The Dwindling Lights of Classical Hollywood

In the past week, two centenarian actresses (June Lockhart and Maria Riva) both passed away at the age of 100.  Lockhart is best-known for her work in television, playing lead roles on Lassie and Lost in Space, while Riva is arguably best-known today not for any of her acting work (which resulted in two Emmy nominations), but instead for being the glamorous daughter of an even more glamorous movie star mother, Marlene Dietrich.

One of the pastimes I think is interesting to talk about on this blog, which does talk about classic cinema when it's not doing elections analysis (I'm aware it's been a bit one-sided as of late...my personal & professional life has had a series of highs & lows and I am running pretty dramatically behind on my movie screenings as a result), is when an era of Hollywood ends.  These two actresses, relatively minor figures in film, dying indicates something really remarkable-they were both two of the last of their kind in terms of acting, and mark the end of something storied in the annals of a fast-fading Classical Hollywood.

Let's start with June Lockhart.  Lockhart started her career in 1938, playing one of the children of Bob Cratchit in a 1938 MGM production of A Christmas Carol.  In the film, Lockhart played the daughter of her real-life mother Kathleen and her real-life father Gene, the latter being an Academy Award-nominated actor (i.e. both Lockhart & Riva were very much what we would now consider to be NepoBabies).  Just 13 when that film was made, Lockhart would quickly graduate to key supporting roles in classics like Sergeant York and Meet Me in St. Louis before getting her first lead role in She-Wolf of London in 1946.  Lockhart was one of the actors we profiled in our article about the last-living Stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood, a list where after her passing only 25 actors still remain.

But it is She-Wolf of London that stands out as a true end of an era.  A relatively forgettable horror film (I reviewed it here, and I wasn't super kind), She-Wolf of London was one of 35 films that are generally to be considered to be the classic run of the Universal Monster movies, stretching from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1913 to The Creature Walks Among Us in 1956 and including the quintessential onscreen inhabitations of Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, & the Wolf-Man.  Lockhart's death is notable in relation to these pictures because it means that every single above-the-line actor in all 35 of these films has now died.  While not all of the actors in these films have died (we'll talk about one of them in a second, but a far more famous one, Clint Eastwood, had a bit part in Revenge of the Creature in his screen debut), there are no living lead actors in any of these films.  Several performers in these movies made it well into the early 21st Century, dying just in the past ten years like Lupita Tovar (Dracula), Ricou Browning (in all three of the Creature of the Black Lagoon films he played the creature), and Julie Adams (Creature from the Black Lagoon), but Lockhart was the last remaining one.  Fitting, a week before Halloween, that she would pass.  If you're looking to mark this occasion, I suggest you find one of these 35 pictures you've never seen before and indulge tomorrow night after the trick-or-treating has finished.

It's worth noting that Lockhart did not get screen credit for her film debut (universal screen credit for all speaking parts in films was not common until the 1960's-before then you'd regularly end up with movies where only a few actors would get credit, while others, even those with speaking parts, might be ignored).  Her first screen credit was in 1940's All This, and Heaven Too with Bette Davis & Charles Boyer.  That means that while she appeared in films of the 1930's, she didn't get credited for them, and in fact it is an extremely small list of actors that are still alive who did receive screen credit for their work in a movie of the 1930's.  This is because, unless you are over 104-years-old, you had to be a child actor to have appeared in a 1930's film, and most child actors of that era, unless they were playing key roles in a picture, didn't get onscreen credit.

One of the few that did was Maria Riva.  The daughter of Marlene Dietrich was credited solely as "Maria" when she played a younger version of her mother in The Scarlet Empress, but, to quote Whoopi Goldberg on 30 Rock "it still counts."  While as recently as the past ten years we saw proper leading ladies of the 1930's like Mary Carlisle, Jane Withers, and Olivia de Havilland pass away, as far as I can tell, Maria Riva may be the last living actress to have received onscreen credit for a Hollywood movie released in the 1930's.  I did a pretty extensive deep dive into actresses of the era (and I am open to amending this if someone corrects me in the comments), but I can't find any woman who is still alive from that era who got an actual credit onscreen rather than just extra or bit work.  The closest I got were figures like Priscilla Montgomery, Valerie Lee, & Caren Marsh Doll (all of whom were in The Wizard of Oz as extras or stand-ins but none of whom got true onscreen credit...Doll also was a background extra in the barbecue scene in Gone with the Wind, but again wasn't credited even though she is the last living person to have been known to have starred in that movie in any capacity).

Weirdly, there are at least a couple of men who are still with us (this is weird because if you look at that list of 25 living leading actors of Classical Hollywood, only 2 of them are men...men statistically die sooner).  June Lockhart's costar in A Christmas Carol Terry Kilburn was, unlike June, credited onscreen for his work as Tiny Tim and is currently 98-years-old (he'd also star in Goodbye, Mr. Chips the next year, making him the last credited member of a 1939 Best Picture nominee).  Donnie Dunagan also received screen credit in two films of the era, both 1938's Mother Carey's Chickens with Anne Shirley & Walter Brennan, and 1939's Son of Frankenstein (circling us back to the Universal Monster movies).  It is possible that there is a third that I am aware of in Sidney Kibrick, who appeared in a number of Our Gang shorts; he is the last surviving member of the Our Gang films, having played Woim, the sidekick to the series' main villain Butch, but given that short films rarely had credits at all in this era, I can't find evidence that he actually was credited in a formal way in these films, though his part would've been significant enough he would have been credited if they had them (even as a child actor, he would've gotten billing as his part would have been too big).

And as far as I can find-that's it-just three actors left from the 1930's, and all of them men.  This feels like a passing of an era, but also an opportunity for some of you to prove me wrong.  If you know of anything that contradicts what I shared here (I researched, but am not infallible), please join me in the comments (and I'll amend the article and give you credit).

Gerrymandering: Why Both Sides are Not Equal

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA)

Mid-decade redistricting is such a touchstone right now that you'd think we just had a census, but in fact that happened almost four years ago.  Just this week, conversations in Indiana, Virginia, Illinois, Maryland, and New Hampshire have come out, with new maps now certain in Ohio, joining Texas, Missouri, and (after next week) likely California with increasingly gerrymandered maps.  This has brought out the worst in people, both in terms of "what-aboutism" and a further decline in the state of modern politics.  I'm going to say a few very simple facts before we get to the purpose of this article.

First, there was gerrymandering prior to 2024, and it was done by both sides of the aisle-this is an undisputed fact, and it is going to be the central tenet of this article as a result.  Gerrymandering has existed for decades, centuries even but with more consistent down-ballot voting and better technology, even laymen can draw shockingly effective gerrymanders that a few decades ago would've been impossible to keep intact.

Second, the current round of mid-decade redistricting is 100% the fault of Donald Trump, and more specifically the Texas state legislature's acquiescing to a request from President Trump to redraw the maps.  Had Trump not done this, Gavin Newsom would not have pushed to redraw the lines in California, and the over a dozen or more states that are currently frantically stretching their power to the limit would not have done so.  Any Republican who says this is in retaliation for, say, Illinois's very clear Democratic-favored gerrymander in 2024 is gaslighting you-this specific bout of redistricting is entirely the fault of the Republicans (that Illinois line is not even remotely the silliest thing I've heard about redistricting, by the way-Sen. Jim Banks said "they killed Charlie Kirk, the least that we can do is go through a legal process and redistrict Indiana into a nine-to-zero map" which, and I don't say this lightly, may be the most mind-numbingly stupid sentence I've ever heard an American politician utter in my ENTIRE life...even typing it made me lose IQ points).  The reason that they are thrown off by it is that I think neither the Republicans nor the media (nor, to be fair, many Democrats) thought that the left had the guts to retaliate against the Texas Republicans, and there's a reason for that...

...the third thing, that only one party is trying to stop this gerrymandering on a national level.  Anti-gerrymandering laws on a national level are not new, and Democrats have tried to pass them to some degree for decades.  While there have been Republicans have cosigned (usually those impacted by Democratic attempts at gerrymandering, like Rep. Kevin Kiley), this is a one-sided affair, and one Republicans have taken advantage of.  While Democrats have implemented bipartisan redistricting commissions in states like Virginia & Colorado, Republicans have oftentimes tried to supplant the ability of similar commissions or advisory councils in places like Ohio, Utah, & Iowa to get maps that favor them.  This is important to note because none of what is happening here is good or healthy for the country-these gerrymanders are anti-ethical to democracy, and we need a nationwide ban on gerrymandering.  So it must be noted (as fact), the Democrats are on stronger moral ground here in my opinion, because they'd be willing to end all of this federally today if the Republicans were willing...the GOP is mad because they used to have their cake and eat it too, and now their cake is gone.

Rep. Eric Sorensen (D-IL), one of the biggest
beneficiaries of Democratic gerrymandering

Which brings us to the goal of this article-what side of the aisle genuinely should be maddest about redistricting right now?  While we are still waiting for the chips to fall where they may, it's a good question to know if, for example, states like Illinois are enough that they are costing Republicans a stronger majority & they should rebalance in retaliation.  Looking at the House popular vote (which is not as strong of a metric as the presidential election given some seats are uncontested, which is why in this article we'll use the 2024 presidential race so it's fairer), the House popular vote generally predicts who gets the House majority.  In the past fifty years, only twice (in 1996 & 2012) has the House popular majority vote not match the eventual winners of the House; it's worth noting (because it's going to be a theme) that in both cases the Democrats ended up on the short end of the stick, though I will also state that in both cases the Democrats did gain seats in the US House those cycles.

So what I will do here is break down, looking at both the House maps in 2024 and the presidential election in 2024, which states should qualify as an outright partisan gerrymander, and which party (overall) gains the most from it.  What you'll find is that while both sides are correct in the sense that partisan gerrymanders existed in 2024 & before that favored either party, there's a pretty indisputable party that is gaining a disproportionately large advantage over the maps compared to the other if you used fair maps...and that party is the one that is actively trying to stop any efforts to ban gerrymandering nationally.

Let's start with ruling out the at-large states.  There are six states that don't have more than one congressional district (Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, & Wyoming)-it is impossible to gerrymander these states.  I have consistently seen Republicans post about how Vermont & Delaware are gerrymandered because they have no Republicans in Congress, and, well, this is basically just proclaiming at the top of your lungs that you're an idiot because without a change to the Constitution (or Congress passing the Wyoming Rule, which I think they should do), there's no possible way to gerrymander an at-large state.

For the 44 remaining states (where gerrymandering is possible), it's worth looking at whether the percentage of the state's congressional districts is significantly different than their share of the party's share of the popular vote in the 2024 presidential election.  You're never going to match exactly (the Wyoming Rule would help this, but it's impossible to do it exactly), but in my opinion it would qualify as a potential gerrymander if the party's share of the House seats won by the presidential party divided by the party's share of the presidential vote statewide is either greater than 1 or less than -1.  Anything in-between that would indicate that the House makeup is roughly matching the presidential race, and this isn't really a mathematical gerrymander.

This gets rid of 18 additional states (Alabama, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, & West Virginia).  I will note two issues with this.  First, states that only have two seats using this process it is impossible to mathematically gerrymander.  In New Hampshire, specifically, it does feel on-paper that the Republicans are probably short a seat, but given the map was literally passed by Republicans...it's hard to say "this is a gerrymander" enough to change my logic.  This means that there are a few states (not just New Hampshire, but states like Hawaii, Idaho, & West Virginia) where I think it makes total mathematical sense that one party gets all of the House seats since they are so overwhelmingly favored on a presidential level.

Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV), an over-performer helping
Nevada look bluer than it is

Second, this is based off of seats won in a presidential election, not seats won in a House election.  This is critical because if you look at this list, there are some seats that are pretty universally agreed upon to be gerrymanders, specifically Nevada & New Mexico, and objectively, I agree with that assessment-both of these maps are drawn to clearly favor the Democrats, and in both states the Republicans should have one more seat.  But, the reason they don't qualify as gerrymanders under this project is because in both states, Donald Trump won a district that the Democrats (Gabe Vasquez & Susie Lee in this case) over-performed the top-of-the-ticket enough by to win a crossover seat.  Had Republicans matched Trump, these would have the allotted the number they need...that the seats are not redder definitely makes these gerrymanders, but my focus here is more on mathematically-significant gerrymanders, which to me these are not because Trump was able to win.  This cuts both ways, too, by the way-Kamala Harris got the numbers in Nebraska to win that seat, but the House Dem didn't, so it's not a gerrymander in my book that matters enough to be angry about.  If you want to be angry in these states...blame candidate recruitment.

This leaves us with 26 states that are mathematical gerrymanders, but that does not mean that there are 26 states drawn with the clear indication of favoring one party over another.  Two other things should be taken into account.  First, which states have independent commissions to prevent gerrymandering.  No state is going to be perfect unless we move to an entirely parliamentary system, and five states (Arizona, California, Michigan, New York, & Washington) all have independent redistricting commissions, and in the case of all but New York, those commissions drew the current lines, so it feels unfair to include the four of them.  This takes away the single state with the biggest discrepancy in favor of the Democrats (California), but there's a reason for that-we are not considering the maps involved here.

In order to gerrymander, you need to be able to draw communities with a strong partisan makeup together to take advantage.  However, if you have densely populated communities with a large number of one party but an even larger portion of the other party, it's hard to draw maps that reflect the state's partisan makeup (i.e. it feels like a mathematical, but it's not a geographic one).  On paper, I agree-California should have more Republicans.  But California has SO MANY Democratic voters, many of them who live alongside Republicans, it's hard to draw the latter enough seats.  Los Angeles County, the largest county in the nation, had 1.2 million Trump voters in 2024, and yet no Republicans in the House because there are 2.4 million Harris voters sitting alongside them, and they live too spread out to help.  So I think, to a degree, California isn't so much a gerrymander as it's hard to draw fair lines that don't favor the Democrats.

Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN), who would not have a seat
under a fair map

This is true in reverse, btw.  Of the 22 remaining states, there are a few states that stand out to me as states where it is very hard to draw more blue or red districts.  In Oklahoma, for example, drawing a map where Democrats get a House seat consistently (which based on their popular vote they should) is darn near impossible without drawing a very bizarre district from Oklahoma City to Tulsa, which makes little sense.  Conversely, it is almost impossible to draw a Republican seat in Massachusetts without it looking like spaghetti, much less the three seats that the GOP deserves if you look solely at the Trump vote.

Before I parcel through which to throw out, though, I'll give you the raw data of where these 22 states sit.  7 states favor the Democrats: Connecticut (by 2), Illinois (4), Maryland (1), Massachusetts (3), New Jersey (1), New York (4), and Oregon (1), for a total of 16 seats.  On the flip, 15 states favor the Republicans: Arkansas (by 1), Florida (4), Georgia (1), Indiana (1), Iowa (1), Kentucky (1), Missouri (1), North Carolina (3), Ohio (2), Oklahoma (1), South Carolina (1), Tennessee (2), Texas (5), Utah (1), and Wisconsin (1), for a total of 26.  Similar to the New Hampshire example above, there are some states that are really close to deserving another additional seat for the other party (in particular Maryland, South Carolina, & Wisconsin), but this is where it lands.

So if you look at the math, on net, the Republicans in 2024 had ten more seats than they deserved.  It's worth noting that this would run a-front of the national popular vote, as Trump won the national popular vote, and yet by this math Democrats arguably deserved the House majority (this is in part because Trump was much more popular than House Republicans were on a whole, but that's not the whole story as you'll see below), something that the Wyoming Rule (or proportional representation at the state level) almost certainly would've helped.  

Ten is an average though.  Like I said, there are states in that bunch that are very hard to draw proper representation like Massachusetts, and so it's worth looking further.  I would break it out in the following ways:

• States Where It's Nearly Impossible to Hit These Proportional Numbers Without Reverse Gerrymandering (in parentheses is the number that's relatively logical to add if you draw common sense maps): Massachusetts (0), Connecticut (1), New York (2 is easy, getting 3 more is doable...to get 4 you basically have to screw over upstate Democrats with a hard reverse gerrymander to make up for the Manhattan & Bronx Republicans, and even that's with essentially drawing a reverse gerrymander across Brooklyn), Kentucky (0-you could easily draw a pink district, but a second blue district is going to take gerrymandering), Oklahoma (0-same story-a pink district is achievable, a blue district is not without reverse gerrymandering), Tennessee (1-drawing a sapphire blue district in Nashville is a piece of cake, but a second one is next to impossible), Texas (similar to New York, I think you could easily get 3 more seats, probably should be able to get 4...to get to 5 you're going to need to reverse gerrymander, but similar to New York getting a pink district for the last one is an option)
• States Where It's Super Easy to Hit these Targets (i.e. there's no excuse for the gerrymandering other than partisan greed): Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, Oregon, Arkansas, Florida (this might change as Miami gets redder, but you could do it currently), Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Utah, Wisconsin

It's worth noting that some of the states in the second bullet (specifically Arkansas) are like New Mexico & Nebraska (i.e. a redraw would create swingy seats that I could see ticket-splitting), but this would be fairer.  If you take this into account, it's a net of about 11 seats to the GOP rather than 10.  Part of the reason I'm harsher on Republicans in this regard as their gerrymanders are achieved by smashing metro areas like Nashville, Salt Lake City, & Jacksonville (i.e. there's a built-in district in the way there just isn't in New England and Mid-Atlantic states where the state's overall density makes it more challenging).

In conclusion, while Trump is the reason that we're doing this round of mid-decade redistricting, the reality is that the Republicans should already be happy.  Even without this 2026 election rigging, they are arguably benefiting by 10-11 seats over the Democrats, more than enough of a majority to have won them the left the House in both 2022 and 2024.  Quite frankly, a truly fair House would be the opposite of the Senate-it would structurally lean to the left in most cycles. 

Jasmine Crockett's Quixotic Senate Bid

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX)

While most of this week online, if you've spent any time discussing Senate races, have been spent discussing what's happening in Maine, as Graham Platner takes an early lead in public polling despite a history of racist & homophobic online behavior (and a Nazi tattoo on his chest) which, honestly, is making me question my faith in the Democratic Party in a way I haven't felt in a really long time, Maine is not the only state where it appears that Democrats are self-sabotaging their chances of winning the US Senate next year.  In the state of Texas, it appears that Rep. Jasmine Crockett's flirtations with a bid for the upper house are being treated seriously by the second-term congresswoman, as she looks to be actively considering running for the US Senate seat currently held by John Cornyn.  Crockett's approach and qualifications are much different than Platner's, but the end result is going to be the same-a Republican winning a seat that could be competitive as Democrats desperately try to cobble back the majority they lost last year.

Let's start with the very clear differences between Crockett and Platner.  For starters, particularly on paper, Crockett is much better prepared for this run than Platner.  Platner does not have a long history of public activism (before running for the US Senate against one of the most powerful women in the country, no one had heard of him), but Crockett does.  She's in her second term in the US House, and before that served in the Texas State Legislature, so she has a voting record that Platner lacks.  In order to win that seat in the State House, she had to beat an incumbent (an impressive task no matter the circumstances), and then turned around and won a competitive House primary to get her seat in 2022.  Crockett quickly made a name for herself on Capitol Hill with viral verbal grillings of a number of Republicans (Crockett is a practiced public defender, and it shows given how strong she is on her feet in committee hearings), and for her verbal tiffs with figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene (whom she said had a "beach-blonde, bad-built, butch body" after Greene made offensive attacks on Crockett's appearance).  Crockett was even afforded a speaking slot at the 2024 DNC, unusual for a freshman member of Congress unless they're on the rise.  Given she's only 44, it would make sense to look to her to run in a Senate campaign.

But there's a reason that Crockett is not a good Senate candidate-she is a guaranteed loser in the general election.  Crockett has a history of making controversial comments, using the phrase "shitter" in a committee hearing, and making offensive comments about Gov. Greg Abbott's use of a wheelchair in March of 2025 (which she said was a reference to a movie...but come on now).  Crockett's voting record would make her the most liberal senator in Texas since...ever (she'd be one of the most liberal senators in the country if she won)?  This is a state that Democrats have struggled to get past 45% of the vote even in the best of circumstances in repeatedly over the past 30 years.  Crockett is more often associated with figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez than the moderate wing of the party, and would be far too liberal to win in a state as red as Texas.  Crockett has acknowledged this, to her credit, but has also implied she'd have to get new voters, which, I'm sorry-never works (there is pretty much no real world example of taking a state as red as Texas, running a candidate considerably more left-leaning than they normally see, and winning the Senate).  Texas, if/when they elect a Democrat to the Senate, will almost certainly look more like recent moderate figures like Jim Webb, Ken Salazar, & Kyrsten Sinema when they broke the mold to end a long dry spell for the Democrats in winning Senate contests, not someone like Crockett.  The Democrats have those candidates (particularly James Talarico, but also Colin Allred)...Crockett ain't it.

What confuses me here is that Crockett is willing to do this.  In her heart, she has to know that she won't win this race-she's not a dumb woman.  It's possible the fame & power that comes with being a viral sensation has gone to her head (it wouldn't be the first time a smart person did something stupid because the internet thought they should...just look at Beto O'Rourke's presidential campaign), but Crockett has a path forward here.  Being in the House is not a dead-end career-it still gives you power and scope that most politicians never achieve in their lifetimes.  Crockett is on the House Judiciary Committee, and is the ranking member on the Oversight Committee.  There's a near-certain possibility that she'll get a subcommittee gavel the next time the Democrats gain the majority, which looks increasingly likely to be next year.  Crockett would have power to put significant pressure on a suddenly accountable Trump administration, and given (even with the Texas redraw) her seat is safe-as-can-be, there's no worry about her losing.  The only path where she stays in politics is clear: run for reelection, and build up power in the House, maybe waiting a decade if she really has designs on the Senate to see if Texas will eventually become purple enough she could run as a liberal (hey, it happened in Colorado, where Ken Salazar at this point would be too moderate to win a Senate primary there).  In the meantime, she can build up a backing & leadership in the House.  If she runs for the Senate, she'll never hold political office again, so the only real answer to why she'd run is to head into lobbying or the cable news game...and she can do that without giving up the Democrats' best chance at a Senate seat in Texas since 2018.  No reason for her to set the entire contest ablaze just for her ego.

It's hard, honestly, to remember the last time a sitting member of the House was so adamant to lose their safe seat that they were willing to enter a Senate contest they had no chance of winning even when the House seat was not at risk at all.  I can think of some recent examples like Heather Wilson in 2008, though that year her House seat was probably also at serious risk even if she'd sought reelection, and (though she's not a member of Congress) Crisanta Duran in 2020, though in that case she was a promising member of the State House that (in a move I'll never understand) decided to seek an uphill battle against an incumbent House representative (Diana DeGette) when there was a wide open path for her to run for the higher office of US Senate that she likely would've won.  But the best corollary for Crockett has to be Denise Majette, which matches this almost exactly (and gives Crockett a look at her likely future).

Majette's similarities to Crockett are noted for where they match and where they don't.  Majette, like Crockett, was a young woman (by political standards) who won her seat by ousting an incumbent (Crockett in the State House, Majette in the US House), defeating incendiary incumbent Cynthia McKinney after the Democrats had attempted to do multiple times before.  McKinney (who deserves her own article on this blog at some point as she's a truly bizarre chapter in US House history that I've only mentioned in passing on TMROJ a couple of times) was to Majette's left, though, and Majette was seen as a more moderate option in the US House.  In 2004, though, Majette inexplicably gave up a safe House seat to run to succeed retiring Sen. Zell Miller.  Unlike Crockett, who has decades of Democratic losses to look to as to why she shouldn't run for the Senate, Majette had evidence that Democrats could win in Georgia (Miller, a Democrat, had won just a few years before), but she was significantly to the left of most of the Democrats who had won Senate seats in Georgia in the previous decades, and she'd just seen Sen. Max Cleland lose in 2002 in the wake of George W. Bush's unpopularity.  She stunned everyone in the political sphere (I remember being SHOCKED when she announced as it came completely out of nowhere), and became the first Black woman to ever be nominated for the US Senate in a southern state by a major party.

And then she lost.  In a landslide.  A foreseeable one, as Georgia had gone deep red in the wake of the second Bush administration, and even Miller would've struggled to win that year.  She would go on to lose a second election two years later in a much bluer year in the state (again, in a landslide), and after that, it was over.  The only headlines she'd make would be a disbarment scandal that would end her legal career a decade later.  Majette was once a clear star in the party, someone who could've kept that seat to this present day (Majette turns 70 this year...there's no reason to assume she wouldn't still be a congresswoman given no Republican has come close to winning her old seat since), and gone on to a gavel or maybe even a House leadership position.  Hell, if she'd played her cards right the eventual blue-shifting lean of Georgia in the late 2010's might've gotten her a spot as the first Black woman to win a Senate seat in the South (a title that is still unfulfilled).  Will Jasmine Crockett suffer the same fate (from the same impatience)?  We're about to find out.

Graham Platner's Senate Implosion

Graham Platner (D-ME)

I wasn't planning on writing about the Maine Senate race so soon after the entry of Janet Mills into the contest, assuming that it would play out for a bit before there was a major development.  Well, if you spent time online in the past few days, you know that this race has pretty dramatically changed.  But for me, it's the reactions of people online that is worth commenting on, and discussing, because I find it shocking and honestly, pretty embarrassing.  Let's talk about it.

For those who don't have a Twitter addiction, the Democratic Primary race between Gov. Janet Mills and Graham Platner, a military veteran & oyster farmer who has captured a surprisingly robust following in the short time he's been in the race, including endorsements from Sen. Bernie Sanders and Labor Secretary Robert Reich, has been upended by scandal.  Within days of Mills' entry into the race, which until then Platner had largely dominated the media narrative, stories began to leak about Platner's past online comments, particularly on the social media platform Reddit.  The comments, so far spread over the course of eight years, included Platner engaging in racial stereotypes about Black people, saying "all cops are bastards," stating that he was a Communist, expressing support for political violence, and stating that sexual assault survivors bear some responsibility for their assault if they were inebriated.  Platner has since blamed these posts on disillusionment and PTSD after his time in the military, while some of his supporters, most notably Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), have blamed Mills, Chuck Schumer, & the DSCC for attempting to "destroy Platner the day their hand-picked candidate entered the race."  While Mills has largely been silent (there's an old saying usually attributed to either Napoleon or Sun Tzu that states "never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake" which feels like what Mills is doing here), the likely Republican nominee, Susan Collins, has called the comments "terrible" and "offensive."

Let's address some of these things head on here.  First and foremost, Collins is right-these things are terrible and offensive, and while Collins didn't say this, I will-they are also politically-damaging.  Platner is about to run a very hard race, and he has just put a gigantic weight around his neck.  This isn't to say he can't run without it (John Fetterman, whom Platner is oftentimes compared to, had an incident where he followed a Black man with a shotgun, though in that case the Black man in question stated that he still endorsed Fetterman in the race, which likely let Fetterman off in a way Platner won't...either way, Fetterman did win that high-profile Senate contest), but he now has a gigantic handicap that the Democrats will spend the rest of this race trying to get around if he is the nominee, as Collins will make it a centerpiece of her campaign in a way that she won't have that advantage with Mills.

Next up, let's talk about Khanna.  Whether or not this was the DSCC or not (I'm not going to wade into that without evidence), I am going to assume that this came with the consent of the Mills' camp, as the timing is too coincidental not to have been something she had been sitting on.  But to complain about that I have to say: grow up.  Politics ain't beanbag, as the saying goes, and if Mills wasn't going to bring these comments out about Platner, Collins sure as hell would've in the general election.  Which would you rather have-the Democrat destroying Platner when we still have a twice-elected statewide official who can beat the Republican, or the general election where we're stuck with having to explain Platner to a host of general election voters who have sent Collins to the Senate five times, but will suddenly change their mind on the sixth for a guy they barely know who as recently as four years ago was making comments many median swing voters would find disqualifying?  Are you freaking kidding me-do you see how we might well lose the Virginia Attorney General's race for this EXACT same reason?  Of course we want this to come out now when we can go to a Plan B!

Jon Favreau

But while some of Platner's supporters, most notably former State Rep. Genevieve McDonald who was serving as his political director, have announced they can no longer support Platner as a result of these comments, a shocking amount of high-profile political figures have tried to gloss over these statements.  DNC Chair Ken Martin stated that the comments were not ones he approved of, but they were not "disqualifying."  Former Obama speechwriter and Pod Saves America host Jon Favreau looked at Platner's apology video (you can see it here) and called it "refreshingly honest, vulnerable, and human...could use more of this in politics" and Pod Saves the World host Ben Rhodes (another former Obama speechwriter) called Platner's apology "what's missing" in the Democratic Party.

I will be honest here-I feel a mountain of second-hand embarrassment on behalf of those who are defending Platner on this one.  I think there is some truth to the idea that we as a society are going to have to acknowledge that internet comments are not going to always be universally disqualifying of political candidates as Millennials & Gen Z become the dominant generations running for office.  Platner and I are the same age, and essentially the earliest age of people who were literally children when we started to have unsupervised access to the internet.  I was 14 when I got my first email address, and 19 when I got my first social media account.  While I am confident that I have not said things as offensive as Platner did (because I've never thought the way he did), I am also confident in over 25 years of being online, there are things that I disagree with that a previous me said, or things that I've done on the internet or texted that I would be embarrassed to be seen publicly.  I mean, I was discussing a blog post I wrote 8 years ago on this very site with a friend yesterday that I disagreed with part of my argument at the time.  People do change their perspectives, and the internet is forever (something that I don't think older Millennials, in particular, realized when they first were on the internet), and in an era where technology is our primary form of conversation, there are things you wouldn't want to get out that you have said.

But Platner said these things in a public forum, and he was not a "young man" when he said them despite what some are claiming (it always amazes me that for straight white men running for high office, being a young man seems to extend until your early 40's while for everyone else it seems to end at around 24).  In 2021, Platner was 37 years old...older than Jon Ossoff or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both of whom were already in Congress by then.  To pretend this is a youthful discretion is ridiculous-he was a grown ass man when he made these comments.  He talks about coming from a male-dominated place, where crude humor and offensive language are commonplace in the video.  I'm sorry, but that feels an awful lot like calling this "just locker room talk" which I think we all know as Democrats we wouldn't allow a Republican to get away with, so why are we allowing a Democrat to use it as an excuse?  I'm not saying that we don't forgive Platner if he's made a genuine change-if he wants to be an activist or supporter of the Democratic Party, let's give him the grace to change his viewpoints.  But being a US Senator is not a consolation prize-it's being granted access to the most exclusive club in the world and makes you one of the most powerful people on Earth.  It's the sort of thing where one mistake should disqualify you.  And it's too valuable to use as a learning tool, one where we try to teach voters that it's okay to give people a second chance.  Susan Collins has dispatched three members of Congress (past, present, or future at the time) in her runs for the US Senate, as well as a House Speaker and a future Secretary of State.  She is not an easy candidate to run against, and Platner comes into the race the least-qualified of anyone who has tried to dispatch her.  Beating her is more important than proving a point-the sins Graham Platner has made are not disqualifying him from being a redeemed, good person if he makes true amends (I don't doubt the sincerity of his apology)...but they sure as hell disqualify him from getting the nomination in the most important congressional race of the 2026 midterms.

That "least-qualified" is where I want to end this, as it's truly where the shock is here from the past few days.  Platner is not an established politician with a longtime following.  When Al Franken resigned in 2018, there was a lot of ire & pushback from people in the Democratic Party who had liked & supported Franken for decades.  He'd been a US Senator for ten years and a political commentator for years before that (as well as an entertainer).  It was understandable that people wouldn't want to turn on a guy they'd spent huge swaths of their lives devoted toward.  But Graham Platner entered this race in August, and that was very much the first time anyone has known of him as a politician.  There are things in your fridge that you've known longer than Platner's been in this race.  And yet Favreau & Rhodes are acting like he's a huge, longtime player in politics whom it would be a genuine loss to see leave the race.  This is not a loss-this is a candidate similar to MJ Hegar, Randy Bryce, and Amy McGrath whom the national media loved because he looks like a Republican but talks like a Democrat.  That's not a totally un-winning combo (the aforementioned Fetterman is the best example, but Jared Golden & Marie Gluesenkamp Perez are also solid reference points of Democrats who used that aesthetic to get into Congress...I understand the strategy behind the initial support of Platner as it's not without merit), but to pretend this is a giant loss is silly, particularly given you know nothing about this man (and have tacitly condoned his racially & sexually offensive comments without knowing what is coming next by so quickly forgiving him...and I suspect there's more to come).  I think that Mills is not perfect (we need to spend the next 13 months getting her to find some wiggle room on the filibuster, and her age is definitely not an asset), but she's better than Platner...and she doesn't come with a gigantic amount of doubt about what other opposition research might be coming.  Supporting Platner at this point feels less about trying to prove a point or winning a certain way, and more about being willing to lose a crucial race just to avoid admitting you were wrong.

The Strange Primary of Ed Markey & South Moulton

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA)

Given that I have spent much of the past few days ardently supporting Janet Mills on Twitter (and I did put my money where my mouth is, making her the fifth contribution I've made to a Senate campaign this cycle), it's worth reminding you that I am, generally, supportive of the primary challenges to aging members of Congress, all things being equal.  Like many Democrats, I was scarred by the "age crises" that occurred surrounding Joe Biden, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Dianne Feinstein (as well as the recent deaths of Gerry Connolly, Sylvester Turner, & Raul Grijalva that delayed the inevitable Epstein Files vote that would've occurred by now otherwise) just like any other Democrat, and I think if you're over 70 and running for a high political office you should make a point of proving why you're special.  Jaime Harrison, the former DNC Chair, made a joke about how "some folks like to talk about age, until it's their favorite candidate" which isn't entirely untrue (looking at you, Bernie Bros), but I also think it's worth stating that there are candidates that are special, like Sherrod Brown, Nancy Pelosi, or, in my opinion Janet Mills (I also, personally, think that Bernie Sanders is unique, just not in a way that I value or find helpful, so I want him to retire but get why others don't) who are too valuable not to run when we can.

On the flip side, though, there are incumbents who are not indispensable.  Ed Markey is a great politician, and as I age, one of those figures that's kind of reassuring.  I have followed American politics as a hobby for over thirty years (I started clipping out newspaper articles about the 1992 presidential race when I was eight-years-old) and could probably have named pretty much every member of the Senate by the 1998 midterms.  As a result, there are very few national politicians who have basically been around as long as I've been following politics, and most members of Congress I have a memory of when they were first elected.  But Markey is on a short list of people that not only have been part of the congressional conversation as long as I've been following politics, but is one of nine members of Congress who have been in the body since before I was born, a list that will get shorter later next year with the retirement of Dick Durbin (and the very real possibility that Marcy Kaptur will lose reelection).  He's always been around, as far as I'm concerned.  I like Ed Markey (a lot), and think his work, particularly on climate change, is basically unrivaled on Capitol Hill right now, but at almost 80-years-old, he neither represents an area that's hard to hold (like Kaptur), nor is he indispensable as someone to rally the base (like Pelosi or Sanders), nor representing an area that's hard to win or we need to flip (like Brown or Mills).  I would be very open to a primary to him, which I will own was not the case in 2020 (my views, as so many politicians have claimed through the years, have "evolved" on this issue).  However, if his primary opponent ends up being Seth Moulton, who announced a challenge to him today...sign me up for six more years of Ed.

I think the logic for a primary challenge based on age needs to be both realistic (politicians tend to be older by design, especially members of Congress who are reaching the "CEO" level of their careers), so I'd say north of 65-70 would be when I'd start raising eyebrows, and also "all things being equal."  With Markey vs. Moulton, it's less about age to me and more about their views.  Moulton is considerably to the right of Markey on a number of issues.  Moulton is much more moderate on transgender rights, not always in deed (both Markey & Moulton support the Equality Act, which I view as the next really important piece of legislation the LGBTQ+ community needs to commit to nationally), but in word.  He in the past has called using pronouns in email signatures "weird," for example.  Moulton voted in favor of an amendment in the House that prohibited "race-based theories" in defense teaching, which given the Republican Party's aggressive attacks on communities of color (and public education & education institutions) feels long something in a solidly blue district should know better than to do.

This would not be as big of an issue if Moulton was running in Ohio or Nevada, where I'd expect at least some moderation on a few issues (someone like, say, Angie Craig I'm going to be more forgiving of because she came from a swing district).  But he's running in one of the bluest states in the nation-we do not need a Catherine Cortez Masto or Angus King in one of the bluest states in the country, and given that he could very well be a deciding vote on a number of issues (if the Democrats get a majority in the next six years, it'll be a narrow one), I want us to have to be making the case to a Senator Mary Peltola or Senator James Talarico that they should sign on for a progressive bill in Congress-no one should be worrying about what's happening with the junior senator from Massachusetts.  Keeping this in mind, I couldn't in good conscience support someone who would cause that many headaches when reliable Ed Markey is right there.

That said, I do hope Markey eventually changes his mind and decides not to run (with Moulton in the race, I doubt it happens, but it could).  Someone like Ayanna Pressley, who has been rumored for a while to be interested in this race (with or without Markey in it) is someone I would support, but this of course puts Pressley into an impossible position.  If she runs, in a state without Ranked-Choice Voting, Markey almost certainly wins as she & Moulton would split the anti-incumbent vote.  If she doesn't run, there's the very real possibility that Moulton wins, and she foregoes a chance at a promotion (at 51, she's certainly young by political standards, but old enough to not have limitless possibilities to run for higher office).  If Markey retires, she'd be able to easily fill his shoes...but with Moulton now taunting the famously combative Markey, I wonder if we have yet another older incumbent vs. young upstart primary, albeit this time with the establishment candidate being to the left of the challenger.

Diane Keaton (1946-2025)

Perhaps the question I get most as a cinephile is "what made you love the movies?"   The answer varies depending on the situation and the person who asked it.  Every true movie-lover knows the breakthrough film, the one that made them realize this was no longer something casual, but a lifelong obsession, something that can only be captured in a darkened room, popcorn in your lap, marveling at the majesty and richness of the story in front of you.

But perhaps a better question is "what keeps you in love with the movies?"  What makes a flight-of-fancy as a child, the kind of thing that children usually give up alongside pretending to be pirates and princesses, and keeps you inspired, sustained, nurtured for decades to come.  There are many answers to this, but if you ask me to pinpoint with a movie, one particular title & scene is always going to come up.  Near the end of Reds, Diane Keaton is walking along a train platform, trying to find out if Warren Beatty has lived or died.  She sees men being celebrated upon their return, and the audience is meant to be hopeful, and then we see a stretcher holding a clearly dead body, and you can feel your heart sink.  Finally, Keaton's gaze looks up from the covered corpse with dread, and she sees Warren Beatty, disheveled and tired, but still very much alive.  Their complicated relationship, and nearly three hours of cinema in front of it, is etched onto their movie star faces.  They don't run to each other, but instead walk slowly, and then embrace, with Beatty whispering in Keaton's ear "don't leave...please don't leave me."  Whether or not these characters will ultimately live or die before the credits fall, they have achieved a reunion-they will be together whatever comes next.  And for every audience member, most teary-eyed, these actors have shown them something true, honest, and real.  From the ephemeral, we have witnessed love, if only for an instant.

I have seen countless Diane Keaton movies, and fallen in love with many of them.  The manic screams of Something's Gotta Give, the frustrated declaration of an abortion in The Godfather, Part II, the la-de-da perfection of her singing "Seems Like Old Times" in Annie Hall, but for me, when I think of Diane Keaton, I always think of her on that train station.  A singular actor, a singular talent, a singular human being, Reds is not the Keaton persona that most of the public associate with her, the neurotic, suited-up feminist trailblazer that Annie Hall would perfect.  But with Reds, you see best what made her so breathtaking in every role she would inhabit-that vulnerability and raw commitment to making each of her characters feel full of truth, timeless, even immortal.  Life is not fair, and death comes for us all, even the immortal, but as long as there are projectors in darkened theaters, and people willing to be moved by the floating lights on a projector, there will always be a Diane Keaton, wandering on a train platform, inspiring us all.

Joan Kennedy (1936-2025)

On Wednesday, Joan Bennett Kennedy passed away at the age of 89.  Kennedy's death wasn't just the end of the life of a longtime public figure, but also the unofficial end of Camelot, the nickname for the roughly 1000 days that John F. Kennedy, Joan's brother-in-law was in the White House.  President Kennedy is oftentimes evoked now, even nostalgically by Republicans (some of whom incorrectly state he'd be a Republican if he was alive today, which pretty much defies all sense of logic), as a time of impossible hope, optimism, and above-all-else glamour, in Washington, something that in the Trump Era feels like a completely different world, so it feels somewhat fitting that Camelot couldn't survive Trump's second term in office.

For me, the Kennedys really were an entry point into a certain type of politics-as-hobby, and so there's an odd sense of sadness over her death that I didn't quite expect.  I have always had a fascination with presidents.  When I was about seven-years-old, my mom bought a book about the presidents (which I still have-it's actually on a shelf in front of me as I'm typing this) from the supermarket, which sounds more rudimentary than it was as it was as it was a proper reference book (for those who are too young to know this, supermarkets in small towns used to have the opportunity to sell things like encyclopedias and reference books from Funk & Wagnalls during certain times of years that you now would find exclusively online, or online as far as you would buy reference books at all, and were why so many of your grandparents ended up owning encyclopedia sets despite them being overall quite expensive).  I poured over that thing, learning everything about the presidents, memorizing their names quickly and the years that they served.

But it was the Kennedys, with their aura of glamour, sophistication, and unspeakable tragedy that was the real entry point for me into thinking about politics the way I do now-not just through facts & dates, but as a rounded story, something with a lot of characters.  Every presidency, if you look at it objectively, comes with countless supporting players like a novel or a TV series, and the Kennedys, with their expansive family tree was something that I couldn't get enough of.  I collected (and still do) magazines about the family, complete with family trees & a look at what not just President Kennedy and his senator brothers accomplished, but their family history of service, scandal, & power.  In eighth grade I couldn't have told you the starting lineup for the Minnesota Timberwolves or the members of most rock bands, but I could name every single one of the Kennedy cousins, and their far more famous aunts & uncles.

All of those aunts & uncles are largely gone now.  While many of the Kennedy cousins still make news despite their age and depleting numbers (particularly First Daughter Caroline Kennedy and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.), Joan Kennedy's death leaves only one of their aunts, Vicki Kennedy (Ted Kennedy's second wife) behind.  And while the former US Ambassador to Austria is accomplished and one of the family's most prominent members now, she only entered the family in 1992, and so had no real connection to the time when the family was the most powerful in America.

However, Joan did.  Married to Ted Kennedy after a whirlwind courtship, Joan Kennedy was the "loose cannon" of the Kennedy wives.  While Jackie and Ethel were placid, forever perfect in the public eye and in many ways a strange combination of intense formality and emerging modernity in the 1960's, Joan Kennedy always felt to me as far more willing to buck the norm.  You could see this with her fashion-there's a famous picture of Joan Kennedy meeting President and Mrs. Nixon a few months after they won the White House.  Pat Nixon looks regal in a mother-of-the-bride silk dress, but it's Joan in a mod, well-above-the-knee mini skirt with mountains of blonde hair & flashy pumps that steals focus.  As the 1960's were ending, the wife of the most prominent Republican in America looked like Loretta Young...the wife of the most prominent Democrat looked like the far hipper Julie Christie or Nancy Sinatra.

Joan Kennedy, unlike Pat Nixon, would never become First Lady, despite her husband's attempt at the office in 1980, and they would divorce not long after Ted's presidential ambitions clearly would never be realized.  She had endured mountains of tragedy by then.  Repeated miscarriages in the 1960's were coupled with her husband's very public infidelities, most notably involving the death of Mary Jo Kopechne (Sen. Kennedy has publicly denied having a romantic involvement with Kopechne, but many think this strains credulity given his acknowledged affairs at the time).  Joan would attend Kopechne's funeral despite doctor's warnings...and soon after suffer her third miscarriage.  She would have three children grow to adulthood, all of whom would suffer health problems, particularly her daughter Kara who died 14 years before her mother from a heart attack.

When people think of Joan outside of her connection with her marriage into the Kennedy clan, they likely associate her with her struggles with alcoholism.  Though it's de rigueur now, in the late 1970's and early 1980's it was incredibly unusual for famous people to talk about drug addiction publicly.  Kennedy, along with Betty Ford & Elizabeth Taylor, was one of the first really famous people to open up about their struggles with the disease, talking about it in national magazines while her husband was the most well-known man in Congress.  This showed an incredible bravery, though she doesn't always get credit for it given that, unlike Ford & Taylor, she frequently relapsed in the years that followed, with drunk driving arrests, probation, and medical issues following.  In 2005, at one point one of the most famous women in America was found lying in a street with a broken shoulder, eventually being put in the care of her children.

But anyone who knows the Kennedy Myth and has followed the family knows that it comes with equal parts fame and sorrow, and few embodied that quite like Joan Kennedy.  While the Kennedys continue to be a part of the national conversation, her death marks the end of a chapter for the family and America's obsession with it, the last of the major figures of Camelot to finally reach Avalon.

Could One Battle After Another Make History?

For a blog that talks a lot about the Academy Awards, I will own that we don't talk a lot about the active Oscar race (certainly not in the way we do US elections), focusing more so on past races.  Part of this is that the minutia of the Oscar season is, honestly, best left for those with the connections (i.e. those visiting film festivals and interviewing the stars and podcasting about it).  But what we always have time for is Oscar trivia, and we may be encountering an historic one this season with One Battle After Another's absolute dominance in terms of pre-awards season chatter: the first film to ever be nominated for six acting Oscars.

The reason this is coming up is because of an announcement in Variety yesterday that actress Chase Infiniti will be campaigning for the Lead Actress Oscar, rather than (as some had assumed) for Supporting Actress.  The Oscars are unique, and unlike, say, the Tony Awards or the SAG Awards, they don't technically have a rule that you have to be nominated in a specific category-you can be campaigned in a category, but there's no pre-marked ballots, so you can also end up in a different category than you were assuming.  This happened to both Kate Winslet in The Reader and Keisha Castle-Hughes in Whale Rider, where both were initially campaigned in the supporting category before ultimately ending up in lead (with Winslet even winning).  That being said, normally Oscar acquiesces, and so if Infiniti is nominated, it's probable she'll be nominated for Best Lead Actress, rather than in the supporting category (for those category fraud watchers, this is the correct choice-Infiniti is arguably the main character in the film, and is definitely not supporting).

But Infiniti stepping into that field leaves room for two other women in her film (Teyana Taylor and Regina Hall) to be campaigned in supporting.  The supporting categories historically are kinder to nominating two nominees from the same film (the last time two leads were nominated from the same film in the same gendered category was 1991).  But perhaps more importantly, the Supporting Actress category has a dearth of obvious contenders this season, and so Taylor & Hall being in the film that (this far out) appears to be the Best Picture frontrunner will surely help them (we're not supposed to say this according to Twitter, but it does appear to be a weak year for the category).

If Infiniti, Taylor, & Hall are all nominated (a huge if, particularly Hall who has limited screen-time even if she does marvelous things with it), they could be joined by their three Oscar-winning male costars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, & Benicio del Toro.  Of the three, del Toro (the most low-key performance of the three) is the hardest sell, but his Oscar history (the best thing to try to get an Oscar nomination is already having another Oscar nomination-the Academy likes to repeat itself) will certainly help him in that regard.  If all six of these individuals were to be nominated, One Battle After Another would become the first film in the nearly 100-year history of the Academy to get 30% of the acting nominations.

Even if they get five, they'd still be tying for the most, and joining just nine other films (listed chronologically): Mrs. Miniver, All About Eve, From Here to Eternity, On the Waterfront, Peyton Place, Tom Jones, Bonnie and Clyde, The Godfather, Part II, and Network.  It's worth noting a few things about these.  First is that (weirdly) not all of them won Best Picture-3 of the six (Peyton Place, Bonnie and Clyde, and Network) were nominated, but didn't win.  Second, not all of them actually won acting prizes-both Tom Jones and Peyton Place came home empty-handed even with five nominations, so a win is never guaranteed in these circumstances.

And third, some of them were in the running for the position One Battle After Another is in now, though not all of them.  While all of these films had other actors in them (this isn't a Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf situation where all of the principle cast got included), a few of them like Bonnie and Clyde and On the Waterfront they nominated literally all of the cast members that were really of any import in the film.  There are other films where there are other primary parts (All About Eve & Mrs. Miniver) where there are other key roles, but none of them really were ever going to gain traction with the Academy.

The other five, though, were in the same boat as One Battle After Another, where there was at least one other contender clearly from the film who could've gotten included (but ultimately didn't).  While From Here to Eternity (where one could argue future Oscar-winner Ernest Borgnine was an option in Supporting Actor as the film's primary villain) didn't get a major nomination elsewhere and neither did The Godfather, Part II (where it's an easy call to say that either Diane Keaton or John Cazale should've been in the running), the remaining three films all got precursors.  The Golden Globes nominated Mildred Dunnock (Peyton Place) and Joan Greenwood (Tom Jones), while the BAFTA's made room for Robert Duvall (Network), none of which made it into Oscar's Top 20.  Any of these six actors could've gotten their film over the hump to an additional nomination, and the all-time record.

Do I think One Battle After Another will do it?  Honestly, probably not.  I think five is much more likely, but I wouldn't be predicting Hall or del Toro at this juncture if I was going on record...a far likelier claim to fame would be nominations in each category, which has happened occasionally through the years, the last time being American Hustle, and seems to be where this is headed.  American Hustle is arguably the last time we got conceivably close to 5 nominations for a film, given that Jeremy Renner (coming off of two fresh Oscar nominations at the time) was conceivably in the running (though not really-his nomination would've been a genuine surprise); you could also make an argument that Everything Everywhere All at Once got close (but again, that would've required a come-out-of-nowhere citation for James Hong).  One Battle After Another, quite honestly-is already in rarefied company.  It's arguably the first film in my lifetime to look solidly plausible at getting 5 nominations.  Whether it hits five (or six)...we've got a long awards season ahead of us to find out.

The Precedence of Adelita Grijalva

Rep-Elect Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ)

In case you were unaware, the government is currently involved in a shutdown.  Despite the Republicans having control of the White House, Senate, and US House of Representatives, they are unable to get a bill passed through Congress due to Democrats filibustering in the Senate, and unwillingness in their own party to break a filibuster (something that I suspect will hold-it's hard to see Susan Collins, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, or Rand Paul destroying the filibuster over this, though I could be wrong...you'd need at least one to do it though).  The end game here is almost certainly a compromise over healthcare, which is usually how this works-a compromise where neither party gets exactly what they want.

Hanging over this government shutdown, though, is a recent special election in the state of Arizona.  In March, Rep. Raul Grijalva lost his battle with cancer, and a special election was held on September 23rd, with his daughter Adelita winning the seat.  Both father and daughter in this case are Democrats, and Adelita Grijalva won in a landslide.  As of today, however, Grijalva has still not been sworn into Congress, despite it being apparent that she has won, and Speaker Mike Johnson appears to be actively trying to prevent her from being sworn in until after the vote on the government shutdown.  This has drawn unanimous criticism from Democrats, who have actively started to protest and even yell at Speaker Johnson in the halls of Congress, and have many wondering if this is a preview of Republican attempts to delay swearing in in an another break of political norms, with worries that this is a preview of how they will treat next year's midterms.

I think it's important to note a few things before we get into my thoughts on what's happening here, as facts should always matter first.  To start, Grijalva's election results, which are not in doubt (she is the winner, and not even Republicans are claiming otherwise) are not technically certified yet.  They will be certified on October 14th by the Arizona Secretary of State, so legally, she is currently just the projected victor, even though everyone knows she will become the victor legally on October 14th.  This brings me to my second point, which is that when it's clear that a special election victor has won, the House has generally proceeded to swearing in that incumbent as soon as possible.  That has been true even this 119th Congress, when Mike Johnson swore in both Jimmy Patronis & Randy Fine when they won seats in Florida in April (days before their races were officially certified by the Florida Board of Elections), and even for Democrat James Walkinshaw, who was sworn in the day after his election in Virginia, even though his election wasn't certified until a week later.  It's worth noting that in the case of both Patronis & Fine, they were sworn in during a "pro forma session," when the House isn't technically in session, but the Speaker has the ability to swear in new members.  I say this because the House has been in a pro forma session this week, so there was a time frame to swear in Grijalva if needed.

I bring this up because Johnson is claiming that he cannot swear in Grijalva until the government is funded.  This is simply not true, particularly if you look at precedence.  During the government shutdown of 2018-19, Congress switched sessions, so every member (including Mike Johnson) were technically sworn in during a government shutdown.  You could make the argument that the House is truly not in session, but that's also not true if you count a pro forma session (which is what Patronis & Fine were sworn in during).  Democrats are actively trying to get Grijalva sworn in.  You can see here a video of Rep. Greg Stanton attempting to get the acting Speaker (note, not Mike Johnson) to swear in Grijalva.  Johnson was also confronted by Sens. Mark Kelly & Ruben Gallego (you can see the video here) with Johnson largely making up excuses about the members already having their swearing in's scheduled as the reason the two Republicans were able to be sworn in, which of course is bullshit.  Johnson himself said during a press conference that he was happy to swear in Grijalva "as soon as she wants" before backtracking and saying he would only do it if the Democrats reopened the government.

Grijalva technically doesn't have anything but precedence to stand on until the certification on the 14th (by which point, to be honest, I suspect the government will probably be opened), but it's worth wondering what Johnson's end game is here.  Johnson might be able to stave off getting Grijalva confirmed until there's alignment on a vote to open the government, but it's worth noting that's not what he's clearly trying to avoid by keeping her from being sworn in (i.e. he's not worried another Democrat on the floor will make a difference in the government funding bill).  No matter what he says, it's flagrantly obvious that Johnson is attempting to stop a discharge petition to require a vote on the Jeffrey Epstein files being released on the floor of the US House.

This is because, given that the discharge petition has four Republican signatories (Thomas Massie, Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Greene, & Lauren Boebert), with every single Democrat in the House already signed onto the bill, if Grijalva is confirmed, she can sign the petition (and she has stated publicly that she will) and force a vote on the floor of the House to release the Epstein files, which given 218 members have said they will force the vote, it would be guaranteed to pass.  The remaining Republicans in Congress would have to choose in this situation-do they vote to release the Epstein files, which the majority of America (and much of their base) wants, or do they back Donald Trump, who clearly does not want the Epstein files to be released given his personal relationship with the deceased sex offender.  Swing district Republicans, in particular, would be asked to choose between helping Trump (famous for being vengeful to those who cross him) and severely damaging their reelection campaigns.

This isn't the end of this story-the House vote would not necessarily get the files released.  It'd have to go through the Senate, make it past the president's desk, and even then it's likely that Trump's Justice Department would attempt to redact portions of it.  But this would still be a huge blow to the president, and make it considerably likelier that the public would finally get to see what's in the files, including potentially damaging information on Trump.  It seems apparent to anyone with two brain cells (but for legal reasons I'll say this is just alleged) that Trump's continued fight to block the release of these would indicate he is implicated in these files, which could potentially destroy his career (and certainly hurt his party's electoral prospects as long as they stand by him).  It's worth wondering, given Johnson's willingness to risk his Speakership in such a way, if other prominent members of the Republican Party are also listed that are pushing Johnson to stop this behind the scenes (but again, that's just speculation).

Johnson's refusal to seat Grijalva is chilling, and seriously undemocratic in a way that is sadly not unprecedented (the Republicans' attempts to stop Allison Riggs from taking her seat after winning the North Carolina Supreme Court election last year were far more shocking, in my humbled opinion), and is something that feels ominous for the future.  But I'll be honest-it's hard to wonder what Johnson's endgame is here.  There's no world where Grijalva doesn't end up in the House, and public statements from all four Republicans has indicated they aren't backing down (if anything, Marjorie Taylor Greene has become anti-Republican in recent weeks in a way I haven't seen from her since Trump retook office).  This vote IS coming...Johnson's attempts to stop it are almost more intriguing because he knows this is futile than if he had some clear room to play.

Janet Mills Upends Maine Senate Race

Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME)

Twitter is my one, true social media addiction, and as a result, I sometimes forget that things I've been talking about on the bird app incessantly are not necessarily things that I've talked about here, and given that not everyone here is on Twitter (keep it that way), I wanted to share my thoughts on a major announcement that appears in the works in the state of Maine where (according to Axios) Gov. Janet Mills is expected to announce a run for the US Senate.

The reason this feels particularly appropriate for Twitter is that the Democratic base on social media has, by-and-large, already fallen desperately in love with a different candidate.  We talked a lot about Graham Platner here, but it's worth repeating that he seems to be an doing well as a first-time candidate, and the grassroots so far agrees, with him raising $3 million already, a huge sum in any race, but particularly for a first-time candidate.  Many people are comparing Mills' entrance into the race, and the presumed treatment she will get from Chuck Schumer & Kirsten Gillibrand to that of Haley Stevens has enjoyed, which as you know I am not supportive of (I've endorsed Mallory McMorrow in that race, and think Schumer should stay out of it).  But it may surprise you to find out that I'm actively hoping that Mills gets into this race & wins it, and while I don't think Schumer butting in will help at all, I do expect Mills to end up victorious in this race despite Platner's impressive performance so far.  Let me tell you why.

The best place to start is to point out how critically-important it is that the Democrats flip the Maine Senate race right now.  Currently, Susan Collins is the only senator in the entire country to hold a US Senate seat that her party lost in 2016/20/24.  Both parties are in a position where they are struggling to flip seats that aren't in the seven core swing states (NV, MI, PA, NC, GA, WI, & AZ), and given the disproportionately larger number of red states in the country, Democrats need to hold 12/14 of those Senate seats at any given time to win a majority...assuming that they also held all of the 19 states that went for them in the past three elections, which of course includes Maine, the one state they can't claim this achieved.  Democrats, quite frankly, will struggle to gain a majority not just in 2026, but also in 2028 or 2030 if they do not get a Democrat into that seat.  And given that Susan Collins is a formidable challenger, we have to assume that she will put up a decent fight.

When it comes to beating incumbents, I'll be honest, my strategy is different than how I'd approach an open seat primary in a state like Maine, which generally would favor the Democrat & therefore there would be some room for risk.  My thought is that we should not get bogged down by, say, a candidate's age or if they are slightly more liberal than your average Democrat is if it means flipping a seat.  The reason for this is twofold.  One, there is no current Republican in Congress who would be better than even the most moderate of Democrats in Congress-either Mills or Platner would bring this seat miles to the left if they were to replace Collins.  And two, this is very much of the mold of "just win, baby" to quote Nancy Pelosi.  You get picky about candidates when you have the luxury to do so-if you don't hold the seat currently & you're fighting an incumbent, you don't have room for luxuries.

Which brings us to the candidates.  Platner is impressive, but I'll be honest-his town hall meetings (to me) feel a bit like Democrats falling in love with a candidate who looks like a Republican but talks like a Democrat.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing (this strategy worked for recent flipped seats from John Fetterman and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez), but it is no guarantee to work, and his town hall performances have left me feeling a bit apprehensive to bet on him when there's better options (he seems somewhat out of his element, and a bit paint-by-numbers).  And Mills, despite her age, is a better option.  She has won statewide twice by wide-margins, and has a positive approval rating.  Maine is the oldest state in the union, with a median voter age of 45, so her age, especially against Collins (who is just a few years younger) isn't really a factor.  The Democrats are likely to hold the governor's mansion next year, so there's no worry about her replacement, and she's a known commodity.  She's not a glossy new potential national candidate like Platner would be if he won, but she's a safe choice.  And it's okay to have a safe choice on occasion-the Senate does not all need to be filled with rising stars (we will be fine if no one from Maine runs for president in 2028).  It's okay to occasionally just have a few generic backbenchers doing the work & increasing the caucus numbers.

Mills also makes Collins' race harder, which I think is important.  It's harder for Collins to redefine a candidate all of the state already knows (a fame that Platner will not have the luxury of falling back on as Collins attacks him), and because she's so well-known & well-liked, it'll be harder for Collins to argue that losing her is a genuine loss for the state.  Making arguments that seniority is important has largely gone extinct in recent years (Joe Manchin would've taken a shot at running for another term if it did work, and Collin Peterson would still be in the House), but also incumbents like Collins have also gone extinct...she's going to make a point of running on there being "just one Susan Collins" because is a strategy that has worked in the past.  Janet Mills, though, can run on "there's just one Janet Mills" in the same vein-Collins, who has taken on a number of strong challengers, has never gone against someone with the success rate of Mills.

The single biggest argument against Mills is her age, and gain-this is where I don't get too precious about these things.  Mills will almost certainly just serve one term, and that's okay.  Her usefulness will have been worth it simply by beating Collins and getting the seat blue (and from a legacy perspective, she'd have a decent shot at a Dem trifecta & delivering a huge progressive agenda back to Maine were she to win).  In six years, quite honestly, there's a decent chance one of the many candidates running for Maine's Governor could go for the open seat as a sitting governor just like Mills is doing now (and it's not like Angus King, who is older than Mills, is going to go for another term after his current one).  As long as the seat flips, Mills will have done what we need this candidate to do.

It's worth noting that history is on my side.  Countless sitting governors have run for the US Senate in the past few decades, and some of them have run in contested primaries, but all of them have won.  The last time an incumbent governor ran for a US Senate primary and lost was in 1986.  That year, weirdly enough, two sitting governors (Bill Janklow of South Dakota and Harry Hughes of Maryland) both lost their primaries.  In Janklow's case, he was challenging an incumbent Senator (Jim Abdnor), which of course is considerably different than Mills going up against the neophyte Platner.  Hughes did not run against an incumbent, but he was also involved in a massive savings-and-loan scandal at the time, something Mills hasn't really had to deal with, and lost to someone more tenured than Platner as well, Barbara Mikulski (at the time a 5-term congresswoman).  There's really no precedence for Mills to lose this race against Platner, and while I do think we might be in for a real race, smart money would be on her to win the primary...and given her experience & stature, I'd argue the general as well.

Who Will Make the Visual Effects Shortlist?

If you have followed along with me on the Oscar Viewing Project for many years (I promise, I am working my ass off to get another ballot up, but my European trip and having a cold for the entire week after have largely made me a vegetable the past week...prayers going up that I will have more time to work on my To Do list this week as it keeps getting longer), you will know that I am obsessed with the Visual Effects category.  Perhaps more than any other Oscar race, it's the one I think is the most intriguing, mostly because it is so dependent on the films in the race, and because it's the one race where you can predict the nominees relatively early.  People love to proclaim awards races "over" in October for acting races especially, and then they are insanely wrong at the end of the day (I don't understand the lack of first-hand embarrassment as a result of that, but to each their own in 2025, I guess...in a world where people use AI to send text messages, maybe no one is capable of shame anymore?), but Visual Effects films fit a certain type, and they are easier to see coming (any film that is going to be a contender for the nomination is, at this point, already advertising with movie trailers).  So I like to, each October, get down for posterity who I think will make the shortlist, the list of ten films that are contenders for the final five nominations.  Last year I did really well given how early it was, correctly getting all five of the eventual Oscar nominees on the list, plus three shortlisted contenders, with the only ones I missed being Civil War (which I didn't predict at all, and honestly don't feel too bad about) and Mufasa (which I nearly added to the list) in favor of the totally unloved Mad Max sequel Furiosa and the strange Robert Zemeckis family film Here.  I will say right up front that by doing this in October, I'm not going to get them all right, but it's more fun when we're still in the speculation phase and not just guessing the same things everyone else is guessing.  We'll talk through some of the nuances of this process, and how predicting the shortlist oftentimes differs from predicting the actual winners, but let's get into this, starting with the "sure things."

Sure Things

Saying "sure thing" about an Oscar nomination in October is usually tempting fate, but there are certain movies that you just can't ignore in a VFX race, and we have two of them this year.  This is less than I normally do, and you're going to hear this a few times in this article, but 2025 is a uniquely hard time to predict this mostly because there weren't as many major special effects films this year, and those that did get made aren't all hits.  You don't have to be a gigantic movie to be able to make the shortlist (last year, Civil War made the list with a $50 million budget, relatively low for this category), but it helps, and it also helps if you made a lot of money.  No movie this year did both to the degree I feel it's "inevitable" that they make this list.  So we're actually going to do something unprecedented with this article series-only pronounce two "not yet released" films for the shortlist.

Avatar: Fire and Ash is the sort of film that you can bet the farm on in this category.  Even if the film sucks (and James Cameron's near flawless record as a visual filmmaker makes that feel unlikely), it's still the undisputed frontrunner for both the nominations and a win.  You have to go back to 1984 to find a Cameron film that wasn't shortlisted (weirdly 1984's The Terminator), and so this is the free space in a Bingo card-it's in the Top 10.  

The other film that I think feels locked into the shortlist is Wicked: For Good.  I had mixed feelings on the first one, and in fact listed it fifth in my OVP for last year among the actual nominees.  But Oscar and I have different tastes, and given the gargantuan box office, the likely elevated effects here (for those familiar with the musical, you know the back half has more potential for special effects), and its previous nomination, I think it's certain to be nominated (and therefore shortlisted).  Other than those two, though, I don't think anyone can feel totally safe.

Will the Academy Like It?

One of the bigger questions when it comes to predicting VFX nominations is whether or not the rest of the Academy is going to be into the movies.  Best Picture contenders, even if they have only a few special effects, tend to get some love here.  Sinners, for example, if it's in the Best Picture field, could make this list.  One of the nuances of the Shortlist is that it frequently results in movies that have any sort of Best Picture heat getting on the list, even if they aren't nominated (recent Best Picture nominees Poor Things, Dunkirk, Black Panther, & The Shape of Water all got on the shortlists without getting actual nominations, for example).  

There are also films that come from major Oscar-winning/nominated directors that might be a contender if they click in other categories.  A few come to mind, including Kathryn Bigelow's political thriller A House of Dynamite, Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, and Paul Greengrass's The Lost Bus.  Frankenstein's mixed reviews at film festivals, combined with being a horror movie (weirdly, despite the genre being a pioneer in visual effects for decades, horror movies don't always click with this branch) feels the most likely of the bunch even with those deficits, but I will note that The Lost Bus is coming from Industrial Light & Magic, the most important visual effects house in Hollywood (which gets a majority of the shortlisted contenders virtually every year. 

I also think that a big question mark is F1, which is a movie that might do very well in the tech categories (it's not going in for Best Picture, but Sound, Editing, Cinematography, & of course Visual Effects are all very real threats).  Despite most major blockbusters these days being sequels or remakes, this category does have a penchant for original movies, and so I honestly think that F1 is going to have a solid shot here, especially given the surprisingly robust box office pull.

Superheroes, Remakes, & Sequels

It's worth noting here that we are predicting the final shortlist nominees, not the Top 10 films that are most likely to get nominated, as there's a slight difference between the two, and a good example of that is Jurassic World: Rebirth.  The Jurassic Park franchise has not been nominated for this category since 1997, indicating that the Academy has largely given up on it as an option, but every installment in the series has been on the shortlist, which means that it's honestly a decent guess to be another also-ran.  I wouldn't have it in my Top 10 for getting a nomination (though it'd be close), but it is a really good guess for a shortlist citation.

That's the thing with the shortlist-it usually feels a bit more bloated, and definitely liking the "MOST" special effects contenders, so I wouldn't totally throw out things like the live-action remakes of Snow White, How to Train Your Dragon, and Lilo & Stitch.  I also think that the surprise recent nomination for Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning in this category makes the final installment in the series a probable shortlister, particularly given that four of the previous movies in the series were on the shortlist.  The Tron series has never been nominated, but given the impressive effects in Tron Ares' trailer (and that Tron Legacy got in the Top 10), I would also consider that a strong contender.

And then, of course, there are the superhero films.  Since the release of Iron Man, while there have been years the MCU has missed for a nomination, there has never been a year where one of their films wasn't on the ten-wide shortlist, and given there are three contenders this year (Captain America 4, Thunderbolts, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps) I think at least one is included, likely the latter given its retro charms, though two isn't out of the question.  Yes, two, don't give me that look even though the other two were noted misfires in terms of box office expectations.  Of the 34 MCU films prior to 2025 (i.e. the ones that have gone through their Oscar year) 13 got nominated, and another 12 were shortlisted, so they like Marvel a lot (they also have never given them a statue, so they don't love MCU a lot, but that's not what we're guessing today).

DC, on the other hand, regularly misses; they have only gotten one actual nomination in the past 15 years in this category (2022's The Batman), and in terms of the shortlist, the only other citation they've gotten in the past ten years was 2020's Birds of Prey (a notoriously weak field).  Superman checks a lot of boxes for Oscar (it's ILM, it's the rebrand of a franchise they've gone for before, and it made a lot of money), but it's not the sure thing that it would've been if, say, this was a Marvel movie.

Odds & Ends

Finishing things out, we have a few odds-and-ends.  If Glen Powell in The Running Man is a surprise hit, it's not insane to think it could make it onto the list.  Films like Sketch, Mickey 17, and Fountain of Youth are a bit too small to get into the conversation, but given they do a 20-wide field for this, it's not insane to think they might make the first round list (and if you make that list, you could always be the weird, "huh-how'd that happen"-style Civil War contender).  A likelier Civil War contender could be Warfare, which uses a combination of traditional and computer-generated effects in its production, and was critically-acclaimed earlier this year.  If there are fans in the Academy, it's not out of the question it could surprise.

But perhaps the most important "odds & ends" contender should be a movie that, as of right now, is the highest-grossing domestic movie of 2025 (though it's less than $1 million away from Lilo & Stitch, so that's a precarious perch): A Minecraft Movie.  Minecraft is jam-packed with special effects, and I honestly do think that it will make the twenty-wide list.  In a year of somewhat disappointing box office, it is absolutely a film that no one saw coming in terms of its success, and Oscar sometimes cares about what keeps his pockets lined.  The effects are pretty much agreed to be bad, and it will likely suffer the fate of a different Jack Black franchise (his Jumanji films have never been on the ten-wide shortlist despite multiple mentions on the 20-wide list), but to skip talking about it would be insane-it's definitely a part of the conversation for the shortlist, even if a nomination feels too silly to ponder.

My Final Shortlist Predictions (Alphabetical)

With all of that being said, here are my predictions as of right now of who will be the Visual Effects Shortlist in 2025:

• Avatar: Fire and Ash
• F1
• The Fantastic Four: The First Steps
• Jurassic World: Rebirth
• The Lost Bus
• Mission Impossible Final Reckoning
• Superman
• Thunderbolts
• Tron: Ares
• Wicked: For Good

I will confess that this feels a little bit vanilla.  I skipped Frankenstein because most people who have seen it seem to be skipping it (and I have been burned a lot by horror movies here, which is also why I'm swiping left on Sinners).  How to Train Your Dragon surely makes the most sense here, and probably should get the spot I gave to Thunderbolts, but the MCU is such a consistent bet for the shortlist, and honestly you have to have at least a couple listed that have no shot at an actual nomination as that's shortlist tradition.  Part of me wants to list Warfare and Minecraft, the former because it has such specific Civil War vibes (an early year critical darling that Oscar tries to make room for) and the latter because it made so much money, but I can't really justify skipping any of these, and if I did (looking at you Thunderbolts, The Lost Bus, and Jurassic World), I'd probably put in the flying dragons...even if they'll get their fair share of that in Avatar.  So these are my ten.