Rachel Bitecofer 🗽🦆 Profile picture
Nov 4, 2020 13 tweets 3 min read Read on X
1. The hot take that "D's need to learn to talk to the other side of the electorate" is absolutely the WRONG take.

I mean my god. Biden, Lincoln, the outside groups: they threw the best persuasion messaging in the history of persuasion campaigns at them.

What Ds need to do is
2. is come to terms that when it comes to the electorate, the very 1st thing that matters is party ID, and this includes Indie leaners. This data is from June, but last night's results make clear that it reflects the actual results as well. Right leaning Indies- which make up Image
3. a disproportionate share of the overall Indie pool, are closet Reps: they are not persuadable no matter how much you cater to them or whether or not Cindy McCain is on your side. The Biden campaign, all of the Senate Dems, and the House Dem candidates bet their candidacies
4. on a couple of assumptions most imp is that they should focus their arguments on issues & not on nationalized referendum campaigns, which is the way that the GOP runs their down-ballot races. Also, in case you haven't noticed, Trump lies directly to people bc he knows they are
5. stupid & will never find out. Did I state that plainly enough? You want to know why Rs are willing non-college voters? They tell them what they want to hear. The Ds talk to everyone like they have a master's degree. Trump talks to them as they are: Walmart shoppers. I realize
6. that sounds elitist and condensing- its meant to. Some 60+ million of them just cast ballots for Donald Fucking Trump & if you ask them why, probably 40 million of them will tell you reasons that are literally exact opposite truths like "he drains the swamp" or "he's a
7. "successful businessman" or my personal fave, "he's the only honest man in Washington." If Dems want to learn how to "reach voters on the other side" then they need to realize that these people would tell you "yes" they read news & then report "The National Enquirer" as their
8. as their paper of choice. Now, IDK if its just that I'm one of fewer academics that come from the real, unpolished, bottom 50% world, and not the romanticized bullshit painted by J.D. Vance of working-class America- the real one where people have 3 kids from 3 different women
9. and get angry when 1 of them is reticent to let them visit their kid when they get out jail. AGAIN. In THAT working class, sexism, racism, xenophobia, and bigotry run rampant: and not only are these "isms" prevalent, there is a belief that they shouldn't have had to be buried
10. (see how that relates back to their culture war champion?) That the old days were far superior bc they could just call someone a f&g or slap their female co-worker in the ass is they were in the mood. There was a hierarchy, a caste as @Isabelwilkerson notes, and they were at
11. the top of it. Everything else might be a shit sandwich, their job, their house, their marriage, their debt, but that hierarchy & their place at the top of it- as Wilkerson notes in her book, that shit was SOLID.
And now its gone.
And do you know who took it?
The Democrats
12. So, you're not appealing to that. Anyone looking at Maine senate, the state with the most Indies in the nation, but also an electorate that is predominately white and lower educated & thinks we just need a better argument is coming at this the wrong way.

Don't get me wrong-
13. you gotta change the voting behavior of these voters, but you're not going to do it via tweaking issues or talking about this and not that.

Its going to take a complete and total overall of the entire electioneering approach of the party.

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More from @RachelBitecofer

Jun 3
🚨🧵The Confederacy Lost the War.
It Did Not Lose the Peace.

American defeated the rebellion militarily, but failed to hold its leaders accountable. The result was one of the most successful historical revision campaigns in modern history-transforming traitors into heroes, rebellion into heritage, and defeat into memory.Image
On April 20, 1861, Robert E. Lee resigned from the United States Army.

“Save in defense of my native State, I never desire again to draw my sword,” he would later write in explaining his decision.

It was not a rash choice. Lee had spent more than three decades serving the nation. He graduated from West Point without a single demerit, distinguished himself in the Mexican-American War, and was widely regarded as one of the finest officers in the Army. He had also sworn an oath—not to Virginia, not to Arlington, and not to the South, but to the Constitution of the United States.Image
When Virginia seceded, Lee faced a choice. He loved the Union and opposed secession. He understood that war meant breaking the bonds forged in the blood of their own grandfathers in the American Revolution. Yet, when forced to choose between the nation he served and the state he now considered “his country”, Lee chose Virginia.

Lee was hardly alone. During the American Civil War, 304 West Point graduates rejected their oath of allegiance to the United States and chose to serve in armed rebellion for the Confederate States Army.Image
Read 21 tweets
May 21
🚨🧵Why America Can’t Stop Trump

Donald Trump is broadly unpopular.

That much is true.

His approval ratings are underwater. Independents are fleeing Republicans like they have herpes. The economy is dragging him down. Inflation from his dumbass tariffs are dragging him down. Gas price spikes from the Iran War is dragging him down. His billion dollar ballroom is weighing him down.Image
Democrats are poised to win big in the fall midterms.

And yet none of that changes the central reality of American politics in 2026: America can’t stop Trump.

America cannot stop Donald Trump because he is supported by what amounts to a political cult. Not only would MAGA still support Trump if he shot someone on 5th Avenue, they would pull the trigger for him themselves if he asked them to do it.
Every constitutional mechanism capable of stopping him and holding him accountable requires the support of elected Republicans — and Republicans now operate inside a political system where opposing Trump is political suicide.

Trump’s approval among the MAGA base comes close to 100%.

Think about that. After raising prices he promised to lower on Day 1, covering up for his fellow Epstein cronies, and reneging on his most important brand of “no new wars,” these motherfuckers are like, “thank you sir, may we have another!”Image
Read 15 tweets
May 13
🚨The End of the Second Reconstruction:

Southern Republicans, after claiming they didn’t need a law to respect the rights of Southern Blacks, moved immediately to eliminate Black reps across the South.

Most Americans think this is a fight over a handful of congressional districts.

It is much, much worse than that.

Plz read and share this 🧵Image
Over the past several days, Southern legislatures have moved with breathtaking speed to dismantle Black political representation across the South after the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais weakened the Voting Rights Act’s anti-dilution framework.

In Louisiana, lawmakers quickly advanced a map eliminating one of the state’s two Black-opportunity congressional districts. In Tennessee, Republicans finalized a map splintering Memphis and dismantling the state’s only majority-Black congressional district. In Alabama and South Carolina, officials are already preparing new challenges and redraws.

Within a decade the South may look like this:Image
Most people hear “redistricting” and think about Congress. A few House seats. A partisan fight in Washington. But the modern Voting Rights Act did not merely shape Congress. Its most profound transformation occurred at the state and local level throughout the South.

The Voting Rights Act did not simply protect the right to cast a ballot. It protected the ability of Black communities to translate votes into actual representation. That distinction is everything.
Read 19 tweets
Apr 29
🚨Please Stop Trying to Murder Trump
Political Assassination Is the Road to Civil War

One unstable individual commits an act of political violence, and suddenly an entire political coalition gets recast as an existential enemy in the minds of millions of angry people. And once people become convinced their families, their country, their way of life, or their movement is under attack, violence stops feeling offensive to them and starts feeling defensive. Necessary. Patriotic, even.

That is the road to political bloodshed.Image
I need you to understand something very clearly:

The assassination of Donald Trump would be one of the worst possible things that could happen to the United States of America right now.

And I don’t mean morally. I mean strategically, politically, socially, historically. I mean, as someone who studies authoritarianism, democratic collapse, political violence, and mass behavior for a living, the idea of Trump being assassinated is absolutely terrifying—not because Trump himself is good for democracy, he is a threat! Trump has purged democratic institutions, legitimized conspiracy theories, radicalized distrust, and pushed the boundaries of authoritarian politics in ways America has never experienced in the modern era.
But there is something much more dangerous than an authoritarian movement slowly losing public support and that is an authoritarian movement transformed into a martyr cult. And I really do not think enough Americans understand what would happen if Trump were successfully assassinated.

We are already got a preview of it.

The man accused of murdering Charlie Kirk left behind evidence that made his political motivations crystal clear. And the same is true with this latest suspect. The motives were there. I’m going to include his writing because I’m already watching people pretend this is somehow ambiguous when it really isn’t.Image
Read 13 tweets
Apr 16
MUST READ & RT 🧵

🔥Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Scorned
Elon's latest baby mama exposes the MAGA narrative machine

One of the persistent mysteries of modern politics is why the online right always seems to move in lockstep. A scandal breaks, even fake scandals like the Biden Crime Family and within minutes thousands of accounts are repeating the same attacks.

Via the GOP’s Wall of Sound, things like trans people on beer cans or fake policies like CRT become MAJOR ISSUES. A talking point appears on Twitter, and suddenly it’s everywhere—from influencers to Fox News hosts to members of Congress.

To outsiders, it looks like spontaneous grassroots consensus.
But according to former MAGA influencer Ashley St. Clair—who spent nearly a decade inside the ecosystem—that appearance is largely an illusion. What she describes (while doing her makeup for some reason, Gen Z is weird) is something far more structured: a coordinated political messaging system that runs through influencers, consulting firms, billionaire donors, and conservative media.

Think of it less like a movement and more like an information supply chain.

And here’s how it works.
1. The Command Center: Influencer Group Chats

At the core of the system are large private group chats populated by influencers, operatives, and most important, politicians and conservative media outlets.
Read 18 tweets
Apr 5
The entire world is looking at America like WTF and most Americans still have no idea anything is wrong.
Here's why:

🚨Democracy on Autopilot
America expanded the right to vote without building the civic culture democracy requires

This week brought another round of buried headlines declaring that Americans don’t understand their own government.

The latest national civics assessment shows just 22% of eighth-grade students scoring “proficient” in civics, while roughly 31% fall below basic competency. Surveys of college students find that about 60% cannot identify the term length of members of Congress, and adult civics quizzes routinely show large shares of Americans unable to answer basic questions about how the federal government works.Image
On social media we are seeing one common theme from foreigners:

WTF is wrong with you, America?!

To which I am forced to reply with the sad reality that most Americans have still no idea that any of this is even happening.

No, really. Go out in the world. Do you a get a sense people realize they are living through what is shaping up to be a historical clusterfuck of epic proportions. One commentator said the guy behind him in line at the airport didn’t understand why the TSA lines were so long, so he told him its from the shutdown.

Dude said “what shutdown?!”
Watch Good Morning America and you would never know anything is wrong. Few Americans watch news of any type, but when they do, they watch “news” that would be in the culture section in any other country.

Every time new data drops that reconfirm old findings about America’s civic crisis, the reaction is always the same: hand-wringing and a call for more civics classes. The fact is, just 5 states fail to mandate K-12 civics and yet 60% of America adults still don’t know the House of Representatives is a 2 year term, so increasing access to civics in the remaining states ain’t gonna fix it.Image
Read 16 tweets

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