Bob Brooks is a pile of human garbage that anyone should be ashamed of. If you’re defending him, it’s because you want a Congressional staff job and the benefits, let’s be honest. Don’t tell me it’s because you have Democratic values, the man hates Barack Obama. He is accused of committing mortgage fraud, entirely so he could stiff his mother-in-law. He’s not just a random deadbeat. No, he’s much worse than that.
A couple years ago, you might have heard that I was almost dead. Literally a couple *weeks* ago, a keyboardist had a heart attack in my basement during band practice. Both times, the incredible folks of Suburban EMS came to save the day. There’s not enough things I can say about these people, I’d be cremated or in a box somewhere without them. When the keyboardist had his heart attack, these EMT’s were joined by the good people of the Palmer Township Police Department and our *volunteer” fire fighters. What does Crooksy think of them? From Bernie:
The Beacon’s Chuck Ross has some up with something I failed to cover during the primary, and that is Brooks’ revulsion at professional firefighters who dare act as volunteer firefighters in their own communities. Ross points to angry social media posts from Brooks, calling them “scabs” and “shitbags.”
I understand that Brooks may have no issue with volunteer firefighters so long as they stay out of a municipality covered by a professional and unionized fire department. But does that make sense. The Lehigh Valley’s three cities have all had major fires over the years during which volunteer firefighters from other municipalities assist. The most recent example of this is at an Easton hotel. Should a professional Easton or Bethlehem firefighter refuse to assist if he is also a volunteer at Plainfield’s fire department and that company responds? Should they just stand by and watch a building burn?
As I said before the primary, Republicans had more on this pile of donkey loaf than I did. I did not have these social media posts. Of course they had the goods here:
In the original article they go on to point out that this post from Brooks is nonsense. Of course a volunteer force should not go into Easton, Bethlehem, Wilson, Allentown, or Emmaus uncalled and undercut unionized, paid members who fight fires for a living. What Crooksy doesn’t point out here is *that doesn’t happen in reality.* There aren’t volunteers from Nancy Run going into his former turf of the city of Bethlehem and responding to routine fire calls. Far from. Almost always, the volunteers are called in because there aren’t enough paid fire fighters on call, or in some cases on the force at all, to respond to the severity of the fire. The reality is that our society doesn’t have the resources to keep people safe all of the time. These folks volunteer to help us deal with that.
I’ll take a guess that this human pile of sewage will say is that these professional fire fighters are “taking advantage” of the real estate tax rebates. Yeah well, our society offers those because we can’t take care of ourselves. God bless these guys to give their time off for the rest of us. I sleep better at night knowing anyone would give of the most important resource we have, time. He knows this though. His union was pleading for more resources from the City of Bethlehem in last year’s budget because *they need more fire fighters.* I even agree with him for the most part. Apparently he doesn’t hold the courage of his own convictions.
Crooksy is just a garbage human being. He should drop out of this race today and just admit the con. Maybe we could still convince the former Congresswoman to take his place.
There are rumors that Crooksy is drawing a look from the U.S. Attorney’s office, and I’m sure the Attorney General would like to take a crack at him over his “quit claim” on the property he stiffed his mother-in-law for. I actually don’t think it would be wise for either to open an investigation unless the statute is about to run out on this. He’ll still be as guilty or not next year and it would look nakedly political. Besides, it looks as though Deadbeat Bob will be spending significant general election time in the court room arguing this case anyway. Bob’s defenders have taken in private to criticizing the woman he stiffed out of the money, and I think it’s just a matter of time until they start trying to call her crooked, unhinged, and other evil words. Maybe she is. That doesn’t matter a single iota, as Bob signed the promissory note to pay her back. He acknowledged that he owed her the money, and he then did everything possible to not pay her. If he weren’t your political candidate, you’d call him a deadbeat.
Ryan Mackenzie deserves to lose in 2026. He voted for everything Donald Trump asked him to vote for, and Donald Trump is about as popular with the electorate right now as athlete’s foot. So of course the consultant class in DC and Harrisburg have saddled us with a pile of cow dung to get elected in this district. My plan is to just leave the race blank right now see what comes around in two years.
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.
Eight years ago I had a kind of front row seat to the spectacle that was the PA-7 Primary. This time, to the extent it matters, I was mostly watching from backstage. Even so, I can’t help but notice a lot of things that were the same then as now, and a few things that are not. Now the big question is if they’ll even matter.
So I had coffee on Friday with one of the candidates and I couldn’t help but eventually say to her that the irony was not lost on me that in another cycle the DCCC would probably have moved mountains to have a candidate like her, and this time they and really the entire establishment of the party really did their best to leave her behind. While the rejection of a woman by a party where the majority of our primary voters are women is noteworthy, it’s important to understand that this is actually more of a similarity than a difference- the party picked a person and then spent like crazy to get them. 2018 was the year of the woman, and outside groups came in and spent like drunks in the closing weeks of that primary to get Susan Wild across the line and *not* have John Morganelli get nominated. The DCCC and related Democratic groups have decided they want to run alleged blue collar “everyman” types in 2026, and they spent like crazy to make sure they got Bob Brooks. They spent so much for Bob that they spent DCCC dollars earmarked for the general election to push the guy across the line. This was a trend that played out to varying degrees in PA-1 and PA-10 as well, and PA-8 had no race. They are going to spend to any number they have to in order to get the narrative they want. You really can’t avoid it. And by the way, the NRCC does the same thing. Ryan Mackenzie was basically a welfare candidate in the 2024 primary, but outside PACs spent like crazy to get him across. It will be fascinating to see what happens over this next week in neighboring NJ-7, where backers of Tina Shah have come in and gone dead negative on Rebecca Bennett lately. We’ll find out if the DCCC really wants her or not.
Another thing that has become apparent- getting elected to some county office in Northampton County is not a route to the Congressional seat. Lamont McClure ran in second place in Northampton and Carbon Counties, respectable for a candidate that got outspent and really had to run against the popular Governor from his own party. He got dead last in Lehigh County, and by a lot. You know what that reminded me of? John Morganelli. Morganelli held on to win Northampton in 2018, but got absolutely left in the dust in Lehigh. Also, both hit a relatively low wall in fundraising pretty quickly and were majorly outspent. In both cases a person who was not an elected, in fact two other people, but was relatively involved in party politics, got major backing from outside of the district, and their fundraising (and outside spending) took off. Wild did not nearly have the thumb on the scale for her that Brooks needed, but her outside supporters spent everyone else into the ground in that race. The white elected guy from Northampton did not have a chance either time. There is an interesting dynamic here, between a major swing county that decides national elections and the national Democratic Party- the folks in DC do not want the candidates that win general elections here. Now this is not as cut and dry as that last sentence sounds, because there are other factors in this district (like turning out Lehigh County), wanting a candidate that is more flexible to running the kind of campaign they want to run, and the fact that many, many more people vote in a federal primary than a municipal one, but it still comes out to the same. If you zoom out to the national level, one could argue this is a national tension for the Democratic Party, as swing districts are much more rebellious against the messages our party wants to run on. One could also look at the numbers though and remark that Democrats actually have performed *better* in swing districts and swing states than they have in solidly Blue or Red areas in 2022 and 2024. Nevertheless, you can see the tensions.
Now this leads me to a couple of other observations that are fairly obvious coming out of this- playing the local politics game to run for Congress here is pointless. There’s not enough money here to “win” the in district political endorsements and turn that into a winning campaign. They can come in and swamp you. Also, and I don’t think you can call this an accident anymore, the national folks come in here and build large fields, often times large and divisive fields, in part because it’s much easier to shape the race to get the result you want in a field of four or more than it would be in a one on one primary. The DCCC met and talked to all four of the candidates before they entered the race, discouraged none of them, and yet ultimately leaned as heavily on the district as possible to get the candidate of their choice, both times. Neither Wild in 2018 or Brooks in 2026 were anywhere remotely near an actual 50%+1 majority in their victories, and they didn’t need to because they had enough other candidates in the field that would take a legitimate amount of votes to know that they probably could win if they got to 30%. It’s divide and conquer politics at it’s finest.
Now the obvious differences are really two things. First off, this time the party decided to embrace a Bernie Sanders backed populist, something they didn’t do in 2018. Boy, it does seem like they never pick the non-white candidates here, maybe I’m the only one seeing that. The national party has decided 2026 is the year they’re going to try Bernie’s way apparently, as we’re seeing in places like Maine as well, and I think it’ll burn them more than they think, but there’s still a chance that sticks for a while because I fully expect them to take the House. This is a wholesale directional change though, and I think a lot of Democrats who were good Obama-Clinton-Biden-Harris voters are going to need to come to grips with this- white populism is probably going to be the dominant ideology in our party too after the recent Supreme Court decision gutting the VRA and basically killing off “Majority-Minority” districts in our politics. Democrats are probably going to win the House with some folks we would not have liked in 2018 or 2022, and at the same time the CBC is going to take a dramatic hit in membership across the South. It’s a different party, and it’s probably going to get more different. I don’t think we’ve seen even the tip of the iceberg of the changes this is going to bring yet, and I’m just waiting for the Republicans to get our state legislative map into federal courts and find a friendly judge. I hope I’m wrong, but I fear I’m not.
And of course, the bigger, and somewhat related thing here- Bob Brooks is not Susan Wild. Wild came out of the 2018 primary with less help from major party figures (her big supporters were EMILY’s List, NextGen, and Planned Parenthood) and her perceived negative by some was that she would be too left for the district. That ended up not being true, at least until the new map gave her Carbon County and took away the good Democratic parts of Monroe. She had nothing personally offensive about her as a person, she was a candidate standing on the set of positions she ran on. Brooks is quite different than that. Yes, I think he will be attacked as a leftist, a “union thug,” and whatever other partisan arguments the NRCC will make, some of them at least partially true (he was backed by Sanders, Ro Khanna, Ruben Gallego, and other troublesome leftists), and some are just generic anti-Democratic talking points. He and Wild do have that stuff sort of in common. Wild didn’t have the personal baggage of Brooks though. Democratic primary voters at least partially (I mean, 59% voted against him) papered over his personal issues. His campaign is going to take the bet that they’ll downplay him stiffing his mother-in-law, and frustrations with Trump will win the day over Mackenzie. That’s a plausible theory that may happen, Trump is very unpopular right now. It also might not happen. These are not a partisan Democratic audience like the die-hards voting in our primaries. As things like this trickle out, it’s more likely general election voters will at least take a look at them. Bob’s strength, which is that he’s basically a generic 2026 Democratic nominee with no serious individualized policy positions, is also his negative- let’s face it, the party won him that primary, it was more of a victory for Josh Shapiro than Bob individually. There’s no reservoir of love for him personally, as is true of the overwhelming majority of candidates in 2026. These voters aren’t going to believe him because he’s on their team. They’ll either decide stopping Trump is their first priority, or they’ll decide Bob is too much of a scumbag to stomach. I can honestly say both things are true, so we’ll see which plays out.
Now with the benefit of hindsight I think you can look back and see the obvious trend lines here. Sometimes history repeats itself. Other times you nominate someone who blows up in your face. I know which deserves to happen here, but it’s harder to say which will. I guess we’ll know six months from now.
Well, it’s over. Really over. After more than a year, the Democratic primary for the 7th Congressional District of Pennsylvania is over. Bob “Crooksy” Brooks won. He got 41.74% of the vote, winning every county. As a matter of fact, he won by 20 points. In the end, his vast list of national supporters won the day. The DCCC was so hellbent on nominating him that they reportedly moved several hundred thousand dollars (from what I was told, money earmarked for his buy-in to the Democratic Party’s coordinated campaign) into the race late. My guess is that there was pressure put on them to do so by someone, but we’ll never hear who that was. Since he won, it really doesn’t matter much.
Allentown, PA — The Mackenzie for Congress campaign issued the following statement in response to Democrats nominating Bob Brooks in PA-07.
“Tonight, after spending millions of dollars in dark money on his behalf, the Democratic establishment got their hand-picked candidate: con-man and fraudster Bob Brooks. These groups steamrolled local Democrats and hijacked the democratic process in order to nominate a corrupt political insider, a wealthy lobbyist with a vast stock portfolio, and someone who has a record of stealing from his own family. The establishment Democrat machine has done this for one reason: they know that Bob Brooks will follow orders from his political bosses, just like he did as a union boss. The people of the Lehigh Valley and the Poconos will reject this dumpster fire of a candidate,” said Mackenzie for Congress spokesman Arnaud Armstrong.
“As a result of Brooks’ history of scams and schemes that we heard about throughout the primary, the Mackenzie for Congress campaign is also announcing the launch of the Bob Brooks Hotline. Residents of the community who have been ripped off or targeted by conman and fraudster Bob Brooks – or have other information about his checkered past – can report their experiences by calling (484) 272-4215.”
Ok, so that should set the table for what kind of campaign this will be. Once again the Lehigh Valley will be one of the biggest battlegrounds in America. And this campaign will be nasty. Very nasty. On the one hand you have a Trump acolyte who has voted loyally for MAGA values. On the other hand, you have a man that lacks any values or soul. It’s enough to make you want to not vote.
I spent close to a quarter century doing campaigns, and at any point in there I would tell you that this is too important to over think. If you want Trump to lose power, you should vote against his party. Trump is absolutely loathsome enough to feel that way. Mackenzie was infamously a yes vote for the “Big, Beautiful Bill” that cut Medicaid to the bone, cut funds to fight climate change, and gutted the Affordable Care Act, amongst it’s many horrible acts. That is a worthy reason to vote Ryan Mackenzie out.
On the other hand, as our progressive friends reminded us in 2016 and 2024, you have to give people something to vote for. I mean, do we want to kick out one guy we don’t like to elect a hypocrite? I’ve spent months telling you what a bad guy Bob Brooks is. In good conscience, I can’t tell you now to just vote for him anyway. I think the guy is a crook. I didn’t give a damn when Pete Buttigieg or Josh Shapiro said otherwise. But I suppose most folks just figure I’ll support my party, right? I mean shit, I worked for Obama, Clinton, and Biden, how can I not want Trump to lose Congress? Surely whatever “shared” values I have with the guy who stiffed his mother-in-law, the awful guy I first remember as a bartender, must outweigh the personal, right?
At a different time in life, yes. This version of the Democratic Party? The Graham Platner/Bob Brooks version of the party? I have to admit, I have nothing here. I signed up for the party of Bill Clinton and John Kerry, not this. I will absolutely be voting Democratic for other offices this Fall, but this one? I know a lot about Ryan Mackenzie, and I’m not really excited about him continuing in his current job. Bob is a dirtbag though. He can say “heck yeah” all he wants and pretend he’s some tough guy biker, but in the end he’s a guy who took from his own family. He’s not an improvement on really much of anyone. As the party accepts more and more problematic candidates, I’m not sure I care enough to care. The guy is a racist, let’s face it, you can’t find a famous black guy he likes (hello Barack Obama and Colin Kaepernick). I want no part in electing this guy. If that costs us the House, maybe the Democratic Party should be better. I’ve said for a long time that I’m not a “vote blue no matter who” type. Well, that’s going to be put to the test here. I broke down and voted for Fetterman at the 11th hour in 2022. I’ve regretted it ever since.
I was asked earlier today if I planned to take all of the stuff down that I wrote about Crooksy. The answer is no. I had several people reach out to me today to say they’ve learned a good deal from this site, and that’s worth more to me than getting a Christmas card from some elected official. I’m not going to endorse Mackenzie right now, I think his record is reprehensible. But I’m also not going to tell you to fall in line and vote for Deadbeat Bob. There’ll be a campaign, and we’ll see what happens. For now, my plan is to either leave it blank or write in someone else. I have to admit, I’m only kind of judging folks who reach a different conclusion.
Well, it’s primary Election Day in Pennsylvania. There is only one race I can vote in with more than one person actually on the ballot, not counting party leader elections. For the first time since 2002 I am not seeking (either on the ballot or by write-in) a seat on either the county or state committee, and I’m quite happy about that. While I will remain in the Democratic Party as an active primary voter, committee people are bound by rule to support all Democratic nominees, and there are simply an increasing number of candidates that regardless of how bad their Republican opponent is, I cannot vote for. Here in the Lehigh Valley, I will not be casting a vote for Bob Brooks in the Fall, regardless of the results tonight. I would not support Graham Platner or Abdul Al-Sayed if I lived in their states. I’m not sure I could stomach NJ-12 candidate Adam Hamawy’s relationship to the “Blind Sheikh” who was convicted of the first World Trade Center bombing, though the rest of his story is pretty good. I’d really struggle to support a lot of what the party is starting to accept, and that’s even while saying I wouldn’t vote for any Republican in 2026 because of Trump, and I’d be fine with even some of the more progressive challengers out there (James Talarico, for instance). I’m happy to be free of having to bullshit. I’m also not working for any candidates today, only for independent expenditures this year. So all I have to do is vote today.
So the biggest news from my ballot is who I’m leaving off, not who I’m for. So let’s dig into it.
I’m leaving Governor blank. I’m going to vote for Josh Shapiro in the Fall, he’s a smart guy and quite competent, and his opponent Stacy Garrity is nuts. His term as Governor is largely a continuation of Tom Wolf’s policies, which is just fine for me. What were his two big pushes though as Governor? An attempt at school vouchers and data centers? None of that is enough to make me want to vote against him in November, as that would be harmful to many people in this state if it worked out. But tomorrow both the Governor and Lt. Governor are running unopposed. Given the Governor’s decision to not only endorse Bob “Crooksy” Brooks, but then to appear with him, I’ll decline today to vote for him. I’ll remember in 2028 too. I will vote for Austin Davis for Lt. Governor though, despite his mostly quiet endorsement in the race. Austin is the future of the party right now, really the only statewide Democratic elected that I suspect we’ll see running for another Pennsylvania office soon. I hope the future is better than the present.
As I said before, I’ll be voting for Lamont McClure. He’s got the right government experience to combat the Trump/Mackenzie cuts to essential services (like Medicaid) and he knows how to win here. The assertion of the receptionist in DC and other backers of Crooksy that McClure is the weakest Democratic candidate to beat Mackenzie is silly. We know general election voters like him, they’ve voted for him. This idea that we should care who raised the most money is completely stupid. Any of the four candidates will raise hundreds of thousands of dollars by July 1st if nominated. Give me the guy who has won elections over the deadbeat.
I’ll be voting for Lisa Boscola. No, I’m not writing in Taiba Sultana. I doubt many people will be. This campaign is nonsense, and we should treat it as such.
I’ll be voting for Jeff Warren. Jeff is running for PA-137 in the House and I think he’ll do a good job.
I’m going to decline to endorse in the state committee races. I have a lot of friends running. I wish them all well.
That’s my ballot. I doubt it shocks anyone. Good luck to almost all today, and everyone go vote.
Chris Rabb is in Philly running for the 3rd Congressional District. He is neither the city Democratic Committee’s candidate of choice or Congressman Dwight Evans’. He has campaign with potential 2028 rivals of Governor Shapiro’s and vocal critics of the Governor. For that matter, he has been fairly outspoken about the differences between himself and the Governor. Governor Josh Shapiro has appeared in back rooms to talk to the building trades and others about the threat that Rabb posts for him and the party. Josh Shapiro has refused to pick a horse though and endorse a candidate against Rabb in that primary.
Most of his allies are with Sharif Street in that race, but his own frosty relationship with Street makes him unable to go along. You see, he didn’t want Street to be the State Democratic Party Chairman back in 2022, and he vocally said so, so now he’ll never forgive that. Dwight Evans, the outgoing Congressman, has been a great ally of Shapiro’s. He supports Dr. Ala Stanford. Apparently she isn’t what the Governor is looking for. So instead of picking one, the Governor is giving a pass to a straight out critic of his.
Meanwhile the Governor took the time on the Sunday before the election to come to Allentown, and after cancelling his public event for worries about something, had a private event with Bob Brooks. You know, a candidate who has embarrassed him during this race. This is a man of such low character that we should all be running away from him. This is the guy the Governor wants to use his political capital on the behalf of. A complete deadbeat.
You know what, I’m totally bought in for 2028. Totally and completely.
You tell me who represents us? A Governor who cancelled his public appearance, probably out of fear of being protested? Or the good folks of Second Baptist Church in Bethlehem? Power brokers doing their self interest, or the base voters of our party? Reject Bob Brooks on Tuesday. Vote for the people.
ADDITION- This came to me late, but is worth noting- Bob “Crooksy” Brooks requested a 90 day extension on his financial report that was due on Friday, in an effort to make sure no one knows the shady Harrisburg and Washington powerbrokers who are trying to buy him a seat in Congress. Not only does he duck public events and live off of dark money, Crooksy hides who his masters are from the public.
Apocalypse Vibes 