@cdarwin@c.im2026-05-21 16:43:19
Democrats may cast last-minute ballots for California governor.
“There’s a little bit of, whoever’s in the lead some Democrats are choosing to vote for … but people don’t know who that person is,” Grose said,
noting that “some of that [could start] to go away” as the race tightens.
An indication that Democrats are starting to consolidate around Xavier Becerra, the former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, came Tuesday in a new survey released by the California Demo…
@hex@kolektiva.social2026-06-22 04:44:36
The first record of the parable commonly known as the "Blind Men and the Elephant" showed up around 2500 years ago, in a Buddhist text from India. At this point it's pretty commonly known. I assume that most folks reading this will be familiar with some variation of it.
If not, it's essentially a story about people who have limited information making assertions about something: one man grabs a tail and says, "it's like a rope," another the trunk and says, "it's like a snake," a third the leg saying, "it's like a tree," and so on. Later variations are less kind to the men, having them not simply report their findings, but fight over them. The first English translation draws a parallel to religion.
This comes to mind for me, because social media has a tendency to incentivize us to make those hard assertions, to dig in, to argue our perspective as part of a spectacle. Free and federated social media isn't structurally that different from corporate media, so the incentive models built to maximize engagement by maximizing conflict tend to leak through the similarities in the user experience and the conditioning of other platforms.
I didn't really come here to critique the fediverse, but rather to remind everyone, "no one sees the whole fucking elephant." We are limited and there are necessarily some things so big they will never be individually comprehensible. Any system that relies on us all agreeing cannot possibly respond to those big things.
We can see that concretely if we look at the difference between "democratic unity" and "diversity of tactics." In the first model, everyone either agrees or gets forced to behave as though they agree (at least on some issues). That's how liberal democracy works. Diversity of tactics (which systematically described, for example, in the "St Paul Principles"), on the other hand, let's people align on goals without needing to agree on exactly how to achieve them. The reality being that often there are multiple "correct" paths, and sometimes those paths can only work if multiple paths are taken in unison.
No one sees the whole elephant. We won't even see the elephant later. People will still be arguing about the elephant long after it's gone. But if you want to get rid of the elephant, you're gonna need to accept that you can't comprehend it all and you're gonna have to figure out a way to work together that doesn't require a unified approach.
@cdarwin@c.im2026-05-20 15:02:08
At least within the Republican party, Trump approval rating remains at 82%, according to a New York Times newspaper/ Siena poll released on Monday.
But the same poll showed Trump’s overall approval rating down to 37%, the lowest of either term. Nearly two in three voters disapprove both of his handling of the economy and decision to wage war on Iran. Democrats lead Republicans 50%-39% on the generic congressional ballot.
This suggests the Republican party is ever more out of whack …
@andres4ny@social.ridetrans.it2026-07-19 17:36:46
hells yeah #NYCPol
@ErikJonker@mastodon.social2026-05-18 16:07:55
Corruption in plain sight. A slush fund that Trump can use to help his friends...
https://apnews.com/article/trump-lawsuit-irs-leak-3729de38770b558be01712a143437bf8
@memeorandum@universeodon.com2026-05-14 14:35:48
Democratic Lawmaker, 83, Has Been Missing for a Month (Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling/New Republic)
https://newrepublic.com/post/210433/democratic-lawmaker-missing-month-midterms
http://www.memeorandum.com/260514/p39#a260514p39
@memeorandum@universeodon.com2026-06-09 21:01:11
Trump DOJ argues Georgia can conduct last-minute voter purges, despite federal law (Yunior Rivas/Democracy Docket)
https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/trump-doj-argues-georgia-can-conduct-last-minute-voter-purges-despite-federal-law/
http://www.memeorandum.com/260609/p100#a260609p100
@cdarwin@c.im2026-06-16 13:43:42
A group of Democratic senators
and one Republican, as well as two Democratic House committees,
sent letters Monday to the National Science Foundation
asking it to reverse course on its plan to dismantle a sprawling ocean monitoring network,
with House lawmakers going further and accusing the agency of acting illegally.
The Ocean Observatories Initiative is a network of more than 900 ocean sensors built at a cost of $386 million.
Over the last decade it has…
@cdarwin@c.im2026-06-16 13:54:18
Primary elections are taking place in Oklahoma today and a closely watched run-off is underway in Georgia,
as Donald Trump’s iron grip on the Republican party faces its next test.
In Washington DC - a Democratic stronghold - voters are also selecting a candidate for the party ahead of November’s mayoral election.
Oklahoma will hold races to help decide US senate and gubernatorial candidates.
Ahead of November’s midterms, Trump has given his early backing to Kevin Hern…
@cdarwin@c.im2026-05-13 17:26:48
Who will win the House?
The scales are shifting.
The map is becoming so tilted that a four-point Democratic win might not be enough for a majority
The Virginia Supreme Court’s decision that last month’s redistricting referendum violated the state’s constitution has predictably sent Democrats into a frenzy.
Democrats are going to be even angrier in November if
— as now appears possible
— they win the national popular vote by a large margin but don’t capt…
