The fundamental idea of Ezra’s is that it is good and correct that the broad left should always and forever approach politics from a defensive crouch, first and foremost prioritizing not offending the True Americans of the right.

Trump and his whole cult lie and say he won a world historic blowout victory and a shitload of the media might *say* it’s false but they *act like* it’s true.

It’s very important for MAGA to constantly harp on the idea that they *always* have “a mandate” - and that any Dem wins are definitely *not* that and their preferred approach of saying it often is repeated enough by others to become “truthy” and thus believed by the ill-informed

CNN et al don’t have to swallow it. They CHOOSE to. THAT is the monster to slay.

It's honestly why I harp on media framing so, so often. People really underestimate how much it influences everything.

separate from everything, the idea that 2020 was a squeaker but 2024 represents a historical mandate will simply be the death of me

Certainly, Dems need to find ways to reach voters who’ve abandoned them and to be competitive in states that have gone red. But this brings us back to the reality that Dems are not the only ones with agency. Trump was a weak candidate in many ways, but also had a formidable coalition behind him.

Again, I see the politics of most of Clinton’s campaign and Biden’s presidency very differently from what Ezra suggests here, drawing from one part of one nuanced speech as symbolic of the attitude of Democratic leaders.

I’ve heard Ezra now twice take one part of Hilary Clinton’s “deplorables” speech, without mentioning the rest of it, which does exactly what Ezra calls for Dems to do. I recognize that we have a politics of sound bits, but in full context the speech hits differently than he suggests.

I take issue with this as well in that a lot of Biden’s policies—passed in Congress overwhelmingly with Democratic votes— were designed to help people in red states. The communication wasn’t great and this strategy did not succeed but I don’t see this as evidence of “writing off” a lot of people.

First, the claim that Democrats got crushed in 2024 is not accurate; it was, in fact, a fairly close election historically. Second, it ignores the global anti-incumbency direction of all elections that year. Third, it attributes undo agency to one side—“How did we let these people back into power?”

For people wondering what she said afterwards

What did she say after that, Ezra Klein? What was the next thing she said in this speech you say you have been obsessing about, that you are organizing your current theory of politics around?

On the first day in office, this President pardoned actual violent insurrectionists who stormed our Capitol. Now he’s making up shit in Portland to justify using the military AGAINST the American people. Real POS behavior from this TEMU dictator.

I guess my point here is that MAGA has become totally unashamed to admit that they are racist, but somehow the rest of society has become ashamed to call them racist. Which gives them this incredible advantage of being able to express openly racist ideas and never be called on it

War ravaged Portland

👇🎯 We are where we are as a country because not enough people on the right half of the political spectrum cared about democracy & the rule of law above all the other things the way @billkristolbulwark.bsky.social clearly does. When the chips were down, he stood up. We need more to follow his lead.

Nothing makes folks here on Bluesky angrier than rightly noting that what we need to solve our authoritarianism problem & have a durable democracy is a center-right pro-democracy party full of Bill Kristols, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Still the only two solutions. Democrats cannot solve this problem alone & should not be expected to:

All the Pundits spending all of their time on What Democrats Must Do should be spending all of their time asking the Lisa Murkowskis & Mitt Romneys why they aren’t following Bill Kristol’s lead & why they continue to ally with/enable the far right authoritarians & have done so since 2016.

And no, before we do this again, the Democrats are not already a center-right/conservative party

And if you watched or read any of these stories, comment 👮‍♀️(police officer) because it’s so nice to see another Dem holding them accountable for their actions. Our voices are our superpower, but only when we use them! 9/

Raise your hand if you knew a single one of these stories before this post… Yeah, I figured it would be that few. THAT is why I do this. If you made it to the end of this post, comment 🪑(chair) cause it’s amazing that for a bipartisan process our Dem aren’t given a seat at the table. 8/

As you may or may not know, the character limit on blue sky, makes it impossible to tell the whole story, so please check out the full article for all the quotes and analysis I couldn’t add ariellaelm.substack.com/p/daily-dems... 7/

@repnellie.bsky.social Joined the entire Dem NJ Delegation, House and Senate, in a letter to the R chairmen demanding an investigation into why the fuck @repsherrill.bsky.social private info, from her military file was given to an ally of her gubernatorial opponent by the National Archives. 6/

@repgwenmoore.bsky.social Is in DC right now. Yes, it’s technically recess, but Rosh Hashanah ended on Wed, if this were normal times, and the government was about to shut down, they’d be back now, so she is. She also did a press availability with Wisconsin news outlets explaining everything 5/

As you wanna really dig in, which you should, and then you should send it to everyone you know, here’s the link. 4/

@democrats-appropriations.house.gov Put together a timeline showing how this shutdown has been inevitable based on R refusal to let Ds be part of, what is supposed to be, a bipartisan process, since the day Trump was sworn in. I can’t properly articulate how phenomenal this timeline is. 3/

Repping the Rep @foushee.house.gov Had a telephone town hall on Monday. One woman asked how she was fighting back against racism. Her answer is just another reminder of how many Reps we have fighting like hell, but we don’t know about it cause they’re not as flashy as some others. 2/

DAILY DEMS DOING THE WORK, MAKING NOISE, AND FIGHTING BACK Day 244 Some days I just love what I do so much, and today is one of them. If it weren’t for me you wouldn’t know any of this, which is heartbreaking, but I am I am sharing it, and now you don’t have an excuse to say you didn’t know. 1/

If you’re screaming at Democrats to DO SOMETHING, but refused to pay attention to what they are doing, and shit on them even when they do exactly what you want, and won’t praise a single Democrat until they fix everything, this is what you sound like.

The thing is the press isn't yet approaching the Republicans in congress as if Trump is their problem to do something about yet, so they get away with pretending all of this is normal.

BREAKING: The FBI has fired agents photographed kneeling during a 2020 racial justice protest that followed the death of George Floyd, AP sources say.

A thing that's rarely noted about the made-up "deploragate" (a variation of the Dean Scream) is Clinton's precise definition of deplorable: "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic." By excoriating her accurate statement, legacy media is implying these ideas are not deplorable.

If we are not citizens by birthright, we are not citizens in any useful sense at all

Another old-school antivaxxer joins RFK Jr's CDC.

but basically anybody, ever, working in this space ends every tweet in a tweet chain with "and EVERY SINGLE DEMOCRAT is doing this and worse than this, and this is why America is the source of all the world's ills", it's EXTREMELY fucking tiring

the frustrating thing is there actually *are* some specific Democrats who are signalling willingness to throw immigrants under the bus and it would be REALLY FUCKING USEFUL to be able to target and talk about them and why their strategy is bad and worse-than-counterproductive

Treated as an assassination? Charlie Kirk. Not treated as an assassination? Melissa Hortman.

This is trivially untrue, but because Stancil is committed to a single theory of power—posting—the fact that Democrats talking about the Adams corruption thing did not end up in the collapse of the Trump administration, it doesn't mean his theory is wrong, if just means they didn't actually try.

How will SCOTUS justify none of this applying to the next president? Easily: it never justified why it applied to Trump. No written opinions, no precedent to contradict. It's an even cleaner perversion of the law for its special boy than "our consideration is limited to the present circumstances."

The government's case here depends upon the Supreme Court being willing to ignore the actual text of the Impoundment Control Act. The govt says the ICA prohibits grantees from suing. The ICA explicitly says it does not limit "claims or defenses of any party to litigation concerning any impoundment.”

Yet again, the GOP supermajority steps in to allow Trump to break the law. The case will be decided on the merits later, it says, when the damage cannot be undone. But in the meantime it is giving the Trump administration a green light to engage in impoundment.

So Congress no longer has power of the purse.

It's called a Pocket Rescission because they're in his pocket

until there's a Republican congress and a Democratic president, in which case it will suddenly be very important. the country cannot function as a real democracy with corrupt, partisan serial liars controlling the Supreme Court; it has to be the first priority of a new administration.

So, I don't think we really needed any extra confirmation but the SCOTUS majority's position is just that Trump is an elected God-King who gets to do as he pleases by divine right of Trump?

But that's not Jeffries fault. Or the Democrats. It's the media's and it's the same reason why Harris rallies were preempted to show empty podiums. And it'll be the same for EVERY Democrat, no matter how progressive they are or how popular. Unless Dems start becoming more pro-corporation.