2026-election

Why the 2026 Senate Races May be to 2028 What the 2022 House Races Were to 2024

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

The Democratic Party needs to net four U.S. Senate seats to flip the chamber in 2026. Even earlier this year, that was not going to happen. Conventional wisdom before this cycle was that North Carolina and Maine were serious pick-up opportunities, but Democrats had to deal with Georgia, Michigan, and New Hampshire, and so even in a good cycle, they may actually come out behind a seat or two, simply because of the map. I’m happy to report that will not happen in 2026. The races in North Carolina and Georgia do not even look close. New Hampshire is far from over, but Congressman Pappas has a lead that hovers near 5%, and the MAGA brand is just toxic in that state at this point, something that has kept John Sununu in a vice all race. Maine is close, in part because of how weird this race was, and because Susan Collins has always been able to outrun the letter after her name. Oh, and while he’s fine as a Senator, Troy Jackson is kind of weird. As for Michigan, our candidate has challenges. Lots of challenges.

Even with those challenges, if you put a gun to my head today and asked me to make a prediction, I’d say that the Democrats probably win at least four of the five. In other words, I think they’re at least +1 in the original battleground states. Democrats are wildly over performing though in 2026. Democrats got very strong nominees in Ohio (Former Senator Sherrod Brown), Alaska (former at-large Congresswoman Mary Peltola), Iowa (State Representative Josh Turek), and Texas (State Representative James Talarico), or at least the strongest nominee who was available to them. Still other states like Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Florida, and South Carolina, all chalked up as almost certain losses even six months ago, are surprisingly close, and even states like Montana, the GOP nominee has poor polling numbers. If these races are *actually* competitive, it means the Democrats probably swept the first group, at least one would think, and are at +2 and need just two of the four particularly strong nominees to pull through to flip the chamber. Right? The math is really good.

At least it looks like that. Three basic math problems though.

The first is John Fetterman. He says he won’t switch parties. Everyone who has been around him from the Democratic side says he won’t switch. Do you trust him to not? If the Democrats win 51 seats, Fetterman could simply switch and J.D. Vance would break the tie in the GOP’s favor. No more majority. Maybe just as bad, he could simply hold the entire chamber hostage as essentially a rogue Democrat, making passing anything impossible. With two years until his re-election, Fetterman might just hold us hostage. You know, I remember his supporters in 2022 telling me what a strong fighter he was…

The second problem is that Democrats seem to be having issues in three seats that they really should be winning in a year where Trump’s disapproval is breaking records, the House appears to be won, and Republicans are about as popular as mold in your house. Maine and Michigan I talked about above, but polls from Minnesota really aren’t too great either. Now look, if you asked me, I think they win them all. However, what if the real story here in 2026 is that Blue states are sick of Democrats shit, just to a lesser degree than Red states are sick of Republicans?

The third problem? The battlegrounds are really red. From The New York Times “On Politics” this morning:

The Senate is not the House.

The poll found that likely voters preferred Democratic candidates over Republicans by 11 percentage points in their congressional districts. That’s a big number, my colleague Nate Cohn writes:

In this particular poll, the Democratic lead is large enough that the party would still deliver a significant victory even if it were off by as much as the polls were in 2016 or 2020.

But when our pollsters asked voters in the 35 states that have a Senate race whether they would vote for the Democrat or the Republican, the Democrats’ lead narrowed to just five points. That could be a sign that reclaiming the Senate is still a tall order for Democrats, who are trying to flip seats in several red states while battling it out in purple states, too.

Hear me out here- Ohio, Alaska, Iowa, and Texas were not very close in 2024. In fact, they really weren’t even super close in 2020, for the most part. Talarico could run like four points better than Harris, and Paxton four points worse than Trump, and the result wouldn’t change. Sherrod Brown could run a bit better than he did in 2024, same for Peltola, and they still might lose. Turek could run considerably better in Iowa, and yes, still lose. In fact, they could all lose by 1-2% very easily, and still have run fantastic campaigns. These seats are absurdly hard if you dig into their performance after Barack Obama left the Oval Office.

It is entirely possible that the momentum of the cycle means the Democrats are going to win every jump ball this year. Trump is not popular at all, and that is the most important indicator in the average modern midterm. Unlike the House, where gerrymandering is the chief challenge now, in the Senate it’s simply the schedule of which seats are up for election. The seats are hard. If I had to gamble tonight, I’d predict the Democrats to win four seats and have 51 the morning after the election (then we can hold our breath over Fetterstein). All I am saying to you is that it is more than a little possible that it will not. Democrats could end up netting 2-3 seats and over performing by 5-6% over what you would have thought at the start of the cycle. It wouldn’t be enough.

In 2022, the narrative after the election was that the GOP had a horrible midterm. After taking over 40 seats in Bill Clinton’s first midterm, and over 60 in Barack Obama’s first midterm, Republicans only won 9 seats in the 2022 U.S. House races. Obviously the fall of Roe v. Wade was a big part of that, as was better gerrymanders than in the past. We all sort of missed the story though. While Democrats over performed and made everyone gush over “how well they did,” the Republican Party won the popular vote by 3 million votes. They won it by 2.7%. They also won the majority with 222 votes. They did perform better than the Democrats.

And two years after that victory, they won the trifecta. They won the White House. It turns out their actual wins were the better predictor of the future. If the Democrats come up short in the Senate, well… let’s check back in 2028.

Brooks Pulls Out of PA-7 Debate

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

Bob Brooks has pulled out of the only scheduled debate with Ryan Mackenzie. There’s only two explanations for this- the first is that Mackenzie has something more to drop on him in the debate and they want to avoid the visual, or second, Brooks is wildly unprepared to go on stage. I would be tempted to say this could be because Brooks has great polling, but that is obviously not true by the fact that both parties are continuing to spend here as if this is a very competitive race, as opposed to what they are doing across the river in NJ-7.

I can’t even begin to tell you how weak this looks. I can’t remember the last Democratic nominee for Congress in the Lehigh Valley who didn’t *want* to debate. Even in rough years, where things were going against them, candidates like Ed O’Brien, John Callahan, and Rick Daugherty relished getting on stage and debating against much stronger candidates like Pat Toomey and Charlie Dent. Brooks should want to call Mackenzie the MAGA shill that he is on camera, and create visuals that play positively for him. Instead, they are apparently afraid to put Brooks on stage.

This is unnecessary and ridiculous. Bob Brooks is probably going to win this race by 2-3% if the race is allowed to just play out to its logical conclusion. Sure, I hear his personal approval is underwater in a couple of polls, but people hate Donald Trump, and Ryan Mackenzie is essentially his foot rest in Congress. Democrats have a serious shot to flip as many as four state legislative seats in just the Lehigh Valley, according to independent polling out last week. The idea that if Brooks just doesn’t go to the debate, the negative hits on him will go away is absurd- if anything this just draws more interest in what he has to hide. Now the question is what he was afraid to answer for, what more is out there, and what his campaign thinks is bad enough to damage him in the 11th hour enough to make people who hate Trump, vote for Mackenzie. This doesn’t make the weakness go away, it emboldens it.

This is what the brain trusts thought was strongest for 2026. The brain rot at the top levels of this party is… well, it’s something. Not something good. But something.

Updated Midterm Predictions

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

We are 20 days from the 2026 Election. Here is my updated predictions, as of right now.

U.S. Senate- Democrats +5, capturing the Senate with 52 votes. They flip North Carolina, Ohio, Alaska, Texas, and Maine. I think the race in Iowa ends up in a coin flip, but the GOP hangs on by a couple of decimal points. I think the winds of anger help Democrats hang on to Michigan and Minnesota in fairly close races, while New Hampshire goes by about 4 points, and Georgia goes comfortably. I think Democratic expansion targets like Kansas, Florida, Mississippi, and Arkansas all fall short by single digits *in that order).

U.S. House- Democrats need to flip 4 seats. They will flip 4 seats. Put a gun to my head right now and I’d tell you the exact number is 14 or 15 seats to the net positive in the end. Cook and Sabato seem to agree that 213 or 214 seats, basically what the Dems have now, are safe. The rest of the battle is mostly on offensive terrain for the Democrats. I am saying Democrats hold most of their embattled seats that aren’t long gone from redistricting, and win about 60% of the GOP’s seats in play. On the high side, maybe this wave reaches 20. That’s a far cry from 2018. This Democratic Party isn’t super popular itself though. Re-districting changes took a pretty good chunk of seats and made many safer than they were. And well, in the end, 20 even bets on all of the Dem candidates with issues not shitting the bed. For what it’s worth, they have PA-7 and NJ-7 as Lean Democrats, PA-8 as a toss-up, and PA-1 as Lean Republican right now. I’d predict Bennett to win NJ-7 by 5% and Brooks to win PA-7 by 2-3%. So candidate quality is playing a factor in those results.

I’ll add that I think Governor Shapiro wins by 21% and the Democrats win 25 State Senate seats *on the dot*, flipping the chamber. But I could easily be dissuaded down to 24.

Two Peas in a Pod

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

Earlier today, someone said something sort of amazing to me- that they were happy the Dodgers were in the NLCS because it made ad time during the game more expensive, so they wouldn’t have to see ads from Ryan Mackenzie and Bob Brooks. You know, I started to argue how I’m enjoying the ads, because both guys deserve it, and then I just stopped. They’re right. The ads are disgusting. And you know what else? They’re true.

Ryan Mackenzie is an awful Congressman who deserves to lose. He voted in lockstep with Donald Trump’s GOP. He voted to make health care for millions of us who *buy* it more expensive. He voted to cut Medicaid, effectively a death sentence for Gracedale and Cedarbrook nursing homes, protecting our local seniors. He voted for ICE raids that the architects admit are targeting a sizable number of people who committed no crime at all, including illegal immigration. He supported policies that drove prices up, from your utility bills to your gasoline, from your groceries to your housing, and touching on every area of your life. Life is worse because of Donald Trump and Ryan Mackenzie’s “service” to our nation. He won’t even vote force all of the Epstein files public.

I’ve talked ad nauseam about what a pile of donkey loaf Bob “Crooksy” Brooks is, and well, you’ve seen all of that brought up in the advertisements. Brooks was never an “every man,” he is a fraud. He did take from his former mother-in-law, and tried to never pay her back. He did stop insuring his employees, in violation of Pennsylvania law. He did say that he hated Barack Obama, and that guns are the answer. Hell, he talked about supporting guns on demand after mass shootings. He has a pattern of racist behavior and statements. Frankly, I don’t know how we even consider this man a Democrat, but for the fact that the bar is in the dirt in 2026.

These two men are two peas in a pod. I’m embarrassed for my community that one of these guys will represent us next year. I can’t bring myself to back either, despite how badly I’d like both to lose. I really can’t blame any of you for whatever choice you make in the voting booth, to be honest. Bob is a deplorable person (yes I chose the word “deplorable”), an embarrassment really. Yes, Ryan Mackenzie is actively harmful with his record. I’ve had Democratic operatives trying to send me material to post about Mackenzie, material about his personal life that frankly disgusts me. I just can’t. So I’m just not. If I had to guess, Brooks will win despite terrible personal approval in polling, but watching him run an ad that begins with “a good neighbor is more important than a distant relative” to combat his negative personal numbers from screwing his family makes me think that the braintrust around him are worried about something they see. Either way, I’m still guessing Trump is the most toxic asset in this race. I don’t care though. I can’t stomach that this time, all of the attacks are true.

Is it Worse to be a Crook, or a Republican, in 2026?

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

The case against every Republican in Washington, and even Harrisburg, is simple- everything costs too much, and their policies made it so. By kneeling before a mad man President, they created a monster. An inflation crisis that was slowly improving is now an inflation disaster- gas, health care, food, and housing, essential core building blocks of life that we cannot skip as people, cost too much. The “Big, Beautiful Bill,” a failed trade war, a botched and unnecessary war in Iran, and rampant and undeniable corruption have wrecked our economy, made our country weak, and destroyed our place in the world. Republicans are heading towards a brutal wipeout that they earned.

Of course, the problem with this is that the Democratic Party is troublesome right now. As a lifelong Democrat, I am trying to navigate the mess we have made. I’ve sent thousands of dollars from the pac I work at to candidates this week, some of whom I have issues with. Small problems that are actually big ones, things like whether a candidate wants to scrap the Affordable Care Act for a larger, unworkable government plan, I’m overlooking, basically because ending Trump’s functional power as President is more of a priority. More core, fundamental things, such as embracing antisemitism, calling for the abolition of borders, police, and prisons as a whole, are not. The truly personally terrible few who are running. Candidates who would steal from their own family? I’m taking a hard pass there. A crook is no more worth a vote than an imbecile.

I obviously won’t vote for Ryan Mackenzie. He’s awful. But Bob “Crooksy” Brooks? I’m still a hard no on him. I’ll just leave it blank. Why? Because what they’re saying about him is true. So even as I send out checks and independent expenditures to candidates in Alaska, Florida, Wisconsin, Maine, California, and other places in the hopes of the Democrats ending Trump’s reign of terror on the world, here at home I just can’t stomach our local version of John Fetterman and Graham Platner.

Democrats spent the last decade chastising the GOP for putting “party over country.” Voting for some of these folks we are running would prove we were nothing but scolding hypocrites who would do the same thing in pursuit of power. Most people already believe that, which is why they allowed themselves to vote for Donald Trump to begin with. I have quite a few friends happy to prove them right, apparently.

No One is Coming to Save Abdul from Piker’s Sins

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

Abdul El-Sayed is actually sort of likable and talented, if we ignore political differences that you can’t just wave off between him and I. Don’t take this as a change in position on the Michigan Democratic Senate nominee, take it as an admission of reality, and one I did not agree with during the primaries. Most of the folks on social media who also don’t like AES will disagree, calling him smug or worse, but frankly, that’s a biased view. It’s enough for me to say I couldn’t support him based on content, we can tell the truth that the guy is mildly entertaining.

I could put up with his unworkable position on health care, because frankly we know the truth about progressives and their stupid “Medicare for All” proposal- they’ll never even bring it to a vote, because they know idea how they’re going to make the program they describe work, no idea how they’ll pay for it, and no clue what the CBO would score it (the ironic part, because honestly, the good and bad math of it is kind of painfully clear). I could absolutely put up with his nonsensical rhetoric about Gaza too, if it were on it’s own, as I know that he could not have been nominated without the votes he received on campuses and in Dearborn, places where it’s possible for actual likely war crimes to become “genocide” by a nuclear power in their minds, even without a significant change in the population of Gaza. Sure, I’m letting AES take fantasy policy positions that are at best annoying, and at worst harmful, basically so we can elect a shitty Senator and get to 51 votes for a Democratic majority. I do recognize Trump is a crisis here.

Of course, then there’s Hasan Piker, and well, no. A month or two ago, Morris Katz’s online army of bots and academics were telling us that we had to embrace Hasan as our conquering king when he was pushing a vile Nazi on us as our Senate nominee in Maine. Now of course we need to forgive AES, because of course, Piker is “just a Twitch streamer.” Funny how that happens. Back when Piker first started becoming an issue this year, I had this to say:

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%.

My thought on “Hasan the Hun” from the starts was we should have ignored him, ostracized him, and shunned him. If we weren’t nominating people campaigning with him because they say they “fight” (they’re all Bernie Sanders endorsed candidates, a man who has been a deadbeat member of Congress for over 30 years, doing nothing for his check.), we could ignore Piker like the trash he is. Instead we’re stuck with him as a part of our dialogue, and now the only choice for any sane Democrat is to bury him as the waste pile he is. If it costs us a race somewhere, that’s better than seeing him in attack ads for years to come. He’s a vile human being and we should want to discredit him as a person anyway.

If someone says “America deserved 9/11,” regardless of the context, we should condemn them as a piece of shit. In fact, his exact wording was “America deserved 9/11, dude. Fuck it, i’m saying it.” That’s frankly even worse. Now, if you listen to the whole segment, and I did out of fairness, he was talking about the concept of “blowback” in foreign policy, something any Moravian Political Science grad in the 2000’s read about existensively- that our actions lead to 9/11. I’ll credit him for that being his rationalization, then say that he’s still a piece of shit, because I don’t believe anything but awful people lead to terrorism. I don’t give any room for this sort of equivocation. 9/11 was rotten to it’s core and has no redeeming or understandable qualities. Putting Bin Laden in an unmarked grave was too kind.

Hasan Piker is a political loser that can never find his way to 50% in a civilized nation or world- but I guess in a streamer world where 1% of America makes you a shit ton of money, you matter. Abdul El-Sayed brought him to Michigan to help him win a primary. The media has decided to ask him directly about all of the vile, disgusting shit Piker said. This, unfortunately, is politics. Remember when all of us Biden lovers implored people and the media to discuss his economic stats instead of just inflation and him being old? Remember when everyone thought Trump saying “grab ’em by the pussy” would matter more than Hillary’s email server? Remember two years ago when a lot of you screamed to stop discussing “they/them,” and to instead discuss everything Trump did? Remember the whole election about Al Gore being a dork that “claimed” to invent the internet, and not the fact that George W. Bush had an 85 IQ? The whole 2004 election was a giant gaslighting. And before you say it’s unfair, they actually do ask the GOP stuff too. They asked Trump directly in debates about the Proud Boys, his past comments, and him claiming Haitians were “eating the dogs, eating the cats,” and well, he shrugged them off. And none of his voters cared. That’s why the standards are different. For some of you, the answer is to just be like the GOP. So we should should dismiss bad actors on our side who want to throw Black folks, LGBTQ folks, Jews, or whoever under the bus so we can… try the failed economic system of the Soviet Union? I’m confused, to be honest. I mean, I guess, we could go the FDR route and build a “safety net” for whites only, but I don’t think that’s what a lot of us signed up for.

Even assuming that all Democrats could stomach this nonsense, AES’s strategy of waving aside questions about Piker is a dead end. The media isn’t just going to decide to drop the questions. That’s not how elections work. He’s going to be dogged with questions about Piker the rest of the way, because he decided to bring him to Michigan to campaign for him. If you like the milk, you get the cow. There is a fix though- just denounce him. Just come out and say he’s an awful person for what he said, in explicit terms. Be done with it. A clean ambush. The rest of us Democrats who won’t forgive your association with him have nothing to bitch and complain about. The media has no real story to run with, other than your flip flop, which frankly is better than associating yourself with terrorism. The questions lose their potency. You solve the worst of the problem.

Keep it simple, stupid.

Governor GPT’s Congressional Candidate Probably has Multiple Answers on Data Centers

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll vote for Josh Shapiro in the end, I guess. Stacey Garrity (Did I spell that right) is the worst Gubernatorial nominee in Pennsylvania that I’ve seen from either party in my lifetime. She holds lunatic views, if you even give her credit for coherent views, can’t really articulate them, and lacks any sort of political identity for any of us to even pretend we’re attacking. You can sort of just rule her out through the ear test- listen to her give a speech or two, and you just know this person isn’t capable of running a civilized place, let alone a state the size of Pennsylvania. This is the closest thing to a default election we’ve had. Scott Wagner and Dougie Mastriano were at least easily classified as angry conservatives.

Let’s be honest though, I wish I wasn’t forced to vote for Governor Josh “GPT” Shapiro. As I said last week:

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.

I mean, it’s a step down from Tom Wolf, who was honestly a step down from Ed Rendell, but hey, it’s like complaining about spam when the alternative is starvation. You’ll take it, you guess. Of course, Josh would have a problem with a credible alternative though. As data center politics energize rural Pennsylvania, and even the suburbs, Shapiro is pretending now that he’s standing in the way of irresponsible development. He’s running ads saying his opponent is awful on data center development and putting out executive orders in the 11th hour of his term to set rules on the structures. I mean, it’s a super complicated issue and I appreciate his wanting to get it right now, but wow the revisionist history. Just Google Josh Shapiro record on data centers. I mean, the guy secured $20 billion from Amazon Web Centers to build data centers all over Pennsylvania when he thought it was popular. Oh, and there was this:

Other groups are more skeptical of Shapiro’s proposal. The Better Path Coalition, a grassroots consortium of environmental groups, pointed to the administration’s behind-the-scenes communications with Amazon, which is developing multiple data centers in the commonwealth, as a cause for concern.

A group of Montour County residents who organized against data center development obtained a trove of emails from the administration through a Right-to-Know request, which showed that a top staffer sent an Amazon lobbyist a “feedback draft of the principles” that the administration planned to lay out in GRID before the standards were public.

The records, which were previously reported by Heatmap, also included an email that state Secretary of Community and Economic Development Rick Siger sent to Amazon. He told the company the GRID standards are “intended to be voluntary,” and said Shapiro is “not proposing to ban or even discourage data centers or other large loads that don’t agree to implement them from siting here.”

That, the Better Path Coalition wrote in a recent statement, shows Shapiro’s GRID standards are “strictly performative.”

Now, he’s doing this:

  • The executive order asks developers to sign an agreement that they will follow the governor’s GRID standards, which include clean energy and job creation requirements. In exchange for signing, they get permit review and approval on a rolling basis.
  • It requires that developers show proof of local approvals before they can receive any state permits or authorizations.
  • It puts conditions on Pennsylvania’s data center sales tax exemption — if developers don’t follow the GRID standards, the state Department of Revenue won’t acknowledge applications for the tax credit.
  • It bans agencies under the governor’s control from signing NDAs in connection with data center projects. (The order doesn’t prevent local government officials from signing such agreements.)
  • It kicks data centers out of Fast Track, a Shapiro administration initiative to speed up permitting of major projects. (Previously, Shapiro had said he was giving this extra permitting attention to data center projects that followed his GRID standards.)

So basically, all the easy permitting he promised, and the tax breaks he promised, now he’ll make you pay off the locals first (I wonder how he raised so much, don’t you?), then you can have them. Look, I get it, I do think the eventual answer on data centers and AI from Democrats has to be yes, but Governor GPT started out with the red carpet out for them, and now he wants to pretend he’s making it hard for them. The answer should be “pay for the infrastructure and utility costs, actually help the towns you invade in ways they need, and then meet our state standards,” and this is closer to that, so good. It still feels hypocritical as hell though. The truth is that Shapiro saw something that made potential 2028 donors and major unions who support him both feel happy, and he tried to be the champion for that, until he realized that public sentiment was way behind on it. So now we get the Shapiro shuffle.

Of course, Josh Shapiro is also asking us to vote for his hand picked Congressional candidate, Bob “Crooksy” Brooks in the Lehigh Valley, a man who can’t string together thinking nearly as advanced as Shapiro on data centers. Crooksy is a stone cold moron who stiffed his ex-mother-in-law out of money, and well, he’s probably confused on this issue. On one hand, Crooksy knows a couple of unions made him a serious candidate for Congress, and he’s probably just waiting to be told what he thinks on this issue, which will probably be to build them. On the other hand, Uncle Josh is moving his position in response to activists like the ones in Carbon County, in South Whitehall, and in Lower Mount Bethel who are opposing data centers, and Crooksy doesn’t know how to make those folks happy without just saying what they want.

Knowing Crooksy, we know his answer- both. A friend of mine said back in the Spring that they attended a Crooksy talk to local Muslim leaders where he said Israel “had committed a genocide in Gaza,” but they were less than convinced that he really understood his answer. I was too, based on the since removed video of him at Lehigh Valley for All completely avoiding the question and pulling his shirt over his face. Look, these are tough questions. If you can keep your answers private, you can get away with giving a different answer to everyone who cares about them. If you’re kind of dumb, why not try that on data centers too? I get it, do what you can get away with, bro.

The Left’s House of Cards

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

A friend of mine who is a lot more “lefty” than me said something to me in 2020 that is starting to resonate now- “part of why we always lose is because of the narrative that we can’t win.” Even when Bernie took a polling lead in 2020 with a plurality, everyone saw through it- there wasn’t 50% plus one vote out there to nominate him, because everyone believed he’d lose to Trump, which he almost certainly would have. The narrative was almost self-defeating. Nobody wants to pick you if they believe you’ll lose.

Welcome to 2026, where all of a sudden, polls come out that show Nazi criminal Graham Platner leading in Maine. Anti-Israel crusader Abdul El-Sayed leading in Michigan. Lost weirdo Francesca Hong leading in Wisconsin. Congressional polls repeatedly showing “Fight Agency’s” clients leading. Weirdly though, in many cases they end up wildly underperforming, or winning with a minority of the vote. General election polls suddenly come out showing the once mighty leads they claimed were false. Even their initial internals, such as Bob “Crooksy” Brooks’ own, show close races where they are shy of 50%- and that’s what they were *willing* to release. It’s as though… no way, right? No way they literally just cooked the books, right?

Well, we have our first fake polling firm story. Median Strategies, which showed Francesca Hong way up, is no more. It was in fact, never real. Nor was their poll showing Karen Bass leading big in Los Angeles’ Mayor race. The whole firm was a fake. They literally just made shit up.

I cannot, for the life of me, underscore just how unserious these people are. They are selling a false narrative, and even powerful people like Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer will not push back on the nonsense. The country rejected Kamala Harris and Joe Biden because they felt they were too liberal, yet these folks want you to believe that now the solution is to move left. Are they winning some deep blue primaries against unorganized incumbents? Yes. That’s because the party shrunk as it was perceived to move left. That is not indicative of how the public feels. Yes, the public hates Trump, and the left is rightly realizing that means they could have a chance in a binary choice against MAGA, but no, people have not decided that Hasan Piker and his audience of less than 1% of America are now representative of “who we are.” This is all nonsense. It’s made up. And Democratic leaders are falling for it, hook, line, and sinker.

All the dumbest people. What can I say? Just the dumbest people.

Just the Worst People

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

Ok, let’s be serious. Who are we kidding. More Americans saw Joe Biden as “too liberal” than saw Donald Trump as “too conservative” during the 2024 campaign. Kamala Harris actually was about 5% better than Biden (insane now, I know), but still viewed as more extreme than Trump. It’s worth pointing out that Biden got nominated as a moderate Democrat and then basically started moving left immediately, which is certifiably batshit when looked back on sober eyed. While Kamala Harris *tried* to run as a moderate, the truth was just that people didn’t believe her. Period. They thought she was a crazy leftist and out of touch with normalcy. She lost.

Many critiques that leftists have of the Democratic Party are correct. The national party’s organizations are largely out of touch organizations filled with DC staffers who respond to major donors who live in LaLa Land. The voters are rejecting the party more than the past. We’re selling a brand that only really excites like 10-20% of Americans at most, but is “acceptable” to more like 45-50%, then pretending that something like half the country likes what the party is selling. It’s a shit sandwich. A lot of voters who vote for us think it’s a shit sandwich, for a variety of reasons. We should probably settle around a couple of pragmatic, popular political positions and stop trying to give everyone something. You know what though, some of you should totally keep selling yourself as Harrisburg and DC’s favorite Democrat. We’d be better off with you going up in flames and starting over in two years.

But let’s be honest. If the public thinks Joe Biden is a pinko, what the hell will they think of Mamdani and DSA? We’re going to eliminate the Senate now, huh? I mean… here is what the GOP has to say about these folks now:

So we’re going to go from Trump winning the popular vote and gaining in his share for ten years, to… mass amnesty and defunding the Pentagon. And I know what you’ll say- they’re not being honest about what she said. Ok. And if they spend more money in the election, people will agree with what they say.

Frankly, I’ll be honest. I think the current Democratic Party is a disaster. Frankly, I don’t think the problem is we didn’t “Democrat” hard enough. And honestly, i’m not at all interested in supporting finding out.

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.