I strongly agree. I'm convinced that Liz Cheney had no effect on the election outcome b/c most non-political people really don't know who Liz Cheney is, and the whole Bush-Cheney admin is lost in fog. Maybe time Harris spent with Cheney could have been better used elsewhere, but that's a minor point

Alan Elrod@aselrod.bsky.social · 2d ago

I just don’t think Liz Cheney doing a couple campaign events cost Harris the election. People who are too on here already knew if they were or weren’t going to vote for her. Normies who aren’t either too online or political junkies did not decide based on this. This is vibes and cope.

We're hosting a terrific virtual event this evening @politicalreform.newamerica.org, on younger voters--looking at both successful organizing to ensure young people are registered and vote, and also the structural changes that would break the gerontocracy: www.newamerica.org/events/the-n...

I remember seeing someone (very reasonably) complaining here a few days ago that there seems to be next to no visible thinking on left and center about how to join the dots on administration and democracy. This is the beginnings of an answer to that complaint donmoynihan.substack.com/p/rebuilding...

Rebuilding Democracy Requires Rebalancing Power

What does a power-shifting agenda look like?

donmoynihan.substack.com

Chris Hayes was good on this in a conversation with Ezra Klein before Mamdani was elected - www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/o... - the whole discussion is good on the experimentation/attention dynamic.

Reminder Brad Lander- while a past member of DSA - built his career and won his House seat with the support of the Working Families Party not DSA. Disproportionate media focus on DSA versus work of other left groups like Working Families Party across the US.

Brad Lander@bradlander.bsky.social · last wk.

I’m in LA this weekend for the California @workingfamilies.org Convention, where I was thrilled to meet Randy Villegas @villegas4congress.bsky.social. (1/3)

Maybe everyone knew this, but I didn't: That for fifty years, 1937-1987, Rockefeller to Gates, there was not a single billionaire in the US. (from Ray Madoff's new book, The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made an American Aristocracy)

"most americans have health insurance and don't like change" explains 90 percent of health care politics

When I worked in the Senate (eons ago), there was a phrase I remember hearing, often from senior staffers, if someone expressed total contempt for another senator, even if well deserved: "He got elected, too, the same way [our boss] did." It was a mark of basic respect for the democratic process.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3w ago

Sen. Cynthia Lummis dramatically says "I don't know" when asked by Fox News if Ossoff and Warnock were duty elected

"If you like democracy, you must resist the peculiar Americanism of anti-partyism. Be pro-party—as many of them as possible." www.liberalcurrents.com/make-politic...

Make Political Parties Great Again

The answer to Eric Swalwell and the top-two debacle in California is multiparty electoral reform.

liberalcurrents.com

I'll just add that between handwringing Dem centrists and young Dem-adjacent socialists is a large group I would label "self-described liberals who are enraged/sick of this crap" and are ready to vote left/progressive. Don't underestimate them. And FFS don't scold them; they're also sick of that.

Eric Blair@protecttruth.bsky.social · last mo.

The “motivated urban left voters” are a major core of the Democratic party and if Democrats like Jared Golden, Janet Mills, MGP, Schumer, Bennet, and Klobuchar can’t figure out how to harness their energy to advance the party they are going to keep losing.

Before Diana DeGette, CO-1 was represented for 24 years by Pat Schroeder. In 1972, Schroeder was a 32-yr-old lawyer, an anti-war progressive insurgent who challenged the establishment Dem and then upset a GOP incumbent. Menat Kiros is a 29-yr-old lawyer and anti-war progressive insurgent. 1/2

Just how effing shortsighted and dumb this email looks now less than 24 hours later?

Murshed Zaheed@murshedz.bsky.social · last mo.

Not a great sign of @kenmartin.bsky.social’s leadership that the organization he runs - @democrats.org - has absolutely no fucking big picture grasp around the damage being done by the Roberts MAGA #SCOTUS What an idiotic and ignorant short-sighted email to send.

The Supreme Court set the stage today for the next Democratic President to fire every single Trump appointee across the federal government on Day One. I assume there won’t be any complaints.

If this means that Mr. Carville will no longer be sending me a half-dozen emails and texts every day, I will consider it a welcome development. DSA candidates are already improving my quality of life.

Mediaite@mediaite.com · last mo.

‘I’m Done, I’m Not in That F*cking Political Party’: James Carville Freaks Out After Progressives Win Big in Democratic Primaries

This is a great example of the journalistic rule to report what people do or say, not what they might feel. I don't know if Exxon CEO Lee Raymond "doubted climate change," and neither does Bloomberg. All we know is that he *promoted doubt" about climate change. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Lee Raymond, Exxon CEO Who Doubted Climate Change, Dies at 87

Lee Raymond, the former head of Exxon Mobil Corp. who oversaw the biggest corporate merger in the history of the oil industry and was derided as “the Darth Vader of global warming” for his skepticism ...

bloomberg.com

agree, and would add that the Democratic aversion to such orgs is partly driven by the hollowing of party (to quote Rosenfeld and Schlozman) - robustly organized parties aren't as vulnerable to concerns about orgs they share some affinity with but can't control.

"Dems and billionaires" can't "rebuild" something like ACORN. They have to be willing to support and respect organizing that emerges from community, even if it makes donors and elected Dems uncomfortable. Orgs don't exist to elect Dems & might not follow the donors' preferred issue priorities. 1/

Oliver Willis@owillis.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Acorn was also killed by Obama and Democrats cowering at the attack against the org even though they had just helped him win

This from Klobuchar exemplifies the language problem in Democratic messaging. It's not fancy words or academic jargon. It's that they yoke so many concepts together, with logical links that are almost impossible for anyone with a normal attention span to track. Don't be clever! Just say one thing!

I'm thrilled to have been asked to become the board chair of scholars.org, one of my favorite organizations, and also to appear on their podcast, No Jargon, to talk about the recent paper and conference on strengthening US political parties that we published at @polreformna.bsky.social

Home | Scholars Strategy Network

Your one-stop resource for timely and reliable research. Get the expertise you need from our responsive network of America's top experts.

scholars.org

Scholars Strategy Network@scholars.org · 2mo ago

300 episodes of our No Jargon podcast! 🎉 To celebrate, we sat down with SSN's new board chair @mschmitt9.bsky.social (@newamerica.org) to talk about what's broken in American politics, why political parties still matter & what it would take to rebuild trust. 🎧 Listen: scholars.org/podcast/epis...

New, and I think important piece. Brainstorming policy ideas to address kitchen table issues is an important undertaking. But it is NOT the same thing as a Project 2025 analog, but for the pro-democracy movement to save the country. www.offmessage.net/p/project-20...

Don't Call It Project 2029 If It's Not A Fighting Document

Policy remedies to kitchen-table issues won't end the fascist threat. I thought we learned this?

offmessage.net

Project 2025 was never a public-facing policy platform. It was a technical plan, often from old memos, for dismantling democratic institutions. The section on college accreditation, for example, is being implemented right now. Dems don't need more policies, we need plans to reconstruct institutions.

The Bulwark@thebulwark.com · 2mo ago

The group dubbed Project 2029 is unveiling its first policy proposals. We got the preview. The latest edition of The Opposition from Lauren Egan:

It’s really important that Democrats have people like Talarico (and Warnock and others) providing this kind of theologically and spiritually rigorous counter to Christian nationalism. Consigning evangelicals to the far right is a terrible mistake. Every person Talarico reaches is a badly needed win

Greg Sargent@gregsargent.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Talarico is willing to theologically go toe-to-toe with white Christian Nationalism. And, importantly, he treats it as fundamental to this moment that Trump and Trumpism are wrecking our common life at a very profound moral and spiritual level. 5/ newrepublic.com/article/2109...

With growing interest on proportional representation in the US, thought I'd re-share this @newamerica.org piece on why I think this systems would be a major upgrade: www.newamerica.org/insights/eig...

Eight Reasons to Champion Proportional Representation for the U.S.

Proportional representation would be a major and much needed upgrade for American elections.

newamerica.org

Just noticed in TX GOP runoff, Paxton got about 4,000 more votes than in the multi-candidate March primary, in which he came in 2d, before Trump endorsed. Cornyn got *400,000 fewer* votes than in March. Trump didn't increase Paxton's base or get voters to switch. Cornyn's electorate simply vanished.

Any effort to understand current politics should start from this position of humility about what we know, even as we try to get beyond it.

Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I’m a broken record on this, but the last few years have revealed that there are HUGE components of public opinion that we do not understand. There are baffling questions about how opinion forms, how it relates to the conditions of society, and how it expresses itself in electoral politics.

To put the DNC's crappy "autopsy" in perspective, note that the RNC produced a much more careful, footnoted autopsy after Romney's 2012 defeat, which concluded the party had to moderate on immigration. Their next nominee did exactly the opposite. Meaning (1) things can change a lot in 4 yrs,

A thorough piece about the DOJ slush fund scam, including Trump's tactics in the lawsuit v. IRS to avoid any action that would trigger a role for the judge in approving a settlement. Really seems they schemed this all along, pretending to sue to give a false veneer of legitimacy to the payoff.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3mo ago

"The entire exercise is an elaborate troll, right down to the $1.776 billion price tag, a figure which supposedly represents 'the projected valuation of future claimants’ claims' — and, *no*, they will not be showing their math." — @lizdye.bsky.social

Journalists need to avoid making this category error

Trump did not reach a settlement with the government. There was no case to settle. He has not created a slush fund. He has colluded with Todd Blanche to steal money from the US Treasury. This is not a “deal.” This is a crime for which Trump & Blanche must be prosecuted. It ia a crime.