Coffee Break: Gerontocrats Bad Jacket Tactics Not Working in U.S. Senate Primary?

The D.C. consensus is becoming clear, the gerontocrats, led by Chuck Schumer, are on the verge of crushing the pesky “viral fantasy” of progressive Maine lobsterman turned U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner.

Or are they? More on that below.

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has been largely AWOL from politics this year, seemingly lost after Trump’s 2024 electoral win.

But nothing stirs the ancient Democratic establishment leader like the need to crush a promising progressive campaign for U.S. Senate so when Bernie Sanders’ supported war veteran Graham Platner started raising millions and getting called “The Maine Mamdani”, Schumer lept strollered into action and drafted 77-year-old Governor Janet Mills into the race.

Note the similarity of tactics the Democrat centrists are using to “bad jacket” Katie Porter after her own-goal interview.

The Democrat Gerontocrats War on Graham Platner in Maine

This is a race I’ve been meaning to cover for months. Graham Platner is a very appealing, Bernie Sanders endorsed candidate. Naturally, Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) have drafted the barely popular 77 year old former governor to run against him.

From Sanders’ endorsement:

“Graham is a Marine and Army National Guard veteran, an oyster farmer, and a proud member of America’s working class. He’s a Mainer through and through, and he is building a movement strong enough to take on the oligarchy that is making Maine unaffordable for all except a privileged few,” Sanders wrote in his announcement, adding that “we need senators in Washington who are prepared to take on the billionaire class and fight for working people.”

Didn’t jibe with Chuck Schumer’s ancient instincts though:

Maine Gov. Janet Mills joined her state’s crowded Democratic Senate primary as the establishment favorite on Tuesday, aiming to flip Republican Sen. Susan Collins’ seat in a pivotal midterm year.

Democrats view the seat as one of their top pickup opportunities — the only in a state Kamala Harris won in 2024 — and Mills is among a few top-tier candidates Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer aggressively recruited to run this cycle. But first the term-limited governor must contend with a competitive primary against breakout candidate Graham Platner, an oyster farmer who announced he has more than $3 million in the bank and already received the endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
…
Mills, who won her seat by wide margins in her last two races, is 77 years old, making her five years Collins’ senior at a time when Americans are grappling with debates about the age of their politicians. If elected, she would be the oldest first-year senator ever. Platner is 41 and unlikely to leave the race for Mills

Common Dreams made the case for Platner vs Mills:

Platner has centered his campaign on naming “the enemy” shared by Mainers and Americans from all walks of life: not immigrants, transgender people, or other frequent targets of the Trump administration, but the oligarchy. He’s also been unapologetically outspoken in his condemnation of the US-backed Israeli assault on Gaza and over the weekend said that should he win a Senate seat, “there will be consequences” for those who have led federal immigration agents’ violent incursion in US cities.

Platner has garnered endorsements and enthusiasm from lawmakers including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—who recently criticized reports that Schumer was pushing for a Mills run—and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who called his campaign “pretty impressive” and “killer” recently.

He’s also proven to be a formidable fundraiser, pulling in more than $4 million since launching his campaign in August, and has spoken to overflow crowds in cities and towns across Maine.

Recent polling has shown Platner outperforming Mills by 21 points among Trump voters, 13 points among voters aged 18-44, and 10 points in rural parts of northern and western Maine.

The Social Media Battle Lines Were Clear

I’ve been following this race as it built up to Mills’ entre on social media and saw some good tussles but nothing especially surprising.

Ryan Grim, ex-Intercept now with Drop Site News, was doing battle with various mid-tier “DC creature”

DC is such a cesspool and all its creatures loathe Platner https://t.co/4vwK3h5Qj3 pic.twitter.com/YsvU8xFN8x

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) October 19, 2025

More on this particular DC creature’s world view as self-presented on X.com

pic.twitter.com/2QHzt9GWJw

— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) October 21, 2025

Grim has been an active online surrogate for Platner, here he is throwing down with Politico who were very eager to carry the DSCC’s water (and have already declared victory for Mills over Platner):

Extremely deceptive from Politico here. Another Reddit user (!) said that Maine lobsterman are “drug addicted maniacs.”

Platner then responded saying, “They aren’t. Some are, the majority are solid folks making a living. I work on the water and know a whole bunch of lobstermen… https://t.co/p2NRngYizu

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) October 19, 2025

The Politico covered the story carried water for the Schumer-Mills attack machine in their newsletter on the 18th:

THE MAINE PROBLEM: Maine Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner is trying to pivot away from the fallout of his divisive online posts that endorsed political violence (Washington Post), minimized rape in the military (Politico) and disparaged police (CNN)…

Note that each outlet (Politico, Washington Post, and CNN) was fed a different angle to maximize impact and increase interest from each outlet.

Planter responded on social media:

pic.twitter.com/fPnFgpD54T

— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) October 17, 2025

Graham Platner: Hey y’all, it’s Graham here. As you’ve probably seen, there’s a story that’s broken about comments I made on Reddit in an earlier part of my life. As I read through them, I read things that I absolutely do not agree with. I read through and I see things that, words and statements that I abhor. I also see the trajectory of my life.

When I got back from Afghanistan in 2011, I stayed in the army for another year. I got out in 2012. Some of the worst comments I made, the things that I think are least defensible, that I wouldn’t even try to defend, come from that time.

I had spent the bulk of my 20s in the infantry, deploying overseas, fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The infantry was a very male-dominated place. It’s a very masculine world. When I was in, women weren’t allowed in the infantry. It’s changed now, and that’s a good thing.

But when I got out, I still had the crude humor, the dark… dark feelings, the offensive language that really was a hallmark of the infantry when I was in it.

I made comments that I’m not happy about, that I do not agree with, but they came from a time and place in my life. And as I read through the comments that were released, I can see myself changing. My language gets less crude, my thoughts and my feelings get a lot less kind of rough around the edges. I do get almost more disillusioned though, and it’s important to know that this was a time in my life where I was struggling deeply. I got out of the army in 2012. I had PTSD.

I had depression. I had all of the things that come with serving in a war, in two wars, that I eventually began to not believe in at all. It left me feeling very unmoored. It left me feeling very disillusioned. very alienated and very isolated. And I think like a lot of people, I went on the internet to post stupid things and get in fights and find some form of community in some way, some outlet for my feelings, for my rage, for my isolation.

It wasn’t until I found actual community that that all went away. And the reason that I stopped posting on Reddit around 2020 and 2021 is because that was the point in my life where I had found this. I had moved back to my hometown. I’d found community. I’d started a business.

I’d met someone to fall in love with. I’d been able to really begin to feel connected again. And not only did it let me feel connected, it also gave me a lot of hope.

I had spent years being entirely isolated. and feeling very, very angry about the system that had made me go through that experience.

Coming back to Maine, moving back to my hometown, reconnecting with the community that I’m from, building real friendships, building real networks, real relationships with people, that helped cut my disillusion. I went from thinking that people were bad to knowing that people are good.

I went from thinking that there was no hope to having nothing but hope. A hope that is rooted in the fact that it was in my community here in Sullivan, Maine that I got to come home and build a nice life. That all changed for me, but it took me a long time to get there and it was a very long journey. And along that journey, I was in different places that I’m not in now. I had different feelings that I don’t have now.

I had different thoughts and opinions that I certainly don’t have now. But I am very proud of the person I am today. And it was that whole journey that got me here. And while I won’t defend things I said in the past, I will just say that if it wasn’t for that entire journey, I would not be who I am today. And I’m incredibly proud of who I am today.

And so for those of you who have read these things and been offended, have read these things and seen someone that you don’t recognize, I am deeply sorry. It’s something that I see someone that I don’t recognize either, not in who I am today. It is somebody that I do recognize though, somebody who is struggling, somebody who is having a very difficult time settling into a society that he felt betrayed by and left behind by after having to go fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m sorry for this. Just know that it’s not reflective at all of who I am.

I don’t want you to judge me on the dumbest thing I ever wrote on the internet. I would prefer if people could judge me on the person I am today. And I just want to say thank you all very much for your time.

I included his whole statement in text because I couldn’t find it anywhere and found it full of interesting messaging that isn’t breaking through into secondary coverage. Which isn’t that big a deal when Platner’s video has more reach than most of the outlets covering him by an order of magnitude.

Back to Politico’s coverage:

Whether Platner can turn the corner remains a question. Playbook obtained screenshots of additional archived Reddit posts from September 2021 in which he calls “some” Maine lobstermen “drug addicted maniacs” and a “few” who were “pieces of shit … absolutely terrible people.” He added that “lots of guys are assholes, some are strung out or drunks, and some are lazy,” and that “the future of lobstering is pretty uncertain” on account of regulations and global warming.

In response to a user who said they had a dream of becoming a lobsterman, asking users to “crush my dreams with reality,” Platner, posting with the Reddit username “P-Hustle,” said “the majority are solid folks making a living. I work on the water and know a whole bunch of lobstermen, and only a few are pieces of shit. Granted, those few are absolutely terrible people, but it’s not remotely the bulk of guys fishing.”

Lobstermen, who number in the thousands, are a political force in an essential Maine industry.

Yesterday, Platner’s political director, former state Rep. Genevieve McDonald, stepped down, according to the Bangor Daily News’ Billy Kobin. ”While I am empathetic to Graham’s experiences and respect his personal journey and growth, I cannot overlook the volume and nature of his past comments, many of which were made as an adult, not as a young man,” McDonald wrote. She was a lobsterman.

A spokesperson for Platner did not respond to a request for comment on the lobstermen posts.

Platner Campaign Does an Info-Dump, Maybe a Limited Hangout?

The Platner campaign pre-emptively revealed this doozy on Pod Save America:

Schumer's slime squad in full effect. Shitlibs do NOT want this guy in the Senate https://t.co/oA0bn0mSY0

— Thoht, Doge of Wisdom (@KidNate) October 21, 2025

The pre-emptive reveal of potential opposition is an advanced PR move you rarely see from losing campaigns (I’m thinking Howard Dean, Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, Liz Warren) so this is a good sign for Platner supporters, I guess.

I’m not embedding the whole Pod Save America episode, just linking, watch if you’re into that kind of thing, but here are the quotes Axios picked up, which illustrates which talking points made it into the MSM narrative, but again Pod Save America > Axios in terms of audience size:

Platner’s campaign shared video with Pod Save America of him singing shirtless that exposed a skull tattoo on his chest that resembles the “Totenkopf,” a symbol used by Hitler’s Schutzstaffel (SS).

The move was intended to get ahead of opposition research, and the GOP’s Senate campaign arm seized on the images, accusing Platner of having a “Nazi tattoo.”

Driving the news: Platner said in an interview with Tommy Vietor of Pod Save America that was released on Monday that the video was from his brother’s wedding, where he lip-synced Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball.”

“I am not a secret Nazi,” Platner told Vietor, adding that he got the tattoo in Croatia while deployed and was “very inebriated.” Platner said he and his fellow Marines chose “a terrifying looking skull and crossbones.”

What he’s saying: In the years since, Platner said, he joined the Army National Guard, where he said he “got a security clearance and a full screen” to be on the detail for the ambassador to Afghanistan. The Army bans tattoos that are “extremist, racist, sexist, or otherwise indecent.”

Platner said that at no point “did anybody ever once say, ‘Hey, you’re a Nazi.’ It never came up until we got wind that in the opposition research somebody was shopping the idea that I was a secret Nazi with a hidden Nazi tattoo.”
Zoom out: An ADL spokesperson said in a statement provided to Axios that it “appears” to be a Nazi Totenkopf tattoo, which they described as “troubling,” if true.

But they added, “[w]e do understand that sometimes people get tattoos without understanding their hateful association. In those cases, the bearer should be asked whether they repudiate its hateful meaning.”

A Surprising Twist in DC Insider Reaction

Like everyone else, I’m processing information as I come across it which isn’t necessarily in a linear, time of publication fashion. Please indulge me in telling the story in the order I learned it.

So I mentioned above that Politico was declaring Platner a dead letter. Here’s that piece headlined “Democrats Keep Falling for Political Fantasies. When Will They Learn?” it’s by Jonathan Martin, best known for chronicling the 2012 Obama-Romney Race and his 2022 declaration of permanent victory for Biden over Trump “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future” which is just as prescient as it sounds.

Some morsels for flavor:

Will Democrats ever learn to stop swooning?

I refer, as you may have guessed, to the case of Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner and the rinse-wash-repeat pattern that has become all too familiar for the party in the digital age.

It goes something like this: Political outsider or mostly new name mounts statewide campaign with online video that leans heavily on compelling biography or powerful oratory, out-of-state liberal hobbyists quickly fall in love and fork over money, and journalists rush to profile the latest heartthrob before inevitable disappointment when the candidate loses or, well, becomes John Fetterman.

Platner is the latest example.

I am glad he mentioned Fetterman, possibly the most disillusioning political figure since Obama himself, but on to today’s tale.

So when I saw that former Biden Press Secretary turned MSNBC host Jen Psaki was hosting Pete Buttiegieg’s she-svengali Lis Smith to discuss the race, I was expecting more of the same.

But it turns out Smith (much like the elements of Obama world who are vocally supporting Mamdani in New York) smells a winner in Platner, and shocking so does Psaki.

Check this out:

Jen Psaki: Just today, Governor Mills of Maine announced she was going to get into the Senate race at the urging of Chuck Schumer clearly and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which is the body that oversees all of this from the National Party. And so she’s entered the race as of today, she’s joining a couple of other candidates who are already in the race.

The one who’s getting the most buzz is a guy named Graham Platner, an oyster man, which you gotta love that piece of his bio. And he goes around and he speaks, in human-speak (emphasis mine, Nat), about a range of issues, including the economy, which he’s relentlessly focused on.

…He’s got the thing, the quality that good candidates have, that’s a great riff on freedom that ties together cost of living issues issues people care about deeply. Um, and he’s just feels very relatable. He’s also 41 years old, uh, and Governor Mills is 77 years old. So this is a big age question in this race.

But I do wanna say for Governor Mills, ’cause this is the argument people of her, her supporters will make, she is very popular. I think she has about a 51% approval rating. Susan Collins has 14%, and (Mills) has been governing a state where she’s been elected twice, where the population is growing older and also isn’t quite as progressive as some people who live outside of Maine might think.

Then they play a video of Trump going after Mills on and she replies “See you in court.” Psaki also notes Mills won that case. But back to Psaki:

So I share that because her announcement video was cringe. And she seemed very old and out of touch, which is a contrast to Platner…

…There’s this obsession by Chuck Schumer and others in Washington. I realize I live here with going with the old same playbook that worked 20 years ago, and not recognizing that politics in the country change, and there are people who don’t come from the political world who might be worth giving a shot, and instead he seems to be putting his finger on the scale here. But what do you think?

Lis Smith: Yeah, so he has that obsession. Um, there’s an obsession right now with Democratic primary voters, especially to not nominate super old candidates. to sort of say goodbye to the Gerontocracy. There’s also an obsession among Democratic primary voters to nominate people from communities, people who aren’t just like lifetime lawyer-lobbyists, politicians, you know, people with unconventional backgrounds, uh, like Graham Platner.

And to your point, you know, you said he has a thing. I’d say he’s got Riz, you know, he’s got the sauce. Janet Mills has a backbone, but my issue isn’t with primaries. Right. I think primaries are good things when you can strengthen everybody. And you end up being a better general election candidate when you have a primary.

What my issue is with here is one: Telling a 77-year-old elected official to not to retire, but instead to go for a promotion when voters are saying, please no more of this after what happened with Joe Biden.

And my second issue is that the DSEC is putting their thumb on the scale for her, as you mentioned. …There are other candidates in there, but I do not think the DSEC is doing anyone any favors, let alone Janet Mills, by putting their thumb on the scale here, because let’s be real, Chuck Schumer is one of the least popular elected officials in American politics today.

Drops mic, as they used to say in the Obama era.

Plot Twist: Alt Media Hates Platner’s Response

Taylor Lorenz, publisher of the Discourse Blog is an outlier by any definition, but one well worth following. Here’s the first graph of her wiki for those unfamiliar:

Taylor Lorenz (born 1984 or 1985[1]) is an American journalist and technology columnist who covers Internet culture. She has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Business Insider, and The Daily Mail. In 2023, she published a book called Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet. In 2024, Lorenz left the Washington Post following an internal investigation after Lorenz posted an image on Instagram labeling president Joe Biden as a “war criminal”. Lorenz subsequently began publishing a newsletter called User Mag as well as a podcast called Power User.

And while Lorenz didn’t write this one, her Discourse Blog co-founder Rafi Schwartz doesn’t like Platner’s response to the tattoo thing at all:

Let me get this out of the way right off the bat: I don’t know if Graham Platner is a secret Nazi, or just a fucking moron. I suspect it’s more the latter, but frankly, there’s enough ambiguity and weirdness coming from the Planter camp that it’s hard to say for certain. What I do know is that, if the past couple of days are any indication, the troop-turned-oysterman-turned-ostensibly leftist wunderkind candidate is in pretty big trouble, entirely of his own making. Because while having a large SS Deathshead tattoo is kind of a campaign problem in and of itself, being a whiny dickhead about it — like Platner has been — is just digging up, stupid.
…
Discussing both his tattoo, and history of Reddit shitposting, he stressed that “the idea that a person cannot evolve and grow from years ago is pretty laughable to the average human being.”

Broadly, I agree with Platner here. People do change and mature and evolve, and having some grace for those transformations is just part of being a decent person. But, at least when it comes to his ink, there’s little sign of any attempt to evolve or grow, or even acknowledge how big of a fuck up getting the tattoo was in the first place.

Go back to the part of the (Pod Save America) interview where Platner and Vietor discuss the tattoo. At no point does Platner apologize for—or even really acknowledge that—a large SS Totenkopf tattoo can be pretty traumatic to see, even if (if!!) it was inked out of ignorance, rather than malice. There’s no “sorry.” No nothing. Instead, both Platner and Vietor go out of their way to blame “opposition research” and “political reporters” for having the chutzpah to point out that Nazis are bad and having a Nazi tattoo is also bad.

…as it turns out, there’s reason to be skeptical of Platner’s repeated claims of ignorance. In the hours following the initial furor from Platner’s Pod Save sesh, two separate reports emerged which suggested that Platner at least knew, if not celebrated, the origin of his tattoo. First, this, from his now-ex-political director and former Main State Senator Genevieve McDonald:

pic.twitter.com/Z4QXJpQHvD

— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) October 22, 2025

Schwartz then links to and quotes from this Jewish Insider post while noting it’s a “right wing” (ie very zionist) outlet:

But according to a person who socialized with Platner when he was living in Washington, D.C., more than a decade ago, Platner had specifically acknowledged that the tattoo was a Totenkopf, the “death’s head” symbol adopted by an infamous Nazi SS unit that guarded concentration camps in World War II.

“He said, ‘Oh, this is my Totenkopf,’” the former acquaintance told Jewish Insider recently, speaking on the condition of anonymity to address a sensitive issue. “He said it in a cutesy little way.”

The exchange occurred in 2012 at Tune Inn, a popular dive on Capitol Hill where Platner later worked as a bartender and was a frequent patron while he attended The George Washington University on the G.I. bill, according to the former acquaintance. He would often take his shirt off drinking with friends late at night at the bar, and on at least one occasion had stated he knew what the tattoo represented, the former acquaintance recalled.

Schwartz closes with this:

Ultimately, then, Platner’s sin and that of his most enthusiastic enablers is less that he got the tattoo in the first place (although, that too) and more a question of how he’s behaved since. Fleeing to a friendly podcast to play victim before even saying you’re getting rid of the thing doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in the Senate candidate’s decision-making skills. Who knows—maybe Platner will snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and continue to run the kind of gritty, progressive campaign that elevated his profile in the first place. Or maybe he’ll do what he’s done so far: ignore the hurt his tattoo has caused and move forward without any real contrition. Either way, I wouldn’t hold my breath for an apology anytime soon.

Schwartz also brings up the appalling Young Republicans racist and avowedly pro-nazi chat leaks that came out last week. Per Politico:

Leaders of Young Republican groups throughout the country worried what would happen if their Telegram chat ever got leaked, but they kept typing anyway.

They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n–ga” and “n–guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”

Giunta was referring to an upcoming vote on whether he should become chair of the Young Republican National Federation, the GOP’s 15,000-member political organization for Republicans between 18 and 40 years old.

Frankly, this is a classic example of the “political blender” which I have attributed to the cognitive dissonance caused by the zionist genocide in Gaza.

The GOP seems to be actual nazis and one of the more compelling Democratic candidate may or may not be a crypto-nazi.

Before October 7, 2023, I personally had a long-standing zero tolerance policy for nazi iconography learned in the independent music scene of the 1980s, these days I’m not sure WTF to make of it.

How Did the Center Win Again, Anyway?

But, back to the broader American electoral context, where skilled analysts can trundle along like it’s 2012 and none of this is happening.

This Ettingermentum News’ piece “The Center is Choking” on the structural and generational conflict in the Democratic party teases a point I want to close with:

For as long as any of us have known, the Democratic Party has been controlled by its moderate wing with a grip that the best efforts of the left have been unable to break. A historic anti-war and anti-establishment effort in 2008 gave us a White House led by Rahm Emanuel.

Unprecedented progressive mobilization during Trump 1.0 culminated in the nomination of Joe Biden. To the extent that any of the left-wing organizing and energy of the 21st century has led to anything, it has been entirely on the margins—some lip service here, a few regulatory appointments there, and, at best, an acknowledgement that it is a valued “junior partner” in the coalition.

Such a track record would have been deeply sobering for the left’s effort to expand its influence even if the results in 2024 had fit entirely within its narrative. As for what actually happened last year, the wing may as well have been sentenced to death. Quite unlike his first victory, Trump’s second win didn’t come against a literal Clinton in the aftermath of a populist campaign. It came against a San Francisco liberal that he had spent the entire fall branding as a radical leftist lunatic—i.e., a seemingly clear ideological mandate. It didn’t seem to matter that Harris had run hard to the center or that the Democratic Party at large had given the leading evangelists of moderation control over a trillion dollars in ad spending. At the end of the day, it was said, Donald Trump said that Kamala Harris was for “they/them.” Then he won, and the left died.

Voters seemed to be on board with this narrative, if only at the beginning. In the first month of Trump’s second presidency, Gallup found a massive surge in the number of Democrats who said that they wanted the party to become more moderate. But in the time since then, hardly anything has gone according to the center’s plan.
…
What accounts for this reversal? A lot of it has to do with timely shifts by the left faction of the party, which has finally begun to play to its own strengths. But none of what they have accomplished would have been possible without a generational fumble on the part of the party’s center, which has so far been completely unable to adapt to the current political environment.

Also check out his piece “The Official 2026 Midterm Outlook: Schumer and Jeffries Need to Resign Immediately.” A taste:

Prior to Trump’s election in 2016, no political party had won a trifecta and lost everything in the span of only one term since the Democrats in 1892. Since then, it has happened twice, and it could very well happen once again.

…Recent history gives us no guarantee as to how next year’s elections will turn out, even with a sitting president as unpopular as Trump is today.
…
The good news for Democrats is that, like Republicans before them, the reasons why they are underperforming are obvious. For Republicans in the leadup to 2022, it was always clear that they were being brought down by their loyalty to a still-unpopular Trump and, later, the Dobbs decision, both of which kept voters from evaluating the election as a simple referendum on Joe Biden.

For Democrats this year, their obvious problem is the simple fact that they have done absolutely nothing to break from Biden since the end of his failed presidency. And as far as the midterms are concerned, this failure is at its most salient in the continued reign of the party’s two congressional leaders: Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York.

…
In every instance of a wave election this century, the parties that have achieved them held one thing in common: they were always led by figures who hadn’t just governed alongside an unpopular president.

…there is only one example this century of an out party doing what Democrats are doing now with Congressional leaders: the Republican Party of 2022. By keeping a highly unpopular Mitch McConnell as the face of their party.

Chuck Schumer as Mitch McConnell in “Old Age Ninja Mutant Turtles 2” isn’t really a very compelling title for a summer blockbuster, is it?

It’s interesting to note as we close out today’s Coffee Break that as the Obama “rizz” fades, he and some elements of his oldteam are opportunistic enough to get behind Mamdani, just as Lis Smith and Jen Psaki are backing Platner over Graham.

Winds of change or just another scam in the making?

Only time will tell, and again this is happening in a context of systemic congressional impotence produced by legalized corruption and attempted authoritarian clampdown so never forget electoral politics are just the entertainment division of the Military Industrial Complex as Frank Zappa used to say.