boss mentality in North Carolina, Texas, and South Carolina has further contributed to the yawning battleground.
He endorsed Rep. Mike Collins in Georgia’s Senate race against Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff — a contest that never really got off the ground after Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, whom Trump tried to take down in a primary in 2022, passed on the race. Ossoff is favored to win.
SEMAFOR (11/02/2026): How Trump’s iron grip on the Republican Party put the Senate in play
Tiff Talk:
I've seen recent polls that show a big surge in support for Democrats. I'm not one of those "polls are wrong" people. Polls are just data. There is no surge either way if we don't vote.
Vote.
Everyone is focusing on tomorrow as if that will end Puddle and Puddle's enablers by Wednesday.
That is cope.
The new Congress doesn't officially start until January 2027.
Puddle and his enablers are already attempting to interfere with an election that hasn't even happened yet...
The Trump DOJ immediately filed a notice of appeal, making clear it still wants to interfere in Alaska's election and pursue an investigation that would violate the right to a secret ballot. Doc https://t.co/bzixLAiNld
— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) November 1, 2026
Find a list of countries that do not protect the right of a secret ballot and whose ruling regimes fight tenaciously to violate it. I doubt that you will find a single democracy on that list.
— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) November 2, 2026
Critical to that effort will be the cornerstone of any free society: the sacred, secret ballot. No government with democratic legitimacy would ever propose asking a court to let agents of the state interrogate citizens about how they voted, but that is exactly what the Trump regime has asked a judge to allow it to do in Alaska.
On Sunday, a federal judge emphatically rejected that effort because the relief that it requested would violate a sacred right.
The Trump Justice Department asked U.S. District Judge Sharon L. Gleason to block any Alaska Senate election outcome that ends in the defeat of the Republican incumbent “pending an investigation to determine whether votes cast for Daniel J. Sullivan were meant to be cast for Senator Sullivan.”
But Judge Gleason found that “requiring the segregation of ballots cast by voters for Daniel J. Sullivan so that these voters can be further investigated by law enforcement is not a remedy that this Court can or should order as it clearly violates Alaskans’ right to a secret ballot.”
To establish standing, a party must request relief that a judge has the power to grant: a concept known as “redressability,” but what Trump Justice Department lawyers asked for was anathema to a free society.
“More fundamentally, the United States provides no workable plan as to how it proposes to segregate ballots cast for Daniel J. Sullivan on Election Day and then conduct a court-ordered unspecified ‘investigation’ of those ballots in a manner that would preserve voter secrecy,” the ruling states.
All Rise News. 11/01/2026.
"Never been anything like this"...
By any fair assessment, The New York Times found powerful evidence that top aides for the campaign of Democratic candidate Mary Peltola and senior DSCC lawyers had a hand in that ballot-stacking scheme, despite their official denials. That’s wrong and strategically boneheaded in a ranked-choice voting state, but it’s a legal and common ploy in U.S. politics being exploited by Trump toward authoritarian ends.
As a legal matter, the state of Alaska points out that the revelations “add nothing.” That’s because the Supreme Court of Alaska decided that it doesn’t matter whether Dan J. Sullivan was a “good faith” candidate or a spoiler dreamed up in campaign war rooms in Anchorage or Washington, D.C. A candidate who meets the legal and constitutional requirements is allowed to run, end stop, and Republicans have run the same disreputable playbook numerous times across the country — including against Peltola recently by supporting a fringe candidate who was incarcerated in New York.
“Countless similarly questionable candidacies surely exist throughout the country in every election,” Alaska Assistant Attorney General Margaret Paton Walsh noted in a legal brief.
In Florida, Republicans successfully won an election by backing a candidate with the same surname as then-Democratic state Sen. Jose Javier Rodriguez, who lost by 32 votes to his GOP opponent. The results stood. What’s more, the scheme was legal and only led to a successful prosecution because of the illegal campaign contribution that came with it.
Until now, no federal government has suggested that a race could be nullified because of that common practice.
All Rise News. 11/01/2026.
And this...
BREAKING: The Trump administration appeals to the Supreme Court in a push to sideline 20,000 California mail ballots. https://t.co/kEDIoqb6YS
— The Associated Press (@AP) November 2, 2026
Thank you for coming to my Tiff Talk...
