If there was one primary result I felt certain about on Tuesday night, it was that MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell would win the GOP nomination to be governor. The rabid election denier had Donald Trump’s endorsement and was ahead in the polls, albeit with a lot of Republican voters remaining undecided. But since roughly 95% of GOP voters have MyPillows in their house, I thought he’d win. 

Well, Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, who also sucks but is not so nuts (low bar!), won. 

This is the latest in a number of small but promising signs that Trump’s own base is feeling ready to move on. His liberal-triggering skills are diminished, along with the remains of his natural hair. Now they have to defend his inflationary policies and his pointless war in Iran, and that’s a bummer! So they continue to quietly sneak away. 

I’m a pretty far-left progressive, with politics that tend to be called “socialist” these days. I want to nationalize health care, make college and childcare free, and tax billionaires out of existence. But still, I was so glad to wake up yesterday morning to the news that David Crowley beat Francesca Hong in the Wisconsin Democratic primary for governor. She can’t win a general election and we need a Democrat in that office.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m annoyed at all the centrists on MS NOW crowing about how this is a defeat for the left. No, it is not. Her actual policy platform included incredibly reasonable calls for affordable education and expanding BadgerCare. But Hong couldn’t stop confirming people’s suspicions that she was the stereotype of a hectoring leftist. It wasn’t just the anti-Thanksgiving tweet, either. She also went after Halloween!

Most people on the left really aren’t humorless joykills, I swear. But the right likes to elevate those that are, because they understand what a turn-off that is for most people. It distracts from policy debates, where the left has real persuasive power. People understandably don’t like being scolded. That’s also a bad look for a politician who needs to build coalitions in order to get things done. People who can charm others rather than browbeat them are a lot better at persuasion.

This isn’t hard. The left wins when it backs candidates who lead with joy and humor, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Michigan U.S. Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed has successfully sanded down his more strident edges while keeping his verbal acuity at dunking on his opponents, which is also a form of humor, no matter what pearl-clutchers might say. He shows that it’s not about playing nice, but about having a good time. 

Candidates who seem more fun tend to win. It’s not deeper than that.

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The anti-vaccination movement is increasingly unpopular as measles rates rise, so this narrative grew up in the mainstream media that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was backing down under White House pressure. Despite tariffs and the Iran war, the myth that Trump is sensitive to negative public opinion never seems to die, but sure enough, it turns out that was all a load of nonsense. Instead, Trump gleefully signed an executive order to change the vaccine schedule, making it both more time-consuming and less effective. 

It’s unclear how much impact this will have. Doctors and clinics seem to be ignoring this stuff rather than adjusting to baseless federal guidelines that will be reversed the second a non-nutty president takes office. Still, there's reason to fear that these guidelines will scare more parents away from vaccinating their kids and make it harder to get insurance to cover what actual medical experts recommend. 

If the medical establishment bends to this, the main effects will be more children getting preventable disease and parents — which, let’s face it, mostly means mothers — being forced to take time off work to take their kids to the doctor, now that Trump is demanding that they “space out” shots that are now given together, with no ill effects. None of this is a coincidence. It all fits into the eugenicist, anti-feminist views shared by Kennedy and Trump. 

Kennedy barely even tries to hide his view that viral disease is good for humanity because it culls those he sees as the weakest members. Children dying is not a byproduct of anti-vaccination policy. It’s the point. Hi obsession with autism is about stigmatizing people he sees as parasites, who the human species would be better off without. He wants to make America “healthy” by removing those he deems unhealthy. 

Similarly, MAGA doesn’t want women to work outside the hom anyway. Saddling mothers with even more doctor visits is seen as a way to further punish moms who insist on having jobs. (Never mind that most have to work to survive.) This isn’t about giving kids fewer shots, but shots that are more widely “spaced out,” so it takes up more time and creates more hassle for parents.

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