Andrew Sharp: “Pratt’s political talent is a big and still-underappreciated story here, but the story of his rise is obviously indivisible from that of the Democratic establishment’s decline. Watching this election unfold over the past several weeks, for all Pratt’s success, I’ve been equally struck by the thought that everything that makes Pratt politically viable used to be specialties of the Democratic Party. Boundless energy, good humor, good-looking and telegenic, occasionally stupid but generally likable, embracing technology, targeting opponents as corrupt and out of touch—that is where Dems lived! And that is becoming less true by the day.”

“Next to the 42 year-old Pratt in L.A., there is the 72 year-old Bass, an incumbent mayor endorsed by Kamala Harris who barely made a dent in the crime and homelessness crisis during her first term, infamously boarded a plane to Ghana during the early stages of the worst wildfires in L.A. history, and worked after the fact to obscure the city’s failures.”

“Does the outcome of this race tell you who’s going to win the nomination? No. But it does tell you there’s a lot of support around a populist economic platform.”

— David Axelrod, quoted by Politico, on how the Michigan U.S. Senate Democratic primary is a good proxy for the 2028 presidential race.

G. Elliot Morris: “Donald Trump won the ‘tipping-point’ state (the one whose electoral votes push the winner past 270, if you order the states by Democratic/Republican vote margin) by just 1.7 percentage points in 2024. Trump defeated Kamala Harris by just 120,000 votes in Pennsylvania. The excess electoral votes he won in Michigan and Wisconsin were decided by 110,000 votes — a fifth of the size of the smallest state.”

“The problem this presents for election analysts is that every campaign decision becomes potentially decisive for the outcome. There were 152 million votes cast in 2024, but the contest was decided by just 230,000 in those three states above — or 0.15 percent of all voters. When a race is that close, almost anything plausibly mattered.”

“When Talarico goes in for a blood test when he gets a physical, blood doesn’t come out. Soy milk comes out. This man has less testosterone than Jasmine Crockett. They would choose a person who looks like he doesn’t belong in the senate but in a cabaret show.”

— White House adviser Stephen Miller, on Fox News.