Mark Schmitt

The "race that hadn't crossed your radar before" is the best answer to the question, "where will my donation (of money, time, etc) have the greatest impact. Especially now.

My brain cannot process this level of corruption. She was being paid $50 million to engineer a pardon from Trump *while working at the Justice Department* as a "Special Government Employee." And it worked. He got the pardon, and she got the money. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/20/u...

A political party is a network of factions that negotiate a policy agenda through the nominations process, and then seek to win elections to implement that negotiated agenda in government

The most remarkable thing is that Jan Crawford, chief legal correspondent for CBS News, thought that El-Sayed explaining the importance of freedom of religion in the Constitution *proved Tommy's point*, which was that El-Sayed is a terrorist sympathizer. Because he believes in THE CONSTITUTION

The last big bonanza of FEC filings before the election has come in! My top takeaway: the legal framework we’ve had since Watergate for limiting the corrupting influence of money in elections is close to dead, with a stark divide between the two parties emerging in how they fundraise.

It's one thing for a sitting president to do some midterm campaign appearances. It's a step further for cabinet secretaries to do campaign stops, but infrequent. The degree to which Trump drags half the cabinet around with him, and also makes them show up in the Oval 2x/week is wildly unprecedented.

It makes sense for Dems to start building the case against Rubio. He's the front-runner for the Republican nomination. Vance will be seen as too much more-Trump+lacks skills. Assuming big D wins this year, the 2028 R contest will probably be Rubio and 1-4 candidates/factions we can't now foresee

It is remarkable how many Dems in competitive races are not doing the squishy bipartisanship tapioca routine and are instead just letting rip with these guys are a bunch of evil goddamned nazis who want to take all your rights and are also corrupt as fuck. It’s reading the room, I suppose.

Very excited for this book.

In a way, it's useful to be reminded that Hastert's abuses became known b/c the W Bush-era FBI noticed he was "violating banking laws." Is there any chance that if Kash Patel's FBI spotted Mike Johnson or another Trump loyalist rep making fishy transactions that they would follow that lead?

In two years we've gone from a standard where the President's budget proposal was a set of suggestions Congress would ignore to where Congressional appropriations are now a set of suggestions the President ignores.

The real absurdity of Huckabee Sanders re-upping old welfare tropes is that welfare (TANF) barely exists, especially in Southern states. There were 729 families on TANF in Arkansas last year and by definition, no childless young men. Less than 2% of the families in poverty in AK are on TANF.

This is a fascinating observation.

I guess I'm going to see every possible pun on my last name today. That's OK--it was worth it.

When they get back in power, Democrats need to go all-in on higher education. We need a campaign of reinvestment in public universities across the country that makes the Morrill Land-Grant Act look like nothing by comparison *and* a GI Bill of Rights-style program of tuition grants.

The election campaigns worth investing in, as a normal donor, are the ones you hadn't thought about before yesterday. NC leg, for example. That's a general rule, but especially this year as the "leans D" line moves quickly. But all those Ds will have *enough* money.

years ago, my colleague Steve Teles and @mschmitt9.bsky.social wrote what I think is still the definitive piece on how to think about this - hewlett.org/wp-content/u...

One of the reasons Trump is doubling down on AI is it has become essential to his administration's campaign to weaponize the administrative state. www.csmonitor.com/Environment/...

notice how these people who were formerly all-in on the mythical power of ideological moderation have changed their tack and entire organizational orientation after discovering the wisdom of the ancients that most voters are not ideological at all. now it’s all about “heterodoxy.”

Everyone's dunking on the disenfranchised Vineyard summer-er, but I'm struggling with the idea that people who hate Bill de Blasio, Eric Adams and Zohran Mamdani with equal passion would be voting in the Democratic primary in the first place. If you hate most Democrats, there's a party for you...

Been wanting to write this piece for years. My magnum opus on not using the term "the working class." newrepublic.com/article/2155...

As polls continue to show a big midterm advantage for Dems, reupping my piece about why some midterms just change the numbers, while others have had more transformational effects on the winning party and on politics generally. markschmitt.substack.com/p/making-mid...

Something about the way VandeHei talks about the AI threat here reminds me of the way people like him talked about "the deficit" or "the debt" in the Obama era--a huge abstract thing that all *serious* people must focus on, to the exclusion of any democratic debate about other priorities.

I found this guide to the political and ideological factions around AI extremely useful and accessible (from the perspective of an outsider without fixed views).

From my outsider perspective I'd have some nitpicks, but the essentials are correct and important. "Like any democracy, the composition and leadership of these bodies are determined by whomever shows up." That's the deep, serious, for-real democracy we've built and is under threat now.

When I and others talk about parties being *permeable* - this is exactly what we're talking about. "I started with a Google search... I was elected to Post Seat Holder by a voice vote of everyone in the room at my third business meeting."

Especially as broadcast ads become less significant, the difference between politicians who avoid many of their constituents (Comer and other GOP, but also Fetterman, Haley Stevens in her walk-away videos) and those who will go anywhere, talk to anyone, and can take tough questions will become key.

Back in the blog era, I used to joke (because it was true) that conservative bloggers had one thing that progressives lacked: clients.

So many of these writers, entire sections, and at times outlets are not engaged in serious writing or thinking. "The Case for Reparations" and "The 1619 Project" remain excellent works of journalism. I am not sure either would have been published today in the outlets where they appeared.

The U.S. has one of the widest age gaps between legislators and the people they represent in the world. New America's Oscar Pocasangre breaks down America's gerontocracy means for democracy. 🗞️ Read the @protectdemocracy.org + New America report: https://go.newamerica.org/age-divide-gerontocracy-5

I'm cranking the Substack back up this week. New post on why some midterms just shift the numbers in Congress, and others have lasting consequences, and the model for Dems to do more than just win numerical majorities. markschmitt.substack.com/p/making-mid...

It's a bad system, perhaps the only idea genuinely and unambiguously worse than traditional FPTP and party primaries. I'm an electoral reform nerd and I would vote against it. California's very likely to repeal it soon, it's been such a complete failure.

If Mitch McConnell is actually able to show up in the Senate in three months, GOP might be able to cause a lot of harm in the lame-duck session.

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

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...

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.

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.