Democrats Rising: In what may be a warning shot for President Trump and Republicans next year, Democrats in elections yesterday won complete control of the Virginia government for the first time since 1992, and a Democrat edged out the incumbent governor of Kentucky.

  Taking both houses in Virginia gives Gov. Ralph Northam the power to push for more gun control and raising the minimum wage, both of which have been stymied by Republicans in the legislature.

  In Kentucky, even after President Trump campaigned for Gov. Matt Bevin, Attorney Gen. Andy Beshear appears to have won by a margin of just about 5,000 votes. Beshear did well in suburbs that had gone for Donald Trump in 2016.

The Immaculate Reception: In a curious turn of events, Ambassador Gordon Sondland filed an amendment to his House testimony saying, oh yeah, now he remembers that military aid to Ukraine was held back in exchange for an investigation of Joe Biden and other Democrats.

  Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union and a staunch supporter of President Trump, said in his new statement that, “This condition had been communicated by Rudy Giuliani,” the President’s personal lawyer who was conducting foreign policy without credentials. Sondland said in his statement that he told the Ukrainians “resumption of the US aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks.” 

  It’s amazing the amount of detail he recalls that completely escaped him before. Sondland said he had “refreshed my recollection” after reading the testimony of two other crucial government witnesses.   It is the so-called “quid pro quo” that Trump and his lieutenants all deny that he demanded of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky — even Sondland previously denied it.

  He also said he did not know “when, why, or by whom the aid was suspended.” In his original testimony he said he was personally assured by the President that the military aid voted by Congress was not being held hostage to an investigation of American politicians.

  Sondland appears to have reversed himself because testimony by other witnesses was boxing him into a perjury rap. He’s unlikely to be charged after coming clean.

  In the face of increasingly damaging testimony, Trump and his backers are changing their story from “never happened to “even if he did it, it’s not an impeachable offense.”

  But Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham is sticking to innocence. She said, “No amount of salacious media-biased headlines, which are clearly designed to influence the narrative, change the fact that the president has done nothing wrong.”

The Mexico Massacre:  The killings of six children and three women in northern Mexico has put the spotlight on a little-known Mormon enclave and Mexico’s uncontrolled drug cartels. Authorities have arrested their first suspect.

  The killings are believed to have been carried out by drug gunmen, whether accidentally or intentionally is still not explained. One theory has it that they mistook the three vehicles they attacked for cars driven by a rival gang.

  But there’s also been friction over the years between the Mormons and the drug gangs. All the victims were residents of Colonia LeBaron, a fundamentalist Mormon community founded by Americans nearly 100 years ago when the church began to crack down on polygamy in Utah.

  Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador turned down an offer of help from President Trump to fight the drug gangs. He has previously decried the use of violence. “You can’t fight violence with more violence,” he has said.

The Obit Page: Novelist Ernest J. Gaines, who wrote of the inner struggle for dignity among Southern black people before the civil rights era in “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and other acclaimed novels, died on Tuesday at his home in Oscar, Louisiana. He was 86. Gaines spent his early years on a Louisiana plantation, giving him the experience to write about living under oppressive racism.

No Ordinary Joe: With Sen. Elizabeth Warren rising in the polls, former Vice President Joe Biden has gone on the attack against his Medicare-for-all opponent. Biden wrote in an online post:

  “Some call it the ‘my way or the highway’ approach to politics. But it’s worse than that. It’s condescending to the millions of Democrats who have a different view.

  It’s representative of an elitism that working and middle class people do not share: ‘We know best; you know nothing. If you were only as smart as I am you would agree with me.’

  This is no way to get anything done. This is no way to bring the country together. This is no way for this party to beat Donald Trump.”

Vapor Trail: Amid a spate of deaths and illnesses, vaping among teenagers is on the rise.

  An estimated 28% of high school students and 11% of middle schoolers surveyed earlier this year had vaped within the past month, according to two studies published online Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That amounts to over 5 million young users, a dramatic jump from about 3.6 million last year.

The Bulletin Board: Former McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook, who was fired for having a romance with a subordinate, gets a severance including $70 million worth of stocks and options. — The Justice Department is trying to finish its counter-investigation into the massive Russia investigation before Thanksgiving, The Washington Post reports. — Queen Elizabeth is abandoning real fur for fake, her dresser says. The queen will still be the worst-dressed woman in the world.

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