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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Right now in Michigan there’s a three way primary on the Democratic side for U.S. Senate. The Republicans are going to nominate Mike Rogers, who might just win. General election polling shows that both Haley Stevens and Mallary McMorrow would lead Rogers and likely win. Both are losing the primary, in part because both are running and taking from the same voters. Instead “Doctor” Abdul el-Sayed, whose candidacy is a noun, a verb, and Gaza, leads the primary. He fashioned himself as a left-populist doctor, even though he apparently mostly has not practiced medicine, and in his last statewide run for Governor (2018), Gretchen Whitmer beat him like a drum. He trails polls against Rogers, in part because his candidacy is just a grab bag of left wing catch phrases, and in part because of serious questions about who he really is. He’s the only candidate we should be actively avoiding, and well, he’s the candidate winning.
Just across the river and down the road a bit is New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District. I worked there in 2014 for Bonnie Watson Coleman’s first run for Congress. It’s a mostly well-to-do, highly educated district that includes such well known towns as Trenton, Princeton, and Plainfield, and basically wraps around Rutgers. Bonnie retired this year, and Dr. Adam Hamawy has emerged from a crowded field as the favorite to replace her. We already knew that Hamawy was a close associate of, and testified on the behalf of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the Blind Sheikh. That was troublesome, but not on it’s own disqualifying- despite the association, Hamawy was not charged with anything. Now we find out that he volunteered in Bosnia with an organization called “Benevolent Front,” which of course was closed because it was an Al-Qaeda front group. Hamawy is leading polls in NJ-12, has the most money, and has a pro-Palestinian group making a huge TV buy for him. He is also nowhere near 50% of the vote, but his lead is solid. East Brunswick Mayor of East Brunswick, Shanel Robinson of the Somerset County Board of Commissioners, Plainfield Mayor Adrian Mapp, Trenton area State Assemblywoman Verlina Reynolds-Jackson, and second time Congressional candidate Sue Altman are all in this race as well, allowing him to win with way less than 50%.
We saw this in Pennsylvania more than a bit recently. AOC/Hasan Piker endorsed, left-wing slogan generating machine Chris Rabb won his primary in PA-3 with 44.66%, while promising a bunch of things he’ll never even get close to delivering in Congress. Again, Sharif Street and Dr. Ala Stanford split 53.28% of the vote amongst them as the “normie” Dems. Here in PA-7, Bernie Sanders endorsed left winger and man who stiffed his mother-in-law out of $55k for over 20 years, Bob “Crooksy” Brooks won his four way primary with 41.01% of the vote, shackling Democrats with a deadbeat with two or three functioning brain cells as their candidate. Over and over again, we are picking problematic, dumb, scary candidates to run for office with a simple plurality of the vote in these insular, out of touch primaries. These people basically represent a fringe of the most partisan, most out of touch voters. They’re embarrassing.
These people are all fucking embarrassments to humanity. I’m sorry, pardon the French, but these people shouldn’t walk your dog, let alone represent you anywhere as a leader. It’s fairly obvious that the consultant class down in the bubble that is the Beltway decided this was the year to flirt with weirdos and wackos, because they somehow think this will convince white guys to vote for them. Of course it’s going to fail, but this what happens when you let a bunch of rejected dorks try to figure out how to connect with “every man” types. The moral of the story is not to let Jeff Coote, Rebecca Katz, and Morris Katz be your strategists on reaching guys who drink beer and watch the Red Sox. But beyond that, it is very apparent that there are folks at the DCCC, DSCC, and DNC who are all co-signing this shit. They’re so out of touch that they think running Nazis, terrorists, deadbeats, and possibly even folks who want to have concentration camps will appeal to “normal” people. Perhaps our biggest concern should be the lack of intellectual ability in the operative class in 2026.
Ken Martin’s entire tenure at the DNC, and really the direction of the party since about 2015, has been a disaster. Much as the GOP of John McCain and Speaker John Boehner allowed the Teahadists into the ten in 2008 to 2014, these feeble and feckless leaders have allowed antisemites, terrorist adjacent, scumbags, and losers into the Democratic tent. It ended badly for the GOP and the country, and well, guess what will happen here?
America is about to turn 250 years old. The people being chosen to lead us are increasingly moon howlers and embarrassments to humanity. The 2026 Election is literally shaping up as a race to the bottom, where we have to decide if disgraces on our “side” are better than “sheeple” on the other. It’s disgraceful and maybe the best sign that our republic needs a full makeover moving forward.
Everything is a business decision, especially in politics. How much is a seat worth to your party? You really can’t win everywhere, because you lack the resources, so the question ultimately is what are your odds of winning, and what is the cost? Activists like to talk about competing everywhere, but that’s anti-reality.
Democrats are highly unlikely to win the Senate in 2026. Notice I did not say they won’t or can’t, I said unlikely. They need to flip four seats to the positive this year. They have varying degrees of difficult defenses to fight in Michigan, Georgia, New Hampshire, and Minnesota. Realistically they need to win all of those to maintain a shot at future majorities. They came into this cycle only realistically thinking they had a shot at North Carolina and Maine. Michigan has gone worse so far than they could have hoped, Georgia has gone better, and North Carolina could not be going better if the GOP conceded it. Maine, for all of the talk about it, is basically going exactly the same as it was going in 2020 at this point, when Gideon was beating Collins handily and was expected to flip the seat- only to lose badly. Gideon never trailed in that race and her lead looked a lot like Platner’s did in October of that year. So at no point will that race look safe.
So let’s assume for a second that we’re holding Georgia, New Hampshire, and Minnesota, flipping North Carolina, and Michigan may very well come down to who is our nominee. Maine remains solidly on the board either way, maybe even give Democrats slightly better than even money odds at it. We’d be at best +2 in the Senate, two seats short, and at worst sitting even. That’s not going to get us a majority. Almost all hopes of the Democrats flipping the Senate still will rest on three time Trump states voting Democratic. Sherrod Brown lost his seat in 2024 and would have to beat the appointed replacement for J.D. Vance, which is very possible, but very difficult. Mary Peltola, who has won Alaska before, would have to defeat a Republican incumbent where the voters there know that voting for her is giving Democrats a potential majority. There are hopes for the open Iowa seat, but we do have a somewhat bruising primary there to even get the shot to convince Iowa voters to pull the plug on Trump in the Senate after giving him three large victories, and a decade of Democrats losing literally every Governor and Senate race there. And of course, there’s Texas. I think Talarico is probably a pretty good candidate, but Texas is still Texas, and we don’t know yet how much ill will there is towards him from Black voters in the state from the Jasmine Crockett primary. Could each of these races flip individually? Yes, it’s possible. Could all four of them flip together? The odds drop a lot, but it is *possible*. Can Democrats win probable difficult defenses in Georgia, New Hampshire, and Michigan, flip both of North Carolina and Maine, *AND* win at least two of Ohio, Alaska, Iowa, and Texas? I’m going to tell you, for those of you who like to gamble on sports, you would be getting a big plus money line on this parlay. Of the nine states I just named, Harris won two of them. Do you think the Democratic Party is that much stronger than it was in 2024? You’re being wishful. In 2018, the Democrats won 40 seats in the House in a landslide win, but *lost* seats in the Senate that were being fought on red turf. If you’re saying you think Democrats win the Senate, you’re basically saying Democrats are considerably stronger than they were in 2018. I know you want to think there is a mass exodus of MAGA voters from supporting the GOP right now, but you’re being very hopeful, some might even say delusional. I guess you can hope that their turnout drops wildly enough to put some of these seats in play and maybe we pull the inside straight with exactly a four seat flip. I’m just saying evidence suggests you probably won’t get it.
So then this begs a pretty simple question, one that I’d suggest has a complex answer. Senate Democrats will have to decide at some point if Graham Platner is worth the trouble to elect in Maine. The DSCC will make the decision to fund him, I will spare you that question for now. They have to if they really want to win the Senate, and his polling probably will never be bad, even if it’s just another Gideon situation. I say probably because we really have no idea what is still out there on this guy. I mean in the past week or so we found out he likes masturbating in public places, he said a Marine who received a Purple Heart should have died, and we’re hearing rumblings of Republicans looking into his income, since he receives disability benefits for his PTSD. I mean, even if you want to assume that the general electorate full of less partisan people than the Democratic Primary are going to forgive the Nazi tattoo, comments about urinating on dead bodies, and being a mercenary, what else is out there, how much proverbial straw will it take to break the camel’s back, and how much money will they pour into taking this guy out? It’s going to take a herculean effort to make sure this guy survives when the Fall comes. That’s assuming we even can, especially as Republicans also pour money into a likely flip RED in ME-2. Is it doable? There’s definitely a chance. Easy? Absolutely not.
So alright, I’ll ask the question again- is it worth it? Best case, the party spends an ungodly amount of cash to get a guy across the line who has a Nazi tattoo, thinks Black people don’t tip, and is a treasure chest of red flags that our core voters typically don’t like. He’ll arrive in Washington and immediately be the new AOC- attacked with every negative term conservatives know, in this case focusing on Nazi, weirdo, and Socialist. He attacks the Democratic Party any chance he gets, so he’ll hurt other candidates and turn off voters in other races we need to win. In a word, the guy is a nuisance. Of course they’re going to fund him and try to win, because that’s the only purpose for the DSCC to exist. Is it worth it though, really? Congressman Jake Auchincloss is right in saying it’s not, and calling this Nazi unacceptable. Him winning isn’t even worth the headaches as is, Democrats flocking to defend this scumbag are building the next round of GOP ammo for them to use against us.
