September 24 2026 - 6:00pm
Is Dan Osborn, the straight-talking industrial mechanic from Nebraska, facing his own “deplorables” moment? Leaked recordings show the independent Senate candidate disparaging Donald Trump voters, saying their lives “probably suck”. “[Trump’s] been so effective at taking Billy Bob and his wife Mary Jane or Mary Jo and telling them, ‘Look, we’re winning,’” Osborn said. “‘You’re on the winning team.’ And that’s all they care about, because their lives probably suck so f**king bad.”
It’s difficult to tell from this 30-second clip whether Osborn is condescending Trump voters or empathizing with them. Perhaps he’s doing both. Either way, it is an odd strategy for a candidate who needs Nebraska’s Billy Bobs and Mary Jos onside in a state Trump carried by more than 20 points in 2024. The other leaked recording of Osborn, however, is arguably worse. During a town hall with black and Latino Democrats, the independent candidate called the border wall a “joke” and a “symbol of racism”. “I knew the wall — it’s a joke,” he said. “It’s a symbol of racism, really, is what the wall represents. It does nothing.”
Osborn is the latest in an emerging trend of Potemkin Democrats this election cycle — MAGA-coded candidates who actually turn out to be conventional liberals behind closed doors. These candidates have all the raw materials: the arm tattoos, gruff voice and blue-collar background, but the party baggage remains. Graham Platner is another obvious example. Like Osborn, the now-ousted Maine Senate candidate was pro-guns and largely sidestepped culture-war issues such as trans rights. Then, unearthed Reddit posts revealed that he did, in fact, have very strong views on those issues. His replacement, Troy Jackson, who has watered down or muddied his positions on ICE, Gaza, and Medicare for All, isn’t much better. To reconcile his present positions with his past statements, he has relied on rote platitudes such as “voters fed up with the status quo” and, on Gaza, “No matter what you’re comfortable calling it, I think we can all agree this is senseless violence.”
Then there’s James Talarico. He may not fit the traditional working-class aesthetic, but his credentials lend themselves to it: a Christian, former public-school teacher and eighth-generation Texan. During his Texas Senate campaign, he has tried to present himself as an anti-establishment populist focused on class rather than culture. Unfortunately, his Bible-sized compendium of uber-progressive comments from the woke one era has severely undercut that image.
Politicians change their views all the time — and Republicans, particularly in the Trump era, are no different. But the problem with Potemkin Democrats is that they are laying claim to the mantle of authenticity while their real views turn out to be different from — or wholly antithetical to — their official positions. That leaves voters unsure which candidate they are actually voting for, and which politician will represent them in Washington. Osborn’s remarks about the symbolically racist border wall, for example, sounded like they came straight out of the Resistance Democrat playbook. Not only did they directly contradict his pro-wall 2024 campaign ad, but they pierced through the facade that Osborn was a genuinely independent candidate.
Democratic strategists have recognized that a wave of anti-establishment feeling is crashing over both parties. That is why they have gone treasure-hunting in unions, churches and timberlands for a candidate untainted by the Democratic Party brand. But their search for a unicorn inevitably comes with strings attached: in seeking a populist-presenting Democrat who can win back the working class, they also need a reliable foot soldier in Washington who will toe the party line. As they discovered with John Fetterman, finding both in the same candidate is not so easy.
