The Next 70 Days

Forget the noise. We need to wake-up and get strategic between now and November 3.

Seventy days.

That’s how long we have to do something meaningful about the future of America.

Donald Trump’s ongoing corruption generated $1.4 billion in income from monetizing the Presidency in 2025. The War with Iran is now entering its seventh month, with no end in sight. America’s reputation in the world has now fallen behind China. And now a tariff war with Canada, our closest neighbor and ally?

But you don’t need another essay telling you how terrible Donald Trump is. You already know.

The question is whether all that anger, exhaustion, and disbelief gets converted into something that actually changes power. Our Constitution gives Americans one wonderfully practical, peaceful mechanism for doing that: an election. And the next one is November 3, 2026, seventy days from now.

So let’s get smart. Let’s get strategic. Let’s get in the game for the next 10 weeks.

First: stop taking the bait

Every week, some national political fight gets teed up to consume us. Often it’s a culture-war outrage. Sometimes it’s a democratic socialist winning a primary in a district where a houseplant with a “D” next to its name could win by thirty points.

Three members of the Democratic Socialists of America win primaries in New York and suddenly the story is that the entire Democratic Party has lurched left.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have grown to 120,000 members nationwide, the largest membership in a Socialist movement since 1912, and they are becoming a real force. The DSA surge in 2026 is the mirror image of the Tea Party revolt of 2010 on the Republican side.

But the DSA represents just 10% of the Democratic Party and they’re not the wing that decides who controls Congress. The DSA endorsed 282 candidates this year, but only 10 have won primaries in congressional or statewide districts more competitive than D+10. Most DSA victories have occurred in already-deep-blue territory. Compared to more than 100 million Americans who are likely to vote in the November elections, 40% of whom consider themselves Independents.

In the swing purple districts that actually matter, something quieter is happening. Voters are responding to candidates who look more like the country’s future than its social-media feed: veterans, prosecutors, teachers, firefighters, working parents. Many are in their thirties. They talk about grocery prices, housing, schools, health care, public safety, and whether government can still competently do basic things.

The press covers ideological fights because fights generate clicks. “Thirty-eight-year-old veteran wins purple district by talking about affordability” does not.

But that is the headline that matters.

So when somebody tells you Democrats have gone socialist, ask them to name five. Then introduce them to five of the people below.

Ask #1: Flip the House

This is the best political investment available in America right now.

Republicans hold a very narrow majority in the House. Cook Political Report now rates 21 House races as Toss-Ups, 16 of them Republican-held. That number moved just yesterday, when Cook shifted Michigan’s 10th from Lean Republican into the Toss-Up column.

We don’t need a 50-state strategy. We need a 21-district strategy, and we need to look closely even within those 21 districts.

I learned this lesson in 2018. Our family invested in twenty young Democratic women running for Congress for the first time, almost all in Republican-held districts where a swing of a few percentage points could flip the seat. Sixteen won, which I’ve heard is a solid political batting average. Two of them, Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill, served honorably and went on to become governors of Virginia and New Jersey.

Those remain the best returns we’ve ever gotten on a political dollar.

It wasn’t clairvoyance. It was research and strategy. We gave to people early, in races where a few thousand dollars mattered, rather than joining the October stampede into races already saturated with money.

One hundred dollars to the right House candidate in August matters more than a thousand dollars dumped into a popular Senate race in late October. Early money buys a field director, a voter file, and a mail slot. Late money buys the four-hundredth television spot in a market where every viewer has already made up their mind.

So here are the ten candidates I’m backing and officially endorsing today. Nine of the ten are in Cook toss-up districts.

Rebecca Cooke, 38 - Wisconsin’s 3rd. Raised on an Eau Claire dairy farm. Founded a nonprofit that invests start-up capital into women-owned businesses across ten western Wisconsin counties. Still waitresses. Our organization TOGETHER! endorsed and supported Rebecca in 2024 and she lost narrowly by 2.7 points, but she just won her August 11 primary for the rematch. She’s out-raised the Republican incumbent, but a tougher-than-expected primary drained her, and Van Orden now sits on roughly two and a half times her cash. This is where your money goes furthest, right now, because the gap is real and she can win.

Manny Rutinel, 31 - Colorado’s 8th. This may be the most competitive district in America. Democrats won it by fewer than 1,600 votes in 2022; Gabe Evans took it back by fewer than 2,500 in 2024. Rutinel is a state representative who worked as an economist for the Army Corps of Engineers before Yale Law and a stint at Earthjustice. He won his June primary with 61 percent against a sitting legislator who outraised the field. Toss-up.

Randy Villegas, 31 - California’s 22nd. A political science professor at College of the Sequoias, a Visalia school-board trustee, and co-owner of the auto shop his father opened in 2005. Outside groups spent more than $2 million in the final month trying to keep him off the November ballot. He advanced anyway. David Valadao has survived a decade of Democratic targeting; under the new post–Prop 50 lines, Villegas is the first opponent who sounds like the district. Toss-up.

William Lawrence, 35 - Michigan’s 7th. A Sunrise Movement co-founder and Lansing tenant organizer who beat two establishment-backed rivals — a former ambassador and a retired Navy SEAL with $2 million in outside support — to win the August primary outright. He is further left than several people on this list but not a DSA member. He is also the one who held a 36-hour sit-in outside Tom Barrett’s district office over lapsed SNAP benefits during the shutdown. Barrett’s staff called the police. That’s the contrast in one sentence. Toss-up.

Rebecca Bennett, 39 - New Jersey’s 7th. A Navy helicopter pilot and aircraft commander for more than a decade, now an Air National Guard officer, a former health-care executive, and a mother of two, running against Tom Kean Jr. In June, Governor Mikie Sherrill endorsed her. I want to sit with that for a second: one of the twenty women we bet on in 2018 is now the governor of New Jersey, vouching for the next one. That is what investing looks like when it compounds. Toss-up.

Christina Hines, 36 - Michigan’s 10th. A career prosecutor, both in Wayne County, then head of the Special Victims Unit in Washtenaw, Christina won a crowded August primary with EMILY’s List behind her. Cook just moved this race into the toss-up column yesterday, since the incumbent announced he’s running for Governor and the new Republican is running for Congress for the first time too. Open seats are where challengers get their cleanest shot, and this one just got live.

Sam Forstag, 32 - Montana’s 1st. Eight years as a wildland firefighter, four of them a smokejumper, now vice president of a union representing about 800 Forest Service workers. Zinke’s seat is open and Forstag won a four-way primary on housing costs and public lands. Full honesty: Cook rates this Likely Republican. It is the longest shot on this list. Montana isn’t supposed to be competitive. Nobody told Montana.

Kristina Knickerbocker, 35 - Ohio’s 10th. An Air Force veteran, oncology nurse practitioner, and mother of two who served as a major and nurse at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base before continuing in the reserves. She faces Mike Turner, who has represented the Dayton area since 2003 and won by 18 points in 2024 even as Trump carried the district by only six. That record makes Turner formidable. But something has changed: on August 13, Cook moved OH-10 from Solid Republican to Likely Republican. An R+4 district is suddenly on the board.

Dan Schwartz, 38 - Maryland’s 1st. A consumer-protection and financial-policy expert who spent more than fourteen years working with state and federal regulators before moving to Maryland’s Eastern Shore and running for Congress. He won a four-way Democratic primary with 46 percent and has assembled an unusual coalition: Wes Moore, Chris Van Hollen, Jamie Raskin, Sarah Elfreth and former Republican MD-1 Congressman Wayne Gilchrest. This is my home state and Dan deserves the help.

Zach Dembo, 40 - Kentucky’s 6th. A ninth-generation Kentuckian, former eighth-grade teacher, Navy JAG officer, federal prosecutor, and former policy adviser to Democratic Governor Andy Beshear. Dembo resigned from the Justice Department after concluding that politicization was making the job impossible. Now he faces Republican Ralph Alvarado for the open seat Andy Barr left behind. Trump carried this district by 15 points in 2024, but Beshear carried it by 20 in 2023. Inside Elections has moved it from Solid to Likely Republican, and an August Democratic poll actually had Dembo ahead 45–44. That makes this one worth investing in.

Ask #2: Flip the Senate — but do the House first

Republicans hold a 53–47 Senate majority. Democrats and Independents need just four seats.

The map has become dramatically more interesting: North Carolina, Maine, Alaska, Ohio, Iowa, and Texas are all real opportunities, with Nebraska, South Dakota and Idaho all fielding independents with a real chance to win. Cook recently moved both Iowa and Texas to toss-up.

Four seats is difficult. It is no longer crazy.

But Senate races absorb tens of millions of dollars. If you have $100 to give, I’d still put the first $75 into House races, where your marginal dollar is more meaningful.

Then put the other $25 into Maine, Iowa, Nebraska, North Carolina or whichever Senate race you most want to own. I will write a longer piece on the Senate in September, but focus on the House today.

Ask #3: Recruit five voters

This may matter more than your donation.

Midterm turnout in this country runs about 40%. Presidential turnout runs about 60% The twenty points in between are the whole ballgame — and they belong disproportionately to people who are young, independent, and convinced that none of this touches their life.

So: pick five people you know well. Not strangers. Five people who answer your texts right away: your niece, your neighbor, your college roommate, the parent you sit next to at soccer, the friend who says politics is hopeless.

Make sure they’re registered. Most states close registration in early October, so do it in September.

Then make sure they have a plan. The actual day, the actual place, the actual time. Don’t send them seventeen links. Don’t argue with them about Trump. Ask what they care about. Tell them why you care. Then text them again during the final week.

Five people.

Peer-to-peer contact from someone you actually know is the most effective turnout intervention anyone has ever measured. It beats television. It beats mail. It beats nearly everything consultants will spend your money on in October.

If a thousand readers of this Substack each move five people from disengaged to voting, that’s 5,000 votes.

Colorado’s 8th was decided by fewer than 2,500 votes in 2024.

The whole game

I’ve spent much of my career betting on underdogs inside broken systems. I’ve learned that broken systems rarely fix themselves, and they’re almost never fixed by the people making the most noise about them.

Congress is the check our founders created. It is also the cheapest one to repair.

Ten House seats. Four Senate seats. Five friends who vote.

For the next 70 days, spend less time arguing about Donald Trump on the internet and more time helping good young people win elections.

Find a young, sharp, common-sense candidate in a red or purple district, somebody who talks about schools, grocery prices and America’s reputation in the world, not the latest cable-news outrage, and help them win.

Give. Recruit. Vote.

That’s the whole game.

About the Author: Jason Palmer is a technology entrepreneur, impact investor, and board chair of TOGETHER! In 2024, Jason was a Democratic candidate for President of the United States, becoming the first challenger to beat an incumbent in a primary in 44 years.