My point about voters is that everyone you EVER interact w on political twitter, at political events falls into the tails of this distribution (2.5%). Most people who watch mainstream major networks news, read @nytimes or @WAPO,watch Sunday shows would fall within the 13.5% bands
Although there are certainly some primary voters who hail from the two 34% areas, the bulk of the two party's primary electorates come from the right & left flank of this graph, which means the far left & right are far more extreme than average & even the center and mods are more
conservative and liberal than the average electorate. For all the convo about the Dem primary, polling consistently shows only about 40% of all people who plan to cast ballots in it, people who as a group are already non-representative of the whole country, have watched a debate
Much of the people sitting in those two 34% bands are America's "disengaged" (as @pewresearch calls them). They aren't particularly ideological, but bc of that, they aren't all that inclined to participate (although this is NOT the only thing driving our low participation rates).
So when I give public lectures and interviews I try to remind my audiences that if they are hearing me talk, they are in the 1%. And when they look around confused I clarify, "no, no, not the income 1%, the information 1%. Th engagement 1%. And this is the crisis that underlies
every other crisis we have in American politics."
I want to add this follower Q to the thread in case other people need this frame of reference. Very good Q!
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🚨🔥🧵👇Herding Cats:
The Problem Isn’t Just Structural. It’s Behavioral.
Democrats are not just losing the information war because the other side has Fox News and a billion-dollar propaganda ecosystem. That’s a big part of it, sure—but it’s not the whole story. The comms asymmetry isn’t just structural. It’s behavioral. It’s psychological. It’s us.
Let me break this down for you, because until we understand the real problem, we’re not going to fix it. And if we don’t fix it, we’re not just going to lose elections. We’re going to lose democracy.
1. Democrats Want to Be Smart. That’s a Problem.
Democrats are smart people. Progressives, especially. They value intelligence. They curate it. They showcase it. They want to look smart, and more importantly, they’re terrified of looking stupid. This seems like a good thing—until you realize that effective propaganda often requires you to say things that sound stupid to smart people.
🚨🔥🧵Politicize Everything:
A Blueprint for a Party That Fights.
Let me start with the obvious: Republicans politicize everything. They politicize natural disasters. They politicize immigration. They politicize murder victims, train derailments, gas prices, egg prices, hamburgers, light bulbs, M&Ms, and your damn stove.
If a dog slips on the ice in Iowa, Steve Bannon’s podcast will have it chalked up to Biden’s America by lunchtime. Fox News will feature it on a five-segment loop under “Border Chaos.” By dinnertime, Ted Cruz is tweeting about how Trump would’ve salted the sidewalk himself.
Meanwhile, Democrats are out here still asking for permission to feel angry.
It’s 2025. If you’re just now figuring out that everything is political, you’re not behind the curve—you are the curve. And the curve is currently being flattened by a fascist movement that figured out 20 years ago that emotion beats policy, fear beats fact, and offense beats defense every damn time.
🧵Make America 1933 Again
The Rise of American Fascism
It can happen here. It already is.
Fascism doesn’t need to show up looking like the History Channel: swastikas, stiff-armed salutes, and jackboots marching down Main Street.
(Learn more 👇and RT so your friends can too!)
Contemporary fascism, here and abroad, wears their Sunday best and clutches a Trump Bible. Fascism in Germany didn’t start with deportations and gas chambers,—it started with the elimination of civil rights and a Big Gov surveillance system focused on “thought crimes.”
And the closer you look at the MAGA movement, the harder it is to avoid the conclusion that America is not just playing footsie with fascism. Millions are in bed with it, spooning it, whispering sweet nothings to it on Truth Social.
Let’s not get coy. There are BIG differences between Trumpism and Hitlerism, of course. But the ideological overlap is substantial—and disturbing.
The Cycle Monday Memo
Live Free. Die fast. Get Digested Slowly
Let’s begin with a quick vibe check. Are you breathing air with an AQI over 300 today? Wearing Crocs in public because it’s too hot for socks but too dangerous to go barefoot? Great. Then you’re ready for this week’s news.
The Elon Musk Civil War: America Party Edition
First up, our favorite discount Bond villain, Elon Musk, declared civil war on the Republican Party this week by suggesting he’s launching the “America Party,” a political vehicle so inspiring it was conceived during a Twitter poll with as much methodological rigor as your drunk uncle asking, “Who wants to go to Waffle House?” at 3am.
Now, Musk says he didn’t actually file an FEC filing for a new party. That’s what his lawyer told him, anyway. So maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. He’s a busy guy juggling at least 6 jobs with a ketamine and video game addiction.
What we know for sure: conservative influencers lost their minds at the idea.
In case you’re wondering how Trump feels about it, he issued his usual sized rant, to which Elon responded: I ain’t reading that.”
Elon Musk has decided America needs a new political party. And not just any party – the America Party, founded on the deeply inspiring and universally unifying mission of… eliminating the national debt??
(Please RT this!)
Don’t get me wrong, there is always decent public support for lowering the debt, theoretically.
Its when you get into the specifics of how to achieve debt reduction, which requires either massive tax increases or massive spending cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, that support drops massively.