Mark Schmitt

There have been so many rounds of, "We need a ___ for the left": We've needed a Grover Norquist, a Powell Memo, a Limbaugh, a Heritage Fdn, a Weekly Standard, a Fox News, a Joe Rogan, etc. Maybe a pluralistic, democratic alternative needs different kinds of people and orgs than an authoritarian one.

Think tanks are a bit tangential to a lot of what Trump 2.0 is doing, but the overall war on expertise and high quality information gathering presents hard questions for how Washington has been wired since roughly the Cold War.

A great piece, but leaves out the crucial role for organizations in this benighted moment to recruit and nurture the experts that can help inform policy when facts and expertise matter again.

Even if we make no headway in the short-term, we need infrastructure in place for when new space emerges.

Kansas voters deserve more choices than 2-party rule, like they used to have | Opinion Only once — in 1897 — have Republicans not held at least one branch of state government. When they regained power in 1900, they outlawed fusion voting. | Opinion

United Kansas’ lawsuit against the 1901 anti-fusion law is a reminder that we can learn a lot from our history. There was a time in Kansas when voters had more choices.

Read more at: www.kansascity.com/opinion/read...

Think Tanks in an Authoritarian Moment When the “war of ideas” meets the war on knowledge, how can ideas come out on top?

I wrote about the role of think tanks in a moment when knowledge and ideas are under attack. Many thanks to colleagues at @newamerica.org and other organizations for sharing thoughts on this challenge. democracyjournal.org/arguments/th...

What strikes me in every DC election is turnout disparity. Trayon White is winning w/ ~2,000 votes, 80% counted. My council member, Janeese Lewis George in Ward 4 won with ~11,000 votes in both a competitive 2020 primary and 2024 primary. RCV would help, but just getting people to vote would be huge

Expanding Citizen-Led Policymaking in the 21st Century This report explores opportunities and strategies for expanding ballot initiative access to more states.

New report from @maresastrano.bsky.social @mschmitt9.bsky.social and @oscarp.bsky.social rp.bsky.social‬ lays out the why, how, and where of expanding access to statewide ballot initiatives to more states: https://www.newamerica.org/political-reform/reports/expanding-citizen-led-policymaking/

It's not just the ACA expansion of Medicaid. It was the incremental work of *decades* to expand Medicaid beyond the small group also eligible for AFDC. It ended the trap where ppl lost health coverage if they earned a little more money. One of the great generational policy achievements, tossed away.

Great to hear this, but I worry that 49+ of his colleagues barely know what Tillis is talking about. They've shut out info about the interaction btw Medicaid and their rural hospitals; they assume ppl who raise their hands at town halls are paid agitators. They've cut off any normal feedback loop.

How to Buy an Election - Boston Review The problem is no longer “money in politics.” It’s just money.

Here's a link to the piece from @bostonreview.bsky.social from February. www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

Fortunately, in NYC, the small-donor matching system can offset the giant pools of billionaire dollars, and not just elevate small donors, but put candidates back in charge of their own funding. It's at least as valuable as RCV.

This illustrates the big change in political $$ that I wrote about in @bostonreview.bsky.social: It's no longer raised by candidates, but billionaires move their own pots of money, attaching themselves to various pols, like mercenary armies in the Middle Ages, allied to one prince or another.

Sincere question.

Democrats have been lighting up Trump officials in hearings, many of which, not all, are yearly appropriations hearings. it's really fun to watch, mostly.

Why aren't you seeing that? What would it take you to do so? To make it go viral?

w/ caveat that I learned Byrd Rule long ago, I don't think these are "parliamentarian's whims." Most don't seem like close calls, and Senators like Lee are either ignorant or have other incentives. Same as when parliamentarian blocked Biden minimum wage in 2021--that was also not a close call.

Taking this more seriously than it merits, I'm always curious how people who think 4 of the last 5 presidents were "dumb" reconcile their support for absolute presidential power and immunity. If the US is so likely to elect "dumb" presidents, isn't that a good case for robust checks and balances?

Don't know if she mentioned this in the interview, but there's a very personal context here I had forgotten: Smith managed the brief Mondale campaign after Wellstone's death. (From a plane crash, but oldsters will remember how Wellstone's *funeral* was aggressively spun by the GOP).

Previous NYC system also left the possibility that a candidate with far less than majority support could win. Example: 2013, when Bill de Blasio won with 40.8% of the primary vote. Is that a more "democratic" outcome? Is a system "democratic" if a candidate strongly opposed by a majority can win? 22

Before calling NYC's ranked-choice system undemocratic, should compare it to NYC's previous system, in which if no candidate reached 40%, there'd be a 2-person runoff, later, low turnout. Same possibility that plurality winner in first round wouldn't win, but a more cumbersome, limited process. 1/2

I am as big a sucker as anyone for the fine-grained legal analysis, but I do sometimes worry it distracts us a little from the big, dumb, obvious points. This is appalling & precisely what the Framers were terrified of. Whether it’s technically legal if you squint right doesn’t change that.

Here's the thing: While some of the administration absolutely intend an autocracy and I suppose some may not, almost everyone in the administration was chosen for winning the contest of Who Can Say the Most Outrageous Things. *That's their skill set.*

My advice to Democratic politicians in this moment: Speak in your own voice, say what you believe, listen to your own constituents, and try to convey the story of the authoritarian moment as best you can. Others will speak in their own voices. A majoritarian political party is a broad coalition.

These non-scandals are forgotten not just because decades have passed, and Trump has erased all records, but because they were disposable from the start. Contrived, and just as quickly forgotten, like the "migrant caravans" of 2018. Or the role of Ebola panic in the 2014 midterms.

Try telling younger people (and not very young) about the 1992 House bank scandal. 20-30 House members lost their seats or retired early because they took advantage of what was basically overdraft protection at their payroll office. Sloppy, but no public $ was lost, no bribes or corruption.

Partial context for Ernst here is that like many Republicans, she's convinced herself that people who show up for town halls don't represent real concerns among constituents. Recall Musk's "the left is mostly fake," and resistance is "paid protesters." What an ugly view of the people they represent!

I worry that the "don't rank Cuomo" campaign makes people think there's some secret strategy to ranked-choice voting. There's not. The goal and value of RCV is that the winning candidate should be broadly acceptable to a majority. So if a candidate's not acceptable to you, don't rank them. Simple.

I'm just "somebody sitting at a think tank," and not aligned with Loury, but I nonetheless agree with this paragraph and @joshchafetz.bsky.social's endorsement of it. Academia has its b.s., but the whole sphere, from community colleges up to the elite institutions is an amazing human achievement.

DOGE should update everybody’s beliefs downward about the extent of redundancy and bloat in the federal government

If Schumer could force a vote on the bill, it might be worth it, just to put some R's in a tough spot and elevate the issue of the bribe. But he can't get a vote. At best he'll get a late-night vote on a "sense of the Senate" on the budget bill. That's useless. Need really creative oversight instead

This Democracy Docket post expands on the point I made yesterday that attempt to take over LOC previewed Trump attack on GAO:
bsky.app/profile/msch...

To be clearer: Eliminating filibuster would benefit both Ds and Rs when in majority. Biden & Obama would have been able to achieve much. But the filibuster w/ exceptions (reconciliation, CRA, etc) means Rs can achieve most of what they want (tax cuts, deregulation), and Dems/progressives much less.