Trump on Thursday requested Attorney General Pam Bondi investigate ActBlue and other donation groups in what the White House says is a crackdown on "illegal 'straw donor' and foreign contributions in American elections."
Since taking office again he has used his presidential powers to target people and groups he and his administration have deemed political enemies or unfair critics.
ActBlue in its statement said Trump's action "needs to be seen for what it is: Donald Trump's latest front in his campaign to stamp out all political, electoral and ideological opposition." A statement from the DNC said, "Trump's memorandum targeting ActBlue is designed to undermine democratic participation."
Pizzo was a pretty conservative "independent" democrat and has criticised Democrats for promoting "socialism, CRT, trans bathrooms, woke AP African" which fueled discontent with him. Then Gwen Graham and the moderate faction backed David Jolly and he faced pressure to step aside in the Senate.
This led to him to rage quitting but the media is obviously going to have a field day with this.
Edit: So he basically quit not because he thinks Democrats are dead in Florida for 2026 but because the primary voters and the establishment both hate him now and he would never be the nominee.
He sounds like Tricia Cotham and her eventually backstabbing NC voters by switching parties and giving NC Rs the supermajority to override Gov Cooper's vetoes. Thank goodness that the supermajority is broken again, but she still needs to lose her seat.
More like the Alabama Black conservative democrat who switched parties multiple times and opposed ACA then ran for Governor as a Dem. I forgot his name.
Artur Davis. He seemed so aggrieved that he wasn't handed the 2010 gubernatorial nomination after trashing everything dems had accomplished under Obama. An apt comparison!
What a silly thing to be mad about given how 2010 turned out he would have been pasted by any R if he won the nomination. Also a fun reminder of Ron Sparks. I wonder what he is up to these days.
Meanwhile, in that same election another Alabama rep who can't seem to make up his mind about which party he's in, Parker Griffith, switched from D to R after one term and lost the primary to Mo Brooks.
Both Griffith and Davis have jumped back and forth between the parties, but neither has held elective office since 2010. Davis even moved to Northern Virginia for a while and considered running for office there, but didn't do so.
Collins also bankrolled the Iraq War from the beginning. Yes, by contrast to the GOP back in the 2000's she was more "moderate."
However, from Republican standards bankrolling the Iraq War doesn't mean Collins is really moderate, especially considering she's on the wrong side of the issue compared to Senator Rand Paul, who has been staunchly against neoconservatism for a long time.
Remember how many Democratic politicians voted to give Bush a blank check to launch a war of aggression against Iraq, though. Start with fucking Schumer...
Especially Paul Wellstone who had a VERY serious fight on his hands with former St Paul Mayor and former DFLer Norm Coleman, who ironically co-chaired his 1996 reelection campaign.
Ones like Schumer, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Feinstein were the worst when it came to Iraq. They all came from super safe Democratic states yet still voted for that totally unjustifiable war.
I was leaning towards Underwood for her 2018 flip of a GOP seat, but Stratton is making the exact political pitch I think we need in deep blue seats everywhere and resonates entirely for me. "In Washington, they're still doing the same old things they've always done, and that old playbook isn't working." I also really like how she took out an old thought/old school Democrat in the State Senate.
Republicans tossed all of those types of politicians in primaries or retirements since the Tea Party wave of 2010 and finishing the last of them off since Trump was first elected. It’s time for the Democratic Party to start doing the same.
We don't NEED someone who flipped a GOP seat in a state like Illinois. I grew up in Underwood's district too and I liked her initially as well. I don't think we can go wrong with any of the candidates except for Kelly.
You’re absolutely right. Almost anyone can win Illinois. I meant to reward her for running in what was a tough district against a tough GOP opponent in 2018. She stepped up when her country and her party needed her, so I felt it apt to reward her with a promotion.
Apart from attacking him as too old, it is hard to see the basis for a Senate campaign by Ayanna Pressley against Ed Markey. Markey is the Senate champion of the Green New Deal and many other progressive causes, and there is not much of a lane to his left for Pressley to occupy.
If she did run that would be it, basically. Age. He will be 80 in 2026. We can do better than octogenarians insisting on leaving office feet first. Even ones that are good on policy. Pressley wouldn't be an ideological change but a generational change.
I don't think such a campaign would be successful, mind you, but I'd certainly support it if it came to it. She already waged a similar campaign to get into congress in the first place, although Capuano wasn't nearly as old.
I think she'd be a much stronger candidate for an open seat, and I think it's likely that she'd lose if she challenged Markey, and that that could hurt her chances in an open race or even a race for Governor.
By the way, we should all be very happy that 78-year-old Marcy Kaptur is running again, and I don't think anyone on The Downballot will be so foolish as to suggest for -her- to be primaried! If she keeps winning and remains competent, we'd be fortunate if she continued serving into her 90s, because it would be unlikely for another Democrat to win that seat.
I don't know if she'll run. It would certainly be very risky for her.
Something to consider is that Pressley's political strength is more or less going to remain static in the immediate future in MA. On the flipside, the other younger representatives are going to gain political strength as they cement themselves and gain name recognition through serving multiple terms. Pressley already has that benefit, the others mostly do not right now. If Markey doesn't retire now, the next chance for an open seat is 2030. And her fellow senate aspirants will be stronger then than they are today.
I think she'd be a clear underdog right now against Markey. But there is a lot of budding dem party anger over ancient incumbents and establishment officials. Not that Markey is in the Schumer style establishment camp, but due to his age many people could lump him in there anyway.
To be fair, that was five years ago when Markey was in his early 70s, it was before Feinstein, it was before Biden's age became a big issue with the electorate. Now we're in the after scenario for those cases and Markey will be 80.
JPK3 also ran a shit campaign. He campaigned like all he needed to win was his last name. In an open seat he might have even been right. In the scenario that did happen there was seemingly no plan for the scenario of Markey continuing to run instead of dropping dead. Which is what happened. And despite that, JPK3 still got 45% of the vote.
Again, I think Pressley would be a clear and unambiguous underdog. But I will reject the idea that Markey is unassailable.
Yes. Generational and demographic. Sorry, that is what I was trying to point at. That she's already won a primary challenge based on a similar argument before.
I don't know how to quantify that, but there did seem to be some substance to it beyond that, as Capuano showed himself to be a bit tin-eared. Compare Congressman Cohen of Memphis, who always wins reelection because he represents his constituents well and clearly with great understanding of their needs and points of view.
Isn’t that exactly the type of primary challenge we should support though all things considered? Democrats don’t lose anything by replacing Markey with Pressley, but they do gain something. If it was say, Auchinloss primarying Markey then we’d have something to lose and it would be better to keep Markey.
Just because a current Senator/Representative has done/currently does a good job in their elected position, doesn’t mean that someone else can’t do it even better. Though whether she can actually do that can be entirely up for debate. In the online world though which is where most Americans reside, she almost certainly would do better than Markey has and we lost 2024 across the board partly because of our inability to push our message on social media while Trump and MAGA dominated the conversation.
I was shocked that Pressley was 51; I thought she was in her 30s when she was elected in 2018.
She's shown to be a more practical progressive than the other Squad members excluding AOC, but she's still done some cringy sloganeering and public statements which frankly I don't want on the national stage during Trump 2.0. Maybe she'd pivot, but I think we'd still get some significant foot-in-mouth moments that go straight into GOP ads in swing districts.
My guess is that's a reference to her taking up the reparations bill. Every congress going back for several decades has had someone introduce legislation for reparations for slavery. After Sheila Jackson Lee died, Pressley took up that mantle and introduced the bill to the house for this congress.
I don't think it's "cringy" at all but I've seen some moderates take issue with it when they saw the headline, before they promptly moved on with their life.
It's quite logical that since reparations were never paid to the freed slaves in 1865, their descendants should be given back wages with interest. But logic isn't enough for a very large number of people.
I'd extend what you're arguing to apply to Native Americans as well, especially considering their homeland was invaded and represent a substantially lower portion population wise than black US citizens.
Being one of THREE to vote for Tlaib's anti Israel bill - Ilhan Omar being the other - is NOT going to sit well in Massachusetts. Especially with Jewish suburbanites which my home state has quite a few of.
James Talarico is likely to run for Governor of Texas and Nathan Johnson has hired staff for a Senate run according to Inside Elections.
In retrospect, though the Florida house elections blew away millions of our donors money, it did give a lot of hope and courage to red state democrats like Allred, Virts, Talarico, Johnson and Jolly to run in 2026. That and the Trump vibe shift.
Tbf, this is nowhere near as bad as Robinson’s scandals (I’ve never seen any politician who had said and done as many reprehensible disqualifying things as him).
No, but Reid's scandal involves sexually explicit stuff online. George Santos lied about his past, his background, and who he fundamentally is as a person. That's not what Reid has done with his scandal.
Still the fact that Governor Youngkin is demanding him gone speaks volumes. The irony about this is that Pat Herrity, the other candidate for LG and the one Republican on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors only withdrew recently just so the VA GOP could solidify behind Reid.
Another factor at play here could be that John Reid is gay and engaged to his male partner. There already is some backlash to Reid's candidacy from some socially conservative Republicans in Virginia, such as in this article:
I imagine Youngkin and other Republicans are concerned about this part of their coalition not showing up to vote in November. This wouldn't surprise me given what happened to Denver Riggleman.
If he withdraws, Republicans have no nominee for LG as Pat Herrity withdrew first and him and John Reid were originally the only 2 in the Republican primary after the filing deadline?! 🤔
Possibly-though it's worth noting that Santos did not make friends with anyone in Congress, so it's certainly plausible that he's pissed Trump off at some point.
To be fair, I think it's very unlikely that either the Georgia or Federal trials would have actually ended in Trump being convicted-I suspect the only reason the Manhattan Trial was a conviction was because there were no Republicans on the jury.
I'm pretty bitter about these polls right now, because the voters didn't vote the only intelligent, responsible way when they had the chance, but do you have an opinion about the rough number of House seats that would flip with a 3-point lead in the GCB? That sure wouldn't flip the Senate.
In 2024 in the house we fell three seats short while losing the house popular vote by a bit over two points. Going from there to winning by three would represent a five point shift in our favor.
I expect that would easily be enough to flip the house with some seats to spare.
The senate can't flip without a huge wave due to the map. We need to pick up four seats to win it now due to the VP breaking ties. That kind of win might be enough to net us the two most plausible pickups (NC and ME). After that the challenge goes up substantially. The next-best targets are IA, TX, OH, and AK. All of which are stretches even in a 2018 style wave.
But her motherfucking emails. I am so livid! These fuckups are destroying the country and ruining our national security, and tens of millions of idiots and ignoramuses think things are dandy as the country goes down the tubes in a way that has historic parallels to the leadup to the downfall of Baghdad in 1258 and the eclipse of the Ming Dynasty and subsequent domination of China by colonial powers for several hundred years.
I still blame Comey, Nate Silver and Vox did a lot of statistical modelling separately and found that Hillary would win a bigger victory than 2012 Obama without the letter.
No Bacon, plus expensive eggs, mean the GOP is probably toast there. Add in the possibility of tariffs making coffee and tea more expensive, and Dems can eat their opponent for breakfast here.
What has happened to Inside elections and Sabato etc? They have rated his seat as lean R. And their Senate map is also similarly thrash, NC and Maine are lean R. Th most common sense rating website is RacetotheWH nowadays.
I don't have a problem with NC and ME being rated Lean R for now. I expect, or at least hope, they'll update their ratings if or when Roy Cooper announces a Senate run in NC and we see some polling showing how Susan Collins fares against certain Democratic candidates (rather than ambiguous polling about whether she deserves or doesn't deserve reelection).
I'd add too that we're ~18 months out from election day 2026. We do not know what the political environment will be. We have some hopes, historical data, tea leaf reading, and guesses, but we do not *know*.
This far in advance it would be malpractice for the major prognosticators to start baking in an assumed environment. They will be giving these early ratings off of an assumed neutral environment. As election day gets closer the ratings should increasingly assume that the political environment will look similar to how it is at that moment.
Recent data supports this approach too: going into 2022 it was primed to be an absolute and utter disaster for us. We barely held onto NJ-Gov in 2021 and actually lost Virginia. Biden was already unpopular. It would have been easy to assume that 2022 would be a repeat of 2010. But then the Dobbs decision came in and scrambled everything. It still wasn't a good year for us but it was only modestly bad instead of the complete disaster that we would expect.
We have a high propensity coalition of the more educated, older and more informed tuned in voters since 2016 which is why it was so hard for Obama to win midterms with his working class coalition but easier for us in 2018 and 2022. There is nothing to suggest that will change anytime soon. Rating media should take this into account and not just base ratings on recentism.
Lean R is OK for NE-02 with Bacon running, considering that he's beaten the odds several times before, though Tossup would also be justified.
Without him it's at least a Tossup, and quite possibly leaning D, though the political ratings sites (Cook, IE, Sabato, etc) would probably, and reasonably, keep it at Tossup until they have a better sense of who'll be on the ballot.
Too many still "have" to believe in the mythical creature that is the "moderate Republican." We get it, your daddies and granddaddies were Republicans and change is hard.
History may not repeat, but it certainly rhymes. This was around the time suburban Republicans started to whisper about retirement in 2017 fearing/knowing what was likely coming in Trump’s first midterm as he screwed everything up the first time.
It would be extra sweet if we could convince Fitzpatrick to retire or beat him in a blue wave.
I'm going to post this link because I think it will interest many of you and because it mentions differences between Republicans and Democrats in terms of their social media campaigns and analyzes a double standard involving appraisal of Trump vs Democrats that isn't fact-based but is clearly analyzable. However, because this piece mostly covers perceptions of how he and his collaborators deal with Israel and antisemitism as opposed to how a Democrat like Biden or Harris has, we can't discuss most of it here, and I provide the link merely because some of you wouldn't want to miss it, not in order to express any opinion about the Israeli-Arab conflict or anything else about Israel or Arab nations and peoples. So please make sure you don't express any opinions about any aspect of that conflict on this board, either. Wherewith, the link: https://open.substack.com/pub/ilangoldenberg/p/democrats-republicans-and-double?r=17bef&utm_medium=ios
I think Trump and his administration are overreacting and making bias prejudgments about antisemitism rather than allowing due process to unfold.
Taking into account the situation Columbia University has been facing with antisemitism towards Jews, Trump's Administration is rushing to judgement about this with the detention of Mohammed Khalil. While I'm sure there are Jews who are critical of his agenda, not allowing him due process is unconstitutional, especially considering his attorney has said Khalil is not pro-Hamas.
The other important point to make is that from what I'm seeing in San Francisco, there's increasing awareness in the Reform Jewish community about getting more reform-minded, forward thinking Jews elected to Israeli government. More representation is important and Reform Jews (me included) want more of a say in what goes on in Israel than the typical pro-Israel rhetoric coming from the conservative, right wing side would suggest.
Let me put it this way - Reform Jews are not being helped by Trump as it relates to representation.
The more important point is that the Trump Administration does and says lots of things that would be considered antisemitic if done by a Democratic administration, but Democratic administrations don't do them. Yet Trump and his collaborators get a free pass from a minority segment of American Jews for "cultural reasons" of shared performative hatred, regardless of what they actually do and what harm it causes.
Very true. There needs to be better mechanisms in place to prevent what Trump is able to get away with but there are no easy answers by which to address this.
There’s a double standard when it comes to Trump on everything because his supporters, media and party will back him no matter what. There’s nothing we can do about it but keep fighting and ride it out.
I’m extremely angry people with the wealth to do so on the left don’t buy media organizations like the right wing has to control the coverage. Republicans are at the top rungs of every American media organization, Sinclair owns hundreds of local news channels, the party completely controls what most people see and hear and we wonder why our messaging isn’t breaking through? Why 2024 coverage was vastly different than 2020?
The answer is very simple, as is the solution, but there isn’t even a whisper of left wing billionaires starting to claw some of this back so that Americans can actually be told the truth instead of what the GOP wants you to think. George Orwell is here, right now in the country and the right has worked very hard and spent billions to make it a reality after they realized the only way for their party to win is brainwashing the uneducated.
Trump orders DOJ investigation of ActBlue
Trump on Thursday requested Attorney General Pam Bondi investigate ActBlue and other donation groups in what the White House says is a crackdown on "illegal 'straw donor' and foreign contributions in American elections."
Since taking office again he has used his presidential powers to target people and groups he and his administration have deemed political enemies or unfair critics.
ActBlue in its statement said Trump's action "needs to be seen for what it is: Donald Trump's latest front in his campaign to stamp out all political, electoral and ideological opposition." A statement from the DNC said, "Trump's memorandum targeting ActBlue is designed to undermine democratic participation."
https://www.axios.com/2025/04/25/trump-actblue-democrats-justice-department-investigation
This abuse of power is deeply concerning. Must confess I really don’t understand the turmoil at or around ActBlue.
This is grossly fascistic on the part of the Orange Tyrant.
Can ActBlue just brush off the investigations?
Pizzo was a pretty conservative "independent" democrat and has criticised Democrats for promoting "socialism, CRT, trans bathrooms, woke AP African" which fueled discontent with him. Then Gwen Graham and the moderate faction backed David Jolly and he faced pressure to step aside in the Senate.
This led to him to rage quitting but the media is obviously going to have a field day with this.
Edit: So he basically quit not because he thinks Democrats are dead in Florida for 2026 but because the primary voters and the establishment both hate him now and he would never be the nominee.
Sounds like a total loser. Good riddance.
State Sen. Lori Berman chosen as new minority leader
How was he the Minority Leader, though? The fact that he was seems to indicate a horribly dysfunctional Democratic Caucus.
He sounds like Tricia Cotham and her eventually backstabbing NC voters by switching parties and giving NC Rs the supermajority to override Gov Cooper's vetoes. Thank goodness that the supermajority is broken again, but she still needs to lose her seat.
More like the Alabama Black conservative democrat who switched parties multiple times and opposed ACA then ran for Governor as a Dem. I forgot his name.
Artur Davis. He seemed so aggrieved that he wasn't handed the 2010 gubernatorial nomination after trashing everything dems had accomplished under Obama. An apt comparison!
What a silly thing to be mad about given how 2010 turned out he would have been pasted by any R if he won the nomination. Also a fun reminder of Ron Sparks. I wonder what he is up to these days.
Meanwhile, in that same election another Alabama rep who can't seem to make up his mind about which party he's in, Parker Griffith, switched from D to R after one term and lost the primary to Mo Brooks.
Both Griffith and Davis have jumped back and forth between the parties, but neither has held elective office since 2010. Davis even moved to Northern Virginia for a while and considered running for office there, but didn't do so.
Yeah, wasn't Cotham basically a mainstream Democrat? I thought that was (part of) what made her party switch so surprising.
Given that she only held on by a little over 200 votes last year (0.4%), I think she's in her final term in that seat.
Another Jeff Van Drew type then!
The GOP can have him.
UNH poll (Maine) | 4/17-4/21
Does Susan Collins deserve to be reelected?
Does not deserve 71%
Deserves to be re-elected 21%
Don't know/no opinion 11%
Would like to know if this question was asked in very early 2020 polling. Could be meaningful, could not be.
Not a perfect comparison but MC found Collins' approval at 42% https://wgme.com/news/local/most-mainers-disapprove-of-susan-collins-new-poll-finds-maine-senator-voters-us-sen-mitch-mcconnell-president-donald-trump-us-sen-angus-king-us-sen-bernie-sanders
In May 2019 a Critical Insights (?) poll found Collins' approval at 41%. However, her disapproval is much highter in this year's poll than in 2019. But different firms/methodologies means an apples to apples comparison should be avoided. https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/news/poll-collins-approval-down-17-points-since-last-spring/97-c3a8fb75-b1fb-427d-bf4a-f725b9fef9c0
Have Maine voters finally figured out Susan Collins is a MAGA voter in moderate clothing? I’ll believe it when I see it and not 1 second before.
The challenge is always what we might call "information-resistant voters".
Collins also bankrolled the Iraq War from the beginning. Yes, by contrast to the GOP back in the 2000's she was more "moderate."
However, from Republican standards bankrolling the Iraq War doesn't mean Collins is really moderate, especially considering she's on the wrong side of the issue compared to Senator Rand Paul, who has been staunchly against neoconservatism for a long time.
Remember how many Democratic politicians voted to give Bush a blank check to launch a war of aggression against Iraq, though. Start with fucking Schumer...
Oh yes!
Sadly, that was reflective of the politics at the time. I admire those who were opposed to that shit from the start.
Especially Paul Wellstone who had a VERY serious fight on his hands with former St Paul Mayor and former DFLer Norm Coleman, who ironically co-chaired his 1996 reelection campaign.
Ugh, Coleman. The emptiest of empty suits. (Garrison Keillor famously called him a "hollow man.")
I opposed that shit from the start, and I do not forgive or forget those who enabled or committed it.
Ones like Schumer, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Feinstein were the worst when it came to Iraq. They all came from super safe Democratic states yet still voted for that totally unjustifiable war.
While Bob Graham (D-FL) as head of the intel committee found the courage to vote no.
Yup and he came from a state where he would actually be at risk of losing his seat.
Pritzker endorses Stratton for Durbin's seat.
She's a solid candidate but want to wait and see how many more jump in before selecting a favorite. 💙🇺🇲
I was leaning towards Underwood for her 2018 flip of a GOP seat, but Stratton is making the exact political pitch I think we need in deep blue seats everywhere and resonates entirely for me. "In Washington, they're still doing the same old things they've always done, and that old playbook isn't working." I also really like how she took out an old thought/old school Democrat in the State Senate.
Republicans tossed all of those types of politicians in primaries or retirements since the Tea Party wave of 2010 and finishing the last of them off since Trump was first elected. It’s time for the Democratic Party to start doing the same.
We don't NEED someone who flipped a GOP seat in a state like Illinois. I grew up in Underwood's district too and I liked her initially as well. I don't think we can go wrong with any of the candidates except for Kelly.
You’re absolutely right. Almost anyone can win Illinois. I meant to reward her for running in what was a tough district against a tough GOP opponent in 2018. She stepped up when her country and her party needed her, so I felt it apt to reward her with a promotion.
Apart from attacking him as too old, it is hard to see the basis for a Senate campaign by Ayanna Pressley against Ed Markey. Markey is the Senate champion of the Green New Deal and many other progressive causes, and there is not much of a lane to his left for Pressley to occupy.
If she did run that would be it, basically. Age. He will be 80 in 2026. We can do better than octogenarians insisting on leaving office feet first. Even ones that are good on policy. Pressley wouldn't be an ideological change but a generational change.
I don't think such a campaign would be successful, mind you, but I'd certainly support it if it came to it. She already waged a similar campaign to get into congress in the first place, although Capuano wasn't nearly as old.
I think she'd be a much stronger candidate for an open seat, and I think it's likely that she'd lose if she challenged Markey, and that that could hurt her chances in an open race or even a race for Governor.
Yeah, another similar situation as what happened with Joe Kennedy III, who didn't need to challenge Markey last time around.
Exactly.
By the way, we should all be very happy that 78-year-old Marcy Kaptur is running again, and I don't think anyone on The Downballot will be so foolish as to suggest for -her- to be primaried! If she keeps winning and remains competent, we'd be fortunate if she continued serving into her 90s, because it would be unlikely for another Democrat to win that seat.
Marcy Kaptur is a freakin' legend.
Yeah, that challenge was such a waste. Kennedy probably could have won *any* statewide office eventually had he just been willing to wait.
I don't know if she'll run. It would certainly be very risky for her.
Something to consider is that Pressley's political strength is more or less going to remain static in the immediate future in MA. On the flipside, the other younger representatives are going to gain political strength as they cement themselves and gain name recognition through serving multiple terms. Pressley already has that benefit, the others mostly do not right now. If Markey doesn't retire now, the next chance for an open seat is 2030. And her fellow senate aspirants will be stronger then than they are today.
I think she'd be a clear underdog right now against Markey. But there is a lot of budding dem party anger over ancient incumbents and establishment officials. Not that Markey is in the Schumer style establishment camp, but due to his age many people could lump him in there anyway.
"Not that Markey is in the Schumer style establishment camp, but due to his age many people could lump him in there anyway."
I don't think they would, just as they didn't when Kennedy ran against him. They know who and what he is.
To be fair, that was five years ago when Markey was in his early 70s, it was before Feinstein, it was before Biden's age became a big issue with the electorate. Now we're in the after scenario for those cases and Markey will be 80.
JPK3 also ran a shit campaign. He campaigned like all he needed to win was his last name. In an open seat he might have even been right. In the scenario that did happen there was seemingly no plan for the scenario of Markey continuing to run instead of dropping dead. Which is what happened. And despite that, JPK3 still got 45% of the vote.
Again, I think Pressley would be a clear and unambiguous underdog. But I will reject the idea that Markey is unassailable.
OK, and you address this logically, but we at least agree that he would be likely to win.
Wasn't the Pressley/Capuano race more about changing demographics than politics?
Yes. Generational and demographic. Sorry, that is what I was trying to point at. That she's already won a primary challenge based on a similar argument before.
I don't know how to quantify that, but there did seem to be some substance to it beyond that, as Capuano showed himself to be a bit tin-eared. Compare Congressman Cohen of Memphis, who always wins reelection because he represents his constituents well and clearly with great understanding of their needs and points of view.
Isn’t that exactly the type of primary challenge we should support though all things considered? Democrats don’t lose anything by replacing Markey with Pressley, but they do gain something. If it was say, Auchinloss primarying Markey then we’d have something to lose and it would be better to keep Markey.
Just because a current Senator/Representative has done/currently does a good job in their elected position, doesn’t mean that someone else can’t do it even better. Though whether she can actually do that can be entirely up for debate. In the online world though which is where most Americans reside, she almost certainly would do better than Markey has and we lost 2024 across the board partly because of our inability to push our message on social media while Trump and MAGA dominated the conversation.
Yeah I like Markey but if he is going to be 86/87 by the end of his next term then it is time to go.
TBH I was surprised that he sought the Senate seat in the first place (he had nearly 30 years of House seniority at that point).
The media wanted him to be Martha Coakley 2 (Electric Boogaloo) soooooooo badly...
I was shocked that Pressley was 51; I thought she was in her 30s when she was elected in 2018.
She's shown to be a more practical progressive than the other Squad members excluding AOC, but she's still done some cringy sloganeering and public statements which frankly I don't want on the national stage during Trump 2.0. Maybe she'd pivot, but I think we'd still get some significant foot-in-mouth moments that go straight into GOP ads in swing districts.
Which statements? She's seemed like the most mainstream member of The Squad to me.
My guess is that's a reference to her taking up the reparations bill. Every congress going back for several decades has had someone introduce legislation for reparations for slavery. After Sheila Jackson Lee died, Pressley took up that mantle and introduced the bill to the house for this congress.
I don't think it's "cringy" at all but I've seen some moderates take issue with it when they saw the headline, before they promptly moved on with their life.
It's quite logical that since reparations were never paid to the freed slaves in 1865, their descendants should be given back wages with interest. But logic isn't enough for a very large number of people.
I'd extend what you're arguing to apply to Native Americans as well, especially considering their homeland was invaded and represent a substantially lower portion population wise than black US citizens.
Definitely.
Being one of THREE to vote for Tlaib's anti Israel bill - Ilhan Omar being the other - is NOT going to sit well in Massachusetts. Especially with Jewish suburbanites which my home state has quite a few of.
Which bill is that?
The amendment that put Israel on the same level as North Korea, Cuba, and Russia. The one only THREE people voted for.
Cuba doesn't belong in that company, but considering Israel an enemy of the U.S. the way North Korea and Russia are is not logical, so point taken.
James Talarico is likely to run for Governor of Texas and Nathan Johnson has hired staff for a Senate run according to Inside Elections.
In retrospect, though the Florida house elections blew away millions of our donors money, it did give a lot of hope and courage to red state democrats like Allred, Virts, Talarico, Johnson and Jolly to run in 2026. That and the Trump vibe shift.
Jolly is Crist 2.0
There has to be someone better
In the context of Florida, I don't think it's clear who's better.
Looks like John Reid may not be the Republican nominee for LG in Virginia this year.
https://bluevirginia.us/2025/04/major-shakeup-for-va-gops-2025-ticket-as-gov-youngkin-calls-on-presumptive-lg-nominee-john-reid-to-withdraw-after-gop-researchers-found-sexually-explicit-posts-online-that-they-believe-are-co
If that's the case than we need to be ready with a lawsuit to get whoever the Virginia GOP gets to replace him thrown off the ballot.
Ah, another George Santos?
More like another Mark Robinson, ie the inflammatory governor candidate from NC last year with similar explicit posts.
Nevertheless, we thank him for his service in helping Josh Stein get elected as Governor.
He also played a big part in the elections of Rachel Hunt, Jeff Jackson, Elaine Marshall, and Mo Green.
If Mark Robinson decides he wants to challenge Thom Tillis in the Senate race, we shouldn't stop him!
Tbf, this is nowhere near as bad as Robinson’s scandals (I’ve never seen any politician who had said and done as many reprehensible disqualifying things as him).
neo nazi and white supremacist posts*
I’d say the scandal most similar to this one is Susanna Gibson’s. She was the Democratic nominee for VA-HD-57 in 2023.
He had an Only Fans page with his wife?
No, but Reid's scandal involves sexually explicit stuff online. George Santos lied about his past, his background, and who he fundamentally is as a person. That's not what Reid has done with his scandal.
Did he claim to be a good Christian man?
The article is not specific but referred to "images," so I think they mean dick pics.
Still the fact that Governor Youngkin is demanding him gone speaks volumes. The irony about this is that Pat Herrity, the other candidate for LG and the one Republican on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors only withdrew recently just so the VA GOP could solidify behind Reid.
Another factor at play here could be that John Reid is gay and engaged to his male partner. There already is some backlash to Reid's candidacy from some socially conservative Republicans in Virginia, such as in this article:
https://vachristian.org/why-john-reid-could-tank-the-gop-ticket-and-destroy-virginia/
I imagine Youngkin and other Republicans are concerned about this part of their coalition not showing up to vote in November. This wouldn't surprise me given what happened to Denver Riggleman.
If he withdraws, Republicans have no nominee for LG as Pat Herrity withdrew first and him and John Reid were originally the only 2 in the Republican primary after the filing deadline?! 🤔
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/25/politics/george-santos-sentencing-fraud/index.html
George Santos sentenced to 87 months in prison.
Pardon from Trump upcoming?
Possibly-though it's worth noting that Santos did not make friends with anyone in Congress, so it's certainly plausible that he's pissed Trump off at some point.
Good point. I don't think even Trump even cares about Santos.
I agree that that's possible. Note the disparate treatment of Paulina Luna, who's a similar fraud.
As much as I can't stand Santos, it sure seems unfair that he'll likely spend far more time behind bars than Trump ever will.
To be fair, I think it's very unlikely that either the Georgia or Federal trials would have actually ended in Trump being convicted-I suspect the only reason the Manhattan Trial was a conviction was because there were no Republicans on the jury.
That's really not clear at all. Wasn't at least one of the jurors on the first Jean Carroll trial a Trump voter who followed the evidence, anyway?
To be fair, that was a civil suit-that person probably knew full well that Trump wouldn't face criminal charges.
True, but not the key point, in my opinion.
You could say the same thing about the great majority of people who are sentenced to prison, including former Senator Gold Bars Menendez.
NY Times/Siena poll:
Trump approval 42/54
GCB D 47 R 44
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/25/us/elections/times-siena-poll-crosstabs.html
I'm pretty bitter about these polls right now, because the voters didn't vote the only intelligent, responsible way when they had the chance, but do you have an opinion about the rough number of House seats that would flip with a 3-point lead in the GCB? That sure wouldn't flip the Senate.
Can’t judge the senate by the generic. They’re individual races. A three point win would probably be around a 15 seat gain in the House.
In 2024 in the house we fell three seats short while losing the house popular vote by a bit over two points. Going from there to winning by three would represent a five point shift in our favor.
I expect that would easily be enough to flip the house with some seats to spare.
The senate can't flip without a huge wave due to the map. We need to pick up four seats to win it now due to the VP breaking ties. That kind of win might be enough to net us the two most plausible pickups (NC and ME). After that the challenge goes up substantially. The next-best targets are IA, TX, OH, and AK. All of which are stretches even in a 2018 style wave.
https://apnews.com/article/hegseth-signal-chat-dirty-internet-line-6a64707f10ca553eb905e5a70e10bd9d
Secretary of Defense Hegseth had an unsecured internet line set up in his office to connect to Signal.
But her motherfucking emails. I am so livid! These fuckups are destroying the country and ruining our national security, and tens of millions of idiots and ignoramuses think things are dandy as the country goes down the tubes in a way that has historic parallels to the leadup to the downfall of Baghdad in 1258 and the eclipse of the Ming Dynasty and subsequent domination of China by colonial powers for several hundred years.
I still blame Comey, Nate Silver and Vox did a lot of statistical modelling separately and found that Hillary would win a bigger victory than 2012 Obama without the letter.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/25/major-health-care-union-cuomo-00310077
New York City's largest private sector union has endorsed Cuomo.
That sucks!
Hopping on the train before it leaves the station.
NE-02: Don Bacon considering retirement?
https://www.notus.org/house/don-bacon-retirement-consideration
No Bacon, plus expensive eggs, mean the GOP is probably toast there. Add in the possibility of tariffs making coffee and tea more expensive, and Dems can eat their opponent for breakfast here.
What has happened to Inside elections and Sabato etc? They have rated his seat as lean R. And their Senate map is also similarly thrash, NC and Maine are lean R. Th most common sense rating website is RacetotheWH nowadays.
I don't have a problem with NC and ME being rated Lean R for now. I expect, or at least hope, they'll update their ratings if or when Roy Cooper announces a Senate run in NC and we see some polling showing how Susan Collins fares against certain Democratic candidates (rather than ambiguous polling about whether she deserves or doesn't deserve reelection).
I'd add too that we're ~18 months out from election day 2026. We do not know what the political environment will be. We have some hopes, historical data, tea leaf reading, and guesses, but we do not *know*.
This far in advance it would be malpractice for the major prognosticators to start baking in an assumed environment. They will be giving these early ratings off of an assumed neutral environment. As election day gets closer the ratings should increasingly assume that the political environment will look similar to how it is at that moment.
Recent data supports this approach too: going into 2022 it was primed to be an absolute and utter disaster for us. We barely held onto NJ-Gov in 2021 and actually lost Virginia. Biden was already unpopular. It would have been easy to assume that 2022 would be a repeat of 2010. But then the Dobbs decision came in and scrambled everything. It still wasn't a good year for us but it was only modestly bad instead of the complete disaster that we would expect.
We have a high propensity coalition of the more educated, older and more informed tuned in voters since 2016 which is why it was so hard for Obama to win midterms with his working class coalition but easier for us in 2018 and 2022. There is nothing to suggest that will change anytime soon. Rating media should take this into account and not just base ratings on recentism.
Lean R is OK for NE-02 with Bacon running, considering that he's beaten the odds several times before, though Tossup would also be justified.
Without him it's at least a Tossup, and quite possibly leaning D, though the political ratings sites (Cook, IE, Sabato, etc) would probably, and reasonably, keep it at Tossup until they have a better sense of who'll be on the ballot.
Not unlike their senior Senator, Maine voters have a pattern of being very "concerned" and then doing nothing about it.
Too many still "have" to believe in the mythical creature that is the "moderate Republican." We get it, your daddies and granddaddies were Republicans and change is hard.
History may not repeat, but it certainly rhymes. This was around the time suburban Republicans started to whisper about retirement in 2017 fearing/knowing what was likely coming in Trump’s first midterm as he screwed everything up the first time.
It would be extra sweet if we could convince Fitzpatrick to retire or beat him in a blue wave.
Especially since there are all these down ballot races in Pennsylvania this year that we MUST win.
I'm going to post this link because I think it will interest many of you and because it mentions differences between Republicans and Democrats in terms of their social media campaigns and analyzes a double standard involving appraisal of Trump vs Democrats that isn't fact-based but is clearly analyzable. However, because this piece mostly covers perceptions of how he and his collaborators deal with Israel and antisemitism as opposed to how a Democrat like Biden or Harris has, we can't discuss most of it here, and I provide the link merely because some of you wouldn't want to miss it, not in order to express any opinion about the Israeli-Arab conflict or anything else about Israel or Arab nations and peoples. So please make sure you don't express any opinions about any aspect of that conflict on this board, either. Wherewith, the link: https://open.substack.com/pub/ilangoldenberg/p/democrats-republicans-and-double?r=17bef&utm_medium=ios
P.S. for context: I got the link in an email from JStreet, one of various organizations that email me.
Why need Republicans when you have people like Ritchie Torres accusing every progressive rep of being antisemitic?
I think Trump and his administration are overreacting and making bias prejudgments about antisemitism rather than allowing due process to unfold.
Taking into account the situation Columbia University has been facing with antisemitism towards Jews, Trump's Administration is rushing to judgement about this with the detention of Mohammed Khalil. While I'm sure there are Jews who are critical of his agenda, not allowing him due process is unconstitutional, especially considering his attorney has said Khalil is not pro-Hamas.
The other important point to make is that from what I'm seeing in San Francisco, there's increasing awareness in the Reform Jewish community about getting more reform-minded, forward thinking Jews elected to Israeli government. More representation is important and Reform Jews (me included) want more of a say in what goes on in Israel than the typical pro-Israel rhetoric coming from the conservative, right wing side would suggest.
Let me put it this way - Reform Jews are not being helped by Trump as it relates to representation.
The more important point is that the Trump Administration does and says lots of things that would be considered antisemitic if done by a Democratic administration, but Democratic administrations don't do them. Yet Trump and his collaborators get a free pass from a minority segment of American Jews for "cultural reasons" of shared performative hatred, regardless of what they actually do and what harm it causes.
Very true. There needs to be better mechanisms in place to prevent what Trump is able to get away with but there are no easy answers by which to address this.
There’s a double standard when it comes to Trump on everything because his supporters, media and party will back him no matter what. There’s nothing we can do about it but keep fighting and ride it out.
I’m extremely angry people with the wealth to do so on the left don’t buy media organizations like the right wing has to control the coverage. Republicans are at the top rungs of every American media organization, Sinclair owns hundreds of local news channels, the party completely controls what most people see and hear and we wonder why our messaging isn’t breaking through? Why 2024 coverage was vastly different than 2020?
The answer is very simple, as is the solution, but there isn’t even a whisper of left wing billionaires starting to claw some of this back so that Americans can actually be told the truth instead of what the GOP wants you to think. George Orwell is here, right now in the country and the right has worked very hard and spent billions to make it a reality after they realized the only way for their party to win is brainwashing the uneducated.