It's been a long week, and so I'm treating myself to a little article today, talking about three major moments in the news that have been dominating my mind. Let's talk through it, shall we?
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| Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) |
The biggest electoral news of the week came in one of the country's most important swing states. After two terms in office, Sen. Gary Peters is retiring next year and foregoing a third. While it shouldn't be news that a 66-year-old man is retiring, in the Senate this barely counts as middle age (Peters is the 47th oldest member of the Senate to give you some perspective).
The goal today is going to be for me to give opinions, not necessarily a full lesson on each of these, so I'm going to state a few opinions as facts right now to get it out of the way. I think that Peters retiring is a good thing. 2026 is likely going to be a good year for the Democrats, and we do, in fact, need to replace our aging senators with younger people so that, for example, if 2032 is a tougher cycle, we have incumbents who can win seats that we might've lost in open seat elections (Jacky Rosen & Tammy Baldwin probably saved us two seats in 2024 because they were established quantities and newcomers). This is a good cycle for Peters to retire, and I hope other aging Democrats like Dick Durbin, Jeanne Shaheen, & Jack Reed follow his lead later this cycle. I know some people like to take retirements as tea leaves of where the Senate is expected to land in 2026 (i.e. Peters doesn't think Dems will win a majority), but I'm more practical about these things, and getting senators a couple decades younger is a good investment for our party's future.
In terms of who should run to replace him, my first and last thought was initially Gretchen Whitmer. Whitmer is a superstar, currently the person I most want to be our nominee in 2028, and I would love to see her in the Senate. But she likely won't run because why run for the Senate when you clearly want to run for POTUS, and so we're left with a Plan B (she has already declined and I doubt she changes her mind). Most Democrats focused on former Transportation Secretary (and 2020 presidential hopeful) Pete Buttigieg. Buttigieg moved to Michigan a couple of years ago, and would be a moron not to run. Buttigieg, like Whitmer, is certainly eying a 2028 presidential run as well, but he is also a decade younger than her, and has much less experience (his only electoral achievement is as a mayor of a small town...she's the wildly popular governor of one of the nation's most important swing states). Buttigieg needs to prove that he can win a major office like the US Senate in order to be seen as a serious contender for the White House outside of DuPont Circle, and his aura won't last forever as an out-of-work politician. He needs to make this move soon-he should run.
As a Democrat, though, my final thought is-I don't know if he is the right choice for our nominee. Buttigieg has shown little appeal outside of a core Democratic constituency (namely, college-educated, affluent white voters, a coalition we don't have any trouble with), and while a campaign could show he does, I do think Democrats shouldn't coalesce around him without knowing if he can actually win a campaign. State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, for example, has also shown herself to be an impressive future star in the Democratic Party that is in search of a higher office. Her appeal feels broader than Buttigieg's to me, and ultimately the most important thing here is winning the seat (neither of these candidates' future presidential ambitions are worth more than that). I personally think McMorrow might end up being the better candidate, but I hope both run (and honestly, I kind of hope no one else serious does because otherwise this just becomes the Buttigieg Show), so we can find out.
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| HHS Secretary Nominee Robert Kennedy, Jr. |
One thing you will absolutely not hear from me in the coming years is discussions about the policies of the Trump administration. Quite frankly, I'm only checking in when I think I can make a difference. The outrage cycles are going to exhaust us all...my focus is on 2026, 2028, and helping the people that I can through other actions (and holding my congressional delegation to task if they look like they're going off-track, which I doubt as they're all progressive Democrats). But America made its bed, it deserves to suffer for a bit in my personal estimation.
But what I want to mention here is the electoral impact of the confirmations. Matt Gaetz is obviously no longer in contention to lead the Justice Department, and Tulsi Gabbard's nomination weirdly seems the most in trouble so far (which honestly I did not predict given Gabbard is a relatively good public speaker and a former member of Congress...I figured that would give her some ability to grease the wheels on her own behalf). But Pete Hegseth has now been confirmed, and it looks like Republicans will get Kash Patel and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. through at the rate. The only Republicans who have indicated they might stray from these three (and we don't know if this will be uniform) are Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitch McConnell, and thanks to Bob Casey's loss last year, they're not enough.
Which brings me to Thom Tillis. With the exception of Susan Collins (who is her own unique unicorn of electoral calculation), Tillis is the only Republican senator from a swing state that is up in 2026. He is also expected to face a very good candidate (former Gov. Roy Cooper) in the general election. Yet his actions of being the deciding vote on Hegseth, and leading the charge on Patel (and so far indicating he is in favor of RFK Jr. leading HHS) are the actions of a man worrying about a primary more than a general election, and I'm going to be honest-that's a bad strategy. Kennedy and Hegseth are not just unqualified & hold unpopular beliefs...they're also incompetent. You can practically smell the future scandals about to erupt here, and while Trump might not pay a price for this, Tillis will. These are the rare congressional votes that will matter, and I'll go so far as to say this-if Tillis backs Kennedy at the end of the day, I think he's the underdog next year to hold the seat.
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| Karla Sofia Gascon in Emilia Perez |
We're shifting gears away from politics into the movies, and specifically the Oscar chances of one Emilia Perez. I have not been shy on social media or Letterboxd about how I think this is a truly terrible film, but with 13 nominations, it was hard until about 72 hours ago to argue it had become the nominal frontrunner for Best Picture of 2024. When you make Oscar predictions, you need to check your own taste at the door. In fact, a few days ago, leading Oscar site NextBestPicture's pundits had Emilia Perez favored for five wins: Best Picture, Film Editing, Supporting Actress, International Feature, and Original Song.
But then the shit hit the fan. An already polarizing film added to its count a director making xenophobic comments; Jacques Audiard talked about how Spanish was the "language of the poor and migrants." This looks like small potatoes compared to what leaked about the nominated lead of the film Karla Sofia Gascon, who has years (though up to the shockingly recent present given how long Netflix has been pimping this movie) of racist, violent, and cruel social media tweets, attacking everyone from Muslims to the Chinese to Oscar-winning singer Adele. Gascon has now become toxic (it's hard, in retrospect, to imagine why this didn't leak earlier given that Oscar favorites Nicole Kidman, Angelina Jolie, Kate Winslet, & Amy Adams were all in the running but got ignored by someone who is now virtually unemployable in Hollywood...AMPAS could've saved itself a lot of trouble by just thinking inside the box). There was talk about having each of the nominees introduced by former winners, but I doubt any publicist is willing to go there for their clients (somewhere Conan O'Brien is nervously wondering why he didn't let Jimmy Kimmel go again).
Here's the reality though-the nominations are set. The Oscars have rescinded nominations in the past, but that was over breaking of Academy rules, which neither Audiard or Gascon have done. Anyone telling you that they might lose their nominations is not aware of Academy history (or of Oscar winners Roman Polanski, Harvey Weinstein, & Mel Gibson). But what it could do is lose awards it was expected to win. Best Picture & Editing, for example, it was only nominally leading at NBP, and I would imagine in the coming days the film will fall out of grace in both categories to films like The Brutalist and Conclave (some will quickly want to say that The Brutalist also has controversies, but honestly...the only controversy I see mattering this year is the one for Emilia Perez because it's very understandable, enough so that the public cares & Oscar doesn't want to be seen rooting for it).
The other three it is the decided frontrunner. International Feature Film at least has an obvious second place (the surprise Best Picture nominee I'm Still Here), but Song and Supporting Actress it's harder to find a way to avoid an Emilia Perez win. Best Original Song Emilia Perez has two nominations, so vote-splitting is theoretically possible, but none of the other nominees are obvious winners to compete with a Best Picture-nominated musical. This would honestly be the perfect time to give the statue to Diane Warren, who has never won a competitive Academy Award, but will enough of the Academy get the memo? In Supporting Actress you have Ariana Grande in second, but as a pop star they probably will make her pay some dues first (Lady Gaga and Cher also didn't win on their first acting nominations), and neither Felicity Jones nor Monica Barbaro have the sort of work that gets you a win. Honestly, Isabella Rossellini would be intriguing (Best Picture frontrunner(?), well-liked film, longtime movie star who has never won, generally beloved as a celebrity, Old Hollywood glamour) if she could pull it off. If she was in second place instead of Grande, I'd think Zoe Saldana was in more trouble...but I currently don't see a shut-out on the horizon for the combusting Emilia Perez
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