Two passages from my reading today:
"The freakout among centrist Democrats is an expression of a deep, deep terror at the realization that regular people are starting to understand that the long-reining political paradigm does not represent them or their interest and are rapidly becoming open to alternatives. This is a very large threat to both their political power and their income. The commentators and pundits you’re no doubt seeing lose their minds have made an incredible living off peddling moderate political positions on behalf of the wealth class to anxious liberals and supposed independents. They’re hired constantly by the party and its stakeholders to do everything from give talks to strategize and make advertisements to going on corporate media to offer milquetoast opinions in order to manufacture consent. They get book deals, are invited to the wealth class’s shindigs, and are continually glandhanded into class solidarity. The Democratic Party, as a political representative and partner of the wealth class, is inextricably intertwined with these people and its purpose is their purpose.
Recently I published an article about the problem of the entrenched Democratic machine. An entrenched machine isn’t just reliant on stakeholders, it requires a superstructure that voices the party line and attempts to keep the base in check. This is why you are bombarded with “vote blue no matter who” rhetoric when it’s convenient and why it falls by the wayside when insurgent candidates emerge who better voice the desires of the base. This is why you are consistently fed article after article by corporate media about how “dangerous the Left is” while you’re also bombarded by pieces that normalize things like AI, flock cameras, anti-trans rhetoric, and the need for the party to “reach across the aisle” to fascists. When there aren’t alternatives - say, independent media or social media or insurgent candidates - you’re supposed to be convinced this is just the way things are."
— Jared Yates Sexton, Dispatches Mailbag, August 17, 2026
"We should not bother to treat the arguments seriously. We should not behave as if transphobia is the bitter fruit of benign misunderstanding.
The mainstream, obscene contempt for trans people is no mystery. Americans may be bigoted but we are not imbeciles: we know that people fear what they do not understand, and we know that that fear can be harvested and manipulated for political gain. We know these things because we experience the fear and bigotry ourselves and we see them in our friends. Transphobia has been incubated on the center-left for at least as long as I’ve been reading what it has been printing. It has been proliferated for years by that great mirror of the vast American middle, The Atlantic which has been at the forefront of this “battle” since long before Trump announced his first campaign. And it is no coincidence that that organ continues to hector that Harris lost the election because Biden was too woke. “She talked about trans people too much” When? How I wish she had! “and about protecting immigrants” Did she? Did Biden? Somehow I can’t recall “and both of them bellowed with pride repeatedly that Harris was a black woman running for the highest office in the land” Right?? If we’re going to get slashed for championing the vulnerable I wish we could at least be guilty of the courage.
The Atlantic and its fellows in the middle package anti-trans sentiment in prettier packaging than Trumpites. The center left doesn’t want to be brave, it wants to be seemly. Bigotry is less vile when it is seemly. That is how much of America likes its hates. And we have so many of them. They are what propelled the unseemly hate to high office: Trump did not swell his base, he merely failed to ignite the fury of the opposition. The fat, comfortable middle refused to turn out and vote because the fat, comfortable middle has been fed on seemly hatreds.
The middle does not express its hates the way Trump does but, well, don’t they basically agree? After all, when we press them on it, the thing they most fear from Trump seems to be his unseemly manner. They don’t like a scene, and the scene is what they will spend the next four years screeching about while trans children grow fearful."
— Celeste Marcus, CIS Or Subhuman, Liberties Journal, November 2024
Also:
I wrote this because most journalists facing this pressure can’t.
The paper we count on to check authoritarianism spiked an investigation into the Democratic Party because the party’s lawyers threatened to sue.
Holding authoritarians accountable starts with holding your own side accountable.
[image or embed]
— Adam Bonica (@adambonica.bsky.social) August 17, 2026 at 11:05 AM
No, Trump isn't popular, but that just makes him more dangerous. If an election is real and fair, he'll lose it. He has to rig the election if he wants to stay in power.
Incredible polling news for Donald Trump: his approval is still above water in 3 states (Idaho, West Virginia, Wyoming). Those states are real and almost 4.4 million people live in them
He is underwater in every other state in the country, plus DC (where he is -83)
www.usatoday.com/story/news/p...
[image or embed]
— Amanda Katz (@katzish.bsky.social) August 24, 2026 at 11:18 AM
"As for the “big tent”, the Democratic Party made it clear in 2024 that they have no room for people forced to live in little tents. Like the GOP, they mock refugees and support a genocidal regime, Israel, that creates them. They supported Israel’s massacre of Palestinians, literally covered their ears when voters begged them to stop it, and refused to take voter demands to Abolish ICE seriously. Their “big tent” does not include ICE captives or the anti-ICE protesters they demonized until recently.
The “big tent” is for DNC consultant glamping. It is pay to play, and pay to prey.
This may sound harsh — but you should be harsh on pedophiles, mafiosos, and genocidaires. You should question those who excuse them. Forming a coalition with people with whom you don’t agree on every policy, but with whom you do agree on basic tenets of freedom, is healthy and productive. Forming a coalition with people who murder and rape children, or with the enablers who protect those people, is not."
— Sarah Kendzior, Midterm Madness: Your questions answered on elections, tech oligarchs, dirty journalists, and more. Aug 29, 2026
"There are many reasons why the immediate response to the threat of a radicalized MAGA movement returning to power was so inadequate. Crucial among them was the fact that the question of how to react was being discussed amidst an engineered intellectual and political climate that actively privileged a position of acquiescence. The major narratives coming out of the 2024 election all strongly suggested that the only reasonable thing to do was to accommodate the incoming MAGA regime: The 2024 election was a referendum that revealed the “will of the people”! America has undergone a major “realignment” and a “rightward shift”! If so many people vote for Trump and his movement, how could they possibly be so bad? Doesn’t MAGA actually have some good ideas? Shouldn’t we seek common ground? Besides, liberal democracy is weak, defeated – you gotta face reality!
* * *
That is precisely the idea that animates the MAGA regime: Trump was installed by a referendum revealing the one true “will of the people.”
We must fight such assertions tooth and nail.
* * *
I want to be very clear: I despise the idea of the noble Trump/AfD voter who cannot – must not! – be blamed for their political choices. I resent the expectation that we all reach for exculpatory explanations, no matter how implausible, to preserve their innocence, to sanitize them as “regular folks” who can do no wrong. Perhaps they didn’t really mean it! They were deceived by cunning demagogues! They are forced to vote for the extremists because of economic desperation and because arrogant liberals were being so mean! Stop it. Have a little respect for these voters. I mean this sincerely: We ought to take them seriously, grant them agency. And that means we can hold them accountable for their political choices.
However, acknowledging this is still not the same as arguing that everyone who voted for Trump is an extremist who is fully on board with what the hardcore MAGA ideologues want to do to America."
Thomas Zimmer, Warnings and Lessons from the Struggle Against Trumpism, Democracy Americana, September 5, 2026
The Guide To Anti-Trans Democrats In The 2026 Elections, By State
These are the Democrats that LGBTQ+ people may wish to avoid this election cycle.
Erin Reed, Sep 08, 2026
"Imagine building a firewall. The wall remains intact, but the fire behind it keeps growing. At what point do you stop admiring the strength of the wall and start asking why nobody has put out the fire?
German politics has just such a firewall or Brandmauer, designed to keep the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) away from real power since the party emerged in 2013. No matter how many votes the AfD wins, the theory goes, Germany’s democratic parties will refuse to govern with it. After the state election in Saxony-Anhalt, when the AfD, led by Ulrich Siegmund, narrowly missed winning an outright majority, the Brandmauer is still standing, yet the flames beyond it are getting bigger.
* * *
At the same time, Germany’s institutional alertness to the threat of the far right has descended into ritual. Each AfD advance produces shock, condemnation and another firm promise that nobody will work with it. The language reassures Germans, like me, who remain inside the democratic consensus, but does little to reach those who have left it. Worse, it allows the established parties to frame protecting democracy as indistinguishable from the protection of themselves.
Germany’s democratic parties must now do something harder than blocking the AfD out of government. They need to show that pluralism can still produce decisive leadership, that economic change does not require abandoning whole regions and that German identity can mean something beyond ancestry or the colour of one’s skin. They must actively compete with the AfD and defeat its ideas—not merely try to quarantine it."
— Germany’s firewall against the AfD isn’t working
As the party’s victory in Saxony-Anhalt shows, blocking the far right from coalition government is not the same as defeating it. Raza Hussain, Prospect, September 09, 2026
Equality Organizations Struggle Over How To Handle Anti-Trans Democrat Endorsements: Equality Ohio gives Amy Acton a B after calling trans women men. HRC endorses multiple Democratic candidates who have taken major anti-trans votes. EITM investigates.
Erin Reed, Erin in the Morning, Sep 09, 2026
Elon Musk’s PAC Drops $100 Million On Anti-Trans Ads Targeting Dems Who Already Capitulated
Anti-trans capitulations didn’t stop Musk from spending big to attack these Democrats.
s. baum, Erin in the Morning, Sep 10, 2026
Democrats seem headed for big wins, but one avenue for self-sabotage would be adopting R's framing on trans rights.
@billiejsweeney.bsky.social spoke with insiders incl Lanae Erikson of Third Way and Rep. Sarah McBride for this substanial piece of new reporting.
assignedmedia.org/breaking-new...
[image or embed]
— Assigned Media (@assignedmedia.org) September 29, 2026 at 7:09 AM
