Sam Rosenfeld
@samrosenfeld.bsky.social
Associate Professor of Political Science, Colgate University. Author of "The Polarizers": https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo24660595.html
My message to students just before evals.
Amanda Litman@amandalitman.bsky.social · last wk.The only people with the power to change leadership are DNC members and Ken himself. Hope they find it in themselves to honestly answer: Is the status quo serving our larger goals? www.nytimes.com/2026/07/26/u...
Looking back at the 2012 RNC autopsy, the contrast in terms of sheer institutional effort is certainly striking. It wasn't "Ask one guy to send you something for free." www.wsj.com/public/resou...
Jon Green@jongreen.bsky.social · 3mo agoThis isn't exactly the problem described in Hollow Parties, but it's not *not* the problem described in Hollow Parties. Why aren't you doing this in-house???
The first steps to fixing Democrats’ disconnect from working people come in identifying the problem: Policy deployed as a substitute for politics makes for bad policy and worse politics. (@samrosenfeld.bsky.social and @daschloz.bsky.social, NYT-unlocked) www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/o...
Opinion | Democrats Should Try Being an Actual Political Party Again
nytimes.com
In the NYT today, @daschloz.bsky.social and I write about how Democrats became policy-pilled and why policy can't substitute for organizational connections to ordinary people.
the modern professor's feeling of warm relief and gratitude at encountering artisanal, human-crafted bad writing while grading papers
There is an “emerging sense that Trump’s centrality to right-wing politics has an endpoint in the not-so-distant future,” @samrosenfeld.bsky.social tells @willoremus.com. “That all serves to loosen Trump’s symbolic grip on the right’s discourse.”
‘MAGA is Trump’: President fires back at right-wing mutiny over Iran
Tucker Carlson and other MAGA figures with big online audiences have criticized the assault on Iran, triggering pushback from the president and White House.
washingtonpost.com
Before Trump created a personalist regime, the modern presidency used to center on trying to pass legislation.
New explainer from me, on understanding ICE as a paramilitary force, in more than one sense of the term 👇 theconversation.com/ice-not-only...
ICE not only looks and acts like a paramilitary force – it is one, and that makes it harder to curb
ICE, created in response to 9/11, meets most definitions of paramilitary forces. Critics worry it’s gone beyond its writ of immigration enforcement.
theconversation.com
Meanwhile my undergrad thesis students have to dutifully fill out IRB applications for permission to do interview research. www.statnews.com/2026/01/22/v...
the question to ask about this is, okay, he wants to cancel the midterms. how does he get the VA state board of elections to cancel the midterms? how does he get the georgia board of elections to do it? how does he convince republican house members to quit their jobs and give up their paychecks?
Ryan Broderick@ryanhatesthis.bsky.social · 7mo agoTrump says a lot of deranged shit, but, per this Reuters article — and the threats of invoking the Insurrection Act in Minnesota this morning — he is very clearly exploring how to cancel the midterms. www.reuters.com/world/us/fiv...
RIP to Jim Hunt, chairman of a Democratic Party commission that bequeathed us the instantly unloved, now all-but-dead, but in fact praiseworthy and sensible institution we call the superdelegates. www.ibtimes.com/political-ca...
Superdelegates Give Party Bosses Upper Hand
Many of those backing Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders are chafing under rules that give party bosses control over the nomination process.
ibtimes.com
Fun to see Susan Wiles unload a million dishy quotes about the admin, but seeing this take mixed in w/ the others is so jarring. This move has already killed hundreds of thousands of people! The moral vacancy of acknowledging its pointlessness while continuing to serve as CoS is hard to fathom.
I've moved from despairing exasperation at students referring to nonfiction works as "novels" in their essays to affectionate relief at this emblem of non-AI organic human error.
Zohran Mamdani’s victory was rooted in organizations that took up the base-building and mobilization functions that once fell to parties. dissentmagazine.org/online_artic...
Partyism Without the Party - Dissent Magazine
Zohran Mamdani’s victory was rooted in organizations that took up the base-building and mobilization functions that once fell to parties.
dissentmagazine.org
Gather round the table tomorrow for a Thanksgiving reading with your loved ones!
Princeton University Press@princetonupress.bsky.social · 8mo ago@daschloz.bsky.social and @samrosenfeld.bsky.social's The Hollow Parties is a major history from the Founding to our embittered present that “explains the void” (Politico) at the center of America’s political parties. Now in #paperback! Read a free preview: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
In its limited, cabined, semi-nuked-and-therefore-always-potentially-further-nukable contemporary state, the filibuster has become the Senate's dark matter, at once powering and obscuring behavior on both sides.
I think this passage is the crux of my disagreement with Drutman and @gelliottmorris.com on moderation: this reasoning is circular. The party labels and levels of polarization are not exogenous to choices made by both parties. www.gelliottmorris.com/p/democrats-...
Now in #paperback with a new preface by the authors, The Hollow Parties by @daschloz.bsky.social & @samrosenfeld.bsky.social is a major history from the Founding to our embittered present that “explains the void” (Politico). Learn more: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
ActBlue, Open Society, Indivisible—terrorists all. Note how slipshod, confused, and ramshackle this project sounds even from quoted behind-the-scenes insiders. Miller WANTS it to sound maximally ominous and intimidating. The targets should hold their heads high and carry on.
Henry's writing about about institutional actors more than the mass public, but the basic collective-action point relates to mass protests as well--a means of signaling the scope of opposition, unafraid and peaceful. Put me in mind of the No Kings day planned for 10/18, which can't come soon enough.
Henry Farrell@himself.bsky.social · 10mo ago"It wanted to signal strength. Instead, it’s revealing its weakness. The administration’s need to break the academy is forcing it to make a desperately risky gamble." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...
“This battle holds bigger lessons. The greatest weapon that the forces of regime change possess is the fear of inevitability. If everyone believes that Mr. Trump will succeed in reshaping America, he will.” A great @himself.bsky.social column in the @nytimes.com. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...
Opinion | You Beat Trumpism by Banding Together. It’s as Hard and as Simple as That.
nytimes.com
Super happy for the awesome @hahrie.bsky.social and her MacArthur fellowship -- couldn't go to a more deserving scholar and person... www.macfound.org/fellows/clas...
Hahrie Han
Analyzing the organizations and movements that equip people to participate in public life and solve problems together.
macfound.org
Theory: Trump's governance is so hardwired to generate crisis & chaos and multiple media stories at once (typically a problem for Dems struggling to break through the noise) that it's actually making it hard for the GOP to effectively focus attention and jam Dems on the shutdown.
Is this the first Dem MC to say this explicitly? That the reason this is the GOP’s shutdown isn’t because they “refuse to negotiate” or whatever but because they in fact have the power at any moment to nuke the filibuster and pass whatever they want to keep the govt operating?
To put this into context, the judicial warrant for the search at the Hyundai plant named just four people. Relying on that warrant, ICE detained nearly 500 people. DHS admitted that included U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and people lawfully here on visas.
Chris Geidner@chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 11mo agoThis is a paragraph Brett Kavanaugh wrote on his little computer and then sent out into the world:
US law created to punish human rights violators—sanctioning officials personally instead of whole countries, since leaders usually don’t feel broad sanctions, passing the pain onto the population—now deployed to punish a Brazilian judge for upholding Brazilian law in the face of a coup attempt.
Wendy Siegelman@wendysiegelman.bsky.social · last yr.US Treasury sanctions Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes under the Global Magnitsky Act- he is overseeing investigation into Trump ally and former President Jair Bolsonaro The act was created to punish Russian officials responsible for death of Sergei Magnitsky home.treasury.gov/news/press-r...
