America

Pennsylvania’s Dysfunctional Government

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

Podcast Episode: Democratic Fights And Crooksy Chaos

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

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

The 2026 Map: Real Gains, Real Ceilings

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crooksy Brooks: A Case Study in Self-Inflicted Damage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

America at 250: Pride Without Amnesia

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Democrats Got Wrong.

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

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

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

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

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

Bernie, Platner, Crooksy

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Well, the NRCC didn’t wait much on this.

Brooks uses Fight Agency, the same consultants tied to Platner’s campaign, and has shown no interest in dropping them. 

“Bernie Bro Bob Brooks is backed by far-left political allies who helped prop up alleged sexual abuser Graham Platner. Brooks won’t distance himself from them because he is exactly what the Democrat machine produces: a self-serving socialist who protects the system, not families.” – NRCC Spokesman Reilly Richardson

This isn’t new, if you’ve been reading here, and it’s not shocking. Much like the Nazi in Maine, Bob doesn’t really like people who aren’t white. Crooksy hates Barack Obama, and Platner’s whole campaign was against the party. As you can see above, they are both Bernie backed candidates. Let’s take a look at some of Bernie’s other greatest hits:

You know, it’s about time for this “revolution” to die. I have to hand it to Crooksy though- he’s maybe not a Russian asset, Nazi, or Shrek, but he did stiff his former mother-in-law. Bernie and Fight Agency are really picking out some fantastic people to run for Congress.

Meanwhile Crooksy is crowing about an internal showing him up 47-43 in July. That’s a lot smaller lead than Platner had two months ago. When the NRCC opens fire on this guy, he really may implode. Especially if he keeps talking.

The Delusions of the Progressive Populist Left

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment
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?

Happy Birthday America

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Yes it was real.

Well, I’m home from eating hot dogs and hamburgers, drinking beers, and shooting off fireworks to celebrate America’s 250th birthday. No, I didn’t watch any of Trump’s speeches or freak show. No, I didn’t watch Mamdani’s speech either, because he’s not our leader. I divorced myself from real world politics today, and well, it was nice.

A lot of folks have suggested that Trump, and the issues facing our nation, made this July 4th less worth celebrating than past ones. Not surprisingly, I don’t agree. Part of celebrating America is celebrating the ideals of it, not necessarily the day-to-day reality of it. I also happen to think that a nation is a lot more than the sum of it’s government and laws. It’s worth noting that our Declaration of Independence was written years before our first real legal document, the Constitution, and is far more of an idealist document. It is a document that celebrates freedom, independence, and the idea of a country where all people are free to live as they want. It’s a beautiful document. It is a beautiful idea. And yes, we are a beautiful country.

The United States has a lot of failings. Slavery. The Trail of Tears. Japanese Internment Camps. Jim Crow. Segregation. The Immigration Act of 1924. The Iraq War. The Patriot Act. The War on Drugs. The way we treated Vietnam veterans when they came home from the war. I would argue January 6th and the current actions of ICE are not good moments. Our failings are pretty bi-partisan and very real. I suppose if you’re an absolutist, you could cancel us as a nation. Lord knows we’ve done it to plenty of people who we shouldn’t have.

We’re also the greatest country on Earth. There is a reason my friends in foreign countries *want* to come here. There’s a reason millions of people try to immigrate here illegally, or overstay visas, or try to float from Cuba, or even seek to marry to get here. It’s better here than it is there. Sure, it’s not *equally* better for all people, we don’t all have the same opportunities, and that’s a problem we should be trying to fix every day. No, I’m sorry though, there’s not really somewhere else I’d rather be. And you know, the rest of the world wants us at our best. The French maintain a cemetery at Normandy because brave Americans of all stripes were willing to sacrifice their lives for their freedom, as they did for us during the Revolution. We’re the country that lead the 20th century in innovation. We landed on the Moon. We won the World Wars. We built the interstate highway system. We built suburbia. We were a leader in the industrial revolution. Nations across the globe quote our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution in their own founding documents. Millions come see our musicians, actresses, and athletes when they come to their countries. Yes, sure, we did some shitty stuff in history that we should reckon with and avoid doing again. We’ve also done the greatest shit in world history. Like individual people, we should hang our head in shame because of our worst moments. Screw that, it’s no way to live. Billions live in freedom around the globe today, either directly because of what we did, or in part because of the inspiration of our own revolution. We fought a whole war with Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, and he and his nation directly quoted Thomas Jefferson in the opening of their very own Declaration of Independence. We’re not perfect, we’re not even the only great nation in this world, but dammit be proud, we’re the best.

So yeah, I celebrated like a red blooded American today. The idea of this country, the great things we do, matters a lot more to me than the failings. I hope to hell all of you celebrated too. God bless America.

What is the MLB Labor Dispute Really About?

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Photo by Richard Wilkins Jr.

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.

As I said, they want to be the NFL. The NFL receives over $13 billion in television money. According to the latest estimates I could find, every single NFL team (regardless of market size) received an equal $432.6 million media rights pay out. The NFL Salary Cap is $301.2 million. Including benefits and other costs, players cost around $378 million a year. Maybe you don’t love math, but what that means is that a lazy team could spend very close to the salary cap and probably come out ahead or even after all their other operational expenses without selling a single ticket, any merchandise, or monetizing anything else. In reality, they’re doing much better than that. From Yahoo Sports:

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 Folks are Mentally Ill

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

In about an hour we’re probably going to see some far leftists win Congressional primaries in New York. Daria Avila Chevalier (NY-13) was protesting Israel on October 8th, 2023, she thinks America bullied Russia into invading Ukraine, she doesn’t believe *anyone* should be deported (even violent criminals), she’s for ending police and abolishing the border, she called Joe Biden a war criminal, she called white women “ugly,” and called the United States a disgrace that is worse than Hamas. Nearby in NY-7 is her friend Claire Valdez, who is partially running on her opposition to Israel coming before her opponent, as well as her support for unifying Ireland (no one is fighting for this in 2026). Then there’s Brad Lander, challenging Daniel Goldman on the all important Gaza issue in NY-10, and he admits that all the antisemitism makes him feel “queasy,” as he does it. Virtually everyone is a lunatic in NY-12, so I’ll just leave that alone, no sense attacking the whole field when only one nut can win, right?

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.

Congrats New York. You’re weird.

Political Gravity in 2026

/ Rich Wilkins / 3 Comments
Random Dick Nixon photo.

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.