IS THERE SUCH A THING AS A PLATONIC HONEY TRAP? ASKING FOR A PENNSYLVANIA SENATOR.

A New York magazine story published this morning tells us about David "Dovi" Safier, a Long Island-born resident of East Jersusalem who has become a near-constant companion to Senator John Fetterman, despite the fact that he has no official position that would explain his close access to the senator.

Safier, a writer of Jewish history and fundraiser for Orthodox causes, has no public background in government or counseling politicians on Capitol Hill. He is not an official staffer or paid outside adviser. A few years ago, he “just kind of appeared” in the senator’s orbit, one former Fetterman staffer remembers. And then, suddenly, he seemed to be everywhere. Staffers would walk into Fetterman’s office, only to find Safier sitting in the room. When the senator went to Israel in 2025, Safier joined him on the trip; when Fetterman filmed Real Time With Bill Maher, Safier met up with him in Los Angeles. The two are constantly texting and talking, according to multiple former Fetterman staffers, and Safier has unofficially operated as a top campaign fundraiser and senior adviser. He has even set up and attended sensitive meetings with foreign officials; in some cases, he is the only person staffing those meetings, I’ve been told.

Fetterman, of course, is now the Democratic senator who is most uncompromisingly pro-Israel.

Safier met Fetterman in 2023 and "worked his way into the senator’s inner circle." He befriended Fetterman and later arranged a four-day trip to Israel, during which he traveled with Fetterman. He regularly appears in Fetterman's office.

When he is on Capitol Hill, Safier will “hang out and sit in Fetterman’s office all day or walk with him to the floor,” a former staffer says. After their conversations, Fetterman would appear “far more radicalized,” the former staffer remembers. The chatter around the office is usually: “Oh God, Safier is here, and now John’s not gonna go to any of his meetings.”

We're told that Safier has become Fetterman's best bud at a time when he otherwise seems socially withdrawn:

The senator has isolated himself from many of his Senate colleagues and members of his own party. There are few who Fetterman seems to trust beyond his dad and brother, who are conservative; Bobby Maggio, his 2022 campaign manager; and now Safier, who has become arguably the senator’s closest confidant.

But a recent Politico story about a possible Fetterman party switch tells us that Fetterman has some friends in the Senate -- two Republican senators and their spouses -- although he seems isolated otherwise:

If Fetterman does flip, according to officials who were given anonymity to talk about sensitive matters, it will be thanks in large part to his deepening friendship with a pair of senators and their high-profile spouses: Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.), and his wife Dina, and Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), and her husband, Wesley....

As he’s drifted from the party line, Fetterman has become increasingly isolated ... those who previously worked for him say he spends much of his time on social media....

The former aides and Pennsylvania Democrats say he rarely participates in the unglamorous work of a senator: showing up for ribbon-cuttings around his home state or racing between committee hearings in Washington.... He has a cool relationship with Gov. Josh Shapiro and barely interacts with the state’s Democratic congressional delegation.

He does, though, spend considerable time with Republicans, particularly the affable Britts and McCormicks, who’ve all but adopted Fetterman and his wife, Gisele.

These sound as if they might be genuine friendships. On the other hand, President Trump and Senator Majority Leader John Thune would love to flip Fetterman. We're told that Thune has good relations with Fetterman, but he "has largely let Britt and McCormick handle the Keystone account."

Safier and the McCormicks and Britts might be true friends, but they're also manipulating Fetterman for political reasons. And it seems easy for them to do that because Fetterman is not in a healthy state of mind.

It's not just the stroke Fetterman suffered while campaigning in 2022. As a 2025 New York magazine story noted, in early 2023, shortly after he was sworn in as a senator, Fetterman had six weeks of inpatient care for clinical depression. Subsequently, he appeared to stop following his treatment plan.

... by mid-March [2024], his aides were again worried that he hadn’t been getting regular checkups. No one I spoke to for this article could be sure about whether Fetterman stayed on his medication during this period, but five different people said they heard comments from the senator that suggested he was not.... Two aides told me they frequently heard him talk about how he felt so great that he didn’t “need” medication. One person told me Fetterman said he “didn’t like the way” his medication “made” him feel — made, past tense.

He alienates people:

One staffer told me there would be entire days when they couldn’t let anyone outside the office be around him because he was in “some sort of state” and might say “really fucked-up shit to constituents.” Sometimes he would just “shut down,” according to one former staffer. He was saying “unhinged shit,” according to one text, and spending more time on social media. [Eric] Stern [a Fetterman consultant] wrote to the group that it seemed to him like Fetterman was “spiraling” and that his constant “doomscrolling” — “I think he’s on essentially all day now?” — would only make things worse.

Many men are in a very bad place right now. They have trouble maintaining personal relationships and lose themselves on the internet. Some of this is the culture; some is their own damn fault. I think Fetterman is an unhappy, unwell man -- if there's a male loneliness epidemic, he has a bad case. It's compounded by his medical history, his discomfort with his treatment plan, and possibly the fact that he's in a commuter marriage, and doing a job he seems to hate. It also seems to be compounded by the fact that he likes alienating people.

We all know about "honey trapping" -- "the use of romantic or sexual relationships for interpersonal, political (including state espionage), or monetary purpose." David Safier's friendship with Fetterman seems like a platonic honey trap -- Safier became Fetterman's friend in order to encourage him to be more and more pro-Israel. The McCormicks and Britts also seem as if they're honey trapping Fetterman on behalf of the GOP. I'm sorry Fetterman is a senator. Because of his difficulties with people, he seems extremely vulnerable to this, and thus far too easy to influence.

DOES TRUMP WANT TO STEAL THE MIDTERMS OR THROW THEM? OR BOTH?

What is President Trump doing in anticipation of the midterms? On the one hand, he and his fellow Republicans on the bench are obviously trying to steal them for the GOP. The Supreme Court opened the door to eleventh-hour gerrymandering in the South, while right-leaning appointees on the Virginia Supreme Court blocked a gerrymander that would have aided Democrats. Meanwhile, Trump has pardoned January 6 insurrectionists, strong-armed Democratic governor Jared Polis of Colorado until he offered clemency to electoral criminal Tina Peters, and now is dangling a slush fund before anyone who might want to riot in response to Democratic wins in November.

But on the other hand, he seems to be doing everything he can to handicap his party's chances in the midterms. Punchbowl tells us:

With less than 24 weeks until Election Day, President Donald Trump seems almost maniacally focused on doing and saying things that could harm Republicans’ chances of keeping their House and Senate majorities in November.

With voters saying they’re frightened by high prices and disappearing healthcare coverage, Trump is building a new billion-dollar White House ballroom and asking for taxpayer money to secure it. His administration announced Monday that it was setting up a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate victims of “weaponization and lawfare” under the Democrats, a move that shocked even Republicans.

As gas prices skyrocket due to the unpopular war in Iran, Trump says it’s a “very small price to pay” as long as he believes the conflict is proceeding to his liking.

He's alienating Senate Republicans -- and possibly putting a key seat at risk -- with his decision to endorse Ken Paxton rather than John Cornyn in the Texas Senate race, as The New York Times notes:

Senator Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican whose independent streak has often angered the president, said that she was “supremely disappointed” by Mr. Trump’s decision.

Then she went a step further, saying that the president’s endorsement of Mr. Paxton, a scandal-plagued conservative firebrand, could cost Republicans what had been considered a safe Senate seat.

“I think that this puts that seat in jeopardy,” she told reporters.

Punchbowl points out that this also about campaign cash:

... GOP senators privately griped about Trump forcing out one of their most prolific fundraisers; Cornyn has raised more than $400 million for Republican candidates and incumbents over his long Senate career. Many saw the episode as Trump once again using Senate races to advance his personal goals at the expense of the GOP majority....

So on the one hand, Trump seems ready to cheat or strong-arm his way to victory in the midterms. He might even send troops to polling places to make that happen. But he doesn't seem to want to win the midterms through legitimate means: advancing popular policies, maintaining party unity, and so on.

Does this make sense? I think it does to Trump.

I think Trump wants to win, but he wants to win his way: brutally. He always wants to project "strength," which, to him, means breaking the rules and getting away with it. He's happy when he gets away with violating (or doing an end run around) the law, and he's also happy when he breaks the laws of politics and wins. (That pretty much describes his own political career since he announced his candidacy in 2015.)

And even though he'll happily engage in felonious conduct or instigate mob violence in order to win the midterms, I'm not sure winning is as important to him as fighting -- specifically, fighting dirty -- and surviving after acting recklessly. At that point, even if he loses, he can blame other people who were "very unfair" to him, while enjoying the thrill of surviving his own recklessness.

I'm haunted by something Tucker Carlson said in his recent New York Times interview. Carlson says he tried to dissuade Trump from invading Iran, and Trump waved him off:

He felt he had no choice and he said to me, Everything’s going to be OK. Because I was getting overwrought. Don’t do this. The people pushing you to do this hate you. They’re your enemies. This will destroy you. This will gravely harm our country. We’ve got kids. I’m hoping for grandkids. Let’s not go there. And he said, It’s going to be all right, and he said, Do you know how I know that? And I said no, and he said, Because it always is.

And he said, It’s going to be all right, and he said, Do you know how I know that? And I said no, and he said, Because it always is. That's Trump's belief in the Power of Positive Thinking. It's also his accurate assessment of the course of his life. When he said this to Carlson, he'd done so many ill-conceived things, from the bad deals that led to his first bankruptcies to the incompetence that led 81 million Americans to vote for his not particularly inspiring opponent in 2020, and then to January 6 and his theft of presidential papers and a host of other actions that would have sunk anyone else. And he was still standing. He was president again. You can't blame the guy for thinking he has life's cheat codes.

On some level, I think he knows he's a colossal fuck-up -- but he also knows that he's gotten away with being a colossal fuck-up all his life. I think he gets off on that idea: that he fucks up, but (as he might put it) he fucks up "very strongly," in an aggressive, intimidating way, and it all works out for him. That's what he wants out of the midterms: he wants the feeling of being a vicious aggressor, and he wants to survive if he can't win. But whether he's consciously aware of this or not, he'd rather lose as a thug than win shrewdly -- as long as he can keep going, even in defeat.

MAKE TRUMP'S CORRUPTION A KITCHEN-TABLE ISSUE (updated)

I keep thinking about something Hakeem Jeffries said late last month:

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) on Sunday said Democrats will not focus on impeaching President Trump if they regain a majority in the lower chamber after midterm elections.

When asked if impeachment was a top priority, Jeffries said “of course not” during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday.”

“I’ve made clear from the very beginning that our top priority is going to be to drive down the high cost of living,” the House minority leader added.

In other words, We're not getting distracted by calls for impeachment -- we're focused on ordinary Americans' finances. To be fair, this approach appears to be working: Democrats now have a 7.2-point lead on the generic congressional ballot, according to Real Clear Polling. In the new New York Times poll, that lead is 50% to 39%.

But this story makes me think that Democrats could sell impeachment as a pocketbook issue:

The Justice Department on Monday announced that it would create a new $1.776 billion taxpayer-backed fund that could pay out money to people — including President Trump’s allies and supporters — who think they were wronged by the department under previous administrations.

This amount of money -- $1.776 billion -- is about $5 for every person in America. That's not a life-changing amount of money for most people, but it still sounds like a big outlay, at a time when Americans feel that they're hurting. I've always believed that most Americans don't do any kind of mental arithmetic when they hear about government expenditures, so critics (usually Republicans) can easily get them angry about government outlays that might even be in the six-figure or five-figure range -- in other words, less than a penny per person in America. This is a lot more money.

If I were leading the Democrats, I'd be denouncing this corruption and linking it to Americans' financial pain: You're struggling, and Trump is using your tax dollars to pay himself and his alllies. Especially when this is just one element of Trump's campaign to enrich himself using the power of the presidency. David Rothkopf writes:

... the president has, throughout his time in office, engaged in thousands upon thousands of stock trades that appear to cash in on unique knowledge he had as president or of actions he intended to take. His sons run companies doing multimillion-dollar deals with the Pentagon and with governments worldwide seeking Trump’s favor.

Trump has accepted aircraft, donations to projects designed to glorify him, golden statues, bitcoins, and cash from suckers eager to buy up Trump swag. Trump phones, Trump watches, and the branding rights to Trump Airport in West Palm Beach are part of his scheme. It looks like the “Trump Presidential Library” may well include a hotel where people can pay to honor Trump in the way that means the most to him: with cash that ends up in his bank account.

Where is the money that the U.S. made from selling oil we stole from Venezuela? Who controls the billions that have been allocated from the U.S. Treasury and governments worldwide to the Board of Peace for Gaza? How many times has Trump sold pardons or lifted regulations or prosecuted or persecuted the innocent in exchange for campaign contributions?

I think Democrats should draw up articles of impeachment focused on this monetary corruption, and every Democrat in Congress should sign on as a sponsor. I think Democrats should introduce a bill preventing any outlay from that $1.776 billion fund, or even establishing an office to pay the money out, and every Democrat in Congress should sponsor that bill as well. I think they should link anti-corruption to a focus on Americans' financial woes.

Obviously, none of this can pass now. Obviously, an impeachment is likely to fail in the Senate even after the midterms. But putting Democrats on record as anti-corruption -- and Republicans in Congress on record as pro-corruption -- would send a message.

At the very least, I think Democratic campaign ads that alternate images of high gas prices with headlines about how much richer the Trump family has become since he returned to office would be powerful. Make Americans think about his finances when they think about their own.

*****

UPDATE: They're not linking it to the economy, but this is a start:

Important: Dems will seek to force Republicans to vote on a bill blocking Trump's illegal $1.8 billion slush fund, Rep Jamie Raskin tells me. Dems will use discharge petition. Hakeem Jeffries is supportive of Raskin's efforts, I'm told. New piece from me: newrepublic.com/article/2106...

[image or embed]

— Greg Sargent (@gregsargent.bsky.social) May 19, 2026 at 1:08 PM

HOW BAD IS TRUMP'S HEALTH?

Late Saturday afternoon, within the space of twenty-eight minutes, Donald Trump posted these three images on Truth Social:

Trump's Truth Social feed generally includes attacks on political enemies, promotions of pet Trump projects, and hyperbolic proclamations of his own magnificence -- but these posts seem different. They seem like Trump's attempts to persuade Americans -- and himself -- that he's supernaturally healthy, as if he's concerned that Americans won't believe he is ... or as if he doesn't believe he is.

I think Trump is self-soothing here. I think he's lying to himself.

As The Atlantic's Jonathan Lemire notes, Trump has been under quite a bit of medical scrutiny lately:

The White House announced this week that Trump will undergo a medical and dental checkup on May 26, which will be his fourth publicly disclosed doctor’s visit in his second term. (He has also had two dental visits in Florida.) Last year he had an annual physical in April 2025, and then what the White House described as a “routine yearly checkup” in October. Across his terms, Trump has bragged repeatedly about acing multiple cognitive tests, a boast that only raises more questions.

On those dental visits, HuffPost notes:

The White House has its own dental suite. Which raises the question of why Trump would schedule routine appointments elsewhere if they’re actually routine.

Lemire wonders why we're not focusing on Trump's apparent frailty the way we focused on Joe Biden's. I know many of you think it's because the media hates Democrats and protects Republicans. I think the media feels it displays its independence when it attacks Democrats and shows its lack of bias when it cossets Republicans, and I think that's part of the problem. But I think Lemire is close to the truth here:

... as Trump himself grows older—traveling less, switching to more comfortable shoes, and seeming to nod off during meetings—his age isn’t getting the same kind of scrutiny.

I have long thought that a reason for that is the president’s sheer size. Trump stands 6 foot 3 and, according to his most recent physical, weighs 224 pounds (yes, questioning that number is a legitimate thing to do). He is a big presence in any room, as opposed to Biden, who grew visibly thinner as he got older, adding to the appearance of frailty. Trump is also LOUD; Biden’s voice was frequently reduced to a gentle whisper. And Trump has the gift of omnipresence. His genius is in capturing attention. Biden’s public schedule grew sparse, and he actively avoided generating news; Trump holds multiple events in front of the press nearly every day. He fills Americans’ TV screens and social-media feeds seemingly nonstop, with an almost-unspoken message: How could he be fading if he’s everywhere?

I think it's not just that Trump is bulky and loud, while Biden increasingly seemed thin and whispery. I think it's also the fact that Biden struggled to finish some of his sentences, and Trump just plows on. As I wrote just after the 2024 election:

... Joe Biden ... frequently stops speaking while he gropes for the right word or phrase. Trump just keeps going until his sentences and anecdotes end somewhere, then he looks pleased with himself and moves on. I think millions of people think he sounds like a normal guy on a talking jag, not like a dementia patient....

And Trump's sentences frequently end with him hurting people. Decent Americans (as opposed to Republican voters) find that repellent, but it's still a power. What we notice -- and this, of course, shows up in his deeds as well as his words -- is that Trump clearly retains the power to cause pain.

Here's a recent example:



He's asked, “Mr. President, you are here against the backdrop of the war in Iran. Why focus on all these projects right now? We're still seeing gas prices soaring.” He snaps back:

We're fixing up the reflecting pond to the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and you say, "Why are you fixing it up?" Because you can understand dirt maybe better than I can, but I don't allow it.

This is one of the worst reporters. She's with ABC fake news and she's a horror show. She's saying, "Why would you bother fixing this up?" Why would I bother taking eleven or twelve truckloads of filth out of the water in front of the Lincoln Monument? That's what made our country great. Beauty made our country. People made our country great. A question like that is a disgrace to our country. Any other questions?

Beauty made our country great? This makes no sense! What does it even mean?

But the words just keep coming, and a person who doesn't think very hard about what Trump is saying can come away with the impression that the reporter (a Black woman, of course) really must be unpatriotic and have an unacceptable tolerance for "dirt" and "filth."

This isn't a thoughtful repsonse, but it still stings. I'll believe he's really losing it when he launches into one of these attacks and freezes up, unable to summon up the next nasty word he wants to say. I look forward to that the day, the day he tries to slip the verbal shiv in but can't manage to do it. I hope it happens.

Maybe he's experiencing some form of dementia. But for now, his words, even when they're incoherent, have power. And that's primarily why he's not judged the way Biden was, even though he's probably in terrible physical health, and he knows it.

TRUMP'S POWER IN PRIMARIES IS A GIFT TO DEMOCRATS, IF THEY'LL USE IT

Let's assess where we are.

Approximately 60% of the country despises Donald Trump. That's a very solid majority in a country that's been seen as 50%/50% for most of this century. The people who hate Donald Trump are the normal people. "Donald Trump is a terrible president" is largely an agreed-upon fact in America.

But a relatively small percentage of the country -- less than 40% -- worships the ground Trump walks on and will do anything he tells them to do:

For the second time this month, Republican primary voters sent a message about the price of defying the president, this time by retiring Senator Bill Cassidy, who voted to convict Mr. Trump in his impeachment trial after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The outcome in Louisiana on Saturday followed losses by a group of Indiana state lawmakers whom the president targeted for political payback. And it arrived just ahead of another big test on Mr. Trump’s retribution tour: a House primary in Kentucky on Tuesday.

Cassidy finished third in a four-way race. He didn't even make it to a top-two runoff. That's how loyal the freaks and weirdos of the MAGA cult are to Trump. In Kentucky on Tuesday, they'll defeat Thomas Massie, on behalf of a president 60% of America hates.

This is an opportunity for Democrats to start saying what they should have been saying for years: not "Trump is bad," but "The entire Republican Party is bad."

Over clips of news stories about Trump's successful campaigns of revenge against Republican dissenters, Democrats can say:

Tired of Trump? Don't expect Republicans to do anything to help. Republicans can't. If they challenge Trump, their political careers are over.

This is where I'd like to see Republicans represented as a crowd of non-player characters saying what actual Republicans in Congress have effectively been saying for the past year and a half:

And while the message that follows this might be hard to craft -- many Democrats haven't exactly been brave anti-Trump warriors -- this is a good setup for a Democratic challenger who promises to fight. Incumbents, meanwhile, can say, We want to fight Trump, but first we need to change control of Congress.

This isn't the full message I want to hear from Democrats. The Republican Party is bad and was bad long before Trump. It's bad in many ways that have nothing to do with Trump. (For instance, Trump isn't the one removing Roots from school libraries in Knox County, Tennessee. That was based on a state law passed in 2022, when Trump was out of office.)

But it would be a start. Democrats could attack all Republicans as Trump bootlickers knowing that Trump is massively unpopular and that hating Trump is America's default mode now. Eventually they need to say that Republicans are massively out of step with normal Americans -- on taxation of the rich, on healthcare, on the minimum wage, on abortion. But they can begin here.

NO, DEMOCRATIC SUPPORT FOR PLATNER IS NOT A MIRROR IMAGE OF REPUBLICAN SUPPORT FOR TRUMP

In a New York Times discussion between two liberal graybeards, E.J. Dionne and Robert Siegel, their young right-wing interlocutor, Sarah Isgur, wags a finger at Democrats while pretending to wag a finger at both parties:

Isgur: ... David French wrote this in The New York Times — I thought the piece was brilliant — that this idea that Democrats are going to get behind Graham Platner, a guy in Maine, who, until quite recently, had a Nazi tattoo — an S.S. tattoo — and has said horrific things about women and sexual assault, because that’s the way that we have to fight Donald Trump. That’s the way we can win, by being more like Donald Trump. It’s just a sad statement, I think, on 2026 midterm politics that, again, I hope the ship is turning, maybe slowly, where the Graham Platners and the Republican equivalents lose.

What Isgur doesn't say, perhaps because she's in denial, is that "the Republican equivalents" of Trump are pretty much the entire party. Hatred, especially hatred for Democrats and groups who are acceptable to bash, is Republicans' default mode now.

America goes two ways.

Option A: Muslims and globalists institute THEIR laws on our society.

OPTION B: Christian men stand up and take their country back.

I’m going with option B. pic.twitter.com/sLpGNv2qnY

— Rep. Andy Ogles (@RepOgles) April 20, 2026

Isgur guilt-trips Dionne into more or less agreeing with her that Democrats support Platner because they believe that sometimes you need a bad person to take on a bad enemy:

Dionne: I want to go to your point about the Democratic image. Democrats are getting behind Graham Platner because they see a Democratic majority in the Senate as the only way to check Trump.

Isgur: Right, because it’s about power, not about principle, not about character. Well, it is about principle on some issues. All the things they said — that Republicans shouldn’t support Donald Trump because there were things more important than power — all went out the window the second someone dangled the Senate majority in front of them.

Siegel: You have Platner as a virtual David Duke on the ticket.

Dionne: Yeah. And I don’t think that’s fair to Platner, but I think the Democrats are saying, “This is a crisis election. We need a majority no matter what.”

That's not what Democrats who support Platner are saying, because Platner is not a Democratic Trump. I'll explain below.

Here's the David French column Isgur is citing. French cites the skeletons in Platner's closet, which are very real: the Nazi death's-head tattoo, the online remarks arguing that some women are complicit in their own rapes and that Black people are bad tippers, and so on. These are bad. If you can't possibly support Platner because of this history, I understand.

But Platner is not running as that guy. He's running as a person who has stopped being that guy. You can conclude that the reformed version of Platner is phony, and that he hasn't really grown or changed, but his supporters believe, or want to believe, that he has changed. They're supporting the person he's been on the campaign trail, not the person he was when he got that tattoo and said those offensive things. They're not consciously voting for a bad guy. They're voting for a guy they think is good now.

Platner hasn't said offensive things since he started his campaign. His supporters are backing the Platner they see on the campaign trail now. Trump, by contrast, has continued to say and do extremely offensive things since he took that escalator ride in 2015. His supporters back that Trump.

French says that Platner's voters are just like Trump supporters:

I know exactly where this process leads. For the past 10 years and counting, I’ve had a front-row seat at the festival of rationalization that’s turned the Republican Party into a Trump cult of personality.

The slide begins when you tell yourself that the stakes are just too high for normal politics. Of course I wouldn’t support this candidate in better times. But now? American democracy is at stake.

Is that what Trump voters have been saying? Nope. They support him precisely because he demonizes immigrants, Muslims, liberals and other political opponents, the media, women (especially Black female reporters) who challenge him ... the list goes on. Trump's voters find his hatred invigorating because they share it. Platner's voters find the hatred he's expressed in his past problematic, but want to believe it's behind him now.

If Democrats were becoming like Republicans, there'd be a wave of Graham Platners across the country. But name another Democrat in a key race who has a long history of offensive statements. James Talarico? Roy Cooper? Mary Peltola? Sherrod Brown? Nope, nope, nope, and nope. By contrast, there are Trump-like candidates running all over America on the GOP line: Tommy Tuberville, Ken Paxton, Paul Le Page, and a host of incumbents (Randy Fine, the aforementioned Andy Ogles, etc.). Trumpism is the lingua franca of the GOP.

Platner's supporters wish he didn't have that baggage. Trump's supporters don't even see his baggage as baggage. It's a feature, not a bug. That's the difference between the two parties.

ATTACK THE ATTACKERS

You should read a piece at The Farce headlined "How AI Plans to Buy 2026" just so you know how much money the tech Nazis plan to spend in an effort to buy control of America, and also to know what they really want (a dystopia for us, a utopia for them). What they want is bad for the rest of us, and they're largely getting their way.

But I don't believe that the tech Nazis are invincible. This apparently worked, but its success wasn't inevitable:

In 2024, advisers to [Elon] Musk ran a $45 million false-flag campaign so precise in its cynicism that it deserves to be described slowly and disdainfully. Muslim voters in Michigan received pro-Israel ads designed to look like Harris campaign materials. Jewish voters in Pennsylvania received the opposite message from the same shop. Young liberals got videos about how Harris had betrayed the progressive movement. Working-class white men in the Midwest got warnings that Harris would institute racial quotas and take away their Zyn pouches. Four brand names, zero common origin, one coordinating strategy. They called it “false positives” internally. The goal was not persuasion. It was subtraction — push enough Democratic-leaning voters into confusion, disgust, or exhausted abstention. Harris dropped eight million votes from Biden’s 2020 total. Trump gained fewer than two million. The election was decided, as the architects intended, by subtraction.

Kamala Harris's campaign raised more than a billion dollars. If this worked, it worked because not enough of that money was devoted to countering campaigns like it.

A nimbler Democratic campaign would have seen this messaging in real time and would have engaged in counter-messaging. The deployment of contradictory messages to Muslims and Jews offers a perfect example of how Harris's people could have countered this: by letting the targeted groups know what the other groups were seeing, by identifying the evil billionaire messengers, and by linking them to Harris's opponent.

It might be hard to do this for every message, but discovering and exposing the overall scheme -- or even just pointing out that unidentified Trump allies with lots of money were simultaneously accusing Harris of contradictary offenses -- would have weakened the potency of the messages.

In Chicago-area Democratic congressional primaries earlier this year, AIPAC ran stealth campaigns, as The Washington Post reported:

Democrats in [Illinois] say they have seen an influx of ads focusing on issues ranging from immigration to health care by groups named Elect Chicago Women and Affordable Chicago Now. None of the ads mention Israel, and none of the groups are publicly affiliated with AIPAC. But the ads benefit candidates favored by AIPAC donors....

Elect Chicago Women uses a mail vendor that shares identifying information with a mail vendor used by AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project. UDP’s vendor for phone banking also has the same address as the vendor listed by Affordable Chicago Now.

Two candidates in the primary in the 9th district of Illinois, Daniel Biss and Kat Abughazaleh, called AIPAC on its secret spending. They finished first and second. The intended beneficiary of AIPAC's campaign, Laura Fine, finished third. That's how you do it: you make the people running the attack ads the issue.

I'm seeing this in my congressional district now. Alex Bores, a state legislator, used to work for Palantir, but is now a critic of Big Tech and a supporter of tech regulation. As Wired notes,

Bores is a vocal proponent of rigorous AI regulation and cosponsored New York’s RAISE Act, which became law in 2025 and requires major AI firms to implement and publish safety protocols for their models, among other guardrails.

Early in the campaign, I began receiving a lot of mailers attacking Bores for his past work in tech. The mailers were financed by Big Tech itself -- the tech Nazis were trying to keep a tech critic out of Congress by pretending to be tech critics themselves.

It's backfiring. Bores is now a leading candidate in the race, in large part because voters know that Big Tech is attacking him. As Bores told Wired,

I literally just came from a call with a tenant leader. It was about housing policy. It had nothing to do with AI. This leader said, “I started paying attention to your campaign because of all these ads.”

... They've been wonderful partners in raising up the issue of AI regulation and AI safety.

You can't stop stealth attack ads and disinformation -- and of course some candidates will be overwhelmed by big money. But if you've got the money -- as Harris did (and as does Bores, who was quite well paid when he was in tech), you should be able to attack the attackers.

The Farce story also tell us:

A rural organizing group found 58 percent of rural voters already believe Democrats are the most corrupt party. AI does not need to create that belief. It scales it with a hundred variations of the same message, each calibrated to a distinct psychological profile, none traceable to a common origin, arriving faster than any correction can travel.

Have Democrats ever considered trying to make the case that Republicans are the most corrupt party? I say this all the time: Democrats seem to believe that it's unseemly to say, "The other party is bad and we're better." Democrats will attack Trump, and individual Democrats will attack their oppponents in a campaign, but the GOP as a party always seem to be off limits. That's crazy! You're a politcal party in a two-party system! You can say categorically that the other party is bad!

Attack politics, AI-enabled or not, can hurt Democrats. But it doesn't need to be fatal.

THE SUPREME COURT SEEMS TO BE LEARNING FROM TRUMP THAT INCREMENTALISM IS FOR LOSERS

Rick Hasen notes that there was a time when the John Roberts Supreme Court seemed to be gutting the Voting Rights Act slowly:

In 2009 ... Roberts wrote an opinion in the Northwest Austin case that raised questions about Section 5’s continuing constitutionality but ultimately punted on the question.... it took another four years, and another round of redistricting after the 2010 census, for Roberts to lead the court in the Shelby County v. Holder case to strike down the existing preclearance regime. In that opinion, Roberts not only assured readers that things had changed in the South; he pointed to Section 2 as an alternative means of providing protection to minority voters on a national basis.

The Court "whittled away" at Section 2, Hasen says, for another decade, but he relied on it in a 2023 case:

Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh then joined with the court’s liberals in the 2023 case Allen v. Milligan in holding that Alabama’s failure to draw a second Black opportunity congressional district violated Section 2.

But under similar circumstances in Louisiana v. Callais, Roberts and the rest of the Republicans on the Court have now made it impossible to use Section 2 to preserve Black voters' right to elect officeholders of their choice. And now the Court seems to be in a rush to implement this ruling:

First, the court agreed to issue its final judgment in Callais quickly, leapfrogging over the normal period when parties could seek Supreme Court rehearing. This ruling sent a signal that Louisiana had the green light to cancel its already ongoing primary election period and schedule a new House primary election using a map that eliminated a Black opportunity district. Then, in ongoing litigation out of Alabama, the court lifted a stay that was preventing the state from redrawing its congressional districts for the rest of the decade.

The Roberts Court played the long game with respect to the Voting Rights Act. Prior to that, it played the long game with respect to Roe v. Wade. Why?

I think the Court's Republicans believed that the most effective way to build their Republican utopia was to do it slowly, in ways that would escape detection by both normie voters and unimaginative journalists. Sure all those angry, bitter Democratic partisans would say that the Court is run by Republican hacks acting as unelected legislators in robes, but the vast majority of Americans wouldn't pay much attention.

But now the Court's Republicans seem to be rushing to implement their agenda. Why? Hasen has a few theories:

First, and most crassly, these decisions could have been motivated by partisanship.

Well, duh. Of course.

Second, even if not consciously biased in favor of Republicans, the conservative justices could be the victims of motivated reasoning: They see the risks of changing election rules at the last minute much more clearly when Republicans are hurt than when they are helped.

That's a charitable view. See theory #1.

Third, perhaps John Roberts sees the court as running out of time, and he wants to get many rulings in the books that change American politics in his preferred direction and forestall the move toward a multiracial democracy. He’s a 71-year-old chief justice now.... The Supreme Court’s rulings in cases ranging from abortion to presidential immunity to the power of the government to fight climate change are growing increasingly unpopular....

Roberts well knows that Democrats and progressives are mobilizing against the court.

"Running out of time"? Sure. John Roberts, Samuel Alito, and Clarence Thomas are all in their seventies. These are bucket-list projects for them.

Are they trying to nail down their agenda ahead of a backlash? Maybe. They might believe that Democrats are serious about Court expansion, age limits, or limiting the Court's jurisdiction. Democrats might be able to get some of this done if they win a 2028 trifecta. (I'll believe it when I see it.)

But I also think the Court's Republicans are looking at Donald Trump and thinking, Why the hell are we trying to sneak everything under the radar? The lesson the Roberts Court's majority and many other Republicans can learn from Trump is: Just do whatever you can get away with, while being perfectly frank about the baseness of your motives. You might get pushback, and there might be moments of public outrage, but you'll be able to get away with a lot, and quite a bit of it will be all but irreversible.

The Court's Republicans still aren't quite ready to openly acknowledge that they're doing what they're doing on behalf of their party, the way Trump does when he calls for gerrymandering or the SAVE Act or an end to mail voting, but they're learning from Trump that moving fast and aggressively allows you to break more things than playing the long game. And they're doing it.

DEMOCRATS ARE DANGEROUS EXTREMISTS, SAYS OUR ENTIRE POLITICAL CULTURE

I was appalled by this tweet, which is quoted in a Jamelle Bouie column about the rush to eliminate Black-majority congressional and legislative districts in the South:

“For too long, Tennessee politics has been dominated by cosmopolitan communists and race hustlers imposing their corrupt will on a deeply rural and conservative state,” Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee wrote on X last week. “The General Assembly’s constitutional redrawing of Federal Districts affirms a foundational truth: Tennessee must be represented by Tennesseans, not socialist democrats.”

Ogles asserts that Democrats are radical extremists. He's a Republican -- of course he would say that.

But Barney Frank -- a lifelong Democrat and one of the first openly gay members of Congress -- is saying similar things. Frank is 86 years old and is dying, and his final public act is the publication of a new book chastizing Democrats for being radical extremists, accompanied by a media tour. In an interview with Jenna Russell of The New York Times, Frank says this:

The key to liberal democracy being able to come back is to get rid of the perception, that we have allowed to grow, that the entire Democratic Party is committed to a series of very drastic social reconstructions that go beyond the politically acceptable.

Most of my mainstream Democratic colleagues agree with me, but they have been reluctant to say that because they’re afraid of being attacked in primaries and accused of being secret conservatives.

And this:

I think it would be a better world, a better America, if somehow everybody had Medicare. But they don’t. And so something that I think would be very helpful, substantively and politically, is to reduce the age of Medicare to 60 from 65. A lot of families would benefit.

You could do it right away, and it would work, and it would build support for going even further. But the left does not support an increase in Medicare coverage. They want to do something more revolutionary.

And this:

... when the financial crisis comes in 2008, people then become convinced that this inequality that’s been building up is not God’s law — it’s the choice of the establishment to do it. And so the left began to campaign to take inequality into account, and they did surprisingly well.

By the end of the decade, most Democrats were ready to deal with inequality, as Biden was, and they were acknowledging that the left was right. But instead of, sort of, taking yes for an answer, some people on the left, who believed there was a lot more wrong with America than simply economic inequality, said: See? We were right, and we’re not going to stop with economics. We’re going after all these racial and cultural things.

Imagine you're a moderate voter -- not a low-information voter, but not a high-information voter, either. You come across the Ogles tweet and maybe it sounds a bit extreme. But you also come across an interview with Barney Frank and he's saying essentially the same thing. The Democratic Party is in thrall to radicals. These radicals intimidate politicians to their right and make them cower in fear.

It appears that there's one thing people across the political spectrum can agree on: Democrats are radical and bad. And maybe that's why President Trump has a -23 approval rating, according to G. Elliott Morris, but the Democratic lead on the generic congressional ballot is only 5 points.

I continue to believe that American voters think the Democratic Party is bad because the loudest Democratic voices regularly say they agree with Republican loudmouths that the Democratic Party is bad.

Though it would also be nice if Democrats could secure real benefits for ordinary people when they have power -- Barney Frank implies that President Biden really did "deal with inequality" when he was president, whereas, in reality, Biden had to scale his program back dramatically in order to get it past Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Maybe if Democrats could deliver real change, we wouldn't have to hear endless whining along the lines of "Oh, all Democrats care about is pronouns."

And as for what Andy Ogles says: No, Tennessee politics has not been "dominated by cosmopolitan communists" until now. Here's a partial list of bills passed by the Tennessee legislature last year:

DEI Restrictions in Public Institutions

Lawmakers approved legislation banning local governments and public colleges from considering race, gender, or age in hiring decisions. DEI offices and demographic-based board requirements were also dismantled, aligning with broader national efforts to curtail diversity initiatives....

Immigration Enforcement Measures

A new law criminalizes the intentional transport, housing or concealment of undocumented individuals for financial gain. The law is part of a broader crackdown on immigration, including the creation of a centralized state immigration enforcement division....

Education Freedom Act

In a special session, the legislature passed a universal school voucher program, allowing families statewide to use taxpayer funds for private school tuition.

And this week, in response to Democratic protests against gerrymandering, majority Republicans in the Tennessee House have removed Democrats from committees:

Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton removed Democratic lawmakers from House standing committees and subcommittees on Tuesday following disruptions during the recent special session on congressional redistricting....

“Members of the Democratic Caucus will receive individual letters removing them from all standing committees and subcommittees of the House,” Sexton wrote.

Individual letters sent to lawmakers informed them they had been removed from committee assignments. One letter sent to Democratic Leader Karen Camper stated she would only remain on the Government Operations Committee, as required under House rules.

Barney Frank could have spent his last few months on earth calling attention to the dangerous radicalism of the GOP. Instead, he's helping those radical Republicans as they kick Democrats when they're down, landing some kicks of his own, literally with his dying breaths.

THAT "MIDTERM COUP" SCENARIO MIGHT BE UNDERSTATING THE RISK

Andy Craig's latest post at The UnPopulist is getting attention, deservedly. Craig speculates that Republicans might use the Supreme Court's recent Voting Rights Act ruling to try to defy the will of the voters and prevent a Democratic takeover of the House.

Craig writes:

If Republicans cannot stop a Democratic majority from emerging on election night in November, they might still try to prevent it from taking power in January, by blocking enough Democratic members-elect from being seated to leave Republicans in the majority.

This danger has been given a boost by the 6-3 party-line Callais decision. Several Republicans, in both Congress and the administration, are now claiming that deliberately drawn majority-minority districts are constitutionally banned. Several states will conduct elections this November using such districts which were, until now, often required under the Voting Rights Act, the landmark civil rights law gutted by the Supreme Court.

On Jan. 3, 2027, when the new House convenes, Republicans could object to the seating of Democratic members, alleging their elections were unconstitutional. The goal would be for a rump House to then have a Republican majority, elect a Republican speaker, and decline to seat the challenged members. On this theory, the seats of rejected members would be vacant, allowing a Republican-controlled House to proceed to business even with fewer than all 435 representatives. The Constitution defines a quorum as a simple majority of the House’s members, and past practice has been to not count vacancies toward that number. In other words, an outright purge of the House.

I'm very interested in this scenario because a few months ago I found myself arguing on Bluesky with people who think Jamelle Bouie is correct to say that President Trump is limited in his ability to interfere with the midterms. Bouie's argument:

here's what happens after house elections, which are conducted by each state and locality: the state certifies the winner the winners go to washington they convene a new house they choose a speaker notice who isn't involved here? the president or the current speaker or the senate.

— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) January 15, 2026 at 11:47 AM

My belief is that the vast majority of Republicans now believe that Democrats cheat in every contested election that they win. Andy Craig worries that Republicans will challenge Democratic winners in districts created to comply with the Voting Rights Act. I worry that Republicans will challenge Democrats for all the reasons Trump challenged Democrats in 2020 -- they'll say Democrats allowed undocumented immigrants to vote, kept dead people on the voter rolls, slipped in fake ballots, and so on. But this time, they'll be doing it in an environment in which election conspiratorialists are already in office in many locales, and in a news environment in which print, TV news, and widely accessible mainstream online news have been supplanted by podcasts, vertical videos, and AI slop.

When I was arguing at Bluesky back in January, I didn't have a complete understanding of how a lame-duck House is replaced by a new House. Nevertheless, I think I had a point about how a Republican coup could unfold.

In Craig's UnPopulist post, his explanation of the process makes clear that there is, in fact, a process that Republicans could subvert, or at least try to subvert:

What gets the House started is a thin scaffolding inherited from the previous Congress. Federal law requires the clerk of the House to prepare a roll of representatives-elect from the credentials sent by the states. The clerk also gavels the chamber to order and presides until a speaker is chosen. Once a speaker is elected (which can take a while), the speaker is sworn in, then administers the oath to everyone else, and the House becomes a House and lawmaking can commence. The process normally goes without any hiccups.

The roll the clerk prepares is the essential starting point. The clerk is required to include those whose credentials show they have been certified as the election winners by their respective states. If any election results have been litigated, the final outcome will be the winner who gets this crucial piece of paper confirming his or her certification....

Here is where things get complicated. A member-elect may, after the roll is read out, object to the seating of another member. By custom, in more normal cases, the challenged member voluntarily stands aside while the rest of the House is sworn in. The chamber then disposes of the objection, either seating the member or not, and, if necessary referring the dispute to committee.

Craig think Republicans might challenge any Democrat from a district formed in order to comply with the Voting Rights Act as it was understood pre-Callais. I think Republicans might challenge any Democrat from a district where Republicans are claiming fraud. In fact, the coup could start much earlier, with officials in Republican-run states refusing to certify the victories of Democratic House candidates because Donald Trump or some random podcaster insists that woke trans Sharia globalist Democrats cheated to achieve the victory.

As Craig notes, the seating of House members usually proceeds without incident, but not always:

“In recent years things have mostly gone smoothly, but there is a deep history of organizing the House going haywire due to partisan disputes,” notes Kacper Surdy, an expert on congressional procedure. In 1839, the House was deadlocked for weeks over which set of credentials to accept from New Jersey, a fight known as the “broad seal war.” In 1863, the House clerk tried to unilaterally reject several Republicans while including on the roll disputed members more sympathetic to the Confederacy. As recently as 2021, Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, objected to members from several states to highlight the contradiction of Republicans rejecting Biden’s victory in an election conducted on the same ballots as their own elections.

So while Bouie's enumeration of the steps involved in this process seems simple and tidy, it won't be a tidy process if Republicans declare total war on the legitimacy of Democratic victories.

I think there'll be a massive propaganda campaign, starting well before Election Day, to persuade Americans that Democrats are cheating, "illegals" are voting, and any blue wave should be discounted as fraudulent. Every Republican who wants to stay in the party's good graces will be required to endorse this view. And then, into that mix, toss in Craig's voting Rights Act scenario.

We need to hope that this would be too much for the American public, and that Republicans who know they were just on the losing end of a shellacking would realize that the public is repulsed by stunts like this and either wouldn't participate or would participate halfheartedly. Democratic wins might need to be overwhelming -- "too big to rig" -- so the public will reject the GOP disinformation.

This is all a worst-case scenario. Republicans might not fight this hard to overturn the midterm results. But they will fight. At the very least, they'll want to delegitimize incoming Democrats. And even if there's a blue wave, GOP voters will believe forever that the 2026 midterms were rigged.

DEMOCRATS SHOULDN'T COOPERATE WHEN THE PRESS WANTS TO MAKE THE PARTY APPEAR TO BE STRUGGLING (updated)

Here are three headlines that appeared in The New York Times over the weekend:

* 10 Days That Shook the House Map and Democratic Confidence

* A Private Call Reveals Democrats’ Desperation Over Tossing of Map

* Democratic Angst Could Lead California to Change Its Primary Rules

"Angst." "Shook." "Desperation."

I know, I know -- The New York Times is gonna New York Times. But Democrats cooperated with all three of these stories.

The first story suggests that Democrats are devastated by recent court rulings on gerrymanders, even though they're still likely to win the House:

Just two weeks ago, Democrats felt increasingly emboldened about taking control of the House in November after seeming to fight the redistricting wars to a draw.

But two court rulings — one by the Supreme Court and another by Virginia’s top court — and an aggressive new push by red states to carve up congressional maps have delivered the Republican Party its biggest burst of momentum in many months....

Democrats are still widely seen as favored to win the House this fall. Republicans face a daunting political climate, saddled with President Trump’s sagging approval ratings, high gas prices and an unpopular war with Iran. In special elections and last year’s races for governor, Democratic enthusiasm has swamped Republican turnout....

[But b]ullish Republicans feel they are back in the game.

The second story focuses on Democratic efforts to overturn the Virginia Supreme Court ruling that negated a successful pro-redistricting referendum. The message is that Democrats are desperate to reverse the ruling, but aren't sure they can, or should:

Democrats are struggling to respond to a major redistricting setback in Virginia, with some party leaders discussing an audacious and possibly far-fetched idea for trying to restore a congressional map voided by the court but showing little indication they have a clear plan.

During a private discussion on Saturday that included Democratic House members from Virginia and Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, the lawmakers ... discussed a bank-shot proposal to redraw the congressional lines anyway....

They did not land on a specific course forward, and Mr. Jeffries and the other members of Congress agreed to consult with their lawyers about the most prudent way to proceed....

The plan under discussion would require the Democratic-controlled state legislature and governor to lower the mandatory retirement age for state Supreme Court justices to 54 -- but Democrats aren't sure they want to go through with it.

In that case, why discuss the plan with the media? Why risk looking weak to Democratic partisans if you don't follow through, and appearing desperate to everyone when the House is still the Democratic Party's to lose?

And why debate this in the newspapers?

Former Representative James P. Moran, Democrat of Virginia, said a move to stack the Virginia Supreme Court would be “just a bridge too far” and could backfire on his party.

He said he understood that many Democrats felt that their party “needs to fight back and not just be victims of unparalleled aggression.” But, he added: “We do have to keep our credibility. We have to do things that pass the legitimacy test.”

Republicans would either act or walk away. They wouldn't dither and they wouldn't have a public debate. Do you remember them debating the plan to block Merrick Garland's Supreme Court nomination in 2016, or the rushed confirmation process in 2020 when Amy Coney Barrett was appointed to the Court? No. They just settle on a course of action and carried out their plans.

And when they wanted to avoid aggression, they didn't do a lot of debating either -- after the impeachment of Bill Clinton made him more popular, they assumed impeachments of Barack Obama and Joe Biden wouldn't help the GOP, so they didn't impeach, and, for the most part, they didn't talk about it.

In the third story above, Democrats look desperate again, even though they shouldn't:

Democrats have panicked all year at the possibility that California’s primary rules could shut them out of the governor’s office despite the state having an overwhelmingly Democratic electorate.

Now a Democratic strategist is launching a campaign to repeal the California primary system....

The new proposal, filed Friday with state elections officials, would end the nonpartisan top-two primary and revert to a traditional primary in which one candidate from each party advances to the general election.

Look, I get it -- many top-tier Democrats are splitting the Democratic vote in this race, while only two Republicans are serious contenders. But publicly discussing this plan right now makes Democrats look panicky and unwilling to accept the results of an unusual but fair democratic process. I don't know enough about what's needed to change the rules in California, so maybe this has to be dealt with right now in order for it to take effect as soon as possible, but if not, just table the discussion, or at least avoid talking about it in public this way:

Steven Maviglio, the Democratic consultant who filed the initiative, has always objected to the top-two system but said he was motivated to try to repeal it this year after seeing the possibility of Democrats being shut out of the general election....

“The fear of having to vote for Steve Hilton or Chad Bianco sent a shiver up my spine,” Mr. Maviglio said of a potential all-Republican matchup in the general election.

You know what? It'll be fine. I grew up in a state, Massachusetts, where the legislature stays in Democratic hands even as Republican governors are frequently elected. The legislature can serve as a check on the Republican governor in California, if there is one -- or, hell, there could even be a recall election.

And in any case, at least one Democrat is likely to make it to the general election, at which point that Democrat will be the prohibitive favorite, given the blueness of the state. Bettors at Kalshi and Polymarket think a Democratic win is far more likely than a victory for one of the Republicans.

So do what you think is best, Democrats, but don't dither or whine helplessly. Don't let them see you sweat.

*****

UPDATE: This is why you don't go public with a plan you're not sure you should -- or can -- execute:

Top Virginia Democrats have decided against exercising a controversial procedural end-run around last week’s state Supreme Court ruling that struck down their redistricting....

“As a practical matter,” Virginia’s state Senate majority leader Scott Surovell said in an interview, the move “would not be capable of being implemented” given the “time frame.” ...

... the problem appears to be that the voting system has not been updated recently enough to make faster entry of the new maps possible (it’s currently being updated)....

“Because the technology is so old, it takes a lot of time to input new districts into the computers, to ensure that people are assigned the correct ballots and that voting is not completely chaotic in November,” Surovell told me.

So Democrats raised the hopes of their base and then dashed those hopes. Brilliant.

Either act maximally or don't -- but don't overpromise and underdeliver. That does nothing except make Democrats look weak.

TRUMP IS CIRCLING THE DRAIN, BUT SUDDENLY THERE'S A CAMPAIGN TO MAKE RUBIO THE NEW MAIN CHARACTER

The head of the Republican Party is hated by nearly 60% of the country. Republicans know this, and know that Donald Trump's heir apparent, J.D. Vance, who has a massive lead in early polling for the 2028 Republican presidential contest, is widely seen as unlikable. What to do?

I'm not sure what Republicans are thinking, but all of a sudden we seem to be seeing a lot of Marco Rubio puff pieces.

This one, from The New York Times, is headlined "Vance or Rubio? Trump Muses on Successor as the ‘Kids’ Fill Bigger Roles," but it largely focuses on persuading us that Rubio is the mythical Good Republican who can Bring Us All Together:

Mr. Rubio, who serves as national security adviser and acted as chief archivist for nearly a year in addition to his role as the country’s top diplomat, likes to hold up his phone to show friends and colleagues the memes that have been made about him, particularly the ones that comment on the fact that he holds several jobs, according to a person who has seen him do it.

The memes are plentiful, and they have imagined Mr. Rubio in various new roles, depending on the outcome of Mr. Trump’s decisions. He has been cast in the internet’s imagination as Kristi Noem, the former homeland security secretary; the president of Venezuela; and, because Mr. Trump has ordered the Pentagon to release its U.F.O. files, Elliott in the movie “E.T.”

According to his allies, Mr. Rubio’s ubiquity is a sign that he might be able to broaden the MAGA tent beyond Mr. Trump’s red-meat base at a time when the Republican Party is facing serious political headwinds over the economy, the war and aggressive tactics to curb immigration.

“He is a politician who could appeal to a whole lot of Republicans who went along with Trump but weren’t overly enthusiastic about him,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster who worked on Mr. Rubio’s 2010 Senate campaign. “He is very good, not only with English, but with the Spanish language, at framing an argument and making a persuasive case to voters.”

(I'm sure it's entirely a coincidence that Republicans are promoting the bilingual Rubio at a time when midterms are approaching, including a tough Senate race in Texas, and Trump's approval rating among Hispanic voters has plummeted.)

In The Washington Post, Megan McArdle seizes on those Rubio memes -- "Rubio finding out he was the new manager of Manchester United. Or the new shah of Iran" -- and expresses the belief that they could heal an entire nation:

Rubio memes are the most delightful thing to hit modern politics in decades. The entire family can enjoy them, from your MAGA uncle to your #NeverTrump niece, from your “resistance lib” cousin to your “abundance bro” brother. For one shining moment, we can all glance at our phones and crack a whimsical smile together. That’s something we could use more of now. And maybe it’s the only thing that can restore American politics to equilibrium.

Just stop, Megan.

But perhaps the worst of these pieces is in The Atlantic, under the headline "Is Marco Rubio the Happiest Cabinet Member?"

It’s a low bar, perhaps, but no one in the Trump administration seems to be having more fun at the moment than Marco Rubio. Last weekend, he was acting as a DJ at a family wedding, headphones to his ear with head and hand pumping to the beat. Midweek, the secretary of state was at the podium in the White House briefing room, spitting rap lyrics and cracking jokes. (“Two more questions!” he said, before entertaining seven more.) And toward the end of the week, he was in Vatican City, being escorted through marble hallways by members of the Pontifical Swiss Guard for an audience with Pope Leo XIV, who has been criticized by the president and vice president.

Rubio comes across as the happy warrior, not the angry one—the one offering lighthearted jokes more than brash confrontation.

Trump can't extricate us from Iran and wants us to pay him a billion dollars so he can construct a ballroom as a monument to himself, while the Supreme Courts of the United States and Virginia have revived Jim Crow and put their thumbs massively on the scale for the GOP in future elections -- and The Atlantic is telling us what a swell, relatable guy the possible next Republican president of the United States is. He's a guy you'd want to have a beer with! It's the year 2000 all over again!

We're not supposed to believe that this is cringe:

Close listeners would have detected Rubio’s use ... of early-’90s rap lyrics: He said that top officials in the Iranian government were “insane in the brain” (a nod to Cypress Hill’s 1993 hit) and added that “they should check themselves before they wreck themselves” (a paraphrase of Ice Cube’s 1992 song “Check Yo Self”). Toward the end, Rubio said he would take a last question. He pointed to Jacqui Heinrich of Fox News. “Many people want to know: What is your DJ name?” she asked. “My DJ name?” he responded. “You’re not ready for my DJ name.”

Yup, we're here again:



The Republican Party needs to change the subject, and the media appears eager to lend a hand. This campaign probably can't be successful in the short term -- soon Trump will do another appalling, headline-stealing thing, and he'll keep doing appalling, headline-stealing things for as long as he draws breath. But we can see the future.

The press doesn't actually like Trump, but it's not liberal. The press wants someone who seems to be an Eisenhower Republican, of either party, to lead America. The GOP hasn't allowed anyone with a national profile to be an Eisenhower Republican since Ronald Reagan was elected, but the mainstream press never stops looking. (It would also accept President John Fetterman.)

George W. Bush was utterly reviled near the end of his term (around the time that "MC Rove" skit took place at the White House Correspondents Dinner). Bush eventually had worse poll numbers than Trump does now, but the Republican Party wasn't discredited for a generation after Bush's term ended, as it should have been -- it was back on its feet within months after Barack Obama's inaugural, rebranded as the Tea Party. This will happen again if we can't stop it, and this time it might happen before the presidential election to pick a hated Republican president's successor.

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.