By Jeffrey Blehar
Tuesday, April 21, 2026
Virginia residents head to the polls today to cast their vote for or against
Governor Abigail Spanberger’s proposed congressional gerrymander, which aims to
shift the purple state’s congressional representation from 6–5 Democratic vs.
Republican to 10–1. That legislative map would pertain until 2032. Needless to
say, if you live in Virginia, vote no.
But given the truly atrocious national environment, I am
pessimistic about the outcome. Virginia’s demographics continue to shift ever
bluer. I predict that the referendum will win, by a much slimmer margin than
Spanberger herself won in November 2025, but by four or five percentage points
regardless. And, to be blunt, even if the referendum triumphs by only five
votes, Democrats are fully content to reap 100 percent of the rewards, as they
transform Virginia into what they believe (with good reason) to be an
impenetrable Democratic gerrymander for the next three election cycles.
Spanberger’s approval ratings have dropped significantly
since the redistricting push, but then again why would she care? She can’t run
for reelection in Virginia anyway, so her goal is to make herself an attractive
vice-presidential candidate for whoever next wins the Democratic nomination.
And she has already done so. (Interpret every move of the Spanberger
administration through this lens, and you will soon find yourself able to
predict them outright.)
But there is also a longer-term goal behind Spanberger’s
redistricting initiative. (The short-term one is obviously to give the
Democratic Party another four seats in Congress for the next six years.) The
real hope is that she can starve the statewide Republican Party into
irrelevance over the next half decade by denying it the opportunity to develop
a bench. That also has knock-on effects: A party shut out of power tends to
turn on itself and radicalize. Its powerlessness becomes demoralizing to the traditional
conservative electorate. Ever more extreme or culturally unacceptable
candidates crop up in a state where only moderate Republicans have any hope of
winning statewide.
Don’t think it can happen? I live in Illinois; I’ve seen
this collapse happen to my state’s GOP since 2005. (Our downward progress went
in perfect Hemingwayesque fashion: “Gradually and then suddenly.”) As many
northern Virginia Republicans will tell you, the state GOP has been doing this
for years without a bit of help from the Democrats. But Spanberger is clearly
working from the Illinois playbook, first pioneered by former state House
speaker (and current jailbird) Mike Madigan: leaning into the state’s demographic changes
to utterly suffocate the GOP at a critical moment. There’s ample reason to
think the play will work. I can’t lie to Virginia Republicans this morning
about their chances. But . . . you have my
sympathies.
The Maine Democratic Senate Primary Is Over
By now readers are no doubt familiar with
salt-of-the-earth oysterman/Manchurian candidate Graham Platner, Democratic
Senate challenger from Maine and the only nationally beloved progressive
politician of 2026 known (so far) to have sported a Nazi death’s head tattoo on
his chest. I remember when news of the Nazi scandal came out in late October of
last year — tied to several other questionable statements Platner was reported
to have made on social media in years past. I laughingly compared Platner to Christine
O’Donnell and wrote him off, assuming the Democrats wouldn’t be so dumb as
to walk into an obvious trap by nominating him.
I revised my opinion exactly one day later, after seeing a University of New Hampshire
poll indicating that Platner currently led the primary by a whopping 34
percent, 58–24, over Governor Janet Mills. Even if such a large margin
shrank, I reasoned, it wouldn’t simply vanish — not because of a tattoo. An
intensity was brewing for Platner among the progressive base in Maine: Those
voters have been dying to replace Republican Susan Collins for decades, and
they figured they weren’t going to do it with an uncharismatic 79-year-old
woman who promised to be a generic one-termer.
Since then, more Platner scandals have emerged, and not
all of them relating to his past. He was caught retweeting a neo-Nazi during President Trump’s State
of the Union address. No matter — Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego endorsed him
over Mills a few days later. Gallego, famously Eric Swalwell’s best friend,
doubtless recognizes a kindred spirit. But so do progressives nationwide, who
want a young true believer with working-class “authenticity” as their avatar
and are willing to stomach or excuse whatever they have to in order to get one.
They will get their champion. Platner’s campaign released
an internal poll of the race over the weekend, and it shows him up over
Mills by the commanding margin of 64 percent to 29 percent. That would be a
shock — Mills is a two-term incumbent governor, after all — were it not for the
fact that these are basically the same numbers we saw in October. The primary
is on June 9. If countless allegations of bad character haven’t made even the
slightest dent in Platner’s numbers, after weeks of negative advertising, then
it’s safe to say he will be the Democratic nominee for Senate.
Don’t ask me what happens after that.
Kash Patel Reaches His Credit Limit
FBI Director Kash Patel is known for many things — his party-down demeanor for one, his penchant for jetting to sporting events on the government’s dime for
another — but I think it’s fair to say that he is known most of all for his perpetually alarmed expression, as if he is forever in
danger of melting into a puddle of sweat and Axe body spray. But perhaps it’s
no surprise that he always looks as if he’s terrified of falling down a
trapdoor, because according to The Atlantic, that is exactly the
position he finds himself in at this stage of his tenure: waiting for the
bottom to fall out from under him.
“The FBI Director Is MIA” blared the headline, and the
story by Sarah Fitzpatrick delivered quite the hammer blow to Patel. According
to the magazine, he has grown increasingly paranoid about being fired by Donald
Trump, during a round of cabinet housecleaning, because of slack performance.
He is also, the article claims, a ruinous drunk. It is this last charge, of
course, that stuck most irritatingly in Patel’s craw: his response to the story
pre-publication was, “Print it, all false, I’ll see you in court—bring your
checkbook.”
Read it and evaluate the evidence yourself. What happened
next was foreordained: Patel has followed through and filed a $250 million defamation
lawsuit against The Atlantic in federal district court. He
almost had to. That said, it is a suit that is functionally impossible to win:
I won’t recount all the elements of defamation law here, but (1) establishing
“actual malice” requires that The Atlantic either knew that what
it was publishing was false or was recklessly indifferent to whether or not it
was, and (2) truth is an absolute defense in defamation cases, so Patel should
tread with caution.
In any event, Patel is merely responding as he knows his
patron would: deny and sue. Perhaps he is hoping that will buy him more time in
the top spot at the FBI. But I predict that, before the year is out, Trump will
cash Patel in for someone else.
Understanding Keir Starmer
I don’t write about U.K. politics, because frankly,
what’s the point? Britain in 2026 is like St. Louis in
February: Something great may have happened there once, but it’s over with.
Both major British parties (Conservatives and Labour) deserve to be electorally
replaced in the next election — and they may be, by Reform and the Greens.
Though matters hardly stand much chance of improving even if they are.
(Remember: This is a land where you can be arrested for posting memes on Facebook.)
Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer is a fitting leader for such a country: a
hollow man, whose perpetually cow-eyed, bespectacled stare is a perfect
reflection of his essential haplessness and helplessness as a leader. Leave
aside his actual record of serial blundering and weakness; whatever solutions
may exist for Britain’s many problems, one look at Starmer’s blank face will
assure you that he has none of them.
Starmer’s premiership is currently being consumed by a scandal that would be considered penny-ante
by American standards: His candidate for ambassador to the United States, Peter
Mandelson, was briefly appointed to the position despite failing to qualify for
security clearances and having ties to unconventional
New York financier Jeffrey Epstein. With the understanding that it’s
difficult for Americans to appreciate why U.K. voters would care so much about
this — there are multiple Trump cabinet-level appointees with similar
credentials — it is the final straw for Labour’s political insiders, who
(unlike in the United States) have the power to depose their leader without
calling a new election. Word is that Starmer’s tenure can now be measured out
in weeks.
And it gave rise to a gloriously apropos Quote of the
Week, as cited in Politico on Monday:
“Lots of people think Keir
Starmer is a good man who is out of his depth,” said one Labour insider.
“Wrong. He’s an a**hole who’s out of his depth.”
It is a description with increasingly universal
application to politicians on both sides of the pond, and well worth
contemplating.
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