David Weigel Profile picture
Covering politics for @semafor. Alum: @washingtonpost, @business, @slate. daveweigel@gmail.com. Buy my book: https://t.co/6sWfZ4MNgH
12 subscribers
Aug 26 17 tweets 3 min read
DNC moving through its resolutions this morning. Easily passed Ken Martin’s Gaza resolution (he mentions “two peoples with historic claims to the land”), passed resolution on keeping super PACs out of primaries with one member saying Dems can’t disarm in general elections. Image After the super PAC resolution passed, NE Dem chair Jane Kleeb clapped: "Ten years in the making!"

Resolution grew out of the Bernie-Hillary wars.
Aug 25 7 tweets 2 min read
I'm here, one theme is that there's too much intra-Dem negativity. Amy Klobuchar, rejecting the "we suck club": “We’re not getting into it when they try to divide us on every single issue online. Complaining about each other to each other – it isn’t how we win again.” Tim Walz up, starting with the Melissa Hortman assassination. "We have not moved on from it. It is not a new news cycle for us."
Mar 18 15 tweets 3 min read
Tim Walz in Wisconsin: “I’m having the most unsatisfying I Told You So tour in the history of politics.” Image “I don’t think name calling works,” says Walz, speaking where a PEOPLE VS ELON MUSK sign was just taken off the screen. “But I do reserve that for the dipshit whose name was up there.”

He celebrates the falling Tesla stock price: “$225 and dropping!”
Jan 31 41 tweets 6 min read
Heavy rhetorical focus on diversity at today’s DNC meetings — real record scratch as Trump admin unwinds DEI programs, w Rs confident that this stuff is an electoral loser. Image “There has never been a Native American in leadership at the DNC. If not now. when?”
Nov 8, 2024 5 tweets 1 min read
Still seeing "Harris couldn't turn out millions of Biden voters," and the count in swing states says that's not true.

In Wisconsin, Harris got 37k more votes than Biden. The most votes of any Dem candidate since Obama in 2008.

She lost bc Trump added 77k more votes since 2020. She is very close to Biden 2020 raw vote in MI and PA. Had Trump just recreated his 2020 vote, he would have lost MI and PA would be too close to call still. But he added 151k votes in MI, 108k in PA.
Jun 15, 2024 12 tweets 2 min read
Day two Bannon: "Jamie Raskin is going to try to steal the election on Jan. 6. They're going to say that President Trump is an insurrectionist, and we will never certify the election of an insurrectionist."
May 25, 2024 10 tweets 2 min read
Hello from the Libertarian National Convention. Downstairs, the LP's delegates keep booing Donald Trump; upstairs, the room for the 8 pm speech has been sweetened with dozens of suburban Republicans who drove in for it. Image The Hilton also did Trump a solid by making Libertarian presidential candidate Lars Mapstead remove projections of his "STOP 270" slogan - pictures of Trump/Biden, a plan to deny either an Electoral College win - from the lobby. (This acc'ing to Mapstead.)
Jan 18, 2024 7 tweets 2 min read
Andrew Yang in Hanover, to support Dean Phillips.

“Someone asked if they should introduce me as the former next president of the United States.” Image Biden is “failing the George Washington statesmanship test,” says Yang, by not recognizing that it’s time to go. “Given that Joe Biden is such a depleted, vulnerable candidate, why is he not getting more competition?”
Aug 25, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
Turley, as usual, is wrong.

Nov. 11: Raffensperger starts audit
Nov. 19: Audit finishes, Biden wins
Nov. 20: Election certified for Biden
Nov. 21: Trump requests recount
Dec. 7: Biden wins recount
Dec. 14: Electors vote
Jan. 2: Trump "find votes" call

Turley gets more details wrong about stuff I've covered than any other pundit - impressive guy
Aug 22, 2023 6 tweets 2 min read
The Biden "no comment" saga is a great little study in choose-your-own media. I've seen multiple pieces claim that Biden literally did not comment on the Maui fires until he headed there, like this day-of-the-rope-ish piece in American Greatness. amgreatness.com/2023/08/22/a-l…
Image The wildfires started on August 8. The WH approved relief on August 10. The same day, Biden commented on the fires/recovery during an event in Utah. whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/…
Image
Aug 12, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
Matt Gaetz warming up crowd for Trump, saying they grilled burgers rare, medium rare, and well done but “the most done you can be is Ron DeSantis.” Image Matt Whitaker introduces himself as “Donald Trump’s favorite attorney general” — definitely true, the only one he hasn’t feuded with
Jul 27, 2023 7 tweets 3 min read
New frontiers in “super PACs aren’t allowed to coordinate with the campaign.” (DeSantis is the “special guest” on the Never Back Down super PAC tour.) DeSantis rolled up with three Chevy Suburbans of reporters and cameras; flanked by four security guys, local police, state senate president Amy Sinclair. Some hand-shaking and convos, some waving as he walks by.
Apr 19, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
Good morning. Image Ignore the empty seats, there a big line outside
Apr 13, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
Pelosi's correct that you didn't see this agita about Cochran, Byrd, Kennedy, etc. But the context is that the left watched RBG hand SCOTUS to conservatives for a generation. That's changed things; see how @brianefallon et al pressured Breyer to retire. There's fancam politics, where you see individual actors as heroes/icons, and there's actual politics, where you put people in place to use power and redistribute resources. Fancam politics took a hit with the "yaaaaaas RBG" stuff.
Apr 11, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
Rs had a similar problem in 2018... slim 51-49 majority, Thad Cochran was ailing. Their solution: Cochran resigned early and Mississippi's governor appointed a reliable R vote in his place. "We can't confirm judges because an elderly senator is sick" is a pretty common problem! See also the near-supermajority Dems had in 2009, which kept falling below 60 bc Kennedy and Byrd were sick.
Apr 6, 2023 7 tweets 2 min read
Hello from Nashville. Image State Rep. Justin Pearson, one of the three Dems facing an expulsion vote today, walking between state troopers and the protesters supporting him. Image
Apr 5, 2023 7 tweets 1 min read
I'm waiting for one WI county to finish its count, but Janet Protasiewicz (D) overall doing better than Biden in the places where >80% precincts are done.

Dodge: Biden 34%, Janet 37%
Jefferson: Biden 42%, Janet 49%
La Crosse: Biden 56%, Janet 64% From WI Dem source: "This is looking extremely good. Dan Kelly’s path to victory is shrinking like Ant-Man."
Jan 27, 2023 9 tweets 2 min read
Charlie Kirk just arrived at the RNC meeting. Okay, I'll do an RNC chair thread here. The meeting starts at 10 am PT; the vote will come after other business, probably within an hour. It's a secret ballot, with the 168 voting members/proxies putting paper slips in a box that'll be counted inside the room.
Jan 25, 2023 8 tweets 2 min read
The RNC winter meeting is down the road at the Waldorf; the closest thing to a public RNC chair debate is here at Residence Inn. Mike Lindell in person, Caroline Wren speaking for Harmeet Dhillon, empty chair for Ronna McDaniel. Wren says the left has been more effective by standing up nonprofits to do work DNC doesn’t do. “We have to fight the war they are fighting. It doesn’t mean hoarding our money in the party committees. It means investing in people like @ScottPresler.”
Jan 22, 2023 4 tweets 1 min read
For clarity, typed up the quote from my tape.

"It's interesting, right? You've got [FOP Lodge 7 president] John Catanzara on one side, [CTU president] Stacy Davis Gates on the other side. Interesting. Two sides of the same coin."
Lightfoot's point was that she was optimistic she could work with the unions if they had different leaders. "Hope springs eternal." Hard to do it when "that kind of leadership is there."
Jan 21, 2023 6 tweets 1 min read
Back on campaign trail… see if you can figure out where based on the clues in this photo Image “The reason I talk so much about equity and inclusion is that I know what the world looks like when you don’t have it.”