John Cena graduated high school, played college football, became a bodybuilder, joined the WWE, became the top star in the company, went to Hollywood, and retired from WWE after a 23-year career…
Ok, now that I got that out of my system, the NFL made sense of itself this weekend. The overwhelming majority of the league is now either in, out, or damn near out. Kansas City is eliminated and no longer has to be treated as a threat. Dallas did what Dallas does. Miami’s mini run is over and they’re done. Cincinnati is finished. Meanwhile Tampa tried to hand the division away, but Carolina handed it back. Buffalo is in fact not dead, and Denver is on it’s way to home field. Things make sense now. Mostly. Jacksonville makes no sense, but we’ll see where things are in a couple of weeks.
I don’t like remembering December of 2016, but I think we all remember the SNL skit where Hillary Clinton showed up at the homes of electors and tried to convince them to vote against Donald Trump in the electoral college. One could certainly laugh at the skit, and one could even empathize with the shock many people felt after Trump won- I mean, he got less votes and won the election. If you go back and watch the speech, even Trump looked shocked when he came out to declare victory. The whole thing was surreal at the time. It was still absolutely batshit that people though the electoral college would be faithless enough to defeat the candidate they pledged their support to. It was a super long shot in 2000 when Al Gore needed less than five, and that wasn’t happening in 2016.
The problem with this is that it never ended though. People thought the Russian interference in our elections and every other scandal “would be the end of him.” When he was defeated in 2020, they wanted him punished for the very real wrongs he had done. Even now, they hope there is some early way out. The truth is that there never was. The even more real truth is that for most Americans, it was never really a priority.
I came across a tweet that angered me quite a bit. It’s tone deaf. There are truly a class of people in Washington who think that the top concern of most people is imprisoning Trump. You can read it here:
The more I think about it, the more I think Joe Biden was a uniquely bad president at the particular moment in time he was president. Not because of what he did, but because of all the things he didn't do. Holding Trump accountable for his crimes was job Number One.
Basically the thought here is that Joe Biden, after receiving 81 million votes, should have made it his priority to prosecute and jail the guy he just defeated. Not stop Covid, revitalize the economy, expand health care, invest in green energy, or really any of the stuff he told people he would do. Never mind that the crimes committed in New York and Georgia were state crimes, never mind the need to investigate whatever involvement Trump actually had in January 6th, never mind that the Florida case hadn’t even happened yet, never mind that while Mueller found that Russia did interfere in the 2016 Election, there was no two party conspiracy, and never mind that neither impeachment ended in a conviction- lock him up. Look, do I think he did a lot of this stuff? Yes, and he was convicted in a state of doing it. The idea that someone was going to lock him in Leavenworth and we’d never hear from him again was nuts though. That locking the guy in Leavenworth, or Minersville, or whatever other crazy place you wanted him locked up in, should have been the top priority, well that’s just insane.
Yes, I’d love it if Donald Trump was gone from American politics. The reality though is that he’ll be gone when he’s done being President- which the Constitution clearly says will be January 20th, 2029, but don’t get too comfortable with this Supreme Court. In all seriousness, Trump and Trumpism will probably only be gone when the American people are ready to move on to something else. They will. They moved on from Obama, from Clinton, from Bush, from Reagan, from Nixon, from Eisenhower, from Truman, and even eventually from FDR’s politics (he of course was dead).
I stopped watching cable news a few years back, almost entirely, and it’s the best thing I ever did. I built a nice following on Twitter and other social media a few years back for my political opinions, but the truth is that I think that world is too segregated from normal society now. People only talk to people like them, then think the world is like them. Most people are much more mad that groceries and gas cost a lot than they are that Trump says mean and insensitive things. No, he’s not being hauled off to The Hague, or impeached and removed, or prosecuted, or any of that. Most people don’t care either. If you tell them this is your priority, they think you’re nuts. This is truly a level of strange that I think has infected most politically active people.
If Bob Brooks is the nominee of the Democratic Party in PA-7, Republicans will swamp him with negative ads defining him as a deadbeat who took money from his mother-in-law and expresses racist beliefs on social media. In any normal time, I’d say that’s disqualifying, but there are a lot of people who would vote for O.J. Simpson if he ran on their party’s ticket right now. Even so, Crooksy is really the only candidate with a strong general election negative to run against, and Republicans are open that they feel most confident they can beat him. They’ll use his personal baggage, his endorsement from Bernie Sanders and other radical left wingers, and even negatives from his career that they have waiting to use. Democrats can’t afford that. Ryan Crosswell is completely unacceptable, but probably can win a general election, if you’re willing to vote for a Republican. There are three Democrats actually from the Lehigh Valley who are Democrats running in this race. We never needed the DCCC to mess this race up with this guy, but sure enough, it happened.
There’s absolutely no evidence that Crooksy brings anything to the table as a candidate, but that’s not what this is about. He raised $300k last quarter? So did like everyone across the river in NJ-7. Any candidate that gets nominated will raise plenty in the general election, and have PACs you’ve never heard of spending on their behalf. All that any of these folks endorsing him cares about is, he is the President of the IAFF’s Pennsylvania organization and the IAFF is really damn good at politics. When the IAFF backs a candidate for President, that candidate usually wins the Democratic nomination, at a minimum. The Governor wants the IAFF to support him in future campaigns, such as for Governor in 2026 and for President in 2028, and let’s be honest, one is more critical right now than the other. It’s very clear this is why this endorsement is happening, and anyone saying otherwise is a liar. Let’s be honest here, otherwise there’s no other reason to step into a competitive primary. Months ago, everyone claimed they would stay out. Plenty of people have appealed to the Governor directly and his insiders, pleading with them to not endorse this guy. None of that mattered, because this isn’t about this race. It’s about 2028.
I know this is an inconvenient truth to publish, but it’s a truth nonetheless. If I was worried about backlash for saying it, I wouldn’t have started in on Crooksy. I knew this from the start and made the decision on my own to write it. I’ve brought the receipts since day one. Frankly, I haven’t wrote the worst stuff, and probably won’t. Unions and elected officials are being pressured from the good ole’ boys club in Harrisburg to fall in line, to crush a primary here. I’m not invested enough in anyone’s success to play that game.
Last week the Senate failed to extend subsidies for people buying health care on the Affordable Care Act Exchanges. This week?
Friday’s proposal from House Republicans includes measures that would allow small businesses to join together to buy insurance plans for their employees and put in place new requirements for pharmacy benefit managers in an effort to lower drug costs.
Starting in 2027, federal payments, known as cost-sharing reduction payments, would aim to lower premiums for some low-income Americans. Health plans that provide abortion coverage would be excluded.
A vote on the package is expected next week, House Speaker Mike Johnson said.
“House Republicans are tackling the real drivers of health care costs to provide affordable care, increase access and choice, and restore integrity to our nation’s health care system for all Americans,” Johnson said in a statement.
Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries blasted the proposal Saturday.
“Mike Johnson just released a toxic Republican Healthcare plan that hurts everyday Americans,” Jeffries wrote on X. “It fails to extend the ACA tax credits that expire this month. And is a deeply unserious proposal.”
This is a joke. Sure, let employers buy together, but what does that do for people who are buying their own health insurance? The answer is nothing. For people like me, who buy their coverage at full price, this will mean not only do I get hit with higher 2026 premiums, but when millions drop their coverage in 2026, my premiums will skyrocket again in 2027. Health care costs the least when the most number of people are able to pay for their care, or are insured. House Republicans actively are plotting to harm that. Why? Some sort of stubborn insistence on free markets? I doubt it. They simply don’t want the government to provide anything, so they can cut taxes more for wealthy people. At this point, it’s clear their goal is no income taxes at all.
This did not have to happen. The decision by Chuck Schumer to send Tim Kaine, Dick Durbin, John Fetterman, Jeanne Shaheen, Maggie Hassan, Angus King, Catherine Cortez Masto, and Jackie Rosen over to vote to end the government shutdown without even this small concession from Republicans will essentially do massive damage to the American health care system. If Republicans were going to re-open the government without these subsidies, Democrats should have forced them to end the filibuster to do it. Let them have the blood on their hands. Instead Democrats gave them a way out of their own mess, and we all know it was approved by their leader, because they gave just enough votes to get it done. Senate Democrats basically own this mess as much as Trump’s GOP, which is utterly embarrassing for a party whose crowning achievement of the last 20 years was a health care system that insured over 20 million people who were previously uninsured.
We really need to get rid of John Fetterman in 2028, by the way.
I’m under no illusions- I do not think any Democratic candidate can win the state of Texas for Senator or Governor in 2026, and probably not in 2030 either. Texas is a red state, more red than the nation as a whole, because Texas Republicans have been more competitive with Latino voters than their national party has been overall. Yes, Democrats could very well do better in 2026 because of actions Trump has decided to take, but what does that mean? Kamala Harris lost the state by nearly 14%. Joe Biden lost it by 5.5%. Hillary Clinton lost it by 9%. So I guess we’re just debating how bad the loss will be. Beto got kind of, sort of close in 2018 against Ted Cruz, but still lost by a margin well beyond a recount. I’m giving you the reality up front- Texas is red, and it’s not going to change very soon.
I have no strong opinion about Jasmine Crockett as a candidate. She will raise money and motivate the Democratic base, probably more impressively than her primary opponent, James Talarico. Does it really matter though? One may argue that she’ll maximize turnout and therefore be closer. Another might say a Democrat can’t possibly win Texas without persuading some Republicans, and Talarico may be better to do that. In the end, I think they both lose. You would need to be prime Bill Clinton to even have a chance to do both strategies at once, and even then you probably lose Texas.
Q: How will you win over Trump supporters? Crockett: “I don’t know that we’ll necessarily convert all of Trump’s supporters. That’s not our goal.” Q: “Do you need to?” Crockett: “No, we don’t. We don’t need to.”
Let’s start by saying she’s factually correct. You don’t need to convince all of the other side in almost any election. Most Republicans are going to vote Republican. She doesn’t need them all. All true. Now, she was asked how she is going to win them over though, and she did dodge that question. She also doesn’t really need an answer in December of 2025. The election is 11 months away. She may be running against a very corrupt Ken Paxton. She also may not. There’s a lot of variables here.
The problem with Crockett’s answer is that largely after 2012 the Democratic position became to not do persuasion, and to instead focus on base turnout. That worked fine for President Obama, but he still did persuasion. The electorate has grown considerably since 2012, and the truth is that the lowest propensity voters don’t vote Democratic anymore, or at least it’s a lot more murky than it used to be (Biden’s super high 2020 number confuses things, but he was a persuader). Trump’s share of the vote grew with each election he ran. I think what a lot of people want to hear is that a candidate is thinking about why the Clinton or Harris campaigns didn’t work, and is going to try something different, and well, she didn’t say that. “Demographics are destiny” was an entirely failed approach, and we have to get back in the game of winning the hearts and minds of the impressionable voters out there. Ignoring them is a losing strategy.
Voter persuasion is expensive and hard. Yes, racial and gender bias can make the road even harder. It’s not impossible to do, it just probably requires a lot of luck in this case that is probably not going to happen. Math is math. For a state like Texas to flip, there has to be some societal level movement against the Republican Party, and I know you want to believe that’s going to happen, but it’s probably not. America is simply not offended enough by him to become a clearly center-left to liberal nation like it was before the 1960’s. They simply don’t like Democrats enough, when push comes to shove in an actual election. Some argue we need to move left, or pick more white guy candidates to fix that, but those things are not going to work. Republicans hate white Democrats plenty, and you’ll lose some of your base chasing them.
Look, what I’m saying is that people are going to get up in their feels about this primary. They shouldn’t. If Democrats have a chance at Texas, they’re probably already spending heavily in Ohio and Iowa, maybe even Florida, and just won’t have the resources to go into Texas. If we win this race, it won’t be because of which candidate wins the primary. At that point, it’s an act of God.
Apocalypse Vibes 