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One of the more amusing false choices, presented by the recent brains of the Democrat's polling and messaging.

Is his job to try to win elections, or to try to win elections the right way, with the right coalition?  

Do the people who pay him know the answer to this?

Coalitions

Everybody will tell you that they are just trying to win - that this is their singleminded goal - but the battle within the party is often about precisely which coalition to try to win with.

There was a concerted effort from without and within the party to reject the 2020 Biden-Sanders-Warren coalition, to declare it a failure and reshape a new one. They were trying to tank the 2022 midterms, or at least wishcast that into being, and then use as that an excuse to go back to the happy place of courting Sensible Republicans.  

That this effort was largely sponsored by crypto cash - SBF was the Real Thing - has gone mostly unremarked, largely because many well-connected people narrowly escaped prosecution (I am being vague here, deliberately).

The 2022 midterms didn't go as hoped, for them, as it wasn't the Red Wave that they had been desperately hoping for.   They went on as if it had, as if SBF wasn't in prison.

And here we are.

That story doesn't explain everything, but it explains a lot.  Nothing made sense to me in 2022 until I realized this was happening.

Everybody's Working For The Weekend

Fetterman when asked re: timing

“Oh my God, I just want to go home. I've already my I've missed our entire trip to to the beach…, there's no drama that we know the votes are going to go…And I think, I don't think it's really helpful to put people here till some ungodly hour.”

— Alan He (@alanhe) June 30, 2025

Lunch

eat

President Deals

Hey, his approach worked. Good luck, Canada, he'll never stop!

Canada will rescind a planned digital services tax in order to advance stalled trade talks with the U.S., Ottawa announced on Sunday.

Experience and Competence

Cuomo has many flaws, but one is that he is lazy and incompetent. Ideology aside, he is absolutely bad at running things, including his own campaign.

This one is worth reading from start to finish so I won't provide an excerpt (the only way most people click through).

One point I will emphasize a bit is that many in politics and political journalism want to claim that it was Mamdani who made Gaza/Israel the centerpiece of his camaign, which is a complete fabrication. It was Cuomo who did that.

Remember that when people ask why The Left is so obsessed with Israel, in order to imply something about that.

Seems Bad

Funny how paranoid conservative fantasies are always turned into reality by conservatives.

The Trump administration has, for the first time ever, built a searchable national citizenship data system.

The tool, which is being rolled out in phases, is designed to be used by state and local election officials to give them an easier way to ensure only citizens are voting. But it was developed rapidly without a public process, and some of those officials are already worrying about what else it could be used for.

Whatever the merits of such an idea (none, but let's pretend), a system implemented with no concern for accuracy and no way to correct errors is there for reasons other than the stated ones. 

Morning

Big beautiful Monday.

More Like This

 

Run Away

Tillis (R-NC) is not running for re-election. I am sure he is now free to vote good instead of bad (lol).

Alaska Gold Rush

To some degree, I think buying off members of  Congress with goodies for their districts/states is actually a better way of doing things, but you don't get to prance around as a principled moderate when you do this.

Collecting goodies is better than getting rid of all the goodies!  More senators should demand goodies, maybe even for the whole country!

Stephen Miller's Personal Domestic Military

I know all they want to do is talk about Medicaid - and they should! - but "putting it on the record that I was against this" is something I suggest elected Dems do about that part, too, because it isn't going to be very popular once it has more money than most country's militaries!

I know we all love first responders now, but we don't, really. Nobody likes the "cops" the instant they get in their way unjustly, even once.

People really don't like this now (someone tell the Dems), and it's going to get a lot worse.

Morning

Sunday funday

Mr. President, Time To Nationalize Starlink

Afternoon

Do some afternoon stuff

Bad Politicians And Their Familiars In The Press

One issue about the general biases of political journalists (which I think most of you agree with me about) is they amplify the messaging of the worst Democrats. I will let you ponder the various implications of that while I do some weekending.

Penalty

Aside from the her racist rant about Zohran, this is pretty amazing from Gillibrand.

Gillibrand answered: “It’s very simple. When multiple allegations came out about Andrew Cuomo, I think it was eight or nine, I called on him to resign… That was my view at the time because people asked how do you think they can continue to govern with these allegations? …The question being asked today is what’s my opinion about someone after they’ve resigned, after they’ve taken the penalty that I called on them to take? …And my answer to that is everyone gets to decide in this election who they want to vote for.”

She added: “It’s up to New Yorkers. It is not up to me.”

Naughty boys get a year in the penalty box, then we believe they have learned their lessons.

Morning

Slacker Saturday

Happy Hour

It is time