THE CATCH-22 THAT WILL MAKE IT HARD FOR DEMOCRATS TO UNRIG AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

Despite all the recent legal shenanigans that have probably handed a significant number of congressional seats to the GOP, it still seems unlikely that Republicans will retain control of the House. Nate Cohn writes:

... if everything stays as is — and with Alabama, South Carolina and Louisiana enacting new maps — Republicans will obtain a significant structural advantage. To win the House, Democrats could need to win the House combined national popular vote by around four percentage points, according to our estimates.

A four-point structural advantage wouldn’t be enough to make the Republicans favorites to win the House, but it gives them a real shot at it. In polling averages, Democrats lead by six points on the so-called generic congressional ballot, which asks voters which party they’ll support for Congress. But if Republicans make gains between now and November or pull off enough victories in key races, they could have a chance to retain control of the House even while losing the national vote by a significant margin.

I don't expect Republicans to "make gains between now and November" because I assume President Trump will continue to do nothing about affordability, while becoming ever more obsessed with self-aggrandizement. Trump will continue to be a blinkered fuck-up running an administration full of fuck-ups, and Republicans will suffer as a result.

And based on Democrats' performance in off-cycle elections since Trump was inaugurated, I think they'll beat Republicans in total congressional voting by more than six points. Yes, it worries me that Democrats' advantage on the generic ballot is much smaller than net disapproval of the president (Trump is underwater by 19 points right now, according to Nate Silver) -- but I think many normie voters literally don't associate Republican members of Congress and Republican congressional candidates with Trump, and as soon as Democratic campaign ads start linking those Republicans to Trump, Democrats' advantage will increase.

Democrats have had a golden opportunity in the past year or so to besmirch the entire GOP, but they haven't done it, and as a result, voters still favor Republicans on a number of issues, including issues on which voters acknowledge that Trump has been a dismal failure.

WaPo/ABC/Ipsos poll | 4/24-4/28

Which political party do you trust on the issues?

🟦Healthcare: D+17
🟦Education and schools: D+8
🟦Cost of living: D+5
🟦Iran: D+2
——
Corruption: Tied
——
🟥Economy: R+1
🟥Inflation: R+1
🟥Taxes: R+3
🟥Immigration: R+5
🟥Crime: R+14 https://t.co/3WLsUhiPWD pic.twitter.com/STNHkEQbHP

— Politics & Poll Tracker 📡 (@PollTracker2024) May 3, 2026

But it's election season, which means that all campaigning Democrats will temporarily point out that the Republican president is bad and is an ally of their Republican opponents. And that will work.

But winning the midterms -- and possibly winning big in 2028 -- will cause a problem for Democrats if they want to unrig American democracy: If they win, they'll be arguing that the system is rigged against them despite the fact that they were victorious. Republicans and the right-wing media will argue that Democrats aren't trying to right a wrong, because (they'll say) obviously Republicans haven't rigged the process -- what Democrats are really doing is rigging the system themselves.

And it's very easy to imagine pockets of the so-called liberal media agreeing with Republicans.

I know what you'll say to that: Democrats just need to be ruthless.

The problem is, we're hoping for that even though the Democrats who are likely to be in office after the 2028 election are, in many cases, the same timid souls who've failed to fight hard against the GOP all these years. They're also the same Democrats who haven't figured out how to out-message the GOP, a process that would need to begin with characterizing Republicans as an extremist hatemongering plutocrat party that worsens the condition of ordinary people when it's in power. (You'll say the Democrats are pro-plutocrat too, and there's truth in that, but please note that the right-wing plutocrats who bought themselves a federal bench over the past couple of decades certainly believe that the GOP represents their interests more than Democrats.)

And some newly elected Democrats could be quite moderate as well. Note that Republicans are eliminating Black-majority (and thus Democratic-majority) districts by spreading Black voters across what are believed to be majority-GOP districts, thus diluting the pro-GOP nature of those districts. If Democratic candidates steal a few of these seats, they're likely to be centrist Democrats, and votes for bills seen as very partisan will be regarded as putting these "frontline" Democrats at risk in subsequent election cycles.

So I don't expect a radical reordering even if Democrats win the White House and both houses of Congress in 2028. Democrats are likely to proceed slowly, and Washington is likely to respond to even those moderate moves by hitting the fainting couches.

Democrats need a plan for dealing with all this -- and I hope they have one.

REPUBLICANS WANT TO MAKE AMERICA NORTH CAROLINA

The referendum giveth and the courts taketh away:

The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a measure allowing state Democrats to redraw congressional districts, dealing a significant blow to the party’s efforts to keep pace with Republicans in a nationwide redistricting battle.

The ruling wipes out four Democratic-leaning U.S. House seats in Virginia....

Republicans threw a lot of arguments at the courts, and this is the one that stuck:

One of the most critical questions concerned the sequence of events in Virginia’s complex amendment process. Before voters weigh in on an amendment to the State Constitution, the General Assembly must approve it twice, with an election for the state House of Delegates taking place between the two votes. The first vote for this amendment was on Oct. 31, just days before the state election. With hundreds of thousands of Virginians having already voted, Republicans argued that the legislative action had come too late.

The court sided with that argument.

Of course, it's much easier to gerrymander in red states, because the power tends to be in the hands of pre-gerrymandered state legislatures:

The defeat at the court also reveals the limits of years of reforms pushed by Democrats in the current hyperpartisan era. While some Democratic-controlled states like Virginia installed independent commissions to oversee their map-drawing process in an effort to insulate it from politics, Republicans kept the power in state legislatures, allowing states like Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Missouri to enact partisan maps with few logistical hurdles.

And now, of course, the Supreme Court has made it possible for every red state to gerrymander its way to an all-white, all-Republican congressional delegation.

I think Democrats will win the House this year despite all this -- President Trump is widely reviled and there's a massive enthusiasm gap between fired-up Democratic voters and not-at-all-fired-up Republican voters. I expect many 2024 Trump voters, especially young men, to simply stay home in November.

But 2026 or 2028 will probably be a high-water mark for Democrats in Congress. Long term, I think it's possible that America could have a near-permanent GOP Congress, regardless of how popular Republicans are in the future.

In that scenario, America will be North Carolina.

Democrats have won the last three gubernatorial races in North Carolina. They've won every attorney general election since 1974. They appear on the verge of electing a man who's held both offices, Roy Cooper, to the U.S. Senate. And while Republicans have won the state in the last four presidential elections, Democrats have cleared 48% each time. North Carolina, in short, is a purple state.

But its legislature is deep red. It's been in the hands of Republicans since the 2010 election. Currently, Republicans have a 30-20 majority in the state Senate and a 71-47 majority in the state House of Representatives (there are also two ex-Democrats in the House who recently switched to "unaffiliated" after voting with Republicans to override vetoes by Democratic governor Josh Stein).

And the state's congressional delegation is 10-4 GOP, also because of gerrymandering. Republicans are trying to change that to 11-3.

This is what Republicans want for the entire country: a permanent GOP congressional majority no matter how popular or unpopular the party is in this effectively 50-50 country. I think they might get their wish by 2030, because Democrats in states like California and New York are unlikely ever to be as ruthless as Republicans in red America. Democrats' current successes (or, in the case of Virginia, near-successes) have been largely in response to the awfulness of Donald Trump, but Republicans hate all Democrats as much as Democrats hate Trump, so I don't expect them to lose focus on the goal of permanent party control. We may eventually see Congress as locked-in Republican, the way we've seen the Supreme Court for decades.

Democratic voters, including less politically involved voters, need to develop a basic understanding of gerrymandering and need to recognize the necessity of curbing the GOP's power, even after Trump leaves office. But Republicans will sell a status quo with a GOP lean as natural and democratic, and will portray any Democratic efforts to fight back as anti-democratic chicanery. It would be nice if the public understood that we got where we are because of Republican chicanery. Can Democrats sell that idea? I hope so, because democracy in America might depend on it.

DEMOCRATS SHOULD LIGHTEN UP -- TACTICALLY

Last month, The Atlantic's Sarah Fitzpatrick reported on the excessive drinking and general incompetence of FBI Director Kash Patel. Patel filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit, but Fitzpatrick and The Atlantic were undeterred. She now tells us this:

After my story appeared, I heard from people in Patel’s orbit and people he has met at public functions, who told me that it is not unusual for him to travel with a supply of personalized branded bourbon. The bottles bear the imprint of the Kentucky distillery Woodford Reserve, and are engraved with the words “KASH PATEL FBI DIRECTOR,” as well as a rendering of an FBI shield. Surrounding the shield is a band of text featuring Patel’s director title and his favored spelling of his first name: KA$H. An eagle holds the shield in its talons, along with the number 9, presumably a reference to Patel’s place in the history of FBI directors. In some cases, the 750-milliliter bottles bear Patel’s signature, with “#9” there as well. One such bottle popped up on an online auction site shortly after my story appeared, and The Atlantic later purchased it. (The person who sold it to us did not want to be named, but said that the bottle was a gift from Patel at an event in Las Vegas.)

This is not the most important story in America. Patel's conduct in office won't make any voter's list of top concerns.

I don't care. Democrats in D.C. and on the campaign trail shouldn't ignore this story in order to remain laser-focused on the economy, Iran, and/or Jeffrey Epstein. Democrats should talk about Patel's bizarre behavior as much as possible.

I wrote this last September, and I stand by it:

Many people on our side believe that Democrats need to have a narrow message focused on "kitchen-table issues," and think everything else is a "distraction." Or maybe they believe that everything is a distraction from the Epstein files. Whichever version they prefer, they agree on one thing: Democrats shouldn't talk about anything apart from a highly select group of issues.

That's ridiculous. Trump's messaging successes are proof that Americans can focus on multiple issues in the course of day. (Given what the internet has done to our attention spans, this was inevitable.) I think Democrats should focus on the important stuff -- but they should also focus on anything Trump does or says that makes him look ridiculous or that's wildly unpopular. Invading Greenland. The Gulf of America. That kind of thing. When Trump makes himself look like an idiot, Democrats should draw as much attention as possible to it.

This story makes the entire administration look ridiculous, along with the congressional Republicans who enable it. That's why Democrats should talk about Patel a lot.

Saul Alinsky would understand. His Rules for Radicals included Rule #5:

Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.

And Rule #6:

A good tactic is one your people enjoy.

In 2024, at least momentarily, the campaign of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz seemed to understand this. Walz was connecting with voters by calling Trump and other Republicans "weird." Then, as CNN reported, this happened:

Three weeks into her presidential run was the first time the Biden campaign's pollsters — now hers — held a deep-dive call with Kamala Harris' inner circle to discuss what she's been saying on the stump.

Over the line came a lot of praise, but also some suggested tweaks. First, said veteran Democratic numbers man Geoff Garin, summarizing their analysis, stop saying, "We're not going back." It wasn't focused enough on the future, he argued. Second, lay off all the "weird" talk — too negative.

As Jason Sattler noted:

The Harris campaign ultimately stuck with the “We're not going back” chant because they had no choice—her crowds wouldn't stop chanting it. But “weird” was gone.

"Weird" was gone, the campaign tried to get "serious" and issue-oriented -- and Harris and Walz lost.

When was the last time a Democratic officeholder or candidate made you laugh? Among the centrists, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are dour. So are Jon Ossoff and Pete Buttigieg. On the left, AOC is often intense and serious. So is Graham Platner. Democrats do a lot of scowling.

The exception is Gavin Newsom, or at least his social media feed. Newsom's online presence has been the source of a lot of laughter -- and it propelled him to a lead in many polls of the 2028 Democratic presidential contest, despite the qualms many voters have about him.

Republican humor is infantile, bigoted, and mean -- but it connects with a portion of the electorate. No one in the GOP ever says, "Don't post that meme! It will make our party look unserious!" They just post away. Trump has been doing it for years and years, and he won two elections and came close to an Electoral College win in his other election. Voters can handle a few jokes.

Democrats should ridicule Patel mercilessly. They should ridicule Trump's building and redecorating obsession. They should ridicule Pete Hegseth's Kid Rock obsession. They shouldn't leave all this to the late-night comics. They should revive "weird" and make voters see them as the normal ones. (And the funny ones -- people like someone who can make them laugh, and Democrats often struggle with likability.) Democrats can do this and talk about the affordability crisis.

THE MAGIC BULLET FOR DEMOCRATS ISN'T "PLAIN ENGLISH"

In an interview with Stephen Colbert, Barack Obama embraces a right-wing critique of Democrats:

Obama: "What I'm more interested in for Democrats is, do you know how to just talk to regular people like we're not in a college seminar? Can you talk in plain English to folks? And not have a bunch of gobbledygook around it. Just talk like normal people talk. 'The rent is too high.'"

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 6, 2026 at 8:51 AM

IB know, I know -- this isn't just a right-wing critique of Democrats. Many Democrats agree that their party's leaders sound too cerebral and professorial. But "Democrats are out-of-touch elitists" is a core right-wing argument, and Obama is echoing it here.

I don't really believe that professorial talk is what's holding back Democrats. Many liberal and left slogans -- "No Kings," "Tax the Rich" -- are very plain English. And Republicans don't always talk like regular folks.

I'll remind you that many of the young men whom Democrats would like to win over were introduced to right-wing thinking by a literal college professor, Jordan Peterson. These same young men embrace Stoicism (admittedly in a dumbed-down form) and follow influencers who regularly invoke the ancient Greeks and Romans. In the manosphere, young men invoke pseudo-scientific concepts like "hypergamy" to explain their struggles with dating.

Older Republicans praise pseudo-intellectual right-wing pundits such as Thomas Sowell and Hugh Hewitt, not to mention Newt Gingrich and Dinesh D'Souza, who delighted Republican voters for years with their academic-sounding denunciations of Obama's alleged "Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior." GOP voters appreciate efforts to turn institutions of higher learning such as Florida's New College into conservative beachheads.

They hate mainstream scientists, but love scientists who embrace vaccine and climate denialism. They distrust lawyers in general, but they revere the memory of Antonin Scalia, and they cheer on the Federalist Society lawyers who control much of the federal bench. They appreciate the work of right-wing think tankers like Chris Rufo. And they sometimes use fancy language: remember, we talk about trans rights, while their term for the trans rights movement is the very academic-sounding "gender ideology."

I don't think right-wingers care how highfalutin your language is, as long as they agree with you. If you tell them things they want to hear, you can use any language you want. If you tell them things they don't want to hear, they'll reject you even if you use nothing but one-syllable words.

BUT DEMOCRATS ARE THE EXTREMISTS

Last month, comedian Ramy Youssef commemorated Arab American Heritage Month on Sesame Street by teaching Elmo the meanings of "salamu alaykum" and "habibi."

The word of the day is HABIBI! Happy #ArabAmericanHeritageMonth from Ramy Youssef, Elmo, and all of your friends on Sesame Street! pic.twitter.com/Hc4BLcehEl

— Sesame Street (@sesamestreet) April 16, 2026

The right lost its shit, of course.

Fox's Raymond Arroyo was incensed:

“I wish Sesame Street would stick to teaching kids about letters and numbers and leave the Arabic immersion to someone else,” he said on The Ingraham Angle. “Next, Bert and Ernie will be praying five times a day on Sesame Street, facing east.”

Podcast host Chad Prather said, "Time to deport Elmo.... On this episode of Sesame Street, Elmo learns how to build an IED."

Fast forward to last Friday. Sesame Street commemorated Jewish American Heritage Month by posting a video featuring actress Kat Graham, in which she talked about matzoh ball soup with a Muppet named Abby Cadabby.

Happy #JewishAmericanHeritageMonth! Join us this May as we honor and celebrate our Jewish American friends and neighbors in our communities.💛💚 pic.twitter.com/324fyjW8SQ

— Sesame Street (@sesamestreet) May 1, 2026

Again there were angry right-wing responses:

There is no such thing as an "ethnicity"-American. You are either jewish or you are American.

— Groypeon (@Groypeon) May 1, 2026

Even the Count can't figure out how they arrived at 6,000,000.

— Nostradumbass (@Nostradumb_ss) May 2, 2026

One was from an influencer and ex-Navy SEAL named Dan Bilzerian:

Nobody wants anymore jewish supremacy bullshit

— Dan Bilzerian (@DanBilzerian) May 1, 2026

Bilzerian is well known in some circles. He

initially gained fame for his Instagram photos alongside bikini-clad women....

[He] has 30 million followers on Instagram and 2 million on X. He regularly tweets opinions like "Jewish supremacy is the greatest threat to the world today," questions the accuracy of the statistic that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust, and reposts clips of avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes....

By 2024, the occasional surveys he took of his followers became pointedly focused on Jews. "Who causes the majority of the world's problems?" he asked, with users overwhelmingly voting for the multiple-choice option "16 million Jews."

In January 2025, Bilzerian asked his followers whether Hitler was a "good person," a "terrible person," or if they didn't know. A third of the 178,000 voters said Hitler was a "good person," and 23% said they didn't know.

Bilzerian laid out his views on Jewish people in a 2024 interview with conservative commentator Patrick Bet-David, during which he said Jews "knew about 9/11" and "had JFK assassinated." Later that year, conservative media personality Piers Morgan asked Bilzerian how many Jews he believed died in the Holocaust. "I don't know, but I would bet my entire net worth that it was under 6 million," Bilzerian said.

Bilzerian is now a Republican candidate for Congress. The incumbent in this race is Randy Fine, a notorious anti-Muslim bigot:

... he privately wrote “Go blow yourself up!” to a Florida Muslim after they challenged his social media posts, calling on an Islamophobic trope that Muslims are prone to violence or suicide bombings.

In December 2023, as Palestinians awaited much-needed humanitarian aid, Fine mocked them, posting on his X account, “Stop the trucks. Let them eat rockets. There are plenty of those. #BombsAway.”

... In May 2025, Fine suggested on national television that the United States should use nuclear weapons against Gaza, invoking the atomic bombings of Japan as a model for dealing with Palestinians. When asked to explain this genocidal rhetoric, he doubled down with a racist and dehumanizing response, claiming that half of Gaza’s population is “married to their cousins” and has “mental defects,” and that “you’ve got to have a mental defect to interpret the comment that way.”

Last winter, he responded to a snarky tweet from a Muslim activist about the prevalence of dog poop in New York City after a major snowstorm with this:

If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.

— Congressman Randy Fine (@RepFine) February 15, 2026

And a third candidate in that Republican primary, Aaron Baker, has been endorsed by James Fishback, a Republican gubernatorial candidate who has referred to the Black front-runner in the race, Byron Donalds, as "By’rone" and "posted a video of himself shooting a gun along with a demand that Donalds join him to prove that he is 'actually black.'" Fishback has "referred to the junk in school cafeterias as 'goyslop,' a far-right term for unhealthy food that Jews [allegedly] foist on non-Jews." And he's been endorsed in the governor's race by manosphere sex criminal Andrew Tate.

And yet we're forever being told that the Democratic Party is the party of extremism, and that Democrats need to silence party members whose beliefs are seen as radical.

The GOP should be widely recognized as the hatemonger party. But instead, we're likely to get a half-dozen more center-left "studies" reinforcing the notion that it's Democrats who have an extremism problem. The Republican Party is increasingly a party of unabashed haters, people who hate without resorting to codes or dog whistles. Maybe Democrats should make a habit of talking about that.

JOHN FETTERMAN IS A PSYOP

Politico's Jonathan Martin thinks Senator John Fetterman might switch parties.

It’s a few days after the election this November, and the results have become clear: Democrats have netted the four seats they need to claim a Senate majority.

But then there’s a disturbance in the force: Senate Republicans and President Donald Trump persuade Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) to switch parties or at least become an independent to ensure Republicans retain power in the chamber.

It’s a scenario that’s becoming less fantastical by the day.

Fetterman says he won't:

“I’m not changing,” Fetterman told me in an interview Friday when I asked if he was ruling out both becoming a Republican or turning independent. “I’m a Democrat, and I’m staying one. “

Yet, at least in private, he’s not totally rejecting dropping his “D.”

When one senior Republican recently brought up the idea of becoming an independent to Fetterman, he absorbed the suggestion and didn’t embrace or reject the overture, according to a GOP official familiar with the conversation.

In our interview, Fetterman said bluntly: “I’d be a shitty Republican.” ...

“Committed conservatives like Cassidy and Tillis are getting pushed out of their seats,” he noted. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges in 2021, and the president is now targeting him in his primary. And Tillis announced his retirement after clashing with Trump over the [One Big Beautiful Bill]....

If Republicans can’t tolerate even Tillis, Fetterman suggested, how would they accept somebody who supports abortion rights, gay rights, legalizing marijuana and is pro-labor? (He flies the pride flag outside his Senate office.)

Fetterman could decide to stop calling himself a Democrat, but my guess is that he won't. The reason has nothing to do with ideology. It's all because Fetterman is perceived as more useful to the right-wing media (and thus to the GOP) if he remains a nominal Democrat.

Fetterman is just the latest in a series of "Fox News Democrats" or "Fox News liberals" -- figures who are registered Democrats but regularly agree with right-wing talking points. Fox has been promoting such figures for a long time -- here's a piece about Fox News Democrats from 2012:

Fox News co-host and contributor Bob Beckel has called for the assassination of WikiLeaks spokesperson Julian Assange (“A dead man can’t leak stuff”—Follow the Money, 12/6/10), for furnishing guns to school children (“If you give your kid a gun, no bullying”—Five, 1/5/12) and for militant opposition to the “War on Christmas,” which is “completely out of hand” (Five, 12/9/11)....

But Beckel is presented as a left-leaning voice on Fox, a counterweight to the network’s army of right-leaning talkers. And he’s far from an atypical specimen there....

For years, Susan Estrich, former campaign manager for 1988 Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis, was one of Fox’s leading tepid liberals. (Sean Hannity—Hannity & Colmes, 5/23/04—has called her “my favorite liberal.”) ... During the 2003 California gubernatorial campaign, Estrich defended candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger against charges he had physically assaulted numerous women ...; after he won, Estrich accepted a job working on his transition team....

Fox News contributor and former Clinton White House special counsel Lanny Davis (FoxNews.com, 10/6/11) wrote a paean to an arch-conservative political organizer, headlined “I’m a Democrat and I Respect Grover Norquist.” Davis recounted how the anti-tax crusader had set him straight on the Great Depression and Herbert Hoover’s liberal economic lunacy, and ended by praising Norquist’s love for his family: “But it’s not possible for anyone to be anything but a good person who has such love and devotion to his wife and his children.”

The piece lists other self-styled Democrats who regularly seconded right-wing arguments at the time: Zell Miller, Juan Williams, Doug Schoen, Alan Colmes.

Fake Democrats are such a regular feature on Fox that "Fox News liberal" shows up in online encyclopedias of TV tropes, such as Tropedia:

Also known as a conservative Democrat or a DINO (Democrat In Name Only), a Fox News Liberal is a character who allegedly provides political balance in the narrative.... They can be presented as the Only Sane Man in their party, and their criticisms of said party can also evoke from those in the prevailing party that "See? Even this die-hard ... liberal thinks that their party has gone way too far and become way too extreme. *sigh* If only the rest of their party could be as reasonable as they are, they wouldn't be in such bad shape". In particularly extreme versions of this trope, the character forsakes their own beliefs as a means of Character Development, claiming their party line has "gone too far".

TV Tropes adds:

It's also very common for them to admit the solutions proposed by people with (what their superiors consider to be) the 'correct' political views are basically good and desirable, but quibble about the details or minutiae of their 'correct' policies.

Fox News Democrats are meant to be a gateway drug for Democratic audience members. (According to Pew, 18% of Democrats and Democratic leaners say they regularly get news from Fox.) These audience members are expected to watch Fox News Dems and think, Wow, even members of my own party think Democratic officeholders and candidates are radical and weird. The goal is to get these viewers to switch parties, or at least vote GOP some of the time.

Fox and the GOP clearly think that the psyop is more effective if the on-screen critic of Democrats remains a registered Democrat, which is why these people claim to be Democrats long after it becomes obvious to more sophisticated viewers that they've switched teams. Alan Dershowitz, for instance, was a Fox News Democrat for more than a decade. Here's a clip from 2015 titled "Megyn Kelly, Alan Dershowitz Rip Liberal Fascism on Campuses: 'These Students Are Book Burners'":



Dershowitz kept up this "I'm a Democrat, but..." charade until last month, when he made his affiliation with the GOP official. (Dershowitz will turn 88 later this year. I guess he's aging out of this role.)

So Fetterman is perceived as a more useful Republican propagandist if he continues to call himself a Democrat. But what about the Senate? Won't the party want him to switch if it prevents Democrats from taking over?

I wonder if Republicans are weighing the publicity risk of a perceived betrayal of voters vs. Fetterman's usefulness as a saboteur. They might think Democrats voters will take to the streets in large numbers if it's clear they've voted for a Democratic Senate and Fetterman's party switch prevents that. There might be intense pressure on him to resign so he can be replaced by an actual Democrat.

By contrast, if he stays in the party, Democrats run the Senate -- and Fetterman, like Joe Manchin and Kysten Sinema before him, can make the party seem divided and radical. He can still vote for Trump's appointees and judicial nominees, and he will. Between that, the filibuster, and Trump's veto pen, Republicans can limit how much Democrats accomplish, while persuading low-information voters that the country's failing are owned, or at least co-owned, by "the Democrat-controlled Congress."

In any case, Democrats need 52 senators for anything resembling real control. That could happen, but it's a longshot.

TODD BLANCHE WILL TOTALLY PROVE AT TRIAL THAT JAMES COMEY IS TRAVIS BICKLE, SWEAR TO GOD

On Meet the Press today, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche reassured Kristen Welker that it's not a crime merely to use the phrase "86 47" -- even though, in his view, it constitutes a threat to kill Donald Trump -- and those of us who have used the number code, or bought or sold "86 47" merchandise, shouldn't worry about being brought up on federal charges just for the use of the numbers.

WELKER: On Amazon, there are dozens of "8647" products being sold and purchased right now. Should individuals selling or buying that merchandise be concerned they are going to prosecuted? BLANCHE: Of course not

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 3, 2026 at 10:28 AM

WELKER: The image -- excuse me -- is part of what led to this indictment.

BLANCHE: Yes.

WELKER: It is worth noting that on Amazon.com -- we looked this up -- there are dozens of products with the same terminology. We're showing it right here: "86 47" being sold and purchased right now. Should individuals selling or buying "86 47" merchandise be concerned that they're going to be prosecuted by the DOJ?

BLANCHE: This isn't -- this isn't about a single incident. Okay, this isn't -- I mean, of course not. That's posted constantly. That phrase is used constantly. There are constantly men and women who choose to make threatening statements against President Trump. Every one of those statements do not result in indictments, of course. There are facts, there are circumstances, there are investigations that have to take place....

So why is James Comey being indicted for posting an image of seashells in an "86 47" arrangement? Blanche says that's super-secret:

WELKER: Just to be very clear: You are suggesting the seashells themselves are not at the root of this indictment.

BLANCHE: I am suggesting that every single case depends on the investigation that's done. And of course the seashells are part of that case -- I mean, that's what the public sees. But without a doubt -- and it should be evident by the fact that it's been eleven months since the posting and the indictment -- there is an investigation that takes place, and that's the result. The result of that investigation is the indictment that was returned last week.

The headline for NBC's story about this is "Acting Attorney General Says Indictment Against James Comey Goes Beyond Seashell Photo."

“This is not just about a single Instagram post,” Blanche told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “This is about a body of evidence that [prosecutors] collected over the series of about 11 months. That evidence was presented to the grand jury.”

Blanche said he was not “permitted” to share the other evidence against Comey that was collected, but added: “At the trial — a public trial that will be open to the public — everybody in this country will know exactly what evidence the government has against Mr. Comey.”

And, in fact, that's what the indictment implies (emphasis added below):

COUNT ONE

On or about May 15, 2025, in the Eastern District of North Carolina, the defendant, JAMES BRIEN COMEY JR, did knowingly and willfully make a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, the President of the United States, in that he publicly posted a photograph on the internet social media site Instagram which depicted seashells arranged in a pattern making out "86 47", which a reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to the President of the United States.

In violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 871(a).

COUNT TWO

On or about May 15, 2025, in the Eastern District of North Carolina, the defendant, JAMES BRIEN COMEY JR, knowingly and willfully did transmit ininterstate and foreign commerce a communication that contained a threat to kill the President, Donald J. Trump, specifically, by publicly posting a photograph on theinternet social media site Instagram which depicted seashells arranged in a pattern making out "86 47", which a reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances would interpret as a serious expression of an intent to do harm to President Trump.

In violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 875(c).

This is a hilarious bluff. Blanche wants us to think that James Comey is secretly this guy, a person acquiring and planning to use multiple weapons to take out Trump while living in a 1970s cold-water flat and wearing his hair in a Mohawk:

Once a jury is "familiar with the circumstances" of Comey's seedy, violent existence, it will be plain as day that he had intent to kill.

Blanche will probably be nominated to replace Pam Biondi as a result of this bluff, but at trial we'll all see that he has nothing. I assume the DOJ will present other perfectly reasonable, non-violent negative statements Comey has made about Trump and suggest that they're evidence of a crime; DOJ lawyers will probably use the phrase "Trump Derangement Syndrome," as if anyone who's not in the MAGA/Fox News cult believes that's an actual thing that suggests violent mental instability.

The case will be thrown out of court. But the cult will believe that a "swamp" judge tossed it in order to suppress inconvenient facts about Comey's murderous intent. And Blanche will need to indict a few more innocent people if he wants to save his job.