Pennsylvania held its primary this week, which was kind of hidden in the news due to the presidential nominations being locked up, and also one of the nominee’s trial opening on Monday. And oh yeah, something about campus protests (you may have heard about that).

The biggest sign that there is an election coming up is the number of campaign commercials. They are increasing. I live in a pretty red area in general despite being 10 miles west of a major university, so generally the commercials are “MY OPPONENT IS A DEMOCRAT IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING IF YOU NOMINATE ME I WILL ALLOW YOU TO OWN A BAZOOKA.” Oh, and occasional scary images of immigrants are shown, just as a reminder of those scary immigrants. We are simple folk up here in Pennsyltucky, we can forget things.

A notable exception to the parade of I AM RIGHT WINGIER THAN ANYONE EVER style ads is the commercials for the Republican challenger to Bob Casey’s senate seat, Hedge Fund Guy Dave McCormick. Diamond Dave was the CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates. During the 2022 campaign, his net worth was estimated to be at least $116 million, possibly a lot more.

During McCormick’s unsuccessful primary run for PA senate in 2022, his commercials were hilariously aw shucks, featuring him talking about his “family Christmas tree farm” and downing beers in rural dive bars. Yeah, the hedge fund CEO down the ol’ dirt road, that guy. He lost to Crudité Enthusiast Dr. Oz, so that approach did not work too well, but that is not stopping Multimillion McCormack from trying it again this year.

The commercials are slightly different for this run. Instead of “I’m just a good ol’ country boy,” the new commercials are right out of the Glenn Youngkin playbook. The general vibe is “I’m just a regular nice guy who is your neighbor in the subdivision” and he talks a lot about his military service and high school wrestling days in them.

I don’t blame McCormick for this strategy. Since Pennsylvania voted for Trump in 2016, several Republican wackos, including Trump himself, lost elections for president, senator, and governor. It seems we soured on crazy people here in the Commonwealth, so doing the suburban military vet dad act is probably not a bad approach.

But I sort of doubt he will fool anyone with this, and it is hard to see him beating a fairly popular senator in Bob Casey. See, every Republican at some point during their campaign must go full far-right to some extent and I just do not see McCormick avoiding this because the rotten pumpkin who runs the party will demand it.

This leads me to The Donald’s performance in the primary. He ran against the Ghost of Nikki Haley (relax, Nikki’s still alive, I just mean she dropped out of the race). One might think that Trump would get north of 95% of the vote, but nope. Nikki’s Ghost scored more than 157,000 votes, or 16.5% of the vote. Trump lost the state in 2020 by 82,000 votes, so no bueno for the Spray Tan Shithead. Hard to say exactly what this means, but in any event, it’s not really what you want to see if you are a candidate.

Elsewhere, progressive Congresswoman Summer Lee from the Pittsburgh region beat back her challenge from a “moderate opponent,” Bhavini Patel. A key focus of the race was Lee’s criticism of Israel’s attacks on civilians in Gaza. In fact, she was one of Israel’s earliest critics, and Patel went after her for it.

I put “moderate” in quotes because one of Patel’s biggest funders is Jeff Yass, via the disingenuously named political action committee Moderate PAC. Yass is a Trump supporter with some awful views, including unwavering support for the far-right government running Israel. Look, I know people come to the Gaza/Israel conflict from different places and views, but I think it can be constructive to look at who agrees with you. I think Patel embracing Yass’s help hurt her more than it hurt Lee, and it does not bode well for future primary challengers to progressive Congresspeople.

So, overall a pretty good week for Pennsylvania Democrats. A fair-minded, empathetic Democrat beat back a right-fueled challenge, Trump had thousands of Republicans vote for political ghost instead of him, and Diamond Dave’s “I’m just a fleece-wearing dad just like you, middle-class person” act likely is not going to work.

The last word goes to Pennsylvania bluegrass band Cabinet.