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   of the Democratic Party’s economic Left; some may well argue he was a   
   prophet of today’s populism. Technically, Sanders was a winner in 2024,   
   as Vermont voters sent him for another six-year term in the Senate; at   
   the end of it, Sanders will be 89.   
      
   You could argue that senator Elizabeth Warren was one of the secret   
   winners of the 2020 cycle, as her former staffers spread out into a lot   
   of positions in the Biden administration. In a reflection of the state   
   of Massachusetts politics, Warren ran for reelection this year, and I’ll   
   bet you never noticed; she won with nearly 60 percent of the vote. At   
   age 75, Warren will still denounce Trump almost every opportunity and is   
   already gearing up for the fight to renew the Trump tax cuts next year.   
   But she will spend at least the next two years in the Senate minority,   
   and it is likely that Warren’s apex of influence has passed.   
      
   Still around, still involved in legislating, but having faded to the   
   background — that’s been the fate of a lot of the Democratic senators   
   who ran for president in the 2020 cycle — Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota,   
   Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, and both   
   Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper of Colorado.   
      
   These senators still pop up on cable news and the Sunday shows. It’s not   
   unthinkable that one or more of them will run for president again   
   someday, but no one is clamoring for it. (Notably, none of them were   
   seriously considered as Harris’s running mate this summer.) They’ve been   
   reduced to faces in the crowd again, “Oh, it’s that guy, whatshisname”   
   status. Virginia senator and former Hillary Clinton running mate Tim   
   Kaine seems quite comfortable in his return to relative obscurity,   
   making fun of how no one remembers him in a recent Saturday Night Live   
   sketch. You wonder if these five are quite as satisfied with returning   
   to their status as “just another Democratic senator.”   
      
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   Jay Inslee, age 73, will finish his third and final term as governor of   
   Washington January 15. When Inslee ran for president, he made climate   
   change the central issue of his campaign. This week, Inslee attended the   
   United Nations climate conference COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan — the one   
   plagued by “a rancid smell from what seemed to be a sewage leak spread   
   throughout a central area of the conference venue,” and that the   
   Panamanian delegate denounced as “chaotic, poorly managed, and a   
   complete failure in terms of delivering the ambition required.” Before   
   the election, Inslee warned that Trump would “sell the climate to the   
   highest bidder.” Trump will reenter the presidency a few days after   
   Inslee departs the governor’s mansion.   
      
   Marianne Williamson ran against Biden again in the 2024 Democratic   
   primary, and received 2.9 percent of the vote, about three-tenths of a   
   percentage point behind Dean Phillips. Back in 2019, there was something   
   kind of quirky and likable about Williamson’s new-age warnings about   
   Trump harnessing a “dark psychic force.” This time around, Williamson   
   amounted to an asterisk.   
      
   Massachusetts congressman Seth Moulton ran one of the least-noticed   
   presidential bids of the 2020 cycle. He is currently facing his own   
   version of the Salem Witch Trials for daring to suggest that those born   
   male should not be participating in teen girls’ sports.   
      
   Eric Swalwell is also still in Congress, still representing Alameda,   
   Calif., and unlikely to worry about ever losing his seat in the D+22   
   district. The most interesting thing to happen to him in the interim was   
   the revelation that he was, as far as we know, the only member of   
   Congress to penetrate Chinese intelligence.   
      
   Julian Castro was one of the few candidates willing to publicly argue   
   that Biden’s memory was failing him as he aged. For this Cassandra-like   
   prophecy, Castro was metaphorically cast into the Phantom Zone. He is   
   now an MSNBC political analyst and guest anchor, telling his followers   
   on Election Day, “I would not be surprised if Ted Cruz loses tonight.”   
   Cruz won reelection, with a margin of almost a million votes.   
      
   This autumn, Castro’s fellow Texan, Beto O’Rourke, was featured at a   
   Harris campaign event alongside the candidate’s husband, Doug Emhoff.   
   Many people forget that after O’Rourke’s 2020 presidential campaign   
   flamed out, he ran for governor of Texas and lost to Greg Abbott by a   
   margin of roughly 883,000 votes. (That’s just under the population of   
   South Dakota.) Now O’Rourke wears the fervor of his 2018 Senate campaign   
   like an old high-school letterman jacket, a reminder of his glory days.   
      
   “With each new race he loses it becomes more difficult to convince   
   voters and persuade them that he can still win the next race,” said   
   Sharon Navarro, a political scientist at the University of Texas at San   
   Antonio, told the Texas Tribune. “That’s a very difficult barrier to   
   overcome for a third-time loser.” At least O’Rourke can boast that he   
   came closer to defeating Cruz than Colin Allred did.   
      
   When you’re a billionaire like Michael Bloomberg, you never lose all   
   influence; in October, Bloomberg donated about $50 million to Future   
   Forward USA Action, a dark-money vehicle that was supporting Harris’s   
   presidential run. But I would note that one of the causes nearest and   
   dearest to Bloomberg’s heart is gun control. He has donated more than   
   $270 million to groups supporting gun control over the years. And while   
   Democrats are as supportive of gun control as ever by some measures,   
   Harris boasted of owning a Glock and said, “If someone breaks into my   
   house, they’re getting shot.” It’s not that Democrats have given up on   
   gun control, but Harris certainly didn’t want to campaign on it.   
      
   Andrew Yang was, briefly, a much-discussed figure in the Democratic   
   primary, in part because of his appearance on (ironic foreshadowing) the   
   Joe Rogan Experience. In 2021, he ran for mayor of New York City and   
   finished fourth. Also that year, he founded the Forward Party, but this   
   fall, he argued that Americans should not vote for third-party   
   candidates. Earlier this year, Yang threw his support behind Dean   
   Phillips’s long-shot bid in the Democratic primary, which did not catch   
   fire. He recently offered Politico his “thoughts on what the Democrats   
   should do, which they will ignore.”   
      
   Former Montana governor Steve Bullock did become the president of the   
   United States . . . in a war-game documentary. He’s now become the kind   
   of retired elected official who gets invited to college campuses to   
   speak about the importance of moderation.   
      
   Retired Ohio congressman Tim Ryan attracted some attention this year as   
   one of the few people who had debated J. D. Vance on stage, and offered   
   advice to that other Tim, Walz of Minnesota. (It apparently didn’t do   
   much good.) Ryan now heads WeThePeople, a political action committee   
   “fostering unity, reform and reconciliation in American society.”   
      
   Former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio left office “incredibly   
   unpopular,” and attempted a comeback in an open House seat, but in July   
   2022, “abruptly ended a campaign for Congress, saying that voters were   
   clearly ‘looking for another option’ and that his time in electoral   
   politics was over.”   
      
      
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   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)