This November, Michigan is going to be the most interesting battleground state of all to watch, because it is finally going to put to the test a big political theory. Can a truly progressive candidate who has plenty of charisma win a general election in a swing state where the stakes are high and both parties will be heavily invested in the outcome? This theory has (so far) yet to be tested in a big way, much to the frustration of progressives, stretching all the way back to the 2016 nomination fight between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. The theory has never been adequately tested, progressives will tell you, because the Democratic Party establishment kept putting its thumb on the scale in order to defeat Bernie and advance their chosen "more electable" candidates instead.

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August is a big primary election month for Democrats, as tonight kicks off a series of contests in multiple states, the results of which could cause a huge freakout within both the Democratic Party and the world of political commentators. Several very progressive candidates seem poised to win their primaries, not in deep-blue Democratic districts but in very purple battleground states. Will this lead to victory in November or a massive disappointment for Democrats? Nobody knows, at this point, but that is the question on a lot of minds, as we all wait to see the primary results come in.

There will doubtlessly be talk of a "Democratic Tea Party" if progressives manage to chalk up some big wins (both tonight and later in the month). The divide between the progressive left and the party's centrists will be on full display, and there will be much hand-wringing and pearl-clutching from one side or the other (depending on the results).

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It's always amusing (to me, at any rate) when one of the fantasies inside Donald Trump's feverish brain collides head-on into a brick wall of reality. This often happens inside of a federal courthouse, which is where the most recent example comes from. At the close of last week, Jeanine Pirro had to eat a healthy heaping of crow by filing a court motion to dismiss her laughably-thin case against a former Olympian, who had been accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and charged with a felony which could have landed him in jail for 10 years. Pirro did an abrupt about-face in the court filing, admitting that the evidence clearly showed that the damage to the Reflecting Pool was not actually caused by the Olympian in any way, but instead was the fault of shoddy work done by the contractor Trump had personally hired to do the job.

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[Program Note: Once again, we must apologize for an incomplete Friday Talking Points column. Real-life events forced me to spend most of the day dealing with something other than politics, but at least I was able to successfully conclude one of the bugaboos that have been eating up my weekday time so much (that's the good news). I didn't even begin writing this until late in the day, so I was only able to complete the first section, a truncated look back at the news this week. Lots of stuff got left out, and there won't be awards section this week or actual talking points, just to warn everyone in advance. Hopefully next week we'll be back to normal Friday columns here, and in the meantime I apologize for the interruption in regular service. Mea culpa.]

Maybe we should call Donald Trump's war of choice against Iran the "On-Again/Off-Again War"? That's what it feels like, at any rate, as Trump and Iran both stumble along, taking potshots at each other, with absolutely no end in sight. Trump in particular seems to have no idea what he's doing, no plans whatsoever to bring the conflict to an end, and an unclear understanding of what that end should look like. Which doesn't exactly build confidence, obviously.

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Republican Senators Thom Tillis and John Cornyn are standing up to Donald Trump (for the time being, as of this writing) by successfully blocking the confirmation of Trump's attorney general nominee. Trump, in a snit, has now threatened to yank the nomination until next year, when both GOP senators will be gone. This might not be the smartest thing for Trump to do, since nobody knows how many Republicans and Democrats will be in the Senate after the midterm elections -- but when Trump gets in a snit, he often doesn't care what the smart thing to do is, instead preferring to do the most emotionally satisfying thing, no matter the consequences.

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In writing about Democratic hopes for a big win in the state of Texas, I have to start with a humorous quote (from Yogi Berra): "It's like déjà vu all over again." Too cynical? Well then how about a rousing Broadway tune instead:

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love, pure and chaste, from afar
To try, when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is a song from the musical Man Of La Mancha. It is sung by Don Quixote, as he explains his reasons for tilting at windmills -- which is now a standard cliché for devoting your time and energy to lost causes.

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The war between the U.S. and Iran has now become nothing more than a classic war of attrition. The key question is: which side will run out of missiles first? Nobody knows the answer to that, but every day that Iran and the U.S. trade attacks with each other brings the answer closer and makes it more critical. In the future, this war will doubtlessly be studied as a new paradigm for modern warfare that is similar but different in one big way to the war being waged between Ukraine and Russia -- since neither Iran nor the U.S. is able to easily and quickly replace their dwindling stockpiles of crucial munitions. Which makes it a textbook example of a war of attrition.

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We have now entered the sprint phase of the 2026 midterm election season, with fewer than 100 days left on the calendar until Election Day. While nothing is guaranteed, up until now it has seemed that the Democratic Party has had the wind at its back, heading into the crucial part of the campaign. But there were worrisome reports in the media for both parties lately, so I thought it'd was high time we take a closer look at the state of things.

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Donald Trump has ramped up his war of choice once again, bombing Iran on a nightly basis while Iran launches missiles at U.S. military installations and other targets in the region. Sadly, four more American soldiers lost their lives as a result of all this crossfire. And the war seems to be escalating, as the Houthis in Yemen have now entered the fray by blocking the strait at the southern end of the Red Sea to any Saudi ships. All of this has caused oil prices to spike above $100 per barrel once again, and gas prices here in America to spike to over four bucks a gallon once again.

It's worth noting that, as of this point, there is no end in sight to any of this. Nobody's talking about "offramps," and while ceasefire proposals seem to have been exchanged there are no talks or other negotiations going on (that have been publicly disclosed, at any rate).

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Shakespeare posed this question a while back, in his masterpiece Romeo And Juliet. Since the two lovers were from families in a longstanding feud with each other, Juliet begins her famous "balcony scene" railing against how fate has given her new love the wrong last name. Here's how she expressed her frustration:

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet

I was reminded of this when reading an article today titled: "What Exactly Is A Democratic Socialist?" in the Washington Post. Unlike their editorials (which have gotten laughably rightwing and pro-Trump), the article was a fairly straightforward look at the label and how it has been changing the Democratic Party. The article answers its titular question with:

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