It's quite common for aging leaders to groom hand-picked successors who aren't capable of breaking with their methods and goals. In practice, the successors function as an extension of corrupt, broken, sclerotic geriatric rule. Jeffries is a product of the gerontocracy -- not a break from it.

Most Democrats have chronic lawyer brain. They feel compelled to complicate straightforward political fights with arcane, legalistic, arduous, and unnecessary procedures. There is nothing in the constitution, the law, House rules, or history that requires any of this of impeachment.

The position on impeachment is wholly incompatible with fighting fascism, holding Trump accountable, and being a minimally competent opposition party.

Democrats remain unapologetically pro-corruption.

"Enjoy your media cycle" is the perfect distillation of the Democratic Party's institutional contempt for: -their own voters -comms and media -fighting -taking action -reality-based political strategy -holding anyone accountable -their jobs as elected officials www.axios.com/2025/12/11/i...

Democrats already own Cuellar's corruption. House Democratic appropriators will now hold a secret vote on whether to empower that corruption and make Cuellar's lawless, anti-immigrant, Trumpy policy agenda their own. www.politico.com/news/2025/12...

Fighting and ending fascism means -- among many things -- taxing billionaires and hundred-millionaires out of existence. How many Democrats in either chamber of Congress would vote to do that right now? You can count them on one hand, maybe two.

Centrists: Follow the polls and do what's popular! Polls: Abortion rights are overwhelmingly popular, and far more popular than Democrats, especially in swing districts and red states. Centrists: No, not that!

“How did American democracy backslide?” “Two ways: gradually, then suddenly” Trump is the culmination of GOP trends that have been accelerating since at least Ford’s pardon, then Reagan’s rogue pre-presidency foreign policy & Iran-Contra, through everything in the GWB admin. All of it unpunished.

Once a country backslides into a hybrid regime or personalist dictatorship, it takes AT LEAST a generation -- roughly 20 years -- to dislodge it and more likely two or three. I reached this conclusion in late 2020. Experienced anti-authoritarian activists agree. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Democrats will not be able to govern in 2029 without rapid court expansion. Judging by their official actions, 100% of House and Senate Democrats are 100% fine with that.

No Democratic president will be able to govern without rapid Supreme Court expansion in January 2029. Democrats will need to do more than just dispense with the filibuster and pass the law. They'll need to add all the new justices within months, if not weeks, in the face of an enraged GOP.

Most liberals and leftists are blind to this, can't make any sense of it, and even if they could wouldn't act on it. It's because their core ideological premises about human political behavior preceded the existence of psychology -- and still largely exclude it except as epicycles at the margins.

Nearly a year into this Congress, Democrats still haven't reintroduced legislation to expand the Supreme Court in either chamber. The message that sends couldn't possibly be any clearer: Whether Democrats win or lose, dictatorship by the Supreme Court is here to stay.

I've been thinking the same thing for years. Yet I would still advocate for primaries against these few good lawmakers every cycle -- even if I'd side with the incumbents. There are lots of reasons I've come to support universal primaries, and this is one of them.

Will House Democrats modernize their enforcement powers so they can hold Trump officials accountable? Or would they rather be impotent and powerless? If you remember how this went the last time, you already know the answer.

MAGA is the reason why Pantone had to settle on Cloud Dancer as their color of the year. They were already sold out of Klan Robe, Hillbilly, and Supremacist White.

Schumer must go, but the Schumer problem is at the same time a whole-caucus problem. Anyone who replaces him is likely to be almost as bad and almost as incompetent, because Schumer's approach embodies what the members want.

Here is the House Democratic leader openly defending corruption. Democratic voters are simply in denial about the endemic corruption of their party and leaders.

People often say Democrats should run against corruption, and indeed they should. The problem is that most Democratic incumbents are IN FAVOR OF CORRUPTION when it's on their own side. Far too many Democratic voters remain deep in denial about this, blinded by partisanship, so nothing changes.

Look, I've regularly called for Senate Democrats to oust Schumer since the mid 2010s. Yet these 8 senators won't even go that far, even in hushed tones. It's a measure of the vast distances Democrats still have to go to become an effective force against the right. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/u...

folks, your faves are in the club. are they as bad as the worst people in the club? no. but theyre in the fucking club and that allegiance is thicker than blood.

Republicans learned Democrats are cowards a very long time ago. I repeatedly pointed it out during Obama's presidency and throughout Trump's first term. It's Democratic voters who are belatedly realizing their leaders aren't cut out for a fight.

i don’t think people realize how straight up delusional a solid proportion of democratic senators are regarding our politics. i don’t mean that as hyperbole. they are actually untethered from reality

As I privately told colleagues all summer long, the objectively correct strategy for Republicans was to cut Democrats out of the process and refuse all their demands. The Senate Democratic surrender confirmed that this was -- and remains -- the correct strategy.

Since 2022, I've maintained a whip count of which senators support and oppose a filibuster carveout to protect abortion rights. For years, Kaine has dodged taking a position. My whip count treats him as an opponent of protecting abortion rights, because he says things like this.

Elite impunity is one of the many forces fueling civic collapse. As I regularly pointed out for over a decade, there is a nearly exhaustive bipartisan consensus in favor of it. You can count the exceptions on one or two hands.

The people & institutions who might have some ability to impose consequences on Trump -- even if only political consequences -- are fucking cowards. They could just impose the consequences now, but they don't want to, even though, as I said, it's all already quite clear. So they're waiting.

Schumer must go. But the Schumer problem is also a whole caucus problem. He's just the current face of it. Primary all of them every time they're up for reelection -- no exceptions ever.

Biden and congressional Democrats prioritizing infrastructure spending over protecting democracy was already a world-historical mistake, as many of us pointed out at the time. These findings make it look even worse.

The right -- especially the religious right -- has a gigantic and persistent problem with pedophiles and sex predators in their ranks and among their leaders. They may deny it in public and to anyone outside their tribe, but I think they know it as well as anyone. Here's why I say that...

Calling on an official to resign without fighting to remove them is passive-aggressive cowardice and empty moral posturing. In an era defined by shameless public officials who rarely step down willingly, it's also completely ineffective most of the time.

If the Epstein files emerge, House Democrats need to fight to impeach Trump as fast as possible. Well-known members of both parties are likely to be implicated. Current Democratic lawmakers need to get on the right side of this extremely fast, or they will get dragged into the mud.

The Republican base began pushing to remake the GOP leadership in their own image in the early 1960s. The effects of their work didn't even BEGIN to show up in congressional ideology measures until the late 1970s. It took them 60 years of relentless work to get where they are now.

The fact that not a single member of the Senate Dem caucus has called for Schumer to be replaced shows you how deep the rot is. This includes Sanders and Warren.

Every senator let through the unanimous consent to make the whole thing take 5 minutes. Every one of them is lying to you about their opposition

We just launched the biggest primary program in Indivisible’s history. Help us (literally) send Schumer and the surrender caucus a message. open.substack.com/pub/ezralevi...

America’s chickenshit elites problem continues to be the biggest obstacle to fighting Trump www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

This is the entire thing. They ended up with nothing on their PR point and nothing on the real discussion which was submerged. The way they shut down RIFs showed they understood how to stop the power grab and chose not to. prospect.org/2025/11/10/m...

Primary the entire Dem Senate Caucus. We all see right through this political theater. I'm done.

"Our constituents want us to take this vote" really tracks well with shielding anyone up for re-election from taking this vote.

Any Democratic senator, at any moment, could've derailed this by calling for Schumer's replacement and casting their colleagues as MAGA collaborators, thereby shifting the Overton window. But they're all in on it. This was always a team effort.

Important to understand this. There's a reasonable chance that your Dem Senator who voted against it and is acting mad now was in on the play. It's the same reason why they scheduled the surrender for AFTER the election this week. They didn't want people pissed at Dems right before an election.

EIGHT Senate Democrats have voted to advance the funding measure so far after the deal was reached: Cortez Masto Durbin Fetterman Hassan Kaine King Rosen Shaheen If the existing 52 Republicans hold, that's 60 — enough to advance this agreement. Final vote still to come.

From Politico: "Even if senators break a filibuster on Sunday, progressives could drag out passage of the deal for days. Speeding it up would require consent from all 100 senators. The House would then need to come back to Washington to pass the agreement before the government would reopen."

The Clinton/Obama/Biden/Pelosi era of Democratic politics has reached it's end. We need to move on. Someone tell Chuck Schumer.

This country and the Democratic Party would be better off if Nancy Pelosi, undisputed queen of the gerontocracy, had stepped aside at the end of 2010 or 2012.

Along with everything else, Trump admitting the shutdown led to a bloodbath for Republicans should at an absolute minimum lead Dem Senators to shelve their apparent plan to prematurely cave. He's admitting he and the GOP are in a weak position, Dems. Exploit that!

This is the first time there's been an election during a federal government shutdown. Whether or not the shutdown had any effect on the results, it went very badly for the party that voters blamed. thehill.com/homenews/adm...