Here we go again. Our toddler-in-chief threw another tantrum this week, because he was mad at Canada. Donald Trump was astonished that Canada didn't immediately knuckle under and agree to all his kooky demands, so he went ahead and opened up a whole new trade war with our neighbor to the north. These demands (to show you how inane the negotiations must have been) included trying to force Canada to reject their bilingual nature and get rid of all that French stuff. Canada refused. So Trump announced a new 50 percent tariff on Canadian goods. Canada then announced their own tariffs on American goods. Trump then threw his tantrum, announcing that he had just renamed Lake Ontario, which will now officially and henceforth be known by the U.S. government as "Lake America" (or possibly "Lake Of America," Trump didn't seem too sure). Which (of course) spurred the internet to respond. The site MapQuest helpfully pointed people to a tool they could use to rename the lake to anything they wished, which (of course) led to all sorts of amusing new names for it (Lake Epstein Files? Lake Hormuz? Lake Cheats At Golf? Lake Gulf Of Mexico?). The funniest one (to us, at any rate) came from "Mister Cool" on the site formerly known as Twitter, who posted an image showing: "Lakey McLakeface."

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There was some amusement in the headlines today, after the announcement that there will not just be one but actually two Dan Sullivans on the general election ballot in the Senate race in Alaska. But many of these articles missed a very key point, which is that the Alaska election system pretty much guarantees that this will not mean one of them will somehow spoil the chances of the other one. In the end, it is likely not going to matter at all to the result of the race.

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It's Tuesday, so yet again it is primary day, but this week doesn't have any really exciting races on the Democratic side so I thought it was time to take an overview of how the Senate races are going in all the other states.

At this point, regaining control of the Senate is well within reach for Democrats, but will still require a massive shift towards the party from the electorate. This isn't out of the question, as Donald Trump's polling is still at record lows and he keeps actually going out of his way to remind people why they are so dissatisfied with his economic record. Starting up a new trade war with Canada isn't going to do the Republican Party any good in states like Maine and Michigan, to state the obvious. The war with Iran continues to stagnate, with gasoline prices showing no signs of coming back down to pre-war levels any time soon (indeed, they are still up over a dollar a gallon from when the war started). And Trump doesn't care one whit -- he still says affordability is some sort of Democratic hoax. Voters aren't in the mood for such gaslighting, which is why the wind is at the Democrats' backs.

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Much is being made over the ideological struggle happening within the Democratic Party, with some likening it to a "Democratic Tea Party," or even a civil war among Democrats. Both terms are a bit overblown, but there is indeed a struggle for the soul of the party happening. It didn't spring into existence overnight, or even with the election of New York City's Mayor Zohran Mamdani, for that matter. Instead it is a movement that has gradually built up steam to reach the point in Democratic politics where it is now.

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Progressives just scored a truly shocking victory in last night's Florida primary election, as state lawmaker Angie Nixon defeated Alex Vindman in the Democratic nomination race for a Senate seat, by a whopping 12 points. The biggest takeaway from this race was that Vindman had raised 16 times the amount of money that Nixon did, but in the end it just didn't matter. The other big takeaway from the race is that Nixon's victory was an impressive one for a progressive because she won demographic groups that don't normally go for progressive candidates -- they are usually a stronghold of votes for establishment candidates instead.

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So doubtlessly you've heard the story -- which has gotten heavy coverage in the political press all week long, of course -- of the very progressive Democrat who not only won the primary for an open Senate seat but also impressively outperformed polling expectations, right? It was a huge story -- because it will mean there will now be three progressives on November Senate ballots in three swing states. Progressives scored a big win, which has given rise to much discussion among the pundits over whether this is a good thing or a bad thing for the Democratic Party, because it is such a risky strategy right now (with control of the Senate hanging in the balance).

What's that? You didn't hear about all of this?

Well, that's because the mainstream media decided a different primary race was worth all their ink and airwave time instead. They obsessed over a progressive who very narrowly lost a primary in a governor's race (which is just not as important, to national politics, as the Senate races), because they could barely contain their relief and glee over seeing a progressive lose (even though the polls said she would win).

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I have to begin by pointing out that, technically, that headline should be in quote marks, since it is a direct quotation (from the guy who inadvertently started the whole thing). I was thinking of calling this article "Whistling Past The Graveyard" before I came across that quote, but I had to admit it was indeed a catchier title.

So what is the "great burrito debate," if you haven't already heard about it all? Here's how Forbes explained it (complete with the quote's source):

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Another bundle of primary elections happened last night, and this morning all the political news was focused on what turned out to be the closest race of the evening: an upset victory in the governor's race among Democrats in Wisconsin. Which is understandable enough, I suppose, since it truly was a close contest (decided by less than a half a percentage point, only a few thousand votes), but this focus managed to crowd out another interesting primary next door, in Minnesota.

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The 2026 primary season is almost over. This week's crop of primaries generated some big news, mostly due to a young and very progressive Democratic candidate winning the nomination for an open Senate seat in Michigan. This was seen as an epic defeat for both the establishment of the Democratic Party and for AIPAC, who spent tens of millions of dollars unsuccessfully trying to defeat Dr. Abdul El-Sayed -- who narrowly won the nomination, despite being outspent almost 9-to-1.

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This November, Michigan is going to be the most interesting battleground state of all to watch, because it is finally going to put to the test a big political theory. Can a truly progressive candidate who has plenty of charisma win a general election in a swing state where the stakes are high and both parties will be heavily invested in the outcome? This theory has (so far) yet to be tested in a big way, much to the frustration of progressives, stretching all the way back to the 2016 nomination fight between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. The theory has never been adequately tested, progressives will tell you, because the Democratic Party establishment kept putting its thumb on the scale in order to defeat Bernie and advance their chosen "more electable" candidates instead.

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