Durbin capitulated because he naively believed Thune? No. It's so much more infuriating than that.

This. I think this capitulation is best explained as a handful of senators trading away 1 in order to stop 2.

This from @mattyglesias.bsky.social really gets at why this capitulation is so infuriating, even to centrists: Senators surrendered on a shutdown that was helping their party to protect a rule that benefits them personally. In that sense, it feels corrupt. open.substack.com/pub/matthewy...

Democrats need to appoint a council of leading centrist sellout squish pundits to check with before they go too far.

This is what's so aggravating — yes, it was not working in extracting a policy concession but it was working in *driving down trump's numbers and provoking GOP infighting* which is what's important if you take Dem rhetoric about the perils of MAGA remotely seriously.

It’ll be interesting to see how this changes Republican behavior around the shutdown.

It’ll be interesting to see how this changes Republican behavior around the shutdown.

“Alex, I’ll take ‘Supreme Court claims that have aged poorly’ for $200”

Maybe your texts tell you to "BE A VOTER" like mine. It all started because of a PNAS paper that claimed that the noun form it increased voter turnout (relative to the verb form ) by 11 to 14 percentage points. It keeps not replicating, obviously. Most recently doi.org/10.1017/bpp....

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Henry Kim and I wrote about this phenomena all the way back in 2013 for House races. faculty.ucmerced.edu/bleveck/asse... My take away is a bit different though: If a party's brand increasingly dominates voters' view of incumbents, then the party should probably try to rebrand as more moderate.

Henry Kim and I wrote about this phenomena all the way back in 2013 for House races. faculty.ucmerced.edu/bleveck/asse... My take away is a bit different though: If a party's brand increasingly dominates voters' view of incumbents, then the party should probably try to rebrand as more moderate.

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In 2025, polarization on schools & the Supreme Court leaves only Banks + Big Business with moderate/high confidence across parties. Populism still cuts across partisan lines. Data: @gallup.com Social Series.

Highly-educated Democrats have very different priorities and policy preferences than Americans writ large. This is likely even more true of politically-engaged college grads. The mood in our circles/social media feeds is not a reliable guide to public opinion www.vox.com/politics/466...

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In the absence of cryptographic trust, we have social norms and faux pas. Sharing realistic-looking AI video without a visible watermark or disclaimer should be a faux pas imo

I understood it intellectually, but it was jarring for me to live in New Orleans after so many years in Los Angeles. NOLA is far poorer and yet has a tiny fraction of the unsheltered homelessness LA has. As a result, the former is full of public spaces while the latter has virtually none.

I think it's a very bad thing for democracy when the military moves onto a private payroll. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/24/u...

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Looks like we are about to see a significant increase in snatch-and-grab operations around the Bay Area 408-290-1144 is the hotline for the Palo Alto/Mountain View area www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...

Lazy bleg. Will look into it later if no one replies, but what does the research say on: “When do citizens start caring about corruption?” Is it how obvious it is? Or, does it depend more on whether the corruption can be easily tied to things that harm voters? Or, something else?

When teaching accountability models I sometimes describe the incumbent action as "taking money from the treasury" and have to explain that this need not be literal. Maybe not anymore! www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/u...

Lazy bleg. Will look into it later if no one replies, but what does the research say on: “When do citizens start caring about corruption?” Is it how obvious it is? Or, does it depend more on whether the corruption can be easily tied to things that harm voters? Or, something else?

How is this real life? www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/u...

The WashU Faculty Senate Council voted *unanimously* that WashU should "unequivocally" reject the compact.

New editorial from me and @keithschnak.bsky.social. “Why Washington University must not sign Trump's 'compact'”

I’m always surprised we don’t talk more about AWS as a single point of failure — and hence of vulnerability to censorship pressure.

One side of this debate says that moderates do better, so if you leaned into more moderate issue-positioning and candidate recruitment you’d win more races. The other side has like ninety seven bajillion quibbles but at the end of the day agrees that moderates do better. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

He’s calling out randos for depicting Trump’s murder. But Trump tweeted a photo of Biden bound and gagged. Which to him is brilliant “satire.” They have always hold their opponents to a super-high standard and themselves to none.

It cuts both ways though. Some complications to the spatial model point towards a need for *more* centrism, even in "safe" seats. Incumbent vote-share isn't just affected by incumbent's own record, it's also affected by how centrist their party is overall. faculty.ucmerced.edu/bleveck/asse...

University of Arizona rejects the compact: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://president.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/2025-10/Suresh-Garimella-to-Sec-Linda-McMahon.pdf

I would only add that centrist candidates had an easier time convincing voters in purple districts of their centrism when the parties themselves were more centrist and ideologically heterogeneous. faculty.ucmerced.edu/bleveck/asse...

I'm glad we now all agree that moderate candidates perform better in purple seats

It’s not weird. The actual debate *right now* is between the party in control of the government, who wants to gut Obamacare, vs those who want to protect it. You can’t be surprised when people don’t interpret a post saying the ACA as worth very little as a good faith argument to improve it.

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I’m happy that this story exists. The nuance of government integrity in the courts isn’t something that lends itself to focused public attention. But, what’s going on is more than a canary in a coal mine. It sort of like a hippopotamus in a coal mine. Everyone should be concerned about this.

Large scale nonviolent demonstrations are a powerful tool and the regime is incredibly sad that they didn’t get the riots they were hoping for

My boss: so how's our fourth quarter looking? Me, the sales manager at the company that makes inflatable frog suits: well, you're never going to believe this, but

People really brought positive energy and a creative spirit to this protest in a small town in a purple part of the state

Biggest protest I have seen in Merced, and with more honking from cars #nokings

No Kings in Mountain View, CA

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The long term implication here isn't just a lost election. It's a growing lack of representation that will encourage corruption, cronyism, and ultimately more political instability and violence.

I have been to two No Kings protests and they are filled with normies and people with funny signs and families and they are just the most wholesome protests imaginable that's all people are going to see, man - their friends and neighbors out there saying we don't want this

While I have only been to one No Kings protest, this is my experience as well.