Good morning and welcome to today’s edition of the Wolf’s Den. It’s Thursday, July 16th, and we have some major news this morning. Cindy McCain — widow of the late Senator John McCain, the Republican Party’s 2008 presidential nominee — is donating to and endorsing Democrat Katie Hobbs for governor of Arizona.
Sit with the geography for a second. Arizona is McCain country. John McCain represented the state in the Senate for more than three decades, and the family name still carries something close to royalty there. So when a McCain crosses the aisle in the one place where that name means the most, the story is less about Katie Hobbs than about what the Republican Party has become. If the GOP can’t keep the McCains quiet — never mind in the fold — the harder question is whether it can hold the ordinary working voters it will need in November.
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Hobbs didn’t need rescuing, which is part of the point. Her poll numbers are strong, and the race Cook nudged into Lean Democrat last week keeps drifting her way. This endorsement isn’t a lifeline. It’s a reading of which way the current runs.
And that current is national. Trump’s approval sits at 37% — a genuinely dangerous number for a party walking into a midterm — and the outline of a blue wave is getting easier to trace. The engine underneath it is the one we flagged last week: prices voters feel every day, and an administration that seems to be looking everywhere but at them. But the Wolf’s Den will always insist on the “but”: a wave you can see in July still has to be built by November. Democrats have to pick the right candidates, get organized, and drag every last one of them across the line.
The map is widening while they do. Pete Buttigieg surfaced in Iowa alongside Josh Turek, the VoteVets-backed Democrat challenging Rep. Ashley Hinson — a dependable vote for Trump’s agenda, from the Iran war to what Democrats have branded the “big ugly bill.” Iowa is a real pickup target now, not a fantasy. Ohio is live in both directions, with Amy Acton in the governor’s race and Sherrod Brown fighting for the Senate. Even Joe Rogan, sparring with JD Vance, reached for Texas Democrat James Talarico’s words as his rebuttal — a small thing, but the kind that tells you the party is being heard in rooms it used to be shut out of.
None of which excuses choosing wrong, and Michigan‘s August 4 primary is the sharpest test of that. Abdul El-Sayed is running to Haley Stevens’ left; Stevens is the establishment favorite, and her résumé is the argument. She was on Obama’s auto-rescue team in 2008, when Detroit was genuinely collapsing, and helped keep the industry breathing. Jim Clyburn endorsed her today, and she’s up a lopsided margin in the latest polling. If you vote in Michigan, my recommendation is Stevens — the best shot in a general election runs through candidates who can actually win one.
Zoom out and the Senate math is demanding but real. To take the majority, Democrats have to hold Michigan, where Gary Peters is retiring, and Georgia, where Jon Ossoff is up — then flip some combination of Maine, Iowa, Texas, and North Carolina. Maine itself is in flux, with a dialogue tonight over who carries the nomination against Susan Collins. Nothing here is settled.
But the ground keeps tilting one way, and a McCain backing a Democrat is the loudest reminder yet. We’ll keep watching.
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-Ethan
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