Progressive Angie Nixon scored an upset win over the Democratic Party establishment candidate Alexander Vindman despite being vastly outspent by him by a ratio of 16-1..
In an upset for the Democratic establishment, progressive Angie Nixon won the party’s US Senate primary in Florida, beating former army intelligence officer Alexander Vindman.
Nixon, a state representative and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, had significantly less funding going into the primary – with $975,000 to Vindman’s $16.3m at the end of July, according to Florida Politics.
…Nixon, who was born in Jacksonville, has aggressively opposed DeSantis’s policies, including with a sit-in at the governor’s office this spring to protest Republican redistricting, the Miami Herald reported. That demonstration resulted in her facing misdemeanor charges of trespassing and resisting, which she is fighting in court.
Vindman’s campaign had been focused on Moody, not his primary opponent, and he did not agree to debate Nixon, despite her public calls for him to take the stage with her.
“Floridians don’t want the establishment in Washington DC deciding who their Democratic nominee and US senator is going to be,” Nixon told the Tampa Bay Times in an earlier interview. “I’m someone who’s willing to debate. He’s not. I’m someone who doesn’t have to be briefed on the issues Floridians are facing because I’ve been fighting the attacks alongside them for nearly two decades.”
Unfortunately, two establishment candidates, long-time party hack Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Jared Moskowiitz won their primaries against their progressive opponents. Moskowitz is a particularly bad candidate.
Jared Moskowitz, a two-term congressman and centrist Democrat, defeated a democratic socialist challenger, running in a new coastal seat extending from Delray Beach to Miami Beach. Moskowitz was up against Oliver Larkin, a 34-year-old who called for universal healthcare and free tuition at public universities and has supported abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Moskowitz was the first congressional Democrat to back Trump’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) initiative, which dismantled the US Agency for International Development. Moskowitz also faced criticism from Larkin over his support for a Republican-backed law that expanded ICE’s detention authority. The centrist congressman has also been a staunch supporter of Israel and voted against a resolution to restrict US military involvement in Iran.
Meanwhile Jon Ossoff, who is running to be re-elected to his senate seat in Georgia, seems to be having fun needling Trump and is clearly getting under his skin.
The Democratic senator Jon Ossoff called Donald Trump a “draft-dodging, crook president” while defending the senator Mark Kelly as a hero during a Tuesday campaign appearance in Georgia, escalating his public feud with the US president.
“I don’t think anything illustrates the times more aptly than that the draft-dodging, crook president, who has plunged our nation recklessly into a war he knows not how to end or to win, tried to imprison this man, who embodies American heroism,” Ossoff said while appearing alongside Kelly and his wife, the former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
…On Sunday, during a campaign appearance in Atlanta, Ossoff similarly attacked Trump’s handling of the US-Israel war on Iran.
“While the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings,” Ossoff said. “He golfs and trades stocks. See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the amir of Qatar.”
Ossoff appears to have been referring to Natalie Harp, Trump’s executive assistant, who has drawn scrutiny for her closeness to the US president.
I wish more Democratic politicians would make fun of Trump. It is easy to provoke him into responding intemperately.
Hard to imagine the onslaught of smears Angie Nixon will face -- like the attacks on Kamala Harris plus identifying as a “socialist”. We might hope that Florida Republicans will defeat themselves with excesses of ugliness -- but after over 1/3 of a century of GOP governors, I find it difficult to conceive what too ugly for Fla voters would even look like.
Vindman, from what I’ve heard, lost by being boring (however well-informed and -meaning), whereas Nixon is lively and energetic. Moody also seems boring, and has not made much of her short time in the Senate, so Nixon, if she can maintain her political ju-jitsu, may have a sliver of a chance.
And the right is losing their minds over the simple statement of fact that “He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace.” They immediately see this as an insult against her rather than against binkie baby. “She’s a public servant! You denigrate all public servants when you imply she’s having an affair with him! He saved her life from bone cancer (nope), of course she’s grateful! How dare you insult all women in politics! What kind of message are you sending our daughters!”
All of those and more are their current outrage points on this. Coming from the same people who said Kamala slept her way to the top, the same people who fired half the civil service workforce, the same people who defunded cancer research and ran a fraudulent cancer charity… I am ever amazed at how easily they employ their double standards on everything at the drop of a hat. Ossoff really hit a nerve there.
#2, Ridana, wrote, And the right is losing their minds over the simple statement of fact
Facts are their kryptonite…. do you think maybe those MAGA hats have invisible ear coverings?
It’s shaping up to be a great midterm. From Florida to Wyoming, the various maga groups are losing their seats via primaries.
I enjoy Amanda’s takes. Always informative and entertaining as well.
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/I4v5e3T7UHs?ra=m
The establishment Democrats are clinging to the model they used to defeat the Reagan-Bush presidency. And they have have become addicted to corporate campaign money.
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At this point, it is definitely time for change, but they fight their progressive rivals with greater determination than they fight the de facto fascist takeover.
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(Thanks for the summary. As a reward for MS, here is a pun from Pearls Before Swine 🙂 )
.https://www.facebook.com/share/p/14peTcT7GXU/
Addendum; Here is the most recent senate forecast I could find.
“2026 Senate Prediction | 75 Days Till November:
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=HND6M7WXawA
Right now it is fifty-fifty, but with three promising states that can be flipped. Also, in Nebraska Osborne is a strong independent candidate. If Agent Orange keeps the war going and gas prices high, things will change for the worse for GOP.
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-in regard to the legacy Democrats, if they insist on bipartisan BS like Obama did, it is time to change leadership. The Republicans have always shouted “vae victis” and so should the Democrats. They can follow Fetterman and start a new party if they don’t like it.
OT -- Has the Blockquote function changed? I know I used blockquotes in my comment at #3, and it didn’t show up like it used to. Then I noticed over on Pharyngula another commenter apologized for an unclear posting where it looked like the blockquote didn’t work properly.
If it has changed, what is the replacement? Because I use blockquotes all the time.
Last comment. I remember distinctly putting those blockquotes in #3, but they are not in the sourcecode for the page. But in other sections of this page and over on Pharyngula I find examples of them showing up properly.
I may be misremembering, and made a mistake, but I’d keep a lookout for it. It looks like the blockquote code may be randomly being stripped from comments. I would be pretty certain it was my mistake if I hadn’t noticed the longtime (and thus presumably familiar with making comments) commenter over at Pharyngula apologizing for the same thing happening.
@flex: Well, let’s find out…
And it looked fine in preview.
@flex, you’d have noticed it if you’d proofread you comment in the preview. If you had simply misspelled the tag, the editor would probably have eliminated a tag that it didn’t recognize. Let’s test my theory with:
<blockquot>
Let’s test my theory …
</blockquot>
Let’s test my theory …
It seems I didn’t proofread my own comment well enough: “you comment” should be “your comment”. 😎
flex @#3,
The blockquote feature is working.
You had inserted a / in the beginning blockquote tag and that nullified the blockquote command.