Public opinion on issues is subject to change, and if you stake a popular position (or criticize the GOP for their unpopular), the GOP propaganda apparatus will just try to shift the narrative.

As an aside, this gets to one of my main critiques of popularism. It justifies laziness. It assumes that by picking the right position, the public will reward you, without having to do the messy work of shaping the public narrative about how to solve public problems. But it doesn't work like that.

Ultimately, I don't think that swing voters in 2026 or 2028 are going to credit Dems for saving SNAP, unless Dem officeholders and aligned institutions are prepared to beat the drum on Trump trying to cut SNAP between now and the next election. I won't hold my breath.

To take an example, Dems basically bailed out Trump and the GOP in 2020 when we were on the brink of pandemic-caused economic catastrophe. In the end, a huge portion of the electorate gave Trump credit for sending them checks, even though Dems basically forced him to do it.

It seems like whenever the GOP hands Dems a winning issue, Dems just kind of assume the voters will remember it in the next election(s). It doesn't work that way. It takes real ongoing work to shape the public narrative, and Dems keep ceding the impetus on narrative to the GOP.

Caving on the rights of the marginalized in the hopes that it will appease the reactionaries is basically the modern equivalent of tossing virgins into a volcano.

This is a much more honest obituary that grapples with Dick Cheney's actual legacy without whitewashing it.

bsky.app/profile/atta...

Finally, perhaps it is poetic justice that after years of demonizing Muslims and socialists, Dick Cheney died on the day New York City looks poised to elect a Muslim socialist as mayor.

This NYTimes obit omits how many Iraqis died from Cheney's war. It fails to condemn him for lying the public into that war (or mention the NYTimes's key role in peddling Cheney's lies). It ignores his role in facilitating Trump's current violence, and treating opposition as enemies of the public.

It is a profound moral stain on this country that Dick Cheney and Henry Kissinger were never held accountable internally, or handed over to the Hague to face justice.

He was later surpassed as the titleholder for the worst American, but that does not rehabilitate Dick Cheney's despicable legacy. Nor did his tepid opposition to Trump come anywhere near repairing the damage he did. In a sense, Cheney's awfulness laid the foundation for Trump to exceed it.

Buried in the rigged polling, there's a real lesson for centrist Dems, if they cared to listen to it. When GOP narratives define an issue, the public rejects the Dem position. So stop ceding the narrative to the GOP on issues like crime, immigration, etc.