If Bob Brooks is the nominee of the Democratic Party in PA-7, Republicans will swamp him with negative ads defining him as a deadbeat who took money from his mother-in-law and expresses racist beliefs on social media. In any normal time, I’d say that’s disqualifying, but there are a lot of people who would vote for O.J. Simpson if he ran on their party’s ticket right now. Even so, Crooksy is really the only candidate with a strong general election negative to run against, and Republicans are open that they feel most confident they can beat him. They’ll use his personal baggage, his endorsement from Bernie Sanders and other radical left wingers, and even negatives from his career that they have waiting to use. Democrats can’t afford that. Ryan Crosswell is completely unacceptable, but probably can win a general election, if you’re willing to vote for a Republican. There are three Democrats actually from the Lehigh Valley who are Democrats running in this race. We never needed the DCCC to mess this race up with this guy, but sure enough, it happened.
There’s absolutely no evidence that Crooksy brings anything to the table as a candidate, but that’s not what this is about. He raised $300k last quarter? So did like everyone across the river in NJ-7. Any candidate that gets nominated will raise plenty in the general election, and have PACs you’ve never heard of spending on their behalf. All that any of these folks endorsing him cares about is, he is the President of the IAFF’s Pennsylvania organization and the IAFF is really damn good at politics. When the IAFF backs a candidate for President, that candidate usually wins the Democratic nomination, at a minimum. The Governor wants the IAFF to support him in future campaigns, such as for Governor in 2026 and for President in 2028, and let’s be honest, one is more critical right now than the other. It’s very clear this is why this endorsement is happening, and anyone saying otherwise is a liar. Let’s be honest here, otherwise there’s no other reason to step into a competitive primary. Months ago, everyone claimed they would stay out. Plenty of people have appealed to the Governor directly and his insiders, pleading with them to not endorse this guy. None of that mattered, because this isn’t about this race. It’s about 2028.
I know this is an inconvenient truth to publish, but it’s a truth nonetheless. If I was worried about backlash for saying it, I wouldn’t have started in on Crooksy. I knew this from the start and made the decision on my own to write it. I’ve brought the receipts since day one. Frankly, I haven’t wrote the worst stuff, and probably won’t. Unions and elected officials are being pressured from the good ole’ boys club in Harrisburg to fall in line, to crush a primary here. I’m not invested enough in anyone’s success to play that game.
Last week I met Crooksy in the flesh. I have before, but I know I was not as interested in it then. His campaign manager walked up with him at an event, outside of the actual event, and said to him “this is Rich Wilkins, the guy who writes mean things about you.” You know what, that’s sort of accurate (I write accurate things about him), and it’s actually pretty funny. I said “how do you do,” and moved along. It was cold, but cordial. That’s really all it needed to be. I have said the guy would be inappropriate as a nominee, let alone a Congressman. I stand by that.
Later on in the event, a labor “personality” from a union that backs Crooksy decided to let me know they were unhappy with my coverage of their endorsement. After questioning why I didn’t ask them first if I was right (someone involved told me, why would I?) quite aggressively, I asked a pretty straight forward question- was what I wrote wrong? Their answer- “it didn’t go down the way you wrote it.” I don’t know, if I was going to confront someone like that, I’d probably be able to just say “yes, you were wrong” when asked that. Hey though, I guess sometimes the truth is a problem for some.
Look, I have the least skin in the game of anyone in this whole shenanigan- I don’t work for anyone involved in the race. I’m not going to work for anyone in the race. While I have a preference in the race, there are several candidates I could accept if they won. It has been said to friends of mine that I’m “harming my ability to work” by being so vocal about Crooksy. Huh? I haven’t worked for an actual candidate since before my health scare, almost two years, and I’m not really trying to. I charged my last candidate gas money basically for a couple months of work, because I grew up looking up to them and just wanted to help them through. These people want to blacklist me from a job I don’t want or have? Allegedly I won’t be able to work anymore judicial races, at least at the state level. You wouldn’t believe how badly that has me torn up, I might not be able to go on here (I shouldn’t have to tell you to read that with sarcasm, but yeah.). I didn’t have people attempting to blacklist me from work I don’t do on my 2025 bingo card, but I think this is supposed to scare me or something. Listen, I was almost dead once, you’re going to have to do better than that to scare me now. At least threaten to kneecap my good leg or something, I might blink. I’ve never really socialized with my co-workers much, the ones I am friends with know we’re friends. The rest? Honestly, maybe we’re acquaintances. I find myself more and more at odds with the world a lot of these people are trying to build. My attachment level is pretty low at this point.
These folks are hellbent to make sure people don’t have choices in this primary and don’t hear information about the people they want to thrust onto the voters. They had emissaries up here trying to clear the field and rally support. It didn’t work. They think if voters hear about the candidates, they won’t pick their guy. They’re probably right. What I don’t think they want to realize is, the 9-1-1 calls are coming from inside of their own house. Most of what I write is coming from people they tell it to. You think I found this stuff on my own? I dug up social media posts? I mean, this stuff is fair game, but it was given to me. It came from multiple sources. There’s more of it not yet written. The stuff I knew about the guy is stuff that quite frankly I can’t write, it lacks sources willing to talk about it. At least right now. Look, the total readership of this blog isn’t going to move this primary. I mostly put it out hoping the right reader will see it. I have no grand illusions here. If you want to spend all day mad about it, go right on ahead.
I don’t think I’ll be asking the good ole’ boys and girls out on the Susquehanna for a green light on anything. I mean, God bless, but they just don’t really matter to me. If they did, I’d be writing about them. God knows normal people would cringe if they read that kind of stuff.
After successfully propelling Zohran Mamdani to the mayor’s office in New York City, the campaign firm Fight Agency is moving on to its next targets – defeating Pennsylvania Reps. Ryan Mackenzie (R-07) and Rob Bresnahan (R-08).
The six-person firm consists of Rebecca Katz, Tommy McDonald, Julian Mulvey, Morris Katz, Eric Stern, and Lynnette Jackson. Fight Agency’s website reads that it has assisted over 300 winning elections in 40 states and has won over 100 awards, including 2022 Campaign of the Year.
Katz was the lead strategist for Sen. John Fetterman’s winning campaign in 2022, while McDonald was his key admaker. Mulvey was a key member of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) braintrust, and Katz was the firm’s lead on the Mamdani campaign.
Stern was deputy campaign manager for Fetterman, while Jackson heads operations.
The group’s website says that it is “looking to help American originals” who are “ready to fight the toughest battles in politics.”
“And we’re here to help you with sharp messaging and the next great iconic ad. So, if you’re looking for something different, you might have just found it.”
So their new iconic original is a pro-gun militant, who hates Kaepernick for supporting BLM (as opposed to telling people to not vote in 2016), and stiffed his mother-in-law. An American original? I mean, you can find deadbeats all over the place right, like maybe Trump Tower? Or is this whatever day Northampton County has hearings for people who stiff their family? I’m unsure. Bob “Crooksy” Brooks is certainly unoriginal though. I’ve see plenty of people who aren’t even honest when it comes to their family.
Yes, these folks got Zohran elected in a gigantic blue city. Good job. Unless they’re going to flat out lie to people and get away with it like they did with John “Shrek” Fetterman, that doesn’t usually work though. Look, Mamdani will be the latest leftist who promised the world and under delivers. John Fetterman somehow went from a Bernie socialist to a Republican before he finished three years in the Senate. These same folks want you to think it’s okay to have a Nazi tattoo, so much so that you should be elected Senator in Maine. Yes, he’s really their guy. These folks brag about electing like 300 socialists, but they probably lost more Presidential primaries with just Bernie Sanders alone than Eugene Debs did in his career. Most Americans don’t want to be Democratic Socialists.
I told you before about a bunch of Allentown elected officials endorsing Crooksy for Congress. All had stayed neutral for months, and even suggested to folks that they planned to stay neutral, or possibly endorse other candidates. Obviously in the end, only one state elected official in the city is still neutral, Senator Nick Miller. So what happened?
Republican Ryan Crosswell and Democrat Carol Obando-Derstine are both from Lehigh County. Mark Pinsley is literally the Lehigh County Treasurer. Crosswell even claims he lives in Allentown, even if he’s out with the night owls in DC. I know what they’re going to say, and that’s half the fun of writing this. Crosswell is a Republican carpetbagger that worked at a union busting firm. Well, that’s true. Pinsley is a far left progressive in their eyes, which is maybe true, but he’s also winning with their voters, so they may want to be careful how bad they diss him. So what about Carol Obando-Derstine? She’s endorsed by former Congresswoman Susan Wild, who they all loyally backed basically from the start in 2018, albeit maybe less vocally than they’re being for Crooksy. She worked for Bob Casey, who they all loyally supported as well, as they should. So what is it about Carol that they don’t like? Is it that she worked for PP&L, and now PP&L is asking the PUC to approve a rate hike? PP&L is currently asking for a 7% rate increase, so I can get them being reluctant to be too friendly to PP&L. The thing is, they didn’t care about that when Obando-Derstine actually worked at PP&L and rate increases were enacted, they liked her there. I doubt that’s the reason. While Crooksy has failed to really gain support from local organized labor on the whole, he has the Allentown Fire Fighters basically running his political operation, and they are objectively good at it. Are they demanding endorsements for Crooksy from anyone who will seek their future support? Or is it the state Democratic Party, run by the Governor’s foot soldiers, who are demanding support for Crooksy? Could it literally be the Governor himself demanded they endorse Crooksy? We’ve known from day one that the good ole’ boys in the Democratic Party have wanted to shove Obando-Derstine out of the race as the only woman running, because they think she’s dangerous to their plot to astroturf Crooksy in. Could it be that people were told they are not allowed to endorse her? They have already put a nasty rumor out in the street that Carol will be dropping out and endorsing Crosswell because of her poor fundraising. Are they trying to make sure no one backs her now?
If we’re being honest, there are only three people with a chance to win this primary, unless the Harrisburg insiders can muscle all resources and support to their flunky, Crooksy. Crosswell might be able to win because he’s raising a lot of money and his cover story for why he’s doing this is heart-warming to primary voters who don’t know better. Obando-Derstine can win this primary too, if her supporters put up an IE for her and she doesn’t get knee capped as “unelectable” for either her PP&L time or for the “sin” of being an immigrant woman in the era of Trump. And then there’s Lamont McClure, who can win because he’s actually won some elections around here and the voters like him a lot more than the party good ole’ boys do. Crooksy can only win this race if he can get McClure, and probably Obando-Derstine, out of this race too. Otherwise he starts out too unknown to win any part of this district by a large enough margin to win. They know they can’t get Crosswell out of this race, because his Republican out-of-town donors don’t care what the Governor thinks, or any other Democrat for that matter. They know they can’t get Pinsley out of the race either, because the guy habitually loves to run for something. They know they can’t get Crooksy nominated, to ultimately lose the general election, unless they get the actual Democrats from the actual Lehigh Valley to drop out. If they can pull that off, then a bigot, socialist, that stiffs his mother-in-law can maybe, just maybe win. If we race to the bottom, we’ll find something lower.
Bob “Crooksy” Brooks should be a salesman. Apparently Josh Shapiro has been convinced that Crooksy is good for his personal political ambitions, and he’s going to endorse him. Of course, they’ve been saying that since July, but still. The good ole’ boys from Harrisburg have been up here telling people to endorse him, because the Governor will be “soon.” Only a couple did, and for all the wrong reasons. Most people don’t want to support a racist, a religious gun-nut fundamentalist, and guy who stole from his mother-in-law and didn’t pay her back for 14 years, even losing on appeal. You would think in a Democratic primary the racism alone, let alone the embrace of political violence, would do it. Ryan Mackenzie has nothing to fear if he gets to run against this crook. No normal person is going to trust a guy who broke a contract with his mother-in-law for 14 years, it shows you exactly who he is. People aren’t going to vote for a guy who lies, steals, and pulls underhanded moves to take over his union. Bob “Crooksy” Brooks is just another Tulsi Gabbard or John Fetterman.
Crooksy is either a real good salesman, delusional, or just hilarious. Now he’s claiming he’s going to get endorsed by Gavin Newsom, according to sources. Look, I’d say he’s full of shit, but he did get Deadbeat Bernie Sanders to endorse him, which is both political malpractice and hilarious. You know what they say about crooks of a feather? But Newsom? Really? Coming across the country to endorse a guy who stiffed his mother-in-law? Gavin Newsom wants to embrace the latest marginal intellect white savior complex candidate endorsed by the bolsheviks? That helps him how? He wants to tell Black voters he is for the guy who hates Kaepernick for kneeling?
There is definitely an element within the Democratic operative world that thinks we need to run communists and bigoted white guys. They think a guy with a Nazi tattoo is what we need to win in Maine. They’re not right though, and Newsom is smart enough to know that. So why would this be? The #2 guy at the IAFF is their head guy in California, and I’m just taking a shot in the dark here, but he may be the link. Perhaps it’s a very low brain wave version of political chess, where one Governor thinks he can get a major endorsement for his quixotic 2028 Presidential campaign, and the other Governor then is convinced he absolutely needs to get in on this too, so nobody gets the credit. I mean, I’m spit balling here. It’s definitely not worth the trouble though.
Look, this is borderline hilarious. Given what a narcissist this guy is, he probably opened an email from Newsom and thinks he’s getting his endorsement now. As one out of the Valley lawmaker puts it, “we all like Bob, but none of us think he can do it.” He’s way nicer than I. If I didn’t know the place he tended bar, I wouldn’t believe he was smart enough to tend bar. Bartenders I know are the smartest people out there, they know when to get cut off a bad situation. This guy is trying to drink from a fire hose while a raging inferno blazes in front of him. The problem is, the powerful and brilliant minds that gave us the 2024 Democratic Party in Harrisburg and Washington are trying to astroturf this guy a victory. This is like handing a mentally ill person a loaded AR-15.
I’m an OG Bernie hater. When his online weirdos put me on their hate list in 2017, it was a badge of honor. I knew then that he was a grifter. His campaign, his super pac (Our Revolution), and his institute (Sanders Institute) all employed his family. Some of his organizations bought his books (great for royalties). He made a profit off of running for office. So he kept running for President in a political party that he slams repeatedly and isn’t a member of. It’s a great existence, for him. He disowns all the stuff that is inconvenient for him, vaguely claims the populist stance, and makes a lot of money off of it. It’s easy to see the guy isn’t real.
I also never trust the people he elevates as our “future.” He has given us some real doozies. Bernie gave us Tulsi Gabbard (who literally had an internal campaign “hate” list that they put me on too). Tulsi Gabbard told us Assad in Syria was “not an enemy,” essentially blaming the U.S. for Russia invading Ukraine, and that Hillary Clinton is drugged and refusing to back her over her foreign policy and cheating Bernie out of the nomination. Today, Tulsi Gabbard is Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, claiming that Russia did not seek to help Trump in 2016 (they did), contradicting a GOP lead Senate report saying they did. Gabbard’s revisionist history is the backbone of the government’s case that former Obama era intelligence leaders lied to Congress and tried to frame Trump. In short, Tulsi Gabbard is a psychopath. Bernie Sanders told us she’s not. Of course, she got her rise by being a trusted friend to Bernie.
Happy Saturday, friends… and enemies too! You see, I have a very, very good idea of my audience on this blog, and well, that impacts what I write here. I’d love to write my thoughts on the Sixers, or next year’s Foo Fighters tour, or the Phillies off-season. I write about how Bernie Sanders sucks and what’s wrong with Ryan Crosswell and Bob Brooks, and you read it though. Yesterday, I talked about how the Allentown crew put self preservation over what’s right, and you read it. You know who you are. A couple thousand hits in the immediate hours after can be confusing, but I still know who most of these readers are. Readers in Arlington, in Washington, in Philadelphia, in Rockville, in Ashburn, in Brooklyn, in White Plains, in Allentown, in Bangor (ok, this one slightly confuses me), in Easton, in McKeesport, in Bethlehem, in Princeton, in Camp Hill, in Braddock, in Phillipsburg, in Hazleton, in Harrisburg… shit, I’m going to be honest, some of you read this so much that I actually am like 99% I know who each of you are. I know who my daily reader from Nazareth is. I also know why you read this, because I pretty much know who you are. And look, that’s great. I write this so someone reads it. I don’t write it to read myself.
Most of you reading this enjoy it. Some of you (hey opposition researchers!) send me into to post here. When I’m reasonably sure it’s true, I post it. Some of you wonder why, and even are critical of me doing it, as if Rich Wilkins not posting something a.) makes it untrue, b.) means it won’t get out. It is a uniquely poor trait of Pennsylvania politicos, more so than any of the other states I’ve been in, that we think we can keep secrets. We can’t. I’m not on any of the campaigns right now, I’m not paying for this stuff, it’s so easy to find that any idiot could do it. Which gets to my other point here- most of you enjoy reading this blog, but yesterday the smoke coming from Allentown looked like a mushroom cloud. One subject was sending the post around complaining, one actually complained to me personally (one talked to me and we actually joked about it, but I’ll leave that for another time), and one is probably already reading this and fuming. I could hear the words that I’m sure came out of one of their mouths- “Rich is a nobody anyway and no one cares what he says.”- while literally talking about what I wrote. Hey, I like irony. The truth is, there’s lots more to come on Crooksy and others. I already have some of it. I’ll print it when I want to. Assuming I want to. And you should be glad I do. If I’ve found all this on a zero dollar budget, don’t you think Ryan Mackenzie has this and more (he does)? At least by me writing it, you know about it now, not when it’s hitting you in the face.
Look, I’m not your boss. I’m not your dad. I’m not your Governor. I give you information, if you don’t care about that, it’s fine. If you’re fine with racism, fine. If you’re fine with extremism, fine. If you’re fine with political violence, that’s not fine, but you can be. If you’re fine with being untrustworthy, fine. Look, if you think Kaepernick was an ass for kneeling during the national anthem, that’s your choice. Bob Brooks agrees with you. Just own that though. Don’t claim he’s changed, because now he’s telling you he did because it’s good politics. Don’t claim it was “just a messy divorce,” when he didn’t pay his mother-in-law back one penny for over 14 years before she sued him. She had him sign a contract after four years of not being paid, and he still didn’t pay her. Just own it. If you’re fine with this because the guy’s union gave you a few bucks for your re-election, I actually totally get it. Just be real with yourself. He doesn’t dispute that he got sued and lost, hell he appealed it and lost. He doesn’t claim he didn’t post racist and extremist memes, he just says that was then. Hell, Ryan Crosswell at least tries to claim he wasn’t “really” a Republican, even though he re-registered in multiple states, and that he only worked on non-competes, not union busting as a private lawyer. Crooksy pretty much admits everything. Or just says it doesn’t matter.
Blogs aren’t the real world. This blog will not move voters next year. Maybe a few of you won’t vote for one candidate or another over something I show, but my audience is in the thousands, and as I stated above, you live in lots of different districts. Basically 90% of you are here reading for politics. A few of you are here reading about the other topics, and you’re my favorites. Most of what I write on this blog is for my audience’s interest though, a bunch of politicos. Sometimes it really reaches a broader audience, of politicos who never met me before. That’s great. This blog can only serve as a guide to how to win an election, it’s not going to get it done on it’s own. That takes money and mass communication with voters. That is not happening here on this page.
I think Matt Tuerk is a pretty good Mayor of Allentown. Mike Schlossberg and Pete Schweyer do a fine job representing their districts. I don’t think any of them are racists or anything. None of them are religious radicals or gun nuts either, in fact they’re pretty far left on those issues. In fact, none of them would stiff their mother-in-law either. I would be surprised if any of them actually, personally approve of the behavior that Bob Brooks has displayed. I’m frankly shocked they’re not endorsing Carol Obando Derstein, who they have all known for years. They all supported Susan Wild for years, but they are breaking with her to back a random guy from Northampton County. They’re supporting a guy who has a demonstrated history of racial insensitivity and represent a majority-minority city. It’s rather surprising.
Let’s be honest, the Allentown Fire Fighters are essentially Crooksy’s political shop, and they’re going to make supporting him a litmus test. Look, I get it. It’s much easier to work with them than against them. I’m sure the Governor’s minions are also making clear they want them to do this. It’s much better to have other people do the endorsing, after all. Endorsing Crooksy is the easy way out, and it makes people happy in powerful places. The insiders want to pick this guy, not because he can win (he can’t), but because it helps their aspirations. It’s not about you and your life, it’s about them and their future aspirations.
Populism isn’t a winning strategy, and the numbers on Tuesday again bare that out. Mamdani did considerably worse, against lesser opposition, than say Mikie Sherrill did. None of these people can seriously argue that an inexperienced candidate with personal baggage, a history of racism, and outlier views on guns and school prayer, is going to be a good Congressman. At best, he’s Fetterman. At worst, he’s a loser. Unfortunately, people are being rewarded for doing things they don’t believe in right now. That’s a real shame. Bob Brooks showed you who he is before he decided to run for public office. Anything he says now is candidate speak and shouldn’t be trusted. According to the Pennsylvania Superior Court, Bob “Crooksy” Brooks shouldn’t be trusted either.
No, this isn’t a real person, really for real here.
A socialist was elected Mayor of New York City. That’s really not shocking. Trump had 69% disapproval amongst NYC voters yesterday, and the only other real option was Andrew Cuomo. I don’t need to add to that. 50.4% selecting Zohran Mamdani given that Donald Trump was backing Andrew Cuomo and the other guy was a vigilante, is not all that impressive. If Mamdani wasn’t a socialist and didn’t make it clear he doesn’t like Jewish people, he’d probably have reached 69%. The fact that he didn’t means a lot of anti-Trump voters couldn’t come around to backing him. In fact, only a little better than 7 in 10 anti-Trump voters selected him, and I assume the rest probably voted for Cuomo. When you think about it that way, it’s not so wildly impressive.
Ok, here’s the small reality check, if you need one. Yesterday definitely suggested 2026 could be a really good year for Democrats. Joe Emrick might finally lose. We should beat Ryan Mackenzie if we nominate the right candidate. Let’s go back to the Mamdani example for a moment, and treat him as charitably as we can. Let’s assume he’d still get 7 in 10 anti-Trump voters in the Lehigh Valley and everywhere, even though most of the places we are going to discuss are less liberal than the Big Apple. 55% of New Jersey voters didn’t approve of Trump. If Mamdani got the same 73% of the anti-Trump vote there, he would be at 40.15%. Mikie Sherrill got 56.3% in the actual New Jersey race, or a bit more than 100% of those votes. How about in Virginia, where 56% of voters didn’t approve of Trump? That comes out to 40.88%. Abigail Spanberger got 57.2%, or also just north of 100% of anti-Trump voters. Sherrill and Spanberger got about 102% of the anti-Trump vote and Mamdani got 73%. More of the country will have Trump’s negatives in the 50’s and maybe low 60’s next year, as opposed to New York City’s 69%. Since Mamdani literally got a bare majority of the vote with Trump at 69% disapproval, you would basically need Trump’s actual disapproval to be at 68% in any district to be able to win with a candidate like Mamdani. That’s not going to be the case in any competitive race. For argument’s sake, California had Trump’s disapproval at 63% last night. If Mamdani got that same 73% of anti-Trump vote in California, he’d be at 45.99%. There are going to be a lot of races on the board in California next year. A socialist candidate viewed as friendly to Hamas/oppositional to Israel, like Mamdani, would probably lose in many California seats. For what it’s worth, Proposition 50, the re-districting question, got 63.9% of the vote, or roughly 101% of anti-Trump votes.
Here in the Lehigh Valley, Nadeem Qayyum won a seat on the Northampton County Council. Let me be clear, I didn’t support him. I waited until after the election to say this because it’s not my place, but Qayyum told members of the Lehigh Valley Labor Council in an endorsement interview that he planned to announce after he was elected that he was the first socialist elected in Northampton County. Even Nadeem knew he had to hide some things. Even as Nadeem lied about being a socialist, he still only got 85.25% of what Tara Zrinski received with the same voters. We know even less about Theresa Fadem. Never the less, they won in spite of plenty of other problems. All of the Democrats beat all of the Republicans though, and by a lot (almost 10,000 votes out of 91,000 votes cast). I’ll get deeper into this later, but the key to the Democratic victory *appears* to not just be vote-by-mail, which was up by close to 5,000 votes in the end, but actually the Election Day surge of anti-Trump voters. Election Day voting was up by 14,000 votes from 2023 to 2025. It’s rather clear by the margins that these people were voting for Democrats, and Democrats only.
So what does all of this mean here? Let’s assume for a second that Tara Zrinski and Josh Siegel got an even 100% of the anti-Trump votes last night in the County Executive races. That’s 59.38% in Northampton County and 60.61% in Lehigh County. A Mamdani-like candidate would get 43.35% in Northampton County and 44.25% in Lehigh County. That’s also assuming next year’s electorate is exactly like this year’s, and well, look at the 2022 numbers (which probably won’t be exact either, but still much closer) in Northampton and Lehigh. You go from just shy of 187,000 votes in the two counties to well over 260,000. The GOP, even if they’re doing awful, will do a little better than this year, and I’m not including Carbon, which actually voted NO on retention for the Supreme Court Judges last night, so Trump may still be in the positive there. I’ll go with the average in Northampton and Lehigh County though today, 60% anti-Trump voters. That’s 43.8%.
Where am I going with this? Well first off, Mark Pinsley basically has the same policy views as Mamdani (I don’t consider him to be as bad of a guy), so nominating him is very likely to end in a loss. Then there’s Bob Brooks, a guy who has deep flaws that cut across party lines, and has the same consultants as Mamdani, and is supported by Bernie Sanders, Ro Khanna, a large cadre of the Mamdani supporters on the national level. Assuming Democrats can stomach the racism and other issues, he doesn’t deteriorate further than Mamdani’s share of the anti-Trump vote, Brooks is probably not doing much better than 44% because his policies and rhetoric is Mamdani’s rhetoric. I’m sure he’ll try to distance himself, like say John Fetterman, but does anyone want to send another version of Shrek to Congress. And what if he does fool people into thinking he’s not a bad guy, like Fetterman? Maybe he gets the more like 85% of the anti-Trump vote and gets to 51.15%, not factoring in Carbon and increased Republican turnout? He still probably narrowly loses. Candidates like Bob Brooks are gigantic risks to maybe lose a winnable race, or be the next John Fetterman. He should be DOA in the PA-7 Democratic Primary, and any efforts to push him by the state Democratic Party are emphatically stupid. We don’t need the Harrisburg insiders pushing their candidate.
As for Ryan Crosswell? Maybe he could win a general election running as a union busting, Trump Democrat. Why would you want that?
Candidates like Zohran Mamdani are fine for New York City. I wish he had lost, and I think the result was bad for New York, but they chose him. Candidates like Zohran Mamdani are not going to win us seats like NJ-7 or PA-7. Candidates like Mamdani wouldn’t represent upgrades in state legislative races in the Lehigh Valley either. We need to reject these folks. Failure to do so will not be unlike Tea Party Republicans nominating the “witch lady” for Delaware Senate in 2020, but they also have the longterm impact the Tea Party had on the GOP as well. I don’t want the Democratic Party to simply be a liberal flip side of the Trump coin. It won’t win, and it’s bad for America.
I’ve been around long enough to remember the Bush Republican Party. It was an awful institution, an institution that ruined our standing in the world with their post-9/11 foreign policy, created permanent deficits with their tax cuts, wars, and unfunded mandates, wrecked public education, put the architects of repealing Roe v. Wade on the bench, ran a Presidential campaign in 2004 based on gay baiting and homophobia, weakened environmental laws, and deregulated housing and Wall Street to the point of an economic collapse in 2008. In short, the reason I am a Democrat today is that the Bush Republican Party was an incredibly damaging group of people and was full of completely repugnant people, from Dennis Hastert to Dick Cheney. We should not opine the moral superiority of “those good ole’ days.” There was nothing good about them.
What followed the Bush Republican Party was not an improvement. Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, and the rise of people like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul was not some return of moral leadership to the Party of Lincoln. Those folks gave rise to Trumpism, and Trump has been the revolution. Our government is largely no longer functional, and that’s what many folks who supported him want. “Norms” are no longer normal, there is no discussion of common ground. The current pathway is simply a regression to the desired conservative mean, a natural outcome of the algorithm billionaires and conservative culture warriors wanted. The destruction of this moment cannot be understated.
The problem of course is that as dumb as Trump truly is, there was a decent argument that a 20th century government and political culture was no longer working for America. The large, bulky government we had put together after World War II, and it’s technocratic wonkiness, had become a hinderance to the desires of the public. Our society was not, and by the way is still not, meeting our needs.
I won’t draw a comparison between the party of Obama/Clinton/Biden and the Bush GOP, because let’s be honest, they gave us things like Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and an infrastructure bill. If you want to argue they didn’t go far enough, fine, but they were good things. However, the Democratic Party had become the defenders of systems and institutions that were not, and are not, popular. We were arguing the economy was fine because of market growth and job numbers, while housing and costs in general were rising. We were arguing that Israel was right to attack Hamas, because they were, but were giving ourselves no room to criticize Netanyahu’s incompetence and total disinterest in getting to a sustainable outcome, even as he criticized and attacked us. We were right to bail out Wall Street, the auto industry, and the health care industry after 2008, but also not only didn’t make them pay for their bad choices, we sort of got stuck defending why America “needed” them. Basically, we got stuck keeping our systems working, because it was the best thing for society, and then also got stuck defending the institutions on which we had always been the only check. We started to look like the kids serving as hall monitors in high school, the wet blankets.
The correct response to this is not to start yielding to anti-semitism and white men with Nazi tattoos, that much I know. Globalizing the Intifada is still a very, very bad idea, even if you think Netanyahu is an abject criminal. Sure, Democrats should never have conceded to the data nerds and embraced a “base only” approach to politics, but the answer to that is not to embrace the very worst human beings one can find. The 2010 Republican Party conceded power to the Tea Party, and within a few years they were embracing Pizza Gate, Charlottesville, chem trail theorists, and “white replacement theory.” So much for Milton Friedman economics and “real politic” foreign policy. They were overrun with an unmanageable caucus in both houses of Congress and a Presidential candidate who was completely self motivated and transactional. What could go wrong? Well, everything. And now it’s the Democrats turn. We are on the verge of accepting anti-semitism, grifters, and crackpot conspiracy theorists. They are defending political violence against Jews. And before you say, it’s just one of them, no it’s the whole Alt-Left movement. As DSA calls murder okay, they organize for Mamdani. That would be Zohran Mamdani, who last year was a part of the uncommitted movement over, yes, Gaza. Up on stage at their DSA rally he had AOC, a proponent of the “defund the police” movement. Seriously. She didn’t just want changes to policing, she wanted it defunded. She meant it too. And then there was Bernie up there with them. Bernie, who ran and lost for President twice, the second time much worse, who never misses a chance to attack Democrats. Not on stage with them was Bernie’s heart throb in Maine, Graham Platner, a loud progressive who also thinks the Democratic Party sucks, and also has Nazi tattoos. Of course, the Alt-Left loves him and thinks they “might have found our Trump.” They also didn’t bring their old buddy John Fetterman around, because he’s sort of problematic right now, but he was Mamdani and Platner before they were.
There are Democratic leaders, from Martin Heinrich to Chris Murphy, maybe to even Hakeem Jeffries and Kathy Hochul, ready to concede to these folks. They are ready to concede the Democratic Party to self avowed socialists, conspiracy theories, and nuts. It’s about to happen here in the Lehigh Valley too. Bernie Sanders has endorsed Bob “Crooksy” Brooks in the 7th Congressional district primary. Just like he did for Fetterman. That would be Crooksy who stiffed his mother-in-law, but lives in a state of denial that people won’t care about stealing $55k, defending political violence, sharing racist memes, and being a religious radical. Of course Bernie is for this, he was for Fetterman too. And like Bernie and Fetterman, Crooksy lectures the Democrats about “not supporting the working class,” which for Crooksy just means they let the Black lady talk to Black people, which he definitely hates. Sadly, it sounds like Governor Shapiro is going to join the PA Dems in conceding the Democratic Party to the most vile, terrible elements of the left for political expediency. This is no profile in courage moment. Our leaders are letting us down. They are allowing anti-semites, conspiracy theorists, and socialists to be our future. This is our Tea Party Moment. We are failing it.
Apocalypse Vibes 