Democrats Get An Election

Various responses to a "blue" night--plus a "Blue Moon."

Greg Mitchell has authored more than a dozen books (see most of them here) and directed four recent PBS films. Subscribing to this newsletter is still FREE—so if you want to help fund, maybe purchase one of my books, thanks!

Stephen last night:

Big election night for Democrats across the country, including key easy wins in NY, VA and NJ, closing with a landslide in California allowing them to re-district to maybe counter Trump’s gerrymandering moves in Texas and elsewhere. Lot can be said but here is summary from Greg Sargent at The New Republic:

These big wins will embolden Dems to take on Trump’s lawbreaking and show there’s a price for GOP enabling of him. Folks hate to hear this, but normal patterns are alive and well: Liberalism isn’t dead, Rs likely to lose 2026, and Trump is very unpopular, not a magical exception.

A few other responses:

The New Yorker already posted next week’s Mamdani cover:

And the predictable response from Murdoch’s NY Post:

Nice to see this:

Maine Voters Approve ‘Red Flag’ Gun Law

The law is set to take effect in January, allowing families to directly seek a judge’s order removing weapons from a relative shown to be dangerous.

Patti Smith has (another) new memoir, and in a CBS morning show this week interview she revealed that, thanks to an ancestry test, she recently discovered that her father was not her actual father….

Caught up with the new Richard Linklater film, “Blue Moon,” last night, written by our friend Robert Kaplow. It finds the lyricist Lorenz Hart (played by always fine Ethan Hawke) in crisis at a party on the opening night for “Oklahoma!” and you will likely find that it is witty and quite excellent. Love the exchanges with E.B. White, and Andrew Scott as Hart’s erstwhile partner Richard Rodgers is also terrific. Kaplow might even get an Oscar nomination for original screenplay.

The title comes from one of Hart’s many famous songs, written with Rodgers in 1934, which he dismisses in the film as one of his weakest. I’m sure I never heard it growing up, until the hit doo-wop version reached the radio in the early 1960s. Here are a few other takes by all-time greats.

Definitive, by Billie Holiday:

Dylan in an alt-take for his much-derided “Self-Portrait” 1970 album:

The Beatles trying it out in the studio a year before that:

Note that it was kind of a dry run for Paul’s “I Will” on the “White Album”:

From Tunes to Toons

Michael de Adder:

Steve Brodner

Ann Telnaes reacted to Dick Cheney’s death by calling him “the original Darth Vader” and re-posting one of her old “tributes”:

And KAL did the same, recalling the day when he “shot a friend in the face"

Photo Finish

From my camera to you, let me know what you think: “Mardi Gras in New Orleans”