Course Correction, Take I"/The Reckoner>
Though it attracted the most attention,
DeGette's upset wasn't the only one on Tuesday's menu, as two other
Democratic progressives also made waves. In the Eighth Congressional
District, Manny Rutinel advanced to the November election over
incumbent Shannon Bird, 40,339-22,792.
In the Governor's race,
Attorney General Phil Weiser beat centrist Senator Michael
Bennet by a 365,254-297.579 margin
(55.1-44.9%). Both were vying to succeed the term-limited incumbent,
Jared Polis, who earned himself widespread infamy in pardoning election denying clerk, Tina Peters (having served barely a
quarter of her nine-year sentence). Democratic Senator John Hickenlooper
did successfully fend off a challenge from his progressive
challenger, Julie Gonzales (469,564-418,066), in one of the night's lone bright spots for
centrist politicians.
The news followed an equally stunning showing last month in New York City, in which Mayor Zohran Mamdani saw all three of his endorsed candidates win their races. Two incumbents – including the Democratic Hispanic Caucus's chair – were among the losers. These results follow last spring's series of upsets, including Graham Platner's victory in Maine.
Prominent centrists – who really should be called Corporate Moderates, for reasons we'll revisit shortly – reacted as they usually do, with a mixture of bravado and denial. WelcomePAC co-founder Liam Kerr's comments in Politico typify this muddled thinking: “We love the statistic that [progressives have] never flipped any seats. We love to say, ‘look at the polling. But we haven’t been scared enough. We’ve been high on our own supply of data while they’ve been organizing.”
The unintentional irony of Kerr's last comment highlights the denial at the heart of Democratic normie thinking – which implies that their critics will just fade away, if they hear, "We're trying," or, "We're working on it," often enough. As DeGette discovered on Tuesday, it's a defense that's wearing increasingly thin with voters struggling to afford necessities like food, gas, and rent.
It's a moment that screams out for the punchline from Bob Dylan's '60s classic, “Ballad of a Thin Man”: “But there's something happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you – Mr. Jones?”
You're In Too Deep"/The Reckoner>
Still, it's worth noting that the six
reactionaries – led by Chief Justice John Roberts – took a
somewhat more strategic approach, compared to the infamous 2024 presidential immunity ruling that evoked so much public outrage. Mindful, perhaps, of avoiding a similar outcome, the reactionary bloc threw out some bones.
In
the biggest surprise, the court upheld, 5-4, a five-day grace period
for mail-in ballots in Mississippi, for instance. The notion of birthright citizenship also survived, 6-3. Yet the margin against the Trump executive order banning birthright citizenship isn't as lopsided as it appears; Justice Brett Kavanaugh partially dissented, though he joined the majority – agreeing that the order flouted federal law, which
Congress could correct, if it wished. Whatever interests Kavanaugh claims to serve, the people's don't rank among them.
Otherwise, the court remained its predictably nasty, brutish self. As we've noted in previous postings, the reactionary bloc handed 6-3 wins to Trump on two immigration cases – and, by a similar margin, upheld Democratic FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter's firing, despite a lack of any direct cause. In doing so, the court flushed a 90-year precedent against the practice – freeing the Trump regime to fire whomever it wants, however it wants, whenever it wants.
The court's actions lay
waste to the separation of powers, because it's hard to imagine that our new nation yearned to repeat the monarchist abuses of power, once it shook them off. The 5-4 ruling that allowed Federal Reserve Board Commissioner Lisa
Cook to remain there simply reflects the Robed Rogues's calculating streak. Allowing her firing to stand would have aroused the markets, who would have not tolerated it. Messing with the Fed might arouse Wall Street's animosity -- and, by extension, that of the billionaires who spent so heavily to elevate Roberts and his clique.
Clearly, this
court respects privilege and money, far more than individual rights – a depressing conclusion to
draw, indeed, as we reach our 250th birthday. But it's
hard to imagine how many, who have struggled for so long, without
anyone coming to their rescue, would actually feel that way.
Never
has the American Dream felt so gutted, so hollowed out, and so
unattainable -- and never has the need for changing this unholy status quo felt so urgent, as it does now, if our democracy is to survive. It's as simple, and existential, as that.
There were ample warning signs that DeGette failed to heed, starting with the Denver County party assembly, where Kiros soundly defeated her by a 67-33% margin in a preliminary delegate preference poll. The situation created a major embarrassment for DeGette before her primary campaign even started, since candidates needed at least 30% to grace the ballot.
As telling as that figure seemed, it failed to register with the legacy media. Yes, the Colorado Sun opined, DeGette's lukewarm showing belied her veteran status – but meant nothing, since “the assembly process is not representative of the broader electorate.” Westword waxed no less optimistic, noting that many candidates who failed to woo the delegates had went on to win their primaries.
DeGette's estimated $2.84 million net worth – much of it coming from investments in stocks and mutual funds, per the OpenSecrets site, which tracks such things – also cut a starkly unfavorable contrast to Kiros, who'd been working as a barista. That job became a necessity, after Kiros's law fired her, simply for defending student protests against the occupation on her Substack page.
“You solve homelessness by giving people housing, you solve hunger by giving people food, you solve healthcare by going to a single-payer system. We know these things already, and yet nothing changes, ever — and it’s because, despite the fact the vast majority of Americans agree on the solutions for all of these issues, there’s too much money in our politics.”
Kiros's comments for Colorado Newsline (see link below) mirrored those of disillusioned volunteers like Iranian-American Roddy Salimi, 25, whose own remarks simmer with a moral clarity that establishment Democrats no longer seem able to muster: "Last year, my home country of Iran was attacked by the very nation that funded that (2020) campaign, using weapons the representative I interned for voted to send. I felt betrayed.”
This line of attack is the keynote theme of the Politico piece -- which reads, in part, like a Corporate Moderate press release -- as we see in these comments from Phil Gardner, of Blue Dog Action:
“This has to change,” Reich urges. “Unless Democrats stand up to the oligarchs now running this nation, there won’t be any alternative to Trump Republicanism in the future, or any reason for a Democratic Party.”
A Brennan Center survey released last month showed that 92% of Americans worry about government corruption, a figure that cuts across all party lines; 79% support a constitutional amendment to restore spending limits for elections; 66% think the government should ensure that all Americans have a right to healthcare, versus 33% who oppose the idea.
“People are really unhappy,” sighs
former Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who's running to regain the seat
that J.D. Vance vacated to become Vice president. “They believe the
system's rigged. They see corporations making more and more money,…corporate executives taking more and more of those dollars for
themselves, stock buybacks, bonuses, compensation of all kinds. They
know they're working harder than ever…and they know that…more
money's going out than coming in.”
<National Republican Senate Committee attack ad:
Will Corporate Moderates and their allies follow suit?
El-Sayed campaign email>
Her donor list reads like a Who's Who of Fortune 500 power brokers, whether it's the defense (General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Raytheon), finance and healthcare (Blue Cross Blue Shield, JPMorgan Chase, Quickens Loans), or tech sectors (Facebook, Google, Microsoft), take your pick.
It's the kind of list that begs the question, “Why are all these players involved, and what do they expect from their investment?” – one that Stevens naturally ducked, when it surfaced during the candidates' only joint appearance, at their recent public debate on Mackinac Island. Time will tell if more follow, though we doubt that Stevens will want to repeat the experience.
Centrists would do well to heed the likes of Bennet, whose comments in Colorado
Newsline show him as much more astute than his peers: “People my kids’ age hate
the parties,” Bennet said during a June 4 debate. “They don’t
believe that they’re standing for them.”
And anyone who's felt the squeeze of jacked-up rents after the private equity vultures discovered them, would agree with these remarks, coming at a housing forum, where Bennet and Weiser appeared:
“The reality is that people of my generation, and Phil’s generation, have benefited from a ridiculous increase in our asset prices, and we have rolled up the carpet on everybody else,” Bennet said. “You see the massive intervention … to inflate the stock market, to inflate the assets of people living in the wealthiest neighborhoods, in the largest houses in Colorado — very clearly to the detriment of the people who work in our restaurants, who work in our schools, who serve in our police department and our firefighters.”
Those who prefer a slightly more direct summary will appreciate these words from Chanae Jackson, spotted on Facebook: "The same Democratic Party that swore up and down they were the last line of defense against fascism... drew their actual line in the sand at SOCIALISM?
"They don't fear fascism threatening
democracy. They fear socialism threatening their access to the bag.
Your tax dollars have been their personal piggy bank of these greedy
bastards for decades and Mamdani is blowing the whole operation wide
open."
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi worked the phones on Connolly's behalf from her hospital bed -- ironically, due to suffering a broken hip after a fall (see link below). If that's not a clear metaphor for generational change, what is?
When you can't afford the food on your plate, it's difficult to cheer the completion of a new bridge in your town. If Democrats really want to reclaim their mojo, this is the place to start. If nothing else, expanding a progressive presence in Congress will force Democrats to reclaim their moral clarity -- an especially pressing priority, given the Trump regime's wrecking ball approach to governance, and the Corporate Moderates' singular failure to meaningfully confront it.
Doing so will require a return to the notion that some red lines should never be crossed. The notion of Congressmen and Senators trading stocks like baseball cards is either a good idea, or it's not. The same observation can be offered on any number of issues, whether it's the infrastructure-gobbling potential of data centers, or the need for expanding the Extreme Court.
"We have in it our power to begin the world over again," as Thomas Paine observed in his famous 1776 pamphlet, Common Sense. "A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom from the events of a few months."
Or, perhaps, we might go with the blunter update, as Jackson voices it: "Stay mad. Stay clear. And stop letting people who benefit from your suffering tell you what kind of help you're allowed to ask for."
Or, once again, to coin a phrase from that '79 Secret Affair song: "This is the time, time for action -- time -- to -- be -- seen!"
However we take this medicine is up to us. But if we want to save our democracy from the slippery slope -- and hope to carve a path out of our present darkness, and are truly serious about reclaiming the ideals that our Founders envisioned, so long ago -- nothing less will do. --The Reckoner
Links To Go (Hurry, Hurry, Before The Autocrats
Shove Their Thumbs On The Scale):
Colorado Newsline: How Democratic Socialist
Melat Kiros Stunned Colorado Politics...:
https://coloradonewsline.com/2026/07/02/how-melat-kiros-stunned-colorado-politics/
Denverite: DeGette Concedes,
There's Little Room For Politicians Like Her:
https://denverite.com/2026/07/01/diana-degette-concedes-melat-kiros/
Jezebel With Splinter:
75-Year-Old Democrat Who Beat AOC For Key Role Resigns...:
https://www.jezebel.com/75-year-old-democrat-who-beat-aoc-for-key-role-resigns-after-4-months
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/25/progressive-moderate-democratic-party-battlegrounds-00975000
The Hill:
Demcoratic Socialists Are On The Rise:
Are The Pitchforks Finally Coming Out?:
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/5943153-democratic-socialism-rise-popularity/
