2025 & 2026 Elections | Adams drops out in NYC

[UNCMSinLS]

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www.politico.com

Independent Dan Osborn makes another run at Nebraska Senate​

Independent populist Dan Osborn, whose insurgent Senate campaign seriously threatened one of Nebraska’s Republicans from securing a third term last year, is now taking on GOP Sen. Pete Ricketts — one of the wealthiest members of Congress.

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Osborn, who has already met with state Democrats, announced his candidacy against the former Nebraska governor Tuesday via campaign video.

A Navy veteran and mechanic by trade, Osborn is aware he won’t be able to duplicate the out-of-nowhere grassroots campaign he deployed last cycle, when he outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris significantly in the state.

“There is no element of surprise [this time],” Osborn told POLITICO, adding that he expects Ricketts and his allies to “come out with a lot of money and go very negative right from the beginning.”

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National polling hints at a growing discontent among independents, Democrats and some Republicans over Trump’s policies, including the passage of his megabill last week that critics predict will add trillions to the national deficit and boot millions off Medicaid.

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As POLITICO reported in November, Chuck Schumer touted the race in a virtual rallydays before the election. The Senate Democratic campaign arm and its main allied super PAC also made late donationsto Osborn or groups supporting him. Democrats didn’t recruit a candidate into the race last year and aren’t planning to do so next year either, giving Osborn a chance to carry Democrats and the state’s many independent voters, according to Nebraska Democratic Party chair Jane Kleeb.

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Kleeb said for Osborn to win, he’ll have to make up ground in Nebraska’s 3rd Congressional District, which broke heavily for Fischer last cycle. She said it’s possible.

“We just think that there is so much anger at what is happening with all of the cuts, in particular in rural communities, that if there was ever an opening to win statewide, [2026] is the year.”

But Osborn vows to remain independent, saying: “I have no problem sitting at lunch by myself.”

Expand the map!

 

[Mulberry Heel]

Jumping ahead to 2028 …

I'm not sure that he's rabid enough for the social conservatives that dominate the GOP's presidential primaries. They'll make exceptions for Dear Leader, but for Youngkin? I have my doubts.

 

[Mulberry Heel]

I have no idea if she'll run or not, but I do think if she does she'll face a much tougher race next year than she has in the past. Maine overall is a blue state and her polling in the state is at or near an all-time low I believe. Has any prominent state Democrat announced plans to run against her?

 

[UNCMSinLS]

I have no idea if she'll run or not, but I do think if she does she'll face a much tougher race next year than she has in the past. Maine overall is a blue state and her polling in the state is at or near an all-time low I believe. Has any prominent state Democrat announced plans to run against her?

I think Governor Janet Mills is considering a run. Many believe she may be favored against the incumbent senator; hence, the latest Collins' dithering.

 

[superrific]

Glenn Youngkin is just Brett Kavanaugh without a law degree.

 

[superrific]

Exactly. Osborn shows how we do that, not by running a standard-issue Democrat in a state where the brand is toxic, but by backing someone rooted in the place who can speak to people’s lived experience.

He’s a Navy vet and union mechanic going up against a billionaire ex-governor. That’s the contrast. Voters responded in 2024; he outperformed Kamala by around 10 points last time. Now the party’s wisely staying out of the way again. No blue branding, no Beltway consultants. Just a working-class candidate with real local credibility.

If this is what it takes to win again in states like Nebraska, then Democrats should be looking at ND, SD, MT, and UT next. Places where national Dems can’t win, but the ideas still resonate if they come from someone who fits the culture. Give them air cover, money, organizing help, but let them run on their own terms.

It was more like 7.5% ahead of Kamala. And he still lost by a lot. It wasn't a close race.

Do we have better options in Nebraska? Probably not. I'm all for Osborn. And, in a bad electoral environment for Pubs, he could win. I've been saying that Dems will probably be able to take a Senate seat or two that we don't even think of right now as really in play. Maybe this will be it.

I'd like to see Osborn win a race before we go all-in on his electoral strategy. But you mentioned MT and isn't Jon Tester basically the Osborn of MT? And he lost. He did win a couple of times, including races he should have lost. So who knows. But I'd say that we need to remember that politics is much more national than it was even a decade ago. Candidate quality matters less and less. That's contrary to conventional wisdom coming out of the 2022 Senate elections, but those were truly horrible candidates. I'd concede that candidate quality matters if one of the candidates is . . . well, Herschel Walker or Todd Akin or minisoldr. I'm not sure even Osborn played by Brad Pitt would win against a decent candidate. I guess we'll see. If there's a time for it, it's now.

UT is not going to elect a Dem any time soon, no matter what electoral strategy we use. I don't think ND is really gettable considering how dependent their economy has become on oil. /No idea about SD. MT is obviously gettable. It's so strange -- it hasn't voted for a Dem for president that I can remember, and usually the races aren't even remotely close . . . but it wasn't that long ago that MT had two blue senators and a blue governor.

 

[superrific]

Tester is not the Osborn of Montana. Tester was a long-time incumbent, ran as a Democrat, and had full party backing in a state with actual Democratic infrastructure. He lost in 2024, despite his local appeal, because the toxicity of the national Democratic brand overwhelmed it. Osborn ran as an independent in a deep-red state where Democrats didn’t even field a candidate. These aren’t remotely comparable.

If anything, Osborn is testing a model for post-party coalition-building in places where Democrats can’t win under their own name. He outperformed Kamala in Nebraska. Mamdani just beat a donor-backed juggernaut in NYC through organizing, not party muscle. These aren’t isolated flukes, they’re signs that nationalization can be disrupted when message and ground game align.

If you want to understand Osborn’s value, stop lumping him in with past candidates propped up by party machines, like Jaime Harrison. Look at what he’s actually doing: building an anti-MAGA coalition where Democrats have no path on their own. That’s what expanding the map might actually look like.

Let me rephrase: Young Tester was the Osborn of Montana. Or, to put it differently, Osborn's career in the Senate, should he win, would be a lot like Tester's.

Yes, Tester lost in 2024 running on the Dem brand. I'm really skeptical that Osborn's politics are going to be much different, and he's still going to need support from Dems. That said, Tester won a few races; if Osborn could replicate that it would be awesome.

Tester originally won in the deeply blue cycle of 2006. If 2026 is as deeply blue as I think it will be, Osborn could definitely win. That said, partisanship has become amplified since 2006. There's less room to run as a Nebraskan than there was.

Also, as you well know, it's those last few percentage points that are the hardest. Beto knows too. It's actually not that hard to improve from 38 -> 45%. It's much harder to do 45->49%.

 

[rodoheel]

Exactly. Osborn shows how we do that, not by running a standard-issue Democrat in a state where the brand is toxic, but by backing someone rooted in the place who can speak to people’s lived experience.

He’s a Navy vet and union mechanic going up against a billionaire ex-governor. That’s the contrast. Voters responded in 2024; he outperformed Kamala by around 10 points last time. Now the party’s wisely staying out of the way again. No blue branding, no Beltway consultants. Just a working-class candidate with real local credibility.

If this is what it takes to win again in states like Nebraska, then Democrats should be looking at ND, SD, MT, and UT next. Places where national Dems can’t win, but the ideas still resonate if they come from someone who fits the culture. Give them air cover, money, organizing help, but let them run on their own terms.

Other than maybe Utah, I'm not sure those are the right states to target for an approach like in Nebraska (or really target at all for Dems, at least right now). Osborn did well in Nebraska largely by racking up votes in the major urban areas - he won by about 73k votes in the three most populous counties (Douglas, Lancaster, Sarpy) and lost by about 140k everywhere else. Nebraska, despite its reputation, has a fairly small rural population (only around 27% of the population - lower, for example, than NC, SC, and Wisconsin, among others), so a good moderate candidate like Osborn has a chance to compete by racking up votes in the urban areas and hoping to hang. States like ND, SD, and MT, by contrast, are much more heavily rural, and their urban areas are considerably more conservative than the major urban areas in Nebraska. I'm not saying Dems/independents should give up on ever competing in senate races in those states, but they're probably among the 5-10 most difficult states for a left-of-center (or even center-of-center) candidate to ever win. An independent candidate in those states probably has more chance than a Dem candidate, but I just can't see the investment of resources being a smart decision right now.

IMO an Osborn-type campaign, where Dems are supportive but possibly happy to have the candidate run as an "I" with no open Democratic affiliation on the ballot, are more likely to be successful in the R-leaning or solid R states that are geographically close and demographically similar to Nebraska like Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Indiana - states that have large public university towns and/or other larger urban areas with their typically more educated and more liberal-leaning voters. I think it makes a lot more sense to try to compete in those states, whether with a D or I candidate, before thinking about Montana and the Dakotas. As for Utah - that will probably require tis own unique approach because the state's politics are pretty different from any other's given the heavily Mormon population.

ETA: I probably shouldn't lump Montana in with the Dakotas because of Dems' history there. But I honestly expect it as a state to trend more conservative in its politics, fitting with the recent trend.

 

[chrissteel]

I guess being the child of ultra-wealthy, cosmopolitan South Asian with Marxists leaning would not help his admission chances quite as much as - other

 

[superrific]

Saying Osborn is like “young Tester” still misses what’s new here. Osborn is trying to do what the Democratic Party can’t do in Nebraska: build a working-class anti-MAGA coalition without the burden of the national brand. That’s not just candidate flavor, that’s a different structure entirely.

Tester campaigned more or less like an independent, often running away from the Dems as much as running with him. Same as Manchin in WV. The Dems brand was better in 2006 than 2024.

There's a lot less difference between them than you want to admit. See, here's the thing: political parties have existed since the very beginning, and with the exception of a few years leading up to the Civil War, we've had two and only two parties, and 99.9% of federal elected officials have belonged to one of them. There is surely a reason for that, don't you think?

What you're describing isn't "new." It's just failed repeatedly over 150 years. It might succeed this time. Bernie is a Senator, after all. Like I said, though, let's see a win before we overturn the apple cart. And the other problem with this model is that it cannot possibly succeed at scale because money. The Dems aren't going to finance non-Dems forever.

In general, you tend to dismiss with waving hands any suggestions that you contemplate history when pondering the future. I mean, you do contemplate history; it's just that you tend only to allow for your favored history. And you tend to cite that history for specific support. The reality is that what you propose has decades of historical experience telling us it's unlikely to work. Unlikely is not the same as guaranteed and I'm all for experimenting when the costs are low. I'm just saying that if you have no real answer to "why will it work this time when it never has?" then you have no real ideas either. That's the initial hurdle you have to pass. Lawyers might recognize an analogy to a 12b6 motion to dismiss.

I don't to argue about this. Maybe I'm wrong about you dismissing ideas. Maybe I'm selectively remembering, or I've missed the point a few times. It doesn't matter what you've posted. It's a going-forward question. Hopefully you will see the point. Clarence Thomas never did.

 

[rodoheel]

Appreciate the thoughtful pushback, but I think you’re misreading the scope of my argument. I’m not saying ND, SD, MT, or UT are the next Osborn states on the board. I’m saying Osborn is showing us how to compete at all in places where the Democratic label is a liability. That kind of post-party coalition-building may not be viable everywhere right now, but we’d be foolish not to start exploring it in states where the current strategy has completely bottomed out.

I wasn’t claiming Osborn’s strategy could be carbon-copied in the Dakotas or Montana and deliver instant wins. I was pointing to a broader structural insight: in states where the Democratic brand is a net negative, a labor-rooted, culturally-aligned, post-party strategy like Osborn’s may offer a way back into contention. That same insight applies, arguably even more so, to Kansas, Missouri, Indiana, and Iowa, given their larger urban centers and their histories of electing populist Democrats.

I’m less interested in copying Osborn’s geographic strategy than in understanding his structural strategy: local credibility, labor ties, independence from national party baggage, and a materialist message that resonates with disaffected voters. That model has real potential far beyond Nebraska, especially if we’re serious about building power outside the usual consultant-mapped terrain.

Yeah I agree with you on things like "labor-focused" and "local credibility" and "materialist message," and I don't doubt that not being tied to the Dem brand helped Osborn. But my concern is that things that should (at least in my opinion) be a big piece of the national Dem platform/strategy - green energy, Medicare for All, social safety net, etc - are simply never going to play well in states like Montana and the Dakotas, which have more rural and independent (I don't mean politically independent, I mean personally independent) populations, and fewer urban working-class enclaves. Tester, for example, only won/competed in Montana by breaking sharply with Dems on some key policy initiatives - including immigration, the Green New Deal, Keystone Pipeline, etc. So if the ultimate goal is not just to win power but also use that power to enact major reform, I just don't think talking about Montana and the Dakotas is really what we should be doing.

But again, I hear you on the larger point about how to build an electoral brand in R-leaning states.

 

[rodoheel]

And to sort of touch on what super is saying - I think it's highly likely we're focusing on strategic questions that mostly only matter at the margins, when the real thing that has to happen is that the country has to fall into a crisis under conservative leadership to want to swing things back the other direction. What do, say, Obama 2008 and FDR 1932 have in common, when liberals swept into power on the back of populist messages of "hope and change"? Everything had gone to shit under Republicans. We can talk until we're blue in the face about the right organizing approach or the best way to spend election dollars, but a "blue wave" election like those probably won't happen unless and until the country goes to shit under Republicans again.

 

[rodoheel]

As long as your party is polling at under 20% you have NO SHOT at flipping any damn seat!!!

Keep losing losers!!

 

[rodoheel]

I think this still reflects a kind of strategic defeatism. You’re evaluating states like MT and the Dakotas based on whether they currently support the full national platform, as if that’s fixed. But politics is about coalition-building over time. You start with what resonates locally (jobs, hospitals, infrastructure) and connect that to a broader material vision.

We’re not going to get Medicare for All or a Green New Deal unless we start building trust with the voters who’ve been told those ideas are coastal elitism. And if we don’t even try, if we treat whole states as lost causes, we’re not just giving up on elections. We’re giving up on reshaping the national political terrain, which is necessary work for any real future.

What you call defeatism, I call pragmatism. But I'm not talking about treating whole states as lost causes, I'm talking about not wasting resources in trying to adapt a national platform that will never appeal in certain places, at least under current national political conditions, to those places. Dems can and should still run vigorous campaigns in, say, the more left-leaning (or gettable) districts in those places. But until the Overton Window - or, if you don't like that term, the national political discourse - is shifted back left, it simply is not a good investment to be trying to compete in the most difficult-to-reach (literally and politically) parts of the electoral map. I simply don't think any organizing effort you can devise is going to take root, much less bear any fruit, in rural areas of deep-red states, unless and until it's a more favorable political environment for that message.

 

[superrific]

At some point, you have to plant seeds even in bad soil.

This, I agree with.

 

[nycfan]

 

[superrific]

You say this has all “failed repeatedly over 150 years,” but that flattens the actual history and the present. What Osborn is doing isn’t some utopian third-party fantasy. It’s a coalition strategy grounded in organizing, credibility, and post-party appeal in places where the national Democratic brand is toxic. You can’t tell that story through the same lens you’d use for a Green Party vanity run.

Yes, we’ve had two parties for most of American history. But the composition, posture, and function of those parties has changed dramatically. One reason Republicans dominate rural areas now is that they’re willing to run everywhere, meet voters on cultural ground, and treat local infrastructure seriously. Democrats have all but abandoned that terrain and then wonder why the map keeps shrinking.

You ask, “Why will it work this time when it hasn’t before?” My answer: because we’re already seeing signs that it is working. Osborn outperformed the national ticket in Nebraska. Mamdani just beat Cuomo’s machine in NYC by organizing around material needs. What both share is not a “new” idea, it’s the forgotten foundation of electoral politics: build trust, meet people where they are, and root yourself in local struggle.

You say the party won’t fund candidates like Osborn forever. Maybe not. But that’s not a reason to give up on the model. It’s a reason to rethink what the party is for. If it won’t adapt to new strategies in states where it’s collapsed, then it’s the failed experiment, not the candidate trying something new.

I'm not talking about a utopian third party fantasy either. I'm talking about the fact that virtually every federal office holder in the history of our country has belonged to one of the major parties. If you can't wrestle with that idea, and recognize that the "forgotten foundation" you describe was not forgotten for a century and yet here we are -- if you can't do that then what are you doing?

I refuse to accept the idea that "it's working." If you were a right winger, I'd call it risible but you deserve more respect than that. But losing by 7.5% in a Senate race is not "working." Winning a plurality of the vote in one of the most liberal places in America against a candidate who had to resign in disgrace three or four years ago signifies nothing outside of the specific context. Do you seriously believe that the NYC Dem primary for mayor is a harbinger of things to come nationally? I mean, dude. Even to say it is to realize how silly it is.

When pressed on specifics, your typical approach is to retreat into abstraction. Build trust, meet people where they are, etc. Those are catch phrases, not ideas. And when specifically pressed on questions like "how does this work with the racism that dominates our country right now," you just punt and retreat. Discourse isn't guerilla warfare.

This is a substantial problem with your theory. How can the Dems build trust in areas that hate black people and think of them as candidates for remigration? How can the Dems, who do not want a theocracy and who want to preserve abortion rights, meet the people where they are when literally those are the most important things to them. When you hand-wave away the objection, it makes me wonder what's the point of the discussion? You seem to have it all figured out in your mind.

Remember: by far the major concerns among rural residents, as expressed both in polls and in revealed preferences, are invasion by brown people, DEI somewhere in some fashion, and their toxic brand of Christianity. How is a meeting of the minds remotely possible?

 

[duluoz]

His campaign didn’t win because of identity politics

False. What’s not said out loud is that there is tremendous anti-Israeli/anti-Zionist sentiment growing in NYC due to Netanyahu’s reprehensible actions in Gaza since 10/7. It has brought other reprehensible past policies and actions of Israel to light as well, *especially* for young voters — college educated, under 45. This is the meat of what truly carried Mamdani in the primary, certainly not “free and fast buses” which NY’ers know is a joke for several reasons, or “affordability” which every candidate from either side parrots with promises they can’t keep.

The energy came from young voters who move here from all over the country to seek out one of the most progressive geographies anywhere, precisely because that aligns with their identities. Mandani in this setting is the very definition of identity politics. It’s the reason you hear people saying he’s the most charismatic young politician since Obama or AOC. IDENTITY. The “big donors” angle you keep harping on plays right into those identity politics, it’s not discrete from them as you keep saying over and over. These very progressive voters want big business out of their politics. So what did they do. They organized and volunteered and had conversations with others every chance they got. That’s great. It’s part of why I love living here.

But this simply can’t happen in this same way in nearly any other geography in the US. Successes can be had and ground regained in other ways in other areas, sure.

But the fact that you keep holding up Mamdani as a template just shows how deeply lost in your bubble you are. The bubble that still thinks using terms like “socialist” and Queens/Brooklyn’s “Commie Corridor” is a good idea, and refuses to acknowledge how the entire rest of the party is saddled with them as a result.

 

[rodoheel]

Yes, we’ve had two parties for most of American history. But the composition, posture, and function of those parties has changed dramatically. One reason Republicans dominate rural areas now is that they’re willing to run everywhere, meet voters on cultural ground, and treat local infrastructure seriously. Democrats have all but abandoned that terrain and then wonder why the map keeps shrinking.

I think this last part is wrong, or at least ignoring a ton of other things. By far the most important reason that Republicans dominate rural areas is that rural areas are the most conservative in the modern political calculus. They are, by and large, heavily Christian, heavily supportive of individual liberty, heavily pro-gun rights, staunchly opposed to big government of pretty much any form, and somewhere between suspicious of and outright xenophobic towards immigrants. Current Democratic politicians didn't make them that way by being bad at connecting with them. They have been that way for decades, if not longer. The "cultural ground" on which Republicans primarily have appealed to them is generally through conservative Christianity and nativism, all with a veneer of "traditional American/family values." Not by taking "local infrastructure" seriously.

 

[rodoheel]

You say we need to wait until the Overton Window shifts left, as if that just happens on its own. But it doesn’t. It shifts because people organize, challenge power, and expand what’s considered possible. That work doesn’t start after a crisis; it starts now, so that when the crisis hits, we’re not stuck with a Buttigieg reading cue cards while the right runs full populist.

This is not at all what I meant, and I'll take the blame for not explaining well. I'm not suggesting we should sit around and wait for the Overton Window to shift left, I'm saying the focus should be on shifting it left at the national level, not the local level. I simply do not think that trying to reach individual rural voters in red states is the way to try to shift the Overton Window. I understand that we disagree about that. But if you look back, again, at Obama 2008, I don't think you can credibly argue that the reason for Dems' blue wave election was built on groundwork organizing people in rural communities across the country.