^ I have a friend in the Raleigh DSA and he will say the same thing. There’s a schism actually on strategy whether to change course and go after electoral wins like Mamdani, or stand by principles. This is crippling the local organization and causing splinter groups. But also worth noting the DSA is not a centrally organized group. They have zero organizational structure or funding. Any group of people can say they’re DSA.

Side note I had ai evaluate if Mamdani is technocratic or populist and there’s a nice table with reasoning:
https://chatgpt.com/share/69165bec-3204-8011-b6fa-097081a7cb36

11/13/2025 5:31:20 PM

It’s comforting to know that I’m not the only one who spends way too much time having pointless debates and doubling down on petty thought experiments with AI.



[Edited on November 13, 2025 at 11:46 PM. Reason : we’re all doomed]

11/13/2025 11:42:34 PM

If you zoom way out, the Trump-Epstein pedo ring really does contain a lot of the elements that Dems are trying to message on and build narratives about. Powerful people preying on the desperate while big banks finance it all. I hope someone out there, more thoughtful and eloquent than I, can pull this all together and run with it.

Did you catch the story about the Epstein victim that fell into abuse because her mom had cancer and she thought Epstein could help? Has there ever been a story more perfectly crafted to frame healthcare policy as a moral question?

https://www.npr.org/2025/07/18/nx-s1-5471348/an-abuse-survivor-speaks-out-about-the-justice-departments-handling-of-epstein-files

Quote :

"BENSKY: Yeah. So I was a ballet dancer, and I went to a professional performing arts school in the city. And I was recruited at a very young age. I was not quite 18 at the time. And I met Epstein, and at first, it wasn't - you know, the abuse didn't start until a little bit later. And my mother was diagnosed with a brain tumor. She had an acoustic neuroma. I had been to the mansion before, and I knew that he had a model of a brain that was in - it was in sculpture form. So nobody knew where his money had come from at that point. All I knew was that he was a very powerful person, and it felt very intimidating, and he often manipulated us to feel that intimidation. So I didn't know where the money came from, and I thought that it came from neuroscience. And so when my mom had discovered that she had a brain tumor, I had gone to him and showed him the brain scans. And when I did, that was when everything evolved and the world kind of came crashing down for me in that he said, basically, OK, well, what will you do for this? He had said, you know, I know the top brain surgeons at Mount Sinai. You know, I have all of this power, and I can use it to help you, or I can make it really difficult for your mother. For myself, I was a teenager, and I was a young teenager, and I just felt like I had to go along with it for her safety, and so I did. And it was - that was when the abuse turned for me."

11/14/2025 10:00:12 AM

Americans already know Trump is a sleazeball. It will not move the needle.

11/14/2025 10:08:47 AM

Dems don’t need to beat Trump in 2026, they need to beat House Republicans (and hopefully pick off a few in the Senate too). The Trump-Epstein issue absolutely shreds their caucus unity and, depending on how they play it, will make them look complicit in coverup. Dems need maximum pressure in the House, I say turn the Trump-Epstein outrage up to 11.

11/14/2025 11:00:47 AM

^^ it very clearly is moving the needle

if it wasn’t, they wouldn’t have felt the need to put the full court press on Boebert

11/14/2025 12:06:17 PM

Quote :

"I agree that Dems need to spend a lot more time on using power when they have it to actually achieve things of value for the American people and spend a lot less time on "other side bad" rhetoric games"

Feels like they tried that and end result was Trump let off the hook and everybody decided whatever he did must have been blown out of proportion and not that bad

Republicans have a much better media/publicity arm to sell their views, Dems need something similar to take credit for the things they actually accomplish.

[Edited on November 14, 2025 at 1:25 PM. Reason : Also please look at a time based Trump approval poll]

11/14/2025 1:25:13 PM

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/opinion/shutdown-democrats-senate-midterms.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1E8.YpE4.ptzRjZVaBEXt&smid=url-share

Quote :

" If they win, Democrats will have to use their newfound authority to rethink, even dismantle, agencies like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. They may need to walk back the Bush-era decision to consolidate those agencies and others under a single department, given the wild abuses perpetrated under this administration and its predecessors. It will need to give serious thought to major political and social reform, including D.C. statehood, a federal ban on partisan gerrymandering, a new voting rights act and federal protections for reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, including the rights of gender and sexual minorities. Democrats will also need to embrace the legislature's constitutional authority to structure the executive branch and the judiciary, up to and including Supreme Court reform. If they win next year, Democrats will need to treat the next Congress not as a return to the status quo ante but as the beginning of a new era in which the principal task is to roll back the president's effort to create and consolidate a personalist dictatorship. They'll need to fortify the American political system against future attempts to play dictator and lay out a project of genuine democratic renewal. None of this is possible without a willingness to use power rather than just hold it. What we've seen this week is that there are still too many Democrats whose instinct is to retreat to normalcy rather than face the conflict at hand."

[Edited on November 14, 2025 at 2:36 PM. Reason : .]

11/14/2025 2:36:17 PM

^

11/14/2025 2:53:40 PM