“Former President Barack Obama appeared with James Talarico in Austin, Texas, on Tuesday, aiming to boost the rising Democrat star in his uphill bid to flip a U.S. Senate seat in the reliably Republican state,” New York Times reports.

“The appearance was part of Mr. Obama’s effort to elevate a new generation of Democratic leaders as the party heads into the 2026 midterms, a highly competitive year for control of the U.S. House and, potentially, for the U.S. Senate.”

Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) avoided ruling out a 2028 bid for the White House, arguing voters are ready for a “new generation” of candidates, Politico reports.

Said Slotkin: “We are not well as a country right now, and people are not looking to just go back to where they were.”

David Graham: “The Iran war will pose a challenge for Vance, Rubio, or any other administration official who mounts a run. In that way, it’s a microcosm of two challenges that any would-be Trump successor will face. First, they will need to forge a base of support, which means trying to keep together as much of the MAGA coalition as possible. Trump’s ideological flexibility and personality-based politics have allowed him to assemble a group that doesn’t agree on anything except loving Trump and hating Democrats, and that group is already starting to splinter, in part due to criticism of his handling of the war. (Interestingly, Rubio and Vance are latecomers to Trumpism compared with many GOP voters.)”

“But just keeping a majority of the MAGA base united won’t be enough to win a general election. The second challenge will be for candidates to distance themselves from the things that have made Trump a historically unpopular president among the general population without infuriating Trump and alienating his hard-core supporters. Think about how loath Kamala Harris was to criticize Joe Biden during the 2024 election, and how that may have hurt her with swing voters—and then imagine how that might work with a president who is both more vengeful and more influential with his base.”

G. Elliot Morris: “In 1976, the U.S. House of Representatives had 101 ‘structurally competitive’ congressional districts. By ‘structurally competitive,’ I mean seats that either party had a reasonable chance of winning in an electoral cycle that was perfectly tied nationally — those seats where the Democratic Party’s vote margin was within 5 points of the vote margin for the Demoratic nominee for president in the most recent election.”

“Last November, in contrast, the number of competitive seats was just 42. Under the new partisan gerrymanders that Republicans and Democrats (but mostly Republicans) have passed for the 2026 midterms, the number falls to a new all-time-low of 33.”

“That’s right: Just 33 out of 435 — less than 8% — of districts were decided by less than 5 points, in terms of partisan lean, last year.”

Chris Rabb (D), who is locked in a tight primary for a seat in Congress, is disavowing an Instagram post that promoted an antisemitic conspiracy theory about the deadly Hanukkah massacre in Australia’s Bondi Beach, saying a former staffer was responsible, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.