Michael Rosenberg

The biggest reason we need Boomer Dems to pass the baton is that they all came of age politically in the Reagan era and are still fighting (or surrendering) the last war. In an era where looking tough is the entire game, we can't afford Dems who instinctively walk around with a "kick me" sign.

Lula winning is great for the planet, great for Brazil, and great for people who aren't revanchist assholes everywhere in the world, but let's not forget that it's also going to make some of the worst people on Earth extremely sad and mad. We should enjoy that, as a little treat.

Kansas Dem Sen. nominee Adam Hamilton on trans rights: “I don’t think we should take a small group of people and bully them, pick on them, and hurt them. I understand one thing really clearly when it comes to transgender people, and that is Jesus told me I was to love my neighbor as I love myself”

Conservative parents absolutely do not mind their kids being bullies to the right people. Come on lol

Doing my part to pump up our GOTV warriors.

Yglesias is a little punk, he's weak and he's pathetic and he thinks he's prudent but he's actually just a loser

1) We have absolutely abandoned the working class culturally, as we should. 2) We have their backs economically, but they don't care. We support PMC cultural values and working class economics, despite their lack of appreciation, because it's the right thing to do, because we're better people.

I shall redouble my efforts to take Draftkings's money. For Amy Acton.

Average Republican:

I was wrong. Fewer people should be able to vote.

One of the most salient aspects of today's politics is how everyone imagines a conspiratorial "them" controlling things behind the scenes. Elon Musk is literally powerful enough to affect the course of the Ukraine war, but he's still imagining faceless puppet masters who need to be unmasked.

Also, projecting strength looks powerful! Voters want to join the powerful side, not downtrodden righteous underdogs!

I'm not kidding, the guy simply has to be at the very least deported at the end of this. If we're doing "he's not from here" shit, he is the most not from here guy alive. He needs jail or deportation the second it's viable to do it.

Retired guy whose healthcare bill is entirely paid for by working adults talking about how he shouldn’t have to pay for other people’s kids to go to school while standing in front of a mansion he owns is really just an excellent encapsulation of the Republican base.

It's absolutely depressing that old school Dems went through a period of unprecedented progress on domestic issues in the 60s and took from that success that the way to win is to position themselves the activists on the receiving end of a firehose and not the ruthless president who signed the bills.

The generation that got to buy cheap houses thanks to a postwar construction boom, then blocked new housing construction to juice their asset values is now whining that they have to pay taxes on their unearned wealth. Just breathtaking selfishness.

Counterpoint: we should wield political power and punish fascist-friendly media execs.

Gonna cost Tommy a lot more than $200 to get his balls back.

Meta took down the No Kings organizing page today - the biggest day of protest this fall. They provided zero explanation. It stayed down for the entire afternoon until most of the protests were done. Outrageous. Put this on the January investigation list.

Portraying your opponents as powerful despots looks *weak*. Portraying your opponents as pathetic losers looks *strong*. Why does nobody else get this?

Counterpoint: we should wield political power and punish fascist-friendly media execs.

The way we defeat MAGA isn't to convince everyone to rise up against the powerful fascist oppressor, it's to point and laugh at what embarrassing losers they all are.

Conventional wisdom has been that moderate/independent voters value civility and respect and "turning down the temperature." This may have been true in 1990, but is laughable now. The median vibes-based voter takes dominance and narrative-setting as strength. And it energizes the base too!

Hard not to notice that Democrats who are doing the best are the ones who are leaving this whole civility-and-norms, we-go-high, we-need-a-strong-Republican-Party bullshit behind and are simply giving Republicans exactly what they all ought to get at all times, which is undisguised contempt.

Troy Jackson: "Sen. Collins says that she voted against it 9 times, but she didn't have the votes. Well, that sounds like then we probably ought to have Democrats in charge of the Senate so we have the votes to stop this war and hold Donald Trump in check. It sounds like Republicans won't do that."

The closeted members of the Republican caucus would have such happier lives if their leadership didn't so consistently traffic in playground-level homophobia.

There is absolutely no viable path forward for this country that doesn’t hinge on extreme accountability for everyone involved in this administration. They’re going to whine about politicization and credulous media types will echo them, but the thing is, they’ve committed tons of obvious crimes!

Dominance Politics, Elite Gatekeeping and Jon Ossoff talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/domin...

Stop asking questions. Tell the audience what this is about. Drive a narrative!

This is how Democrats should have been speaking to Trump for the past decade. Finally.

I’ve written abt this back to 2004. The drivers of elections are competitive displays/performances of power and attacking in ways an opponent can’t or won’t defend themselves against. That’s far more determinative than the specifics of campaign agendas.

"Dominance politics" is really apropos here and speaks to why Trump seems to get a groundswell of vibes in his favor (when out of power) -- the average disengaged voter doesn't really hear what he says, but they sense that he's dominating the debate and that codes on an id level as strength.

He doesn't play the role of underdog like so many older Dems who fancy themselves like the righteous Civil Rights era activists. Voters don't respect righteousness, they respect strength. And Ossoff speaks as if he deserves to be in power and the other side are embarrassing clowns.

Maine Senate candidates clash over Trump: Sen. Susan Collins: “This Congress alone, I voted against President Trump 137 times.” Troy Jackson: “She voted a hundred times against Trump when it didn’t matter.”

What you have to understand here is that it isn't just about titillating their deplorable base with violence, it's about provoking response and protest and then getting to point at the protesters and say "who do you identify with, us or these pussies?"

They believe! That’s the worst thing! They don’t care.

feels like at least part of what is happening is that a lot of people want politics to solve the "my life feels empty" problem and the populist right is directly appealing to them

Fox News talks a lot about the WNBA, but it’s not because it likes to see talented female athletes putting the ball in the hoop. To Fox, women’s sports is good for 2 things: 1. To agitate for white grievance. 2. To foment anti-trans hate. (This is No. 1, but there’s a lot of No. 2 on Fox as well.)

Among voters who could write a coherent, 5-paragraph essay justifying their vote, Harris surely won by double-digits. Unfortunately, most voters are not in the category. It's all vibes for them.

Being a (white, male) pastor insulates him from the "activist" vibes that usually plague pro-immigrant advocates. This is important, because the average voter's feelings towards activists ranges from eyerolling mockery at best to seething rage at worst.

The Biden era complaint that "nobody wants to work anymore" is really a complaint that we elevated what was formerly a permanent underclass of low-wage workers into not needing to do those jobs while also contributing to demand (inflation), and everyone lost their shit.

This is what Democrats love -- and independents respect -- about Jon Ossoff as well. Too many (older) Democrats are in the decorum/decency mindset that what appeals to independents is being kind to one's opponent. That may have been true in 1990, but today just screams weakness. Throw a punch!

It's fine if people don't want to have liberal arts education. Go ahead, have large gaps in understanding the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Live your life ignorant, incomplete, undeveloped, inadequate. You have the right to be a worse citizen, a shallow dullard, a lesser person.

the average person has no idea what their government does on a daily basis. they just dont know. and for decades the right has used this as a launching point to propagandize the idea that the government simply cannot work. yes, being mayor is different from being president. but people need this.

Wu on redistricting if Dems get control: "You do the exact same thing that they did to you until they say mercy" and agree to national, bipartisan reform.