I genuinely don't think good counter-messaging on trans rights is all that difficult. There are Democrats who aren't doing it not because coming up with it is hard but because they agree with the Republicans and want to disguise their disdain for trans people as a matter of political strategy.
Democrats just flipped the Omaha mayor's office with ads like this. The right-wing obsession with genitals is starting to backfire.
What’s funny about this is - to the extent OP’s diagnosis is true - this completely flies in the face of the
@whstancil.bsky.social philosophy
The Nation was spoon-fed documents from a bad-faith Republican House committee and covered them as if they were a scandal.
The more I look into the lab leak the more shocked I am at how desperately the media tried to launder the theory into something respectable.
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I love that you’re just like completely convinced that the left has never been “groupthinky or wrong” about anything.
you want to know one reason people are losing trust in the media? it’s the total inability to call things what they are
some guy on YouTube: “wow this is the most corrupt shit I’ve ever seen”
the Times: “critics say it raises appearance of impropriety”
who are people going to take seriously?
Yes, the braindead YouTuber. Of course.
[me stuffing gold bars into my suit jacket]
listen, all of you who want to eject me from the party for "corruption" and "bribery" just want to shrink the tent!
Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego defended his fundraiser with crypto investor and Trump ally Marc Andreessen during a town hall in Pennsylvania, arguing that Democrats have gotten too “pure” and need a bigger tent.

Dem Crypto Ally Defends Fundraiser With Trump Crypto Donor
Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego defended his ties to crypto investor and Trump ally Marc Andreessen, arguing Democrats need a big tent.
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What is the evidence from this story that Gallego is a “crook.” Just plainly rewriting the definition of that word to imply anyone who you disagree with politically is “corrupt.”
Yes this was exactly the news cycle from my youth I was thinking of.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_...Caning of Michael Fay - Wikipedia
We lost our effing minds when a us teen got caned for spray painting cars, an actual crime.
“Got canned” for vandalism my be a little different than, um, what is going on in the US right now lmao
I've said this a million times, but I'll say it again: it is truly striking how many Democratic politicians, pundits, and commentators have internalized the idea that the right shapes public opinion and it is the job of the left to respond to it.
You have it backwards.
Public opinion *itself* is on the “right” and it up to the left — as a political movement — to respond to it.
This is a clear, true, & important distinction that many people refuse to make.
The same is true of "fancy city dwellers condescending to hard workin' ruralites."
The same is true of "wokesters forcing you to use pronouns."
These are RW bogie men. RW hysteria exceeds actual examples 1000/1.
Men are not constantly being told “you’re bad,” they are constantly being told “LEFT WING SJWS THINK YOU’RE BAD” by conservative propaganda. There’s a huge difference.
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By refuting the factual part of your point?
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It is true tho that she supported gender affirming care for inmates which was what that add was about…
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... I don't think I've read a single article about "the crisis of women" or heard a single podcast agonizing about how women are supposed to deal with these mixed messages & broken expectations.
You didn’t read a single article about how women were dealing with structural inequalities in the workplace? Just obviously not true lol
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Lol yes, I actually do think low-education, working class people are generally the victims of neurotic, cosplaying yuppies’ insufferable bullshit
Posturing like this is pure condescension and way too common. It's basically the same as brain dead insistence to only highlight "kitchen table issues."
Turns out you might not be very good at talking to voters if you think they are all too ignorant to understand the word "fascist."
You do realize he won the popular vote by 1.5 pts less than 6 months ago? Are all the people who voted for him MAGA? Do you have any interest in winning those people back or do you just like to repeat the word “fascism” bc you think it makes you sound vaguely intellectual?
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The issue is that you are so pretentious and self-righteous you literally can’t see over your own nose. You’ve built an entire identity out of cosplaying some freedom fighter on the internet without any interest in interrogating whether you are producing good or bad outcomes in the real world
I personally would think more seriously and critically about things, but it is a free country. I wish you the best.
“This is pure condescension…turns out you may not be very good at…” I’ll just ignore the hysterical lack of self-awareness and ask an earnest question:
What is your theory as to why less-educated, working-class voters have increasingly turned away from the Democratic Party over the last 15 years?
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You do realize he won the popular vote by 1.5 pts less than 6 months ago? Are all the people who voted for him MAGA? Do you have any interest in winning those people back or do you just like to repeat the word “fascism” bc you think it makes you sound vaguely intellectual?
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They didn’t cause “fascism.” What they have caused is an eroding trust in institutions/the Democratic Party by regular people. This in turn has allowed a clown to be elected President twice. I’m sorry if that deflates your understanding of politics as a grand struggle, but it is true.
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Lol that idea is not “lost on me.” It has been clear to me since 2016. But it is “lost” on a huge share of the American electorate who repeatedly vote for him despite the clowning. You act like this is the first time he has besmirched the office and that no one is aware of this tendency of his.
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There is a massive difference between policies he promises and a joke about being the Roman Catholic Pope. Please be serious.
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I would say the most obnoxious thing of the past 10 years is the constant hysterics of highly educated liberals who have pushed regular, working class people away from their party in order to seem intelligent in faculty lounges and on websites like Bluesky. But ymmv
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What is the “standard” here? This - even more than other stuff he does - is just clearly a joke. Any normal person understands this. If you want to flash it on some news segment and let some Catholic’s be offended at the poor taste - sure. Harping on it as some supposedly real ~threat~ is absurd.
Everybody (with the exception of overwound Liberals) realizes stuff like the Pope thing is an obvious joke. Losing your mind about it just alienates you to average people. Please get a grip.
begging for money on the internet after calling a child racial slurs? these are gutter people raised in gutter families with a rotten, rancid culture
She got $250k for calling a 5 year old the n-word
And they say white people have no culture
“These are gutter people raised in gutter families with a rotten, rancid culture [because certain people have acted badly].”
Idk man, that feels like something someone on the far-Right would say.
So basically, there was a Signal chat with tech folks and some Harpers Letter writers, and the Harpers folk were chased out when Andreessen realized they would not go along with censorship. But the tech guys stuck with Chris Rufo.
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So he’s a “dumb shit” because he doesn’t recognize that Richard Hannia shares the same [right wing] beliefs as him and your evidence for this is that he posted a comment about how Progressives should try harder to win power.
I am sometimes just utterly amazed by the idiocy of people on this website
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Get a grip
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Ben Smith? Lol
"Flatten the curve" is maybe the most successful slogan of the last 10 years and conveys a relatively complicated idea! The difference is that the media helped explain and operationalize its underlying message. With "Defund the police" the media did the opposite.
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If you consider the 80% of Americans who don’t want to “defund the police” your “oppressors” you are delusional. I’m sorry, really no other way to put it.
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Ok, but if you actually want to achieve your goals and not just have some ethereal expression of feeling, then the politics *do* matter.
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You can push for whatever the fuck you want. If you continue to live in a democracy you must convince other people that what you are pushing for is good or else you will continue to scream endlessly into a void.
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What should congressional Democrats do instead? I am begging someone to just answer this question for me.
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🤷♀️
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No defund is bad…because it is also too strong lmao.
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Do you not see the absurdity of this statement? If the country “loves cops” a phrase that just says “defund the police” is obviously political suicide. How is this not obvious?
Even if I bought this premise, the idea that “flatten the curve” (a neutral, ambiguous phrase) is similar in kind to “defund the police” is so absurd I actually can’t tell if you’re being serious.
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What I’m saying is tell me one thing, that you think Democrats could do to “stop the no-due process mass deportation machine” (the claim made at the top of this thread). Saying “do anything” is not an answer — it’s an admission that you don’t actually have an answer but that you like to complain
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No what I’m asking is what does “doing something” in this context mean?
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So the difference to you is that one arm of the state — locally elected school boards — is materially different than another arm of the state — unelected state employees.
Fair enough. But I’m not buying that this is actually a difference in kind.
I love how this also describes the panic over certain conservative states “banning books.”
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Do you think it would be good for Elon Musk to focus on Tesla rather than be involved in government?
Everybody's mad at this dude for this post, but are we not in *exactly* the kind of situation Jefferson described in the Declaration of Independence? That passage that dumbass right-wingers are always quoting?

When Must We Kill Them?
Evil has come to America.
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Lmfao
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Fair enough. This is just my opinion, I’m not claiming any expertise or certainty.
You may not like it, but most Americans are sympathetic to that Republican talking point and when you allow it to be hammered in “defense” you weaken yourself in relation to your opposition. IMO.
This dynamic is ignored by the people of Bluesky bc, well, there are no Republicans (or independents) on here lol.
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You just don’t really understand how this works. Look, it is fine for Democrats to talk about it. But what happens is when this gets brought up on Sunday morning shows, social media, etc. the Republican response is “yes we deported him bc he was illegal and a gang member.”
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Yes, I think you guys are underestimating the crowding out effect of one issue vs another. Obviously in a world of no tradeoffs it would be good to attack Trump on every issue, but there are real constraints on what issues Republicans are forced to be on tv/social media talking about.
“We shouldn’t talk about immigration, it’s his strongest issue.”
NOT ANYMORE LOSERS. BECAUSE WE TALKED ABOUT IT
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Lol you people are actually just so stupid.
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You’re just ignoring the idea that (1) This strategy puts Republicans on the “defensive” on their best issue! And (2) there are crowding out effects — why talk about their best issue when you could talk about their worst ones???
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Same question except I’m dubious.
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You have overextended the analogy. This isn’t a 1 to 1.
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No, but the difference is that we have a court of law that adjudicates murder disputes. The court of law in this analogy is the American electorate, not your own personal conviction.
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Again, you could make literally that same argument if you earnestly believed the 2020 election was stolen. Like you could easily see a Jan 6’er make the literal argument you just typed out.
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The point is there is no arbiter to decide you are “actually right” the only arbiter of that is the American electorate — that’s how democracy works.