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🚨 NEW: Deep dive investigation into 3,000+ Senate polls over the last 4 cycles. They've overestimated Democrats in all 4 cycles, 73% of polls overstate the Democrat, and it's worse right now, in the summer. https://t.co/CQb0WIKpAs
— Patrick Ruffini (@PatrickRuffini) August 18, 2026
Ed: And that’s just when we treat polls as honest attempts to measure public opinion. These days, it seems like pollsters are more interested in “social experiments.” Be sure to read all of Patrick’s thoughts on the data, though.
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Axios: Why it matters: The left is leaning into candidates who look young, energetic and even desirable, with fresh faces often eclipsing the older guard.
"We see a rise in young millennials, or the top part of Gen Z, trying to get into office," says Grace Weinstein, a politics and culture senior correspondent at The Recount and founder of "Who Broke It?" "We're talking about a generation that is not always image obsessed, but always image aware."
The big picture: Democrats are working through identity growing pains between the left flank and the party's establishment. But with moderates and progressives alike, Dems are playing the sex appeal card.
The party's main TikTok page has given big names the thirst trap treatment, including: Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) (nicknamed "Senator My Boo" by internet fans), Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in his tight-fitting T-shirts, a grinning NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani and former President Obama with a touch of gray, among others.
The ladies — like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Michelle Obama — have gotten their share of screen time too, though Weinstein notes the Dems' page has made a "very intentional choice to feature the most attractive male members."
Ed: First off, Democrats use the "thirst trap" strategy in every election. Remember how dreamy and Kennedy-esque Beto O'Rourke was supposed to be? The rugged athleticism of former Baylor football star Colin Allred? Pete Buttigieg even recently tried it out. It only attracts the terminally online. Besides, given Democrats' recent demographic issues, choosing male thirst traps as a strategy is somewhat ... curious.
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Jon Ossoff attempts to clean up his "travel with Natalie" line by claiming it was a commentary about all of President Trump's White House aides in general.
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) August 18, 2026
Yes, I'm sure that's exactly what he meant by referring to that one specific person in the way that he did pic.twitter.com/5fZc5emEyd
Ed: So much for "thirst traps." Ossoff is an ugly human being who can't read a room even with footnotes.
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Liel Leibovitz at Tablet Magazine: Watch the footage from the synagogue’s livestream cameras, and you’ll see Montes, an unarmed, middle-aged, overweight creep, his sizable belly quivering under his too-tight purple shirt as he runs up and down the aisle uninterrupted. You’ll also see a host of congregants, men and women alike, recoiling in horror, receding deeper into the pews for safety and looking desperately for the guards to intervene and save them.
Not a single one stormed Montes. Not one person at Central Synagogue last Friday night saw the fat, frothing attacker shout obscenities and thought, Hey, I ought to step up and defend myself, my family, and my fellow congregants, consequences be damned.
Because too many American Jews have been taught that “security” is serious business best left to trained professionals, that “risk assessment” meant it was best to run for cover, and that “safety” meant paying more and more for consultants and guards and cameras and metal detectors and hoping for the best.
They haven’t been taught to fight. And they haven’t been forced to face reality: A Jewish congregation that cannot muster the strength to fight—physically and willingly and boldly, for all to see, and for its own physical survival, especially when the attacker poses very little or no risk—is not a congregation that can survive. Instead, such a congregation becomes a hospice, a soothing place where well-intentioned caregivers deliver vaguely uplifting but largely empty reassurances to audiences of scared people.
Ed: I can’t disagree with Leibovitz here, but this is not limited to Jewish congregations. This model is routinely adopted by all denominations in worship spaces, and it’s just as dangerous for those congregations as well. We need robust commitment from all individuals to effective personal security even when in church, temple, or chapel, and a mindset that asserts strength in the face of threat. For that matter, we can make the same criticism of schools and practically every application of the “gun-free zone” conceit.
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Imagine trying to protect the public from truthful speech. These laws exist! They're common across Indonesia, UAE, Malaysia, etc, often targeted at protecting government officials and entities. But sane people know how ridiculous it is https://t.co/u37K3nC3mL
— Shoshana Weissmann, Sloth Committee Chair 🦥 (@senatorshoshana) August 18, 2026
Ed: David wrote about this earlier today. These kinds of laws exist to allow elites to avoid accountability, and have no other real purpose.
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NY Times: ABC on Tuesday sued the Federal Communications Commission, accusing the agency of infringing on its First Amendment rights. It asked a federal court to stop the F.C.C. from pursuing aggressive regulatory moves that the network said posed an “existential threat” to its operations.
The lawsuit was unusual, a rare example of a major media organization suing the Trump administration over its unrelenting campaign to punish the national press through regulation and lawsuits.
The suit, filed in federal court in Washington, is meant to halt a series of F.C.C. moves that placed the network’s ability to operate in doubt. In the most extreme case, the agency was threatening to strip several ABC stations of their broadcast licenses, which would force them off the air.
Ed: I have little doubt that a federal judge will issue an injunction, but I'm not sure it will stand up. The FCC has nearly plenary authority to review broadcast licenses. The real question is whether they should, and the answer is no. The FCC dumped the Fairness Doctrine 40 years ago, and it should not reimpose it. Let the market deal with stupid commentary as the market sees fit.
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Kentucky has a population of just 4.61 million people. However, its governor just called for abolishing the Electoral College, which protects small-population states from being turned into electoral nonentities. https://t.co/IDXPHIl7RQ Next, Beshear will call for banning Bourbon.
— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) August 17, 2026
Ed: Beshear is running scared of the socialists poaching into the primaries. He's a gutless wonder, and Kentuckians should take a close look at the ballot this cycle to rid itself of other gutless wonders who would rather burn the Constitution than defend it and their state interests in its structure.
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Jordan Ruimy at World of Reel: The new 4K Blu-ray release of Gary Ross’ “Pleasantville” from Shout! Factory has sparked questions after fans noticed that a line from Reese Witherspoon’s character, Jennifer, has been removed.
In a final conversation with her twin brother David (Tobey Maguire), Jennifer explains why she plans to stay in the Pleasantville world and attend college nearby. In the original version, she says, “I did the slut thing, David. It got kind of old,” referring to her past of hookups and partying. The new release cuts directly from her mention of having an admissions letter to David’s next line. ...
The edit also seems especially ironic given the film’s themes of repression, conformity, and censorship. “Pleasantville” famously depicts a community attempting to suppress anything that challenges its worldview. Removing Jennifer’s brief reference to her former sex life raises eyebrows — particularly because the line is not some throwaway gag, but an important part of how she resolves her character arc.
Ed: Via Christian Toto, too late for our OTBP chat today. I've never liked the film because I found it far too pretentious, but at least it was earnest in its revolt against conformity. This late omission – 28 years after its release! – undercuts the message Ross beat audiences over the head with in the film. What a hypocrite.
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A Minnesota immigrant once honored as an "outstanding refugee" by the state's Department of Human Services has been charged with Medicaid fraud for allegedly billing over $1 million in fraudulent services.
— Fox News Politics (@foxnewspolitics) August 18, 2026
Salman Ahmed Elmi faces three counts of aiding and abetting by swindle… pic.twitter.com/EpCaFkWB9t
Salman Ahmed Elmi faces three counts of aiding and abetting by swindle and five counts of aiding and abetting by false representation. The charges also allege two members involved in the fraud scheme were tied to a sex trafficking ring involving brothels.
The same agency that gave Elmi the award in 2021 — the Minnesota Department of Human Services — has been deeply involved in the massive fraud scheme that has unfolded across the state in recent years. Elmi was also part of a startup that received financial backing from a Shark Tank star, according to Fox 9 Minneapolis.
Ed: Quelle surprise.
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Coleman Hughes at the Free Press: Jason Arday was either the most interesting man in the world, or he was a liar. It turned out to be the latter.
All this has revealed many unflattering things about academia: DEI invites fraud by lowering standards, the bigotry of low expectations is alive and well, and a disturbing number of “experts”—not just Arday but all the Cambridge professors and BBC journalists who co-signed him—are compromised by ideology, cowardice, or both.
But the Arday scandal has also revealed something else: White liberals in the English-speaking world want to believe in the archetype of the up-from-nothing black intellectual who, despite huge disadvantages, goes on to achieve greatness. In fact, they want to believe in this sort of story so badly that they are willing to turn off every ounce of skepticism that they would normally bring to bear on fantastical claims.
The irony, however, is that we already have many examples of up-from-nothing black intellectuals who go on to greatness. It’s just that they usually turn out to be conservatives—or if not conservatives, then at least out-of-step with the left-wing religion of racial justice.
Ed: And therefore must be suppressed with all force necessary. There is a reason why Clarence Thomas, one of the most brilliant legal minds of his era, gets such vitriolic attacks. Although, as I can personally attest from a dinner I attended with him, Justice Thomas does not give a single patoot about it.
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In 2020, Mike Adams committed suicide after being canceled and losing his job as a professor.
— Jeremy Kauffman 🦔🌲🌕 (@jeremykauffman) August 14, 2026
Adams was never dishonest. All he did was say things like "rioters are thugs" and "women's studies aren't essential".
Even in death, the media ran awful headlines like this. https://t.co/IPAYlthQa9 pic.twitter.com/nKjHknAsqw
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This is a great lesson for public figures. If you don't want something unflattering published, just threaten to kill yourself. https://t.co/PUJV4NWimK
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) August 18, 2026
Ed: The socialist elite are desperate to avoid accountability for their lack of integrity. That's all this is.
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The end of an era or error or whatever pic.twitter.com/mdVfeP7SqZ
— Weapon 𝕏 (@HellRaz0r1776) August 18, 2026
Ed: This is terrible news. Where else will teens learn what a bad idea subscription-model music sales are? I learned it the hard way with Columbia House. On vinyl. You'll never forget the "oh, crud" feeling you got when the latest rando album showed up on your doorstep, and you realized you were on the hook for the cost. (Although I may still have a handful of the albums I got without wanting them.)
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Last night's lyric: "Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard" by Paul Simon.
Editor's Note: If we thought our job in pushing back against the Academia/media/Democrat censorship complex was over with the election, think again. This is going to be a long fight. If you're digging these Final Word posts and want to join the conversation in the comments—and support independent platforms—why not join our VIP Membership program? Choose VIP to support Hot Air and access our premium content, VIP Gold to extend your access to all Townhall Media platforms and participate in this show, or VIP Platinum to get access to even more content and discounts on merchandise. Use the promo code FIGHT to join or to upgrade your existing membership level today, and get 60% off!
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