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@adamjentleson.bsky.social Profile picture
@adamjentleson.bsky.social
@AJentleson
Author KILL SWITCH + new book coming in 2025 from @wwnorton | Former Fetterman COS | Former Harry Reid Deputy COS | Against fascism | Democrats are good
6 subscribers
Nov 14 • 18 tweets • 4 min read
A quick 🧵 on what seems to be Trump's plan to obliterate the Senate's advise and consent responsibility so that he can recess appoint his cabinet, or at least those members who lack the votes to get confirmed by the Senate. 1/ Remember that only the Senate confirms nominees and judges. The House has no role in the confirmation process itself.

The Constitution allows POTUS to make recess appointments, ie to put nominees in place without Senate confirmation. In the past this has been used sparingly. 2/
Nov 9 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Early taxonomy of responsibility:

1. Joe Biden’s profoundly arrogant decision to run again

2. The strategy by groups and their funders to push Harris to take politically disastrous positions in the 2020 primary, thus leaving the people they claim to fight for worse off Moving forward, we can’t do anything about the first problem but we can do something about the second.
Nov 3 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
a quick🧵 on why this selzer poll of Iowa (???) matters, translated for normal people, i.e. those who don't remember where they were when she released her poll of the 2008 democratic primary (me, not normal: i was in the edwards HQ in chapel hill, all love to my JRE08 peeps ✊) the reason political obsessives revere @jaselzer is that she is uncannily accurate, and has the courage to publish results that do not herd - and which usually end up proving prophetic. her record speaks for itself:
Oct 24 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
alright here's a 🧵on why i'm feeling optimistic and tips on surviving the next two weeks. take it or leave it. first i want to endorse @danpfeiffer's take - YOU have agency. if twitter is stressing you out, log off. i like and respect @NateSilver538 but his model is not going to tell us anything by E day that it doesn't tell us today. the race models as a tossup.
Nov 13, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
While it's true that you can't mint candidates who look like Fetterman, the reason his message resonated was that the campaign was so deeply in tune with PA, including knowing that the NJ attack would resonate in ways that many political reporters never really grasped. A common reaction among super-savvy DC political types was that the NJ stuff was “too online.” Well either Mr. Beuth, a retired 72-year factory worker from Armstrong county, is super online, or many super-savvy DC political types were wrong.
Nov 12, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Indeed. By contrast, the single smartest person about Nevada - in ether party - has not tweeted since August 31. I meant among political operatives. @RalstonReports is very smart too but don’t tell him i said that.
Nov 10, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
We are witnessing crypto-esque cratering in the credibility of certain GOP consultants. ImageImageImage 😓
Nov 9, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I say this in the most constructive spirit I can: it’s worth revisiting what happened with the debate. Before asking a single voter how they felt about it, many reporters let fly on Twitter and elsewhere with their confident predictions that it was a “disaster” for John. 1/ The abundance of evidence says that debates almost never matter. Yet in the face of all evidence and in many cases without bothering to check, many reporters immediately bought into the idea that this debate was an exception - that it had not just mattered, but was decisive. 2/
Nov 7, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Incredibly important to remember this about PA. Just like in 2020, the results we'll see early on election night will skew heavily Republican. This situation is imposed by the GOP state legislature so anyone who uses this as a pretext to cry foul should take it up with them. Exactly. In most states, election officials can start counting mail ballots earlier than in PA. The GOP legislature blocked efforts to speed up counting, which creates a situation where e-day ballots (generally more Republican) get counted faster.
Nov 4, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
To emphasize one point I made in this discussion with Josh and @SCClemons, one reason Democrats need to deal with the debt ceiling ahead of time is to save themselves (and America) from themselves. Here's what I think will happen if they don't deal with the debt ceiling soon... If we get up against the actual deadline, it will be very clear that Republicans are willing to send us into default. I was there in 2011 and there were a lot of Republicans who were willing to do it then. Now, there will be many more of them and they'll have a lot more power. 2/
Nov 4, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Bryce Harper is from Las Vegas. Harry Reid knew his family (Bryce’s Dad was a steelworker) and tracked Harper’s rise game to game. Every once in a while Reid would call the fam to check in and see how the kid was doing. By Reid’s request, his daily briefing included Harp’s line. When Harper got called up, his first game was on the road. Reid went to his first home game in DC. I was lucky enough to tag along. I’ll never forget it. Reid went on the field pregame during BP. Harper came over to him and talked to him like a kid talks to a respected elder…
Nov 3, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
What this piece fails to grapple with is, what if this is true? The counter-examples @jbarro cites are parliamentary systems whose structures make cross-ideological coalitions relatively common. We have a rigid two-party system that won’t change anytime soon. One party has demonstrated it will eagerly support a coup. So it’s a binary choice.
Oct 19, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Pop quiz: Without googling, which state led the south in peaceful school desegregation in 1955, an accomplishment for which it was featured in Life magazine and named by the Chicago Defender as “the bright spot of the south”? Image The article that accompanied this photo told the tale of the first day of integration of a major school district in this state. It went well: “By the end of the day the children were behaving as if they had gone to school together all their lives,” came the report.
Oct 18, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
If your instinct is to laugh at this instead of seeing it as good politics, you’re doing it wrong. Mid woke is the worst, most useless political lens. Either go deep enough to understand why it’s good politics for Walker to cover himself with goofy-ass white sheriffs like this (or even especially with them) or stay on the surface. But avoid the mid range at all costs.
Oct 12, 2022 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
Good moment for a gut check here. Fetterman has said he misses words and pushes them together, and been transparent about needing closed captioning. I’m biased but when I watch the clip I see a guy recovering and recovering overcoming a challenge. I wonder what voters will see. Right, this👇. Fetterman has been transparent about the lingering issues from his stroke, including the need for closed captioning. Not bad for a recovery! Yet NBC is penalizing him for using exactly what he has publicly said he needs, and treating it like some kind of expose.
Sep 5, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Yes, when your side does fascism, this is the kind of thing you can expect. Sorry! Maybe next time don’t be on the side that does fascism. A genuinely useful exercise for the kind of folks @DouthatNYT is talking about would be to make a list of the ideological commitments they are *not* willing to sacrifice in order to defeat fascism. What, exactly, ranks higher?
Jul 17, 2022 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
As we pore over the forensics of how we got here, the message from those who controlled the Dem party for the last 30 years or so has been that Republicans had a long-term plan, so what was Biden supposed to do?

That begs the question: What were you doing that whole time? 1/ One area of focus should be the progressive advocacy space. A multi-multi million dollar industry, many big orgs in this space were founded long ago with the mission of countering conservatives’ structural advantages in the halls of power. Did they do a good job? Let’s see. 2/
Jul 15, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
This is the border between DC and Takoma Park, MD (in Montgomery Country). Despite my poor photography skills you can hopefully see there’s a project on the DC side building new housing units. There’s another a block away and a third two blocks from that - all on the DC side. 1/ On the MoCo side there are one- and two-story building with retail on the ground and nothing on top. We’re a county in the midst of a housing affordability crisis and studies show that building housing - any housing - reduces costs for all. The NIMBYism has got to stop. 2/
Jul 5, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The bipartisan gun deal, which does almost nothing but Dems were happy to oblige in fluffing up, gives Republicans cover on days like today. I think it’s important to be honest that on the scale of national policy, the bill is an admission of defeat, a marker of decline, a sign that our system is no longer capable of passing policy solutions that are on the same scale as the challenges they seek to address.
Jun 6, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
In the wake of Uvalde, Republicans were looking for political cover that would help them weather the worst days of press coverage by being able to point to bipartisan negotiations. Dems gave it to them. As attention wanes, Republicans will now ensure that nothing useful passes. A good rule of thumb: In most negotiations, Democrats are so thirsty for that dopamine hit that comes with the first round stories celebrating "bipartisan talks" that they downplay, in their own minds, the likelihood that they're being played.
May 6, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
Calls like this are often derided as "do something" Twitter. But coming from someone like Newsom, I think this reflects a growing sense among Democratic pros that there is a leadership vacuum and no plan - short-term, long-term or otherwise - to deal with the threats we face. Obviously, we need to elect more Democrats. But our leaders have a responsibility to rally voters to that cause. Deflecting the onus back to voters and expecting them to show up, in a midterm election, without providing inspiration or vision is just preemptive blame-shifting.