Ryan Grim Profile picture
Sep 24, 2020 5 tweets 2 min read Read on X
Lots of polling shows that Democrats are less likely to vote if they believe Trump is just going to steal the election. Trump's people have no doubt seen that polling too, which might be motivating Trump to be so honest about stealing the election. Win-win, so to speak.
The more he can get the media and Democratic leaders to talk about his willingness to steal the election, the less likely it becomes that he has to steal it to win. Awfully clever, if intentional.
And this point is not remotely controversial among Democratic strategists who analyze polling and have found that people are more likely to vote if they think their vote will matter and count. Here's one piece of a memo where they talk about how to better frame it (3rd row down) Image
This yougov model finds that undermining faith in the election does not hurt enthusiasm. What I’m reporting on here is the conclusion of Dem strategists who’ve analyzed the polling and argue the opposite, that if you tell people their vote won’t count, they’re less likely to vote
The Biden camp thinks this is what he's doing Image

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More from @ryangrim

Jan 12
This assertion from Yglesias is quite damning -- for Yglesias. He is claiming it is "basic reality" that Elizabeth Warren is "an electoral underperformer" and that anybody who doesn't understand that shouldn't be trusted to understand more complicated things. But he appears not to understand the numbers himself.

He often points out (rightly) that Kamala Harris outperformed Warren in 2024 in Mass. That's true overall. You could note that Warren ran no ads and didn't campaign, so that explains the difference, but it's actually much worse than that for Yglesias. If you look at where the votes were spread out, what you find is that Harris significantly overperformed Warren in the wealthiest, most-educated parts of Massachusetts, while Warren outperformed Harris in the working class areas.

So if you think the way for Democrats to win nationally is to keep running up the score with people who read Yglesias' newsletter, then by all means, don't listen to Warren and definitely follow Matt's advice into the arms of Kamala.

But if you think Democrats need to do better in working class areas where people don't have advanced degrees, the candidate who does well there is actually Warren.

I'm going to assume in the spirit of good faith that Matt has never looked at the numbers beyond the state level. (Matt, is that right?) Once he sees them, I think he'll have to correct his analysis. It is basic reality that in areas that demographically and educationally look more like the rest of the country, Warren outperformed Harris. That doesn't mean he has to like her or her ideas, but he has to confront them head on, and drop this false claim that she is an underperformer.

Let's take a look at about a dozen towns and cities that tell the real story:
Take a look at Lawrence, in Essex County. You can find the results here: electionstats.state.ma.us/elections/view…

Just 16% of people there have a college or advanced degree by the time they're 25 yo, and Warren won 71% of the vote while Harris won just 57%.

Now look at Wellesley, where 87% (!) of people have degrees. Warren won it with 65% but Harris won it with 74%. That's how Harris ran up the numbers, but Wellesley is obviously not the path toward a national majority. Lawrence is much closer to the national demographics Democrats need to win.

Let's go through some more:
Springfield and Holyoke are both fairly large working class towns in Western Mass, and Warren outperformed Harris in both.

Springfield (20% have a college degree)
Warren 70%
Harris 65.5%

Holyoke (25% have a college degree)
Warren 66.3%
Harris 63.5%

Now let's go back to some rich areas.

Marblehead (77% have a college degree)
Warren 62%
Harris 69%

Again, to the point made by @mattyglesias -- it is EXTREMELY clear what is happening here. Wealthy Dems liked Kamala Harris more than they liked Warren. That is the only reason Harris overperformed in Mass even as working class areas went more for Warren. Let's look at some more:
Read 4 tweets
Aug 21, 2025
St. Louis police and security for Rep. Wesley Bell got quite rough with townhall attendees at the end of the recent event.

Here's new video from one constituent who filmed some of the assaults and by the end is getting thrown to the ground himself:
(In case it's not clear this was about Israel-Gaza; Bell beat Cori Bush thanks to millions from AIPAC)
Read 5 tweets
Aug 6, 2025
Here's footage of the same site as the Time magazine photo that @BillAckman and others are saying was staged. They will all retract and apologize after watching this.

You can tell by countless details that it's the precise same site and that the photographer did not stage it.
Here for instance is the corrugated metal and the wall in both the video and photo. The photo was clearly taken just before the aid distribution began. Image
Image
Here's Al Jazeera's video, posted 5 days ago:
Read 4 tweets
Jul 24, 2025
Holy shit the "Free Press" just took down the video of @havivrettiggur sounding the alarm about the famine.

What a way to welcome him to the organization.

@bariweiss wants heterodox views, but stating the obvious, that Israel is inflicting starvation on Gaza, is too much
Here's where it was. Hope @havivrettiggur fights to have this put back up. The message was important. Image
@havivrettiggur And if you click on WATCH it takes you to a paywall
Read 4 tweets
Jul 5, 2025
I could not possibly be filled with more rage after seeing Texas Republicans blame the National Weather Service forecast for the unspeakable tragedy that hit the girls camp.

You were warned this would happen if you fired everyone!
You actively chose to fire as many scientists working for the federal government as possible and have even taken weather balloons out of the sky. These were people who dedicated their lives to this stuff and you fired them so you could do tax cuts.

You do not now get to complain that weather forecasts are off.

Please go find these girls and rehire these scientists.
It can’t be known at this time what the specific effect of the cuts was. What can be known is that nobody who supported all the firings gets to complain about the performance of an agency they torched. And stop letting people build in known danger zones.
Read 4 tweets
Jan 25, 2025
This doesn’t seem to be getting enough attention. The Silicon Valley social contract forced on the public by Obama and then Trump and then Biden (minus Lina Khan) and now Trump was straight forward: We will let these bros become the richest people in human history and in exchange they will develop a tech industry that makes the U.S. dominant for a century.

They did the first part, then built monopolies to try to keep out competition rather than continue to innovate at a top level, and then got out-competed by Chinese companies in both AI and social media. They are the losers we always thought they were — and now so are we.
Now they’re gonna spend $500B gobbling up energy in Texas to build a product China is making for $5B and giving away basically free. Lemme know how that goes.

Meanwhile the Texas grid breaks when it gets cold.
U.S. tech oligarchs and the actual president of the United States spending time and energy doing crypto nonsense while China releases an AI that kicks our ass is such a perfect metaphor while also being literally what’s happening
Read 6 tweets

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