Mad King Watch (Take XVIII): A Republic, If We Can Restore It (Reclaiming Our Mojo On America's 250th Birthday)

 

<"Consequences Coming:
Course Correction, Take I"/The Reckoner>

<i.>

The revolution will not be televised, but on Tuesday, landed where it counts the most – at the ballot box. In Colorado, Democratic primary voters rebuked the party establishment's choice – Congresswoman Diana DeGette, who'd been in place since 1996. Melat Kiros, 29, a self-described democratic socialist, won by double-digit margins. Kiros garnered 58,337 votes (49.3%), followed by DeGette, with 51,459 (43.5%), and businesswoman Wanda James (8,505 votes, or 7.2%).

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?”

<"Happy 250th, Sucker...
You're In Too Deep"/The Reckoner>

<ii.>

For progressives – indeed, for any voter who still harbors some measure of the hopes and dreams that our Founding Fathers entertained, once they'd defeated their British colonizers – felt like a sorely-needed balm of relief, as the reactionary-stacked Supreme Court – or, the Extreme Court, or the Supremacy Cour, as we prefer to call it – continued dismantling major pieces of the republic that Ben Franklin audibly hoped to keep.

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 250^th 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.

<Tired of hearing the same old broken record...

"A Tale Of Two Expectations, 2026 Style..."/The Reckoner>

<iii.>

DeGette's upset produced a raft of predictable headlines, such as the question that Colorado Public Radio posted: “What just happened to Diana DeGette?” A better one might sound like this, in light of our Dylan quote: why didn't Mr. Jones -- or Ms. Jones, in this case -- read the room more adeptly?

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.

The bitterest irony of DeGette's loss is that, for decades, she was widely seen as her delegation's most progressive member, based on her support of ideas like Medicare For All. And how could her district even part with someone who'd served as one of the House managers of Donald Trump's second impeachment trial?

Yet DeGette struggled to explain her willingness to accept money from Super PACs – including the $1.3 million that poured in, to shore up her campaign – and inability to break from decades of supporting Israel, whose brutal occupation of the Gaza Strip has created such a major fissure within the party.

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.

But DeGette's pleas to stick with a woman whose daughters had “never known a time when their mom was not in elected office," as she noted -- in a telling aside from her concession statement -- fell on deaf ears. “Continuity” isn't a word that voters care to hear, especially when they're seeing their own lives get worse, while the status quo remains stubbornly intact, as Kiros observed:

“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.”

<Michigan Democratic Senate Primary Flyer:

Abdul El-Sayed makes the case 

against the establishment>

<iv.>

With recent trends turning against them, the Corporate Moderates – and their Washington, D.C. allies, as well as the legacy media – are resurrecting a familiar  argument: any use of the s-word (“socialism”) is too risky, because it might alienate those ever-elusive swing voters, and Republican soccer moms, or something along those lines. The activist left can't be trusted, because its denizens are starry-eyed space cadets, incapable of governing effectively, or – to coin their chosen phrase – “solve problems.”

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:

“The reason they do that is because it works,” Gardner said of GOP efforts to tie moderates to progressives. “Candidates running in these competitive seats should not rely on just anti-Trump sentiment or the Democratic brand, because you’re basically putting your destiny in the hands of forces far outside your control.”

It's an odd argument, when we consider what the Republican Party has become – an anti-democratic, authoritarian personality cult, driven by the whims of one man (Donald Trump) who's bullied companies into “partnering” with his regime – and egged on his underlings to aggressively pursue his real or imagined enemies. Sounds like quintessential Stalinism, doesn't it? If not, what does?

Some centrist faces, like Gavin Newsom, are running for cover– as he's shown, in backing off California's wealth tax proposal. Never mind that it's designed as a one-time fix that would raise $40 to $100 billion, depending on the estimate. San Francisco Mayor Dan Lurie pulled a similar stunt, in leading the charge against a corporate tax on the CEOs who've hollowed out his city, as Robert Reich noted, in a Facebook post last month. The measure lost narrowly.

“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.”

That circle gets even tougher to square, when you consider a few relevant statistics that Heather Cox Richardson cites in a Facebook post of her own.

According to CBS News, the wealthiest 1 percent own 31.7% of all US wealth, the highest share they've enjoyed since 1989, when the Fed first began tracking household wealth, in 1989. “That means the wealthiest 1% held roughly as much in assets as the bottom 90% of Americans combined: about $55 trillion,” she reported.

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>

<v.>

So what do we make of all these events? For the short run, at least, the Corporate Moderates show no signs of “getting the memo” – as we see in Michigan's Democratic Senate primary, where millions are flooding in, to squelch progressive Dr. Abdul el-Sayed, who's holding a narrow lead over its preferred candidate, Haley Stevens. (The field also includes State Senator Mallory McMorrow, whose support remains mired in single digits.)

What makes Stevens so unappealing, besides her robotic speaking style, and allergy to public events? Essentially, all the corporate PAC loot that she's hoovered up for her campaign, including $5.5 million from the widely-hated Israeli lobbying arm, AIPAC.

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?

"Not authoritarianism. Not concentration camps. Not the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. Not children in cages. Not Jan.6. Not Project 2025 being implemented in real time. Not actual Genocide."

Jackson's comments followed the Mamdani sweep in New York's primary, where he cuts to the heart of the matter. "There was never enough money for YOU," he writes. "That's not a fiscal position. That's a choice. And certain Democrats have been making that choice right alongside Republicans while calling themselves your allies.

"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."

<"Consequences Coming:

Course Correction, Take II"/The Reckoner>

<Coda>

This is the elephant in the room that refuses to go away, because it's true. For decades, establishment Democrats have kept voters captive to their donors' whims. The nature of the pitch depends on whatever political dilemma confronts Corporate Moderates at any given moment, whether it's basic bribery ("Vote for Blowhard, and we'll make sure you get your tax credit"), cynical resignation ("You  go along to get along"), or calculation dressed up as empathy ("These things take time; we share your disappointment").

Small wonder, then, that Reich wonders if the Democrats are up to their old tricks, rather than the hell that must be raised: "Instead of being class warriors, many Democratic politicians are class worriers. They openly worry that inequalities of income, wealth, and opportunity are out of control — but they won’t fight for what must be done."

Obviously, much depends on how well we survive the Trump regime's blatant attempts to rig the midterms. But even if we do, the Democratic Party must offer an affirmative, transformative vision of the future -- because its voters are yearning so fervently for it, and also, because it cannot continue simply as the anti-Trump party.

Opposing the Orange Man as an end in itself will only go so far, particularly when he departs from the political scene. The clearest place to start is this fall, when Democrats -- whatever majorities they win, or lose -- should revisit who's best equipped to lead them. If Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and his House counterpart, Hakeem Jeffries, are still viable leaders, let them prove it once more to their respective conferences. 

If not, then Democrats should also revisit mid-level positions. It's puzzling, and downright scandalous, to see the rock star likes of AOC leapfrogged for committee chairmanships -- as we saw in the notorious case of the late Gerry Connolly, who clawed his way to Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee, only to resign four months later, citing a recurrence of the throat cancer that eventually claimed his life. (Indeed, he died in May 2025, only a month after announcing that he was retiring.)

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?

But these are only intermediate steps, and no matter how they go, the Democratic Party must refocus on the art of the tangible. The "pick and shovel" politicking that President Biden pursued so ardently, via his signature infrastructure bills, did not yield the returns that he anticipated. 

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.

None of these things will come easily; they are neither cheap, nor expedient, but they are painfully necessary.  But they must be the first order of business, as we close the books on our 250th anniversary, amid a fog of social and class resentments not seen since the depths of the Great Depression.

"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

Politico: Centrist Democrats Are Freaking Out...:
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/