The term originated in the late 19th century. These voters would allegedly “vote for a yellow dog before they would vote for any Republican”, or, “vote for a yellow dog if he ran on the Democratic ticket”.[1] The term is now more generally applied to refer to any Democrat who will vote a straight party ticket under any circumstances. The South Carolina Democratic Party and Mississippi Democratic Party, among other state parties, continue to use the phrase to refer to committed members of the Democratic Party in the “Yellow Dog Club”.

I submit that it’s outdated; it’s way too mild. For example, see this:

Susan Collins:
1) Voted to convict Trump of impeachment
2) Voted against Amy Coney Barrett & Pete Hegseth
3) Backed limits on Trump's military power
4) Wants to nuke his "Anti-Weaponization Fund"

And more. If *she* is your evil right-wing extremist, words do not mean anything. https://t.co/dLQakRiAkS

— Billy Binion (@billybinion) June 1, 2026

Perhaps they should be called “Platner Democrats,” although that doesn’t roll too trippingly off the tongue. But “the messier Platner turns out to be the more I hope he wins,” because Susan Collins (one of the few moderates left in Congress) is evil – well, that is much of the current Democrat Party in a nutshell.

As far as Platner goes, if you haven’t kept up with the latest revelations about him, see this and this at Ace’s.

Another example of a Platner Democrat is Jessica Tarlov and apparently the Democrats of Maine:

“There are Democrats who have concerns, and some of them are speaking out about it,” she conceded. “This was the first weekend that I feel like Democrats were really pushed on the Sunday shows. Dana Bash was doing that as well with Andy Kim from New Jersey, who wanted to talk about what’s going on at Delaney Hall. And she kept bringing it back to this. Listen, Graham Platner, his wife is not a professional political spouse, and Graham Platner is not a professional politician himself. And you’re seeing that come to light.”

I’m not sure how not being a “professional politician” is supposed to absolve you from having a Nazi tattoo for nearly twenty years, for making racist, homophobic, and misogynistic comments online, for having a sorta-potty fetish, and for maintaining an account on a chat app used by sexual predators, but hey, that’s apparently the argument Tarlov is choosing to make.

“Chuck Schumer wanted Janet Mills to win,” Tarlov continued. “He got her to jump into this race because someone like a Jared Golden didn’t want to get in. And that didn’t work. Mainers have consistently said, ‘We know who Graham Platner is and this is what our choice is at this point.’”

Not all Democrats feel this way. But of those who are objecting to Platner, is it because he’s a terrible person (in addition to having virtually no political experience) or because they think he may lose?

The post “Yellow dog Democrat” has become an outdated term now that Platner’s the Maine frontrunner appeared first on The New Neo.

Mills is 78, and I think her heart wasn’t in it, but she also ran out of money. New York Magazine refers to her campaign as “lackluster,” and that’s a fitting description.

More:

Senate Democrats had touted Mills as a top recruit to take on Collins, who is the only Republican senator representing a state that President Donald Trump lost last year. Maine is practically a must-win if Democrats are to net the four seats they need to take control of the chamber in the 2026 midterm election. But Collins has proven a tough opponent in previous elections.

After launching her Senate campaign in October, Mills struggled to gain traction against Platner, who burst onto the scene as a brash political newcomer and quickly built a loyal following. Platner notched endorsements from high-profile progressive leaders including Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.

Most importantly, he built major support among Maine Democrats, leading by double digits in recent polls of the primary. Platner’s rise — and the governor’s struggles — came despite top Democrats’ preference for Mills, turning this campaign into a rare rebuke of party leaders in a top-tier race.

Mills was kind of the Jeb Bush in the race, except for the lack of money. Note the NBC piece linked and quoted there doesn’t mention Platner’s most salient characteristic, the Nazi tatoo, early on. You have to get very deep into the article – paragraph fourteen – before it’s mentioned, and then it’s described as classic “Republicans POUNCE!”:

Republicans have already begun to attack Platner, as he pulled ahead in the primary. The GOP super PAC Pine Tree Results PAC launched an ad Monday highlighting those controversial social media posts and Platner having a tattoo that resembled a Nazi symbol. Platner has said he was not aware of the Nazi connection and has since covered up the tattoo.

Well, doesn’t everybody get a Totenkopf tattoo and not know what it is? Could happen to anyone. More, from Platner’s Wiki page:

While acknowledging the resemblance, he said he had not been aware of it until reporters and political operatives from DC contacted him during his campaign. He said he had recently gotten it covered up. CNN and Jewish Insider reported that an anonymous former acquaintance of Platner’s claimed that Platner was aware of the tattoo’s meaning and had previously called it “my Totenkopf”. Maine governor Janet Mills, one of Platner’s opponents in the Democratic primary, called the tattoo “abhorrent”.

Ah, but that’s really the least of it. There’s this:

In October 2025, various news outlets reported on Reddit posts Platner made between 2013 and 2021 in which he called himself a “communist”, wrote that all cops are bastards, and agreed with a post calling rural white Americans “racist and stupid”. In an interview with CNN, Platner said of those comments, “That was very much me fucking around the internet … I don’t think any of that is indicative of who I am today”. In a 2013 Reddit discussion about anti-rape underwear, Platner wrote that people worried about assault should “take some responsibility for themselves and not get so fucked up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to”.

Platner also referenced political violence in multiple posts; in 2018, he wrote: “Fight until you get tired of fighting with words and then fight with signs, and fists, and guns if need be.” He also wrote that “an armed working class is a requirement for economic justice” and urged readers to “Get Armed, Get Organized. The Other Side Sure As Hell Is.” He has said that many of the comments do not represent his current political beliefs, and that they were the product of disillusionment after his military discharge and struggles with PTSD.

Collins called Platner’s internet history “terrible” and “offensive”. Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said that while he did not approve of Platner’s comments, he did not consider them “disqualifying”. Platner said in an interview with Semafor, “How do you expect to win young people? How do you expect to win back men when you go back through somebody’s Reddit history and just pull it all out and say: ‘Oh my God, this person has no right to ever be in politics?’ Good luck with that. Good luck winning over those demographics.”

Of course Martin doesn’t consider them “disqualifying.” Au contraire; they match the mood of the party and its up-and-coming younger candidates. Platner is 41, by the way, born in 1984. You do the math; we’re not talking about posts or comments he made in high school. He was 29 years old in 2013 and 37 in 2021, the years in which the posts were made. Hardly an impressionable child, and not that long ago.

From Platner’s Wiki page:

[Platner says in an early campaign video] “I did four infantry tours in the Marine Corps and the Army. I’m not afraid to name an enemy. And the enemy is the oligarchy. It’s the billionaires who pay for it, and the politicians who sell us out. And yeah, that means politicians like Susan Collins.”

This video received 2.5 million views in its first 24 hours, sparking national media attention. The campaign raised $1 million in its first nine days, and reported amassing over 2,700 volunteers.

Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed Platner on August 30, ahead of a Fighting Oligarchy tour appearance in Portland with Platner and Maine gubernatorial candidate Troy Jackson. The event had originally been scheduled to be held in an auditorium but had to be moved to a much larger arena due to high public interest. Platner has also been endorsed by former United States Secretary of Labor Robert Reich; Senators Ruben Gallego, Martin Heinrich, and Elizabeth Warren; and Representative Ro Khanna. He has also been endorsed by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, Maine State Nurses Association, and United Auto Workers.

You get the picture. He also is running as a working-class Joe, but it seems to me – from his Wiki page – that he had a very comfortable family situation growing up: restaurant owner (in resort area) and lawyer parents, private high school in Connecticut, architect grandfather of some renown (grandpa designed the interior of the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center, Windows On the World).

Graham seems to be hiding the extent of his leftism, another common theme among Democrat candidates these days. From Wiki again:

Before running for office, Platner described himself on Reddit as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America who was “pretty radically left” and a “vegetable growing, psychedelics taking socialist” (in 2017) and “rabidly anti-Hillary [Clinton]” (in 2016 Democratic presidential primaries). In a December 2025 interview with The New Yorker, he declined to call himself a socialist and described his political involvement before his campaign as “organizing around mostly local economic justice issues or social justice issues”.

Blahbity blah.

Does Platner have a chance of winning? Yes, especially if you believe polls:

RealClearPolitics’ polling aggregate shows Platner with an average 7.6-point lead over Collins as of Thursday morning. Collins held a 0.2 point lead over Mills in polling average.

Maine backed former Vice President Kamala Harris by about 7 points in the 2024 presidential election and is generally viewed as Democratic-leaning but with an independent streak. Collins, a popular Republican in the state, has been able to win thanks to bipartisan credentials. Democrats believe she may be in for her toughest race yet, given President Donald Trump’s declining nationwide popularity.

I think it’s way too early to tell, and the polls aren’t especially meaningful. But Collins is definitely threatened. And no, a more conservative Republican wouldn’t have a chance in Maine. Collins has carefully positioned herself for years to be carefully calibrated to Maine’s basically blue/purple tastes.

The post Maine’s governor drops out of the Democrats’ Senate primary …. appeared first on The New Neo.

That’s not ordinarily news. But this summer there was a widespread drought in this area, which was unusual but made for a rather pleasant time in terms of planning outdoor activities.

But it also meant that rivers have been low, and many of the leaves this fall shriveled up prematurely, turned brown, and dropped rather than looking beautiful. It seemed to me that fall would be a total bust, but it wasn’t.

For example, I took this photo on Saturday:

Not too shabby, eh?

The post Much needed rain appeared first on The New Neo.

Arguments begin Thursday in a New Hampshire court case involving President Donald Trump’s demand that schools end diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in public schools or risk losing federal funding.

The New Hampshire case is one of several lawsuits contesting the administration’s demands and seeking to determine if the federal government can withhold billions of federal dollars for schools to educate low-income students.

The National Education Association and the American Civil Liberties Union are suing the administration, accusing it of violating congressional regulations that say federal agencies cannot dictate matters of local instruction, The New York Times reported.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not the least bit surprised that Trump’s directive is being challenged in court. After all, everything Trump does is being challenged in court. The courtroom is a tried-and-true way for the left to get its way when it can’t pass a law in Congress and/or when the presidency is held by the other party. Just find a leftist judge and hope that either SCOTUS refuses to hear it, or SCOTUS agrees. And DEI in grade schools is one of the main ways the left hopes to continue to indoctrinate the youth of the US in the preferred type of racism.

But why New Hampshire? That isn’t the usual venue for these cases; it’s basically a purple state. Perhaps it’s merely the lawsuit occurring today, because the article also says the case is one of “several” similar ones, and I have little doubt that in a blue state (or if the judge is leftist, even in New Hampshire) the court will rule against Trump’s order and the case will be appealed. And indeed, later in the article it says the states suing on this issue are “mostly blue.”

I see also that one New Hampshire district that appears to be involved is Hanover, home to Dartmouth and one of the most blue areas of the state. You can see from this chart that the county in which Hanover is located, Grafton, was the part of New Hampshire in which Kamala Harris got the highest percentage of the vote in 2024, 59%.

Here’s the statement on the case from the Hanover official:

“The U.S. Department of Education’s unclear ban on DEI undercuts our ability to adequately meet the needs of our students and overrides our communities’ decision to uphold these values in our public schools,” said Jay Badams, superintendent for New Hampshire’s Hanover and Dresden schools, NHPR reported.

But are there no limits to what local communities can teach and what values it decides to “uphold”? The original civil rights cases that involved the schools established that the federal government had a say in the matter when localities were practicing anti-black racism. Now that anti-white racism may be involved, the shoe is apparently on the other foot.

From the Times article:

The Trump administration has set out its case in a series of executive orders and memos. It believes that when schools allow transgender students to play on the sports teams or use the bathrooms of their choice, they are violating the rights of girls under Title IX. And it believes that D.E.I. programs violate the Civil Rights Act, which prevents discrimination based on race, color or national origin.

The administration has not offered a detailed definition of D.E.I. But it has argued that programs that separate students by race in order to provide targeted support are a form of illegal segregation. …

The Trump administration has also argued that teaching about concepts like white privilege is discriminatory toward white students.

That seem quite obvious to me.

The post The DEI school lawsuits in New Hampshire and elsewhere appeared first on The New Neo.

The president also said there’s going to be a transition cost, transition problems. I mean we are going to see higher prices in America. It’s not like you can open a factory tomorrow to build iPhones or to – to make sneakers, shoes. I mean we – we – we buy a lot of shoes in this country, 99 percent of them are made elsewhere. I mean do you – are we going to become a nation of cobblers again? I mean what – this is going to mean higher prices, isn’t it?

“Cobblers” – love that word. It conjures up visions of Hans Christian Andersen’s father – at least for me. But ask any New Englander over fifty or sixty years old about the shoe industry and what its American demise meant to New England, and you’ll get an answer, and probably no one will use the word “cobblers.” Here’s a 2023 article on attempts to bring shoe manufacturing back to New England, with a little bit of history.

For me the phrase “a nation of cobblers” also conjured up the famous saying “nation of shopkeepers” supposedly uttered by Napoleon and referring to England:

There is reason to doubt that Napoleon ever used the phrase. No contemporaneous French newspaper mentions that he did. The phrase was first used in a derogatory sense by French revolutionary Bertrand Barère on 11 June 1794 in a speech to the National Convention: “Let Pitt then boast of his victory to his nation of shopkeepers”. Barère was referring to the British victory over the French at the Glorious First of June. Later, during the Napoleonic wars, the British press mentioned the phrase, attributing it either to “the French” or to Napoleon himself. …

After the war English newspapers sometimes tried to correct the impression. For example the following article appeared in the Morning Post of 28 May 1832:

“ENGLAND A NATION OF SHOPKEEPERS This complimentary term, for so we must consider it, as applied to a Nation which has derived its principal prosperity from its commercial greatness, has been erroneously attributed, from time to time, to all the leading Revolutionists of France. To our astonishment we now find it applied exclusively to BONAPARTE. Than this nothing can be further from the fact. NAPOLEON was scarcely known at the time, he being merely an Officer of inferior rank, totally unconnected with politics. The occasion on which that splenetic, but at the same time, complimentary observation was made was that of the ever-memorable battle of the 1st of June. The oration delivered on that occasion was by M. BARRERE [sic], in which, after describing our beautiful country as one “on which the sun scarce designs to shed its light”, he described England as a nation of shopkeepers.”

A short while ago I posted a video that contains a good description of Trump’s actual plans and hopes for new industry in the US as a result of his policies. You may have already watched it, but if not here it is again (I doubt Jon Karl is especially interested; he’d rather talk about “cobblers”):

The post A nation of cobblers appeared first on The New Neo.

Brrrr.

To top it all off, I’d caught a cold from my grandkids. I love my grandkids very much, but they’re at that age where colds are common and expected. And when I get a cold, it doesn’t last just a few days. It segues into sinus congestion and a cough that usually endures, all told, for about a month. I’m not usually very sick, fortunately, but I wonder why my colds linger that way and have done so since I was a teenager.

I’ve tried those zinc lozenges and all they seem to do is delay the amount of time I feel as though I’m getting a cold but haven’t really gotten it yet. I take Vitamin C. I inhale steam. Decongestants make me sicker so I avoid them. None of it seems to matter.

And yet I like the weather in New England. I enjoy four dramatic seasons – as long as the ice storms are kept to a minimum. So here I stay – so far.

The post Cold enough for you? appeared first on The New Neo.

For example:

Now, with Tuesday’s election providing stronger majorities in the State House and Republican Kelly Ayotte’s victory in the race for governor, Republican lawmakers have the opportunity to pass bolder legislation.

Barring any changes from recounts, the House is expected to have 222 Republicans and 178 Democrats, according to the House Clerk’s Office; the Senate is projected to have 16 Republicans and eight Democrats.

The article has a list of legislative goals for the state Republicans, such as banning sanctuary cities in the state and having a parental rights bill. And of course there is New Hampshire’s well-known tax conservatism.

A person could be forgiven for thinking that New Hampshire is a red state. But at the national level, the state went for Harris – granted, by a narrow margin of 50.7 to 47.9, but in line with the fact that Clinton won there in 2016 and Biden in 2020. This year, there were no senators in New Hampshire up for election, but New Hampshire’s two current members of the US House are both Democrats. One was incumbent Pappas, who won easily: by eight points. The other seat was open but the Democrat won by six points.

So, what gives in New Hampshire? I think the state’s tax tradition is one of the reasons it remains Republican at the local level. It is also commonly thought that the trend at the national level has to do with new residents from Massachusetts, but I’ve read several analyses that say the new arrivals haven’t tended to vote consistently for Democrats. So the mystery remains.

The post New Hampshire displays its split personality once again appeared first on The New Neo.

And muggy. The air is incredibly heavy, and thunderstorms threaten. I haven’t been outside today and maybe I’ll just stay indoors.

I went out yesterday, though, when the weather was very similar. As I stepped outside, I was reminded of a passage from a book I last read many many years ago and liked very much at the time, Arthur Koestler’s The Lotus and the Robot, a 1961 work about India and Japan. Here are the opening sentences:

The sewers of Bombay had been opened by mistake, I was told, before the tide had come in. The damp heat, impregnated by their stench, invaded the air-conditioned cabin the moment the door of the Viscount was opened. As we descended the steps I had the sensation that a wet, smelly diaper was being wrapped around my head by some abominable joker.

There’s no sewer smell here. But a heavy wetness in the air? Yes indeed.

The post Hot enough for you? appeared first on The New Neo.

Male high jumper Maelle Jacques won a GIRLS' high school state title yesterday in New Hampshire. @NHIAA_LOA

His winning jump was almost 10" lower than the boys' winning height. His 10 pt score helped the Kearsage HS girls' track & field team jump to runner-up in the state among… pic.twitter.com/mX2c0lUOHS

— ICONS (@icons_women) February 12, 2024

There’s a hint there as to why schools let this happen: it helps the team place higher. However, not only is it an obvious travesty which we’re not supposed to notice, but it hurts individual girl athletes:

…[S]ince Maelle has declared that he is femaelle, he finished in fourth in the girls meet. This is significant for two reasons:

1. His girl’s team got 5 points towards their team score.

2. The top 6 girls in each event qualify for the New England Championship, which meant that Brooke Bouchard of Hollis-Brookline Regional would’ve qualified if she ran against a field exclusively of other girls.

Many people think the girls should just refuse to compete. But don’t underestimate how difficult that is. From the comments at LI:

Competitors definitely don’t want to miss a meet. And/But, they definitely don’t want to miss a meet and then get labeled ‘transphobic.’ There’s a reason why (for the most part) the only collegiate athletes who are publicly criticizing this insanity are those who are in their senior year or have graduated. The younger girls in college or those prep school athletes wanting to make a collegiate team themselves, keep their mouths shut because they’re terrified of retaliation. Given what happened to the college coach (I think at Otterbein), that fear is clearly justified.

Plus, unless it’s a group boycott, it has little effect except to ruin the boycotter’s athletic career. I wish more people were strong enough to protest by getting together in a large group to stop participating, but I think it’s unrealistic to expect that many people to be courageous. In my opinion it is the athletic authorities who allow this who are the gutless cowards who should stop it.

The post Another male “winner” in female sports appeared first on The New Neo.

Sununu is an interesting case. I think he would have been a shoo-in had he run for the Senate from NH in 2022 against the vulnerable Democrat incumbent, as he was expected to do. Instead, he announced that it was more important that he stay as governor. He did run for another two-year term as governor in 2022, but then announced about six months later that he wouldn’t be running for governor in 2024 either.

I guess it wasn’t so very important after all that he be the NH governor, because that leaves a very good possibility that a Democrat may win the NH governorship in 2024. Nor does this seeming retreat from politics mean that Sununu is actually retreating from politics, because he endorsed Haley a little over month ago, and has been making appearances with her. Sununu has made it clear he doesn’t like Trump, and his Haley endorsement should be seen in that light.

In New Hampshire, anyone can vote in the GOP primary unless the person is a registered Democrat. And even registered Democrats can fairly easily change their registration to “undeclared” and vote for one of the GOP candidates. It has to be done by a certain date – this year it was apparently in early October – but many many people just register as “undeclared” in general in order to keep their options open. It’s no secret that Haley is favored by Democrats and Democrat-leaners in the state, and there is a great deal of money behind her.

The post Haley in New Hamphire – plus Sununu appeared first on The New Neo.