I have some confidence in Ken Martin, the current DNC chair. DC consultants for the DNC seem to hate his guts, but he is partially responsible for the momentum Dems are seeing in unlikely places because the national party is not fully neglecting state races anymore, in favour of spending all the money in ‘swing state races’ as in recent years past.

Even if some kind of Blue tsunami manifests come Nov 3, and even IF Republicans reluctantly prepare for a peaceful transfer of Congress in Jan 2027, don’t stop the No Kings protests, don’t stop the resistance to ICE’s terrorism of cities and disappearing people into detention camps, don’t stop going to town halls to push back against Flock-style surveillance (including by other vendors) and AI data centres. Don’t stop calling and mailing your representative. The fight still continues regardless, every step we get will be through keeping the pressure on.

It doesn’t help when the President of the United States is repeating and knowingly spreading disinformation.

However, it might backfire because in his taunt Trump challenged Talarico to debate Paxton. In the very first TV appearance after that Talarico responded that he’s ready and would while the Paxton campaign is the one making excuses trying to avoid a debate.

I’ve gotta say even normally progressive and anti-Trump MSNBC runs smack segments against Ken Martin gives me confidence that Democrats should let him cook and bring the DNC into a new chapter.

Good start, but time to also have a 2 year plan and start drafting Project 2029* if no Democrat has already.

The two most important questions being: “What concrete differences do Americans want to see in their lives compared to before and now?” and “How will we (extending to the whole world) create a system that prevents reactionary right-wing psycopath billionaire-funded culture war zone-flooding politics to pave the way back to fascism?”.

*Project 2029 seems to be a thing, but at first glance seems like a scaled down and focused effort on a couple issues, explictly not designed to be an all-encompassing vision as the Republican version was. I don’t think it goes far enough, so either it needs to have more sections added, or the Democratic Socialist and neolib organizations each start putting their thoughts in their own treatises to compare notes later.

I also advocate for incrementalism, but I do think that very progressive positions need to be staked out and anchored by certain members in Congress, to move the Overton window allowing more moderate Democrats to ‘make compromises’ and still land everyone in a better position.

For DHS/ICE, if Congress can’t herd enough cats to abolish them, they can hamstring anything they are permitted to do without a judge-signed warrant. They can also first cut the slush fund appropriated in 2025. If neither of those things work, they can change the purpose of DHS/ICE to go after employers who abuse undocumented workers or leverage restrictive visas against them, and help immigrants get visas instead of locking up and torturing them.

It’s easier to settle on the three improvement positions if the initial anchor is closer to the extreme.

Communism! Hasan Piker! Zohran Mamdani and his scary fast and free buses are coming for you! We’re losing the culture war to Abdul MOHAMED El-Sayed because he’s walking away from it on Fox News! Turn up the Islamophobiaaaa!

Is what Republicans will fall back on

Alright, media and experts, time for you to say President Donald Trump ‘aspires’ to commit terrorism on the USA.

I’m glad to see you still are around, I’ll subscribe to that and save your comment, sometimes i worry if the posts are years old if the community is unmoderated. If I get into BAR again, maybe I’ll post.

With humanoid robots manning the turrets by 2028, yuuuuuup.

I know I used to see a fairly clear picture of myself on Google Street View when it came out. It was later slightly blurred out even though it wasn’t the latest one when when I checked through the timeline.

I could imagine both scenarios where he moves left or right after the election my comment didn’t necessarily rule one out. Why are you only imagining Talarico moving to the right? And even if he does move rightward, the makeup of the Senate will still be more pro-trans than without him.

Imagine a continuous fart going brrrrrrrppppppp out of your butt. It’s that, but out of Trump’s mouth and Ministry of Truth Social page.

I beg to differ, it is my opinion that not doing so is what got the USA Trump (if that’s what you mean by ‘us here’) twice.

It’s out of self-interest I agree. And now that it affects them, they are skipping the sanewashing on this one issue. If it didn’t affect them, they would be reporting on it like:

White House uses unconventional legal theory to revoke press access

I’ll be frank: I don’t think Paxton winning over Talarico will tell the DNC a single thing with respect to trans rights.

Whereas if Talarico wins, what is preventing him from changing his views in any way, at any point within the next 6 years? A Dem President in 2028, with the support of Congress including Talarico, can codify better protections for all humans, in all states despite any state like Texas’ objections. Paxton as Senator would be an active obstacle to that type of effort.

Can I have a source on the claim that the Equality Act was changed to redefine what it meant so that it could exclude trans people?

If a Musky PAC were to run ads saying how terrible Brown or another candidate would be for trans rights, in the same way Jewish and Arab voters were shown contradictory messages in 2024, would that influence how or whether you vote?

they are copying their talking points to demonize us

To be clear, I think that trans people should compete in sports according to their gender and be conferred the same rights as anyone else. But people that want to limit trans people’s participation in sports for flawed, scientifically refuted reasons while treating them as humans, I don’t think is the same, as wanting to ban them from bathrooms changing driver’s licenses and treating them as subhuman demon freaks. We should not equate the two.

To give a similar example, the fight for gay sex and marriage in Canada was fought over decades, and the stigma remains in small pockets. A progressive Prime Minister decriminalized it in the 1969 while not his entire Liberal Party was openly for it, and it was still in the decades after that a ban on workplace discrimination and in the 2000s when marriage was recognized. So we have to pull in the same direction, allow trans people the same basic rights as anyone else, then talk about competitive and recreational activites like sports later rather than just labelling it all as anti-trans sub-humanization talking points.

But just like Trump found out in Iran, power comes from how much you can get others to go along with your plan. He has power when people capitulate in advance to his illegal and unconstitutional orders. Sure, the way he operates will become more illegal and unconstitutional when you ignore him, that won’t make him powerful so long as nobody listens to him. The journalist boycot in response to the press pass denial was the first thing resembling a spine from the media.

Vote for lesser evil + organize, get loud and make being trans normal in red states. The American system is so screwed up with no ability to dissolve your legislatures before the 4 year cycle. If you live in a state of those races, it would be better to be ignored than your rights taken away. If you need anything go seek the support of a Democrat that is pro-trans from out of your state, with control of Congress they would be able to help you more if your state’s legislators are useless but of the same caucus rather than of a caucus that is actively blocking efforts. Sorry if I sound flippant about it, but I would tell moderate voters the same about a progressive candidate.

If you’re worried about the ratchet affect, the solution I don’t think is to turn the screws further in the direction of the ratchet. The UK example is weird, the Labour Party’s somewhat to blame but I don’t fully lay it at their feet, because their justice system is biased in very old ways, negatively affecting people’s rights to gender expresssion.

The USA has already tried in 2016 the “haha, let Republicans vote for Donald Trump, they’ll see how bad it is when they vote for racism rather than a milquetoast candidate and they will disavow it forever after” method, that didn’t work, only made things a lot worse, he got elected again. Even if you have the long game in mind, not voting appears to send, even if a Republican wins 49% to 47%, a signal that the people mandate that trans people should be hurt, rather than a more neutral signal. States that had been trending red turning blue signals nationally a change in the direction of trans acceptance, regardless of the willingness of the candidate to associate during the campaign with pro-trans advocates or not.

I absolutely see where you’re coming from. Sorry if I made bad assumptions about your opinion because I’m responding to you and the original comment, and in a sense I agree on your assessment but differ on the approach.

The physical crises are coming whether we shut our eyes or not, you are correct. I am maybe a lot more optimistic than many here on how pliable that system could be. My optimistic vision still does hinge on many improbable sounding feats like getting money out of politics, drastically reforming the court amongst other changes. Preparing for the break is fine, but I argue we’d be better off doing that while still trying to bend the system to better handle the break if it happens, and form some strategic alliances with the establishment to get there.