May
5
2026

Don't Putsch Your Luck

Via a link on Jim Geraghty's Morning Jolt newsletter yesterday:

That's one response to Jon Favreau's efforts to obfuscate and excuse Maine's (probable) Democratic nominee to oppose Senator Susie Collins in November. Jim's response in text:

In other words, it’s just the tattoo.

And the retweeting of an antisemite conspiracy theorist, Stew Peters. Or his sitting down for an interview with another antisemite conspiracy theorist, Nate Cornacchia, where Platner said he was a “longtime fan.” Or his praise for Hamas. Or this observation by the NRSC: “Every one of the eight active ads that Platner is running on Facebook and Instagram, according to Meta’s political advertising library tool, includes a repudiation of AIPAC, and around half accuse Israel of genocide.”

Doesn’t it seem a little weird for a Senate candidate in Maine to be running a campaign so relentlessly focused on opposition to Israel? (In case you’re wondering, there are about 10,000 Arab-Americans in the state of 1.4 million people.)

Remember, witnesses said Platner knew darn well what that tattoo was and called it, “my Totenkopf” more than a decade ago. As I wrote back in October, “We can all agree that if you have a tattoo of the SS, and you know that it’s a tattoo of the SS, and you keep it for years and years, then you are, functionally, a neo-Nazi.”

I'd like to say that New Hampshire successfully keeps the antisemites well out of positions of responsibility, but that's tough to do when The Times of Israel notes: NH lawmaker faces little pushback after Holocaust deniers testify to education commission.

A Republican state lawmaker in New Hampshire partnered with a notorious German Holocaust denier in an effort to insert Holocaust denial into the state’s public education guidelines.

Rep. Matt Sabourin dit Choinière successfully pushed the New Hampshire Commission on Holocaust and Genocide Education to hear testimony from Germar Rudolf, a German chemist who has previously been deported from the United States and served prison time in his home country for propagating Holocaust denial.

Two other Holocaust deniers also testified before the state House as a result of Sabourin dit Choinière’s efforts, including a man who grew up Jewish who has led protests outside a Michigan synagogue weekly for more than two decades.

Sabourin dit Choinière is from Seabrook. Here's hoping that voters send him crawling back under a rock in November.

Also of note:

  • How can we miss her when she won't go away? I confess that James Freeman's headline surprised me: Kamala Is the Presidential Favorite (WSJ gifted link)

    A new Harvard/Harris poll finds that former Vice President Kamala Harris has opened up a significant lead in the race for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. Ms. Harris is the choice of 50% of Democrats surveyed, while her next closest competitor, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.), gets the nod from just 22% of the donkeys. Bringing up the rear is a cast of characters each polling in single digits. Oddly, this new presidential polling momentum for Ms. Harris arrives just as some Democrats wonder out loud if she really should be running for governor of California. A Monday announcement makes one wonder if Ms. Harris is among them.

    As a counterpoint, the Lott/Stossel Election Betting Odds agglomeration of betting market data has her in a distant third spot (7.7% probability) to be the Democrat nominee, behind Newsom (27.6%) and AOC (9.9%).

    But "Other" is actually the front-runner, at 30.9%. So I think what the prediction markets are saying is … unclear. Yeah, we'll go with "unclear".

  • What would it take to get us out of this fiscal mess? Reader, I know you've been asking. Kevin D. Williamson has your answer: All the Money in the World, and Then Some. (Dispatch gifted link)

    We finally really did it! You maniacs! You blew it up!

    From the numbers-monkeys over in the statistical department comes the news that U.S. government debt has crossed a red line: Debt held by the public now exceeds 100 percent of GDP, those figures being $31.27 trillion and $31.22 trillion, respectively.

    What that means is that if the federal government were somehow able to pass a tax that would confiscate 100 percent of the output of the U.S. economy for a year—if consumption somehow magically fell to $0.00 and Americans were able to do nothing else with their economic efforts except put their fruits toward the national debt—it would not be enough.

    Oh, don’t worry—it gets worse.

    Click on that gifted link, if necessary, to find out just how much worse.

    And in case you're wondering if KDW is telling us how he really feels, well…

    The bosses here at The Dispatch have asked me to keep the profanity to a minimum, so I am not going to write in plain English what it is that we are: Let’s just say that it is a problem we have not ducked.

Recently on the book blog:


Last Modified 2026-05-10 5:58 AM EDT