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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…

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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
My message to students just before evals.
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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
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Had to cancel due to a family medical issue, sadly—have fun!
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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...
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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
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Democrats Need to Stop Being the Party of Wonks
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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.
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
the sentence fragments, the jumbled abstractions, the dangling modifiers
media.tenor.com
a man with long hair is sitting in front of a laptop computer
ALT: a man with long hair is sitting in front of a laptop computer
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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?
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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.
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
Same with Home Alone 2: Home Aloner.
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
www.nytimes.com/2025/12/16/u...
nytimes.com
Trump’s Top Aide Acknowledges ‘Score Settling’ Behind Prosecutions
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
Gather round the table tomorrow for a Thanksgiving reading with your loved ones!
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
You see an ideological range of people, lefties to mods, in and out of the Senate, who have no such reverence for the ridiculous, outlier institution of the filibuster and are reacting with incredulity at the sight of copartisans folding amidst visible Republican flailing. /end
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
Key Democrats, to their discredit, preferred to blow a winning hand than to risk the GOP actually having to *take* that responsibility.
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
Trump was absolutely right to see the proper endgame of the shutdown as the GOP ending this farce by finally going nuclear on approps and taking actual responsibility for governing. And Senate Republicans didn't *want* that responsibility.
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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.
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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.
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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
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
Stay peaceful, disciplined, and confident, and make this huge. www.nokings.org
nokings.org
No Kings
As the president escalates his authoritarian power grab, the NO KINGS non-violent movement continues to rise stronger. We are united once again to remind the world: America has No Kings and the power ...
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 10/10/2025
www.reuters.com/legal/govern...
reuters.com
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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.
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
Cringy 2017 protest-brunch energy matters a lot right now. Trump has used deployment in four cities as a provocation of violence & further crackdown. With protestors largely staying disciplined, he's been failing. A day of nationally distributed, localized, peaceful protests drives the failure home.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
He's gish-galloped himself.
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/ec...
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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.
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
The Dems can't abide that, but they've been reluctant to actually bring themselves to say any of it out loud. It's bracing to see a House member at least start to do so. /end
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
What the GOP position boils down to is that a few Dems should be made to eat shit and affirmatively vote for a bad-faith bill that's substantively objectionable and guaranteed to be reneged-on thru rescission and impoundment--*even though those votes are not actually necessary.*
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
But what's genuinely crazy-making is that even that leverage is in a true sense illusory. At any moment it's in the Republicans' power to jettison the 60-vote requirement and pass whatever they want.
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
Dems are in the minority across the board. They're feeling intense pressure to "fight," which means shutting down the entire govt via the one thin piece of leverage they have--the weird supermajority requirement for cloture on appropriations votes. It's a weak position to be in.
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
Divided government presents a perfectly legible clash of democratic mandates--"the people gave us control of the House to check this president!" "I'm your president and will stand up to extremists in Congress!" But right now Republicans have unified control of the government.
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
It hasn't penetrated the discourse sufficiently how unusual it is to be in a shutdown-via-filibuster. All the major past shutdowns have stemmed from divided party control of govt. (Though Trump's weird border-wall shutdown started in the lame duck just prior to divided govt.)
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
But the vibe *I’m* perceiving from “Dems need to fight” types seems surprisingly congenial to this position. It has the benefit of being true and making sense: We can’t make a deal with you because you’re going to reneg, so go ahead and take ownership of your own terrible budget.
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
No Senate Dem wants to say that because they want to talk about the popular substantive demands they’re making instead—and presumably because they think that explicitly welcoming the GOP’s filibuster-nuking will be seen as abdication by their base.
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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?
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 30/09/2025
press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...
press.princeton.edu
The Hollow Parties
A major history from the Founding to our embittered present that “explains the void” (Politico) at the center of America’s political partiesFeatured on The Ezra Klein Show and The Weekly Show with Jon...
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Sam Rosenfeld @samrosenfeld.bsky.social · 30/09/2025
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