Greetings! Welcome to Thursday, May 28, 2026. Today is National Hamburger Day, a day when many fast food outlets have some serious deals. It’s also National Brisket Day. Been a while since I’ve had any. We’ve got a BBQ place here in Rochester (and Syracuse) called Dinosaur BBQ, which makes some serious Brisket. (No, I’m not getting paid for the mention.) It’s also Whooping Crane Day and National Paperclip Day. Honestly, I didn’t know about most of this stuff. I’m learning about it just as you are.
1742: First indoor swimming pool opens in Goodman’s Fields, London.
1845: Fire destroys 1,500 houses in Quebec, Canada.
1889: Édouard and André Michelin incorporate the Michelin Tyre Company.
1892: Sierra Club formed by John Muir and others in San Francisco.
1928: American automobile makers Dodge Brothers Inc. and Chrysler Corporation merge.
1934: The Dionne identical quintuplets are born.
1937: Neville Chamberlain becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
1946: First night game at Yankee Stadium (Senators 2, Yankees 1).
1972: White House “plumbers” break into Democratic National Headquarters and install listening devices at Watergate Complex.
1977: Sting, Stewart Copeland, and Andy Summers perform together for the first time.
Birthdays today include: Jim Thorpe, all-round athlete (Olympic gold decathlon, pentathlon 1912; College & Pro Football Hall of Fame; there’s a town in Pennsylvania named after him for playing at Penn State); Ian Fleming, English author (James Bond novels); T-Bone Walker; blues guitarist; “Papa” John Creach, blues violinist (Hot Tuna; Jefferson Airplane); Beth Howland, actress (Vera – Alice ); Billy Vera, singer-songwriter (Billy & The Beaters – “At This Moment”; “Into the Night”); Gladys Knight, known as the Empress of Soul (Gladys Knight & the Pips – “Midnight Train to Georgia”, “If I were Your Woman”); Rudy Giuliani, former Mayor of New York City; John Fogerty, songwriter, guitarist, and singer (Creedence Clearwater Revival); Kylie Minogue, Australian pop singer-songwriter (“Can’t Get You Out of My Head”); and Marco Rubio, Secretary of State and former Republican senator (Florida, 2011-25).
If today’s your day, too, here’s wishing you a great one.
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I spoke about this yesterday, briefly, but the more I sat with it, the more I realized it needed to be broken out into its own piece. I’ll warn you in advance: This one’s a bit heavier going than some of the pieces I’ve written here. So, buckle up.
Let’s play a game, you and I. I’ll give you three Democratic politicians, and you tell me which one embarrasses the Democrat party leadership.
Contestant One: Graham Platner, Democratic Senate nominee for Maine. Combat veteran. Oyster farmer. Self-described communist. Owner of a Nazi Totenkopf tattoo he swears he acquired drunk in Croatia without realizing what it was — which, sure, fine, we’ve all been there. Author of the helpful guidance that rape victims should “act like an adult” and “take some responsibility for themselves and not get so f—ed up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to.”
This is the philosopher-bartender who took to Reddit to ponder why Black people “don’t tip,” noting he found the stereotype remarkably consistent. The theologian who called Jesus a “zombie” and the Virgin Mary “a skank.” The military analyst who reviewed a Hamas terror raid that slaughtered Israeli soldiers and ruled it “a damn fine looking and successful raid.” A Renaissance man, truly.
Contestant Two: Maureen Galindo, whose campaign Democrat voters mercifully executed in her Texas congressional primary runoff Tuesday. Before her campaign died a well-deserved death on Tuesday, she posted publicly on Instagram her governing vision: converting an ICE detention facility into a prison for “American Zionists and former ICE officers” — and simultaneously a “castration processing center for pedophiles,” a category she helpfully noted would probably cover most Zionists. She also accused her Democratic primary opponent of “being paid to put Jews and Mexicans in concentration camps via Zionist trafficking networks.” Not exactly your typical campaign mailer, but give her points for commitment.
Contestant Three: Senator John Fetterman. Wears hoodies. Broke with his party on Israel and the border. Occasionally has the audacity to agree with Republicans. Says things that make Democratic consultants spill their oat milk lattes.
Which one embarrasses Democratic Party leadership? If you guessed the hoodie guy, you apparently understand modern Democrat politics better than most of the people running that clown show.
But now hold up, because this is where it gets truly special. When Platner’s greatest hits started surfacing — the tattoo, the rape comments, the Hamas cheerleading, the Reddit racial theorizing, the communist self-ID — you might expect the party’s leading progressive voices to quietly back away. Issue a tasteful statement about “serious concerns.” Or at least, they might discover a scheduling conflict. Anything to give themselves some cover.
Ummmm, that would be a “No.”
Bernie Sanders endorsed Platner, and Elizabeth Warren followed, declaring him “the real deal” — after Maine Democrat competitor Janet Mills’ campaign ad had already surfaced his rape comments. Sens. Ruben Gallego and Martin Heinrich piled on. (I wrote regarding Gallego the other day, regarding his links with the now disgraced Eric Swalwell. Birds of a feather, ya know.)
And once the last respectable alternative dropped out, Chuck Schumer and the entire Democratic Senate campaign apparatus fell in line — no pause, no statement, no apparent thought involved. Simply the jerking knee and full-on support.
Let’s be precise about the timeline. Every one of these endorsements came after the tattoo. After the rape comments. After the Hamas praise. After “zombie Jesus.” After the Reddit thread on black tipping habits. They knew. They read the stories, weighed the evidence, and hit “endorse” anyway. Warren didn’t whisper her support into a paper bag — she called him “the real deal” and praised his “fighting spirit” as exactly what the Democratic Party needs right now — the fighting spirit. As the saying goes, let that soak in.
As I said yesterday about all of this:
The Democrat party didn’t embrace Platner — it surrendered to him. He’s the last man standing in an organization that has spent years torching its own bench. And Sanders and Warren? Their loyalty isn’t principled — it’s a cold actuarial calculation. They know exactly what Platner is. They’ve run the numbers. Back him and watch the party bleed. Pull him and watch it hemorrhage. These people know that Platner is a suicide pill. They’re just haggling over the dosage. In the end, he’ll go down in flames. The question is, will sanity affect the Democrats after November? I doubt it.
Now, let’s be completely fair about this. Platner has apologized. He’d like you to know he’s evolved. He was going through a hard time. He was young. He was a different person — presumably briefly possessed by a demon who hated women, loved Hamas, and held strong opinions about gratuities, but that demon has since departed, leaving behind the real Graham Platner: the oyster-farming, Bernie-endorsed, $1.5-million-raising Graham Platner, who continues running on many of the same ideas as the demon he’s now trying to distance himself from. Growth!
Mmmmph. Well, at least he’s fine-tuned his dance routine.
John Fetterman, meanwhile — a man who served as mayor of Braddock, Pa., nearly died of a stroke, came back to finish his Senate race, and votes with Democrats the overwhelming majority of the time — his own party has treated him like someone who showed up to Thanksgiving in a MAGA hat. His sin? Supporting Israel. Taking border security seriously. Refusing to perform the politically correct emotions on cue.
The contrast I’m showing you here doesn’t need spin. It doesn’t need interpretation. It just needs a clear eye. It also needs someone to admit what they see. The Democratic Party leadership of 2026, meanwhile, will make enthusiastic, well-funded, celebrity-endorsed room for a candidate who blamed rape victims, praised terrorists, wore Nazi imagery, and aired his theories about Black people and tipping on Reddit.
But it has spent years signaling — loudly, consistently, personally — that a senator who occasionally wanders off the ideological reservation represents a source of genuine institutional shame. That his stroke is affecting his judgement. Must be because he doesn’t agree with the leadership.
Related: Sanity Returns
Let’s be real, here. This isn’t a party that temporarily lost its way. This is a party that examined its options and chose. Sanders and Warren didn’t miss the Platner stories. They read them, weighed them, and concluded: still our guy. That conclusion tells you more about the modern Democratic left than a thousand position papers ever could.
Maureen Galindo wanted to put Zionists in a castration camp. Voters rejected her Tuesday. The party leadership said nothing. Graham Platner praised Hamas, blamed rape victims, and tattooed a Nazi symbol on his body. He’s the Democratic Senate nominee — with the full-throated backing of progressive royalty and establishment leadership alike.
After decades of the left calling anyone to the right of Fidel Castro a Nazi, isn’t it a bit more than passing strange that the Democrat leadership is fully embracing people whose only apparent problem with the guy wearing the funny mustache is that he didn’t finish the job?
John Fetterman, meanwhile, bought a hoodie and changed his mind on a couple of issues. Guess which one they are embarrassed by and can’t forgive.
Related: Sanity Returns
I have little doubt that, once the rank-and-file Democrat voters get hold of all of this, they will take to the voting booths on June 9 and dispatch this Platner creature, just as Texas voters dispatched Gallindo to the category of also-rans.
But does the gap between the rank-and-file Democrat voters and the Democrat party leadership — the Democrat establishment, in other words — say anything about the party’s future, at least in the short term? Does it mark a gap between what the Democrat leadership and the voters want? Does it suggest, as I did in the headline of this piece, an upcoming civil war in the Democrat party?
Granted, some might consider calling Sanders and Warren “party leaders” a bit of a stretch. That’s understandable. But then, where are the Democrat leaders denouncing this nonsense? Where is Chuck Schumer? Where is Hakeem Jeffries? Clearly, neither one is offended enough to speak publicly on the subject. Will enough Democrat voters be annoyed enough to stand up against all this?
Just as importantly, where does that leave the independent voters, watching all of this from the sidelines? You know — the people who went long for Trump and his coattails in ’24?
Thought of the Day: The people who fought and died in WWII were fighting real Nazis to give you the freedom to call everyone who isn’t a Democrat a Nazi. Meanwhile, the Democrats are warmly supporting people who spout Nazi rhetoric. Make sense to you?
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Take care of yourselves today. I’m hoping you’ll be here tomorrow.
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