iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Dana Houle @danahoule.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Thinking back to a year ago, when Ezra Klein did a podcast with Ross Douthat & said that to be competitive Democrats should run anti-abortion candidates in Ohio & Kansas.

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Perry Bacon @perrybaconjr.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

"Economic issues not cultural wars' produces a party that both loses elections and abandons moral causes and vulnerable people. That’s not a theoretical argument—it’s the story of the Democratic Party of my entire adulthood." newrepublic.com/article/2159...

newrepublic.com

Why Democrats Should Stop Using the Phrase “Culture Wars”

Texas’s Gina Hinojosa and others slamming the party for focusing too much on so-called cultural issues are pushing a flawed electoral and policy strategy.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 01/10/2026

i think cox should spend less time weeping about polarization and more time working to convince his co-partisans not to abandon pluralism and liberal democracy

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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...

But there’s also something about truth to pain. We talk a lot about truth to power, but I think it’s actually a lot harder to speak truth to pain. I say that as someone who went to medical school, realizing that in a lot of our politics right now, we’ve got to get a lot better at speaking truth to pain if we’re going to get through some of these challenges that we have.

What does “truth to pain” mean?

It’s one thing to look power in the eye and say: You’re wrong about this. But there’s a way in which pain is very difficult to reason with. Because when somebody is in their pain, they’re in their trauma. They see that pain, and they may not see what’s causing it.

I remember just very explicitly being in a trauma ward with a gunshot wound patient and watching this big guy with his hand on his gunshot wound. All the folks are trying to pull his hand off his pain, that point of his gunshot wound, this clear vulnerability.

And this emergency room doctor had the presence of mind to be like: Everyone, stop. And she looks him in the eyes, and she’s like: I get that really hurts, and I’m so sorry that you’re here. You don’t want to be here. We don’t want you to be here. But if you don’t let us fix this, you could die. So I’m going to take your hand, and I’m going to move it off, OK? Because I need to get there so that you can live.

She was speaking truth to pain. He understands he’s at the hospital, he needs care, but he also doesn’t want anybody to touch the wound. Which is a natural thing. And I think it is a really great metaphor for how we think about a lot of these challenges we talked about today.

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Deva Woodly @devawo.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Make the argument you want to make in resonant terms. It changes opinions.

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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 29/09/2026

This is crap for two reasons. 1: polls show, clear majorities of all parties support expanding childcare access 2: if parents are wary of childcare, it's because Reps spent four decades vilifying employed moms, stoking false fears of daycare, and underfunding programs in ways that limit care quality

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rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

there's a thing in moderate democratic politics where it is considered fundamentally illegitimate to deliver results to your own voters; instead, you must propose a better way to implement your adversaries' entire ideological program

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 23/09/2026

i think you can fairly say that the second trump administration is the most racist federal administration since woodrow wilson and honestly i'm not sure that it isn't more racist than wilson's

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Gillian Brockell @gillianbrockell.com · 23/09/2026

Every AI booster: It can do all your most fun activities for you! Art work! Songwriting! Your fantasy draft! Talking to your kid! No AI boosters: It can do the dishes and your laundry.

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ProPublica @propublica.org · 22/09/2026

Sen. Susan Collins helped steer millions in federal defense contracts to Navatek, whose CEO illegally funneled thousands of dollars to her campaign. The FBI sought to launch a probe and was eyeing Collins and other lawmakers. Then Trump gutted the unit in charge. THREAD 🧵

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reclaimidaho.bsky.social @reclaimidaho.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

HJR 4 is on your ballot in November, but it was NOT put there by the people of Idaho. It was placed on the ballot by the Legislature, and the goal is to convince you to surrender your voting rights on a sweeping range of issues related to drugs and medicine. No on HJR 4!

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

"Over the five years following a sexual assault, victims’ employment falls by 6 percentage points and annual earnings decline... These effects persist for at least a decade and correspond to a 15% decline in employment, 17% earnings loss, and 28% rise in anti-depressant use"

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Pam Herd @pamherd.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

The plan is paid for by taking child care supports away from low income parents (mothers), just as they're requiring these same families (women) to *work* to access Medicaid and SNAP. The real goal is to punish poor single mothers. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/21/u...

nytimes.com

White House Plan to Subsidize Stay-at-Home Parents Divides Conservatives

Some praise the idea championed by Vice President JD Vance to direct federal money to support traditional families, while others say it cuts against conservative principles.

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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Thinking about the selling point of "AI" supposedly "freeing up time" to do important things. Beyond devaluing the tasks that we can supposedly offload to software systems, it occurs to me that this is kind of opposite of mindfulness/being in the moment. >>

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Brian Beutler @brianbeutler.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

There was some logic to it once upon a time. But even when it paid dividends, it caused real collateral damage to actual liberalism. www.offmessage.net/p/ai-risk-ne...

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Dan Ancona @danancona.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Excellent interview here. Just want to flag one thing: straight issue trust or issue preference and weak/strong are all pretty easy to poll. Understanding why people - even an individual, let alone big groups of voters - think Dems are weak, even with openends or in qual, is much more difficult.

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Perry Bacon @perrybaconjr.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

"No one is going to vote for a Democrat because they came out for a trans sports ban. No one is on the fence being like, "If they just came out for a trans sports ban, then I would vote for them. I don't think that person exists," says @evanurquhart.bsky.social. newrepublic.com/article/2154... .

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G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · 17/09/2026

This is important though because the finding of weak ideological attachment undermines position-taking as an electoral strategy. It’s not the case that voters hold firm preferences around the spectrum, it’s that lots of these positions are created by “non-attitudes”

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Lauren Goldstein @lauren-goldstein.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

FWIW, this is exactly what those of us who are not popularists want electeds to do. No one is asking them to take "unpopular positions." We're making the evidence-based argument that when elites advocate for issues, they can make those ideas more popular with the mass public.

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Katelyn Burns @katelynburns.com · 16/09/2026

For my newsletter, I wrote about how we shouldn't ignore that a billionaire trying to build data centers is putting a hundred million into Republican anti-trans ads in these midterms. www.burnsnotice.com/the-data-cen...

burnsnotice.com

The Data Center Guy Wants This Election to be About Trans People

Elon Musk obviously hates trans people, but let's not pretend he has nothing to gain personally from a Republican win this fall

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Deva Woodly @devawo.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Most of what people use chatbots for is what search engines used to do perfectly well. The info auditing and organizing messy input stuff that they do that folks find useful can be done by SLMs, which don’t require mortgaging the economy to nefarious billionaires & setting the planet aflame.

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Susan Rinkunas @susanrinkunas.com · 07/09/2026

This is absolutely about punishing mothers who work outside the home

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Lauren Goldstein @lauren-goldstein.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

"The greatest trick Trump...ever pulled was convincing the American establishment that a sub two-point popular vote plurality in the 2024 election represented a total and permanent repudiation of liberal culture and the Democratic Party. " 🎯🎯🎯🎯 @brianbeutler.bsky.social shorturl.at/KeM8i

offmessage.net

How To Undo The Great Lie Of 2024

Trump’s second election wasn’t a verdict for all time, but the coming midterms might be one.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 06/09/2026

the reason i keep arguing against “the vibe shift” being a real thing is that quite a few commentators believe otherwise and it has left them completely unable to analyze, understand and respond to the current political moment

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The Downballot @the-downballot.com · 04/09/2026

Has Bevin’s 2019 running mate, Ralph Alvarado, commented yet? Alvarado is running for the open #KY06, a Dem target.

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G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · 02/09/2026

This (from Tom Wood) suggests more than just the typical thermostatic backlash is happening right now. In sixteen months, Trump and Republicans have turned the GOP’s largest party ID advantage this century into a tie for its biggest deficit

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

This is large scale disenfranchisement and now SCOTUS has even less excuse not to reject Trump's EO on mail voting. Allowing him to move forward would have clear negative harms to voters that could not be reversed, even as his claim for authority over voting processes is legally dubious.

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Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

We’re stuck doing deep textual analysis on Hasan Piker, a Twitch streamer, to discover if he said something offensive. Then the actual Secretary of Defense is gleefully picking out random Canadians and mocking them for being overweight, and it’s like “Well Trump will be Trump!”

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[Christopher M. Federico] @chrispps.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

a key problem with the elite ‘centrist’ understanding of the swingy portion of the mass electorate is that fails to appreciate that there are far more moderates who lack a coherent belief system and strong issue preferences than moderates whose views match the boutique views of elite centrists

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Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 29/08/2026

reskeeting with alt text bc this is a funny as hell way to dismiss someone's dumbass argument to their face

Screenshotted excerpt from a conversation transcript, reading as follows

Cottle: My guess is that you then completely reject the idea that we wound up with this wretched administration in part because of the backlash to the excesses of woke, especially alienating young men, who were told they were the problem, just generally speaking.

Bouie: [this line is highlighted] I completely reject that for simple reasons of linear time. This administration was elected in 2024. At peak woke, when Nancy Pelosi was wearing kente cloth, Democrats won a trifecta, right? At the--

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Cleg @clegggg.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

this is a pretty wild exchange with someone seemingly in a moderator position

Bouie: Sure. Before I do, I want to say two things, just to establish them right now and kind of to say where I stand on some of this stuff. The first thing is: "Woke" is a term that comes from African American vernacular. It has its origins in the 1930s, and it has traditionally meant something along the lines of: Be aware of the ways that this society is not built for you. Be aware of the ways that you may face disadvantage and oppression in this society. Again, this is a term that emerged in Black vernacular in the 1930s. And that is, as far as I'm concerned,
what the term means. And the usage — Cottle: You are exactly one of about 20
people who think that's what the term
means.
Bouie: I know.

Bouie: I know. Cottle: I always love the historical reference,
but that ain't where it's gone. Bouie: I think a lot of Black Americans would agree with me on this point, I'll say that. I think among commentators, sure, not very many people agree with me. Among the
people for whom the term - Cottle: Oh, wait, wait, wait. No, no, no. You can't pull that it's a split between commentators. And like, half of America has
decided what woke is, and it's not that. Bouie: Among Black Americans, it still
means what I just said. So I just want to say Cottle: But beyond the commentators, there's plenty of folks who have decided
something very different.

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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 29/08/2026

This line of questioning is utterly irrelevant to public policy & to the lives of 99% of the people AES will be representing. But it is what America's desiccated, decadent political media has come to see as "tough questions" -- ie, questions designed to hurt your chances of being elected.

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Lauren Goldstein @lauren-goldstein.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Sharing a piece I co-wrote with the great @sjclermont.bsky.social on all the handwringing coverage about polling post-primaries. Polling isn't broken, but the way we consume it might be. laurenmgoldstein.substack.com/p/polling-is...

laurenmgoldstein.substack.com

Polling isn’t broken.

But poll coverage and consumption might be.

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Prof. Nicole Holliday @mixedlinguist.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Why should I bother to read something "written by an expert" who couldn't even be bothered to think through the ideas themself? These folks are a disgrace to our profession, and they're worsening the lack of trust in higher ed.

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Joseph Fasano @josephfasano.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Back to school. ❤️

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

I wonder if there's ever been a political movement before that claimed that immigrants were all carriers of diseases and therefore needed to be removed from society? Eh, it was probably a really positive movement, not one associated with evil in any way

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brad @bradiscranky.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

it is, in fact, completely contrary to the purpose and existence of higher education to say that every debate must continue eternally and no position can be dismissed and left behind

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Revan @revan.eurosky.social · 23/08/2026

Amazing

In the week after the June 24 primary election for mayor, I was determined to meet with voters in conservative neighborhoods where
Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani (D-Astoria), a democratic socialist, had performed surprisingly well. In a Howard Beach precinct where Mamdani won, I met a couple who, despite being conservative, voted for Mamdani because they bizarrely thought he had run "to the right" of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and also believed he was Italian-American, as his name ended in an
"'" and he was from Astoria.
When I dug further into why they thought he was running "to the right" of Cuomo, they noted that it was because he discussed "prices" and
"cost of living," as Donald Trump had in 2024.
They both voted for Trump. They had a hard time believing Mamdani was a socialist because they believed socialists "support making everything more expensive. 1"

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jon ben-menachem @jbenmenachem.com · 23/08/2026

I think the class of school administrators (not just in higher ed) who act fast to insulate core pedagogical functions from AI will reap major rewards for their trouble. In a few years, there will be an extremely stark difference between people who used AI in school and people who are competent

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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

In the american context communism is mostly unrelated to economics. Any progressive redistributive policy is communism, as is any egalitarianism of race, gender, or sexual orientation. Integration is communism, women in the workplace is communism, marriage equality is communism. It's deeply stupid.

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Philip Gourevitch @pgourevitch.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

This makes no sense: “Mr. Vindman far out-raised Ms. Nixon and was the clear front-runner in the race. But there was no public polling ahead of the primary.” So how was he clear front runner and how is it a huge upset? Big money doesn’t necessarily = voter support. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/u...

nytimes.com

Angie Nixon Scores Upset Win in Florida Senate Primary

Angie Nixon faces another difficult test this November against a Republican incumbent heavily favored to win.

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Adam Bonica @adambonica.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

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.

data4democracy.substack.com

With Fear and Favor

Institutions don’t have courage. They have incentives.

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

@gelliottmorris.com has been making me more aware of this—anytime a leftwing Dem becomes popular, pundits redefine them as not actually leftwing

I don't know what Zohran Mamdani or anybody else would do if they had kinglike power. But I would say Mamdani, in terms of, if you knew nothing about what he has said or what he believes, if you just saw what he has done governing, this would not look very different if another liberal candidate in that primary had won.

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G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · 11/08/2026

I've written a lot more about "America's new swing voter" today, showing how "anti-system orientation" is distinct from left-right ideology & driving much if not most of the gains for (1) the DSA in primaries and (2) the Democrats for the general election. www.gelliottmorris.com/p/2026-08-11...

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 11/08/2026

So Trump and the White House lied about which plane Trump was on flying out of Turkey, setting up journalists who thought they were on the same plane as the president to possibly be the target of an Iranian attack while he secretly departed on a different one. Words fail.

wapo.st

Contradicting public statements, Trump took secret flight from Turkey amid Iranian threat

The White House said the president was aboard Air Force One as he left a NATO summit. Instead, his departure included an elaborate ruse that concealed his travel.

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Lauren Goldstein @lauren-goldstein.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Counterpoint: literally what on earth are you talking about www.cidrap.umn.edu/vaccine-inte...

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Perry Bacon @perrybaconjr.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

I understand 60 Minutes is a huge platform. But NYT sets the agenda for American politics and elite discourse. That gave Ross huge power. And he used it poorly and often disingenuously. Good riddance.

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Dan Silverman @dmsilverman.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

New study shows that — contra widely accepted narratives — there is NO EVIDENCE that professors change their students’ politics and make them more liberal through their teaching

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noam @noamchompers.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

many professors are calling it 'the least surprising result of all time'

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