The Democratic Party

Why Ryan Mackenzie and Republicans are Going to Lose

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

Over the weekend, Bob “Crooksy” Brooks trotted out his ex-wife with a “letter to the editor” to defend him for stealing money from his ex-mother-in-law. She attacked Ryan Mackenzie for hitting Bob for taking the money and said Mackenzie knows “it isn’t true” and the case has been “dismissed.” I mean, that’s cute, and it was dismissed, almost certainly after he paid the money he owed, because the fact is both the trial court and the appeals court found as a matter of fact, that Bob took the money and stiffed his ex-mother-in-law. I’ve linked to the Superior Court opinion more times than I can count, so here’s one more time. Of course his ex-wife stands with him against her mother- she also took the original $55,000, also didn’t pay it back, and also was sued. I mean, maybe we should ask the dude who drove the white Ford Bronco about OJ while we’re at it, or maybe Bonnie is available to comment on Clyde.

It’s not going to matter a lick though. While Bob’s camp might think this is going to change minds, it’s not, and it won’t need to. The New York Times shows that Brooks, and Democrats in general, are on their way to victory. Despite the fact that Democrats are on their way to a crushing victory, and Josh Shapiro is heading towards a 20 point win for Governor, Bob Brooks is stuck below 50%. Ryan Mackenzie’s relentless campaign beat Brooks up for his personal failings essentially worked, and still, that won’t matter. Ryan Mackenzie is a deeply unpopular incumbent who can’t reach 45% (all three other incumbent, embattled PA Republican Congressmen top 45%), running with a deeply unpopular Republican President, and even though they’ve managed to keep Brooks under 50% in a favorable environment to Brooks, none of that matters. Trump and Mackenzie are less popular than a guy who a majority thinks stiffed his wife. Let that sink in and tell you what is going to happen on Tuesday.

Brooks and many other Democrats are polling just under 50%, but winning likely voter screens by a margin of error or slightly better margin all over the country. In fact the Democratic Party in general is not every popular right now. It doesn’t matter because a significant portion of Republicans are simply fed up with Trump’s bullshit and aren’t voting, or are voting third party, or in more rare cases are crossing over to the Democrats. Gas, health care, housing, and groceries cost too damn much. Those checks we were supposed to get from DOGE never came. The “peace President” that Trump claimed he was is in a war in Iran that he’s not only failing to win despite having the best military in the world, it is driving inflation through the roof because of what it did to oil supply chains. People wanted immigration policy that prioritized enforcement and made sense, and what they got were masked secret police picking up non-threatening school kids, crushing the agricultural work force, and shooting citizens in the street. The Trump Presidency has been a disaster for everyone, but it has been really bad to Trump’s white and Latino “blue collar” base who are particularly hit hard by things like expensive diesel and groceries. Mackenzie could literally have put the ex-mother-in-law into an ad to tell the world herself how bad Brooks is, and voters weren’t going to care when they feel they are getting screwed personally themselves by Mackenzie’s “service” to our community. Shit, unless Brooks was taking directly from their mom, I don’t think most voters value that over their own situations.

If you follow early voting, Republicans are struggling everywhere from Kansas to California, from New Jersey to Florida, to meet their 2022 numbers, let alone Trump’s 2024 numbers. Democrats aren’t feeling the love, they’re just not the public’s current whipping boy. It’s too early to know yet, but Trump may very well be withering away the realignment he built over the last decade, setting us up for a fourth 21st century political realignment based on whoever emerges in 2028. It also could just be a mid-term blip, like 2010 and 2022, that ended up not being predictive of the future at all. When Trump won in 2016, I predicted a twenty year period of political volatility and chaos in America that we now seem to be about a decade into. Lots of Speakers, a run of one term presidencies, cultural polarization, and general disillusionment. We’re in it. And the fact is, the public hates it. They’re willing to vote for people and things they don’t like, because they hate the alternative more. One would think that *eventually* one of the parties would moderate towards a political position more palatable to a clear majority of the public, but decreasing party membership means less rational actions. In short, it’s the Republicans turn to deeply disappoint Americans with deeply stupid things like cuts to programs people used, destructive things like opening the border and ignoring inflation in the last term by Democrats. Democrats should not take this as an endorsement of nutty ideas. They hopefully see an opportunity though and do some helpful stuff that is popular. Hopefully.

How I’ll Probably Vote

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

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

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

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

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

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

Is Crooksy Too Toxic for Shapiro Now?

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

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.

Sultana Beats the Dead Horse Almost as Bad as Boscola Will Beat Her

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

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.

Time to Take Away “Hasan the Hun’s” Hot Mic

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

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

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

The fact that we are spending time on him is wasteful. The fact that we have elected Democrats seemingly coming out against him at the same time makes him look too important. We have spent much of the last decade doing this. Let’s be clear, Kamala Harris did not lose in 2024 because of leftist agitators or some coordinated effort to withhold votes from her. She lost because Democrats lacked standing and credibility with “normie” voters and let’s face it, she is a Black woman running in a country that has a racist and sexist undercurrent in it’s electorate, not to mention 5+ years of Republicans framing her as stupid, soulless, and extreme. It’s more comforting to blame extremists like Piker and Mamdani, and they don’t help, but it’s also a fictional story.

The only winner in this saga is Piker. He’ll grow his audience from the attention of being a martyr. He still won’t capture an audience large enough to be a true kingmaker of any kind, but let’s not let math get in the way. The correct response for *the party* is to simply ignore this vile loser. Nobody that believes we deserved 9/11 is going to vote for Democrats in 2026 or 2028. Let this man grift off of his audience in the relative obscurity he belongs in. We really don’t need our own Charlie Kirk.

The System the Democrats Insist on Saving Isn’t Worth the Saving

/ Rich Wilkins / 3 Comments

A week ago today, Congressional Democrats sure had some real leverage. The Republican Party controlled the White House, both houses of Congress, every agency in the government, and the courts, but needed Democratic votes in the Senate to pass a funding bill to keep the government open. Senate Democrats half the ability to kill the completely partisan House spending plan and force a bipartisan plan that rolled back much of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts. If Republicans refused to make an agreement, Democrats could have walked away and left them holding the bag. After all, the offer on the table was absolutely nothing at all. Trump told them to pound sand.

By now you know what happened. Chuck Schumer’s Senate Democrats, fearing that Trump’s White House would destroy the government if they let it shut down, sent 20% of their caucus over to bend the knee. They took the offer of nothing and gave the Republicans a hand. In the week since, the Trump Administration has still managed to burn down the government. He signed an executive order to basically close the Department of Education. He held an infomercial for Tesla at the White House. They ignored a court order to halt deportations without having hearings to determine if the people being deported were even immigrants or not. They even took down Jackie Robinson’s biography page at the Department of Defense, saying the Hall-of-Famer and veteran of war fell under their anti-DEI policy. It turns out that regardless of whether the Democrats voted to fund the government or not, Trump was going to Trump.

We just had a four year Presidency where the underlying theme was restoring normalcy. It turns out the public was completely not interested. This shouldn’t be that shocking. Basically since 9/11, public polling has said the American public almost constantly feels our country has been on the wrong track. It turns out that terror attacks, Enron, Iraq, priests molesting kids, a bank crash, Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme, school shootings, the Patriot Act, Afghanistan, the bank bailouts, COVID, Me Too, Epstein, celebrities stealing PPP loans, opioids, inflation, a broken immigration system, wars in the Ukraine, Syria, and Gaza, and probably lots of bad shit I’m forgetting, has left people feeling as though the world is in decay. It turns out that giving us some unchecked social media, cryptocurrencies, and trash reality TV isn’t making us feel better. Returning to normal doesn’t sound that appealing. Being the party that insists we’ll make it normal again doesn’t help much. Maybe, just maybe, burning it down in the name of a fight over something, like maybe Social Security and Medicaid, would be pretty appealing.

Democrats need to lay out some sort of new vision. Many people who were loyal Obama voters 15 years ago have given up on the product being offered. Responding to banks melting down our economy with a bailout and not jail sentences in the name of a better regulatory system for the economy we have wasn’t it. Responding to people without health care with a better system to buy health care doesn’t excite people. Responding to a crooked student loan system by giving people some forgiveness while leaving the system in tact, only to predictably have it struck down in court, wasn’t popular. Responding to a broken and unfair immigration system with some executive orders and hoping it went away, well you get the point. Continuing to put up some smart, corporate, highly educated Congressional candidates who promise to “run the system better” and maybe throw around some buzz words like “empathy,” is about as appealing as Taco Bell leftovers in your fridge from two weeks ago. The status quo blows, and everyone knows it. Not one fucking halfway normal human being wants to “bend the cost curve” on health care, they want greater coverage for less money out of their pockets.

The Democrats had a chance to demand some good things a week ago, and they passed on it. They passed on it because they were afraid that if they shut down the status quo they’ve spent a generation defending, we would be worse off. Most of the public thinks we’ve been worse off for many years. All the shock to the system they were afraid of, we’re getting anyway. Say whatever you want about Trump, at least he can tell which way the wind is blowing.