Virginia is no longer for lovers.
Well, if I were JD Vance this morning, I’d go back to being Dumbledore.
I did some morning BBC radio and was struck by the presenters’ take that it was a centrist Dem wave last night here on our side of the pond. They are seriously underestimating the power of Mamdani-AOC-and-now-El-Sayed. It’s a radical party, and I don’t think there’s any controlling the young, flashy, obnoxious momentum.
This could be an excellent opportunity for Republicans — one that has been a long time in coming. You have been given an invitation/excuse/justification to insist on a post-Trump party. Trump’s not going to like it.
I have a hard time seeing how Marco Rubio can come to distance himself from Trump and Iran. This is Ron DeSantis’s moment, and it’s important because he’s the only plausible alternative I can be convinced of.
Of course, Trump is going to want to be a kingmaker. Adults in the party are going to have to decide to rally around DeSantis, if he does manage to articulate a hopeful conservative vision for a post-Trump America.
It remains to be seen if the aforementioned adults actually exist. Time will tell, and there is not a lot of it. It will feel like an eternity, but that’s because today’s politics have become one never-ending trashy reality TV show that jumped the shark long ago.
Abdul El-Sayed is bad news. And he won’t be quiet about it. If his graceless victory speech is any guide, he’s itching for a fight with the vice president. Our great Rick Brookhiser could probably supply a few colorful precedents to warn about where that could lead.
There’s something cynical about the way El-Sayed invokes religion. And he seems to be craving a Camelot-like mythology for his unfolding political story.
It is amazing to process that not only is Lindsey Graham dead; his Senate seat has gone to the Dems. That’s political malpractice. And we have one president to thank for that.
Thanks be to God for Idaho — they kept abortion out of the state constitution.
What’s the matter with Texas? Yes, Ken Paxton was no small part of it. Every time James Talarico speaks, Republicans there ought to be doing an examination of conscience. Look what you inflicted on us, guys!
Vivek Ramaswamy lost in Ohio in no small part because of his disgraceful ad against Amy Acton, using the mother she hasn’t talked with since she was a child.
The vice president, meanwhile, was disgusted with those of us who called Ramaswamy out for it. This is a time for humility, bros.
That Virginia’s Amendment 1 passed is a grave matter — no limits on abortion, obliteration of parental consent on abortion, and puberty blockers.
The only two hopeful things I can say are: I do believe people didn’t know what they were voting on. As with abortion more broadly, people are confused — and scared. The good news being that they are not as radically pro-abortion as some of these laws are. But now abortion on demand without exception is in the state constitution. This confusion and radicalism impacts — ends — human lives.
The other thing that must be said is this is not the end of the story. My friend Catherine Hadro at EWTN put it well:
Heartbreaking. Virginia has enshrined abortion without limits into the state constitution. Lord have mercy.
But I must believe the heroic “Catholics Vote No” campaign led by @BishopBurbidge and Bp. Knestout cultivated an abundance of unseen graces here in Virginia.
When a…
— Catherine Hadro (@CatHadro) November 4, 2026
Virginia is no longer for lovers, because abortion is the antithesis of love, and indicts us for our failure to love. (And, Senator-elect Talarico, please don’t talk to me about love when you insist the Bible is silent on abortion.)
One finally thought: Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America issued a memo warning the GOP to stop taking pro-lifers for granted. It declares: “We did all we could to try to prevent this.”
I found that jarring. I know they are talking about the likes of door knocking, but we can never do enough when we are talking about the lives of the most innocent and their mothers. And if our politics are any reflection of this, we do not know this — or we know and are waiting for someone else to fix the problem.
Women deserve better than this miserable politics that adds salt to open wounds in real human lives, as terminations of life continue while we pretend this is basic health care.