{"id":61040,"date":"2026-08-11T07:33:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T14:33:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=61040"},"modified":"2026-08-11T07:33:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T14:33:29","slug":"the-used-and-abuses-of-epstein-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2026\/08\/11\/the-used-and-abuses-of-epstein-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"the used and abuses of epstein politics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A few things going on in the primary elections. One is the unspectacular story where Schumer casts his lot with a candidate who won a stateside election or has a ballsy backstory. So it is in North Carolina, Iowa, Alaska and then onto Kansas and wherever. Two is the misfires in Maine and Michigan &#8212; though he almost pulled one off in Michigan &#8212; and the stubbornness of the known commodity and a vetting to cut off a left flank drowned him.  And so comes the reality of a Democratic wave &#8212; the bigger the Democratic win in November, the more the dsa insurgents are simply drowned out by candidates whose political fixing is to try to stay centred and maybe &#8220;find an issue&#8221; &#8212; see &#8220;border security&#8221; as the Insta-answer from all these candidates when asked and from that I have a grim view on what is to be done about ICE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then there is a bi-partisan old timers dump. A bi-partisan gambit.  Texas dispenses their Republican incumbent Senate.  Colorado ushers in a DSA Congress-critter, and the story there is as much that the incumbent Democrat came into the seat in the 1996 election as anything ideological.   And off of that I glance over to the Massachusetts Democratic Senate primary between a forty-something year old and an eighty-something old.  All things being equal, I would want to go ahead and respectfully edge the old incumbent out &#8212; I am picturing a bad assessment of handling the problems of AI and apt to see a good influx of Union Construction jobs and not see the downbacks of the construction of data centers and I am picturing being stuck in the mud with Israel, and I am picturing a mid-length hospital visitation.  Markey, I remember musing when I noted him taking over for Kerry (or the interim replacement of Kerry) &#8212; cool, but he is going to cut out after two terms right?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Unfortunately Seth Moulton disgraced himself in a Democratic party debate.  It is a thing I have been pondering with the Epstein Files, a catch-all term that slides everyone who passed by Epstein.  Concentric circles where a number of people have been disgraced (Chomsky, Summers, Trump, and Bannon) and you are trying to get a few to get disgraced but can&#8217;t get there (Clinton).  It is easy enough to demagogue this.  And Ed Markey is not in any concentric circles here.  But.  He knows a guy who knows a guy &#8212; a lobbyist is there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We are as close to &#8220;you&#8217;re a pedophile&#8221; as we are going to get, and is wholly unbecoming of a candidate one should want to vote for.  So.  I guess Massachusetts voters are stuck voting for the fanned 80 year old?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few things going on in the primary elections. One is the unspectacular story where Schumer casts his lot with a candidate who won a stateside election or has a ballsy backstory. So it is in North Carolina, Iowa, Alaska and then onto Kansas and wherever. Two is the misfires in Maine and Michigan &#8212; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61040"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61045,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61040\/revisions\/61045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}