Thread by @GregTSargent

Time to stop shaping our conversations about vaccine-hesitancy and voter "confidence" in elections around the feelings of Trump supporters. The specter of alienating those voters is being widely abused by bad faith actors, and we should say so. My latest:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…

Remarkable:

Texas Republicans are pushing for an audit of 2020 votes -- but only in the biggest counties.

Its chief sponsor, asked why the audit doesn't include smaller counties, actually says this:

"What's the point? All the small counties are red.”

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…

On many fronts, we're being told Trump voters are afflicted with a deeply fragile belief system that we must humor to an extraordinary degree.

There are good ways to empathize with the other side. But this BS is being abused by bad actors everywhere:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…

Yes, Republicans are starting to urge vaccines. But they're also pushing deeply destructive storylines that *undermine* confidence in the government's vaccine effort.

When it comes to solicitude toward vaccine hesitancy, we need a limiting principle:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…

The bad actors who tell us to tiptoe around red-state voters' feelings are also pumping their heads full of lies and pushing those feelings in a more destructive direction.

Anyone pleading for solicitude toward those feelings should grapple with that:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…

Relatedly, @brianbeutler is right that Dems need to accept the implications of all this bad acting. No amount of cooperative spirit toward Republicans will dissuade Rs from this kind of sabotage governing or get political media to stop normalizing it:
mailchi.mp/crooked.com/bi…