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.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Plenty of Parallels between MAGA and the NAZI Movement
Folks, sometimes when I’m waging war against the MAGA Nazis on the twitter machine I come across something I read and then want you to read too.
This is why I am going to copy and paste this short piece from someone who would prefer to remain anonymous (with their permission!)
This analysis shows the parallels between MAGA and another fascists movement from 100 years ago who you know as the Nazis.
Here it is:
The comparison to Nazi Germany isn’t just a stretch—it’s a direct historical parallel unfolding in real time. Trump’s playbook is eerily similar to Hitler’s rise to power, and the signs are all there for those willing to see them.
Hitler exploited economic hardship and blamed outsiders and minorities for the country’s problems—Trump does the same with immigrants, refugees, and political opponents.
Hitler rose to power through democratic means, then dismantled democratic institutions from within—Trump is following the same script, stacking courts, gutting federal agencies, and openly threatening to imprison political opponents.
🧵The Tipping Point Is Upon Us:
Will MAGA Simply Ignore the Courts?
Ok folks, we’re three weeks in and have already entered the “constitutional crisis” phase of things.
I want to draw your attention to something critically important in the coming week. The federal courts have started to respond to Elon Musk’s illegal attack on federal agencies and programs like USAID.
This is going to create a real litmus test for the survival of our democracy.
Much of what Trump and Elon are doing is so flagrantly illegal, it is hard to imagine much of it surviving judicial review, even at the Supreme Court level.
Yes, the Federalist Society controls the Court, but on occasion at least three of their justices, Gorsuch, Barrett, and Roberts have ruled on the side of the Constitution against Trump. There is one major exception and that is the immunity case where they not only did their best to create an untouchable presidency, but also did it in a way to drag the case out of being tried before the election. So we know they have it in them.
I expect the lower courts to reject most of Trump’s power grab. All we can do is hope that those 3 justices recognize by creating the Imperial Presidency, they are rendering their own power obsolete.
The sitting Vice President went public with what us MAGA watchers already knew: there is a forceful movement within MAGA that argues federal court orders should simply be ignored.
This 🧵 is about the effects of partisanship on public opinion.
Please RT & share it! #TheMoreYouKnow
This book, The American Voter, first published in 1960, is the Bible of my subfield in political science: political behavior.
Political behavior is the study of the way people think, feel, and act with regard to politics and includes everyone from political office holders and candidates (elites) to your average man on the street voters.
As soon as phones became prolific enough to allow for scientific polling political scientists launched surveys to figure out what Americans knew about their government.
The results were shocking. It turned out that other than who the current president is and vague impressions of what the two parties stand for, average Joes and Janes knew next to nothing about their own government!
Trump, MAGA, and the Breaking of the American Mind:
A Majority of Republicans Say They are A-OK With Trump Suspending the Constitution
Have you ever had a random conversation with someone that just sort of stays with you over time?
I had one such conversation back in 2019 or so participating in an event.
The conversation was with a graduate student assistant from Rwanda who was working the event. That evening a few of us gathered under the Virginia summer sky to night gaze and hang out.
Always eager to talk with people from other cultures, and especially from places with a political history like Rwanda’s, I was eager to ask about Rwanda’s recovery from the genocide that ripped the country apart in a 100 day blood bath during the Rwandan civil war in 1994.
The victims of the Rwandan genocide were the Tutsi ethnic group, murdered in a wave of violence unleashed by the assassination of the Rwandan president by Hutu extremists, another Rwandan ethnic group. The genocide left somewhere between 500,000 and a million people, mostly Tutsis but also including moderate Hutus, dead.
An Interview with Matthew Taylor, author of The Violent Take it by Force: The Christian Movement that is Threatening our Democracy.
If you’ve been following the transition of the Republican Party from the party of Reagan into whatever the hell it is now you’ll know that the once “useful idiots” of the Republican Party, the Christian Right, now rule the party and they have big plans for Trump 2.0.
As Dr. Taylor points out in our interview about his book The Violent Take it by Force: The Christian Movement that is Threatening our Democracy, for all the attention January 6th received, a key part of that story has been largely ignored.
I’m aware many of you want/need actionable advice on things you can do to help thwart what is coming so you don’t marinate in hopelessness. As Dr. DOOM, I’m not well-positioned for this role!
That’s why when I came across Emily Galvin-Almanza's threaded tweet offering tangible, actionable ideas for real resistance that can really matter I knew I needed to get it to you.
So, I reached out to Emily and offered her the opportunity to write up her ideas to share with The Cycle’s audience and I am delighted she agreed.
What follows is Emily’s article.
I, too, believe in the power of the corporeal.
But then again, I am also one of those elder millennials whose life has been a slipstream from watching 9/11 on my college dorm room TV set to having my high school friends sent to die in Iraq as the rest of us back home marched in the streets to no avail, to the financial crisis that would cost so many of us our future stability, to an impossible housing market, couples having crisis conversations about whether to bring kids into this world, and now enduring the start of Trump 2.0. It’s been a ride. And unlike my parents, it has not been a ride where the marches I have taken part in have singularly changed the course of history.