Thank you for these recommendations, Matt. To this list I would add Dan Osborn, the Independent in the race to become the next Senator from Nebraska. There is no Democratic candidate in this race, and Pete Ricketts, the incumbunt Republican billionaire-lacking-charisma, is eminently beatable. Last year, Dan outperformed Kamala in the state by 15+% in his race against Deb Fischer; he's now known throughout the state; he's already tied with Ricketts in the polls; and he's exactly the rare non-MAGA candidate who can flip this critical Senate seat.
I share your ambivalence about national security hawkishness being used as a signal for moderation. I would like the party to move to the center on crime, public safety, and education reform, I’m not sure I support the sanctions on Cuba.
One of the things that’s stuck with me about Ruben Gallego was him introducing legislation to kick out Russian students from American universities after Putins invasion. It was such a batshit legislation to propose, my chemistry lab partner from russia was an apolitical nerd and was super worried about whatever the hell Gallego was trying to do (Gallego failed eventually). It’s one of the reasons I hesitate to get on the Ruben 2028 bandwagon. IMO someone with such reflexively hawkish instincts should not be president, given how much power over foreign policy the president has.
Wow I did not know he did that. That should be disqualifying. I support Ukraine but it was dispiriting to see how many institutions just decided to go after random individual Russians who probably didn’t even support the war. By contrast, I don’t think even the most strongly anti-Israel politicians would’ve supported similar legislation banning Israeli students after the Gaza War.
Yeah, some of the most anti-Russia people I've met have been Russians who made a point of immigrating here because they were so unhappy in Russia. Obviously, that's not universally true, but it was strange to see Democrats openly endorsing discrimination on the basis of national origin.
There was a weird, brief and largely inconsequential time, where justified liberal support for Ukraine flirted with xenophobic anti-Russian sentiment, it dissipated quickly but the fact some liberals wanted to drop Russian books and composers for a period did point to something wrong.
Yep, friends of mine on social media were freaking out about classical-music stations airing previously scheduled performances of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. I pointed out that the big political issue in Tchaikovsky's era was the liberation of the serfs (!). And the episodes of boycotting Russian restaurants in the States and demanding purity statements from musicians in North America *with family back in Russia* were dispiriting. It was a bizarre couple of months!
Yes though not sure it was just “liberal”; in the early days it was a broad swathe of the public indulging in anti-Russia xenophobia. It was a revealing moment because it didn’t map onto the typical US culture war stuff. Though part of what it revealed was that libs are as hungry as anyone else for someone to hate.
More than anything it's idiotic and benefits Putin as he can point to "Russophobia" in the West. Also, nothing would damage Putin's Russia more than Europe and the US admitting millions of young, well educated Russians who don't want to live in a cold, miserable, imperialist Banana Republic.
Sounds like a bad policy to me as well, but maybe the number of students from that country at US universities is really small? I haven't looked into it.
Probably smaller at the undergrad level (although even there it would still be an atrocious decision) but I have known a lot of Russian PhD students in my field (off the top of my head, probably more than any non-US country other than India, China, Iran, and Israel).
e: I guess I should specify that I’m a computer scientist, although I think Russia is probably decently represented in most of the hard sciences at least?
The point is what such reflexive hawkishness reveals about a potential Gallego presidency. Foreign policy is an area where the president has a lot of unilateral power and I just don’t think anyone with such innately hawkish instincts should be president. The fact that this legislation didn’t really have any domestic constituency that more polarizing topics like Israel have and he still decided to introduce the legislation is revealing to me. It signals a kind of an innate hawkishness that worries me as much as the crazy tankie isolationist.
It isn't really hawkishness, Russian students in America aren't a key Putin constituency, it doesn't serve any purpose or signal aggression, it is just bigotry.
I was commenting on the action not his soul. It seemed to be a common thing in the 2019-2023 period, where a totally normal moderate would say an absurd or offensive thing that went against everything they stood for and now they pretend they never said it.
It’s not a top 20 source of students. Even places like Nepal, Thailand, Peru, and Kuwait send more students. But there are more Russian students than Australian in the United States. And as John K notes, it’s quite a noticeable number in graduate programs in mathematical sciences.
Is there a way to give money to political candidates without having my contact information sold to other candidates and groups who incessantly email and worse, text? I would be much more likely to donate if I knew I wasn’t going to be spammed.
Unsure how the methods would work here, but I’d love to see a study that tried to see if spam political messaging actually reduces aggregate donation.
My suspicion, and this informed by my work in the industry (albeit with a non spammy firm) is that they do it because it really does work even while pissing off a lot of people into not donating.
I agree, there must be some evidence, or perception, that the spam works. Maybe the short term returns justify the practice, but in terms of building a longer term relationship with recurring donations it is a huge disincentive to donate.
It feels disrespectful. If I care enough about your and your cause to give you money, why is there an expectation that you'll try to profit off my generosity.
Those emails "TRUMP IS ABOUT TO 💣💣💣DESTROY💣💣💣 AMERICA!" or "(((THEY))) ARE AFTER TRUMP, DONATE NOW TO SHOW (((THEM))) WE'RE NOT SCARED!" are the survivors of dozens or even hundreds of rounds of A/B testing.
There's a lot that's unsure in politics about what works, but the consultancy firms that rake in a percentage of donations are 100% on the ball in terms of maximizing donations.
They can A/B test the direct response to an email. It’s much harder to test how individual emails like this affect donation to related causes on future occasions. If it causes 10% donations in recipients, but decreases donations by 0.1% on 200 future occasions, then it is net negative, but will show up as very positive in the tests they can do.
Yes, a good rule of thumb in political fundraising is regardless of what you think personally if they are doing it it's because it does in fact work as unlike say sign wars (which probably don't matter) finance people really do test different strategies and compare them.
Even if individual candidates don’t share information, isn’t there the fact that donations in general are public record for transparency reasons? I’m not sure if the public records include phone numbers or not, but I would think you could cross reference them with other information that would.
They must use the same strategy that retailers and spammers rely on: yeah they know it's obnoxious as hell but studies show they can get a few percent extra customers/responses for shoving this crap repeatedly down our throats. Great. All it gets me to do is unsubscribe so while they're getting a few extra donors they're losing a lot of folks like me.
Write a paper check and mail it. Just give them your name, occupation, and snail mail address (you’ll probably get some junk mail, but that’s probably less of a bother than spamming).
One other consideration re: Jeff Duncan - he could be the John Bel Edwards of Georgia and finally take up the full Medicaid expansion. Dems periodically winning governorships in red states has been (alongside referenda) one of the most important factors in the steady forward march of Medicaid expansion to 40 states.
We should be putting up competitive gubernatorial candidates in the 10 holdout states cycle after cycle until Medicaid expansion reaches all of them. This is an area where electoral success for Dems leads to direct, tangible benefits for people's lives. And it's one of the best issues we have. Medicaid expansion won outright by referendum in places as red as Idaho and Oklahoma - people love it! Running on cultural moderation plus Medicaid expansion could be viable (to a first approximation) essentially anywhere.
In many of those states, the appropriate D strategy (assuming your primary concern is policy outcomes in aggregate) is probably to run candidates whose positions are literally "Republican on basically ever national policy except Medicare expansion".
I think you meant “Medicaid” rather than “Medicare” expansion…and rather than Republican on policy, maybe just former Republicans, i.e., the pre-Trump Republican party. I’m supporting a former Republican (running now as a Democrat) for governor of Florida, he’s a basically a never-Trumper and I don’t even know what his policy positions are for the most part.
Hey team - quick correction from North Carolina here. You should absolutely donate to NC Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls - it's vital that she wins. Just wanted to note that Democrats currently hold two, not three, seats on our state supreme court. Earls (and Riggs, who won in '24) are those two.
What this means is that if Earls holds her seat, then Democrats need to flip just 2 more seats to win a 4-3 majority on our state's highest court. In 2028, there are 3 seats up for election, all held by Republicans who have voted to protect Republican partisan gerrymandering. So if Earls wins, Dems need to flip just 2 of those 3 to flip control of the court. (Likewise, if she loses, they need to flip all 3.)
>Before proceeding with the list, though, I wanted to talk a little bit about Golden because I’m pretty angry about the situation.<
I'm angry about the situation, too. But I personally think the real problem is the weird way political parties operate in the United States, and how their operation intersects with the state laws that determine ballot access and (critically) partisan labelling on these ballots. Even if the Democratic Party had PRE nominated Jared Golden and said there's no need for a primary, they'd be SOL if a challenger to Golden entered the primary election and won. Not only would that challenger be on the general election ballot, that challenger (and not Democratic Party-endorsed Jared Golden) would enjoy the designation "Democrat" on the ballot.
What do people think about the alternative hypothesis that Jared Golden just isn't very good with media? Josh Shapiro who is cut from the same cloth as a center left moderate overperformer is the CONSTANT subject of various pieces about the future of the democratic party. My theory is that Shapiro is just good at media, Golden just isn't.
Though I think there are also a bunch of important differences in *how* they moderate. A Jewish lawyer from suburban Philadelphia moderates in a very different way from a marine from rural Maine. The media types know a lot of people like the former and can read them as friendly in a way that they find harder with the latter.
>It's rather the Democratic aligned elite media ecosystem just never really gave him the time of day.<
That can add to the problem, sure, but it really wouldn't *be* much of a problem if, as in other rich democracies, political parties in the United States possessed a full and unfettered right to nominate whoever they like. Or, to put it another way, a primary challenge can do damage even to even quite well-liked and admired incumbents, never mind centristy mavericks like Jared Golden. Leftists—including those in the elite media—often get it wrong as to who maximizes the chances of winning a general election, or else they're perfectly happy to see the Democratic candidate lose the race.
Why not simply take away their influence on the nomination process? The way we run our elections is bonkers.
Progressives have been practicing this weird coerce and extort politics for like a decade. It’s like they want to mimic the Tea Party, but they don’t have a path to an electoral majority if they succeed in forcing their positions. Republicans are advantaged by structural geographic factors, the fact they at least meet some of the cultural values of their voters, and the fact progressives hold much of this country in contempt for mundane reasons.
What they’re doing is exactly what you said, and then hoping that a once-in-a-generation Obama-esque talent will pop up on their side and deliver victory. That’s why they’re so excited about Mamdani: they think he’s that talent.
Everybody can’t be President, it’s ridiculous that we hold every elected official to that standard. Mamdani has done Democrats a great favor by showing them how to run a campaign—not everyone has the talent for it, but I’m sure a lot of people do, and we need to have an eye out for those people who know how to navigate the 21st century media ecosystem.
Our constitutional structure wasn't designed for a system of two quasi-official major parties, but nonetheless the primary and ballot access reforms may have been an improvement over the status quo when first adopted over a century ago.
But that was then. Now the status quo is that we have the equivalent of two established state parties, governed by nobody.
It's hard to predict how it would play out, in the very different information and communication environment to today and tomorrow, if we did away with the past century's worth of laws that privilege the two established parties, and fully separated party and state, so that parties were again fully private organizations without specific privileges granted by law. But my bet is it would make possible a flowering of new coalitions and political configurations.
Democrats have been able to attract some competent and talented people who have been pushed out of the Republican Party. This might make “Democrats center right” to some, but it’s an opportunity created by Trump. It would be silly not to take advantage of this opportunity to reposition on social and economic issues.
You say it might be silly not to take advantage of the Trump-created opportunity, but the D's don't have a great recent record of taking advantage of Trump-created opportunities....
"And yet in all this time, there were no big Jared Golden features in national magazines"
While I share most of Matt's frustration, a national magazine feature or glowing praise from Brooklyn liberals probably would have undermined his candidacy in his particular district. For all we know, he was offered the national feature and turned it down. And if I were a centrist representing a light red district, I would welcome criticism from the far left, left, or even center-left
The real truth, of course, is that progressives are more concerned about winning the future of the Democratic Party than optimizing for 2026, i.e., stopping Trump.
I say that without judgment. I don't hold that view--I'd prefer a somewhat moderate Democrat like Golden over the smaller chance a more progressive candidate wins that seat. But I do feel that way about people who were very recently Republicans like some on this list running in Democratic primaries. If the way for Democrats to "win" is to elect Republicans who jumped ship from Trump *after* he won the presidency, what's even the point of the party anymore? So I won't, for example, be supporting Duncan.
It's funny, maybe I'm being just a mirror image of Late Blooming but I've found myself identifying less and less with the Democrats over this kind of tension, contradiction, whatever you want to call it. Trump is either a break the glass, all hands on deck, five alarm fire or he isn't. I think he is and the Biden administration's failure to approach it that way in any manner other than rhetoric has my loyalty and positive feelings towards the Democrats lower than they have been in my entire adult lifetime. I'm still voting for them for the time being, not that it matters in my deep blue district, but I do wonder how much of the damage to the brand comes from the completely justified perception that, however one feels about the policy positions, these are fundamentally unserious people, deeply interested in everything except for that which actually matters.
Democrats have ruined so much trust via hyperbolic language. Fascism, climate crisis, healthcare collapse, systemic injustice, etc. The language that something is a massive existential concern is not met with the same urgency or heavy response the rhetoric entails undermines credibility.
Progressive hyperbolic escalation on social media feeds into this distrust too.
And the fact that many Democratically controlled governments are failing at addressing problems (e.g.: cost of living, crime, homelessness, aging infrastructure) further exacerbates trust.
This really is an all politicians problem. There literally is no more obvious example of hyperbolic speech than Trump himself. Americans have simply become too comfortable with it to the point that they participate without much reflection about whether they are being hyperbolic themselves. They say the claim, and defend it first as literally true, and then retreat to arguing they were only speaking symbolically or generalizing. But they don’t even think about whether that’s true until confronted with counterpoints. Their mental models simply are not complex enough for that.
Yep. Trump is an existential threat to democracy in the rhetoric but when it’s time to make policy he’s just another Republican. Climate change is an existential threat to *human life on Earth* when Democrats give speeches but not scary enough to make it easy to build nuclear plants. And when every CEO in the country is promising to spend trillions of dollars to build a computer to do your job at 5% of the cost, so they can take away your job and immiserate you, Democrats are mum. They’d be the worst people in the world, if it wasn’t for MAGA Republicans.
At least the Paul Ryan Republicans, like the aforementioned CEOs, are pretty mask-off about the idea that you don’t deserve a good life (maybe don’t deserve a life?) if you’re not part of the capitalist class. I’m not sure that a lot of Democrats (think of e.g. Chuck Schumer here) really disagree at heart, but they pretend not to, and that’s worse.
I hear ya. I switched to Independent a couple decades ago though I usually vote Democrat simply because they're the less worse option. What happened to the JFKs, FDRs, Teddy Roosevelts, Trumans, and Ike's? Does it take disastrous circumstances to get substantial candidates (ie--Great Depression, WWII, etc )? Are our Bizarro world politics just an archetypal symptom of waning empire?
Yea that's what keeps me up at night when I think about my kids' future. Some level of relative decline was probably inevitable given the historically unparalleled level of ascendancy we had after the Cold War. But we're still a very well placed country to stay strong and prosperous indefinitely if we play our hand with even minimal competence. Instead it seems like we're hell bent on an orgy of self indulgence and self destruction.
I think the Republican party has been MAGA-esque for longer than Trump has been in power, and that it's more important to have an actual liberal party if you're going to stop the illiberal slide in American politics. That's consistent with having a big tent, just not so big it includes recent Republican elected officials.
I think "Did you stand up against egregious abuses of power to the detriment of your own career" is a pretty straight-forward standard to use, and both candidates highlighted above meet that criteria.
I also think that, from an electoral math perspective, the Ds just can't afford to be that choosey if they ever want to win in the Senate. If you deny representation to anyone who was an R before, how can you expect to get votes from people who voted R in the past? And if you're rejecting those voters, you have no majority.
I think it's unreasonable to expect, and people do not in fact expect, parties to nominate former members of the opposing party in exchange for the votes of swing voters or switch voters.
Also, there just aren't that many people in the electorate who are basically Bush/Ryan era Republicans who are now open to voting Democrat. The Harris/Cheney road show seems to not have been a winning electoral strategy. There is, of course, a good reason for this: part of the appeal of the wage war & slash the welfare state policies of Bush/Ryan Republicans *was* cruelty, and a large part of thei voting base are perfectly comfortable with Trump who more openly exhibits that quality.
Poor Republican duped into accepting impurity in their blood via Donolnd Trump (ex-D), or any number of Demcrats who flipped to R in House notably and have in 21st century continued on.
Harris lost for her campaign and the perception as well documented by Silver et al of being Too Left due to never clearly dumping her old Woke / Proggy positions of the 10s-early20s.
While I appreciate your initial post engaging with mine, which sparked an interesting (to me) discussion, generally you've just thrown out lazy Twitter-tier strawman points, so I'm adding you to my ignore/mute list.
If they're the best candidate for the district, why on Earth not? I'm not saying you're obligated to nominate a defector. My position (contra yours) is that the option should remain on the table. And then you should choose the best option to win the seat.
Maybe we have slightly different ideas of the proposal.
My objection to Democrats nominating Republicans is not that they *were* Republicans so much as that they *are* Republicans. Generally, having been a Republican up until 2022 or so is a good indicator that one holds Republican views. "The party left me; I didn't leave the party." I'm just saying that's an option Democrats shouldn't exercise. I'd put Duncan, Cheney, etc., in that camp.
The idea isn't to punish people for having been Republicans and then defecting but rather to have minimal standards for what the Democratic Party stands for.
As a separate issue, I would question the judgment and sincerity of someone who says, "Yeah, I was a Republican up until 2022 but now I agree with most Democratic Party positions." If someone had a good explanation for the change of heart--maybe they encountered the ghost of FDR on the road to Damascus--maybe.
The option will always be on the table. People can (and do) vote for who they believe will best represent them. But since I don't believe a former Republican will best represent me, I'm not going to vote for one unless my back is against the wall.
I tend to think liberal Dems would be more effective embracing homeless right liberals instead of pandering to the populist horseshoe.
It would certainly offer much better governance.
Edit: Or at least Left and Right liberals both need to think clearly about how to effectively marginalize the populist horseshoe, even if that doesn't necessarily mean a coalitional realignment. The right liberal wing has completely collapsed in terms of institutional power. The left liberals need to hold the line instead of embracing red vs brown politics.
What do you mean by "right liberal" and "populist horseshoe"?
If by right-liberals you mean Blue Dogs, they seem to be doing OK. If you mean people who were Republicans from the era between roughly Reagan to GWB, I'd dispute that most of them were that liberal.
If by populist horsehoe you mean a style of politics, I think that is somewhat orthogonall to this debate. If you mean a lack of commitment to democratic norms, I think (a) Democratic/progressive populists haven't really exhibited this in the US, and (b) it's hard to be the one party in favor of democratic norms while the other flouts them. If you mean policies that tend to have a populist character--"tax the rich," "stop insurance companies from putting profits over people," "secure the borders--then I'd say some populist ideas are good and some are bad, and that it's good when the good ideas get cross-party support.
I mean the Free Minds and Free Markets wing of the old R three legged stool. Obviously they had the executive power enthusiasts mostly in the Foreign Policy Hawk leg, and the Buchananite populists and theocrats and racists in the Social Conservative leg, but, prior to about 2017 or so, there were plenty of Republicans who were constitutionalist, pluralist, market liberals before they were purged by the Trumpists. Lots of these people still exist and they are much more aligned with constraining the power of MAGA than the labor protectionist or "overthrow capitalism" wings of the populist left who covet that power for themselves..
Yes yes, a 'big tent' so long as it is not actually big, welcoming so long as one is only engaging with the Converted who have the right history of correct thinking.
That is in the end not a Big Tent at all but the pretending about Big Tent while keeping the impure heathen at appropriate non-polluting arms length.
An ideological "Limpieza de Sangre, no Republican Cooties allowed.
Otherwise Actual politics requires an actually effective party to actually win and not merely posture.
Else you end up excactly where the Democrats are now - having quite successfully self-limited own-appeal and shrunk their own reach geographically, and socio-economically.
Funny thing is that most Republicans who jumped to Democrats adjust their positions to be more in line with Democrats. Sociologically people adopt the norms and values of those in their social group (this is what has happened to Anti-Trump Republicans over time.)
The converse is also an explanation for Republicans’ transformation.
The Bulwark team is an excellent example of this... But unlike regular Dem types they like free markets and don't police their own speech much (or at least Tim Miller doesn't). As someone who's very much disenchanted with the progressive left but angrier at the right then ever these are very much my people.
Yes, I agree. While I'm happy they've seen the light about Trump, I disagree we should be welcoming them into the ranks of elected Democratic politicians. If they didn't turn tail on the GOP long before Trump, they'll *never* be actual Democrats. They'll be Republicans who hate Trump is all. No thank you.
From the Bluekskyism that is quite prevalent, and the pattern of Flipping from late 20th century into 21st Century, I have to suspect this is prevalent amongst Democrt partisans..... and likely quite explanatory in part for why that pattern of Reps is very heavily D to R and not the other way.
Brilliant success, Democrats have done quite well hin this, being so broadly competitive geographically, expanding their play... ah wait no completely the opposite.
It's not enough they convert. They need to eat dirt, and apologize to my face. To me, personally. And wash my car. Don't forget that second coat of wax, Biff.
No, I don't. I don't care what they do. I'm just not going to vote for them and I really don't see giving them a place at the table of Democratic politics. They hate Trump, and I'm glad for their vote against him. But to turn the Democratic party itself into a vessel for all things anti-Trump, no matter how anti-choice, anti-worker and otherwise antagonistic to the Democratic platform they may be otherwise, seems like a bad way to go.
And voila, self-marginsalisation of the partisan-sect based politics. the impure sinners will polute the waters.
How about if they do self-flagellation, repent the sin of being of the opposite political party and engage on a pilgrimage to an appropriate identarian conference?
Compare and contrast with the delight of the Republicans when they have a D convert....
and then one can profitabily reflect on which party has self-excluded from large swaths of the Electoral geography for Senate and EC.
Edited Later to Add: Wiki summary pages on Party Flips (House, Senate)
[while certainly flawed and incompletee, and this only House and Senate the emergent late 20th ongoing into 21st century rather tells a story of the Opposition being quite happy to capitalise on flips.
It is not probably worth the effort to do State levels but I would strongly suspect that in Swing / BattleGround where Dems were once broadly competitive one would see a rather similar strongly in one direction flow.
I think a good part of the appeal of Yglesias' substack is people who, for whatever reason, think they're under seige from college students who are woke or whatever.
I'd just like the Democratic Party to have roughly the distribution of views it did in the late 2000s, after it arrived at the consensus that the Iraq War was a mistake, but with less homophobia/transphobia. I think that's a better path to electoral victory (Obama) and a better way to resisting a dangerous administration (Bush). I believe people on the progressive left belong in the tent, as do moderates, whats-the-matter-with-kansas types, etc. I do not believe Bush or Romney era Republicans belong in the tent.
But if you look at the actual party that existed in 2008, it did include a lot of people whose views you would now exclude. Including in elected offices. The elected offices that allowed for the judges that decided Oberkfell and the officials who passed the ACA.
The current party, a party that excludes anybody to the right of Obama, is a minority party destined to give ground on every important issue.
I'd love for us to be a country where a majority overwhelmingly thinks like Obama and Pelosi, and sees Bernie Sanders as only slightly left of center. But I don't live in that country.
Yes, I completely agree, and I'm not sure why that seems to engender so much hostility here except that my guess is there are a lot of former Bush and Romney types who subscribe. I personally would rather have a party made up of Bernies and Schumers and Mamdanis and Testers than Kinzingers and Liz Cheneys and Joe Walches, but that would get me ratio'd here.
What on Earth does this even mean? "I'd rather have a Republican in office than a Democrat who used to be a Republican be became disgusted with them and now wants them to lose"?? This is self-defeating and naive.
I didn't say that. I said I'd rather have someone committed to Democratic principles AND committed to beating Trump rather than someone not committed to Democratic principles but wants to beat Trump. If my ONLY two choices are Republican Lite and Republican MAGA, then of course I'll vote the former, reluctantly. But those usually are not the only two choices.
The context of the discussion is a recommendation about a primary vote in a statewide race in a state that has two Dem senators, both presumably well to the left of Geoff Duncan.
I understand that, and have sympathy for it. I'm glad I don't live in those places. I am only saying I would *not* support it and I believe it is bad for the future of the party to turn whatever power they have over to the Romneys and Cheneys of the world.
This really does reveal that for progressives, the threat posed by MAGA isn’t really different than the broader political disagreement about policy. In fact, I would guess a lot of Progressives like the destruction of our democratic systems of checks and balances in the hope that due to some mystical intervention, somehow they are ultimately the ones who wield the unlimited executive powers and crush dissent.
I live in the district next to Jared Golden's, and I can tell you *exactly* why the national media is not falling all over themselves to promote him. It's because he is the House version of Kyrsten Sinema. I personally think he brings most of the shit he gets on himself, and for no good reason-Matt has to know he wrote an article for the Bangor Daily News last year saying how fine it was all going to be when Trump got reelected, and he's been a big proponent of Trump's tariffs. There was no need for any of that. He's just a prickly guy.
(And besides, the inside dope is that he was *really* pissed about having a primary challenger.)
What major Democratic initiatives has Golden blocked? Or maybe he supported Mike Johnson for Speaker over Hakeem Jeffries (hey, it's possible I didn't hear about it!).
Politics isn't for little children. IOW, who the fuck cares about Golden's occasional forays into Trump-whispering if he's an infinitely better and more reliable VOTE for decency in the House of Representatives? Do you really not care about substantive results? Do you really think sending Paul LePage to Washington instead of Jared Golden would be in Maine or America's interest*? Because that's what's extremely likely to happen.
*On second thought don't answer that. I get serious horseshoe vibes from you.
Unlike Sinema Golden puts up numbers. If the Dems lose the seat with his challenger as the nominee he will look much more like Manchin. It's not like Manchin was right about everything, he was just much better than the realistic options.
Yes, that is very true. The GOP nominee for that seat is likely to be Paul LePage, our 80ish year old "Trump before Trump" former governor, who remains relatively popular in the 2nd CD even if he can't break 20% in the 1st. Golden may have lost that seat anyway this time around (although a blue wave would obviously have helped him a lot)
Strong disagree. Krysten Sinema doesn’t get enough hate for having an absolutely bizarre set of policy stances. For example, she basically single handedly saved the carried interest tax loophole. It primarily benefits hedge funds and private equity, which have a very limited presence in AZ, so it’s not a local issue. It’s also not popular or populist because it solely benefits a tiny slice of extremely rich people. It strongly gives, “sold out to corporate lobbyists”.
Sinema is basically the poster child for why I have sympathy for Democrats or Progressives who are suspicious of "we need more moderates" stance. There is moderation in theory (I support Dems on 90% of issue, but on one or two high profile issues like immigration or gun control that swing voters notice, I will break from the party) and moderation in practice (I will support an end to the government shutdown because I'm more committed to archaic and idiotic senate procedures than winning the political fight).
I defended Manchin given the partisan lean of his state. But Sinema really is the ultimate riposte that progressives can give to Matt. As you say, who the heck is the swing voter in Arizona who's coming around to voting for Sinema because she defended the carried interest loophole. Or worse, when she breaks with the party on an Dem issue that actually has a decent amount of support from at least some GOP voters (see her vote on $15 minimum wage).
I also have said before that Matt is sort of forgetting that a lot of what Blue Dog Dems did back 15-20 years ago to show moderation was basically cut down or cut out provisions of basically any bill that came their way just for the sake of showing they were moderate. Like it wasn't even about objecting to a provision that maybe particularly harms their district or state. It was just cutting down a bill for the sake of showing moderation. It was basically the worst form of "inside the beltway" thinking about what moderation should be. I just wish Matt remembered that he was one of the people who first enlightened me to how dumb this thinking was back then.
> For example, she basically single handedly saved the carried interest tax loophole
The median voter is often the deciding vote but they don't do things "single-handedly." They do it because there were already enough votes from one side to push the issue into their view.
I remember the complaints from sitting Democratic Senators that it was "undemocratic" for 2 Senators to stop a bill, but it wasn't 2 Senators, it was 51 Senators.
Because I don't think he needed to do that to win. I think it was unnecessary pandering and, more to the point, the chance to put a thumb in the eye of the Maine Democratic Party, who of course support him but also can't stand him.
Well, you can believe what you'd like about me, but I know my state. For years, until 2014, the 2nd CD in Maine was represented by a gay union organizer. His voters didn't all die and get replaced by MAGA diehards in the course of a few years.
The other thing to remember is that Maine uses ranked choice voting for national elections, which is how Golden has won every single time. He's almost nobody's first choice up there, really.
Ehh, golden would have won the primary and every mod has a challenger. Make don’t just chicken out of running. This blog held him up as the paragon of independent, tough, winning candidate only for him to fold from a primary challenger
I voted for Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, for the first time since McGovern. I wrote in candidates for the last three Presidential elections. There is not a Republican left in National Office save Rand Paul, who at least will point out to the President that blowing up the lowest level drug smugglers is illegal. But I generally don’t vote for libertarians; one exception was the pot grower who ran in 2016. William Weld was his VP choice, and he is sane.
My issue with voting Democrat is simple. Are they loony? I can live with center-left over MAGA loony. There are two requirements they have to meet: first, a realization that spending other people's money is no longer a viable strategy. We have a progressive tax scheme. The well-off already pay the majority of the taxes. If you want to squeeze them a little more, fine, but there has to be a realization that taxing the millionaires and billionaires will not solve our fiscal dilemma.
The second thing they have to acknowledge is the fiscal reality of our entitlement programs. Around 2034, SS will become insolvent, requiring a mandatory 23% benefit reduction. Covering your ears when this is pointed out and yelling la la la la la in order to ignore the issue is not a serious way to act.
MAGA and Trump believe in the tooth fairy and that she will take care of it. Current Democrat leadership is no better. The Progressive Caucus as a whole also accepts this fantasy, as does the American public.
Populism has infected both Parties; it has caused them to lie to the American voter, and the American voter also accepts this fantasy.
A SS fix will require tax or a reduction in benefits; there is no other way around it. Same with Medicare. Voters will complain and scream, "I paid for my benefit.” No you didn’t. You roughly paid 2/3 of your benefit with your employer's help. You roughly paid 1/3rd of your Medicare benefit.
Taxes are coming; if the voters want European-style benefits, borrowing money is no longer a viable option. America is effectively broke, the free lunch is over, and unless something is done, the standard of living will go down.
An anthem for Democrats is a reduction in spending. I’d like to hear one serious Democrat come up with a reduction of some sort. Sure, they might say cut the military, a crappy option in a world where more countries are challenging our power. It may happen, but if they cannot come up with another reduction, they are not a serious candidate.
Sadly the delusional cheerleaders for the financial system are still pushing tax cuts and stimulus spending. Its amazing how many of the populace don't realize it's not free money. Politicians selling us down the road for votes.
You have perfectly described populism. It is a virus. Each candidate sees how many lies and false promises they can make. When Harris said she also would support no tax on tips, she was disqualified in my eyes. Why in the hell should that one group be blessed with not paying income tax? There was only one reason Trump did it, Nevada, they have a lot of tipped workers in Las Vegas. He won the state, and I can hear Harry Reid now. “Well, it worked didn't it"
Maybe if they pay the stimulus in DigiTrumpBucks (tm) they can get around this. They didn’t sell US policy to the crypto industry for nothing, did they?
On the question of why isn't there more nice stuff written about Golden, I don't think the claim that it's because he's moderate works. There's lots of that stuff written about Peltola and MGP and Fetterman, all of whom have similar political profiles. I think the most likely answer is that he didn't want to do that stuff (understandable) but there are other possibilities as well.
As a former resident of NY-12 and occasional Dem. donor with a 646 area code, I received the very long campaign (fundraising) announcement for/from Jack Schlossberg yesterday evening before the news broke about his candidacy.
This will be an interesting primary, but I am not sure what that does for the donation calculus within the district.
Can I ask if you're upset about Schlossberg's campaign, or the fact that you learned about it from the comment thread?
And more broadly, what are your thoughts on the primary? (I posted elsewhere in the comments, but I'm a fan of Micah Lasher (strong on housing, and a policy wonk who understands the issues deeply. See his blog at https://substack.micahlasher.com/)
I'm upset that the story is now going to be the latest iteration of the Kennedy dynasty instead of the other promising candidates in the race. I have no thoughts on the primary beyond liking Erik Bottcher. I don't know very much about Lasher.
In the NYTimes it's buried as the 3rd or 4th story in the "New York" section, so it hasn't travelled very far yet, but clearly he has resources because I haven't lived in NY-12 since 2011 and rarely get political/fundraising messages from NY. I think he must have paid a lot to cast a pretty wide net. I'm curious if I am on a list that I have long forgotten about or if my data were compiled across multiple sources to target me.
Thank you for these recommendations, Matt. To this list I would add Dan Osborn, the Independent in the race to become the next Senator from Nebraska. There is no Democratic candidate in this race, and Pete Ricketts, the incumbunt Republican billionaire-lacking-charisma, is eminently beatable. Last year, Dan outperformed Kamala in the state by 15+% in his race against Deb Fischer; he's now known throughout the state; he's already tied with Ricketts in the polls; and he's exactly the rare non-MAGA candidate who can flip this critical Senate seat.
Time to launch "WrenchPAC" the PAC focused on electing Dem aligned people who are good with wrenches to Congress.
I share your ambivalence about national security hawkishness being used as a signal for moderation. I would like the party to move to the center on crime, public safety, and education reform, I’m not sure I support the sanctions on Cuba.
One of the things that’s stuck with me about Ruben Gallego was him introducing legislation to kick out Russian students from American universities after Putins invasion. It was such a batshit legislation to propose, my chemistry lab partner from russia was an apolitical nerd and was super worried about whatever the hell Gallego was trying to do (Gallego failed eventually). It’s one of the reasons I hesitate to get on the Ruben 2028 bandwagon. IMO someone with such reflexively hawkish instincts should not be president, given how much power over foreign policy the president has.
Wow I did not know he did that. That should be disqualifying. I support Ukraine but it was dispiriting to see how many institutions just decided to go after random individual Russians who probably didn’t even support the war. By contrast, I don’t think even the most strongly anti-Israel politicians would’ve supported similar legislation banning Israeli students after the Gaza War.
Yeah, some of the most anti-Russia people I've met have been Russians who made a point of immigrating here because they were so unhappy in Russia. Obviously, that's not universally true, but it was strange to see Democrats openly endorsing discrimination on the basis of national origin.
There was a weird, brief and largely inconsequential time, where justified liberal support for Ukraine flirted with xenophobic anti-Russian sentiment, it dissipated quickly but the fact some liberals wanted to drop Russian books and composers for a period did point to something wrong.
Yep, friends of mine on social media were freaking out about classical-music stations airing previously scheduled performances of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. I pointed out that the big political issue in Tchaikovsky's era was the liberation of the serfs (!). And the episodes of boycotting Russian restaurants in the States and demanding purity statements from musicians in North America *with family back in Russia* were dispiriting. It was a bizarre couple of months!
Yes though not sure it was just “liberal”; in the early days it was a broad swathe of the public indulging in anti-Russia xenophobia. It was a revealing moment because it didn’t map onto the typical US culture war stuff. Though part of what it revealed was that libs are as hungry as anyone else for someone to hate.
More than anything it's idiotic and benefits Putin as he can point to "Russophobia" in the West. Also, nothing would damage Putin's Russia more than Europe and the US admitting millions of young, well educated Russians who don't want to live in a cold, miserable, imperialist Banana Republic.
Sounds like a bad policy to me as well, but maybe the number of students from that country at US universities is really small? I haven't looked into it.
Probably smaller at the undergrad level (although even there it would still be an atrocious decision) but I have known a lot of Russian PhD students in my field (off the top of my head, probably more than any non-US country other than India, China, Iran, and Israel).
e: I guess I should specify that I’m a computer scientist, although I think Russia is probably decently represented in most of the hard sciences at least?
The point is what such reflexive hawkishness reveals about a potential Gallego presidency. Foreign policy is an area where the president has a lot of unilateral power and I just don’t think anyone with such innately hawkish instincts should be president. The fact that this legislation didn’t really have any domestic constituency that more polarizing topics like Israel have and he still decided to introduce the legislation is revealing to me. It signals a kind of an innate hawkishness that worries me as much as the crazy tankie isolationist.
It isn't really hawkishness, Russian students in America aren't a key Putin constituency, it doesn't serve any purpose or signal aggression, it is just bigotry.
Sure it is psychotic nevertheless and doesn’t reflect well on Gallegos decision making skills on a non-ideological level.
I actually don’t think Gallego is bigoted I just think he’s kind of dumb and not ready for prime time.
I was commenting on the action not his soul. It seemed to be a common thing in the 2019-2023 period, where a totally normal moderate would say an absurd or offensive thing that went against everything they stood for and now they pretend they never said it.
It’s not a top 20 source of students. Even places like Nepal, Thailand, Peru, and Kuwait send more students. But there are more Russian students than Australian in the United States. And as John K notes, it’s quite a noticeable number in graduate programs in mathematical sciences.
Is there a way to give money to political candidates without having my contact information sold to other candidates and groups who incessantly email and worse, text? I would be much more likely to donate if I knew I wasn’t going to be spammed.
Unsure how the methods would work here, but I’d love to see a study that tried to see if spam political messaging actually reduces aggregate donation.
My suspicion, and this informed by my work in the industry (albeit with a non spammy firm) is that they do it because it really does work even while pissing off a lot of people into not donating.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/trump-is-terrified-of-your-grassroots
I agree, there must be some evidence, or perception, that the spam works. Maybe the short term returns justify the practice, but in terms of building a longer term relationship with recurring donations it is a huge disincentive to donate.
It feels disrespectful. If I care enough about your and your cause to give you money, why is there an expectation that you'll try to profit off my generosity.
Those emails "TRUMP IS ABOUT TO 💣💣💣DESTROY💣💣💣 AMERICA!" or "(((THEY))) ARE AFTER TRUMP, DONATE NOW TO SHOW (((THEM))) WE'RE NOT SCARED!" are the survivors of dozens or even hundreds of rounds of A/B testing.
There's a lot that's unsure in politics about what works, but the consultancy firms that rake in a percentage of donations are 100% on the ball in terms of maximizing donations.
They can A/B test the direct response to an email. It’s much harder to test how individual emails like this affect donation to related causes on future occasions. If it causes 10% donations in recipients, but decreases donations by 0.1% on 200 future occasions, then it is net negative, but will show up as very positive in the tests they can do.
It might be hard to test the alternative because I'm not sure people would find a "we won't spam you" commitment to be credible.
Yes, a good rule of thumb in political fundraising is regardless of what you think personally if they are doing it it's because it does in fact work as unlike say sign wars (which probably don't matter) finance people really do test different strategies and compare them.
I have the same concern. I get tons of political spam from PA, where I have never lived but gave a small donation to a candidate years ago. I hate it.
Even if individual candidates don’t share information, isn’t there the fact that donations in general are public record for transparency reasons? I’m not sure if the public records include phone numbers or not, but I would think you could cross reference them with other information that would.
They must use the same strategy that retailers and spammers rely on: yeah they know it's obnoxious as hell but studies show they can get a few percent extra customers/responses for shoving this crap repeatedly down our throats. Great. All it gets me to do is unsubscribe so while they're getting a few extra donors they're losing a lot of folks like me.
Write a paper check and mail it. Just give them your name, occupation, and snail mail address (you’ll probably get some junk mail, but that’s probably less of a bother than spamming).
Five seasons in and we get a new character? Is the first mention of your brother?
This does in fact have strong Michelle Trachtenberg on Buffy energy.
One other consideration re: Jeff Duncan - he could be the John Bel Edwards of Georgia and finally take up the full Medicaid expansion. Dems periodically winning governorships in red states has been (alongside referenda) one of the most important factors in the steady forward march of Medicaid expansion to 40 states.
We should be putting up competitive gubernatorial candidates in the 10 holdout states cycle after cycle until Medicaid expansion reaches all of them. This is an area where electoral success for Dems leads to direct, tangible benefits for people's lives. And it's one of the best issues we have. Medicaid expansion won outright by referendum in places as red as Idaho and Oklahoma - people love it! Running on cultural moderation plus Medicaid expansion could be viable (to a first approximation) essentially anywhere.
In many of those states, the appropriate D strategy (assuming your primary concern is policy outcomes in aggregate) is probably to run candidates whose positions are literally "Republican on basically ever national policy except Medicare expansion".
I think you meant “Medicaid” rather than “Medicare” expansion…and rather than Republican on policy, maybe just former Republicans, i.e., the pre-Trump Republican party. I’m supporting a former Republican (running now as a Democrat) for governor of Florida, he’s a basically a never-Trumper and I don’t even know what his policy positions are for the most part.
Hey team - quick correction from North Carolina here. You should absolutely donate to NC Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls - it's vital that she wins. Just wanted to note that Democrats currently hold two, not three, seats on our state supreme court. Earls (and Riggs, who won in '24) are those two.
What this means is that if Earls holds her seat, then Democrats need to flip just 2 more seats to win a 4-3 majority on our state's highest court. In 2028, there are 3 seats up for election, all held by Republicans who have voted to protect Republican partisan gerrymandering. So if Earls wins, Dems need to flip just 2 of those 3 to flip control of the court. (Likewise, if she loses, they need to flip all 3.)
Earls for Justice: https://earls4justice.com
Updated. Thank you!
>Before proceeding with the list, though, I wanted to talk a little bit about Golden because I’m pretty angry about the situation.<
I'm angry about the situation, too. But I personally think the real problem is the weird way political parties operate in the United States, and how their operation intersects with the state laws that determine ballot access and (critically) partisan labelling on these ballots. Even if the Democratic Party had PRE nominated Jared Golden and said there's no need for a primary, they'd be SOL if a challenger to Golden entered the primary election and won. Not only would that challenger be on the general election ballot, that challenger (and not Democratic Party-endorsed Jared Golden) would enjoy the designation "Democrat" on the ballot.
It's a stupid freaking system. I hate it.
I don't think the problem is that the Democratic Party should have pre nominated Golden.
It's rather the Democratic aligned elite media ecosystem just never really gave him the time of day.
What do people think about the alternative hypothesis that Jared Golden just isn't very good with media? Josh Shapiro who is cut from the same cloth as a center left moderate overperformer is the CONSTANT subject of various pieces about the future of the democratic party. My theory is that Shapiro is just good at media, Golden just isn't.
Though I think there are also a bunch of important differences in *how* they moderate. A Jewish lawyer from suburban Philadelphia moderates in a very different way from a marine from rural Maine. The media types know a lot of people like the former and can read them as friendly in a way that they find harder with the latter.
Those types balk at people who aren’t downwardly mobile socialites with fancy degrees from elite exclusionary colleges and universities.
There is a reason large swaths of the country resent and mock NYC and its centrality to discourse.
>It's rather the Democratic aligned elite media ecosystem just never really gave him the time of day.<
That can add to the problem, sure, but it really wouldn't *be* much of a problem if, as in other rich democracies, political parties in the United States possessed a full and unfettered right to nominate whoever they like. Or, to put it another way, a primary challenge can do damage even to even quite well-liked and admired incumbents, never mind centristy mavericks like Jared Golden. Leftists—including those in the elite media—often get it wrong as to who maximizes the chances of winning a general election, or else they're perfectly happy to see the Democratic candidate lose the race.
Why not simply take away their influence on the nomination process? The way we run our elections is bonkers.
Progressives have been practicing this weird coerce and extort politics for like a decade. It’s like they want to mimic the Tea Party, but they don’t have a path to an electoral majority if they succeed in forcing their positions. Republicans are advantaged by structural geographic factors, the fact they at least meet some of the cultural values of their voters, and the fact progressives hold much of this country in contempt for mundane reasons.
What they’re doing is exactly what you said, and then hoping that a once-in-a-generation Obama-esque talent will pop up on their side and deliver victory. That’s why they’re so excited about Mamdani: they think he’s that talent.
Which is odd because he could never be President and thus unable to lead the party without a change to the Constitution.
But then again we are talking about people who get all their knowledge from social media.
Everybody can’t be President, it’s ridiculous that we hold every elected official to that standard. Mamdani has done Democrats a great favor by showing them how to run a campaign—not everyone has the talent for it, but I’m sure a lot of people do, and we need to have an eye out for those people who know how to navigate the 21st century media ecosystem.
yes it is a stupid system. the 1970s "reforms' created doors for basically ad-hoc takeovers of powerful brands
Our constitutional structure wasn't designed for a system of two quasi-official major parties, but nonetheless the primary and ballot access reforms may have been an improvement over the status quo when first adopted over a century ago.
But that was then. Now the status quo is that we have the equivalent of two established state parties, governed by nobody.
It's hard to predict how it would play out, in the very different information and communication environment to today and tomorrow, if we did away with the past century's worth of laws that privilege the two established parties, and fully separated party and state, so that parties were again fully private organizations without specific privileges granted by law. But my bet is it would make possible a flowering of new coalitions and political configurations.
At this point I can’t help but wonder if “Independent” would be a more appealing ballot line, so long as there’s only one of them.
Democrats have been able to attract some competent and talented people who have been pushed out of the Republican Party. This might make “Democrats center right” to some, but it’s an opportunity created by Trump. It would be silly not to take advantage of this opportunity to reposition on social and economic issues.
You say it might be silly not to take advantage of the Trump-created opportunity, but the D's don't have a great recent record of taking advantage of Trump-created opportunities....
No, they are better at creating opportunities for trump to get power
"And yet in all this time, there were no big Jared Golden features in national magazines"
While I share most of Matt's frustration, a national magazine feature or glowing praise from Brooklyn liberals probably would have undermined his candidacy in his particular district. For all we know, he was offered the national feature and turned it down. And if I were a centrist representing a light red district, I would welcome criticism from the far left, left, or even center-left
The real truth, of course, is that progressives are more concerned about winning the future of the Democratic Party than optimizing for 2026, i.e., stopping Trump.
I say that without judgment. I don't hold that view--I'd prefer a somewhat moderate Democrat like Golden over the smaller chance a more progressive candidate wins that seat. But I do feel that way about people who were very recently Republicans like some on this list running in Democratic primaries. If the way for Democrats to "win" is to elect Republicans who jumped ship from Trump *after* he won the presidency, what's even the point of the party anymore? So I won't, for example, be supporting Duncan.
Well, the point would be Stopping MAGA
If one actually believes the MAGA threat.
Mostly however Left-Democrats are LARPing about fascism and have zero real sense of it.
It's funny, maybe I'm being just a mirror image of Late Blooming but I've found myself identifying less and less with the Democrats over this kind of tension, contradiction, whatever you want to call it. Trump is either a break the glass, all hands on deck, five alarm fire or he isn't. I think he is and the Biden administration's failure to approach it that way in any manner other than rhetoric has my loyalty and positive feelings towards the Democrats lower than they have been in my entire adult lifetime. I'm still voting for them for the time being, not that it matters in my deep blue district, but I do wonder how much of the damage to the brand comes from the completely justified perception that, however one feels about the policy positions, these are fundamentally unserious people, deeply interested in everything except for that which actually matters.
Democrats have ruined so much trust via hyperbolic language. Fascism, climate crisis, healthcare collapse, systemic injustice, etc. The language that something is a massive existential concern is not met with the same urgency or heavy response the rhetoric entails undermines credibility.
Progressive hyperbolic escalation on social media feeds into this distrust too.
And the fact that many Democratically controlled governments are failing at addressing problems (e.g.: cost of living, crime, homelessness, aging infrastructure) further exacerbates trust.
This really is an all politicians problem. There literally is no more obvious example of hyperbolic speech than Trump himself. Americans have simply become too comfortable with it to the point that they participate without much reflection about whether they are being hyperbolic themselves. They say the claim, and defend it first as literally true, and then retreat to arguing they were only speaking symbolically or generalizing. But they don’t even think about whether that’s true until confronted with counterpoints. Their mental models simply are not complex enough for that.
The growth of casual mendacity is probably one of worst consequences of social media.
This is how I feel. Just ridiculous that Ed Markey even exists in a world where Trump poses the threat that he does.
Yep. Trump is an existential threat to democracy in the rhetoric but when it’s time to make policy he’s just another Republican. Climate change is an existential threat to *human life on Earth* when Democrats give speeches but not scary enough to make it easy to build nuclear plants. And when every CEO in the country is promising to spend trillions of dollars to build a computer to do your job at 5% of the cost, so they can take away your job and immiserate you, Democrats are mum. They’d be the worst people in the world, if it wasn’t for MAGA Republicans.
Or even Paul Ryan Republicans
At least the Paul Ryan Republicans, like the aforementioned CEOs, are pretty mask-off about the idea that you don’t deserve a good life (maybe don’t deserve a life?) if you’re not part of the capitalist class. I’m not sure that a lot of Democrats (think of e.g. Chuck Schumer here) really disagree at heart, but they pretend not to, and that’s worse.
I'm far from being a Schumer fan but I don't think that's a fair characterization at all.
I hear ya. I switched to Independent a couple decades ago though I usually vote Democrat simply because they're the less worse option. What happened to the JFKs, FDRs, Teddy Roosevelts, Trumans, and Ike's? Does it take disastrous circumstances to get substantial candidates (ie--Great Depression, WWII, etc )? Are our Bizarro world politics just an archetypal symptom of waning empire?
Yea that's what keeps me up at night when I think about my kids' future. Some level of relative decline was probably inevitable given the historically unparalleled level of ascendancy we had after the Cold War. But we're still a very well placed country to stay strong and prosperous indefinitely if we play our hand with even minimal competence. Instead it seems like we're hell bent on an orgy of self indulgence and self destruction.
I think the Republican party has been MAGA-esque for longer than Trump has been in power, and that it's more important to have an actual liberal party if you're going to stop the illiberal slide in American politics. That's consistent with having a big tent, just not so big it includes recent Republican elected officials.
I think "Did you stand up against egregious abuses of power to the detriment of your own career" is a pretty straight-forward standard to use, and both candidates highlighted above meet that criteria.
I also think that, from an electoral math perspective, the Ds just can't afford to be that choosey if they ever want to win in the Senate. If you deny representation to anyone who was an R before, how can you expect to get votes from people who voted R in the past? And if you're rejecting those voters, you have no majority.
I think it's unreasonable to expect, and people do not in fact expect, parties to nominate former members of the opposing party in exchange for the votes of swing voters or switch voters.
Also, there just aren't that many people in the electorate who are basically Bush/Ryan era Republicans who are now open to voting Democrat. The Harris/Cheney road show seems to not have been a winning electoral strategy. There is, of course, a good reason for this: part of the appeal of the wage war & slash the welfare state policies of Bush/Ryan Republicans *was* cruelty, and a large part of thei voting base are perfectly comfortable with Trump who more openly exhibits that quality.
Yes the unreasonableness of it all
Poor Republican duped into accepting impurity in their blood via Donolnd Trump (ex-D), or any number of Demcrats who flipped to R in House notably and have in 21st century continued on.
Harris lost for her campaign and the perception as well documented by Silver et al of being Too Left due to never clearly dumping her old Woke / Proggy positions of the 10s-early20s.
Trying to shift blame to Cheney is ... Cope.
While I appreciate your initial post engaging with mine, which sparked an interesting (to me) discussion, generally you've just thrown out lazy Twitter-tier strawman points, so I'm adding you to my ignore/mute list.
If they're the best candidate for the district, why on Earth not? I'm not saying you're obligated to nominate a defector. My position (contra yours) is that the option should remain on the table. And then you should choose the best option to win the seat.
Maybe we have slightly different ideas of the proposal.
My objection to Democrats nominating Republicans is not that they *were* Republicans so much as that they *are* Republicans. Generally, having been a Republican up until 2022 or so is a good indicator that one holds Republican views. "The party left me; I didn't leave the party." I'm just saying that's an option Democrats shouldn't exercise. I'd put Duncan, Cheney, etc., in that camp.
The idea isn't to punish people for having been Republicans and then defecting but rather to have minimal standards for what the Democratic Party stands for.
As a separate issue, I would question the judgment and sincerity of someone who says, "Yeah, I was a Republican up until 2022 but now I agree with most Democratic Party positions." If someone had a good explanation for the change of heart--maybe they encountered the ghost of FDR on the road to Damascus--maybe.
The option will always be on the table. People can (and do) vote for who they believe will best represent them. But since I don't believe a former Republican will best represent me, I'm not going to vote for one unless my back is against the wall.
I tend to think liberal Dems would be more effective embracing homeless right liberals instead of pandering to the populist horseshoe.
It would certainly offer much better governance.
Edit: Or at least Left and Right liberals both need to think clearly about how to effectively marginalize the populist horseshoe, even if that doesn't necessarily mean a coalitional realignment. The right liberal wing has completely collapsed in terms of institutional power. The left liberals need to hold the line instead of embracing red vs brown politics.
What do you mean by "right liberal" and "populist horseshoe"?
If by right-liberals you mean Blue Dogs, they seem to be doing OK. If you mean people who were Republicans from the era between roughly Reagan to GWB, I'd dispute that most of them were that liberal.
If by populist horsehoe you mean a style of politics, I think that is somewhat orthogonall to this debate. If you mean a lack of commitment to democratic norms, I think (a) Democratic/progressive populists haven't really exhibited this in the US, and (b) it's hard to be the one party in favor of democratic norms while the other flouts them. If you mean policies that tend to have a populist character--"tax the rich," "stop insurance companies from putting profits over people," "secure the borders--then I'd say some populist ideas are good and some are bad, and that it's good when the good ideas get cross-party support.
I mean the Free Minds and Free Markets wing of the old R three legged stool. Obviously they had the executive power enthusiasts mostly in the Foreign Policy Hawk leg, and the Buchananite populists and theocrats and racists in the Social Conservative leg, but, prior to about 2017 or so, there were plenty of Republicans who were constitutionalist, pluralist, market liberals before they were purged by the Trumpists. Lots of these people still exist and they are much more aligned with constraining the power of MAGA than the labor protectionist or "overthrow capitalism" wings of the populist left who covet that power for themselves..
Yes yes, a 'big tent' so long as it is not actually big, welcoming so long as one is only engaging with the Converted who have the right history of correct thinking.
That is in the end not a Big Tent at all but the pretending about Big Tent while keeping the impure heathen at appropriate non-polluting arms length.
An ideological "Limpieza de Sangre, no Republican Cooties allowed.
Otherwise Actual politics requires an actually effective party to actually win and not merely posture.
Else you end up excactly where the Democrats are now - having quite successfully self-limited own-appeal and shrunk their own reach geographically, and socio-economically.
Funny thing is that most Republicans who jumped to Democrats adjust their positions to be more in line with Democrats. Sociologically people adopt the norms and values of those in their social group (this is what has happened to Anti-Trump Republicans over time.)
The converse is also an explanation for Republicans’ transformation.
The Bulwark team is an excellent example of this... But unlike regular Dem types they like free markets and don't police their own speech much (or at least Tim Miller doesn't). As someone who's very much disenchanted with the progressive left but angrier at the right then ever these are very much my people.
I stopped listening to the Bulwark because they got too whiny. Kind of like how I got sick of Krugman.
Do people change their strongly held moral views on abortion when they decide they don't like Trump?
Not every person believes every line of a party's platform.
And FWIW, Trump's position on abortion isn't far from the median American's...
Yes, I agree. While I'm happy they've seen the light about Trump, I disagree we should be welcoming them into the ranks of elected Democratic politicians. If they didn't turn tail on the GOP long before Trump, they'll *never* be actual Democrats. They'll be Republicans who hate Trump is all. No thank you.
"actual Democrats" is a poor way to approach politics, particularly as a disadvantaged party.
Surely by "actual Democrats" he means safety-net liberals and not left populist independents like Bernie Sanders. /s
I mean anyone who didn't used to be a registered Republican until 2019. You could just ask me instead of making assumptions.
From the Bluekskyism that is quite prevalent, and the pattern of Flipping from late 20th century into 21st Century, I have to suspect this is prevalent amongst Democrt partisans..... and likely quite explanatory in part for why that pattern of Reps is very heavily D to R and not the other way.
Brilliant success, Democrats have done quite well hin this, being so broadly competitive geographically, expanding their play... ah wait no completely the opposite.
I don't agree.
Of course, you want the Heathen to Convert.
that's religion, not mass electoral politics.
It's not enough they convert. They need to eat dirt, and apologize to my face. To me, personally. And wash my car. Don't forget that second coat of wax, Biff.
Hair Shirts, must have hair shirts.
No, I don't. I don't care what they do. I'm just not going to vote for them and I really don't see giving them a place at the table of Democratic politics. They hate Trump, and I'm glad for their vote against him. But to turn the Democratic party itself into a vessel for all things anti-Trump, no matter how anti-choice, anti-worker and otherwise antagonistic to the Democratic platform they may be otherwise, seems like a bad way to go.
And voila, self-marginsalisation of the partisan-sect based politics. the impure sinners will polute the waters.
How about if they do self-flagellation, repent the sin of being of the opposite political party and engage on a pilgrimage to an appropriate identarian conference?
Compare and contrast with the delight of the Republicans when they have a D convert....
and then one can profitabily reflect on which party has self-excluded from large swaths of the Electoral geography for Senate and EC.
Edited Later to Add: Wiki summary pages on Party Flips (House, Senate)
[while certainly flawed and incompletee, and this only House and Senate the emergent late 20th ongoing into 21st century rather tells a story of the Opposition being quite happy to capitalise on flips.
Senate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_senators_who_switched_parties (more ambiguous, and smaller sample set to be sure)
House: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_representatives_who_switched_parties
It is not probably worth the effort to do State levels but I would strongly suspect that in Swing / BattleGround where Dems were once broadly competitive one would see a rather similar strongly in one direction flow.
Imagine exaggerating this much.
It happens a lot around here. Snark replaces any real attempt to understand, especially when one has a take not in line with the groupthink.
I think a good part of the appeal of Yglesias' substack is people who, for whatever reason, think they're under seige from college students who are woke or whatever.
I'd just like the Democratic Party to have roughly the distribution of views it did in the late 2000s, after it arrived at the consensus that the Iraq War was a mistake, but with less homophobia/transphobia. I think that's a better path to electoral victory (Obama) and a better way to resisting a dangerous administration (Bush). I believe people on the progressive left belong in the tent, as do moderates, whats-the-matter-with-kansas types, etc. I do not believe Bush or Romney era Republicans belong in the tent.
But if you look at the actual party that existed in 2008, it did include a lot of people whose views you would now exclude. Including in elected offices. The elected offices that allowed for the judges that decided Oberkfell and the officials who passed the ACA.
The current party, a party that excludes anybody to the right of Obama, is a minority party destined to give ground on every important issue.
I'd love for us to be a country where a majority overwhelmingly thinks like Obama and Pelosi, and sees Bernie Sanders as only slightly left of center. But I don't live in that country.
Yes, I completely agree, and I'm not sure why that seems to engender so much hostility here except that my guess is there are a lot of former Bush and Romney types who subscribe. I personally would rather have a party made up of Bernies and Schumers and Mamdanis and Testers than Kinzingers and Liz Cheneys and Joe Walches, but that would get me ratio'd here.
We'll just disagree on the merits here.
What on Earth does this even mean? "I'd rather have a Republican in office than a Democrat who used to be a Republican be became disgusted with them and now wants them to lose"?? This is self-defeating and naive.
I didn't say that. I said I'd rather have someone committed to Democratic principles AND committed to beating Trump rather than someone not committed to Democratic principles but wants to beat Trump. If my ONLY two choices are Republican Lite and Republican MAGA, then of course I'll vote the former, reluctantly. But those usually are not the only two choices.
But for many districts and states in this country, "Republican Lite" and "Republican MAGA" ARE the only two options. This is the crux.
The context of the discussion is a recommendation about a primary vote in a statewide race in a state that has two Dem senators, both presumably well to the left of Geoff Duncan.
I understand that, and have sympathy for it. I'm glad I don't live in those places. I am only saying I would *not* support it and I believe it is bad for the future of the party to turn whatever power they have over to the Romneys and Cheneys of the world.
This really does reveal that for progressives, the threat posed by MAGA isn’t really different than the broader political disagreement about policy. In fact, I would guess a lot of Progressives like the destruction of our democratic systems of checks and balances in the hope that due to some mystical intervention, somehow they are ultimately the ones who wield the unlimited executive powers and crush dissent.
I live in the district next to Jared Golden's, and I can tell you *exactly* why the national media is not falling all over themselves to promote him. It's because he is the House version of Kyrsten Sinema. I personally think he brings most of the shit he gets on himself, and for no good reason-Matt has to know he wrote an article for the Bangor Daily News last year saying how fine it was all going to be when Trump got reelected, and he's been a big proponent of Trump's tariffs. There was no need for any of that. He's just a prickly guy.
(And besides, the inside dope is that he was *really* pissed about having a primary challenger.)
What major Democratic initiatives has Golden blocked? Or maybe he supported Mike Johnson for Speaker over Hakeem Jeffries (hey, it's possible I didn't hear about it!).
Politics isn't for little children. IOW, who the fuck cares about Golden's occasional forays into Trump-whispering if he's an infinitely better and more reliable VOTE for decency in the House of Representatives? Do you really not care about substantive results? Do you really think sending Paul LePage to Washington instead of Jared Golden would be in Maine or America's interest*? Because that's what's extremely likely to happen.
*On second thought don't answer that. I get serious horseshoe vibes from you.
Unlike Sinema Golden puts up numbers. If the Dems lose the seat with his challenger as the nominee he will look much more like Manchin. It's not like Manchin was right about everything, he was just much better than the realistic options.
Yes, that is very true. The GOP nominee for that seat is likely to be Paul LePage, our 80ish year old "Trump before Trump" former governor, who remains relatively popular in the 2nd CD even if he can't break 20% in the 1st. Golden may have lost that seat anyway this time around (although a blue wave would obviously have helped him a lot)
You should say better: he’s the house version of Joe Manchin!
Oh wait, Joe Manchin’s seat is now taken by a Republican.
I'm not sure where I said he wasn't better than John Justice.
Strong disagree. Krysten Sinema doesn’t get enough hate for having an absolutely bizarre set of policy stances. For example, she basically single handedly saved the carried interest tax loophole. It primarily benefits hedge funds and private equity, which have a very limited presence in AZ, so it’s not a local issue. It’s also not popular or populist because it solely benefits a tiny slice of extremely rich people. It strongly gives, “sold out to corporate lobbyists”.
Sinema is basically the poster child for why I have sympathy for Democrats or Progressives who are suspicious of "we need more moderates" stance. There is moderation in theory (I support Dems on 90% of issue, but on one or two high profile issues like immigration or gun control that swing voters notice, I will break from the party) and moderation in practice (I will support an end to the government shutdown because I'm more committed to archaic and idiotic senate procedures than winning the political fight).
I defended Manchin given the partisan lean of his state. But Sinema really is the ultimate riposte that progressives can give to Matt. As you say, who the heck is the swing voter in Arizona who's coming around to voting for Sinema because she defended the carried interest loophole. Or worse, when she breaks with the party on an Dem issue that actually has a decent amount of support from at least some GOP voters (see her vote on $15 minimum wage).
I also have said before that Matt is sort of forgetting that a lot of what Blue Dog Dems did back 15-20 years ago to show moderation was basically cut down or cut out provisions of basically any bill that came their way just for the sake of showing they were moderate. Like it wasn't even about objecting to a provision that maybe particularly harms their district or state. It was just cutting down a bill for the sake of showing moderation. It was basically the worst form of "inside the beltway" thinking about what moderation should be. I just wish Matt remembered that he was one of the people who first enlightened me to how dumb this thinking was back then.
> For example, she basically single handedly saved the carried interest tax loophole
The median voter is often the deciding vote but they don't do things "single-handedly." They do it because there were already enough votes from one side to push the issue into their view.
I remember the complaints from sitting Democratic Senators that it was "undemocratic" for 2 Senators to stop a bill, but it wasn't 2 Senators, it was 51 Senators.
I'll definitely agree Sinema deserved what she got, which is essentially booted out of office. Golden never misrepresented himself at least.
Because I don't think he needed to do that to win. I think it was unnecessary pandering and, more to the point, the chance to put a thumb in the eye of the Maine Democratic Party, who of course support him but also can't stand him.
Well, you can believe what you'd like about me, but I know my state. For years, until 2014, the 2nd CD in Maine was represented by a gay union organizer. His voters didn't all die and get replaced by MAGA diehards in the course of a few years.
The other thing to remember is that Maine uses ranked choice voting for national elections, which is how Golden has won every single time. He's almost nobody's first choice up there, really.
Not enough Epstein in today's post
I don’t think anyone even remotely associated with him should get any campaign donations!
^ This is the kind of bold stance we need in Washington!
Ehh, golden would have won the primary and every mod has a challenger. Make don’t just chicken out of running. This blog held him up as the paragon of independent, tough, winning candidate only for him to fold from a primary challenger
Bingo.
I voted for Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, for the first time since McGovern. I wrote in candidates for the last three Presidential elections. There is not a Republican left in National Office save Rand Paul, who at least will point out to the President that blowing up the lowest level drug smugglers is illegal. But I generally don’t vote for libertarians; one exception was the pot grower who ran in 2016. William Weld was his VP choice, and he is sane.
My issue with voting Democrat is simple. Are they loony? I can live with center-left over MAGA loony. There are two requirements they have to meet: first, a realization that spending other people's money is no longer a viable strategy. We have a progressive tax scheme. The well-off already pay the majority of the taxes. If you want to squeeze them a little more, fine, but there has to be a realization that taxing the millionaires and billionaires will not solve our fiscal dilemma.
The second thing they have to acknowledge is the fiscal reality of our entitlement programs. Around 2034, SS will become insolvent, requiring a mandatory 23% benefit reduction. Covering your ears when this is pointed out and yelling la la la la la in order to ignore the issue is not a serious way to act.
MAGA and Trump believe in the tooth fairy and that she will take care of it. Current Democrat leadership is no better. The Progressive Caucus as a whole also accepts this fantasy, as does the American public.
Populism has infected both Parties; it has caused them to lie to the American voter, and the American voter also accepts this fantasy.
A SS fix will require tax or a reduction in benefits; there is no other way around it. Same with Medicare. Voters will complain and scream, "I paid for my benefit.” No you didn’t. You roughly paid 2/3 of your benefit with your employer's help. You roughly paid 1/3rd of your Medicare benefit.
Taxes are coming; if the voters want European-style benefits, borrowing money is no longer a viable option. America is effectively broke, the free lunch is over, and unless something is done, the standard of living will go down.
An anthem for Democrats is a reduction in spending. I’d like to hear one serious Democrat come up with a reduction of some sort. Sure, they might say cut the military, a crappy option in a world where more countries are challenging our power. It may happen, but if they cannot come up with another reduction, they are not a serious candidate.
Sadly the delusional cheerleaders for the financial system are still pushing tax cuts and stimulus spending. Its amazing how many of the populace don't realize it's not free money. Politicians selling us down the road for votes.
You have perfectly described populism. It is a virus. Each candidate sees how many lies and false promises they can make. When Harris said she also would support no tax on tips, she was disqualified in my eyes. Why in the hell should that one group be blessed with not paying income tax? There was only one reason Trump did it, Nevada, they have a lot of tipped workers in Las Vegas. He won the state, and I can hear Harry Reid now. “Well, it worked didn't it"
Maybe if they pay the stimulus in DigiTrumpBucks (tm) they can get around this. They didn’t sell US policy to the crypto industry for nothing, did they?
Out of curiosity, what in particular compelled you to vote for Sherrill?
My desire is to see MAGA thrown into the dustbin of history.
On the question of why isn't there more nice stuff written about Golden, I don't think the claim that it's because he's moderate works. There's lots of that stuff written about Peltola and MGP and Fetterman, all of whom have similar political profiles. I think the most likely answer is that he didn't want to do that stuff (understandable) but there are other possibilities as well.
As a former resident of NY-12 and occasional Dem. donor with a 646 area code, I received the very long campaign (fundraising) announcement for/from Jack Schlossberg yesterday evening before the news broke about his candidacy.
This will be an interesting primary, but I am not sure what that does for the donation calculus within the district.
I learned about this from this comment thread and I am pretty upset about it.
Can I ask if you're upset about Schlossberg's campaign, or the fact that you learned about it from the comment thread?
And more broadly, what are your thoughts on the primary? (I posted elsewhere in the comments, but I'm a fan of Micah Lasher (strong on housing, and a policy wonk who understands the issues deeply. See his blog at https://substack.micahlasher.com/)
I'm upset that the story is now going to be the latest iteration of the Kennedy dynasty instead of the other promising candidates in the race. I have no thoughts on the primary beyond liking Erik Bottcher. I don't know very much about Lasher.
In the NYTimes it's buried as the 3rd or 4th story in the "New York" section, so it hasn't travelled very far yet, but clearly he has resources because I haven't lived in NY-12 since 2011 and rarely get political/fundraising messages from NY. I think he must have paid a lot to cast a pretty wide net. I'm curious if I am on a list that I have long forgotten about or if my data were compiled across multiple sources to target me.
I did not get a text or an email fwiw (I live in NY-12 and am a regular campaign donor though I don't have a 646 area code).
That's very curious