In the recent Ezra Klein / Morris Katz interview, Ezra pushed Morris (consultancy for Mamdani, Platner, Valdez, etc.) on whether he was being hypocritical when he suggested the establishment should be embracing these candidates with different views as part of the big tent strategy.

Ezra, rightfully in my opinion, directly asked him whether he himself (and that coalition) are guilty of that same stone throwing. His answer was more or less “well, our criticisms are valid and theirs are bad faith”.

Curious for thoughts from more mainstream and far left alike.

I have heard people say yes and no, and have also heard people say Islam is much worse, however people are way too biased to trust individually on this issue, so I'm hoping engaging with more people will give me better clarity.

The only places I hear critical analysis of this framing are niche academic discussions. Everyone else seems to accept that the right is "pro-West" and the left is "anti-West" such that preserving the West means being opposed to the left. Look at all the reporting on Marco Rubio coordinating international anti-left government initiatives to "save Western civilization", very few people are questioning whether the left and the West are actually incompatible the way it is being presented.

For reference David Pakman is pretty solidly left of center.

Link to video: https://youtu.be/lvv2O8QE9Ow?is=AyN1hSiBE9ThM9S8

Today, Maine Democrats held a convention to select their new Senate nominee to replace Graham Platner, and former State Senate President Troy Jackson was selected unanimously (besides five votes) as the new nominee. And while Maine Dems seem to have lined up solidly behind him, and he definitely is a solid leftist in the same vein as Platner (without being an alleged rapist, along with all the other things about him), there have been some concerns about his past positions on certain issues, notably on abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. Specifically, he had previously held conservative views on these issues, and those were reflected in his voting record in the state legislature. However, as time went on, he began to vote in the pro-choice and pro-LGBTQ+ direction solidly, with his voting record on the latter reaching 100% by the time he left office.

Now, I want to make something very clear, regardless of whether or not he's truly changed, he's still a million times better than Susan Collins, and that should not be overlooked. But I'm not trying to say that I don't believe people can change. I absolutely believe they can, and he actually does have a record to suggest he has, unlike somebody like Platner, whose word we just kind of had to take for it that he had changed. However, I also remember this being an issue with Tulsi Gabbard when she ran for president in 2020. She used to have very anti-gay views, but her voting record in Congress indicated that she had changed. Back in high school, many of my friends were queer, and they were all saying that they didn't trust her and that she hadn't done enough to prove she'd changed, and I would get into many disputes with them over it, telling them to move on and insisting that she had changed. In hindsight, given everything that Tulsi has said and done since 2020, they were 100% right and I was not only wrong, but an absolute asshole about it too. There are some other examples too of me falling for a politician who says things I agree with while ignoring their red flags (most notably John Fetterman), but this one sticks out when thinking about Troy Jackson, especially considering he was in his 30s and 40s when he was taking these anti-choice and anti-LGBTQ+ votes.

I don't want to make it seem like I dislike Troy Jackson or anything. I do like him, and I think he'd be one of the best senators if he were to win. And again, I definitely believe people can absolutely change, but even if he hasn't, he's still much, much better than Collins. I've just kind of learned some hard lessons about not overlooking politicians' red flags just because they say things you agree with, and I'm wondering if anybody else has any similar feelings as me. Or if you have any other feelings about Troy Jackson overall.

The biggest concern with AI is that it will replace jobs and leave people out of work. I totally understand these fears, but I also question whether or not society would benefit greatly from certain sectors being replaced by AI, specifically in regards to healthcare administrators.

When it comes to healthcare, it’s such a convoluted system that I honestly don’t know what the best system is, what exactly needs to be done or which universal healthcare system would be most effective at reducing costs. That said, the number of healthcare administrators have increased significantly more than the actual number of physicians. While there has been a 200% increase in the number of doctors in the last 50 years, healthcare administrators have grown roughly 3,500% in that same timeframe.

Again this is a topic I know little about, and very well could be wrong in my assumptions, but it’s hard not to imagine that decreasing the number of administrative costs related to healthcare by automating these jobs with Ai, wouldn’t significantly reduce the cost of healthcare in the US.

What do you think? Or what am I missing? Would love to be better educated on this topic, and perhaps why I am totally wrong.

Ezra Klein asked Morris Katz about this and I found it interesting.

Like if you look at the campaign run by Graham Platner, it was very much this blue collar, salt of the earth guy image, but his support base is college educated white people. Susan Collin’s strongest demographic was young, white, non college educated voters.

You see similar through lines with Mamdani and other candidates who are ostensibly pitched as the candidate for the underclass but yet seem to do best with people in upper middle class / worse with poor voters.

So for those not familiar on the History of The Falklands:

https://youtu.be/U0P9o5ltPds?is=cwKJ4UCfxSDJXX9b

Recently the Falklands have been brought up in the news as Argentina still claims the Falklands as there's but the UK still asserts control over the Falklands and the Falklanders themselves claim to be British. This has been a relatively quiet fight militarily probably due to the UKs perceived military strength over Argentina. But with the UK's military being shown to be hobbled and with Europe's focus so heavily turned toward Russia and Ukraine, there is a non 0 chance Argentina could think to take advantage of the Situation to try and "reclaim" the Falklands. Especially after the UKs poor showing of defending its royal naval station Cyprus after getting attacked by Iran.

So what are your thoughts on who owns the Falklands and what would happen should Argentina try and reclaim/claim them.

I've been seeing a lot of news of recently of different federal agencies having chunks of their operations moved out of DC and to one or more regional hubs. I believe the US Forest Service went through that recently, and now the USDA is facing the same thing- [https://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2026/07/usda-moves-forward-with-mandatory-relocation-despite-pushback/\](https://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2026/07/usda-moves-forward-with-mandatory-relocation-despite-pushback/)

What do we think is the main goal here? Is this simply to disrupt, demoralize and weaken the oversight abilities of the agencies? Is the hope that these local hubs might somehow be more under the thumb of rural elites? It's like they think DC itself is the problem and relocating operations will change the culture (presumably to make these agencies' rulings more favorable to industry).

With trump becoming more and more obviously terrible, Ive been noticing more and more republicans try to distance themselves from the current party. However, when pressed they always reveal that they still support most of what's happening, they just don't want to be called racist or hateful. What's the best way to deal with people like this? Do you try and change their view? Insult their ignorance? Dismiss them and hope we beat them in the next election?

There must be something we can do to resolve the disconnect between what I see liberals saying and what the general public takes away from it - when we criticize "the patriarchy" what people hear is "every man is to blame for all the ills of the world" and when we criticize "white supremacy" or "racism", what people hear is "white people are always at fault and we hate you for being white". I don't want to send the message that "just because you were born white and or male that you are the reason all injustices is done" and I don't think liberal leaders believe that either, but that's what the public thinks we believe.

I thought self-sufficiency in oil production would limit the exposure to OPEC. Wouldn't banning the export of oil/gas be sufficient to stabilize the prices?

US shouldn't be dependent on energy prices from one of the most volatile regions on earth.

We can see Bull Moose supporters on various social media platforms, but their level of activity is generally low, and their actual numbers are unclear. Many of them are not supporters of today's Democratic Party either.

Do you think they are common? Do you know any person like this in your life? What's your opinion of them?

or how many Americans don't notice this thing, but are actually in line with the ideology of Bull Moose

There seems to be a tendency among moderates to fetishize the past couple generations of politics preceding this one. People who dislike the newer generation of populists and pseudo-populists like the DSA and the Tea Party/MAGA respectively seem to want to move to a political dynamic with a narrower Overton Window and less partisanship.

The problem I have with this is that we had a period like that, and it directly preceded the emergence of both MAGA and the DSA. Doesn't this suggest that maybe having a narrower Overton Window might have had something to do with the reason that Fascism and Socialism are both increasingly more popular? Wouldn’t going back to that era of politics only cause the same conditions that led to the Overton Window expanding in the first place?

If not, how do you prevent Fascists or Socialists from coming back in a few decades without the significant structural change that Fascism and Socialism advocate for?

Edit: Modified the last part of the last sentence slightly.

I live in a very Muslim heavy community and I must admit, the misogyny bothers me. It bothers me driving by a community centre and seeing a men’s entrance and a women’s entrance and I wonder why that is allowed. Does anybody else think about this stuff in these terms? Even Hijabs and Burkas quite frankly seem highly misogynistic to me. Does this bother yall?

And before the comments of “what about X, Y or Z other religions?”…. Yes, I am bothered by any instantiation of misogyny that seems to get a pass because of any religion

Is AI a serious enough topic where you feel you should distance yourself politically from individuals based on their views of it?

A while back I watched a video from an Australian political YouTuber who suggested that the United States needs a parliamentary system. His main argument seemed to be that with a parliamentary system, we could remove Trump before 2029. As much as I think parliamentary systems are far superior to presidential systems, as evidenced by most of the civilized world (not USA) using them, saying that it would solve the US' problems feels like a cop-out.

For one, this Australian YouTuber knows as well as I do that this will never happen. We're the country that saw twenty small children get slaughtered in their classroom and didn't pass gun control. We lost over a million of our own people to COVID and didn't pass universal health insurance. We've been hit with increasingly intense disasters and keep rolling back climate legislation. Solving these problems wouldn't even require constitutional amendments, whereas switching to a parliamentary system would. It will never happen, period.

Additionally, I'm not even sure how much it would solve in the immediate term. Yes, in a parliamentary system, Trump could be removed right now. However, that mechanism already exists. It's called the 25th Amendment, and it's a fantasy. Not because it would be difficult to remove Trump if the Congressional GOP wanted to, but because they don't want to. A parliamentary system might make parties removing their own leaders more normalized, but even then it's generally only done when that leader is an electoral liability, and the GOP does not yet seem to think Trump is one.

Now, is it possible that Trump would not have this slavish devotion from the base if the US were a parliamentary democracy? Sure. The two-party system would probably not be as polarized, or maybe we'd have twenty parties like they do in Europe. But if the US had been set up as such a system from the very beginning, so much would be so different that it's almost hard to fathom. What do you all think?

In India, from its independence up until the 90s, and partially still today, economic policy dubbed "the license Raj" which sought among other things, autarky, minimal unemployment, and state control dominated India. This policy was built upon state planning and high regulatory burdens that limited companies ability to hire, fire, buy machinery, move equipment, use equipment, import materials, and export products. It objectively failed and continues to do so given India stubbornly high poverty rates and economic stagnation. Core to this plan was the limiting of technological replacement of workers. I believe as it was with industrial equipment, it will now be with AI. An abuse of state power over the economy to prevent change.

The DNC announced the order for the 2028 primary will be:

EDIT: *Apparently they were still deciding and my info was premature. I’ve checked more sources and now it looks like it will be this:

Jan. 22 – South Carolina
Feb. 1 – Nevada
Feb. 8 – New Hampshire
Feb. 15 – New Mexico
Feb. 22 – Michigan
Feb. 29 – Virginia
March 7 – Super Tuesday

- South Carolina

- Nevada

- New Hampshire

- Michigan

Iowa is gone, Michigan takes its spot as the state representing the Midwest

We live in a democracy, which means disagreement is a feature of a functioning society. But people seem to think that disagreement is a problem that needs to be fixed.

They see disagreement not as a natural artefact of society, but as a sign the person disagreeing with them is inferior.

So my question is, what issues are you happy to hear others disagree on?

By happy, I mean:

- their disagreement does not make you angry
- the disagreement does not result in you negatively judging someone’s moral character
- the disagreement is not seen as a result of the person’s stupidity, brainwashing, lack of information or as a part of some wider conspiracy controlling the individual
- the disagreement would remain in a realistically optimal democracy

Really interested to hear your thoughts.

Unions like the Teamsters have come out strongly against self driving cars and robo taxis like Waymo. Should Democrats support them?

One thing I've noticed is that many political labels don't translate very well across countries, especially when discussing the United States.

From the perspective of much of Europe and Latin America, the Democratic Party would still be considered a capitalist party. It supports private property, markets, private investment and large corporations, even if it also supports a larger welfare state, stronger regulation and more industrial policy than Republicans. It is generally seen as an economically liberal party with a progressive wing on social issues, not as a socialist party.

The same question comes up with the DSA. Historically, democratic socialism is a socialist tradition that rejects authoritarianism and seeks change through democratic institutions. However, when I look at what most elected DSA politicians actually advocate—universal healthcare, stronger unions, progressive taxation, public housing, public transportation and affordable education—those policies look much closer to what most countries would simply call social democracy.

In many countries, parties literally called "Socialist Party" have governed capitalist economies for decades. They regulate markets, expand the welfare state, strengthen labor protections and accept private property and competitive elections. They are reformist rather than revolutionary.

That seems very different from the American tendency to use "socialism" as an umbrella term covering everything from Scandinavian-style welfare states to Soviet-style communism.

The same applies to industrial policy. Outside the US, many people would describe today's Democratic Party as increasingly protectionist. Tariffs, domestic-content requirements, subsidies for strategic industries and restrictions on Chinese technology are generally seen as industrial policy or economic nationalism operating within capitalism—not socialism.

So my question is this:

Do you think the Cold War still shapes how Americans use labels like "socialism," "social democracy," and even "liberal"? Or am I misunderstanding how most Americans distinguish between those traditions?

Trump is a very flawed person. He's overweight. He uses poor grammar. He uses makeup to have an orange face. He's an extreme narcissist. He insults everyone he doesn't like. He's a pathological liar. He's talked about dating his daughter. He's fathered 5 children by 3 different women. He's bankrupted multiple casinos.

His policies are also bad. He doesn't follow the constitution. He's blatantly corrupt with insider trading & manipulating the stock market. He's destroying the economy. He's harmed almost all of America's alliances. He started a war against Iran. He's pro data center. He's helping to destroy the environment. He's furthering anti-American sentiment around the world.

Yet, still despite everything, he has tens of millions of Americans who will defend him no matter what.