It’s a civic travesty that almost half the states (including many blue states) do not empower their citizens to submit ballot initiatives. They come in handy when legislators (due to gerrymandering, corruption, cowardice, etc.) are not aligned with popular policies. And for those that have horror stories from ballot initiatives gone wrong, two thoughts: (1) There are many more horror stories from the lack of ballot initiatives (ie representation gone wrong); and (2) You can be smart in ballot initiative rules design.

When something really bad happens in public life, we eventually have to ask ourselves: “Are we willing to commit to attending routine meetings to change this?” If we’re not, we’re not going to change it. It’s not fair—it’s just the reality of how change happens. There’s an urge to say, “Why should I have to commit to attending routine meetings — isn’t that the leaders’ job?” We can feel that, but in the end, our feeling about the unfairness of that doesn’t change the reality that they’re not going to do it for us.

If you are in a state that has citizen-initiated ballot initiatives, this (unicameralism) would be a great thing to put on the ballot! A question for the skeptics: Has Nebraska been harmed by unicameralism since their citizens decided to #GoUnicameral in 1934?

https://twitter.com/janeplyons/status/1484342243947204615

Nebraska Progressive George Norris began the fight in 1923, arguing in the NYT that the Founders' experiment with bicameralism "has been very unsatisfactory"—that all the back-and-forth between the houses creates enough confusion for politicians to cover their tracks.

We remember Martin Luther King for his cinematic dragon-slaying—his iconic speeches and confrontations—but what’s lost is all the long-haul work that queued up those moments. A thread: <1/18> King makes clear in Stride Toward Freedom, his memoir of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, just how much time he spent in the mundane work of winning the community’s trust, joining organizations, weaving together coalitions through multiple meetings, and planning gatherings. <2/18>

I can't recommend enough centering your politics around the advancement of policies, rather than solely politicians. What's interesting about policy-centered politics is that it's both substantially radicalizing and interpersonally moderating at the same time. Here's why: It's substantially radicalizing because the more you look under the hood of how systems work—and how many wonderful alternatives are being underutilized—the more you are outraged. I'm constantly thinking "Wow, it's even worse than it looks" and "The alternatives are everywhere!"

For those debating the religious left right now, I highly recommend David Campbell and Robert Putnam’s book, “American Grace,” which is filled with very informative, nearly-comprehensive history, charts, and analysis of all aspects of American religion today. Some surprising charts in there. For example: Progressives get more political in sermons, whereas the religious right moves their ideas through talk in the pews:

It’s helpful to learn about the moral ethic of socialism — but I think it’s also helpful to learn about the various institutional elements that make up socialism, too. These elements are never really unpacked in the campaign debates, leading to confusion. Here’s seven major ones:

https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/1232036304348561408

1) UNIONS: workers, tenants, small producers, & consumers organizing to collectively bargain with employers, landlords, platforms, and corporations

The Dem generational divide seems to be due to the fact that boomer liberals lived through decades of ideological defeat, so they don't believe we can win. They only know dashed '60s dreams & 50 years of right-wing ascendance. They think of themselves as "battle-weary realists."

https://twitter.com/CANCEL_SAM/status/1224334092457709568

The young, in turn, have only lived through the atrocities of right-wing domination and the catastrophic failure of the "Diet Republican" strategy of combatting it. We also think of ourselves as "battle-weary realists"—but the realism of seeing that we need to try something new.

One powerful theme that no 2020 candidate has fully tapped into yet is the idea of what might be called "intimate disrespect"—the disrespect you might receive at work, at home, in your neighborhood from the people who see themselves as your superiors. Here's what I mean: Reactionaries, @CoreyRobin has argued, are defined by & organized around the project of defending against subordinates asserting their power—men against women asserting their power, whites against blacks asserting their power, bosses against workers asserting their power.

There's this idea in social theory called Structure vs. Agency. Structure is the patterns of society that shape us; agency is our capacity to shape the structure. One way to think about democracy is that it's the process of widening our agency over the structure. The least democratic society is one that is all structure and no agency. Society gives you a script—and we all follow it. To democratize that society is to loosen the structure and increase our agency over it — to turn the tables, reform the structure, re-write the script.

I think we understand polarization/bipartisanship wrong. The reason we have such inter-party acrimony is because neither party has a governing vision that has won over the hearts & minds of a supermajority of Americans. So they're locked in a 25% vs. 25% war of attrition. <1/7> During the turn of the century, the progressive-populist vision was so compelling that it disrupted every party to the point that every 1912 POTUS candidate ran on it! By the '30s, it developed into the New Deal coalition, which was so successful the GOP had to live inside! <2/7>

The framing on these “what will voters like?” questions is always tilted against Warren/Bernie. Why is the question never: “Sir, many think Dems lost in 2016 because there were not inspiring structural reforms. What do you say to people who say you are repeating this mistake?” “You say your policies are all that’s possible, but many people say this will still leave x number of people going bankrupt and y number of people dying due to health care. How do you respond?”

I was recently turned onto this idea called "Relationships vs. Attributes" by my sociologist friend, Zach Wehrwein. It's been changing the way I see everything in American politics. Here's the idea: <1/14> To interpret people based on attributes you ask, "What's their race, their gender, their class, their education level, their geographic location, etc." To interpret people based on relationships you ask, "What social networks are they embedded in?" <2/14>

This is Silas Soule. You should think about him and his family anytime someone defends Robert E. Lee or Thomas Jefferson or Andrew Jackson with "Well, everybody back in the day thought that." Here's his story: <1/13> Soule was born into a family of Maine abolitionists. They were big in the New England Emigrant Aid Company, which helped settlers turn Kansas into a free state. <2/13>

A story: While advocating for a higher minimum wage in 2014, I was interviewed by some corporate-minded CNBC host. During the pre-interview, their argument against a raise was: “didn’t we win the Cold War?” <1/10>

https://twitter.com/carterforva/status/1079979601743482880

I asked: “What do you mean?” They responded: “Didn’t we show that these things don’t work by having our system beat the Soviet Union?” <2/10>

We should judge 2020 candidates on 3 criteria:

(1) VISION: do we like their vision for the future of the country?

(2) INTEGRITY: Have they ever demonstrated actual courage in fighting for that vision?

(3) CAPACITY: Are they capable of building a winning coalition?

<1/12> When politicians disappoint us, it is often because either: their vision was lacking; they lacked the courage to advance their vision (or lied about having that vision in the first place); or they didn’t have the skills or personality necessary to advance their vision.

<2/12>

The agenda @Ocasio2018 is pushing — strong labor unions, serious infrastructure investment, income/health/housing security, a pro-family employment regime — has been pushed by Americans throughout the past century. It's not a foreign menace: it's as American as apple pie! <1/13>

https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/1071035124412760064

Don't believe me? Here's Young Republicans in the 1950s bragging about strong unions, good working conditions and social security expansion: <2/13>

Question for @CassSunstein — are you also concerned that there is ideological overrepresentation of right-wing thought among military officers, CEOs and evangelical leaders? Why does only one institution's ideological diversity concern you?: bloomberg.com/view/articles/… Ideological diversity of Fortune 500 CEOs: thinkprogress.org/fortune-500-ce…