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Plaidula

@plaidula.bsky.social
1.4K followers 771 following 1.1K posts

Himbo, strongman, G L O B E Chapter Lead of the Twin Cities New Liberals. Pro-liberalism, anti-"I'm too good for everything" cynicism.

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Plaidula @plaidula.bsky.social · 4h
Of course, this pitch sounds very different when the median voter is conveniently imagining that, since you said 5 contradictory things you might do, you'll do the things they like and not the stuff they don't like, as opposed to when you're the actual president and you keep doing things they HATE.
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ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 13/10/2026
a big reason (though not the only one) that so many elite institutions capitulated to Trump immediately in early 2025 is they had learned through long experience that Dems are too chickenshit to punish them for basically any reason. but things can change!
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Daniel Gilmore @gilmored85.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
Republicans traded in a sturdy, high turnout coalition for an extremely fickle, low turnout one that can only be assembled by one guy that also somehow doesnt have downballot benefits even when hes on the ballot—& now that one guy will never be on the ballot again. Good luck with that going forward.
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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
Though, cards on the table, in my ideal world we would have shifted those interceptor stocks and then told Ukraine to absolutely keep blowing the crap out of Russian oil infrastructure until every last Russian soldier was either off Ukrainian soil or buried in it.
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Daniel Gilmore @gilmored85.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
"dEmOcRaTs AnD rEpUbLiCaNs ArE iN a RaCe To ThE bOtToM" Fuck off
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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Let me try this: Maybe Trump campaigning, stealing from taxpayers to put out ads, and trying to bribe voters; Vance begging people to give them more of a chance; and Republicans spending big in TX, KS, SC, etc. is because they *don’t* have a good plan to overturn electoral loss, not because they do.
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Micah @rincewind.run · 08/10/2026
the reason “AI will create so much abundance we will have a utopian society” rhetoric falls so flat is that the people building it will never, ever share their bounty unless it is taken from them and we all know it
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🎃GHOULLIKEHELLMACHINE🎃 @golikehellmachine.com · 08/10/2026
the president demanding that one of the primary engines of the country’s economy — thousands of companies, trillions of dollars — rename their core products to suit his whim is tinpot dictatorship shit, and the only reason it doesn’t feel like it is because no one is listening to him
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Vituperative Erb @vituperativeerb.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
You could replace Biden with anyone you can think of and they aren’t going to be able to fundamentally restructure the judiciary with the narrowest legislative majority in American history. Biden would have preferred larger majorities! He’s a New Deal guy!
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ae @aelkus.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
“we don’t want to turn into a banana republic,” its too late for that, we are one now. getting out of it requires resetting incentives
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Vituperative Erb @vituperativeerb.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
The blame for Trump 2 lies with voters! That’s a bummer! But you gotta accept that!
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Plaidula @plaidula.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Increasingly convinced that like 80% of issues map onto one axis: Mom vs Drunk Uncle. HR Ladies? Moms. Founders? Drunk Uncles. Wine Aunts are Moms, despite the alcohol, while Alpha Male Abstainers are Drunk Uncles despite pretending to believe in moderation/self control.
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Plaidula @plaidula.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Reviving this classic from 2023.
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Plaidula @plaidula.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Wanted 3 things tonight: 1. Judkins gets me a bunch of fantasy points 2. Rodgers gets sacked a lot and has a bad time 3. Watson gets sacked a lot and has a bad time 2/3 ain't bad
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Plaidula @plaidula.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I probably listen to significantly more AI music than the average person, but that's because a lot of AI music is the perfect thing to put on while digging through code and spreadsheets specifically because it's reached a middle point where the mechanics are solid but the emotional valence is low.
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AdotSad @adotsad.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I'm sorry no, voters aren't getting a pass on this one.
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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
In practice though, it really seems like we're moving towards, "AI is a productivity tool that enhances the employee you have, but often doesn't really let you replace them, so much as get more out of them, in some fields. In others, it's mostly useless so far."
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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
“The base” means core voters, not those furthest from center who denounce the party and say don’t vote. Every sign says the Democratic base is very energized: party registration, likely voter screens, primary and special election turnout, generic ballot, which states are competitive, you name it.
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Max Dubler 🏳️‍🌈 @maxdubler.com · 14/09/2026
The American Democratic Party is overwhelmingly pro-trans.
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Schnorkles O'Bork @schnorkles.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Gotta admit that I don't really think it's coincidental that suddenly all the knives are out for Talarico the moment polling has rather decisively turned in his favor.
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 13/09/2026
Ossoff: "The draft-dodging commander in chief builds a monument to himself while plunging us deeper into a war he doesn't know how to end or win"
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A penitent who is loud @loudpenitent.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I'm not even stating a side on the latest Discourse - I'm simply saying: the goal of this shit published from the Beltway punditocracy, a group we KNOW loves Republicans & wants them to win, is to get YOU, personally, to despair & see enemies everywhere, to convince you the real war is against Dems
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Michael Paulauski♨️ @mike10010100.com · 11/09/2026
When normie establishment Dems did this, people interpreted it as a sign that establishment Dems actually just loved Republicans and the outrage/anger they expressed was keyfabe. Can we all recognize the double standard here?
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Daniel Gilmore @gilmored85.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
A lot of ppl are like "oh wow only 1/6th not a big deal," but as @unavaleable.bsky.social likes to note, Hoover only lost about a 1/5 of his voters in 1932 and it was a totalizing wipeout for him.
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Plaidula @plaidula.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
I continue to beat my specific hobby horse that this is generational. Boomers/Gen X are convinced GOP are better on economy because of vibes/memories from the 70s-80s. Millennials do not trust the GOP after W Bush and the GFC, Gen Z is having that same experience under Trump.
Snapshot of Google results saying Gen Z/Millennials trust Dems more on economy, Gen X/Boomers trust GOP more.
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Plaidula @plaidula.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
This is the most irksome part of watching people drag the founding fathers for "not anticipating this." You can anticipate all you want, but if the volk want ruination to cure their affluenza, there is no possible system to prevent them from getting it, including "authoritarianism, but for good"
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Plaidula @plaidula.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
I mean, Trump is successfully driving enormous numbers of farmers to bankruptcy and the Democratic coalition is probably only getting less reliant on farming communities in both the primaries and general elections moving forward. The pro-farming, pro-rural consensus may be coming to an end.
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Plaidula @plaidula.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
As I'm pretty sure Ed Zitron has noted (and I don't buy everything he says on AI, but I buy a lot of his financial analysis), the timeline in which all of these data centers need to be built, operational at stated capacity (including power use), and paying back debtors make this quite bad.
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Patrick Damp @synonymforwet.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
It’s been extremely funny to watch the “always following, always angry about politics” website predictably crash out over this. You guys do realize Jeffries has run circles around Johnson, right? He’s not the most inspiring pol but he is actually quite good at the job. Sorry.
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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
I want to expand on this in a short thread. Fascism sucks. It is also not going away: it is an effectively permanent part of modern representative politics because it is an effectively permanent part of human nature. We have to be prepared to push back against it, basically forever.
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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
We lived like that - brutal, slavery-and-genocide beggar-thy-neighbor competition for resources in which suspicion and violence towards outsiders was a key survival skill - for many tens of thousands of years before we even developed farming. We created culture for it. We *evolved* for it.
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The Fig Economy @figgityfigs.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
One of the online opinions I understand least but see most is “I, a poster, must be allowed to dictate the elected leadership of the Democratic Party and if I am not so allowed, I will never again support the party”.
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Plaidula @plaidula.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Different analysis frame: Boomers and people who remember the 70s have dominated electoral politics since the 1980s, and we may very well be about to swing the other direction, similar to how New Deal voters dominated an entire generation before the Boomers grew in electoral prominence.
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Schnorkles O'Bork @schnorkles.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
It is amazing that we are talking about a dems in disarray narrative when they're competitive in Ohio, Texas, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas lmao
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Plaidula @plaidula.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
I once worked at a company with a stupid early-morning all-hands every day, and one time the President called in from his phone but forgot to turn his camera off, as he was lying in bed with his eyes closed, lights off, plausibly snoring. Senior leadership was clearly mildly panicking. Hilarious.
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Plaidula @plaidula.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Realizing I'm from Minnesota and my opinion on larger mountains is unimportant, I must acknowledge that the Sawtooths on Lake Superior being as large as they are makes me feel less crazy about thinking of them as mountain-adjacent hills.
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JLRay @jlray.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
discourse alert: at -8 among white non-college workers, the GOP is now below the number Democrats hit among young men voters in 2024 (-5 on Nov 2024 vote choice) when we decided we had a demographic crisis on our hands
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Plaidula @plaidula.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
If the MAGA coalition loses 20% of its voters while the Harris coalition stays united, as this poll suggests, that really is a catastrophe for the GOP.
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Plaidula @plaidula.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
The most obvious way the US gets out of its current political predicament is neither in our control nor emotionally satisfying, but as many have noted, it mostly involves low social trust voters deciding that getting burned by Trump means politics doesn't matter and tuning out of future elections.
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Plaidula @plaidula.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
I think Nathan's point here holds up the most where a small pool can constrain consumer access (e.g., monopolies and oligopolies with collusion), which applies in many instances (e.g., housing). I think Max is right concerning the revealed consumer preferences in markets without these problems.
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Starfire’s Deranged Neocon Foreign Policy Podcast @irhottakes.bsky.social · 08/08/2026
I think the thing we are all in denial about when it comes to the One Cool Trick to win elections forever is that low info swing voters are basically incomprehensible eldritch horrors to politically engaged people. There’s no understanding them and you’ll go mad trying.
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The Fig Economy @figgityfigs.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
There is, let’s say, some tension between the conviction that deliverism must be true, and the conviction that doing incremental progress toward a goal will make your base turn against you.
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Plaidula @plaidula.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
I mean, current trends with Ukraine suggest that Ukrainian know-how combined with EU industrial production at a fraction of the US price is the future of European security, regardless of the next administration (which Europe will have no reason to trust anyway).
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Plaidula @plaidula.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Ok, but you see how that's a *you* problem, right? Any "Democratic Eatablishment" that includes elected Dems, Dem staffers, fundraisers, party leaders, etc. will include progressives and strongly oppose the GOP. If your definition of Dem Establishment doesn't account for that, it is wrong.
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Plaidula @plaidula.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
My position as a card-carrying Neolib shill is that I'd rather elect DSAers who win Dem primaries over literally any Republican. It's Vote Blue No Matter Who praxis time, baybeeeeee
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Plaidula @plaidula.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Ah, so the question remains: can Trump take this big of an L without walking back on the deal within a week because people (correctly) call him a loser?
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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 04/08/2026
Whitehouse: "Today I think is a sad and embarrassing day for this committee as it looks like on a party-line vote we are going to advance out of this committee probably the most discreditable person ever to seek the office of attorney general. Let's start with the Epstein files ... "
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Plaidula @plaidula.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Sickos.jpg but with a globe head
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Grudgie the Wail @grudgie.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
It’s completely nuts that Trump won by less than 2M votes with near universal media help and worldwide rage at incumbents and the media treated this like a permanent sea change towards MAGA and now less than 2 years later he’s the least popular President in history and there’s no media reckoning
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