Losing loser loses again.

4 divisions, 2 leagues. 1st round playoffs: 2nd place vs. opposite 1st place, all at 1st place team that starts with a win (so 1sts need 3 wins, 2nds need 4). Winners play regular 4 of 7 LCS, winners play WS. Yes, there are downsides, but it's the best solution. (Oh, and no major realignment).

!!!!!!! (Will Cook move it straight to lean from safe? Wouldn't be surprised).

ELB Book Corner: Julia Azari: “Election Interference is a Recurring Theme in Presidential Impeachment” electionlawblog.org?p=153713 @juliaazari.bsky.social

Overlapping the Venezuela raid, but no approval bump so far here vs. last week. Overlapping MC was +1. Ipsos, entirely post-raid, had a small positive approval change. Did (irresponsibly early?) look at the 1st polls in my item this morning. goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com/p/candidates...

Uh...article doesn't tell me where to go to volunteer for testing this, but I'm ready yesterday.

I for one welcome former Republicans to run for seats as Democrats, especially if they can offer cross-party appeal. But maybe in seats that are more competitive than Harris +64

The key point: The only people remaining to brief Trump are (for the most part at least) those who learned the lesson of never actually challenging whatever nonsense is in his brain. Presidents are rarely experts on anything, and the presidency has been set up to help them. Trump dismantled that.

Throughout 2024, I spoke with a number of Republicans who believed (and seriously worried) that Democrats would do the same thing if they lost in November. They didn’t, because the lunatics on the left are online weirdos, and the lunatics on the right are controlling all 3 branches of US government.

Five years ago today, many people simply woke up on January 6, 2021 and went to work in and around the Capitol to serve their country in ways big and small, only to be met with violence. Their stories are many, and they are still with me.

218-213 for now, with another Dem to be elected on Jan 31 and presumably ready to be sworn in on Feb 1, so a one-week CR would mean an even smaller GOP edge. The Mikie Sherrill special isn't until April 16.

Was going to post something about how ridiculous some of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame selections/omissions are, but the better Take is that it's a joke that isn't worth getting worked up about.

Of the many great DS9 moments (root beer, "I think I can live with it") we don't give enough respect for the Dukat/Weyoun discussion on whether to eradicate the population of Earth.

Like, how do you assume that gender differences are ENORMOUS and IMMUTABLE and CONSITUTIVE OF HUMAN NATURE and NECESSARY TO ALL HUMAN ORGANIZATION, NORMS, and BEHAVIORS, but not think that's something that you should understand if you want to understand the world?

this is what happens when you turn foreign policy into a kind of gender-affirming care for marginal elites who score three standard deviations north of the mean on fragile masculinity

This is not, in fact, the definition of who is in charge

Man. Trump v USA. What a bad decision 🌲🌲🌲

Dude could still announce today he'll put a rider on the upcoming CR overturning this, or zeroing out Kennedy's office, etc. - and that he won't vote for the CR unless it's included. My guess is he could round up at least a handful of Republicans to join him. Maybe a dozen or more. But nope.

Losing loser loses again.

OK if I see one person claiming that Miller/Trump are talking up Greenland as a "distraction" (from Venezuela? Something else?) I'm totally going to lose it.

A fair number of GOP incumbents (US House, state legislatures, etc) are presumably on the fence about filing for another term or not. This is the season for deciding, and it's certainly plausible that another Dem special pick-up or not in a mildly GOP district could make the difference for some.

I'm pleased to report that my forthcoming book is now available for pre-sale. What's more, if you become a paid subscriber to Tusk, I'll send you a complimentary copy of the book! More about the book below (1/4): smotus.substack.com/p/my-new-boo...

Another one where there's a majority, and likely a supermajority, for sane policy in both chambers of Congress...but Republicans won't act on their sincere (*and very popular!*) beliefs. It's a dysfunctional GOP problem. Again. As is so much of what's gone wrong.

I really value the folks I talk to on here, and also every time I have reason to go back and look at a pre-X Twitter post, I'm a little depressed to realize anew how many folks I used to talk to who are not On Here (or, frequently, On Anywhere)

Folks, there's little reason to believe DOJ will fuck THIS up. There's an experienced team of real AUSAs who've been working these cases for years (and got Maduro's key deputy to plead in June). SDNY is not as incompetent as DC, yet. SDNY/EDNY have done cases like this a lot.

🧵 The rot on America’s political right runs deep. Perhaps because of their growing numbers and influence, some on the right apparently seem to believe that the political success of the Republican party requires playing footsie with racists, bigots and antisemites. What are conservatives to do?

You should obviously read this (and for that matter Julia's book) but you might feel guilty about straying from reading her at GP/BP: goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com/p/why-trumps... I'm not saying that adding a subscription/upgrading to paid would cure that, but worth a shot. In my opinion.

The Venezuela operation may raise the risks that the US strikes Iran again. I assess these risks in my conversation with @cnbc.com

Kudos to @profsaunders.bsky.social for consistently and brilliantly linking current foreign policy developments to scholarly literature for context. Extremely helpful!

The SSA is also engaging in unprecedented lying (and hyper-partisan communication) regarding agency activities. This is what their Facebook feed looks like. Reality: People are waiting over an hour for help, and 1 in 4 actually give up after waiting up to ~40 minutes www.nextgov.com/digital-gove...

Remember again that congressional leaders are not chosen for their public speaking skills (see: McConnell, but really just about all of them). And absolutely correct: The people who make a difference here and always are the GOP members of Congress who would prefer a republic but don't act on it.

Tried to tackle why Trump's actions in Venezuela feel like both a familiar and unprecedented disaster goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com/p/why-trumps...

We now go live to Mar a Lago:

These guys watching Trump press conferences like “even we can discern no actual meaning from this mess”

Josh Marshall on the mistaken assumption that there is “a” reason why we attacked Venezuela. I have an odd perspective on this, since I spent ages fixating on the analogous question about Iraq. It started when I noticed that none of the books about how we went to war in Iraq mentioned a DECISION.

Just putting down a marker on Trump approval, with most recent poll included in the field through Jan 1: FiftyPlusOne 39.5% Silver 41.9 NYT 42 Cook 41.4

Notable to me that fed-up leaders of Greenland and Denmark are not only telling Trump to stop his threats, but also suggesting that their NATO/EU compadres should speak up against the bluster as well. I’ve seen messages of support from Finland, Norway & Sweden today.

I really liked this...although to be fair something like 19 of the top 20 (at least) most disturbing presidential press conferences have been Trump's. (Hell, it might be 49 of the top 50).

Wrote about Trump flailing: Venezuela, bragging about cognitive exams, vetoes, etc. Plus links! @profsaunders.bsky.social @smotus.bsky.social @meredithconroy.bsky.social @donmoyn.bsky.social @dcinbox.bsky.social and more. goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com/p/venezuela-...

He is likely to find himself in a position to learn these lessons. I think it’s extremely unlikely that he himself will learn them.

RIght. As far as we know Trump still believes that the US should have "taken the oil" when leaving Iraq. Something he (oddly, I guess?) doesn't say about Venezuela for some reason.

my sense is this: not only are trump and rubio and hegseth lying to the public about the purposes, impact, planning, etc of the attack on venezuela. they are lying to each other. they have no idea what they're doing or where this ends.

Well, sure, Venezuela has a real government and the US occupies 0% of the country but once Trump posts a notice dissolving the military everything will go smoothly.

Terrible face aside this is an important point I think, removing Maduro was, like Iraq, a logroll that lots of advisers supported for different reasons.

US oil companies arent on board with this dumb bullshit and the Trump admin jumped the gun on that and are furious about that

Yes TCM we really needed the apocalypse in Technicolor of "When Worlds Collide" (1951) tonight. Nice timing. Thanks.

for me, the apparent absence of any serious policy process, clear thinking about the national interest or more concrete foreign-policy goals, or effort to look down the game tree is impressive even by Trump standards (1/n)

This please. What matters from Dems right now is choosing the correct side, which almost all are doing, not the quality of their statements. (Also there's a range from pretty good and inept; marinating in the worst ones rather than amplifying the good ones is a choice.)

Was pleased to join @perrybaconjr.bsky.social on @newrepublic.com to talk about the Maduro capture and what it means. newrepublic.substack.com/p/the-us-dep...

So like, everyone is restarting their nuke program and never giving them up right? That’s what we’ve learned since 1989. If you give up nukes or abandon your program, you’re getting regime changed by someone. Too bad the one thing from the 1980s Trump isn’t obsessed with is “The Day After”.