Pedro Yokes

So what’s going to happen with a woman candidate who is to the left of Harris and Clinton? I think we already know. It’s pretty depressing tbh!

And I hate that I’m going to be forced to factor this in, but I will. Trump ran three times. He twice beat moderate women that the public perceived as far left of where they are. He lost to a doddering old man who was perceived as more moderate than he actually was. None of this is coincidental.

The RW media does its most effective work against female candidates. The ideas would favor us, but they would ensure the election wasn’t decided over ideas, and that terrifies me.

They’ll do this to other candidates as well! But it wouldn’t be as effective against Chris Murphy.

It’s too early to make proclamations about 2028 but I’m struck by one feeling that keeps running through my head. I like AOC’s politics the best of any current candidate. But can she win a race that becomes another proxy culture war? Oof. I don’t know.

Changed from what? He’s always been a progressive. I’m not conceding the point that he’s ever had problematic ideology. The tattoo was not and never was an expression of ideology. And I know this because I’ve known the guy personally.

He is known as someone who will run through a wall to help his community. That’s who he is. And I’m not going to stop defending him because people who don’t know him want to caricature him

But by the tattoo rubric, I’m supposed to believe that Graham is a Nazi, and the tattooless guy isn’t because he doesn’t have that tat? Come on.

If there were anything to support the “Nazi” stuff as having any bearing you’d have seen tons of it coming out. There’s not.

And this morning I log onto this app and I’m being told that actually the first guy is the fascist because a piece of flash ink he got with his unit in Croatia was used by the SS? I’m sorry, but absolutely nobody that knows Graham thinks he is ideologically problematic. It’s just farcical.

Like, I’m not kidding:

One guy—a dedicated Bernie supporter who agreed with me on everything except guns (he’s pro 2A, I’m not).

The other guy, actual fascist. Helped write project 2025! Thinks Stephen Miller is soft on immigrants!

A funny thing about my history with Platner is that the bar he worked with my wife had another bartender who is now a senior fellow at Heritage and has actual right wing nationalist beliefs. One of these guys is progressive and got an unfortunate skull tat. The other guy, no tat — but very fascist!

The same Nazi you think should be running for local office first

Well the thing is I know he isn’t a Nazi and his tattoo story checks out based on my years of knowing him. I’m more interested in the claim he has voted for Collins because it’s new to me.

No

I would like to see the sourcing on this. I haven’t turned up anything and my personal interactions with him have always shown him to be proudly progressive.

“This guys a Nazi, but I think he should run for state legislature or sheriff”

Makes me think that the “he’s a Nazi” part isn’t really a genuine concern you have

Where did you hear that he consistently voted GOP.

“Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said the issue of Greenland had “distracted in ways that I don’t think that any of us could have anticipated.”

How can you possibly fail to anticipate this? How is this a thing any adult, let alone a US Senator, can say?

(They do not detail who these observers are that thought Jeanine Pirro would restore stability to the DC USAO)

An actual sentence someone at Politico wrote about Jeanine Pirro

Donald Trump does not read policy papers, and he’s been against NATO forever. He had an entire anti-NATO presidency before this paper was written!

What is *actually happening* is ideologues are using Trump’s batshit instincts to push crackpot policy ideas in academia and gain credibility

Is This Where Trump’s NATO Ideas Are Coming From? An idea floating in academic circles has helped drive the Trump administration’s pullback from Europe.

Politico will bend over backwards to identify some Serious Policy explanation for Trump because they need to reframe his insanity in rational terms — otherwise their policy reporting is useless.

Here they say that Trump got his anti-NATO ideology from a policy paper written **in 2023**

This is true for sure — it’s not even arguable. But I would also say that if you spend a lot of time on Bluesky you will also get a warped perspective of how the country is feeling. You have to get out and talk to people, and you need to read a lot of non-horse race public opinion research

So I don’t think just throwing real hourly wage data in peoples faces is an adequate response to the creeping sense among a large, swing voting chunk of Americans who are telling us over and over that things don’t feel sustainable for them.

If you live in a rural or otherwise underserved market, this kind of institutional support makes a massive difference in your economic life. You see this now particularly in healthcare.

Lots of people have gotten quiet support from the government that made life easier for them— I’m not even talking about food stamps here, but government supported extended afterschool programs, head start, etc. This support is always under attack.

3. I don’t think wage data does a great job in evaluating the overall package of support that buttresses someone’s economic life. There are fewer union jobs, which means worse health and retirement benefits embedded in “wage.” The government support provided is also worse

2. In the basket of goods and services that are used to calculate CPI, there are some that are quite large and continue to see high inflation — notably healthcare, childcare, elder care, education/student debt, and housing.

If you are facing or might face several of these at once, it’s daunting

1. There is a massive difference in our economy between people who own homes they bought years ago and refinanced during QE and everyone else. Not just in terms of current financial situation but economic optimism. Median real income data doesn’t really allow you to tell this story.

I used to be a believer in the Stancil-Darling vibescession argument but I’ve really been persuaded against it.

I think there are several confounding variables that explain why the real median data series’ on income don’t reflect *key groups* in the population

Anyway there has been more enterprise reporting into his entire life than any typical politician. The irony is that you already know (or have access to) substantially more about his life than you do about Janet Mills’ life.

You can certainly oppose him for any of it, but he’s not a mystery.