Democracy Affordability Security Is a solid three leg stool.

I described the entire GOP as vapor locked at this point. They've been conditioned to only do what Donald wants but Donald is pretty much non-functioning now.

So Trump and the GOP, fresh off a massive electoral rout, are digging in behind starving people and kicking millions off health care? Make it make sense

Trump says, End the filibuster, pass all these voting restrictions, and we will lock in Republican power forever. “You’re not supposed to admit openly that you want to do these voting restrictions in order to rig the elections in your favor and create one-party rule.”

Interesting…

This is why you're seeing (like in Indiana) sitting GOP electeds not being willing to push gerrymandering further; more GOP districts by the math means making the existing ones weaker. In this environment, it'll be hard to get an existing GOPer to willingly make his own election more competitive

This.

This is very important from @gregsargent.bsky.social. When the people drawing a gerrymander get too greedy, they can put a lot of their own seats in danger in anything like a wave election. And if there is a 2026 wave, it won’t be Republican.

Crucial thing to watch: The Dem blowout wins suggest it'll be way more risky for GOPers to gerrymander, because the GOP safer seats may become more vulnerable than expected. Rs in those seats will now be very nervous. Exchange on this w/Dem operative Jessica Post: newrepublic.com/article/2028...

Incentives in lib-Dem advocacy/journo/Substack world favor treating 2024 as having great ideological significance (durable victory for/realignment toward Trumpism) that party must atone for. Those incentives, which apply across ideological spectrum, prevent reassessment to counterproductive degree.

The dynamic below explains the mindset of handful of Senate Dems still looking to surrender to Republicans by voting to fund the MAGA run government based on a promise of a vote to extend aca subsidies. It’s pathetic but thankfully majority of Sen Dem caucus is holding firm.

This is very good framing from @gelliottmorris.com. It adds more data to what I've been arguing. Would only add that *attacking Trump* produced these reversals among nonwhite working class (see my piece and thread below). www.gelliottmorris.com/p/trumps-win...

"Say he's an unpopular and failing president who's wrecking the economy and that voters delivered him a resounding repudiation."

On some level, the basic posture of some Dems (not all) is still fearful and tentative. Some seem afraid to say their big wins were driven even *partly* by Trump. Why? Say he's an unpopular and failing president who's wrecking the economy and that voters delivered him a resounding repudiation.

Ha well the gerrymandering one is already not going well

How soon before he attempts to totally cancel voting in America?

Trump's new response to epic GOP losses? Pushing Rs to end early and mail voting entirely. Rather than course correct, the answer is: Gerrymander GOP states, make voting much harder, rig midterms. On the pod, Dem operative Jessica Post is so good on all this: newrepublic.com/article/2028...

Sincerely wondering how much of a distribution effect staying on twitter is having on reporters, pundits and consultants. Their takes, spin and advice seen steeped in a non-reality.

Sherrill was hammering “liberty and prosperity,” the NJ state motto — which is a very flexible and nonpartisan message for Dems. Freedom from corruption, kidnappings, speech crackdowns, etc, and a chicken or at least an affordable dozen eggs in every pot

Yes, excellent point. Mikie Sherrill's use of the "liberty and prosperity" slogan is really important. It captures this emerging Dem politics of the Trump 2.0 era very well.

Great thread. From part 8: "The ... narrative that Dems must choose between anti-Trump and affordability politics reflects a broad reluctance to accept that Trump is really unpopular."

Print this out and nail it to the doors of every County Democrat official in your state.

"There’s a weird tendency in the discourse to treat attacking Trump as evading “real” issues working-class voters care about. But I looked at ads from the winning campaigns: They attacked Trump *and* they addressed material concerns. Because this is *his* economy!" This is an excellent read. 👇

Great post systematically dismantling the “ZOMG dems must moderate” bullshit being shoveled by the NYT and others.

👇THIS "the Spanberger-Sherrill-Mamdani axis ... hint at the outlines of a broad, emerging Democratic coalition for the Trump 2.0 era. It can and should be organized around both anti-Trump and affordability politics. Because they are often deeply complementary or even one and the same"

Some good takes here:

Federal judge orders Trump's masked stormtroopers to stop waging war on Americans:

This is a must read from @gregsargent.bsky.social about the power of running against both Trump personally and on what the pundits like to call “the real issues”. That combination proved crucial especially among working class voters. Check it out. Nice shout out to @jamellebouie.net as well

Wicked good article. Democrats in leadership and strategic planning need to read it.

This is the rational endpoint of “the democrats must keep a narrow focus on eg Healthcare and not raise the salience of eg pogroms of ethnic terror carried out by a massive and expanding secret police program” btw. This is why I said this was stupid, racist, and shortsighted to begin.

Many incentive structures in lib-Dem world strongly favor the overinterpretation of 2024 (Ds suck/too lefty/woke) and strongly discourage the more balanced interpretation (cost of living/Biden age/Trump cultural penetration). Everyone in that world knows this is how it works. They'll never admit it.

The electoral maps infested with all those red arrows had everyone freaking out, but it wasn't a forever rightward turn: sure, the Worst People are in power, and 30% of the country is in a MAGA cult, but everyone else? Just wants a normal, functioning country without all the chaos and cruelty.

The big wins should lead Dems and certain writers to revisit whether they overinterpreted 2024. MAGA coalition is more fragile than it seemed. Their interpretation is now actively counterproductive. On the pod, @alexshephard.bsky.social is great on need to reassess: newrepublic.com/article/2027...

Looking at this a bit more closely, this guy won PRECISELY BECAUSE he raised the "salience" of immigration via attacking ICE raids, and this won by a sizable margin in one of the most important swing counties of all, Bucks County in Pennsylvania.

Maybe, just maybe, opposing a performatively sadistic autocrat who has, literally, declared war on parts of the nation he was elected to lead is good politics?

"People really, really don’t like [Trump's damaging policies]. Democrats won by campaigning hard against them, and by promising a better alternative. Democrats should say so, loudly and proudly."

Please note this: Raising the "salience" of immigration actually worked in Dems' favor in one of the most important swing counties in the country. This is more grist for the idea that attacking Trump is succeeding among the nonwhite working class (see thread below).

This.

Too many Dem strategists both feed the NYT these bogus narratives or believe them Best thing some of them could do would be stop talking to each other and go canvass with state leg candidates. Listen to some actual voters. Same for pundits. And always read @gregsargent.bsky.social

People on the far right are literally citing the fact that a lot of women voted for Democrats, and instead of saying, "hmm, maybe we should try to rethink how not to alienate them," they're saying, "let's repeal their right to vote." Via @aselrod.bsky.social

I'd say that Trump's all-stick-no-carrot style of despotism rather broadly connects the democracy and the economic argument; anyway if you're not out there saying that authoritarianism makes us all financially poorer off, maybe politics isn't your thing

Running against a bad, unpopular president doing bad, unpopular things works. Thinking a bad, unpopular president is not worth talking about—one narrow election is forever, he’s magic, no one cares—is ridiculous. Shouldn’t need saying, but here we are, so it’s good @gregsargent.bsky.social does.

Immigration is good.

100% correct. The Dem ads about Trump weren't just "orange man bad." They were: I'm focused on lowering costs while my GOP opponent is serving Trump, who is raising costs with tariffs, canceling infrastructure, etc.

Exactly this: “Trump's consolidation of authoritarian power is inseparable from the economic carnage he's unleashed.”

The dramatic repudiation of Trump this week wrecks a number of absurd narratives the media has pushed lately. In the runup to the election, NYT pieces kept telling us Dems were overly obsessed with attacking Trump. That dumb idea now lies in ruins. 1/ (new piece) newrepublic.com/article/2027...

"The results wreck the argument from some prominent centrist commentators that Demts should react to 2024 by accepting that they lost the culture and need to compromise on core values to win again." Good @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social on the overreading of 2024: www.arcdigital.media/p/democrats-...

This is superb

This is a particularly strong @gregsargent.bsky.social piece, but this is my fear. Attacking Trump + econ codes as being kind of left, and a lot of media and substackers have built their identities around being not left, and their recent arguments have all been that Dems are too far left. So this -

Yes. A lot of people are posing as the True Blunt Realists About Why Trump Won, so they must always be in opposition to those who they cast as Delusional About Why Trump Won. Attacking Trump for them codes as "not admitting Trump won because we suck/we're too woke," which they have to criticize.