2026-election

As the World Rejects Marxism and Third World Leftism, Some Democrats are Embracing It

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

Venezuela and Bolivia are actively rejecting Marxist ideology as their nations fail. The Cuban government is turning to foreign capitalists to solve their liquidity crisis, because Socialism has failed there. Socialism is collapsing across our hemisphere. Yet, Democratic Socialism is finding at least empathizers, if not outright sympathizers, all over the Democratic Party.

Zohran Mamdani can literally take pictures with unindicted co-conspirators in an infamous terror attack in New York City, refuse to call for Hamas to end, and say and do any number of outrageous things and there are Democrats backing him anyway, Democrats he has attacked. The Shapiro Administration and Chris DeLuzio are falling all over themselves to help a guy who stiffed his mother-in-law get to Congress from here in the Lehigh Valley. Graham Platner in Maine has damn Nazi tattoos and there are people defending him, saying “he was only 37,” and “he didn’t know what he got tattooed on himself,” as though that sounds better? Martin Heinrich, a ****ing U.S. Senator from New Mexico, literally still says he’s a good candidate. In fact, he goes further, to say he “obviously” doesn’t like this, but the real lesson is “stay off Reddit.” You cannot make this shit up.

You know, when Bernie started running for President as an already old man, it was stupid and all, but there were some half baked policies being discusses. “Medicare 4 All,” “Defund the Police,” and “Green New Deal” were all somewhere between not fully thought out plans (that could have been finished plans) and poorly thought up, stupid ideas that took actual problems and created new problems from them, but there was policy here. We are now at the point where “globalize the Intifada” and “you have to accept some Nazis to win back men” are actual arguments of the American left. I guess we could see this coming when “tough guy from Braddock” got a guy elected in 2022 who was in no way ready to serve in the U.S. Senate for Pennsylvania, but one would have thought that Fetterman’s utter and complete failure as a human being, let alone as a Senator, would have stopped that. It’s bad enough that he won’t fight for people’s health care, the guy has literally turned into an internet troll against the people who supported him in 2022 over Israel, an issue where I may agree with him more than not, but still find his cavalier, childish behavior disgusting.But we’re not just considering doing that again- we’re doing it on steroids.

Kamala Harris did not lose in 2024 because she moved too far right. That might make you sleep better at night, you might even be able to twist some parts of the story to make that seem plausible. Trump hasn’t gone up in every one of his three elections though, in raw votes and percentage, because the Democrats moved right. Millions of Biden voters, objectively considered the most moderate Democratic nominee in the post-Obama era, didn’t sit out the 2024 Election because the Democrats moved right. It’s a nice story that “Dearborn cost Harris Michigan,” but they voted against Biden in the primary and moved the numbers zero, they voted against Whitmer in 2022 and she won easily. Sure, in very blue enclaves it doesn’t matter if you nominate Zohran Mamdani, he’ll probably win. And then you can hope that he is able to enact some of the more popular policy stuff on housing and buses, and maybe all the “Intifada” talk goes away. At best, it’s a net neutral in competitive Congressional Districts, and my guess is it is much worse in the five or so neighboring seats to the city that might decide who wins the House. Of course, that message gets ignored. So much of the Democratic Party has decided to believe the myth that Dem-Socialist Populism is the only way to turn out the youth, who are the only way to win an election. They’re not only wrong, they’re exactly wrong.

Every vote Democrats have gained in the Trump era has come from the exact opposite of this populist brain rot. Kamala Harris became the first Democrat in my lifetime to carry college educated white men. Democratic midterm success in 2018, and to a large extent in 2022 was built off of college educated white voters and middle class Black and Latino voters. Joe Biden rode increased Black voter turnout and gains with college educated white voters to the most votes in American history. Bernie Sanders actually did worse the second time he tried to run for President. I get it, the guy has a following, he can get a crowd and a donor off the internet for you. What he can’t do is win you an election outside of a deep blue district. If you watched Sara Gideon get savaged in the closing days of the 2020 Maine Senate race with attacks that she supported “defunding the police,” and you think the answer to that is to nominate the guy with the Nazi tattoo who wants to take the party in a left populist direction, you’re a lunatic. It’s stupid, it’s not backed up in data, and it’s not backed up in facts. If you want to move on from “centering identity politics,” because “Hillary and Kamala lost,” I get that there’s a strategic argument to be had about what we talk about and how, but that’s very different from selling out the people who might vote for us for people who are loons and wackos, won’t vote for us, and will make us look even crazier than we already do. We’ve spent a decade trying to shame Republican supposed moderates into abandoning Trump, and they’ve spent a decade calling us hypocrites. In these people, we actually might prove them right.

Crooksy to Get the Governor’s Endorsement For Real This Time?

/ Rich Wilkins / 5 Comments

I got a text last night- “Josh IS endorsing Crooksy!!! Unbelievable.”

I won’t reveal the source of the text, but I guess if that’s the street word, it’s only like the twelfth time it’s been out there. If Crooksy thinks he has the Governor’s endorsement, by the 37th time or so he believes it, it has to be true.

The out-of-town union buster known as Ryan Crosswell basically dusted Crooksy in fundraising last quarter despite help from every legislator not from the Lehigh Valley and the Governor’s hired guns at the state party. The truth is that Bob “Crooksy” Brooks is problematic right to his core. He’s another John Fetterman. We’re talking about a guy who stole money from his mother-in-law here. Yes, he did it. She gave him 14 years, and he still didn’t pay back one dime.

If this is who the Governor wants, that’s nice, he won’t have a vote. My sense is he won’t spend on the guy’s behalf either, so who cares? We will see what the voters think of Crooksy’s record of backstabbing his way to the top of his union and deceiving his own family.

Cash Rules Everything Around Me…

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

Welp, we have updated finance numbers. If it wasn’t clear before, Ryan Crosswell is going to have the most campaign cash in the PA-7 race. The former Trump Administration Republican from DC won the money race by a lot. Since we know the DCCC values that over everything, obviously they will go looking for a sixth candidate now, right?

Anyway, here’s the numbers here in PA-7, followed by some other races of note.

  • Crooksy brought in $308,259.47. He has $243,615.75 on hand.
  • Crosswell brought in another $380,000. He has raised $701,108.08 in two reports. He has spent $266,743.94, leaving him with $433,791.14. That’s some burn rate.
  • Carol Obando-Derstine brought in $123,000. She has raised $317,006.02. She has spent $198,245.98, leaving her with $127,513.18. That’s a really astounding burn rate.
  • Lamont McClure’s report doesn’t seem to be fully up on the FEC site yet. He raised $229,000 according to press reports, which should put him at $458,386.04. He had burned through $135,267.89 in the first two reports, which should leave him at $323,118.15, minus whatever he spent this quarter. That was a fast burn rate, but we’ll see what he did this quarter.
  • Mark Pinsley’s report isn’t up on the FEC site yet. Press reports indicate he has raised $73,000. I have nothing to add to that.

Crosswell is raising serious cash, but spending just shy of 40% of it on staff and things that aren’t voter contact. He’s spent $266,743.94 and 10% of voters or less really know anything about him. I actually have to compliment Crooksy’s campaign, their burn rate is like half of Crosswell’s. They might catch him in money if there was more than two and a half quarters left at this rate, but they won’t. Carol’s number slowed and her burn rate is very high. McClure wrote himself most of what he raised this quarter, but the word is he stopped most of his spending so he may have a decent cash on hand number, but we’ll see about that. Pinsley’s number won’t do it. Crosswell and Crooksy have decent numbers here, but not Neary enough cash on hand with their low name ID’s. We’ll see here.

Now for context, some other numbers of note:

  • Paige Cognetti, the Mayor of Scranton, running in PA-8, announced she raised over $500,000 in under a month. She currently has no primary and probably won’t get one.She has $442,966.97 on hand. That district won’t be easy for her, but those are damn good numbers.
  • Janelle Stelson brought in $1,249,712.55. She has $969,643.79 on hand. The burn rate is a little higher, but damn!
  • Not enough numbers are out yet in PA-3, but so far the leaders in cash-on-hand are Sharif Street at $372,089.87 and David Oxman at $331,724.05. I’m really interested in Dr. Ala Stanford’s number to see if they hype is real.
  • Across the river in NJ-7, two candidates have crossed the $1 million mark raised. Rebecca Bennett still has $922,757.14 and Brian Varela has $805,278.44 left. Tina Shah has $481,396.28 on hand and Michael Roth has $290,302.11 left.

At this stage in the game, the most important number is really your cash on hand number. Sure, the DCCC and a bunch of DC types care about the total raised and quarter raise for their horse race purposes, but if you spend everything you raise, who cares? Campaigns are, in the end, about talking to voters. Right now, no one in PA-7 is really prepared to spend on the level they need.

John Fetterman… or um Crooksy Joins the Upper Lehigh Dems

/ Rich Wilkins / 5 Comments

He’s got the black hoodie. He talks about “fighting” in Washington. He claims he’s a blue collar guy. He’s supported by Bernie Sanders. He has the same media consultants as Bernie, Fetterman, and Zohran. He’d like you to call him Brooksy. He stiffed his mother-in-law though, so on here we call him “Crooksy.”

Crooksy went on the Upper Lehigh Dems podcast/zoom to talk about his campaign. I needed to watch the leaves fall off trees in my neighborhood though, so I was too busy to listen to this guy lie about what a champion for the little guy he is. He is only the champion for some little guys, I think. I’m not going to listen to him lie when everything we need to know about him was litigated in public. A friend of the blog did watch though, a very skilled friend, and they had some thoughts.

Gotta tell ya, he is just not political material. I cannot imagine him going toe to toe with Rs in Congress or even some of his D colleagues.

Yep.

DC people pushed him and his head got big

Even more yep. He’s not at all of the caliber to do this. He’s not even someone who has shown us he can win anything. If we nominated this guy, one of two things will happen. It’s most likely that everything I received on him, and probably worse, is used against him, and Ryan Mackenzie wins another term. Under the unlikely scenario where this guy wins, he goes to Washington and is the next John Fetterman. Look, I was for Conor Lamb, so I don’t want to watch the rest of you get duped again. Send Crooksy off to the retirement he earned and give someone real a chance.

Union Buster Crosswell Crushed Crooksy?

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

I haven’t seen any full reports yet, but apparently we’re in for a bit of a surprise. Bob “Crooksy” Brooks definitely didn’t “rake in the cash,” only so far saying he beat $300k. That’s definitely not the $400k the DCCC rumor mill pushed. Despite touting his backing from a bunch of people from out of town and the non-endorsement that is supposed to be an endorsement from Governor Shapiro, Crooksy isn’t keeping pace with what his handlers are saying about him.

Meanwhile the word was that Ryan Crosswell was going to underwhelm. Well it doesn’t matter if it’s crushing Coors Light in DC or raising cash, he’s apparently keeping a serious pace. His campaign says they’ve raised $700k so far in two quarters. That would mean he raised $380k this past quarter. He probably beat Crooksy pretty badly.

Both of these guys have awful negatives and I think are very vulnerable. I think Crooksy probably has insurmountable negatives, no one likes a guy who stiffs his mother-in-law. Neither is a Democrat really, so I guess they both have primary problems. Crooksy was already $320k behind Union Busting Ryan to begin with, now it’s probably like $350k. Nobody knows who Crooksy is out there, it’s so bad that Mackenzie just left him out of his poll this week. Of course, earlier polling showed people didn’t really love Crooksy even when they were read a positive bio, so that’s probably for the best. Neither of these two are well known, but Crosswell will at least have money to try and cover up his bad behavior. If Crooksy keeps spending away his campaign money and missing his goals, he’ll be lucky to finish fourth in this primary. He should never have ran.

Good for Janet Mills, I Hope She Wins

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

Janet Mills is the Governor of Maine. She has won twice for her office, both times by a lot. She will also be 78 years old next year. There is zero sign that she has mentally slowed at all, but she will be 84 at the end of the Senate term up in 2026 in Maine. Frankly, I do not care. Age is a predictor of whatever you want it to be. If this were a race for President, I’d have added concerns. This is not though.

All of the worst people, the very worst people, the most awful people, maybe very well the very worst people hate that Governor Mills is running. Bernie wants her to not run so we can “not waste millions on an unnecessary and divisive primary.” Is this for real? The guy who made Hillary Clinton run primaries for months after he had no mathematical way to winning the *elected delegates* for our 2016 Presidential nomination now is worried about primaries. He’s telling us about how his chosen candidate, Graham Platner, is a “great working class candidate for Senate,” You know who else he said that about? John Fetterman. How has that turned out? Platner has hired the same media consultants as Mamdani, Fetterman, Bernie, and even our local Bernie bro, Bob “Crooksy” Brooks. They’re raking in the bucks, and to be fair, their work quality is solid. They are really selling us a lot of garbage people though.

Janet Mills might be a wonderful candidate, regardless of what Platner’s push poll (just read his bio they read voters, it’s horseshit) said. As I said above, she’s won twice for Governor, the same voters who will be voting in 2026. She’s a pro-choice, pro-ACA, and has real achievements fighting climate change, in her actual career in government. Graham Platner is out there saying Governors like Mills have taken the Democratic Party off track. I couldn’t agree less. Meanwhile he’s backed by Bernie Sanders, who has been rejected twice by our primary voters for President (including in Maine’s 2020 primary), says he’s for “Medicare for All,” which can’t even get a vote in Congress because it has no way to be funded, and talks a lot about “oligarchy.” This guy has no real, specific plans to do anything, and just talks in platitudes with buzzwords he learned from Bernie. Even so, I think it’s at least fair to let the two battle it out in a primary and see who the better candidate is. For me though, I’m not for the guy that worked at Blackwater in 2018 but calls himself a revolutionary. Sorry, no thanks, give me the lady that actually knows what she’s doing, no matter how damn old she is.

Congressional Poll Drops in PA-7- Crooksy Excluded

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment
Live look at the state of the PA-7 race.

I got chosen for a web poll- whoever did that should be fired. They asked how I felt about every Democratic candidate but Crooksy, and I only gave two of them positive marks. They asked my feelings about Governor Shapiro- I’ll vote for him, but I’m definitely not in the cult. They asked about Trump and Vance- I think they’re trailer trash. They asked about my top issues- I said healthcare and inflation. It was very vanilla. I think it was either Mackenzie or Pinsley/Carol doing the poll. If I had to guess? It was Mackenzie.

The interesting part? No Crooksy. My guess is if it’s Mackenzie he’s just not worried about a guy who robbed his mother-in-law. The conspiracy theorist in me thinks maybe Crooksy himself, trying to figure out how to pick up voters. Honestly though, he should just drop out. His negatives will burn him.

Drop out, Crooksy. This was a mistake.

Crosswell and the Bros out Crushing Coors at RNC South

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

Ryan Crosswell’s manager says he’s feeling the love in Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District, but every other metric says otherwise. No elected in the district backs him. No union backs him. He had one donor from the district on his first report. Look, it’s hard moving to a new place and making new friends, I get it. Ryan’s struggling a bit.

I have to hand it to him though, he’s a man after my own heart. A couple weeks ago he ran off to Washington, D.C. for a few days. I like to do that when I’m depressed and want to feel completely hopeless about the future. He went hanging out at a bar called “Problem Child” over by Nats Park in the Navy Yard, also known as “RNC South” for the folks living there. You know what, I’m still right with him, that’s exactly where I go to feel better about all of my flaws, the Navy Yard is full of people who will make you feel better about yourself. So far, I’m with him. He also went out drinking beer, and well, I definitely like beer. More importantly than me liking beer, I think any good candidate who isn’t literally a recovering alcoholic should be able to drink beer amongst the people, it shows you can relate to the masses. So far, I’d say Ryan is kind of winning me over with all of this. But… Coors? I mean look bro, why don’t you just order a water? At least the water isn’t created by a notorious anti-union company, and it probably will get you more drunk. If I were being called a Republican and a union-buster, while running in a Democratic Primary in a district I’m not from, I’d probably put down the Coors for at least a bit so that people can’t make the point once again that I don’t care about labor rights. Hey though, we all make choices.

The photo and others (more for later, right?) were forwarded to me in an e-mail from a friend. They were dated 9/18 and 9/19, so a Thursday and Friday. I don’t mind that Crosswell likes beer, I do too. This just all screams the main points about him though- he’s running not to represent the Valley, but to get back home to DC, and he doesn’t give a damn about Democratic values, because he isn’t one.

Drink up, friends.

The Dumbest Campaign Interview Ever, and Generally Bad Democratic Candidates Right Now

/ Rich Wilkins / 2 Comments

I was never a fan of Katie Porter and her white board. Or her reading a book during the State of the Union. I was never impressed when she just yelled at witnesses during House Oversight Committee Hearings (I’m not impressed with the existence of the Oversight Committee, it serves zero purpose for the general public and writes no laws.). She was just not my cup of tea. She generally votes right and was fine as a Congresswoman, but I was disappointed when she gave up her swing seat to run a quixotic campaign against Adam Schiff for Senate, when literally the entire Democratic Party wanted him. I’m not much of a fan.

The shame when a party wins a wave election is that it drags in some good and some bad candidates. You have people that win in tough swing districts because they’re good candidates, and others who do so because they’re lucky. Then you also have people drug in through the tide who win very safe seats that have no broader appeal to the national electorate, but the Squad is a discussion for another day. The shame of course is when the good candidates in tough districts eventually lose their seats, a lot of activists and donors think *those* are the weaker candidates, and people like Porter are somehow a real future star. That’s how we end up where we are.

So in Porter’s case, the question was absolutely stupid. Why would she need the 40% of voters in California who voted for the losing candidate to help her win? Why not just win over most of the 60% who voted for the winning candidate? If you want to ask if she has any intentions of being bipartisan, go ahead, but don’t act like you can’t do math. Porter’s reaction was also amateur hour. Just give the standard bullshit “I’m working for every vote,” or go with the partisan “I’m concentrating on the Californians who share our vision for the future,” or some shit. Why storm out, it’s not like the reporter called you an asshole? This interview was below the public discourse in 2025, and well, that’s a major achievement.

People like Porter just don’t go away though. A few candidates meet an archetype that is popular with an activist crowd, and it’s a disease that takes a long time to get out of your blood. Amy McGrath is begging you to light your money on fire for her again in Kentucky, where she wants to lose for Mitch McConnell’s seat and raise $100 million again. It’s honestly not going to happen, just go fail up and run for President at this point. Mikie Sherrill might pull out the win in New Jersey, but that’s only because it’s New Jersey. Her campaign of a noun+a verb+fighter pilot+Trump+an inaudible sound is about as inspiring as week old bread, which is just fine as long as she wins, but does give people watching a few skipped heart beats that aren’t necessary. Then there’s James Talarico in Texas and Graham Platner in Maine, both running for Senate seats they are grossly unqualified for on the genius notion that the Democratic Party sucks, and if only we nominate the “working class white guy savior,” we’ll be fine. All of these rising stars, created by a combination of insular DC Democratic operatives, rich out of touch donors, and activists. Could it be that we lose elections because we nominate bad candidates? Could it be that we nominate bad candidates because we look for them in all the wrong places?

I don’t know, what the hell do I know?

Are the PA Dems Essentially Running Crooksy’s Operation?

/ Rich Wilkins / 6 Comments

Street word is that Bob “Crooksy” Brooks is going to fall well short of the $400k the DCCC and his campaign were putting out there. Now it sounds like $300k. That’s a very good first quarter. That’s not “clear the field” level numbers. That comes as no one on the ground is endorsing him and his union support has stopped after his own IAFF and the crooked SEIU endorsement. While Crooksy is popular with some Harrisburg types, people on the ground are scared off by his lazy personal campaign style and the abundance of negatives that follow this guy around. Deadbeat Bernie Sanders is for Crooksy, but PA-7 is not. This fire is too big for Crooksy.

There is the whole matter though of how Bob “Crooksy” Brooks is raising $300k in the first place though. In multiple calls with local party leaders this week, they all remarked how he’s late for events and leaves before they’re over. At least two of these leaders made the remark to me though, “he does have the state party helping him.” Really? I’m not shocked that he has the Bernie grifters helping him raise money, and for that matter the same people who created Fetterman. The state party though? That’s fascinating. This is a Democratic Primary, almost all of the other candidates are definitely Democrats. The state committee, the elected body that governs the staff at the party, has not voted to endorse in this or any other Congressional Primary in years. No county party in the district has voted to endorse Crooksy. In fact, no elected official in this district is backing Crooksy. So under what authority are the new chairman and his staff helping this guy? Seems crooked as hell.

By now though everyone knows what’s going on here. Brooksy has no shot in hell against Ryan Mackenzie, they’ll drown him just with the fact that he stiffed his mother-in-law for $55k, let alone all the other stupid things. That was a temporary distraction though. No one has shown they are the certain nominee in this district, and Crooksy is good for the good ole’ boys in Harrisburg’s bottom line. Senator Fetterman’s mouthpieces get paid. The out-of-district legislators endorsing him get to come back to the IAFF later and remind them how they supported their guy. The Governor can say to IAFF leadership in his gubernatorial run, and his future Presidential run, that he has been a loyal soldier with them. Here’s the thing- that’s all true. The folks at the DCCC got to push some work to consultants they like too. Absolutely none of this does anything to win this seat and give the Democrats a majority in PA-7. We actually run the risk of nominating a dude who will be way over his head and get mugged by the GOP money machine in November. It’s a political dead end, and worse yet, even if I’m wrong and he does win, the guy is just another John Fetterman. Wasn’t it enough for the good ole’ boys in Harrisburg to push one massive mistake on us all? Do we need to do that again?

Does one district decide everything? No. This one is as close as you can get though. Nominating this guy and either losing or getting a shit Congressman will hurt people who need government to work. No one benefits from that. We need to sink this guy, and sink him fast. He’s a nightmare in waiting.