Tootfinder

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…

Democrats may vote at last minute for governor. What it will mean
With the top two candidates in the primary advancing, many Democratic-leaning voters appear to be waiting for a clear leader to emerge, political analysts say.

Senator John Fetterman said last week he would formally switch his affiliation if Democrats make opposition to Israel part of their official platform.
It’s the first time the Pennsylvania senator has laid out a scenario in which he would jump ship.
Fetterman’s colleagues have doubts about his ability to win a Democratic primary.
One Democratic senator, who requested anonymity to speak freely, expressed anxiety over the prospect of an unexpected party switch by Fetterman.

Fetterman's Ultimatum Is Giving Some Democrats Anxiety He’ll Switch Parties
The Pennsylvania Democrat warns he will leave the party if it officially changes its platform regarding its stance toward Israel.

I see Proton are back on Mastodon after leaving in a huff last year after being criticised for praising the fascists running the USA.
Just a reminder their CEO thinks (I’m using the term very loosely here) that Trump and the Republicans will save us from Big Tech.
(They’re right about the corporate Democrats being shit. The solution to that is to flush the toilet, not jump headfirst into the sewer.) @…

Joe Cooper 🇺🇦 🍉 (@swelljoe@mas.to)
Attached: 2 images @protonprivacy@mastodon.social this you? This is either hopelessly naive or irredeemably dishonest. Gail Slater was a lobbyist for those same oligarchs.

Hakeem Jeffries: At least 7 blue states could redistrict by 2028 (Jen Rice/Democracy Docket)
https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/hakeem-jeffries-at-least-7-blue-states-could-redistrict-by-2028/
http://www.memeorandum.com/260519/p94#a260519p94

A dozen memes (in a thread) of the foreign policy moment: capitulation, surrender, losing the war.
🧵 1 of 3
#USpol #Iran #kegseth

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.

Democrats have seized on the deaths of three US troops killed in Iranian strikes to urge Donald Trump to urgently reverse his resumption of the war with Iran amid widespread anxiety over climbing casualties.
Even as US forces launched a 10th consecutive wave of attacks against Iranian targets,
concern over the deaths of American service personnel threatened to complicate moves to escalate the conflict,
which has reignited after he last week walked away from a memorandum of …

‘It needs to end now’: Democrats urge Trump to halt Iran war after US troop deaths
President accused of having ‘lost control of this war’ as deaths of trio in Iranian military strikes fuel rising concern

House Democrats' Litigation Task Force Fights to Block Trump's Self-Dealing Settlement in Sham $10 Billion IRS Lawsuit (House Committee on the Judiciary)
https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/house-democrats-litigation-task-force-fights-to-block-trump-s-self-dealing-settlement-in-sham-10-billion-irs-lawsuit
http://www.memeorandum.com/260518/p115#a260518p115

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 …

RE: https://c.im/@cdarwin/116956531400957913
Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator for Connecticut, accused Trump of having “frighteningly lost control of this war”.
“For those of us who pay attention to the hour-to-hour pace of the Iran War, things are getting ve…