It's so unbelievable to me that he is our president - hopefully not much longer. Maybe those demons referenced by BeeBeeinNYC can take him away early (before the end of his term).
I have to admire those female reporters who take him on. He shows how weak and incapable of hearing the truth he is by not allowing them to speak and personally insulting them continuously.
And that condescending pat on the arm as he walks away...
His treatment of those female reporters makes him look SO BAD and WEAK and OUT-OF-CONTROL and he thinks he's showing strength.
Daily calls are in to WI R elected members: Ukraine, war powers, ICE/Birder patrol, vanity projects and Blanche and Pulte. I guess I did the laundry list approach today.
I will be most eager to hear what Simon has to say about the role of these right wing polls and widely watched TikToks or whatever and how they actually did contribute to Trump’s narrow win in ‘24. Simon says we can’t get caught “napping” again in the midst of all of this crap they will throw at the wall in their attempts to maintain power this coming fall. I really want to know what that actually means. How did we get caught “napping” in ‘24 and how can we avoid it now? And I’m grateful that Spencer Pratt turns out NOT to be the choice of a huge number of LA voters, but how is it that we managed not to fall prey to this chicanery in LA but we are vulnerable in other parts of the country? Perhaps it could work better in areas that aren’t as blue as LA, I’m guessing. How do Dems fight back against this? Can’t wait to hear Simon’s insights here! Simon thought Harris would win in ‘24…did he get caught “napping” as well?
Seems to me that the rightwing “influence” polls work only if enough people want them to work. Here in NJ I saw the respected polls (university, mainstream) showing Sherrill was ahead by a comfortable margin. Yes, there were rw polls but they didn’t nudge people. What surprised me, as Simon pointed out, was how many Dems kept saying things like “imo opinion Ciatarelli ran a better campaign than Sherrill,” even “Ciatarelli has no scandals and he’s Italian. A lot of Italians are in NJ.” I pointed out this didn’t help Florio against Christie Whitman, in the early 90s, to no avail. Needless to remind, Sherrill won by over 14 pts. The wet towel effect on Dems worries me more than anything else. We need to keep clear eyed and stay confident that yes we can and will win.
the early 90s were a different universe; it's not that italians were more likely to vote for jack because he is italian, its just that many who live in places like ocean county have turned red. you see it in staten island as well, and in fact, a lot of those people in ocean are from staten island, i noticed this back when i taught there. some of them never got over dinkins being elected mayor. but what got me is that harris' team said she was never ahead in internal polling, suggesting that the right wing polls may have been onto something in that race. i've read commentary to that effect, that in fact they were more on target, perhaps for the wrong reasons. i'm not astute enough a poll analysis to say for myself. i guess the argument could be they massaged the data enough to create what they wanted, and it worked in 24, but not in nj, or at least not enough; trump still did a lot better in nj and nyc than he did in 2020.
2024 was an aberration. It was shown many Dems and left leaning indies just did not vote in NJ that year. The surge was really status wuo for repubs with a steep decline among Dems… As for Sherrill’s big win, it was more than even I anticipated. I thought she’d win by 5 or 6, not 14. But again it was due to anti-Trump surge among Dems and indies.
I do not think Simon ever said he thought Kamala would win. I recall him saying often he would rather be us than them, and that the polls were all within the margin of error. My own personal bias was Kamala would win, because how could it possible that anyone could ever support Trump again, but my personal bias was not supported by any polls. I remember just feeling like I couldn't believe this was going to be a close election. And it was close. Regarding napping. I didn't have any knowledge about the differences among the pollster groups leaning one way or another, no knowledge of fake polls essentially campaigning to influence the narrative, until the very very end of the '24 cycle, learned about it here. So part of not falling asleep could be tell who you know about it, so more people will be able to discern what is actually happening, more people to counter the "R's are surging narrative" when it's just engagement on social media, doesn't mean what the Rs are saying. But yeah, more specific tools about how to spread the concept and not fall asleep would be helpful! Although I think we have also done some of the not napping work already, by virtue of info sharing about the R's messing around propping up *their* preferred candidate in *Democratic* primaries (the one they think would be easier to beat), and raising money to support the stronger candidate.
I did think it was more likely than not that she would win, in line with the forecasters I site, in line with what I was hearing from the campaign in the final days and in keeping with the repeated underperformance we'd seen from MAGA from 2018 on. But the way to think about what happened was that it was a margin of error race, and losing by 1.5 pts was always a plausible scenario given the polling we were seeing. My writing in the last few weeks of the election was in line with what see in the article from the other forecasters, including Nate Silver.
A while back you had a discussion or two about how the polls drifted so far during the last couple of general elections, and described better ways to utilize and compare them. As we have had some of the preliminary and primary elections, that seems to have provided better insights. (Like potato chips, with polls, I've learned that I can't eat just one!)
We all thought Harris would win in 2024. And the truth is she did.
One form of “napping” was our worrying about whether trump would contest what was then seen as a very likely Harris victory. While we were all distracted by that possibility, Trump just walked right in and straight up stole the election himself.
Another kind of “napping“ was our collective non-reaction to trump’s “win”. We expressed some shock, but mostly rolled over. Every last one of us should have been in the streets demanding audits, recounts and investigations.
The nap we’re taking now is in the complete and utter absence of any organized effort to build firewalls and generally ramp up the security of our election system so that Musk or someone like him will be blocked from rewriting a few lines of code to pre-program massive MAGA majorities in both the House and the Senate.
The only hope I can offer here is that www.electiontruthalliance.org is working hard and uncovering serious evidence of the theft of the 2024 election (and the recent Republican primary that took out Thomas Massie). ETA advocates for the verification of all elections.
Hi everybody! Sorry I’ve been away for a week… Dealing with the aftermath of a tough loss in my family. Glad to see that nothing’s been going on while I was away 👀 👀 👀
I hope that democratic leadership are not afraid to craft a central counter narrative about this… I firmly believe that Trump is unpopular enough right now, that if we make it central to our campaigns along with our intention to improve the terrible conditions he has saddle us with, that he’s a whiny pathetic baby who can’t face losing in a competitive endeavor without accusing his opponents of cheating, and we have all the evidence we need going all the way back to January 6. We have to in my opinion, literally say to the American people, don’t take the bait… Aren’t you sick of his constant failures followed by whining and pointing the finger at other people? Isn’t he just a pathetic excuse of a human being? Reject his ridiculous lies and let’s move on.“
I know that survey data is going to continue to say that we should only focus on the economy, but we have to address this side of things head on…
This cannot remain standard operating procedure for the Republicans going beyond Trump. It has to be rejected resoundingly.
I shouldn’t be surprised that Ron DeSantis joined in on this, but what a fucking disgrace. I mean seriously, what a pathetic fucking disgrace that guy is.
Anyway, America is so much better than what it’s getting right now… Onward!
Steve, you are absolutely right that Trump is a whiney snowflake of a joke and we need to call him out as such.
And I think we should call out the corporate press for the way it handled Biden’s age and fumbles versus Trumps much worse transgressions. (Perhaps the electeds look like whiners if they do it, but the grassroots can still make noise.)
Simon, thank you for this valuable discussion of the role "influence" can play in elections. I had no idea.
I thought Trump's interview with Welker made him look weak. I do wish more Dems would make his failing health and mental capacity a regular talking point. They can just add it in to whatever they're saying, "Our weak and aged president has made gas prices go up." "As Trump gets weaker and more demented, he's unable to negotiate with Iran." And so on. It's how Republicans made Biden's age an issue. (And when people try to bring up Biden's age in response to Trump, I think it's easy to say, "Democrats made Joe Biden step down due to his age," and keep going.)
I called Congressman Raskin and Senators Alsobrooks and Van Hollen to say that Trump is seriously out of touch with reality and needs to be replaced. I'm writing postcards to Ohio voters today.
Funny you say this - the Bulwark folks are constantly on the Dems for NOT making more hay out of his obvious ineptitude, illness, corruption, etc. Can't say I completely disagree. Dems need to beat the drums both of corruption AND of the economy, IMHO.
I have noticed during the last two weeks a significant change in public statements that backfire more quickly (Iran, Israel for two).
While I understand the appeal of the failing health/fitness argument, I'd rather see the hard pushes go to the costs to us, the lawlessness, and pointed evaluation of the way the cabinet, which has less immunity, is pushing that on us.
Remember when we were horrified that Trump mocked a reporter with a disability? Let's not be him. There's plenty to address without adopting that trope.
All REGISTERED voters in CA get a ballot in the mail. Many mail theirs and others use dropboxes which the post office can't delay even if it wants to
A large fraction of voters choose not to wait in lines on election day. This makes the process slower. This time many also waited until the last minute to vote in the governors jungle primary not wanting 2 Republicans as the only choices in the midterms. With over 50 candidates people wanted to be careful and not waste a vote that would leave us poor choices in November
As soon as he goes personal, Kristen Welker knew it was over. He has no self control and she keeps getting better and more articulate under heavy pressure. Even though Donald’s face was incredibly red with makeup, look how his face goes even redder under her constant barrage of “where’s your evidence”!
He left because he was exhausted and couldn’t keep up and knew he was just repeating his same vile lies. That’s how it’s done. Her interview will be a textbook study in journalism classes all over.
And if you think journalism is an old and irrelevant field, Kristen Welker begs to differ. So do I.
I agree and I also really appreciated her pushing back, "I'm not crooked." Journalists need to do that every time he insults them instead of just trying to ignore it.
Tomorrow Whatcom County, in Washington State, is scheduled to introduce a revised ordinance that would impose a moratorium on new or expanded detention centers. Here is the text:
I've been following this one closely. I plan to attend the afternoon planning meeting when it will be taken up and the evening session where it will be officially introduced. I may speak at the evening session, which, given the local interest in this issue, could run very late into the night.
I grew up with a verbally abusive parent. I recognize the behavior and it makes me sick. As an adult, I cutoff that parent when the abuse would start and it forever changed our dynamic. The parent lost control over me when I said no.
I noted the abuse also. It is as if the United States is enmeshed in an abusive relationship. We are abused by this man and the GOP every day, and now hopefully more voters are waking up to this reality, and will be willing to turn away from this and toward a better future.
His behavior is not normal. We are going to have to reverse this very distinctly so that people remember how we expect a President to act. I'm glad you survived. <3
A very apt analogy. As Dr. Ben-Ghiat says, he is plundering and trying to destroy the country per Putin's direction. We need to shut that abusive sh*t down and ensure folks see the game for what it is. That is how we will win.
Mike is a good friend but this article like much of the commentary misses something important - Dems have a limited amount of money and will be spending it on the races they believe where we have the best chance of winning. Right now Maine is part of that mix. Will it be in two weeks? -Let's see what the primary vote and polling tells us. For as I've been writing this race just got much harder and more expensive, and I still think everyone is underselling the significance of the now admitted serial infidelity in a new marriage and the totality of what they have to run against him with.
But let's hope this all gets better and we can go out and win this thing, together, this year.
I have been thinking some about this race, and I'd like to point out the obvious: Platner is not like the other candidates we've been supporting here. Think about how different he is compared to Mary Peltola or James Talarico or Roy Cooper or Josh Turek. The latter four are experienced, confident and vetted. They are not playing defense. They are not carrying heavy baggage into the race. I respect the voters of Maine in voting for the candidate of their choice, but I have to consider how I want to deploy limited resources.
I have to be convinced he can win before we will endorse him. Same as all the candidates we get behind. And I am going to wait until we have a few independent public polls out there to make the decision. How we would approach any other race like this.
I guess I hold similar views to the author of the article. If he wins tomorrow, here's what I hope: I hope the DNC and Maine Dem Party get 100% behind their candidate. I hope his campaign has some really smart people in it. I hope he's honest with voters from Maine. And I hope he beats Susan Collins.
Me, too. Platner should actually apologize for as well as acknowledge past bad behavior. If/when he does that, I'm all for him.
He has the political values Dems support and a personality to vigorously present them. Unfortunately the damage to his campaign is real. We'll just have to see if he recovers.
To your point about the late polls showing Trump ahead-- -one of Anat Shenker-Osorio's criticisms of the Harris campaign was that they kept saying she was the underdog. Since people want to support a winner, she said the campaign should have messaged strength, etc. Those polls suggest how right you and she were/are. Hope the 2026 candidates have taken lessons from this analysis and from the 2025 races!
I was so worried about the underdog thing I did a briefing for the senior staff of the campaign in September begging them to lean into she's winning/strong and not losing/weak. The campaign only embraced that approach in the final week, when it was too late IMHO.
I remember just feeling like the "underdog" thing was a terrible message at the time. I hoped they knew what they were doing with that. But I thought it was better to project that they were "ahead", whether it was exactly provable or not. There's always a margin.
Simon, I know it’s arguably too soon to ask and I know you wouldn’t endorse any one individual until a full primary went underway. That said, would you support Kamala running again? Especially given your long observed instincts about her X Factor and how underestimated a figure she still is? All sentiment I share from her days in the senate btw only you obv have the pleasure of knowing her and I don’t. At minimum, I’d love to see her as AG, in the crux of her strength especially if instead, say either Newsom or Kelly were to become the nominee.
Trump was so intimidated and fearful of Kamala Harris that he couldn't even look at her during the debate. His body language was signalling submissiveness, even if his words weren't. And then Harris came out of the debate saying she was an underdog.
How can we allow a President of our country to talk like that to anyone? Press is invaluable and to talk like that to a human being is demeaning, cruel nonsense. Nothing is right about him. How long can we allow this to go on?
One thing that I wonder about: Dems are pushing a vote early strategy. Hopium was just discussing this last week. Mail in ballots get counted last so it can look in the beginning like the GOP candidate is winning but then, days/weeks later, once ALL the ballots are counted, it's the DEM who is the victor. But this lag time allows all these conspiracy theories & right wing "influencers" to create this rigging narrative.
The best way is to do everything we can to ensure that the victory is too big to rig. Smaller margins get expensive -- NC saw this when liberal justice Allison Riggs won by 734 votes. It took six months and several million dollars to fight against the GOP machine that was trying to cheat their way into victory.
I guess no matter what we do or don't do, if they lose it will be the rigged narrative. Certainly helps to win by wide margins (which is what's happening in w/the Dems in the California races but that's not stopping the Trump/MAGA/GOP machine from their ranting)
The count is too slow, it's rigged. The counting is too fast, they didn't count all the votes. Mail in ballots are forged but if republicans vote by mail and win, it's fair. No matter what, if republicans lose, they say it's rigged.
I am so sick of the malignant narcissist's carrying on about rigged elections, especially since he tried to do that and lost. But if you watch the video, he can hardly get up and then puts his handmon Welker's shoulder; to steady himself? And his walk is pretty bad also. He is definitely not energetic or well. Where is the mainstream media in reporting this? Oh wait, kissing that smelly a**.
Really interesting analysis this morning, putting the substance of the blubbery baby man's tantrum ("CA voting is rigged because it's slow") in the context of broad MAGA strategy. The extent of Polymarket's role in all this is something I had not fully understood. Yes, the best way to counter it is what this post is doing today, shine a bright light on it. Cockroaches prefer to do their business in the dark.
The irony is that CA's process is slow in part because of steps that are taken to prevent fraud. Every ballot envelope, whether put in a mailbox or a drop box (I use the one at my local library -- I can walk to it), has to be signed, and those signatures are verified. My family all reminded each other several times to double check that we had signed our ballot envelopes. Most of us vote that way instead of voting in person on election day. CA makes it easy to vote and we have a lot of voters, and therefore a lot of votes, and only so many people to count them. This article was a good explainer for me. https://www.votebeat.org/national/2026/06/08/california-election-results-take-a-long-time/
I'd like the punks like DeSantis, who know exactly what they are doing, to explain to me how this "conspiracy" works in practice. CA has 58 counties. Are all of the county clerks in on the conspiracy? Or just some of them? How do they coordinate? How do they manage to keep it all so secret? I mean come on. And of course they don't offer any specific descriptions of how it all works because it would sound so ridiculous and far-fetched. Much better for them to raise suspicions and leap to unfounded conclusions. This, to me, is part of the problem with any sort of conspiracy theory and why I have such a visceral negative reaction to them.
I agree about the Ca voting. I've heard criticism and that it needs to be invested in and speeded up and "it's Democrats' fault". Well, who cares if the votes take awhile to count? I don't care.
I think our big concern in Ca is low turnout. If there was bigger turnout in Orange County more Democrats would win.
Well according to Mike Johnson, the conspiracy is too massive to prove (insert eyeroll): “some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream it’s impossible to prove. But I think everybody knows instinctively that something is wrong.”
Had to turn the sound off. He has no self control.
It was almost as if his inner demons were eating him alive.
I listened. Thankfully it was a short clip.
He's a NASTY man (to use his phrase).
It's so unbelievable to me that he is our president - hopefully not much longer. Maybe those demons referenced by BeeBeeinNYC can take him away early (before the end of his term).
I have to admire those female reporters who take him on. He shows how weak and incapable of hearing the truth he is by not allowing them to speak and personally insulting them continuously.
And that condescending pat on the arm as he walks away...
His treatment of those female reporters makes him look SO BAD and WEAK and OUT-OF-CONTROL and he thinks he's showing strength.
Daily calls are in to WI R elected members: Ukraine, war powers, ICE/Birder patrol, vanity projects and Blanche and Pulte. I guess I did the laundry list approach today.
I will be most eager to hear what Simon has to say about the role of these right wing polls and widely watched TikToks or whatever and how they actually did contribute to Trump’s narrow win in ‘24. Simon says we can’t get caught “napping” again in the midst of all of this crap they will throw at the wall in their attempts to maintain power this coming fall. I really want to know what that actually means. How did we get caught “napping” in ‘24 and how can we avoid it now? And I’m grateful that Spencer Pratt turns out NOT to be the choice of a huge number of LA voters, but how is it that we managed not to fall prey to this chicanery in LA but we are vulnerable in other parts of the country? Perhaps it could work better in areas that aren’t as blue as LA, I’m guessing. How do Dems fight back against this? Can’t wait to hear Simon’s insights here! Simon thought Harris would win in ‘24…did he get caught “napping” as well?
Seems to me that the rightwing “influence” polls work only if enough people want them to work. Here in NJ I saw the respected polls (university, mainstream) showing Sherrill was ahead by a comfortable margin. Yes, there were rw polls but they didn’t nudge people. What surprised me, as Simon pointed out, was how many Dems kept saying things like “imo opinion Ciatarelli ran a better campaign than Sherrill,” even “Ciatarelli has no scandals and he’s Italian. A lot of Italians are in NJ.” I pointed out this didn’t help Florio against Christie Whitman, in the early 90s, to no avail. Needless to remind, Sherrill won by over 14 pts. The wet towel effect on Dems worries me more than anything else. We need to keep clear eyed and stay confident that yes we can and will win.
the early 90s were a different universe; it's not that italians were more likely to vote for jack because he is italian, its just that many who live in places like ocean county have turned red. you see it in staten island as well, and in fact, a lot of those people in ocean are from staten island, i noticed this back when i taught there. some of them never got over dinkins being elected mayor. but what got me is that harris' team said she was never ahead in internal polling, suggesting that the right wing polls may have been onto something in that race. i've read commentary to that effect, that in fact they were more on target, perhaps for the wrong reasons. i'm not astute enough a poll analysis to say for myself. i guess the argument could be they massaged the data enough to create what they wanted, and it worked in 24, but not in nj, or at least not enough; trump still did a lot better in nj and nyc than he did in 2020.
2024 was an aberration. It was shown many Dems and left leaning indies just did not vote in NJ that year. The surge was really status wuo for repubs with a steep decline among Dems… As for Sherrill’s big win, it was more than even I anticipated. I thought she’d win by 5 or 6, not 14. But again it was due to anti-Trump surge among Dems and indies.
I do not think Simon ever said he thought Kamala would win. I recall him saying often he would rather be us than them, and that the polls were all within the margin of error. My own personal bias was Kamala would win, because how could it possible that anyone could ever support Trump again, but my personal bias was not supported by any polls. I remember just feeling like I couldn't believe this was going to be a close election. And it was close. Regarding napping. I didn't have any knowledge about the differences among the pollster groups leaning one way or another, no knowledge of fake polls essentially campaigning to influence the narrative, until the very very end of the '24 cycle, learned about it here. So part of not falling asleep could be tell who you know about it, so more people will be able to discern what is actually happening, more people to counter the "R's are surging narrative" when it's just engagement on social media, doesn't mean what the Rs are saying. But yeah, more specific tools about how to spread the concept and not fall asleep would be helpful! Although I think we have also done some of the not napping work already, by virtue of info sharing about the R's messing around propping up *their* preferred candidate in *Democratic* primaries (the one they think would be easier to beat), and raising money to support the stronger candidate.
I did think it was more likely than not that she would win, in line with the forecasters I site, in line with what I was hearing from the campaign in the final days and in keeping with the repeated underperformance we'd seen from MAGA from 2018 on. But the way to think about what happened was that it was a margin of error race, and losing by 1.5 pts was always a plausible scenario given the polling we were seeing. My writing in the last few weeks of the election was in line with what see in the article from the other forecasters, including Nate Silver.
A while back you had a discussion or two about how the polls drifted so far during the last couple of general elections, and described better ways to utilize and compare them. As we have had some of the preliminary and primary elections, that seems to have provided better insights. (Like potato chips, with polls, I've learned that I can't eat just one!)
We all thought Harris would win in 2024. And the truth is she did.
One form of “napping” was our worrying about whether trump would contest what was then seen as a very likely Harris victory. While we were all distracted by that possibility, Trump just walked right in and straight up stole the election himself.
Another kind of “napping“ was our collective non-reaction to trump’s “win”. We expressed some shock, but mostly rolled over. Every last one of us should have been in the streets demanding audits, recounts and investigations.
The nap we’re taking now is in the complete and utter absence of any organized effort to build firewalls and generally ramp up the security of our election system so that Musk or someone like him will be blocked from rewriting a few lines of code to pre-program massive MAGA majorities in both the House and the Senate.
The only hope I can offer here is that www.electiontruthalliance.org is working hard and uncovering serious evidence of the theft of the 2024 election (and the recent Republican primary that took out Thomas Massie). ETA advocates for the verification of all elections.
Trump needs to be asked if he still believes (as he claimed) that Ted Cruz committed fraud to win the 2016 Iowa Republican caucuses.
Hi everybody! Sorry I’ve been away for a week… Dealing with the aftermath of a tough loss in my family. Glad to see that nothing’s been going on while I was away 👀 👀 👀
I hope that democratic leadership are not afraid to craft a central counter narrative about this… I firmly believe that Trump is unpopular enough right now, that if we make it central to our campaigns along with our intention to improve the terrible conditions he has saddle us with, that he’s a whiny pathetic baby who can’t face losing in a competitive endeavor without accusing his opponents of cheating, and we have all the evidence we need going all the way back to January 6. We have to in my opinion, literally say to the American people, don’t take the bait… Aren’t you sick of his constant failures followed by whining and pointing the finger at other people? Isn’t he just a pathetic excuse of a human being? Reject his ridiculous lies and let’s move on.“
I know that survey data is going to continue to say that we should only focus on the economy, but we have to address this side of things head on…
This cannot remain standard operating procedure for the Republicans going beyond Trump. It has to be rejected resoundingly.
I shouldn’t be surprised that Ron DeSantis joined in on this, but what a fucking disgrace. I mean seriously, what a pathetic fucking disgrace that guy is.
Anyway, America is so much better than what it’s getting right now… Onward!
Peace to you, Steve. 🩵
I’m so sorry for your family’s loss.
Steve, you are absolutely right that Trump is a whiney snowflake of a joke and we need to call him out as such.
And I think we should call out the corporate press for the way it handled Biden’s age and fumbles versus Trumps much worse transgressions. (Perhaps the electeds look like whiners if they do it, but the grassroots can still make noise.)
AND… kirchen table too.
Simon, thank you for this valuable discussion of the role "influence" can play in elections. I had no idea.
I thought Trump's interview with Welker made him look weak. I do wish more Dems would make his failing health and mental capacity a regular talking point. They can just add it in to whatever they're saying, "Our weak and aged president has made gas prices go up." "As Trump gets weaker and more demented, he's unable to negotiate with Iran." And so on. It's how Republicans made Biden's age an issue. (And when people try to bring up Biden's age in response to Trump, I think it's easy to say, "Democrats made Joe Biden step down due to his age," and keep going.)
I called Congressman Raskin and Senators Alsobrooks and Van Hollen to say that Trump is seriously out of touch with reality and needs to be replaced. I'm writing postcards to Ohio voters today.
Funny you say this - the Bulwark folks are constantly on the Dems for NOT making more hay out of his obvious ineptitude, illness, corruption, etc. Can't say I completely disagree. Dems need to beat the drums both of corruption AND of the economy, IMHO.
…and incapacitation too
I have noticed during the last two weeks a significant change in public statements that backfire more quickly (Iran, Israel for two).
While I understand the appeal of the failing health/fitness argument, I'd rather see the hard pushes go to the costs to us, the lawlessness, and pointed evaluation of the way the cabinet, which has less immunity, is pushing that on us.
Remember when we were horrified that Trump mocked a reporter with a disability? Let's not be him. There's plenty to address without adopting that trope.
All REGISTERED voters in CA get a ballot in the mail. Many mail theirs and others use dropboxes which the post office can't delay even if it wants to
A large fraction of voters choose not to wait in lines on election day. This makes the process slower. This time many also waited until the last minute to vote in the governors jungle primary not wanting 2 Republicans as the only choices in the midterms. With over 50 candidates people wanted to be careful and not waste a vote that would leave us poor choices in November
States control voting.
Fast need not be any safer or fairer.
As soon as he goes personal, Kristen Welker knew it was over. He has no self control and she keeps getting better and more articulate under heavy pressure. Even though Donald’s face was incredibly red with makeup, look how his face goes even redder under her constant barrage of “where’s your evidence”!
He left because he was exhausted and couldn’t keep up and knew he was just repeating his same vile lies. That’s how it’s done. Her interview will be a textbook study in journalism classes all over.
And if you think journalism is an old and irrelevant field, Kristen Welker begs to differ. So do I.
It's a classic case of someone who cannot win knocking over the chessboard.
When you suck, your only option is not to play or admit others cheat. Donald can’t resist so he cheats.
I agree and I also really appreciated her pushing back, "I'm not crooked." Journalists need to do that every time he insults them instead of just trying to ignore it.
Tomorrow Whatcom County, in Washington State, is scheduled to introduce a revised ordinance that would impose a moratorium on new or expanded detention centers. Here is the text:
https://whatcom.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=8057190&GUID=D2053660-4C81-40D0-B8D0-0C2E22044129#docaccess-0ec1a5ec216408e225b65b9ad111b2ca
I've been following this one closely. I plan to attend the afternoon planning meeting when it will be taken up and the evening session where it will be officially introduced. I may speak at the evening session, which, given the local interest in this issue, could run very late into the night.
I grew up with a verbally abusive parent. I recognize the behavior and it makes me sick. As an adult, I cutoff that parent when the abuse would start and it forever changed our dynamic. The parent lost control over me when I said no.
I noted the abuse also. It is as if the United States is enmeshed in an abusive relationship. We are abused by this man and the GOP every day, and now hopefully more voters are waking up to this reality, and will be willing to turn away from this and toward a better future.
His behavior is not normal. We are going to have to reverse this very distinctly so that people remember how we expect a President to act. I'm glad you survived. <3
Thank you.
A very apt analogy. As Dr. Ben-Ghiat says, he is plundering and trying to destroy the country per Putin's direction. We need to shut that abusive sh*t down and ensure folks see the game for what it is. That is how we will win.
Opinion piece article about Platner from the New Republic for anyone that is interested...
https://newrepublic.com/article/211466/platner-collins-maine-senate-primary?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tnr_daily
Thank you.
Mike is a good friend but this article like much of the commentary misses something important - Dems have a limited amount of money and will be spending it on the races they believe where we have the best chance of winning. Right now Maine is part of that mix. Will it be in two weeks? -Let's see what the primary vote and polling tells us. For as I've been writing this race just got much harder and more expensive, and I still think everyone is underselling the significance of the now admitted serial infidelity in a new marriage and the totality of what they have to run against him with.
But let's hope this all gets better and we can go out and win this thing, together, this year.
I have been thinking some about this race, and I'd like to point out the obvious: Platner is not like the other candidates we've been supporting here. Think about how different he is compared to Mary Peltola or James Talarico or Roy Cooper or Josh Turek. The latter four are experienced, confident and vetted. They are not playing defense. They are not carrying heavy baggage into the race. I respect the voters of Maine in voting for the candidate of their choice, but I have to consider how I want to deploy limited resources.
I have to be convinced he can win before we will endorse him. Same as all the candidates we get behind. And I am going to wait until we have a few independent public polls out there to make the decision. How we would approach any other race like this.
I guess I hold similar views to the author of the article. If he wins tomorrow, here's what I hope: I hope the DNC and Maine Dem Party get 100% behind their candidate. I hope his campaign has some really smart people in it. I hope he's honest with voters from Maine. And I hope he beats Susan Collins.
Me, too. Platner should actually apologize for as well as acknowledge past bad behavior. If/when he does that, I'm all for him.
He has the political values Dems support and a personality to vigorously present them. Unfortunately the damage to his campaign is real. We'll just have to see if he recovers.
To your point about the late polls showing Trump ahead-- -one of Anat Shenker-Osorio's criticisms of the Harris campaign was that they kept saying she was the underdog. Since people want to support a winner, she said the campaign should have messaged strength, etc. Those polls suggest how right you and she were/are. Hope the 2026 candidates have taken lessons from this analysis and from the 2025 races!
I was so worried about the underdog thing I did a briefing for the senior staff of the campaign in September begging them to lean into she's winning/strong and not losing/weak. The campaign only embraced that approach in the final week, when it was too late IMHO.
I remember just feeling like the "underdog" thing was a terrible message at the time. I hoped they knew what they were doing with that. But I thought it was better to project that they were "ahead", whether it was exactly provable or not. There's always a margin.
Simon, I know it’s arguably too soon to ask and I know you wouldn’t endorse any one individual until a full primary went underway. That said, would you support Kamala running again? Especially given your long observed instincts about her X Factor and how underestimated a figure she still is? All sentiment I share from her days in the senate btw only you obv have the pleasure of knowing her and I don’t. At minimum, I’d love to see her as AG, in the crux of her strength especially if instead, say either Newsom or Kelly were to become the nominee.
Trump was so intimidated and fearful of Kamala Harris that he couldn't even look at her during the debate. His body language was signalling submissiveness, even if his words weren't. And then Harris came out of the debate saying she was an underdog.
How can we allow a President of our country to talk like that to anyone? Press is invaluable and to talk like that to a human being is demeaning, cruel nonsense. Nothing is right about him. How long can we allow this to go on?
Yes are absolutely correct - the President should not talk to anyone like he did to that reporter.
One thing that I wonder about: Dems are pushing a vote early strategy. Hopium was just discussing this last week. Mail in ballots get counted last so it can look in the beginning like the GOP candidate is winning but then, days/weeks later, once ALL the ballots are counted, it's the DEM who is the victor. But this lag time allows all these conspiracy theories & right wing "influencers" to create this rigging narrative.
How do we combat this?
The best way is to do everything we can to ensure that the victory is too big to rig. Smaller margins get expensive -- NC saw this when liberal justice Allison Riggs won by 734 votes. It took six months and several million dollars to fight against the GOP machine that was trying to cheat their way into victory.
I guess no matter what we do or don't do, if they lose it will be the rigged narrative. Certainly helps to win by wide margins (which is what's happening in w/the Dems in the California races but that's not stopping the Trump/MAGA/GOP machine from their ranting)
The count is too slow, it's rigged. The counting is too fast, they didn't count all the votes. Mail in ballots are forged but if republicans vote by mail and win, it's fair. No matter what, if republicans lose, they say it's rigged.
I am so sick of the malignant narcissist's carrying on about rigged elections, especially since he tried to do that and lost. But if you watch the video, he can hardly get up and then puts his handmon Welker's shoulder; to steady himself? And his walk is pretty bad also. He is definitely not energetic or well. Where is the mainstream media in reporting this? Oh wait, kissing that smelly a**.
Really interesting analysis this morning, putting the substance of the blubbery baby man's tantrum ("CA voting is rigged because it's slow") in the context of broad MAGA strategy. The extent of Polymarket's role in all this is something I had not fully understood. Yes, the best way to counter it is what this post is doing today, shine a bright light on it. Cockroaches prefer to do their business in the dark.
The irony is that CA's process is slow in part because of steps that are taken to prevent fraud. Every ballot envelope, whether put in a mailbox or a drop box (I use the one at my local library -- I can walk to it), has to be signed, and those signatures are verified. My family all reminded each other several times to double check that we had signed our ballot envelopes. Most of us vote that way instead of voting in person on election day. CA makes it easy to vote and we have a lot of voters, and therefore a lot of votes, and only so many people to count them. This article was a good explainer for me. https://www.votebeat.org/national/2026/06/08/california-election-results-take-a-long-time/
I'd like the punks like DeSantis, who know exactly what they are doing, to explain to me how this "conspiracy" works in practice. CA has 58 counties. Are all of the county clerks in on the conspiracy? Or just some of them? How do they coordinate? How do they manage to keep it all so secret? I mean come on. And of course they don't offer any specific descriptions of how it all works because it would sound so ridiculous and far-fetched. Much better for them to raise suspicions and leap to unfounded conclusions. This, to me, is part of the problem with any sort of conspiracy theory and why I have such a visceral negative reaction to them.
I agree about the Ca voting. I've heard criticism and that it needs to be invested in and speeded up and "it's Democrats' fault". Well, who cares if the votes take awhile to count? I don't care.
I think our big concern in Ca is low turnout. If there was bigger turnout in Orange County more Democrats would win.
Well according to Mike Johnson, the conspiracy is too massive to prove (insert eyeroll): “some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream it’s impossible to prove. But I think everybody knows instinctively that something is wrong.”
How convenient.