mtutiger

The protection racket angle is probably accurate, but there is no "being made whole" for companies that submit regardless so long as other countries retaliate and so long as uncertainty remains sky high (as it will). And that is something Trump has zero control over. The end result that there's no getting around is that, in all likelihood, he will make goods more expensive for all of us. And will likely drag his popularity down even further on the economy (which is currently underwater)

Something something we will never be more respected something something

Open to the possibility that there will be some pump-and-dump happening, but the damage to relationships with our trading partners are going to remain damaged even if there are walkbacks. And the uncertainty in the markets is going to be an impediment to the markets overall.

These guys sound insane

I hate consolation prizes, but this Dodgers team is going to be an absolute terror for the rest of the league this year...

Tommy Kahnle has good stuff....

Ump show bay bee

Spencer Torkelson kinda seems like the offense so far two games in.... didn't have that on my dance card

I initially thought it was Torres as well, fwiw

Sweeney

That was a wipeout inning for Jack Flaherty.... wow

Pollster is Fabrizio, ie. Trump's pollster. There are too many undecideds to think an upset is likely, but anything within 10% still seems like it would be a massive overperformance

Actually made this point to a colleague at work this week... He fell back on some sort of morally relativistic "everything's just so partisan" argle bargle. Which kinda makes the point that this stuff is really really hard to defend on the merits.

I think it's wild that coming off of four years of hearing my old man talking about Biden as if he was Konstantin Chernenko, we now have Donald Trump demonstrating that he has no ****ing clue what's going on. And no, I don't think this is all part of some secret plan or 4D chess or anything, he just doesn't care. Credit to Goldberg for going public with this, going against the grain of how his fellow journalists have handled things thus far... if it was Maggie H, she'd be hawking a tell-all book in 2029 about this incident.

About 55% or so percent of a normal turnout in the district, but considering its Lancaster County (about as ancestrally GOP as it gets), wow...

I don't think the headlines about the Department of Education, which were all over the news yesterday and on social media, were good ones. And I think they likely broke through

I really don't agree with the bolded, Fox News had a poll this week that suggests that going after the Department of Education is deeply unpopular (32-65) I go back to my original point though... people vote on their pocket books and their economy. We are currently going backwards.... with Trump himself talking about tariffs with the kind of zeal that Sterling Hayden's character talked about the fluoridation of water in Dr. Strangelove. It won't go unnoticed. The thing that plays well is immigration.... the rest of it is tenuous at best.

I would just add that so much of the analysis of the last election ignores some basic fundamentals... it was a really hard lift, Harris came a lot closer than she probably should have considering how people perceived the economy (ie. poorly). We fast forward to today.... Trump is moving fast and with force. It's intimidating, I almost think the speed is the point, to get us to a point of exasperation or learned helplessness. All of which serves his (and the GOP's) goals. But he's also underwater in popularity, he's never been viewed worse in terms of the economy. The pox that took down Biden and Harris, is now on him.... it doesn't seem like it, but he's *vulnerable*.... and the speed in which they are moving, disorienting as it is, maybe belies weakness. Like they know the window is narrow.

Even with that though, the recent polls (including NBC) is showing him underwater on the economy for literally the first time *ever* as a national figure.... Material conditions still matter to a degree.... maybe propaganda can overpower that, but in a country that is congenitally bred to hate incumbent Presidents, we'll see how it ends up working.

This is all correct, but I still think we need to consider the context in that people were sour about inflation and the economy, and it remains the biggest reason he won. And he's ****ing up daily on that front. It's important that Dems learn about what happened in 2024, but after that last eight years, I sometimes worry that we collectively spend way too much time analyzing the last battle versus preparing for the next one.

The economic stuff is going to be a real issue for the Trump folks... I don't know that I buy what chas is selling above, but the administration trying to consolidate power while people see their real wages / purchasing power falling is in real tension. That's the part of me that thinks Schumer's tactic wasn't unreasonable, I still think he executed it so poorly and seems ill fitted for the moment

I'd be OK with Patty Murray or Chris Murphy... I don't see any of the others being viable. Schatz maybe would have been in the category, but he voted with Schumer

Durbin may not even run for reelection...

Just threading in for your post in the other thread, I'm torn on what the right move was, but the bigger problem is that he clearly doesn't have the pulse of his caucus. Add on top his latest media tour, he's just clearly not the right voice for this moment. Honestly not sure who is among Senate Dems, which is the worrying part...