Case in point: Lawrence Wright’s new article about women on death row in Texas took years to report. And it’s excellent. Few magazines are willing to run a 22,000-word article, and none of them are, on average, as well written or well edited as The New Yorker.

This is wonderful. TIL.

Oh, yes. I was focused on expanding the majority on the Court, rather than on increasing the number of justices.

The Senate majority makes its own rules; in other words, the Republicans don’t need a House majority to eliminate the filibuster.

In principle, they may just restrict use of the filibuster when it’s convenient to do so. I think that’s more likely than outright abolition of the filibuster.

They don’t need a trifecta for that. The House doesn’t deal with Supreme Court nominations. Only the Senate does, and they already have a majority there.

Further entrenchment of the conservative majority on the Court is almost guaranteed. It could be the most likely major political change of all.

As things stand, Democratic candidates' silence in the face of these attacks makes it easy for people to imagine that the candidates hold, or at least don't object to, the wildest fringe views.

"[A]ttacking versions of the Democratic Party that are essentially cultural hallucinations created by people who hate Democrats."

You're right. But Dem candidates rarely push back when they're mischaracterized in this way. They might do well to push back explicitly.

"But how pervasive are they, and how much are they pushed by Democrats in power? Those are empirical questions, and it’s a lot less than many believe."

You're right. But Democrats in power rarely push back against either the fringe views or the GOP mischaracterizations of their views. They should.