Sign in

Sam Rosenfeld

@samrosenfeld.bsky.social
3.8K followers 641 following 308 posts

Associate Professor of Political Science, Colgate University. Author of "The Polarizers": press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/c…

PostsRepliesMedia
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
My message to students just before evals.
080
Reposted by Sam Rosenfeld
Daniel Schlozman @daschloz.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
I wrote about the DNC. www.nybooks.com/online/2026/...
nybooks.com
The DNC Against Itself | Daniel Schlozman
“Democracy is a very old institution,” explains the Democratic National Committee’s autopsy of the 2024 election, belatedly released in May. “And yet what
096
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
Looking back at the 2012 RNC autopsy, the contrast in terms of sheer institutional effort is certainly striking. It wasn't "Ask one guy to send you something for free." www.wsj.com/public/resou...
1195
Reposted by Sam Rosenfeld
Opinion Today @opiniontoday.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
The first steps to fixing Democrats’ disconnect from working people come in identifying the problem: Policy deployed as a substitute for politics makes for bad policy and worse politics. (@samrosenfeld.bsky.social and @daschloz.bsky.social, NYT-unlocked) www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Democrats Should Try Being an Actual Political Party Again
042
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
In the NYT today, @daschloz.bsky.social and I write about how Democrats became policy-pilled and why policy can't substitute for organizational connections to ordinary people.
5103
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
the modern professor's feeling of warm relief and gratitude at encountering artisanal, human-crafted bad writing while grading papers
2354
Reposted by Sam Rosenfeld
Michael Kruse @michaelkruse.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
There is an “emerging sense that Trump’s centrality to right-wing politics has an endpoint in the not-so-distant future,” @samrosenfeld.bsky.social tells @willoremus.com. “That all serves to loosen Trump’s symbolic grip on the right’s discourse.”
washingtonpost.com
‘MAGA is Trump’: President fires back at right-wing mutiny over Iran
Tucker Carlson and other MAGA figures with big online audiences have criticized the assault on Iran, triggering pushback from the president and White House.
16327
Reposted by Sam Rosenfeld
Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
Before Trump created a personalist regime, the modern presidency used to center on trying to pass legislation.
814640
Reposted by Sam Rosenfeld
Erica De Bruin @edebruin.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
New explainer from me, on understanding ICE as a paramilitary force, in more than one sense of the term 👇 theconversation.com/ice-not-only...
theconversation.com
ICE not only looks and acts like a paramilitary force – it is one, and that makes it harder to curb
ICE, created in response to 9/11, meets most definitions of paramilitary forces. Critics worry it’s gone beyond its writ of immigration enforcement.
23614
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
Meanwhile my undergrad thesis students have to dutifully fill out IRB applications for permission to do interview research. www.statnews.com/2026/01/22/v...
060
Reposted by Sam Rosenfeld
jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 15/01/2026
the question to ask about this is, okay, he wants to cancel the midterms. how does he get the VA state board of elections to cancel the midterms? how does he get the georgia board of elections to do it? how does he convince republican house members to quit their jobs and give up their paychecks?
422112412753
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
RIP to Jim Hunt, chairman of a Democratic Party commission that bequeathed us the instantly unloved, now all-but-dead, but in fact praiseworthy and sensible institution we call the superdelegates. www.ibtimes.com/political-ca...
ibtimes.com
Superdelegates Give Party Bosses Upper Hand
Many of those backing Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders are chafing under rules that give party bosses control over the nomination process.
120
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
Fun to see Susan Wiles unload a million dishy quotes about the admin, but seeing this take mixed in w/ the others is so jarring. This move has already killed hundreds of thousands of people! The moral vacancy of acknowledging its pointlessness while continuing to serve as CoS is hard to fathom.
140
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 30/11/2025
I've moved from despairing exasperation at students referring to nonfiction works as "novels" in their essays to affectionate relief at this emblem of non-AI organic human error.
1111
Reposted by Sam Rosenfeld
Dissent Magazine @dissentmag.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
Zohran Mamdani’s victory was rooted in organizations that took up the base-building and mobilization functions that once fell to parties. dissentmagazine.org/online_artic...
dissentmagazine.org
Partyism Without the Party - Dissent Magazine
Zohran Mamdani’s victory was rooted in organizations that took up the base-building and mobilization functions that once fell to parties.
04416
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
Gather round the table tomorrow for a Thanksgiving reading with your loved ones!
0111
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
In its limited, cabined, semi-nuked-and-therefore-always-potentially-further-nukable contemporary state, the filibuster has become the Senate's dark matter, at once powering and obscuring behavior on both sides.
1155
Reposted by Sam Rosenfeld
Joel Wertheimer @wertwhile.bsky.social · 02/11/2025
I think this passage is the crux of my disagreement with Drutman and @gelliottmorris.com on moderation: this reasoning is circular. The party labels and levels of polarization are not exogenous to choices made by both parties. www.gelliottmorris.com/p/democrats-...
Here’s another example illustrating the shortcomings of the moderation thesis: An independent candidate named Dan Osborn ran for Senate against incumbent Republican Deb Fischer in Nebraska in 2024. He came within 5 points of winning, in a state that voted for Trump by 20 points. He ran on an anti-swamp, pro-Trump, pro-border wall agenda.

Setting aside that a Democrat would never have been nominated with that agenda, I am confident that a Democrat would not have come as close as Osborn close even if they took those same issue positions. That’s because Republican voters attach stereotypes and baggage to Democratic candidates simply because of their party label.

If you’re a Democrat interested in breaking the Republican stranglehold on the Senate, the way you do that is to decrease the number of Republican Senators in the Senate. You can try to accomplish that by running a bunch of pro-Trump “Democrats” in red states like Nebraska. Or you can support institutional reforms to increase the likelihood that the anti-Democrat voters of Nebraska elect someone from a party other than the Republican Party.
2111
Reposted by Sam Rosenfeld
Princeton University Press @princetonupress.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
Now in #paperback with a new preface by the authors, The Hollow Parties by @daschloz.bsky.social & @samrosenfeld.bsky.social is a major history from the Founding to our embittered present that “explains the void” (Politico). Learn more: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics by Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld. A major history from the Founding to our embittered present that “explains the void” (Politico) at the center of America’s political parties
021
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
ActBlue, Open Society, Indivisible—terrorists all. Note how slipshod, confused, and ramshackle this project sounds even from quoted behind-the-scenes insiders. Miller WANTS it to sound maximally ominous and intimidating. The targets should hold their heads high and carry on.
719453
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
Henry's writing about about institutional actors more than the mass public, but the basic collective-action point relates to mass protests as well--a means of signaling the scope of opposition, unafraid and peaceful. Put me in mind of the No Kings day planned for 10/18, which can't come soon enough.
3217
Reposted by Sam Rosenfeld
Elizabeth N. Saunders @profsaunders.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
“This battle holds bigger lessons. The greatest weapon that the forces of regime change possess is the fear of inevitability. If everyone believes that Mr. Trump will succeed in reshaping America, he will.” A great @himself.bsky.social column in the @nytimes.com. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | You Beat Trumpism by Banding Together. It’s as Hard and as Simple as That.
13411
Reposted by Sam Rosenfeld
Filipe Campante @filipecampante.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
Super happy for the awesome @hahrie.bsky.social and her MacArthur fellowship -- couldn't go to a more deserving scholar and person... www.macfound.org/fellows/clas...
macfound.org
Hahrie Han
Analyzing the organizations and movements that equip people to participate in public life and solve problems together.
0174
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
Theory: Trump's governance is so hardwired to generate crisis & chaos and multiple media stories at once (typically a problem for Dems struggling to break through the noise) that it's actually making it hard for the GOP to effectively focus attention and jam Dems on the shutdown.
2483
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
Is this the first Dem MC to say this explicitly? That the reason this is the GOP’s shutdown isn’t because they “refuse to negotiate” or whatever but because they in fact have the power at any moment to nuke the filibuster and pass whatever they want to keep the govt operating?
15631205
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 30/09/2025
ONE EDITION AFTER ANOTHER
270
Reposted by Sam Rosenfeld
Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 08/09/2025
To put this into context, the judicial warrant for the search at the Hyundai plant named just four people. Relying on that warrant, ICE detained nearly 500 people. DHS admitted that included U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and people lawfully here on visas.
21173182973
Reposted by Sam Rosenfeld
Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
US law created to punish human rights violators—sanctioning officials personally instead of whole countries, since leaders usually don’t feel broad sanctions, passing the pain onto the population—now deployed to punish a Brazilian judge for upholding Brazilian law in the face of a coup attempt.
39851
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 23/07/2025
Trump's affection for Epstein is so earnest. It's like Kim Jong-Un level.
072
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
Seeing Don Bacon mix it up with critics and energetically defend this bill is instructive. He's a moderate who isn't seeking re-election. He's voting for this because, whatever his marginal objections, he believes in the agenda the bill embodies. The same goes for the vast majority of his party.
171
Reposted by Sam Rosenfeld
Clara Jeffery @clarajeffery.bsky.social · 30/06/2025
If you have a Republican Senator or Rep and you are opposed to this bill, you should call them.
Senate Republicans said they expected to begin voting on amendments to the domestic policy bill at 9 a.m. Monday, after taking a break likely sometime after midnight, rather than working all night.

The decision not to move from debate straight into the so-called vote-a-rama, an hours-long series of votes on amendments, could indicate that Republican leaders are still struggling to lock in support.
211101489
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 30/06/2025
Easy for close politics-watchers to miss the ways in which the old standard interchamber dynamic has now flipped—the GOP Senate has moved this legislation significantly to the RIGHT of what House Republicans had produced. The quirks of the reconciliation process are only a part of the explanation.
176
Reposted by Sam Rosenfeld
jae holzman @jael.bsky.social · 29/06/2025
Republicans are now suddenly planning to TAX renewable energy, transforming the repeal of the IRA from a challenge to a full-blown crisis for American solar and wind. I spent the last 24 hours putting this story together to explain why. Please share! This is really important!!! @heatmap.news
heatmap.news
How the Senate GOP’s New Tax on Renewables Could ‘Kill’ the Industry
As bad as previous drafts of the reconciliation bill have been, this one is worse.
511552995
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 18/06/2025
What @daschloz.bsky.social and I wrote in March: "At a time when the stakes of interparty conflict are existentially high, the Democrats’ picayune organizational dynamics retain an unmistakable student-council quality." The DNC's crisis of student-councilness is more acute than we knew.
151
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 18/06/2025
Thinking back to this @jeffstein.bsky.social classic. www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Can You Tell a Sunni From a Shiite? (Published 2006)
160
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
Inside the key party meeting with a Dem consultant in January 2025: youtu.be/ySP2NpzB_9w?...
youtu.be
You really think I ought to swear?
YouTube video by HydratedPizza
010
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 17/06/2025
“About two-thirds of the public says they have heard either little or nothing about the budget bill.” A fixable problem but it takes doing! www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...
washingtonpost.com
GOP budget bill faces nearly 2-to-1 opposition with many unaware: Poll
A plurality of voters oppose the sweeping tax-and-spending legislation, with mixed opinions on specific provisions, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll conducted earlier this month.
1919863
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
It'd be great if resignation letters like these weren't written in code. If the substance of these intraparty disputes matters at all, make it legible! www.nytimes.com/2025/06/15/u...
nytimes.com
Two Top Union Leaders Quit D.N.C. Posts in Dispute With Chairman
0607
Reposted by Sam Rosenfeld
Taniel @taniel.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
Melissa Hortman, who was assassinated last night, was the Speaker of the Minnesota House in the 2023-2024 session, when Democrats ran the state government. That means she had a leading role in shepherding the many landmark reforms that Dems adopted in that period—an important legacy. Brief 🧵.
4989383399
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
A few takeaways from this big Atlantic piece on Future Forward and the Harris campaign: www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...
theatlantic.com
How Democratic Disagreement Helped Elect Donald Trump
One democratic candidate, two presidential campaigns.
152
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 13/06/2025
He’s heading back down now, but I feel like there isn’t much of a consensus explanation for why Trump’s numbers had started to drift back up over the last month.
230
Reposted by Sam Rosenfeld
G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · 12/06/2025
Trump's immigration approval has fallen 6 points on net this week www.gelliottmorris.com/p/data
271210273
Reposted by Sam Rosenfeld
Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
This is the most straightforward thing they've said so far. They're using the military to "liberate" Los Angeles from its mayor and governor.
26136451052
Reposted by Sam Rosenfeld
Leah Greenberg ❌👑 @leahgreenberg.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
Everyone do what Mark Ruffalo tells you to do
1147297
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
Such an absolute Type. A true recurring Guy through the ages! www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
010
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
"Trumpism can be seen as a giant attempt to amputate the highest aspirations of the human spirit and to reduce us to our most primitive, atavistic tendencies."
030
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 27/05/2025
Quite a weekend for celebrity aeronautic stunt work. #MissionImpossibleTheFinalReckoning #TheRehearsalHBO
000
Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 25/05/2025
Long past time Cruise had a Final Reckoning with natural graying.
100