1. Yes, @kkondik is spot on in terms of the assessment here. In my forecast- which comes back out Sunday, the NC Senate seat is seat 50- although there are reasons to believe it was looking soft before this happened. Primary bc the @CalforNC was focused on wooing Indies & mod Rs
2. to the exclusion of any other efforts and messaging as I knew it would be when I was fervently hoping a stronger nominee would emerge. Sadly, NC's bench sat out, failing to realize how good the atmosphere would be in 2020- looking at 2020 & Burr's open seat which si DUMB,
3. my research being blacklisted off election twitter, it was hard for me to convince people back in 2019 that come fall of 2020 it would be a dominant environment to topple Tillis. So they end up w Tillis, and for the 2nd time the Ds find themselves getting screwed by the sexual
4. appetites of older white men. But this will also give us a good test of how much the D electorate will tolerate. We know how bad the R electorate is- they tried and almost succeeded in sending a child molester to the Senate in Alabama. They weren't thwarted in that effort by
5. R voters- they were thwarted by a surge of Dems and Indies. Control of the senate is on the line. I don't see Tillis dropping out and I don't see the Dems dropping him. Maybe he'll realize too that the only way he ever could win this race was via NC's college educated Ds & Is
6. and driving massive black turnout by focusing on the stakes of control of the senate and tying Tillis to Trump. That was the campaign he should have been running all along- and the fallacy of his "get Rs to bail on Tillis plan" was already apparent. But in terms of "guy wanted
7. to cheat on his wife" scandal rendering him unelectable? I'm guessing no, not in this environment with control of the senate at stake.
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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.