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

1. I am thankful that at 12pm 1/20 the powers of the prez will be removed from the most dangerous person who has ever held them. I am thankful for the many wonderful fellow Americans from across the spectrum that joined me to help get him out & save America from authoritarianism

2. I am thankful for each & every person that had to make a hard decision, stay silent & normalize this man & his party's actions- which mirror so closely actions taken by other leaders & parties as they moved to consolidate power at the expense of democracy (as documented so

3. clearly by @anneapplebaum's book Twilight of Democracy) bc their lock on power is threatened. Those of us that took a holistic look at events in the U.S., the scope of the Right's propaganda network, and the lengths to which GOP influencers (electeds & media) were willing to

4. go to manipulate public opinion and knew without a shadow of a doubt that we were facing a five alarm fire. Trump, as dumb & self-sabotaging as he is, does one thing perfectly well- manipulate public opinion. Trump fully understands that public opinion flows from the top-down,

5. and that when you control the information diet of a group of people, as the Right is controlled, that manipulation level reaches profound levels. By the time Trump came down the golden escalator in May of 2015- the Republican electorate was primed for someone like him to come

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

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

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

Trump has left the White House.

God what a lovely sentence to type. I might do it again.

Trump has left the White House.

Lovely. I didn't know fingers on keys could feel that good.

Is there a more beautiful sentence? I suspect not.

Per WaPo:
Trump is working behind the scenes to create a MAGA Party
-endorsing Kelli Ward in AZ
-to primary those who voted against him
-& bc he feels the threat will give him leverage over GOP who may vote to convict

2-"In a recorded phone call, Trump offered his “complete and total endorsement” for another term for Arizona state party chairwoman Kelli Ward, a lightning rod who has sparred with the state’s Republican governor, been condemned by the business community and overseen a recent

3-"flight in party registrations. She narrowly won reelection, by a margin of 51.5 percent to 48.5 percent, marking Trump’s first victory in a promised battle to maintain political relevance and influence after losing the 2020 election.

4-"In recent weeks, Trump has entertained the idea of creating a third party, called the Patriot Party, and instructed his aides to prepare election challenges to lawmakers who crossed him in the final weeks in office,

5-"including Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Rep. Tom Rice (R-S.C.), according to people familiar with the plans.

When you boil Trump (& the consequent Trumpism) down to its essentials at root it is Lying.
Trump has made a life of being a liar.
It is "Trump Rule#1" expressed years ago "Trump is a liar. He does not simply tell lies, he IS a liar. Thus what he does is quintessentially a lie".

Now we are embroiled in an impeachment trial, the consequence of the ultimate Donald Trump lie.
That he won the election.

This is so fundamental a lie, that when pressed, as Trump has done, & married to a demagoguery, as he had utilized to enflame his believers, you get

what we got. A mob. Playing at an insurrection.

All because of a Lie. Propounded by a liar.

Here then is the first brick in the edifice that is the newly submerged & subjugated Republican Party:

Renounce the Founding Lie.

If they will not, then nothing else matters.

The impeachment trial itself is become a farce, not for the lack of an impenetrable prosecution case.
But by the dint and opportunity allowed the structure of the impeachment process, to avoid all and any facts by the simple tactic of embracing, and advancing, a lie.

The Republicans as a Party have subordinated themselves to a Lie.
The Republicans as a Party have accepted as their functional premise for governance and leadership a Liar.

Until these cornerstones of what unifies the Republicans, devoted to their party, and not the country,