The tankies absolutely can't stand that Eastern Europe immediately turned West after the collapse of the USSR because, amazingly, they wanted personal, political and economic freedoms. They were counting on Russia to punish Ukraine for making that same choice. They absolutely cannot stand the fact that the people of Eastern Europe chose the US and NATO instead. They want that to be undone. They have to characterize it as US imperialism as opposed to what it actually was, because otherwise, it represents the victory of liberalism.

Just because I'm thinking about it today: the DOJ is in fact applying a double standard to Trump, just, in the opposite way Republicans think. Anyone else who did what Trump did and intentionally absconded with top secret defense info would have just been arrested. Instead... 1/x 2/x the DOJ negotiated with Trump, secretly, for months, trying to get the top-secret government back, precisely because Trump is a very special boy. And instead of taking advantage of that, Trump tripled down on the leeway he was given by organizing a conspiracy to keep them.

On the Bernie-Warren "misogyny" issue, the stupid part is that there was an easy path forward that would have reduced conflict and smoothed things over. It could have gone like this, but it didn't. Bernie could have done this: "In that conversation, I referenced the well-acknowledged fact that because of sexism, women have a steeper road to winning political office, but I never wanted to suggest, nor do I believe, that a woman cannot win the Presidency." Then Warren could have confirmed that. Done.

I wonder if Bernie skipped over the part where his campaign repeatedly called her a liar, his supporters with the biggest audiences called her a fraudulent Republican-lite warmonger, and he spent 2 days campaigning in MA to embarrass her.

https://twitter.com/joemayall/status/1638187365255770114

For someone who now acknowledges that Texas was "the most hotly contested" of the remaining primary states, it sure seems weird that Bernie chose to campaign for 2 days in Massachusetts instead!

The main thing Frost and AOC get--and that a lot of older Dems don't--is that Republicans are not redeemable. They can't be shamed into better behavior or reasoned with, so they need to just be exposed on the same information spaces they rely on--namely, social media. 1/x

https://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS/status/1624102069266268160

Beyond culture war stuff--banning abortions, banning drag shows, and banning books--Republicans really take one policy issue seriously above all else: trying to guarantee the reach of their propaganda through social media. That's their main concern. 2/x

I just said this as a reply to someone, but it's crucial to understand that if Russia had succeeded in its conquest of Ukraine and NATO had not stepped up, the next step would have been to challenge NATO directly, likely over Estonia and the Baltics. Here's what that playbook would have looked like: foment separatist movements in Northeast Estonia, which is substantially Russophone, claim an anti-Russian crackdown that necessitates preservation of the Russkiy Mir, and recognize the independence of some territory.

Russia defines "anti-Russia" as basically any country that rejects Russian imperialist domination and wants to preserve its own sovereignty. It's a joke at this point.

https://twitter.com/mfa_russia/status/1623993146886463488

Moldova has long known that if the conquest of Ukraine succeeded, they would be next. Russia has been laying the groundwork for this in Transnistria for years, the same way they started the playbook for Ukraine with Donetsk and Luhansk.

The right wing admires Putin because he's an autocrat blending hard state power with a national church enforcing patriarchal rigidity in a system where white people rule and others are allowed to live if they don't get in the way,--and that's what they want for the US as well.

https://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS/status/1606288539863465985

The reason the MAGA right is blinded with rage over Zelenskyy is because the Jewish liberal Western-facing multilateralist showed on the world state that he and his country was stronger than their favorite strongman, and speaking to the US congress in fatigues was a capstone.

My strategy for Dems on whatever committee is doing the Hunter "investigation" should just be to ask Hunter about the obvious entanglements of the Trump children and then act apologetic and confused. For instance: "Mr. Biden, we are here today because a President's family member receiving $2 billion from Saudi Arabia raises obvious questions about that President's ability to conduct foreign policy for the best interests of the United States. Oh wait, that was Trump's son-in-law. Sorry."

"Lol we don't need Warnock" is what people say who haven't worked in Congress and don't know how it works. Here are the differences that 51st Senator can make, just off the top of my head: 1/x 2/x 1: a 51st Dem means no power-sharing in the organizing resolution. Dems have a majority on committees. no more deadlocks, no more discharge petitions for floor votes. That massively accelerates both the legislative process and the confirmation process.

If you're in the political space, you have to judge your success by whether you get policy outcomes. But that's not what dialectical materialists do. They judge success by whether the "right people" supported their policies. 1/x 2/x because the end goal for them isn't any policy outcome but rather a "united working class revolution" they would rather lose on policy if their preferred policy was supported by the working class than win on policy if it wasn't.

Gonna take a stab at writing a NYT article, dateline approximately June 2025. Here we go.

Headline: "America's emerging dictatorship has liberals on edge. But for some, the stability and absence of hard choices is a welcome change." - Maggie Haberman, et al. "It happened imperceptibly, and then all at once.

After a hotly contested 2024 election in which incumbent President Joe Biden carried the national popular vote by 9 million votes and appeared to carry the vote in states representing more than the 270 electoral votes necessary,

Some people have asked me why I care so much about Ukraine, so as briefly as I can, I'm going to try to summarize it.

First, a country wanting to move away from being a "battleground of great powers" and toward a pluralistic democracy should always be supported. But moreover: For a century, the major axis in foreign policy was the cold war between capitalism--often democratic but often really not--and state socialism, which almost never was. A lot of lefties were often on the side of "not democracy" in the name of anti-capitalism.

Now that Musk owns the place, I think I'll be spending less time here as an active participant and just checking for news from trusted places. I'm contemplating building a newsletter centered around progressive foreign policy with a good dose of domestic political analysis. The war in Ukraine--and how a lot of left organizations have reacted to it--has convinced me more than ever that progressives need a new foreign policy vision centered around the coming global struggle between pluralist democracies and ethnostate autocracies.

There's a difference between the people who are pushing for the US to force Ukraine to concede now because they're legit afraid of nuclear war--I respect them but disagree with them-- 1/x 2/x and the people who are using Putin's nuclear threats as an excuse to demand that the US make Ukraine concede, because that's the policy outcome they support. And you can tell the difference by what their position was before Putin's nuclear threats.

Also, just because apparently there's some confusion about this: the only way the conflict will end for sure is through a multilateral settlement, and that applies even if Ukraine fully pushes Russia out of all occupied territories. That is because... 2/x even under that scenario, Ukraine will not trust that Russia will not invade again, and will stay on a war footing at least until an armistice is signed, if not longer. Another key aspect of diplomacy is not just whether you do it--because of course it will be necessary--

I feel like I have to keep repeating this. In the Cuban Missile Crisis, both Kennedy and Krushchev had escalated, both needed an offramp to de-escalate, and they both needed each other to provide that offramp simultaneously. And that's exactly what happened. 1/x 2/x the current situation ALSO presents nuclear threat, but that's where the similarities end. Only one side is escalating, only one side has invaded, and an "offramp" is immediately available in the form of simply stopping the invasion and withdrawing.

Again, flatly untrue. Biden is, as I have said repeatedly, quite correct about the dangers we're facing, and managing the risks extremely well. It is the people demanding that we compel Ukrainian surrender rightfuckingnow that I have a problem with, not Biden.

https://twitter.com/Nick_L_Miller/status/1585442777344753665

I have also repeatedly said that Biden is right that this is the most dangerous nuclear situation since the Cuban Missile Crisis but that using the negotiations of the CMC to advocate for "negotiations" over Ukraine was deeply flawed, and I have repeatedly explained why.

What has Karen Bass done in Congress? Things that a supposed progressive should care about, including being one of the nation's foremost advocates for foster kids, leading Congress on economic and social support for Africa, and bringing infrastructure dollars to LA.

https://twitter.com/cenkuygur/status/1585433624131706880

And that's to say nothing of what Bass did in the Assembly, which was basically trying to preserve as much of the social safety net as possible against the constraints of supermajority requirements that allowed Republican obstructionists to kill as much of it as they could.

I do a lot of threads about nuclear posture and war, but I want to do a thread about diplomacy., because a lot of people saying "we need to negotiate with Putin" seem to think that diplomacy is a button you hit on Civ III, as opposed to the "war" button. And...no. Let's go. 1/x 2/x the first thing that needs to be resolved is how many nations get to be a party to the talks in the first place. Obviously, these talks would involve the US, Ukraine, and Russia, but other nations have a huge stake as well. Poland, Moldova, Western European countries...

Over at the American Prospect, Harold Meyerson just asked "what's the endgame" in Ukraine, as if there is no answer to that. But it's a really weird time to be asking that question while Ukraine is pressing a relatively rapid counteroffensive. The "endgame" is full Ukrainian sovereignty, which is not only the moral outcome, but also conveys ancillary geopolitical benefits for multilateralism and democracy over realism and autocracy.