Notices by Matthew Sheffield (mattsheffield@mastodon.social)

Donald Trump is appointing the crazed religious extremist Russ Vought, co-creator of #Project2025, to head the federal budget.

It's a total refutation of his lies that he had no connection to the group https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-russ-vought-office-of-management-budget/

After tricking millions of union members into voting Republican, Trump's puppet master Elon Musk is now suing to get the entire National Labor Relations Board declared unconstitutional.

There is not such thing as right-wing populism. It's all just vulgar rhetoric in the service of oligarchs https://apnews.com/article/amazon-nlrb-unconstitutional-spacex-elon-musk-ab42977117d883e97110a7bf8e8b257f

As #Bluesky sees an influx of users, its centralized structure is failing to scale.

Republican dominance of new media is the number-one reason Kamala Harris lost in 2024. Her message was drowned out by propaganda and she failed to understand how gaslit Americans were.

Here are a few graphics to keep handy next time you want to explain this to someone.

@WarnerCrocker Garland should have indicted Trump as soon as he had left office. Mitch McConnell in the impeachment literally encouraged the DOJ to do it.

Garland's failure to move quickly will be his only real legacy.

Donald Trump repeatedly boasted about walking into women's and girls' locker rooms but more people were concerned about imaginary trans people doing it.

That's the power of media ecosystems.

The platform is greater than the message.

Many people on the left have bemoaned how reactionary billionaires funded the creation of the gigantic right-wing media machine that has poisoned millions of Americans' minds, supposing that there are no billionaires on the left.

In fact, there were actually more billionaires backing Kamala Harris (83) than Donald Trump (52).

There's plenty of Democratic money. It's just being wasted https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2024/11/04/billionaires-backing-trump-harris-2024/75936100007/

In 2012, I was a Republican consultant frustrated that our candidate's preferred message about the economy didn't get through to the public.

With a friend, I wrote an essay calling on Republicans to start up many new media platforms.

They did it. Our advice worked overwhelmingly.

I switched sides 3 years later. My prescription remains the same: media investment is the only path to public persuasion.

Here's the old essay https://spectator.org/there-we-went-again/

Most people do not think critically about politics. They're too busy or they find it too difficult or distasteful.

Where they get news determines what they know. And it's crystal-clear that Republicans dominate the news sources of young people.

The American left gave up on the internet and on low-information people. These are the results 👇https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/11/09/social-media-traditional-news-elections-00188548

🧵 Blue MAGA, aka Resistance Twitter, is a lot more conservative than they will admit.

I just got blocked for calling out sexist criticism of Melania Trump's nude modeling.

Going after hypocrisy is fine. But don't insult a woman's perfectly valid profession.

@philip_cardella We have to maintain our humanism in order to effectively combat authoritarianism.

And on the broader topic of porn, the research is very clear that men who become fans of adult media creators who are women grow greater respect for women. This is part of why the right is trying to criminalize it.

Kamala Harris changed her rhetoric after the DNC to become much softer toward billionaires and manipulative businesses.

Was her brother-in-law, Tony West, Uber's head attorney, responsible? David Plouffe, her campaign manager, is ex-Uber https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/11/biden-harris-2024-election/680560/

Lots of people are pointing to various small mistakes that allegedly were made by Kamala Harris.

But this misses a much bigger problem: Democrats should not have to run flawless campaigns in order to win.

Republicans have a lot more room for error because their larger strategy is superior.

https://plus.flux.community/p/why-trump-won-democrats-have-a-coalition

@eribosot Oh yikes I didn't see that error. Thanks. It's fixed now.

@eribosot Not sure what you mean there. I did fix the "betted" usage though. It's technically correct, although not in American vernacular.

My latest: Why Trump won: Democrats have a coalition, Republicans have an ecosystem

Kamala Harris ran a very effective campaign, but she was no match for the gigantic power of right-wing media to poison minds https://plus.flux.community/p/why-trump-won-democrats-have-a-coalition

PSA: Anyone talking about how Trump or Harris received fewer voters should be ignored.

There are still tens of millions of provisional and overseas ballots that have not been counted yet so NOTHING about the raw vote totals is valid at this point.

Actual screenshot from last night's Trump rally via @atrupar

This was right after he said that he didn't tell something to his campaign team because "they'd only screw it up like they do everything else."

Check out the audience reactions in the background. Everyone is sick of this guy's nonsense.

If you don't live in a swing state, it's easy to think that voting is a waste.

This is a HUGE mistake!

Many people live in swing U.S. House districts.

If Harris wins, she'll need a House to support her. And if Trump wins, the House will be a critical check on him.

Please also make sure to vote against all the Republicans in your down-ballot races. Doesn't matter if you don't know the candidates.

The Republican party has become so extreme that they cannot be trusted even in local offices.

Everyone's saying that the presidential election is a coin toss, but did you know that real coin flipping is slightly skewed (51-49) to the side that's facing up before the flip? https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/gamblers-take-note-the-odds-in-a-coin-flip-arent-quite-5050-145465423/