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2025 & 2026 Elections

  • Thread starter Thread starter nycfan
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Paine said:

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.”
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Expand the map!
 
nycfan said:


Susan Collins Maine GIF by Election 2020
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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?
 
Mulberry Heel said:
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?
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I think Governor Janet Mills is considering a run. Many believe she may be favored against the incumbent senator; hence, the latest Collins' dithering.
 
Paine said:
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.
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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.
 
Paine said:
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.
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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%.
 
Paine said:
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.
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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.
 
Paine said:
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.
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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.
 
Paine said:
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.
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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.
 
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.
 
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