It's Tuesday, so yet again it is primary day, but this week doesn't have any really exciting races on the Democratic side so I thought it was time to take an overview of how the Senate races are going in all the other states.

At this point, regaining control of the Senate is well within reach for Democrats, but will still require a massive shift towards the party from the electorate. This isn't out of the question, as Donald Trump's polling is still at record lows and he keeps actually going out of his way to remind people why they are so dissatisfied with his economic record. Starting up a new trade war with Canada isn't going to do the Republican Party any good in states like Maine and Michigan, to state the obvious. The war with Iran continues to stagnate, with gasoline prices showing no signs of coming back down to pre-war levels any time soon (indeed, they are still up over a dollar a gallon from when the war started). And Trump doesn't care one whit -- he still says affordability is some sort of Democratic hoax. Voters aren't in the mood for such gaslighting, which is why the wind is at the Democrats' backs.

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made an announcement today, unveiling increased sanctions on Iran and also (possibly -- there were few actual details given) on countries which still do business with Iran. It was billed as being a tough declaration of economic warfare (he called it "D-Day"), but what is pretty obvious is that in reality it was an admission of military defeat.

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Much is being made over the ideological struggle happening within the Democratic Party, with some likening it to a "Democratic Tea Party," or even a civil war among Democrats. Both terms are a bit overblown, but there is indeed a struggle for the soul of the party happening. It didn't spring into existence overnight, or even with the election of New York City's Mayor Zohran Mamdani, for that matter. Instead it is a movement that has gradually built up steam to reach the point in Democratic politics where it is now.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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):

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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.

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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.

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