My apologies, but today was yet another day where I had so many things to get done in real life that I didn't have time to write a new column. What I wanted to write about was a spectacular upset in a Pennsylvania state house district where the Democrat, Brandon Dukes, narrowly defeated his Republican opponent. The district hasn't elected a Democrat in decades, and Donald Trump won it by a whopping 18 points.

This was a low-turnout special election and the same two candidates will face each other in November running for the next full term, when a lot more voters will assumably show up at the polls. Even so, it does show (once again) how Democrats have widened an "enthusiasm gap" with the Republicans. Polls show far more Democrats are motivated and eager to vote this year, while Republicans are a lot more disenchanted and demoralized. This disparity could wind up turning into a "blue wave" in November, although there are no guarantees (as always).

That would have been the theme of my article today, at any rate. The wind is still at the Democrats' backs, but they can't afford to get overconfident with over two months to go before November.

Again, my apologies for not having the time to flesh that argument out and write a full column. And never fear -- tomorrow's Friday Talking Points column will appear on schedule.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Progressives just scored a truly shocking victory in last night's Florida primary election, as state lawmaker Angie Nixon defeated Alex Vindman in the Democratic nomination race for a Senate seat, by a whopping 12 points. The biggest takeaway from this race was that Vindman had raised 16 times the amount of money that Nixon did, but in the end it just didn't matter. The other big takeaway from the race is that Nixon's victory was an impressive one for a progressive because she won demographic groups that don't normally go for progressive candidates -- they are usually a stronghold of votes for establishment candidates instead.

Continue Reading »

Yesterday was supposed to be a big deadline. Yesterday was 60 days from when Donald Trump signed the "Memorandum Of Understanding" with Iran, and was theoretically going to be when the final peace agreement between the two nations would be finalized. Needless to say, the deadline passed without this actually happening. The M.O.U. completely collapsed soon after it was agreed to, which made the deadline itself completely meaningless.

It was always a pie-in-the-sky deadline, it is worth noting. Even if the two countries had stuck to the agreement, it is highly doubtful that they would have been able to hammer out an agreement by now that covered all the topics it was supposed to -- not least of which was some sort of agreement on Iran's nuclear capabilities and the half-ton of highly enriched uranium it still possesses. It took Barack Obama over a year to get the Iranians to agree to a nuclear deal, after all (a deal that Trump famously ripped up in his first term, replacing it with absolutely nothing). So expecting a fully-fledged nuclear deal to appear inside of two months was always unrealistically optimistic.

Continue Reading »

Many curmudgeonly older people long for the past. They want the world to be simpler -- as it was when they were growing up. Most of them, however, don't have the power to impose their living-in-the-past will upon the world. So they have to be content with grumbling about modern life and being an embarrassment to their children and grandchildren.

Continue Reading »

So doubtlessly you've heard the story -- which has gotten heavy coverage in the political press all week long, of course -- of the very progressive Democrat who not only won the primary for an open Senate seat but also impressively outperformed polling expectations, right? It was a huge story -- because it will mean there will now be three progressives on November Senate ballots in three swing states. Progressives scored a big win, which has given rise to much discussion among the pundits over whether this is a good thing or a bad thing for the Democratic Party, because it is such a risky strategy right now (with control of the Senate hanging in the balance).

What's that? You didn't hear about all of this?

Well, that's because the mainstream media decided a different primary race was worth all their ink and airwave time instead. They obsessed over a progressive who very narrowly lost a primary in a governor's race (which is just not as important, to national politics, as the Senate races), because they could barely contain their relief and glee over seeing a progressive lose (even though the polls said she would win).

Continue Reading »

I have to begin by pointing out that, technically, that headline should be in quote marks, since it is a direct quotation (from the guy who inadvertently started the whole thing). I was thinking of calling this article "Whistling Past The Graveyard" before I came across that quote, but I had to admit it was indeed a catchier title.

So what is the "great burrito debate," if you haven't already heard about it all? Here's how Forbes explained it (complete with the quote's source):

Continue Reading »

Another bundle of primary elections happened last night, and this morning all the political news was focused on what turned out to be the closest race of the evening: an upset victory in the governor's race among Democrats in Wisconsin. Which is understandable enough, I suppose, since it truly was a close contest (decided by less than a half a percentage point, only a few thousand votes), but this focus managed to crowd out another interesting primary next door, in Minnesota.

The stories today about the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary mostly followed one of two storylines. The first was: "How was the polling so wrong?" or (with a slightly different emphasis): "Progressives are failing to live up to their polling in Democratic primaries." The second storyline came from those pundits who could barely contain their relief that a centrist candidate had somehow managed to defeat a progressive in a contest where few people expected he'd even have a chance. Both of these storylines are probably going to prove to be far too sweeping and generic in the end, because while the political reporters all love to write about the "progressive versus establishment" fights within the party, to do so in this case means ignoring several rather large caveats.

Continue Reading »

I will warn everyone up front today that I am veering off from politics to comment on something entirely unrelated. While there are multiple primary elections happening today, and I will be watching the returns come in tonight, I think my column from last Tuesday will still serve as adequate commentary on the races everyone will be talking about (one way or another) come tomorrow morning. Instead, today I am going to focus on a pet peeve of mine when it comes to mainstream media science reporting. In particular, earthquake reporting.

Continue Reading »

Donald Trump is getting increasingly desperate to declare some sort of victory in his ill-begotten war of choice with Iran (despite his constant bluster that they are the ones who really want a deal right now). Things have gotten so bad that Trump is now reportedly considering just punting the question of Iran's nuclear capabilities altogether. If true, this would be a major development, since while Trump's reasons for starting and fighting this war have changed and evolved over time, the nuclear issue has always remained Trump's main go-to reason for attacking Iran. So throwing in the towel on getting any sort of nuclear agreement with Iran would be seen as an enormous defeat for the U.S. There's no other way to look at it, really.

Continue Reading »

The 2026 primary season is almost over. This week's crop of primaries generated some big news, mostly due to a young and very progressive Democratic candidate winning the nomination for an open Senate seat in Michigan. This was seen as an epic defeat for both the establishment of the Democratic Party and for AIPAC, who spent tens of millions of dollars unsuccessfully trying to defeat Dr. Abdul El-Sayed -- who narrowly won the nomination, despite being outspent almost 9-to-1.

Continue Reading »