How Wrong Will the Polls Be?

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)

Political watchers, if they watch long enough, are constantly haunted by losing certain races.  In the same way that, say, Minnesota Vikings fans will never entirely get over Gary Anderson's missed field goal at the 1998 NFC Championship game (which cost us a spot in a Super Bowl we would have gone in as favorites to win), there are political races that scar a certain generation of political watchers, and that never really heals, and occasionally feels like it impacts their judgment.

The Maine 2020 Senate race seems to have done this to a generation of Democrats, and there's a reason for that.  Headed into Election Night 2020, the Democrats had every reason to assume the best.  Joe Biden had been leading in the polls in most swing states, and the Democrats appeared posed to win not just the White House, but also to win back the US Senate after six years in the wilderness, and make gains headed into the House.  It looked like Biden would end the long national nightmare that Trump had wielded over the Democrats for four years.  And to a degree, that happened.  Biden did win an impressive popular vote victory, though his slim margins in key swing states like Georgia, Arizona, & Wisconsin meant a second consecutive Trump term was a closer call than we had realized.  But the congressional victories, while ultimately successful in getting Dems those majorities, came with a lot of headaches, with Republicans doing unexpectedly well down-ballot, no more so than in Maine.  Headed into the night, Real Clear Politics had State House Speaker Sara Gideon at a +6.5 margin spread in aggregate polling, while 270 to Win had her at +3.8.  It seemed probable that Sen. Susan Collins' vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh was going to cost her greatly, and Gideon would become the first Democrat elected to the US Senate since 1988, but that didn't happen.  Collins win margin of over 8-points was extra salt in the wound.  Never mind that it was due in part to Maine's use of Ranked-Choice Voting, and Gideon probably would've gotten closer to 47-48% of the vote in the end had Collins not squeaked over 50% of the vote: it made Collins look invincible, and it made the polling look like a joke.

I'm seeing a lot of talk online, both in articles about the midterm elections in five weeks and on social media, asking the question of whether or not the Democrats are headed toward another bout of polling that could point to disaster like it did for them in Maine in 2020.  This is partially because Democrats, as a species, are allergic to good news.  Show me a Democrat who isn't panicking before an election, and I'll show you someone who is either on a great prescription drug or is secretly a Republican; Democrats always panic until the results are called, while Republicans can march over-confident to their doom if that's what it takes.  A big reason for this is the scope of a 2026 win if you look at aggregate polling.  If aggregate polling across platforms like 270 to Win, Decision Desk HQ, & Silver Bulletin were exactly right at this exact moment (I said exact twice for a reason...these metrics shift pretty quickly toward the end of election season so I don't want to be called out in the comments if suddenly a new poll changes one of these races narratives!) the Democrats would pickup six Senate seats in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, & Texas, and would (depending on which site you go with) also be looking at pickups in Kansas & Nebraska.  They also wouldn't be at risk of losing any of the races in Georgia, Minnesota, New Hampshire, or Michigan that are oftentimes listed as a potential risk, and the Republicans would be looking at their closest margin in South Carolina in decades.  A 6-8 seat pickup for the Democrats, mainly in states that Donald Trump won in 2024 by double-digits is a bit more good news than the Democrats can believe without actual results.

So I thought it'd be worth looking at the aggregate polling sites for the past three cycles in the Senate to look at how many called the victor wrong.  And when I say wrong, I mean the eventual winner, not the margin; there are a lot of situations like South Carolina in 2020 where aggregate polling showed Lindsey Graham in a much more competitive race than he actually was...but still showed him winning.  The races I want to look at are specifically ones that the aggregate was truly wrong, that they called a winner that never was.

In that case, there's a limited list of options for the past three cycles.  Susan Collins in 2020 is obviously one of them, but she's joined by only four other races: the aggregate polling missed the wins of Thom Tillis (R-NC) in 2020, as well as John Fetterman (D-PA) & Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) in 2022, and Dan McCormick (R-PA) in 2024.  It's worth noting that not all aggregate polling sites weigh and factor the same polls, so both Arizona in 2022 (Democrat Mark Kelly) and Ohio in 2024 (Republican Bernie Moreno) both had some sites saying they were headed to defeat, while others thought polling showed they'd lose narrowly.  Overall, 5-7 seats in total, no more than 3 in a night, and no less than two.

Extrapolating this out, if we assume that the polling aggregates don't change between now and November 3rd (a very big "if" given the number of undecideds in some polls, especially in South Carolina, Kansas & Nebraska), the Democrats would need a gargantuan polling miss, much worse than any of the last three cycles, to not win the majority.  Even if three of the eight seats that currently look like flips were to go red...the Democrats would still be at 52, a healthy majority (one no one could've guessed with a straight face even on Memorial Day, much less last year).

It's also not out of the question that it's the Democrats who are under-polled here.  Look at the above lists.  All of them are uniform in each cycle of who got missed (2020 it was two Republicans, 2022 it was three Democrats, and in 2024 it was two Republicans).  In all cases, the party that we didn't realize had quite as much strength as it did on election night ended up getting the gain, and that's not the same as who won the night (i.e. in 2020 the Republicans were stronger than realized on Election Night...even on a night that the Democrats ultimately won a trifecta).  We will not know until election night overall which party was stronger than we realized (see 2022 for a case of the incumbent party doing better than expected, 2014 for a night where they did worse).  It is assumed, given how sunny this polling is, that it's the Democrats that are being over-polled (also because getting the polls wrong when the Democrats end up winning more seems to be a sin that the national media is far more willing to forgive than the reverse).  But with rising gas prices, Trump's gargantuan disapproval ratings, and the administration's inability to stick to a narrative (yesterday scaring countless communities reliant on higher education money by upending the rules on student loan approval), it's possible that the Democrats are the ones who might be under-polled, in which case those mixed bag aggregate states like Kansas & Nebraska (or even South Carolina) could be where the surprise win happens, and in that case it might involve a blue checkmark.  We won't know until November 3rd, but right now, polling is pretty clear-the Democrats are the favorites to win back the US Senate in five weeks.

Things I Learned from My Europe Vacation: Britain, Ireland, & Scotland Edition

The past few weeks, I have been on what is increasingly becoming an annual tradition.  Every September, while everyone else is coming back to the real world with the close of Summer and the start of the school year, I tend to like going on vacation.  September is a really great month for childless people to do that, because the weather is still solid (it doesn't magically become Pumpkin Spice Latte season even if you start drinking them after Labor Day), and most people aren't traveling because it's too hard with the new school season.

This year, I went on a vacation with my parents to Europe, specifically Ireland, England, & Scotland for a total of about 16 days, for me the longest vacation I have ever taken in my life by at least one day (if not two).  I had been to England before, when I was a teenager on a school trip (it's always a little weird, but this is the most vivid memory I have of what it was like to travel before 9/11 as this trip which would've included a layover in both DC and Chicago in addition to flights into Paris & London would've happened just a few weeks before 9/11 and the upending of the TSA experience for American passengers), but Scotland and Ireland were totally new to me.  As has become something of a tradition on this blog, I wanted to share my observations (some old, some new) from this trip, and what I learned from this travel that I can maybe bestow onto you in a bit of a change-up from our usual cinema & politics chat.

1. Planning a Trip Like This Takes Time...and is Necessary

First and foremost, planning a trip like this takes a lot of time...in fact, many, many hours bordering on days (I probably spent an equitable amount of time planning this than I did on the actual trip).  Part of that is fiduciary-a trip like this is very expensive, and you don't want to leave feeling regrets over missing something.

But also, it's kind of overwhelming if you don't plan ahead.  Planning this with my parents, both of whom had never been to any of these three countries, I wanted to make sure they got to see everything...with everything being a loose term here given you can't actually see everything in 16 days (I have lived in the Twin Cities for over 20 years, and there are still things on my internal "I need to do that" list that I want to go to here...I can't possibly conquer three millennia-old countries in just two weeks).  But if you go to these countries, you go with an idea of what you want to do, and you have to sort of approach it like a gigantic marathon.  You want to see Big Ben, Loch Ness, Stonehenge, & Blarney Castle (don't give me the malarkey about wanting to see the "non-tourist" side of a nation...that doesn't ever feel authentic & that just means you leave behind the icons of the country you dreamed of seeing as a kid).  You want to try authentic sticky pudding and fish & chips.  And you want to shop for souvenirs to bring home and postcards to mail.  And for a country where I was frightened off of driving due to them driving on a different side of the road, that meant planning tours & transportation in addition to finding locations to go that felt like we had truly seen everything (no day of the trip was meant for rest, as you can do that at home which has been the case for me as I've taken repeated naps in the past few days...the closest we got was the transit day from Ireland to Scotland, and even that day I made sure to get most of the mandatory shopping items done for my parents).

I will also note that traveling with a group made things uniquely odd for me given that I couldn't do a bus tour group, which was my initial plan.  I'm not young, but I would definitely be young on a tour group (even on the day tours we did, I was almost always in the younger crowd even in my early 40's).  But learning about hotels there, where I assumed I could just stay with my parents but in reality would've had to room with a stranger (for non-Americans reading this, American hotels can easily fit four in virtually all circumstances, something not the case for most European hotels), I instead opted to be our own travel agent and for 7 of the days, be the tour guide as well, taking us around the cities on my own.  This resulted in a better trip, but is another sign of how hard it is (and more expensive it is) to travel by yourself, and why I was grateful that my parents were with me both because it was more fun to experience this with them...but also because I frankly couldn't have afforded the trip in its end state without getting to sleep in the same hotel room as them & splitting the cost.

2. Thoughts on England, Scotland, & Ireland

As I said, I'd been to England before when I was 17, and remembered it weirdly well.  The experiences I had at Stonehenge, Stratford, Bath, & the British Museum were quite similar-these institutions haven't changed a lot, and it's also a good thing to note because they are things that (while enjoyable) you probably only need to do once in your life.  New to me in England were the Victoria & Albert Museum (and the gorgeous Raphael cartoons), the National Gallery (and its host of terrific paintings), and Warwick Castle.  The rest was repetition for me, and it was mostly fun to just share with my parents, who are highly addicted to BritBox, and spend way more time with British culture than I do.

Ireland & Scotland were new for me, though, and of the two, while I liked them both, I came away desperately in love with Scotland.  There was a beauty to Ireland that was unexpected (it really is green in a way that feels plucked out of a Technicolor film), but it didn't call to me in the same way that Scotland did.  This was partially to do with me having the single best day of the trip there on a walking tour of Scotland looking at sites from the Harry Potter books and film series.  I spent a full-day in the Warner Brothers studios north of London, which was about as close as I'll get to pure bliss actually stepping into the Great Hall and Diagon Alley, but the Harry Potter tour was a treat getting to spot and pick apart things from my favorite book/film series, and honestly our redheaded tour guide was so cute (and I was so good at his trivia game) that I was hard-pressed not to just beam the whole time (he singled me out with a high five when I won the house cup for my group, the only time in my life I'll openly admit to being a Hufflepuff when I am very much a Gryffindor boy).  I am usually loathe to make unprompted travel recommendations of what to do, but if you are a fan of the boy wizard and have a few hours in Scotland, you should make a point of doing this.

3. Travel Like It's the Only Time You'll Go

Traveling in London more than 25 years after the last time I went, I was struck by the single most recurring piece of advice I ever give about travel (and at this point, I think it's fair to say that I travel a lot for fun so maybe you should listen to me): travel like it's the only time you'll go to this place.  And I think this is telling because this is the first international trip I've ever taken where I actually saw things I'd already seen; last year's trip to Paris was a city I'd been to before, but I didn't go to any of the spots in Paris I'd been before (instead solely focusing on Disneyland Paris whereas my first trip was a more traditional list of Parisian landmarks like the Eiffel Tower & the Louvre).

But with that, I felt like I had really done England before, and coming away, the breakneck speed at which I had approached it as a teenager (pushing always to do "one more stop, one more museum, you can be tired later") proved that I had seen all of these places before, and hadn't shortchanged them.  This isn't to say I didn't enjoy it, and all of these places were ones I had been to, but also-I didn't feel like (save for the new places) I had missed out on England.  Samuel Johnson famously quipped "if you're bored with London, you're bored with life" and it's impossible to be bored with London (I'd go back tomorrow if given the chance), but also from a realistic perspective, visiting it in this way, I realized that had I never gone back, I felt like I had gotten what I needed to from the country.  There are places in my life because they are less about seeing things and more about a feeling or experience of them (like Hawaii, Alaska, Broadway, Paris, and Orlando) that I intend to visit again and just be places I always hope for one more time until that's no longer possible, but this trip reinforced, because I made a point of seeing everything I could (we walked over 100 miles in total over the 16 days), that if I never get back, the only regret I'll have is that I didn't kiss more Irish & Scottish men (wow are there are a lot of good-looking guys in those countries).

4. Bucket List Travel Should Never Be on the Backburner

I recently had the pleasure of meeting with a crew of coworkers who talked about our respective bucket lists over lunch.  I am the firmest believer in bucket lists for all people, not just because it puts pressure on you to quantify reach goals, but also because it gives you a realistic path to knowing how long it'll take to reach those goals.  And so during this, I pointed out to one of my coworkers who felt like she had a lot of travel on there that 1) she didn't-travel should be the biggest part of any curious person's bucket list and 2) given her age of around 30, and that travel is much easier when you have the health & money of someone still working, that if she took a trip every year, she'd likely be retiring about the time she finished all of her goals...so she should take a trip every year to keep up.

This felt good for me because looking at my personal bucket list, while I have a lot of things left on it (some would argue too many...I need to pick up the pace on some of them), travel I'm timing pretty well.  If I want to retire largely having finished the international travel component, I have about 17 trips outside of North America that I want to still take in my lifetime...which will put me near sixty when I finish those trips (i.e. hopefully about one a year).  Traveling is something that is a huge highlight of retirement, and as someone who hopes to retire in their early 60's (knock on wood), I definitely want to do that...but I'm also aware that as you age it gets harder to do that.  It's more challenging to know the technology to plan these things (not just booking trips, but knowing how to use mass transit or Ubers has changed dramatically since I was 17), and physically it can be demanding to make this trip.  We don't know how long our lives will last, but generally our bodies don't last in top condition as long as our lives & minds.  I hope I can still travel internationally when I'm in my 70's and even 80's...but I'm aware that this might not happen, and so planning as if I won't feels comfortable (if financially scary) for me.  And so getting this trip (the third of ten total trips I'd like to do to Europe in my lifetime) done just a year after a Europe trip I had spent upwards of 7 years planning...it felt like the pace that felt right for me.  I like the way this has made me feel like I'm investing in my goals, and getting to do it alongside family members (not just my parents, but my brother & I are already eyeing a trip to Asia next year) who are conquering their own life's goals makes it even better.

The Kennedy Center: Trump's Attacks (and Why We Need to Fight Back)

All right, we are continuing on talking about some of the political articles that I wanted to write the past couple of weeks, but didn't because I was in trip prep mode (and then actually on the trip itself).  Today, we're going to talk about the Kennedy Center, the bizarre centerpiece of Donald Trump's second term attack on the arts.

Let's start with a little history lesson to ground ourselves.  First and foremost, in February of 2025, Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he was taking over as Chairman of the Kennedy Center.  This seemed like an odd job for the leader of the free world; the president does serve as master-of-ceremonies for the annual Kennedy Center Honors, but usually this is the extent of his involvement in the organization given that he should have more pressing matters, but for Trump...this was the most important thing in the world.  It has to be noted that Trump has long had a weirdly earnest love of musical theater, producing a play called Paris is Out! in 1970 starring Sam Levene and Molly Picon.  Like most of Trump's business ventures, the play was a financial failure, and received no Tony nominations in a season where Frank McMahon's Borstal Boy and Robert Marasco's Child's Play were the dominant players.  I have often felt that this Kennedy Center move was in part Trump never getting over failing so enormously in something he actually put in an effort (a rarity in his world).

But Trump's move politicized an organization that had largely avoided that even in his first term, and had been relatively successful in its post-Covid recovery.  Artists as diverse as Issa Rae, Philip Glass, & Stephen Schwartz all cancelled planned appearances/performances, and ticket sales slid dramatically for the shows that stayed.  Trump then attempted to rename the building after himself and President Kennedy, which federal law bans (it takes an act of Congress to rename the Kennedy Center, which is seen as a living memorial to the late president), and drew great ire from Democrats, the artistic community, and even members of the Kennedy family including Maria & Tim Shriver (President Kennedy's niece and nephew, respectively).  All of this led to a shocking decrease in ticket sales, railroading of the board (highlighted by Rep. Joyce Beatty's very public outing of what was happening as she is an ex officio member of the board), and the now closure of the storied institution, right around the time the annual Kennedy Center Honors (which were able to be held last year with Trump president) would've normally been announced, marking the first time (other than a delayed Covid celebration) that the honors were not held since 1978.  The latest news happened in the past couple of weeks, when photos of Trump with FHFA Chairman Bill Pulte aboard Air Force One with a poster saying "Kennedy Center DEMOLISHED" coincided with dozens of layoffs and an extended shutdown of the Kennedy Center.

This is a lot of information, and I say it because it's all deeply political.  The Kennedy Center has been political in the past, and not just under Trump.  Mel Brooks, for example, was offered the Kennedy Center Honor during the presidency of George W. Bush, but refused it, and wouldn't accept until a Democrat was in the White House.  But by-and-large, it's one of the more important cultural institutions in America, and generally both Republican & Democratic presidents have been apolitical about it as much as possible; Brooks was the exception-figures like Barbra Streisand, Clint Eastwood, Danny Kaye, & Charlton Heston all accepted under presidents that they likely wouldn't have voted for given their personal politics.  I have long talked on this blog about how it's bizarre that we don't have a Secretary of Culture (most democratic countries do) despite so much of our shared American experience (and tourist economy) comes from places like Hollywood, Nashville, Motown, Orlando, & Broadway.  The Kennedy Center is, alongside PBS & NPR, one of the few places where the government truly funds the arts, and it has hosted everyone from Aretha Franklin to Vladimir Horowitz to Jessye Norman to Mikhail Baryshnikov, all of whom have performed there at some point.  It is an important cultural touchstone, and one that is a major part of our American identity.  Along with the Reflecting Pool and the east wing of the White House, it's one of many landmarks that Trump has literally destroyed while he has metaphorically taken a jackhammer to countless other American traditions.

It makes sense, then, that there were gigantic protests about this, particularly from the residents of DC who view this as their theater.  Thousands of people were in attendance...and social media took note.  And like most things that social media took note of, there were many people, particularly on the Far Left, who thought that this protest was "inappropriate."  The theme of the posts were that while ICE arrests are ravaging the country and with wars waging in both Palestine & Iran, it felt "elitist" and out-of-touch to focus on something as "trivial" as the Kennedy Center closing, and not focus on these more life-and-death atrocities.

Here's the deal though-these criticisms seem to ignore the fact that people have been protesting ICE and the war in Iran.  I know this because I've been part of those protests, and have seen thousands (in some cases tens of thousands) of people marching the streets of my town chanting this; this is certainly also the case in DC, and I would be willing to bet money that the people who protested the closure of the Kennedy Center have protested, as well as actively helped in these efforts through phone calls to members of Congress & donating money to causes, to fight against these actions from the Trump administration.  It's hard for people to grasp, but a person is able to protest more than one thing at a time, and to be angry at Trump in more than one way at a time.  This has become increasingly an issue when it comes to conversations about Palestine, acting as if the only public conversation that should be happening right now is what is happening in Gaza.  This isn't because what is happening in Gaza isn't important (it is), but the world is complicated, and that means other things are also worth fighting for.  Pretending otherwise makes you look like you are the one who don't care about anything, including the one issue you're fighting for, because you're alienating people who are already on your side.

Protesting the closure of the Kennedy Center is a good thing, and it's worth noting it was done by local residents most impacted by its closure (i.e. the people who go to it every day), not part of a mass countrywide protest similar to what we've seen over ICE, Palestine, & Iran.  And it's also a good thing even if it's happening alongside other protests.  We are all trying to stop the Trump administration's paths of destruction, and that means fighting it on all fronts, not just on the one that you deem the most important.  Many things that Trump will have destroyed by 2029 will be beyond repair...multitasking with our attentions is the only way to keep that list as short as possible.

Cop Land (1997)

Film: Cop Land (1997)

Stars: Sylvester Stallone, Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta, Robert de Niro, Michael Rappaport

Director: James Mangold

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Sylvester Stallone: click here to learn more about Mr. Stallone (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week we talked about Cliffhanger really serving as the last true blockbuster to Sylvester Stallone's name, but it was not the last time that Stallone made a film worth watching.  Cop Land is a unique movie in the pantheon of Stallone's pictures.  In 1997, it was released as a late summer film that was against-type for the actor, but it was well-received, the first time Stallone had starred in a movie that got truly good reviews in over a decade.  And given the film's tiny budget (only $15 million despite Stallone himself able to command that large of salary in other pictures on his own), it was a profitable hit, something that Stallone really hadn't been able to achieve since Cliffhanger.  But Stallone would later lament the film's only mildly good box office would cement the end of his time as a leading man (it's worth noting, in a month we're talking about Stallone & Schwarzenegger together, that both of them were decidedly out of fashion by 1997, and it was Arnold, not Sly who was getting a Razzie nomination that year).  In reality, given what would come next, it might have better served as a reminder of what could have been.

(Spoilers Ahead) Because Cop Land is a surprisingly good movie, and not just good in comparison to Stallone's other pictures.  The film focuses on Officer Murray "Superboy" Babitch (Rappaport), the screw-up nephew of Lieutenant Ray Donlan (Keitel), a corrupt police officer in the NYPD who, because of a loophole in the residency system, actually lives in a suburb dominated by police officers.  When Superboy kills a suspect he believes to have a gun (but doesn't actually have a gun), Donlan fakes Babitch's death to protect him, but in the process catches the attention of Internal Affairs, including Lieutenant Moe Tilden (de Niro).  Tilden focuses in on the sheriff of the small suburb that Donlan views as an extension of New York, Freddy Heflin (Stallone), as Heflin knows all of these men well, but because of an accident when he was younger where he was saving a woman from drowning, he is deaf in one ear and can't be in the NYPD proper.  This creates a standoff between Donlan, Tilden, and an initially weak-willed Heflin, all trying to figure out what happened to Superboy, and ends with Heflin taking a stand against him.

Cop Land is basically a Martin Scorsese movie not being directed by Scorsese, which feels like an insult in some ways, both because Mangold (a good if inconsistent director) is not as revolutionary in his vision as Scorsese would be even in his worst picture, and also because he robs Scorsese's slew of actors wholesale (not just Keitel, Liotta, & de Niro, but Cathy Moriarty is also in a small role in the picture).  But Cop Land works in a way that Scorsese probably wouldn't have achieved by minimizing the stylishness for something more barebones.  There's scenes in the movie that feel really impressive primarily because they acknowledge the lack of choices in these characters, particularly Stallone's Heflin.  I loved the way that he talks about how the best thing he's ever done (saving a girl from drowning while causing him to go deaf) is something he wouldn't do again, and the moral regret he has knowing he isn't the hero he once was because it cost him so much.  There's also the scenes at the end where Liotta (probably the best in the cast) who has felt like something of a moral compass, is exposed as just as corrupt as Keitel's Donlan, just in a greedier and more personal way.  No one is above the law here, and the final scenes where Stallone's moralistic-but-cowardly Heflin starts to shoot up this crime syndicate masquerading as law enforcement, is jaw-dropping because it feels like the only way the story can end-that crime can only be fought with crime.

Cop Land would not, as Stallone would say, mark the end of his time as a leading man...that had largely sailed at this point and this felt like a shining blip on a radar of doom.  But he would continue to make dreadful pictures like Driven, Avenging Angelo, & D-Tox which only exacerbated the vision of him as a joke, one that even international audiences wouldn't support any longer.  But even a surprise hit as a villain in Spy Kids 3-D couldn't prevent what was inevitable-that Stallone would spend most of the rest of his life latching onto former glory in additional Rambo & Rocky films (though the latter would get him a much-deserved Oscar nomination for 2015's Creed) and lucking into a gigantic "last gasp" action all-star franchise in The Expendables.  He would eventually even wander into the Marvel Universe, but his appearance would barely register as a special event at this point, the land of movie stars he once dominated now taken over by "IP as King" in action flicks.

Next month we're going to continue to focus on a man who (like Schwarzenegger & Stallone) would become a mainstay of successful action films of the 1980's, but unlike the two of them, he would thrive in the 1990's, and it would take a series of truly bizarre personal & professional scandals to have the public sour on his teflon image.  I'll tell you who he is on Thursday.

What Angie Nixon Says About the DSA in Democratic Politics

State Rep. Angie Nixon (D-FL)

I am getting back from a long vacation (my hope is to have an article about it in the next week), but in the meantime, I do want to wade back into the world of politics today, and talk about some of the stories that were of interest I missed in September.  It has been a brutal month for polls for Republicans across the country, with double-digit generic congressional ballots leads for the Democrats becoming the norm, and individual Governor & Senate polling showing huge shifts to the Democrats.  We're in a position where the GOP is considering triaging North Carolina & Georgia (both states that Donald Trump won two years ago), and are starting to shore up contests in states like Iowa, Kansas, & Texas, all districts that he won by double-digits in 2024.  This is all fodder for an article, and maybe I'll write it at some point...but today I want to focus on an under-the-radar contest, and something that is sort of happening in the background of the 2026 election season.

In the state of Florida, there is a special Senate election happening due to Marco Rubio's resignation last year to become the Secretary of State.  Florida was once a swing state, in fact it was the swing state, but it has become a Republican safe-hold in recent years.  Since 2012, when President Obama and Sen. Bill Nelson both won reelection there, only one Democrat (Nikki Fried for Agriculture Commissioner in 2018) has won statewide there, despite Democrats running major players for office, including Rep. Val Demings & former Gov. Charlie Crist (not to mention our presidential candidates).  It is not a state that you would name-check as an easy flip for the Democrats...but then again, neither were Kansas, Texas, or Iowa at the start of this year.  Florida was won by Trump by roughly the same margin as he had in Ohio, Texas, Alaska, & Iowa, and it was considerably closer than Kansas or Nebraska, and yet all of these races seem to be contests that outside interests are showering support upon, and polls show are very close races, potentially even flippable ones for the Democrats.  What makes Florida unique?

It's not because the Republicans have an electoral juggernaut on their hands.  Sen. Ashley Moody (R-FL) is not a bad candidate, but she's certainly not the natural talent that Marco Rubio is, nor the electoral juggernaut that Ron DeSantis appears to be.  She hasn't run a campaign that's worth writing home about (though it's hard to find a Republican Senate candidate who has this cycle), and she doesn't seem considerably better than Jon Husted or Dan Sullivan are, and they're both losing their races while Moody maintains a 5-6 point lead in polling aggregate.

And, on-paper, the Democrats didn't nominate someone without credentials.  State Rep. Angie Nixon is a sitting State Representative (just like Josh Turek and James Talarico), and she's quite impressive in interviews.  After she pulled off an upset against establishment favorite Alex Vindman in the primary, she received plaudits from people (including me) for doing well in interviews in left-friendly media.  She's polished, and feels like she can cater her message to Florida, going directly after some of the bread-and-butter issues of the day...there's a reason that Moody has publicly refused to debate her.  But while Turek & Talarico look like coin toss (in Talarico's case, better than a coin toss) contenders to become senators in January, Nixon is a huge longshot.

There are two answers as to why, and I think both will largely go along your political lines over which you believe.  Nixon is a Black woman, and to date no Black woman has ever won a statewide Senate race in the South.  The Democrats did run two prominent Black women in southern states in 2022 (Demings and Justice Cheri Beasley in North Carolina) with huge pockets, but neither of them were able to win.  This isn't a cause-and-effect, I want to be clear-we have not had enough Black women running for these types of offices to have a clear idea of what they are able to achieve.  This year we have more (Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia), so we'll get a clearer picture, but it's possible that Nixon's lack of support or lack of movement could be attributed to racism or the Democratic Party not backing a candidate because they believe racism is a hill that's too hard to climb...but I don't think that's it.

The biggest issue here is Nixon's association with the Democratic Socialists of America.  Despite other candidates having ties to members of the DSA (like Abdul El-Sayed, Troy Jackson, & Peggy Flanagan), Nixon is the only one that is openly a member of the organization.  Her viewpoints are decidedly further left than you would expect of a candidate in a red state, supporting universal healthcare, free childcare, and is a strong advocate for transgender students in sports.  She is far to the left of candidates like Turek, Talarico, and Mary Peltola (D-AK), all running in similar states.

This poses a dilemma for the Leftist movement, as they have a chance to prove an adage they have long pushed: that the reason that red states are red is because we don't run Far Left candidates that show a real difference between the two parties, and that a silent majority is there if we just run the right candidates.  With Nixon, they have that option-Nixon is not a candidate anyone could compare to, say, Kyrsten Sinema or Joe Manchin...she would fit neatly next to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Bernie Sanders.  This is a clear choice (for the record, I also feel Turek/Peltola/Talarico are a night-and-day choice for voters, but that's not really relevant to this article).  And they are being given a gift in the cycle being super blue and that Nixon is a talented candidate.  This is not a Paula Jean Swearingen situation where she comes across as a gadfly in a doomed cycle-Florida should have its best results for the Dems since at least 2018, if not 2012, and there's a real chance the top of the ticket for Nixon (i.e. David Jolly) can win his race, helping her.  Throw in a state with a high Latino population (and Latino sentiment toward the Republicans being at an all-time low), and you have a recipe for an upset in the way we're seeing in Kansas and Texas.

But the question becomes-why aren't we seeing this support in the polls, or in the DSA backing this candidate?  Nixon is a dream option (I don't think you could find a red state DSA candidate with an easier path to victory), but the DSA and Far Left isn't rallying around her.  They aren't donating to her in a way that would give her a stronger shot at a state with multiple expensive media markets.  Nixon is everything they've begged for-a quality candidate against a middling Republican...this is their chance to prove that that silent majority exists.  The fact that they're not makes me wonder if, well, even they know this is bullshit.

Because look at the polling this year.  The candidates that are underperforming (not just Nixon, but also Flanagan, El-Sayed, and Jackson) are candidates from the Far Left.  While these other three candidates appear on-track to win (certainly the first two are) they are also posting polling numbers that are embarrassing compared to what someone like a Peltola or Talarico are doing.  There is still time to prove the pundits (and me) wrong, but if these candidates notably under-perform the nation compared to candidates like Peltola, Turek, & Sherrod Brown, it might just be because the establishment is right-the nation is more moderate than what the Far Left believes.  I would truly love to be wrong (honest-to-goodness, I'd love to see Nixon have a big upset in Florida in November & beat Moody...I'd be ecstatic to say "I was wrong"...I know I'd be voting for her if I lived in Florida), but nothing in this race seems to be sending that message.  If anything, the fact that her base seems to have abandoned this race while the establishment base of the party have gone all-in on a half dozen Senate races that felt like pipe dreams a year ago, proves the point already: the DSA is not a realistic option to win purple/red states, and as we look to 2028 (and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's presidential hopes), this message is going to be heard loud-and-clear by the people who matter.

OVP: Cliffhanger (1993)

Film: Cliffhanger (1993)

Stars: Sylvester Stallone, John Lithgow, Michael Rooker, Janine Turner, Rex Linn, Paul Winfield

Director: Renny Harlin

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Visual Effects, Sound, Sound Editing)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Sylvester Stallone: click here to learn more about Mr. Stallone (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

I don't mean to compare Stallone's career all month to Schwarzenegger's, but it's hard not to both because that's what the press did during their entire heyday and it's also hard when you look into the 1990's as they were on deeply different paths.  By the late 1980's, Schwarzenegger was regularly churning out hits in films like Predator, but the best was still to come.  For Stallone...the 1990's were a series of pitfalls.  It started with Rocky V, which made money but given the expectations after the last four films, was a disappointment.  But this would arguably be a high-point when you look at what would come next.  While Arnold was making mountains of money with Total Recall, Terminator 2, and True Lies (all films audiences adored), Stallone was working in truly crappy flicks like Oscar, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, and Judge Dredd.  Even his films that made money, like The Specialist or Daylight, were critically-lambasted and were largely only popular overseas.  Stallone at this point was to the Razzie Awards what Meryl Streep was to the Oscars (fun fact-Stallone gave Meryl her Oscar for Sophie's Choice).

(Spoilers Ahead) The one really bright spot from the first half of the decade for Stallone was in 1993.  Cliffhanger is not a critically-acclaimed film by any means (and Stallone got nominated for Worst Screenplay at the Razzies), but it had decent reviews, and made a fortune.  One could argue it was the last unequivocally successful blockbuster built off of Stallone as a leading man.  The movie is about Gabe Walker (Stallone), a mountain rescue ranger who is traumatized by his friend Hal's (Rooker) girlfriend dying in the opening moments of the film from an accident while ziplining through the Colorado Rockies.  Walker largely checks out of his life and wants to leave it behind, taking his girlfriend Jessie (Turner) with him, but she refuses.  Meanwhile, a group of hijackers, headed by Eric Qualen (Lithgow) steal a fortune of $100 million aboard a US Treasury plane, but a mishap in the hijacking causes them to crash in the Rockies.  After tricking Hal, Jessie, & Gabe into rescuing them, this causes an increasingly staggering standoff, as Hal, Gabe, & Jessie try to stay alive as these people attempt to escape with all of the money.

Cliffhanger is a movie that is, and I say this lovingly, dumb as a post.  The plot of the film rarely makes sense beyond a second grader's description of an action film, and it is impossibly repetitive.  We have the same standoffs between Stallone, Lithgow, Rooker, and Rex Linn for about 60 minutes in a row.  But that shouldn't confuse with it a bad movie, as Cliffhanger is not a bad movie.

For starters, some of the action scenes are really well done.  The opening scene with Stallone desperately trying to save a doomed Michelle Joyner from falling to her death thousands of feet below is nerve-gripping...I was actively clutching a pillow wondering what would happen.  And the film as it progresses lives up to some of the camp of its premise, mostly because John Lithgow (with an accent that kind of has to be heard to be believed) acting as over-the-top as is humanly possible to keep the audience amused between Stallone getting different elaborate killing scenes in.  This is, like many of Stallone's films, a clear paycheck role for a decent actor who regularly was selling out...but that doesn't negate that it works more than it doesn't, and Stallone's everyman appeal is there, especially in the first half.

First Blood (1982)

Film: First Blood (1982)

Stars: Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Brian Dennehy

Director: Ted Kotcheff

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Sylvester Stallone: click here to learn more about Mr. Stallone (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last month we talked about Arnold Schwarzenegger, and this month with us approaching Sylvester Stallone, it's important to talk about them in conjunction.  While I could've picked an actual film they made together (the minor 2013 hit Escape Plan probably made the most sense) to frame this, it actually makes more sense in terms of a film from the 1980's when the feud was actually waging.  First Blood and the Rambo franchise really launched Sylvester Stallone away from some of the risks he was taking post-Rocky with films like Paradise Alley, Escape to Victory and Rhinestone (these films scripts might have also helped deter Stallone), but it also made him a quintessential action star of the 1980's.  The other quintessential action star of the 1980's was Schwarzenegger, and younger audiences might now know how intense their rivalry was.

Amongst other things that they did during the roughly 10-year stretch that the two would feud was Stallone marrying Schwarzenegger's ex-girlfriend (Brigitte Nielsen), and they would take a series of jabs at each other in movies like Twins, Tango & Cash, and Last Action Hero.  It's not clear, in retrospect how much of this was the press feeding into things (by all accounts Arnold's relationship with Nielsen was a momentary fling, and all of the jokes in those movies are clearly said as fourth well-breaking jest for the audience to chuckle at), but it's worth noting that Stallone seemed to take it more seriously than Schwarzenegger, purportedly helping to fund the legal fees of a reporter who had called Schwarzenegger's father a Nazi (which he was, though rumors about him committing war crimes or being involved in carrying out the Holocaust have long circulated but never been proven, and are likely untrue), probably the biggest escalation in the feud (and one Stallone initially did behind-the-scenes).

Why am I picking First Blood to be the movie we discuss the Arnold/Sly feud?  Because it probably wouldn't have been possible without First Blood.  Sly Stallone's career was made with Rocky, but while the film piled on successful sequels, most of the other movies that Stallone was making at the time were flops.  All of the movies I listed above didn't succeed, and while Nighthawks turned a profit, it wasn't enough to really notice in the way the Rocky films did.  The one bonafide box office performance during this time he turned in was Staying Alive, which made a fortune...but was only directed by Stallone, and instead it was John Travolta who got the box office credit for it.  Were it not for Rambo, it's arguable that Stallone would've spent the 1980's making movies like Chuck Norris & Charles Bronson did-middling, lucrative but barely registering straight-to-video style pictures that no one would remember.  But he did make First Blood, and it changed the trajectory of his career, making him a theatrical movie star for at least another decade.

(Spoilers Ahead) First Blood is the story of John Rambo (Stallone), a Vietnam war veteran who is basically a drifter, coming into town in a small city in Washington, and being chased out of town for not being "the right sort."  Rambo doesn't take this lying down, and gets into a war of wills with Will Teasle (Dennehy), a sheriff who abuses Rambo, and causes him to have flashbacks to Vietnam.  During the PTSD, he escapes, and essentially sets off a series of attacks that result in the deaths of multiple police officers, initially unintentionally, but eventually very intentionally.  They even bring in Rambo's supervising officer in the army Colonel Sam Trautman (Crenna) to try and deal with Rambo as the showdown escalates, and we see that only one man between Rambo and Teasle will survive...

...except both of them do.  In an interesting scene toward the end involving Stallone, Dennehy, & Crenna, we see Stallone admit that he felt confused by the public rejection of his service after Vietnam.  First Blood is really interesting as a cultural artifact because it represents (at the rise of the Reagan Era) a nail-in-the-coffin of the hippie liberalism that had existed in the late 1960's.  Read any discussion about the treatment of Vietnam veterans returning from the war (that they were spat upon and called "baby killers") and you'll find a host of different anecdotal and academic evidence online, the former insisting that it was relatively common while the latter pointing out that it was rare to the point of providing virtually no persistent evidence in terms of things like video or police records.  That all three of these men come together for Stallone's John Rambo to soliloquize about this treatment becomes a sort of fascinating case study of your political beliefs-conservatives see in John Rambo a fighter, someone who was rejected after he did his service to his country by anti-war protesters, while liberals see a man broken by a war who is still rejected by authority figures (it should not be lost on anyone that the men both terrorizing & supporting Rambo are leaders in a law & order organization, a longtime bastion of conservative reverance).  Stallone's sort of two-dimensional approach to the character, as just a "guy who is living his life" helps tremendously here-it makes you think First Blood is about what you want, and fighting against the other guy, while they see it the same way.  In terms of propaganda, it's honestly really impressive, and adding in the early scenes which have a John Boorman directing Deliverance vibe, it's a much better movie than you'd expect.

But First Blood's complicated politics did not continue in the very successful film sequels that would basically just make Rambo another Terminator (Bruce Willis would have this same issue with the Die Hard movies).  The next three films would all make north of $100M at the box office, and would become Stallone's life-blood as a bankable star along with Rocky.  But unlike Schwarzenegger, Stallone (despite, for my money, being the better actor) didn't have good enough taste in his scripts and cared too much about his paychecks to really win the war against Arnold.  It helped that Schwarzenegger had the good luck to find a proper talent (James Cameron) to make his two best films, but it's more than that-Schwarzenegger had better quality control (he actually said no to sequels when they didn't make sense), and ultimately came out on top.  Even Stallone would later admit (years later, when the two had become friends offscreen) "He wanted to be number one.  Unfortunately he got there."  We'll talk about why Stallone & Schwarzenegger fell off next week. and how both of their careers would change in the 1990's.