Elon Musk pretending to have read the Iliad (and learned important lessons from it!) when chatting with Marc Andreessen reminds me of how Nick Klegg said tech elites all “claim to read the same books.” www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

“I had always been told that my Jewishness protected me from deportation (from Israel),” Leila Stillman-Utterback told RNS. “I understand that the current government does not want people like me or like other activists doing work in the West Bank, but I think I felt a sense of betrayal."

Latest article for @liberalcurrents.com is a review of @ztameez.bsky.social’s Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation (Holt, 2025), with some references to Sean M. Kelley’s American Slavers (Yale, 2024). www.liberalcurrents.com/the-american...

Elon Musk pretending to have read the Iliad (and learned important lessons from it!) when chatting with Marc Andreessen reminds me of how Nick Klegg said tech elites all “claim to read the same books.” www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

I don't know how you stop that. Because he could also drive to the basket. Kareem's sky hook was considered an unstoppable 2-point shot. This is basically an unstoppable 3-pointer.

The book is real! To celebrate, I will give out five copies to interested early career folks. DM if you’d like one.

A bunch of McClellan politicians and McClellan political pundits. When will we find our Grant and Sherman?

“What made Charles Sumner a profoundly modern thinker was his commitment to a thorough-going conception of human rights based on the inherent dignity of all human persons.” www.liberalcurrents.com/the-american...

The distance in time between now and when Microsoft Office replaced drop down menus with the ribbon bar at the top is the same as the distance between then and the fall of the Berlin Wall

The last sentence should lead you to doubt how certain researchers could possibly be about the first sentence.

It’s hard to remember the last time I saw a bigger defensive breakdown at the end of an NBA game.

It would be deeply unwise to keep the government shut down through Jan 2027. And real people were suffering. But if Dems withheld their votes for at least several more weeks you had a decent chance that: 1) Repubs popularity falls further and/or 2) Repubs decide to end the filibuster

The last sentence should lead you to doubt how certain researchers could possibly be about the first sentence.

I helped make a film, out this week, called “Rovina’s Choice,” about the deaths this man without conscience or accountability has caused — already 600,000, ⅔ of them children.

Prioritize the anti-Trumpism coalition. Don't prioritize factional fighting within the Democratic Party. Point out the crimes of Trumpism. Resist whataboutism. Remember that Trump will not be in power forever. Plan to prosecute all his crimes. Remember that the Constitution is on your side. 🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲

An agenda to oppose Trumpism: Assist non-Trumpists to take back control of the Republican party. Strengthen American civil society, with powerful groups/institutions to oppose Trumpism. A broad tent anti-Trump coalition, including moderate/conservative Dem candidates in conservative states.

It would be deeply unwise to keep the government shut down through Jan 2027. And real people were suffering. But if Dems withheld their votes for at least several more weeks you had a decent chance that: 1) Repubs popularity falls further and/or 2) Repubs decide to end the filibuster

A reasonable person would wonder why they bother doing things like this. The politically disengaged people who would be fooled by this essentially ceremonial vote will never learn that it happened at all.

Assume all the yes and no votes from Dem senators are strategic and not sincere votes. The party caucus made a decision. No way to know how many were in favor. Then the caucus decided who would vote yes and no based on what would protect each of them politically the most. That’s how this works.

Two of the most counterproductive political system choices you can make, which increase corruption but sound good, are: 1) low salaries for elected office holders and bureaucrats 2) term limits for legislators

apropos james watson’s death i had an idle thought today about how stupid race/iq stuff sounds. “buh if your skin is darker you are biologically less smart” is a thing only a dumbass can believe

I watched “City Slickers” with my family, a favorite I rented many times as a child. Discovered that the men having a midlife crisis in this movie are 39. I did not expect to be attacked in this way.

"When I picked up my granddaughter from the federal agents, she had a dirty diaper, a bruise on her face, and was developing a rash. She was exhausted and cried… My heart aches knowing this could happen to others, to my kids, or even me, despite being U.S. citizens.”

The fact that pollsters had so much trouble modeling the electorate when he was running is a serious issue for pollsters to think about. However, it's unclear whether it will have significant short and medium-term political consequences, as Trump will never appear on a presidential ballot again.

Trump at a -16 net approval rating among all adults now, per our average at @fiftyplusone.news, and flirting with dropping below 40% approval. fiftyplusone.news/polls/approv...

Religion note: The first plaintiff in this case pushing the Trump admin to fully fund SNAP benefits is the Rhode Island State Council of Churches. By my count, that makes 62 religious organizations (including denominations!) that have been part of lawsuits against the Trump admin this year.

It's wild because you could make a plausible argument that Musk adds negative value to Tesla. Their consumer car business could be a long-term success if they detached their brand from his. And any rational future Dem president would cancel his security clearance. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/06/b...

Don't fire workers if you want them to vote for you:

An agenda to oppose Trumpism: Assist non-Trumpists to take back control of the Republican party. Strengthen American civil society, with powerful groups/institutions to oppose Trumpism. A broad tent anti-Trump coalition, including moderate/conservative Dem candidates in conservative states.

This is a strange hack punditry, in which everything anyone does is the Democratic Party's fault. Dems' mistakes are their fault. Repubs' mistakes are the Dems' fault for not stopping them. No party is perfect. But we should examine their actual actions. You can't learn anything from this punditry.

This is a strange hack punditry, in which everything anyone does is the Democratic Party's fault. Dems' mistakes are their fault. Repubs' mistakes are the Dems' fault for not stopping them. No party is perfect. But we should examine their actual actions. You can't learn anything from this punditry.

My theory of why: 1) leaning into lifestyle products 2) simply having the biggest brand name in a nationalized industry 3) the organizational suicide of the Washington Post as a national competitor www.nytimes.com/2025/11/05/b...

Congress used to pass bipartisan immigration laws. What the heck happened? The end of the Cold War created cracks in the parties, and 9/11 amplified them, laying the foundation for our current immigration predicament. My new piece at Good Authority. goodauthority.org/news/congres...

The Feds deceived them by conducting a green card interview, subsequently arresting his wife, and mocking them while taking selfies.

What's happening in TX-18 is more obscene than not seating Grijalva during pro formas. Turner died in March. Abbott delayed the special election until yesterday, and now it goes to a runoff early *next year.* Congress can and should require special elections to be held within 90 days of a vacancy.

Great example of how election-to-election swings are almost always close to uniform. “Realignments” (uneven shifts in support) are almost always slow and accumulate but only over many years. (Mayhew 2002)

My theory of why: 1) leaning into lifestyle products 2) simply having the biggest brand name in a nationalized industry 3) the organizational suicide of the Washington Post as a national competitor www.nytimes.com/2025/11/05/b...

Since 2015, Trump has never been able to turn out his low-political engagement voters (who are very hard to reach in polls) in elections when his name is not on the ballot. The pattern continues.

The factional grifters will hate this, but the Mamdani-Spanberger-Sherrill axis actually suggests the outlines of a broad, emerging Dem coalition organized around both anti-Trump *and* affordability politics, not a party bitterly divided against itself.

Since 2015, Trump has never been able to turn out his low-political engagement voters (who are very hard to reach in polls) in elections when his name is not on the ballot. The pattern continues.

It will be interesting to see what the Prop 50 numbers in CA are. I've always thought that retaliatory gerrymandering might be the right thing to do, but it's a tough sell to the broad electorate in a referendum. I think it's a hard lift.

It looks like public polls had a small Republican bias in VA and a relatively large one in NJ this year.

More evidence of the decline in the magnitude all types of personal vote and candidate effects in a variety of different parts of the U.S. political system.

Manassas City, 95% in 43% Hispanic 2020 President: Biden +25 2024 President: Harris +15 2025 Governor: Spanberger +30?!?!?!?

Mackenzie Scott continues building up American society, when so many billionaires are content to rip it down.

Oh — the situation has escalated. Pope Leo has spoken out: says "spiritual rights" of detainees should be respected and calls on the "authorities" to allow "pastoral workers" in. "Jesus says very clearly … we're going to be asked, how did you receive the foreigner?" www.youtube.com/watch?v=taCi...

Dick Cheney published his APSR with Aage R. Clausen. As a grad student, Clausen worked on the American Voter (1960) and is credited with inventing the feeling thermometer. In terms of coauthorship, Cheney is two degrees of separation from Converse and Miller. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

As we today wonder if polls will be accurate, consider that, last year, state-level election polls had an average error (in any direction) of 3 points, the most accurate year since 1944. And they had an average pro-Democratic bias of 2.7 points.

Paul Musgrave with a political science-centric obituary for Dick Cheney. musgrave.substack.com/p/dick-chene...

ANES Data Release! electionstudies.org/data-center/... The 3-wave ANES panel is now available. It merges data from 3 election studies (2016-2020-2024), the first time the ANES has collected interviews of the same respondents across 3 presidential elections.