Too many political figures seem trapped in pre-2024 ideas, attitudes and battles, even as MAGA authoritarianism becomes entrenched. All of us, and leaders especially, need to put old grievances aside and focus on saving our democracy.

Ugh. The Schumer wing recruits a septuagenarian whose priority is to preserve the filibuster. The Sanders wing recruits a wholly unvetted populist who apparently didn't realize that he has a Nazi tattoo. Given the two, I pick Mills, but in such a critical time why can't we do better?

No Kings Boston!

Post No Kings, we must IMO move towards a soft economic boycott, especially of the tech giants. Buy less from Amazon, keep your phone longer, shop local as much as possible. CEOs need to see that their cowardice is bad for business.

IMO, political power can’t make people think or believe different things. Our campaigns need to focus on better jobs, lower costs and safer streets for all Americans, and when we win, we need to deliver. Most voters are exhausted by culture wars, class wars and grievance.

If we all cut spending by just 10%, it would send a message to business and political leaders. This Christmas, why not give the gift of resistance?

A best-case scenario, perhaps, is that the oligarch takeover of legacy media will drive Democratic campaigns to finally embrace new outlets and approaches.

In the past 6 days I’ve listened to interviews with Ben Shapiro, Joe Manchin and Spencer Cox; it truly makes me wonder how we can ever feel like one nation again, when our worldviews are so far apart (and these three are all more reasonable than anyone fully of the MAGA right).

The best response to Kirk’s assassination is to work harder at building a world where such events happen less often.

IMO, every Dem response to MAGA provocation must presume that MAGA intends an authoritarian takeover. No more presumptions of good faith or conciliatory language. We should dismiss culture war clickbait for what it is but take every serious action as a step towards autocracy.

Left-populism is not, IMO, the best way to fight far-right populism. For too many, it has been a pipeline to MAGA. I think we need to build a different political consciousness for the left - perhaps our next leader will figure out how to do this.

Dems need to dismiss silliness like the Sydney Sweeney ad kerfluffle for what it is - culture war clickbait. Tell people the truth: no amount of culture war clickbait is going to make your groceries cheaper or help you find a better job.

Could Senate Dems demand (in exchange for votes on a bipartisan budget) changes to Senate rules that require 60 votes to modify the rules, and that block future rescission votes? Or would Thune simply renege on any deal?

No Kings in Coolidge Corner, Brookline MA

IMO we should avoid calling Trump’s outrages “distractions”. We can’t dictate what people find interesting, and it likely comes across as dismissive when we try. Our challenge is to turn the attention he’s stealing against him instead.

My prediction for the feud's endgame

If the two biggest attention trolls in the world are determined to destroy each other, I can only wish them both success

When the agenda is stuck, the economy is sputtering and global politics is ugly, attacking immigrants and wokeness will remind the adoring mob why they love you.

One path forward on cultural issues is to put more power in the hands of states (vs. the Federal government), but we’d somehow need to also ensure that state governments grant similar cultural autonomy to their cities and counties.

Democrats in 2026/28 represent the most ideologically diverse coalition that our republic has ever seen. Surely there is some branding potential here?

The foundation of our economy is trust - trust of rational policymaking, honoring of agreements and fair dealings. Our financial systems have a lot of built-in inertia, but when they collectively cease to trust, things will go very bad very quickly.

Feels like SCOTUS wants to avoid rulings that might provoke the regime into defying the courts - further trashing their legitimacy in order to preserve the appearance of their power.

While many seem to believe that populist rage on the left is what Dems need to regain power, I worry that rage politics is a pipeline straight into MAGA for at least 10-20% of participants. Is there any way to rally our coalition around a positive narrative rather than one of blame and grievance?

Hardcore MAGA voters are lost, and need to find their own way back. Our challenge is with those who voted for Trump because he seemed at the time to be the less bad option. We need to convince such voters that we’re a good choice, and we need to do this in more than just reliably blue districts.

Democracies in theory rely on an educated electorate, but in reality a vote is about identity, prevailing narratives and perceived personal pain. Populist movements and modern media amplify grievance, anger and pain - if we can't find a structural fix for this, democracy cannot survive.

Expect the mad king to lash out with vicious cruelty at someone over the next few days - his ego needs recharging after the humiliation of being forced to back down on tariffs

Hope our former allies understand that the era of US-led cooperation, security, finance & trade is over. MAGA US is transactional, untrustworthy and irrational. If the project of building a better future is to continue, it must be led by others, and the US will play no role.

Nearly finished with "Abundance" by Klein & Thompson. TBH I am underwhelmed. I'm largely sympathetic to the book's message, but there isn't much here that wasn't discussed in book tour podcasts, and the proposed "solutions" amount to little more than "let's try to do better".

Feel that Democrats should not wait for the 2028 presidential campaign to work out what our party represents beyond being anti-MAGA. Is there any way to accelerate this process?

IMO we need to be talking now, loud & often, about red lines that the next funding bill cannot cross. These should be reasonable, simple things that everyone understands and most agree with. And we need to hold the line when Trump/Musk/Johnson try to jam us again.

IMO it's not about shutdown vs. no shutdown. The problem is that we have no real battle plan beyond hoping for the courts to save us while waiting for thermostatic public opinion to give us back the House in 2026.

I’m no longer completely confident that the markets will rein in Trump’s worst impulses. The key to Trump is, who is he trying to impress, vs who does he see as beneath him? Back in 2017-20, he wanted to impress CEOs, Wall Street etc. but now I think it is more about impressing Musk & Putin.

Trump staged an event where Zelensky would sign away mineral rights and agree to end the war via surrender, and it fell apart when Zelensky wouldn't play along. Why did Trump think he would? Most likely - Trump was told Zelensky expected security guarantees but expected to bully him out of this.

The truth is that MAGA wants a leader just like Putin - projecting ruthlessness, virility and dominance; espousing sexual & cultural traditionalism; unabashedly declaring the superiority of “our people” vs others; promising restoration of a mythic past when men were men and our nation was feared.

“Democrat” is a political label whose meaning shifts over time. We of the legacy left, liberals and progressives, should welcome center-right refugees as Democrats and accept that this will change both them and our party. We are united against fascism; let's figure the rest out later.

Not an NYC resident but disappointed with Hochul. How can dithering like this be a political "win"? Who is the pro-dithering constituency?

Are we all waiting for some leader to find their voice (and a platform) to speak out and unify the opposition?

Trump's obsession with making Canada the 51st state might be described appropriately as "CanSchluss"

I keep hearing that Trump will need to "do a deal" with House Dems in order to get a debt ceiling increase, but why wouldn't he just take the "trillion dollar coin" option instead? He could have an actual coin minted with his face on it.

Joe Biden had solid approval right up to the day that Kabul fell to the Taliban. Few American lives actually changed that day, but the gut punch of losing the war was painful enough to turn people against him. Shit happens, and while it make take time, chaos and dysfunction will catch you.

IMO we need some sort of "Rule of Law HQ" on the Web that tracks every illegal move by the regime and summarizes where we are in fighting back. Similar to the various sites that sprang up in early days of COVID tracking cases.

Two things that make Trump II feel so different from Trump I (so far): the full-fledged frontal assault on norms, reason & truth, and the slavish self-abasement of so many business & political leaders. Neither feels like it can be sustained for too long.

So far Trump II is all performative chaos. But at some point we will start to see real-world consequences for rash decisions, incompetent & crank appointments and abandonment of allies. Our challenge is to ensure that Trump and MAGA own 100% of these consequences in the public’s eyes.

We are surrounded by fascists, cranks, grifters and nihilists. But we outnumber them, and even as they try to intimidate and dominate us, they are afraid we will realize how much stronger we are. Let’s celebrate the leaders who stand against them, and hope that this gives courage to others.

When Eliot wrote “Not with a bang, but a whimper”, I wonder if he had in mind the whimper of lapdog Senators and CEOs, yearning for one gesture of affection from a brutal and uncaring master?

In this new era of powerful AI and craven oligarchs, it is going to be a lot harder to know what to trust.

Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal, the Gulf of Mexico - this feels like a tired old game, tossing out bits of insanity to "own" the news cycle and the libs. Perhaps we can't ignore it, but IMO we should see it for what it is - trolling and distraction, at least for now.

It may be that people like the New Orleans truck terrorist are not violent because they were radicalized, but rather seek out radical ideologies that enable them to act out violence that they were already set upon.

Reflecting - my vote for Jimmy Carter in 1980 was my first time voting for anyone in any office.

MAGA infighting is fun to watch but a terrible reminder of how bad the chaos is going to be once they’re back in full power.