This honestly wouldn’t surprise me.

Musk has the ear of the president, and it’s not like Trump gives a shit about space. He’ll rubber stamp whatever Elon wants when it comes to the launch industry, and I didn’t think I have to explain to anyone why cancelling SLS would be good for SpaceX’s bottom line.

Frankly, I think 50/50 odds are way too generous. More like 80/20 in favor of SLS being scraped and access to space being fully privatized for a generation.

It would be funny if his awkward loyalty purge was the thing that ending up kicking off that “deep state coup” he’s been raving about for all these years. Self-fulfilling prophecy would be a fitting end for that human cheese burger.

that Harris, who took Biden’s positions wholesale

Except for the instances where she moved further to the right, like on capital gains tax.

Sadly, yeah… D:

To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld:

You don’t run for president with the voters you want, you run for president with the voters you have.

Stupid or not, these are the voters we have, and Democrats need to learn how to reach at least some of them if they ever want to win another election.

Hear fucking hear.

That’s true, but Trump’s team is already lobbying the incoming majority leader to call an intentional recess so he can ram through all the appointments he wants without any Senate oversight.

Whether or not that happens remains to be seen, but I wouldn’t bet money on the new majority leader standing up to Trump on day one, right after he was elected with a significant mandate and handed full control of the legislative branch to Republicans. More likely, Thune will fold to whatever Trump demands until the the political winds begin to shift and Republicans need to start playing defense for the midterms. At that point we might start to see the Senate push back on Trump’s agenda if his approval ratings have gotten are low enough and the Dems have gotten their act together enough to run some decent congressional campaigns.

Some Senate Republicans are signaling that they won’t vote for him, and it wouldn’t surprise me all that much if 4 Rs defect to block his confirmation.

Of course, Trump can and will still force him through as a recess appointment (fitting, giving Gaetz’ track record on consent) which will secure him as AG at least until the midterms when the balance of power in the Senate will inevitably shift again.

I saw one the other day painted neon yellow. Believe it or not, it actually seemed like an improvement.

His handling of the train derailment in Ohio was also pretty terrible, and didn’t paint a very good picture of his crisis management skills.

You’re right, it doesn’t. But if we can transform the party into one that’s focused on running younger and more progressive candidates, then the DNC at large will start to look less like a crusty party of “good old boys” and more like an actual grassroots movement of “outsiders”. That’s what I’d like to see for the future of the DNC and I think AOC would be a good face for that movement.

In before “But… but… Bernie…”

I really don’t see anyone saying this…?

Yeah, a lot of people (myself included) feel like he was robbed of the nomination, but I haven’t really seen anyone on the left advocating he run again. The great tragedy of Sanders is that we rejected him at the perfect time for his message (and at a time when the country needed him most), and now it’s too late.

Of course that doesn’t mean he should be ignored, it just seems like most progressives understand ee need a younger candidate with Sanders’ ideals to shape the future of the party, not Sanders himself.

If Trump has taught us anything, it’s that Americans have a growing appetite for “unconventional” candidates. A 40-year-old waitress from the Bronx is about as far from conventional as Trump (albeit in the opposite direction), but the more time she spends chasing Senate seats and climbing the political ladder, the more dulled that “political outsider” edge gets.

I think she should take a shot at 2028 — or at the very least, run for DNC chair next year. Someone like her directing political strategy would help younger and more progressive Democrats gain ground in local and congressional elections which could finally help shift the party back out of its corporate-sponsored neo-liberal rut and towards actual progressivism.

I’m genuinely not sure if there is a set of policies the left can offer which will adequately appeal to their entire base.

“Eat the rich” might do it.

I’d eagerly vote for this platform. Are you running?

Conservative economist Oren Cass warns that Donald Trump could jeopardize his presidency by focusing on donor and activist agendas rather than the priorities of swing voters who secured his victory.

Jeopardize how? He’s already been elected, and it’s not like a Republican congress is going to impeach the head of their own party for… checks notes… focusing on donor priorities, lol

The whole reason the Republican party exists in it’s current form is to rubber stamp the agenda of the ownership class. Maybe he’ll get his ass kicked in the midterms in two years, but so fucking what? He’s got more than enough time to trash everything before then, especially since the RS are going in with an actual plan this time.

No, the only ‘jeopardy’ for Trump in his second term is that the hamberders might finally catch up with him and his black, unfeeling heart explodes.

The big surprise to Democrats is that this also won over many Latino voters.

It blows my mind that anyone continues to be surprised by this. Republicans have been gaining ground with Latino voters since Bush. How much longer do we have to wait before the DNC stops scratching their heads and actually tries to do something about it?

Pretty much, yeah

Oliver Hall, a Harris campaign volunteer, found that economic concerns, particularly inflation, also drove voters to Donald Trump, despite low unemployment and wage growth touted by Democrats.

This. This right here is the issue.

According to the studies done by the Federal Reserve, only 54% of Americans have enough savings to cover 3 months of expenses. That means nearly half the country is basically living paycheck to paycheck.

Dems say wages are on the rise? So is the price of food, with some items still 50% more expensive than they were at the start of the pandemic (and now in even smaller packages to boot). Many Americans are also still stuck working a laughably low federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Why should they care about wage hikes when they haven’t gotten a raise since 2009? Meanwhile a large portion of the working class is in food service where the base rate is even lower and they have scrape by on tips — tips that are harder and harder to come by as fewer and fewer Americans are choosing to eat out.

Dems say unemployment is falling? Of course it is, when many Americans have no choice but to work multiple jobs just to make rent. And speaking of rent, it’s up a average of 30% which is even higher than the supposed ~25% wage growth Dems were running on.

If someone is living hand-to-mouth, struggling to keep a roof over their head and food in their stomach, the last thing they wanna hear about is fucking GDP or employment rates or the stock market. Millions of Americans are getting screwed by the economy, and when Democrats run on a message of prosperity, that spits in the face of their lived experiences. Meanwhile Trump tells them that the system is rigged and they’re getting screwed. He points the finger at all the wrong things, of course, but at least he acknowledges that things suck, even if all his proposed “solutions” are all empty demagoguery.

Stop telling working Americans how great the economy is and start telling them what they want to hear, what they know in their bones is true: The system is rigged against you. The ownership class has spent the last 3 decades gleefully stealing our wages, raping the environment, and padding the pockets of politicians so that we all stay divided and distracted. Stop running for the economy and start running against it. Run against robber barons and union busters like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Run against the Kochs and the Waltons who’ve been fighting for decades to keep wages low and the keep the pockets of rich politicians full with hundreds of millions in PAC money. Run against Comcast, run against Starbucks, run against fucking Nestle.

And while you’re at it, stop taking economic policy advice from capitalist assholes like Mark Cuban. Stop flaunting all your celebrity endorsements — more rich people who understand absolutely nothing about the day to day lives of working Americans. And for the love of God… please, please stop running to the right at every opportunity you get.

We need a labor party.