Denise Powell won the Democratic primary for Nebraska's Second Congressional District on May 13, beating state Sen. John Cavanaugh by roughly 1,400 votes. National Democrats now view her as one of their most important candidates in the fight to reclaim the House. But voters in the Omaha-area district may want to know what Powell was doing on Inauguration Day 2025, when the president she is running against took office: she was on Instagram, urging her supporters to disengage from reality and "read some fairy smut."
The video, posted to followers of her Women Who Run Nebraska PAC, surfaced in a New York Post report that connected Powell's social-media persona with her newly elevated role in Democratic strategy. In it, Powell told supporters to stop watching the news, stop following social media, eat comfort food, and watch "junk TV." Then came the signature recommendation.
"Read some fairy smut, I'm super into that right now, but just remember that we're in it for the long haul, and today is just the start of something that's going to be one h*** of a ride, but we've survived it before. We'll do it again, and we're just gonna keep showing up."
That is the woman Democrats are counting on to flip one of their top-targeted House seats in November.
Nebraska's Second Congressional District, often called the "blue dot", is one of just three districts in the country where Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024 yet a Republican still holds the seat. Rep. Don Bacon, the Republican incumbent, announced in June 2025 that he would not seek a sixth term, turning the race into an open-seat contest and one of the most watched in the country.
The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan election handicapper, rates the race "Lean Democrat." That rating, combined with Bacon's retirement, has turned the district into a magnet for national money and attention.
Powell will face Omaha city councilman Brinker Harding, a Republican endorsed by President Trump, in the general election. The contrast between the two candidates could hardly be sharper, and Powell's Instagram history offers a preview of the kind of campaign she intends to run.
Powell's campaign website states that she is focused on opposing "Donald Trump and MAGA extremists," with particular emphasis on tariffs, health care, and abortion. She participated in the 2017 Women's March. Her public messaging treats the current administration not as a governing reality to engage with but as a crisis to endure, something to survive with comfort food, fantasy novels, and deliberate media blackouts.
That posture is revealing. A candidate who tells her own supporters to "stop watching the news" on the day a new president is inaugurated is not preparing to govern. She is preparing to resist. And resistance, as Democrats learned during the first Trump term, is a fundraising posture, not a policy agenda.
Nebraska has become a recurring laboratory for this kind of Democratic experimentation. In the 2024 Senate cycle, state Democrats ditched their own brand entirely to back an independent candidate, hoping that a non-partisan label would sell better in a red state. The gambit failed. Now the party is back with a candidate running under its own banner, but one whose public identity is built more around emotional coping mechanisms than around the bread-and-butter concerns of Omaha voters.
Powell's path to the nomination was not smooth. She edged out Cavanaugh, a sitting state senator, by just 2.1 percentage points. Outside groups poured more than $6 million into the primary race, a staggering sum for a congressional primary in a state with Nebraska's media costs.
Cavanaugh alleged on X that "dark money Republican groups" had supported Powell's candidacy because they viewed her as the easier opponent to defeat in the general election. Whether or not that claim holds up, the sheer volume of outside spending suggests that both parties see this seat as a genuine toss-up, and that national operatives are deeply involved in shaping the outcome.
After winning, Powell called on Cavanaugh to remain in his state senate seat, framing the request in the language of institutional defense. She said in May that "the White House and Supreme Court" were "attacking voting and reproductive rights in our country" and that the party needed to "hold the line at the federal and state level in order to protect Nebraska families."
The framing is worth noting. Powell treats the elected president and the constitutionally established Supreme Court as threats to be defended against, not as legitimate institutions whose decisions might reflect the will of the voters who elected them.
The genre Powell endorsed, sometimes called "romantasy", blends fantasy fiction with explicit sexual content. Authors like Sarah J. Maas, whose "A Court of Thrones and Roses" series helped popularize the sub-genre, and Rebecca Yarros, whose "Fourth Wing" is being adapted into a Prime Video television series, have built enormous followings on TikTok, where fans create AI-generated edits of characters and scenes.
There is nothing wrong with reading fiction. But Powell did not recommend a book to a friend over coffee. She recorded a public video, addressed it to the supporters of her political action committee, and framed escapist fantasy reading as a political coping strategy on the day a duly elected president was sworn in. The message to her base was unmistakable: the real world is too painful; retreat into make-believe.
That instinct, to flee from political reality rather than engage with it, has become a recurring theme in Democratic politics since 2016. It is the same impulse that drove progressive activists to knit pink hats, light candles, and post therapy recommendations after election losses. It is a politics of feelings, not of persuasion.
And it raises a fair question: if Powell's first instinct after an election loss is to tell her supporters to unplug and read fantasy novels, what will her instinct be when she faces a difficult vote, a tough negotiation, or a policy setback in Congress?
Powell's candidacy fits a pattern that Nebraska voters have seen before. The state's Democratic infrastructure has spent recent cycles searching for the right formula, sometimes running candidates under their own label, sometimes backing independent candidates linked to progressive and socialist operatives, and sometimes trying to paper over ideological commitments that don't match the electorate.
In the 2024 Senate race, the party's chosen vehicle was Dan Osborn, who ran as an independent but drew support from national progressive donors. Osborn's campaign quietly scrubbed abortion language from his website while continuing to cash checks from Planned Parenthood donors, a maneuver that suggested the campaign was less interested in transparency than in managing perceptions.
Powell's approach is different in style but similar in substance. Her public persona is built around opposition to Trump, emotional appeals to her base, and progressive policy commitments on abortion and health care. Whether that profile can win in a district that also elected Don Bacon five times is the central question of the race.
The broader Democratic Party is grappling with similar tensions nationally. After the 2024 losses, internal factions pushed to oust DNC chair Ken Martin over a botched election autopsy, exposing deep disagreements about whether the party's problem is messaging, ideology, or both. Powell's Instagram video is a small but telling data point in that debate. It suggests that at least some Democratic candidates still believe the path forward runs through emotional solidarity rather than substantive engagement with voters' concerns about the economy, security, and governance.
Nebraska's Second Congressional District is competitive precisely because it contains voters who are willing to split tickets, weigh candidates on merit, and punish politicians who take them for granted. Those voters sent Bacon to Congress five times. They also gave their single electoral vote to Harris in 2024. They are not a monolith, and they are not looking for a candidate whose signature public moment is a recommendation to read explicit fantasy fiction as political therapy.
Powell's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the New York Post. That silence may be strategic, the video is not the kind of thing a campaign wants to relitigate in a general election. But the video exists. It is public. And it tells voters something important about the candidate's instincts, priorities, and view of the electorate.
Brinker Harding, her Republican opponent, carries a Trump endorsement and the advantages of running in an open seat that the Cook Political Report still considers competitive. The race will be expensive, closely watched, and nationally significant. Democrats are betting that Powell can deliver.
Voters in Omaha will decide whether they want a representative who responds to political adversity by rolling up her sleeves, or by reaching for a fantasy novel.
