The public doesn’t follow all the investigations. The Mueller report has name ID and cultural currency. The others don’t. They will be, at best, something to add to this. But only if you start driving public opinion now instead of waiting and letting the moment pass.

Gaetz’s critics already know he’s at a minimum sympathetic to the extremist far-right. His allies don’t care or share his sympathies. There’s no political cost for his action. White nationalism is mainstream in the GOP. News articles are constantly quoting a few anti-immigrant “think-tanks” that all have ties to a…

You will never have a better foundation than the content of the Mueller report. I did say multiple times that taking a “we’ll continue to investigate” position may be smart, but there needs to be movement.

Friedersdorf is far-right enabling trash. He will caper for the IDW and any sort of racist charlatan he can find, while he directly supports the “race science” loving cretins of Quillette. I was forced to abandon a Twitter account because he snitch-tagged notorious anti-Muslim bigot Andy Ngo from Quillette and the…

Playing nice feeds the structural problems. Trump’s shift towards illiberalism is enabled by “playing nice”. These are not disconnected phenomenon.

This really doesn’t serve any useful policy goal. It’s just cruelty for the sake of cruelty, because Trump’s base loves cruelty.

Sarcasm seems lost on you.

Just because you’re too much of an arrogant charlatan to grasp the use of long posts doesn’t mean they’re useless.

You said you were leaving. Leave. Stop your childish tantrum. 

I thought you were leaving? Quiet down your tantrum and go. I’m not interested in watching you try and soothe your massive ego. I responded substantively and my comments speak for themselves. I explained why I held the position I did.

Why are you doubling down on an ignorant rejoinder that illustrates you don’t understand the point? The Civil War did not fundamentally change the US political system, right down to the discrimination. The US was not a liberal democracy before or after the Civil War. It was the Civil Rights movement that pushed the US…

Polling data, multiple studies about how elite opinion and public opinion interact, historical patterns of voter enthusiasm, and years of studying authoritarian and illiberal political regimes and their tactics, particularly in the MENA, which weirdly enough seems to be a place Trump takes a lot of cues from.

I don’t know you, but I do know when you so clearly display ignorance that you lack knowledge. It was your response that made it clear. I didn’t assume, I responded to your glib and irrelevant claim. You don’t grasp what I was talking about or the threat, and you made it clear with the baseless Civil War comparison.

Ugh I’m being more of an asshole here than I intended but I really really hate someone trying to lecture me in my bloody field when it’s clear from their comments they have very little knowledge in said field. 

You’re not being pragmatic. You’re acting on your unsupported opinions. Ironically likely driven by the very elite opinion effect I’ve mentioned, as the risk-averse Democrats have created a large swathe of risk-averse Democratic voters. You’ve internalized their arguments and haven’t critically examined them. That’s…

No, the general message is two things. 1. it’s unlikely to be successful. That is probably true, but they seem to think a failure will hurt them rather than energize their base to vote out republicans. It also ignores the value of the spectacle itself.

No, it will drive public opinion and reset certain norms and boundaries. It’s a signal to political actors about the bounds of behavior. Driving public opinion is arguably more important than removing Trump, since Pence is equally awful. People don’t seem to grasp how important action is to move public opinion. Elite…

Yes, and refusing it out of hand could easily depress voter enthusiasm, though the liberal base is far harder to predict than the conservative one when it comes to enthusiasm.

His base is already riled. He already talks about coups! You’re acting like there’s an opportunity cost here that simply doesn’t exist. He will not behave differently if the Democrats take action than he will if they don’t. He is consistent in that way.

1. There is absolutely not evidence it will “bring in more people”. The long term polling trends all point one way, and nothing he’s done since has significantly shored up his support among independents.