Better in their words…

In which we search the fallout from Tuesday’s elections for hopeful lessons; and a 1981 classic Kurt Russell movie returns with a bang of new relevance.

Source: THE RETURN OF SNAKE PLISSKEN ☙ Thursday, November 6, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS.

WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY

🔥🔥🔥

Unsurprisingly, and just as we’d predicted, yesterday the corporate media wallowed blissfully in Tuesday’s election results like swine in sludge, while conservative social media hustled hysteria, pushed panic, and played the Blame Game.™ This morning, the Washington Post’s full Editorial Board excreted a jubilant op-ed headlined, “Thanks to Trump’s overreach, Democrats won big.” We’ll get to that oversized claim in a minute. Meanwhile, at breakfast yesterday, President Trump all but begged Republican Senators to fracture the filibuster.

CLIP: President Trump turns on the charm with Senators after the Tuesday elections (30:18).

As Senators munched, the President offered several persuasive points. First of all, the Democrats will end the filibuster anyway, as soon as they get back control; after all, they already tried under Biden in 2022. Meanwhile, even if they ever agree to pass the clean continuing resolution and reopen the government, we’ll the fight will just resume every 90 days, as each successive short-term funding bill expires. In other words, Democrats are exploiting the silent filibuster— instead of using it responsibly. The rule has outlived its usefulness; it’s now just a cheat code for creating unlimited gold rings in Mario Cart, DC Edition.

(Watch the whole breakfast meeting clip if you’re feeling anxious; it was President Trump at his most charming.)

WaPo’s Editors began their own argument with some astonishing admissions about President Trump’s electoral mandate and the ruinous Biden regime (which in turn outraged their commenters, who are sick and tired of the WaPo’s love affair with the President):

WaPo’s editors should have, but didn’t, mention that nearly all of Tuesday’s races were in safe Democrat strongholds, so it is dangerous to draw too many conclusions, a fact that will not slow the breathless pundit class by a single MPH.

The op-ed’s gist —correct, in my view— was that Democrats ran against ‘King Trump’ rather than on candidates or issues. Well, there was one ‘issue’— the gossamer, ineffable notion of “affordability,” whatever that is, presumably meaning that avocado toast has become too expensive. It would seem like a terrible argument; if, that is, any logic applied.

First, complaining about affordability is pretty rich coming from a political party that caused all the historic inflation under the Cabbage and at the time were perfectly fine with it. Second, is it really the President’s job to make stuff cheaper? (To the extent the answer is ‘yes,’ that is only because the federal government is involved in too much of our lives.)

But forget about logic. Trump Derangement is a powerful drug, and the party is pushing it to progressives in heaping handfuls. Still, WaPo’s editors worried it might not be enough. “While being anti-Trump was enough to win this year, and might work again in the midterms,” they mused, casting their minds far to the future, “the exit polls reveal that the Democratic brand remains underwater.”

More to the point, they don’t need to fix their branding problems to win the midterms.

After Tuesday’s elections, you can bet the Democrats will run the exact same playbook again in the 2026 midterms. Why would they change? It worked on Tuesday. Unless something drastic changes, since Trump has boxed them in with 80/20 issues, Dems will focus their emotional midterm messaging on “No Kings” and “affordability.”

It’s how they plan to escape the 80/20 trap. Neither of those “issues” is any tangible policy. It’s just vote against Trump.

For example, yesterday Politico interviewed New York City’s new muslim-socialist mayor, who vapidly sloganeered about his plans. “It’s time to talk about protecting our democracy, not just as an ideal or a value, but also in its ability to deliver the material needs for working people.” See? No kings, and free stuff.

Believe me, that was the most concrete policy that Mamdani suggested.

It’s that simple. Democrat voters don’t need sensible policies or strong candidates. Jay Jones’ election in Virginia, the lackwit who “mused about the murder of a colleague and his children in texts,” proves it. “They voted blue, no matter who,” WaPo’s editors cynically observed.

I remain optimistic. Democrats have nothing to offer but emotional manipulation. They aren’t winning on any definable issue. So the GOP can focus on frustrating the Democrat machine and addressing the electoral elephant in the room: the personality the progressives are really running against.

The sooner Republicans face these facts, the better. This isn’t hard. The crucial midterm elections will be run on Trump and Trumpism, with a side dish of midnight mail-in ballots. If the GOP wants to keep the Congress, it needs to help make the President’s agenda happen faster. Killing the filibuster now and passing some strong election integrity laws would be a great start.

CLIP: White House planning to issue an executive order to “strengthen security of elections” (1:04).

In a sense, Tuesday’s results were the best thing that could’ve happened. Any sleepy Republicans just got a double shot of espresso, a wake-up call that should now grab everyone’s attention and clarify the mission. Plus, since the vast majority of losses were safe blue seats anyway, the cost of learning these lessons now was much lower than it might otherwise have been.

In other words, without losing anything important, we’ve learned the Democrats’ playbook before the 2026 midterms, which really will count. No surprises.

🔥🔥🔥

They often say life imitates art* (so-named for Art Flouster of Two Eggs, Florida, who bravely defied his homeowner’s association and —using only old motorcycle parts— constructed a life-sized replica of the Eiffel Tower in his front yard.) But we did not expect to see 1981’s hit Kurt Russell classic Escape from New York materialize quite so soon. Yesterday, the Guardian ran a story headlined, “New York elites flock to Florida after Mamdani victory.”

Escape from New York was supposed to be a dystopian fantasy. Now it’s a documentary. “My phone’s been blowing up,” said Eric Benaim, a leading Florida real estate broker nicknamed “the King of Queens.” Eric told the Guardian, “I was up until midnight, and I’d probably received a few dozen calls and messages by 9am this morning.”

“All the rules that these socialist politicians think work actually just make prices go up, and make people suffer,” Eric added, helpfully.

High-end beachfront broker Dina Goldentayer suggested, “They’re miserable where they’re at, and they could be in sunny South Florida feeling safe in the streets and not under a Marxist regime.” Dina reported that calls have “definitely increased,” and for permanent residences rather than wintertime getaway rentals.

John Boyd, who runs a Florida-based corporate relocation firm, said, “Several large companies and private developers have approached me in the last few weeks about moving to the new Wall Streets in Boca Raton, Nashville, and Wilmington.” He added, “For many executives, Mamdani is the final straw.”

“New York lost roughly 500,000 people during the pandemic, and it went through this phase of losing billions of dollars of taxpayer income; the concern is this could be exodus 2.0,” Boyd continued.

Had those 500,000 lost taxpayers still resided in New York, maybe Mamdani wouldn’t now be mayor. Just saying.

Greg Kraut, a New York-based office developer, said he received calls from around 50 wealthy business owners in the past few weeks who want to escape from NYC. “People are fleeing the city,” Kraut explained.

Apparently, New York City’s top taxpayers —who somehow tolerated the pandemic— are ironically worried about an affordability crisis. “If you make a million dollars a year in New York City, you break even with a family,” Kraut rhetorically wondered. “Now they’re going to add more taxes, and if you don’t have better public safety and you feel like people don’t even like you, why be there?”

In that sense, then, Mamdani is right. There is an affordability crisis. The one he’s caused, not the one he keeps blathering about.

Miami-based developer Isaac Toledano told Fox that his company has closed over $100 million in contracts with New York buyers in just the past few months – which is double last year’s volume. It’s not just high earners, either. “We saw a few articles with thousands of police officers saying they’re going to quit or resign,” Toledano said. “The fact that people have to deal with this daily stress, for them, for their kids, for their families, puts them in a position that they need to make a decision.”

🔥 In the movie, one-eyed antihero Snake Plissken prophetically quipped, “I don’t give a f— about your president.” Seriously, the movie could have been scripted for this week. Plissken was a criminal sent into Manhattan to rescue a president trapped in the city’s chaos — a mission that feels less like fiction and more like a flashback.

As you consider Escape from New York II, remember how this sequel started. The Big Apple ran Trump off after deciding he was Snake Plissken —a criminal!— public enemy number one of Broadway cocktail culture. He rode down the escalator at Trump Tower, and they sent him packing from Manhattan to Mar-a-Lago. They tried to wall him off with audits, lawsuits, receiverships, and subpoenas— lawfare replacements for John Carpenter’s concrete border walls.

How they laughed. They called it exile to the swamp, banishment to the land of retirees and reptiles. But, like any good sequel, the story twisted: Trump didn’t just escape; he built a new capital outside the old walls. If Manhattan was the prison, Florida became the free zone.

Now, one by one, his old neighbors are following, escaping. Wall Street refugees, media moguls, real estate royalty, even cops and firemen— they’re all slinking south past the Mason-Dixon Line, like minor characters realizing the hero was right all along. Mar-a-Lago isn’t just a golf club anymore; it’s Snake’s glider hangar; the launchpad for a new civilization where air-conditioning works, criminals are in prison, gas is cheap, and the president takes your call.

What can I tell you? Mamdani = TAW again.

Have a terrific Thursday! With any luck, I’ll be back to scratch soon. But either way, you’ll have an all-new roundup tomorrow morning.

Share

Give a gift subscription

Don’t race off! We cannot do it alone. Consider joining up with C&C to help move the nation’s needle and change minds. I could sure use your help getting the truth out and spreading optimism and hope, if you can:☕ Learn How to Get Involved 🦠

How to Donate to Coffee & Covid