1. The hot take that "D's need to learn to talk to the other side of the electorate" is absolutely the WRONG take.

I mean my god. Biden, Lincoln, the outside groups: they threw the best persuasion messaging in the history of persuasion campaigns at them.

What Ds need to do is

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@RachelBitecofer

1. Ok, I'm liking @RepSeanMaloney

"I sure as hell didn't win 5 Xs as a gay guy in a Trump district"

Much more imp he just correctly pointed out that even liberal MSNBC gives the GOP a major assist by constantly talking about Defund the Police, socialism, & intraparty fighting

2. and @JoeNBC is right, in my "modernized moderates" plan, you have to have these candidates go on offense. Its CRAZY that @SpanbergerVA07 is defending her record as a moderate when she's running against an ideologue in Nick Freitas.

If you ask the wrong questions & ask them

3. the wrong way, the evidence & data will screw you. Such as it did in 2020 because there is no reality in which Dem congressional/senate candidates were well-served by pulling out all their registration and in-person voter contact while the GOP was doing it. It was a bold

4. decision that someone, looking at the weak or inconsistent findings of research on effects of GOTV and esp the diff between in-person and "remote" forms and decided "you know, there is likely no diff from in-person and remote & in fact, remote you can contact WAY more people."

5. And the fact is, maybe this is right. Maybe the Ds total bomb on the congressional map has nothing to do with the decision to suspend the field programs of the House & Senate campaigns. Maybe. I'll be interested in the analysis when the voter file is updated I'll be looking at

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1. The ideal outcome @JRubinBlogger & @AliVelshi IS that the MAGA faction turns on the "establishment" part of the party & they tear each other apart. This is why only 20 M.O.Cs are acknowledging Biden- they are TERRIFIED of this. But I should make something clear & this is

2. something that @rickwtyler and this panel doesn't seem to be sending a vibe off that it gets and that is that absent some type of intraparty Civil War 2, the Republican Party is not a party in decline, heading into a sunset, its a party primed to go into the 2022 cycle & take

3. the Speaker gavel from @SpeakerPelosi! I mean, jeez guys- all of the stuff just talked about in terms of its abandonment of sanity, of the rule of law, of its dereliction of duty to the Constitution while it performs gross fealty to a swamp creature, all of that was true 1

4. month ago and what happened?? They gained 11+ House seats and potentially will hold the senate majority even though Ds had 6 pathways to it. 6! No, as craptastic as it is, despite the fact that it stood ready to execute a coup it spent months preparing for w Trump, the GOP is

5. STRONG right now. Its voters- and NOT just the nuts you see at the MAGA rallies, I'm talking about mild-mannered regular folks you run into at the bank and work with at Progressive Insurance- those folks are STOKED on the Trump Admin (albeit the Right Wing media over the past

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1. I think so. I don't think the issue are plans. The issue is that the ability of our govn't to function-to create & enact policy- has been seriously abridged the past decade to the point where it can't function. We've seen virtually no legislation this past decade & pretty

Does anyone in DC have an actual plan that would get the American middle class back on its feet and elevate many more of the poor into the middle class? I mean besides trickle down economics, which has been shown to be a joke?
— John Frost (@JohnFrost) December 30, 2020

2. much none relying on just "regular order." Although the Ds spent almost a year trying w the ACA before giving up & using a procedural trick in the end. Keep in mind, McConnell changed the operation of senate so that all bills, ALL, had to reach 60 vote threshold in the senate

3. That was a MASSIVE change to the legislative filibuster (a massive abuse of it). It creates a super majority requirement for laws that the Framers didn't design. And given the issue of misrepresentation the senate, which is causing a Tyranny of the Minority, its really shut

4. down the federal lawmaking apparatus. If Ds flip these 2 GA senate seats, the legislative filibuster will be right back in the spotlight bc McConnell will use it to lockdown Biden's legislative agenda. And we'll have to see how Biden responds. I agree that Biden needs to give

5. McConnell an opp to change his behavior, but if he doesn't Biden will have to go w EOs or ending the legislative filibuster. Either that, or getting nothing done. The GOP will seek to do to him what they did to Obama- use control of the senate OR the filibuster to prevent

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1. "They're leaving! They're leaving!"" yell seditionist as they watch House members fleeing the floor through the glass doors the only thing (+ some under-armed officers + office furniture" that protected our elected REPs (same ballot as Trump, each & everyone

@McConnellPress

2. of them felt so inclined towards martyrdom and/or possessed the weapons (Jesus, what if they'd has a grenade & guess what, in America, yes, you can come up w functional equivalents of that bc barring people from them is a betrayal of freedom so great we must simply acquiesce

3. their eventual death tolls. One functional "freedom grenade" down that hallway, tossed w ease through a hole in the glass door, could have easily hit anyone fleeing.Unless it was Mo Brooks, MTG, or one of their well-known crazy boosters, here's a thing @LeaderMcConnell ought

4. to reflect upon as he makes his CRITCAL pivot decision, which he could rally 17 people & start a fight for control of the party that rest of the country will help him with,EVEN AFTER ALL THE SHIT HE'S DONE TO PEOPLE, YES, THE REST OF THE COUNTRY WOULD HELP HIM IF HE WAS TO

5. RALLY 17 SENATORS FOR IMPEACHMENT, he'd find his whole 🌎awakened. And Mitch, as far as I understand it, you could do it anonymously!! How much would THAT fuck w them?? How great would it be, for the 1st time in 5 yrs, to be the one w power- you LOVE power! Think of the FUN!

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Yes, actually that's kind of the problem these days.

All the 🔥takes will be shown to be wrong once the voter file data & analysis like this one w the FULL RESULTS get done, which is why I'VE NOT PUBLISHED MY 🔥TAKE IN NYT yet

We'll have to decide if we want it fast, or right

I'm not sure if it's still a \U0001f525 take almost 2 months after the election, but here goes.

Majority black precincts in Philadelphia didn't really underperform for Biden.

Oh, and this is a \U0001f9f5with #maps and #stats and things. #ElectionTwitter #R 1/?
— Mike Johnson (@MikeJohnsonPA) December 31, 2020

There is ONE STORY in elections right now and its education. Its not rural vs urban, or Black and White, Latino and White

Its educated versus non-educated

And its global

1. I'll add that it's very imp that Ds understand, crystal clear, this fact (that edu is the divide that rules all other divides). After Parscale's success in 2020 the GOP will now double down on their efforts to come after non-college educated, non-white voters bc now they KNOW

2. they're gettable. The 2018 and 2020 cycle were "feelers." No doubt donors and strategists were skeptical. Now they have the analytic proof and the $ will be flowing. This is one reason that I decided that I had to get into electioneering myself. Someone is going to need to be

3. there talking to these voters from the Left (and talking to them with effective messaging- for ex they don't give two shits about insider trading corruption) or you'll see even more erosion in the D's vote share among non-college educated non-white voters, I'm sure of it. Its

More from Politics

David Rothkopf
@djrothkopf

Pretending that voting for Trump or denying climate change or suggesting the solution to every problem is more guns is a legitimate point of view, worthy of respect is not "how America works." It is how it dies.

People in a free society are entitled to any point of view no matter how obviously wrong or outlandish or destructive provided they do not impose their views on others.

But suggesting that something ignorant or divorced from reality warrants the same kind of treatment in public debate as something based in fact or at least credible is absurd and when done on behalf of a society in public media or academic settings it is self-destructive.

We would not grant media coverage or much bandwidth at all to a group that argued that unicorns exist or that there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Yet views like denying climate change or basing policy decisions on sweeping, obvious lies, are just as unsound.

Somewhere, somehow, judgments must be made. Some behaviors are wrong and must be condemned. Someone must challenge lies and demand facts. Coddling people who embrace idiocies does not help them no matter how loudly they demand to be coddled.

David Rothkopf
@djrothkopf

Trump on climate: I don't believe it. Trump on Khashoggi: I don't believe it. Trump on Russia: I don't believe it. Idiocy? A canny game? Doesn't really matter as much as the underlying intellectual autocracy. In this administration only one opinion matters.

It's an assault on facts and reason. It's an assault on good governance. It's an assault on the bureaucracies that are being discounted. It's an assault on science and history. But it is also an assault on one of the underpinnings of democracy.

We live in a system that is grounded on the idea of collaborative government. Leaders may have a final word but even then, there are typically checks and balances. Hopefully, in this case, such checks and balances may work. But they also are being tested.

The president's position that he is smarter than all the world's scientists, than the entire intelligence community, than experts who have studied any issue all their lives, is, of course, asinine. But his belief that government turns solely on his opinion, is monarchic.

Louis XIV reportedly said, "L'etat est moi." That he was the state. Trump asserting that he knows better than all, discounts all advice, that his brain is enough to chart the course for America alone, is essentially saying the same thing.

Henry Farrell
@henryfarrell

1. Short thread - on the various claims we're seeing from Republican politicians over the last few days that the Democratic push for accountability is "divisive." Damn right it's divisive - that is what it has to be.

2. It is intended to enforce a clear division between those who accept and are committed to democracy and those who are willing to turn to violence when the vote doesn't turn out the way that they want it to.

3. One of the basic implications of Adam Przeworski's theoretic work is that democracy is made out of mutually reinforcing expectations, and those expectations are fragile. If some actors think they would be better off defecting from the democratic bargain, they will.

4. In other words: democracy and armed factionalism are far closer than we think, or we would like them to be. This means that it is incredibly important to police the boundaries between them. Allowing some to turn to violence can lead to expectation collapse and cascading ruin.

5. When we allow the divisions to become blurred, that means that we are running the perpetual risk of things getting fucked up. If a major faction turns to violence, and no-one responds, things can get really fucked up really, really fast.

ScottishPanda
@PandaScottish

[thread]

I am going to do a thread on several numbers

1

2,996

4,494

43,730

106,158

Now

We go back into the dim and distant past in British politics

We go back over 2 decades

A lesson from the past

Now I am going to focus on the words of two politicians

Two politicians who have held high offices in this land

And I am going to agree with their words

So those with a long memory

May have already figured out perhaps what I am going to do based on the first two numbers

And you'd be right

So let me get going on the journey

In my first post

I deliberately anonymised those numbers

Let me now give them context

1 Princess Diana or Margaret

2,996 9/11

The final 3 are UK coronavirus death tolls:

4,494 (5th April 2020)

43,730 (30th June 2020)

106,158 (1st February 2021)

Robert Saunders
@redhistorian

"3 million people are estimated not to have official photo ID, with ethnic minorities more at risk". They will "have to contact their council to confirm their ID if they want to vote"

This is shameful legislation, that does nothing to tackle the problems with UK elections.THREAD

Millions of people do not have photo ID. By forcing through mandatory voter-ID the government risk disenfranchising millions of legitimate voters. https://t.co/y0Upzof2FI
— Electoral Reform Society (@electoralreform) February 17, 2021

There is no evidence in-person voter fraud is a problem, and it wd be near-impossible to organise on an effective scale. Campaign finance violations, digital disinformation & manipulation of postal voting are bigger issues, but these are crimes of the powerful, not the powerless.

In a democracy, anything that makes it harder to vote - in particular, anything that disadvantages one group of voters - should face an extremely high bar. Compulsory voter ID takes a hammer to 3 million legitimate voters (disproportionately poor & BAME) to crack an imaginary nut

If the government is concerned about the purity of elections, it should reflect on its own conduct. In 2019 it circulated doctored news footage of an opponent, disguised its twitter feed as a fake fact-checking site, and ran adverts so dishonest that even Facebook took them down.

Britain's electoral law largely predates the internet. There is little serious regulation of online campaigning or the cash that pays for it. That allows unscrupulous campaigners to ignore much of the legal framework erected since the C19th to guard against electoral misconduct.