If Democrats don't deliver again, Woke 2.0 becomes MAGA 2.0

Kelli Anne Busey of TransAction in an article posted on Daily Kos reported Democrat Allison Montgomery made history in Alabama by being the first transgender legislator in the state. Yes, in red Alabama where Tommy Tuberville was just elected governor. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos listed the 13 women who were elected as governors. Some take over from other women, some from men, some elected to another term. The list includes Amy Klobuchar who follows Tim Walz in Minnesota. And commentary about the election, starting with what to do next. A major part of the discussion of what comes next is about what Democrats should and can do, knowing important bills will get vetoed. Some suggestions from Paul Krugman, as discussed by xaxnar of the Kos community: Investigate the full extent of the nasty guy family corruption. Pass popular bills that will improve the lives of Americans. If vetoed, call for a vote to override the veto to record Republican loyalty. Do not make a deal with the nasty guy or reach across the aisle to Republicans. Do not return to status quo governing. In a second post xaxnar speculated whether Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas will retire while the nasty guy can get their replacement through in the lame duck session. First, replacements probably can’t get through by the end of the year. Second, Alito and Thomas are not going to give up power until they have to. The bigger issue is Supreme Court reform, including adding members, curbing the shadow docket, and perhaps adding term limits. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported new Michigan senator Abdul El-Sayed laid out his priorities on Morning Joe. Basically: Affordability, including a job that pays a living wage. A war powers resolution and returning to diplomacy. Ending the tariff regime and tussle with Canada. Stopping the collapse of healthcare because of the Medicaid cuts. And pass a “Crap Lettuce Elimination Act, to restore the parts of the FDA and CDC that protected food safety. Kos of Kos quoted conservative pundit Erick Erickson who listed reasons why voters turned against Republicans. Erickson came up with a decent list (according to Kos), including corruption, incompetence, tariffs, cruelty, aggressive deportations, arrogance, and the ballroom. Even with a long list, Kos thinks Erickson left out a few things: gutting healthcare, expensive spectacles for his birthday, trying to get his name on the Kennedy Center, and desperate attempts to manufacture culture-war distractions.

Now it’s time for Democrats to govern as a serious, sensible, measured, and pragmatic party—laser-focused on affordability and clean government. Less performative outrage. Less culture-war bullshit. More improving people’s lives. Because if Democrats fail to deliver again, Woke 2.0 will eventually give way to MAGA 2.0. And we already know what that hell looks like.

Another post by xaxnar, from before the election, discusses a Reuters article by Nandita Bose and Tim Reid about plans by the nasty guy administration to govern [rule] without input from Democrats and Congress. The power Democrats have is small compared to the nasty guy as the head of the executive branch and of the military. The summary of the article (xaxnar doesn’t clearly say if he wrote it or quoted it)

Officials identifying executive actions on immigration, tariffs, housing and spending, sources say. Trump says he would become “Mr. Veto”. Plans under consideration include tariffs on critical minerals and wind turbines. White House lawyers brief appointees on handling subpoenas and document requests, one source says.

Emily Singer of Kos has heard anonymous Republicans say that the election losses show the nasty guy’s power is waning. The party can now start to break from him. Singer can only laugh. Those comments were anonymous.

If Republicans are afraid to put their names to even the idea that they may have leeway to ignore Trump and stand up against his whims, on what planet should that give any of us any confidence that they will break with Trump when it actually matters? ... Ultimately, after a decade of wondering when Republicans would finally break with Trump, I’ve stopped waiting for that day to come. I refuse to be tricked by Lucy and the football any more.

Oliver Willis of Kos as part of his series of explaining the right asks why Republicans never learn from their election losses. It isn’t just a nasty guy thing, this has been going on for a long time.

The root cause of this unresponsiveness is an idea at the core of the modern conservative movement, which first came to the fore when conservative upstart Sen. Barry Goldwater secured the Republican Party presidential nomination in 1964. It is the idea that conservatism is always perfect. It cannot fail. The way the GOP sees it, if a conservative candidate loses an election, that is on the voters for not fully understanding the wonders of conservative ideology, not because those ideas are bad for the country and the world.

In the comments of today’s pundit roundup for Kos is a meme posted by exlrrp showing the nasty guy and the words, “[He] got beat so bad he didn’t even try calling it rigged.” Greg Dworkin posted a tweet by Degan Sports that appears to be from the TV show Breaking Points in which the host uses a half-minute to summarize why Republicans lost. This is an attempt at a transcript:

If you run a child sex trafficking ring, cover it up by waging a war after promising not to, and that war drives up the price of oil and breaks the global economy, and you spend the time getting rich and pushing money towards AI and data centers, you won’t do well in the elections.

A meme by the Fiber Friend and posted by exlrrp is about the Democrat who won the US Senate seat in South Carolina. I included a correction supplied by exlrrp. The text:

Dr. Annie Andrews is getting ready to sit in a seat that has been held by only two elected individuals in the last [72] years. 1. Lindsey Graham 2. Strom Thurmond. Thank you.

I had an important comment on what we face in the future. But I can’t find it. It was by The Geogre in the comment section of a pundit roundup on Kos, though perhaps working from someone else. The quote goes something like this: Money doesn’t defeat its opposition, it purchases them. A great many of the severe problems in America right now are because of the extremely wealthy wanting to destroy democracy so they can oppress everyone else with impunity. I’m glad Democrats won big, but I fear they won’t enact the necessary big reforms because they will be bought out by the rich. A cartoon by Drew Sheneman posted on Kos. It shows a rich man on a private jet saying, “I’ve spent more buying elections trying to avoid taxes than it would cost to just pay the taxes. Sometimes it’s the principle.”

Organized people can still defeat organized money

The results are quite delightful! Yes, the US elections ended yesterday and results were posted last night and this morning. I’d love to bask in every wonderful detail, but you can get most of the results from traditional news outlets. So I’ll mention the top numbers and then turn to results harder to find and to what some pundits are saying. Real Clear Politics (I learned about this site only recently) shows the top numbers. It also gives details on each race. As of 9:20 pm today it reported: Democrats gained 39 seats in the US House for 247 to 152 Republicans. There are 36 seats that haven’t been called yet. Democrats gained 7 seats in the US Senate for 54 to 44 with two seats too close to call. Those seven gains are almost all in red states. They are: Maine, not so red, but goodbye Susan Collins! Ohio. Both North and South Carolina, goodbye Darlene Graham, unqualified sister of the late Senator Lindsay Graham pushed into the position by the nasty guy. Iowa. Kansas, which hasn’t voted for a Democratic Senator since 1932, where pastor Adam Hamilton will take the seat. And Texas, where Seminarian James Talarico won. Democrats gained five governor’s mansions, in Ohio (I like this!), Iowa, Georgia (Jon Ossoff returning to the Senate has long coattails), Texas (even better!), and Nevada. Kalloli Bhatt of Michigan Public has the Michigan results. Democrats kept the governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, the two contested seats in the state Supreme Court, and elected Abdul El-Sayed as the first Muslim senator in Washington. His opponent didn’t succeed in trying to smear him as a terrorist. Two seats in the US house also flipped. The Michigan constitution requires citizens be asked every 16 years whether it should be rewritten. But we now have too many wonderful amendments (independent redistricting, voter rights, abortion protection) to risk a complete rewrite most likely controlled by billionaires. There was fear at the start of the campaign season when it polled at 47% for a rewrite. Thankfully, no rewrite got 73.8%. I had helped gather signatures (all together more than a half-million) on a proposal to get money out of politics, especially from utilities and government contractors. It passed decisively with 81.3% of the vote! Already, one provision is the target of a lawsuit. Democrats widened their hold on the state Senate (their majority had been a single seat) and retook the state House, giving Michigan a trifecta again. There are still a few seats too close to call. The Daily Kos staff posted a chart (as of this morning) showing the Senate races that were not rated as safe for either party. It’s good to see all that have a “DEM. FLIP” designation. Sarah Bricker Hunt of Pridesource has results for Michigan’s LGBTQ candidates:

State Sen. Jeremy Moss became the first out LGBTQ+ person Michigan has ever elected to Congress, and Joanna Whaley will be the first openly trans member of the Michigan House. All nine out LGBTQ+ candidates for the Legislature won.

Whaley was in the news back in July when a suit tried to require the use of her deadname on the ballot. Moss won the seat vacated by Haley Stevens when she ran for the US senate. I’ll have more on her downfall likely in another post. Other firsts in this election:

Michigan was part of a night of national firsts. Chris Pappas of New Hampshire will be the first out gay man elected to the U.S. Senate, Keisha Lance Bottoms will be the first Black woman to serve as governor of any state after winning in Georgia and New Mexico's Deb Haaland will be the first Native American woman governor.

The 9 LGBTQ candidates for state legislature are also listed. One is shown as too close to call. The others won, some getting as much as 71% of the vote. Emily Singer of Kos listed her ten most satisfying results. Here are some of them: Max Miller, Republican candidate for Congress in Ohio and accused of domestic violence, lost by ten points to Brian Poindexter. Vivek Ramaswamy lost the race for governor in Ohio. He had run an ad showing his opponent Amy Acton’s mother denouncing her while not mentioning Amy had been pulled from her mother’s home at age 12. The ever concerned Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was known for her “independence” from the nasty guy when her vote didn’t matter, lost by nearly 8 points. I had noted Texas had voted for Democrat James Talarico for Senate. The state also voted for Democrats for Governor (goodbye Greg Abbott!) and other statewide races and flipping the state House. Texas is no longer a Republican stronghold. Lauren Boebert, racist MAGA warrior of Colorado, is on track to lose her House seat. It hasn’t been officially called yet. Democrats won almost all seats Republicans gerrymandered to be in their favor. Wisconsin, perhaps the most gerrymandered state for Republicans, flipped its House, Senate, and governor for a Democrat trifecta. Oliver Willis of Kos reported that Elon Musk spent at least $440 million to help Republicans win. A big chunk of that went to Texas in hopes of preventing a Talarico win. Of the candidates Musk supported 20 lost, one won, and 20 are too close to call. Shares of Tesla and SpaceX dropped on the news because Musk’s contracts with the government will be scrutinized by incoming Democrat majorities. Musk moved company headquarters from California to Texas to avoid state oversight. And now Texas is controlled by Democrats. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin had, of course, election commentary. A tweet by Chaz Nuttycombe:

Arkansas Republicans got absolutely nuked in the state legislative races. Seats where they had 80, 90% odds of winning, just gone.

A tweet by Drew Savicki

Dummymander moment: Democrats are going to win 10/14 congressional districts in North Carolina on map that was drawn to be 11-3 Republican.

A tweet by Jesse Ferguson:

Welp. Democrats have just flipped control of the City Council in Lynchburg, Virginia. That's the home of Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.

In the comments, a tweet by Wendell Pierce:

THE NEW RECONSTRUCTION ERA FIRST BLACK HOUSE SPEAKER FIRST BLACK WOMAN GOVERNOR 3 BLACK WOMEN SENATORS 3 BLACK GOVERNORS CONCURRENTLY IN OFFICE FIRST MUSLIM SENATOR FIRST OPENLY GAY SENATOR

A tweet from Robert Reich:

The richest man in the world spent more money that most people will see in a lifetime, only to lose a Senate race and governor’s race in Texas by double digits. This is a reminder that we must overturn Citizens United. But it’s also a reminder that organized people can still defeat organized money.

A tweet from Armand Domalewski:

The mandatory sex change surgeries begin TONIGHT. All Republican voters, please report to your local abortion clinic voluntarily or a bisexual MS-13 member will be sent to your home. Somehow, pansexual org-es and shariah law are simultaneously in effect as of this moment.

Dan K of the Kos community commented on a New York Times report that at 10:30 last night the nasty guy said he would accept election results. He is looking forward to working with Democrats. Or maybe that’s a bit inside out. From the NYT

“I think they’re gonna want to work with me,” he said. “Otherwise I’d just veto everything and they’re not gonna want that.”

And from Dan K:

We’ve said all along we needed to win by so large a margin that trump couldn’t steal it away from us. We got that margin!!!!! (and we’re getting it bigger!!!!!), and it was enough to shock trump into a semblance of comity. For the moment.

Will his staff and cabinet allow him to not fight the results? Or maybe he is too old, tired, and sick to sustain a fight? I’ve been thinking a lot about not hearing anything in the news about putting in action the plan to contest the election, which I wrote about in my previous post last Friday. I’m delighted it doesn’t appear to be happening. Or maybe the nasty guy is content to turn his attention to his ballroom. This afternoon he held a news event inside the unfinished structure, as reported by Walter Einenkel of Kos. Dartagnan of the Kos community quoted a Republican strategist from mid October discussing polls showing a huge Democratic win.

It would be so historically unprecedented you’d have to presuppose we’re staring down the barrel of a generational national trauma that no one is aware of.

Dartagnan emphasized “no one is aware of” as evidence that conservatives live in a bubble. He explained:

They lost because they were living in a bubble. They were living in a media ecosystem that told them everything they were doing — everything that Trump was doing — was just peachy. The bubble was reinforced over and over on Fox News, and in all their social media feeds. That bubble brooked no dissent, not a hint of doubt or introspection. It was the same bubble all cult members live in. It was a big bubble, and it was an amazingly popular bubble (for them). They would go to bubbled events where they would only interact and talk to the people in the same bubble. They stared into their phones and read the same happy talk, tailored and curated for their bubble. And before too long — quite understandably — they all forgot about the bubble. No, they thought. This was reality. And Trump was happy to reinforce it for them, so much that acting– or even thinking — outside the bubble became unthinkable. But it wasn’t reality. It was still a bubble.

We use media for indoctrination, so you must be doing it too

Arcelia Martin, in an article for Inside Climate News posted on Daily Kos reported:

More than 451,000 people are projected to die across the globe in the next six months from the additional heat brought by a super El Niño, according to estimates from climate scientists released Wednesday. ... In the new estimates, scientists at the University of Chicago Climate Impact Lab project the hotter land conditions brought by El Niño will resemble the higher temperatures climate change is predicted to deliver in 20 years. The estimated heat death toll, the scientists warned, are on top of the impacts from droughts, wildfires and flooding, expected from hotter temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns in a world already superheated by greenhouse gases.

This El Niño could be the strongest on record and could permanently push average temperatures past the 1.5C, the rise determined by scientists and written in political agreements to be the point where climate impacts could be irreversible. Oliver Willis of Kos, as part of his series on Explaining the Right, looked at the conservative view of Rachel Accurso, known as Ms. Rachel who is popular on various children’s television.

On Thursday’s broadcast of “Fox & Friends,” co-host Lawrence Jones described Ms. Rachel as “sinister” while the network displayed a graphic of the host, detailing her donations to charities assisting Palestinian children and her interactions with Democrats, including Florida Senate candidate Angie Nixon. Among Ms. Rachel’s infractions: She discussed the joy of cartwheels with Nixon’s 5-year-old daughter Ashanti.

Other words used were “pure indoctrination.” Ms. Rachel is, of course, part of a long line of people where a conservative talking head has made similar accusations of children’s entertainment. There was Jerry Falwell condemning Teletubbies of turning kids gay. Sesame Street was attacked for advocating for vaccines. They also didn’t like Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

The motivation for these attacks can be traced to the right’s weird view of the media. Unlike the rest of the population, the right has come to believe that programming (like Fox News) mostly exists to indoctrinate viewers into a right-wing lifestyle. Since the programming they enjoy is oriented this way, they then believe that lessons about compassion, grace, and even sharing are the left-wing mirror of their media world. In this twisted take on things, Ms. Rachel isn’t just a figure advocating for Palestinian and migrant children, but an insidious left-wing agent. ... Trump so thoroughly embodies cruelty, bigotry, and discrimination that when “Sesame Street” or Ms. Rachel tells children to be kind, it sounds like a direct rebuke of conservatism.

Well, kindness is a direct rebuke of conservatism. People on children’s TV are popular because they are authentic advocates for value most people support. Republicans are included in “most people.” This is the American Library Association Banned Books Week. I’ll get to a few of the books on their top ten list of challenged books (actually eleven this year because of a four-way tie for eighth place).

The 2025 data reported to ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) shows that the majority of book censorship attempts continue to originate from organized movements. In 2025, 92% of all book challenges were initiated by pressure groups, government officials, and decision makers, up from 72% in 2024. Less than 3% of challenges originated from individual parents. The most common justifications for censorship provided by complainants were false claims of illegal obscenity for minors; inclusion of LGBTQIA+ characters or themes; and covering topics of race, racism, equity, and social justice.

The ALA says many book challenges are not reported to them or covered in the press, so this isn’t a full count of challenged books.

OIF documented 5,668 books banned from libraries (66% of the total challenged) in 2025. An additional 920 books were censored through access restrictions such as relocation or requiring parental permission. This is both the highest number of titles censored in one year and the highest rate of challenges resulting in censorship from 1990–2025.

The LGBTQ books in the top 11 list, which seems a lot fewer than in previous years. 2. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky 3. Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe 5. (Tie) Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo. The club is a lesbian bar. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported:

The European Parliament unveiled “The Orange Plague,” a new gold leaf-covered statue depicting President Donald Trump naked while sitting on the shoulders of a smaller man. The 8-foot statue—which is in a parliament building in Strasbourg, France—shows Trump holding a golf club on top of a pedestal that reads, “I am sitting on the back of a man. He is sinking under my burden. I will do anything to help him. Except stepping down from his back.”

The nasty guy’s part of the statue is covered in gold leaf. In addition to the golf club he is also holding the scales of justice. Alix Breeden of Kos has been interviewing Democratic candidates for US Congressional races who have a better chance of winning than pundits thought just a few months ago. One of those is Lindsay James, running for Iowa’s 2nd district. She is also a Presbyterian pastor. Her answer that caught my attention is in response to the nasty guy administration’s claim that Christianity is under attack.

Part of the reason why I’m talking about my faith a lot on this campaign has to do specifically with how I’ve been shaped by the “Parable of the Good Samaritan.” What I love about that parable—I think that this parable really meets this moment—is how Dr. Martin Luther King talked about it. Because what King said about this parable is, it’s not just our moral obligation to pick up the person who’s hurting and harmed on the side of the road. It’s our moral obligation to fix the road, because what King knew about the road was that it was a place that was notorious for being dangerous, where people were regularly exploited and hurt and harmed. And too often, this feels like what’s exactly happening in Washington, D.C. Politicians who have the power and the ability to actually fix this person’s circumstances are turning a blind eye and walking the other way, and we need leaders who have the courage to help their neighbor but also to fix the challenges that have caused the harm in the first place.

The story of the Good Samaritan is in the Bible, Luke, Chapter 10. A man is beaten and left for dead at the side of the road. Important church officials pass by on the opposite side. A Samaritan, someone loathed by Jews at the time of Jesus, offers considerable help. Jesus asks: Which of them acted like a good neighbor? I’ve heard a similar take on our obligation from Soulforce, an organization working to dismantle spiritual violence against LGBTQ people (I donate to them). Their version went like this: You are watching a swift flowing river. You see a person in the river calling for help and you rescue them. Soon you see more people in the river and rescue them as well. As the number of people in the river increases, at what point do you go upstream to find out why people are being thrown into the river and get that to stop? In Monday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Jerry Zremski writing for his own Substack:

In the most impassioned and eloquent sermon I’ve ever heard, Cardinal Robert McElroy, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington, admonished all of us who have seen the suffering in front of us and then turned our heads. In his homily for the Mass for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, McElroy likened us not to the Good Samaritan, but to the priest and the Levite who, in Luke 10:25-37, saw a wounded robbery victim and just walked away. “For the last year and a half, the people of the United States have witnessed the suffering of the undocumented in our midst, purposely and strategically magnified by our government, and for the most part, we have simply passed on by,” McElroy said. And that was just the start of a sermon that served as a call to action — one that seemed to make some parishioners squirm either out of guilt or, in some cases, disagreement.

An article in Politico said that this year Republicans have been trying to find a new boogeyman to rail against. The usual targets – Joe Biden, Zohran Mamdani. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Bernie Sanders – aren’t working as targets so well this year.

Democrats’ foil, meanwhile, has never been more obvious, with Trump’s approval rating in the mid-thirties amid continued high prices and the Iran war.

In the comments indianobserver wrote:

Democrats seem to be in a David vs Goliath situation. Democrats are up against: 1. Billionaires and unlimited cash 2. Tech overlords and cutting edge tech 3. Wall Street 4. The oil and gas industry 5. Bought out national and local media 6. The DOJ (maybe) 7. The FBI (maybe) 8. The Trump administration 9. A majority of the Supreme Court 10. Elements of the Netanyahu govt/Israeli intelligence (maybe) 11. Elements of the Putin regime/Russian intelligence (maybe) What the Democratic Party has against this arsenal are 1. the rule of law 2. the judiciary 3. millions of votes. 4. stout hearts :)

Ben Urban tweeted a tweet by John Fugelsang:

My dad was a public school teacher; and he always said the toughest parts of the job were: 1. Having to play for your own classroom chalk, and 2. Performing gender-reassignment surgeries during class hours w/out parents finding out.

A cartoon by Jen Sorensen posted on Kos shows two women, one saying it feels like something is taking over everything and no one is capable of stopping it. The second says, yea, AI is scary. The first responds, “AI? I’m talking about our insane shareholder-first economy.”

No trust in lowering drug prices if they own drug stocks

My Sunday movie was Rebuilding. Dusty, a rancher in southern Colorado, loses close to everything when a wildfire burns his home and property – the burn is so bad the bank thinks the land will need a decade to recover. That means no collateral for a loan to rebuild. The ranch has been in the family for a few generations. FEMA offers him a trailer in a group of a half-dozen trailers placed out in the middle of nowhere. But he lost his purpose in life and needs time to figure out what replaces it. He gets to know some of the other trailer residents who also lost everything. They begin to form a community. The two elderly women who share a trailer and used to share a home seem to me to be a lesbian couple. Since his job is gone he has time to reconnect with his daughter Callie Rose and ex-wife Ruby, though she appears to already have a boyfriend. I was amused that because the trailers don’t have WiFi Dusty and Callie occasionally spend time parked outside the town library because though it is closed it’s WiFi is still on. Several other displaced people do the same thing. That’s the only way for some to fill out FEMA forms. I enjoyed it, but while it is a good movie (Metacritic gives it 72/100) it isn’t a great one. The pace is slow. While Dusty does become a part of the trailer community not a lot of that is shown. While Dusty does connect with Callie he doesn’t otherwise exhibit much personal growth. He does come up with a solution, a next step, for his little community’s future. Eric Schmeltzer, a contributor on Daily Kos posted another article on what Democrats need to do when they take the House and if they take the Senate. The first bill of a new Congress, HR1 or S1, is greatly important. It is introduced to tell the country what the party in power is all about. Since the other party will filibuster or veto it if they can, it is a “messaging bill.” Hakeem Jeffries, presumed Speaker in the new House, is already directing work on a bill to lower costs in housing, gas and utilities, food, caregiving, and healthcare. This is his planned HR 1. Schmeltzer says all that is great and sorely needed. But it should be HR 2. HR 1 should be an all encompassing bill on ethics. If the cost of living bill is first, Republicans will roll out their own version, the nasty guy will use executive orders to lower some prices, and Democrats have a muddle they can no longer easily define and campaign on. But the ethics bill can be first because voters have already connected that to the cost of living. No one is going to trust a plan to lower drug prices until there is a ban on lawmakers owning drug stocks. Schmeltzer’s plan has four major components. Transparency: The president, every member of his cabinet, all senior White House officials, and every member of Congress must post a daily log of who they met with. Both Obama and Biden did that, but both times the nasty guy stopped it. Every lobbyist must post their daily log to be matched with the government officials. Making money from the office: The president, every member of his cabinet, all senior White House officials, every member of Congress, members of the Supreme Court, and their families are not allowed to own stock and cannot hold a stake in a company with business before their office. We’ve seen the nasty kids rake in the dough while daddy is in the Oval Office, which is why the ban must include them. Crack down on lobbyists: That same group of people should have a lifetime ban on being a lobbyist. No lobbying for foreign governments. Require registering as a lobbyist even if less than 20% of your time. Tax any company paying more than a half million for lobbying. An ethics cop: Create an Anti-Corruption Bureau with subpoena power and commissioners the president can’t fire. It can look into all the same groups, including the Supreme Court. Fund it through the lobbying tax so Congress can’t so easily cut its funding. And a fifth part: Start the process to overturn Citizens United through a Constitution amendment to limit campaign spending. A quarter of voters say they trust neither party to end corruption. A strong ethics bill will end that for Democrats. They’re about to spend two years investigating the corruption of the White House and Republicans. An ethics bill that also affects Democrats will block the calls of “hypocrite.” On day one, they put up an ethics bill. Republicans will vote no. Democrats now own the issue. If Republicans say they have a better plan for prices, Democrats can reply you voted against the corruption that is keeping prices high. Tell your members of Congress that a strong ethics bill needs to be first. Require Republicans to vote on it. Kos of Kos discussed why Republicans in Texas are desperate to hang on to their Senate seat. They’re pouring huge amounts of money into that race and could better spend it to keep Republican Senate candidates strong in Kansas, Iowa, and Alaska. They might get even more overall seats and one from Iowa counts the same as one from Texas. But a loss in Texas would be a symbolic disaster. It would breach the wall, show that Democrats could will statewide in Texas. It would also blow a hole in their 2028 presidential aspirations. What they’re losing is the luxury of assuming they’ll win in Texas. Having to spend big to keep Texas red means not spending as much in other states. The nightmare is having to fight for Texas every November. And I’m ready for it. In the comments of Tuesday’s pundit roundup for Kos exlrrp posted a tweet (I think) by peechloves:

I’m sorry am I getting this right? NYC Mayor Mamdani taxed wealthy people on properties they own if they don’t live in them, it balanced the city’s multi-billion dollar budget immediately, and all the wealthy people are still wealthy? Am I getting this right? They’re still wealthy right? And no middle or lower financial earners saw any additional tax? Am I getting this correct?

Someone else (not identified) added:

The craziest part? The wealthy stayed wealthy. The middle class didn’t get hit. The sky didn’t fall. Almost like the panic was always propaganda.

David Horsey posted a cartoon on Kos showing kids with shirts that say the names of the big AI companies pulling out sticks of dynamite and lighting the fuses. A voice says, “What are you boys doing out there?” One replies, “Don’t worry, Mom, we can police ourselves!”

We learned it’s high time to get off fossil fuels

In 2024 the nasty guy made an explicit deal when he asked oil executives for a billion dollars and promised to gut climate rules. He kept that promise by killing wind, solar, and EV incentives. Then he invaded Iran and they’re enjoying big profits from the high prices. Thom Hartmann of the Daily Kos community wrote that a few oil tankers are getting through the Strait of Hormuz and the price came down a bit.

Meanwhile, though, the big lesson the world seems to have learned because of Trump’s fiasco — other than that our military is under the control of an irresponsible alcoholic and a narcissist and unreliable wannabe king — is that it’s high time to get off fossil fuels. Starting a stupid and criminal war is probably the dumbest way to wake the world up to the need to kick their/our collective addiction, but here we are: the war has done more to encourage conservation and the transition to renewables than any other single effort by anybody anywhere in recent memory.

The International Energy Agency reported global oil demand has fallen 2.5%, the equivalent of 42 million gas-burning cars. Hartmann described the German “100,000 Rooftops” program approved about 2000. Banks and power companies worked together to get solar panels on to 100,000 rooftops. The program was basically free to residents. The power companies were in on it because they could avoid building new power plants and even decommission old ones. Solar now supplies about 14% of Germany’s power, and that’s for the cloudiest country in Europe. EVs sell well elsewhere in the world, nearly 100% of sales in Norway, 30% across the EU, and 50% in China. In the US EVs sell 5.8%. In America the price of oil does not include externalities, the other things, “the cancers and the asthma, the wildfires and the floods, or the wars we fight to keep tankers moving through places like the Strait of Hormuz” not included in what we pay for oil. We pay externalities for tobacco, for the cost to health and society. Europe has taxed fuel that way for decades with Germans paying about $3 a gallon in taxes. The federal gas tax has been at $0.184 since 1993. Those European fuel taxes mean people drive smaller cars for fewer miles. They walk (and improve their health) or take the train.

A high price cuts consumption whether it comes from a war or from a tax, but what separates the two is where the money ends up. — When a war drives up the price of oil, the extra dollars flow to fossil fuel companies and dictatorial petrostates as windfall profits. — When a tax does it, the money belongs to us. It can go right back to working families as a rebate check or EV subsidy, and it can pay for the kind of loan guarantees that put solar on all those German roofs.

That doesn’t happen in the US because Republicans have, since Reagan, kept oil companies happy so the companies will keep them in power. The nasty guy has only been more explicit about the deal. This year has shown:

Instead of subsidizing fossil fuels to jack the profits of the companies that fund the GOP, we should be taxing them the way Europe does and using that money to turn every American roof into a power plant.

Let your members of Congress what you think. Kos of Kos wrote that if just 1 in 10 Republicans switch sides Democrats will have an easy victory. That 1 in 10 might be possible because 11% of voters who backed the nasty guy regret their vote. Sure, some will switch parties only long enough to tell Republicans how displeased they are. Some will stay home. And some with switch sides. Kos talks about all three types of voters. One of them is Washington Sun columnist Matt K. Lewis who will be voting for Democrats this year. As part of his reasoning he wrote:

Besides, what bad, un-conservative things could Democrats do? I mean, are they going to start another forever war in the Middle East? Start socializing industries? Raise the national debt to $40 trillion? Cause abortion rates to rise? Increase the cost of groceries and gas? Pal around with socialists (like Zohran Mamdani)? Suck up to communists (like Chinese President Xi Jinping)? Nominate a bunch of weirdos, drunks and inexperienced hacks to the Cabinet? Pursue self-enrichment? Start building monuments to themselves? Threaten to use the power of government on their opponents?

Kos added the nasty guy is responsible for about a quarter of the $40 trillion national debt. He provided links to the other things Lewis mentioned. Kos concluded:

If Democrats can use that opening to demonstrate what responsive government looks like—a government focused on people’s material needs rather than the interests of Wall Street and Silicon Valley—then maybe some of those temporary defections become more durable.

Lisa Needham of Kos reported the nasty guy has been saying to the courts, and the rest of us, that he needs to slap his name on the Kennedy Center because that is the only way to attract donors to keep the place open. Like all nonprofits ticket sales and government grants are not enough to keep the place open. One must have donors. And those donors stopped donating to the Kennedy Center when he took over. So, no he won’t be attracting donors if he slaps his name on the place. Instead, the place is likely to go bankrupt, as many of his businesses have. The way he can attract donors is remove his cronies from the board and resign as chair.

If Trump’s vision for the Kennedy Center was so amazing, so profitable, people would be donating money. Artists would be begging to get booked. People would be clamoring for tickets. But everyone hates Trump and his low-rent, tacky garbage vibe.

Oliver Willis of Kos reported that for the first time the Kennedy Center Honors will not be at the Kennedy Center this year. The reason is the Center is closing because courts won’t let the nasty guy put his name on it. In the comments of today’s pundit roundup for Kos is a meme posted by exlrrp about special prosecutor Jack Smith (remember him?) and his testimony before Congress.

Fun fact: Jack Smith had 86 witnesses of Trump’s crimes, and not a single one was a Democrat.

A tweet from Abdul El-Sayed posted by 2thanks:

I'd rather have an economy that makes 1,000 millionaires than 1 billionaire.

Kill the filibuster or say the rulebook won

Eric Schmeltzer, a Daily Kos contributor, has suggestions for Democrats on how to keep their majority once they get it this fall. My view is they need to sever relationships with billionaires and cut the billionaires’ hold over the rest of us. But let’s listen to Schmeltzer:

Pop quiz: It’s 2028, and Democrats have held both chambers for almost two years. Which of these realities would you prefer? A) We tried to pass an anti-corruption bill, but it got filibustered. B) We passed an anti-corruption bill, but President Donald Trump stood in the way of it becoming law. Here’s one more: A) We passed a bill that put healthcare back where it was before Trump’s disastrous “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” B) We passed a package that redefines healthcare in America, but Trump vetoed it. You probably didn’t need long, and neither will other voters. B is bold, which is exactly what turns one win into a series of wins. But for Democratic leadership, the time to figure out how you get to B is now. The good news is that the planning is happening.

Part of that good news is it seems possible next Speaker Hakeem Jeffries is on board with these ideas. Even so, this will require bold work. That healthcare package can be described as “Medicare for Anyone Who Wants It,” something you get through your taxes, not a monthly bill, is priced without a profit margin, and stays with you no matter where you live or work. So pass it, get it to the Oval Office. The nasty guy vetoes it. And in 2028 the message is easily: Remember how close we got with that bill. We must keep Democrats in the majority and keep Republicans out of the White House. A Brennan Center poll found 92% of voters say corruption is a big problem. An effort to end Citizens United shows 46% of voters don’t trust either party to fix it. That’s an opening for Democrats. Other needs to end corruption: Ban members of Congress from trading stocks. Ban the president from profiting off the office (we didn’t use to need a law for that). Ban anonymous money in elections (I’d like to go much further, but this Supreme Court...). Create an ethics office that doesn’t answer to the president (yeah, there is that effort by the nasty guy to allow him to meddle in everything not under Congress or the Federal Reserve). I would add: Ban all gifts to Supreme Court justices and create a Supreme Court ethics office they don’t control. Commenters added: Ban gerrymandering and pass voting rights. These ideas will cost Democrats something – and that is important. Yeah, he’ll veto all that. And Democrats run on that in 2028. These bills can be readied now so that within 100 hours of the new Congress being sworn in they hit the Oval Office desk. Democrats may control the Senate, but not a filibuster proof Senate. The common wisdom about the filibuster is if it is killed Republicans can pass horrible stuff and Democrats can’t stop them. But (1) people need to see the true impact of their vote – now they can vote for vile candidates knowing the worst won’t get through. And (2):

Let’s go back to the quiz and say the filibuster line to that guy in Saginaw, Michigan. Democrats have 51 votes and a rulebook they control, and they’re telling him that the rulebook won. Now say the veto line. He already knows whose fault it is, because only one guy in this country can veto a bill and everybody knows his name. People forgive a wall you can’t move. But a rule you could have changed and didn’t, well, that’s on you.

Restoring what the nasty guy broke is good. But passing something that gets vetoed and people are still talking about in 2028 requires boldness. And if they’re still talking about the bills in 2028 they can be signed in 2029. And a majority might hold for decades. So get moving. Emily Singer of Kos reported that Republicans are into the stages of grief over losing Congress. So far they’re into bargaining. I mention that because of an exchange that Singer relates, between former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and Robbie Smither, a Florida Republican voter who plans to vote Democratic for the first time in his life because of the nasty guy: Gaetz: “Bro we need your vote. ... I hate the war too. But the Democrats want to trans your kids.” Singer had Smither’s response:

“With all due respect, stop pissing on people and telling them it’s raining,” he shot back. There is absolutely no logical evidence that [Democrats] want to ‘trans’ my two sons. None.” Smither went on to say, “What we worry about is feeding him and his brother. Paying the mortgage and homeowners insurance on the house we’re raising them in.”

Which is why culture war issues are not working this year. Singer also reported that Republicans and their billionaire funders are (finally) dumping piles of cash into the campaign. But it won’t matter. Singer lists reasons: Campaign finance law says candidates get better ad rates that PACs. Democratic candidates in swing states are far out-raising their opponents. So the differences are smaller than they appear. Most importantly, no amount of money will change an election if the ads aren’t addressing the issues most important to voters. People want candidates to address high cost of living and high gas prices. What they are getting fearmongering on transgender issues. Republicans think transgender issues got them in power in 2024. Actually, voters were reacting to the economic mess recovering too slowly from the pandemic and thought Republicans would handle the economy better. Instead, Republicans screwed it up. Also, in states where those vile anti-trans ads ran and are running, the states already passed laws restricting transgender rights. Fearmongering now is less effective. An email from March For Our Lives reported that libraries across the country, including in Baltimore, six branches of the Los Angeles County Libraries, and all 20 branches at St. Louis County Libraries are giving out gun safe storage devices and gun locks, often for free. No paperwork, no ID, no questions. The Central Library of Baltimore gave out 100 locks in 24 hours.

One administrator put it plainly: "One homicide costs taxpayers a million dollars. One non-fatal shooting costs taxpayers $1.5 million. A safe costs $20. Gun locks are $15." That math is undeniable. And the fact that communities are finding ways to make it happen — through libraries, hospitals, health departments, and local officials working together — is proof that the movement for gun safety doesn't wait for Congress.

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Justin Wolfers of Platypus Economics looking at the importance of a free press. This is at a time when the nasty guy banned three networks from the White House. The ban was blocked this morning.

Starting in 2003, Brazil’s federal government randomly picked municipalities for audits of federal money. Some audit results came out before an election, and some came out after. That’s the foundation for a great natural experiment. Claudio Ferraz and Frederico Finan compared the two groups. Corrupt mayors who were exposed before the election were far less likely to be reelected, and the effect was much bigger where there was local radio, because radio was how the story reached voters. Mexico shows something similar. When local radio and TV reported that politicians had misused public money, voters punished those politicians’ parties much more heavily.

In the comments Rambler797 reported diesel truck buyers (and I’m sure he is referring to pickups) are 90% men and 84% white. And 87% of their party affiliation is Republican. That’s why they are raging at the nasty guy on social media. Rambler797 then included a tweet by Curtis Namba:

Hey Truckers! Remember when diesel was so cheap under Biden you would caravan to DC waving your stupid Trump banners?

Nerd heaven? Mandalit del Barco of NPR reported on the opening of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles. Yeah, that’s George Lucas, creator of Star Wars. Of course, there is a great deal about Star Wars inside, but there is also a great deal that isn’t. There are reproductions of the Sistine Chapel ceiling and other world heritage sites. One gallery has a large collection of Normal Rockwell paintings.

But most of the collection is original work that Lucas says is often overlooked in the art world, including comics, Japanese manga, children's book illustrations, and pulp magazine covers.

No B.S. Just fix it.

Eric Schmeltzer is a Democratic communications consultant who writes Build a Better Donkey. He wrote a contributing article for Daily Kos discussing Democrat Zohran Mamdani, Mayor of New York, and Democrat Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania. What they have in common is they are cutting red tape. This isn’t the deregulation favored by Republicans, which is all about removing customer protections so corporations pollute and scam without breaking the law. Mamdani has been cutting red tape for those applying for small business licenses. Shapiro did it when an I-95 bridge collapsed in Philadelphia in June 2023 and he had a temporary replacement in use twelve days later. Shapiro also ordered a review of how the state handles the 2,400 different licenses, permits, and certifications it hands out. Teacher certification went from ten weeks to three or less. Schmeltzer says the villain isn’t the government worker, but but the institutionalist.

Not evil, not lazy. It’s people who are wedded to all those 6,000 regulations Mamdani cited, because they know why each one is there. Every rule started with a reason. Somebody got sick from a bad batch of ice cream, so now you need a permit to sell it. Then something else happened, so another rule got stacked on top of that one, and another on top of that. And nobody in government has ever lost their job for adding a rule. So the rules stay, decades after the reason is no longer valid, because that’s just how things are done and there’s no incentive to change them (but plenty of cost if you do and something goes wrong). As Mamdani’s own buildings commissioner said, the job now is to “get out of our own way.”

Yeah, cutting red tape had been the nasty guy’s line. We must keep Republicans from snatching this idea of a functioning government from Democrats. Well, part of that is Republicans don’t want a functioning government (see DOGE). For the solution the first part is get all Democrats running with this idea so that it becomes a party brand. Show voters what happens when Democrats run things. The second part is to fix what’s broken, to have Congress reverse what DOGE did. Just cutting regulations isn’t enough. “Somebody has to answer the phone, process the form, and hit the deadline, and Trump fired those people.” Yeah, Republicans won’t like the restaffing. Schmeltzer came up with a slogan for this attitude:

“No B.S. Just fix it.” Why that one? Because it’s how people already talk. It covers the rule nobody can explain and the excuse for why nobody can change it, in two letters. And Trump can’t say it anymore, not after DOGE, not without the room laughing. The second ice cream permit is B.S. Six weeks on a nursing license is B.S. “That’s the way it just is” is B.S.

This is a way to push the brand. Kos of Kos discussed the campaign of Democrat Ben Gruber, running for the Wisconsin state assembly. His district is rural, yet he seems to have a chance. He has made some inroads in the district because from his previous jobs he has a reputation of getting things done. That resonates with the people there because they know about getting things done – the hay must be baled before the rainstorm. “‘It doesn’t always have to be pretty,’ Gruber said. ‘It just has to get done.’” Gruber is able to talk to people by asking about shared values and what they need. An example is healthcare. He then tells them how Republicans are making what they need harder to get and that these have been Democratic goals since forever. And when culture war issues come up, like the state paying of prisoner sex-change operations, he deflects the discussion back to economics. Back to getting things done. Which is why the nasty guy is popular in this district. He gets things done, he’s willing to act. Kos wrote:

I’ve written about the same phenomenon. Our politicians have too often blamed norms, traditions, institutions, and procedural obstacles for their inability to change a system that increasingly benefits the wealthy and powerful. It’s excuse after excuse after excuse. But Trump just does what he wants. Yes, he’s using that power toward ends we vehemently oppose, and many of his actions have been clawed back by the courts. But that has helped reveal the contours of presidential power—what a president can do, what the courts will stop, and what survives those challenges. And it turns out a president has far more power than we were led to believe. The next Democratic Congress and president need to be just as laser-focused on using the power that voters give them to deliver tangible economic benefits to everyday people, without hiding behind norms and traditions that entrench the status quo. Do that, and maybe some of those conservative voters in Gruber’s rural district will be impressed enough to reassess their partisan affiliations.

That some who reassess might be enough to dramatically change politics. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Jonathan Last of The Bulwark discussing Rep. Thomas Massie introducing articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth.

All in all, it’s a pretty thorough document. You know what else it is? A good start. Thomas Massie just pointed the way for the next Congress. We don’t need to wait for 2029 to start pursuing accountability for the criminal acts carried out by members of the Trump administration. A Democratic-led House should impeach all of the officials around Trump who have committed high crimes and misdemeanors.

The reason for needing to do that is to declare at least Democrats believe their actions are illegal, unethical, and just morally wrong. Without saying that Republicans, joined by a few Democrats, will keep doing illegal, unethical, and morally wrong things. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted late night commentary. Here’s a couple:

“After a judge ruled that President Trump can’t add his name to the Kennedy Center, Trump announced that he’s shutting it down and canceling the planned renovations. Yup, Trump is shutting it down because it doesn’t have his name on it—as opposed to his casinos, which shut down because they did have his name on them.” —Jimmy Fallon “Diesel is now so expensive my Amazon driver just told me he’s leaving my package in Ohio and I should come get it.” —John Fugelsang

Seduced by “power over”, when Christ taught us “service of”

Brian Beutler posted a thread with a link to an article in Off Message. The link’s title and subtitle:

How to Undo the Great Lie of 2024 Trump’s second election wasn’t a verdict for all time, but the coming midterms might be one.

I didn’t follow the link to the article. Beutler wrote in his thread:

MAGA got a huge return on gaslighting the elite into treating Trump's less than 2 percent popular vote plurality as a permanent repudiation of liberalism. The midterms represent an opportunity to propound an inverse but true narrative of American rejection of MAGA. But Dems have to frame it that way first. Republicans will send mixed messages if they lose, because Trump will deflect all responsibility for their poor performance. But they will be unified behind the idea that Democrats didn't win a mandate, because they always unify behind that idea. Meanwhile, in their affordability myopia, Democrats are likely to help Republicans along by attributing their own political success to Trump's narrow failure to reduce prices, giving him a pass on all the most repellent aspects of his presidency. If Democrats don't tell a grand story of Americans rising against fascism, the public will hear a different, false one. Republicans will say what the election was about, and what the results mean. And, once again, many people will believe them.

Drew Sheneman posted a cartoon on Daily Kos showing a crocodile labeled “Corporations” with a small bird in its mouth labeled “Dems.” The bird says,

Democratic Socialists will never understand our deeply symbiotic relationship. Now say ‘Ahh’ so I can pick the scraps from your teeth.

And that quite succinctly summarizes the problem I have with Democrats. Jon Paul Sydnor of the Street Prophets community group on Kos wrote a month ago:

If your church’s leaders are trying to control you, then leave. Many churches are systems of control that cause great pain. Today, some therapists are specializing in Religious Trauma Syndrome (RTS), trying to heal the psychic scars produced by churches that castigate questioning members and hold the threat of hell over all. The leaders of these churches have abandoned their call, having been seduced by the lure of power over, when Christ taught us service of.

The purpose of the church is to share the love of God with the world. The church is where love is enacted as consistently as possible. Yes, it fails to love perfectly. Sometimes it harms instead of heals. But very few (perhaps no other) organizations discuss love at all. Love risks betrayal, but the alternative is self-seclusion, which denies life. The church may not (can’t) love a person completely back to health, but it can make a start. Unless the church is broken and won’t admit it. And many don’t. Sydnor told a few stories about his father, a pastor. At one church he wanted to stop a “girlie” show that was part of the county fair. The show wasn’t risque, it was degrading. But it brought in a lot of money and a leading elder in the church supported it. The pastor was told not to rock the boat. He became disillusioned and left the ministry. After a dozen years working to prevent juvenile delinquency he returned to the ministry. A family left a nearby church to try his church. The daughter had Down’s syndrome and the other church wouldn’t let her be in the Christmas pageant. This pastor named her to be Mary, the central role, in their pageant to the great joy of the congregation.

That was one of the best Christmas Eve services ever. It was an imperfect church with an imperfect congregation and imperfect pastor, but they worked hard to love like God. And sometimes they hit the mark perfectly, creating the little miracles that sustain us.

In the comments of today’s pundit roundup for Kos is a tweet from Team Talarico, the campaign to elect Democrat James Talarico to the US Senate from Texas. In it Talarico is shown saying:

Scripture tells us that you can’t love God and hate other people. You can’t love God and abuse the immigrant. You can’t love God and oppress the poor. Matthew 25 tells us Christians exactly how we’re going to be judged — by feeding the hungry, by healing the sick...

The rest is cut off from the text of the tweet, though includes clothing the naked, offering hospitality to the stranger, and visiting those in prison. I see Matthew 25 as a core of the message Jesus is trying to teach us. In response to Talarico’s message Aaron Baer tweeted:

This is genuinely one of the most evil interpretations of Scripture I've ever seen. Lord protect your Church and our nation from this wolf.

And to that Kos user Rambler797 added:

Wut? (these people don’t know their own book)

Commenter The Idiot went looking for who Aaron Baer is: the president of the “Center for Christian Virtue.” It has turned the Bible upside down. That organization has completely inverted the Christian message and has accumulated the power and platform to override the love of God, then use the threat of God to spread hate. Vile. I went to Baer’s tweet, and of course it is on X. I was able to see a couple of the comments, all X would allow me to see before demanding I sign in. From Braden Bellack:

When someone posts something like this and then doesn’t respond to any of the comments or try to defend what they’ve said, it’s called rage bait. That’s all this is.

Think Prague posted a cartoon showing St. Peter at the gate of Heaven facing a man in a MAGA hat.

St. Peter: So, tell me... did you welcome the foreigner? Help the poor? Feed the hungry? Care for the sick?... you know, all the things Jesus commanded? Man: Listen here LibTard.

We’re sick of corporate- and billionaire-aligned solutions

After Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic primary for US senator from Michigan, Thom Hartmann of the Daily Kos community wrote that a win by a Democratic Socialist seems to have broken the brains of Republicans.

Donald Trump’s pathetic bleats notwithstanding, people voting for progressive Democrats and “democratic socialists” aren’t voting for communism or even socialism; they’re trying to get America to the same sort of economy and form of government that works for everybody — a system somewhat like the one a majority of us had before Reaganism —that most other developed countries enjoy right now.

That includes: A healthcare system that doesn’t bankrupt families. A K-12 education system that works for everyone. A college system that is available to everyone that can handle the work. A political system where foreign governments, corporations, and rich people can’t buy elections, legislators, and judges and where there is no barrier to voting. An environment with clean air, water, and food, and where strong actions are taken to reduce climate change. An immigration system that embraces diversity and isn’t cruel. A tax system in which the extremely rich pay their fair share. A respect for international law and human rights. An economy like 1981 when two-thirds of us could buy a car and home, take a vacation, put kids through college, and comfortably retire. A country not rigged by the rich. Those aren’t impossible demands. Canada has all of those things, as does England, France, Germany, Spain, and dozens more, down to Costa Rica.

The problem we face today is that a large cohort of our billionaire and CEO class are suffering from the mental illness commonly known as hoarding syndrome, a subset of obsessive-compulsive disorder. There’s never enough for them, no matter how much they have, so they don’t care how many people must die or live in poverty for them to maintain their (tax-deductible) islands, palaces, bunkers, yachts, and private jets. It’s like that popular meme you find these days all over the Internet: “If a monkey hoarded more bananas than it could eat while most of the other monkeys starved, scientists would study that monkey to figure out what was wrong with it. When humans do it, we put them on the cover of Forbes.”

Hartmann then reviewed how we got here. There was the infamous Powell Memorandum, written by “notorious tobacco lawyer and sociopath” Lewis Powell. It urged rich people to develop the think tank and media infrastructure to convince Americans that oligarchy was the way to go. For that Nixon put Powell on the Supreme Court. And in 1978 Powell delivered with the Bellotti decision, that included a couple phrases that have plagued us ever since: Corporations are people. Money is free speech. And Reagan was elected on a tsunami of oil money. That industry still has control of our politics and their grip became even firmer with Citizens United. Less than 0.0001% of Americans supplied about 17% of all money spent in all of the 2024 federal elections and 44.5% of all the money spent on electing the nasty guy. That is what Americans are voting against this year. Even the corporate Democrats can’t stop it.

Americans know they’ve been screwed over the past 45 years since the GOP’s Reagan Revolution stopped seriously taxing the morbidly rich, killed off our unions, and sent our jobs overseas. And they’re rapidly waking up to exactly who it is who screwed them.

Hartmann extended these ideas in a second post.

The problem corporate neoliberal Democrats, the heirs to Clintonism and Obamaism, face is that a majority of Americans are now clear that it simply doesn’t work. We’re sick of partial, corporate- and billionaire-aligned solutions to large problems that should best be handed by our government as part of the commons.

The people see it isn’t working because the Middle Class was about 66% of the population when Reagan took office and it is now at 41%. Fully 60% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck. The last time that was that high was the 1930s. Inequality in this country has never been this high. Americans tell pollsters they believe one man, Musk, could spend $290 million to elect the nasty guy is obscene. In addition to the list from the first article, add that Americans want wages high enough to live on, affordable utility bills, and an end to expensive wars with no purpose.

Every single one of these issues are on the progressive agenda, whether you call it that or “democratic socialism” or just point out that it aligns with traditional Democratic Party traditions prior to the Clinton presidency.

Outsiders v. establishment

Max Burns of Daily Kos discussed what Democratic voters really want. Four Democratic candidates for a variety of offices, including Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York, got where they are “by campaigning as outsiders frustrated with Washington’s do-nothing Democratic establishment.” The Democratic establishment and the centrist group Third Way (see below) are fighting the Democratic Socialists in their own party. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer gets an angry response when he tries to steer voters away from outsider candidates.

What Schumer, Third Way, and the Beltway barnacles that make up the aging Democratic elite fail to recognize is that this year’s election isn’t a battle between their party’s left flank and its centrists: It’s a referendum on the failed incrementalism of the Democratic establishment. ... That’s bad news for Democratic politicians who have spent decades promising voters that real change was just around the corner—and failing to deliver. The Democratic establishment “told you that every election for the last decade or two has been the most important election of your life, and then [they] get in power and aren’t willing to govern like this was the most important election of your life,” Democratic strategist Joel Payne argued on a recent episode of Lincoln Square’s “Strategy Session.” “It’s such a frustrating experience as a Democrat.” ... Cornered by their own disconnect from a base that demands Democrats actually start using their political clout, Schumer and Third Way can’t see that their desire to hold on to power actually harms their party’s ability to serve the American people. Worse still, Democratic establishment leaders seem more intent on defeating insurgent candidates like El-Sayed than in understanding and harnessing the message that made them so popular.

Robpos of the Kos community discussed Third Way. The group is preparing to use $15 million to “discredit democratic socialism.” Third Way is a dark money political organization. Its source of funding is hidden. Robpos looked over the most recent Board of Trustees. All in his list work for a big bank, such as Goldman Sachs, or for a private equity company. Robpos concluded:

These folks are not on our side. Third Way is NOT a “centrist” Democratic think tank no matter what they say, or how they are presented by the media.

Robpos noted that Third Way is trying to reduce it’s dependence on small donors (meaning more dependence on billionaires). Their goal, according to Robert Reich discussing a Third Way memo, is “to curb ‘far-left influence,’ adopt a ‘pro-capitalist’ stance, and stop ‘demonizing wealth and corporations.’” All this means Third Way is made up of people aligned with Republicans who declare they are “centrist” Democrats (and hope the media doesn’t look closely) with the goal of preserving the Democratic establishment who are already in the pocket of rich people. Put another way, the reason why Democrats have been making only incremental changes is they don’t want to annoy (with the resulting pulling of funding) their rich paymasters. This is the reason why voters see the party so unfavorably and why they are voting for candidates who are anti-establishment. Kelly Candaele, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Kos interviewed Sheri Berman, author of the book The Political Consequences of Economic Ideas: Neoliberalism, the Left, and the Challenges Facing Democracy Today. Here are some of the things they talked about. In the post-war era (aren’t we at a time when we should ask which war?) of approximately 1945 to 1975 the economic pie was growing and the slices were more evenly distributed with less privileged groups also gaining. Economists had thought we couldn't have both growing profits and growing wages and couldn't have growth without increased inequality. Both of those were shown not to be true in this era. That era ended with Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in America. They yanked their countries so far right that they were replaced by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton who were much more center-left than Democratic politicians before them. That created slow growth, rising inequality, relatively high unemployment, low productivity gains, and weaker unions. That weakened both the working class and middle class. And with the center-left turning away from strong worker support there was less reason to vote for the center-left. With the weakened situation of the working class, even the middle class, the ideas of the far-right have room to thrive. These ideas include: economics is zero-sum, therefore immigrants and minorities are why you aren’t getting ahead. Also, the system is rotten. Of course, the evidence of the post-war boom are obscured. Promoting the idea that economics is zero-sum leads to polarization and demonization.

But the polling tells us that while Trump has grown increasingly unpopular, the Democrats remain remarkably unpopular as well. If the Democrats don’t deal with their internal divisions — between radicals and moderates — and manage to unite around a platform that can prove attractive to a decent number of wavering and independent voters, they could still lose in 2028 and then face a Republican Party that will remain a radical threat to American democracy.

I donate to a lot of different organizations – LGBTQ of course, gun safety, voting rights, health research, etc. Over the years I’ve mailed off checks – and as much as possible I donate by check so credit cards don’t take a cut – and every few months a check isn’t cashed. I call the organization and they say they never received it. I don’t cancel the check because I discover the problem because the check isn’t cashed. I don’t investigate whether a cashed check was cashed by someone other than who I wrote it out to. The checks are just gone. There have been a few times when checks sent to a particular organization are more likely to be lost. When those mount up I sometimes stop donating to them. Yesterday an envelope was returned to me. I had addressed it to an organization I stopped donating to because the checks so often didn’t get cashed. It has the usual Postal Service yellow sticker saying “return to sender, not deliverable as addressed, unable to forward.” I opened the envelope. The check inside was dated four years ago.

Not magic dirt, not magic blood, but a magic idea

I finished the book An Equal Music by Vikram Seth. I read it because Michael, the main character, plays second violin in a string quartet that performs classical music – Haydn, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and such. Much of the setting is London. There are three primary threads to the story. The important one is life in a string quartet. What it’s like to rehearse, perform, and travel together. How to work out musical challenges. Working with a manager to get bookings. Another thread involves Julia. When Michael was a student in Vienna ten years ago he and Julia, a pianist, performed together and fell in love. But his relationship with his teacher soured and he returned to London and took too long to explain why to her. After a chance meeting in London he knows he’s still in love with her, but she now has a husband and son. The last thread is the quartet hires a pianist for a particular piece and discovers the pianist has gone deaf. The music is marvelous but they all have to adapt to visual cues rather than sonic ones. I quite enjoyed this one. The writing is beautiful and I appreciated all the musical references. That means if one isn’t a classical music fan a lot of terms won’t make sense. Jessica Huseman, in an article from more than a week ago for Votebeat posted on Daily Kos, reported that the nasty guy fired the two Democratic commissioners of the US Election Assistance Commission. The remaining Republican commissioner was allowed to resign. The other Republican commissioner had left earlier in the year to join the Heritage Foundation. There are supposed to be four members on the commission, two from each major party. Now there are none. The commission has workers that can keep current efforts going, but without people at the top it cannot take any official action. New members are nominated by the president and must be confirmed by the Senate.

The EAC was created by Congress after the 2000 election to help states improve election administration without federalizing elections. Its role is mostly supportive: distributing federal election funds, maintaining the national mail voter registration form, testing and certifying voting systems, and offering best practices and guidance to state and local election officials.

Yes, this firing happened just after the Supreme Court, in its Slaughter decision, granted the nasty guy the power to fire independent agencies simply because he wants to. An EAC that cannot act is also one that cannot alter voting registration and voting-system standards before the November midterms. Conor Murray of Forbes says that tarps have gone up around the North Portico of the White House. There is something about security upgrades to the White House front door that will take a couple months to complete. Or maybe the columns need repair. Or 150 year old paint needs to be removed. The White House is saying very little. That goes along with the helipad being built close to the south side. And the East Wing still showing little evidence of being turned into a ballroom.

$1.2 billion. That’s how much 18 major construction projects Trump launched across Washington, D.C., could cost, according to an estimate by the New York Times. It’s unclear how much of this is funded by taxpayers, but the Times reported a White House official suggested taxpayer money would be used for most of these projects.

David French, a columnist for the New York Times, tweeted (with a link to the full article):

Birthright citizenship is especially noxious to the populist right. They scorn it as relying on magic dirt — the idea that there is something inherent in American soil that makes a person an American citizen. Yet the same populists seem to believe in something like magic blood — that one’s lineage can make one superior. America doesn’t have magic dirt, and it certainly doesn’t have magic blood. But it does have a magic idea — the creed that declares “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Alix Breeden of Kos spoke with Brian Tyler Cohen, author of the new book The Day After: How to Wield Power in a Post-Trump World. Here’s some of what they talked about. The nasty guy gave a speech last week urging the Senate to pass his voter suppression bill he calls the Save America Act. As part of it he ranted again that the 2020 election was stolen. Cohen said this is laying the pretext that if Republicans lose the 2026 midterms he can claim they were stolen. Or ahead of time he can claim presidential powers to attempt to rig them. He’s doing this because Republicans are fully in control of the government and have failed to deliver on promises of lower costs, releasing Epstein file, starting no wars, and keeping prices down. He can’t credibly blame Democrats, though he is trying. The electorate was largely disillusioned with Democrats in 2024, which explains Republican gains. But Democrats are getting a second chance in 2026 because Republicans were “so focused on self enrichment and blind deference to Trump instead of delivering for their constituents” Democrats get a second chance. Republicans are tearing down the institutions of government. Democrats reflexively prop them up. But these institutions are part of the reason why Americans are struggling. Americans don’t want the institutions protected, they want them reformed to give them a better chance at life. Thankfully, the nasty guy got rid of the idea that institutions are sacrosanct. But he did it for self-enrichment. Democrats should not treat the institutions as sacrosanct, but should reform them to benefit those at the bottom. That means passing voting protections (including banning gerrymandering), taking serious action on climate change, and reforming the Supreme Court so they can’t veto what Democrats enact. In general, Democrats need a message that is more than being against the nasty guy. One way to do that is to urge the old timers who think they should die in office to step aside for younger people. Another is to create progressive media – Democrats had relied on mainstream media being liberal but the nasty guy is making them conservative. See CBS. Cohen believes there will be a world after the nasty guy. All of his cronies are also quite low in public opinion, especially the vice nasty. And the spirit of resistance (see No Kings protests) is still quite strong. Mark Kreidler, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Kos, reported that billionaires in California are spending big this election cycle, significantly bigger than before. Some of the reason is to defeat the one-time tax on their wealth. Some of it is to elect candidates who are favorable to unregulated AI and crypto. They donate to Republicans where they can and to business-friendly Democrats in races where Republicans don’t have a chance. A recent poll by NPR/PBS News/Marist shows the same thing as other polls back in 2023 have shown, that Americans love the idea of term limits in Congress. 80% to 90% want them. Andrew Mangan of Kos explains why term limits for Congress are a bad idea. Here are some of the reasons. Going back to 1975 American’s approval of Congress does not correlate with the average years of service of its members. Approval can fluctuate widely, average years of service fluctuates only a little bit. Yes, there are out-of-touch fossils (Grassley, Schumer). But being a member of Congress is a job and jobs take a while to learn and be good at. When a member is still new to the job (where “new” could be many years) they need to rely on experienced members and term limits would get rid of the experienced members. That means they would rely on lobbyists, the ones we don’t want them relying on. If a member knows their time is limited they have less of an incentive to learn the job, to delve into policy and procedures. Many of the most effective Democrats have been in Congress much longer than term limits would permit. Term limits appear to increase political polarization and to hamper economic growth. Enacting term limits would require changing the Constitution. Something just as effective to increase accountability and productivity with similarly high levels of public support is a lot easier to enact. That is to ban gerrymandering. Michigan enacted term limits many years ago. And, yup, the people who know how to make the legislature run are the lobbyists.

Democratic voters want someone as pissed off as they are

My Sunday movie was The Best Years of Out Lives, released in 1946. The story begins with three men on their way home from WWII, heading for the same city. Al had been in the Army, Fred an airplane bombardier, and Homer in the Navy. Homer had lost his hands in the war and has adapted pretty well to hooks as replacements. Al fits pretty well back into being a banker, though his seniors are concerned he’s giving too many loans to veterans through the GI Bill. He glad to return to his wife, daughter, and son. Before the war Fred was a soda jerk and his war experiences don’t translate to any other civilian jobs. He married his wife just before the war and she has come quite independent. They start to clash and he meets Al’s daughter. Homer had a steady girlfriend before the war. Now that he’s disabled he doesn’t want to burden her. The three have a lot to work out as they return to civilian life. According to IMDb trivia of the film:

The film deals with a hot-button issue of the aftermath of World War II: how to reincorporate traumatized war veterans into civilian life. The returning veterans of the film are struggling with PTSD-induced flashbacks to the war, alcoholism, life as amputees, and financial difficulties. They also struggle with finding jobs. A USAAF bombardier captain is reduced to working as a soda jerk, because he has no formal education or marketable skills. The film was reputedly inspired by a 1944 article of Time magazine about emotionally and financially struggling war veterans, who were facing constant hardships after being discharged.

Harold Russell, the guy who played Homer, actually did lose his hands in the war. He was spotted by the producer in an Army training video and given the part. The movie was made under the old Hollywood studio system and the bosses wanted Russel to have acting lessons. The director refused, preferring Russell’s natural talent. When the Academy Awards came around Russell was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. The Academy Board of Governors thought his chances of winning were low, so gave him an honorary award “for bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance,” as recorded by IMDb. And then he won for Best Supporting Actor, the only actor to win two Oscars for the same role. The studio system had an unusual effect on the movie, according to IMDb. The character who played Al’s son concluded his studio contract after a couple early scenes were filmed. That contract was not renewed. So the lad doesn’t appear in the rest of the movie – the son disappears. I learned of this movie through the filmscore by Hugo Friedhofer. It probably showed up in a radio program devoted to filmscores. I have a CD of it and play it every so often. It’s good music – it won Best Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture. This is the first time I saw the movie. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos discussed what mainstream media got for bowing to the nasty guy. Short answer: Very little. Media has been propping up the nasty guy since 2015 with uncritical coverage. But since his second term started many are compromising their independence and try to appeal to his most ardent supporters. Yes, some of this is driven by the nasty guy suing news outlets if they say something he doesn’t like, but such cases would be dismissed if actually taken to court. The result is the outlets that compromised a lot, such as CBS, have lost their previous customers. They haven’t attracted nasty guy supporters because they already have conservative outlets such as Fox and Newsmax and have no need to switch to CBS. Even when a network promotes the nasty guy he still lashes out at their “fake news” and encourages his supporters to do the same. So for bowing to the nasty guy and his threats all they get is lower ratings. Willis reported that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin got on Fox News to suggest immigrant women should be given a pregnancy screening. This is in response to the Supreme Court reaffirming birthright citizenship while conservatives still feel threatened by “birth tourism.” Mullin claimed travel in the last few months of pregnancy could be a health issue.

Neither Mullin nor the Fox panel explained how pregnancy would be determined. Would women have to be subjected to a pregnancy test before boarding a plane? Or would other, more invasive techniques be used?

Jenae Barnes started an article for The 19th posted on Kos with:

Anti-abortion advocates, including Republican lawmakers and state officials, want the EPA to review mifepristone as a water contaminant. Scientists say there’s no evidence it harms the environment or people. While there is no scientific evidence that abortion medication is contaminating Americans’ water supply, it has nonetheless become a central claim by the anti-abortion movement. Activists, Instagram influencers and Republican Party officials — including state and federal lawmakers — are doubling down on what experts describe as a disinformation campaign that mixes environmental policy and reproductive rights, and risks exploiting legitimate concerns about clean water.

The claim has been around for decades. It says mifepristone pollutes the water and puts the health of pregnant people at risk.

Environmental health experts dismiss these claims. These experts consistently point out that there is no scientific basis for treating mifepristone or other abortion medication as a water contaminant.

Experts point out that a small number of women take one dose compared to many other drugs taken far more frequently by a much larger number of people. The Environmental Protection Agency (at least under responsible presidents) has screened 700 medications for potential water contamination concerns. Mifepristone was not one of them. What this is really about is attempting to restrict abortion access. The claim distracts from actual pollution threats, such as PFAS chemicals. As for that birthright citizenship case, Kos of Kos wrote about conservatives who have spoken against the ruling. He ended with:

It’s especially rich to call faithfully reading the Constitution “lawless.” If the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment intended something different, they could have written something different. It’s crazy. Conservatives have spent decades attacking the idea of a “living Constitution,” arguing that judges shouldn’t reinterpret the Constitution to fit changing times but should instead follow the text as originally understood. Now they’re asking judges to disregard the plain language of the 14th Amendment because the modern world has produced outcomes they don’t like. That’s not originalism. It’s outcome-based jurisprudence.

Willis wrote about why Republicans hate the Constitution as part of his series on Explaining the Right. He begins with:

The right has spent decades associating itself with traditional imagery of the Constitution. That means years and years of Revolutionary War cosplay, references to the “original intent” of the Constitution, and right-wing figures claiming to be the last remaining defenders of constitutional order. But it’s all a lie.

Willis then gives many examples of the cosplay and the hatred that started well before the nasty guy. And the main point:

When it comes to the right and constitutional law, what matters is not the document they purport to revere, but rather the pursuit of power. ... The right’s actions show that securing, increasing, and attaining their own political power is more important than sticking to principles and tradition.

In Saturday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark discussing why Democratic Socialist candidates are winning. And the reason is simple.

DSA candidates are seizing on voters’ primal scream for Democrats to Do Something. In this climate, one of the worst things a candidate can do is act like these are normal times. Democratic voters want someone who seems as pissed off as they are and who is focused on fixing the problems that impact their material well-being.

Matt Royer tweeted a response to a tweet from Homeland Security that uses the words of Theodore Roosevelt to condemn immigration. Royer says they left out the following sentence from a speech in 1915. What Homeland Security tweeted:

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism... Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance.

The rest of the quote:

But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else. ... any discrimination against aliens is a wrong.

The American anniversary festivities were set up by Congress into the organization America 250. The nasty guy seems to have sidelines the official group, at least in DC, with his Freedom 250 organization. MSNOW reported:

Most notably, the authors of the report — Democrats on the Natural Resources Committee — raise questions about whether Freedom 250’s fundraising practices could amount to “potential wire fraud and charitable solicitation fraud.”

I’m not at all surprised. Ronald Brownstein quoted some nasty guy officials claiming Gen Z people don’t have real jobs, which is why they complain that everything is so expensive. Brownstein replied:

Yes the reason young people are not getting ahead, or reaching life milestones nearly as fast as their parents, is because there is a massive epidemic of sloth. No structural headwinds-just personal failure. Great messaging strategy as Gen Z reaches 1/6 of eligible voters in 2028.

Laziness has been a messaging strategy of Republicans ever since Reagan and the welfare queens. Down in the comments exlrrp posted a tweet from Robert Reich:

Just one day before he announced a 90-day pause on his sweeping tariffs, Trump’s investment accounts made stock purchase worth as much as $12.8 million. Then when Trump announced the pause, the S&P soared nearly 10% -- one of the biggest single-day gains in the index’s history. Trump pulled in at least $2.2 billion last year through schemes like this plus his crypto business. How are you doing?

A meme posted by exlrrp has the caption under a chart, “Here’s how many stock trades each president made during their term. Notice anything?” The chart shows Clinton: 0, GW Bush: 0, Obama: 0, Trump 1: 50, Biden: 0, Trump 2 (so far): 3642. By may quick calculations that’s 9-10 trades a day (excluding weekends). That sounds more like a day trader than an occupant of the Oval Office. In Sunday’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times.

As much as nationalists today imagine a whites-only world in 1776, that was the leadership, not the people. A fifth of Americans in the revolutionary era were Black — most held in slavery in the South, but still there. What would bind our nation together, sort of, eventually, was not race or faith, but the words on this document. “Certain nations are grounded in ethnicity or common religion, or a common language,” said Slauter. “But that has never been true of the United States. From the beginning it is a nation bound together by documents. Ink on paper is the medium of the United States.” That is really what we are celebrating on the 4th. A written promise. A check to be cashed. Not an end result — Americans had five years of bloody battle ahead of them before victory at Yorktown.

In the comments exlrrp included a tweet from The Politburo discussing the DC fireworks delayed by weather:

A bombastic display so ill conceived and delayed to placate his fragile ego until 1 in the morning on the 5th, the 850k fireworks vastly outnumbered the spectators and created so much smoke and haze to obscure itself. The obvious end to this poorly executed celebration.

In today’s roundup Dworkin included a tweet by Barry Malone that includes a photo taken by Cheney Orr. It shows the inside of a Washington Metro car packed with members of the Patriot Front (a white nationalist group) with shirts and caps with patches and faces wrapped in white – and one lone black person. Dworkin then quoted a thread by Adam Cochrane posted on Threadreader. I went to the whole thread that discusses far right groups grooming young converts.

They give them scholarships, internships, references and all kinds of support to help up their pedigree while exposing them to their specific school of thought. Then through donor networks, they call in favors to get these individuals placed as staffers on the hill. Young Republican staffers have a higher concentration of extremist views tied to lobbying groups and thinktanks than ever before. You can see it in office decorations and comms accounts, countless subtle callouts to white nationalist movements. And many times, this is all entirely unknown to the Congressional representative. These staffers don't really report in to the Congress person. They answer to a now indoctrinated ideology from their lobbying group - often with their own handler. The reason the Patriot Front wears masks isn't because they fear losing their jobs. It's because lobbying groups know if you knew what percentage of them were staffers, you'd realize just how deeply compromised the government is.

This is how they can quickly get 400 Patriot Front members to a protest. Dworkin quoted a tweet by Jonathan Martin:

There’s a growing recognition that the country’s soaring concentration of wealth and declining social mobility can’t be separated from America’s civic ills. Democrats as different as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, potential presidential candidates from opposing factions and generations, both say as much. “Economic instability and the collapse of democracy are intertwined,” Ocasio-Cortez recently told MSNOW’s Jen Psaki. “The moment the American dream became unaffordable, American democracy became unstable,” Emanuel has said for months as he scampers around the country, proposing a roster of targeted reforms on healthcare, education, housing and retirement.