In 2024, Donald Trump carried ten of the 11 states that once belonged to the Confederate States of America. In the one he lost, Virginia, he cut his losing margin from 2020 by more than half. And even Virginia had a Republican governor at the time; the only Democrat elected governor in 2024 was North Carolina’s Josh Stein, who had the good fortune to run against the worst candidate of the entire cycle, the hate-mongering scandal-magnet Mark Robinson. Yes, Virginia and Georgia had Democratic U.S. Senators, but Republicans were licking their chops at the chance to take down Georgia’s Jon Ossoff, a Jewish liberal from Atlanta, in 2026.

Two years later, a lot has changed. Ossoff was the big, brawling bully of the 2026 cycle, forging a lead so large that Republicans threw in the towel against him long before Election Day. The same thing happened in North Carolina, where Stein’s predecessor, Roy Cooper, flipped a Senate seat without breaking a sweat. More remarkably, these men (and Virginia holdovers Mark Warner and Tim Kaine) were joined in the U.S. Senate by new stars........

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