The NRCC has put up it’s first “red box” page on Bob “Crooksy” Brooks in PA-7, and it’s a mix of things we expected and knew, and things that are expansions on his other laundry list of problems. The four main hits they put up:
I have to admit that I’m surprised they limited themselves to just four things with this guy, but as I found in the primaries, there’s so much more than you can actually print legally about him. They’re hitting on the obvious stuff, being a racist who stiffed his family. They’re also hitting him though right where his message is most vulnerable- he’s not a champion of blue collar Americans. They’re going to call him a “union boss,” an attack with a false meaning for the most part, by hitting him for his compensation in the job and job performance. I mean, I guess that works with Republicans, but I don’t know there. The first hit, that he doesn’t have workman’s compensation insurance for his landscaping business could expose him to some serious issues legally, and also open up the long rumored issues of how he got the business. Of course they have videos of Crooksy saying crazy things and also avoiding talking (see above) on the page as well. I doubt this is everything they have, but it’s probably enough to pull Crooksy down a bit. I’m sure they’re going to use the deadbeat stuff and racism to really nuke him, because well, it’s true.
This could be written in one sentence- “They didn’t vote for him.”
Welcome to the mythical summer of “the Democratic Tea Party.” They can win the most gentrified areas of New York City. They can win Denver. They can win the super safe Philadelphia seat. The Bronx? The Hudson Valley? Suburban Chicago? All the competitive Texas seats? Suburban Philadelphia? South central Pennsylvania? Every California competitive race but one? Suburban Maryland? The Iowa seats? I could go on. They lost every one of them.
Progressive populists are winning low intensity primaries. Safe seats that no Democratic nominee can lose. Races with backbench, lower profile (to the general public) candidates or divided, underfunded competition from multiple candidates. Wildly leftist seats. Rural white seats and gentrified white trust fund babies. Actual working class districts with working class voters? Those folks want nothing to do with these idiots. People in competitive districts? They’ll pass.
Their movement is white, educated, and very male. Their attempts at “working class” are trust fund babies like Graham Platner and grifters like Bob Brooks that somehow didn’t get beat up too badly in their bar room days. When they ran Bernie in 2016, he hit his high in the low-40’s in the primaries. Four years later, with huge money advantages and organization, he fell downward closer to a third. Both times Black peoples had no interest in him. No primary this year suggests anything has changed.
But let’s play along for a minute. Their entire theory is that most Democrats will stick with the party in the event the DSA takes over. They also believe there ae a group of non-voters and even Republicans out there who would vote for them, but not Dems. Is this realistic? Would Republicans cross over to vote for DSA Democrats? Well 77% of them call themselves conservatives, another 18% call themselves moderates, and just 4% call themselves liberals. Even among the whole electorate, liberals are the smallest share of the three options (conservative, moderate, and liberal). Could people not voting right now tip the scales in favor of the DSA types? Well, more non-voters favored Trump in 2024, so that’s not super promising. It doesn’t stand to reason that people calling themselves conservative or moderate in general would prefer the further left version of Democrats to the current version of Democrats that they also didn’t prefer to Trump. But there’s a greater danger here- it really wouldn’t take many existing Democrats just deciding they’re out on this to make the Democrats a hopeless minority forever. Democrats have received about 48% of the vote or more in every Presidential election since 1996, so let’s use that as a baseline. If ten percent of Democratic leaning voters decided they didn’t want to vote for this party anymore, the party would be a 43% national party and would lose both houses of Congress and the White House for a generation. A little over 40% of Democratic voters are independents that lean Democratic, and about 45% of them are moderates, at minimum. So figure conservatively somewhere around 20% of Democratic leaning voters are definitely well to the right of these people, at least. Losing half of them seems to be an automatic. Reality is that these numbers could be a lot more.
What’s the point in taking over a party that can’t win anymore? Ok, you win a majority of a small group and meanwhile the larger public is repulsed. It’s hard to put lipstick on a pig. You can say Mamdani is a model for Democratic Socialist governance if you want, but they can talk about the $4 billion bailout from Albany he got this year and the missed pension payment for city workers worth $2.3 billion more. We all know that $6.3 billion for a city is a lot of money. People who don’t live in these big, blue cities are not going to be as okay with that kind of government as the very progressive voters in those places. How do you sell this to people who are largely not all that ideological, let alone to anyone opposed to leftism?
The answer is you don’t, and you won’t. Yes, they are going to win elections in very blue areas right now. Expanding beyond that isn’t something they have even fathomed beyond some nonsense about “turning out non-voters” that probably don’t like them either. The whole thing is just Corbyn’s British Labour on steroids, and probably will go about as well. In what world are you going to sell voters in the Midwest, or even here, on electing people who are members of a political party that is nominating people supporting the Kremlin, Cuban communism, and people chanting “death to America” over in New York City? Literally why would any American with a sane mind look at the recent winners in New York City and Denver and be like, “yeah, I’m for this?” This is a dead end. For those of you who say “well the establishment Democrats lost too!,” yes, you are right. They lost in no small part because the country thought they were too obsessed with social justice and economic redistribution under Biden, how the hell do you think the country is going to react to someone who is actually a real life leftist?
The other day Bob “Crooksy” Brooks was sitting for a lunch with friends. As one would expect from Crooksy, he said something stupid. He made a joke about Mayor Sal Panto’s social media posting, saying something along the lines of he got drug for his social media postings, but at least he spelled them right. He probably figured he was sitting with friends, and he was. But well, the walls have ears when you run for Congress, and the walls couldn’t wait to tell me about it. Was his joke mildly funny? Sure. But Sal Panto is popular in Easton, and with good reason, he’s the best Mayor the city has ever had. Also though, Crooksy’s social media postings are cringe, cringe, cringe. And more cringe. He all but defends violence. Like the problem here isn’t whether or not Bob can put together a complete sentence (he barely can), it’s more that he spent most of his adult life spouting off offensive, racist shit before he decided he was a working class hero leftist politician. But that’s neither here nor there, he’s nominated now, amiright?
The right wing is just starting to tee up their line of attack against Bob for later this Fall. They dug up his hits on IAFF Fire Fighters who are volunteers too, and kind of easily, because the guy must not have his Facebook locked down. I mean, you’re running for Congress, man. The graphic above from Fox News ironically just uses his own words against his campaign statements, they didn’t even have to lie for once. Look, pro tip here- a former bartender should have a consistent position on how we tax tips for bartenders. Going on some bro podcast and calling Trump’s so-called (it’s not really, or at least not fully) “no tax on tips” position “garbage,” then having your handlers say you support it is campaign malpractice that’s impressively bad even for a knuckle dragger like Crooksy. The question is, is he dishonest, stupid, or both? I’m going with both. The result of that is he just shoots from the hip on policy questions and tells the room whatever he thinks they want to hear. Kind of makes sense now that he recently told a room of mostly Muslim Americans that Israel’s war in Gaza is a genocide, but when he was asked about cutting aid to Israel at a Lehigh Valley for All meeting a few months ago, he pulled his shirt over his face like he was afraid of the question. This guy believes whatever he’s told to believe. Consistency isn’t his thing.
If you believe the Democrats are going to win 30 seats and take the House in a wave this year, none of this will matter. Crooksy will win because Democrats win, and frankly any complaints I have against him won’t mean anything because the race will be too far gone. I don’t believe that at all. These midterm elections are going to be way more competitive than most Democratic activists want to believe. This is what happens when activists and electeds just talk to each other and confirm each other’s biases. The fact is that battleground voters think Democrats are nuts right now. They think we are more extreme than Republicans. They thought this in 2024 too, and then voted for Republicans. Now we’re nominating embarrassing, Mamdani-DSA candidates around the country.
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. The idea they sold voters on is that Crooksy would win back (white) working class voters because he’s a working class, union President with a bald head that said some stupid things on social media that makes him “authentic.” It’s literally the same as Platner’s story, to the word. We heard some of the same rhetoric around James Talarico’s campaign in Texas too. Well, how’s it going? Platner’s once mighty lead in Maine is gone, because his personal baggage is out now (oh hey, Crooksy), and he’s getting absolutely housed among white, non-college educated voters in Maine, the people he was supposed to pull back to the Democrats. Oops! Talarico is doing even worse. There’s less than zero reason to think that Crooksy is doing better with white non-college educated voters here, or frankly any other group that didn’t vote Democratic in 2024. He’s not. He’s probably going to be lucky to flip any individual precincts on Mackenzie, let alone communities, and therefore his pathway to victory will be motivating more core Democrats, the type that were the backbone of Susan Wild’s coalition, to show up. Frankly, he repulses a lot of those activist types, and I doubt he does much better with the 30 or 40 something year old college graduate couple living in the suburbs either.
Crooksy’s continual mistakes are going to burn him. And he’s going to keep making them.
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.
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.
Right now in Michigan there’s a three way primary on the Democratic side for U.S. Senate. The Republicans are going to nominate Mike Rogers, who might just win. General election polling shows that both Haley Stevens and Mallary McMorrow would lead Rogers and likely win. Both are losing the primary, in part because both are running and taking from the same voters. Instead “Doctor” Abdul el-Sayed, whose candidacy is a noun, a verb, and Gaza, leads the primary. He fashioned himself as a left-populist doctor, even though he apparently mostly has not practiced medicine, and in his last statewide run for Governor (2018), Gretchen Whitmer beat him like a drum. He trails polls against Rogers, in part because his candidacy is just a grab bag of left wing catch phrases, and in part because of serious questions about who he really is. He’s the only candidate we should be actively avoiding, and well, he’s the candidate winning.
Just across the river and down the road a bit is New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District. I worked there in 2014 for Bonnie Watson Coleman’s first run for Congress. It’s a mostly well-to-do, highly educated district that includes such well known towns as Trenton, Princeton, and Plainfield, and basically wraps around Rutgers. Bonnie retired this year, and Dr. Adam Hamawy has emerged from a crowded field as the favorite to replace her. We already knew that Hamawy was a close associate of, and testified on the behalf of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the Blind Sheikh. That was troublesome, but not on it’s own disqualifying- despite the association, Hamawy was not charged with anything. Now we find out that he volunteered in Bosnia with an organization called “Benevolent Front,” which of course was closed because it was an Al-Qaeda front group. Hamawy is leading polls in NJ-12, has the most money, and has a pro-Palestinian group making a huge TV buy for him. He is also nowhere near 50% of the vote, but his lead is solid. East Brunswick Mayor of East Brunswick, Shanel Robinson of the Somerset County Board of Commissioners, Plainfield Mayor Adrian Mapp, Trenton area State Assemblywoman Verlina Reynolds-Jackson, and second time Congressional candidate Sue Altman are all in this race as well, allowing him to win with way less than 50%.
We saw this in Pennsylvania more than a bit recently. AOC/Hasan Piker endorsed, left-wing slogan generating machine Chris Rabb won his primary in PA-3 with 44.66%, while promising a bunch of things he’ll never even get close to delivering in Congress. Again, Sharif Street and Dr. Ala Stanford split 53.28% of the vote amongst them as the “normie” Dems. Here in PA-7, Bernie Sanders endorsed left winger and man who stiffed his mother-in-law out of $55k for over 20 years, Bob “Crooksy” Brooks won his four way primary with 41.01% of the vote, shackling Democrats with a deadbeat with two or three functioning brain cells as their candidate. Over and over again, we are picking problematic, dumb, scary candidates to run for office with a simple plurality of the vote in these insular, out of touch primaries. These people basically represent a fringe of the most partisan, most out of touch voters. They’re embarrassing.
These people are all fucking embarrassments to humanity. I’m sorry, pardon the French, but these people shouldn’t walk your dog, let alone represent you anywhere as a leader. It’s fairly obvious that the consultant class down in the bubble that is the Beltway decided this was the year to flirt with weirdos and wackos, because they somehow think this will convince white guys to vote for them. Of course it’s going to fail, but this what happens when you let a bunch of rejected dorks try to figure out how to connect with “every man” types. The moral of the story is not to let Jeff Coote, Rebecca Katz, and Morris Katz be your strategists on reaching guys who drink beer and watch the Red Sox. But beyond that, it is very apparent that there are folks at the DCCC, DSCC, and DNC who are all co-signing this shit. They’re so out of touch that they think running Nazis, terrorists, deadbeats, and possibly even folks who want to have concentration camps will appeal to “normal” people. Perhaps our biggest concern should be the lack of intellectual ability in the operative class in 2026.
Ken Martin’s entire tenure at the DNC, and really the direction of the party since about 2015, has been a disaster. Much as the GOP of John McCain and Speaker John Boehner allowed the Teahadists into the ten in 2008 to 2014, these feeble and feckless leaders have allowed antisemites, terrorist adjacent, scumbags, and losers into the Democratic tent. It ended badly for the GOP and the country, and well, guess what will happen here?
America is about to turn 250 years old. The people being chosen to lead us are increasingly moon howlers and embarrassments to humanity. The 2026 Election is literally shaping up as a race to the bottom, where we have to decide if disgraces on our “side” are better than “sheeple” on the other. It’s disgraceful and maybe the best sign that our republic needs a full makeover moving forward.
Josh Shapiro was going to come campaign for Bob “Crooksy” Brooks tomorrow- before he wasn’t. He pulled out in the eleventh hour. Was it the planned protests against him? Or was it late polling showing problems? Street word is the latest polling was inconclusive and very close. Crosswell has an outside shot from what I hear. It’s likely to come down to Deadbeat Bob and McClure though- they’ve been first and second in the last three polls I’ve seen. While Carol was fourth in two of those three, I bet she over performs by a few points on Election Day.
The Governor and Crooksy thought everyone would fall in line behind the scam campaign to sell him as a good Democrat for the Fall. Despite a 2:1 advantage in dark money spending for Crooksy in this election, his backers are worried and pouring money in. A Medicare For All PAC went up spending for Deadbeat Bob this week. All of these groups are seeing that in fact, endorsements from the Governor, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, half the dark money groups on God’s green earth, Satan, and Elizabeth Warren, they could never quite sell a guy who stiffed his own Mother-in-Law. If they’re lucky, they’ll sneak a weak, morally bankrupt person across the line with like 30-33% of the vote. They truly had to shove this pile of donkey loaf down our throats.
It’s bad enough to get a million text messages from people on the ballot, how about getting text messages from people who got kicked off the ballot? Well, if you wanted that, you’re in luck.
Taiba was already kicked off the ballot. She had no chance to begin with, but she has a chance to lose by Saddam Hussein like numbers now. She’s claimed dark money is being spent against her (Where? By who? She’s not on the ballot, why would someone giver her attention?). Above she’s making a case about being homeless, which is quite sad, but what is the point? Is she claiming the residents of the district and their lawyer who sued are responsible for high rent? Is she claiming Harrisburg insiders did this? I mean look, I think some of them are bad, but she was on Easton City Council when a lot of these high end buildings got built. Is she the insider?
This campaign was quixotic when she was on the ballot. It’s lunacy now. I’m glad she’s doing this though, and not hoarding money away to run for Mayor.
Apocalypse Vibes 