No One is Coming to Save Abdul from Piker’s Sins

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

Abdul El-Sayed is actually sort of likable and talented, if we ignore political differences that you can’t just wave off between him and I. Don’t take this as a change in position on the Michigan Democratic Senate nominee, take it as an admission of reality, and one I did not agree with during the primaries. Most of the folks on social media who also don’t like AES will disagree, calling him smug or worse, but frankly, that’s a biased view. It’s enough for me to say I couldn’t support him based on content, we can tell the truth that the guy is mildly entertaining.

I could put up with his unworkable position on health care, because frankly we know the truth about progressives and their stupid “Medicare for All” proposal- they’ll never even bring it to a vote, because they know idea how they’re going to make the program they describe work, no idea how they’ll pay for it, and no clue what the CBO would score it (the ironic part, because honestly, the good and bad math of it is kind of painfully clear). I could absolutely put up with his nonsensical rhetoric about Gaza too, if it were on it’s own, as I know that he could not have been nominated without the votes he received on campuses and in Dearborn, places where it’s possible for actual likely war crimes to become “genocide” by a nuclear power in their minds, even without a significant change in the population of Gaza. Sure, I’m letting AES take fantasy policy positions that are at best annoying, and at worst harmful, basically so we can elect a shitty Senator and get to 51 votes for a Democratic majority. I do recognize Trump is a crisis here.

Of course, then there’s Hasan Piker, and well, no. A month or two ago, Morris Katz’s online army of bots and academics were telling us that we had to embrace Hasan as our conquering king when he was pushing a vile Nazi on us as our Senate nominee in Maine. Now of course we need to forgive AES, because of course, Piker is “just a Twitch streamer.” Funny how that happens. Back when Piker first started becoming an issue this year, I had this to say:

Let me just start by saying I think “Hasan the Little Bitch” is an asshole. Now that we got that out of the way, I think you can guess how I feel about Democrats appearing on his show. I do not believe America deserved 9/11, I do not think the state of Israel should be disbanded, and I have no interest in this loser’s “outreach to masculinity.” There, all done.

Now that I’ve buried the point, let’s get to it- of course the Democrats are screwing up their handling of him. The electorate is locked in right now on things that matter to them- health insurance prices, gas prices, housing prices, personal debt, and things that impact them every day. 95% of the electorate doesn’t know who Piker is or care very much about his Gaza fetish. Even some of the 5% lack very deep thoughts on these matters. Piker has 3 million Twitch followers and 1.7 million YouTube followers, which combined together don’t quite reach 3% of a Presidential electorate, assuming there isn’t any overlap. Until people started arguing about him on Twitter, I had no idea who he was, and I’m in that 5%.

My thought on “Hasan the Hun” from the starts was we should have ignored him, ostracized him, and shunned him. If we weren’t nominating people campaigning with him because they say they “fight” (they’re all Bernie Sanders endorsed candidates, a man who has been a deadbeat member of Congress for over 30 years, doing nothing for his check.), we could ignore Piker like the trash he is. Instead we’re stuck with him as a part of our dialogue, and now the only choice for any sane Democrat is to bury him as the waste pile he is. If it costs us a race somewhere, that’s better than seeing him in attack ads for years to come. He’s a vile human being and we should want to discredit him as a person anyway.

If someone says “America deserved 9/11,” regardless of the context, we should condemn them as a piece of shit. In fact, his exact wording was “America deserved 9/11, dude. Fuck it, i’m saying it.” That’s frankly even worse. Now, if you listen to the whole segment, and I did out of fairness, he was talking about the concept of “blowback” in foreign policy, something any Moravian Political Science grad in the 2000’s read about existensively- that our actions lead to 9/11. I’ll credit him for that being his rationalization, then say that he’s still a piece of shit, because I don’t believe anything but awful people lead to terrorism. I don’t give any room for this sort of equivocation. 9/11 was rotten to it’s core and has no redeeming or understandable qualities. Putting Bin Laden in an unmarked grave was too kind.

Hasan Piker is a political loser that can never find his way to 50% in a civilized nation or world- but I guess in a streamer world where 1% of America makes you a shit ton of money, you matter. Abdul El-Sayed brought him to Michigan to help him win a primary. The media has decided to ask him directly about all of the vile, disgusting shit Piker said. This, unfortunately, is politics. Remember when all of us Biden lovers implored people and the media to discuss his economic stats instead of just inflation and him being old? Remember when everyone thought Trump saying “grab ’em by the pussy” would matter more than Hillary’s email server? Remember two years ago when a lot of you screamed to stop discussing “they/them,” and to instead discuss everything Trump did? Remember the whole election about Al Gore being a dork that “claimed” to invent the internet, and not the fact that George W. Bush had an 85 IQ? The whole 2004 election was a giant gaslighting. And before you say it’s unfair, they actually do ask the GOP stuff too. They asked Trump directly in debates about the Proud Boys, his past comments, and him claiming Haitians were “eating the dogs, eating the cats,” and well, he shrugged them off. And none of his voters cared. That’s why the standards are different. For some of you, the answer is to just be like the GOP. So we should should dismiss bad actors on our side who want to throw Black folks, LGBTQ folks, Jews, or whoever under the bus so we can… try the failed economic system of the Soviet Union? I’m confused, to be honest. I mean, I guess, we could go the FDR route and build a “safety net” for whites only, but I don’t think that’s what a lot of us signed up for.

Even assuming that all Democrats could stomach this nonsense, AES’s strategy of waving aside questions about Piker is a dead end. The media isn’t just going to decide to drop the questions. That’s not how elections work. He’s going to be dogged with questions about Piker the rest of the way, because he decided to bring him to Michigan to campaign for him. If you like the milk, you get the cow. There is a fix though- just denounce him. Just come out and say he’s an awful person for what he said, in explicit terms. Be done with it. A clean ambush. The rest of us Democrats who won’t forgive your association with him have nothing to bitch and complain about. The media has no real story to run with, other than your flip flop, which frankly is better than associating yourself with terrorism. The questions lose their potency. You solve the worst of the problem.

Keep it simple, stupid.

Governor GPT’s Congressional Candidate Probably has Multiple Answers on Data Centers

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Don’t get me wrong, I’ll vote for Josh Shapiro in the end, I guess. Stacey Garrity (Did I spell that right) is the worst Gubernatorial nominee in Pennsylvania that I’ve seen from either party in my lifetime. She holds lunatic views, if you even give her credit for coherent views, can’t really articulate them, and lacks any sort of political identity for any of us to even pretend we’re attacking. You can sort of just rule her out through the ear test- listen to her give a speech or two, and you just know this person isn’t capable of running a civilized place, let alone a state the size of Pennsylvania. This is the closest thing to a default election we’ve had. Scott Wagner and Dougie Mastriano were at least easily classified as angry conservatives.

Let’s be honest though, I wish I wasn’t forced to vote for Governor Josh “GPT” Shapiro. As I said last week:

As for Josh Shapiro? Whatever. What has he done? Shorty worked hard on building data centers and passing school vouchers, while SEPTA funding, property tax reform, and adult recreational weed legalization went nowhere. What’s the point of high approval if all you want to do is take it with you to South Carolina in January? To be fair, he made the smart decision to Xerox the Wolf budgets and maybe add the inflation rate to the numbers. I guess he also fixed twenty yards of road in Philly too one time. Get shit done, right? Still, the guy is basically competent and kept the state from going off course in his first term. Stacy Garrity is incompetent and has bad ideas. Nobody needs her as Governor.

I mean, it’s a step down from Tom Wolf, who was honestly a step down from Ed Rendell, but hey, it’s like complaining about spam when the alternative is starvation. You’ll take it, you guess. Of course, Josh would have a problem with a credible alternative though. As data center politics energize rural Pennsylvania, and even the suburbs, Shapiro is pretending now that he’s standing in the way of irresponsible development. He’s running ads saying his opponent is awful on data center development and putting out executive orders in the 11th hour of his term to set rules on the structures. I mean, it’s a super complicated issue and I appreciate his wanting to get it right now, but wow the revisionist history. Just Google Josh Shapiro record on data centers. I mean, the guy secured $20 billion from Amazon Web Centers to build data centers all over Pennsylvania when he thought it was popular. Oh, and there was this:

Other groups are more skeptical of Shapiro’s proposal. The Better Path Coalition, a grassroots consortium of environmental groups, pointed to the administration’s behind-the-scenes communications with Amazon, which is developing multiple data centers in the commonwealth, as a cause for concern.

A group of Montour County residents who organized against data center development obtained a trove of emails from the administration through a Right-to-Know request, which showed that a top staffer sent an Amazon lobbyist a “feedback draft of the principles” that the administration planned to lay out in GRID before the standards were public.

The records, which were previously reported by Heatmap, also included an email that state Secretary of Community and Economic Development Rick Siger sent to Amazon. He told the company the GRID standards are “intended to be voluntary,” and said Shapiro is “not proposing to ban or even discourage data centers or other large loads that don’t agree to implement them from siting here.”

That, the Better Path Coalition wrote in a recent statement, shows Shapiro’s GRID standards are “strictly performative.”

Now, he’s doing this:

  • The executive order asks developers to sign an agreement that they will follow the governor’s GRID standards, which include clean energy and job creation requirements. In exchange for signing, they get permit review and approval on a rolling basis.
  • It requires that developers show proof of local approvals before they can receive any state permits or authorizations.
  • It puts conditions on Pennsylvania’s data center sales tax exemption — if developers don’t follow the GRID standards, the state Department of Revenue won’t acknowledge applications for the tax credit.
  • It bans agencies under the governor’s control from signing NDAs in connection with data center projects. (The order doesn’t prevent local government officials from signing such agreements.)
  • It kicks data centers out of Fast Track, a Shapiro administration initiative to speed up permitting of major projects. (Previously, Shapiro had said he was giving this extra permitting attention to data center projects that followed his GRID standards.)

So basically, all the easy permitting he promised, and the tax breaks he promised, now he’ll make you pay off the locals first (I wonder how he raised so much, don’t you?), then you can have them. Look, I get it, I do think the eventual answer on data centers and AI from Democrats has to be yes, but Governor GPT started out with the red carpet out for them, and now he wants to pretend he’s making it hard for them. The answer should be “pay for the infrastructure and utility costs, actually help the towns you invade in ways they need, and then meet our state standards,” and this is closer to that, so good. It still feels hypocritical as hell though. The truth is that Shapiro saw something that made potential 2028 donors and major unions who support him both feel happy, and he tried to be the champion for that, until he realized that public sentiment was way behind on it. So now we get the Shapiro shuffle.

Of course, Josh Shapiro is also asking us to vote for his hand picked Congressional candidate, Bob “Crooksy” Brooks in the Lehigh Valley, a man who can’t string together thinking nearly as advanced as Shapiro on data centers. Crooksy is a stone cold moron who stiffed his ex-mother-in-law out of money, and well, he’s probably confused on this issue. On one hand, Crooksy knows a couple of unions made him a serious candidate for Congress, and he’s probably just waiting to be told what he thinks on this issue, which will probably be to build them. On the other hand, Uncle Josh is moving his position in response to activists like the ones in Carbon County, in South Whitehall, and in Lower Mount Bethel who are opposing data centers, and Crooksy doesn’t know how to make those folks happy without just saying what they want.

Knowing Crooksy, we know his answer- both. A friend of mine said back in the Spring that they attended a Crooksy talk to local Muslim leaders where he said Israel “had committed a genocide in Gaza,” but they were less than convinced that he really understood his answer. I was too, based on the since removed video of him at Lehigh Valley for All completely avoiding the question and pulling his shirt over his face. Look, these are tough questions. If you can keep your answers private, you can get away with giving a different answer to everyone who cares about them. If you’re kind of dumb, why not try that on data centers too? I get it, do what you can get away with, bro.

The Left’s House of Cards

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A friend of mine who is a lot more “lefty” than me said something to me in 2020 that is starting to resonate now- “part of why we always lose is because of the narrative that we can’t win.” Even when Bernie took a polling lead in 2020 with a plurality, everyone saw through it- there wasn’t 50% plus one vote out there to nominate him, because everyone believed he’d lose to Trump, which he almost certainly would have. The narrative was almost self-defeating. Nobody wants to pick you if they believe you’ll lose.

Welcome to 2026, where all of a sudden, polls come out that show Nazi criminal Graham Platner leading in Maine. Anti-Israel crusader Abdul El-Sayed leading in Michigan. Lost weirdo Francesca Hong leading in Wisconsin. Congressional polls repeatedly showing “Fight Agency’s” clients leading. Weirdly though, in many cases they end up wildly underperforming, or winning with a minority of the vote. General election polls suddenly come out showing the once mighty leads they claimed were false. Even their initial internals, such as Bob “Crooksy” Brooks’ own, show close races where they are shy of 50%- and that’s what they were *willing* to release. It’s as though… no way, right? No way they literally just cooked the books, right?

Well, we have our first fake polling firm story. Median Strategies, which showed Francesca Hong way up, is no more. It was in fact, never real. Nor was their poll showing Karen Bass leading big in Los Angeles’ Mayor race. The whole firm was a fake. They literally just made shit up.

I cannot, for the life of me, underscore just how unserious these people are. They are selling a false narrative, and even powerful people like Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer will not push back on the nonsense. The country rejected Kamala Harris and Joe Biden because they felt they were too liberal, yet these folks want you to believe that now the solution is to move left. Are they winning some deep blue primaries against unorganized incumbents? Yes. That’s because the party shrunk as it was perceived to move left. That is not indicative of how the public feels. Yes, the public hates Trump, and the left is rightly realizing that means they could have a chance in a binary choice against MAGA, but no, people have not decided that Hasan Piker and his audience of less than 1% of America are now representative of “who we are.” This is all nonsense. It’s made up. And Democratic leaders are falling for it, hook, line, and sinker.

All the dumbest people. What can I say? Just the dumbest people.

How I’ll Probably Vote

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

Poor Danny got stuck with me on his list. I feel for him, I’ve been there. Asking someone to volunteer who is repulsed by your ticket’s existence is hard. I don’t make it better.

So I am decided. I won’t be voting for Bob “Crooksy” Brooks. No way, no how. The best part is this is just the stuff that can be sourced. This guy said way worse that just can’t be verified. A man who steals from his family is not fit for any office. A man who failed to purchase workman’s comp insurance for his employees calling himself a “working class hero” is a joke. I won’t vote for Mackenzie, despite personally liking him more, because he voted for Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill.” That is disqualifying.

I’ll be voting for Senator Lisa Boscola and Jeff Warren for the State House. Both are solid, normal people who will fight to make life more affordable for us. I’m decided there.

As for Josh Shapiro? Whatever. What has he done? Shorty worked hard on building data centers and passing school vouchers, while SEPTA funding, property tax reform, and adult recreational weed legalization went nowhere. What’s the point of high approval if all you want to do is take it with you to South Carolina in January? To be fair, he made the smart decision to Xerox the Wolf budgets and maybe add the inflation rate to the numbers. I guess he also fixed twenty yards of road in Philly too one time. Get shit done, right? Still, the guy is basically competent and kept the state from going off course in his first term. Stacy Garrity is incompetent and has bad ideas. Nobody needs her as Governor.

If the Democratic Party wants to embrace Bernie Sanders style politics, they’ll lose votes. Not as many as they should, because the GOP is a cult, devoted to the dumbest, most fat, grotesque beta in America, and that has to hurt more. But it’s uncomfortably close.

There are Better Ideas than a Wealth Tax

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Well, the bad and losing ideas of the 2020 Democratic Presidential primaries are making a comeback and we can’t get rid of them. The newest returnee? The wealth tax. The long and short here? The idea is you’d tax the actual wealth and estate values of rich people instead of just their income.

It seems overwhelmingly likely that the current Supreme Court would invalidate a wealth tax under the Fifth Amendment. If somehow they didn’t, the issue with the tax is fairly simple. How does you deal with illiquid billionaires vs. liquid billionaires? What happens if you have billionaires selling off stocks and assets in a rush to have the cash for the tax? There’s a ton that can go wrong- assuming it ever even clears the courts.

There’s a better way that makes sense and would probably build more public support. Create more brackets, make them lower, and eliminate or dramatically cut write-offs. If someone proposed making people who earn over a million dollars *actually* pay 25%, rather than claim every write-off known to man and pay nothing, the public would probably support it. Maybe you don’t like the 25% number, fine, pick your number. If your complaint is that rich people don’t pay, take away the write-offs and shield regular people from the hits under lower rates like 5 or 10%.

It’s true that increasing wealth concentration under the ultra wealthy is a real problem. Sure, you can do a windfall tax, and that probably is good at some high number, but that number is not a million dollars in 2026. Everyone would be better off with a legitimately simple, straight forward graduated income tax with simple brackets that are lower. Collect more revenue and make things simple. Only conservative ideologically crazy people would complain. That would be actually a good thing.

Just the Worst People

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Ok, let’s be serious. Who are we kidding. More Americans saw Joe Biden as “too liberal” than saw Donald Trump as “too conservative” during the 2024 campaign. Kamala Harris actually was about 5% better than Biden (insane now, I know), but still viewed as more extreme than Trump. It’s worth pointing out that Biden got nominated as a moderate Democrat and then basically started moving left immediately, which is certifiably batshit when looked back on sober eyed. While Kamala Harris *tried* to run as a moderate, the truth was just that people didn’t believe her. Period. They thought she was a crazy leftist and out of touch with normalcy. She lost.

Many critiques that leftists have of the Democratic Party are correct. The national party’s organizations are largely out of touch organizations filled with DC staffers who respond to major donors who live in LaLa Land. The voters are rejecting the party more than the past. We’re selling a brand that only really excites like 10-20% of Americans at most, but is “acceptable” to more like 45-50%, then pretending that something like half the country likes what the party is selling. It’s a shit sandwich. A lot of voters who vote for us think it’s a shit sandwich, for a variety of reasons. We should probably settle around a couple of pragmatic, popular political positions and stop trying to give everyone something. You know what though, some of you should totally keep selling yourself as Harrisburg and DC’s favorite Democrat. We’d be better off with you going up in flames and starting over in two years.

But let’s be honest. If the public thinks Joe Biden is a pinko, what the hell will they think of Mamdani and DSA? We’re going to eliminate the Senate now, huh? I mean… here is what the GOP has to say about these folks now:

So we’re going to go from Trump winning the popular vote and gaining in his share for ten years, to… mass amnesty and defunding the Pentagon. And I know what you’ll say- they’re not being honest about what she said. Ok. And if they spend more money in the election, people will agree with what they say.

Frankly, I’ll be honest. I think the current Democratic Party is a disaster. Frankly, I don’t think the problem is we didn’t “Democrat” hard enough. And honestly, i’m not at all interested in supporting finding out.

Pennsylvania’s Dysfunctional Government

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Governor Shapiro signed a $50.8 Billion budget just shy of two weeks late. That’s the good part, as last year’s budget fight stretched so long that counties were running out money. They might be still. Hey, at least they got some money out to the counties, cities, school boards, and non-profits the state government provides most of the funding for. Look, it probably wasn’t good enough, but in an election year it’s as good as the Pennsylvania Legislature is going to do.

Let’s just be honest, Tom Wolf was not satisfying as 21st century politicians go, there was no sizzle there, but he was a really, really good Governor. He fixed the mess he inherited, while dealing with an incredibly weak Democratic House Leader (the Senate was marginally better) and Republican Majorities in both chambers. Tom Wolf was able to finally establish a health care exchange for the state under the ACA and pass the fair education funding formula while he served as Governor, two monumental acts of government that directly impacted millions of Pennsylvanians lives in a positive way. He handed Josh Shapiro a functioning state government in 2023, as well as a Democratic Majority in the House with leadership that is dynamic and wants to govern. For the most part, not many major things have passed the legislature since. Governor Shapiro’s early attempt at pushing school vouchers through didn’t go well, and most of the achievements since then have been marginal upgrades on things the state already does. On data centers the state response has been a confused mish-mash of doing anything possible to court the jobs and kind of, sort of, at least talking about regulating them. I’m going to be fair for a second- most of them mostly maintain what the folks before them did. For the most part, this Governor is Xeroxing his predecessor’s budgets, which is politically brilliant and frankly the right thing to do. Yeah, he fixed a 20 yard stretch of road and handed out a lot of economic development money, most of which was approved before his term. This is not ground breaking, transformational stuff, and you know what, I’m glad. Tom Wolf inherited a disaster of a state government. He fixed it. It’s far from perfect, but it’s way better than it was. And you know what? I’m not sure the public wants it much better. The lack of activity in Harrisburg isn’t hitting most of them, yet. And so, as they usually do, they like it. Josh Shapiro is very popular. Tom Wolf was very popular. Ed Rendell was very popular. Tom Ridge was very popular. Bob Casey Sr. was very popular. Hell, Dick Thornburgh was really popular, and that’s every Governor in my life besides Tom Corbett. Some of them did big things as Governor. Some didn’t. Pennsylvanians are fine if the trains run on time and they never really have to read about their government. At least in the short term.

You see though, Governors are not really the problem or the solution in Pennsylvania. Our courts, which 20 years ago went through horrific scandals with the pay raise and “Kids for Cash,” are actually pretty good now too and functioning to the benefit of the public. The problem is, and basically usually is, the legislature. It is a body with a wide variety of grifters and odd balls. When I was a high school student I once asked my wonderful State Representative at the time, whose daughter was a good friend willing to introduce me to him, what the legislature is like. He responded “Rich, I meet some of these guys and decide I never want to actually go to some of their districts- and those are the good guys.” The Senate has been hopelessly lead by corrupt lunatics since 1995, a one party rule that is only made worse by the Senate Dems inability to get out of their own way and run candidates around the state that want to represent the state, and not Philadelphia or Pittsburgh. The House has either been run by the same brand of ideological nutbags or narrowly lead by sane people who can’t find 102 votes to do much, let alone then get their bills through the Senate. Last year as the state languished without a budget for months, the Senate literally went on a Summer vacation longer than the school kids across Pennsylvania. Meanwhile the House Dems passed bills representing many of their core partisan priorities. Good stuff, but tone deaf under the circumstances. If you want to solve something, the courts and the Executive Branch might have your remedy. The legislature struggles to cut through the noise of lunatic fringers who inhabit it.

Right now, the legislature is in full election year mode. They had several priorities that needed passage, and they really didn’t do any of them. The courts nullified life without parole for second degree murder as a mandatory sentence, saying it was unconstitutional (not that it can’t be the sentence, but that judges should be able to consider a range). The courts also ruled that video poker machines are in fact slot machines and not a special category of “skill games” that don’t require licenses. In both cases, the cases were sent back to the legislature to address by passing a bill. So far, neither has happened. One might forgive them for not acting at the whims of the court if one thought they were doing it to assert that they don’t work for the courts, but it’s really more like watching moss grow on a stone. There are things though that are fully the responsibility of the legislature to do, and well, they just didn’t do them. Even after the importance of SEPTA in Philadelphia navigating America 250 celebrations, the World Cup, and the All-Star Game, I’ll be damned if the legislature would actually fund our mass transit. The Senate doesn’t want to do it, and well, nobody made them. God forbid they actually fund transportation in the largest economic activity hub in the state. And of course, finally, there is adult recreational marijuana use, which is something forward thinking states have done to help them fund their state governments. Ohio, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York- also known as all of our neighbors but one- have already done this. Pennsylvanians are driving to their states and purchasing marijuana products as adults, and paying tax dollars to their states. Their seniors and their students are getting those dollars. Meanwhile, we’re underfunding our counties. We lack clear DUI laws that make sense for marijuana users. We can’t do basic things.

I know we like to joke about how PennDOT is a third world organization and our roads suck. Honestly, other than a clean sweep, I have no idea how you fix that. It would be nice though if the legislature wanted to legislate. While I have my issues with the House, I am specifically talking about the Senate, where good and bad ideas go to die so everyone can go do whatever they do with their down time. It is, at this point, creating problems for the future, for the sake of doing nothing. It’s a disaster. And while right now everyone is cool with it, the chickens will come home to roost. We’ll be sitting here at some point, wondering why we can’t do basic things. I wonder if people will be smart enough to assign blame correctly.

Podcast Episode: Democratic Fights And Crooksy Chaos

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

Pip: Every election cycle, someone promises the apocalypse is finally arriving on schedule — and every cycle, the map barely moves.

Mara: That's the territory Rich Wilkins has been mapping on Apocalypse Vibes — the structural limits on Democratic ambitions in 2026, the candidate quality problems making those limits worse, the progressive left's Israel politics, and what America's 250th birthday actually means when you're paying attention. Let's start with where the 2026 wave is, and isn't, headed.

The 2026 Map: Real Gains, Real Ceilings

Pip: The central argument in "Political Gravity in 2026" is that Democrats are probably winning the House, but the landslide narrative is running ahead of the actual numbers.

Mara: The post puts it plainly: "The best way to understand American politics is to understand that our country has been stuck in a 48-46% split for a quarter century or so now." That's the floor and the ceiling both.

Pip: Which means gerrymandering doesn't even need to work that hard — the electorate is doing most of the structural work already.

Mara: The post estimates roughly 400 of 435 districts are drawn so partisanly that even a wave doesn't move them, projecting a net Republican loss of fifteen to twenty seats. "The Delusions of the Progressive Populist Left" and "What Democrats Got Wrong" both reinforce why: the party is consolidating leftward while independents — now 45 percent of Americans — are calling themselves moderate, and they are not moving toward the Democratic Party as it shifts.

Pip: So the wave is real, the ceiling is low, and the party is spending energy debating whether to go further in the direction that's already not working.

Mara: That's essentially the argument. Which brings us to the candidates Democrats are actually fielding.

Crooksy Brooks: A Case Study in Self-Inflicted Damage

Pip: "Crooksy's Loose Lips" opens with a scene that pretty much writes the rest of the segment for us — Bob Brooks, at a private lunch, cracking jokes about a popular mayor's spelling while his own social media history is a liability archive.

Mara: The post is direct about the strategic problem: "The blueprint for Crooksy was written by literally the same people who created Nazi oyster farmer Graham Platner in Maine and John Fetterman here in Pennsylvania." Same consultants, same pitch, same early polling lead that is already shrinking.

Pip: A 47-43 internal in July, per "Bernie, Platner, Crooksy" — which also notes the NRCC didn't wait long to tie Brooks directly to the Fight Agency consultants behind Platner's campaign.

Mara: "Crooksy Goes to Court" lays out the financial record: money loaned in 2004, a signed promissory note from 2008, an appeal lost in 2022, and a reported hundred dollars paid to date. The post also notes an ethics complaint was filed with the House during the primary.

Pip: A hundred dollars. Over twenty-two years. That is a commitment to a position.

Mara: "The NRCC's File on Crooksy" details four lines of attack the Republicans have already assembled — unpaid workers' compensation insurance, racist social media posts, the mother-in-law lawsuit, and a pay raise Brooks took while cutting spending on actual union member advocacy. The post notes this probably is not everything they have.

Mara: Then there is the firefighter issue. "Bob Crooksy Brooks Doesn't Just Hate Barack Obama, He Hates the Folks Who Save Your Life" covers his social media posts calling IAFF members who also volunteer "scabs" and "shitbags." "Someone Ask Crooksy How Many Scabs Helped Fight Last Week's Massive Fire in Allentown" puts a concrete number on what that argument looks like in practice: over a hundred firefighters from as far as Carbon County, working for more than seven hours.

Pip: His pathway to victory, the post argues, runs through turning out the Susan Wild coalition — the very voters he most repulses.

Mara: And the through-line across all of this is candidate quality as a structural problem, not a one-race accident. Which connects directly to what's happening on the Israel and progressive politics front.

The Progressive Left, Israel, and the Limits of the Movement

Pip: "These Folks are Mentally Ill" is about the New York primaries, but the argument is really about where the progressive left can and cannot win.

Mara: The post draws the line precisely: "these embarrassing freaks are only winning certain kinds of races — very blue district, legislative races that usually have more than two candidates." Safe seats, low-turnout fields, places where you never have to acknowledge Republicans or moderate Democrats exist.

Pip: The Gaza politics driving a lot of these candidacies gets its own full examination in "For All the Talk About a Free Palestine, Nobody Has a Plan for Who Would Lead It."

Mara: That post walks through the practical obstacles — two separate governing authorities that do not recognize each other, Abbas whose term ended in 2009, Hamas, skeptical neighboring states, and an Israeli electorate that roundly rejected the idea after October 7th. The conclusion is that attaching conditions to foreign aid is reasonable; promising a functioning Palestinian state in the near term is not.

Pip: Serious conditions on aid — yes. Promising a flying cow — also apparently on the table, and the post is not more optimistic about one than the other.

Mara: From there, the question becomes what any of this means for a country about to turn 250.

America at 250: Pride Without Amnesia

Pip: "Happy Birthday America" is the outlier in tone — a genuine defense of patriotism that holds the country's failures and its achievements in the same frame.

Mara: The post names the failures directly — slavery, Japanese internment, Jim Crow, January 6th — and then pivots: "We're also the greatest country on Earth. There is a reason my friends in foreign countries want to come here." The argument is that a nation is more than the sum of its government and its worst moments.

Pip: Ho Chi Minh quoting Thomas Jefferson in Vietnam's own Declaration of Independence is the detail that earns that argument.

Mara: The post closes on that note — that the ideals in the Declaration of Independence matter more than the day-to-day failures, and that billions live in greater freedom today at least partly because of what this country did and inspired.

Pip: A structurally frozen electorate, a candidate class that keeps finding new ways to underperform it, and a birthday party anyway.

Mara: The through-line is the gap between what the moment calls for and what the parties are actually offering. That gap isn't closing before November — we'll see if it narrows at all.

What Democrats Got Wrong.

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

For the last ten years, Democrats have been locked in a brutal battle over the direction of their party. One wing of the party, let’s call it the mainstream, took the lesson from the Obama years that leaning into social issues, pluralism, and changing demographics was the pathway to a longer term majority. The other wing felt that the Occupy Wall Street movement, anger at wealthy people, and a more ideological policy portfolio would lead to victory. The “mainstream” generally won this fight and occupies a majority within the party. But the insurgents are a sizable bunch. Either way, neither has been successful.

The mainstream Democratic Party, for lack of a better way to put it, decided it needed to lean into social issues and “identity” politics late in the Obama years. This was driven in no small part by the party’s failures in elections where Barack Obama was not on the ballot. The thinking was that if you could turn out the “Obama coalition” consistently, you would win elections consistently. Not only did this fail in 2016, but Trump has seen his share of the vote improve amongst most of the groups that Obama rode to big victories, at least at the margins. The only place the party has seen real growth in this era with this strategy has been among college educated voters, particularly white ones, and that has had to offset declines with lower educated white voters. Basically running on what leftists call the “HR Lady politics” is not very popular and can’t build a sustainable majority outside of white collar, educated enclaves. It’s a losing strategy. Outreach to non-white voters who gave Obama huge numbers in his runs usually has brought leftists into the fray with circus clown candidates like Graham Platner who make fools of the party, and unpopular, absolute joke policy soundbites like “Defund the Police,” which end up not only costing us White voters, but also Black voters and Latino voters. In short, Democratic “mainstream” operatives have no bloody idea how to reach any group of voters right now besides white folks with grad degrees, and they’re still the better option because they don’t sound crazy, harmful, and destructive.

Then there’s the other side, which sounds like a campus protest at this point. These fools thought the reason Obama was successful was leftist protest movements such as “Occupy Wall Street,” and well, that’s went how you’d expect. They have jumped from “omnicause” to omnicause, hoping to jumpstart their revolution, and it just never quite finds enough support outside of lower and lower turnout primaries where they can edge out a low intensity win. They come up with slogans like “defund the police,” “Green New Deal,” and “Free Palestine,” none of which have any actual substance behind the plans (they often argue over what they even mean), and end up as the subject of Republican attack ads. They have leading figures like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren who don’t have many career achievements and generally dislike the party more than they hate their opponents, and it ends as horribly bad as you’d expect. They give us ideological lunatics like Tulsi Gabbard, John Fetterman, and Graham Platner, who end up practically making the Republican arguments for them as they run away from the Democratic Party, people so intellectually flexible that they end up disagreeing with themselves on what kind of America they want. They make up roughly a third of the party that is just angry and wants to “FIGHT” or “DO SOMETHING” even if there is no concrete idea what that is. They can’t build a majority of the party, let alone the country, and if they did take over a lot more of the existing Democrats would leave. Which is bad when you’re 27% of America. They justify this though by living in an imaginary world where they’ll convert some portion of non-voters and Trump voters into leftists, which is nonsensical to any thinking person, but it’s the only way to justify moving left when the country thinks we’ve gone too far now.

The second problem is truly a problem of leadership though, and it’s made these problems way, way worse. Instead of standing on their beliefs and values and presenting a plan of any kind to the country, they have bent over backwards to appease these folks. What’s come out of it is slop policy, adaptation of half measures to try and appease people which does not appease people, and the perception among less ideological voters of all stripes that Democrats are a bunch of weirdos obsessed with changing everything in society. Let’s be honest, I kind of get people defining us by our furthest left flank- they at least have a list of things they want to do. They might not have a real plan to get there, or any clue how they’d change a government not meant to change, but they have policies. What does a Chuck Schumer Democrat do, run the government better? It’s basically a management class political party that promises to appropriate money better than the other guys and maybe be a bit better about hiring more diverse people, and defending achievements the party had in the past, like Medicare, Obamacare, or Social Security. Really, let’s be serious, most of the great achievements Democrats have in recent times are cleaning up messes left to them by Republicans. It’s not as though they’ve put forward serious regulatory bills on things like the internet, social media, or AI. It’s kind of just “we’re better at governance,” which makes people’s eyes glaze over. Then the leftists yell about giving out free shit, and most voters know it will never happen, but some folks do latch onto it, and so people assume that’s the party’s position. I mean, it’s dumb, but I can’t blame people.

So not only are Democratic leaders appeasing people who want to change the very core of the support they currently have to become something less popular, they’re also literally putting nothing forward as a party. And this has been the case for ten years. We’ll pass continuing resolutions for the same government you don’t like, but do it better than them, so vote for us. Then we wonder why we’re being defined by the least popular among us. I don’t know why we’re shocked. Ten years into this.

MLB Power Rankings, 7/14/26 (All-Star Break)

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

Well it’s the All-Star Break. Baseball is descending on Philadelphia. Tonight I’ll be sitting in the seats watching Cristopher Sanchez deliver the first pitch to Mike Trout. I was not nearly as excited about this months ago as I have become recently. In 1996 I was there, and it was awesome, but there was one Phillies player in the game. This will be dramatically different. Maybe too different in my view, but there’s no way to balance getting every team involved with giving the fans what they want.

As for where baseball is- well, it’s where you expect it to be. The Dodgers are good. The Brewers, Braves, Phillies, and Cubs are chasing them in the NL. The Yankees, Guardians, and Mariners are good. But it’s also not. Miami, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis are as alive as the Padres and Diamondbacks in the NL. The White Sox and Rays are more alive than the Tigers or Blue Jays. Everything that was predictable, well most of it was. But not all of it.

First, here’s my preseason picks. Boy, I got some wrong. Here’s the first and second power rankings too. I’ll give you my updated power rankings now, then the thoughts on the rest of the season:

  1. Los Angeles Dodgers
  2. Milwaukee Brewers
  3. Tampa Bay Rays
  4. Atlanta Braves
  5. Chicago Cubs
  6. Philadelphia Phillies
  7. New York Yankees
  8. Cleveland Guardians
  9. Chicago White Sox
  10. Miami Marlins
  11. Texas Rangers
  12. St. Louis Cardinals
  13. Pittsburgh Pirates
  14. Arizona Diamondbacks
  15. San Diego Padres
  16. Seattle Mariners
  17. Boston Red Sox
  18. Washington Nationals
  19. Minnesota Twins
  20. Houston Astros
  21. Baltimore Orioles
  22. Detroit Tigers
  23. Toronto Blue Jays
  24. Cincinnati Reds
  25. Sacramento Athletics
  26. San Francisco Giants
  27. New York Mets
  28. Kansas City Royals
  29. Colorado Rockies
  30. Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim

So I re-arranged the front group, but not wildly. I think the top eight all have a legitimate shot to win the World Series and should be absolute buyers. From nine to sixteen, those teams really should believe in their team and try to buy. Here’s the thing though- I don’t think any of the top 24 are like 100% out of this. How they come out after the break will really determine what those teams do, and there are teams like Boston and Detroit that I thought were absolutely dead that have actually regained some life in recent weeks.

Here’s how I would evaluate each team’s chances though- how many legitimate #1 or 2 pitchers do they have, and how bad is the back end of their bullpen. Teams that have three or even four premium arms are going to eventually just pull away, as long as they have a bullpen that doesn’t just give away wins they should get. If you made me predict today, I’d predict the Dodgers, Brewers, Phillies, Yankees, Guardians, and Mariners to win their divisions. I’d predict the Cubs, Braves, and Marlins to win the NL Wild Cards, today. The teams I think with the best shot of knocking off the Marlins? Pittsburgh and Arizona. The deadline will decide that, and frankly if Atlanta pulls a strong deadline they could hold off the Phillies- if they don’t do the same. In the AL, I’d pick the Wild Cards to go to Texas, Tampa, and Boston- yes, Boston- right now. Again, pitching. Most pitchers are at 18 or 19 starts this season right now, and teams with less proven arms will see serious depreciation in the last ten to thirteen starts of a pitcher’s season. Teams like St. Louis and Washington, who have really fun lineups to be excited about, will need pitching to not fall off. I love what the White Sox are doing, but they are a team who needs to add arms. Again, I like teams like Miami and Pittsburgh, who have young arms that casual fans don’t realize are really talented, and will hold up better than you believe. I still basically believe the teams like the Yankees and Cubs who were built with postseason aspirations, or even just well run teams like Milwaukee, will hold up better. Those teams are made for long seasons.

AS FOR MY PHILLIES, I did say I think they’ll win the division, but the deadline will matter. They have the best top three starters in the division, if not the league, and that will be decisive. They have the most top heavy roster in baseball though. They have six guys at the All-Star Game. Add Wheeler to that, and that’s about all of the roster that you’d bet your season on. Maybe you’d add Kerkering or a Stott and say you feel decent about them, or you might still feel very good about Justin Crawford’s progress as a rookie, but they’re truly all complimentary pieces. The truth is that the Phillies charitably can feel good about maybe nine or ten roster spots, and should look for any upgrades they can possibly make for the other 16. I’m not asking for big names like Buxton or Trout, I’d be fine with several marginal upgrades. I particularly am intrigued by the possibilities with the Giants, Tigers, Angels and Twins, among teams that may have more than one piece we want in a deal. Like everyone else, a right-handed bat, left handed reliever, and starting pitcher better than Aaron Nola would work. Given that this team is carrying two back-up catchers around for an abnormal amount of time, I’m not picky on bats, just someone who actually can hit. I’d love to buy a rental arm like Ray, but that’s probably a pipe dream, so again, anything above a five. And someone to replace Alvarado as the main lefty in the seventh and eighth.

I said Ohtani and Judge would win the MVP’s, with Bobby Witt Jr. and Juan Soto as the top challenges. Woof. Do I think Ohtani should win? No, I think frankly he should be more under consideration for Cy Young, but in the analytics age he’s a given. Personally I’m drifting further from being a WAR voter as this season goes on, but I’d probably vote for James Wood in the NL, though I’m tempted to say the hell with the analytics and pick Schwarber. If he really hits 60 and people start telling me about PCA’s defensive metrics, I’ll bite their head off. With that said, Pete Crow-Armstrong is having a very good season and needs a look too. My AL mention of Witt is more than deserving, but his team is massively disappointing. Yordan Alvarez’s team isn’t a ton better. So maybe I’m voting for Junior Caminero. For NL Cy Young I am going homer and saying I’d pick Zack Wheeler (yes, the non-All Star) over Sanchez, Misiorowski, and Ohtani in what is a fantastic race. In the AL, give me Cam Schlittler by a nose over Dylan Cease right now. I’ll give Kevin McGonigle the nod for AL Rookie of the Year and J.J. Wetherholt the NL nod, unless Murakami can come back strong from injury. That AL race is going to be great. Clayton McCullough and Will Venable get my Manager of the Year nods.