Chris Oates

This is what makes predicting the end of the shutdown particularly hard.

The Speaker is saying that appropriations are now functionally a simple majority in the Senate.

So why wouldn’t Democrats hold out until Thune nukes the filibuster? It’s the same result either way.

Federal Reserve report also suggests that economic decline will continue to be a big story through the next year

Based on today’s @massterlist.com headline, I’d love to see a coffee table book of photographs from election night victory parties for uncontested candidates. A mix of elation and expectation.

Seeing new political framings emerge One reason to read hearing transcripts

Committee hearings let you see new political arguments emerge, like butterflies from a cocoon. This week we see

- Beacon Hill is worried about the economy
- The federal government is now an other
- The OBBB is reshaping the political landscape

massachusettsdigest.substack.com/p/seeing-new...

To my friends in Philadelphia, this is your Bill Buckner moment

“I’m John Dickerson and tonight we’re taking a look at long throw routines”

It’s not like there’s a magic news breakthrough waiting to happen that no one else had thought about before.

She created a niche publication and did well in that niche.

This is like if a set piece coach becomes Director of Football and people expect them to win the title

It’s why I doubt she succeeds at CBS News (however you want to judge it). Her career has been counterpositioning against what she termed the establishment, but there’s nothing more establishment than CBS News.

Imagine being a parent and worrying that when you die there may be no one to care for your child if they can’t live independently.

It’s a spectrum so many can, but we shouldn’t negatively polarize ourselves to dismissing how profound of a disability it can be

There is a bit of the Baumol effect as well, with non-working parents now being a greater opportunity cost to the household income than in the past. Hard to differentiate completely from the rise in median income, but it definitely feels logistically harder with one than my grandparents with four.

My guess is that this is mostly downstream of rising ages of first pregnancy and cost in time and money of raising kids. If you asked me in the abstract, sure, I'd love to have four kids. But when our first kid was at 39 and both parents have careers, that's just not possible

How long until sportsbooks start offering lines on the Sesame Street letter of the day?

Oh man that brings me back to my days in college, sitting around the quad benefitting financially and enhancing my brand.

Completed my semi-annual cancellation of SaaS products that no longer are worth the money and feel great! It's like spring cleaning for the digital age. Also, probably should be checking on those more often than twice a year

Did Dewey ever defeat Truman?

From S&P Global Market Intelligence, this is a very scary chart. Basically, the sector of the economy we're relying on for innovative growth and high income salaries have seen the most layoffs in the last 12 months. That's not good!

Are we in a recession? Deep dive from the mid-year economic roundup

This week we take a look at what came out of the mid-year economic roundup. It's one of the dryest hearings you'll ever read, but it's vital to understanding what's happening in the state.

Also, I learned that on Beacon Hill, the One Big Beautiful Bill is "OB3"

open.substack.com/pub/massachu...

It’s important as a political analyst to accept your forecasting mistakes and learn from them so I now have to figure out why I had faith in this Red Sox team to win the wild card series

I don’t remember ever being so pessimistic about a Red Sox playoff offense. They don’t at all look like they can score 4 runs even if you spotted them a ghost runner every inning

First article I saw at that particular site said that a bill had passed when it had only been proposed. Big difference!

The US Navy in 1861 is why our sheets are Egyptian cotton

I’m getting all my built up stress for Red Sox - Yankees out by watching Tottenham UCL right now. It’s like methodone but if I also planned on still taking heroin later

Looks like we just made any operation with an allied country much harder

Reading the Kamala Harris campaign memoir.

It’s good, but it reminds me how incredible US Grant’s memoirs are. Still the best book by a president or candidate in American history

There's no rule that a committee can't be chaired by a dog Beacon Hill goes a bit Air Bud this week

First time I've seen a non-human chairing a committee at the State House.

That, along with Raise the Age, service worker pay, and clean energy jobs this week

massachusettsdigest.substack.com/p/theres-no-...

Thanks very much for this. If I were a benign dictator, I’d mandate every city and public forum be live streamed to YouTube (and whatever other platforms they want) with mics for all participants. Such a small thing that makes municipal government more accessible

We need to get back to the good old days when hard hitting journalism from Normandy was brought to you by Crisco

“International political economy” doesn’t sound as cool

My best guess - and this is purely based on qualitative info we get - is that the info environment has broken down so much, and the D brand is so tarnished in many states, that the tipping point voter in many states is on issues a Democrat and yet cannot bring himself to vote for a Democrat

This is also a tough question because there aren't a lot of good methodological approaches. Polling will often get to issue views that fade when they make contact with a real party election, and focus groups tend to get more in depth than a lot of voters spend on an election.