He’s setting up a go at the presidency. He knows that the DNC will want him to lean conservative, but he doesn’t want to be painted as flip flopping or pandering, so he’s leaning into it early. Now when the GOP inevitably calls him a woke far left extremist (or whatever buzz words they’re using by that time) he can point back to this period as proof that he’s “always been a centrist” who can appeal to non-MAGA conservatives.

Of course, he and the rest of the DNC haven’t figured out yet that conservative voters are NEVER going to vote for the LESS conservative party.

Haha I know 🫠

2026

The midterms are going to be brutal; Republicans can’t afford to lose either chamber of Congress.

Well, Sears went under because the CEO was a True Believer in the Libertarian/Atlas Shrugged/Starve The Beast method of running a business. He genuinely thought that making stores and even individual departments fight for ever reducing funding was going to make them better. What he learned is that when people have their livelihood at stake, they fight dirty and lie.

When Sears finally closed forever, he said he regretted it. Probably not as much as the people whose lives he ruined.

Wait for it, it’s coming: some variation of “make Greenland great again” political campaign to try to win over Greenlanders so they’ll support annexation by the USA.

Thankfully they get a preview of what making a country great looks like according to Trump.

It makes me genuinely wonder if they’re going to actually try to reprogram it or just do nothing and say they did.

Another real possibility is Musk ours a small team of three or four fresh college graduates on the job knowing that they’ll fail, essentially setting them up to be the fall guys if he can’t avoid repercussions.

Either way the goal is not to benefit the people who rely on social security.

Look, Pennsylvanians know a thing or two about election a representative, that representative having a personality changing life event, and then that representative going on to fix absolutely nothing and in fact make things measurably worse.

But even still they did the math, calculated the risk:reward of their vote, held their nose and cast their ballots.

Just as I have for every election my whole life.

You want real, meaningful change? Support progressive candidates at the local level who will be in a position to get rid of first past the post voting. The two party system that enables the Democrats’ laziness is a direct, organic result of FPTP. Thankfully how voting works is legislated at the local level, meaning if we can get some form of Rank Choice then suddenly Democrats are going to have to care A LOT because it’ll be easier to vote them out without simultaneously voting a Republican in.

But until we can fix the source of the problem (FPTP) damage mitigation will continue to be the name of the game, and it’ll be a game we will eventually, inevitably lose.

We CAN fix it, but we need less cynicism* and apathy.

*I didn’t say “no cynicism” that’d be terrible, I don’t think I could get through the day without a cup or two… But everything in moderation, ya know?

I was unaware the classified information being “boring” was a good reason for a news outlet to self censor.

Unless the concern had nothing to do with newsworthiness so much as the cost:reward ratio of publishing vs the expense of litigation against the Trump administration.

As far as you know, their intent has always been to publish and they were waiting for advice from their lawyers. You just keep jumping to conclusions though. Maybe try giving some benefit of the doubt. Again, it’s not like they’re Fox News or AON. These are people genuinely trying to do the right thing (even if they mess up sometimes) (within the context of a late stage capitalist society).

To be clear: I’m not saying they’re innocent and that you’re wrong; I’m saying you don’t know. So maybe chill a little.

If your support was conditional, then it was insincere. I don’t know what group you think you belong to, but you were never one of “us.” If you would like to be, you can make a good start by growing enough backbone to stand by whatever morals you have instead of “being an ally” and then “not an ally anymore” depending on whatever shit people say to you.

Publishing classified information, no matter how innocuous or unharmful, is still illegal and it would be a dumb fucking thing for The Atlantic, or even a private citizen* to do.

However I’m to understand that since then a government representative has said that nothing in the conversation was classified and The Atlantic is now considering whether to publish everything.

Absolutely nothing about this story indicates that The Atlantic or any of its employees are “working for the government” or anything like that. They were just trying to not break any long-standing laws that 100% would land them in prison for a long time.

This is a great example if Occam’s Razor. Is it all a conspiracy between the government and a news organization in good standing (ie not Fox News/OAN/etc)? No, somebody just didn’t want to go to prison for a stupid reason, so he held back a little to play it safe.

*of course private citizens have published classified material before and they did us a great service by doing so, BUT that information was, generally, worth it

It blows me away that we’re still seeing “both sides” arguments even after the last two months.

Have liberals failed to help us? Yes. Have conservatives failed to help us? No; they can’t fail at something they never attempted to do.

Both sides are not the same.

But if you want to argue that the two party system has failed, we can certainly agree there. The two party system is an organic result of first past the post voting. The good news is that voting is determined at the local level, where it’s easier to get progressives who are willing to move away from FPTP into office. We’re not going to vote away fascism, but voting reform absolutely needs to be one of the many strategies employed against fascists.

(Note: I switched to"liberals" and “conservatives” because your source spans multiple eras with different political parties, including when Democrats and Republicans switched after Republicans adopted the Southern Strategy. Interestingly, the modern Democratic party (post-Southern Strategy) has only held a unified government a mere 5 times)

Afaik they’d have to go through customs for the country they’re trying to enter. I can’t recall ever having to deal with US customs when leaving the US, it’s always been the country I’m traveling to.

Count me as another ally you threw away because you can’t see past your own ignorance.

LOL if you think this way then you were never an ally.

A strike that has a scheduled end date is a strike that’s has scheduled its own failure. A ten day strike would achieve nothing except the suffering of it’s participants.

Yes, the economy would grind to a halt, yes people would likely die, yes it would financially hurt the powerful people in charge.

But do you really think those powerful people will give a shit? They know after ten days the gravy train will resume, but only for them and not the people who lost their jobs, got arrested, were injured, etc. The rich and powerful can afford to be patient, meanwhile everyone who sacrificed for ten days is going to have to question whether they can survive doing it again.

No, we’re way past the point where our society can afford another failed effort to affect change. We need a general strike that doesn’t end until the government capitulates to the needs of the people. It’s all or nothing, now. ☹️

not everyone thinks that

Yes, obviously not everyone thinks fascism is an existential threat. Which is probably one of our greatest failures as a society, in terms of education.

No? No. Democracy, functional or not, has no direct determining power on what candidates cater to. What democracy does is select the winning candidate, regardless of who the candidate caters to.

We may be a flawed democracy with candidates that cater to the elites, but we’re still a democracy and we still pick the winner.

This may come as a surprise to you, but yes, in a democracy the people are to blame for who gets elected.

The Democrats could have run a turd as a candidate with the slogan “it’ll be a shit show” and I’d still have voted for them with no regrets, because I understand that fascism is an existential threat. If the Democrats are to blame in any way, it’s because they didn’t try to get people to understand that OH WAIT THEY DID.

Should the Democrats have run a better candidate and a better campaign? Obviously yes. Is it their fault that voters were willing to let a fascist win? Not even a little.