I want to dedicate this post to all the nonsense that surrounds us as we move towards the election. Let’s start with the Third Way’s supposed change in position on trans rights:
Not so long ago centrists aligned with the Democrats broadly cast this civil rights struggle as one of moral equivalency, a fight between two sets of extremes. As recently as May 2025, Jonathan Cowan, the president and co-founder of the influential think tank Third Way, was urging Democrats to “express their frustration and disgust with the ways extremists on both sides have weaponized the issue.”
For Third Way, the terms of engagement have changed, Lanae Erickson, the group’s senior vice president for social policy, education and politics acknowledged in a wide-ranging interview, although she cast the shift in terms of a changing political landscape.
“On this issue, the dynamic has really shifted,” she said. Republicans and the right have grown far more extreme, while advocates for trans people have moved to a “more pragmatic place.”
“The MAGA folks took from the 2024 election that this was a great issue for them, that it was one that united their base and made Democrats uncomfortable,” Erickson said. “And that was all true at that moment, but now they’re going way beyond any concerns the public had.”
She added: “Going after healthcare for adults, kicking people out of the military, taking people’s driver’s licenses away, they can’t pick up their kids at school – these are well beyond the pale for most American voters. We’ve got an HHS secretary right now who believes the only appropriate healthcare for transgender people is conversion therapy. That’s crazy.”
“I think protecting trans people, trans kids in particular,” Erickson added, “has become an important part of the agenda for the entire progressive movement.”
First, I recognize that treating the Third Way as anything but an inside-the-Beltway phenomenon is dumb, but, man, these people can sure get their stupidity into print. Assigned Media is a trans news site, and I assume they know that the Third Way sort of speaks for centrism in general, so that’s why they quote someone from Third Way.
That said, Erickson’s quote above is a perfect reflection of the vacuity of centrist positions in general. They have carefully consulted their polling on trans rights and decided that it is now OK to acknowledge that trans folks are actual human beings. If the polling had gone the other way, welp, too bad for trans folks as far as Third Way is concerned. That’s exactly the kind of lack of authenticity and courage that leads to the defeat of institutional Democrats, but these guys act as if it’s a virtue, and also have zero regret about the human cost of their positions. They’re like a spreadsheet with a mouth and a rolodex of DC media phone numbers — calculating and inhuman.
In case you missed it, noted leftist Andy Beshear once again refused to throw trans folks under the bus:
Hasn’t he read the polls in Kentucky? Doesn’t he know that Republicans will run anti-trans ads against him? Why isn’t Beshear “moving to the middle” and finding a “sensible compromise” on the rights of trans folk? Could it be that he has actual beliefs?
In a few years, the Democrats running in this election who decided to throw trans folk under the bus will be viewed in the same way as the Democrats who voted for the Iraq War — stupid and cowardly.
Moving on, I guess we’re going to mention the dummy from Missouri, Schmitt, again, because, before his total fuckup while questioning Jack Smith yesterday, he got this beat sweetener from Jim Vanderhei at Axios:
Sen. Eric Schmitt is drawing buzz as a possible Vance VP in 2028
First-term Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) — who was a tough-on-crime state attorney general, and now is vice chair of the Joint Economic Committee — has grown close to Vice President Vance and is seen as a top prospect to become a potential 2028 running mate.
We hear the VP views Schmitt, 51, as trustworthy, intelligent, articulate and a deft political operator.
(If you want a laundry list of just how terrible Schmitt is, that Steve M post provides it.)
Axios’ Vandehei is one of the biggest names inside the Beltway, and I guess someone decided that he should curry favor with Schmitt, a nobody numbskull. Let me ask the obvious question here: why the hell would Schmitt be the right VP pairing for Juicy Divan? Jerks-it-to-the-Davenport is green as fuck. JD’s only political experience was as a Senator for a short period of time before he became VP. Shouldn’t he be paired with someone more senior with a little more gravitas? (I use the term “gravitas” because that’s what Beltway stenographers will say that AOC lacks if she runs for President.)
Anyway, Schmitt’s screwup seems to have broken containment and now local news is talking about it:
Not knowing the name of a sports team (and screwing up which sport) is something that sticks to you, like Quayle not being able to spell “potato”, to use a reference for the olds in the audience.
