Sr. Elections Analyst, @RCPolitics, Visiting Scholar, @AEI, Lecturer, @osupolisci. Recovering Attorney. Husband, Dad. Writes about elections, history and more.
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I think it's more like the old mental game of "what if everyone else is a zombie?" or "how do you really know the past is real?" There's no particularly good answer to those questions, yet we all know the answer.
Thinking AI might be conscious is like thinking that there are real people talking to you from inside the TV, or that there is a tiny band playing music inside the radio.
Fine for 2 year olds to believe, but beyond that, insane.
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If you have a team you want hexed, LMK and I can try to pick up some of their players off the waiver wire.
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Sean T at RCP retweeted
I still think Troy Jackson is gonna win, but the @rtraister piece felt like an obvious attempt to preemptively pass the buck, presumably planted by the same people who insisted that Jackson be the nominee.
All of Jackson’s vulnerabilities were on full display at the time when Platner and his allies were insisting that only Jackson could replace him.
Anybody who followed the primary for governor could see that Jackson was not a great campaigner. He placed third despite being endorsed by Bernie and Platner, and was clearly a lackluster campaigner and debater.
Yet despite these clear vulnerabilities, Platner and his allies insisted on Jackson over someone like Nirav Shah—who got the most votes in the first round of the gov primary (before RCV kicked in), was an energetic campaigner and had a genial, approachable demeanor that seemed well-suited to wining over a Maine general election audience. (I thought Shah was a better pick and said so at the time.)
From the beginning, the narrative surrounding this race has been marred by confusion over what motivates democratic primary voters versus general election voters.
The subtle shifts in Jackson’s issue stances that Traister hangs her piece on are probably only legible to the most committed Democratic primary voters.
Whereas swing voters like these folks, who were quoted in the NYT, do not sound like they are voting for Collins because Jackson is insufficiently left-wing.
It seems pretty clear that the Platner-verse progressives saw one (1) NYT poll and decided to throw Troy Jackson under the bus by rebranding him as an establishment puppet based on nothing so they don't have to claim his loss, which they see as inevitable. Real backstabby stuff!
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How much are candidates and PACs in hotly contested states paying for local TV ads?
I've compiled a list of some quoted ad prices for Wheel of Fortune and the late local newscasts on the Wheel channel into chart.
Who pays what varies greatly by market, adv type & priority.
1/?
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I go back-and-forth. AI can be a powerful tool for learning. If you work to a stopping point on a proof, go to office hours and don't really understand what the prof showed you, AI can explain with infinite patience. But most 18 year olds will just use it to solve the proof.
Exactly this: AI-powered edtech is being sold to universities under the guise of increasing “access.” Helping disabled students is a Trojan horse that has proven extremely effective for morally blackmailing admins into buying software, and profs into allowing it in the classroom.
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Sean T at RCP retweeted
This kind of thing is Libs of TikTok for the right. It will erode the Republican Party just as woke nonsense eroded the Democrats. I'm totally here for it.
If you think women should be able to vote, have jobs, live alone, or have unsupervised access to one another, that is because "you have normalcy bias for insane world": "You're living in an insane asylum and you think it's the normal world." peoplefor.org/rightwingwatch…
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Amazing
Some NPR podcasts started getting mysterious comments on Spotify. They made no sense to the staff reading them – until someone from a younger generation cracked the code.
Hear the story: link.podtrac.com/phns92ui
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Something I did not expect to find: R/D/I in Kansas, 2016: 44.4%/24.8%/29.9%. 2020: 45/26.4/27.5. June 2026: 44.4/24.7/29.7.
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The reason that so many people on the left can't let go of masks is that they symbolize the last great "state of exception," where the normal rules of governance were suspended and the enemy could be culturally and politically punished.
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Republicans could actually have a reasonably compelling record to run on. But a story like this gets washed out in [waves arms] all this.
This chart is the only reason you need to vote Republican in the midterms. The second Democrats regain control, they will open the border and continue the replacement of the U.S. population with foreigners who hate our way of life.
If they retake power, we will lose our country.
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People value what they want, but the problem that you quickly run into is that there are relatively few general electorates that are majority Republican. So if you elevate a Republican without sufficient appeal to Independents, you put the seat at risk.
You punish bad Republicans in the primaries.
You vote to save the country from leftists in the general.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
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"States are free to decide for themselves whether last-minute changes to an election are in their best interests." This is a dangerous precedent, ripe for abuse. But it's consistent with my broader thesis: The Court just wants out of election cases, to the extent it can do so.
MORE: “The Eighth Circuit’s application of Purcell was incorrect. Even though federal courts should not impose changes close to an election, States are free to decide for themselves whether last-minute changes to an election are in their best interests—subject, of course, to certain limited constraints imposed by federal law. Moreover, in this case, the Missouri Supreme Court was not responsible for the late-breaking changes. On the contrary, in an opinion back in May 2026, well before the primary election, the Missouri Supreme Court stated that the 2025 map would not take effect until approved by the voters in an intervening referendum, at least if the referendum petition was legally sufficient. So in the several-month period before the August primary election, the Missouri Secretary of State was well aware that conducting the August primary election with the 2025 map carried significant risks. The Secretary nonetheless chose to proceed with the 2025 map for the primary.”
supremecourt.gov/opinions/25…
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People seem to have a hard time believing that I mean what I mean. Just as lists of "best presidents" typically tell us more about historians than about presidents, these type of lists tell us more about art critics than about the art. 1/
To be clear, I don't think a film studies degree, culinary arts degree, or art degree gives you special insight into what a "good" movie, meal, or painting is. At best, it gives you a special set of criteria. The real value is teaching you how to create movies, film and art.
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IE I think it is a genuine problem that the Oscars have largely devolved into a celebration of movies almost no one has heard of. 3/
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