All posts tagged "democratic party"

Cranky James Carville gets fired up on CNN over historic Dem win

Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville had a feisty response on Friday over the historic Democratic Senate primary election in Michigan.

Carville told CNN anchor Brianna Keilar during the fiery back-and-forth that he was skeptical about progressive Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and shifts within the Democratic Party after the historic upset this week.

"You got 48% in a primary," Carville said. "You're being hailed on CNN as a revolutionary, complete tidal wave hitting the United States. It's the latest, greatest thing that ever happened. And what I'm saying right here is I would go a little bit slow — maybe if I was analyzing this."

He added that Democrats would have more work to do, arguing that El-Sayed and other more left-leaning candidates should "develop some political skills that make you more accessible to more voters."

"That's just me off the top of my head. But excuse me for not being on the bandwagon here, that this is a giant movement," Carville said.

Jon Stewart stumps Fetterman over 'weird line' behind his MAGA-friendly turn

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) was stumped cold when comedian Jon Stewart pressed him on where he draws the line for political support.

Fetterman appeared on Stewart's podcast, "The Weekly Show," for an interview that hasn't been released yet, but in a clip previewing the episode, Stewart repeatedly asked Fetterman to explain why he has increasingly embraced MAGA-friendly positions while feuding with his own party over issues like opposition to Israel.

"For you, you could agree with them 90 percent of the time, but Israel is the red line," Stewart said, seeking clarification from Fetterman on where he draws the line for his support.

"Absolutely," Fetterman said. "Israel, for me, like, I can't ever turn my back on Israel."

The interview focused on Israel as Stewart asked Fetterman about his opposition to Democratic Socialists who have won congressional seats and others running for office while criticizing Israel. Fetterman has said he would leave the Democratic Party if it "officially" became "anti-Israel," according to reports.

However, Stewart seemed baffled by why Fetterman draws that line.

"I mean no disrespect on this," Stewart told Fetterman. "But that is not our country," Stewart said, referring to Israel. Fetterman reacted to the statement by throwing his head to the side, seeming to be frustrated.

"You're saying that these candidates may have great ideas for our economy; they may want to do the exact same thing you want to do in terms of getting money out of politics; they may want to increase the social safety net; they may want to change the balance of power from capital back to labor," Stewart continued. "But if they don't agree with you on Israel, you don't want them in your party."

"I don't know who you're referencing specifically," Fetterman said.

Stewart shot back, "I'm referencing what you just said."

Fetterman shook his head and said, "Name one."

Stewart threw out names like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Abdul El-Sayed, and Bernie Sanders. Fetterman responded by saying that DSA members should "run under your own banner" and "Why not have a DSA party?" Stewart explained, "We have a two-party system," and said it didn't make sense to throw them out because they don't support Israel but agree with Fetterman on most other issues.

"You're literally saying we can all have discussions except when it comes to Israel, which is not America," Stewart said. "It seems like a weird line to draw."

Fetterman stammered and said, "I don't think that's weird," because historically the Jewish community suffers "when people or a government or people turn their back" on them.

"The Jewish community and Israel are not the same thing, brother man!" Stewart responded.

Jon is joined by U.S. Senator John Fetterman (@SenFettermanPA) for discussion on the Democratic Party, Israel, and the issues that continue to shape his politics. New podcast out tomorrow! pic.twitter.com/QAmZazHzOQ
— The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart (@weeklyshowpod) August 4, 2026

'What is happening here?' GOP leader's 'Bolshevik takeover' warning baffles onlookers

A GOP leader's recent warning about the Democratic Party and a "Bolshevik takeover" left onlookers baffled.

On Tuesday, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) spoke about the upcoming elections and invoked a Red Scare with his cautionary words about the Democratic Party.

"The Bolshevik takeover of the Democratic Party is in full swing," Scalise said. "Communism is on the ballot this November."

Trump has been making similar warnings ahead of the midterms. However, online critics were more confused by Scalise's choice of words than they were scared.

"What is happening here?" former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance wrote. "Seriously. Bolshevik?"

"This communism stuff comes across as so desperate," legal and political analyst Joe Patrice reacted.

"Hitler used 'Bolsheviks' and 'communists' almost interchangeably with 'the Jews,'" Canadian political commentator Jim Stewartson posted. "That was a relatively short time after the actual Bolshevik Revolution. McCarthy's red scare was during the Cold War. Scalise's excuse is Mamdani. It's so embarrassing."

"Brother we just want affordable healthcare," commented popular internet personality Jared Shult.

"If the election is about inflation, war, the economy and @realDonaldTrump, the Republicans will lose the House and, possibly, the Senate," wrote former Obama White House official David Axelrod. "So this is their mantra for fall!"

"Bolshevik? How Retro, a return to the original Fascist counter-revolutionary rhetoric and action," author Ruth Ben-Ghiat posted. "Conjuring Communism in all its forms is apparently the new MAGA propaganda theme."

"Folks, be prepared," warned political commentator and former GOP strategist Tara Setmayer. "It's starting already. This is the GOP's strategy to distract from Trump's failures and their complicity. However, do not underestimate the effectiveness of the scare tactic without a proper strategy to combat it. Remember 'they/them?'"

Disbelief as MAGA rep warns GOP being taken over by 'crazy people': 'He’s one of them!'

Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) warned on Wednesday that Republicans were in a serious battle to stop "crazy people" from controlling the GOP — and the internet had plenty to say in response.

During a live interview with Newsmax, Fine commented on Democrats and said he was concerned about the Republican Party.

"When these people surfaced decades ago, they didn't take them seriously," Fine said. "They were so determined to gain power, they said we'll take anybody into our tent and now those people have taken over the tent. That's why we got to fight in my party, in the Republican Party, to not let crazy people take over. Because if we do, we're done. I think what we see happening to the Democratic Party, it may be good for Republicans but it is terrible for America."

Fine's comments drew criticism online among commentators.

"That battle was lost in the spring of 2016," S.V. Dáte, White House correspondent at HuffPost, wrote on X.

"Crazy people have taken over… no doubt, he’s one of them!" Alene Browdy, political commentator and vice president of sales and merchandising, wrote on X.

"How does anyone on the right say this with a straight face?" author Luke Epplin wrote on X.

"Too late for that, genius. Vote this bigot the f--- out," Rodger Williams, a progressive political commentator, wrote on X.

"In related news, I am launching a campaign to save the brontosaurus," politics writer Julian Sanchez wrote on Bluesky.

That battle was lost in the spring of 2016. https://t.co/LQ7Bf0n0GP
— S.V. Dáte (@svdate) July 1, 2026

Graham Platner's troubles deepen as wife's warning about explicit texts surfaces

Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner sank deeper into hot water as his wife revealed that she found sexually explicit texts on his phone, per reporting by the Wall Street Journal.

Platner's wife, Amy Gertner, told his Senate campaign about the texts with several different women, insider sources told the WSJ. Gertner discovered the texts in spring 2025, and in August, she told an aide whom she considered a friend, while the campaign was doing opposition research on Platner, the WSJ reported.

Campaign aides told Gertner that they didn't expect the messages to be a problem as it was a "private matter," according to the WSJ, which mentioned that the couple had been undergoing counseling.

"We did the hard work that marriage requires. We went to counseling. We were honest with each other in ways that weren't easy," Gertner said in a statement provided to the WSJ by Platner's campaign. "Our marriage today is stronger than ever before."

Platner, who's hoping to unseat Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), is already dealing with controversy surrounding his Nazi-linked tattoo, past remarks about sexual assault victims, and posts from his deleted Reddit account, which included "lenient views on infidelity," the WSJ report noted.

5 things to know as DNC's long-buried 2024 autopsy leaks to CNN

CNN obtained the Democratic Party's long-private autopsy of the 2024 election on Thursday.

CNN Senior Reporter Edward-Isaac Dovere told anchors Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown how he had access to the report, saying the report was "not ready" but that over time, he had discovered more information and worked with DNC chair Ken Martin to release it. CNN opted to publish the report in full.

"The plan was not to release this report. The report was released to me after I had obtained a lot of the detail and contents in there," Dovere said.

The public version published on CNN was annotated by DNC lawyers, "undercutting a lot of what was in the report," he explained. "We are publishing the full report so people can see it and read for themselves."

Here are five things to know about the "autopsy" report.

1. The release was delayed from its original release date and prompted a number of conspiracy theories.

The report was originally set to be released in spring 2025.

"Then, DNC chair Ken Martin promised members at their summer meeting last August in his home state of Minnesota, 'Three weeks,'" Dovere said. "Then October. Then after the November elections. Then, with Martin offering no explanation other than he suddenly didn’t want to look backward, he announced he wouldn’t be releasing it at all."

Conspiracy theories were mounting in the wake of the report's delayed release.

"Martin was trying to protect Kamala Harris as she considers another presidential run, Obama campaign alumni were protecting each other, high-priced consultants were trying to keep millions in fees from being revealed, or the party was trying to hide how voters reacted to the Gaza crisis," Dovere said.

"Or one of the most widespread: Maybe the autopsy didn’t even exist at all," Dovere added.

2. The Biden White House and campaign neglected Kamala Harris and her campaign.

"The autopsy accuses the Biden administration of not doing more to boost Harris long before the president’s June 2024 debate performance forced him to withdraw, particularly on immigration given the Trump campaign tying the issue to her as the administration’s so-called 'border czar,'" Dovere said.

3. The Harris campaign was in the dark on key DNC decisions — and may have taken too much for granted.

"Martin entrusted a top priority to a friend, Democratic consultant Paul Rivera, who volunteered to work on it part-time and waited several months to contact key officials with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ campaigns," Dovere reported. "Many top decision-makers in the campaigns were ultimately never interviewed, and Harris herself has expressed frustration privately that questions about the document have gone on."

4. The report revealed both campaigns — Biden and Harris — failed to define Trump.

Republicans appeared better at messaging to voters and learning from past elections. This was identified as a pain point during the aftermath of the 2024 election.

5. Not all questions surrounding the election and what happened are included in the current report.

"It gets into things about spending decisions and organizing that was done by the DNC, ways to possibly improve it," Dovere said. "But there are a lot of things in that version that are incomplete and also, it does not touch a couple of topics a lot of people are very interested in and thought were the reasons for this report not being out. There's nothing about Joe Biden and what happened in the debate, there's nothing about Kamala Harris getting the nomination without any kind of primary process and also there's nothing about the way that voters were responding to Gaza and how the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris policies and comments about it were hitting their minds."

'Disenchanted' group will deal Trump major blow at midterms: ex-White House economist

A draft of voters will abandon the Republican Party at the midterms later this year, according to a former Joe Biden staffer.

Jared Bernstein, who served as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, has claimed that a major voting pool is more likely to vote against Trump and the GOP than for them in November.

Speaking with Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, Bernstein said, "There are the Never Trumpers, the Always Trumpers, and then this really key group in the middle that’s pretty dispositive in terms of which way they swing, and it’s dispositive in terms of determining election outcomes.

"Some people call them 'persuadables.' So they rolled the dice, and they bet on the wrong pony. Whoops, I mixed the metaphor. But you get what I’m saying.

"And now they understand that they’ve bet on the wrong guy and that their prices are right back to where they were. And in fact, inflation, if anything, has accelerated because of decisions Trump’s made.

"It’s not just that he’s ignored affordability or called it a hoax; it’s that he’s pushed hard in the wrong direction on these things. And this key middle group—which I think is behind some of the numbers you posted this morning — is very disenchanted by what they’ve seen."

GOP strategists have also recently urged candidates to break from Trump and his team if they wish to survive this election cycle.

Trump's decision-making in office, particularly over the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, could be a hindrance to GOP representatives hoping to hold or gain seats at the midterm elections, according to some insiders. An unnamed GOP strategist told Reuters, "We have to break out of that and show race by race why we’re the better choice."

Trump faces 'hardball' fight as Dems prep criminal probes for presidential team: analyst

Donald Trump's post-midterm presidency could look like a fight against the Democratic Party on criminal accountability, an analyst has claimed.

The New Republic's Greg Sargent observed that, should the Dems receive a majority in the Senate or House following the November elections, they would have the opportunity to build a case against Trump. Sargent said, "Presumably, you could see Democrats using hardball to seek accountability for Trump world’s crimes and also build in deep protections against more authoritarian rule."

Fellow analyst Brian Beutler suggested that Trump and his administration could do little to stop the Democratic Party from increased oversight into cabinet decisions after the election.

He said, "So in the immediate term, it entails fighting with the Trump administration over congressional oversight, right? Because winning the election doesn’t give them the power to conduct police investigations, they have to control the presidency for that.

"So in 2027 and 2028, it’s going to mean they’re going to have to do oversight more aggressively than they did in Trump’s first term, when they had Congress in 2019.

"And they’re going to have to be prepared for him to try to essentially embargo oversight—to say that he won’t cooperate with any Democratic oversight, it’s all illegitimate, sort of like a version of all elections I lose are rigged.

"What can they do about that? They need to get comfortable with large segments of the government being defunded if people in agencies, leaders in agencies, are following Trump’s orders not to comply with proper oversight—then those offices are going to have to be shut down until they start following the law, essentially.

"And then they’re going to have to go around the executive branch by subpoenaing the corporate entities that have bribed Trump, or quote-unquote settled with Trump, or worked hand in glove with Trump in some cases."

Political analysts had previously flagged the funding for Trump's White House ballroom and the push for the SAVE Act to be passed into law as examples of what Sargent described as "authoritarian rule".

The SAVE Act would end mail-only voter registration, implement nationwide photo ID requirements, and restrict mail-in ballots. Democratic lawmakers denounce it as voter suppression legislation.

Impeachment plan for two GOP Supreme Court judges floated: 'Reasons for removal'

Democratic Party candidate Graham Platner has outlined a plan to impeach two sitting Supreme Court judges.

Platner, who is running for the Democratic nomination for US Senate in Maine, told NBC there are reasonable grounds for the removal of Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. Alito and Thomas have faced significant ethical scrutiny during Trump's second term. Alito authored the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade, a decision that sparked widespread controversy and calls for his recusal from abortion-related cases.

Thomas has been embroiled in controversy also, with recent calls for his removal from the Supreme Court following a speech where he denounced progressive politics.

During an appearance at University of Texas Austin Law School, Thomas said, "Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence and hence our form of government."

Platner has since called for the impeachment of both sitting judges. He said there is a "compelling case" against both Alito and Thomas. "The relationship between Clarence Thomas and Harlan Crow is not hard to see as clearly corrupt, and Justice Thomas doesn’t even recuse himself from cases that impact Crow’s businesses," he said.

Platner added that he is "definitely open to doing more, including adding seats on the court." He also outlined a plan, should the Democratic Party win a majority in the Senate, to investigate Donald Trump's administration.

“I want to shut the White House down,” Platner said. “I want us to, for the next two years, be dragging every single person in the White House, every single person in all these agencies that have been conducting themselves in illegal and unconstitutional ways. They need to be dragged by subpoena in front of Senate committees over and over and over again."

A Supreme Court justice can be impeached through a constitutional process outlined in Article II of the U.S. Constitution. The House of Representatives must vote to impeach the justice, requiring a simple majority, by charging them with "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

Following House impeachment, the Senate conducts a trial where the justice can present a defense. A two-thirds majority vote in the Senate is required to convict and remove the justice from office.

No Supreme Court justice has ever been successfully impeached and removed through this process, though several have faced impeachment attempts throughout American history for various alleged misconduct and ethical violations.

Dems could see '10-to-1 majority' after 'huge win' ahead of midterms: GOP expert

The Democratic Party could be handed a 10-to-1 advantage thanks to a recent redistricting vote, a political analyst has claimed.

Virginia Democrats have pushed an aggressive redistricting measure aimed at gaining four additional House seats through redrawing the state's congressional map to favor Democrats in 10 of 11 districts.

The ballot measure, which passed last night (April 21), will redistrict the state's congressional map and could result in Democrats winning as many as four House seats.

Democratic state House Speaker Don Scott said, "Virginia just changed the trajectory of the 2026 midterms. At a moment when Trump and his allies are trying to lock in power before voters have a say, Virginians stepped up and leveled the playing field for the entire country."

The Bulwark analysts Tim Miller and Bill Kristol analyzed the chances of Democratic Party victory at the Virginia midterm elections.

Miller added, "The side that favored the referendum that redistricted the state of Virginia and redrew the state in such a way that it might end up being a 10-to-1 Democratic majority.

"My main takeaway though, like my biggest picture of all this, like taking off the campaigns and elections nerd hat, you know, and just like looking at the biggest picture takeaway, it's really a huge win and an exclamation point for the response that the Democratic Party and the pro-democracy movement had to Donald Trump and his cronies attempts to rig the midterm elections. And they're going to keep trying other things."

Kristol added, "I mean, this is Virginia. Two-thirds of Virginians voted in 2020 for the previous redistricting, and that was the actual sentiments of Virginia are probably two to one for let's have nonpartisan redistricting and so they overcame that because of the threat of Trump, and I I was one of those who thought they should, and I voted that way and obviously a lot of other people thought so too.

"The Democrats have won [Virginia] with the exception of that first Biden midterm. It's why the state of Virginia has gone blue. It was a swing of two-thirds in favor of nonpartisan redistricting. That would be one way to look at it.

"It [Jay Jones Nov. '25 results] is very consistent with the generic ballot polling right now nationally, which is +7, +8. I feel like that's a kind of, pretty good for Democrats but not quite at blowout levels."