WEDNESDAY: Did Dems just lose the Alaska race?

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2026

Staffers strike again: We've been semi-wondering when some sch snowshoe might imaginably hit the fan. Mediaite sends in the sled dogs:   

Alaska Dems Spent Months to Find New Dan Sullivan to Derail Republican Foe...

Alaska Democrats working for Senate hopeful Mary Peltola engaged in a coordinated effort to find someone named “Dan Sullivan”—the same name as the Republican in the same race—in a bold bid to confuse voters, a bombshell New York Times report has alleged.   

The Times report, which is sure to shake up the closely watched Alaska Senate race, alleged Wednesday that Peltola staffers worked for months to find another “Dan Sullivan” who could draw votes away from incumbent Senator Dan S. Sullivan (R)... 

“The plan worked,” according to The Times, when they found Dan J. Sullivan (unaffiliated), who threw his hat into the ring earlier this year.

Ugh! 

"Name's-the-same" ballot misdirections have a long history in American politics. That said, they're always an unsightly, unattractive attempt to fool a helpful number of voters, possibly tipping the scale in a close election.

On MS NOW, obedient anchors have been rolling their eyes at the very thought that Alaska's sophisticated voters could possibly be so fooled. Unfortunately, a campaign doesn't go out and find a "name's-the-same" entry unless they think the unattractive answer is an unattractive yes. 

Amazingly, here we go again! Rather, here they go again. We refer to the hapless, self-involved Peltola staffers who were involved in the earlier New York Times report about the troubling way they were dragooned into the care and fee3ding of Peltola's pet iguana, Cricket—or was Cricket really a hamster?

Actually, Cricket was a chameleon, but these staffers are always the same:

The Times report cites Elisa Rios, Peltola’s former aide and campaign manager, who was fired in the summer.

“Alaskan voters need to know,” Rios told the paper. “There was a lot of speculation, and voters should get the full picture when making their decisions.”

While Peltola is “definitely aware” of the effort, she was not directly involved, Rios added.

Last week, however, Rios told The Times she no longer wanted to participate in the story, and said she wanted to retract her previous statements to the paper.

“As discussed on our call earlier today, I am confirming that I have retracted all statements made regarding the 2026 Alaska Senate Race in connection with any article you may or may not be writing,” Rios reportedly told the paper. “I am not willing to be a source for any story in any capacity.”

The firing may have been a mistake. That said, how did this person ever get hired to begin with?

(For the record, no. You can't unsay what you've already said to a major news org!)

Hopeless! This could help the GOP win the Alaska Senate race. Given the publicity it will create, it could conceivably help the GOP win elsewhere as well.

(Yesterday afternoon, we asked a version of this question: Could a Blue American player ever do something wrong?)

For the TIMES EXCLUSIVE itself, you can just click here.

EMERGENCE: The president's disorder is the curse...

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2026

...from which we need to emerge: "I'm a scrappy kid from Youngstown," the Ohio candidate said.

"And scrappy kids from Youngstown, we never back down from a fight!"

At this site, the analysts loved that bit of rhetoric. They liked it all the way down.

For the record, that self-proclaimed scrappy kid is sixty years old at this time. It's her first run for elective office. She's running for governor of her state, and she's expected to win.   

The analysts also like the cut of the jib of the rest of the rhetoric she put on display last weekend. Meanwhile, out in Iowa, a scrappy Senate candidate also offered some striking rhetoric as he spoke with Lawrence O'Donnell last night. 

Personally, we'll go with the rhetoric of Candidate Amy Acton in Ohio over that of Candidate Josh Turek in Iowa. But various forms of new rhetoric—new ways of challenging and inspiring the American public--are struggling to emerge as November 3 draws near.   

New ways of thinking are trying to be born! And from what nightmare do these new voices seek to let us emerge? 

Yesterday, in Corpus Christi, a thoroughly disordered person was seen making outlandish claims toa lrge group of people in a thoroughly public setting. The RealClearPolitics site offers videotape of some of the president's comments. 

Inevitably, the sitting president refers to Candidate James Talarico as "Talafreako" all through his remarks. Below, you see the transcript of some of his remarks, the evidence of a profound disorder. 

(We would recommend discussing it as an untreated medical matter.)

We include the headline from the RealClearPolitics site. Here's part of what this nation's disordered president said in this disordered session:

Trump on Talarico: "No Politician In History Has Been More Obsessed With Turning Your Young Boys And Girls Transgender"

President Trump launched a full-scale culture war attack against "James Tala-freak-o" during a rally for Ken Paxton on Tuesday in Corpus Christi... 

[...]

TRUMP: Talafreako wants to get rid of the guns. He wants to get rid of the oil. He wants to get rid of the meat.

But he wants to keep the transgender mutilization of your children, open borders. He wants to keep men playing in women's sports. Figure that one out.

This is what Talafreako stands for, and it's what he is, it's where he is...But no politician in history has been more obsessed with turning your young boys and girls transgender. I mean, he wants to—he said that recently.

I saw a thing where he said, "What do you like the best?" He said, essentially, "Transgender children." That was a straight— That was a straight—

You know, look. That's the way it is. You're not going to change it.

You know, it's like meat. He's going around to so many barbecues. That's probably why—either that or he has a mental illness. 

[...]

And not only did Talafreako state that God is transgender, he actually said that if Jesus Christ himself came and visited the Texas legislature, Jesus would be promoting sex changes for little children.

You know, just—I'm not an expert on it, but I will tell you, I read enough about it. I find it amazing, you know, many of those little children, as he says, when they turn 22 and 25, they say, "Who did this to me? Who did it to me? Why did you do this to me?" Many, many.

[...]

But the only man standing between Texas and this raging lunatic is a man named President Donald J. Trump. Thank you. And I need the help of Ken Paxton in the U.S. Senate. I need a little help, please. I need help. He's the perfect guy. 

In the iconic film, On the Waterfront, Father Barry famously says this:  

Jesus Christ is down here on the waterfront.  

The sitting president has now disgracefully told a Texas audience thissss:  

Not only did Talafreako state that God is transgender, he actually said that if Jesus Christ himself came and visited the Texas legislature, Jesus would be promoting sex changes for little children. 

The candidate never made such ludicrous claims. It is from this manifest, undisguised madness that the rhetoric of a scrappy kid in Ohio is attempting to let us emerge.   

This morning, Morning Joe played tape of those claims by the sitting president. In response to this inexcusable madness, Joe Scarborough said this about what the Trump operation has done:

SCARBOROUGH (10/27/26): They've twisted and perverted the gospel. It's extraordinary. 

It's just extraordinary how much they've twisted and perverted it and created their own new religion. And they have! A completely new religion that lets them feel good about voting for people like Ken Paxton and Donald Trump. 

So said Scarborough, who runs the best policy and political discussions seen on American TV.   

Morning Joe played the tape of that insanity; Scarborough offered his view.  But the New York Times and other Blue orgs have been running away from this, an act of cowardice and incompetence, all through these past years. 

This madness needs to be reported and discussed on page 1. If the paper's journalists aren't up to the challenge of discussing what's going on, those journalists need to step down.

We badly need a type of emergence. Many are refusing to serve.

Tomorrow: Candidates Acton and Turek

TUESDAY: Could a Blue star ever do something wrong?

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2026

As we all know, the answer is yes: On Saturday, October 17, we closed our report with remarks which have been described, by at least one site, as a "record shattering statement." 

We were describing the way we Americans might be able to find our way out of our current journalistic / political / academic mess.  It's considered bad form to quote oneself. Today, we make an exception:

We Americans can't fact-check or name-call our way out of our current national mess—"back out of all this now too much for us," as Frost confusingly had it. 

Instead, we'll need to emerge into a world of deepened American values—some of them seeming to be a bit Reddish, some of them tilting toward Blue.   

If we want to emerge from our current (dangerous) mess, we'll need to concentrate on values. And some of the values on which we settle may tend to come a bit more from what is currently the reddish end of the pile.  

We thought of that "record shattering" suggestion as we perused Elie Honig's recent piece for New York magazine. Honig is a senior legal analyst for CNN. He's also a regular contributor to New York.

Honig's essay concerns the ongoing pursuit of Rp. Ilhan Omar by the current DOJ. The headline seems to tilt in a Blue direction. Under current circumstances, the opening grafs may perhaps seem to tilt Red:  

DoJ’s Ilhan Omar Probe Reeks of Politics  

Last week’s search of Ilhan Omar’s home was abnormal in several key respects, and she’ll have an opportunity to contest the government’s actions if she does find herself on the wrong end of an indictment. But the truth is, at this point, anyone who definitively proclaims Omar’s guilt or non-guilt is just guessing.  Let’s start with what we do and don’t know. 

We do know that federal prosecutors obtained approval from a federal magistrate judge, Matthew Sharbaugh, to search Omar’s home. (Magistrates are appointed by district court judges—not by the president—and can exercise certain administrative judicial powers, including review and approval of search warrants.) That means prosecutors convinced the magistrate judge that probable cause that a federal crime was committed exists and that investigators would find evidence of that crime in the place to be searched. We also know that prosecutors have issued at least a dozen subpoenas, which do not require any judicial review or approval. We don’t know, however, precisely what evidence prosecutors marshaled to convince the judge to sign off or how strong the current case is against Omar or others.   

Say what?  Anyone who "definitively proclaims Omar’s...non-guilt" would just be guessing at this point? Is Honig allowed to say that?   

Clearly, he's allowed to say it, but does it make any sense? After all these years of rumor-peddling on grimy MAGA programs like Gutfeld!, is it possible that Rep. Omar has actually done something wrong? Something for which she could (reasonably) be criminally charged? Something for which she could lose her citizenship?   

Honig, who isn't a MAGA adherent, says the answer is yes/ (Meaning yes, it's possible.) He also says it's possible that the answer will turn out to be no.  

(Concerning that magistrate judge, the Wall Street Journal's James Freeman has reported that "when he was a lawyer in private practice, Mr. Sharbaugh donated to various Democratic political campaigns, including those of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden." So there's also that.)

Honig runs through various possibilities, dismissing certain procedural objections which have been raised against a possible prosecution. As he closes, his headline comes into play—the recent announcement seems baldly political, he now seems to say: 

[W]e know that Trump and his allies would delight in an Omar prosecution, regardless of the strength of the evidence. The president has used grotesque, inflammatory language to attack Omar’s ethnicity, race, national origin, and family, often calling for her to “go back” to Somalia, as he has continued to do after the search. The appearance of a sitting president’s pliant DoJ investigating one of his nemeses in this way is disturbing...

Then there’s the question of timing. Federal authorities searched Omar’s home just 22 days before a midterm election in which the incumbent Democratic U.S. representative from Minnesota is on the ballot. That timing ordinarily would violate the Justice Department’s traditional practice—sometimes referenced colloquially as the “60-day rule”–of refraining from overt law enforcement actions (like executing a search warrant, which is plainly visible to the public) during the run-up to an election. There’s no binding law here. But the DoJ has imposed the prohibition on itself, for decades and under both political parties, to prevent prosecutors from influencing an election, or even appearing to do so.   

The timing here looks grimy, Honig says. That doesn't mean that there might not be some violation of law, he says once again as his essay closes:

The problem here isn’t necessarily the investigation of Omar itself; it’s the timing of the search warrant on the brink of an election. Omar might be guilty of some crime, or perhaps not. We’ll find out, eventually. Either way, the Justice Department has done institutional damage to itself, yet again, by letting politics drive its prosecutorial tactics. 

Has Rep. Omar done something wrong? Honig says he doesn't know; we ourselves have no idea.  

More generally, is it possible that one of us Blues did something wrong at some point in time? Everything is possible, including even that! 

As a nation, are we ever going to pull ourselves out of our dangerous downward spiral? If so, Blues and Reds will have to agree on an obvious point:  

Sometimes, people make mistakes (or not). But are we ready to say, as tribal beings, that people we favor on our own side can sometimes, just maybe, be wrong?   

In our view, the timing of the DOJ's announcement is just flatly wrong. Has Rep. Omar ever done anything wrong? Here at this site, we hope not.

EMERGENCE: As presidents feud about Cheesecake jibes...

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2026

...the future tries to emerge: And so, today, it has come to this! 

There it is, in the New York Times! If we're willing to state the truth just for once, this is our nation's deeply underdeveloped political culture in action:   

Obama’s ‘Cheesecake Factory’ Jab Rankles Trump on Mississippi Campaign Stop
Former President Barack Obama had cast his successor as out of touch while jabbing at his extravagant sense of style. Mr. Trump responded at length.  

Pitifully but accurately, that's the dual headline which sits atop the New York Times report. President Obama had indeed offered a jab, and President Trump had responded at length. 

In fairness, it wasn't quite as nutty / stupid as the sitting president's discussions of Jon Husted's ascot. But it was stupid enough to define our flailing political culture.

Filling you in on the inanity in question, the actual report in the Times had started out like this:

Obama’s ‘Cheesecake Factory’ Jab Rankles Trump on Mississippi Campaign Stop   

Former President Barack Obama has struck a nerve with President Trump.

Mr. Trump took time from campaign issues to defend his fixation on remodeling the White House in his second term on Monday after Mr. Obama jabbed that “he’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.”

Mr. Trump spoke for several minutes about the remark on his way to a campaign swing in Mississippi, then delivered an extensive aside there on the White House ballroom, helipad and other projects. He was in the solidly Republican state, which has been shifting toward Democrats, as part of his swing through ruby red America to shore up candidates ahead of the midterms.   

Mr. Trump...at times insisted he had spent “very little time” on redesigning the White House, parts of which he has demolished to make way for the new ballroom. But he also defended his focus on the renovations and eventually conceded that “I have fun doing it.”  

Obama's "jab" about the Cheesecake Factory had triggered a discussion—one which got dumber and dumber.  Later in his report for the Times, Chris Cameron describes the way "Trump administration officials and other Republicans responded with indignation" to Obama's joking remark, saying it showed that the former president is, in fact, an "elitist."

Cameron then checked his stopwatch regarding President Trump's reaction to the appalling remark:

No one appeared more insulted than Mr. Trump. In a six-minute gaggle with reporters on his way to Mississippi, the president devoted more than half his speaking time to Mr. Obama’s remarks. He spent comparatively little time repeating his unfounded claims of massive voter fraud.   

“For you to say it’s a Cheesecake Factory, that just shows why you were a lousy president,” Mr. Trump said, before calling Mr. Obama “a stupid person.”

Once onstage, Mr. Trump devoted another six minutes to defending his makeover of the White House, and other parts of the nation’s capital.

“Nobody loved it like I do,” Mr. Trump said of the White House... 

In truth, the sitting president's various remarks were substantially dumber, and made less sense, than Cameron lets on.

In this report for Mediaite, Kathryn Wilkens provides a second report on this pitiful piffle. She includes videotape of the huffing and puffing by President Trump as he decamps for the South.   

Personally, we aren't fans of former president Obama's transition toward the role of stand-up comedian in chief, at times like these, in these post-presidential years. Meanwhile, the sheer stupidity of the MAGA pushback was evident on the Fox News Channel last night—for example, with resident nutcase Greg Gutfeld sounding off idiotically on The Five, the nation's most-watched "cable news" show.

He scolded Jessica Tarlov: 

You can go after Trump all you want. Don't go after the Cheesecake Factory, OK? You know, a lot of us don't have a personal chef. The Cheesecake Factory is a tribute to America. It is literally a melting pot, Jessica. That's why you hate it.  

Scolding the program's designated punching bag, the nutcase told the liberal Tarlov that she hates The Cheesecake Factory because she hates America. 

This is standard inanity on our failing nation's most-watched—and stupidest—"cable news" TV show. By the way, with a salary of $9 million per year, the resident nutcase could hire a chef if he ever chose to.

Alas, poor Gutfeld (age 62)! Increasingly, the manic insanity of this small, angry nut-ball defines the shape of American "news" and information flow. 

At 10 p.m., when his own show aired, he opened by describing the way Bill Clinton still enjoys "banging skanks" at the White House, then offered a joke in which he rather unmistakably described former Vice President Harris as a "drunk, crazy bitch."  

(It's the rare night on the Gutfeld! show when Harris isn't portrayed as a drunk.)

This is the stuff of primetime "news" within our braindead journalistic and academic culture. Incredibly, you have never seen the ugly content of this show described in the New York Times, or in the Atlantic, or even on any program on CNN or MS NOW.

Dearest darlings, use your heads! Giant salaries are at stake! It simply isn't done!

This is the ugly inanity our national culture has chosen. That said:

Over the weekend, even as this latest inanity was taking shape, we thought we saw a new improved batch of messaging starting to emerge.   

Amy Acton is the Democratic nominee for governor of Ohio. She will probably win that race. 

She won't be the Democratic Party's candidate for president two years hence. But last Saturday, she spoke at a rally in Cleveland. In part, she energetically offered this:   

I'm an Ohio girl through and through. I grew up in Youngstown... 

When I grew up, we didn't know what party you were in. We knew what union you were in!

We knew what branch of the military you served in, we knew where you worshipped. We knew what civic groups you were in. But the biggest thing we knew was that you had one another's back.   

So said Candidate Acton, energetically, early on. 

I'm a scrappy kid from Youngstown, she later said. And scrappy kids from Youngstown, we never back down from a fight!  

We Blues badly need to find some scrappy kids. We don't need another comedian. We need to find a scrappy kid who might help let the future emerge.

Tomorrow, we'll look at the messaging in Acton's speech. It was delivered by a scrappy kid who's already 60 years old!

Tomorrow: Messaging from Candidate Acton

Thursday: What two C-Span callers had said

MONDAY: Obama too good for the Cheesecake place!

MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2026

Snobbery, hatred emerge: It's true! At that rally in Cleveland this Saturday, Barack Obama made a flippant remark about The Cheesecake Factory.

Actually, it was more like a joke! Headline included, Bess Levin starts to explain at the Intelligencer:

The Most Overheated Reactions to Obama’s Cheesecake Factory Line

Over the weekend, former president Barack Obama appeared at a rally in Ohio, where he gave an impassioned speech in hopes of galvanizing Democrats ahead of next week’s midterm elections. He called out the “chaos and cruelty and corruption” of Donald Trump’s second term and dinged the current president’s obsession with interior design and remodeling projects, on which he has been intensively focused since returning to Washington in between going to war with Iran and the free press.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed but he seems very focused on home renovation,” Obama said of his successor. “He should be on HGTV. Guy is building a ballroom that’s bigger than the White House. Paved over the Rose Garden. Put a helicopter pad on the South Lawn. And there’s gold everywhere. What’s up with the gold? He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. Just gold everywhere.”

That was fairly standard stuff, with the joking remark thrown in. That said, under prevailing rules of the game, tribal offense must be taken!

(continuing directly from above)
Trump’s preference for decorating every space he has ever lived in with gold is in no way debatable, nor is his longtime penchant for designing spaces where a dictator would feel at home.... But apparently the comment about the restaurant chain hit a nerve with conservatives, who reacted to Obama’s joke with the fury of a thousand Brownie Crunch Choc-a-Lot Cheesecakes.

Former Democratic strategist Evan Barker, who voted for Trump in 2024, claimed the line was evidence that “the coastal elites hate Americana”...

Did Barker start it? We don't know, but you can see Barker's tweet simply by clicking here. Here's what the turncoat said:  

The coastal elites hate Americana. We know what they really think, and we know why they are so quickly defending Obama’s snobbery. They might think they are “too good” for the Cheesecake Factory, or find the decor to be tacky, but most regular Americans don’t.

In short, Barack Obama hates America. His Cheesecake snobbery proves it!

Many others took offense. We saw the caterwauling about the alleged condescension on several Fox News Channel shows. 

Please don't make us seek out the links. The election cycle will be over next week, and then the real problems begin.

EMERGENCE: "I'm a scrappy kid from Youngstown!"

MONDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2026

We never back down from a fight: Very early Sunday morning, we got extremely lucky here on this sprawling campus.   

We'd already semi-watched some endless comments by the sitting president. He had delivered his endless remarks at a rally the day before. 

As it supplied full videotape, C-Span summarized thusly:

OCTOBER 24, 2026
Campaign 2026
President Trump Speaks at GOP Midterm Rally in Perry, GA

President Donald Trump held a midterm rally for Georgia Republicans in Perry, GA. He claimed that crime had reduced in multiple cities including Memphis and Washington, D.C. since took office and touted other achievements of the administration. He spoke against Somali immigrants including Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and asked why the United States took "so many" immigrants from nations he deemed low-quality instead of "people from Norway, Sweden…Denmark?" He urged Georgians to elect U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA) and oust Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), who he called "Pee-wee Herman."...

C-Span was being polite. You can watch the whole thing here. 

(You won't read about it in the New York Times. But it seems that something is wrong with the sitting president, a human being whose public statements and global behaviors are making less and less sense.)  

That endless stream of endless chatter had started at 3:39 a.m. We're not sure when we started watching, but the president's endless remarks seemed to go on forever. 

At 5:19 a.m., a second event went to air. We were surprised by what we saw. With C-Span supplying the videotape, we thought we saw an emergence:  

OCTOBER 24, 2026
Campaign 2026
Former President Obama Campaigns with Ohio Democratic Candidates in Cleveland

Former President Barack Obama, Ohio governor candidate Amy Acton (D), and U.S. Senate candidate Sherrod Brown (D) spoke at a midterm rally in Cleveland. Acton and Brown discussed affordability and their respective opponents, governor candidate Vivek Ramaswamy (R) and Sen. John Husted (R). Obama then spoke about the importance of voting for Brown and Acton. He also discussed current Trump administration policies...

Candidate Acton spoke first. She spoke for 17 minutes. 

We were surprised by her energetic, slightly hyper performance. With a bit of editing supplied by us, she started by saying this:   

Eric and I want to thank all of you from the bottom of our hearts for all the support, and all the love, you have shown us this past week, and every day on the trail. 

Thank you. Thank you.

[CHEERS] 

My name is Dr. Amy Acton—

[CHEERS]

I'm an Ohio girl through and through. I grew up in Youngstown.

[CHEERS]

It's the stuff of Bruce Springsteen songs...

We performed in Youngstown once. We have the scars to support this hopeful's fond assertion.

This emerging presence grew up there. She now explained what that meant:   

When I grew up, we didn't know what party you were in. We knew what union you were in!

[CHEERS]

We knew what branch of the military you served in, we knew where you worshipped. We knew what civic groups you were in. But the biggest thing we knew was that you had one another's back, and if it weren't for the tough, deeply resilient community I had, I wouldn't be here today

They had my back when I needed it most...

They had her back when she needed it most? The audience knew what she was talking about on this particular day.

We'll show you more of this candidate's messaging as the week proceeds. Eventually, though, she said this, addressing her opponent:   

In Ohio, we work hard and we watch out for one another. My opponent just doesn't get it. 

Mr. Ramaswamy, you are not just out of touch, you are out for yourself and you're a danger to my state. 

Apparently, there is no low to which you won't stoop. But look:

I'm a scrappy kid from Youngstown—

[CHEERS]

—and scrappy kids from Youngstown, we never back down from a fight!  

Good grief! We've been waiting, and waiting and waiting, to see someone emerge from nowhere and start talking like that on the trail.

Tomorrow: C-Span caller speaks