I waffle back and forth on whether she should or whether she should go for Governor and bide her time for the likely open Senate seat in 2034. You can get a wave insurance candidate in the senate race next year too, but her odds at Governor are about as good as you can get.
Do you live in Alaska? If I were an Alaskan, I'd definitely care who my governor was. But since I'm not an Alaskan, who is Governor of Alaska is not of great importance to me, whereas who is in that U.S. Senate seat is very important!
There’s the risk of not wanting to waste our best candidate in Alaska on a potentially uphill race when the governorship is there for the taking. She’s young enough to run for Senate after two terms as governor. I think Rob Sand similarly made the best decision for himself personally to run for Governor in Iowa, and yet we have good legislators running in the Senate race that can ride the wave if it crests that high.
But what would she gain from being in the Gov's office that would enable her to run more successfully for the Senate in 8 years? She's already represented the state as a whole, she's universally known, it's a Dem-leaning year.. why wait?
Building popularity is the obvious reason. Governors generally make the strongest senate candidates, and it's not even close. They can outrun the partisan baseline significantly. If a hypothetical governor Peltola ran for Senate in 2034 with solid approvals, she'd easily win if she had a Bredesen/Hogan overperformance.
After what TACO and Miyares have said, Jay Jones' texts are nothing. If he wins, it'll be by the skin of his teeth. But if he wins by more, it means most VA voters didn't hear about it or care.
“According to our source, the President is "vacillating" on a commutation. We're told some of the W.H. staff are urging Trump not to commute the sentence. But, our source states the obvious -- "Trump will do what he wants," and we're told Trump could set Diddy free as early as this week.”
We're going to have to tie TACO to every vulnerable R up for election next year and in 2028. I'm surprised no one has announced they would challenge Mike Johnson in his district because they will have a goldmine of attack ads on being an "enabler of the pedophile in the White House."
Go there. I'm beyond caring what Obama Dem strategists think otherwise. Make the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential election a referendum on Republicans being the party of pedophiles.
If TACO can viciously attack VP Kamala on being for "they/them, not us", whoever the 2028 Dem candidate is needs to hit back.
I don't think we're not using that attack line because we're too cautious. I think it's because most people that it would work on are pretty solidly in Trump's camp regardless. There is no scenario in which we beat Johnson btw.
I think that accusation has become so overused by the right that it's already a coded/sorted issue and the people who take sides over it are already MAGA.
The amount of sexual misconduct we can be hitting Republicans with constantly is unreal. Gym Jordan, Hastert, a thousand other people. We need people to think Guardian of Pedophiles every time someone says GOP.
Ghislaine Maxwell. Trump has already said that he is “allowed to give her a pardon." He has already transferred her to a country club prison. Voters need to be reminded of his affinity for pedophiles.
The right mix of charisma, intelligence, policy positions, and telegenics. He’s a rare commodity - the southern Christian version of Zohran. The right candidate at the right time - lots of upside. He could become a generational political talent (or I might just be wrong but that’s the vibe I get).
Zohran Mamdani would surely have no chance to win in Texas, but fortunately , considering Texas politics, Talarico is not a socialist. What evidence is there that he shares Mamdani's superior speaking ability and ability to connect with voters? We haven't seen that in polling yet, have we?
I'm not saying you're wrong, but isn't that what we said about Beto? To be fair, he did come as close as a Democrat has to winning a Senate race in Texas in a very long time, but that was the messaging around him back then...
I think we should be cognizant of the results in 2018. Beto only came that close because he had that unicorn candidate messaging about him. Much as we want it to be more purple, Texas is still solidly red. So a candidate having that Beto vibe can get us close with a blue wave nationally. That’s what it takes to make TX close, we need everything to go right.
Can we get a victory? That’s the real question, but even if we don’t, a loss doesn’t automatically mean we were wrong about Beto, which also doesn’t mean people are wrong about Talarico if he’s our nominee and loses. The margins matter and any other generic Democrat would likely lose by a far greater percentage in place of Beto/Talarico.
That all said, I don’t think Talarico is guaranteed to win the primary like Beto was. Different races, different circumstances, but the one thing they have in common is Trump being president, maybe that’s enough this time, we shall see.
I can get how generic Rs and Trump can romp in Ohio, but still am befuddled how a guy like Ramaswamy can win a Governor's race there. He should be toxic in a working class Midwest state.
Yeah that one threw me as well. But as I've seen in the Ohio-adjacent demographics in Minnesota and Iowa industrial towns, once you lose those conservative, blue-collar voters, you don't ever get them back.
I suspect Brown is benefiting enormously from being a recent incumbent.
Oftentimes the biggest hurdle a candidate faces is voters imagining the candidate actually in the office. This is not really any hurdle at all if the candidate matches the partisan preference of the state; it's much more important for "wrong party" candidates.
The last time Ohio elected a democratic governor was 2006. Whereas Brown was their senator less than 12 months ago. They don't have to imagine him in the office of senator, helping him partially overcome the partisan preferences of the median voter. It might not be enough in the end, but it will help, and it's helping more than the various factors that would help us in the governor's race are helping.
Dems are still going to win the House majority next year. If 2026 is a repeat of 2018, Dems are going to win at least 20+ seats. Definitely not 41 but more than enough to unseat Mike Johnson as House Speaker.
I still despise the NC GOP assholes even if the 2026 election retains the 10 R - 4 D makeup with the additional gerrymandering.
Maybe maybe not. We have a lot fewer generic ballots at this point than in 2017 and more of them are right-leaning firms. But yes it's not great right now.
The deciding factor of 2026, I think, will be the level of low-engagement MAGA turnout.
It's certainly possible that they crawl over glass to prop up the regime, but given that they didn't exactly blow the doors off in 2022 with an unpopular Biden—whom they believed to be illegitimate—in power, I'm far from convinced that they will.
That being said, GOP gerrymandering and the likely loss of VRA Section 2 will be major setbacks (albeit with dummymander potential in some places). Hopefully the latter doesn't fully kick in until 2028.
I agree with this summary. There is zero evidence that MAGA types will show up when Trump is not on the ballot. Frankly, even when they do, it's not always enough to bring Republicans over the line (e.g. NV, AZ and MI-Sen races last year). I'm pretty optimistic about the 2026 elections.
Do you really think there's any scenario where Johnson would green light that 218th Democratic seat? Or the 225th for the matter? The only way Johnson won't try to game the legal system and contest the outcome is if the Dems have at least 230 seats that make their victory indisputable. With the Republicans gaining new seats every day through new district lines, 230+ Democratic seats would be an extraordinarily heavy lift.
Less than ideal - better it comes out now than in October of 26.
Who’s the third candidate? Is he decent? Mills is not that exciting but maybe that is what’s needed to win (hopefully she studies up on the filibuster).
That's a hidden potential danger of running war veteran candidates. If the candidate is not being swiftboated a la John Kerry questioning their valor and service, there's still a decent chance the candidate has had some PTSD or trauma that caused them to make poor judgments or even still lingers as a medical issue they are handling.
But why keep it for twenty years and only acknowledge it when it’s politically convenient? This guy is a walking red flag and we’d be throwing away a Senate seat to nominate him.
I had no idea until this story broke that a skull was a nazi symbol. I’d be surprised if many Americans knew this symbol previously. It is not hard to understand a Marine going out with his buddies and getting a skull tattoo in another country many years ago and not knowing that it resembles, or maybe is, an obscure nazi symbol until his life gets put under a microscope
He has said that he's a military history buff, which does raise the likelihood that he has seen this imagery in its WWII context.
Also, I saw someone make this point on Bluesky, but he got the tattoo in Croatia, which has some pretty active neo-nazi elements, and I have got to wonder what else was on the walls (or tattooed on the people) at the shop where he got this done...
Captain America was created way in the 40's to fight nazis (and after Pearl Harbor, Japanese enemies, too), and his arch-enemy was the nazi supervillian... Red Skull.
No shot. This is the kind of stuff that would cause center left people to vote for Collins or abstain. Luckily, I don't think he has a shot at the nomination anymore.
I don't think this is true and, furthermore, why on earth would we chance it? I genuinely don't understand how anyone can still be onboard his train (or boat, more apropos).
It’s too late now, even if he does get rid of it. Which he should, but that will be too late for his campaign: that needs to be done for his own sake. His campaign is, or at least should be, toast.
I’ve defended him on this board because I finally saw a candidate rightfully being as angry at both the Republican Party and Democratic Party, matching how I feel, with the current mess our party’s in, in addition to supporting all the issues I care about. But nope, I’m definitely done with him now. There’s no coming back from knowing a tattoo is a Nazi symbol and not doing anything about it.
The only good thing I can say is at least Mills team is able to go for the jugular in researching her opponents because this massive drip, drip opposition dump that has completely destroyed Platner’s candidacy (which doesn’t seem to ever end) obviously is all from her and her campaign team. 1 term to get rid of Collins I can live with if she comes around on the filibuster, if not, I’m supporting Woods.
In his Pod Save America interview, Platner said that he picked his chest tattoo off a chart at the parlor on a whim and had never thought of a Nazi association.
Jewish Insider has a former acquaintance of Platner saying he used to call it "my Totenkopf"
He should push Dunlap to switch to the Senate race and endorse him to save face or else he's got another Gabbard/Turner/Taibbi/Joy Gray/Shaun King blight on his record.
Which reminds me, has Sanders ever apologized for his support of Gabbard? Or for attacking Clinton when she pointed out Gabbard was compromised long after we all knew that she was? That was egregious.
Hell, I thought there was something very off-putting about Gabbard as far back as 2012. I never understood why, for example, Rachel Maddow of all people thought she (Gabbard) was the next big thing in the Democratic Party.
Yeah, that's an SS-totenkopf. He can't be cute about it (like that he got it to honor the hussars). And why the heck would a reputable tattoo artist in Europe let him get one?
They were/are in some sunk cost fallacy. Also, his previous employment with Blackwater was an early red flag about his judgment, even if he said he felt bad about it afterwards. Surely there were less awful mercenary companies out there than the one founded by a lunatic neo-Crusader.
Yeah, I hadn't heard about the Blackwater thing until today but apparently it was pretty well known. Your comparison is pretty apt. McKinsey was a deal breaker but being a mercenary for a rightwing military group, no problem.
It seems like the tattoo was from 2007. Given that Platner has had an extensive history in Iraq and Afghanistan as a war veteran, it doesn't surprise me at some point that he would have developed significant PTSD and other trauma that could radicalize to extreme idea and poor judgement. We have have already seen how PTSD wrecked Jason Kander and of course we've seen how mental illness can make someone's personality and views change drastically as they have for John Fetterman. If Platner is sincere about taking back and apologizing for his past vices and misdeeds, I think he should be trusted to do so. Robert Byrd was given that benefit so I do see why the same shouldn't apply to Platner. The larger issue isn't just the comments and tattoos themselves, but the major distractions and derailments this is causing. Still, the election itself is over a year away from now, so there's plenty of time for this scandal to play out and perhaps be forgotten or mitigated.
Again, why would we accomodate this at all? Put aside the moral challenge in supporting someone with a Nazi tattoo - why would we put the Senate race at risk for this guy? I still don't get it...
At its most basic level this should be our response.
From a moral perspective I think there's enough here to dislike him. But ignore that: there's enough factors damaging him to tell us it doesn't matter if any of us on a personal level are willing to accept his explanations and responses. There are enough voters out there that will not, that will see the attack ads aimed at him, to make it clear he is not our strongest candidate.
I originally preferred him over Mills because of my reservations about Mills' readiness for this type of campaign, but it's clear that his flaws are unmistakably larger. His flaws are also concrete, rather than my prior (and still present) worries about Mills.
Whether it's for moral reasons or simply because he is weakened significantly, it's time to move on from Platner's campaign.
Honestly given the stakes, we shouldn't, but unless we're residents of Maine, we truly don't have much of a say here outside of giving donations and our support. For whatever it's worth Sanders still seems to be willing to support Platner despite this latest revelation - and he's someone who's experienced actual Nazis wiping out a large part of his family in the Holocaust, so I don't doubt that such a revelation would be personal for him. At a personal level, I do wish we had a younger and more progressive and populist candidate that could contrast with Mills that lacks baggage, but stands out with vigor. Unfortunately, Platner is not that candidate, unless public perception of him improves.
I think it was just a working class, industrial city. But I don't know if there was something specific beyond that. Wikipedia suggests gambling, though I don't know if that's actually well sourced.
This was around the time that Lydia Pinkham, who was from Lynn, was getting rich selling her "vegetable compound" as a health cure. The main active ingredient was alcohol, it was around 60 proof, and provided women with a socially acceptable way to get drunk at a time when the saloon was very much a male dominated environment. (Pinkham defended its high strength as necessary to preserve the beneficial nutrients in the herbs.)
Lydia's great-grandson Daniel Pinkham (who was born in Lynn) is an interesting and underrated 20th-century composer whose music I discovered in college.
This tracks with internal GOP polls showing Dems with only a slight and decreasing edge.
Let's be real this isn't a sustainable route for Dems . . I think the talk of getting to November 1st, highlighting the GOP's fault for letting the premiums expire and then setting up a dual short-term CR and subsidy extension vote is the only way forward. They certainly don't have the momentum to demand extensions pre-reopening the government with these numbers.
I tend to disagree that it's not a sustainable route.Vulnerable Republicans are calling for a vote on extending subsidies and Republican House Leadership is negotiating about how bad a compromise they might offer.
Agreed. Dems need to keep their backbone strong as long as possible. Voting to re-open the government on November 1, with no concessions, is a surefire recipe for landslide losses in Virginia and New Jersey a few days later, as demoralized Dems stay home.
I think the concession is a clean vote on extending the subsidies. The GOP has a trifecta . .if they tank it it's on them.
Re: vulnerable House Rs, I think everything being floated is about votes happening after a CR is passed. MAYBE you could get it concurrently with an extension vote happening immediately after a CR passes. I think that's realistically the best they can get.
Unless there's some assurance Trump won't simply impound any spending he doesn't like, there should be no deal, even if the shutdown lasts till Election Day, 2026.
There were a lot of comments akin to this pre-November 2024. I think polls are actually very insightful for pols to use in a scenario like this. Batting down the hatchets in a sinking ship doesn't help anyone.
Next week a lot of folks don't get paid. Maybe that boosts Dems. If it doesn't, you have to pull a Kenny Rodgers and live to fight another day.
What’s the source on these internals - certainly don’t match the public polling. The DC consultant class wants to reopen no matter what so I would be leery of doomsday dem internals.
"While the office cannot comment on ongoing investigations, suffice it to say that I remain focused on prosecuting political corruption wherever it exists regardless of political affiliation," Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said in a statement.
I honestly have no idea how this plays out. One deeply-frustrating aspect of our politics since at least the W era (and I know I'm a broken record on this) is that voters of all political stripes expect Democrats to fix things and "be the adults in the room" even when they hold little or no power, and Republicans—whether in power or not—are rarely expected to do anything other than throw tantrums and fling poo.
How do you think the GOP Primary debates will be? It’s unique to see two former GOP Senators unseated by two Democrats now running in the primary race.
I can just see Scott Brown going after John Sununu for not being MAGA, supporting the Iraq War and other crap that makes him out of touch with the GOP today.
How is this a Republican position? I say let them nuke it and own their decisions. Trump is just cutting shit unilaterally anyway so the filibuster is merely a cover for the Senate GOP at this point.
Republican position or not, getting rid of the filibuster is a move that would generally benefit Republicans, since the Senate is tilted toward them. In my opinion, it has always been a mistake for Democrats to embrace it. That aside, it sounds like Fetterman is now only backing it since Republicans control the Senate, which is obviously even worse.
The Senate map definitely favors the GOP but the abolition of the filibuster benefits Dems more because in general they want to pass a lot more legislation than Republicans.
Republicans not being able to implement their full extremist party agenda are exactly why voters ignore and don’t believe Democratic warnings when it matters the most: before elections take place. It has protected them from feeling the full brunt of what the GOP in power actually wants to do and what that pain looks like for them.
Fuck it, it needs to go, consequences be damned. Maybe then voters (and the media) will wake up to how stupid they’ve been over the last 8 years and fully understand the reality of what the GOP actually is. Nothing else has, so let’s let them see exactly what right wing power does without checks or balances. Can’t possibly be any worse than where we are right now.
That reads like the communist argument that if only things get bad enough, the revolution will come. No. First of all, that's demonstrably untrue; second, the Democratic Party exists to improve the lives of non-rich people.
If the filibuster is fully eliminated, Republicans would very likely succeed in privatizing social security. Having it is a very big part of why Bush was unable to do it. Given how hard it is for Democrats to win the senate, it would be very difficult to “un privatize” it once Republicans did that.
I am in favor of creating a filibuster carve out to require all states to have bipartisan/non partisan redistricting commissions and DC statehood the next time Dems get a trifecta. Eliminating the filibuster without having that could result in Republicans having House control and potentially a trifecta simply because they got to gerrymander. In that case, I’d want to have the filibuster as protection against a GOP trifecta that exists solely due to gerrymandering.
This is a close variation on the argument of what would happen if Roe vs. Wade was overturned....that the Republicans who advocated it would be stuck with a position that the country wouldn't tolerate. Well....they got it repealed....and paid no price whatsoever. Not only didn't they pay a price, they were rewarded with more power than any party has had in my lifetime given the way every institution is working as a united front to reinforce its own power.
So I'm skeptical that anything a consequence-free Republican majority might pass would have long-term electoral repercussions. Once Social Security and Medicare are gone, they're never coming back. But even if a conservative-run government paid a short-term price for snuffing them out, and at this point I'm not entirely convinced that they would, the Republicans would be back much sooner than Social Security and Medicare would.
I agree with your point, but I'd amend the Roe v Wade detail. Republicans did pay a big price. The problem is that price only lasted for a single election, the 2022 midterms. Without the Dobbs decision we would have been absolutely crushed in 2022, instead of the roughly neutral year we saw.
Unfortunately, voters got their anger out once and moved on. Which aligns with your argument, hence the agreement.
In the long run, assuming a continuation of sufficiently free and fair elections, the filibuster is more beneficial to the Republicans than the Democrats, because while they would prefer to keep doing horrible things, their fallback position is to just prevent progress, whereas Democrats need to actually change things for the better. However, in the short run, while the Republicans control the Senate, it would obviously be to the advantage of the Republicans to get rid of the filibuster.
The Alaska poll has a Trump +13 sample
https://x.com/CloudsterWx/status/1980451111283879980
Which is an exact match to 2024
She should go for it.
I waffle back and forth on whether she should or whether she should go for Governor and bide her time for the likely open Senate seat in 2034. You can get a wave insurance candidate in the senate race next year too, but her odds at Governor are about as good as you can get.
Do you live in Alaska? If I were an Alaskan, I'd definitely care who my governor was. But since I'm not an Alaskan, who is Governor of Alaska is not of great importance to me, whereas who is in that U.S. Senate seat is very important!
There’s the risk of not wanting to waste our best candidate in Alaska on a potentially uphill race when the governorship is there for the taking. She’s young enough to run for Senate after two terms as governor. I think Rob Sand similarly made the best decision for himself personally to run for Governor in Iowa, and yet we have good legislators running in the Senate race that can ride the wave if it crests that high.
But what would she gain from being in the Gov's office that would enable her to run more successfully for the Senate in 8 years? She's already represented the state as a whole, she's universally known, it's a Dem-leaning year.. why wait?
Building popularity is the obvious reason. Governors generally make the strongest senate candidates, and it's not even close. They can outrun the partisan baseline significantly. If a hypothetical governor Peltola ran for Senate in 2034 with solid approvals, she'd easily win if she had a Bredesen/Hogan overperformance.
She's making Janet Mills seem decisive by comparison.
and as they say in surfing, the swell is approaching and the wave will be huge.
Win the seat!
After what TACO and Miyares have said, Jay Jones' texts are nothing. If he wins, it'll be by the skin of his teeth. But if he wins by more, it means most VA voters didn't hear about it or care.
What are you referring to, specifically, that Miyares said?
That AK-Sen poll is tasty.
Texas, too. We could genuinely pick up both houses.
“According to our source, the President is "vacillating" on a commutation. We're told some of the W.H. staff are urging Trump not to commute the sentence. But, our source states the obvious -- "Trump will do what he wants," and we're told Trump could set Diddy free as early as this week.”
https://x.com/PollTracker2024/status/1980449749711864232
If this happens, we need to tie Republicans to pedophilia and nazism in every single ad. Unbelievable.
We're going to have to tie TACO to every vulnerable R up for election next year and in 2028. I'm surprised no one has announced they would challenge Mike Johnson in his district because they will have a goldmine of attack ads on being an "enabler of the pedophile in the White House."
Go there. I'm beyond caring what Obama Dem strategists think otherwise. Make the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential election a referendum on Republicans being the party of pedophiles.
If TACO can viciously attack VP Kamala on being for "they/them, not us", whoever the 2028 Dem candidate is needs to hit back.
I don't think we're not using that attack line because we're too cautious. I think it's because most people that it would work on are pretty solidly in Trump's camp regardless. There is no scenario in which we beat Johnson btw.
You think campaigning against Republicans as enablers of child molestors wouldn't work with most voters???
I think that accusation has become so overused by the right that it's already a coded/sorted issue and the people who take sides over it are already MAGA.
I disagree. It will be different coming from Democrats with facts.
The amount of sexual misconduct we can be hitting Republicans with constantly is unreal. Gym Jordan, Hastert, a thousand other people. We need people to think Guardian of Pedophiles every time someone says GOP.
Ghislaine Maxwell. Trump has already said that he is “allowed to give her a pardon." He has already transferred her to a country club prison. Voters need to be reminded of his affinity for pedophiles.
Some on the WH Staff are urging Trump not to commute Puff Daddy?
But they aren’t showing their balls on Trump’s tariffs, ICE actions and everything else?
New - Senate poll - Texas
🔵 Allred - 41% (+3)
🔴 Paxton - 38%
Tyler center #B - 9/24 - RV
https://www.threads.com/@ppoliticalpolls/post/DQE1M2HDS_y?xmt=AQF05mODsQrueNlcEGC81cY7udpYQD6axaNKfaJXRkhEGg&slof=1
Not sure if they polled a Talarico matchup with Paxton
Talarico is starting to get into unicorn territory - he might be the future. I like Allred but Talarico seems like the best chance in Texas right now.
Unicorn how?
The right mix of charisma, intelligence, policy positions, and telegenics. He’s a rare commodity - the southern Christian version of Zohran. The right candidate at the right time - lots of upside. He could become a generational political talent (or I might just be wrong but that’s the vibe I get).
Zohran Mamdani would surely have no chance to win in Texas, but fortunately , considering Texas politics, Talarico is not a socialist. What evidence is there that he shares Mamdani's superior speaking ability and ability to connect with voters? We haven't seen that in polling yet, have we?
This is pretty good (polling is quickly catching up with the head start that Allred had)
https://youtu.be/6mAPHKHFtKQ
That's in the primary. A general election lead is needed.
if you're on tiktok he's a good follow
I'm not saying you're wrong, but isn't that what we said about Beto? To be fair, he did come as close as a Democrat has to winning a Senate race in Texas in a very long time, but that was the messaging around him back then...
I think we should be cognizant of the results in 2018. Beto only came that close because he had that unicorn candidate messaging about him. Much as we want it to be more purple, Texas is still solidly red. So a candidate having that Beto vibe can get us close with a blue wave nationally. That’s what it takes to make TX close, we need everything to go right.
Can we get a victory? That’s the real question, but even if we don’t, a loss doesn’t automatically mean we were wrong about Beto, which also doesn’t mean people are wrong about Talarico if he’s our nominee and loses. The margins matter and any other generic Democrat would likely lose by a far greater percentage in place of Beto/Talarico.
That all said, I don’t think Talarico is guaranteed to win the primary like Beto was. Different races, different circumstances, but the one thing they have in common is Trump being president, maybe that’s enough this time, we shall see.
I can get how generic Rs and Trump can romp in Ohio, but still am befuddled how a guy like Ramaswamy can win a Governor's race there. He should be toxic in a working class Midwest state.
Racists love minorities agreeing with them.
They do, although some of them won't vote for them under any circumstances.
Republicans care more about supporting Republicans than anything else a voter might care about.
MAGA can always be counted on to prioritize harming others over helping themselves.
Yeah that one threw me as well. But as I've seen in the Ohio-adjacent demographics in Minnesota and Iowa industrial towns, once you lose those conservative, blue-collar voters, you don't ever get them back.
But Brown is ahead in that same sample, against a pretty Generic R opponent in a federal race! It should be the opposite.
If Louisiana can elect a Dem Governor against a terrible opponent in the late 20teens I'd think Ohio can.
I suspect Brown is benefiting enormously from being a recent incumbent.
Oftentimes the biggest hurdle a candidate faces is voters imagining the candidate actually in the office. This is not really any hurdle at all if the candidate matches the partisan preference of the state; it's much more important for "wrong party" candidates.
The last time Ohio elected a democratic governor was 2006. Whereas Brown was their senator less than 12 months ago. They don't have to imagine him in the office of senator, helping him partially overcome the partisan preferences of the median voter. It might not be enough in the end, but it will help, and it's helping more than the various factors that would help us in the governor's race are helping.
It's possible, but don't bet the house on it!
The North Carolina state senate has just approved a new redistricting map that will give Republicans an additional seat in Congress. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/us/north-carolina-congressional-map-republicans.html?unlocked_article_code=1.vE8.LLfi.qYqtsKPYKuI1&smid=url-share
Dems are still going to win the House majority next year. If 2026 is a repeat of 2018, Dems are going to win at least 20+ seats. Definitely not 41 but more than enough to unseat Mike Johnson as House Speaker.
I still despise the NC GOP assholes even if the 2026 election retains the 10 R - 4 D makeup with the additional gerrymandering.
So far it is not looking like 2026 is a repeat of 2018. We are doing~5 pts worse on the generic ballot thus far.
We still have a year to go and polls don't matter. We will see how things go come 11/3/2026.
Maybe maybe not. We have a lot fewer generic ballots at this point than in 2017 and more of them are right-leaning firms. But yes it's not great right now.
The deciding factor of 2026, I think, will be the level of low-engagement MAGA turnout.
It's certainly possible that they crawl over glass to prop up the regime, but given that they didn't exactly blow the doors off in 2022 with an unpopular Biden—whom they believed to be illegitimate—in power, I'm far from convinced that they will.
That being said, GOP gerrymandering and the likely loss of VRA Section 2 will be major setbacks (albeit with dummymander potential in some places). Hopefully the latter doesn't fully kick in until 2028.
I agree with this summary. There is zero evidence that MAGA types will show up when Trump is not on the ballot. Frankly, even when they do, it's not always enough to bring Republicans over the line (e.g. NV, AZ and MI-Sen races last year). I'm pretty optimistic about the 2026 elections.
And by 2028 Democrats getting rid of their commissions may be enough to counteract that.
And we've won far more races this year than in 2017.
Do you really think there's any scenario where Johnson would green light that 218th Democratic seat? Or the 225th for the matter? The only way Johnson won't try to game the legal system and contest the outcome is if the Dems have at least 230 seats that make their victory indisputable. With the Republicans gaining new seats every day through new district lines, 230+ Democratic seats would be an extraordinarily heavy lift.
What options does Johnson even have to block a narrow Dem majority?
Johnson won’t be the Speaker in January 27 - the organizing votes are done by the House Clerk. Johnson has no way of blocking a Dem majority.
I believe in Don Davis's ability to hang on during a blue wave in a red-leaning district. I also think Dems could win NC-11 under the new map.
Platner has a Nazi tattoo.
https://www.pressherald.com/2025/10/21/graham-platner-addresses-tattoo-linked-to-nazis/
Less than ideal - better it comes out now than in October of 26.
Who’s the third candidate? Is he decent? Mills is not that exciting but maybe that is what’s needed to win (hopefully she studies up on the filibuster).
I see no reason to disbelieve his story that he had no idea the skull was associated with the Nazis.
Same, but every subsequent story about him makes me think he's not ready for prime time
That's a hidden potential danger of running war veteran candidates. If the candidate is not being swiftboated a la John Kerry questioning their valor and service, there's still a decent chance the candidate has had some PTSD or trauma that caused them to make poor judgments or even still lingers as a medical issue they are handling.
That rings true, but of course it shouldn't trigger discrimination against war veterans.
But why keep it for twenty years and only acknowledge it when it’s politically convenient? This guy is a walking red flag and we’d be throwing away a Senate seat to nominate him.
Agreed.
I had no idea until this story broke that a skull was a nazi symbol. I’d be surprised if many Americans knew this symbol previously. It is not hard to understand a Marine going out with his buddies and getting a skull tattoo in another country many years ago and not knowing that it resembles, or maybe is, an obscure nazi symbol until his life gets put under a microscope
He has said that he's a military history buff, which does raise the likelihood that he has seen this imagery in its WWII context.
Also, I saw someone make this point on Bluesky, but he got the tattoo in Croatia, which has some pretty active neo-nazi elements, and I have got to wonder what else was on the walls (or tattooed on the people) at the shop where he got this done...
It's not a generic skull, it's a specific skull with a specific, very bad, history. It's an image straight out of the "Are we the baddies?" skit.
You should read comic books more.
Captain America was created way in the 40's to fight nazis (and after Pearl Harbor, Japanese enemies, too), and his arch-enemy was the nazi supervillian... Red Skull.
He could still win a general based on Maine’s partisanship alone.
No shot. This is the kind of stuff that would cause center left people to vote for Collins or abstain. Luckily, I don't think he has a shot at the nomination anymore.
I don't think this is true and, furthermore, why on earth would we chance it? I genuinely don't understand how anyone can still be onboard his train (or boat, more apropos).
If he truly regretted getting that tattoo, he would have it lasered off.
I've defended Platner here before, but this is the last straw for me. I'm definitely not supporting him unless he gets rid of that tattoo.
Agreed, now that he has been informed the tattoo resembles, or is, a Nazi symbol, he absolutely should get it removed
It’s too late now, even if he does get rid of it. Which he should, but that will be too late for his campaign: that needs to be done for his own sake. His campaign is, or at least should be, toast.
He was in the military and they have an education program for this sort of stuff, iirc.
That's besides the point. He needs to go now. To be honest, I can't believe anyone would still support him at this point...
I don't support him.
To be clear, I wasn't saying you do or did. More of a general statement that I cannot understand why anyone would advocate for him now.
And I was just clarifying.
This is getting a little comical at this point.
I expect him to drop out about the time some polling shows his support cratering.
I’ve defended him on this board because I finally saw a candidate rightfully being as angry at both the Republican Party and Democratic Party, matching how I feel, with the current mess our party’s in, in addition to supporting all the issues I care about. But nope, I’m definitely done with him now. There’s no coming back from knowing a tattoo is a Nazi symbol and not doing anything about it.
The only good thing I can say is at least Mills team is able to go for the jugular in researching her opponents because this massive drip, drip opposition dump that has completely destroyed Platner’s candidacy (which doesn’t seem to ever end) obviously is all from her and her campaign team. 1 term to get rid of Collins I can live with if she comes around on the filibuster, if not, I’m supporting Woods.
https://x.com/IsaacDovere/status/1980704214943953341
In his Pod Save America interview, Platner said that he picked his chest tattoo off a chart at the parlor on a whim and had never thought of a Nazi association.
Jewish Insider has a former acquaintance of Platner saying he used to call it "my Totenkopf"
There is absolutely no excuse for antisemitism or the use of antisemitic symbols.
It’s Platover. This is the third strike.
https://jewishinsider.com/2025/10/graham-platner-ss-tattoo-maine-senate/
"Former Platner political director weighs in on his tattoo"
https://x.com/burgessev/status/1980696432031289806
Why seek an endorsement from the most high-profile Jewish politician in America when you have a fucking nazi tattoo??
"Why seek an endorsement from the most high-profile Jewish politician in America when you have a fucking nazi tattoo??"
Let's see if Sanders actually pulls that endorsement. I don't think he will.
He should push Dunlap to switch to the Senate race and endorse him to save face or else he's got another Gabbard/Turner/Taibbi/Joy Gray/Shaun King blight on his record.
Which reminds me, has Sanders ever apologized for his support of Gabbard? Or for attacking Clinton when she pointed out Gabbard was compromised long after we all knew that she was? That was egregious.
Hell, I thought there was something very off-putting about Gabbard as far back as 2012. I never understood why, for example, Rachel Maddow of all people thought she (Gabbard) was the next big thing in the Democratic Party.
Of course he won't. He's proven himself over and over and over again to be a terrible judge of character.
+1
Agreed. Bernie's biggest problem, when he was on the national stage, was the people he surrounded himself with.
Yeah, that's an SS-totenkopf. He can't be cute about it (like that he got it to honor the hussars). And why the heck would a reputable tattoo artist in Europe let him get one?
He's gonna make all his fans look so foolish.
you think his "fans" looking foolish is the part that matters here? seriously?
They were/are in some sunk cost fallacy. Also, his previous employment with Blackwater was an early red flag about his judgment, even if he said he felt bad about it afterwards. Surely there were less awful mercenary companies out there than the one founded by a lunatic neo-Crusader.
He worked for Blackwater? Yeesh. And people gave Pete Buttigieg shit for working for McKinsey!
Yeah, I hadn't heard about the Blackwater thing until today but apparently it was pretty well known. Your comparison is pretty apt. McKinsey was a deal breaker but being a mercenary for a rightwing military group, no problem.
It seems like the tattoo was from 2007. Given that Platner has had an extensive history in Iraq and Afghanistan as a war veteran, it doesn't surprise me at some point that he would have developed significant PTSD and other trauma that could radicalize to extreme idea and poor judgement. We have have already seen how PTSD wrecked Jason Kander and of course we've seen how mental illness can make someone's personality and views change drastically as they have for John Fetterman. If Platner is sincere about taking back and apologizing for his past vices and misdeeds, I think he should be trusted to do so. Robert Byrd was given that benefit so I do see why the same shouldn't apply to Platner. The larger issue isn't just the comments and tattoos themselves, but the major distractions and derailments this is causing. Still, the election itself is over a year away from now, so there's plenty of time for this scandal to play out and perhaps be forgotten or mitigated.
Again, why would we accomodate this at all? Put aside the moral challenge in supporting someone with a Nazi tattoo - why would we put the Senate race at risk for this guy? I still don't get it...
At its most basic level this should be our response.
From a moral perspective I think there's enough here to dislike him. But ignore that: there's enough factors damaging him to tell us it doesn't matter if any of us on a personal level are willing to accept his explanations and responses. There are enough voters out there that will not, that will see the attack ads aimed at him, to make it clear he is not our strongest candidate.
I originally preferred him over Mills because of my reservations about Mills' readiness for this type of campaign, but it's clear that his flaws are unmistakably larger. His flaws are also concrete, rather than my prior (and still present) worries about Mills.
Whether it's for moral reasons or simply because he is weakened significantly, it's time to move on from Platner's campaign.
Honestly given the stakes, we shouldn't, but unless we're residents of Maine, we truly don't have much of a say here outside of giving donations and our support. For whatever it's worth Sanders still seems to be willing to support Platner despite this latest revelation - and he's someone who's experienced actual Nazis wiping out a large part of his family in the Holocaust, so I don't doubt that such a revelation would be personal for him. At a personal level, I do wish we had a younger and more progressive and populist candidate that could contrast with Mills that lacks baggage, but stands out with vigor. Unfortunately, Platner is not that candidate, unless public perception of him improves.
Somewhat tangential: The City of Lynn is the subject of a rhyme that dates to the 1870s:
Lynn, Lynn, City of Sin,
Never go out the way you came in.
To escape this ditty, the mayor of Lynn in the 90s proposed renaming the city to Ocean Park. Residents immediately coined this retort:
Ocean Park, Ocean Park,
Never go there after dark.
The proposal was quickly dropped.
That's funny! What was happening in Lynn in the 1870s?
I think it was just a working class, industrial city. But I don't know if there was something specific beyond that. Wikipedia suggests gambling, though I don't know if that's actually well sourced.
This was around the time that Lydia Pinkham, who was from Lynn, was getting rich selling her "vegetable compound" as a health cure. The main active ingredient was alcohol, it was around 60 proof, and provided women with a socially acceptable way to get drunk at a time when the saloon was very much a male dominated environment. (Pinkham defended its high strength as necessary to preserve the beneficial nutrients in the herbs.)
Lydia's great-grandson Daniel Pinkham (who was born in Lynn) is an interesting and underrated 20th-century composer whose music I discovered in college.
https://politicalwire.com/2025/10/21/voters-narrowly-blame-republicans-for-shutdown/ 45% to 42%, internal Democratic poll that's not identified on Politicalwire. The link to Punchbowl News is completely paywalled.
This tracks with internal GOP polls showing Dems with only a slight and decreasing edge.
Let's be real this isn't a sustainable route for Dems . . I think the talk of getting to November 1st, highlighting the GOP's fault for letting the premiums expire and then setting up a dual short-term CR and subsidy extension vote is the only way forward. They certainly don't have the momentum to demand extensions pre-reopening the government with these numbers.
I tend to disagree that it's not a sustainable route.Vulnerable Republicans are calling for a vote on extending subsidies and Republican House Leadership is negotiating about how bad a compromise they might offer.
Agreed. Dems need to keep their backbone strong as long as possible. Voting to re-open the government on November 1, with no concessions, is a surefire recipe for landslide losses in Virginia and New Jersey a few days later, as demoralized Dems stay home.
I don't know if it's surefire, but the amount of anger would be volcanic!
I think the concession is a clean vote on extending the subsidies. The GOP has a trifecta . .if they tank it it's on them.
Re: vulnerable House Rs, I think everything being floated is about votes happening after a CR is passed. MAYBE you could get it concurrently with an extension vote happening immediately after a CR passes. I think that's realistically the best they can get.
Unless there's some assurance Trump won't simply impound any spending he doesn't like, there should be no deal, even if the shutdown lasts till Election Day, 2026.
The courts will have to tackle the impoundment issue.
Forget polls I'm sick of this constant poll watching and it's gotten dems nowhere.
There were a lot of comments akin to this pre-November 2024. I think polls are actually very insightful for pols to use in a scenario like this. Batting down the hatchets in a sinking ship doesn't help anyone.
Next week a lot of folks don't get paid. Maybe that boosts Dems. If it doesn't, you have to pull a Kenny Rodgers and live to fight another day.
What’s the source on these internals - certainly don’t match the public polling. The DC consultant class wants to reopen no matter what so I would be leery of doomsday dem internals.
I have no idea what the source is.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/state-charges-commuted-rep-george-santos/story
"While the office cannot comment on ongoing investigations, suffice it to say that I remain focused on prosecuting political corruption wherever it exists regardless of political affiliation," Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said in a statement.
https://politicalwire.com/2025/10/21/vulnerable-republicans-want-vote-on-obamacare-subsidies/ per Politico, which seems to show the Democrats' strategy is working, regardless of how close public opinion polls are on which party should be blamed for the shutdown.
I honestly have no idea how this plays out. One deeply-frustrating aspect of our politics since at least the W era (and I know I'm a broken record on this) is that voters of all political stripes expect Democrats to fix things and "be the adults in the room" even when they hold little or no power, and Republicans—whether in power or not—are rarely expected to do anything other than throw tantrums and fling poo.
NH-SEN:
How do you think the GOP Primary debates will be? It’s unique to see two former GOP Senators unseated by two Democrats now running in the primary race.
I can just see Scott Brown going after John Sununu for not being MAGA, supporting the Iraq War and other crap that makes him out of touch with the GOP today.
I forget whether this was covered yesterday. It's Gallup, but: https://x.com/williamjordann/status/1980270804223893792
"New/Q3 2025 party ID data from Gallup just moved to D+7, Democrats best reading since the first quarter of the Biden administration."
https://politicalwire.com/2025/10/21/fetterman-would-support-nuking-the-filibuster/
He would support the -Republicans- nuking the filibuster. This guy is virtually a Republican at this point.
The Congressional filibuster has been on borrowed time for years now. It's going to be sayonara by the end of the decade if not sooner.
And it -should- be gotten rid of. But not because an ostensible Democrat supports Republican horror.
And of course I doubt he’d support Democrats nuking it if they were in charge.
Just get it over with and then go hard once we get a trifecta again.
How is this a Republican position? I say let them nuke it and own their decisions. Trump is just cutting shit unilaterally anyway so the filibuster is merely a cover for the Senate GOP at this point.
Republican position or not, getting rid of the filibuster is a move that would generally benefit Republicans, since the Senate is tilted toward them. In my opinion, it has always been a mistake for Democrats to embrace it. That aside, it sounds like Fetterman is now only backing it since Republicans control the Senate, which is obviously even worse.
The Senate map definitely favors the GOP but the abolition of the filibuster benefits Dems more because in general they want to pass a lot more legislation than Republicans.
Yes, it probably would eventually favor them - but not now.
Republicans not being able to implement their full extremist party agenda are exactly why voters ignore and don’t believe Democratic warnings when it matters the most: before elections take place. It has protected them from feeling the full brunt of what the GOP in power actually wants to do and what that pain looks like for them.
Fuck it, it needs to go, consequences be damned. Maybe then voters (and the media) will wake up to how stupid they’ve been over the last 8 years and fully understand the reality of what the GOP actually is. Nothing else has, so let’s let them see exactly what right wing power does without checks or balances. Can’t possibly be any worse than where we are right now.
That reads like the communist argument that if only things get bad enough, the revolution will come. No. First of all, that's demonstrably untrue; second, the Democratic Party exists to improve the lives of non-rich people.
If the filibuster is fully eliminated, Republicans would very likely succeed in privatizing social security. Having it is a very big part of why Bush was unable to do it. Given how hard it is for Democrats to win the senate, it would be very difficult to “un privatize” it once Republicans did that.
I am in favor of creating a filibuster carve out to require all states to have bipartisan/non partisan redistricting commissions and DC statehood the next time Dems get a trifecta. Eliminating the filibuster without having that could result in Republicans having House control and potentially a trifecta simply because they got to gerrymander. In that case, I’d want to have the filibuster as protection against a GOP trifecta that exists solely due to gerrymandering.
This is a close variation on the argument of what would happen if Roe vs. Wade was overturned....that the Republicans who advocated it would be stuck with a position that the country wouldn't tolerate. Well....they got it repealed....and paid no price whatsoever. Not only didn't they pay a price, they were rewarded with more power than any party has had in my lifetime given the way every institution is working as a united front to reinforce its own power.
So I'm skeptical that anything a consequence-free Republican majority might pass would have long-term electoral repercussions. Once Social Security and Medicare are gone, they're never coming back. But even if a conservative-run government paid a short-term price for snuffing them out, and at this point I'm not entirely convinced that they would, the Republicans would be back much sooner than Social Security and Medicare would.
I agree with your point, but I'd amend the Roe v Wade detail. Republicans did pay a big price. The problem is that price only lasted for a single election, the 2022 midterms. Without the Dobbs decision we would have been absolutely crushed in 2022, instead of the roughly neutral year we saw.
Unfortunately, voters got their anger out once and moved on. Which aligns with your argument, hence the agreement.
I don't agree with "Once Social Security and Medicare are gone, they're never coming back." The rest makes sense, though.
It would be very hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube if those were repealed. Especially since it’s very hard for Dems to win the senate.
Roe didn't create a sustained backlash because mail-order pills largely blunted its impact.
I strongly disagree the public would just "meh" privatizing social security/medicaire.
In the long run, assuming a continuation of sufficiently free and fair elections, the filibuster is more beneficial to the Republicans than the Democrats, because while they would prefer to keep doing horrible things, their fallback position is to just prevent progress, whereas Democrats need to actually change things for the better. However, in the short run, while the Republicans control the Senate, it would obviously be to the advantage of the Republicans to get rid of the filibuster.
WATN: https://www.wsj.com/world/sarkozys-five-year-prison-term-starts-with-fingerprints-and-a-mug-shot-f9b41548?mod=hp_lead_pos8
"Former French president, convicted of conspiring to seek campaign funds from Libya’s Gadhafi, placed in isolation ward for his safety"