Jim Carroll

plus.flux.communityTo move the U.S. beyond MAGA, Democrats must delegitimize a radicalized GOP in the eyes of votersThis strategy needs to start with any Dem successes in the midterms, which the party should frame as a repudiation of Trumpism and its enablers, not just as a referendum on a struggling economy

ICYMI @flux.community: Dems should ever bear in mind the larger long-term struggle against MAGA extremism, and frame any successes in the midterms as a repudiation of Trumpism and its enablers, not just as a referendum on a struggling economy. 1/x plus.flux.community/p/to-move-th...

But here’s the crux: having seen this grotesque social and economic experiment run in real time and at national scale, a strong majority of citizens are repulsed, and wish to be freed from this radical re-envisioning of America. 16/x

Democrats must directly speak to Americans’ ongoing engagement and reaction to a Republican assault on basic notions of equality and national unity, and be unafraid of channeling this disgust and outrage. More here: /fin plus.flux.community/p/to-move-th...

Despite so many Dems’ refusal to engage fully with the GOP’s advocacy of racism, misogyny, and Christian nationalism, or to highlight these assaults on the nation, citizens have been forced to grapple with such outrages and their larger meaning for the nation’s future. 14/x

The direction they’re trying to push us in is palpable not just intellectually, but at a gut level for so many people: to raise white, straight, Christian men up to positions of high authority and social dominance, and to put everyone else in their proper, degraded place. 15/x

Our citizenry has been forced by the Trump administration and the radical GOP to realize that there is no “normal” we can get back to without fully confronting and discrediting the forces that have turned our country so very abnormal. 12/x

Even the narrow, cautious focus that some in the Dem party counsel — such as on affordability and health care — turns out to be inseparable from larger questions of American identity, equality, and freedom that the GOP has thrust to center stage. 13/x

including an explicit goal of permanently keeping Dems out of power at both the state and national levels. Looking beyond Trump’s congressional co-conspirators to red states and their Republican leaders, there is little reason to think a post-Trump GOP will be more moderate. 10/x

liberalcurrents.comThe Future of the Republican Party After Trump Is in TexasThe white male supremacists of the Texas GOP embody what the national party has become.

Indeed, as @aselrod.bsky.social writes @liberalcurrents.com, the cruelty and extremism displayed by GOP politicos in the ur-MAGA state of Texas make a good case that the party is set to go even further off the democratic rails in the coming years. 11/x www.liberalcurrents.com/the-future-o...

They have been presented not just with a generational opportunity, but a moral obligation, to discredit the Republican Party as a political force in the United States, and should not hesitate to seize it. 8/x

If this sounds extreme or grandiose, then I’d simply ask the reader to consider the project of the Republican Party over the last decade and more, which has constituted nothing less than an escalating insurrection against American democracy — 9/x

The worst thing that could happen would be for the Democratic Party to stand up a narrative, inadvertently or not, that Trump is the primary source of the GOP’s moral rot and anti-democratic animus. 6/x

For the remaining years of the Trump administration and beyond, the ambition of Democrats should match the country’s political crisis and the danger that the Republican Party presents to the continuation of democracy and a free society in the U.S. 7/x

But Dems need to bear in mind that at some point, they will be entering a zone of diminishing returns in trying to tie the GOP to the bloated failure of Trump and his administration, rather than hitting Republican politicians for their own policy and ideological failings. 4/x

To my mind, this means that the pivot to emphasizing GOP complicity in Trump administration depredations needs to start now, and ramp up through the 2028 election. 5/x

A key challenge for Dems over the next 2 years will be to both maximize the damage that Trump has inflicted on the GOP brand while also not letting his allies, toadies, and even reluctant defenders off the hook for their complicity in outlandish policies and ideologies. 2/x

There is obviously value in tying the GOP to Trump: in the person of the president, the many pathologies of the contemporary GOP are legible for any American to see. He makes explicit what so many in the party would rather downplay or dissimulate. 3/x

plus.flux.communityIn desperate attempt to head off midterms rout, Trump tries to criminalize Representative Ilhan Omar for crime of being an immigrantIt’s time for Dems to attack such authoritarian maneuvers both as dangers to the republic and as exposing the deep vulnerabilities of MAGA’s bleakly racist vision for America

New from me at @flux.community: It’s time for Dems to attack authoritarian maneuvers like the targeting of Rep. Ilhan Omar both as dangers to the republic AND as exposing the deep vulnerabilities of MAGA’s bleakly racist vision for America. 1/x plus.flux.community/p/in-despera...

Most Americans find such state-sponsored white supremacism unacceptable, and this basic reality means that the Trump administration’s aggressive actions, as dangerous as they are, also create massive self-inflicted vulnerabilities for MAGA. 13/x

And a key way for those vulnerabilities to carry a political price is for MAGA’s opponents to call public attention to them, and to describe them as the un-American beliefs of a racist, radical minority at war with our democracy. More here: /fin plus.flux.community/p/in-despera...

But even more than this, Dems needs to engage in pushback that recognizes its elected officials’ obligation to defend not just Omar and their own political standing, but the millions of naturalized citizens and immigrants who are indirectly targeted by this abuse of power. 11/x

And this obligation, in turn, points us to something that has been absent from even the best of the analyses so far: that the Trump administration’s own attempt to actively highlight MAGA’s vast racial hatred should be viewed as a huge opportunity for the Democratic Party. 12/x

In other words, making an example out of Omar is a form of social and political control, a way of intimidating millions into political complacency even if the Trump administration never singles them out for special attention, or fully succeeds in its mass deportation goals. 9/x

At the constitutional level, congressional Democrats cannot abide a strategy that, if successful, would weaken the party by opening the door to the Trump administration literally expelling from the country any representative who happens to be a naturalized citizen. 10/x

So targeting Ilhan Omar is an opportunity to punish a political enemy and harm the Democratic Party, while also broadcasting to non-white immigrants that they are not wanted here and that the same treatment could be in store for them. 7/x

nytimes.comOpinion | Trump’s Attempt to Deport Ilhan Omar Is Another Leap Toward the AbyssThis is more than just another persecution of one of the president’s political enemies.

At the same time, as @michellegoldberg.bsky.social notes, it’s also “sending a message to every foreign-born American. Oppose Trump too loudly, and the government will comb through your paperwork [. . .] for errors that could upend your life." 8/x www.nytimes.com/2026/10/16/o...

But the administration’s clear intention of finding a basis on which to strip Omar of her citizenship, and to deport her from the U.S., constitutes a second, equally profound layer to the case, where authoritarian intent melds with white supremacist ideology. 5/x

To this point, @lioneltrolling.bsky.social observes that, "Trumpism can be understood as the notion that some Americans are not really Americans, that their political rights are illegitimate, and that the nation must be purged of these interlopers.” 6/x www.unpopularfront.news/p/whats-at-s...

The obvious effort to create a distraction from impeding midterms losses for the GOP, or even change the thrust of election reporting in the coming weeks, shouldn’t obscure the additional dire seriousness of what the administration is in fact doing. 3/x

At the level of the rule of law, Trump is abusing the power of the fed government to go after a political enemy. To seek to criminalize one’s political opponents on fake or trumped-up charges is the mark of an authoritarian regime, not a democratic republic. 4/x

@brianbeutler.bsky.social

Earlier this month, federal agents searched the home of Minnesota’s Representative Ilhan Omar, as part of an investigation into her immigration to the United States decades ago, as part of a reported effort to denaturalize and deport her. 2/x

Jim Carroll reposted

Flux

@flux.community

Despite Trump's failures and extremism, Democrats have not focused on deligitimizing the entire Republican brand within the public eye, @jtccarroll.flux.community writes. Next month's election must be more than just a repudiation of Trump's specific failures.

Jim Carroll reposted

Brian Beutler

A despairing scenario I’ve been confronted with repeatedly: won’t Dems come back to power, not fix every problem they inherited fast enough, and pave the way for another GOP comeback, like 2010 and 2024? Maybe! But the GOP is really burning up the foundations. 🧵 www.offmessage.net/p/post-donal...

offmessage.netNo Fake Makeovers For The Post-Trump GOPDemocrats should behave as if the pendulum is destined to swing back against them. But that doesn’t mean it will.

Jim Carroll reposted

Jason Karsh

@jkarsh.bsky.social

The immediate task if Ds can take back power is wins. Little fixes, lots of fanfare. A lot of this is because of the electorate. I can’t tell you how angry people are. Across the board they see all politicians do nothing liars—all while the lives of normal people get worse. Book. Immediate. Wins.

Brian Beutler@brianbeutler.bsky.social

offmessage.netNo Fake Makeovers For The Post-Trump GOPDemocrats should behave as if the pendulum is destined to swing back against them. But that doesn’t mean it will.

plus.flux.communityFlimsy GOP attempts to show ‘distance’ from Donald Trump should fool no oneAs Republicans face a likely midterms wipeout, Democrats must be unsparing in reminding voters that there is little daylight between a radicalized GOP and the aspiring despot in the White House

My latest @flux.community: As Republicans face a likely midterms wipeout, Democrats must be unsparing in reminding voters that there is little daylight between a radicalized GOP and the aspiring despot in the White House. 1/x plus.flux.community/p/flimsy-gop...

And while a good number of prominent Dems have argued for structural changes to root out corruption and revive US democracy, there has been much less stress on what it would mean to hold the GOP accountable for its radicalization into an extremist, anti-democratic party. 12/x

The phenomenon of Republicans making a show of opposing particular Trump administration policies is a test case for how well Dems grasp the authoritarian threat of the radicalized GOP that they will still face in 2 years. More here: /fin plus.flux.community/p/flimsy-gop...

With 2 years left in his term, Democrats need to grasp the risks of any over-emphasis on Trump as the root cause of America’s ills, and his eventual departure from the American scene as synonymous with the return of normalcy. 10/x

The authoritarian inclinations, misogynistic worldview, racist assumptions, and essential corruption of which Trump is such an exemplar have taken strong root in the Republican Party; indeed, many of these pathologies pre-date the president’s personal hold over the GOP. 11/x

But it would be a grave political error for Dems to treat attempts by GOP politicians to distance themselves from a few specific, unpopular Trump policies as a decisive break with Trump, or from their complicity in the larger retrograde political project he has enabled. 8/x

That they are afraid for their own political survival based on souring public opinion is not the same as repudiating a host of noxious ideas that they’ve largely been happy to support, and which constitute not simply Trump admin policies but mainstream beliefs of the GOP. 9/x

which in turn threatens their own political survival. In other words, GOP politicians supported or turned a blind eye to Trump’s warmongering and ICE-inflicted sadism, only flinching when his falling poll numbers raised the prospect of their own personal political apocalypse. 6/x

publicnotice.coThe trickle of Republicans opposing Trump will become a floodThe risk of bucking him is now outweighed by the risk of NOT opposing him.

And so, as @paulwaldman.bsky.social has helpfully highlighted, a slice of GOP candidates around the country has started to distance themselves from some of the president’s policies: 7/x www.publicnotice.co/p/republican...

It’s also being signaled through the flight from the GOP of those very demographics — Latinos, African-American males, younger Americans — that had created the myth of a realignment in 2024. 4/x

As it turns out, what's finally turning a handful of GOP candidates to seek space (or at least the appearance of it — more on this below) from Trump isn’t necessarily any particular action by the president, but his measurably catastrophic loss of support among voters — 5/x

After Trump’s pair of head-spinning wins over the last decade, we can be forgiven for only cautiously accepting what is increasingly obvious: the president and the GOP appear to be forcing a decisive public judgment against their actions and their ideology. 2/x