Actually, Barack Obama was a highly popular and effective president, and the campaign to convince Democratic elites he was a failure was deeply misguided nymag.com/intelligencer/… David Dayen can't respond to the argument, so he'll just lean into the premise any argument coming from an ideological enemy should be ignored

https://x.com/ddayen/status/1821917845175062567

“Hiding beneath the surface” is a construction writers like to use when they want to claim somebody is making an argument they are not in fact making. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
This @qjurecic piece cites two articles, one of which is mine, against disqualifying Trump on 14th Amendment grounds. My argument is that the stakes (throwing a presidential nominee off the ballot late in the game) requires a no-doubt claim. nymag.com/intelligencer/…

Interviewing Trump has some news value, and I appreciate @kaitlancollins is trying hard to stop him from filibustering, but giving him a pro-Trump audience is a disaster and I don't understand the choice. The whole effect of the crowd to cheer him and laugh at his jokes is to frame Trump as the tribune of the people.

My feature on the Republican campaign to gain ideological control of the schools has gotten some interesting and positive responses. Here's @rweingarten

https://twitter.com/rweingarten/status/1655558177403056128

Even @DianeRavitch liked it! dianeravitch.net/2023/05/09/jon…

Why Republicans have become obsessed with schools as centers of political indoctrination nymag.com/intelligencer/… My story covers a lot of ground, but I want to highlight a few points. First, the Republican belief that schools are inculcating progressivism is not entirely imaginary:

I agree -- this should move your Bayesian priors, but I suspect there's also a lot more investigation coming, and the most sensible thing is to hold off conclusive judgment.

https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1631148457913090050

Worth noting that left-wing echo chamber Twitter has retroactively decided my column is mainly about the Reed affidavit, but it is in fact almost entirely about reporting in the New York Times. Just look at the headline, the photo, or 90% of the text! nymag.com/intelligencer/…

Debut column by @DavidAFrench. His main point here is very important: people tend to assume mistakes by our side are atypical, while mistakes by the other side are characteristic nytimes.com/2023/02/05/opi… French's column is about why people make genuine errors of perception. My newsletter addresses something different: when people know their side is wrong, but refuse to acknowledge it link.nymag.com/view/56eb230a1…

It's a sign of unhealthy thinking when your movement's position is that the New York Times is inspiring murderous hate crimes nymag.com/intelligencer/… If you scroll through some Twitter responses to this piece -- and I am talking about influential people, not randos -- you'll see how closely they follow the exact pathologies the article describes.

"Semi-fascism" can be thought of as the vast space between Reagan and Mussolini. This is where the Republican party is headed. I saw it up close. nymag.com/intelligencer/… The evidence I compile in this piece can’t be summarized adequately in a tweet thread, let alone a single tweet, so please read the entire thing. However, I want to summarize a few of the key points: nymag.com/intelligencer/…

DeSantis tries, fails, to prove liberals hate immigrants as much as he does nymag.com/intelligencer/… What's amazing is that DeSantis's ploy was premised on Martha's Vineyard treating immigrants like conservatives would. And when they didn't play the part, the right simply pretended they had.

https://twitter.com/BrookeKushwaha/status/1570439144568147975

I've had two boosters. Still no covid! Looking forward to getting the new bivalent booster this week.

https://twitter.com/ChristinaPushaw/status/1569135614456659968

Can somebody explain what DeSantis's press secretary thinks I am trying to hide about my vaccination status?

https://twitter.com/JeremyRedfernFL/status/1569144280035229696

Today, I am once again the subject of an angry, reflexive by @mattlewis. The subjects of our disagreement are 1) my analysis of Ron DeSantis’s contempt for democracy, and more importantly, 2) Lewis’s disinclination for reading. Thread: My analysis of DeSantis is based on the research I did for a lengthy feature story, which synthesizes his writings and actions as an elected official into a theory about his philosophy. You can read it here: nymag.com/intelligencer/…

Principled support for democracy would be the only reason for a Republican to oppose Mastriano, and that is not a principle DeSantis subscribes to.

https://twitter.com/JoshKraushaar/status/1556613427984044032

DeSantis's no-enemies-to-the-right strategy is premised on mobilizing Trump's base, which includes insurrectionists, QAnon, fascists, paramilitary orgs, etc. nymag.com/intelligencer/…

One of DeSantis's tactical improvements over Trump is to offload Twitter duties onto a subordinate, who can abuse and harass critics and reporters, without looking like a crazy person himself. Here's what I wrote in March: nymag.com/intelligencer/… This Washington Post profile of Pushaw shows how the method works. All the wild attacks are treated as coming from her, not positions taken by DeSantis: washingtonpost.com/media/2022/07/…

In his recent newsletter, @sullydish disputes my claim that Ron DeSantis has courted the anti-vaccine movement. DeSantis, he says, simply opposes mandates and school closings: andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/the-desantis… This is an argument that has been made by DeSantis's pro-vaccine supporters. (His anti-vaccine supporters, by contrast, treat him as a straightforward champion of their cause.) It's wildly unpersuasive.

This thread is another example of a quality I find on the right, but almost never on the left: a desire to use public policy to hurt people on the other side.

https://twitter.com/lone_rides/status/1540486553931218950

The left has plenty of ugly traits that are parallel to the right, but this expressed hope to make lives worse for people in the other party is not one of them.

Completely false. The Atlantic published @ProfEmilyOster's data about school closings in October, 2020 theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

https://twitter.com/BradOnMessage/status/1540303608251645955

It also published this the next month theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

People outside the GOP have not really grasped the degree to which the party has already coalesced around Ron DeSantis over Trump nymag.com/intelligencer/… and if you haven't read it yet, here is my broader take on what DeSantis believes about the role of the state, and how he will conduct politics: nymag.com/intelligencer/…

Good example of how conservatives invent imaginary abuses by Democrats, which they use to justify their own authoritarianism: nationalreview.com/2022/04/florid… Conservatives charged Obama sicced the IRS on Tea Party groups. First their investigation found Obama and the WH had no role in the IRS's treatment of non-profits at all...

DeSantis's thuggish threats against Disney are waking up a lot of people to a dynamic I tried to explain at more length in my feature on him a few weeks ago. If you haven't read it yet, I think it explains what's going on: nymag.com/intelligencer/… My working premise is that, while Trump is an outlier in many respects, he also represents a longstanding evolution toward authoritarianism within his party. The American right's historic discomfort with democracy is a product of the fear of majorities voting for redistribution.

I learned a lot about Ron DeSantis I didn't know before, and I think readers will, too. Let me share a few of the key themes in this piece: nymag.com/intelligencer/… 1. I think the DeSantis project needs to be understood as an attempt to restore the party's control over the nominating process after Trump broke it in 2016, a la "The Party Decides." nymag.com/intelligencer/…