{"id":862,"date":"2026-03-12T04:44:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-12T04:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/political-strategy-notes-2\/"},"modified":"2026-03-12T04:44:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-12T04:44:00","slug":"political-strategy-notes-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/political-strategy-notes-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Political Strategy Notes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some notes from “Pentagon probe points to U.S. missile hitting Iranian school<\/a>” by NPR staffers Tom Bowman, Kat Lonsdorf and Geoff Brumfiel: “The U.S. has launched a formal investigation into a missile strike on an Iranian girls’ school that killed at least 165 civilians, many of them children, after a preliminary assessment determined the U.S. was at fault, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly. The investigation is expected to take months and will include interviews with all those involved, from planners and commanders to those who carried out the strike…If the U.S. role in the attack is confirmed, it would rank among the military’s most deadly incidents involving civilians in decades. Congress created a special Pentagon office to prevent the accidental targeting of civilians but it was dramatically scaled back by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth<\/a> soon after he took office last year…As we have said, unlike the terrorist Iranian regime, the United States does not target civilians,” said White House spokesperson Anna Kelly…At a press conference shortly after the war began, Hegseth criticized<\/a> “stupid rules of engagement,” and said such rules interfere with winning…NPR was the first news organization to report that the strike on the school appeared to be part of an attack involving precision weapons<\/a>. Subsequent video of the strike released by Iranian state media gave visual indications that Tomahawk missiles struck a compound<\/a> that included the school. Iranian state media also released pictures<\/a> of Tomahawk missile components on a table in front of the school…NPR previously reported that the girls’ school was once part of what had been an Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval base and may have been shown on outdated U.S. target lists as a military building.” Arguments about who is most responsible for this tragedy will rage on. But President Jimmy Carter’s warning in his 2002 Nobel Peace Prize lecture resonates with increasing clarity: “We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.”<\/p>\n

Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen share their thoughts in “1 big thing: A consensus Bill of Rights<\/a>” at Axios, and write: “In this morning’s “Behind the Curtain” column<\/a>, we showed how algorithms and screens hide a more normal and agreeable American public. This actually extends to many hot political debates: Most people agree on most big topics most of the time. The results are striking \u2014 and should give you hope. See if this aligns with your experience…This notional Bill of Rights<\/strong> synthesizes majority views from polling of U.S. adults:…\"\ud83d\uddfd\" 1. Government should<\/strong> have no say in what we say, how we pray, how we protest and whom we love, provided we act legally…79% of Americans<\/strong> say the government has gone too far in restricting the right to free speech. Strikingly, this view is held by 88% of Democrats and 86% of independents, showing it’s not just a right-wing grievance. (NPR\/PBS News\/Marist Poll<\/a>, October)…<\/em>A landmark poll<\/a> <\/strong>of 20,338 adults<\/a> by the Kettering Foundation\/Gallup Democracy for All Project, published in November, found 84% believe America’s racial, religious and cultural diversity is a strength…2. Government should<\/strong> keep the border tight, and settle the status of those who’ve been here for years…A record-high 79%<\/strong> of U.S. adults consider immigration good for the country. (Gallup<\/a>, June)…<\/em>Two-thirds of registered voters<\/strong> say local officials should cooperate with federal immigration authorities on deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes. (Harvard CAPS<\/a>\/Harris, January)…<\/em>But support for legal <\/em>immigration<\/strong> hit an all-time high in the 23 years the Chicago Council on Global Affairs<\/a> has asked the question (49%). And two-thirds of U.S. adults in the poll, out in October, support a path to citizenship for undocumented workers currently contributing to the economy…4. Government should<\/strong> stop spending money we don’t have, on things we can’t afford…90% of registered voters<\/strong> are concerned that the national debt’s effect on inflation is increasing the cost of living, according to a poll out two weeks ago<\/a>from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which is dedicated to increasing awareness of fiscal threats…7. Government should <\/strong>start caring about American workers as much as it cares about the rich and powerful…37% of Americans<\/strong> say “big business” is a bigger threat to the country’s future than labor or government, tying the high in Gallup’s trend<\/a>…” More here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Interviewed by Jen Rubin at The Contrarian<\/a>, Philip H. Gordon, <\/a>\u00a0Sydney Stein, Jr. Scholar in the Foreign Policy program\u2019s Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology at Brookings, argues that “<\/em>Let\u2019s just start by acknowledging it is a terrible regime. It represses its people, it threatens its neighbors, it has sponsored terrors in the past, they did have a nuclear program. It would be a good thing if that regime were replaced…It would be great if we could replace that regime…The problem with that as a military mission, as you say, is that it\u2019s just very unlikely to work. It\u2019s never worked in the past, and we\u2019ve tried this repeatedly. And we\u2019ve tried it in different ways, with a full-on, you know, occupation invasion, like in Iraq, or just bombing, like in Libya. or arming the opposition in Syria, or international coalition in Afghanistan, there are all sorts of ways. But the problem is you remove the regime, however bad, and then you just create a political vacuum. And none of those formula we have tried has managed to put something stable in its place, and sometimes, like in Afghanistan, you go 20 years and you get the very guys that you threw out. In Iraq, you get a raging civil war…So, the problem is the impossibility of the mission, rather than the value of the mission, if we could do it. And Iran\u2019s not going to be different, and that\u2019s a mistake, you know, presidents have made repeatedly, but Trump seems to have made it, thinking, well, he\u2019ll do it differently. Venezuela gave him a fantasy that you could knock out the regime. put in someone who would cooperate with you and everything would be fine. It\u2019s very different, but what\u2019s not different is that, in Iran, you have, as you mentioned, this hardened regime with thousands and thousands of armed men willing to kill and die for their cause, and you have a divided opposition that is unarmed, and so if you create chaos and quote-unquote knock out the regime, what is going to happen? probably not the moderate, friendly, pro-Western types that you\u2019d like to come to power, but either, you know, all-out chaos, or the hard guys with guns.” More here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A couple of salient insights from David Weigel’s “The Democratic tax fight that\u2019s really over copying Republicans<\/a>” at Semafor: “\u201cOne frustration with Democrats is that we have been working on and promising certain things, but we need to focus on how to actually deliver those things, more than how to deliver the message in a snappy, TikTok-friendly way,\u201d he added…Democrats never explained how they lost the country between Trump\u2019s two terms. (Bet on them never<\/a> doing that.) But one popular theory is that the liberal groups over-sold<\/a> the power of \u201cdeliveryism\u201d \u2014 for example, that the Teamsters would appreciate the bailout of their pensions (nope<\/a>) and college-educated voters would be thankful for student debt relief (hah<\/a>)…An adjacent theory is that Trump promised more memorable, digestible benefits to voters than Democrats did, with \u201cno tax on tips\u201d as a case in point. Democrats are haunted<\/a> by their failure to formalize a tax cut for tipped workers before Trump did, and they\u2019ve studied how Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., ran far ahead of the presidential ticket after endorsing<\/a> the Trump plan…The tax benefit for tipped workers made it into the GOP\u2019s omnibus spending bill<\/a> last year, and Democrats have been comfortable with their votes against it. But they don\u2019t talk about repealing it, as James Carville recommended<\/a>. For decades, they\u2019ve run on keeping Republican tax cuts and reforms for lower-income people intact while raising taxes on the wealthy…A third new Democratic tax proposal this month, rolled out by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Ca., would \u201cMake Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share.\u201d Nobody<\/a> else would pay anything…Democrats who still believe in the New Deal-era promise of government helping the public are a bit depressed by the idea that the solution to their party\u2019s problems is generating less money for that purpose…\u201cThis is just totally playing on Republicans\u2019 turf,\u201d said Adam Jentleson, a former senior Senate Democratic aide and the founder of the Searchlight Institute. Read more here<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n
Source link thedemocraticstrategist.org<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some notes from “Pentagon probe points to U.S. missile hitting Iranian school” by NPR staffers Tom Bowman, Kat Lonsdorf and Geoff Brumfiel: “The U.S. has launched a formal investigation into a missile strike on an Iranian girls’ school that killed at least 165 civilians, many of them children, after a preliminary assessment determined the U.S. was at fault, according to…","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":67,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_analytify_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}