I'm always astounded by people who complain that a game they play in private with their friends has been ruined by some new material. There is nothing stopping them from continuing to run campaigns about defending the good people of Whitetown from the Evil Gay Orcs.

Step 5: blame progressives for not voting for you and reflect on how you can further alienate them in order to attract more of the (again, mostly fictional) anti Trump Republicans.

Step 4: lose

Step 3: when polls continue to show progressives are not sure they will vote for you, insist it doesn't matter because the votes of the largely fictional anti Trump Republicans will make up for any progressives who stay home.

Step 2: insist that progressives will vote for you anyway, even though polls show a sizable number are considering not voting for you.

The strategy:
Step 1: Distance yourself from any position important to progressives in order to appeal to the largely fictional anti-trump republican.

I love that his name is John Brown Stan. If there's one thing I associate with John Brown, it's avoiding taking positions that might be divisive.

Thanks to @collinwhite.bsky.social for posting this article.

If you still think the people affected by the deportations are only some anonymous "illegals," this is your reminder that they are our neighbors, colleagues, and friends.

Whichever you pick, you're guaranteed to immediately think of a bakers's dozen or so great ideas for running each of the other two.

It doesn't help that I'm using the mini keyboard I bought for my work tablet.

But I would like to see Democrats do more to acknowledge that free trade hasn't been good for everyone and provide alternate solutions that aren't grounded in xenophobia and isolationism.

I know that all of this is not going to fly as a winning argument in the current climate and Trump placing blanket tariffs on everything isn't going to fix the problem because the damage has been done.

And of course people who crossed the border anyway couldn't always demand better wages or treatment because they had no legal protection.

This depressed wages on both sides of the border because Mexican workers couldn't leave and American manufacturing workers had the threat of outsourcing preventing them from demanding better pay.

NAFTA created a system of free trade for the owners but not for labor. Owners could outsource to Mexico where labor was cheaper, but Mexicans couldn't respond by moving north in search of better wages, at least not legally and in enough numbers to matter.