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Sometimes a politician comes along who makes the opposition’s job almost unfairly easy.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Angie Nixon. The newly minted Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Florida is quickly becoming one of my favorite people to listen to — although perhaps not for the reasons she would prefer.

Nixon pulled off a genuine political upset, defeating Alexander Vindman despite his national name recognition, establishment support and considerable advantages going into the primary. Give her credit: She organized, she campaigned and she won. The voters made their choice.

And now Democrats have to live with it. That may be where the fun begins.

Senate Democratic leadership backed Vindman. Nixon recently joined the Democratic Socialists of America. She’s running statewide in Florida, a state filled with people who have firsthand family experience with governments that have called themselves socialist.

And rather than running toward the political center after winning the primary, Nixon appears to be flooring the accelerator.

In one interview we played Thursday, she accused Republicans of “literally trying to kill us.” She described ICE as a “weaponized paramilitary force” designed to terrorize people. In another clip, she warned that people would be racially profiled, shot and killed unless politicians like her were sent to Washington to investigate and jail the “bad actors.”

Then came the policy prescription. Abolish ICE. And provide a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, with particular attention to Florida’s Haitian community.

Remember, this is not a candidate running for a seat on the Berkeley City Council. This is the Democratic nominee for United States Senate in Florida. That distinction seems to have occurred to some Democrats. David Jolly, the Democratic nominee for governor, was asked whether he would campaign with Nixon. His answer had the unmistakable aroma of a man discovering that the floor beneath him had recently been waxed.

Would he campaign with her? Well, they’re Democrats.

Would he campaign with her? They’ll undoubtedly appear at events together.

Yes, but will you campaign with her? You could almost hear the political calculator overheating.

Meanwhile, Hasan Piker has no such reservations. Piker announced that his operation is essentially an Angie Nixon fan club. If she wants his help, he’s there. If she wants him quietly working in the background, he’ll do that. If she wants him nowhere near Florida, he’ll apparently disappear. “We are her loyal soldiers,” he said.

Now there’s an endorsement every statewide Florida Democrat dreams about. The socialist streamer who praises Fidel Castro and Che Guevara is ready for duty. What makes all of this especially fascinating is the argument Nixon is using against Republicans. She says Donald Trump and Republicans want to return America to the “worst chapters” of its history. She invoked segregation, “colored only” drinking fountains and violence against Black Americans as examples of the America Republicans supposedly want to recreate.

There’s one rather large historical problem with that argument. Who exactly was running the South when those things happened?

The segregationist political machinery of the old South wasn’t some secret chapter of the Republican Party. It was Democratic.

George Wallace was a Democrat. The Southern politicians who defended segregation were overwhelmingly Democrats. And when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 faced a Senate filibuster, Republicans supplied crucial votes to break it and pass the legislation. History is inconvenient that way. You don’t get to invoke Jim Crow as a political weapon while airbrushing the party responsible for maintaining much of the Jim Crow political order out of the photograph.

But there is a larger issue here that goes beyond Angie Nixon.

Democratic politicians have spent decades telling Black Americans that Republicans are the great threat to their lives and livelihoods. Yet some of the worst conditions confronting Black Americans today remain concentrated in cities Democrats have governed for generations. Violent crime. Terrible schools. Broken families. Economic stagnation. Neighborhoods where children grow up surrounded by dysfunction that politicians would never tolerate for their own children.

Where is the urgency? Nixon says Republicans are “literally trying to kill us.” I’d like Democrats to explain something. When a Black child is killed in a Democrat-run city, who failed that child? When a violent repeat offender is returned to the street and commits another crime, who made those policies? When children spend 12 years in a failing school system controlled by Democrats and emerge unable to read proficiently, who is responsible for that?

At some point, yelling “Republicans!” stops being an explanation.

Then we heard another variation of one of my favorite election-year rituals: the Black pander.

Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed was asked about his relationship with Black voters and emphasized that although he is Arab, he is also African because his family came from Egypt. “I’m proud of my African heritage,” he said.

There it was. Election season arrives and suddenly Democratic politicians start discovering parts of themselves they apparently believe Black voters desperately need to hear about. It reminded me of that wonderful old Kamala Harris record-store performance, when she emerged displaying albums by Charles Mingus, Roy Ayers, and Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.

See? Records! Black records! Everybody Loves Sunshine! I know Black music! Vote accordingly.

Maybe we really should turn this into a dance. The Black Pander.

It could sweep Democratic primaries nationwide. But underneath the humor is something insulting. Black Americans are not political children who need politicians to perform little cultural authenticity rituals for us. I don’t care whether you own a Charles Mingus record. I don’t care whether you can tell me your favorite Coltrane solo. I don’t care how enthusiastically you pronounce “African heritage.”

Tell me what you’re going to do about schools. Tell me what you’re going to do about crime. Tell me what you’re going to do about jobs, businesses, families and neighborhoods. And please spare me the performance.

That’s one reason this Florida Senate campaign could become much more important than people currently realize. Nixon represents an increasingly confident faction of the Democratic Party. The DSA isn’t hiding its label anymore. Its candidates aren’t necessarily softening their positions after winning primaries. And activists like Hasan Piker aren’t embarrassed about cheering them on.

Meanwhile, Florida Republicans have moved in precisely the opposite electoral direction. The state that was once the ultimate American swing state has become reliably Republican. Ron DeSantis helped cement that transformation, and now Byron Donalds is campaigning to succeed him as governor.

So Florida voters are about to receive a remarkably clean political experiment. On one side, a Republican Party arguing for continuation of the DeSantis-era governing model. On the other, Democrats trying to explain how a DSA member calling ICE a paramilitary terror force is going to win statewide in Florida.

Pass the popcorn.

There was plenty more packed into Thursday’s fastest hour in American media, including Pete Hegseth once again causing distress at CNN and Jake Tapper looking as though someone had scratched the finish on the anchor desk.

But Angie Nixon owned this show. And something tells me she may own quite a few more before November. If you only want the substance, you’ve just read the heart of Thursday’s Rush Hour.

But you really ought to hear the audio, because there are certain things a written column simply cannot reproduce — the soundbites, the timing, Hasan Piker’s positively giddy Nixon fandom, my increasingly unsuccessful attempts at pronunciation, and Karolos wondering exactly where the next sentence is going.

That’s why they call it Bo Snerdley’s Rush Hour.

The news gives us the material.

What happens during the fastest hour in American media is another matter entirely.

Rush Hour airs Monday through Friday and moves quickly through the day’s hottest political stories, breaking developments and media absurdities. It is the fastest hour in American media because there is always more happening than the legacy media has time—or desire—to explain.

And if you want my daily stack of news and commentary delivered directly to you, sign up for The Daily BS here. It is free, arrives daily and, unlike a New York Democratic event, questions are not removed for exceeding ideological capacity.