The ways JD Vance could become president: 1) Trump dies in office 2) 2028-29 coup attempt succeeds That’s it

Trump could win because he gave supporters plausible deniability (to themselves, if not to outsiders). He's putting on a show, messing with the media, trolling the left, that's just the way he talks, seriously but not literally, etc. Vance's unabashed, creepy white nationalism doesn't have that.

Bingo. He can't win a national election because he's a repulsive douche. The danger is him inheriting power.

Al Qaeda’s high point came with a cult of personality around Osama bin Laden. His successor, Ayman al Zawahiri, was once described as “a black hole of charisma,” and couldn’t replicate bin Laden’s (relative) success. Not a perfect analogy, but I’ve been thinking about it a bunch lately.

Speaker Mike Johnson Campaigns for Democrats in Upcoming Midterms

As a media story it’s interesting, but easy to explain. Podcast/YouTube “IDW” chats, but on TV. Direct through line of Bari Weiss using her position at NYT to say these are the voices you should be listening to more, then using her position at CBS to say the same about the same people and topics.

Trump Take Bourbon

When Google search launched, people didn’t need to be berated into it. There was no “you better figure out some way to use this.” People just tried it, quickly saw it directed them to information they sought and helped them navigate the internet, and kept going back to use it more. Just sayin’.

Running for office on dismantling ICE would be a good example of touch-the-stove politics. Public opposition probably wasn’t enough when it was mostly warnings. I wish it had been. But now that ICE’s brutality and repression is widespread, undeniable, and in so many social media feeds, it might be.

Tulsi Gabbard was an open Putin sympathizer (Assad sympathizer too) for years before Trump and the GOP Senate put her in charge of the US intel community. Her apparent eagerness to push Russian govt propaganda, including some that’s transparently absurd, is not incidental. It’s why she got the job.

This. We’ve left the sane world behind. Are we going to rebuild structures and processes to reimpose discipline on the discussion of intelligence? Or on [fill in your favorite policy area]?

AD-ROCK: Yo Ebenezer you gotta show re- BEASTIES: MORSE AD-ROCK: Redemption is not a mere matter of Beasties: COURSE MIKE D: We’ll show you Bob Cratchit’s not a lazy BEASTIES: MOOCHER MCA: We’re Christmas Past MIKE D: Christmas Present BEASTIES: AND CHRISTMAS FUTURE

Nothing to see here, just a right wing hyper-nationalist government going to their party’s youth event sponsored by a group with a martyred leader they’ve pledged to avenge, recruiting people to join their masked police force devoted to removing auslanders from ze homeland.

The gall to treat the 2024 election like it was a binding referendum on American culture, a lasting “vibe shift” to which others must accommodate, then within a year proclaim the cultural change over, as if a bystander, not an active contributor manufacturing vibe shifts by overdetermining results.

US seized another tanker carrying Venezuelan oil, this one not already on the sanctions list for Russian oligarchs and Iran. Panamanian flagged and belongs to a legal, China-based oil trader. Unclear what US will do with the cargo, but this looks like at least a partial blockade, an act of war.

Data can be very useful for politics. It’s a shame how much that concept has become associated with public figures who use data poorly, forcing what sure looks like preconceived personal preferences, and in ways that don’t reflect how voters, especially swing and sometimes voters, actually behave.

REVEALED: Picture of Bill Clinton hanging out with a serial sex offender.

My seven-year-old has been able to identify pictures of an elephant for years. Even knows what noise they make. And he hasn’t prided himself on that ability in a while.

“The New York Times contacted Ms. Farmer about a report stamped with the date of Sept. 3, 1996. She broke down in tears. “I’ve waited 30 years,” she said. “I can’t believe it. They can’t call me a liar anymore.”

I am a bit taken aback how many powerful people didn't realize that Trump taking office was an inflection point marking the zenith and downturn of "antiwoke" and not the dawn of their glorious era. Anyone who has been alive more than a few years has seen an oversaturation and then backlash cycle.

Now the craziness of Sen. Mike Lee about enlisting "privateers" to get a "letter of marque" and go after drug traffickers themselves makes more sense. It's not national interest, even if misguided. It's an effort to get already-existing mercenaries—sorry, sorry, PMCs—to get money from the US govt.

Question: When the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights division tweets out a false statement about an individual that results in them being barraged with death threats based on their religion and ethnicity, which governmental agency would look into whether that student’s Civil Rights had been infringed?

"American institutions appeared to systematically disfavor younger white men for employment, preferment and advancement." "Appeared," you say. How interesting. What's this appearance based on? If entirely facts, one would cite them. So how did some of these younger white men come to this impression?

Even if one believes that politicians should only do what wins elections, virtue be damned, it's quite a leap to insist that what wins elections in the US today, the biggest thing American voters are crying out for, is more positivity about climate change, and less green energy even as it's cheaper.

Weird how this keeps happening.

At the risk of pointing out what should be obvious, antisemitism looks like chanting "Jews shall not replace us!," accusations of dual loyalty, Sieg Heils at political events, the recent Bondi Beach shooting, and things along those lines, not like celebrating Hanukkah with Mandy Patinkin and family.

All the “good” stuff is there’s to claim forever all the bad stuff must be forgotten to move forward.

Takes halfway through this article to get there but, yeah its not just Fuentes preaching blood and soil politics, the most prominent person doing that, quite explicitly, is JD Vance (like Vivek, a Peter Thiel protegee) www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/u...

“Witkoff has declined multiple offers from the CIA for a briefing on Russia.”

not that the present economic picture is rosy, but i do think that popular culture — and specifically nostalgia bait television — is a big part of the reason that our public memory of the 1970s, 1980s and even 1990s seems to miss the real economic pain that marked each of those decades.

Amazing how we're seven Superman movies in—not counting Justice League—and the 7th is the first to do Brainiac. Zod is in three movies! Superman II and Man of Steel, plus The Flash. Though maybe filmmaking technology has caught up to comics/cartoons imagination. A 1970s Brainiac wouldn't be great.

I thought "respect" meant treating others as essentially equal to oneself, with regard for who they are and where they came from. I don't think "respect" means "give me everything I demand, no matter how unjustified, what's yours is mine and I'm taking it, don't object." So, uh, agree to disagree.

In 2020, the mercenaries — sorry, the private military corporation — of Silvercorp USA decided to try to overthrow the Venezuelan government. They didn't make it off the beach. A few killed, the others arrested. Private orgs attempting war, law enforcement, and other statecraft usually goes badly.

The trap Trump now faces - the Epstein redactions will only fuel conspiracy theories even when they are innocuous. Our 2016 JEPS article: "Classified or Coverup? The Effect of Redactions on Conspiracy Theory Beliefs" www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I do want to clarify that, while there is absolutely no question that this change is catastrophic, immunization requirements are set by states and AHIP has previously committed to covering vaccines recommended until the current ACIP recommendations through the end of 2026.

This piece on Cassandras and anti-alarmists by @polphilpod.bsky.social is well done, and I bet some Bluesky users will see themselves in.

"Look what They took from You" politics, based on an imagined fantasy of the past, is really unhealthy for a country.

US and Venezuela both reportedly jamming GPS signals in the Caribbean now. Escalating series of measures short of war can work only if there's a concrete, actionable demand. If you do X, we'll back off, stop doing Y, and won't start doing Z. But there's no concrete US demand on Venezuela. At all.

Americans in their 20s and 30s may not feel that they’re richer than their equivalents 60 years ago, but they’re objectively wrong. It’s fascinating how important it is to some people not to say “I’m struggling, it’s hard” or “I need help”—objectively true—but to instead insist they have it worse.

What Republicans are doing is projecting. Everyone’s approach to leading politicians is worshipful cult-of-personality, where voters take it as a personal affront to themselves if the politician is held to the most basic standards of law and morality, right? Right?

Insane that these antivax horrors, which bring avoidable suffering onto millions of people, including a lot of children, follow the biggest, fastest, most successful vaccine roll out in history. RFK Jr., Trump, the GOP Senate, and “MAHA” evidently think the problem with COVID was not enough death.

The US is at war in the Middle East again. This time in Syria (again). It’s in response to a real attack (unlike US Caribbean boat strikes) by ISIS (who Trump said was totally defeated). Hopefully goes better than in Yemen earlier this year against the Houthis, where US achieved nothing then quit.

Controversial opinion (on this website at least): The 2020s weren't the first time in history America had problems. Nor the first time young people had reason to feel pessimistic about the future. In fact, false nostalgia insisting that everyone had it so easy back in the day is part of the problem.

A political environment in which a decisive number of voters are mad all the time and think everything's awful, no matter current material conditions or personal experience, presages years of swinging back and forth, accomplishing nothing, satisfying no one but entrepreneurs of chaos and decline.

Contempt of Congress, contempt for the law, contempt for Epstein's victims, contempt for basic human morality, contempt for their own supporters, contempt for the American people. Not merely covering up Trump and associates' awful actions, but being really obvious, throwing it in everyone's faces.

Great piece from Paul Musgrave on how Trump is, in essence, taking America private:

Takeaway from that "What Do Gen Z Republicans Think?" piece is not what participants said, but how the publication behind it—City Journal from the Manhattan Institute, the think tank that employs Chris Rufo—summarizes them: Economically comfortable, driven by boredom, see politics as entertainment.

Change “here’s why liberalism is inherently bad” arguments to “here’s why these relatively small number of people I interact with or heard about annoy me” and it makes more sense. The personal grievances don’t work as sweeping civilizational critiques, because they’re personal grievances.

Giant caveat that the people who talk to outlets for these "what do voters think" pieces are not representative. That said, this makes me reiterate my controversial opinion that Trump voters are adults with agency who made a choice. So when someone expresses admiration for Hitler, believe them.