elections

Democrats Need to Hope Platner Loses

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

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.

Hard “no thanks” from me.

Would You Recruit This Candidate to Face Lyin’ Ryan Mackenzie?

/ Rich Wilkins / 52 Comments
This Goof Represents The Most Swing District in America.

There’s not many scenarios where Democrats win the House in 2026 and don’t win PA-7. Joe Biden won it in 2020, Donald Trump did so in 2024, and both times the margins look similar to the state margin, and Pennsylvania basically is the tipping point state right now. One of the reasons I never registered to vote anywhere else while out on the road (besides the fact I was coming back) was that I really do live in the most swing spot in the country.

So it seems that the DCCC may not have been as thrilled with how the race was shaping up. Fundraising amongst the candidates in the field wasn’t matching up with the more metropolis swing districts in New York and California. That sort of makes sense though. There’s not a lot of big donor money in this district. The big donors in Philadelphia and New York are hesitant to put money into a competitive primary. So two of the three candidates are finding it a little harder to raise cash than expected. The other, we’ll just say he’s problematic. Problematic in big ways. Problematic in many ways.

I can’t blame the DCCC for going looking for more candidates. Why not? The more seats you can put on the board, the better. If you don’t feel absolutely great about the candidates you have, keep finding more. Competition should be fierce for an important job. Right? Unfortunately, maybe the DCCC is not looking in the right direction. The candidate they are supposedly recruiting now has some, let’s just say, issues.

Out of respect for the man, I won’t name this first time candidate, yet. He has never held public office, but he has spent his career working for the public. He’s got no experience being a candidate though, and running for Congress is not the place to learn. Digging in a little deeper, things get a little difficult for him though. A friend whom I will not name dropped me a note on the guy today, and he’s got some problems that will dog him in his race. He’s been in foreclosure twice, in 2012 and 2016. One could write that off, all of us normal people have financial problems at some point. He also had a $5,000 legal judgment rendered against him to Midland Bank, which sounds like a credit card or some small loan that he failed to pay. Again, no judgment here. This part of what they told me stuck out though. It goes well beyond just some hard economic times:

He borrowed $55,000.00 from his mother-in-law. Signed a promissory note. Refused to pay. Got sued. Had a trial. Lost. Appealed. Lost. There is currently a unsatisfied $55,000.00 judgment hanging over his head.

Ok, look, there’s being a working class guy that is behind on some bills, which I think we all can sympathize with. Congress could use more guys that understand that feeling. Then there’s stiffing your mother-in-law for $55k and not paying it back even after you lose in court twice. This friend goes on to note that there’s also a divorce with the potential candidate’s first wife out there, which they don’t know what is in there. I don’t know if this was mother-in-law one or mother-in-law two, but I’m guessing this judgment was from the first one. If that’s the case, I’m sure that divorce is messy and I’ll probably get something sent my way on that later.

Stiffing old ladies isn’t a good look. Especially when it fits with a pattern of being bad with money. Stiffing a family member makes it look like maybe the money problems aren’t just a case of tough times, but maybe something worse. It’s hard to tell, but I will bet bourbons to beers that Ryan Mackenzie and the Republican Party will take information like this and absolutely slime this guy if he’s nominated. By the end he’ll be the symbol of elder abuse and financial misconduct in America, not the next Congressman.

This new candidate has went around the district telling people he will enter with the public support of the DCCC, the Governor of Pennsylvania, and the Democratic Leader in the House. I find it hard to believe any of them would be so stupid as to promise all of that to a candidate without doing a little more research than this friend of mine did before sending this info to me. In fact, I first met the Governor like twenty years ago when he was a State House member, the guy is way too smart to put himself into a nasty, competitive primary like this right before re-election (and maybe a run for President?). I definitely don’t see that happening, once they do their research.

Campaigns are hard. This guy has had an honorable career serving the public. This may be biting off a bit more than could be chewed.

Carpetbagging Republican Crosswell’s Out of Town Donors Try to Buy the Lehigh Valley

/ Rich Wilkins / 13 Comments

You can’t make this up if you try. No, really. Crosswell’s first finance report is out. It’s incredibly bad. Don’t take my word for it. From Lehigh Valley News:

Crosswell, the latest candidate to enter the race, raised more than $320,929 in just three weeks, records show. 

That amount, which came entirely from individual donors, led the field of Democrats. After expenditures, he had $254,003 on hand as of the end of June, according to the reports.

Crosswell resigned from the U.S. Justice Department in protest after the Trump administration opted to drop corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams for political reasons. 

His campaign, which has focused on upholding the rule of law, appears to have attracted significant support from the legal community. Dozens of attorneys from across the country have donated to his campaign, records show.

However, it appears almost none of the money he’s raised came from within the district. 

LehighValleyNews.com identified only a single donation from within the Lehigh Valley or Carbon County on the 200-page report — a $500 contribution from an Allentown woman.

The dearth of local donations could feed more political attacks that cast him as a carpetbagger. Crosswell, a former Marine, moved to the district earlier this year and switched his party affiliation from Republican to Democratic in December. The Pottsville native had no prior ties to the district other than athletic competitions in high school. His three opponents have accused him of district shopping — a claim Crosswell denies.

For a moment I’ll leave aside the false narrative that the Adams decision pushed him to run and let the rest speak for itself. Croswell got exactly one person to donate to his campaign from the district. One. This guy isn’t even pretending to represent the Lehigh Valley, he’s trying to buy his way into our seat with a bunch of lawyers from North Carolina, DC, California, and God knows where else paying his tab. I’m sure if we looked over their voter registrations, plenty of them are his buddies from his union busting days in the Republican Party, but it really doesn’t matter if they aren’t. They aren’t from the Lehigh Valley. That’s fine with Crosswell though, because neither is he.

I’ll just point out though something that is just as bad, especially if you’re a solid Democrat who believes in the policies and values of the Democratic Party. While raising $321k, he couldn’t find one Democratic group to back him. Not a single PAC gave him money. Not one union. No pro-choice organization. No environmental group. Nobody. This is because he has long held the values of the Republican Party when he went to work and vote. One has to worry now that if he does find a group to give him money, it will be because he basically sells himself. He came into this with none of our values. This whole campaign is being astroturfed by union busters and Beltway elites.

The other two Democratic candidates have not matched Crosswell so far, which can be expected based on past Lehigh Valley congressional primaries. This isn’t a wealthy district, and this happens to be where they made their actual lives and careers. They’re from here, and they’re Democrats. I certainly have my preference, but I could probably deal with either one being our nominee. Being honest about who you are is the first and most important step to asking for someone’s vote.

Weird New York Results, Explained?

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

It has become a near sacred belief for some folks on the internet that they don’t believe the 2024 Election results. I get it, they’re a nightmare. The idea that nearly 50% of the public would re-elect Trump after everything seems impossible. When you understand how close virtually every Presidential Election other than 2008 has been this century though, it starts to make at least some sense though.

Enter New York, specifically Rockland County where I worked on a County Executive race, more than a decade back. It is a politically peculiar place. It’s a very purple county in suburban New York City. It’s got the highest percentage of Jewish people of any county in America. It’s incredibly diverse in general. It’s got super, super wealthy and very working class people living together. It’s a part of the swing NY-17 Congressional District, one of the most competitive in America. It’s really, really expensive to run a campaign there. And they have a rather significant Hasidic Jewish population, now sitting over 50,000 in the district. They tend to vote together, as a block, getting them the name “the block” amongst politicos. Once the leaders decide who they are backing, and to what level, everyone does their job. It doesn’t fit neat partisan or ideological politics, and so it confuses many political class people who are new to the area. This often puts them at odds with other groups in the county, who don’t particularly love their voting power. The East Ramapo School District there has been controversial, but that’s nothing new.

I’m not shocked that a friend sent me an article about a challenge to their 2024 Election results, but I was immediately skeptical. Rockland is the king of weird election results. What’s more, Vice-President Harris underperformed President Biden and Secretary Clinton in general in New York. Senator Gillibrand was facing weak, token opposition at best, and some of the national hot button issues were less so problems for her. When I first looked at Smart Elections’ Blue Sky post comparing Harris and Gillibrand’s numbers in several voting districts, I immediately assumed they are simply “Block” voting districts, where the Hasidic population chose Donald Trump, but still wanted to vote for the incumbent Democratic Senator. There are absolutely districts in Rockland County where Trump probably won almost every vote, and so did Gillibrand. There are a few problems with my explanation though. First, just having the district number isn’t enough for me today to be sure those were “block” districts. Second, the lawsuit does point to other things, like statistical analysis, that suggests a problem. So it’s possible I’m wrong here.

My guess is that Harris generally underperformed fairly popular incumbents across the state, and Rockland was no different. My second thought is that the lopsided districts will be “block” areas. If anyone knowledgeable on the subject comes across this post, please feel free to keep me updated on this.

Revisiting an Old Post- Presidential Approval and Our Four Party System

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

I published this back in 2023, on 12/19. I got a lot of this right. This realignment wasn’t good for Democrats. Presidential approval remains poor. Non-college educated minority voters did keep moving towards Trump, while Harris actually improved with white voters almost entirely because of improved performance with college educated white men. The parts I got wrong were the importance of Dobbs and Biden winning. Dobbs did not disrupt the migration that was already going on with voters. Biden did not win, in no small part because of inflation/recession concerns and his own party knifing him up, because he wasn’t exactly what they really wanted. Kamala Harris could not unite the factions either, it turns out. Anyway, enjoy the update here.

It’s worth noting- our last two Presidents have spent most of the last seven years with poor approval ratings. When I say poor, I mean consistently under 50%, and usually handily. This is not something we’re necessarily used to- Bill Clinton spent most of his Presidency with high approval, George W. Bush spent his first term generally over 50%, and Barack Obama spent the majority of his Presidency with majority support. With that said, the new normal has become poor Presidential approval ratings, which seems to be an obsession of the press.

I think it’s worth us noting that this shouldn’t be shocking- the “right track, wrong track” question about this country has almost unanimously shown Americans saying we’re on the wrong track going back into the Bush 43 Presidency, or the better part of 20 years. Americans have not, for quite some time, thought the condition of our nation and society is improving. We live in one of the wealthiest, most technologically advanced, most militarily powerful countries in human history, we enjoy a high standard of living relative not only to the world, but to human history, and yet we’re not overly happy. The last couple of decades have shaken our confidence in so many institutions we held dear. We carry high debt, we work longer and longer hours for the same (or less) money, our marriages end in divorce (if they happen at all), addiction (to opioids, alcohol, whatever) is literally killing us, we’ve seen multiple wars in the last 75 years built on false pretenses, the Catholic Church covered up child molestations, school shootings are a constant part of our lives, universities covered for sexual monsters, our banks nearly melted down the economy, a hurricane destroyed an American city while our government looked incompetent, we spent 20 years in Afghanistan to just give it back within hours of leaving, Iran-Contra, the ridiculous Clinton impeachment, we lack confidence in our elections, Congress constantly gets us to the brink of government shutdowns, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I honestly can’t even remember all the stuff in my lifetime that people thought was horrible, and I didn’t even get into terrorist attacks here. It’s kind of surprising anyone thinks we’re on the right track. And I’m only bringing up the Supreme Court at the end of this list of grievances.

With that backdrop, it’s sort of surprising it took until 2017 for our Presidents to start seeing approval ratings that are under water. We began a period of political realignment with Barack Obama’s 2008 election, and we’ve been in it ever since. The net result is in-party division like we have never seen before. The Biden/Hillary wing of the Democratic Party represents somewhere between 55-70% of the party, while the Sanders wing approaches a third. The MAGA Republicans represent about two-thirds of their party, while the old Bush/Cheney/McCain/Romney/Ryan wing of the party is the other third. Nearly none of these people even entertain voting for the other party, but they basically hate the other wing of their own party. The net result of this is that virtually no national figure in American politics today has 50% of the population willing to “approve” of them. The other net result is that every Democratic Presidential nominee since 1996 has received at least 48% of the popular vote, and every Republican Presidential nominee since 2000 has received at least 46% of the popular vote. So basically the public will increasingly dislike our Presidential candidates, and yet they will basically vote for them or skip it. There’s very few actually open minded voters. There’s just a lot of unhappy voters.

All of this is a very long-winded way for me to say that Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s actual approval rating doesn’t really matter. About 90% of their voters from 2020 are going to vote for them again, no matter what, regardless of what pundits on X say. Even more to the point, even that last 10% might talk about doing something different, but 80% of them are voting the same way again, no matter what happens. National pollsters have not adjusted to an electorate that works more like the volume on your radio than a horse race. Intensity moves, opinions really don’t right now.

Again I’m making a point that is maybe lost in the explanation- Joe Biden is going to win in 2024. He’s going to win with an approval rating that probably never quite gets back to 50%. Most of the agitators to his left- be it on student loans, Gaza, or Dobbs- either live in super “blue” cities and states, or didn’t vote Democratic in 2020 (for varying reasons), and don’t represent anyone offline. Yes, this is true of the supposed “Gaza Backlash” voters in Michigan too, where Governor Whitmer last the Arab-American vote in 2022 and won an easy re-election. Trump has lead a very slow, drip of resurgence among non-white voters in general, particularly high school educated or less men, but he has more than limited his upward mobility with older white voters by putting Social Security and Medicare into question (and letting others in his party do so), and of course by Dobbs. Look, I’m going to be honest with you- Dobbs is going to decide the 2024 election. The GOP has generally underperformed a bit from 2017 on, but since Dobbs they have performed apocalyptically poorly for an opposition party in the United States, routinely losing or underwhelming in elections all over the United States. You simply cannot win an election telling slightly over half the population that they don’t have the right bodily autonomy in our society. There is no way to slice that. It cost the GOP what should have been a huge win in the 2022 midterms, it factored into abysmal performances in Kentucky, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and around the country in 2023, and it simply will kill them in 2024. Worse yet for them, nominating Nikki Haley might seem like it would fix it, but both for her own extreme position on abortion, and the fact she could never get the Trump base voter to turn out for the election, she would underwhelm too. The GOP has a Dobbs problem, and virtually no silver bullet to fix it by 2024. The most angry women live in suburban swing Congressional districts, often times in the most swing states (which should be read as “suburban.”). Yes, things can happen yet. International crises. Recession. Inflation spikes (mostly from gas). A health crisis. So no, this is not set in stone. As is though, Dobbs is going to be what decides the 2024 election, and Joe Biden is in a good spot for that.

In the longer term though, this is more interesting than what I’m writing here. It may be a long while until a President has consistent majority approval. We basically live in a constant “four party” state where primaries are ideological war zones, and incumbents do not enjoy broad support within their parties. Voters are still realigning as I said before, but at a glacial pace for now. I would expect if the dam is going to break, and we’re going to see a mass migration of voters, it’s going to happen after Biden and Trump have run their final campaigns in 2024. In other words, a year from now you’ll just see the tip of the new political sun rising. College educated white voters moving left. Non-college educated voters of color moving right. This could make for significantly different politics in the near future, and serious problems for the Democratic Party. Much as Catholic voters moved substantially in the 20 years after JFK’s 1960 win, millennial and non-white voters are not going to continue to provide them the margins they gave Barack Obama. It was silly to ever think they would. Again though, these are five and ten year problems from now, not 2024. And no one should get worried about Presidential approval ratings for a while. They aren’t going to be pretty.