Free Republic

No primary—especially a Senate primary—should go on this long. But Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, having dragged on for months, has turned into an interminably vicious grudge fest—one that’s not likely to subside until voters finally go to the polls on August 4 and choose between Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed.But the Michigan primary is also so bitter for the same reason that it has been so interesting. Of all of the 2026 races, this is the one that best captures the current fissures in the Democratic Party—and which seems to best predict where the fault lines of the 2028 presidential...

The case against Ron DeSantis from a Democrat’s perspective is straightforward and uncomplicated. For one thing, he’s a Republican. And not just any Republican: DeSantis has been one of the most odious and destructive governors in America since January 2019. He has been a vocal opponent not just of efforts to end the Covid-19 pandemic but of the vaccine that did more to control it than anything else; his anti-vaccine advocacy has also spurred on anti-vaccine activists’ assault on safe, protective measures to control diseases like mumps and polio. He has relentlessly attacked his state’s LGBTQ population, signing draconian bills...

For a political press hopelessly addicted to speculation about the next big election, there are precious few data points to obsess over during the first year of a president’s term. New York City elects a mayor during this off-off-year, but it’s an election that’s typically too chaotic and too particular to really tell us much of anything about national trends. New Jersey elects a governor, but the Garden State has become so reliably blue that it hardly registers as a point of interest: Its days of electing gruff Republicans seem to be long gone. And so it must be periwinkle-hued...