Greetings, and welcome to Sunday, Nov. 8, 2026. Today is the anniversary of a whole string of elections, a few of which Republicans would very much like to repeat, so don’t let anybody tell you that one bad Tuesday is the end of the world. Grab your coffee and let’s get to it.
My calendar says it’s Cappuccino Day, Harvey Wallbanger Day, X-Ray Day, STEM Day, and Parents as Teachers Day. Start the morning with a cappuccino and save the Harvey Wallbanger for after the football games. Thank the fellow who discovered X-rays 131 years ago today. And while you’re encouraging the grandkids to study science, math, and engineering, remind them that the parents are the first teachers, not the bureaucrats at the Department of Education.
Today in History:
1519: Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés enters the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan and meets the emperor Montezuma II.
1864: President Abraham Lincoln wins reelection, defeating Gen. George McClellan in the middle of the Civil War.
1889: Montana becomes the 41st state.
1895: German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen discovers X-rays while experimenting with cathode rays.
1923: Adolf Hitler launches the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, a failed coup that lands him in prison, where he writes Mein Kampf.
1932: New York Gov. Franklin Roosevelt defeats President Herbert Hoover in a landslide.
1942: Allied forces land in French North Africa in Operation Torch, the first major American offensive against the Axis in the European and African theaters.
1960: Sen. John F. Kennedy narrowly defeats Vice President Richard Nixon for the presidency.
1966: Former actor Ronald Reagan is elected governor of California in his first run for public office.
1966: Massachusetts Republican Edward Brooke becomes the first Black senator elected by popular vote.
1988: Vice President George H.W. Bush defeats Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis to win the presidency.
1994: Republicans win control of both houses of Congress at the same time for the first time in 40 years, two years after Bill Clinton took the White House.
2016: Donald Trump defeats Hillary Clinton to win the presidency, stunning nearly every pollster and pundit in the country.
Birthdays Today include: Edmond Halley, astronomer and namesake of Halley’s Comet; Bram Stoker, author of Dracula; Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone With the Wind; Christiaan Barnard, the surgeon who performed the first human heart transplant; Esther Rolle, actress from “Good Times”; Patti Page, singer (“The Tennessee Waltz”, "Old Cape Cod"); Morley Safer, correspondent for “60 Minutes”; Bonnie Raitt, singer and slide guitar great (“Something to Talk About”, "Nick of Time"); Kazuo Ishiguro, Nobel Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day; and Gordon Ramsay, chef from “Hell’s Kitchen.” If today’s your birthday, too, happy birthday from all of us here.
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There are a lot of issues that, with just one column per day, I haven’t had a chance to address. It’s been the Democrats’ mantra ever since they figured out that nonstop lawfare and impeachment weren’t selling anymore. So let’s see how affordable things are where Democrats run the whole show. I doubt I'll get any argument that New York and California are the deepest blue states in the country, and so make perfect test cases.
Spoiler: it’s not going well.
Both states sit at or near the top of every “most expensive” list in the country. The reasons overlap: sky-high housing, energy prices well above the national average, punishing taxes, and residents fleeing in droves. You’d almost think there was a common thread. I’ll give you a hint: it isn’t Donald Trump.
CNBC’s 2026 rankings named California the most expensive state in America. It scored 4 out of 50 on cost of living, the only F in the country. New York made the list too. Depending on whose index you prefer, California runs about 39% above the national average and New York about 26%, while World Population Review puts New York’s index at 148.2, second-highest in the nation. Pick your yardstick. The two bluest states in the union end up in the top tier either way, behind only Hawaii, which at least has the excuse of being in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Now, to be fair to my own state, there’s a big gap between upstate New York and New York City. Out here in Western New York, we’re not paying Manhattan prices for anything. But Manhattan is where the money and the political power are, and the numbers there are staggering. Average Manhattan home prices hit $2.9 million in the first quarter of 2026, and average city rents are approaching $6,000 a month. New York now has the highest rents in the country as a share of median income. State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, hardly a right-wing firebrand, reports that the state’s homeless population doubled in just two years.
And Gov. Kathy Hochul’s answer? She’s turned “fight Trump” into an affordability plan, pitching New Yorkers on the idea that defying the president will be good for their pocketbooks. Apparently nobody told her the rents were this high before he took office.
Then there’s California, where housing has gone past expensive into flat-out ridiculous. Last spring, a mid-tier home averaged $775,000. That’s not a mansion. That’s a perfectly ordinary house, at twice the national price. Even a progressive advocacy group’s own analysis concedes that 82% of California households can’t afford a median-priced home. Given those prices, it’s no shock that California leads the nation in households spending more than half their income on a roof over their heads.
Then there’s energy. Democrats love to scream about gas prices. So where is energy most expensive? Why, California, of course, where residential electricity averages about 33.75 cents per kilowatt-hour, roughly 87% above the national average of 18.05 cents. In June, gasoline was running about $6.14 a gallon against a national average of $4.56, according to the Daily Signal. That national average has come down a good bit since; I paid $3.25 the other day. Don’t hold your breath waiting for California to follow.
Democrats in Washington are pinning the blame on Trump’s Iran war. Cute, except the problem was there long before the first shot was fired in the Gulf. The nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found that since 2020, California gas has run $1.19 above the national price, compared with 68 cents in the six years before that. That isn’t a war premium. That’s a Sacramento premium, and it’s structural. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that it's also intentional.
Then there are taxes. New York has some of the highest combined state and local tax burdens in the country. Hochul campaigned on not raising income taxes, God bless her, while lawmakers in her own party were in Albany pushing tax hikes to pay for things like free child care. Because nothing says “affordability” like a bigger tax bill.
So how are the people taking all this? They’re voting with their U-Hauls. From July 2024 to July 2025, California lost 229,077 residents to other states, and New York lost 137,586, the two biggest losses in the country. As a share of population, New York’s loss was the worst of any state. Widen the window, and New York’s losses to other states over the last five years top 1 million people. Only California has lost more. California’s population actually shrank last year. It took a drop in immigration to finally expose how many people were leaving. Gov. Gavin Newsom responded by saying California’s population had grown for three straight years. Weeks later, the Census Bureau’s estimates showed the state’s population actually shrank by about 9,500 in 2025, its first loss since 2022, because a sharp drop in immigration couldn’t cover everyone moving out.
To be fair, Hochul has tried a whole menu of fixes: suspending state gas taxes, cutting the Manhattan congestion toll from $15 to $9, and mailing out rebate checks. Her 2026 agenda adds a path to universal child care, a state income tax break on up to $25,000 in tips, and a pledge to build 800,000 housing units over a decade. Notice what’s missing from that list: anything that makes it cheaper to build, heat, or live in New York in the first place.
California has even less room to maneuver. The governor’s proposed 2026-27 budget shows a $2.9 billion shortfall, but the state’s own Legislative Analyst’s Office pegs the real gap at $18 billion. That’s not a rounding error.
These are the two states where Democrats have had total control for decades, with no Republican to blame, no filibuster to hide behind, and no excuses. This is what Democrat “affordability” looks like when it’s fully implemented. Now they want to run the country the same way. Indeed, they want to go back to Obama/Biden. In other words, they want to tax and spend their way to “affordability.” Huge increases in Obamacare subsidies. Return Medicaid spending to pre-“Big Beautiful Bill” levels. That’s trillions of dollars, folks. That kind of government spending spikes inflation. Joe Biden got inflation up to 9.1%. The next highest was 14.1% under Jimmy Carter. Inflation stayed above 5% for 21 straight months under Biden. But it’s all Trump’s fault, right?
Yeah, no.
When Trump 2.0 was sworn in, inflation was 3%. A year later, in December 2025, it was 2.7%. Trump’s inflation rate is roughly half of Biden’s at the same point, the core rate is the lowest in five years, and the spike is about energy, tied to a war that will eventually end. Biden had 21 straight months above 5%. Trump hasn’t had one.
Democrats want to raise the minimum wage and pass what’s called the PRO Act, which essentially makes it flat-out illegal for many workers to not belong to a union. All that, they tell us, won’t raise inflation or end-user costs. That’s about the same as being told he’ll still respect you in the morning.
If they follow through on even part of what we’re talking about here, their forced exit from the halls of power will likely be, and should be, more hurried than their entrance last Tuesday.
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Thought for the Day: In 1992, Republicans lost the White House. Two years later, they took both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years. Defeats are only permanent for the people who quit.
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