Thread on Senate nuking of supermajority cloture for their nomination reform resolution:

Stop scrolling and post two characters who bring you joy and happiness.

Some thoughts on Trump, power, Epstein, coalitions open.substack.com/pub/goodpoli...

Geeky question for Congress geeks: has anyone tried to validate the idea that the DW-Nominate 2nd dimension has started picking up a cross-party establishment/antiestablishment thing in the House? Or published anything that works from this assumption?

Our article introducing CampaignView is now officially online! Check it out here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Really good overview of (1) what we know about when/how voters punish members of Congress on big votes and (2) what that might mean for the OBBB from @mattngreen.bsky.social

Don't Let The Pigeon Fly The Plane!

House GOP pay-fors more draconian for tax cuts this year compared to 2017 TCJA. Primary 2017 revenue raiser was🧂🧢 (after "border tax" killed). This time, slimmer GOP seeks more costly tax cuts & more politically salient revenue raisers (Medicaid/SNAP/ACA/Pell✂️). Pulls bill much farther to the right.

This is excellent, and it hit home on a day when I struggled to explain what "broadcast TV" was/is to my fifth-grade kid. musgrave.substack.com/p/what-the-k...

Jan. 2023: McCarthy elected Speaker on a promise that bills would cover only a single subject. Jan. 2025: Johnson elected Speaker on a promise to make everything into one omnibus.

Oooh--it's free-range C-SPAN camera day again!

Congressional parties put significant effort into messaging around votes. Members care a lot about explaining their votes. What happens when the party tries to message explanations--how does the party decide which positions to explain? I use new archival data to study this in Party Politics 🧵

Very good summary of House GOP leadership problems from Josh Huder: the Speaker leads a chamber that is still complex, institutionalized, and majoritarian, but House Republicans have made necessary institutional experience a "liability not an asset."

Yikes. (1) Are they going to do this under a rule? (2) If so, can a rule to do this even get out of Rules and pass? (3) And if so, is the rule going to join the bills that pass or leave the Senate to deal with three separate measures? bsky.app/profile/news...

Just got an email from Wiley thanking me for citing an AJPS article in an article I published two years ago, so I've got that going for me this morning.

How does the media report on Senate procedure, and how does this reporting affect public opinion? I look at these two questions in a new piece in PRQ 🧵 journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

This political scientist strongly recommends placing your election yard sign at least 15 feet away from your fake tombstones, skeletons, and other spooky decorations to avoid message confusion.

The GOP is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Contract with America. Curious about where it came from, who it represented, and how it affected House Republican actions? I've got you covered: www.cambridge.org/core/element...

Interesting reporting on candidates' use of AI in communicating their positions to voters (from Bucknell polisci grad Jaxon White). www.witf.org/2024/09/24/a...

I've been teaching the prisoners' dilemma for 20 years and today is the first day that, when asked what they would do, a student finally gave the obvious answer: demand a lawyer.

Congress folks: My review of Life in the Middle by Neil Chaturvedi is up in Party Politics. The book is a very persuasive (and timely!) argument for why Senate "moderates" are often *not* power brokers driving centrist outcomes. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

165 Democrats (81%) voted for the rule on the foreign aid package. Policy obviously drove this, but it's worth noting how weird it is to see a modern-era minority party fully embracing the message of "we are helping the majority party govern" and (prob. correctly) seeing electoral benefit in it.

Sure, new Taylor Swift this weekend is exciting and all, but it can't compare to watching a Speaker without a procedural majority trying to pass four controversial bills with different coalitions under one rule, apparently to package as one bill for the Senate . . .

@dcinbox.bsky.social's data is an amazing research and teaching resource, and this is a great piece summarizing some of what it shows:

$2.13/hr + tips as a busser and then as a server in the early 1990s. In other news, the federal minimum cash wage for tipped employees in 2024 is . . . still $2.13/hr.

Pretty strong ends-against-the-middle vote on TikTok: D opponents (-.44) significantly more liberal than supporters (-.37) and R opponents (.63) significantly more conservative than supporters (.50) on DW-Nominate first dimension.

Interesting: The 2023 CQ party unity data shows the House GOP with the lowest rate of majority victory on party unity votes (63.7%) since the Dems in the first Reagan Congress (who frequently split as conservative Dems supported Reagan).

Dear Ms. Swift, I write with enthusiasm to apply for the position of Chair of the Department of Tortured Poets. While I have not previously led a Tortured Poets Department, my four years as chair of a department of Sometimes-Beleaguered Political Scientists makes me very well qualified to . . .

Shameless self-promotion of the 2023 work thing I was most excited about: this short book on where congressional parties' election agendas come from and how they relate to the policies Congress makes.

Training new academics isn't part of the gig when you work at a liberal arts college, but one of the best parts of the job is getting to watch a few amazing undergraduates go on to become great scholars and teachers. Congratulations Emily!!! bsky.app/profile/emil...

Justice O’Connor was the last person to serve on #SCOTUS who had ever run for (and been elected to) government office. I often wonder what today’s Court would look like with justices with broader local, state, and/or federal governmental experiences before joining the bench…

Think Ron Swanson is the only one who can learn a thing about responsiveness? Think again. (Don't lie. You laughed at this scene. That makes you culpable!) Make up for your sin this Wed, Nov 29 at 3 ET w/ our session on ~responsiveness~ Papers by @elizabethelder.bsky.social & John Wagner

Some thoughts from me on how asking spending bills to bear all of Congress's political conflict is part of what has brought us to a cycle of shutdowns and stopgaps. www.nytimes.com/2023/11/17/o...

Important point: It's not just that the norm of supporting the party nominee on the floor has broken down. It's that the radicals *do not have asks* that can be bargained for. Certainly not realistic ones, and perhaps not any at all.

A very fine example of the "Things I Don't Like Are Unconstitutional" genre: www.nytimes.com/2023/10/19/u...

47 years after its publication, McKelvey’s chaos theorem is having it’s day in the House Republican Conference. The social choice theory states that majority rule decisions in a two-dimensional space are unstable. Any point in the space can be reached through a sequence of majority votes. There …

Good to see Matt Green getting media attention. He is wise on all matters involving the Speakership. www.politico.com/news/magazin...

I mean, a Borda count speaker nomination isn't the *worst* idea I've heard . . .

Had a Good Chat (actually a great chat!) at @goodauth.bsky.social w/ @mollyereynolds.bsky.social @mattglassman312.bsky.social & Ruth Bloch Rubin abt House speakership drama/dilemma. Went deep on 1910 analogy, “MTV,” why McHenry leaves power on the table, & more 🤓 goodauthority.org/news/everyth...

Between "the House doesn't have any power until it elects a Speaker!" and "maybe they will reinstate Kevin McCarthy!" things have gotten so weird/dumb that I feel like we're living out rejected House Of Cards plotlines this week.

Very good overview of the procedure & politics around the motion to vacate from @mattglassman312.bsky.social mattglassman.substack.com/p/procedural...

What would it take for the House to depose its Speaker? The rules of the game matter— including the secret 🤫 list of “speakers-in-waiting”! New @goodauth post on what you need to know (if you are planning a speaker coup or trying to stop one). goodauthority.org/news/what-do...

At what point do we conclude that there is effectively no majority party in the U.S. House of Representatives?