I wonder if Graham Nordone (Graham's sister who assumed office as an appointed U.S. Senator earlier today) will get any committee assignments at all, since she's probably only going to be in the Senate for a few months (unless she runs for the full term and wins election; I don't think Graham Nordone will run for the full term, but I could be wrong). Obviously, she'll never be anywhere near a committee gavel unless she gets elected and re-elected multiple times.
I keep trying to use the David Curson situation in Michigan back in 2012 as an analogy for the committee assignment situation in Graham Nordon's case; I don't remember Curson having any House committee assignments for the less than two months he was in office.
MI-1 - This map by a metrologist for the ABC affiliate in Ames, Iowa (Des Moines DMA) illustrates how late Winter sunrises would be in the Midwest would be if Trump's year-round Daylight Savings Time bill passes Congress:
The areas that would have the latest sunrises would be northwestern North Dakota and much of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
While ND-AL is not in any danger of flipping Democratic barring a cash-in-the-freezer scenario with the party roles flipped, there might be a push within the state to move more of western North Dakota to Mountain Time if the Trump DST bill becomes law.
MI-1, on the other hand, could be uniquely vulnerable to flipping to Democrats because of the Trump DST bill, as I would imagine very late Winter sunrises in much of the Upper Peninsula would be extremely unpopular, not to mention the fact that four GOP state legislators pulled their endorsement of the incumbent over an unrelated controversy.
I've always felt Michigan and Indiana should be on Central time. That would be the best solution, realistically.
North Dakota's northwest counties are in an odd place because unlike the southwest counties, they are on Central time instead of Mountain time. The counties in that area could presumably make a switch, too.
It wasn’t that long ago when the seat was competitive, even after republicans picked it up. Dan Benishek had close elections. Obama won the district as it was drawn in 2008. Clinton also won it twice
Yeah year-round DST will be something everybody wants until the moment they get it just like 1974. Every 50 years, we apparently have to reeducate ourselves on this foolishness.
That's also what happened in Russia. They implemented it in 2011 then ended it in 2014. Iceland, on the other hand, seems perfectly happy with their late winter sunrises. They adopted permeant DST in 1968 and haven't switched back. I was there at the end of January and sunrise was around 10:15am with sunset being around 5pm.
Iceland has a large tourism industry, which explains that country’s staunch support for DST. Yet, at the same time, Hawaii and the vast majority of Arizona, areas that also have sizable tourism economies, have chosen not to observe DST if given a choice one way or the other (the Trump DST bill might mandate that any area of the U.S. that doesn’t observe DST observe it year-round, although I haven’t read the text of the bill).
Absolutely not. Far and away the least disruptive option is what we do now....daylight savings time in the summer and standard time in the winter. Neither option of 4:30 a.m. sunrises or 9 a.m. sunrises is a good one and will result in higher electricity consumption at a time when rates are already spiking because of AI. At this point though it seems like a certainty that we'll have to relearn this lesson over and over and over again.
I saw an interview with Sanford and he didn’t say no. (NBC or PBS) Interesting that the last two Senate appointments in our fair state have been a black man and a woman. Before Scott, I believe it was Donald O. Russell, who lost to Fritz Hollings when he ran for reelection.
It looks like Darline Graham Nordone will be the Harriet Lane of Muriel Humphreys...
(Harriet Lane was the niece of the bachelor President James Buchanan who served as his First Lady. Muriel Humphrey was the widow of Sen. Hubert Humphrey who was appointed to succeed him in office after HHH passed away.)
MI-Sen: Gary Peters explains why he endorsed Stevens after initially staying neutral, saying it's critical Michigan has a "vetted" candidate. Everything he says was true a month ago, so I interpret this as he wanted to remain neutral so long as his preferred candidate was in the lead, but now that's not true, he's getting involved. For some reason, this really sticks in my craw and put a bad taste in my mouth.
I know the internet isn’t real life, but I’ve seen a ton of negative sentiment towards Stevens from online liberals/progressives and it does make me worried about her ability to unite and motivate dems to vote. I know El-Sayed has his own issues, I’m a bit worried it will be a very close race no matter who the nominee is.
A lot of it is from people who are not Michiganders (I'm a supporter of AES despite being a lifelong Illinoisan, so count me guilty as charged in that regard), most notably Suzanne Lambert, who is from Georgia (although she now lives in D.C. and Florida) and only relatively recently became a Democrat. Lambert in particular has been mocking Stevens on social media, to the point of irritating me, as someone who would vote for AES over Stevens if I was a Michigan resident, at times.
Suzanne Lambert who? I've never heard of her, just as most Americans have probably never heard of Hasan Piker, and I'm both pretty online and pretty invested in politics
Not from MI, but Stevens literally saying the following about Abdul - "aspirational goals aren't real results" - whatever you think of it, does not speak well for her ability to inspire people. She's literally saying she will not fight for much! I strongly suspect she will not make any effort to unite voters if she does win.
I am also quite incensed at her open refusal to disavow corporate money in politics -- not just for her campaign, but in general. I cannot find the story for this, by the way, but I do remember seeing it. Attempting to search for it leads me to numerous other stories about her extensive corporate ties, so many that I genuinely can't find the original. Also not a good sign.
I have a bad feeling Stevens, if she does win, will be a Sinema-type who blocks legislation that is insufficiently pro-business. Everything I've seen of her so far speaks to a candidate who is the definition of "corporate puppet". I don't know why they picked her for this seat, over Whitmer or Nessel or other candidates who would have done better. I sincerely hope they did not do this as some favor to lobbyists or something.
I'm not exactly inclined to believe in Haley Stevens for the very reasons you are describing.
However, this is still a primary so what happens after that is a different story. That said, I really doubt Stevens will be like Kyrsten Sinema was back when she was a Senator. She was the Chief of Staff in the auto recovery task force when the auto industry was bailed out back in 2009 and President Obama had even praised her for her efforts in this. Stevens was a strong supporter of the Inflation Reduction Act without any reservations, as well as CHIPS. Very unlikely given this history would Stevens block key economic pieces of legislation Democats are pushing. Even in her Senate campaign, she's talking about pushing to get groceries to be except from the impact from tariffs.
But with foreign affairs that's a whole different story all together.
I'm definitely someone who wants Stevens to lose the primary. But I take strong issue with this sentence of yours, " I don't know why they picked her for this seat, over Whitmer or Nessel or other candidates who would have done better."
I agree that Whitmer, Nessel and several others would have been stronger candidates. But there is no they! Anyone who wants to can run. As the Buddha (or maybe it was Rumsfeld) said, "You go to war with the army you have, not the one you wished you had". Nobody was stopping any of those other candidates from running. Desire & willingness to act on it are severely underestimated ingredients in many ramas of success in life. E.g. I would have supported Andy Levin. But he's still licking his wounds and didn't go for it.
That is a very good point, and one I didn’t notice when I typed out that comment. Open primaries are indeed essential — they allow for a more democratic process (especially in safe seats where an opposing party won’t win) and they can also work as vetting processes for candidates. Not always, mind you (WI-Gov this cycle) but betting the farm on one candidate at the expense of others can prove disastrous. Platner, Cunningham, all the Trump hand picked candidates, these are cases where a single candidate sucking the energy out can blow a winnable race should said candidate implode.
"Aspirational goals aren't real results" is in line with how moderate Dems typically message against progressives in primaries, even if the progressive has more actual political experience than the moderate (although that situation is relatively rare).
Angie Craig in Minnesota is using similar messaging, and I actually have more concern about Craig being Kyrsten Sinema 2.0 than Stevens (Craig was one of only a handful of Democrats to vote against making hot rotisserie chicken SNAP-eligible, for example).
Sounds like defeatist milquetoast rhetoric to me. Lest we forget, arguably the most successful moderate Democrat in the 21st century and recent history, Barack Obama actually ran on quite the progressive platform, including ending the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars AND enacting universal healthcare, all of which he fulfilled during his presidency. This whole "aspirational goals aren't real results" reads as "sorry, we can't help" to many people including myself. There's being a visionary, and there's being uninspired and even cowardly and lazy. Unless the status quo is 1950s Andy Griffith pie in the sky Mayberry, which right now it's the total opposite of, there's little reason not to try and be more optimistic and inspirational. This is is not how you inspire and mobilize people to support you.
Probably true, unfortunately, but I think in this case and with Peters's experience as the D Senate Campaign Chair, it refers more to Platner and other poorly vetted/loose cannon candidates.
Why? That seems like a stretch. After seeing what a lack of vetting nearly did to us in Maine, maybe vetting is important. Maybe Peter's knows something we don't, just like Schumer knew something that a lot of people ignored.
No, it's about Muslims - AES ran for statewide office before and has had two high-profile positions within public-facing agencies. He's an accomplished public health physician with degrees from prestigious institutions, doesn't drink, and has been with the same woman since high school. The idea that he hasn't been vetted is nonsensical, and even more so when comparing his personal life to Platner's. If his name were Adam Erickson with his resume, nobody would be insinuating any personal skeletons; it's because he is a muslim and arab.
The article doesn't say Rasner is suing his opponents, just other Republicans:
"On Friday morning, Rasner will settle one case against an Iowa man who called him a “pedophile” under several of his campaign’s Facebook posts. Rasner is pursuing another case against a former GOP Wyoming state senator who he alleges led a whisper campaign accusing him of sexual misconduct."
OK you have to be pretty old and nerdy to hear “America’s most famous hiker hits the campaign trail again” and think “NOOOO Mark Sanford” but all the same good job getting ahead of the upcoming appalachapalooza of puns.
Hey, more than a few young whippersnappers might consider some of us on here – including the undersigned at two-thirds of a century – to be positively ancient.
I’d heard about it in past Downballot issues, so yes. My political awakening was 2012 (I was 12 then)-2017 - the SOPA/PIPA internet censorship fight introduced me to the importance of paying attention to politics, my opposition to the TPP/subsequent discovery of Bernie in 2016 helped me find my identity as a progressive, and watching Trump win, combined with a speech by Michael Moore (who I don’t even like anymore) at the 2017 Women’s March where he told the crowd how to get involved in politics directly and some of the things they could and should do, led me to decide to potentially work in politics as a career - my goal being to work not as a politician, but with politicians or in a nonprofit. We’ll see. I also started paying attention to downballot politics after I started hearing about other progressives running for different offices (first primary vote I made was for Cynthia Nixon in 2018 for NY Governor) - and it was The Downballot (and its previous iteration, Daily Kos Elections, which I lurked), the former Primary School newsletter, and Bolts Magazine that really got me into in-the-woods national, state, and local races.
This is all to say that I have been watching politics for some time.
Good point. Not sure if I’ve posted here before or not but definitely I wasn’t thinking “new community here, introducing myself.” Anyways nice to be in conversation with smart people in good faith.
As far as I know, Delaware is the penultimate state for candidates to file in, with the last being for Louisiana's House primaries on August 7. But this is pretty much the last normal filing deadline, as Louisiana had their other primaries way back in May.
DE-Sen: Democratic Sen. Chris Coons will likely face Republican Mike Katz, a former Democratic state senator and third-party candidate for the state's other Senate seat in 2024, where he got 4%.
DE-Treasurer: Incumbent Democrat Colleen Davis is retiring. Businessman Mike Miller and financial adviser Ted Lauzen are running in the Democratic primary. (correction - my first comment said Lauzen was the son of Kane County's Republican treasurer, Chris Lauzen. While that's true, the other Ted Lauzen ran in Illinois as a Democrat. Not in Delaware, where there is no Kane County).
DE-SD-1, 5, 7, 8 and 15:
-Bernie Sanders-backed candidates Adriana Bohm and Shay Frisby are running against incumbent senators Dan Cruce and Ray Seigfried in Democratic primaries. Restauranteur and community advocate Jose Lopez is also running against state Sen. Spiros Mantzavinos from the left.
-Delaware has grown more favorable to progressives in recent years. For example, Sen. Tom Carper was challenged by Kerri Evelyn Harris in 2018. Though she performed poorly, she was later elected to the state House and now serves as majority leader. New Castle County executive Matt Meyer, a progressive, beat out Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long in the 2024 gubernatorial primary and now serves as one of the few lefty governors.
-State Rep. Mara Gorman is likely to succeed Senate president pro tempore David Sokola in the 8th.
-Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Dave Lawson, who represents the most conservative district up this cycle, has endorsed state health official Elizabeth Thompson to succeed him. However, University of Delaware trustee Nisha Lodhavia is running a credible Democratic campaign for a seat Trump won by 28 points.
Guam and the Marianas have important governor's races where the incumbents are term-limited/retiring (respectively). And American Samoa Del. Aumua Amata could retire - she'll be 79 in December.
Do you still see her frequently back in AS or is she running to maintain her DC residence? Not sure the expectations on returning, must be an 18 hr trip or thereabouts, no?
The Northern Marianas was hit by two super typhoons (Cat 4-5) within the past 3-4 months. Republican Rep. King-Hinds will probably win reelection if she can continue to bring in FEMA and recovery money. Considering how Trump has made disaster recovery partisan, the NMI is lucky to have a Republican congresswoman right now.
She does seem to have drawn a challenger in independent Galvin Deleon Guerrero, who is the president of the territory's sole university and the nephew of a former delegate, Gregorio Sablan. He seems credible enough, although I imagine he'd split the vote with a Democrat, if one ends up running.
I'm still waiting for truth to catch up on the week 1, 2017 stuff, like "Alternative facts" to the amount of people at the inauguration, let alone the freshest lies of 2026. There are tens of thousands of lies, thousands of broken norms, and hundreds of violated laws we WILL have to do thorough look-back accounting of.... we've barely dealt with any of it, and clearly the next administration will have to do a Nuremberg style trial and cleansing.
This will end with settlements paid out to the people arrested for vandalizing the reflecting pool and a bar investigation against Jeanine Pirro and anyone else involved with these sham prosecutions.
It was obviously a lie from day one. It's rather pathetic that people were arrested and charged with felonies because the president wanted to save face. The only thing saving us from complete dictatorship is our still largely independent judiciary, that will almost certainly throw out those charges.
Full moratorium seems to be a bit of a baby and bathwater case of quasi-Luddite populism but every democrat should at least be on the record that residential ratepayers be given legislative priority for electricity and data centers get whatever is left over if they can’t provide their own juice
The bigger dilemma is looking into more sustainable sources of energy to power the internet without having the data centers taking up too much of the oxygen in the environment.
No argument from me there. Even sans AI compute needs purely from cloud internet and digital economy needs are going to continue to grow dramatically and some kind of enterprise LLM for data analytics is going to perpetuate even once chatbot crap like OpenAI inevitably goes bust
Sure. This is where the argument saying we can't stop the development of AI is absolute nonsense. Of course you can as long as the data centers are alive, AI development with no oversight continues to evolve.
Data centers use a fraction of the water that golf courses and people’s lawns do - if you’re looking at water conservation there’s a much more effective target (and you’ll get no argument from me on wanting to curtail residential lawn water usage or curtail golf courses!)
The energy argument about driving up consumer bills is more effective and one where policy teeth is likely to have some benefits for ordinary people. The horse is, whatever else one may think, out of the barn on this technology
i don't think we will ever bring down golf courses, but if the present trend continues I think lawns are going to fall by the wayside in importance. I'm a hypocrite on this though, as your comment made me realize. I play golf occasionally
I golf in the sense that I shoot 60 on the front nine, realize that I actually hate golf and turn around and leave, and then I’m back at it six months later for some reason
But yes large lawns will continue to become rarer and rarer
Henrik's point, I think, was about the fact that there are non-AI based data centers out there. Servers for Google, Steam, Playstation, Netflix, etc. are all "data centers" too. Banning all data centers bans the ones that actually do contribute to society, not just the ones that contribute nothing.
Probably the bigger problem here is that we do not have a system that can and will capture the negative externalities created and require the facilities to pay for them. If that was solved then it would be OK.
I for instance love GPS navigation. Back in 1999, my parents and I went with a friend to a trip in Hawaii and the rental car had this where we were able to get around quite efficiently. This was before Google Maps.
I really don't use GPS in my car these days. Back in 1999 though, times were innocent for late teens and early 20's guys like myself who didn't need technology to aid us when we went on vacation.
But GPS back in the late 90's wasn't even a thing for authorities.
MI-Sen: The AIPAC-linked United Democracy Project is putting former President Barack Obama in ads to boost Rep. Haley Stevens, and undecided voters in the Democratic primary say Obama's presence in the ads makes them favor her over Dr. Abdul El-Sayed.
Obama and his wife Michelle, who is also in the ads, have not endorsed in the race, but Stevens served as a transportation adviser to Obama in his administration and was part of the auto industry (one that is large in Michigan) bailout in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
Honestly I’m irritated the most with McMorrow. She was my preferred candidate over both AES and Stevens. Stevens probably wins anyway because of the environment (although I think AES wins too) but she’s just an utterly unimpressive candidate.
It all boils down to the rate of attrition you can expect from progressives if Stevens is the nominee versus the other 80+% of Michigan voters if El-Sayed is the nominee. Are there enough El-Sayed votes to be gained in Ann Arbor and Dearborn than will be lost in 78 other Michigan counties either from nonprogressives or Islamophobes? There's loss potential in both directions but I struggle to see how the loss potential would ever be larger for Stevens than El-Sayed.
I genuinely believe that it doesn't matter who we nominate. I think either of them wins in this environment. In that case I'd prefer to take the risk on AES because I align with him more politically. Though McMorrow would have been much more preferable overall.
I agree with your assessment of the race - I suspect either will win in November, but I do think AES is more likely to make us sweat a race that we should be winning in a walk.
I think in broad terms this is a useful framing. But I think the framing assumes that they are equal quality candidates and the only differentiating factor for their ability to gain votes is ideology. Ideology absolutely impacts vote-getting ability, but candidate quality can counterbalance or even override that.
A different moderate, like Slotkin, wouldn't inspire any worry from me, because Slotkin is a fairly capable candidate. Different states, but people like Klobuchar or Kelly are also incredibly strong candidates.
Stevens is not a strong candidate, IMO, which is the focus of the issue. Realistically I think both Stevens and AES could/would win this cycle, but both of them are going to perform worse than they should in a swing state in an expected blue wave year.
One of the many reasons why the Democratic Party is seen very unfavorably by most voters is because the party is still seen as the party of Obama, even nearly a decade after Obama left office, and a large segment of the party's establishment (basically the entire establishment except for the most conservative people who are still at least nominally Democrats, such as John Fetterman and Andrew Cuomo) is completely unwilling to articulate any vision for the party that is tethered to a considerable degree to Obama's legacy.
I would even go as far as to argue that the progressive movement within the Democratic Party began in earnest as backlash to Obama's rejected effort to cut Social Security benefits during his second term, and, if it wasn't for the Chained CPI proposal, people like Bernie Sanders would have not gained a ton of political influence, and a lot of people like AOC, etc. would have not even been a consideration to get elected to Congress.
Sanders had a high profile before that. I agree that racists dislike today's Democratic Party as the party of "those people," but isn't Barack Obama one of the most popular people in the U.S. as a former president?
Does anyone think the states like FL and OH that passed their versions of the SAVE Act are going to roll it back if the confusion keeps Republicans from voting? FL Rs left vote by mail intact which means college students and other targeted voters can get around the law if it's enacted by January.
-Not looking forward to Lee at Judiciary
-Who takes over at Appropriations if Collins does lose?
I wonder if Graham Nordone (Graham's sister who assumed office as an appointed U.S. Senator earlier today) will get any committee assignments at all, since she's probably only going to be in the Senate for a few months (unless she runs for the full term and wins election; I don't think Graham Nordone will run for the full term, but I could be wrong). Obviously, she'll never be anywhere near a committee gavel unless she gets elected and re-elected multiple times.
I keep trying to use the David Curson situation in Michigan back in 2012 as an analogy for the committee assignment situation in Graham Nordon's case; I don't remember Curson having any House committee assignments for the less than two months he was in office.
-On the fundraising section, Chris Pappas is not the incumbent in the New Hampshire Senate race.
-It's worth noting Oliver himself would have been the Libertarian candidate for governor this year had the signatures been accepted
Thank you, I've fixed.
MI-1 - This map by a metrologist for the ABC affiliate in Ames, Iowa (Des Moines DMA) illustrates how late Winter sunrises would be in the Midwest would be if Trump's year-round Daylight Savings Time bill passes Congress:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1E3ct1SCoo/
The areas that would have the latest sunrises would be northwestern North Dakota and much of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
While ND-AL is not in any danger of flipping Democratic barring a cash-in-the-freezer scenario with the party roles flipped, there might be a push within the state to move more of western North Dakota to Mountain Time if the Trump DST bill becomes law.
MI-1, on the other hand, could be uniquely vulnerable to flipping to Democrats because of the Trump DST bill, as I would imagine very late Winter sunrises in much of the Upper Peninsula would be extremely unpopular, not to mention the fact that four GOP state legislators pulled their endorsement of the incumbent over an unrelated controversy.
https://keweenawreport.com/2026/02/18/upper-peninsula-delegation-withdraw-support-for-the-regions-representative-in-washington-d-c/
Bergman is also unpopular with the Republican establishment for endorsing against their legislative candidates for far right alternatives.
And for living part time in Louisiana.
I've always felt Michigan and Indiana should be on Central time. That would be the best solution, realistically.
North Dakota's northwest counties are in an odd place because unlike the southwest counties, they are on Central time instead of Mountain time. The counties in that area could presumably make a switch, too.
I like being on the westernmost edge of Eastern time!
The proximity of Toledo and Detroit may make that an issue but, otherwise, Indiana should at least be entirely central
Why?
It wasn’t that long ago when the seat was competitive, even after republicans picked it up. Dan Benishek had close elections. Obama won the district as it was drawn in 2008. Clinton also won it twice
Yeah year-round DST will be something everybody wants until the moment they get it just like 1974. Every 50 years, we apparently have to reeducate ourselves on this foolishness.
That's also what happened in Russia. They implemented it in 2011 then ended it in 2014. Iceland, on the other hand, seems perfectly happy with their late winter sunrises. They adopted permeant DST in 1968 and haven't switched back. I was there at the end of January and sunrise was around 10:15am with sunset being around 5pm.
Iceland has a large tourism industry, which explains that country’s staunch support for DST. Yet, at the same time, Hawaii and the vast majority of Arizona, areas that also have sizable tourism economies, have chosen not to observe DST if given a choice one way or the other (the Trump DST bill might mandate that any area of the U.S. that doesn’t observe DST observe it year-round, although I haven’t read the text of the bill).
I assume Hawaii is far enough south not to have great differences between the sunrise and sunset times in winter vs. summer.
The did not have much of a tourism industry in 1968 though. It only really got big in the 2010s.
Then we should have year-round standard time. Changing time zones without traveling is stupid.
Absolutely not. Far and away the least disruptive option is what we do now....daylight savings time in the summer and standard time in the winter. Neither option of 4:30 a.m. sunrises or 9 a.m. sunrises is a good one and will result in higher electricity consumption at a time when rates are already spiking because of AI. At this point though it seems like a certainty that we'll have to relearn this lesson over and over and over again.
You know, it's also possible to have time zones that vary from others by a half hour. I hate time change!
I saw an interview with Sanford and he didn’t say no. (NBC or PBS) Interesting that the last two Senate appointments in our fair state have been a black man and a woman. Before Scott, I believe it was Donald O. Russell, who lost to Fritz Hollings when he ran for reelection.
It looks like Darline Graham Nordone will be the Harriet Lane of Muriel Humphreys...
(Harriet Lane was the niece of the bachelor President James Buchanan who served as his First Lady. Muriel Humphrey was the widow of Sen. Hubert Humphrey who was appointed to succeed him in office after HHH passed away.)
MI-Sen: Gary Peters explains why he endorsed Stevens after initially staying neutral, saying it's critical Michigan has a "vetted" candidate. Everything he says was true a month ago, so I interpret this as he wanted to remain neutral so long as his preferred candidate was in the lead, but now that's not true, he's getting involved. For some reason, this really sticks in my craw and put a bad taste in my mouth.
https://x.com/adamwren/status/2077028997028880494
I know the internet isn’t real life, but I’ve seen a ton of negative sentiment towards Stevens from online liberals/progressives and it does make me worried about her ability to unite and motivate dems to vote. I know El-Sayed has his own issues, I’m a bit worried it will be a very close race no matter who the nominee is.
A lot of it is from people who are not Michiganders (I'm a supporter of AES despite being a lifelong Illinoisan, so count me guilty as charged in that regard), most notably Suzanne Lambert, who is from Georgia (although she now lives in D.C. and Florida) and only relatively recently became a Democrat. Lambert in particular has been mocking Stevens on social media, to the point of irritating me, as someone who would vote for AES over Stevens if I was a Michigan resident, at times.
I think influencers like Lambert are primarily chasing the algorithms, which have favored AES due to his online support.
Knowing her, Lambert probably will end up doing an interview and TikToks with Stevens if Stevens wins the primary.
Suzanne Lambert who? I've never heard of her, just as most Americans have probably never heard of Hasan Piker, and I'm both pretty online and pretty invested in politics
Not from MI, but Stevens literally saying the following about Abdul - "aspirational goals aren't real results" - whatever you think of it, does not speak well for her ability to inspire people. She's literally saying she will not fight for much! I strongly suspect she will not make any effort to unite voters if she does win.
https://bsky.app/profile/johnbrownbread.bsky.social/post/3mqkyvlz3hk2r
I am also quite incensed at her open refusal to disavow corporate money in politics -- not just for her campaign, but in general. I cannot find the story for this, by the way, but I do remember seeing it. Attempting to search for it leads me to numerous other stories about her extensive corporate ties, so many that I genuinely can't find the original. Also not a good sign.
I have a bad feeling Stevens, if she does win, will be a Sinema-type who blocks legislation that is insufficiently pro-business. Everything I've seen of her so far speaks to a candidate who is the definition of "corporate puppet". I don't know why they picked her for this seat, over Whitmer or Nessel or other candidates who would have done better. I sincerely hope they did not do this as some favor to lobbyists or something.
I'm not exactly inclined to believe in Haley Stevens for the very reasons you are describing.
However, this is still a primary so what happens after that is a different story. That said, I really doubt Stevens will be like Kyrsten Sinema was back when she was a Senator. She was the Chief of Staff in the auto recovery task force when the auto industry was bailed out back in 2009 and President Obama had even praised her for her efforts in this. Stevens was a strong supporter of the Inflation Reduction Act without any reservations, as well as CHIPS. Very unlikely given this history would Stevens block key economic pieces of legislation Democats are pushing. Even in her Senate campaign, she's talking about pushing to get groceries to be except from the impact from tariffs.
But with foreign affairs that's a whole different story all together.
I'm definitely someone who wants Stevens to lose the primary. But I take strong issue with this sentence of yours, " I don't know why they picked her for this seat, over Whitmer or Nessel or other candidates who would have done better."
I agree that Whitmer, Nessel and several others would have been stronger candidates. But there is no they! Anyone who wants to can run. As the Buddha (or maybe it was Rumsfeld) said, "You go to war with the army you have, not the one you wished you had". Nobody was stopping any of those other candidates from running. Desire & willingness to act on it are severely underestimated ingredients in many ramas of success in life. E.g. I would have supported Andy Levin. But he's still licking his wounds and didn't go for it.
That is a very good point, and one I didn’t notice when I typed out that comment. Open primaries are indeed essential — they allow for a more democratic process (especially in safe seats where an opposing party won’t win) and they can also work as vetting processes for candidates. Not always, mind you (WI-Gov this cycle) but betting the farm on one candidate at the expense of others can prove disastrous. Platner, Cunningham, all the Trump hand picked candidates, these are cases where a single candidate sucking the energy out can blow a winnable race should said candidate implode.
Thanks for catching that.
"Aspirational goals aren't real results" is in line with how moderate Dems typically message against progressives in primaries, even if the progressive has more actual political experience than the moderate (although that situation is relatively rare).
Angie Craig in Minnesota is using similar messaging, and I actually have more concern about Craig being Kyrsten Sinema 2.0 than Stevens (Craig was one of only a handful of Democrats to vote against making hot rotisserie chicken SNAP-eligible, for example).
Sounds like defeatist milquetoast rhetoric to me. Lest we forget, arguably the most successful moderate Democrat in the 21st century and recent history, Barack Obama actually ran on quite the progressive platform, including ending the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars AND enacting universal healthcare, all of which he fulfilled during his presidency. This whole "aspirational goals aren't real results" reads as "sorry, we can't help" to many people including myself. There's being a visionary, and there's being uninspired and even cowardly and lazy. Unless the status quo is 1950s Andy Griffith pie in the sky Mayberry, which right now it's the total opposite of, there's little reason not to try and be more optimistic and inspirational. This is is not how you inspire and mobilize people to support you.
Perhaps he was staying neutral between Stevens and McMorrow.
I hadn't thought of that, and you're probably right. Thanks, that cools me down and makes me feel less angry, lol.
Also, some people, fairly or unfairly, are going to interpret Peters's usage of the word "vetted" as a coded way of saying "not Muslim".
Probably true, unfortunately, but I think in this case and with Peters's experience as the D Senate Campaign Chair, it refers more to Platner and other poorly vetted/loose cannon candidates.
Chris Van Hollen, who also was a Democratic campaign chair in Congress, endorsed El-Sayed.
Why? That seems like a stretch. After seeing what a lack of vetting nearly did to us in Maine, maybe vetting is important. Maybe Peter's knows something we don't, just like Schumer knew something that a lot of people ignored.
This is clearly about Maine, not Muslims.
No, it's about Muslims - AES ran for statewide office before and has had two high-profile positions within public-facing agencies. He's an accomplished public health physician with degrees from prestigious institutions, doesn't drink, and has been with the same woman since high school. The idea that he hasn't been vetted is nonsensical, and even more so when comparing his personal life to Platner's. If his name were Adam Erickson with his resume, nobody would be insinuating any personal skeletons; it's because he is a muslim and arab.
If Adam Erickson had the same politics as AES, you really think he'd be facing no similar scrutiny?
Super PACs wouldn’t have to darken his skin and lengthen his beard in ads and in mailers while applying that scrutiny.
Point taken.
I think he was fine with both Steven's and McMurrow so he stayed neutral until McMurrow dropped out.
FL Democrats say that this year is likely that the GOP supermajority will be broken.
https://www.wusf.org/politics-issues/2026-07-14/florida-democrats-say-they-can-break-gop-legislative-supermajority
Of course, the arrogant POS Evan Power is smoking copium.
Power should focus on his congressional primary if anything.
https://www.semafor.com/article/07/10/2026/gay-wyoming-republican-sues-members-of-his-own-party-for-pedophile-slur
WY-AL: Businessmam Reid Rasner, who is gay, is suing his fellow Republicans for calling him a pedophile.
If that ain't the most "leopards eating people's faces" thing I've ever heard, I don't know what is.
Rasner faces Secretary of State Chuck Gray, state Sen. Bo Biteman, conservative activist Foster Friess and many others in the primary.
The article doesn't say Rasner is suing his opponents, just other Republicans:
"On Friday morning, Rasner will settle one case against an Iowa man who called him a “pedophile” under several of his campaign’s Facebook posts. Rasner is pursuing another case against a former GOP Wyoming state senator who he alleges led a whisper campaign accusing him of sexual misconduct."
OK you have to be pretty old and nerdy to hear “America’s most famous hiker hits the campaign trail again” and think “NOOOO Mark Sanford” but all the same good job getting ahead of the upcoming appalachapalooza of puns.
Hey, more than a few young whippersnappers might consider some of us on here – including the undersigned at two-thirds of a century – to be positively ancient.
I’m Gen Z and sometimes I feel like I’m among the few here who is. I think JazElections is too if I remember correctly - not sure if there are others.
Yes. I believe I’m the youngest regular poster.
Perfect! So did you guys get the reference (not mine, OP’s) to “hiking the Appalachian Trail”?
Yes, mostly because of being obsessed with politics and political history. I also happen to live in WV, the heart of Appalachia.
I’d heard about it in past Downballot issues, so yes. My political awakening was 2012 (I was 12 then)-2017 - the SOPA/PIPA internet censorship fight introduced me to the importance of paying attention to politics, my opposition to the TPP/subsequent discovery of Bernie in 2016 helped me find my identity as a progressive, and watching Trump win, combined with a speech by Michael Moore (who I don’t even like anymore) at the 2017 Women’s March where he told the crowd how to get involved in politics directly and some of the things they could and should do, led me to decide to potentially work in politics as a career - my goal being to work not as a politician, but with politicians or in a nonprofit. We’ll see. I also started paying attention to downballot politics after I started hearing about other progressives running for different offices (first primary vote I made was for Cynthia Nixon in 2018 for NY Governor) - and it was The Downballot (and its previous iteration, Daily Kos Elections, which I lurked), the former Primary School newsletter, and Bolts Magazine that really got me into in-the-woods national, state, and local races.
This is all to say that I have been watching politics for some time.
Pleasantly surprised to be corrected! I’m GenX.
I'm also Gen Z (on the older end), although I wouldn't call myself a regular poster here
More of a lurker than a regular commenter but I’m 3 years old than you and always enjoy your posts
I'm Gen Z/Zalpha too
Pretty old? Wow, OK.
I was referring to myself! It has since emerged that several less-old people (maybe nerdy, dono) got the reference. I have lived too sheltered a life.
To be fair, you're also on the kind of site where people are more aware of political happenings and memes from the relatively recent past and beyond.
Good point. Not sure if I’ve posted here before or not but definitely I wasn’t thinking “new community here, introducing myself.” Anyways nice to be in conversation with smart people in good faith.
Looks like he may have finally paid up.
https://x.com/lawofruby/status/2077038249856385512?s=20
I heard about this via a family member. Good news
https://elections.delaware.gov/candidates/candidatelist/prim_fcddt_2026.html
Delaware filing deadline:
As far as I know, Delaware is the penultimate state for candidates to file in, with the last being for Louisiana's House primaries on August 7. But this is pretty much the last normal filing deadline, as Louisiana had their other primaries way back in May.
DE-Sen: Democratic Sen. Chris Coons will likely face Republican Mike Katz, a former Democratic state senator and third-party candidate for the state's other Senate seat in 2024, where he got 4%.
DE-Treasurer: Incumbent Democrat Colleen Davis is retiring. Businessman Mike Miller and financial adviser Ted Lauzen are running in the Democratic primary. (correction - my first comment said Lauzen was the son of Kane County's Republican treasurer, Chris Lauzen. While that's true, the other Ted Lauzen ran in Illinois as a Democrat. Not in Delaware, where there is no Kane County).
DE-SD-1, 5, 7, 8 and 15:
-Bernie Sanders-backed candidates Adriana Bohm and Shay Frisby are running against incumbent senators Dan Cruce and Ray Seigfried in Democratic primaries. Restauranteur and community advocate Jose Lopez is also running against state Sen. Spiros Mantzavinos from the left.
-Delaware has grown more favorable to progressives in recent years. For example, Sen. Tom Carper was challenged by Kerri Evelyn Harris in 2018. Though she performed poorly, she was later elected to the state House and now serves as majority leader. New Castle County executive Matt Meyer, a progressive, beat out Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long in the 2024 gubernatorial primary and now serves as one of the few lefty governors.
-State Rep. Mara Gorman is likely to succeed Senate president pro tempore David Sokola in the 8th.
-Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Dave Lawson, who represents the most conservative district up this cycle, has endorsed state health official Elizabeth Thompson to succeed him. However, University of Delaware trustee Nisha Lodhavia is running a credible Democratic campaign for a seat Trump won by 28 points.
Guam and the Marianas have important governor's races where the incumbents are term-limited/retiring (respectively). And American Samoa Del. Aumua Amata could retire - she'll be 79 in December.
Resident of American Samoa here: Amata is widely expected by pretty much everyone to be running again
Do you still see her frequently back in AS or is she running to maintain her DC residence? Not sure the expectations on returning, must be an 18 hr trip or thereabouts, no?
She is generally here when congress isn't in session and in DC when it is
The Northern Marianas was hit by two super typhoons (Cat 4-5) within the past 3-4 months. Republican Rep. King-Hinds will probably win reelection if she can continue to bring in FEMA and recovery money. Considering how Trump has made disaster recovery partisan, the NMI is lucky to have a Republican congresswoman right now.
I've seen interviews with King-Hinds on progressive networks. She's not MAGA, she just seems to be trying to get her job done.
Yeah, that's another reason why I don't think she'll face real opposition.
She does seem to have drawn a challenger in independent Galvin Deleon Guerrero, who is the president of the territory's sole university and the nephew of a former delegate, Gregorio Sablan. He seems credible enough, although I imagine he'd split the vote with a Democrat, if one ends up running.
Spiros Mantzavinos is an absolutely baller Greek name, love it
Katz made a totally laughable and totally ignored Presidential run in the Democratic primary in 2020.
Thanks for the report!
What’s that they about a lie traveling fast just as the truth is waking up?
https://x.com/bourscheid/status/2076984233323635020?s=20
I'm still waiting for truth to catch up on the week 1, 2017 stuff, like "Alternative facts" to the amount of people at the inauguration, let alone the freshest lies of 2026. There are tens of thousands of lies, thousands of broken norms, and hundreds of violated laws we WILL have to do thorough look-back accounting of.... we've barely dealt with any of it, and clearly the next administration will have to do a Nuremberg style trial and cleansing.
just kidding!
This will end with settlements paid out to the people arrested for vandalizing the reflecting pool and a bar investigation against Jeanine Pirro and anyone else involved with these sham prosecutions.
Judge Box of Wine deserves some prison time. Along with a disbarring.
It was obviously a lie from day one. It's rather pathetic that people were arrested and charged with felonies because the president wanted to save face. The only thing saving us from complete dictatorship is our still largely independent judiciary, that will almost certainly throw out those charges.
https://www.reuters.com/world/new-york-becomes-first-state-impose-data-center-moratorium-2026-07-14/
New York is the first state to impose a data center moratorium, a hot button issue this election cycle.
Full moratorium seems to be a bit of a baby and bathwater case of quasi-Luddite populism but every democrat should at least be on the record that residential ratepayers be given legislative priority for electricity and data centers get whatever is left over if they can’t provide their own juice
The bigger dilemma is looking into more sustainable sources of energy to power the internet without having the data centers taking up too much of the oxygen in the environment.
No argument from me there. Even sans AI compute needs purely from cloud internet and digital economy needs are going to continue to grow dramatically and some kind of enterprise LLM for data analytics is going to perpetuate even once chatbot crap like OpenAI inevitably goes bust
Sure. This is where the argument saying we can't stop the development of AI is absolute nonsense. Of course you can as long as the data centers are alive, AI development with no oversight continues to evolve.
AI cannot run on autopilot.
hard disagree, we have historic droughts, and i don't trust politicians to not screw us over to big tech. Maybe everyone could just use less AI?
Data centers use a fraction of the water that golf courses and people’s lawns do - if you’re looking at water conservation there’s a much more effective target (and you’ll get no argument from me on wanting to curtail residential lawn water usage or curtail golf courses!)
The energy argument about driving up consumer bills is more effective and one where policy teeth is likely to have some benefits for ordinary people. The horse is, whatever else one may think, out of the barn on this technology
i don't think we will ever bring down golf courses, but if the present trend continues I think lawns are going to fall by the wayside in importance. I'm a hypocrite on this though, as your comment made me realize. I play golf occasionally
I golf in the sense that I shoot 60 on the front nine, realize that I actually hate golf and turn around and leave, and then I’m back at it six months later for some reason
But yes large lawns will continue to become rarer and rarer
Henrik's point, I think, was about the fact that there are non-AI based data centers out there. Servers for Google, Steam, Playstation, Netflix, etc. are all "data centers" too. Banning all data centers bans the ones that actually do contribute to society, not just the ones that contribute nothing.
Probably the bigger problem here is that we do not have a system that can and will capture the negative externalities created and require the facilities to pay for them. If that was solved then it would be OK.
That’s exactly what I’m saying
no opposition to those, I should have been more clear. Apologies, I just want better regulation of non-AI data centers.
I for instance love GPS navigation. Back in 1999, my parents and I went with a friend to a trip in Hawaii and the rental car had this where we were able to get around quite efficiently. This was before Google Maps.
Make sure you don't use it too much. I hear apps like Waze sell data of immigrants to ICE.
I really don't use GPS in my car these days. Back in 1999 though, times were innocent for late teens and early 20's guys like myself who didn't need technology to aid us when we went on vacation.
But GPS back in the late 90's wasn't even a thing for authorities.
Saw that on the news this morning. Whatever you think of data centers, I think it’s a very politically smart move, given the opposition they face.
it should be a three year moratorium, but given that it's hocul best to be hoped for
https://michiganchronicle.com/how-the-obamas-are-motivating-black-voters-in-michigans-u-s-senate-race/
MI-Sen: The AIPAC-linked United Democracy Project is putting former President Barack Obama in ads to boost Rep. Haley Stevens, and undecided voters in the Democratic primary say Obama's presence in the ads makes them favor her over Dr. Abdul El-Sayed.
Obama and his wife Michelle, who is also in the ads, have not endorsed in the race, but Stevens served as a transportation adviser to Obama in his administration and was part of the auto industry (one that is large in Michigan) bailout in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
I sincerely hope Haley Stevens defeats Abdul El-Sayed in the primary.
Because she has Obama in her ads despite him not endorsing her?
I would bet she got a wink and a nod from him.
Obama doesn't seem the type to praise someone if he doesn't like their work so i wouldn't be surprised if he's for her
Even if you hope that, you have to admit that it's disingenuous to include Obama in ads despite them not actually endorsing her.
Unless she makes it appear that he's endorsing her then it's not disingenuous.
I say it's fair game if what is being said is accurate
If you think she’s the stronger GE candidate, you may be in for a surprise.
I would certainly hope the DSA progressives would support her if she's the nominee.
And I'm sure progressives hope moderates would support El-Sayed.
Most will begrudgingly support her.
Honestly I’m irritated the most with McMorrow. She was my preferred candidate over both AES and Stevens. Stevens probably wins anyway because of the environment (although I think AES wins too) but she’s just an utterly unimpressive candidate.
My position exactly
Why are you most irritated with McMorrow?
It all boils down to the rate of attrition you can expect from progressives if Stevens is the nominee versus the other 80+% of Michigan voters if El-Sayed is the nominee. Are there enough El-Sayed votes to be gained in Ann Arbor and Dearborn than will be lost in 78 other Michigan counties either from nonprogressives or Islamophobes? There's loss potential in both directions but I struggle to see how the loss potential would ever be larger for Stevens than El-Sayed.
Most years I would agree with you. Not sure about this year. But you well may be right.
I genuinely believe that it doesn't matter who we nominate. I think either of them wins in this environment. In that case I'd prefer to take the risk on AES because I align with him more politically. Though McMorrow would have been much more preferable overall.
I agree with your assessment of the race - I suspect either will win in November, but I do think AES is more likely to make us sweat a race that we should be winning in a walk.
I think in broad terms this is a useful framing. But I think the framing assumes that they are equal quality candidates and the only differentiating factor for their ability to gain votes is ideology. Ideology absolutely impacts vote-getting ability, but candidate quality can counterbalance or even override that.
A different moderate, like Slotkin, wouldn't inspire any worry from me, because Slotkin is a fairly capable candidate. Different states, but people like Klobuchar or Kelly are also incredibly strong candidates.
Stevens is not a strong candidate, IMO, which is the focus of the issue. Realistically I think both Stevens and AES could/would win this cycle, but both of them are going to perform worse than they should in a swing state in an expected blue wave year.
There will be bad blood/recriminations for either candidate. I think they each are 55/45 to lose. Been a nasty race.
Not me, but I think a Stevens win is more likely.
One of the many reasons why the Democratic Party is seen very unfavorably by most voters is because the party is still seen as the party of Obama, even nearly a decade after Obama left office, and a large segment of the party's establishment (basically the entire establishment except for the most conservative people who are still at least nominally Democrats, such as John Fetterman and Andrew Cuomo) is completely unwilling to articulate any vision for the party that is tethered to a considerable degree to Obama's legacy.
I would even go as far as to argue that the progressive movement within the Democratic Party began in earnest as backlash to Obama's rejected effort to cut Social Security benefits during his second term, and, if it wasn't for the Chained CPI proposal, people like Bernie Sanders would have not gained a ton of political influence, and a lot of people like AOC, etc. would have not even been a consideration to get elected to Congress.
Sanders had a high profile before that. I agree that racists dislike today's Democratic Party as the party of "those people," but isn't Barack Obama one of the most popular people in the U.S. as a former president?
Does anyone think the states like FL and OH that passed their versions of the SAVE Act are going to roll it back if the confusion keeps Republicans from voting? FL Rs left vote by mail intact which means college students and other targeted voters can get around the law if it's enacted by January.
What Ohio law are you referring to?
https://bsky.app/profile/reginageorgebush.bsky.social/post/3mqn2jtuebs2z
The Primary School newsletter is relaunching again.