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Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of June 2
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.
This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.
Sen. Ernst doubles down on bleak response to Medicaid grilling
This is a surreal level of tone-deafness, not to mention just complete ineptitude.
The article quotes her video:
So she’s mocking her constituents and bringing religion into politics.
While ignoring the teachings of her own lord and savior.
Did she not read the Bible, or does she just not actually believe it?
There is no power greater than that of Owning the Libs. Republicans can say or do anything, as long as they make sure to own the libs in the process.
At this point, Republicans would eat shit if they thought a liberal would have to smell their breath.
Aside:
I'm not sure if I'm allowed to mark something like this 'exemplary', but I have to say what a pithy response. Modern society robs us of this level of precise cleverness in place of a quick 'gotcha', so I appreciate this (and will be stealing this for my notes; with attributions of course)
As a former Christian (Lutheran to be specific), I can answer that:
Best I could tell, most people only knew the Bible insofar that it was quoted by the Pastor during sermons or the 2 passages read aloud...all heavily curated.
IMO, if all Christians read the Bible, there would be a lot less Christians.
Wrong.
If al Christians read the Bible, there would be a lot fewer Christians.
Now, bear in mind that I'm not actually correcting your grammar. I just wanted to do the whole 'had you in the first half' thing and that gave me cover to make the silly joke. :) On a more serious note, I'm an atheist now because I read the Bible as a child through teen and eventually realized it was BS, so I agree with you 100%.
Yea the quality of my grammar is directly proportional to the amount of time I spend editing and re-reading.
It's still a low ceiling, but still.
Your grammar is fine and less/fewer is a debate. It was down to one dude in the 18th century who suddenly decided "no that's rong" and people went along with it. I was just using it as an opportunity to have fun with you <3
Hating poor people is part of her platform.
Tone-deaf? It's on purpose. It's le epic troleing as a political tactic.
Welp the Musk vs Trump shit fit is kicking off (i think they made it longer than my initial guesstimate). I'm hesitant to link to anything directly yet as its still an ongoing twitter slap fight at this point, but we'll see if there's any real repercussions from this.
Trump has "threatened" to remove all the subsidies for Musk's programs, and Musk has claimed that Trump isn't releasing the Epstein files because he's in them and a bunch of other back and forth shit kicking.
I suspect this just dies out (like last time), but a small chance there's larger repercussions for Musk. I do think that he's now going to try and pivot (as he has been) back to "oh woe is me, look i'm against this" attitude, and I have a low enough faith in the average person that his cult will take the out and return.
Edit-
Some additional salient points:
Musk claiming that we'll go into a recession in the second half of the year due to the tariffs.
Musk saying that since the president is threatening his projects he's going to decommission the Dragon spacecraft immediately.
And i guess he "endorsed" a post saying we should impeach trump.
I get the feeling that this'll blow up into something bigger by this time. It's... difficult to say though, but this time it's someone from the core of Mango Mafia full on calling the fermented mandarin being in the Epstein files. That's gotta sting a bit more than usual.
No matter what though, it is very, very satisfying to watch them throw shit at each other.
Please don't do that, don't give me hope :'(
let me help you abandon all hope as ye have entered here. The play I suspect is to usher Trump off and install vance, who is very smart and deadly.
Vance lacks Trump’s charisma. A not insignificant amount of voters literally are only coming out for Trump, in some cases only checking him on their ballots. Those voters have also been critical to his sustained success. He goes away, so do they.
The problem is that Vance is already in a position of power. And he actually had some level of political savvy compared to Trump, as well as being likely to work with the rest of the admin.
Right now Trump's stubbornness and selfishness is weirdly acting as a bit of a shield since the rest have to work around him to complete their agendas. He makes for a horrible puppet figure because he just does what he wants, and while he does seem to take some advice, ultimately he'll ignore it if it strongly contradicts his desires. He also keeps throwing wrenches into things with crazy executive orders that are likely weakening their position.
If Vance is on the same page as the others, then that will simplify implementing a lot of bad policies with very specific purposes in a very short time. And voters can't do much to stop them while he and his cronies are in office.
Does he have political savvy with Congress though? They mostly give in to Trump because he can credibly threaten a primary challenge. Can Vance effectively whip them?
maybe in the next election. But if Trump exits early, the remainder of his term is Vance-land.
l just saw that claim from Musk that Trump is in the Epstein files.
I’m not sure how much of this is kayfabe like when Trump and Putin have a “disagreement”, and how much is real. But in either case we have two of the most powerful people in the world acting like little kids and it seems very dangerous.
They may kiss and make up at some point, but I never really understood why people think stuff like this is orchestrated (not targeting you, just saying I've seen this in general). There's no upside really for either of them in this — Trump would certainly prefer his associations with Epstein to not be salient again, and Musk certainly would not want his Tesla stock to be plummeting like it is today.
I have no idea of the long term effects of this for MAGA world, if any, but I see no reason to think it is not a real spat between the two of them.
They've both made loads of money from the fluctuation in the stock market. Every time there's a dip, there's lots of what seems like insider trading happening just before, and then when they kiss and make up and the market immediately starts recovering, there's lots of what seems like insider trading happening just before.
The spectacle of it all is just to keep people interested and not really wondering why there was a flurry of activity on the stock market on Wednesday just before everything went to shit for a day.
Honestly I expected those two to fall out eventually, and I'm surprised it took this long. Their egos are both massive, and they're both used to being the most powerful man in the room. Neither one is used to being told no, so it was inevitable that when they'd disagree it would rapidly escalate and spiral. I think they only lasted this long because Elon was given free reign over DOGE, and that was enough to satisfy him for a bit.
This article from The Guardian is amazing: Impeachment, Epstein and bitter acrimony: Trump and Musk joust in astonishing social media duel
It doesn't really put Musk in a good light that he knew about this and kept it secret until now. Although, isn't this well-known by now anyway? Maybe it will wake some people up.
That is just hilarious. Well played.
Ouch. Honestly I'm surprised Musk didn't do more to harm NASA while he had the chance. Maybe he wasn't solely in government to enrich himself, unlike Trump.
Getting makeup tips from a man notorious for his self-tanner abuse is once again hilarious.
Wow, that is just straight up declaring that the US political system is blatantly corrupt and in desperate need of election reform.
That is actually somehow news to me! Would explain how Musk knows Trump abused minors, if he himself abused those same minors. Release the Epstein files, take them both down!
Yes this is important. Some people were focusing how it seems to mean that he's admitting to hacking voting machines or otherwise doing election fraud. (This is possible to some extent but not likely, and there is already plenty of evidence of "legal" election interference through disinformation campaigns, voter purges, gerrymandering, and other methods of disenfranchisement)
But the actual thing that was admitted is that Citizens United, along with media control by billionaires, has completely broken the the (always imperfect) democracy of the United States in a way that allows one person to completely change an election. And what he is saying is not hyperbole. He definitely affected the election just as he claims. Musk also frequently talks about "primarying" politicians he doesn't like, which means funneling money to an opponent to affect an election.
Let's go check r/conservative to see if they are also concerned about this, or if instead they are still posting stuff about George Soros.
I think Hank Green also has a good take (possibly filmed before we got more of the back and forth). We should be very concerned that the president can cost a person/company so much money just to ruin their day, among other money and corruption related concerns.
Agreed that in general Trump is incredibly vulnerable to leverage. He has many conflicts of interest, associations with foreign nations, debts, and other things which should be considered disqualifying for politicians in general. On top of that he is famously easy to manipulate through flattery and is generally unconcerned with ethics.
So yeah we're in terrible danger and I daily wish that his supporters would understand they have harmed the whole world (including themselves).
It's ironic because his supporters used to pretend that he was less vulnerable than other politicians because he has money. That has turned out to be hilarious because there is no limit to his craven thirst for money.
r/moderatepolitics is a conservative subreddit that doesn't delete opposing viewpoints or ban users as freely as r/conservative does
Trump official who shut down counter-Russia agency has links to Kremlin
He’s also a white supremacist by the way
There were a lot of articles about Darren Beattie over the last few months but I guess a story about putting a white supremacist with Kremlin ties in the State Department doesn’t register among the daily mindblowing Trump scandals that make the Manchurian Candidate novel and movies seem absolutely quaint.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/06/politics/trump-california-federal-funding
sigh. I will probably lose my research funding if this article is accurate.
I started my PhD in 2020, during the height of pre-vax covid, and finishing it during this different, entirely man made disruption. I just want to get paid to do the research and use the skills that I have been developing for the better part of a decade. I would have been much better off if I just got a data science position right out of undergrad but I believed at the time that basic research was both valued and valuable to society.
This is another daily example of the impeachable offense of abuse of power again which is fully sanctioned by the republican congress.
There are two kinds of Trump policy decisions:
This is one of the latter.
‘We’re citizens!’: Oklahoma City family traumatized after ICE raids home, but they weren’t suspects
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Also shared here!
link
Oops! Thanks.
Unrelated: the article had a link to an article from January titled Las Vegas ice cream truck mistaken for ICE vehicle: ‘I’m an ice cream man, that’s it’ and that's genuinely one of the most Onion-y headlines I've ever seen.
Holy moly this is a difficult timeline.
How on earth do you need to seize cash as evidence?
You don't. But civil forfeiture in the USA lines a lot of cops pockets with essentially no evidence or path to reclaim. You (as the person whose cash was seized) have to prove that the cash wasn't involved in a crime.
Those phones, laptops, and cash was going directly into those agents backpacks. Of that I am almost certain.
Realistically, protocol to seize cash almost definitely exists so they can try to trace the serial numbers to see if it's connected to a crime (e.g. a bank robbery, cash used to pay ransoms, the D.B. Cooper case, etc.).
That said, I can't think of any reasons that would apply to this situation. This seems like a plain old power play to me.
People Who Have Miscarriages Could Face Prosecution in West Virginia
If people don't tell police about their miscarriages, they could be investigated... but how many people will be investigated after telling police about their miscarriages?
I swear, people should report every fucking period... just in case. With pictures. To the Attorney General.
It's stating the obvious and somewhat preaching to the choir: but this is going to kill people. Paired with the fact that they've cut down basic institutions checking the safety of food anyone who is pregnant in the US is now more at risk. Years ago, before studying physics, I actually did some of those tests for microorganisms in particular. (I hate to say this, but in the future it may be worth to avoid local dairy products if things get bad)
Unironically, I could see that work... reactionary conservatives are incredibly fragile about blood from periods. sigh despite the fact that it's arguably one of the cleanest way a human body can bleed.
I've said it before but, take care. It's all madness with a method and no matter whether they get the result they want, it's sure as hell going to hurt so many people along the way...
'Sore subject': White House confirms physical brawl between key Trump allies
"'Scott Bessent called [Musk] out and said, 'You promised us a trillion dollars (in cuts), and now you're at like $100 billion, and nobody can find anything, what are you doing?'' Bannon recounted. "And that's when Elon got physical. It's a sore subject with him. It wasn't an argument, it was a physical confrontation. Elon basically shoved him."
Trump officials delayed farm trade report over deficit forecast
Administration officials blocked publication of written analysis that normally accompanies the report because they disliked what it said about the deficit.
Yeah, the closer we get to winter and all harvest will be done, many, many rural areas of America will struggle more. It's also not just the tariffs - boycotts, USAID getting nuked are also going to do wonders.
I don't think anyone can realistically say how bad it'll be, but I doubt it'll be pretty.
It’s a big problem that Trump and his admin will just lie and cover up and they mostly get away with it. Even when the truth eventually comes out it’s too late or ignored by half the voters. In this case, if they can defer economic data for just a bit, they are more likely to pass their horrible budget bill.
Farmers are key voters in rural districts and states. Also farmers support local businesses and talk to neighbors.
Trump might have made a big mistake. We'll know in a couple of years
Which is too late and it's not like he's getting voted in again (third term or by force)
His supporters in the house and Senate are at risk.
He also risks not having enough goons to enforce his fantasies.
https://www.npr.org/2025/06/06/nx-s1-5425509/kilmar-abrego-garcia-el-salvador-deport-cecot-maryland-ice
Mixed feelings here. It's great that he's finally been returned, but the railroading continues. At least he'll get due process this time.
Wife and 5 children of Boulder attack suspect taken into ICE custody, White House says (NBC News)
...
Honestly I'm just sad for thr behalf of his family, since they almost certainly had no clue. Plenty of other mass murderers and serial killers active over extended periods hid their plans and actions from their families, so I can easily believe his wife and children were just as clueless. I already felt bad for his daughter since he purposely waited for her to graduate high school, and then ruined her life in multiple ways just days later.
There's also something chilling about his family being subject to the expedited deportation. It feels like this has the potential for setting a scary, chilling precedent...
On the one hand, the case against the guy seems pretty cut-and-dried, and they should absolutely throw the book at him.
On the other hand, the call-out of him being an "illegal alien" is technically correct, but also feels really ..... I dunno but "ick" is the best description I have right now.
If he were a citizen, they wouldn't be going after the wife and children like that.
I'm sorry to disagree with your assertion. :(
It's certainly unusual:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/06/03/mohamed-sabry-soliman-family-ice-custody/
I think I don't really understand this - why is it "ick"? He was here illegally. I'm 100% opposed to all the heinous nonsense this administration is involved in with deporting people who are either citizens, visa holders, or otherwise here legally (or in the case of children, here illegally, but not of their own volition), but if we as a (presumably) liberal group are going to start down the road of saying "you can't call someone an illegal alien", especially when that person decided to go out and throw molotov cocktails at innocent people, we're just going to further inflame the stereotype that we don't want law and order, and the only group that can give us that is the republicans.
That sort of "you can't say..." rhetoric is the stuff that I believe starts in the furthest left leaning corners of the democratic party, and eventually ends up as a rallying call for republicans to win elections.
Perhaps I'm way off base here?
Its dehumanizing rhetoric. It contributes to the ongoing dehumanization of people. It's easy to reference his acts without using that language, much like it's easy to describe how Caitlyn Jenner is shitty without misgendering her.
Holding this man accountable to the law has nothing to do with calling him an illegal alien. Not dehumanizing people is part of my broader ethical and moral standards, and while I'm definitely not perfect, I don't compromise those standards because someone else will misrepresent me.
"We" as a broadly left wing group have been opposed to that dehumanizing language for a while, so this is very much not new. As for the ick, even perfectly pleasant terms can be used in a way that is harmful - I'm queer, but I can tell if someone calls me queer in a dehumanizing way. Same with Jew or Black or even "them."
Sometimes when a particular term, even a technically legally correct one, is used, it carries a connotation regardless of the denotation. And to be clear, "you" can say anything. People will always have opinions on what you say. And that's not something anyone can prevent
Fair points, and I'm of course aware that "you" or I can say (nearly) anything. But like you said, people will have opinions on it, and if we're trying to convince a voting bloc to vote with us, perhaps the optics of trying to govern what can and cannot be said is worth considering.
For what it's worth, we're on the same side and fighting the same fight - maybe with some differing views on how it should be done. I do worry about optics - republicans are good at weaponizing these sorts of things, and for now, elections turn on the votes of tiny little slivers of moderates in swing states.
I don't think buckling under the social pressure would be better optics. If we back down on our principles because someone is bad, then we don't have principles and that is a far worse "look" IMO. I don't mock Trump for his weight, or make fun of Abbot for using a wheelchair, or call Miller a lizard person, or call Musk an "illegal alien"
Especially in a case like this where the person just said it gives them the ick, not "fuck these fucking assholes for saying this fucking bigoted ass shit" or something. I don't think there's even a perception issue. They shared their personal feelings.
But if I lived my life concerned about how certain Republicans feel about it, I'd already have lost my identity - I wouldn't wear rainbows, shave my head, have a septum piercing, be queer and non-monogamous, be comfortable in my body size, work in higher education, have a Master's degree, etc.
Judge bars Trump administration from deporting family of Boulder attack suspect
Also see: The Boulder suspect’s family faces deportation. What rights do they have?
...
fit to rule - an anonymous conversation about Donald Trump
From the introduction to the interview:
This guy has some crazy beliefs, but ... well, there are lots of people with crazy beliefs, and I don't think it's a hopeless cause to convince people like him to vote Democratic.
That article is fascinating. The guy's beliefs strike me as . . . incoherent? He believes several things that are, if not mutually contradictory, at least in extreme tension with each other. And that's to say nothing of the tension between what he does and some of the things he believes. It's so all over the place, I can't engage with it as a whole; I can only engage piecewise.
Charitable:
Good instincts, and it's frankly disgusting that the Dems have lost the plot so hard that people who think this way are not overwhelmingly voting for them.
By the way, this kind of thing is why I'm convinced that people shouldn't underestimate JD Vance. Vance is selling a vision that this guy will buy. Actually, I think it's very possible that this guy is getting the exact word "dignity" from JD Vance.
Uncharitable:
Okay, I don't disagree that the Democratic leadership often comes across as disingenuous and inept. But, like, what the fuck. Mr. "I wouldn't even mind an open border" voted for the "Stop all immigration immediately" candidate???
Uncharitable:
Mr. "I'm a fan of woke" voted for the "Defund woke universities and deport woke immigrants and close woke government departments" candidate???
Uncharitable:
"Yeah, I voted based on vibes."
Uncharitable:
This seems like a frankly insane thing for a Silicon Valley founder who idolizes Peter Thiel to say.
Uncharitable:
As much as I hate this, I think it's maybe the most revealing aspect of the interview. Trump was the candidate of fun and possibility. He was—forgive me—the "yes we can" candidate.
But this attitude fucking infuriates me. "Maybe we take Greenland, and that'd be fun and cool." ????????? This is a deeply unserious attitude to take about global politics. And yes, I realize that I'm falling into the liberal stereotype, but, like, there are good reasons to be careful with what you say! Actually, there are good reasons to be careful in general! This "Let's just try it and see what happens" attitude is mostly fine when the worst thing can happen is your startup failing, but the stakes are a little higher for great powers. And maybe you argue that there's an element of kayfabe to Trump's ramblings, and, well, maybe, but personally, I loathe that, and I'm extremely bitter that we live in that world. I miss the fact-based world. I want it back.
(Also, even in the case of a startup, "what happens" sometimes ends up as "oops, we radically restructured human cognition and social structures!", and frankly I think we should have reigned in Silicon Valley's carelessness long ago. It's probably too late now.)
Uncharitable:
Look, look, he said the thing!
Neutral:
The Democrats are completely fucked on I/P. The left-wing base accuses them of supporting genocide; moderates (and, I guess, various "heterodox" people) accuse them of being sympathetic to terrorists. There appears to be no way to win.
Uncharitable:
The comparison to 9/11 is apt; I remember thinking back to 9/11 when October 7 happened. But then I immediately thought "Israel is going to make the exact same mistake we did." It drives me insane that apparently nobody learned a damn thing from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Oh, by the way: there was relativism in the wake of 9/11. It was roundly condemned, because the ideological environment was much more unified back then, but there were people who said things like "It doesn't excuse what they did, but there are reasons why this happened."
Honestly, this is a very "woke" line of reasoning. It's one thing if you straight-up disagree with someone's arguments, but this sounds more like an issue with tone and timing. And, hey, I understand that there's a time and a place for that, but does the Republican Party agree?
Mixed:
I will grant this: the Biden admin's engagement with Israel—and this was really a pattern with all of the Biden admin's foreign policy, including Ukraine—was far too timid and passive. The Biden admin appears to have made no attempt to set a "war agenda": they just let Israel do whatever it wanted. And (in my opinion) it was obvious from the beginning that Israel would overreach. Leaving aside the political pressures on and despicable character of Netanyahu himself, the stated war goal of destroying Hamas was and is absurd. You cannot wipe out an embedded militant group through ordinary military means. So long as that remains the goal, the war will remain a forever war.
However, I'm deeply suspicious of the argument that "Oh, we should have supported a war, but we should have made that support conditional on a limited war." I think the most likely outcome there is that Netanyahu says "Oh, yes, of course we will only pursue a limited war", right up until he hits that limit, and then he says "Well, actually, we can't stop here if we want to make Israel secure." This feels like reaching for a way to blame Democrats for being too soft and too hard on Palestine, which, like, what?
Extremely uncharitable:
Case in point for why education in the humanities is important.
I think in a lot of ways Trump can stand for everything and nothing at the same time. If a voter liked certain aspects of Harris’ platform, but disagreed with other parts, they can just project their ideal policies onto Trump. He won’t confirm or deny support for 90% of policies, so people can create a reality in their head where he’s exactly like them.
There’s another thing that he does: He makes statements in public which may or may not be actual policy. There was a recent article about this on The Atlantic.
So recently he’s been calling for the arrest of governor Newsome. Did he order this, or just make a tweet about it, or just tell Fox News? It isn’t clear yet. He governs as if he’s just calling into a talk radio show.
At least in his first term. Now it seems that he is actually doing a lot of (illegal) executive orders, but he still fall back on the “govern by Twitter” for deniability.
The way you broke it down makes one thing stand out to me.
Inside all of the reasons he gave for voting for Trump, there is probably only one actual reason. The rest are just reasons/excuses he gave after the fact. That's why they aren't coherent as a whole.
I would guess his real reason is related to accelerationism and/or blowing up the status quo. That's why the distance between voting for Bernie and Trump is small for him. I know there is a huge number of people who post on reddit that use the same criteria.
For me, I might also have a simplistic method for choosing a candidate. But my way is to find out if one of the candidates has a disqualifying quality and should not be given power. Trump has multiple disqualifying qualities so any imaginable candidate would be preferable, including a fully incapacitated Biden (if that had been an option).
I think it's less blowing up the status quo and more "these clowns haven't made progress in the last 20 years despite both sides having had a decade each, so I'll vote for someone very clearly distinct from the past institutions".
That's not accelerationism, that's just... basically voting third-party in whatever way FPTP makes viable.
Nice writeup.
There is a book called dignity: seeking respect in back row American. By Chris arnade
It is a book I found compelling. It's from 2011
It's hard to not be infuriated about this.
I had a conversation with someone who decided not to vote for president at all, which basically went like this:
Me: Why didn't you vote for Kamala?
Her: She's so dumb. She can barely answer any questions. And she lied about Biden's age-related issues.
There's nothing to say to people who just are not participating in objective reality. I asked if she watched Fox, but she said no. So there are other sources of propaganda that she was exposed to. Maybe Youtube or Facebook. I'm not sure. Certainly there are a lot of problems with Kamala Harris, but "she's dumb" is not an objective reality, especially in comparison with Trump. Voting for Trump in this case, or just withholding your vote, is like not wanting to eat stale bread so you eat poison instead. I did spend some time going over a few of the ways that Trump is an unethical criminal who tried to overturn the 2020 election, but it just didn't register with her. Basically it was "I don't like him either, so I didn't vote".
Poll: Democratic voters prefer populism over abundance
Democrats could never find a problem they couldn't brand themselves further into. Abundance feels like a rebrand of populism where the bureaucrats still get to be holding the strings of power while doing "popular" things, and they can ask their economy wonk friends at the GOP how well that compromise worked for them.
#offtopic
Why is this article just a collection of bullet points? Did someone forget to hit "generate" on the AI?
That's kinda just how Axios articles are
I saw this quote in Yglesias's newsletter and while I know a lot of people here are probably allergic to him I thought it was worth sharing:
This seems depressingly true to me. Thoughts?
I think this gets the direction wrong. Public opinion on so called cultural issues is heavily influenced by political elites. 10 years ago, bathroom bans were being voted down in even relatively conservative states; they still poll poorly too. “Making a big tent on cultural issues”, which Yglesias likely intends to mean being less vocal about things like DEI (i.e. integration) or trans rights, is just a surrender. The GOP didn’t only tap into some latent public opinion on these issues, but rather actively shaped opinion to be where they were at. Dems ought to do the same.
I'm not going to argue with your general point. However, the wedge attack in 2024 was very precise and sophisticated. Too many people are indifferent if not hostile to government (tax money) spending for prisoner wellbeing in general. Add to that the fact that many people associate trans medical care with plastic surgery rather than hormones and Harris' record was vulnerable. There are a lot of resentments and fears around taxes, prisoners and immigrants. I don't like it, but I'm aware of it.
Jimmy Carter was very quiet about race relations before he was elected governor of Georgia and he made substantial changes toward racial justice and equal opportunity once in office. Likewise our current cursed supreme court has justices who were very careful about their public record re abortion. They got appointed and influenced the country in their preferred direction. (Ugh!).
I don't claim to know what balance should be maintained but an effective candidate shouldn't show all of their cards during a campaign
I don’t really disagree with anything you’ve said here. The attacks are used for a reason; they work. The issue is that the right raises the salience of these issues, forces Democrats to respond, and the end result is that to the average voter it looks like the Democrats are running on healthcare for trans prisoners. Since the election I’ve seen a lot of pundits saying that Democrats need to drop the cultural issues and focus on kitchen table issues, which baffles me because Democrats hardly ran on cultural issues in 2024! Almost every time Harris talked about trans rights it was in response to being asked about it, or responding to proposed plans from the GOP. It simply wasn’t a focus of the campaign, but with the information environment that the average person faces, I can see why many thought so.
But the solution here, in my opinion, isn’t to drop these issues or not talk about them. Democrats need to have a cohesive messaging strategy that allows them to focus fire on the GOP and brush off these cultural attacks entirely, instead of having to respond. That’s why the brief period of Walz’s “They’re fucking weird” messaging felt like a revelation — it was the first time it felt like the Democrats had figured out messaging in the year of our lord 2024. Alas.
To be clear, Yglesias is arguing that we shouldn't be building a winning populist coalition because we won't like what it looks like. And a losing populist coalition is something nobody wants.
This could be true, but in all my life the left has never had a weaker ability to influence public opinion than they do right now while the right has never been stronger. If we can solve that problem I'm not sure any sort of populism is required in the first place.