“The only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee is to get me to say something — anything — that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up, in his words — quote — ‘behind bars,’” Dr. Fauci said in his opening remarks.

“Any reasonable person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion,” Dr. Fauci continued. “Therefore, although it pains me to do so because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the 5th Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions.” (Watch the shameful spectacle below.)

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Not beating the “unhinged obsession” charges, Paul publicly released more than 1,100 pages of Dr. Fauci’s private diary, which I suppose is now just a “diary.” It’s what the gross older brother does to his sister in a teen movie. Everyone rightly hates that guy. Paul’s motivation is only slightly less juvenile, though the motivations are just as sinister. He’s pursuing his white whale (really a rather dainty 85-year-old man) in a tedious investigation about whether the Covid-19 virus was leaked from a Chinese laboratory. Paul insists Dr. Fauci lied to Congress about the origins of the virus.

Paul wasn’t alone on the coo-coo train to McCarthy-ville. Other twisted opportunists and anti-health zealots (or, as we call them, “Republicans) eagerly joined the witch hunt.

Father of the year Sen. Bernie Moreno told Dr. Fauci that he was inspired to run for office after a woman was tased and arrested at a middle school football game in September 2020. He claims this was because she refused to wear a mask — during a period when there was no vaccine and cases were rampant — but technically the woman was tased and arrested because she refused to just leave as requested.

“Here I am sitting in front of you six years later, saying, who the fuck do you think you were for doing that?” Moreno asked Dr. Fauci, who was neither the Ohio governor or the U.S. president in September 2020. “It is a total disgrace what you did to this country, and if my Democrat colleagues are standing there defending you, I hope the voters, the United States of America, watch the clips of every one of you doting on a guy who is more interested in being a celebrity than saving American people.”

Sen. Josh Hawley, who’s never had to truly answer for his part in promoting a violent coup agains the government, also feigned tremendous moral outrage over Dr. Fauci’s diabolical efforts to keep people from dying.

“You were using federal employees with taxpayer money to apply for and solicit cash prizes for you personally, cash prizes totaling over $1 million,” Hawley said — clearly offended at the idea that a public official would ever use his position for personal enrichment. “You did all of that during the pandemic, didn’t you?” (These are lies, by the way.)

It’s a long way from when Brad Pitt played Dr. Fauci in a 2020 Saturday Night Live cold open. But that’s how life goes. Your peak of popularity comes during a global pandemic. You don’t even get to enjoy all the gala cocktail parties because everything’s shut down. (Brad Pitt was later accused of assaulting his now-ex-wife Angelina Jolie and his own kids, who want nothing to do with him. Maybe the pandemic was better for everyone involved here.)

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Republicans are setting up Dr. Fauci as the Trotsky scapegoat for everything they hated about the 2020 Covid era. This includes the Covid vaccine, which was the Trump administration’s one decent accomplishment. Last week, Fox News “legal analyst” Emily Compagno offered some Bizarro World history about the vaccine.

“What I see here is not that Operation Warp Speed was the result of a concerted effort in war time,” Compagno said, as if washing her own brain in real time. “It was simply at the behest of one small, egomaniacal, hubris-infected individual who made everyone fall in line behind him, and those who dared to question him in any way, shape, or form were vilified and ostracized.”

Compagno is not actually describing Donald Trump, even though he is a “small, egomaniacal, hubris-infected individual” and was the actual president in 2020. Dr. Fauci worked for Trump, but Republicans act as if Dr. Fauci was pulling the strings, which I suppose is a reasonable conclusion considering that Trump is an empty-headed dummy, but Trump is more like the evil dummy in a Twilight Zone episode who does his own thing, like recommend people shoot Windex up their ass.

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Predictably, Trump did immediately claim credit for Operation Warp Speed while Republicans were ganging up on Fauci.

“‘Operation Warp Speed’ was a SPECTACULAR SUCCESS, in fact, many say, one of the most successful things ever done by an American President. I overrode Fauci on this. His ideas were CRAZY! Also, I said from the beginning that the Virus came from the Wuhan Laboratory in China. Fauci strongly disagreed, always trying to protect China. I Inherited Fauci, who was there since the 1980’s, but with each passing day, relied less and less on him. He made too many bad calls, like on MASKS. Remember at the beginning he was an anti-masker. He then switched to a super-masker.”

Dr. Fauci has addressed this. He was responding to the science — whether masks were actually effective at reducing transmission in a community setting — and the practical reality of potential shortage of masks in hospitals, where they were needed most. There was no “flip-flopping” or deliberate attempt to mislead Americans.

“In any event I didn’t let him shut the Country down, although he wanted to. I went the Federalist way, and let the governors decide. The Republican governors did a much better job than the Dumocrats. Fauci was largely taken out of play, and then along came Sleepy Joe Biden, who made Fauci a ‘King!’ I called Biden to tell him Fauci was no good, either didn’t have a clue, or was dishonest. The call was well received, but sadly, not acted on. Biden went on to give Fauci vast destructive power. The rest is history!”

No, this entire message is fantasy. Trump did in fact “shut down” the country in March 2020, and he didn’t actually “let the governors decide.” He actively undermined Democratic governors who made tough choices at a difficult time. I know Trump pathologically blames Joe Biden for everything that goes wrong, but Biden pretty much ended all major Covid restrictions by the summer of 2021. Dr. Fauci would retire in 2022, but it’s unclear what “vast destructive power” he wielded.

Megyn Kelly declared on her show last week that Dr. Fauci had harmed more people than Jeffrey Epstein, which is a deranged statement yet perfectly in character for a professional terrible person.

Fauci-haters don’t hide their resentment for a man who dedicated his life to public service. They want to paint him as a vainglorious petty tyrant because they can’t dare express their contempt for the White House occupant who actually fits that description.

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I love the opening credits featuring a new score from Nelson Riddle that incorporates the leitmotif of the four top villains from Batman’s rogues gallery — the Catwoman, the Joker, the Penguin, and the Riddler. When I watched this movie with my son for the first time, he was three years old and as soon as Adam West appeared, he pointed and shouted, “Look, Daddy, Batman!” Damn right. (Watch below.)

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Cesar Romero, Burgess Meredith, and Frank Gorshin reprise their TV performances as Joker, Penguin, and Riddler, but Julie Newmar was unavailable to return as Catwoman. Her replacement is the stunning Lee Meriwether, who’s deliciously sinister, much like Newmar was in her only appearance during the show’s first season story “The Purr-fect Crime/Better Luck Next Time.”

In the upcoming second season, Newmar’s Catwoman becomes more overtly comedic, while still a potent threat. She also seems to genuinely love Batman, if she can just stop trying to murder him. Meriwether’s Catwoman has zero romantic interest in Batman. She poses as Soviet journalist Miss “Kitka” from the perfectly reputable Moscow Bugle and seduces Bruce Wayne, who falls for her act, but for Catwoman, it’s all business. She’s a true femme fatale.

When Batman realizes Miss Kitka never truly existed, there’s a gut-wrenching close up of the devastated hero as the song “Plaisir d’Amour” plays: “The pleasure of love lasts only a moment. The pain of love lasts a lifetime.” Holy heartbreak, indeed.

Batman (1966) is a fun romp, the Batman film you can watch with your young kids or just when you want to feel like a kid again. How can you not enjoy the Shark Repellent Bat Spray scene? (He also has barracuda, whale, and manta-ray.)

There’s also the classic bit where Batman desperately tries to dispose of a giant-sized bomb straight from Spy vs. Spy, but every possible obstacle emerges until he laments, “Somedays you just can’t get rid of a bomb.” He’s Batman, so he does manage to do so at the last possible moment. Robin can’t believe that he didn’t just leave the bomb behind in a bar where some slothful day drinkers would meet their end: “You risked your life to save that riffraff in the bar?” Batman reminds his slightly homicidal partner, “They may be drinkers, Robin, but they’re also human beings and may be salvaged. I had to do it!” That’s our hero. No drunk left behind. (Watch below.)

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July is almost done, but my special summer subscription sale is still in effect — 40 percent off the usual annual paid subscriber rate. That’s just $30 a year. Thanks to all who have upgraded to paid subscriber status recently.

This week, I wrote about the supposed DSA “hostile takeover” of the Democratic Party and explained what a “hostile takeover” actually is, based on my extensive viewings of the 1987 Michael J. Fox movie, The Secret of My Success.

Following up on my podcast discussion last week with , I argued that people who make supposed “electability” arguments in defense of horrible positions might actually genuinely believe in those positions. “Electability” is just an excuse. (It’s sort of like when I feigned heroism for never leaving the house and not socializing during the 2020 Covid shutdowns.)

John Fetterman, the Democrat who might join the GOP, has opinions about what qualifies as a “true” Democrat. Those opinions are as terrible as Fetterman himself.

What are people talking about when they talk about diversity?

That’s it for this week. Coincidentally, the second season of Batman: Caped Crusader lands on Amazon Prime. I have made no promises to wait for my son to watch those, so I’ll see you on Monday.

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Thus, it’s disappointing whenever I see the left respond similarly to perceived lack of diversity, or at least the diversity they might prefer.

Earlier this week, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee posted the images of nine Senate candidates in swing states who they believe “are going to help flip the Senate in 100 days.” Artist and activist Tina Duryea responded, “The appalling lack of diversity in this line up is disheartening.” The implication here is that the apparent lack of diversity is the result of malicious intent.

I should note here that I’ve interviewed Duryea and have no personal quarrel with her. I’m focusing on her post because I think it is emblematic of a growing issue among the center-left, one that will eventually consume us before we even have the chance to put up a fight against actual MAGA fascism.

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The nine candidates in the DSCC’s lineup is incumbent Sen. Jon Ossoff from Georgia, Roy Cooper from North Carolina, Sherrod Brown from Ohio, Mary Peltola from Alaska, Josh Turek from Iowa, Chris Pappas from New Hampshire, James Talarico from Texas, Scott Colom from Mississippi, and Troy Jackson from Maine.

This is actually a reasonably diverse group: Ossoff is Jewish, Peltola is Yup’ik, Turek is a wheelchair user, Chris Pappas is openly gay, and Colom is a Black man who successfully lived past 40 in Mississippi. Yes, Talarico, Brown, and Jackson are straight white Christian men, but diversity is not the absence of straight white Christian men, who do still exist in America.

Duryea’s stated concern was that Peltola is the only woman among the nine candidates, but that outcome in itself isn’t “appalling” or “disheartening.” There’s no evidence that women didn’t win nominations in those primaries because of rampant Democratic sexism (despite what Jasmine Crockett’s less rational online supporters might insist). People simply voted for their preferred candidate.

I believe diversity is a net positive but if you obsess too much over outcomes, you can wind up playing a no-win game of “Rock Paper Scissors Diversity.” Colom is after all tying to unseat living Confederate monument Cindy Hyde-Smith, who’s a woman underneath the hood. Does that make her the “diverse” choice over the Democratic man? Or does Colum’s race cover Hyde-Smith’s gender?

Of course, most “pro-diversity” liberals would argue that even the whitest, least queer, rural white male who non-ironically drinks Pabst while watching sports in a bar is still preferable to a Republican from the most marginalized group. Feminist organizations would have eagerly endorsed Joe Biden over Nikki Haley in 2024, because they understood that policy is what matters most.

Republican John James is currently running for governor of Michigan, which would make him the first Black person to hold the position and one of just two sitting Black governors (three if Keisha Lance Bottoms prevails in Georgia), but Black political groups will obviously endorse and support Democrat Jocelyn Benson, who’s white, over James. Race will rightly factor very little in their decision.

The Democratic candidates in the contentious Michigan Senate primary are Rep. Haley Stevens, a white woman, and Abdul El-Sayed, a straight cisgender able-bodied male, true, but also Muslim. There are only three Muslims in Congress, and they are all women who barely have support from other Democrats and none are senators. Curiously, a lot of “pro-diversity” Democrats aren’t torn over their choice here. They’re backing Stevens — though they are perhaps making themselves feel better by pointing out that El-Sayed’s supporters aren’t very diverse, at least as they define diversity. But Blackness is not the only diversity. That’s what frustrates me whenever people claim Portland or Seattle isn’t “diverse.” (There’s a significant Asian population in both cities, particularly Seattle.) An obsession with selective diversity can result in ignoring everyone else around you.

Iowa Republican Senate nominee Ashley Hinson is very much a woman — so white and blonde that Elon Musk would cast her as Helen of Troy in his alternate version of The Odyssey (filmed in Klan-o-vision). She hopes to replace Joni Ernst, who was also a woman but who voted to confirm misogynist bigot Pete Hegseth. Not to risk “mansplaining,” but women’s rights (as well as human rights overall) are clearly better served with Ernst out of the Senate, and if Josh Turek defeats Hinson. That’s not simply a matter of “wheelchair crushes gender.” It’s about what the individuals believe. We should never lose sight of that.

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Senate Republicans are actively pushing Fetterman to switch parties and help expand their majority. (They would inevitably drop him in favor of a real Republican come 2028.) Fetterman is reportedly open to this if Democrats keep listening to Democratic voters about Israel’s right-wing government.

“If our party ever becomes — and just makes it official — the anti-Israel party, that’s when I would leave because that’s been a moral clarity for me,” Fetterman whined to the Hill Nation Summit.

Last week, Fetterman made one of his regularly scheduled Fox News hits, during which he talked about who he personally considers “great Democrats.” Obviously, no one paying attention would include him on such a list. (Watch below.)

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I’m not sure why he referred to Colorado Gov. Jared Polis as “President Polis.” After folding to Donald Trump’s mobster threats, Polis released unrepentant election denier Tina Peters and effectively ended any future career in Democratic politics. He didn’t even receive a commemorative t-shirt.

Fetterman insists that Democratic Socialists aren’t actual Democrats even though they are running as Democrats in Democratic primaries where Democratic voters almost exclusively vote. The DSA is accused of a “hostile takeover” of the Democratic Party, which I’ve previously discussed and dismissed as a silly argument. The Democratic Party is not especially popular. There’s no branding benefit from such a “takeover.”

Given his Israel fixation, Fetterman predictably defended Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s honor, which is non-existent, after New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani (correctly) called him a war criminal. “I know you’re angry at Netanyahu because he killed a lot of people you admire.” Fetterman is referring to Hamas terrorists not the 38,000 women and girls killed in Gaza from October 2023 and December 2025. Meanwhile, Fetterman rarely has harsh words for the ICE goons who are executing U.S. citizens. In fact, after Renee Good’s murder, Fetterman lectured Democrats to “turn down the temperature,” as if their strong words against ICE were somehow responsible for a hateful thug shooting a mother in the head. (Watch below.)

Of course, Fetterman has no concerns about the temperature when he calls Democratic socialists “anti-American” and “dirtbags.” Mamdani (and his wife) have received unhinged death threats even before he was elected, and they have only increased once he took office — and not just because he dares condemn Netanyahu’s grotesque actions.

Center-left Democrats claim that Democratic Socialists are a threat to the party because they spend more time attacking Democrats than they do attacking Republicans, who control every branch of government to the nation’s detriment. However, it’s obvious that center-left Democrats can’t follow their own advice. They freak out over DSA victories and fully embrace the paranoid narrative about a “socialist takeover” of a party whose congressional leaders are Droopy Dog and a disembodied suit. Like John Fetterman, Jared Polis also enjoys complaining about socialism on right-wing media. (Watch below.)

“First of all, it’s important that people understand what socialism is,” Polis said. “It’s government owning collective ownership of the means of production, meaning they’re owning companies. They’re operating companies.”

So far, that’s nothing like what most DSA candidates have actually proposed. Seattle has a Democratic Socialist mayor and yet Amazon still thrives. It’s sadly ironic that centrist Democrats in particular have spent the past decade warning liberals against calling Trump and his MAGA movement “Nazis” or even “fascists” — despite the many uncomfortable similarities — but they’re now eagerly skiing down the slippery slope from Medicare for All and wealth taxes to outright communism.

You don’t have to like socialism, but you also don’t have to do this. When Republican primary voters nominated QAnon cultists in 2020, Republicans didn’t rush to MSNBC so they could express their shock and horror to Joy Reid and Rachel Maddow. After Marjorie Taylor Greene won her primary runoff in 2020, she received full GOP leadership support, including from sitting president Donald Trump. Republicans would even gain seats in the House that year.

But Republicans are just very good at pushing the Overton window while Democrats just slam it shut on their own fingers. Republicans normalize the members who have outright dangerous views, whereas Democrats can’t seem to find room in their “big tent” for members with views that are simply different. You don’t have to agree with the socialist members, but you don’t have to go full Joe McCarthy.

“I support universal healthcare,” Polis has claimed. “I support a strong social safety net. The only way to accomplish those — and history has proven this — is through capitalism and the free-market system [and] the clarity that it creates.”

Republicans (and many centrist Democrats) have a documented history of labeling all those proposals as “socialism.” Democrats who are worried about socialism could at least call out the predatory capitalism that Republicans impose when in power and that too many moderate Democrats willingly support.

There are center-left Democrats who understand the value of a true “big tent.” During an appearance on Fox News last week, Buttigieg was asked in obvious bad faith if “it’s gone too far” having citizens vote for and elect Democratic socialist candidates as if it’s a free country. (Watch below.)

Buttigieg deftly responded in a manner that focused on policy disagreements — always a given in a true liberal democracy — rather than dehumanizing rhetoric and a 21st Century Red Scare reprise.

“There’s always gonna be some people in my party who go too far for me, people I disagree with,” Buttigieg said. “If you pick the four or five furtherest left people in our party, they are by definition going to disagree with a lot of others, but there is so much that we do in fact agree on. I think one of the reasons why you see people who run on a promise of shaking it up, whether it's a DSA candidate on the left or whether it's someone like Donald Trump is because people can tell that the system we have is not just showing its age —it’s letting us down. That system can change. There's a way to do that.”

Yes, and it’s better than whatever Fetterman and Polis are doing. Buttigieg is a true leader and thus wants to expand the coalition that could finally, at long last, defeat MAGA. Fetterman in particular is just out for himself.

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Last week, my friend offered a compelling counter-argument to my theory during our podcast conversation. He suggests that people like Yglesias and Klein are attempting to hide their own ideological agenda behind the pretense of objective calculation

BERLATSKY: I don’t believe that’s true … I think you want to hurt immigrants. I think you want to hurt trans people … it’s like you’re massaging the evidence to get to these policies that you claim you don't want to support. I don’t believe that you don’t want to support them. I think you want to be considered a good person, but you also want to hurt immigrants and trans people. To your point, it's like, just admit that you believe in it or not. People respect that you actually believe in this more than some desire to be seen as a good person because it's blaringly inconsistent. It’s just clear what you value and what you don’t. And so you just don’t, why look like a fraud.

If you read enough of Yglesias’s newsletter and social media posts, it would seem clear that he fundamentally doesn’t support trans rights and actually agrees with the socially conservative position on most cultural issues. This March, Yglesias argued in the New York Times that the “Democratic brand is toxic in too many states,” and his prescribed cure was predictable:

The two biggest vote-shifting issues for Democrats are related to race. Dropping support for the use of race as a factor in college admissions and racial targeting of small business assistance moved voters a great deal. So did embracing merit pay for K-12 teachers, backing off teaching gay and lesbian themes in school, welcoming fewer asylum seekers, being tougher on minor crimes, being more open to fossil-fuel production, restricting gender transition for children and sticking to biological sex as the criteria for sports teams.

Yglesias’s business model is to soberly present electoral chemotherapy as the only viable treatment option for Democrats’ political woes, but, in truth, he just enjoys blasting (certain groups of) people with massive amounts of radiation.

For instance, Yglesias has said he’d recommend that Michigan Democrats vote for Rep. Haley Stevens in the upcoming Senate primary because he disagrees with Abdul El-Sayed on the issues and “leftists are on average significantly worse electorally performers,” but a few days later, he glibly posted, “Sincerely, if Abdul wants to go anti-woke and come out against affirmative action and for assigning kids to sports teams based on biological sex, I will endorse him and donate to his campaign tomorrow — that would be amazing.”

This is a rather inconsistent position if Yglesias’s primary objective is simply winning elections. The Democratic establishment has weaponized race when boosting Stevens’ support among Black voters. Opposing affirmative action would hardly benefit El-Sayed or any Democrat in a contested primary. It’s not necessarily a major issue for the general election, unless the whole point is the vice signal that you don’t support “woke” issues.

Yglesias supposedly disagrees with El-Sayed’s “leftist” positions, so if he were truly willing to flip his support to El-Sayed over affirmative action and trans rights, that reveals a disturbing order to his overall priorities.

Of course, the challenge with rigid ideology is that you can look silly when discussing documented history. Last week, Yglesias wrote a piece about “how the center-left can come back in 2028.”

“[Political] science proves that you can win a Democratic primary by running to the center on select issues that would also help you beat [JD] Vance,” Yglesias posted on social media, “and I think decisively winning is the only thing that will put the intra-party insurgency to rest.

Note the photo illustration for this piece: It’s Bill Clinton and Al Gore at their peak Fleetwood Mac moment.

Conventional wisdom is that Clinton, a member of the centrist Democratic Leadership Conference, shifted the Democratic Party to the sensible center, rescuing the party from the political wilderness after more than a decade of liberals walking into electoral rakes. This is true to a point, but what Yglesias doesn’t seem to grasp is that Clinton didn’t win the 1992 Democratic primary or the general election against President George H.W. Bush on an overtly socially conservative platform. He certainly didn’t pick fights with the marginalized, as Yglesias recommends Democrats do with an almost pulling-the-wings-off-insects glee.

I voted for the first time in 1992 so I have clear memories of the Clinton/Gore campaign. First off, while Clinton/Gore were more conservative on some key issues than Mike Dukakis (e.g. the death penalty, welfare) they didn’t openly promote regressive views on culture. Yglesias isn’t just urging Democrats to shift right on certain cultural issues. He’s recommending that Democrats openly backtrack on previously held positions. Clinton never said during the 1992 campaign, “Well, Reagan and Bush kicked our asses so maybe we shouldn’t have interracial marriage after all!”

In fact, Yglesias argues that Democrats surrender on cultural issues in ways that Clinton never did against George H.W. Bush — even when Republicans hit him (and specifically Hillary Clinton) on “family values.” It’s not as if Hillary said, “OK, fine, I'll promise to only do traditional First Lady stuff.” She stood her ground. (Watch below.)

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Interestingly, Clinton took several positions to the left of Dukakis on culture, specifically gay rights. According to a National Opinion Research Center poll in 1992, only 38 percent of Americans said they considered homosexuality an “acceptable alternative lifestyle,” compared to 57 percent of Americans who didn’t. Yglesias would have claimed that the data was clear and candidates who expressed open support for gay rights needlessly jeopardized their chances of winning elections. However, Clinton aggressively courted the gay community, even as the Republican platform opposed all civil rights law protections for gay people and same-sex marriages.

From the Washington Post:

[Clinton] released formal position papers on gay issues that essentially pledged him to virtually the entire mainstream gay political agenda. Among other steps, Clinton has pledged to sign an executive order ending the U.S. military policy discriminating against homosexuals, support legislation to amend federal civil rights laws to include sexual orientation, “appoint gays and lesbians to major positions” in his administration and launch a “Manhattan-type Project” to find a cure for AIDS.

But Clinton never really connected with the gay community until last May when he delivered an emotional speech at a gay political fund-raiser in Hollywood. In the speech, videotapes of which now circulate in the gay community and are repeatedly played at gay fund-raisers, Clinton tells his audience: “I have a vision and you’re a part of it.”

When Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 — for which he later apologized, he claimed it was to stall momentum for a more sweeping same sex marriage ban (one likely to pass, considering the Supreme Court makeup at the time). You might reject that reasoning, but Yglesias and far-too-many elected Democratss have shown no concern for trans people when embracing anti-trans positions.

Clinton was hardly perfect — the 1994 crime bill and Glass-Steagall repeal weren’t exactly high points for liberalism — but he arguably maintained a winning liberal coalition because of his progressive position (for the time and even now) on prominent cultural issues. It also paid off for him politically: It wasn’t the cops and bankers who saved his ass during his impeachment debacle. It was the vulnerable groups who felt he’d been on their side. That’s the true politics of “popularism” in action.

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Lately, it seems as if this pattern has reversed itself — far-left candidates are actually winning primaries — and many center-left/moderate Democrats are having trouble coping.

Last week, Rep. Josh Gottheimer said, “The DSA are not Democrats. They’re socialist who want to hijack the Democratic Party.” Then, without any apparent self-awareness, he added, “The Democrats have a big tent. That’s our strength. We embrace a range of ideas — but there’s no room for anti-American bomb throwers who oppose our ideas, values, and leaders.”

This is clearly a significant shift from the former “Vote Blue No Matter Who” position, one that embraced literal Republicans who were elevated as heroes simply for drawing a line at violent insurrectionist coups. The Democratic Socialists of America support single-payer healthcare and tuition-free higher education. No DSA member would vote to overturn a free and fair election, as the majority of House Republicans did in 2020.

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When Gottheimer accuses the DSA of trying to “hijack” the party and opposing “our ideas, values, and leaders,” his argument is inherently anti-democratic. There is only room in his party’s “big tent” so long as you don’t challenge its existing leadership. Former Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison, who presided over a series of party losses, recently complained when DSA candidates won primaries, “If you hate the Democratic Party, then please don’t run for our nomination,” but as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani correctly observed, “‘What is the Democratic Party if not its voters?’”

That is the existential question to consider whenever mainstream Democrats use terms like “hijack” or “hostile takeover” when discussing DSA primary victories. In an Atlantic article that grossly referred to the DSA as “parasites,” writer James Kirchick lamented, “Democrats appear slow to recognize that ideologues on the left are attempting a hostile takeover of the party.”

So, let’s first discuss the concept of a “hostile takeover,” as it has a real-world definition. In the corporate world, a “hostile takeover” is when a rival company takes over another against the wishes of its management and board of directors. It achieves this by going directly to the shareholders. In an electoral sense, shareholders are a party’s voters. Thus, what the DSA left is doing is completely democratic. Its candidates are winning elections. That’s only a “hostile takeover” if you believe the Democratic Party is “owned” by its current leadership.

This is probably why Democrats don’t describe Never Trump conservatives who’ve entered their “big tent” as “parasites.” They praise them as “country over party” patriots, even when they openly advocate for Democrats to become the country club party that Mitt Romney would find acceptable. However, if Never Trumpers successfully shift the party to the center, that’s done with the approval of Democratic Party leadership.

Of course, moderate centrism has staged their own “hostile takeover” attempts within the Democratic Party. First, in 1972, the Coalition for a Democratic Majority was formed in response to Richard Nixon’s landslide re-election. The CDM’s “manifesto” was titled Come Home, Democrat and declared that after liberal George McGovern’s humiliating loss, “The ‘New Politics’ has failed.” Many members of the CDM would go on to embrace neoconservatism. Later in 1985, after Walter Mondale’s political vivisection, Democratic strategist Al From would form the Democratic Leadership Council with future presidents Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. Their stated goal was neutralizing the left’s influence within the party. They failed to nominate a Southern conservative Democrat in 1988, the same year DLC critic and unashamed left-populist Jesse Jackson performed surprisingly well. However, they leveraged Mike Dukakis’s decisive loss to George H.W. Bush as a platform to move public opinion their way. This is actually how a healthy political party operates, rather than forming weird parasocial attachments to politicians.

I first learned about hostile takeovers from the 1987 Michael J. Fox movie, The Secret of My Success. Fox’s Brantley Foster works for the Pemrose Corporation, which is facing a hostile takeover attempt by the Davenport Corporation. If Davenport acquires Pemrose, most of the staff will lose their jobs, but the decision-making executives don’t care what happens to the working people at the company. Their primary objective is preserving their own positions.

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At their first big meeting after Davenport acquires Pemrose, CEO Donald Davenport (Fred Gwynne, more monstrous here than he ever was as Herman Munster) tells the feckless executive team that although most of Pemrose’s existing employees will have to go, a handful of upper management “who’ve been so helpful” can stay for as long as they like. Party leaders Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer, and James Clyburn, along with center-left “strategists” and “consultants” like Jaime Harrison and Neera Tanden, might talk a lot about preserving the voices of rank-and-file voters, but what they truly fear is the DSA replacing them.

After all, a “hostile takeover” only works when shareholders are willing to sell their stocks to the rival company. This usually happens because the shareholders have lost faith in the company’s direction. Donald Trump first took office almost a decade ago, and the MAGA threat has only escalated. Democratic primary voters are open to new ideas and especially new leaders.

Right now, many Democratic primaries have become what the business world would call a “proxy fight,” a form of “shareholder activism” where stockholders — in this case, the voters — move to replace existing management. Most proxy fights fail as incumbent leadership has significant structural advantages that can resist even modest change. Those structural advantages have weakened over the years. They were insufficient to stop Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican primary, and most recently were unable to prevent Zohran Mamdani’s election as New York mayor. Both were examples of incumbent leadership becoming so fossilized, they practically defeated themselves. Centrists elevating the corrupt Eric Adams and the even worse Andrew Cuomo certainly made Mamdani seem a more viable option. But that’s the dilemma for the Democrats who are complaining about the DSA’s supposed “hostile takeover” — they are incapable of doing what’s necessary to stop it.

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Studies have shown that screwing with our natural biological clocks is not ideal. Dr. Trang VoPham, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Fred Hutch, warned in a recent interview, “The increase in light in the evening leads to later bedtimes, more sleep disruption, ultimately less sleep, as well as a misalignment between our circadian system, or in other words, our internal biological clock, and our daily schedules.”

So, no matter what law we pass, our bodies are still conditioned for standard time.

It’s especially an issue for regions where the sun naturally sets later in the day, like Seattle or Portland, Oregon. It’s darker longer in the mornings, when people are leaving for work or taking their kids to school. This also puts the lie to the “DST saves electricity” argument, as you arguably turn on even more lights in the morning when getting ready for the day than when you’re winding down at night.

Businesses have long appreciated the extra hour of daylight shopping in the late afternoon/early evening, which might explain Trump’s supporter for permanent daylight saving time. Sporting events and other outdoor functions can start later, which boosts attendance. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 adopted what seemed like a reasonable compromise: Daylight saving time started at 2 a.m. on the last Sunday in April and ended on the last Sunday in October. (Waiting until late April to “spring forward” means sunrise is no later than 6 a.m. in Portland.)

If you must have daylight saving time, summer makes the most sense. Sunrise right now in Portland is about 5:45 am, so it’s light out when most people wake up. Trading the 4:45 am standard time sunrise for an extra hour in the evening is a fair bargain.

Permanent Daylight Saving Time makes far less sense because the 7:50 am sunrise in January becomes 6:50. Years ago, I’d often take the 8 a.m. bus from Portland to Seattle, and this is what it looked like when I left the house in January. Now, imagine this is an hour later each day.

Sure, the 4:30 p.m. sunset is now 5:30, which is not much of a trade. In the pacific northwest, that’s the end of peak commuting. It’s also cold, damp, and dark regardless of when the sun — which is theoretically present — actually sets. You’re not enjoying a drink on the patio. You’re curled up by the fire.

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Permanent daylight saving time isn’t a new concept. During an energy crisis in 1973, President Richard Nixon signed into a law a bill that briefly made daylight saving time year round. The logic reportedly was that “setting clocks ahead one hour could reduce nighttime electrical use and shave about 2 percent off the nation’s demand for energy.”

This clearly wasn’t thought out well. Not long after the law took effect in 1974, eight children in Florida were involved in predawn car accidents while walking to school. Parents — well, mostly mothers as it was the 1970s — driving their kids to school because it was no longer safe for them to walk didn’t actually help save energy.

What a clever TV commentator termed “Daylight Disaster Time” didn’t last a year before Congress restored standard time in fall 1974, a few months after Nixon resigned.

Very clever people online insist that this time will be different because obviously, it’s so much has changed since 1973. Yes, M*A*S*H no longer airs in primetime, but otherwise kids still go to school in the morning. It’s been suggested that we just shift school start times, because it’s apparently just that easy. This seems like an awful lot of work for daylight happy hours in the winter.

One thing I agree that has changed significantly since 1973 is that Americans are even less likely to accept when they’ve made a big mistake. If permanent daylight saving time does become the law, we’re likely stuck with it no matter how bad things turn out.

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The 90 degree heat in Portland this week has me longing for fall, but my special summer subscription sale is still in effect — 40 percent off the usual annual paid subscriber rate. That’s just $30 a year. Thanks to all who have upgraded to paid subscriber status recently.

This week, I wrote about how gun control advocate Fred Guttenberg went full Stephen Miller on Rep. Rashida Tlaib.

Then there was part two of my Angels in America discussion with .

Mainstream Democrats have always questioned the electability of their opponents, and they’ve often been wrong.

My friend joined me to discuss Graham Platner and Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, and how the two are nothing alike, despite what some cynical folks might suggest.

That’s it for this week. See you on Monday.

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Everything Is Horrible

Graham Platner Is Not Going to Be Senator

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post in which I argued that, while I found Graham Platner an appealing candidate for Senate in Maine, his lack of experience made me cautious…

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9 months ago · 290 likes · 23 comments · Noah Berlatsky

Everything Is Horrible

Platner vs. Stratton

Both the Maine Democratic Senate primary and the Illinois Democratic Senate primary feature a progressive running against a centrist. If you read progressive media or social media, though, it’s likely that you’re read one or more profiles of Maine progressive candidate…

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5 months ago · 52 likes · 7 comments · Noah Berlatsky

Everything Is Horrible

Jews Like Mamdani

Progressives are often suspicious of polls. They don’t like polls which show that people trust Trump on immigration (though those numbers have fallen); they don’t like polls that suggest that people like cops; they don’t like polls that suggest that Joe Manchin was in fact the only Democrat who could have won West Virginia b…

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a year ago · 107 likes · 4 comments · Noah Berlatsky

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In Bill Clinton’s case, there were early concerns that he was primarily “an artificial creation by the press” who wasn’t fully vetted — yes, that should sound familiar. A January 1992 Time magazine piece asked, “Is Bill Clinton for real?”

Journalistic pundits are constitutionally incapable of confessing that they have no idea what will happen in a presidential race; they are irresistibly driven to impose some sort of structure on the most shapeless contest. Last year many were looking for someone to cast as the principal rival to presumed front-runner Mario Cuomo. They came up with Clinton partly because he seemed the perfect foil to a Northern Big Government liberal: a Southerner who took many moderate stands — on education and welfare reform, for example — and talked constantly about the “responsibility” of people who receive government benefits to do something in return.

Then, too, many journalists had repeated until it became conventional wisdom the idea that the Democrats have lost five of the past six presidential elections largely because they had become identified as a party of the poor, blacks, labor unionists, radical feminists and other special interests. Supposedly they could win again only if they chose a candidate moderate enough to win back middle-class voters, especially Southern whites.

After humiliating Democratic losses in 1984 and 1988, center-left/moderate Democrats believed Clinton offered a more “electable” path for the party — although there were those pesky adultery rumors. (Check out this ad that claims Clinton bravely “stood up to the tabloids and false attacks and shown real character.”)

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Clinton’s opponents attacked his character, suggesting he was a draft-dodging hippie compared to war hero President George H. W. Bush. This wasn’t just Republicans. Even prior to clinching the presidential nominations, Democrats had expressed serious concerns about his character. “Rarely if ever have party voters approached their choice with so many misgivings,” George J. Church wrote in Time. “Only 50% of New York Democrats questioned as they left primary voting booths said Clinton had the honesty to be President; 46% thought he did not. That was only a bit higher than the proportion expressing qualms in exit polls in earlier primaries.”

Predictably, though, Clinton’s many character flaws were less a drag on his campaign than public reaction to his wife, who you might recall is Hillary Clinton.

“[Hillary Clinton] has become a paradigm of the over-structured super-mom,” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote in May 1992. “A recent New Yorker cartoon showed a woman asking a salesclerk for a jacket and saying, ‘Nothing too Hillary.’”

Even among women who are Mrs. Clinton’s natural constituents, there is criticism about what they call “the Hillary situation.” Some leading Democratic women privately worry that, while Mrs. Bush may be the last of the First Ladies who have never worked outside the home, the public is still skittish about the idea of a First Lady who is more involved in substance than ceremony.

These critics say that the Clintons may have pushed too hard on the concept of an unprecedented partnership in the White House, and suggest that they should wait until after the election to break precedents.

It’s hard to overstate just how “radical” Hillary Clinton was viewed in 1992. Republicans took aim at her position on children’s rights. Noted bigot Pat Buchanan claimed at the Republican National Convention that Hillary believed “12-year-olds should have a right to sue their parents,” and that she had “compared marriage and the family as institutions to slavery and life on an Indian reservation.”

Hillary Clinton attempted to counter her supposed “radical left wing” image by insisting that she was actually “conservative, not liberal” on some key issues, including the death penalty and parental notification for abortion. She’d later observe, “I sometimes think that I didn’t leave the Republican Party, as much as it left me.” This pleased no one.

Conservatives accused Hillary Clinton of promoting Marxist ideology with her 1996 book It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us. They tried to link her to left-wing community organizer Saul D. Alinsky. David Brock called Clinton “Alinsky’s daughter” in his 1996 biography The Seduction of Hillary Clinton. (They are no actually related.) The late Barbara Olson took this to an absurd level in her 1999 book, Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton, where she opened each chapter with an Alinsky quote. Olson argued that the Clintons had buried her college thesis about Alinksy because she “does not want the American people to know the extent to which she internalized and assimilated the beliefs and methods of Saul Alinsky.”

Although the young Hillary Rodham criticized Alinsky’s “anachronistic” tactics, she praised him overall: “Much of what Alinsky professes does not sound ‘radical.’ His are the words used in our schools and churches, by our parents and their friends, by our peers. The difference is that Alinsky really believes in them and recognizes the necessity of changing the present structures of our lives in order to realize them.”

Bill and Hillary Clinton weren’t radicals who burned their draft cards and bras as college students in the 1960s but neither were they rigid traditionalists who studiously avoided any position that could damage a future political career. Today’s center-left moderates might prefer candidates who kept their heads down and avoided any potential controversy in college, but that doesn’t describe the Clintons.

Yet, it was entirely predictable that less than a decade after the Clintons left the White House, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign also tried to paint Barack Obama as an unelectable lightweight candidate who was “unvetted.” In February, when the Clinton campaign discovered there might be something to this Obama guy, chief strategist Mark Penn issued a press release detailing all the reasons Clinton was more “electable” than Obama. The tune should sound very familiar.

So how much do independent voters know about Barack Obama, his voting record and his past positions? Even less than Democrats know. For example, he recently told voters in Idaho that he favors the Second Amendment - but he didn't mention that, in the past, he supported a complete ban on all handguns. If he were the nominee, the Republican attack machine would have immediately rolled out his full record - and his independent Idaho support would have evaporated. So far, the Republicans have been laying low. Sen. Obama has never faced a credible Republican opponent or the Republican attack machine, so voters are taking a chance that his current poll numbers will hold up after the Republicans get going.

During a primary debate, Hillary Clinton suggested a questionable link between Obama and William Ayers of the Weathermen. She suggested their past meetings were part of a “larger set of concerns about how we’re going to run again John McCain.”

In April 2008, Clinton seized on Obama’s controversial comment suggesting that George W. Bush’s crappy economy had made working-class voters “bitter.” (She’d later raise that “bitter” with a “deplorable” in 2016.)

“I was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Sen. Obama made about people in small-town America,” she said. “Sen. Obama’s remarks are elitist and they are out of touch. They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans. Certainly not the Americans that I know.”

The whole “Black voters are the base of the party” mantra kicked in with the 2016 primary but in 2008, when Hillary Clinton lost Black voters decisively to Obama, she and her surrogates questioned Obama’s general election viability with white voters.

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” Hillary Clinton told USA Today in May 2008, when Obama had all but locked up the nomination. Clinton eagerly pointed to an AP article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

Self-described “common sense, pragmatic” Democrats have been questioning the electability of other Democrats for decades now, and they’ve consistently been proven wrong. The candidates who defy convention, who reject the past, are the ones who succeed.

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Yet, forgiveness is not the same as forgetting. The latter is an insult to the injured. After Louis and Ethel Rosenberg’s ghost deliver a Kaddish over Cohn’s body, they say with justified disgust, “You son of a bitch.” I would’ve supported any Graham tribute that ended similarly.

Hope you enjoy my conversation with Evan. Don’t forget to like, share, and all the goodies.

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Years ago, my wife and I were returning home after a trip to Italy, and we had a layover in London. Once we’d boarded, the flight was delayed for apparent mechanical issues, which I’m always in favor of resolving before we’re actually in the air. When the very posh flight attendant — think William Hanson — brought passengers a complimentary “please, just chill” drink, we inquired about the flight’s status, and he told us, perfectly deadpan, “They know what’s wrong. Now they’re just arguing over who to blame.”

A vocal segment of Democrats have determined who’s to blame for Donald Trump’s 2024 victory, and the pattern should disturb you. First, there’s the Uncommitted Movement, the protest campaign that pushed for a ceasefire in Gaza and an arms embargo on Israel. The prevailing centrist narrative is that Uncommitted alone cost Kamala Harris the election.

Gun control advocate Fred Guttenberg raged against Uncommitted this weekend during a particularly vicious rant against Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who’d criticized Rep. Haley Stevens for taking “corporate PAC money from the companies hurting Michiganders.” Guttenberg supports Stevens in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary in the sense that he really loathes Dr. Abdul El-Sayed.

Guttenberg posted, “Hey, Rashida Tlaib, you are a cancer on the Democratic party and America. You and your stupid protest vote are the reason we have a 2nd Trump term. you are not a Democrat, but you certainly use the party … Like I said you are a cancer.”

Notice that Guttenberg goes full Stephen Miller against Rashida Tlaib. As acclaimed actor Kirk Lazarus might warn, you should never go full Stephen Miller.

A “cancer” is an enemy that can’t be reasoned with, only violently exterminated. I can’t believe I have to say this, but you shouldn’t refer to anyone — even a politician —as a “cancer” just because you disagree with them on policy issues, especially when literal fascists — which Tlaib is not — currently control the government. If you seriously oppose Trump’s regime, then Tlaib is an obvious ally in that fight, just as I consider non-fascist centrist Democrats similar allies in the same battle.

When journalist Medhi Hasan responded, “Nothing to see here, just a Haley Stevens supporter repeatedly calling the only Palestinian American woman in Congress a ‘cancer’,” Guttenberg stood by his dehumanizing rhetoric.

“Nothing to see here except Medhi Hasan again making shit up. I have called many a cancer in our Government to include Trump and every man and woman who enables him. Only you, in your pathetic racist mind, are trying to make this about race.

She organized the protest vote that doomed Kamala Harris in Michigan. She is a cancer.”

Guttenberg also goes full Trump when he justifies his dehumanizing language. Trump enablers will insist Trump isn’t actually racist because he crudely insults everyone. However, any objective review of Trump’s remarks reveal specific animus toward people of color, especially women.

So, yes, Guttenberg has harshly condemned the Trump administration’s appalling record on gun violence, but he’s also proven capable of rational communication with Trump — most recently after Charlie Kirk was murdered last year. Guttenberg wrote directly to Trump on social media: “I saw your confirmation that Charlie Kirk, someone who you loved, has died. During your first term, someone I loved, was murdered. My daughter Jaime was killed in the Parkland shooting. I had hoped to work with your administration then to reduce gun violence. I am sorry for your loss today. I would still love to work with you to stop the next one.”

Meanwhile, Rashida Tlaib, who Guttenberg claims is “not a Democrat,” actually has a solid record on gun violence. She’s introduced a bill that would require gun locks for all firearm purchases. She co-founded the Background Check Expansion Act. She’s consistently advocated for an assault weapons ban.

In 2024, she called out the GOP-controlled House’s refusal to even consider gun safety legislation: “We have not voted on a single gun violence prevention bill under this Republican majority,” Tlaib posted on social media. “Guns now have more rights in this country than women do. It’s sick.”

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It’s revealing that Guttenberg doesn’t consider Tlaib a key congressional ally, especially considering all the glowing tributes to Lindsey Graham from Democrats who claim they found common ground with the late Republican senator, despite their considerable differences, over at least one issue. Gun safety is sort of Guttenberg’s issue, but Tlaib’s position on Israel/Gaza effectively makes her a non-person in his view. And this is almost entirely about Israel/Gaza. Yes, Tlaib is often critical of other Democrats, but moderate Democrats are also openly critical of progressive Democrats. You can’t maintain a “big tent” where only one group is allowed to speak freely.

Tlaib has consistently voted for Democratic causes and against MAGA. Yes, she didn’t support Biden during the 2024 primary, but that still makes her a Democrat. (It’s not really much of a Democratic primary if you can only vote for one candidate.)

Democrats online have defended Guttenberg’s “cancer” smear and his claim that Tlaib/Uncommitted cost Kamala Harris Michigan. This is a bizarre argument from the start: If you genuinely believe someone’s existence in the party is an overall negative, you can’t simultaneously demand that they support the party. It’s an electoral variation of Schrodinger's Leftist: An embarrassing liability to the party but also critical to the party’s success.

Of course, elected Democrat would swiftly condemn any prominent liberal activist who called a Trump-supporting Republican a “cancer.” They’re still apologizing for Hillary Clinton’s “deplorable” dig.

However, facts still matter: “Tlaib helped Trump win Michigan” is an outright lie. Kamala Harris did better among self-described liberals than Joe Biden. She lost ground with moderates and conservatives. She lost Latino voters outright by more than 20 points.

The 2024 election was about inflation, immigration, and overall global anti-incumbency backlash post-Covid. True, many pro-Palestinian liberals will also argue that Gaza was a determining factor in Harris’s loss, but the data doesn’t bear this out. Yes, Gaza is cited as the number one issue for Biden 2020 voters who didn’t show up in 2024, but according to exit polls, the overall percentage of self-described liberals remained consistent at 25 percent. Even you want to blame Tlaib and Uncommitted for suppressing the left-wing vote, people not voting for Harris because of Gaza is still less damaging than people voting for Trump. The number of self-described moderates increased from 2020 to 2024 and Trump improved his margins among them.

What’s alarming about the “Blame Uncommitted” narrative is that it pairs with the “blame trans people” narrative that far too many Democrats have embraced. Donald Trump didn’t win because of those “Kamala is for they/them” ads or because a trans student played sports somewhere. It was the price of eggs. Yet, prominent mainstream Democrats believe the lesson from 2024 is that they absolutely must find common cause with anti-trans bigots. It’s an interesting contrast with Uncommitted, as the same Democrats don’t seem to think they should alter their position on Israel/Gaza, even if it helps them win progressive votes.

This is because those Democrats are only interested in promoting a “stab in the back” myth about the 2024 election. They want to blame “Uncommitted” and trans people for Trump’s second reign of terror. It’s frankly repulsive that a supposed “multiracial” political party would set up vulnerable groups as scapegoats for their own failures. Pro-Israel Democrats like Fred Guttenberg might protest bitterly at the fascist comparison, but you’ll never defeat fascism by embracing its tactics.

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Spider-Man debuted in Amazing Fantasy No. 15 in 1962, and for more than 60 years we’ve come to think of the character as a youthful wisecracker with relatable problems. Yet, in theory, he would seem to have a lot in common with “creature of the night” Batman, especially during his early pulpy days. Just look at the covers for their respective debuts.

Bruce Wayne dresses like a giant bat to scare criminals, but if you think about it, the average person would probably rank spiders are more personally fearsome. Everyone encounters spiders in their daily life, but very few people have regular access to belfries. Spiders are creepy, despite the concerted PR efforts to justify their existence, and the early stories by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko present a Peter Parker who’s actually more brooding and dark than Batman was at the time. Sure, the Frank Miller-inspired Bruce Wayne is emotionally damaged — a mere mask for his true persona as Batman — but in the 1960s, years before Adam West, he was genuinely upbeat and cheerful. Peter Parker, however, had the origin of a future school shooter.

When Peter’s bitten by a radioactive spider during one of those common 1960s open-air radiation exhibits, he gains super powers that he decides to use for personal gain. He disguises himself with a mask — not to protect his loved ones, as is the typical superhero trope — but to avoid potential embarrassment.

Peter makes money performing as Spider-Man. He infamously lets a burglar walk right past when he could’ve stopped him easily. “Sorry pal, that’s your job,” Peter tells a police officer. “I’m thru being pushed around — by anyone! From now on, I just look out for number one. That means me!” He’s officially a young Republican.

Notice how almost sinister Spider-Man looks in the above panel. Ditko gave him a full-face mask and the narrow slits for eyes are especially off-putting. Compare this to Dick Sprang’s classic image of Batman — round, accessible eyes with an mask that lets us see his broad smile.

Later, Peter’s beloved Uncle Ben is murdered during a break-in. (Peter had earlier said that his Aunt May and Uncle Ben were “the only ones who’ve ever been kind to me. I’ll see to it that they’re always happy, but the rest of the world can go hang for all I care.”) When Spider-Man tracks down the killer, he learns to his horror that it’s the same common thug he let walk right past him.

On its own, Amazing Fantasy No. 15 plays out like an episode of the classic Twilight Zone, which was still on the air. The main character gains mysterious powers but misuses them. He then learns a harsh lesson. Spider-Man’s first appearance ends with this Rod Serling-style narration: “And a lean, silent figure slowly fades into the gathering darkness, aware at last that in this world, with great power there must also come great responsibility.”

The Russo Brothers have stated in interviews that Tom Holland’s Spider-Man isn’t responsible, even indirectly, for his uncle’s death in the MCU. “That would have been a more intense interpretation of the character.” This makes Holland’s Peter Parker a distinctly different character from Ditko and Lee’s. The Spider-Man films starring Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield also avoided this direction translation: Maguire’s Peter lets the burglar go because he’d just robbed someone who’d swindled him out of money he’d earned. That’s far more forgivable than comic-book Peter’s callousness. Garfield’s Peter doesn’t let the burglar get away, though he does feel guilty that Uncle Ben was murdered while searching for him after an argument.

When Spider-Man returns in his own title, almost a year later, he’s still somewhat of an anti-hero. He doesn’t stop performing for money because he’s taken his “power and responsibility” lesson to heart. Daily Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson has launched a crusade against him that effectively ends his entertainment career. He saves Jameson’s astronaut son, but his motivation is primarily self-interest. He hopes the rescue will salvage his reputation and career. He later tries to join the Fantastic Four but discovers they don’t work for profit. “Who needs you!” he tells them. “I’ll make you guys look like pikers!”

Soon, Peter figures out how to earn money taking photos of himself in action as Spider-Man, and he eventually settles into more traditional heroics when he faces Doctor Octopus and the Sandman. However, he constantly questions whether he is driven more by a craving for action and glory rather than true heroism and responsibility.

Peter’s internal narration isn’t yet the joking self-deprecating banter we’ve come to expect, but more like Travis Bickle’s journal. Spider-Man as a “grim avenger” might seem absurd now, but it wasn’t a stretch if you only read those early issues. Even his wisecracking remarks when defeating villains have a hardboiled detective edge.

Spider-Man as we know him today starts to emerge when John Romita replaces Steve Ditko as artist in 1966. His Spider-Man is drawn more heroic, less creepy. That’s when Peter Parker starts to become the dashing, slightly adorkable, romantic lead. It’s proven a successful formula, both on the page and on the big screen.

Ironically, Spider-Man’s post-Romita image as an essentially lighthearted character — despite the whole creepy spider thing — has become so set in our minds that when he wears an all-black costume, it’s seen as wrong, a corrupting influence. Batman is the Dark Knight but Spider-Man is forever a “friendly neighborhood” hero.

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Summer has arrived, even if the days are now slowly getting shorter again. I’m celebrating with a special summer subscription sale — 40 percent off the usual annual paid subscriber rate. That’s just $30 a year. Thanks to all who have upgraded to paid subscriber status recently.

This week, I paid a less-than-fond farewell to Sen. Lindsey Graham, who died last weekend.

I explored whether mainstream Democrats are genuinely shifting their position on Israel/Gaza or just repeating the failed pro-Iraq War strategy from 2004.

It’s probably a safe bet that John Fetterman will leave the Democratic Party after midterms.

from the Certain Thoughts Substack joined me for a timely discussion of my favorite play, Angels in America.

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That’s it for this week. See you on Monday.

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Please watch/listen to part one of our discussion. Part two will run next week.

Now enjoy some clips from productions of Angels in America.

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Roy Cohn is perhaps the rare role that both Al Pacino and Nathan Lane could play convincingly — although Lane as Michael Corleone or Richard Roma would be fun to watch.

Belize (played wonderfully on stage and screen by Jeffrey Wright) is the moral center of the play.

Here’s a young Tony Kushner, discussing Angels in America, in his first live TV appearance on Charlie Rose.

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The new political action committee is called Common Ground PA and is supposed to give the bipartisan fuzzies but instead just raises serious concerns. McCormick is objectively a better senator than Fetterman, as he actually engages with his constituents rather than just ranting about communists on Fox News. However, beneath the superficially pleasant veneer, McCormick is a reliably partisan Republican, who is fully on team MAGA. Seeking common ground with McCormick is definitely not in the best interests of democracy. Conor Lamb — easily the better choice for senator in 2022 — posted on social media, “They could’ve teamed up to get healthcare back for 160,000 Pennsylvanians who lost it. Could’ve teamed up to address PA’s grocery prices, among the fastest-rising in the nation. But no, they only team up to get money for themselves, sell books, and pose for cameras.”

Fetterman and McCormick are friends, even if they clearly don’t shop for clothes together. Rumors have circulated that McCormick and Alabama Sen. Katie Britt, another GOP bestie, are courting Fetterman to switch parties. Donald Trump has reportedly ordered Senate Republicans to turn Fetterman to the MAGA side. Next he’ll personally take Fetterman to some weird experimental theatre and tell him about the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise. (Watch below.)

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It’s worth mentioning, even if the mainstream media collectively shrugged, that Trump also reportedly offered Fetterman a “financial windfall” — i.e. a “bribe” — if he defected. The Common Ground PA PAC seems like the first step in delivering on this promised windfall. After all, McCormick — who’s not even up for re-election until 2030 — doesn’t need Fetterman’s help to raise money, but Fetterman is currently more popular among Republicans than Democrats, who collectively loathe him. McCormick can help connect Fetterman with the GOP donors necessary to keep Fetterman afloat if he plans to continue his Senate career. While we’re all better off if Fetterman left the Senate as another one-term loser like Kyrsten Sinema, he’s clearly desperate for the attention. As a private citizen, he’s just a slob in a hoodie. That doesn’t get you many talk show bookings.

This is why I’m more convinced than ever that Fetterman flips. He’ll probably do it after midterms and like Sinema, he might just become an independent. (Joe Manchin has also encouraged him to leave the Democratic Party and go indie.) He’ll blame the DSA victories, especially if Abdul El-Sayed is the Michigan Senate Democratic nominee.

When it comes to the Senate majority, Democrats are, as Bono once sang, “faraway, so close!” They have to flip four seats while holding all their current ones. After Graham Platner’s justified implosion, Maine is an uphill climb, so Democrats would have to win North Carolina, Ohio, Iowa, and Alaska of all places. I actually think Alaska is less of a reach than Texas, which remains electoral fool’s gold for Democrats. Maybe Democrats could pull off a miracle and run the table, but Fetterman still has the potential to shiv Democrats big time.

Of course, Bernie Sanders and Angus King are both independents who caucus with Democrats. Sinema, as annoying as she was, did the same. Ironically, even if Sinema had caucused with Republicans, Democrats would have kept their majority because Fetterman had just flipped his Pennsylvania Senate seat. Four years later, Fetterman will likely help ensure that Republicans maintain Senate control.

I imagine that Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune will promise Fetterman that if he makes the full heel turn and caucuses with the GOP, they will clear the primary field for him in 2028. Fetterman has argued that he’d make “a terrible Republican” because he “votes overwhelmingly with Democrats,” but he’s hardly a great Democrat. Regardless of his political positions, Fetterman devotes most of his time to trashing Democrats and the Left, even after candidates he might not like have already won their primaries.

The current MAGA GOP is a personality cult whose animating principle is devotion to Donald Trump. Fetterman has defended Trump’s corruption and his overall grossness toward women. He’s advocated for Trump’s ballroom vanity project and has consistently voted in support of Trump waging senseless war without congressional approval.

Fetterman has accused Democrats of having “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” a right-wing talking point that minimizes righteous Democratic fury over Trump’s fascist regime. Fetterman has submitted completely to the one policy position that matters most to Trump. Fetterman’s pro-weed stance is hardly a deal breaker. There’s a reason Trump courts Fetterman while banishing hardline conservatives like Bill Cassidy and Thomas Massie, and it’s not flattering to Fetterman.

Whatever promises Republicans make Fetterman, they don’t actually have to keep them when his term is up. They can easily ditch him if his approval is still in the toilet and it’s likely that an actual Democrat would beat him. If Democrats drop the ball in key races and Republicans maintain the majority without Fetterman, they might still welcome him to the fold anyway. Every extra vote helps. However, if circumstances are such that Fetterman is solely responsible for blocking a Democratic majority, I think Senate Republicans are savvy enough to realize that Democrats will make defeating Fetterman a top priority. They would stand a far better chance recruiting another Dave McCormick to run. Fetterman would have betrayed everything he believed in for a limited return. The only upside is that he probably never truly believed in anything but himself.

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“It is very clear that Mr. Netanyahu has not made us safer, has not brought us closer to peace. And he’s endangered Jews here in America and around the world. This is why he was just trashing me today on CNN,” Stevens said during last Tuesday’s Democratic primary debate. “I am not afraid of bullies. I am not afraid to stand up. And I continue to stand up for humanitarian aid, for the U.S. to work with the countries in the region and get aid into Gaza.”

Netanyahu, as well as Jonathan Greenblatt at the MAGA-excusing Anti-Defamation League, have consistently conflated any criticism of the Israeli government with violent antisemitism, but it’s still not a surprise that a pro-Israel candidate Stevens is suddenly “daring” to take on Netanyahu. Her words were hardly unique.

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Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor and Barack Obama’s first Leo McGarry, gave a speech at Tel Aviv University, which is in Israel, where he warned that unconditional aid to Israel needs to end and that Israel must abandon its dreams of seizing the entire West Bank and, while we’re at it, give serious consideration to Palestinian sovereignty. What is he, AOC now?

The New York Times helpfully described Emanuel’s remarks as a “stern tough-love message,” rather than further evidence of rising antisemitism within the Democratic Party, which is probably how it would’ve been reported if someone without Emanuel’s pro-Israel, centrist credentials had said anything similar. Perhaps it’s another variation of “only Nixon could go to China.”

Hillary Clinton echoed the Times’ framing in a social media post last Wednesday, “Rahm Emanuel’s candid, tough-love speech in Tel Aviv deserves attention from anyone who cares about the future of both Israelis and Palestinians.”

Wow, it’s both “Israelis and Palestinians” now. It’s as if even non-progressive Democrats can no longer ignore the brutal polling on this issue. For instance, 60 percent of U.S. adults have an unfavorable view of Israel, an increase from last year’s 53 percent, and 59 percent have little or no confidence in Netanyahu to “do the right thing regarding world affairs,” which also increased from last year’s 52 percent.

It’s even worse within the Democratic primary electorate: Eight-in-ten Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents currently have an unfavorable view of Israel. Although majorities of adults under the age of 50 in both parties now rate Israel and Netanyahu negatively, Democrats still rely the most on young voters and will need to turn them out in significant numbers in the upcoming midterms.

I don’t mind that establishment Democrats’ abrupt change is likely poll-driven, but I will probably forever hold a grudge against those who accused me of antisemitism or of not suitably caring about Jews because I defended Palestinians or dared question Israel’s actions after 10/7. (I lived through 9/11 so I know from experience how bad things can go when a terrorist attack has its own shorthand date that will live in infamy.)

That said, I’m always more interested in a productive way forward than harboring personal grudges, but I’m concerned that establishment Democrats are more interested in a politically convenient kayfabe act with Netanyahu as the star “heel” than a true change in policy. Will Democrats like Stevens and Emanuel actually hold back aid to Israel if the government doesn’t cut back on human rights offenses? That’s actual “tough love.” If establishment Democrats just express their disappointment with Netanyahu but continue fully supporting his government, then that’s more “spoiled rich kid love.”

Even before Israel’s approval plummeted in the polls, Democrats have tried singling out Netanyahu as the sole problem. Staunchly pro-Israel Democrats such as Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have openly criticized Netanyahu and his government. This is not out of the ordinary — our European allies might criticize Trump while making clear they still fully support a continued positive relationship with the United States. Of course, the big difference there is that Trump and his odious policies don’t enjoy popular support. American voters might have foolishly elected Trump twice, but we soon regretted ever putting on our electoral beer goggles. Our allies might rightly feel frustrated over American voters’ shortsightedness but they can also witness the ongoing public protests against the Trump regime. There is a significant anti-Trump coalition within the U.S.

Canada can reasonably embrace something close to a “One Bad Man Theory” about the U.S. Yes, MAGA is currently dominant, but the anti-MAGA opposition could prevail in the next election, if they can only stop nominating rapists. Canadians can reasonably presume that if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2028, all that crazy “51st state” nonsense will stop.

So, the Netanyahu Heel narrative raises the question of just who is the viable anti-Netanyahu politician with non-extremist positions? Yair Golan is the leader of the Israeli Democrats, and he opposes West Bank annexation and supports a two-state solution.

However, it’s not clear that Golan represents a sizable anti-Netanyahu coalition. According to a recent Gallup poll, just 27 percent of Israelis support a two-state solution with a 63 percent opposed. It’s a shocking shift from 2012, when 61 percent of Israelis backed a two-state solution. Although Netanyahu isn’t exactly popular in Israel, it’s not clear that any replacement would embrace a drastic change in policy or even have public support to do so.

Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot, a former IDF chief, is rising in polling to possibly replace Netanyahu and his positions are better because it’s hard to be worse. I would love to see Israeli leadership forge a different path, one not tied to Trump’s gross hip and not openly antagonistic to the Democratic Party in the U.S.

However, the evolving rhetoric from establishment Democrats can’t help but remind me of the 2004 Democratic primary elections when Iraq War-voting Democrats tried to split the difference: They maintained their support for the invasion but tried blaming President George W. Bush entirely for botching the war. That was their version of the “One Bad Man Theory” and it didn’t prove compelling. John Kerry attempted this convoluted song-and-dance but still lost to Bush. Four years later, Barack Obama would win the Democratic primary after clearly opposing the war, without any hedging. I think we are moving in a similar direction on the U.S. relationship with Israel, and it’s a matter of whether establishment Democrats can effectively play catch up.

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No, this wasn’t a Putin hit job. Graham reportedly experienced chest pain at his Washington, D.C. residence and then suffered cardiac arrest — a perfectly ordinary death. Like John McCain and let’s face it Mitch McConnell, Graham is yet another of Donald Trump’s former foes who he subdued and outlived. Now, all that’s left is Graham’s legacy, which is not impressive. He was a partisan hack who claimed character mattered when he prosecuted Bill Clinton’s fellatio-related “high crimes” but later became a staunch defender of accused sex offenders Trump and Brett Kavanaugh. This was spun as a tragic abandonment of once lofty principles, but that gives Graham too much credit. What mattered most to him was the accumulation of personal power and the advancement of his own right-wing agenda.

Consider Graham’s often cited warning about Trump on May 3, 2016: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed.......and we will deserve it.” This was the day of the Indiana GOP primary, which was Ted Cruz and the Republican establishment’s last stand against MAGA. Hillary Clinton was still polling consistently ahead of Trump, sometimes as much as double digits (although there were already signs of her weakness in the “Blue Wall” states). Graham was not making a moral declaration about supporting Trump. It was a tactical argument. Once Trump actually won, Graham was thrilled to have been proven wrong.

Liberals in particular will bring up Graham’s condemnation of Trump during a 2015 CNN interview after Trump proposed a racist Muslim ban. Graham (correctly) called Trump “a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot” who “doesn’t represent my party” or the “values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for.” (Watch below.)

Graham didn’t surrender his principles when he fully embraced Trump. He just saw firsthand that Trump would help deliver what he always wanted. Overlooking Trump’s bigotry and ego-driven stupidity is bad enough but Republicans like Graham (and John Cornyn and Bill Cassidy, whose political careers are now deceased) did so because they prioritize the MAGA agenda even over their own dignity. If I were one of Graham’s Democratic Senate colleagues, I might take that personally. Yet, most of them are more than willing to help promote the centrist-pleasing narrative that Graham was in any way respectable.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar posted a glowing tribute to Graham on Sunday. She wrote:

It was a shock this morning to find out that my friend Lindsey Graham has died. He was a man who loved his work, his country, and his family. He didn’t have an easy life growing up and to me that explained a lot about him as well as his devotion to his remaining family members including his sister.

It also explained his almost kid-like exuberance about his job and the responsibilities he was given (even in his sixties he would get off a plane in a foreign land with a twinkle in his eye and look at me as if to say, can you believe we are actually here and doing this?).

She goes on like this for a while — it’s enough to put you off your food — but “kid-like exuberance about his job” is where I had to pause to retch. I don’t consider Graham’s enraged defense of Brett Kavanaugh against serious assault allegations an example of child-like innocence. (Watch below.)

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“What you want to do is destroy this guy’s life, hold this seat open and hope you win in 2020,” Graham shouted, describing imaginary strawman Democrats. “This is the most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics.” (I repeat: Graham was an impeachment manager against Bill Clinton.)

What especially annoys me, though, about Klobuchar’s post is that just this year, Trump’s ICE goons murdered two of her constituents and terrorized countless more. Meanwhile, Graham openly supported Trump’s fascist invasion.

After Renee Good and Alex Pretti were publicly executed, Graham defended the poor, put-upon ICE agents:

“From a Republican point of view, the cops need us right now. They are being demonized. They’re being spat upon. They can’t sleep at night,” Graham said. “Are they right to want to change some ICE procedures? Absolutely. But I’m not going to lead this debate for two weeks before I can explain to the American people what I think the problem is. The problem is, structurally, for four years, the country was ruined.”

Dick Durbin shared the following nonsense in his tribute post:

Lindsey was part of every important policy issue and an indispensable player in every Senate ‘gang’. He was a fierce Republican partisan one day and a key bipartisan ally the next.

When I was Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he was the Ranking Republican. His word was good—no cheap shots.

This is absolute fantasy. Graham’s “bipartisan ally” days ended back when Netflix sent you DVDs in the mail. Supporting the bipartisan infrastructure bill — packed with goodies for his own constituents — was an exception to the partisan rule he established as a reliable vote against former bestie Joe Biden’s agenda. He even openly helped sabotage Biden’s bipartisan immigration deal for Trump’s benefit.

Durbin’s description of Graham’s service as ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee is also disconnected from reality. Graham accused Democrats of conspiring to ruin Kavanaugh’s life during his confirmation hearing and thus should never be trusted with true power. (He smeared his supposed friend Dianne Feinstein as masterminding this sinister plot at a time when she was probably struggling to remember where she put her keys.) Graham gleefully ignored Senate norms during Amy Coney Barrett’s drive through confirmation and mocked the protests from his Democratic colleagues. He basically argued that if the shoe were on the other foot, Democrats would act the same way. It was the cynical claim of the morally bankrupt.

Republicans — including Graham himself — would never forget this. That is how they’d remember a Democratic colleague who’d just died. They certainly wouldn’t sanitize his actions while in office. Democrats either believe that — per “Murc’s Law” — they must always exist above partisanship, no matter how ridiculous they look or how insulting it is to the people who put them in office and who they claim to protect. Or they genuinely believe it’s all just a game, and Graham merely a charming player in that game, one they’ll genuinely miss. This isn’t a game, however, and I think voters have no more appetite for those who think they’re playing one.

Hunter Biden wrote on Sunday that he chose to remember the Lindsey Graham who once praised his father as “the nicest person I’ve ever met in politics” rather than the man he was afterward, one who told Fox News’ Jesse Watters in 2024 that he believed “the only felon in this election is Joe Biden. His border policies are criminal.” (Biden was never actually charged with a crime.)

Even if you’re not a Biblical scholar, you still know that what people remember most about Judas is that he betrayed Christ. Their prior friendship — whatever Judas might have once believed — isn’t exonerating. No, he’s viewed worse than those who were Christ’s enemies from the start. Perhaps Graham’s Democratic “friends” are willing to give him the Jesus Christ Superstar treatment, but he doesn’t deserve it. Voltaire wrote, “To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.” Lindsey Graham is dead and nothing is gained from sparing him, and the public, the harsh truth.

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However, prequels are how corporations leverage a popular intellectual property. It’s a testament to Legally Blonde that studios are still panning for gold there. The “franchise,” as Hollywood likes to say, began with the 2001 novel by Amanda Brown — herself a blonde who’d attended Stanford Law School but was obsessed with fashion and beauty magazines. This put her in conflict with many of her peers, and since conflict is the source of all great fiction, Brown decided to adapt letters she’d written to her parents about her law school experience into a novel. She took a community college writing course and shopped around her manuscript — unsuccessfully until she resubmitted it in pink, which caught the attention of an agent. Maybe I should write more scripts in pink.

When producer Marc Platt received Brown’s unpublished manuscript, he recruited writing partners Karen McCullah and Kirsten Smith (10 Things I Hate About You, Legally Blonde, Ella Enchanted, The House Bunny) who adapted Brown’s book for the big screen. Then first time feature film director Robert Luketic signed on to the project: “I had been reading scripts for two years, not finding anything I could put my own personal mark on, until Legally Blonde came around,” he said.

The script’s first draft wasn’t that impressive, more in line with the studio’s desires for what Luketic described as “more wet T-shirts and boobs than it actually turned out to be.” There was no murder trial initially and the film ended with Elle dating a professor. It was very American Pie. McCullah and Smith vastly altered the plot and added new characters, including Jennifer Coolidge’s Paulette.

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I remember seeing and very much enjoying Legally Blonde during the summer of 2001. Two years after playing a drastically different character in Election, Reese Witherspoon delivered an astounding comedic performance that also showed depth and complexity. Elle Woods defied the silly blonde stereotype and rejected 1990s-era hipster nihilism. She was confident enough in herself to maintain her earnestness and open appreciation for life. Both in college and in New York, I encountered a lot of the too-cool-for-school types who confused cynicism with sophistication. In Legally Blonde, Elle endures and overcomes the sneering contempt from people who mistakenly believe they are enlightened but are instead intellectual and cultural bigots. This conflict remains relevant.

Legally Blonde inspired a 2003 sequel with a great title (Red, White & Blonde) and an unsuccessful 2007 Broadway musical starring Laura Bell Bundy, who would later star in the unsuccessful 2025 Broadway musical version of Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion. It’s a shame, because I personally find Bundy delightful. It’s just possible that neither Reese Witherspoon nor Elle Woods can be easily reproduced.

(Oh, and the brilliant Alanna Ubach is her usual scene-stealing self as Elle’s friend Serena. Watch some highlights below.)

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Summer has arrived, even if the days are now slowly getting shorter again. I’m celebrating with a special summer subscription sale — 40 percent off the usual annual paid subscriber rate. That’s just $30 a year. Thanks to all who have upgraded to paid subscriber status recently.

This week, I wrote about America’s 250th anniversary celebration and whether the nation can survive Donald Trump.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani suggested New Yorkers set their thermostat at 78 degrees and Republicans lost their minds. You’d think they were Frosty the Snowman.

Reforming the Supreme Court is a noble goal. Expanding the Supreme Court, however, would directly address the threat the current Court poses, which is why Democrats will likely resist doing so.

I felt like writing about Netflix, which I keep forgetting I have. It’s been a long time since The Crown.

That’s it for this week. See you on Monday.

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Avatar: The Last Airbender was one of Netflix’s most-watched shows in 2024 but plummeted more than 60 percent in its latest season. Even well-received comedies Running Point and The Four Seasons lost more than 50 percent of their viewers in their second season.

Netflix has seemingly identified the issue: There is often far too much of a delay between installments, sometimes years, so it’s less like a new season and more like a new era. Viewers move on. For instance, Wednesday starring Jenna Ortega was a meme-worthy sensation when it debuted in 2022 but a second season didn’t arrive until late 2025. Over on Hulu, Only Murders In The Building has consistently aired every year since its 2021 debut (50 total episodes so far) and has steadily built an audience.

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I think the larger issue for Netflix is one that’s perhaps core to its identity — binge-watching (a term I’ve always found odd, as it doesn’t suggest a healthy action). New Netflix series are released all at once, which is clearly a mistake. Binge viewing was once key to the success of series like Breaking Bad, where audiences discovered the show well into its run and then “binged” past episodes so they could catch up with the new ones. However, Breaking Bad was already airing weekly, like a traditional TV series.

Just as movies benefit from watching them with a large group of people, TV shows thrive when audiences watch episodes “together,” at the same time. In ancient times, popular TV shows became “water cooler” discussion the day after they aired. We collectively debated who killed Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks and discussed the ongoing conspiracy in The X-Files. Later on, reality TV show “drama” would dominate conversation the day after the latest Real World or Survivor. A show like Lost would have fizzled if episodes dropped all at once and there were years between new “seasons.”

For popular comedies like Seinfeld and The Simpsons, it mattered that audiences experienced the jokes around the same time. We were all dancing like Elaine in unison.

The weekly airings for shows like WandaVision, Severance, and Only Murders In The Building keeps the water cooler discussion going for weeks, allowing viewers to ponder and debate theories. It’s a slow tease rather than a quick hit.

Only Murders In The Building also airs from late summer through early fall — somewhat similar to a classic TV schedule (though with an abbreviated 10 episode season). I think there’s a reason that schedule has worked for generations. It’s reliable but also when people are primed to settle in and watch TV again. Netflix series schedules are more haphazard. Wednesday’s second season was split in two parts — August 6 and September 3, both Wednesdays, which is cute but that was prime summer vacation. (Viewership for the second half dropped more than 40 percent.)

The Four Seasons dropped its first season on May 1, 2025 and its second on May 28, 2025. I think that’s a big difference scheduling-wise. Although, there wasn’t a large gap between installments, I confess I was surprised to learn that there would even be a second season. The first felt, well, finished. I’ve been rewatching Only Murders In The Building with my 12-year-old and I appreciate how the finales tie up each season’s mystery while ending with a cliffhanger that leaves you talking (and guessing) about the next season. That’s another classic TV series move.

Of course, Only Murders In The Building offers a narrative with compelling, life-and-death stakes, while The Four Seasons is pretty much “Rich People Problems,” which can feel positively adolescent (and misplaced in our current dumpster fire reality).

The only original Netflix series I’ve watched regularly was The Crown, and it felt like a major event. Each season’s episodes arrived in either November or December — consistent with “sweeps” in a traditional TV schedule — and there was only a gap year whenever the cast was replaced, during which the anticipation for the new leads kept the series relevant.

Netflix can probably turn things around, perhaps enough so that I’ll download the app on my mobile devices again (currently, our son just watches old cartoons like Kevin Smith’s Masters of the Universe), but the platform might need to fundamentally change its identity. Binge-watching is the past not the future.

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My friend recently wrote over at that Democrats should start openly declaring they’ll expand the Supreme Court once they’ve returned to power (presumably after fumigating the White House). I agree that specifics are preferable to mealy mouthed generalities, which is how most Democratic leaders have responded to an out-of-control Supreme Court. Last week, after four MAGA justices in the birthright citizenship case rejected the plain language of the 14th Amendment, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said, “I think everything needs to be on the table. I think we need radical reform.” (Watch below.)

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This is an obviously pre-approved Democratic talking point. After the Supreme Court spat on the VRA, Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries said, “We’re going to have to do something about this Supreme Court. And let me be very clear: everything is on the table.” (I loathe the phrase “let me be clear.” No one is twisting a politician’s arm and demanding obfuscation.)

Berlatsky notes that Democrats are probably skittish about calling for Supreme Court expansion because it’s not nearly as popular as more measured reforms. According to a Brennan Center poll from March, adding seats to the current Supreme Court has just 46 percent support — so arguably not even all Democrats back the idea. Whereas, other perfectly reasonable reforms enjoy greater support:

Mandatory retirement age for justices—73%

Term limits for justices—73%

National elections for justices—55%

Retention elections for justices—53%

Overturn rulings via referendum—53%

Add seats—46%

I think the challenge here is that expanding the court is merely a prescriptive solution to a larger problem: The Supreme Court as an institution has zero accountability. That’s not how a democracy should work. We should not exist at the mercy of robed masters who we can’t realistically replace, despite repeated demonstrations of naked corruption. Chief Justice John Roberts has rejected Senate Democrats’ appeals for basic oversight. Samuel Alito all but told Senate Democrats to go climb their thumbs when they gently suggested he recuse himself from January 6 cases, even after his own wife flew an upside-down U.S. flag — the standard for the “Stop the Steal” movement — outside their Virginia home just weeks after the MAGA assault on the Capitol.

Everything Is Horrible

Demand That Candidates Say “Expand the Court”

What should we do about the out-of-control Christofascist Supreme Court? “I think everything needs to be on the table,” very centrist Pennsylvania Governor and woul-be 2028 presidential nominee Josh Shapiro said when asked that question last week following the narrow 5-4 decision defending birthright citizenship…

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a month ago · 46 likes · 8 comments · Noah Berlatsky

The conservative justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade — specifically Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — arguably gave misleading if not outright false testimony when questioned about Roe during their Senate confirmation hearings. That’s ultimately academic, though, because they won’t face any real penalty for lying. There is no “read my lips: no new taxes” backlash. They can serve on the Court for the rest of their lives, which could be decades. Clarence Thomas has sat on the Supreme Court for 35 years, almost as long as there’s been a Law & Order series on the air, which is just insane. No one should have that much power over American citizens for such an extended period.

This is why mandatory retirement ages, term limits, national elections, and retention elections — as well as the ability to overturn rulings that defy popular sentiment or are based in outright false data — are all ideal methods of reforming the Supreme Court as an institution, which is too corrupt and anti-democratic to exist in its current form. (All respect to Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, but they only make the court 33 percent less corrupt and anti-democratic. The math isn’t good.)

However, I must concur with Berlatsky that these necessary reforms don’t address the current MAGA Supreme Court’s ongoing threat. He writes:

Term limits and/or age limits could simply not be instituted in a bipartisan way that would result in a Democratic majority on the court given the fact that (a) most of the Christofascist justices are young and were placed on the court not that long ago, and (b) any plan that did change the balance of the court would be fiercely opposed by Republicans and their voters, causing that bipartisan 73% approval to quickly drop to something much more like a partisan 46%.

There is an overall good-faith argument for containing if not outright reducing the Supreme Court’s power, but the Supreme Court is a threat to democracy right now because these specific conservative justices are hostile to the rights granted to all Americans since the Civil War. Republicans share this hostile view, and they only object on the rare instances where Roberts and especially Barrett show some basic scruple or intellectual consistency.

Obviously, in the alternate reality where Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election and there’s a center-left Supreme Court majority, liberals wouldn’t consider these reforms necessary. Conservatives would argue this makes us hypocrites, but a center-left Supreme Court would be … sane. It would respect precedent and overall democracy. Four liberal justices wouldn’t suddenly pretend that the Second Amendment doesn’t actually exist. No, the problem with the Supreme Court is that conservatives are in control. That’s the blunt reality.

Mainstream Democrats might fear that Americans will view Court expansion as a blatantly partisan response, but that’s exactly how Americans should see this. They should understand that Republicans have built this corrupt Supreme Court and Democrats will tear it down, freeing us all. There is no “bipartisan” fix for the damage Republicans have inflicted in broad daylight.

Democrats should learn from how they were screwed by independent redistricting commissions. Creating a level playing field isn’t the answer here. Democrats must specifically neutralize right-wing control over the judicial branch. We’re long past Joe Biden’s almost farcical Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States. We don’t need a commission to discuss the gun pointed at our heads. We need to disarm our opponents and fight back. My concern is that the Democratic Party, as it currently exists, will always struggle to embrace a total war position against the GOP.

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“New York: it’s hot out there, and the power grid is working overtime to keep us cool. Set your AC to 78 degrees, turn off lights/electronics you’re not using, and unplug what you can. Our City is doing its part too: maintaining the 78 degrees rule in our buildings, dimming/turning off our lights during peak electricity demand, asking private partners to do the same, and powering down non-essential equipment. A stable grid means the AC stays on, and lives are saved. Let’s ease demand — and get through the heat — together.”

This almost immediately sparked a 2020 covid-era right-wing resistance, because a disturbing number of Americans suffer from oppositional defiance disorder. There was a clearly coordinated response from Republicans for whom shame and honesty aren’t in their job descriptions. Sen. Lindsey Graham warned, “This is the future that WOKE Democrats want not just for NYC but for South Carolina too!” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis snarkily said, “Is this what was meant by the warmth of collectivism?” Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley wrote, “Welcome to socialism!”

If you’re someone who mainlines Fox News, it obviously doesn’t matter that Mamdani’s suggestion was consistent with past guidance from Republican and Democratic mayors and governors — including Nikki Haley herself. The same recommendation was even on the Department of Energy’s official web page before vanishing in a flash of gaslight.

(BTW: Any thermostat debate reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from Curb Your Enthusiasm.)

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All this contrived furor over Mamdani’s banal message conveniently ignores that 78 degrees is a perfectly comfortable temperature. It’s like the summer high in San Diego, where there’s still a debate over whether air conditioning is necessary. Many San Diego homes were historically built without AC because of the mild climate. Global warming has increased that need over the years but that’s because summer highs are now inching into the mid 80s and low 90s. A similar situation has occurred in the Pacific Northwest, as summers in Portland and Seattle have gotten more oppressively hot. When I was in England recently, it was scorching and unlike my native South, the buildings there aren’t designed to maximize coolness.

Republican Rep. Brandon Gill posted on social media, “Welcome to socialism, where the government demands you turn your house into a sauna because they can't plan for the super unpredictable fact that it tends to get hot in the summer.”

Gill represents Texas’s 26th congressional district, so he should be accustomed enough to hot weather that he wouldn’t describe 78 degrees as sauna-like. (The average sauna temperature ranges from 150 to 195 degrees. Maybe Gill’s home sauna is broken.) A heated pool is usually 78 degrees at a minimum and is meant to be refreshing on a hot day. Daniel Di Martino from the Manhattan Institute posted a video where he defiantly set his thermostat to 67 degrees, which is sweater weather. If I had ever dared set a thermostat below 75 — 72 if the Queen or Oprah were visiting — my mother would have unleashed hell, where it is hotter than a sauna.

My first New York apartment didn’t have air conditioning, so I relied on a fan and an open window that let in stagnant air. This was the mid-1990s and New York has gotten steadily warmer. (This is year round, so New York winters are now snowier.) In my AC-less 20s, I would’ve found 78 degrees perfect for a summer afternoon drinking ice tea with all the windows covered from the sun.

I grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, and my experience with air conditioning is that it’s expensive, so no one kept their homes like a meat locker. That was a luxury reserved for the shopping mall or movie theater, where come to think of it white people probably controlled the thermostats. Meanwhile, Black folks had to bring a sweater when shopping or seeing a movie in the summer. My elder relatives insisted that if you kept the AC too cold, it could cause or aggravate arthritis. (There is perhaps some partial truth to this.)

When I started working in New York, it often felt as if men like Daniel Di Martino set the workplace thermostat. I recall a 2015 headline from the satirical web site Reductress read: Archaeologists Discover Perfectly Preserved Frozen Woman Under Office A/C Vent. This is more than just a joke. It was a disturbing reality.

At my last New York City job, it would often get so cold in the office that my former colleague Kelso used to wear Bob Cratchit gloves while typing. This was in the summer! That was both uncomfortable but absurdly inefficient. Air conditioning should ideally make you feel less hot, not freezing cold. One could argue that 78 degrees is the true Goldilocks setting. After all, if New Yorkers followed Mamdani’s commie decree (which was more a polite request), the temperature in their homes would still be almost 30 degrees cooler than it currently is outside. That’s an engineering marvel for which we should be grateful, but instead Republicans are complaining and encouraging people to drive up their power bill at a time when the economy is hardly humming. That’s just not cool.

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