The Bulwark

"How do you reconcile the disconnect between the vibes and the polling? What are your outcome scenarios? How do you rank them probabilistically?"

"It is a disturbing and shameful abandonment not only of a would-be ally in need, but of the best and noblest traditions of American foreign policy dating back centuries."

Our Founders understood that despite the relative success of their earlier efforts, the contest between liberty and despotism around the world—and even in the United States—had not ended. Let's not make them spin in their graves next Tuesday.

"Anyone committed to Ukraine’s freedom and sovereignty must be committed to stopping Trump."

"Imagine a mother who would run away—abandoning her children—because she chose a pedophile rapist over her own flesh and blood. And now imagine that woman slithering out from her hole to defame her daughter in the service of helping a cretin."

"I’ve never played a single game of baseball. Not once. Never even threw, or caught, a baseball until I was in college. I have no personal connection to the game....For me, the joy of baseball has been walking with my little boy as he grew."

If you still happened to think that underneath the disgusting rhetoric there were constructive policies for sexual abuse victims, well....

Amy Acton: "I had a pretty rough childhood…My opponent has chosen to exploit, intentionally, this story in a desperate attempt to save his struggling campaign…It's not going to work because decency and compassion still matter to us.”

"Republicans are showing, through their spending and use of Trump, what they think the state of play is. And it’s worse than they ever imagined it could get." Yet the polls suggest less dismal prospects. Which is right?

@johnlegend.bsky.social: "When Vivek Ramaswamy hears of an indicted child abuser who fled the state rather than face charges instead of siding with the victim. He takes the side of the abuser…Do we want a man with this sort of depraved moral compass to lead our state?"

They were preparing for the collapse of America. Instead, their own club is falling apart. A secretive far-right men's group is imploding over Trump, Israel, and the movement's growing extremist infighting. @willsommer.bsky.social dives into the ugly meltdown. lnk.thebulwark.com/4kobYDg?utm_...

Democrats are starting to prepare for what an unexpectedly large midterms win would mean - and demand - for 2028.

RFK: "There's five hundred million Arabs in the world. And yet they don't produce science. They don't win the Nobel Prize. They don't win the Fields Prize. They don't win the Wolf Prize. They don't produce literature."

Well, would you look at that

RFK in Michigan: "Mike Rogers was talking about the Muslim Brotherhood. That's something I can talk about…Islamism, which is the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, took over…That's why you don't see any Muslims, any Arab Muslims winning the Nobel."

Trump in Mississippi: "Nice looking guys, these guys. I wanna wear those cowboy hats. I love those cowboy, I don't know if it works for me. I love the cowboys. I love Texas."

Vance: "Adam Hamilton says that he's a pastor. I can't possibly know what is in the man's heart, but I know the lawgiver in Adam Hamilton's world isn't Moses, it's not Jesus — it's Chuck Schumer."

Rep. Bill Huizenga: "It's bananas right now. My wife told me I can only use that phrase once a day. I told her I had to modify it to only once per meeting. So it is bananas out there right now. It's a family show."

"Watching him stagger toward a humiliating midterm rebuke with his movement seemingly on the brink of collapse, I have to admit it’s hard to feel much pleasure about it all. Instead, I still mostly feel disgust and shame."

Roger Marshall: "Adam Hamilton will let these radical Islams into our country."

Trump: "They were two weeks away from having a nuclear missle...[Iran] had a missile that essentially reached Europe. They weren't supposed to. We said, 'Where the hell did they get that?' And they'd hit our cities. They'd hit San Diego, they'd hit Los Angeles...So somebody had to do it."

"We’re off to the races. Here are a handful of movies I have circled on my calendar as we hit the meaty part of awards season." ICYMI @sonnybunch.bsky.social:

"Nobody asks Mike Rogers why he’s part of a party where leaders seem so willing to impose their faith on society."

"'Wait until you see what we do next year,' border czar Tom Homan boasted earlier this month." Yeah. We can't wait.

"Relative to the disgusting Acton ad, most of these policy choices have gotten scant attention. But they all deliver the same closing message for the midterms: It was never about helping the kids." Let @crampell.bsky.social tell you what they are:

The real challenge for Democrats in expanding the map for 2028 will be figuring out how to build up party infrastructure in more purple and red parts of the country. It would be a good problem to have.

How low is too low for Trump voters? Possibly, Ramaswamy's ad:

Annie Andrews: "I don't know what's so radical about thinking hard-working South Carolinian families shouldn't have to worry about if they can afford to put food on the table...Or what's so radical about thinking all the counties in South Carolina should have an OB-GYN?"

Annie Andrews on Trump's recent comments regarding her: "If calling me names will lower our gas prices and our grocery prices and keep our rural hospitals open, he can call me all the names that he wants. But that's not going to get the job done."

Q: "If you win the Senate and if Nancy Lacore wins...does that mean South Carolina is actually purple?" Annie Andrews: "I think this is just going to be a reset of this hyper-divisive sort of path that we've been on, and this is going to be a rejection of that hyper-partisan era of politics."

"'The people that are making the most blatant comments about sharia appear to present it as if it’s something unified, something like the U.S. Constitution that you could apply 'sharia'—which, from a classical point of view, is really quite laughable.'"

"Here’s a serious question: When is the last time a Republican Senate candidate won a news cycle?"

Trump’s deportation force is giving ordinary people new ways to threaten, torment, and punish their neighbors. And sadly, some of them are making the most of the opportunity.

Vance: "Remember in 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine and gas prices skyrocketed. They skyrocketed, by the way, far higher than they are today...They skyrocket every time some tin pot dictator decides to throw a tantrum."

Beyond that Amy Acton ad, "there are thousands of other children and domestic violence victims whose lives have been made materially worse by Trump policies—and, in most cases, for no obvious electoral advantage."

Vance: "We're self-confident men in the Trump-Vance administration. The president's been noticing a lot about the physiques of everybody lately."

For now, and probably for the next two years, the United States is as likely to be on the side of despotism as liberty. The struggle our Founding Fathers envisioned is still real, and close to home.

El-Sayed on Trump's cognitive tests: "I went to medical school...In my neurology unit, I would have to give that MoCA exam...The only people that you give a MoCA test to are people who you worry may have cognitive deficits. By definition, if you're taking one of those tests, something's wrong."