I don’t do requests

Me: Don't do that You: Why are you telling me to do that

I expect better from the RFT community, you'll make it

Because our former party is a cult of personality. There is no "party" to speak of; the RNC is just an extension of a cult now.

This post is in response to a post by me where I say, explicitly, that no one should do that.

I still find it amazingly insular and short-sighted that while American democracy was under attack from the guy who sparked a seditious coup and vowed to pardon the J6ers, that there were actual Americans who said "yes, but Gaza is my top issue."

How about "former War College professor who studied and wrote about ethics and the use of force and taught about it" I mean, I do write at a magazine, but I did a few things before that

It feels good to revel in the warmth of self-regard rather than make difficult political decisions

Me: The goal is not to coax the firm Trump voters, it's the swing voters You: I refuse to coax Trump voters

This message approved by every anti-democratic movement in the country and around the world, who want you to give up

Cue the people who say "don't join our party, go fix yours" I'm just trying to offer insight into how Republicans, a minority of the population, became the majority party. (And no, the answer isn't gerrymandering.)

And yet

Yes, and I've been clear that I think - as both a personal view and based on my work when I was a professor - that the Israelis committed war crimes in that campaign.

slowly I turned

One more time, for the people in the back: These are not the voters you're trying to coax into your coalition.

This typical Judean Popular People's Front propaganda. Splitters.

Rick's first book has a chapter directed to Democrats that they should read.

But I am not a Democrat, and I would be very uncomfortable in that party. Some of my friends - Bill, George Conway, others, have made that decision and I understand why. I am happy to be in a pro-democracy coalition with sensible Dems and others who want to save the Constitution.

Oh, no, no, no. I am not reteaching a two-day seminar on why people who keep reading something they don't understand are not understanding it. It wasn't genocide, but whatever you think it was, it wasn't going to get better if you held back a vote from Harris.

Grow up people. General elections in the US are an enormously consequential binary choice between which of two candidates and parties will best lead the country. Your job as a citizen is to choose between the two. Anything else is pure wankery. If you don't choose, others will do it for you.

And I can tell you, as a former Republican, that the GOP counts on that, and actively promotes cultural hot-button issues to bait Democrats into fighting among themselves. Works like a charm.

Here is what I wrote in 2019: www.usatoday.com/story/opinio...

Reagan campaigned against Wallace in 1968. He never embraced him, politically or personally, except for good wishes after Wallace was nearly killed in 1972.

Correct. I do not want PR, RCV, judges by panel, direct elections, majoritarianism. (I want "basic social guarantees" but we'll argue about what that means.) I don't want systems that produce Berlusconi or Bibi; where tiny parties are kingmakers and Thatcher rules for 12 years. Well, maybe that.

That's such a lazy, and easy way, to escape the discomfort of building a coalition: Assume everyone to your right is basically a Nazi.

And it wasn't genocide. That word was a way of letting people flip all the circuit breakers off in their brains and draw dumb moral equivalences between two very different candidates.

Pretty sure that "voting for either Trump or Harris was bad for Palestinians" was a stupid equivalence from the get-go, but Trump and Netanyahu have now proved it was a stupid position, so maybe people should rethink that kind of moral slushiness.

Whatever one's views on Reagan, he made the GOP in the 1980s what I call "the party of everyone else" - that is, anyone who wasn't an unshakeable Dem. Today, Trump's awfulness has given the Dems have the opportunity to be that kind of party, but some in the party seem determined not to do it.

It's complicated for people who don't want to understand the downstream implications of having to build coalitions, which to them feels dirty and icky and dishonest

This is just endless complaining about the reality of politics. Yes, I'm very sorry that there are millions of people standing in between the two parties, who could throw their votes either way (or not at all), but that's the grownup world.

Yes, it sure would

This is the thing. If you accept that there is no issue you care about that would be better in the hands of the other party, then you grit your teeth and vote for people who agree with you maybe 90, or even 50 percent of the time - or maybe just on one supremely important thing.

Now we begin the goalpost moving. I didn’t say it’s impenetrable. I’ve been warning for years that it’s in danger.

You build a coalition by winning people who are not already in your party and whose votes are up for grabs, and that could go to the other party. By enlarging the number of people who vote the way you want them to vote.

If the constitution were genuinely meaningless right now, you’d know it, and you’d be experiencing it in ways you couldn’t even begin to imagine

$5+ gas in Evanston, Illinois. Woof.

The American Constitution survived all of it.

For all it mattered, he could have stopped RFK and Hegseth and ended up with the same result but a better government

Always with excuses

Yes, it's legal as long as he's not in any official capacity and they just say "a citizen named Pete Hegseth." Karine Jean-Pierre got Hatch-Acted for saying "MAGA Republicans." People regularly demanded that I be fired under the Hatch Act for writing op-eds with full disclaimers.

By definition, the base are the people who don’t need to be convinced to show up for you

70% of black voters identify as moderate or conservative. The progressive group think you’re absorbing in online activist politics is where you should focus your blame. You do it to yourselves.

Good afternoon.

There is only one choice for a bond replacement

I admit I cannot get my head around the idea that "atheist/Jewish/other highly-educated white and Asian voters" would just say "screw it, give the seat to the GOP because Talarico isn't a superprogressive and said 'Jesus' too many times."

I was yelling Boo-urns

Yeah, no. Father Coughlin was forced off the air when World War II broke out by The National Association of Broadcasters, pressure from the White House - and the Catholic Church, who ordered him off the air and then to shut up entirely.

As good as the late 70s #AT40 charts can be, he's always lurking in there

This is impossible. Everyone knows that there was no right-wing radio before 1987