Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

May 25, 2026 at 12:03 PM

Jared Polis's High Crime

View this post on the web at [link removed] I had the opportunity on Friday to chat live with David Seligman, who’s a labor and consumer protection lawyer, and candidate for Colorado attorney general. He’s one of a small number of Colorado Democrats who’s staked out the view that the state’s te…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

May 22, 2026 at 1:06 PM

Filibuster Reform Is No Longer Enough

View this post on the web at [link removed] Bringing the broad left around to the importance of abolishing the filibuster has been a decades-long project. Happily, we’ve reached the cusp of success. The bad news is we’re already too late—unless we expand our horizons. The time to act, the last …

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

May 21, 2026 at 6:55 PM

🗓️ Brian Beutler is going live on May 22 at 11:30 AM EDT: “A conversation between David Seligman and Brian Beutler”

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

May 21, 2026 at 1:42 PM

They Think They're Winning For All Time

View this post on the web at [link removed] Ian [ [link removed] ]: Thinking about the downfall of Cassidy in the LA primary last night, and the way he groveled for his job by voting to confirm Kennedy even after once showing the courage to vote for impeachment. And then lost anyway (as he surely…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

May 20, 2026 at 12:28 PM

They're Really Going For It

View this post on the web at [link removed] There’s no contradiction between Donald Trump’s deepening unpopularity—and his evident commitment to further unpopular conduct—and his intensifying assault on democracy and the rule of law. When democratic politicians become unpopular, they try to und…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

May 19, 2026 at 1:24 PM

Moral Clarity And The 2028 Presidential Primary

View this post on the web at [link removed] All else equal, we should assume [ [link removed] ] that ambitious Democrats would rather rise to the presidency in a fairer system, one that isn’t rigged by Republicans to make Democratic Party governing impossible. But what these Democrats feel in t…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

May 18, 2026 at 1:18 PM

Bracing For The Next Redemption

View this post on the web at [link removed] We’ll get to Jared Polis in a minute, but first: Imagine two futures in which Democrats manage to defeat Trumpism through normal politics. They win the coming midterms, notwithstanding unprecedented Republican subversion, and keep or expand their majori…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

May 15, 2026 at 2:44 PM

Institutional Rot And The Death Rattle Of America

View this post on the web at [link removed] It’s remarkable, when you step back and think about it, how toxically maladapted the power centers in U.S. politics have become to one another. A simple-minded idealist might like to live in a world where the two major U.S. political parties advance c…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

May 14, 2026 at 12:40 PM

Are Democratic Voters Or Democratic Elites To Blame For Democratic Timidity?

View this post on the web at [link removed] Patt [ [link removed] ]: Ohio defied their Supreme Court and ran their 2022 election with maps that had been invalidated by their Supreme Court. Should Virginia do the same, as well as enact the age limit on justices? Max M. [ [link removed] ]: If it’s…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

May 13, 2026 at 1:32 PM

The Failed Game Theory Of Democratic Electoralism

View this post on the web at [link removed] Let me stipulate a few things I think most people, even many Republican voters, would agree with: Principles are supposed to run deep. Politics allows for all kinds of hypocrisy and maneuvering and compromise, but everyone who serves the public should …

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

May 12, 2026 at 12:32 PM

A Terrible Omen

View this post on the web at [link removed] I don’t think it will happen. But there’s at least some chance Democrats will “win” millions more votes than Republicans in House elections this November, but fail to gain a majority by the margin of Republican gerrymandering. And if it does happen,…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

May 11, 2026 at 1:15 PM

Republican Judges Leave Democrats No Choice But To Escalate

View this post on the web at [link removed] I had this piece mostly completed on Thursday. It was originally drafted to flag my concern, as I did on the podcast [ [link removed] ], that the Republicans on the Virginia Supreme Court might well overturn the state’s the new congressional map. The ne…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

May 8, 2026 at 12:51 PM

Saving Democracy And Reality-Based Politics Requires Billionaire Realism

View this post on the web at [link removed] Ending this vicious cycle has to be a top priority for Democrats, if they ever want a fair shot at governing again. Democrats might still win elections despite the best efforts of right-wing oligarchs. But as long as those oligarchs have unlimited weal…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

May 7, 2026 at 1:01 PM

In Defense Of Grubby Partisanship

View this post on the web at [link removed] Avi [ [link removed] ]: Tucker Carlson has said he’s been trying to get Mamdani on his podcast ever since his moment on the debate stage last year when he wouldn’t commit to visiting Israel. Mamdani has declined so far, which seems prudent to me, given …

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

May 5, 2026 at 4:17 PM

How To Protect The Midterms From GOP Subversion

View this post on the web at [link removed] The good news: Democrats are taking Donald Trump’s threats to subvert the midterms as seriously as they took the gerrymandering arms race. They’re planning, they’re war-gaming. The bad news: it’s ominous that they believe the federal government repres…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

May 4, 2026 at 1:32 PM

When The Fascist Rump Is All That's Left

View this post on the web at [link removed] Hakeem Jeffries recently visited Fox News to assure its hostile audience that Democrats don’t intend to waste time using impeachment as a tool to investigate or otherwise check Donald Trump. “Of course not,” Jeffries said [ [link removed] ]. “I’ve mad…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

May 1, 2026 at 8:18 PM

🗓️ Brian Beutler is going live on May 4 at 2:00 PM EDT: “Brian Beutler w/ Hunter Walker and Josh Kovensky on protecting the vote this November”

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

May 1, 2026 at 2:11 PM

Time For The DNC To Sue CBS News For $20 Billion

View this post on the web at [link removed] Knives are out for Ken Martin as Democratic National Committee chair, and they probably should be. Fundraising has been anemic, spending has been questionable, and he broke a clear promise to release the committee’s post-2024 autopsy. So Martin may no…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

April 30, 2026 at 1:09 PM

How To Weigh A Human Head

View this post on the web at [link removed] Heather L. [ [link removed] ] What is continually shocking to me is that even when Trump’s poll numbers are “plummeting”, the approval rating among Republicans remains an absolutely staggering 68%. I mean WTF. Just in the past few weeks alone, he’s insu…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

April 28, 2026 at 12:39 PM

Trump Brings This Upon Himself—And Us

View this post on the web at [link removed] If you’ve been troubled by the re-emergence of conspiracy theorizing in the American center-left, if you’re frustrated by all the people who believe Donald Trump has engineered false flag attacks against himself, I get it. But I also invite you to put y…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

April 27, 2026 at 1:01 PM

Do Not Authorize The F@cking Ballroom

View this post on the web at [link removed] The upshot of the White House Correspondents’ Association’s limp decision to invite Donald Trump [ [link removed] ] to its annual dinner has been to fuel a Republican propaganda blitz. For those just tuning in, the event attracted an armed man who tri…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

April 24, 2026 at 1:37 PM

You Are Actors In History

View this post on the web at [link removed] As a younger person, I struggled to absorb and process history, and thus didn’t appreciate it—not as a student, not as a sightseer. At least not for the reasons people devote their lives to history as a vocation. My preferences ran to puzzles with corre…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

April 23, 2026 at 1:39 PM

The Gerrymandering Fight Should Be A Dress Rehearsal For Court Packing

View this post on the web at [link removed] Michael [ [link removed] ]: What can the Democratic party or left of center people more generally do to more effectively convince the public that the Supreme Court is run by a partisan Republican majority? To make reforms up to and including court expan…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

April 22, 2026 at 1:44 PM

What Happened To Consumer Sentiment?

View this post on the web at [link removed] It’s instructive to imagine yourself (or a composite, fake person) living life severed from media and rhetoric and marketing. Or as insulated from those things as it’s possible to be in modern times. No TV, no radio, no streaming, no social media (tex…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

April 21, 2026 at 12:36 PM

What Trump's Iran Humiliation Can Teach Democrats About Fighting

View this post on the web at [link removed] Let’s use Donald Trump’s Iran debacle as a metaphor for domestic accountability politics. If you asked me to place a bet on the near-term resolution of Trump’s war on Iran, I’d ̶i̶n̶f̶i̶l̶t̶r̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶W̶h̶i̶t̶e̶ ̶H̶o̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶m̶o̶n̶e̶t̶…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

April 20, 2026 at 1:09 PM

MAGA Is Eating Itself

View this post on the web at [link removed] On one hand, it’s frustrating that a political data analyst like Harry Enten would hype [ [link removed] ] a survey finding that Donald Trump has 100 percent approval among people who identify as MAGA. (Not accounting for a significant margin of error.)…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

April 17, 2026 at 2:31 PM

They're Only As Repressive As Their Constraints Allow

View this post on the web at [link removed] Everyone’s looking to Hungary for lessons. What does it mean that Viktor Orban conceded defeat? What does it mean that Hungarians ousted him in the first place? What does either fact mean for the United States, insofar as Orban was an inspiration figure…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

April 16, 2026 at 1:32 PM

How To Deter "Look Forward Not Backward" Thinking

View this post on the web at [link removed] Gary Paudler [ [link removed] ]: Trump is reported to have promised pardons to all cooperating criminals. If I recall correctly, if one accepts a pardon, one is acknowledging guilt. If so, wouldn’t there be at least symbolic meaning to investigating, pr…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

April 15, 2026 at 3:34 PM

Call Their Bluff

View this post on the web at [link removed] If Viktor Orban’s willingness to acknowledge defeat helps underscore Donald Trump’s aberrance, it also provides refuge to right-wing authoritarians in America. They can now unctuously cite Orban’s concession and (so far) peaceful hand-off of power as pr…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

April 14, 2026 at 3:15 PM

What Democrats Should And Shouldn't Learn From Hungary

View this post on the web at [link removed] Viktor Orban conceded, Donald Trump never did. These two basic facts, etched into history after Orban lost his election Sunday, quickly formed an interpretive lens through which to view democratic backsliding in Hungary and the United States. If you’r…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

April 13, 2026 at 2:31 PM

JD Vance Goes Bust

View this post on the web at [link removed] I think JD Vance might have finally fumbled the ball irretrievably. He’s midair, horizontal, arms extended, face contorted in panic. He’ll do anything he can to salvage it—it, being the ball, which represents his deeply held pretensions to power. But it…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

April 10, 2026 at 2:00 PM

Donald Trump's Plan To Steal Or Destroy Everything

View this post on the web at [link removed] Donald Trump now claims to own all of his presidential records. To be more precise, his Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which interprets law for the entire executive branch, recently opined [ [link removed] ] that the Presidential Records …

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

April 9, 2026 at 1:43 PM

An 11-Point Plan To Fascism-Proof America

View this post on the web at [link removed] Sean [ [link removed] ]: How should elected Democrats fight back against the epic levels of “sanewashing” we are seeing since the start of the Iran War, which reached yet another peak with shocking downplaying of Trump’s profane Easter threats. For tho…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

April 8, 2026 at 4:04 PM

Republicans Chose Armageddon Over Checking Trump—They Just Got Lucky

View this post on the web at [link removed] I called it “The Humiliation of Donald Trump” [ [link removed] ] for two reasons. First, because schadenfreude is more powerful than my restraint: It’s good when bad things happen to him, and we should rub it in his face. Second, more importantly, becau…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

April 8, 2026 at 2:41 AM

25 Thoughts On The Humiliation Of Donald Trump

View this post on the web at [link removed] Donald Trump, and the many Republicans who backed him through this latest disgrace, have spent decades pretending to believe the Iranian government is uniquely evil because it threatens (idly) to wipe its enemies off the map. It must be clear to everyo…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

April 7, 2026 at 3:54 PM

Why The Democratic Opposition Feels So Tepid—Even When It's Not

View this post on the web at [link removed] My former boss and good friend David Kurtz, who writes Morning Memo for TPM , asked me to gab with him about the big, recurring questions of our time: How did we get here? How might we get out? And what would it take for a bright future await us on the…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

April 6, 2026 at 1:53 PM

Impeachment As A Referendum On The Iran Fiasco

View this post on the web at [link removed] With the House of Representatives back in session this morning, I think Hakeem Jeffries should force a vote on a privileged resolution to impeach Donald Trump as a first order of business. Trump affirmed once again this Easter weekend [ [link removed]…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

April 1, 2026 at 12:49 PM

The Fights Of 2027 Start Now

View this post on the web at [link removed] Elected Republicans in Washington have, to a person, betrayed their oaths of office. Which means Donald Trump’s illegal war of choice against Iran will continue until he chooses to withdraw or the military runs out of weapons and cash. Whatever Trump …

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

March 31, 2026 at 12:47 PM

How The Empathy Gap Swallowed America

View this post on the web at [link removed] The writer Yonatan Touval has written the best analysis I’ve read [ [link removed] ] of how Donald Trump blundered into cataclysm by launching an illegal war of choice against Iran. Touval is based in Tel Aviv; his critique is of all of the war’s arch…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

March 30, 2026 at 1:03 PM

How To Fix Democrats' Generic Ballot Woes

View this post on the web at [link removed] Donald Trump is 20 points under water. He’s flirting with an approval rating in the mid 30s. The public is furious, and not just those of us who’ve always seen through him. More congressional Republicans have announced their retirements than at any ti…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

March 29, 2026 at 4:44 PM

💬 New thread from Brian Beutler

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

March 27, 2026 at 2:16 PM

Expose ALL Of Trump's War Profiteering

View this post on the web at [link removed] We can say this much about Donald Trump, his advisers, and their many servants in other branches of government: They are prolific coverup artists, but poor craftsmen. This became evident in Trump’s first term—indeed even in his first campaign—but the …

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

March 26, 2026 at 12:48 PM

Would Jon Ossoff Really Fight?

View this post on the web at [link removed] c0ffeep0t [ [link removed] ]: Why aren’t Democrats loudly and preemptively blaming Republicans for any terror attacks that occur as a result of Trump’s war of choice and the GOP’s unwillingness to fund TSA separately? Same set of reasons they haven’t b…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

March 25, 2026 at 12:44 PM

Donald Trump Is A Bad Fighter

View this post on the web at [link removed] Part of what makes Democratic politics frustrating—for us and for Democrats themselves—is that Donald Trump effectively transformed all of politics into the procedural equivalent of a fist fight, whereas most Democrats think of politics (and made profes…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

March 23, 2026 at 1:02 PM

James Talarico And The Real Problem With "The Groups"

View this post on the web at [link removed] Now that he’s a Democratic Senate nominee, James Talarico has a big challenge on his hands: He’s got to win statewide in Texas, where Democrats haven’t won in decades. Republicans may lend a hand, depending on whom they ultimately nominate for Senate. …

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

March 20, 2026 at 2:54 PM

Optimism In An Age Of Superstition And Decline

View this post on the web at [link removed] Democracy, living standards, and relative global peace are all imperiled. And if you attempt to get a handle on developments along any of these fronts, the most readily available sources of information are literally designed to confound you, if not conv…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

March 19, 2026 at 12:43 PM

Why Are Democrats Suddenly Obsessed With Crippling Tax Cuts?

View this post on the web at [link removed] Griffin Tennent [ [link removed] ]: I’m wondering what you think about opening a portal to the chaos realm on the filibuster and letting republicans kill it. This article [ [link removed] ] by Ryan Cooper makes what I think is a compelling case-- not th…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

March 18, 2026 at 2:05 PM

Trump, Iran, And The Biting Of Reality

View this post on the web at [link removed] Donald Trump can pump the gas and brakes on his mass deportation regime at will. He can move aggressively in opportune moments, then hang back amid scrutiny, without much impact on his political standing. He can do the same vis-a-vis his efforts to de…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

March 17, 2026 at 1:03 PM

Donald Trump's Fake Makeover

View this post on the web at [link removed] OOPS! That’s the subtext of just about every communication from Trump administration officials to the broader GOP these days. They do not confess openly to error—the White House has only one zero-tolerance policy, and it’s against admitting error—but…

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  Brian from Off Message · [email protected]

March 13, 2026 at 12:06 PM

Using FOIA To Expose Trump's Biggest Coverup

View this post on the web at [link removed] I have submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in an effort to unravel an ongoing Trump administration coverup—specifically, of evidence that Donald Trump battered and sexually assaulted a teenager in the 19…

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