Lost Character Study: Sayid Jarrah A Different Kind of Antihero

 

Like so many of the best shows during this period Lost took incredible swings for the fences, in terms of character as well as plot. One of the most incredible then and now has to be with Sayid Jarrah, played brilliantly and soulfully by Naveen Andrews.

Fatigue over the War in Iraq had already set in by the time the Pilot of Lost was being written and in a post 9/11 America bigotry against Islam was becoming increasingly excused. So it was astounding to have a character such as Sayid Jarrah who was not just Iraqi but who when asked in the Pilot said he served in the Republican Guard. That Sayid was a devout Muslim was something that the show frequently illustrated (we saw him praying on multiple occasions both on the island and in flashbacks) though his faith was never the focus the way it was for so many other characters.

In a way when it was revealed that Sayid had been a torturer less then a third through Season 1 it was actually less of a creative risk: 24 had already become part of the Zeitgeist and Battlestar Galactica had already been willing to use similar methods on Cylons during its first two seasons. The difference was we never saw Jack Bauer feel any regret when he beat up suspected terrorists. By contrast the first time Sayid tortured anyone – Sawyer when he was suspected of having Shannon's inhalers – he felt such remorse that he actually decided to exile himself from the camp to map the island, with the full intention of never returning.

If Lost had been a more political show it could have easily used Sayid as a victim of the American military and our own worst impulses. In 'One of Them' we saw that Sayid had learned his skills from the American military in order to extract information from a superior without them getting their hands dirty. But Sayid always had an awareness of himself as he said in what is arguably the most famous monologue he ever gave on the show. He tells 'Henry Gale' about his military career about the things he wishes he could erase from his memory, but that he came to realize he was always capable of them:

My name is Sayid Jarrah and I am a torturer.

And that is what makes Sayid different from Jack Bauer as well as so many other of the antiheroes will meet during the era (with one exception I'll get to below). Like Tony Soprano, Jack Bauer and Walter White he is capable of doing horribly violent things to men and even defenseless women but the actions drain him emotionally. He doesn't want to be a violent person, he doesn't like himself when he does it but as we see there are so many points in his life, on and off the island, in the past and in the future, where he has a choice to inflict violence or not do so. And as Nikki Stafford points out in her own analysis: "As much as we love Sayid he is weak…He never chooses that option."

Noel Murray points out that Sayid 'spends an awful amount of time in Lost in shackles'.  Stafford is aware of this fact in Finding Lost but in her books she makes the argument its symbolic of a condition Sayid has been throughout his entire life – even when he's physically free he's always emotionally imprisoned. This decision plays out by far the most effectively on the Ajira flight: Sayid is the only one who has been physically restrained by another in order to return to the island. And it's the idea that Sayid has always felt like he has always been doomed his entire life in which I argued the greatest parallel upon characters of this era is not a torturer like Jack Bauer but rather Dexter Morgan:

Like Dexter, Sayid Jarrah knew even at a young age he was capable of great violence. Both men were influenced by their father’s behavior – Sayid’s encouraged violence in his son, Dexter’s tried to help him channel it -  but both knew at an early age of the darkness in them.

Both Dexter and Sayid followed in their father’s footsteps. We don’t know much about Sayid’s father’s background except he was ‘a great hero’ but Sayid may have gone into the military to win his approval just  as Dexter went to Miami Metro to earn his. During the First Gulf War Sayid learned his potential under the instruction of the U.S. Army. Unlike Dexter, Sayid initially refused to engage his dark side and the first time he did so, he was so horrified he swore he would never do it again. But that was an oath he broke and he ended up working as a ‘communications officer’ for the Republican Guard. Here we see the first critical difference: Dexter spent much of the first half of the series hiding his capacity for violence because he knew how much it would horrify the world. Sayid received advance in his career because his capacity was useful.

Like Dexter Sayid feels there are two sides of his nature: the torturer and the caring one. The difference is Dexter spent the entire series hiding that nature and pretending he was, to paraphrase Nadia about Sayid, someone he knew he wasn’t. He only showed his darkness under the cover of night and protecting himself. Sayid, however, has always been able to turn off his emotions and inflict violence when he needed to – he was even capable of doing it to the woman he loved before he helped free her.

Dexter started the series believing that human connection was part of his cover: he initially started his relationship with Rita Bennett and her kids because he thought they were safe. He was surprised when they became real over the first few seasons and more surprised to learn he was capable of love. But he always feared what would happen if his dark side ever came to interact with the cover. He spent much of the first four seasons making human contact and trying to find friendship only to find out his human side could lead him astray.

By contrast Sayid wants to belong to that world of humanity but it has always gotten him into trouble. He spent eight years searching for Nadia and when the CIA dangled her in front of him he sold part of his soul to do so. There is a parallel between Sayid and Essam’s story in ‘The Greater Good’ and Miguel and Dexter’s storyline in Season 3. In the latter, Miguel spent much of the season manipulating Dexter into a position of trust just as Sayid did with Essam. But when Essam learned of his friend’s betrayal, he committed suicide and his last words summed up so much of Sayid’s story: “I hope she makes you whole.” Sayid has never been whole and he knows that.

When the plane crashed, his skills as a communications officer made him useful – as did his capacity for violence. On the island his growing relationship with Shannon made him torture Sawyer and seriously wound him. He chose to exile himself from the group but when he got caught in Rousseau’s traps, he found a kindred spirit – perhaps one more kindred than anyone he ever knew. When Sayid learned of the Others he returned to the camp to warn them and swore he would never torture another person. He began a relationship with Shannon, only for her to be accidentally killed by Ana Lucia. He resisted an urge to kill her, and we thought he had grown – but it would turn out he only would direct his violence towards  ‘people who deserved it’, much in the same way Dexter sought his targets.

The first target was Henry Gale and despite the fact he never broke Sayid was certain he was ‘One of Them’. It was the start of the long relationship between him and Ben Linus, a man who was his nemesis even more than Locke’s because he always brought out the worst in him with his manipulations. He spent much of the next season and a half focusing his rage on the Others and while that didn’t play out as much in Season 3, in the season finale he stayed behind on the beach. It was in part to secure rescue to be sure, but you can’t help but wonder how much of it was to help kill off so many of the people who had tormented him.

Sayid’s story had always been filled with violence throughout the first three seasons but it turned truly tragic once he left the island. He found Nadia and the two of them quickly married. He thought he was getting his happily ever after, but less than nine months later she was killed in a hit and run. It’s never clear if this was the action of Charles Widmore, a manipulation of Jacob, or just an accident but the result was the same: the day Nadia died, the best part of Sayid did to and it made him vulnerable to the manipulations of Ben Linus.

Sayid spent the next two years as Ben’s personal hitman, killing Widmore’s men. Sayid was manipulated by Ben into doing his dirty work because it was supposedly to protect his friends, much as Dexter killed people he thought were dangerous to society at large. When it came to an end in the cold of Russia, Sayid blamed Ben but Ben told him: “You didn’t do it for me.” And there’s a certain truth to this: like Dexter, Sayid needed something to channel his darkness into and the list was as good a reason as any.

Sayid tried to walk away from his violence and did humanitarian work. But yet again Ben found him and convinced him that his friends were in danger. This was a pure manipulation on Ben’s part – he claimed his murder of Locke was an action of Widmore to get Sayid back to Los Angeles – but he also knew it was bait he couldn’t resist. In one of the last lines he said to Sayid told Ben that “whenever you’ve made the choice, whether to torture or to kill, it hasn’t really been a choice at all. It’s in your nature. You’re a killer.” This could just as easily apply to Dexter except he wouldn’t have bothered to deny it.

And just as with Dexter, the more effort Sayid tried to become human, usually through his romantic connection, it always ended up hurting him. Every time he made himself vulnerable to a woman – whether it was genuine as with Shannon or under false pretense as with Elsa or Ilana – it always comes back to hurt him. In the last case, Ilana did a con to get him into her hotel room, gave a different con (she was there to get him back to the island) and Sayid was brought on to the plane in handcuffs.

I could add that at the end of Season Five Sayid is shot and is on the verge of dying until he's brought to the Temple.  There he's brought to a pool that may have the power to heal him but now that Jacob is dead (something that the viewer knows but critically no one at the Temple does) it's no longer running clear. Sayid drowns in the pool but two hours later returns with his wound closed. Dogen later tells Jack that there is a 'darkness growing inside him'. In effect Sayid now has his own 'Dark Passenger' as Dexter famously described what was inside him for most of the series.

The critical difference between Sayid and Dexter, at least on the island, is that Sayid was always accepted as a critical member of the group. We should never forget that in Tabula Rasa Sayid stepped up and made a speech about not surrendering hope and leadership two full episodes before Jack made his famous speech. I can't really argue that racism didn't play a role in everyone following Jack but its worth noting that Sayid himself, much like the soldier he was, always seemed more comfortable following orders then giving them.

For that reason he was always considered a valuable member of the leadership. Jack always took Sayid's counsel seriously and while the two disagreed it was never at the same level of his arguments with Locke. Locke also got along with Sayid well (at least until they went to rescue Jack); Kate always seemed willing to listen to him far more easily then she did Jack and while Sawyer inflicted him with horribly racist nicknames there was a measure of grudging respect that built over the years. Sayid was considered almost universally trustworthy by everyone of the castaways as well as many of those we met over the years and I've often had time to wonder if Sayid ever had been a leader, maybe fewer people would have died.

Sayid at his core was a pragmatist and practical when it came to dealing with so many crises. Rousseau kidnaps Aaron: he doesn't try to understand logic he just goes across the island with Charlie to find him. The computer in the Hatch needs to be fixed, he doesn't ask if Desmond is telling a believable story, there's a timer counting down and he knows nothing good happens at the end of it.  Michael tells him he's not welcome in the rescue mission for Walt. He takes the no calmly and only in private tells Jack that he's sure Michael has been compromised.

Sayid was always to put his own life ahead of a greater good. At the start of Through the Looking Glass, just before Jack leads his mission to the radio tower he tells Jack not to come back no matter what. "I'm willing to give my life in order for rescue to be achieved," he makes clear to Jack. And I suspect for that reason Jin and Bernard are fully willing to do the same, despite their respective wives entreaties. When it came to the greater good he demonstrated a clarity that so many of the other Oceanics rarely had.

The same was not true of the Others – or specifically Ben Linus. The two men were basically mirrors of the same kind of monster. Sayid physically tortured people; Ben did so emotionally. We'll deal with that in Ben's own article but for now we'll just say that much as they hated each other, there seemed to be a part of them that sensed each other. On more than one occasion Sayid seems to have sensed Ben's presence in a way that bordered on the supernatural though it's clearly a power he absolutely didn't want.

One of the great ironies of Lost came in The Economist when Sayid tells Locke: "The day I trust that man is the day I sell my soul'. And the flashforward reveals that Sayid has done just that. His soul, as Nikki Stafford pointed out, was Nadia and once she was dead Sayid had lost all of the hope he had left. Ben was always capable of manipulating Sayid by arguing that people he cared about were in danger while withholding the fact that they were likely in danger because of him more than anything.

Sayid was at some level aware of that fact, even when he was working for Ben, but he had no purpose other than that. This is made clear when we see him with Ilana in 'He's Our You'. Ilana doesn't know anything about Sayid other then that he's a candidate and she clearly doesn't know anything about Ben. So even though she's there to con Sayid she knows what she has to do.

So its got to be sad when Sayid tells her that he just quit his job. She never asks what it is, though she does know he was responsible for the murder of Peter Avellino. So when Sayid tells her: "The only thing I was ever really good at," he genuinely means it. He doesn't know who he is without his violence or Nadia.

I am reminded of a similar scene nearly thirteen years later. In what turns out to be his final scene in Better Call Saul, we see Gus Fring going to an expensive restaurant he hasn't been to in a while. He's just gotten away with the murder of Lalo Salamanca and he clearly wants to celebrate with someone who clearly knows him. It's clear he wants to connect but when the sommelier leaves his expression darkens and he leaves before he comes back. The viewer knows where Gus's path leads – he will manage to get the revenge he's wanted for twenty years only to have it end in his death as a result.

It's not difficult to see a connection between Gus and Sayid: both men engage in great amounts of violence in order to revenge a loved one that they lost and that has defined who they are. The scene in Saul is remarkable because for the first time we see that Gus, for all his efficiency, violence and rage, really does just want to connect. Unlike Sayid Gus knows well enough to walk away. Sayid doesn't – and the path brings him back to the island in handcuffs. The critical difference is that Sayid spends the entire series wrestling with the better angels of his nature whereas Gus gave up on them decades ago.

I would make the argument that by the time Sayid finds himself being held prisoner in 'He's Our You' that he considers himself doomed. He never wanted to come back to the island and even if he leaves he's got nothing to go back to. In that I see his decision to kill a teenage Ben Linus not so much an effort to fix the past but out of his own need for vengeance. When we see a tear run down Sayid's cheek and he runs into the darkness, I think the metaphor is fitting as to where Sayid is as well as his inevitable fate:

By the time he shoots a young Ben Linus in 1977, the only hope he has left in that by blowing up a hydrogen bomb, there is the false hope that all of this will save them and, at worst, it will end his suffering. When Ben’s father shot him, the last words he said in Season Five were: “Nothing can save me.” And it was clear before he was brought to the Temple, he had no hope for the afterlife either.

It's real sad watching Sayid during the final season of Lost. After he makes his deal with The Man in Black he has fully embraced the killer within. When Ben finds him and says: "There's still time." Sayid's response of "Not for me" is so blank that Ben is genuinely terrified and leaves without a word. Sayid spends the second half of the season saying he can't feel any emotions and has become just a pawn to kill for the Man in Black.

It's impossible not to think of the comparison to Dexter, particularly in the aftermath of Rita's death at the hands of Trinity. Immediately after this Dexter sends Rita's children to live with their grandparents, essentially thinking he's tainted them for live. He spends the rest of the series watching Harrison hoping he's not irreversibly tainted by this but he spends the second half of the show more or less the killing machine he was when we first met him.

And while it doesn't strictly fit the metric of these articles, it's worth remembering the original controversial ending of Dexter. (Which was just as polarizing as Lost's.) After the actions of Dexter lead to the death of his foster sister Dexter leaves Miami forever and fakes his death, only to be found living a completely solitary lifestyle of a lumberjack where he can't hurt anyone any more – and he's lost his sense of humor as well as his narration.

But there's an obverse of this too. Dexter truly believes that he must be a lone wolf because of the collateral damage that comes when he tries to be normal. Like everyone else in Lost Sayid thinks he's a monster but his friends believe in him – and at the end of the series, he proves that he is more than what he thought of himself.

 

Haley Stevens: A True Profile in Political Courage.

 

 

Ever since Donald Trump became the face of the Republican Party back in 2016 the far left as well as too many mainstream Democrats have been stunned as to why the GOP would get behind a candidate that they consider morally disgusting.  To them the question seems to be "For what shall it profit a political party if they gain power but lose their souls?"

The GOP has never directly answered that question mainly because it seems implicit. They get political power and that's what a political party is supposed to care about.  The media and the left – to whom everything is a moral question – either refuse to accept this as a legitimate answer. To politicians  -particularly the GOP - it’s the only answer that matters.

Over this same period the left has increasingly come to idolize so many Republicans – many of whom they loathed over the bulk of their career prior to 2016 – when they publicly broke with Trump, from Jeff Flake to Liz Cheney to Mitt Romney and so many others who chose not to seek reelection as a result. None of them seem to have realized the cost of doing the right thing is the end of their political lives and that as a result they no longer have the power to make policy and serve the public. Doing the right thing, particularly in politics, almost always comes an enormous cost and in the era since Trump took office the left has observed this and praised these people while ignoring the fact that they're no longer able to serve the public good. That these people have served as a voice against Trump and might have able to do good within in the party and America as a whole is irrelevant.  Thomas Reed, a  Congressional Republican famously said: "A statesman is a politician who is dead" and he might as well have argued politically dead applies just as well.

And it has to be noted this has only gone in one direction. Increasingly during the Trump era many left-wing Democrats have made pariahs of their own who choose to go across the aisle and work with Republicans. They've long accused the GOP of renouncing bipartisanship under Democratic administrations yet when members of their own party do likewise they have almost to one referred to as traitors. This was true of Jared Golden of Maine a Blue Dog Democrat who crossed the aisle multiple times and who chose not to run for reelection when he made it clear that the current tenor of politics had made it harder to do his job.  And the left turned on John Fetterman when, immediately after running as a progressive, he chose to work across the aisle and among other things chose to work with his Republican colleague in the Senate Dave McCormack for the common good of Pennsylvania. He has now become such a pariah among the left that it's frequently rumored he'll switch parties despite his saying he has no intention of doing so and his track record of voting with Democrats ninety precent of the time.

Much of this is being driven by the extreme left flank of the Democratic Party which has increasingly been far more of a weight on it then it will ever admit. They've spent much of the primary season of the 2026 midterms getting a lot of attention but not winning many critical races as they want, in large part because of the level of their candidates. This was true of Graham Platner's implosion in Maine earlier this summer where the left chose to stand stubbornly by him until a second accusation of sexual assault finally forced him to withdraw from the race. This led to Troy Jackson stepping in and while the Democrats may yet manage to pull out a win there Tuesday it nevertheless shows the toxic nature of so many of their candidates as well as what the left wants to accept.

The biggest example of this, and one that has drawn national attention, was the Democratic primary race in Michigan. In what came to be a bloodbath between former Justice Democrat Abdul El-Sayed and the more moderate Haley Stevens the polls suggested El-Sayed would win in a landslide. Instead the race wasn't called for El-Sayed until the following morning with El-Sayed winning by little more than a percentage point.

The normal path of every primary win is that El-Sayed was supposed to become a more moderate candidate, bury the hatchet with the other side and shore up where he was struggling, particularly with African-American and Jewish voters, in order to win in the fall. El-Sayed, by contrast and against all good sense, has basically chosen not to do that. His efforts to reach out to the African-American community and Jewish community are considered half-hearted at best, he's basically chosen to soft speak much of his past rhetoric rather then uniformly denounce it and time and again he chose to essentially refuse to campaign with Stevens on the trail.

Considering the narrowest of his win as well as the fact that the GOP was going to be laser focused on trying to pick off a Democratic seat in a race they were playing defense in as well as the fact that Michigan had gone for Trump just two years ago this approach to running was tantamount to political suicide. One can campaign as anti-establishment in a primary but once you're running in the general you need the whole party behind you. Instead El-Sayed has behaved like so many left-wing candidates have before: he assumes winning the primary is the same as winning the general. This works in deep blue districts; running for a Senate seat in a swing state is taking your life in your hands.

El-Sayed has time and again rejected multiple overtures to try and go anywhere near the center that Stevens clearly won. It was clear her willingness to stand by him was getting increasingly harder for her to deal with in October and the two never appeared on the same platform despite the efforts of multiple people in both Michigan and national Democrats to intervene. Despite all of the national criticism against him as well as the very real problems he had in the primary as well as a much closer race in the polls then a Democrat in Michigan should face – particularly compared to the nominee for governor Jocelyn Benson -  El-Sayed has run the campaign as if he had 'all the votes he needed' and he didn't need to bother with such things as 'party unity'.

I suspect while the Democratic Party and all of the major names associated with it, left and center, have come to campaign and endorse El-Sayed it is done out of the necessity of party unity as well as the political calculus that any political institution has to endure in an election year. Democrats want to win elections and hold political power because that is the only way you can get things done. Much as the Michigan primary exposed fissures in the party that they will have to deal with down the road, the critical phrase is 'down the road'. I suspect many Democrats are repulsed by El-Sayed's rhetoric as they are many of their own more far-left members then and now. I expect all of them wish their candidate for a state-elected office would make some effort to try and moderate his rhetoric and they can't be thrilled that Tucker Carlson chose to more or less endorse him. Nevertheless the Democrats have taken the approach that has basically been the standard the Republicans have: "He's a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."

In the case of Haley Stevens it’s a different story. It's genuinely not clear what future she had in Michigan politics after losing the primary but it has to have hurt immensely to have lost by so narrow a margin.  She also did better with the voters who are more typical of the Democratic base, the kind of voters El-Sayed needs to win on Tuesday. So that the nominee has made it clear at every level that he doesn't think he owes her anything, even when it comes to making the most token efforts, should be considered offensive to good political standards. And its been clear that El-Sayed doesn't think he needs her. There was going to be a unity breakfast on Sunday when the two candidates appeared on the same platform. Yesterday El-Sayed made it clear he didn't want her there, which wasn't just an offense to Stevens but to all of the Democrats who had been trying so hard to paper things over before Election Day.

My feelings about El-Sayed aside I truly believe he has treated many people on the campaign trail shamefully, particularly his defeated opponent. It is the kind of arrogance and spitefulness I'm honestly more used to from our current President, never mind a man who is, to be reminded, running to be the junior Senator from Michigan.  So I truly think the decision Stevens made this afternoon was not merely incredibly brave but inevitable.

She chose to endorse Mike Rogers for Senate.

Just Rogers. Not John James for Governor, not any of the Republicans running for Congress in Michigan and she certainly isn't in favor of Trump.  She said she expected Chuck Schumer to become the majority leader and that she was still a Democrat. She just said she couldn't support a man who'd campaigned brutally against her and had done nothing to accept any olive branch she tried to offer.

The reaction from the Democratic party was frankly stunning in its speed. Within hours from Nancy Pelosi to AOC and Mamdani they all chose to pile on Stevens and call her  very close to a traitor. Her campaign manager resigned along with half her campaign staff. And Curtis Hertel, the chair of the Michigan Democratic Party essentially chose to excommunicate her saying "she is not a current member of the Michigan Democratic Party, nor will she be in the future." El-Sayed himself tried to downplay it saying:" None of this matters." To be fair it may not.

When Stevens said that she believed Democrats would flip the Senate Tuesday, she's not talking out of school. She made it clear that this was about a referendum on 'hate in politics' all of which is a legitimate argument considering much of El-Sayed's rhetoric. She had been counseled to remain quiet and out of the news cycle. In other words she's condemning the exact kind of hateful rhetoric that people like the President should do publicly with nothing to gain from it. The stakes are far lower than the Democrats truly want it to be: the Democrats were already favored to win take back the Senate before her announcement and that will likely happen even if Mike Rogers wins. And honestly if the Democratic Party believes everything – not just Michigan – but the entire blue wave will dissolve because of Stevens' actions, they're as dumb as everyone says they are.

What all of this lays bare is something far more simple: For all the morality and garment rending the Democrats, progressives and so many on the left have  made about the Republicans condoning a morally bankrupt candidate for the sake of political power, they are just as willing to do the same when it meets their political ends – and honestly when the stakes are much less important by comparison. I don't find this nearly as hypocritical as Fox News and the right absolutely will: they lost the moral high ground well before Trump showed up.

But it's part of a pattern that's always been just beneath the surface when it comes to so many on the left about basically everything: the way that they will throw out everything they've said about those they despise for years when they say something against a newer enemy. Rachel Maddow deciding to publicly attend Dick Cheney's funeral because he'd chosen in 2024 to endorse Harris is just the most public equivalent of this.

On a personal note I truly find that so many seemingly intelligent people have chosen to make Abdul El-Sayed either an existential threat or potential savior to the Democratic Party, if not America itself, demonstrating the same kind of silliness that I found with everything involving Graham Platner. Again, El-Sayed is running to be the junior senator from Michigan, full stop. He's not going to have any more power in the Senate if elected then any of the other freshman Democrats who will win office. He'll have the same influence that James Talarico, Roy Cooper and Sherrod Brown all do if they win: one Senator, one vote.  If you truly believe that him winning is the  equivalent of the destruction of the Republic, you watch too much Fox News. If you believe that it can bring about the instant realization of a socialist utopia, you don't understand how Congress works.

Now at my core, I don't think El-Sayid is any more qualified to be in the Senate then Ken Paxton is and for the same reasons. And I also understand why the Democrats lined up behind El-Sayed after the primary the same way the GOP did with Paxton: "He's a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."  But whatever my personal feelings are the decision isn't up to me: it's up to the voters in Michigan and Texas and I believe they are perfectly capable of making up their own minds without having to be told what the entire world thinks they should do. I have my opinions about it, I know what the polls are telling me about both men's chances but in either case, I don't think the voters will listen to me so I'm not going to hit them over the head with it.

Haley Stevens, however, does live in Michigan and does have a reason to care about this as well she should. Now it is still possible, even likely, that El-Sayed will still win election on Tuesday.  Early voting has been going on for two weeks and the most it may do is influence some Stevens voters to either stay home or vote Republican. To be honest I think they might have done so even if Stevens had said nothing and I suspect Stevens knew this too. So her decision was about her future in politics. The choices were simple: be quiet and possibly have one or take a stand and lose everything. Stevens chose the latter – and I truly do find that brave even if that is not the opinion of so many in America today.

Like every major political website I think that a blue wave, perhaps a tsunami, will happen Tuesday. Perhaps it will be enough to sweep El-Sayed to victory; I suspect it will. But no matter what I think I respect and admire Haley Stevens's decision. It was a true Profile in Courage, the one that Democrats say they want to see more often – but of course, only by Republicans.

Homicide Rewatch: Secrets

 

Written by Yaphet Kotto

Directed by Ed Bianchi

 

Secrets is the second episode written by Yaphet Kotto and a completely different beast than his previous episode Narcissus. In fact of the three episodes Kotto will pen for Homicide this is the most atypical as it doesn't put his own character front and center the way other two will.

That doesn't make it a bad episode. Indeed Secrets plays very much like an episode any of the other writers during the show's run could have turned out and I mean that as a compliment. Kotto manages to put several of the critical storylines that have been playing out throughout Season 6 with perfect precision, continues the trend of the season for having the unit investigating cases that don't fit the traditional mantle of what Homicide has done in the first five years and centers it on a plot that as it unfolds is fascinating both in the nature of what the villain at the crux of it is doing and the grayer area of just how horrible it is. Indeed nearly thirty years later the question at its center is even more fascinating then it was back then, even though we now live in an era where it is increasingly difficult for anyone to hide their secrets from the world – and increasingly there are no consequences when they come out.

Munch and Ballard are called in on what is clearly a suicide: Josephine Dalton, 46 who's killed herself via carbon monoxide poisoning. She's clearly very wealthy – the car is a BMW and the house is mansion. What's more she's married with two young kids who discovered her when they came home from school. Not the type to kill oneself but they have to do the paperwork. Dalton is Vice President of Fayette Securities and the kids knew something was wrong when she was there when they get home: she's always at work. They say she was fine until the previous night when she was crying in her room and wouldn't say why.  Ballard wants to know what could have inspired Dalton to kill herself but first Munch and then Giardello make it very clear that if it’s a suicide move on. "It's hard enough understanding why people kill each other. Why they kill themselves, that's not ours to answer."  Considering Al is no doubt still unable to understand why Crosetti killed himself four years later, he speaks from experience.

Meanwhile Bayliss and Pembleton are dealing with Kenneth Alden who has shot himself. He left a note: "I'm sorry. Love, Ken." Pembleton is somewhat more philosophical considering that Alden is the President and CEO of another prominent Baltimore business. He shot himself in his office while his secretary was bringing him coffee. He has a wife and a son. Its only when Scheiner shows up and is told that a middle-aged man of the corporate variety killed himself that the detectives put it together. (Scheiner: "Must be contagious.") This causes Bayliss and Frank to wonder if there's a connection.

It is a suicide and Ballard still wants to know why. Munch wants to move on and he very likely would have until Pembleton and Bayliss come in and ask if there was a connection.  The two of them were prominent in the Baltimore financial community, which isn't that big. Bayliss is more sanguine saying that two suicides in one day is plenty. They might have been inclined to let it go except the 'widow Alden' wants to have a word with them.

The widow knows what "I'm sorry" means because she received a similar envelope, one that has photos she's very reluctant to share.  They are photos shot from a distance of Kenneth with another woman and Mrs. Alden believes he killed himself out of fear of exposure. Pembleton finds this a bit extreme – he's had his share of murders involving infidelity – until Mrs. Alden tells him that suicide might be the easy way out. The women is Jesse Mesker, Kenneth's half-sister.  The two have the same mother. Pembleton posits that Alden killed himself not because of guilt but because he was afraid of being exposed. Ballard and Munch realize that these photos might indicate that blackmail was involved – and part of the Homicide detail's mandate is to investigate extortion.  Giardello orders an investigation to find out who might have took the photos. Munch, to his credit, now realizes that Dalton's suicide fits the same profile and Alden and that an investigation might have merit.  Bayliss is more philosophical: he knows that no matter what secrets these two people had they didn't have to kill themselves. "Time passes on, people can forgive anything," Bayliss says. The viewer knows he's talking about what happened in his family. "People can forgive anything."

Jessie tells Bayliss and Pembleton that the two of them had been having an affair for 25 years, longer then his marriage. They'd been meeting at lunch at the Ambassador for decades. The detectives are more perfunctory then usual but its worth noting that Jesse doesn't feel the least bit ashamed about what she and her half-brother were doing and wonders more about her brother's own guilt. Mr. Dalton is very reluctant to let Munch and Ballard go through her things until Munch reveals that Alden committed suicide and the link's established – the two victims were members of the same country club, Fairglen. There's no evidence the two knew each other but Mr. Dalton reveals that before she died his wife also received photographs of his wife having an affair with their children's babysitter.

There follows a hysterical sequence where Bayliss and Pembleton interview a clerk at the Ambassador Hotel where despite not being able to tell about the tenant's privacy she tells them everything they need to know about Alden renting the place, that he and Jesse saw each other their repeatedly and the visitor one Brenner Jones. It becomes more serious when Frank and Tim bring Jones into the box and show him his photos. They can connect him to the apartment and a fight that was heard, and once they reveal the truth – particularly that the subjects of the photos he took have committed suicide – he's genuinely shocked.

Then the case takes the turn that makes it interesting. Jones admits he took the pictures and made delivers but not to blackmail.  He was told to do this by an old money, old society member of Fairglen named Remington Hill. He told them where and when Alden and Dalton would be having their affairs and was right both times. Jones tells them he did this because he needed the money – but that's a lie too.

The scene between Bayliss, Pembleton and Hill is a highpoint of the season. After a short discussion in which Bayliss and Pembleton talk about Jones he barely puts up a denial and then says about Jones: "He's a weak man, don't you think?"

He admits he hired Jones to do some 'research' – which he calls the 'proper term'  But then he says he didn't blackmail the two of them despite behavior he considers disgusting. Hill said that the two of them were behaving like animals and he wanted them to stop what they were doing.  He says he never threatened to expose them. He went to them directly, said that if they didn't change their ways, he would reveal the truth and that they chose to kill themselves instead.  Furthermore he tells them that he was doing this to give themselves a chance to reform. While he is brazen saying "I'm not responsible for the weakness of others."

He's momentarily shaken when Bayliss points out that both Alden and Dalton left children behind and spouses to grieve – but only momentarily saying: "Then they were sacrificed for the greater good." This would be frightening until he tells them that there were others that he photographed and threatened them with exposure. He has been compiling information for over a year for those who needed 'intervention' . This week he sent photos to eight other people and made the same demands – and they all promised to stop. He says that if 8 out of ten made the right decision, the moral ledger shows a balance.

When the two leave the club Frank immediately wants to go back and doesn't like the idea of Bayliss saying we have nothing on him.  Frank doesn't like that Hill passed judgment but Bayliss reminds him Dalton and Alden made the choice to kill themselves. Bayliss actually seems to be on Hill's side – and then he points out what has been the subtext: "If someone had taken pictures of me and my uncle, I might have been better off. I would have been better off."

I have to say, now that we live in a world where society takes pictures of what it considers the worst behavior of strangers and holds them publicly guilty, Remington Hill's actions almost seem benign. He privately took the pictures, told no one else but those involved and only said he'd tattle – as Danvers puts it – if they didn't stop. By the standards where TMZ and Twitter are almost the mildest versions of this Hill's behavior almost seems merciful and certain utilitarian. (I actually agree with Ballard when she says tattling should be a crime.)

And as Frank and Tim find out there's no real crime to charge Hill with and not even Jones. The matter would be closed – except Gharty then comes in and tells them Fairglen has one less member – Remington Hill.  The detectives assume he killed himself but Dyer points out his trigger finger is clean. He's been killed and its been staged as a suicide. They look at the list of the eight people he blackmailed. Three of them were at the club but they have iron clad alibis. However Brenner Jones was in the club too.

Jones makes it very clear that he killed Hill when it was clear the detectives weren't going to do anything to stop him. He also says that he wasn't doing it for money; Hill had a secret on him as well. He's willing to go to jail for murder but he won't tell his secret no matter what.

 

 

The title is accurate because it also refers to the Mahoney storyline and all of the secrets that are starting to spill out. It starts on an optimistic note when Falsone asks about Meldrick's trial board and asks if Giardello can do something to 'grease it'

Al's response is hysterical: "Are you suggesting that a trial board can be manipulated? That there's no integrity in the process?" Falsone doesn't hesitate. "Pretty much."  Al: "I'm shocked, very shocked, by the very notion of such a thing." We already knew that in fact Giardello has done exactly that because he more or less implied it to Lewis last week and as we see very clearly in the trial board it plays out exactly like Giardello said it was and Meldrick knows as much.  He doesn't contest the findings and indeed he gets the exact punishment.  Giardello then says he called in more favors then Meldrick wants to know.

I have to tell you that immediately afterwards Gaffney chooses to weigh in. "If it was up to me, you'd be back in a radio car for that stunt you pulled. He then faults Al on his problem being a 'lack of discipline."  This is the broken clock occasion. Still its hard to resist their final exchange:

Gaffney: "If I were running his shift, I'd be offering you a transfer out."

Meldrick: "Respectfully speaking, sir, if you were running his shift, I'd be taking it."

Giardello doesn't say anything at all; just smiles beatifically. He has no idea how soon he will regret his decision.

When Kellerman, Falsone and Stivers see Meldrick their reaction is 'the football's back'. None of them seem overjoyed Meldrick is back from suspension and there's a real awkwardness between them that the tossing of the football – Lewis's bonding exercise for the entire series – doesn't erase. Stivers is uncomfortable she's at Meldrick's desk but Lewis doesn't want to talk about it. Critically no one wants to toss the ball to Mike and when they do no one wants it back. Mike's hopes that this will be over soon are dashed almost immediately.

Meldrick has no desire to partner with Mike when he makes the offer in the weight room  and when Mike tries to 'thank him' for helping clear the Barnes murder – a murder, it's worth remembering Mike had no interest in closing on his own – Meldrick denies any involvement. It's also clear given how bloodthirsty Kellerman is when he asks Meldrick how he got the Mahoney crew to turn on each other that Lewis really does want to move forward. When he reveals what's going on with Judge Gibbons and says Meldrick should "ease up" whatever he's doing. The fact that Mike plans to go to jury selection on the civil suit in order to make Gibbons sweat and that Lewis has no interest in it basically shows how far apart the two are. Meldrick genuinely just wants to forget everything he's done; Mike wants to dance on the graves of every last bit of the Mahoney organization as it falls apart.  Lewis is genuinely upset when Mike leaves.

And there are signs that things are getting worse. Falsone and Stivers have caught the murder of Tonio Cornell who'd been in line to replace Luther if Georgia Rae hadn't stepped in. At this point Stivers knows that if he's dead they're can't be much left of Georgia Rae's crew. Falsone then says that they should talk to Meldrick directly. Stivers has been living in denial that Meldrick did this but Falsone enlightens her and tells her his part in giving him the information on the Mahoney crew.

In doing so he officially takes off any shine that was left on his halo at the start of the season.  He admits his role and what was happening to the Mahoney crew. When Stivers asks why he helped him he just says: "He's my partner. He asked." And when Stivers asks why he was so interested in Luther's shooting to the point we thought he was on a mission for some higher calling Falsone makes it clear that his problem was that half the shift  was carrying some big secret. He wanted to know what the dirt was, so he could transfer out if the shit hit the fan.  Everything he did about the Mahoney shooting was simply so he could avoid working with Kellerman so if IID came down he wasn't dirty. And the fact that Stivers is clearly willing to tell him about the shooting and Falsone says he knows enough makes it clear he has no desire to make a mess. He doesn't want the truth revealed. He just wants to stand clear when the dirt hits.

The bigger problem is Lewis didn't ask for Cornell's name. Now that he's dead things are out of control. Meldrick may have started a drug war but he has no way to stop it – something he will find out at the end of the episode.

Lewis finds that out when he catches his first call back on the job the murder of one Nate Bihari, a supplier vital to the Mahoney organization. He doesn't understand why someone would kill someone who's officially neutral and who they'd need after the war was over. Munch is partnering with him (and is one of the few members of the squad still on the outside of all this) says, making sense of a drug war is like making sense of cancer. He doesn't know he's working with the man who started it when he says: "Violence is a contagion that feeds on itself." Munch is absolutely right on this.

And as if Mike has lost any pretense of being a detective his scene at the courthouse shows him basically at his most disgusting. He shows up there for jury selection, saying he's there to give Gibbons a friendly wave. Then when Gibbons sees Kellerman he all but turns white and immediately dismisses the case. Then Kellerman smirks, all but dances out of the courthouse,  and then hurries up after Gibbons to taunt him about what he's done, actively telling him with the Mahoney organization very much still around that the Feds have him dead to rights and he'd better give up Georgia Rae. When he turns and sees Mahoney's representatives leaving the courthouse himself, he doesn't even seem that concerned. We'll see that he shouldn't have shared that secret.

The episode ends with Bayliss and Ballard at the Waterfront the first time they've had dinner since "their disaster of a date" as Ballard puts it. Apparently it ended with performance anxiety on Bayliss's part. He tells Ballard that he never talks that much about his personal life, not even Frank. He comes about it very clumsily but then he confides something that's been on the backburner for the last half of the season.  He confides about his failures in relationship and for the first time to anyone he confides – vaguely but still directly for 1990s audiences – that he's bicurious.

Ballard takes it better than Frank. Bayliss confides that he was always terrified about telling anyone this because it would scare them off. And Ballard tells him: "I'm not running away." In an episode full of secrets Bayliss has chosen to share his biggest one. And in a series where the darkest truths only come to bear in the box, there's something brave and hopeful about it.

 

Notes From The Board

It was the 1990s: Gharty is suffering from a cold (that's why Munch was partnering with Ballard but comes in anyway. "After 30 minutes of Regis and Kathie Lee, I had to get out of there." Not even watching Montel Williams?"

"Detective Munch" While Munch has his own great line there's a lot of fun watching Ballard react to partnering with him. In the teaser when Munch is talking about the safest place in America to live – Stearns, Minnesota – and that Baltimore is the city with the third shortest life expectancy he tells Ballard he plans to move there and become a farmer. Ballard's reaction by the end of the teaser: "I thought you'd be milking a cow by now." Asked what would be so bad you'd have to end your life Ballard's response: "A date with John Munch." One moment later Munch walks by: "Ready to roll, partner?"

The best line comes when Lewis says Nate Bihari was like Switzerland and Munch reacts with fury: "Hey don't go trusting the Swiss. Turns out they spent World War II skimming money from my dead relatives." When Lewis is baffled Munch unfolds: "I don't like their chocolate. I don't like their cheese. I don't like that little knife that folds out into cutlery. Don't go talking up the Swiss to me!"

It's rather strange considering that she's the main client in this civil suit Georgia Rae Mahoney isn't in the courtroom. Maybe she didn't want to be seen in the same place as the judge that was on her payroll. Or maybe she's dealing with the fallout with her crew falling apart. (Or maybe Hazelle Goodman just wasn’t available that day.)

This is the first episode where all three recurring medical examiners: Scheiner, Lausanne and Dyer appear in the same episode. I guess now that Michelle Forbes is gone they can afford to free up time for these characters which honestly isn't a bad thing.

Remak Ramsey, who plays Remington Hill, was a Baltimore native who had roles in The Stepford Wives, The Front and played Richard Bissell in the NBC miniseries Kennedy, Justice John Campbell in Lincoln and the War Within and Dean Acheson in Truman. He also played Thomas Hutchinson in the TV miniseries Liberty! The American Revolution and John McWilliams in Julie & Julia. Better known as a stage actor he appeared in Half Sixpence, Private Lives, The Devil's Disciple, Saint Joan and The Heiress all on Broadway. He was twice nominated for the Drama Desk Award (Off Broadway plays) for Outstanding Actor in a Play for The Winslow Boy and Quartermaine's Terms. It is unknown if he is alive or dead as of this writing.

Constant Reader October 2026: My Sister Rosa by Justine Larbalestier

 

    I first saw My Sister Rosa in my local library a couple of years ago and I checked it out but never got around to reading it. I returned and checked it out following the same pattern quite a few times but didn't get around to actually reading it until last month.

The idea is a brilliant one. Justine Larbalestier, an Australian-American author who wrote My Sister Rosa back in 2016, tells the story of seventeen year old Che Taylor. He's convinced his sister, only ten years old, is a psychopath. As the novel progresses there's plenty of evidence to back up Che's theory – but as the novel progresses you increasingly wonder if Che is perhaps hyper-focused.

The novel is divided into four sections, each named after Che's four goals that he does every time the Taylor moves. The first one is called 'Keep Rosa Under Control' In it Che lists how he's convinced even at 2 years old Rosa has been able to manipulate and control everything around her environment. "No sooner did Rosa start talking then she started lying.' He details Rosa's history at a child of killing ants, of being able to manipulate people around her, especially 'the parentals' as both Che and Rosa call their parents, the way she may have manipulated a friend in Bangkok to kill a guinea pig which convinced Che that Rosa has the traits of a psychopath.

Because in typical fashion his parents, who insist on being called Sally and David instead of Mum and Dad, refuse to believe there's something wrong with Rosa David has taken it upon himself to put the goal of controlling Rosa all on him. The Taylors live a jet-setting lifestyle in which they move around as social do-gooders, raising money for notable causes. The Taylors are incredibly left wing, given the names of their children, and haven't bother to put Che and Rosa in public school. They have been moving from place to place for the last five years around the world and they end up going to New York City where the bulk of the novel takes place.

Each time they relocate Che writes down a list of goals in each city, each of which form a section of the novel:

1. Keep Rosa under control.

2. I want to spar.

3. I want a girlfriend.

4. I want to go home

 

Every day Che types this into a journal, then deletes because he's convinced that Rosa is breaking into his room and reads his journal. This is incredibly paranoid but also accurate.

My Sister Rosa is a brilliant novel not just because of the obvious possibility that we are looking at a ten year old psychopath. The idea of children being devilish has been the subject of horror increasingly in both great films and bad ones in the last half century, going back to The Bad Seed which is clearly the most direct inspiration of this novel.

However once you get to the climax of the novel you look back at everything far differently and while I wouldn't dream of giving away that revelation I will say that Larbalestier has done a brilliant job hiding it in plain sight the whole time.

Some of it is hidden by the fact that Che loves Rosa more than anyone else in the world. This is because his parents seem far more in love with each other and have less regard for their children throughout and when they do, understandably, they worry more about their youngest. Early in the novel Rosa disappears in the city and leads their parents to call the police only to find that Rosa has been playing chess all this time. After initially being terrified Che takes it to believe that is a sign Rosa has been manipulating their parents and is upset that she isn't treated more harshly.

But there's also a different factor. Rosa is very much smarter than Che. She's brilliant at math and is a very chess player, and she clearly handles education far better than Che, who struggles at everything and is only focus on studying the brain. (As you'd expect he's only interested in becoming a neurologist because he thinks it'll help Rosa.) Che seems to believe because Rosa says she loves him that he can extract promises out of her to be good and do the right thing even though he is aware and can see just how good Rosa is at telling 'the parentals' exactly what they want to hear. It's clear to the reader as early as the second section that Che has no chance of controlling Rosa but somehow it hasn't occurred to him yet.

There's also the fact that Che himself doesn't seem quite normal either. Time and again when he's told something by his friends back in Australia and they ask him if it bothers him he's slow to figure it out.  When they move to New York and meet the McKnight's, who are friends of the Taylors and are backing his latest venture, the first time he meets their daughter Leliani he can't pick up on her sarcasm which is obvious to the reader. He has no idea how rich the McKnight family is, nor even that Leliani is a famous teenage model until his friends tell him to Google her. Part of this can be blame on being an average teenager and his focus on Rosa, but it's rather unsettling that in all these travels Che never seems to ask any follow up questions -or for that matter any questions at all.

Che likes fighting and has wanted to be a professional boxer. His parents haven't wanted him to spar so when he goes to a gym and decides to do it, it's as close to rebelling against the parentals as he's gotten. It's at the gym that he meets Sojourner, an attractive African-American girl with two mothers, one of whom is very sick, one of whom is a preacher and who is religious. This deeply bothers Che because he's been raised an atheist and understandably there's a fair amount of humor as he tries to figure out how much to lie about going to church in order to impress Sojourner.

As you might expect Sojourner fills out part 3 of Che's wish list. The problem is Che is understandably terrified that if Rosa finds out about Sojourner she will do something to hurt her -  a threat that becomes increasingly valid as the novel progresses. But critically he never bothers to tell a woman he increasingly falls in love with just how dangerous he thinks Rosa truly is.  He's convinced that Rosa has fooled Sojourner like she's fooled everybody else but as we learn late in the novel that even before things took a tragic turn Sojourner was more observant than Che could imagine.

And that's the other thing throughout the entire book Che's focus is so much on Rosa that he's basically been ignoring so many other normal social behaviors around him. When Leliani welcomes him into her friend circle because she's never met anyone quite like him, he doesn't know that he's being brought to an exclusive clothing store in New York and just what it takes to get in. He has no idea how famous a model she is and he doesn't understand what it's like to function in her friend circle.  Time and again, he can't pick up on normal social cues that are does among the friend group around them. It's only when Leliani picks up on that fact that Rosa isn't quite normal that he takes her into his confidence – and tellingly she believes him without much argument.

By this point Rosa has been manipulating Leliani's twin sisters to the point where their normal cheerful manner has been subverted and they are becoming snappish at each other. Halfway through the novel one of them nearly dies from an allergic reaction at the Taylor home and has to be hospitalized. Che is sure this will convince his parents that this was Rosa's fault and David seems to acknowledge it.

It's then we realize that for all his efforts to make it clear who Rosa is Che has no idea what to do once the truth is revealed. It’s at that point David reminds Che of the family history which Che has noted to be part of the factor. When Che asks him if empathy can be taught David reminds him just how well Rosa can game the doctors.  He thinks the only thing that can be done is to keep trying to teach Rosa to pass as normal and that pretending can change you. He wants to take her to a professional and then David puts it into plain speaking:

"You can't call a ten-year old a psychopath. How do you think people will treat her once they know? What school will take her? Will she have to go to a school for other disturbed children? What will she learn from other schools like her?"

All Che can say is "I don't know." In the final section David confronts a horrible truth: "If Rosa doesn't make any trouble for next ten years, will I believe she's changed?" The fact that not long after this the final horrible moments of the novel reveal everything doesn't change the reality that Che never had a plan at any point.

It doesn't help that Rosa is clearly far more aware of the realities around the Taylors then Che is. Halfway through the book Rosa tells Che that the reason they moved to New York is that they've gone broke and that the McKnight family, while an old friend, has given them one last chance before they won't fund them anymore. Che doesn't believe Rosa but this is very much the truth. He has no idea exactly what kind of do-gooding his parents have been a part of  and late in the novel Leliani asks Che what David must have on her parents to keep them close. There's a clear implication that the McKnight's have been throwing money at their problems for years and are just as neglectful as the Taylors are – and Che is clueless to this.

Throughout this book it was impossible for me not to be reminded of Dexter and yet it was impossible not to compare pop culture's most famous serial killer to David, not Rosa. Like Dexter in the early seasons David never picks up on verbal cues, is always hungry and eating something, knows far too much about psychopathy and has been trying to control his violent urges, which when they come out become terrible. When he – as well as the reader – learns the real truth about his entire family it comes as a bigger shock to Che then it does to reader. Not long after that Rosa and Che have their first honest conversations at which point Rosa is by far the bluntest about just how much Che has been lying himself his entire life – and honestly still is by the time the novel finishes.

While ultimately bleak My Sister Rosa can also be savagely funny at times. Because we only see Rosa from Che's perspective and because she always seems to mix both literal dialogue with childlike behavior, you get the impression that Rosa is toying with everybody around her, including Che. Rosa is a brilliant chess player and it is clear just how good she is at moving the pieces around the board and constantly running rings around Che. Late in the book it's clear she knows exactly what her brother thinks of her and has for a very long time and that she's been messing with him as effectively as everyone else – but Che doesn't take the hint.

It's also funny to see Che as the fish out of water in New York itself, unable to deal with such things as churches in warehouse, so many nightclubs and getting his head around the idea of someone who's 'not a boy or a girl'. He spends a lot of the novel getting drunk for the first time as well as getting high and like every teenager he just wants to lose his virginity – while make sure his sister doesn't push her down a flight of stairs, of course.

At the end of My Sister Rosa Che has finally realized that he'll never be able to control Rosa. What's unclear at the end of the book is if he's realized that he ever had a chance of doing it. Yet somehow I think Rosa Taylor has a better future in the world then Che ever does. She's learned from her mistakes. I can't say the same for her brother.

Decision 2026 Final Thoughts: Even If The Blue Wave Happens Some Lessons Democrats Need To Take Away (Because The Left Won't)

 

 

Like everyone else the closer we get to election day the more deluged I am by campaign ads those running in the tri-State area, not just New York but also New Jersey and Connecticut.  And while I've been basically ignoring political ads on every level since I was, well, let's say  fourteen it's not like I haven't noticed certain things from an objective way.

One of the most recent ads have been ones that are marketing by a Republican superPAC arguably that Cait Conley, who's running to replace Republican Mike Lawler in a vital upstate swing district has the complete support of the Democratic Socialist and puts AOC and Mamdani front and center. Most of these ads run in such a cheery and positive tone that if you were slightly less intelligent – as indeed many campaign individuals in both parties believe the electorate is – you might think that this was a positive ad.  I almost wonder if far-left voters in Conley's district might read it that way and actually vote for her as a result.

What this Pac knows is something that I suspect the average progressive refuses to accept: that the candidates and elected officials that they worship from a distance are held with decidedly mixed emotions in the states and even cities they represent. This has always been true with AOC, who despite having become a national figure after her upset victory in 2018 is rarely, if ever, mention in ads by Democratic politicians in New York particular those who represent more conservative parts of the state such as my district represented by Tom Suozzi.

Suozzi himself was the target of quite a few ads linking him directly to every policy that AOC, Mamdani and even Bernie Sanders have endorsed for the last decade even though Suozzi's only been in the House (again) since February of 2024. This has been the tactic of almost every major Republican ad for almost every Republican running for office whether they are those running for Congress or Bruce Blakeman's ads running for Governor.

None of this is likely to make  much of a difference here on Tuesday: all four swing districts are likely to remain or go Democrat, Hochul is certain to win reelection in a landslide and we may even pick up the seat that Elsie Stefanik held way up in Utica, which has been reliably Republican for years but has recently been moved to 'Toss-up' by almost every major political website.  Much of this is due to the fact that every nominee for every statewide office is focusing on how every Republican candidate and office holder has ties to MAGA which is even more toxic in New York by and large than anything on the far left.

What matters is what I've seen in everyone of these Democratic candidates – or rather who I haven't seen. None of them mention AOC and Mamdani or anything that could be tied as progressive even when they're not laser focus on MAGA and the White House. They do mention their public service (Conley and Rebecca Bennett mention how they've served in the military) representatives like Laura  Gillen and Suozzi will mention their willingness to be bipartisan and work with anyone (and their voting record more than backs that up) and they talk about issues involving corruption to the point they don't mention the Democrats that much. But none of them have gotten AOC and/or Mamdani to do ads or campaign for them and they certainly do everything possible to distance themselves from the democratic socialism that both have become nationally prominent for on the stump advocating enthusiastically for.

And this pattern, I should be clear, predates this election.  In the three previous election cycles none of the swing district candidates or for that matter those running for governor or Senator have mentioned that they so much as know AOC. This would come as a shock to those who believe that defeat only comes when you cede ground to the right that should go to the left. And yet the fact remains by and large almost every statewide official has kept AOC at arms' length, no doubt because they've seen that she doesn't have a great track record with endorsements of other candidates that aren't in New York and even those who are themselves progressive. One saw this play out most famously two years ago when Jamaal Bowman was primaried from the right by George Latimer and lost by nearly eighteen points despite AOC campaigning with him at multiple rallies.

There is every indication that the Democrats are set for a blue wave, very close to a tidal one. At this point Real Clear Politics  by far the most conservative slanted political website of those that track elections is saying the Democrats will gain six seats in the Senate, including Iowa and Kansas and that the Democrats will likely win 238 seats in the House. Other pollsters are being more cautious but even they admit they might be underselling how well the Democrats could do. It is possible, even increasingly probable, that this may be a generational shift across the country. And that's why I think its important even before the votes are counted to make sure that the Democrats don't take the same lessons from it that we did back in the last major blue wave in 2018.

At the time, in large part because of AOC's upset primary victim and the triumphs of the Squad many key Democrats chose to embrace the idea that the progressive agenda was the path forward for the party. We took that approach in 2020 and it actually hurt us at a Congressional level. Because of everything Trump did in the aftermath as well as his continued presence the party chose to ignore the lessons and in 2024 they came back to bite us hard. It's vital as we move into an era where Trump is finally leaving the national stage that the Democrats learn from the mistakes we made before – and might be making now – so we don't pay for them later.

This is not my opinion alone. Last week Ezra Klein interviewed the celebrated pollster Nate Silver in regard to what he thought was going to happen in 2026. He actually thinks that things are going to be very good in both the polls and his gut but he did point out some critical things.

Klein mentioned that in several states where the Democrats needed to be competitive the party decided to endorse far more 'conventional' candidates then we had in past elections. This included James Talarico in Texas, Sherrod Brown in Ohio and of course Mary Peltola in Alaska. (I'll leave her out of this for the sake of objectivity.) But he also mentioned how in states that should be more traditionally safe Democratic states the party embraced more far-left  candidates for Senate and that has caused signs for the party to be concerned, even if they win – which is increasingly likely.

The biggest problem and the one the GOP has increasingly been trying to make the new face of the Democratic Party is of course Abdul El-Sayid in Michigan. Mike Rogers has been essentially backed by every Republican surrogate from Trump and Vance all the way down essentially using every single play in the worst parts of their playbook.  As horrible as the frequently Islamophobic comments have been, the truth is they are just a variation on an old Republican standard that goes back to Lee Atwater and that is barely veiled in the adds using Mamdani and AOC in New York. They are morally despicable but considering the party's effectiveness of them it's very difficult for them to be going back to their greatest hits.

The issue is that this blatant racism and bigotry will cover the multitude of sins El-Sayid has had as a candidate. In previous articles I pointed out for him to win he was going to have to move towards the political center, away from the progressive vote that elected him, towards those who voted for Haley Stevens who came with an inch of beating him in the primary. That also meant that he would have to shore up his standing among African-American voters, who are historically vital  to any Democratic victory as well as Jewish voters who his rhetoric on Gaza did much to isolate during the primary. And the reason the race has been so close until fairly recently – and indeed may be closer then the polls indicate – is that El-Sayid has done very little during the campaign to win them back and the efforts he has made have been perfunctory compared to his continued outreach to the progressives who helped nominate him and by their nature refuse to allow any concessions to the center.

There have been signs during the fall that Rogers may well be making up ground with African-Americans as well as the Jewish voters. His campaign has made very attempts to have events with Stevens on the same platform, and in fact he's reached out to Mallory McMorrow who dropped out of the primary late, far more often then Stevens. Stevens has repeatedly said that she supports the nominee but has not publicly said if she's voting for him and that her fiancée has made it clear that he's crossing party lines to endorse Rogers is very telling.

We have found a variation on this to the west in Minnesota where just a few weeks after El-Sayid's narrow victory Peggy Flanagan, a more progressive candidate, upset favorite Angie Craig to win the Democratic nomination for the Senate. Minnesota has been plagued by chaos and controversy all year starting with ICE coming out in force in January in a series of violent and public confrontations that led to multiple ICE related to deaths and the focus of the world on Minneapolis. Tim Walz, who just two years ago had his public profile raised as Kamala Harris Vice Presidential nominee, was embroiled in a welfare scandal and announced he would not seek reelection. This led Amy Klobuchar to announce she was running for governor and a certain amount of electoral turmoil in a reliably Democratic state. This may have led to the voters choosing Flanagan over Craig.

And despite Minnesota having been one of the most reliably Democratic states in the nation for more than sixty years, particularly at a statewide level, Flanagan was seen constantly polling far lower than the average Democrat candidate has with multiple polls continuing to show her within the margin of error over Republican candidate Michele Tafoya.

The comparison has to be made in both these midwestern states in comparison to the gubernatorial race in each. Amy Klobuchar has always been polling significantly ahead of her Republican opponent by 8 to 10 points with a weighted average of 10.6 percent.  By contrast the weighted average shows Flanagan's margin at 6 percent over Tafoya. Similarly while polls have shown El-Sayid on average 5.8 percent ahead of Rogers, Jocelyn Benson the nominee for Governor of Michigan has always been ahead of her Republican opponent John James by double digits and is currently 9 percent of him on average going into the final weekend.

And it's worth noting that a major cause that progressives such as AOC and Ilhan Ohmar have been infuriated by is why the DNC hasn't given what they consider sufficient support to the Democratic nominee for Senate in Florida Angie Nixon, a former DSA member who managed an upset primary win over Alexander Vindman this August. It's not that complicated. The Democratic Party is concentrating on races that it has a chance of winning and Nixon has no chance of defeating Ashley Moody.

There has never been a moment in Nixon's campaign where she has been even close to within the margin of error of her Republican opponent. Going into October while there are polls show that she has narrowed the gap slightly the most charitable ones have her losing by at least six percent. Florida has been increasingly red during the last decade and it was always a long shot that any Democrat was going to win there. But going into the primary all polls showed Alexander Vindman running a closer race against Moody, some showing him statistically tied. There was never any poll before or after the primary that showed Nixon within 5 points of defeating Moody.  Winning in Florida was always going to be an uphill climb in a state where Republicans outnumber Democrats in registration by nearly two to one. Nominating a DSA candidate sealed any chance we had of winning there and the Democratic Party knows that even if AOC and the Squad won't acknowledge it.

A Times Op-Ed acknowledged part of the reason that Republicans lost reasons that have been winnable is that they've had a history of nominating far right candidates who win the primary but lose in the general. This played out quite a bit  during Trump's tenure as his decision to empower Dr. Oz and Herschel Walker almost certainly cost the GOP a chance to take the Senate in the last midterms. The Democrats had mostly managed to avoid these mistakes in the 21^st century and when they did make them they were overpowered by so much of the actions of Trump.

But when the left unified behind Graham Platner in Maine as a 'working class progressive' despite all of the very real warning signs it looked very much like the left was about to do just that. Platner's campaign spectacularly imploded during the summer, forcing the Democrats to go to the fallback position of Troy Jackson. It may yet work out – the polls do show Jackson still ahead of Collins as we go into the final weekend – but it was clear just how badly the left was prepared to sabotage the Democrats nationally in the name of ideological purity.

The danger, as I said, is not about what happens in this cycle but in 2028 and going forward. It is imperative that the Democrats not repeat the same mistakes they made in the aftermath of 2018, particularly now that our enemy for the last decade is very soon going to be gone from the field of battle. (Remembering just how little good against so many of his soldiers in Congress who survived despite labeling them is MAGA would help us well.) This means doing an accounting of where these kinds of candidates are weak and where they are strong. And this election cycle will give us multiple opportunities to show exactly that across America.

The consensus among all major pollsters is that in addition to winning control of both houses of Congress the Democrats are favored to either win or be in control of the majority of the governorship this cycle for the first time in 20 years.  And in almost every state where there is a competitive senate race there's also a gubernatorial race. After all the ballots are counted on Election Day we'll be able to compare just how well ultra progressive candidates such as El-Sayid and Flanagan did in comparison to more moderate governors such as Benson and Klobuchar.

And we will be obligated to extend it in every other state in play as well. It will be less important in states such as Illinois or Ohio where we are favored to win both statewide races handily. But there will be multiple cases where it is looking like ballot-splitting may take place at a far greater level in several critical states, either for the senatorial or gubernatorial candidate. We will likely see this in Texas where James Talarico is heavily favored to win but Greg Abbott is looking like he will narrowly hold on the governor's race or in Georgia where Jon Osoff is expected to win in a landslide but gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms has been running either dead even or trailing Republican candidate Rick Jackson. Considering that four years ago Brian Kemp beat Stacy Abrams by eight points to win reelection but Raphael Warnock managed to prevail against Herschel Walker in the Senate we'll have to pay close attention, particularly because Warnock will be up for reelection in 2028 as well.

It may also cut both ways in Iowa where Rob Sand is expected to win the governor's race in a landslide but Josh Turek is in a razor-thin race with Republican Ashley Hinson. It's looking like we're going to win three of the four Congressional districts this cycle so we're going to need to know why Turek polled poorer to Sand.

We'll also have to see how badly Nixon does compared to David Jolly in the race for the Florida governorship. Jolly has been polling slightly better against Bryan Donalds for governor then Nixon has for the Senate but not by that  much, usually at most trailing by three or four points. Still we need to do better for the future which is coming up soon – Moody will be running for reelection in her own right in two years and we will get another bite at the apple.

To do an autopsy on the midterms when its looking very much like we're going to have a generational wave may seem like I'm taking the tone of the kinds of nattering nabobs of negativism that make up so much of the columns. The thing is we've been down this road before. In the aftermath of the 2006 midterms and then the Obama landslide many in the party and others thought that this was the beginning of the end for the GOP. Just two years after that came the Tea Party and within 6 years all the Democratic gains we made were completely washed away, which led us pretty much to where we are now. The fact that we took the wrong conclusion from the 2018 elections made it very clear that the Democratic Party, given the opportunity can and will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

The Republican Party and the conservative movement have always known the weakness of  our own left flank are the best weapon they have to maintain their control over those working class voters who find the policies and approach of those such as AOC and Mamdani incredibly distasteful at best. While that weapon has lost much of its effectiveness during Trump's second term, that doesn't mean it's still not potent nor that America is any more willing to accept the warm embrace of collectivism. The left in other cities and states may yearn for an Mamdani of their own unwilling to accept that in his own city Mamdani is viewed with mixed emotions at best.

The good news that if – or more likely – when the Democrats do very well Tuesday it will be because they have chosen to embrace the idea of centrist candidates like Talarico and Brown far more then those of El-Sayid and Angie Nixon. There has to be room in our big tent for all of them but we have to be sure that one does crowd the other out. We've managed a decent job keeping them relatively on the fringes to this point. It's important this remains the status quo after this election and the ones to come for the good of the Democratic Party, if not the country as a whole.