Ok, as usual here- those are Bob “Crooksy” Brooks own words, right? Crooksy said recently that IAFF members who also serve as volunteer fire fighters and respond in areas where other IAFF members work are “scabs.” I talked about how ignorant of a thing this was for Crooksy to say here. Look, it was an ignorant statement, and Crooksy is an ignorant guy, but I do get it in theory. If IAFF members were undercutting other IAFF members by working for some sort of renegade department that went into their municipalities and worked for free, they would legitimately be “scabs.” That’s never how it works though. Basically, some IAFF members also serve as volunteers in their home communities, either out of civic duty or for the benefits Pennsylvania offers them to do so. Sometimes they get called in to towns with professional fire fighters, because there is a fire so big and awful that it requires a lot of extra, outside help. Even professional forces don’t always have enough guys. So they ask neighboring communities for help. You know, like during a six alarm fire in Allentown…
“Most of those homes are displaced, some of them sustained significant damage. Fire crews worked an offensive attack, as soon as the fire jumped the street, in order to save these homes. The homes are salvageable, but they are significantly damaged,” says Steed.
One resident tells us they saw flames shoot up into the sky from several blocks away.
“I saw the flames, they were way beyond the building height right now, I felt the heat, and I’m like ‘Yo man, I hope they get this taken care of,” says Charles Shafer of Allentown.
Others say they smelled the fire before even seeing it.
Danitza Lopez of Allentown says, “It smelled like my house was on fire, I smelled the smoke, it was like engulfing my house, and then thankfully I looked around everywhere, and there was no fire, but then I came outside, and the whole building was engulfed in flames.”
For more than 7 hours, over a hundred firefighters from as far as Carbon County were entrenched, snuffing out the blaze inside the vacant industrial building.
Oh, yikes. I have no idea what Crooksy meant when he was spouting off online, and judging from the quality of his other posts, I doubt he knows what he meant either. I’m going to say that I hope he wasn’t talking about situations like this, because honestly, that would be brain dead. For the record, two juveniles have been charged with setting the fire. I’m going to take a guess that a lot of “scabs” were on site.
I suppose it’s possible that some volunteer force somewhere is trying to respond to calls in a town that has professional fire fighters, and in this hypothetical it would make sense for a union leader to make a statement against that. I have no idea what kind of ass backwards place that’s happening in, but I won’t say it’s impossible. I just will take a guess that it’s not happening in Allentown. So thank you to everyone who responded to the fire, both the professionals and those who were volunteering. Most folks appreciate you.
Well, baseball season is about half over. The last time I did a power ranking was Memorial Day. Seeing as it’s almost the 4th of July, and the season is now about half over, it seems time for another. Several teams have fired their managers. The results have been mixed. Even as those teams made changes, some things remained constant- the Dodgers having the best record in baseball. The Brewers, Braves, Phillies, Cubs, and Padres as the predictable teams in pursuit in the NL. Meanwhile the AL is like 2/3 terrible. Some things make perfect sense. Others are just plain weird.
Okay, so a lot of changes there from last time. The top four from last time are all re-arranged, but still right there. The Guardians, Yankees, Padres, and Cubs are all still top ten teams. The Phillies and White Sox are charging up the board though. The Cardinals have only lost a little steam, while Arizona has dropped off a bit, but remains alive. All told, I would tell you right now that the top 22 teams still have a realistic shot, while 23 and 24 are alive because the American League is hot garbage. After that, these teams should be sellers unless something changes in a hurry. The reality is that some of the teams I’m not calling sellers yet will end up as sellers soon.
So then, how do we separate real contenders from pretenders on this list? To be clear, this is a ranking of their performance so far this season, not a ranking of how I think these teams will end up. For instance, I think Washington has had a generally pretty nice season, but I doubt their starting staff will keep them at .500 for the long haul. Pittsburgh is having a pretty nice season, but do you buy that lineup? Meanwhile Seattle is a huge disappointment, as is Cincinnati and Toronto, but I think all of those teams will chip their way back into the race this season. Most of how I make these judgments is how I feel about starting pitching staffs and late inning relief corps, but I do look at lineups too. For the most part, if you don’t have enough starting pitching, it probably won’t end well for you. I don’t care how much you hit, if you can’t limit the other team’s lineup for the first six innings of a game most of the time, you’ll end up losing more and more as the season goes on, and the innings pile up on your arms.
If I had to predict the National League right now, I’d say two teams make the playoffs from each division- Atlanta, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Diego. I would give the best odds of breaking that group up to Arizona, Cincinnati, Miami, and Pittsburgh. St. Louis and Washington are really nice stories, but I think their rotations will hit a wall. In the American League, I’m honestly struggling to count to six. I have the Yankees, Guardians, Mariners, Tampa, Toronto, and Houston right now, with the White Sox obviously as the best positioned team to break through, and Texas as well. I don’t really trust Minnesota and Sacramento to pitch well enough. As I say all of that though, how the hell can I trust Toronto and Houston, given what we’ve seen. If I were being honest about the eye test, I’d be saying Chicago and Texas, but I am still giving some credit for recent success.
For months now we’ve been reading that MLB is heading towards a lockout next year. It is inevitable and there’s no way MLB will have a normal off-season, spring training, and season. So says literally everyone. The owners are absolutely united in wanting a salary cap and the players will not accept it. So the outcome is locked in. Accept it. Both sides are going to the mat here.
I get the players not wanting a salary tax that doesn’t exist now, that makes logical sense. I’ve never understood the owners side though. How are the Dodgers, Mets, Phillies, and Cubs in perfect alignment with the Pirates, Athletics, and Rockies? They don’t behave the same now, and clearly have different goals for their franchise, right? These are franchise dumping money into their teams to try and win, while other owners (who are billionaires) are literally just trying to turn a profit. Why would owners who are spending be in agreement with owners who are not? Why would owners who have relatively good television deals regionally want television money entirely pooled between all the clubs? Why would teams who are good at player development want to ban high school players from the draft and off-ramp all player development to the college level? How are 30 owners in entirely different situations in lockstep on such a radical alteration to the game?
The best way to understand this labor dispute is *not* as an argument over the way things are, but frankly an argument over the way things *might* be. MLB owners aren’t trying to salvage their current system. MLB is generating record revenue. Attendance is actually moving back in the right direction, topping 70 million. Teams are monetizing more and more of their product. Even beyond their game driven revenues, teams are monetizing their real estate and owning more things. And team values are rising. In short, MLB is actually doing better than it has probably ever. This fight is not about improving this system for the owners or the league. I’m not sure there’s much they can do there.
Baseball is volatile though. They don’t like that. MLB wants to be the NFL. The truth is, every sport does, but not necessarily because they are comparing the actual revenues. The NFL is easy. Whereas the Kansas City Royals are considered a “small market” baseball team, the Chiefs are a constant contender that is trying to spend money and is building a new stadium now. The Packers have one of the smallest home cities of any major sports team globally, and they spend and compete every year. These franchises sign free agents every year that are good, relatively expensive players, they win a lot of games, and most importantly, they still turn a profit. MLB teams turn a profit in one of two ways- either they cost cut and keep their operating expenses low enough that they can make more from television, tickets, and whatever else they can monetize, OR they spend a lot of money in an effort to compete for championships, and therefore be popular enough that their fanbase puts more and more money back into the team. Let’s be honest though, even the biggest market teams that almost always try to contend end up going through a year or two bust cycle under this model, where either the team decides it’s not competitive or the fans decide it for them, and then their left cutting costs to turn a profit on the fly. Owners don’t like that kind of instability. Just look at my beloved Phillies, a team that has consistently been spending among the top five to ten teams in baseball for close to a decade now, after doing so for the majority of the previous fifteen years too. Are they good? Yes. Do they have a large fanbase? Yes. But right now attendance is ever so slightly down after a fourth straight playoff loss last year, and there are concerns about their television deal with Comcast SportsNet’s Philadelphia regional affiliate. So much so that they are considering creating their own network. Because, well, stability. People that own multi-billion dollar assets want those assets to essentially be risk free. If anyone tells you they are free market capitalists, remind them that no one is less in favor of that than owners of sports teams.
While those figures are generally kept private, they are revealed through the Green Bay Packers each season. The Packers are the only publicly owned team in the league, which requires them to reveal their financials on a yearly basis.
Though each team is different, the Packers’ financial statement provides a pretty good benchmark for franchises throughout the league. The Packers’ profit from operations, according to ESPN, increased from $60.1 million to $83.7 million year-over-year. Local revenue, which was helped with the addition of a ninth regular-season home game for the first time last season, also increased by about $35 million.
The Packers said that the national revenue sharing they receive accounts for about 60% of their total revenue.
The article goes on to quote their outgoing Team President as saying the league aims for 7% growth every year. Of course that growth level controls the salary cap level for every team, and also the media rights pay out to every team in the league. Every team in the league has a relative baseline to plan what they will receive, and every team in the league has a relative baseline to plan their expenses. No boom cycles or bust cycles. If the team is good, you might sell more merchandise and monetize more things. But if the team is bad, you’re getting a media rights check that should come in around 7% higher than last year, and your expenses are set to basically match. You almost can’t *lose* money on an NFL team. Even signing a bad contract with a player who becomes terrible quickly doesn’t matter, because the only guarantees in NFL player contracts are the bonus money, so you can cut a player at any time.
This is essentially what MLB is shooting for. Rob Manfred has talked about wanting to nationalize more of the media rights. Couple that with the owners proposed salary cap and you see where this is going. They want to limit contracts to five years. They want to end contract deferrals. They essentially want to cap a player’s salary somewhere around $44 million a year. They want to remove high school players from the draft. In other words, they want to set certainty into most of a team’s revenues for the season across the board, and set certainty onto the costs too. Like the NFL. They want to streamline and shorten player development, like the NFL has by forcing players into college programs. They’re willing to give in on tying draft compensation to the qualifying offer for free agents, as well as let players who are 30 years old receive free agency after five years (shorter than now), in exchange for essentially limiting compensation growth moving forward to a target number based on revenues they can control. They’ll even accept a salary floor if they can get the stability and certainty they want.
Look, this would dramatically change the way the game operates. Obviously it would make it much easier for teams like Pittsburgh and whatever city the A’s will be playing in by then to take free agency risks on par with the Dodgers. On the other hand, it would have two major impacts on the players. First, it would limit the on-field compensation for the biggest stars in the game. Second, while they are saying they would raise the minimum salary, this would cause a lot of mid-level and role players to cycle out of the league much faster, as paying them in free agency would make less sense than bringing up new, cheaper players when you have a set limit on what you can spend. It would force teams to find incentives beyond on field pay to attract players to their team. It would also set up a situation not unlike the NFL and NBA, where players tend to flock to the cities they like most, and leave some franchises constantly in a state of struggle.
It is true that running a baseball team is riskier than other sports. You can make a mess of your roster and payroll situation, become a bad team, and then lose money for an extended number of years if you’re an idiot. Does equity bring about parity though? When are the Cleveland Browns or New York Jets good? How have the Memphis Grizzlies done attracting major free agents? Is it an accident that the Cincinnati Bengals managed to mess up a great thing after Joe Burrow took them to a Super Bowl, I mean he’s the only man to quarterback them to a playoff win in the cell phone age for a reason. You can’t tell me most teams make what Jerry Jones does in the NFL, the guy just decided to build a stadium way bigger than everyone else’s for a reason. If teams no longer control their own television situation because the league does, will Pirates fans still get a Bob Walk, or Phillies fans a John Kruk, or will we get the sanitized, one size fits all that we get from most national broadcasts? He’s actually improved a bit since 2008, but do I want Joe Buck calling my games over Harry Kalas? A cookie cutter league is just that, cookie cutter. Sure, you’re giving the Arizona Cardinals a chance to win in the NFL on par with the Eagles, but frankly they don’t. Are you really going to tell Mets fans that Steve Cohen can’t die trying to bring his favorite team their first title since the Reagan Administration?
Major League Baseball is doing very well. Even lower revenue teams seem to be generating at least close to $300 million a year. High revenue teams may be generating considerably more (here’s looking at you, Yankees) than many NFL teams. I tend to be a fan of teams running their own ship and taking their own risks. I also get the reality- with regional sports networks dying, teams increasingly will either need their own networks or will have to be in a national media rights deal. Even so, the players are the product. I don’t like deals like Shohei Ohtani’s that danced around the luxury tax, but I also don’t think a salary cap should stop Juan Soto or Mike Trout from getting the deal they can get. If we’re sitting here and saying “Tarik Skubal isn’t worth $50 million a year” then maybe no owner should offer it? I know, they can’t collude, but if there’s someone who wants to pay it, I say have at it. All of these guys are billionaires, if they’re smart enough to succeed in business, maybe they don’t need so many guard rails.
I tend to side with the players here, but I’m a realist. The league is going to have to increasingly control media rights because that’s where both commerce and platforms are moving us. If players want earlier free agency, increases in minimum salary, and a salary floor, I don’t think a salary cap is necessary, but the players are probably going to have to give some of that up and still at least accept a more punitive luxury tax. Rich guys, generally speaking, demand stability for their wealth. If we’re having a political conversation there is no need for us as a society to generally underwrite this and insure it for them, but a negotiation between millionaire baseball players who make their money playing in an organized league and billionaire owners who have the capital to create that league is a lot different than asking if billionaires should be paying more in to Social Security and Medicare. Yes, I think the players should be free to earn whatever they can earn on a free and fair market during the short time they can play baseball. Playing in MLB is not a right though, it’s a far cry different than discussing if people should have health care or retirement. There’s similarities, there’s common ground and themes in the conversation. I generally support the players. But it’s a collective bargaining agreement for a reason. The emphasis on agreement.
These people are a bunch of sick nuts. We had a woman who wanted to put “Zionists” in concentration camps get 40% in a primary this year, so I don’t think we can put anything as “out of play” at this point. Here in PA-7 we nominated a grifter who stiffed his mother-in-law, so even normal places are nominating nuts. How did the Democratic Party go this far? We were normal like five minutes ago? One way to understand it is that a good chunk of Hillary’s 2016 primary voters are either independents now or dead, and Bernie’s 2016 voters are mostly still around. Another way to view it is that the party is hollowing out and only 27% of Americans identify as Democrats, so the nuts are what’s left. While I think the Hillary Clinton campaign playbook largely doesn’t work in America, nominating people who howl at the moon is probably not a path forward. Just ask Corbyn’s Labor Party.
I think it’s worth noting though, these embarrassing freaks are only winning certain kinds of races- very blue district, legislative races that usually have more than two candidates. The third of Democrats who don’t think Fidel Castro was that bad can win three and four way primaries in places where the Republicans aren’t a threat. Relatively normal, moderate Dems will be tasked with taking back the Senate in Alaska, Iowa, Texas, Ohio, and North Carolina, while a Nazi will try in Maine.These nutbags seem to do well in super urban and rural areas and nowhere else. Basically in places where you don’t have to acknowledge Republicans or even moderate Democrats exist if you don’t want.
Leave it to Philadelphia fans and media to worry about things they shouldn’t lose a moment’s sleep over. On the night Zack Wheeler returned to the Phillies, their record sat at 8-18, and they were probably the worst team in baseball to that point in the season. His return was just a couple of days removed from the Phillies DFA’ing Taijuan Walker, who was maybe the worst starting pitcher in baseball through the first five rotations through. Andrew Painter kind of looked like a normal rookie trying to figure things out and the night before, Rob Thomson had left him in a batter too long against Atlanta in what had been a good start up until that point. In the time since then, the Phillies are 32-16, but 1-8 in Painter’s starts. If the Phillies continue this rather substantial stretch they’ve been on for almost two months the rest of the way, they’ll win 98 or 99 games. They’re going to be a playoff team rather easily in the end. Painter’s struggles have been substantial, but they have been but a bump on the road for a team that is going to steamroll to one of the NL Playoff spots this season. Yes, I said steamroll.
This does not mean that Painter’s problems are not a real problem. Half the games they’ve lost in the last 48 games were his starts. That’s astoundingly bad. By contrast, Aaron Nola has been as absolutely mediocre as a league average four or five starter over that stretch (to be read, you don’t enjoy his starts) and the Phillies have won the overwhelming majority of them. Yes, it’s not even close to .500. Basically if Painter was going three or four OK innings in his starts and handing the ball to the bullpen the rest of the way, the Phillies would very likely have three or four more wins than they have. Painter has simply not been good enough to be a major league pitcher. I have read plenty of writers and fans lamenting that Alan Rangel is the best current option to replace him in the rotation, and I don’t agree with them, or any talk of the Phillies going and trying to trade for a fifth starter in June. They could literally treat the fifth spot in the rotation as essentially a bullpen/opener game, try to get three or four okay innings from Rangel, and they’ll be a better team for it. The bar is super low.
Of course in the world of sports talk hyperbole today you’re seeing people write Painter’s obituary and say the Phillies should just trade any young prospect they can for any MLB ready help they can, because most prospects fail. There are folks ready to give up on Justin Crawford after a tough month or so, as well as Felix Reyes, Gabriel Rincones Jr., Otto Kemp, and any other number of younger players. Of course this is how you end up as the Angels, watching Brandon Marsh become the player you desperately needed in another uniform before the age of 30. Crawford for sure, but I’d probably say Reyes and Rincones too, need an extended period of at-bats in the majors to figure it out. Crawford’s game probably will take some time to reach it’s potential, but the team is winning games while he figures it out right now, and that really doesn’t make it as big of a problem as some fans would believe. Reyes hit his 16th homer in AAA on Tuesday, but has struggled in sporadic playing time in the major leagues so far- because sporadic playing time is not a good way to see if a guy who crushed AA and AAA as a full time player can hit in the majors. If it were me, I would not be carrying two back-up catchers who cannot hit major league pitching (again, it’s not like they play enough to improve, and Lord knows they should be giving Marchan one start in every series to save J.T. at this age), I’d be platooning Rincones and Reyes in left and getting Reyes some starts at third base as well, to see what they can actually do in the majors. This team is winning games anyway, because their top three starting pitchers, their top several relievers, and their top three or four bats are all so good that they can sustain winning two-thirds of their game when all healthy and playing. You have about a month to decide what people are ahead of the trade deadline and then go get what’s necessary then. Maybe these guys aren’t good enough to win with. Maybe they are. I’d actually kind of like to know.
As for Painter, it’s important to look back on the early careers of Max Scherzer, Roy Halladay, Curt Schilling, and Randy Johnson and understand that not every Hall-of-Fame level stud pitcher that can carry a staff came up ready to carry a staff like a Justin Verlander or Paul Skenes. Hell, Zack Wheeler spent his early years baffling the Mets and the league as to what he was. Writing him off today would be a mistake, though I’m not saying I wouldn’t put him in a trade if I could actually get a difference maker under contract for a while onto my team. Painter might still figure it out if given the time by his organization, he’s only 23 right now. There are guys who will be drafted at his age this year. Blaming the Phillies for holding Painter as a top prospect when literally the whole league called him a top ten prospect in 2023 (and even some in 2024), is silly. The problem since his Tommy John surgery is basically two things- his fastball is flat and his command has not returned. Some folks want to talk about his velocity, but for the most part it has returned and is at least pretty normal. The Phillies are not asking him to be a number one right now, and realistically he needs to be a number three in like 2028 for this team to flourish with him, the bar is not super high. He just needs to be a league average (aka- Nola) fourth or fifth starter right now and stop getting absolutely raked the way he has this season. The problem is simple though- it may not happen. We are about 13 months into him pitching in live professional games post-surgery, the majority of that in AAA and the Majors, and his fastball has lacked it’s old movement since. The Phillies claimed some of it was his arm slot last year, then told us it was fixed in Spring Training, and the ball is still flat. Guys throwing in the mid-to-high 90’s with a flat fastball get hit hard in the Major Leagues, and also many times in AAA. He could certainly survive as a mid to back end rotation piece who doesn’t cost much for the next half decade in Philadelphia if he had better command of all of his stuff, but he has not had that last year or this year. You can’t hang breaking balls against professional hitters. You can’t miss your location with a flat 96 mph fastball in the majors. I don’t know if Painter’s lack of improvement on these things from last year to this year is a Painter problem or a coaching problem, but if no one fixes it, he might not ever be a Major League starter, or even reliever.
Given that the Phillies are a team willing to spend money, Painter failing wouldn’t be as bad of a long term hit as it would be on a small market team. Even so, him being at least a league average guy would be a huge help. In the short term though? Honestly, I don’t get the freak out, or people ready and willing to pay a premium to go get a starting pitcher who would never throw a playoff inning for you outside of mop up (think Taijuan Walker and Walker Buehler *last year*). Yes, I’d like the Phillies to try to get a couple (two or three, quantity over a big splash) of right handed or quality bats in general at the deadline and a late inning reliever, because those moves would help this team in October, and maybe we need a fifth starter at some point later, but these are not urgent, immediate problems for a team winning two-thirds of it’s games for a nearly 50 game sample now. The Phillies have time to see what some of these younger players can do for sustained runs, and they should be trying them out to see just that. They’re on their way to the playoffs. I’ll be honest, I’d be very surprised if they don’t finish as the fourth seed and first Wild Card winner in the National League, and that is perfectly fine with me. Outside of LA, Atlanta, and Milwaukee, most of their competition for that spot have much more glaring, important holes on their roster than we do over the long haul. You don’t win the World Series in June, and the Phillies won’t win or lose it because of their fifth starter. They have much more important problems in their path to winning right now.
Bob Brooks is a pile of human garbage that anyone should be ashamed of. If you’re defending him, it’s because you want a Congressional staff job and the benefits, let’s be honest. Don’t tell me it’s because you have Democratic values, the man hates Barack Obama. He is accused of committing mortgage fraud, entirely so he could stiff his mother-in-law. He’s not just a random deadbeat. No, he’s much worse than that.
A couple years ago, you might have heard that I was almost dead. Literally a couple *weeks* ago, a keyboardist had a heart attack in my basement during band practice. Both times, the incredible folks of Suburban EMS came to save the day. There’s not enough things I can say about these people, I’d be cremated or in a box somewhere without them. When the keyboardist had his heart attack, these EMT’s were joined by the good people of the Palmer Township Police Department and our *volunteer” fire fighters. What does Crooksy think of them? From Bernie:
The Beacon’s Chuck Ross has some up with something I failed to cover during the primary, and that is Brooks’ revulsion at professional firefighters who dare act as volunteer firefighters in their own communities. Ross points to angry social media posts from Brooks, calling them “scabs” and “shitbags.”
I understand that Brooks may have no issue with volunteer firefighters so long as they stay out of a municipality covered by a professional and unionized fire department. But does that make sense. The Lehigh Valley’s three cities have all had major fires over the years during which volunteer firefighters from other municipalities assist. The most recent example of this is at an Easton hotel. Should a professional Easton or Bethlehem firefighter refuse to assist if he is also a volunteer at Plainfield’s fire department and that company responds? Should they just stand by and watch a building burn?
As I said before the primary, Republicans had more on this pile of donkey loaf than I did. I did not have these social media posts. Of course they had the goods here:
In the original article they go on to point out that this post from Brooks is nonsense. Of course a volunteer force should not go into Easton, Bethlehem, Wilson, Allentown, or Emmaus uncalled and undercut unionized, paid members who fight fires for a living. What Crooksy doesn’t point out here is *that doesn’t happen in reality.* There aren’t volunteers from Nancy Run going into his former turf of the city of Bethlehem and responding to routine fire calls. Far from. Almost always, the volunteers are called in because there aren’t enough paid fire fighters on call, or in some cases on the force at all, to respond to the severity of the fire. The reality is that our society doesn’t have the resources to keep people safe all of the time. These folks volunteer to help us deal with that.
I’ll take a guess that this human pile of sewage will say is that these professional fire fighters are “taking advantage” of the real estate tax rebates. Yeah well, our society offers those because we can’t take care of ourselves. God bless these guys to give their time off for the rest of us. I sleep better at night knowing anyone would give of the most important resource we have, time. He knows this though. His union was pleading for more resources from the City of Bethlehem in last year’s budget because *they need more fire fighters.* I even agree with him for the most part. Apparently he doesn’t hold the courage of his own convictions.
Crooksy is just a garbage human being. He should drop out of this race today and just admit the con. Maybe we could still convince the former Congresswoman to take his place.
There are rumors that Crooksy is drawing a look from the U.S. Attorney’s office, and I’m sure the Attorney General would like to take a crack at him over his “quit claim” on the property he stiffed his mother-in-law for. I actually don’t think it would be wise for either to open an investigation unless the statute is about to run out on this. He’ll still be as guilty or not next year and it would look nakedly political. Besides, it looks as though Deadbeat Bob will be spending significant general election time in the court room arguing this case anyway. Bob’s defenders have taken in private to criticizing the woman he stiffed out of the money, and I think it’s just a matter of time until they start trying to call her crooked, unhinged, and other evil words. Maybe she is. That doesn’t matter a single iota, as Bob signed the promissory note to pay her back. He acknowledged that he owed her the money, and he then did everything possible to not pay her. If he weren’t your political candidate, you’d call him a deadbeat.
Ryan Mackenzie deserves to lose in 2026. He voted for everything Donald Trump asked him to vote for, and Donald Trump is about as popular with the electorate right now as athlete’s foot. So of course the consultant class in DC and Harrisburg have saddled us with a pile of cow dung to get elected in this district. My plan is to just leave the race blank right now see what comes around in two years.
A lot of folks think the 2026 election is going to be a landslide. I do think Democrats are likely to win the House this year, and I think they’ll do generally well in swing state governor contests across the country. I’m genuinely a skeptic on Democrats winning the Senate or winning numbers like 2006 or 2018 in this wave though. Trump is historically unpopular. He is double digit percentages worse than he was in his first term at this time or compared to Joe Biden at this point in his term. With the electorate we’re going to have in 2026, Trump would lose if he were on the ballot (midterm electorates are different than Presidential electorates). We’re not having that election though. Democrats are leading the generic ballot right now. Most polling averages are not showing Democrats polling astonishingly high though- in fact both of the ones I linked to here have the Democrats at the same 48% that Kamala Harris received in last year’s election. I’ll link to one more here, just to sort of drive home the point- occasionally there’s a poll that shows Democrats getting to the 51% Joe Biden got in 2020 or that Barack Obama got in 2012, but you don’t see a 55% anywhere. What you generally see is Democrats consolidating their voters and Republicans not feeling incredibly good about their party. Some probably won’t vote this year, others probably will come home in the end to the GOP. In any event, probably no less than 40 states will generically favor the same party they voted for in 2024, if not closer to 45. Democrats may hold slim advantages in places like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and North Carolina this Fall. Given the candidate quality gaps at the top of the ticket in some of these states, the generic lead might even be noticeable. I’d still venture a guess that even if all of those states tilt blue this Fall, and states like Ohio, Alaska, Iowa, and Texas show vast improvement for the Democrats, this will change the result in a minimal number of Congressional districts. I’d venture a guess that 400 districts out of 435 are drawn so partisanly now that even a wave election doesn’t move them. If I had to guess, Republicans lose 15-20 seats this Fall. There’s just not that many more than that actually in play. I can’t see either party falling under 200 seats any time soon.
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. Every Democratic nominee for President since 1996 has received at least 48% of the vote, and every Republican since 2000 has received at least 46% of the vote. The parties high water marks in that time are 53% (Obama in 2008) and 51% (Bush in 2004) in that time, which is to say they both have a range of 5% they have been able to grow. For every “brilliant” strategist that comes along to change politics, from James Carville to Karl Rove, from David Axelrod to Kellyanne Conway, our public is pretty static. Each crew comes along and moves the electorate a little bit at the edges, and over time you can see trend lines, but there’s almost always an equal backlash that leaves us in roughly the same spot.
Part of this is because no one really likes either party. 58% disapproved of the GOP in the May Pew poll, but 59% disapproved of the Democrats. People that are actually members and call themselves members in each party say they like their party- 84% of Democrats and 89% of Republicans. The rest of the country really doesn’t like either party very much. 45% of Americans now identify as independent. Prior to 2011 it would have been unheard of to have 40% of the electorate call themselves independent. Clear pluralities of Americans 50 and under (if not majorities in some cases) view themselves as independent. While the block of people who call themselves “liberal” is up to 28%, most of that growth is among Americans who self-identify as Democrats. Basically, Democrats are moving left. Meanwhile 47% of independents are calling themselves moderate, a clear plurality over conservative or liberal. More people prefer Democrats (47-42%) in this polling, but it would appear the 11% in neither camp are not exactly moving towards the Democratic Party as it shifts left. Basically a small group of the independents shift from party to party as power shifts in Washington, voting against whoever is in charge. We’ve been in this pattern at least since 2014, if not 2006. Democrats say they want the party to moderate, over and over again, but that is not what is actually happening to the membership of the party.
How does this impact the 2026 election in the real world? Let’s say this- Democrats will probably perform closer to Kamala Harris vote levels in swing districts and swing states in 2026 than Republicans will perform to Trump’s 2024 vote levels. One should assume that particularly strong Democrats at the top of the ticket, like say Roy Cooper in North Carolina or Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania may hold an even more commanding advantage. Candidates like Rob Sand and Josh Turek in Iowa, James Talarico in Texas, and Sherrod Brown in Ohio will probably hold polling advantages for most of the Summer because they are better candidates than their opponents, but those polling advantages need to rise over 50% of the vote to know that they are actually converting some of the voters you’ll need to get to move over to them and actually win. Meanwhile Democratic candidates with glaring potential problems in their candidacies, like say a Graham Platner, will probably poll ahead for most of the Summer before the large scale media buys go to death con five levels after Labor Day. Between now and the general election we’ll probably see a few more nuts win primaries in both parties, because nuts are making up a bigger slice of the primary electorate. People will scream about those nuts impacting the parties beyond their own races. A few figures will matter nationally, people with name recognition and coverage in the media like say Mamdani and Platner. They will matter less than Trump, who has the most name recognition and media coverage. What it will come out to is something like a 51-46% national popular vote victory for Democrats. That will get the job done for them.
Ok, so where the rubber really meets the road, what’s this mean? I think it means that a fairly generic Democratic candidate in a district that runs basically about where the national average district this year is, that candidate is going to win. You have districts like NY-17 and PA-1 where Harris won in 2024, and the only reason Republicans have been able to hold on is candidate quality. Then you have districts like PA-7, 8, and 10, or NJ-7, where Trump carried the seats in 2024 and the races probably hinge on how much of his base comes back out for the GOP in 2026, or how much the GOP can discredit the Democratic nominees. I’ll just give you my napkin math on where these seats all are right now:
-PA-7- Trump won this seat in 2016 50-47% and 2024 51-48%, while Biden won it in 2020 50-49% In every one of those instances, Donald Trump out performed his national numbers in this district (+5, +3, and +2, in order). On the other hand, Bob Casey won it in 2018 by 10% and Tom Wolf by 16%, in a year Democrats won nationally by 9%. The same was true in 2022, when John Fetterman won the district by 5% and Josh Shapiro won it by 12% in a year that Republicans won by a little over 2.5% nationally. In other words, this district is harder for Republicans in midterm years than Presidential years, mostly because of sporadic turnout voters not coming out for midterms. Thinking about this district that way, I think Bob “Crooksy” Brooks is probably entering the general election with about a 6% lead, as the generic ballot shows right now, in part because Mackenzie has an uphill climb to actually bring back out his base of voters from 2024. Mackenzie also doesn’t have the kind of electoral record that say Fitzpatrick, or Lawler, or Kean has in their districts attracting crossover support. He’s not Bresnahan or Perry levels of corrupted personally though either, his problem in this district is purely partisan politics. And of course, Crooksy has personal baggage. The guy is a mini-Platner. The question is, if this is a 5% popular vote spread or more on election night, can Mackenzie convince 1 in 20 voters to vote against Crooksy, rather than for the party they want? For what it’s worth, Susan Wild over performed the national party in 2022 by exactly 5%. I give Crooksy 60-40 odds to win this race, I just think Mackenzie has to overcome a lot, but it’s well within possible.
PA-8- This has been a district shifting right in a hurry. Trump has won it by 9%, 3%, and 9%, out performing his national numbers every time. At first, the district lagged his shift, with Casey and Wolf carrying it in 2018 and Fetterman and Shapiro carrying it in 2022, although by less than PA-7. In 2024 the dam broke. Bresnahan beat Cartwright, McCormick beat Casey, and obviously Trump won. In other words, if we think PA-7 is where the generic ballot is, PA-8 is probably a few points better for Republicans. Bresnahan’s big problem is not only is he not as strong of a candidate as Fitzpatrick, he’s weaker than Mackenzie probably too. But it’s a better district, and while Paige Cognetti doesn’t have Crooksy’s problems, I’m not sure you want your profile in PA-8 to be “Obama alum and pro-choice woman” with that electorate. I assume that a good chunk of the electorate won’t actually love either candidate. This race probably comes down to what exactly the generic ballot is nationally, and how far ahead of it Republicans can run in this area. At 5%, with no Trump on the ticket and Bresnahan’s candidate quality, it’ll be razor close, but I’d expect Cognetti to edge him out.
PA-10- Trump has won this seat by 10%, 4%, and 5%, and this is the most traditionally Republican of these seats, so I am not sold that Scott Perry’s January 6th sins are ever going to cost him his job. Even so, the district has narrowed over time and I’m going to go out on a limb and say Janelle Stelson would reverse her 1.2% defeat in the current political climate. If PA-8 is trending more red right now, this one is trending more blue, and Stelson ran ahead of Kamala Harris by almost 4% in 2024. I’m going out a limb here, but if I were her, I’d mostly run against Trump’s economy and kitchen table issues. If she does that instead of debating what a bad guy Perry is, I think she wins this race by 5%. Everyone who cares already knows about Perry. Hit him for supporting the pain people are going through now, not a six year old insurrection.
PA-1- Donald Trump has never won PA-1. His worst loss of the three was 5% in 2020, so it’s not as blue as other parts of the Philadelphia suburbs, but PA-1 isn’t a Trump seat. It is fair to say right now that PA-1 is probably somewhere between D+8 and D+10 right now. Brian Fitzpatrick is easily the strongest Republican running in any of these PA seats. I’d venture a guess that he has positive approval in the district, which makes him a political unicorn. He can credibly point to instances he has stood up against Trump in a way none of the other GOP candidates I’m talking about here can. With that said, this guy should still be a dead man walking in this political environment. Josh Shapiro really may win this seat by more than 20%. Are there that many people who will cross over and split their tickets in 2026? As his party lost nationally by 9% in 2018, Fitzpatrick won by 2.6%. In 2020, he won by 13% while Biden carried it by 5%, an 18% crossover rate. He won by just shy of 10% in 2022 and 13% in 2024, while Shapiro won by 20% in 2022 and Harris won it by 1% in 2024. Bob Harvie is probably the best candidate to run against Fitzpatrick in a while, and this is the best environment since at least 2018. When I started writing this, I was kind of feeling like he’d probably win this year. Fitzpatrick’s numbers are strong though. If he survived 2018, you have to believe he survives 2026, right? At least right now.
NJ-7- This district is quite literally as swing as PA-7. Trump won it by 6% in 2016, Biden won it by 4% in 2020, and Trump won it by 2% in 2024. For what it’s worth though, this district is more Republican than New Jersey as a whole obviously, and that is a part of why Tom Kean Jr. has held it for two terms now. Cory Booker narrowly won it in 2020 and Andy Kim lost it in 2024. Even so, there are signs that Kean is dead here. Jack Ciattarelli won the district 56-43% in 2021 and *lost* it 51-49% in 2025. Traditionally New Jersey is more red in gubernatorial races than federal years, so a 15% move in a district is a sign of a bloodbath coming. With that said, it was only a 2% margin and Kean has always run better than most Republicans. Rebecca Bennett winning the nomination here is probably a good sign for Democrats though, as she’s been a solid fundraiser (as were most of the leading candidates, to be honest) and there’s nothing “extra” for Republicans to run against here. Add on Kean’s apparent health issues and I’d say this one probably tilts to the Democratic column. Probably by less than the national numbers, but a win’s a win.
Ok, so what am I saying here- I just predicted four competitive seats in this region to flip Democratic. I also don’t think any are slam dunks. I think I feel strongest about Stelson and probably Bennett winning, and weakest about Brooks and Cognetti. But I’d predict them all to win in this environment. Now I’m not saying I want that (I think I’ve been clear about Brooks), but as Trump trends towards Bush 2006 numbers, I don’t see how they survive that? Of course it’s worth noting that the GOP will make up for these losses with gerrymanders across the south that will probably keep this year from looking like a 2006 or 2018. But for now it’s looking like a blowout.
Ted Cruz has an NCAA reform bill getting a committee vote in Congress today. The bill deals with a lot of thing, from a limited anti-trust exemption to a strict five years of eligibility time, to limits on transferring and limits on poaching coaches. Some of it is actually good stuff and is worth looking at- I know, a shock from Congress and Cruz specifically. It’s also an inadequate bill and one that will not fix the real problems that student athletes need fixed, and fans want to see fixed.
Let’s be honest, everyone is behind the curve. The fans, the writers, the legislators, everyone. We’re talking about the conferences and their next moves, and honestly that’s great, but it’s not where things are going. Even within the Big Ten, SEC, and even ACC, there are echelons in college football. Do Ohio State and Michigan need the Big Ten, or could they honestly just take Washington, Oregon, USC, UCLA, and Penn State do whatever they want? Do Texas, Alabama, and Georgia need the SEC, or could they grab Oklahoma, LSU, Texas A&M, Auburn, Tennessee, and Florida and do whatever they want? I don’t know why Notre Dame hasn’t sat down with Florida State, Miami, Clemson, Georgia Tech, UNC, and Virginia and built something other than the ACC? At the last television negotiation, many of these schools saw enlarged power conferences as the way to make money. There’s no real necessity for them to do that again. Sure, if it’s the best deal they will, but if it’s not? Money for 15-20 programs will drive the next version of college football as is. Nothing less, nothing more.
What the NCAA needs is something it’s behavior doesn’t really deserve- power and control. There are few organizations I can think of in sports who have shown less character and values than the NCAA, I guess maybe FIFA and the NFL. However, the only way to stop the push towards a true “super conference” run by a few institutions is for the NCAA to receive a strong anti-trust exemption that would give them all the leverage in asserting rules over the members. Anything short of that won’t stop talk from member conferences like the SEC of taking their ball and going home. It also won’t stop member institutions from valuing football dollars over literally everything else and killing off rivalries and lesser revenue sports in the pursuit of those dollars. Basically a weak NCAA continues the progression we’re under, towards a lawless world where 20 programs control the money and set the rules. It is, in a word, chaos.
What fans want isn’t so hard, they want most of what they had for a century, with a logical playoff system that makes sense. They want their old rivalries, they want conferences that make some geographic sense, and a playoff system that values getting the best teams in over conference payouts, ESPN’s monetary interests, and television ratings. This bill might limitedly preserve some of those things. It won’t hold up super long though.
My big concern is that Congress is more worried about things like limiting the NIL than they are about preserving sanity within the sport. It’s not lost on me that Cruz represents Texas, a state with two SEC super powers that are probably happy with the direction things are going. Texas, Texas A&M, and Oklahoma basically fled to the SEC for the larger payouts, and left other major institutions in the state to play in lesser conferences and fall behind. I have no doubt at all that Florida State and Clemson are salivating to do that, and it seems obvious to me that Miami and North Carolina wouldn’t mind either.
The NCAA needs the kind of power the “big four” professional sports have right now. They need to be able to negotiate television deals, to set playoff rules that don’t favor two conferences and an independent over everyone else, and have a level of control over conference re-alignment. This bill will improve their hand, but it won’t give them that.
So yes, I think it’s a good bill. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think Ted Cruz did a good job. I don’t think good is quite good enough, and I think maybe we’re missing the bigger point here. Do I think it’s good to limit Lane Kiffin to waiting until the season is over to jump ship and take a big pay day from another school? Yeah, I do. I’m not sure Congress needs to settle that though. They definitely have a legitimate role in regulating college sports (it is absolutely interstate commerce). I just am not sure they know what the real problems are that require a Congressional fix.
Apocalypse Vibes 