Hello and welcome, my friends, to Wednesday, July 8, 2026. Today is National Freezer Pop Day, National Blueberry Day, National Chocolate with Almonds Day, and Be a Kid Again Day. That last is a holiday we can share with goats.
Today in History:
1777: Vermont adopts a constitution that abolishes slavery, becoming the first territory in what would become the United States to do so.
1853: Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Tokyo Bay with a squadron of U.S. Navy ships, opening the way for Japan's first formal contact with the West.
1889: The Wall Street Journal published its first edition, founded by financial reporters Charles Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser.
1896: William Jennings Bryan delivered his famous "Cross of Gold" speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
1918: A young Ernest Hemingway is wounded by mortar fire while serving as an American Red Cross ambulance driver on the Italian front in World War I.
1943: Allied forces launch Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily under General Dwight D. Eisenhower, opening a new front against fascist Italy.
1947: The Roswell Daily Record reported that the military had recovered a "flying saucer" in New Mexico, launching decades of UFO speculation.
1950: General Douglas MacArthur named commander of United Nations forces in the Korean War.
1994: North Korean leader Kim Il-sung dies; his son, Kim Jong-il, assumes control of the country.
2000: Venus Williams wins her first Wimbledon singles title, becoming the first black woman to claim the championship since Althea Gibson in the 1950s.
2011: Space Shuttle Atlantis launches on STS-135, the final mission of NASA's 30-year Space Shuttle program.
2022: Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is assassinated while delivering a campaign speech in Nara, Japan.
Birthdays today include: Anjelica Huston, actress (Prizzi's Honor, The Grifters, The Addams Family, Ever After, Medium, Lonesome Dove); Kevin Bacon, actor and producer (Footloose, A Few Good Men, Apollo 13, Mystic River, The Following); Jeffrey Tambor, actor (The Larry Sanders Show, Arrested Development, Transparent); Wolfgang Puck, celebrity chef (Top Chef) and restaurateur, founder of Spago; Beck, musician and singer-songwriter; Billy Crudup, actor (Almost Famous, Big Fish, Eat Pray Love, The Morning Show); Toby Keith, country singer-songwriter; Maya Hawke, actress (Stranger Things); Jaden Smith, actor and musician (The Pursuit of Happyness, The Karate Kid); Sophia Bush, actress (One Tree Hill); Milo Ventimiglia, actor (Gilmore Girls, Heroes, This Is Us); Robert Knepper, actor (Prison Break, Heroes); and Virgil van Dijk, professional footballer and captain of the Netherlands national team.
If today's your birthday too, happy birthday — hope it's a wonderful day!
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Democrats spent years slapping the "Nazi" label on Trump, as if repetition of the charge alone would do the persuading. It didn't, of course. It did, however, give the party faithful a warm little dopamine hit every time one of them took a potshot at him. Now the guy with the actual Nazi tattoo on his chest has become the inconvenient one. Funny how that works.
Several Republican women leveled allegations against Graham Platner that were worth serious scrutiny, and Democrats shrugged them off without a second glance. One allegation from a Democratic woman, though, and suddenly the party discovers it has a spine after all. Suddenly, Democrat leaders want Graham Platner gone — immediately, urgently, as if this were never even a live possibility five minutes ago.
As of Wednesday morning, Platner is showing no signs of obliging, even with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee yanking its money and prominent Democrats scrubbing their endorsements.
Here's where it gets amusing. The power-hungry sharks are circling. AP reports an active succession fight is already underway.
The Guardian goes further, reporting that Maine Democratic Party officials accused Platner and his campaign of trying to muscle in on the replacement process, and quoting party leaders insisting neither Platner nor his team gets a say in picking his successor. News Center Maine reports the same accusation. Several other outlets, including the New York Post, are running similar stories. It's a mess, and I wouldn't swear to any single detail — but I wouldn't put the power play past Platner, either. For all the reporting and speculation, the one fact everyone agrees on is that he hasn't left yet. Platner has an ego, I'll give him that.
Let's be real, though: None of this is new. Democrats have a long history of shoving candidates out the door the moment they become inconvenient — party first, voters a distant second. Joe Biden is the most recent and most glaring example. Al Franken is another: The party dropped him at record speed once misconduct allegations landed, due process be damned. Bernie Sanders got the same treatment in a different flavor — the party rewrote its own rules midstream specifically to keep him from winning the nomination. And before you assume the establishment's panic over the Democratic Socialists of America is some brand-new phenomenon, know this: They were already trying to throttle it a decade ago, with Sanders as the target.
Make no mistake, they've run the sex scandal play against Republicans they couldn't thwart otherwise, as well — people like Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Gordon Sondland — here, too, the list goes on for quite a while. That last name is exemplary of the stretch such charges have to make to even sound plausible: Our Matt Margolis wrote on the topic of Sondland back in November of 2019:
However, according to the story, “friends, family members or colleagues of the women recall being told about the encounters at the time.” Reporting on the story also began in October, which, ProPublica/Portland Monthly notes, was “around the time of Sondland’s initial impeachment testimony, in which he backed the president’s assertion that there was no quid pro quo involving Ukraine.”
Yeah, retaliation seems the motive there, and I said so at the time.
Of late, we've seen Democrats playing the sex scandal against their own people with increasing frequency. I've often pointed at Jim Trafficant, Andrew Cuomo, Bob Menendez, Eric Swalwell, etc. The Democratic elite overriding the wishes — and the votes — of their own voters isn't a bug. It's the house style, polished to a shine.
It would be easy to suggest Democrat voters are used to this by now. I won't go that far, myself. It's worth noting that 72% of Maine Democratic primary voters cast their ballots for Platner, more primary votes than any Democratic U.S. Senate candidate in Maine history has ever pulled. Yes, that was before the rape allegation broke, but it shows the scale of grassroots enthusiasm party elites now have to unwind — not exactly a rounding error they can quietly memory-hole.
Notably, Platner's scandals before the rape claim from the Democrat accuser already involved acknowledged misconduct in his marriage and prior relationships, and he may have simply burned through whatever goodwill his supporters had left. Post-primary polling already showed his baggage dragging him down against Susan Collins, so this isn't a clean elite-versus-base morality play — some of the erosion looks organic, homegrown, and entirely of Platner's own making. That's important to the outcome in November, and it looks from here like it's something the Democrat leadership hasn't considered fully.
The mood among Democratic voters is sour and souring further by the day. Recent poll data show roughly a third of Democrats describe their own party negatively — about 15% calling it "weak" or "apathetic," another 10% calling it "ineffective" or "disorganized," while barely two in 10 have anything positive to say. Those numbers don't evaporate on their own.
The trend line is there, even if it isn't dramatic. Democrats aren't stampeding toward the GOP — from their point of view, Republicans have their own five-alarm branding fire to deal with. But a sizable chunk of the Democratic coalition is contemptuous of its own leadership, exhausted by the brand, and one more badly vetted candidate away from just staying home in November. That's not a defection story. It's worse: It's an apathy story, and apathy doesn't show up in the exit polls until it's already cost you the seat.
Recommended: Socialists Are Disqualified for Office Simply by Being Socialists
At this point, Platner is toast, and so too the Democrats in Maine for this next cycle. Assuming Platner manages to hang on, he'll lose in the general, which is why the Democrat leadership is panicked. If he doesn't remain in place, the race still belongs to Susan Collins, given the lack of momentum for anyone the Democrats might offer up.
In any event, the trend is clear: Charges of Nazism and sexual misconduct are not a priority for Democrat party leaders, unless they affect the ability of Democrats to obtain and maintain political power. And the rank-and-file Democrats — you know, actual voters, the working class — are nearly ready to bolt over it.
Thought for the day: If life gives you lemons, add Vodka.
VIP members: Tell me how YOU think things are going to go down in Maine. And of course, hit that heart.
Take care today, gang. Tomorrow is waiting. I'll see you then.
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