1. Yes, Trump will claim to intend to target GOP senators up for reelection in '22 (like he did to Thune with Kristi Noem) if they don't join in @HawleyMO's sedition on Jan. 6, but the fact is, it's not clear whether Trump will be successful in ANY of those efforts & voting yes

1. Yes, as @danielsgoldman is talking about now on @MSNBC is playing a big part. Rep Senator reluctance to go after Trump is MUCH MORE now than mere political reluctance. And frankly Trump made these threats openly known. Yet, he had his "lists" for primaries. But there is much

2. more going on here, that I'll touch on in the article which will also include the survey results ( there is STILL TIME to get involved w the survey. It is on extremism in the GOP- focused on MTW, GA-14 but also GOP extremism broadly. Ultimately, I waited to field it until

3. after the impeachment trial bc the survey wasn't really meant to test that (trust me, the big org will cover it!) and bc I was afraid it would impact what we are trying to measure. So now its time to get this puppy in the field. UNLESS, y'all care to asses some of this stuff

4. Impeachment may or may not impact attitudes on MTG and tribalism. Lord knows it had so many elements of extremism that times in. In order to add anything I'd gave to raise more money. 10K is not enough- survey research, the kids you see in wapo and nyt and such are like 30K

5. Some quotes I get are even for 50k!!! For 10K, with me doing analysis, we'd get to ask 5 or 6 questions and the most critical demos. (If you are reading this and willing to add your won pro-bono work to mine PLEASE DM me. This isn't some silly horse race poll. The goal is to

1. Yes, removing @DebHaalandNM from NM CD 1 intros risk on losing the seat, but maybe less now that I am connecting w @RepSeanMaloney.

The GOP will start w descriptive representation on this one. In other words, they will seek to run a Native American. If there IS a Republican

2. American active in politics that resides (or can be said to reside!) in CD 1, they will run that person. This is bc the GOP is esp good at the "biography" end of politics in these specials- IE: Mike Garcia in CA 25.

Ds *think* they're good too. But they're not! All D's needed

3. in CA 25's special election to ensure they held that seat was a qualified Latino nominee who passably personable. They literally GAVE that seat away under this myth that it would be too hard to beat Garcia when the whole election was a story of % R ballots relative to % D

4. ballots- as we ALL watched in the special election. And even with a candidate people told me was "flawed", "a mess" or even "crazy" Ds lost the damn seat again, sealed the loss in the fall general by 333 votes! If that doesn't hurt YJEM, it hurts ME. Makes me want to PUKE!!

5. And although white people, and most particularly white men, who are, in most cases, still in the positions that make the decisions for these things and THUS leave their orgs vulnerable to blind spots that they themselves have huge incentives to not get stuck on, bc like all

1. IMP ANNOUNCEMENT

I want to let you know when I made the decision to launch @StrikePac & directly get into electioneering I realized I wasn't going to continue issuing "race ratings" & "forecasts" each cycle- OBV that's a conflict of interest!

The hostility & sexism of

2. that world, I have to be honest, makes it very easy to walk away- the misogyny in the top tier of the election analysis community outside of @Center4Politics folks who are awesome & also more accurate than anyone else is intolerable. I'll still analyze politics, political

3. events, issue commentary, write articles, run the pod, go on TV, and generally succeed in ways that drive those men nuts but no, I won't be putting out ratings or "forecasts" anymore. Now, lots of people are asking me "what's going to happen in 2022?" The Midterm Effect, the

4. the long standing pattern of the president's party losing seats in the Midterm happens virtually every single cycle. I believe there are 2 recent exceptions: post-9/11 in the 2022 midterms and 1998 post-Lewinski gate. What I'm trying to do in building @StrikePac is completely

5. redesign/overhaul/modernize & reshape the way that Dems currently approach electioneering. I want to build a new organization with the funds capable of coming into cycle's like VA's 2021 cycle and the 2022 midterm cycle and start to deploy these new methodologies into the

1. Yes, @FareedZakaria's new book, Ten lessons From a Post-Pandemic World argues we don't need a big or small gov- we need a GOOD one.

We don't have that now & that is bc for decades now, the GOP has intentionally hallowed it out. Stripping it of funding under the auspice that

2. the only goal should be small. And as it turns out- that was stupid. And now we have a dysfunctional, as @maddow says, "big, bad" gov. Something that has been "wasted, and rotted and ruined." And its been intentional. Its been murdered, with no thought for how people would

3. suffer for it. COVID just put that suffering in a streamlined spotlight. But as @FareedZakaria points out- its the cherry on top of a 40 year plan that Bannon termed the final "deconstruction of the administrative state." As with the decimation of the economic tools that had

4. allowed the world's 1st middle class to emerge & flourish before The Great Lie ushered in the greatest wealth transfer in history. Not only were Americans bamboozled into voting away their wage increases, their pensions, & their health care (at least till 2010)- they were also

5. tricked into pissing away their country's superiority- its claim to fame, its ability to puff its chest out & say "look over here, we have the best _____. " I had no idea when I was a kid that we were not, in fact, the greatest country on Earth- at least not if you care about

President Trump has pardoned four Blackwater contractors who killed 17 Iraqi citizens including a 9 year old Ali,19 year old Ahmed and 11 year old Qasim in one of the worst acts of terrorism.

In this thread I'm sharing the heart wrenching accounts from that day in 2007.

On Sept 16 2007, at approximately 12:08 p.m. in Nisour Square Baghdad, a heavily armed Blackwater convoy consisting of four “Mamba” armored vehicles with 7.62-millimeter machine guns mounted on top made a surprise U turn as they entered the square.

[1]

While the blackwater convoy entered, a young Iraqi medical student named Ahmed Hathem al-Rubaie was driving his mother, Mahasin, in Opal sedan after dropping his father Jawad at a hospital where he worked as a pathologist. Ahmed was in the third year of medical school.

[2]

It was the month of Ramadan so they were fasting. Ahmed’s mother, was also a doctor--an allergist. They could've left Iraq but Jawad believed they were needed in the country. “I feel pain when I see doctors leaving Iraq,” he said.

[3]

Ali Khalaf Salman, an Iraqi traffic cop, was on duty in Nisour Square on that day. As Khalaf watched, the blackwater convoy came to an abrupt halt and a large white man with a mustache, positioned atop the third vehicle in the Blackwater convoy, began to fire randomly.

[4]

MSNBC medical experts are underscoring that the course of treatment Trump is on is one you would *not* apply to someone who's doing well—but to someone who is struggling. Indeed, the experts say, it would be a *dangerous* treatment to give to a COVID-19 patient who is doing well.

NOTE/ The specific cause for concern here is the steroids; they're given to "severe and critical" hospitalized patients, and could harm patients who are not having breathing or immune-response issues. Keep in mind Trump's doctors claim they're discussing discharging him tomorrow.

NOTE2/ Tomorrow Trump's doctors will come up with a reason why he can't be discharged. Or they'll recall what was always the case—Trump can get basically the same treatment at the White House. I maintain the most likely scenario is that he demanded Walter Reed, then regretted it.

NOTE3/ Another possibility: Trump's White House doctors are basically jokes who just do whatever he tells them, and he wanted the real doctors at Walter Reed. Now that *real* doctors have set the course of treatment, Trump can go to the White House unless/until it becomes acute.

1) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Senate Trial today
 
What is expected to be the final day of President Trump’s second impeachment trial will begin at 10 am et today. We anticipate a final vote on the guilt or innocence of the former President as early as midday.

‘The perfect target’: Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years.

This really doesn’t surprise anyone, right? It shouldn’t — most of us have been talking about it on Twitter for at least four years.

“Then, in 1987, Trump visited Moscow and St Petersburg for the first time. Shvets said he was fed KGB talking points and flattered by KGB operatives who floated the idea that he should go into politics.” 2/X

Shortly after, Trump began considering running for POTUS one day.

“For the KGB, it was a charm offensive. They had collected a lot of information on his personality so they knew who he was personally. The feeling was that he was extremely vulnerable intellectually, and psychologically, and he was prone to flattery.” 3/X

I’ve often discussed how Trump was vulnerable to world leaders and intelligence agencies due to the fact that it’s so easy to get inside his bubble — you just have to satiate his ego and his personal sense of grandiosity.

Say nice things and spend money at his properties. 4/X

“This is what they exploited. They played the game as if they were immensely impressed by his personality and believed this is the guy who should be the president of the United States one day”

Putin is a master at this. 5/X

The media spent years pretending Trump could magically pardon his co-conspirators, consequence-free, at any time, even though nothing works that way. Now the media is pretending the GOP can magically filibuster, consequence-free, at any time. Nothing works that way. It gets old.

Every media pundit understands that there are always consequences to every move in politics. Yet they always frame the Republicans as being able to magically do anything they want, with no consequences, to try to scare/enrage you into staying tuned in.

"But the Republicans are indeed getting away with it all..." No they're not. They lost the Senate, the House, and the presidency. Their top leaders in the House are at each others' throats. They're out of power, adrift, losing donors. These are the consequences for their antics.

The catch is, it's just not the consequences you want. Because even as TV pundits convinced you that republicans were magically winning, liberal Twitter pundits convinced you that republicans could be defeated by imaginary simplistic magic wand solutions.

So now the pundits have spun you around to where you don't even realize your side won the election, you don't realize the Democrats are going be able to pass everything they want to pass, and you're pissed at Democratic leaders for imaginary reasons.