2022 midterms

Beto O’Rourke’s campaign for Texas governor is, to put it mildly, not going so well. The latest polls have him trailing Greg Abbott by seven or eight percentage points. The Democratic candidate, and enthusiastic furry, could really use a shot in the arm from his old pal and political ally Beyoncé. But Cockburn is skeptical about how likely that is. When Robert Francis O’Rourke, aka Beto, ran to be one of Texas’s senators in 2018, high-profile Texan and Democrat Beyoncé Knowles-Carter waited until the day of the midterm elections to endorse him, after many had already voted. Donning a “Beto For Senate” hat in an Instagram post, the singer encouraged her fans to run along to the polling station.

Last week, with fewer than 50 days to go before the midterm elections, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy put it bluntly: elect Republicans to save what's good about America. McCarthy introduced the Commitment to America, a policy plan he insists will put the country back on the right track. In doing so, McCarthy was looking to former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, hoping to recreate the magic of the 1994 Contract with America, which crystallized America's then-conservative movement. The Contract with America has a mythical quality in the minds of most pundits. It’s often credited as the reason behind the Republican Revolution of 1994, which saw Republicans gain control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1953.

Wes Moore, the Democratic Party's candidate for Maryland governor, wants everyone to know how great he is — and humble, too. Moore is a bestselling author, a former television host, a US Army veteran and has founded or led multiple nonprofit organizations. Cockburn admits it's a stellar résumé for anyone seeking public office — and in heavily blue Maryland, Moore is outraising his Republican opponent Dan Cox ten to one. Unfortunately, it seems Moore's accolades might have gone to his head. In a Friday tweet, Moore bragged about being the first black Rhodes Scholar to graduate from Johns Hopkins University — but insisted he only brings it up because other people ask him about it.

At first, I thought Joe Biden's address to the nation on Thursday was going to be one of those Star Wars crawl-type soliloquies that liberals love to deliver. You know the kind: "It is a period of great strife. RIGHT-WING EXTREMISTS, pouncing from their TRUTH Social accounts, have struck at the very heart of OUR DEMOCRACY..." The difference, though, is that in those addresses, the speaker at least tries to sound objective, to remain above the hurly-burly he's criticizing. This was not the approach taken by Joe Biden. Joining us from what looked like a cross between Philly's red-light district and some marble Pentagon imperium, Biden jumped straight into the ring with what he called the "MAGA Republicans.

Every election cycle has one. That absurd farce of a race that hardly seems like it can be real. This year the honors go to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and its clown car of a Senate campaign. There are 13 million people in the Keystone State and somehow it has come down to Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz and Democrat John Fetterman to serve in the upper house of the Congress. Where is DJ Jazzy Jeff when you need him? By dint of a coin toss backstage, I’ll start with Dr. Oz. But where to begin? Oz is the Trump backed candidate, but he’s running like Mitt Romney, with all of the electric Utah energy that entails. There is a kind of Mid-Atlantic Republican who sort of apologizes for it — Oz oozes that.

Just a few months ago, Blake Masters was strongly criticizing Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, expressing hopes, as other conservative candidates have this cycle, that he would receive a viable challenge to his Senate leadership after November. But on Friday, Masters was sounding a different tune, outright hoping that McConnell would back his campaign in the Arizona Senate race as the Senate leader has for J.D. Vance in Ohio. “I’ll tell Mitch this to his face,” Masters said during a GOP primary debate in June. “He’s not bad at everything. He’s good at judges. He’s good at blocking Democrats. You know what he’s not good at? Legislating.” On Friday, Masters predicted McConnell will get another term as GOP leader and no Republicans will challenge him.

You know the old expression “too clever by half?” It’s not a compliment. And though I am loathe to describe Democratic strategists as “clever,” I grudgingly acknowledge that they exhibit a certain low cunning that, on occasion, can be effective. We saw it on full display early on in the 2016 presidential election campaign when clever Dems were falling all over themselves to support the ridiculous candidate Donald Trump. He could never win, of course, but the ploy was good for a laugh and would hurt whatever serious candidates were running against Hillary. To almost everyone’s surprise, things didn’t work out quite as expected that time. But old habits are hard to break.

Some people stand in the darkness, afraid to step into the light. Some people need to help somebody, when the edge of surrender’s in sight. Pam Anderson is firmly in the latter category, after her win in the Republican primary for Colorado secretary of state on Tuesday night. Anderson handily defeated Mesa County treasurer Tina Peters, who ran on a platform of election denialism, by fifteen points.

Cockburn is no stranger to scandal — if anything he’s an expert in the field. With that cap on, he’s approaching the latest shocking allegations against gun-totin’, Biden-hecklin’ Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert with caution, as they don’t seem to pass the smell test. A website, neutrally dubbed “FIRE BOEBERT,” published a document on Tuesday evening containing the audacious claims that Boebert was an “unlicensed paid escort with sugardaddymeet.com” and that she “had two abortions.” If those allegations weren’t egregious enough, the site, which is run by a PAC called American Muckrakers, declares that Boebert was “hired by a wealthy male client in Aspen, Colorado, who was a Koch family member,” who then “introduced” her to Ted Cruz.

The children, Cockburn has always believed, are the future. That’s why he was so enthused to head down to Mission Navy Yard on Thursday night to prop up the bar at a happy hour fundraiser for Matthew Foldi, who is running for the House in Maryland’s 6th district. Casting an eye around the infamous watering hole, Cockburn concluded that he might be the only attendee over thirty. Hill staffers, GOP strategists and right-of-center reporters milled around the venue, sipping on High Noon and stingy pours of draft lager. Foldi is a unique proposition of a candidate.

President Trump won’t be eating peaches any time soon, but he’ll always have Georgia on his mind. For one of the first times this primary season, the former commander-in-chief has been handed what looks like a resounding rebuke in Georgia. Governor Brian Kemp and secretary of state Brad Raffensperger bested their primary challengers, securing the Republican nomination handily. These men dared to stand athwart Trump’s alternate history about the 2020 election and were subjected to an endless barrage of attacks for not sacrificing their integrity. Ultimately, in their bout with the Goliath of the GOP, they emerged triumphant.

Were the recent primaries in Pennsylvania and Oregon vindicating victories for radical progressives — or merely the ominous first ripples of an incoming November red wave? Like almost everything nowadays, it depends on who you ask. Unlike the Republican race between Dave McCormick and Dr. Oz, the Democratic Senate primary was not a nail-biter: Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman handily beat Representative Conor Lamb. Fetterman, who billed himself as a “Democrat with a backbone,” endorsed Bernie Sanders for president in 2016. His stances on certain issues, including his defense of fracking, do not check off all of the perfect progressive boxes.

Still on the fence about who to vote for in the Republican primary race for Pennsylvania’s US Senate seat, I watched the Newsmax “debate” earlier this month. I was naively hoping to determine which of the five candidates most aligned with my values. Instead what I learned was that they all hate each other. The debate (again, I use that word loosely) was hosted by Grove City College, a small, Christian liberal arts school in western Pennsylvania that does not accept federal funding (there are a handful of such holdouts across the country). College president Paul McNulty offered an optimistic opening message, expressing hope that the event would be an opportunity for the “thoughtful exchange of ideas.” Ha!

Tina Kotek could be well on her way to being the thirty-ninth governor of Oregon. The Democrat, who previously served as speaker of the state’s House of Representatives, won her party’s primary this Tuesday. And with a Democratic supermajority in the legislature and a governor’s mansion that hasn’t housed a Republican since 1979, that’s likely a one-way ticket to victory in November. Kotek is, in many ways, a creature of the state Democratic establishment. Yet in Oregon — and in blue states like it — “establishment Democrat” means something very different than it once did.