Ryan Lizza is 51. "Younger" is only accurate relative to RFK

I'm not one to comment on appearances - or even like others' comments on appearances - but I bookmarked this because I thought it described her so perfectly, in a way that I couldn't put my finger on before.

bsky.app/profile/slot...

Primary voters are a subset of voters that are more likely to have longer memories

Reading your other comments about both sincerity & showing flawed people working to become better people, I had just had the thought, "That's also why Ted Lasso resonated with me."

It's not that the shows are about "good people." It's that they show people struggling but trying to be better

This is not true. There are a total of 1.3 million active duty service members. They are clearly not all on SNAP. The highest estimates of those eligible is much lower and # actually using SNAP is lower still

www.gao.gov/products/fpc...

Now that I am remembering this better, you're probably right. She claimed she was exempt because "income taxes are unconstitutional". We tried to argue with her but said that at least she had to give us a W-4 that said she was exempt. But she refused even that.

As a former employer who had someone try this (based on some crazy theory of income tax being unconstitutional), we did not honor this. Our understanding was that it was our legal obligation to withhold some income tax

As I'm thinking about this, if you coordinated state & local govts and have them hold the federal taxes they collect (perhaps "against" the money they are owed), that might be a way to start. When you factor in all public employees (like teachers, cops, etc), $$ might start to get substantial.

I am all for this but I honestly don't understand how it would work. Companies / individuals are the ones that pay the taxes. What's the mechanism that might enable this? (Beyond, at least, state employees)

I do think the winter keeps "everyone" (with money) from wanting to live there and helps maintain its more grounded, less pretentious vibe.

Also, I don't think messaging is a binary, especially in today's fractured media environment

Again, many focus groups showed that it didn't resonate with many become they thought it was an exaggeration- that Trump wasn't going to do those things! Walking away from those points now just ruins your credibility

Not going back to a message you rightly campaigned on demoralizes the 1st group and reinforces with the 2nd group that it was just rhetoric. To both groups, you seem like a principle-less hack mindlessly repeating talking points with no conviction behind them

I think this is their rationale, but it doesn't make sense: 1) It did land with many. Those are your engaged volunteers and donors and a higher % of midterm voters. And 2) many for whom it didn't land is because they *didn't believe it*; they thought it was normal political "sky-is-falling" BS

Not 100% sure on this but I think you only get one reconciliation bill a year and they already passed it. (Why the budget and appropriations are different is another question. That I don't understand...)

I would imagine - or at least hope - he's working behind the scenes on stuff like this. You don't announce things like this w/o the groundwork to make sure you can follow through.

The one thing I would like now is not only telling people to record but also having a centralized reporting system

This was actually quite helpful. She laid it out clearly. I didn't understand the exact issue before