Maybe 2026 Will Be the Year of the Blue Collar

 

I tend to think that a lot of the Democrats’ problems can be solved through candidate recruitment, and just recruiting people who come from the communities that they want to represent, who sort of are fluent in the cultural norms of the places that they come from.

--Michelle Goldberg

Dan Osborn

Goldberg brought Nebraskan Dan Osborn to my attention. A tough ex-Navy and rock-hard union man whose social compact virtues make him also attractive to the Left (in a state where there's barely any Left left) -- he's liberal on abortion and on the rights of organized labor -- yet he ran for Federal office as a hard-nosed critic of both Democratic and Republican machines and said he agreed with Trump about the border and about confronting China. He presented as an irritable independent, a somewhat shocking emanation of working-class anger, running for US Senate in Nebraska in 2024 against a two-term Republican incumbent, Deb Fischer. No one took him seriously at first. The Democratic Party was initially more than merely cool toward him, but with no Democratic candidate on the ballot, the Party reportedly offered to endorse Osborn. Osborn rejected it. His determination not to be beholden to any damn clique was the final straw for the Democratic Party establishment, but many registered Democrats nevertheless discreetly flocked to his campaign. Osborn became a phenomenal money-raiser -- almost $8 million, just from out-of-state donors alone. How did he do that? (And by the way and to give away the ending, Osborn scared the wits out of Sen. Fischer and took 46.52% of the vote in 2024. He's already formed a campaign to try again in '26 against the other incumbent Republican Senator, Pete Ricketts.) 

Osborn set out to hold a series of at least two and possibly three in-person events in every single county in Nebraska, getting out among the people in a way his Republican opponent never did. The breakthrough came in September, in the heat of the campaign. A new poll suddenly put Osborn ahead of Fischer, turning a lot of heads. Boom! Osborn is appearing in a lengthy interview on MSNBC, and everybody wants to get him on camera. Money came in.

A beneficent cash-flow allows you to compete, and Osborn didn't pull punches in his TV ads.

Not only is Osborn running again in '26 -- a recent 2025 poll showed him leading the incumbent Ricketts -- but he's also now financing other authentic working-class candidates with a new PAC, the Working Class Heroes Fund, aimed at candidate recruitment, whether Republican, Independent, or Democratic. The Fund is "dedicated to uniting and mobilizing working people across party lines to give the working class a seat at the table" (website).