The experts say the solution is simple: Whenever possible, give toddlers a chance to feel like they have control.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot as I read the news lately, because I suspect much of voters’ behavior right now stems from that same feeling that drives a toddler temper tantrum: a lack of agency in their own lives.

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hit on this in ’s fall report on gen Z:

In the NYT this week, David Wallace Wells found a similar vein in the anti-data center movement:

If you abstract nearly every political fight beyond its material specifics, so many are actually about agency.

Due to economic winds out of their control, people feel like they can’t decide where they live, or what kind of job they have, or whether or not they have the size family they want.

And boy do they want to.

A third of Americans told a 2026 Gallup/Walton survey that they feel pushed around by circumstances beyond their control. This has direct correlation with whether people feel like their lives are going well: People who feel able to “shape their own path” are twice as likely to say they’re “thriving” as people who feel controlled by circumstances.

This crosses over to work, too. People want agency over their schedules — a 2025 survey defining what makes a “quality job” put influence about the decisions that shape one’s day and meaningful control over when and how work gets done right at the center.

It’s even relevant in economic conversations. People want money to pay their bills (duh) and have a good life — but part of that desire is because economic security allows for choice, not obligation.

I think this is the opening Democrats have been looking for.

I’ve written before about different stories Democrats could tell as they try and paint a picture of a better country, a new American dream, and a brighter future.

I think ’s argument on “time as a public policy” could be an option here — I suspect agency might be even more compelling, given how sticky control is for Americans.

To be clear: This isn’t an argument for libertarianism — it’s an argument for bigger collectivism in service of individual freedom. Government doing more, together, so individuals have more capacity make their own choices.

Consider this reframe:

• Child care gives you control over whether or not you can work

• Paid leave gives you control when someone gets sick

• Affordable housing gives you control over where you live

• Reproductive freedom gives you control over the shape your family

• Reliable public transportation gives you control on how to get where you go

• Money gives you control over your time.

• Democracy — unfettered by billionaires and outside money — gives you control about the rules we all have to live under

There’s a version of “agency” the right has been selling — fewer rules, less mandates, government out of your business. I think that’s freedom from something, not freedom to do something.

Cutting regulations doesn’t give me control over who’s watching my kid when I work; it just means there’s no one making sure my daycare provider is safe and licensed. Similarly, gutting the ACA doesn’t give a cancer patient control over their treatment; it just means the insurance company (beholden to their shareholders) decides instead of the government.

I think people are starving for freedom to, not freedom from. That doesn’t come from government being small enough to fit in your bedroom; it comes from competent government doing its job well enough that Americans don’t have to spend their whole lives managing precarity.

People want control over their lives. They want to be in charge. What if we built a country that gave them that power?

My toddlers settle down (most of the time) when I give them a chance to make their own choices. Maybe voters will, too.

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Huge news: When We’re in Charge (the paperback edition) will be out in stores on September 22nd — complete with a new cover, new subtitle, and among other revisions, new references to gen X so yall will stop yelling at me. Pre-order it now (or pick up the hardcover or audiobook wherever you get yours).

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Not That Kind of Proposal - Victoria Lavine [ Bookshop / Amazon ]

A very charming enemies-to-lovers romance about Gracie Holland, who post-messy-breakup, lives on grounds at a wedding venue in Rhode Island helping run events. The owner passes away and leaves the property to her grandson, Jude, who plans to sell the estate and end all weddings — Gracie somehow ends up in a scheme where she’s planning her ex-boyfriend’s wedding with Jude’s help in order to convince him not to sell the place. It’s a whole thing but it works and I enjoyed this.

Mad Mabel - Sally Hepworth [ Bookshop / Amazon ]

Elsie is an 81 year old living in a Melbourne suburb, minding her own business when her neighbor turns up dead and whoops everyone believes it’s Elsie, since Elsie is also Mad Mabel, Australia’s youngest convicted murderer. Through a series of recountings to true crime podcasters and to her young neighbor, Persephone, we learn Elsie’s full story and also what happened to her neighbor. I did not expect to love this but once it gets going, it’s truly excellent.

Retro - Jessica M. Goldstein [ Bookshop / Amazon ]

I picked this up after hearing the author on the Sam Sanders Show talking about nostalgia — the premise really captured me: Ash, an out-of-work actress, gets a job as a tour guide for an ultra-luxury time travel company. One part sci-fi, one part romance, one part story of finding yourself. I really really liked this.

Sunlight Finds You - Laura Moriarty [ Bookshop / Amazon ]

Historical fiction that starts in St. Petersburg, FL in 1949 and runs over decades as Nora and Leonard fall for each other, get into trouble, and are forced apart due to extenuating circumstances. A good beachy read.

All That’s Unseen - Emilee Hackney [ Bookshop / Amazon ]

A memoir of an eighth-generation Appalachian growing up in far southwest VA who gets sucked into Pentecostalism and then eventually breaks out of it (and a very very very bad marriage), ends up at Harvard, and re-defines herself, her story, and her community in a whole new context. I was captivated by this book, especially as it relates to the 2016 election. (I think I found it after reading her Modern Love column?)

Let’s Kiss and Tell - Joss Richard [ Bookshop / Amazon ]

Lucy the sex columnist fake-dates news reporter Marshall in order for her to be able to write about being in a relationship and so he can prove to his family and friends that he’s moved on from his ex. Fun, hot, easy to read.

See You at the Sunset - Susan Lee [ Bookshop / Amazon ]

Jia gets fired from her job as an assistant at a big financial firm so goes to spend the summer with her grandma at Palm Springs (but has a quick one night stand with a handsome guy before she leaves NY.) Whoops, turns out the guy she had a one night stand with was Henry, a lawyer who signed her termination paperwork and who is also spending a few weeks in Palm Springs with his grandpa. Some fun opposites-attract hijinks.

The Art of Fighting - Priya Parker [ Bookshop / Amazon ]

From the author of The Art of Gathering (which is an absolute must-read) — a really insightful look at how to fight better. Priya’s argument is that fighting means you care — if you’re going to have stronger relationships, you’ve got to know how to fight well and hold “healthy heat.” This is a must-read (Priya’s a great writer!) and tbh goes really well with my book (sorry not sorry!)

Get all my previous book reviews and reports here

What are you reading lately? Let me know! I just started The Poison Daughter to turn my brain off a little bit — we’ll see if I finish it…

Huge news: When We’re in Charge (the paperback edition) will be out in stores on September 22nd — complete with a new cover, new subtitle, and among other revisions, new references to gen X so yall will stop yelling at me. Pre-order it now (or pick up the hardcover or audiobook wherever you get yours).

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On August 10, I posted on X that, in my opinion, Republicans should be asked about Rep. Max Miller, who I referred to as a man who had “broken his toddler’s collarbone.”

Two days later, I got an email, and then a letter:

After a bunch of back and forth with my lawyers and Rep. Miller’s counsel, I posted a clarification on X, per his demand.

This has been incredibly annoying. But like all annoying things, it’s taught me a few lessons -- in particular, I’ve learned a lot about defamation law and the First Amendment of our great country’s constitution.

I’ve learned that the First Amendment obviously allows me to state things that are factually accurate.

So I can say that allegations of Rep. Max Miller being violent towards women go back decades and that in high school, he was accused of pushing a girl out of his room and down a flight of stairs after, allegedly, she resisted his alleged attempts to touch her.

I can say that his ex-girlfriend -- a former Trump White House senior staffer -- publicly accused him of physically abusing her.

I can say without fear of retribution that Rep. Miller has been arrested for allegedly driving under the influence (which he later pleaded down to a more minor offense).

In high school, Miller was arrested for reportedly punching a man in the back of the head and then running from the police; he pleaded no contest to the charges, which reportedly were then dismissed and sealed.

All of this, among other things, has been previously reported.

I encourage people to look at these stories if you can stomach them and form your own conclusions. Part of holding politicians like Rep. Max Miller accountable is learning what people who know them have to say about them.

Another fun lesson is that my personal opinions are protected by the First Amendment.

I’m free and clear to say that, in my opinion, Rep. Miller is a limp dick coward whose barbaric and performatively cruel politics come off to me as an obvious projection of: his own insecurities, his incapacity to escape the shadow of his rich grandparents, and, more generally, give off the vibes of a man unable to sexually satisfy a woman.

It’s my right as an American -- arguably, it’s patriotic! -- to say that I think Miller is a sad little man who acts like a bully toward those he thinks he has power over.

In my personal opinion, it’s deeply embarrassing that someone on Miller’s team apparently is specifically tasked with trolling the internet to find women to threaten with lawsuits for saying things he doesn’t like.

And I can say as loudly and as vigorously as I want, in particular to the people of Ohio: We may disagree bitterly over any number of policy fights, but I hope we can agree that such a man like Max Miller has no place in the halls of Congress.

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Q: What innovations in fundraising are you seeing work for local candidates? Or, even if they're not working yet, you see potential?

One of the many things I’ve loved about the last decade of working at scale with local candidates is realizing how much is just new thing, same as the old thing. What works for local candidates is asking everyone they know or might possibly know or a whole bunch of strangers for money.

The tactics have varied over the years: Texting people directly with links, DM’ing them on Facebook or Instagram, calling, or holding IRL events, but the reality is, there is no secret sauce to fundraising. It is simply asking over and over again, getting rejected most of the time, not taking it personally, and being pleasantly surprised when someone says yes.

For context here, the median campaign budget for RFS candidates in 2026 is about $60k.

The median budgets for state leg races are around $100k ($292k for state senate, $80k for state house), municipal races are $47,500, judicial/sheriff/attorneys races are around $60k, and school board races are around $15k. (Note: These are planned budgets as submitted in applications, not final raise/spent numbers.)

So, it’s a lot! But also not nearly as much as you’d think.

Q: Since you talk with a lot of young candidates and organizers, I wonder what you've heard about the challenges (and tools) of raising young kids and also doing politics? Seems like that barrier's a hidden but important contributor to the gerontocracy, so how do folks deal with it?

Our structures and institutions both on the government side and on the campaign/organizing side are wildly unwelcoming to parents.

Just a few of the things I mean:

• City council or school board meetings happening in the evenings, when parents would have to pay for childcare

• Similarly, campaigns rarely hold events at child-friendly times or locations.1

• While candidates can now use campaign funds to pay for child care on the federal level, state and local candidates are still piece-mealing their way through the laws. (Shout out to the many RFS alum who’ve fought for this, along with the great team at Vote Mama.)

• It’s nearly impossible to get a job on a campaign or in organizing and also have little kids. You usually have to move cities or states, you’re often in the office around the clock, and the pay is nowhere near what you’d need for the childcare required. There are certainly some senior staff who make it work — or consultants, of course — but they are few and far between.

• I’ve talked with a number of women with kids running for office who tell me how disappointed they are in their partners, who were perhaps initially supportive but once they realize how much time campaigning requires, really chafe at the obligation on them. (Not a politics problem so much as a societal one, but still.)

• The safety and security of people running for office is even more heightened when there are kids involved. E.g.: A candidate often has to put their location and planned location out into the world for voters/constituents to know how to meet them. That may ultimately put them or their kids at risk. Or alternatively: Do you put your kids in your campaign lit? In your ads? On your Instagram?

• Anecdotally, I’ve heard that a lot of state capitols, city halls, and municipal office buildings don’t have lactation spaces for nursing parents or diaper changing stations in men’s bathrooms. Such bullshit.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. The TLDR of how people manage it is that it’s really fucking hard and they do it anyway because it’s worth it.

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Q: How do you manage your inbox!??!?!

So one of my few work superpowers is I am really really good at answering my email. This is not a humble brag — it’s simply a brag; my inbox management is excellent.

I have two inboxes, one for work and one for everything else. I use tabbed inboxes on both to filter out newsletters, promotional emails, forums, etc — I go through those maybe 2-3x a day just to scan for anything interesting I might want to read.

My primary inbox tabs on both function as to-do lists and are the ones I read closely. I get maybe 100 email messages or more to my work email from M-Th and then anywhere from 5 to 50 to my personal inbox a day; I read/skim every single one immediately via notifications and either answer ASAP if I can or leave it marked as read in my inbox. (Yes, I mark it as read. The notifications drive me nuts.)

The first thing I do every single day and the last thing I do before I close my computer for the night is do a full pass thru my primary tabs and answer, archive, or save for later in case I need to come back to it. (Keyboard short cuts are key in this.) I repeat this process every 2-3 hours as I have the time to.

To give you an example: Right now my work email has 12 messages sitting there — a mix of clips emails I’ll go through when I pull together the (and then archive after I’ve used ‘em), a few emails holding some logistics notes I need, two batches of docs I need to review or provide answers to, and some other odds and ends.

My personal email has just 3 messages — an itinerary for planned travel, a note from my publisher I want to keep an eye on and possibly bump later, and a manuscript I’m trying to possibly read to blurb. Everything else I’ve handled within a day or two of receiving it.

In years past, my email speed has been somewhat annoying for people who work for me because I’ll answer things before they’re ready for me to. But such is life.

In terms of response, I’m very concise. Years as a professional email fundraising writer taught me one of the most important skills: Ask for what you want directly and make it easy for people to say yes. Don’t hide the ball!

Q: What’s your media diet? What do you read daily/weekly/monthly? What do you pay for?

Ugh, too much (but also, somehow, not enough? Subscribe to more media!)

Legacy/sort of legacy media I pay for:

• The NYT (I know, whatever)

• New York magazine (everyone say thank you, the Cut!)

• The Atlantic (sorry)

• Puck

• WSJ - some of my favorite writers work there!

• HellGate (not quite legacy but still: local independent news!)

According to Substack, I subscribe to 932 different publications (yikes). I don’t read them all — or even most of them — every time but I do skim through them either in my inbox or in the Substack app on my phone and dive in when things get interesting.

There are a bunch I pay for or have paid for in the past - I try to turn off my auto-renewals so I can consciously choose to re-up each year. A sampling that is certainly missing some:

• - I think they’re running some of the smartest inside scoop stuff; knows her shit and is a pro.

• - I don’t love all their writers but I really admire and appreciate .

• ’s After School, a rundown of gen Z and gen alpha trends

• ’s Link in Bio, all about social media marketing

• - I don’t always agree with his takes but I love the thoughtfulness

• - I love her writing about family!!

• - a pal and romance writer/reader

• by Anna Sproul-Latimer - super interesting about the publishing world

• - my hyperlocal news!

• - I went to college with Maura and while I am not a fashionista, I like her takes on fashion

• - One of the smartest thinkers about gen Z’s political engagement

• - I don’t cook (LOL) but I send my husband like half her newsletters and we have her cookbooks.

• - like all millennial women in Brooklyn, I love Cup of Joe

• - one of my favorite fiction writers and thinkers about various parts of internet/feminist culture

• - another pal who has excellent writing/content about women + politics + culture

• - a newsletter about books!

• - I think I get this comped (thanks Dan!) but I’d pay for it if I didn’t!!

• - obligatory for a New Yorker who aspires to be cool but absolutely isn’t

• - more on internet culture

• - more about publishing

• - totally fascinating work on money & psychology

• - also about publishing!!

• - yes, sorry, more on internet culture

• - publishing and internet culture and influencers

• - I don’t listen to the podcast that often (I really only listen to pop culture podcasts unless there’s one I need to for work) but I love both these writers and they gave to RFS a few years ago, which I SO deeply appreciate

• - just two women in their early 30s being friends!

• - one of the OG link round-up bloggers that still sends things that surprise and delight.

Not on Substack but I also pay for Anne Helen Petersen’s Culture Study, Kyle Tharp’s Chaotic Era, La Fronde (about women shaping media) and probably a few other things I’m not remembering. Again: I try to not set things to auto-renew so if I run into the paywall consistently, I re-up.

On top of all that: I am constantly bouncing around between Twitter, Bluesky, Threads, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, a bunch of groupchats with friends and a bunch more groupchats within the neighborhood and/or parent-chats.

I try to end every day by reading real books (or, books on my Kindle) — at the very least, 20-30 minutes of sustained attention on a novel tends to reset me.

The flipside is I haven’t watched TV that wasn’t a kids show — ask me about Peppa the Pig seasons 3-7 — since I came back from maternity leave with my second kid in January 2025. I think I’ve maybe seen one movie? Two? Not many, that’s for sure. This is why I mostly only listen to pop culture podcasts, as referenced earlier: They rarely make me mad because I have basically no opinions on whatever they’re talking about.

Q: For millennial women leaders, how would you recommend they either deal with, or try to cope with, other women leaders that seem to want to pull them down? I’m finding its often women that want to pull a woman leader down rather than lift each other up. We’d be so much stronger as allies and not adversaries!

This question makes me so sad!! I have been very lucky that the women leaders in my life — generally speaking — have been some of my best allies and supporters, not adversaries.

There are occasionally the haters or detractors, but a thing I have come to terms with is that other people’s opinions or reactions to me/the things I do/the choices I make have basically no relationship to me and have nearly everything to do with their own bullshit. You simply cannot take any of it personally because it’s never really about you.

That being said, if you’re dealing with peers who want to pull you down and you’re so inclined to be confrontational, it’s worth asking them about it! I’ve done a number of calls over the years with leaders (both men and women) where I’ve had to say upfront: Hey, I’m feeling (or hearing about) X Y Z tension between us — can we talk about what’s going on here?

It’s a useful reset, like a DTR convo but between colleagues, not dating partners. Even if I don’t like the ending, I feel better not harboring resentment.

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Huge news: When We’re in Charge (the paperback edition) will be out in stores on September 22nd — complete with a new cover, new subtitle, and among other revisions, new references to gen X so yall will stop yelling at me. Pre-order it now (or pick up the hardcover or audiobook wherever you get yours).

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I-told-you-so politics — abbreviated as ITYS — is a fucking scourge.

ITYS could be literally “I told you so,” or perhaps “see? I was right” or “you should’ve listened to me.” ITYS also includes the related sentiment of “now that I’ve convinced you that I’m right, I’m going to make you feel bad for having been wrong before.”

It’s being a sore winner, lacking in grace.

ITYS is smug. It’s self-righteous. It’s shitty, unwelcoming and often deeply cathartic for the person saying it.

I get it.

I understand the impulse to say it to Trump voters who are, in many ways, getting what they voted for — and I get it for intra-party fights where one side of the stupid fight wants to claim dominance over the other.

Personally, I love being right. I often have to self-edit out some variation of “as I’ve been saying for months/years/decades” (or I proactively decide to keep it in and be a little bit of an asshole. I’m working on it!)

Hell, in this very Substack, I literally bragged about being right when I was reflecting on the year since my book came out. I am no paragon of excellence here.

So believe me when I say: I understand why people do it. It’s so so so tempting to gloat — especially in politics, where to be right about what might happen is, in some ways, the whole thing.

Being right is often the foundation of someone’s career in this business — to win is to prove you know what voters want. (Somehow, the inverse is rarely true: Being wrong rarely ever hurts someone’s career for any sustained period of time. Weird...)

But in politics — as in interpersonal relationships — ITYS is counterproductive. It’s ego over efficacy; self over mission. It’s fundamentally bad strategy!1

When I see someone going hard on ITYS, I don’t think “oh man, I should really listen to them next time.” I think “what a smug asshole.”

I don’t even know what kind of response ITYS is supposed to yield!

“Okay, congrats, you were right, you’re the best, I’m the worst, congrats”? Is that what you want me to say?

ITYS shifts the focus from fixing the problem to assigning credit for having predicted it.

And in politics specifically, it’s self-defeating in a very literal way: To have people finally agree with you is the whole fucking point!

Persuasion is the job. We are here to get people to change their minds and take action accordingly. When someone comes around to your point of view, making them feel bad for not being “right” sooner doesn’t help your cause. It just makes you feel good.

If the goal is to throw a big party, then you can’t be an asshole when someone shows up — even if they’re a little bit late or took a different path to get there. You just let them in.

ITYS is bullying. It may not feel like bullying, because it’s wearing the costume of being correct, but it’s absolutely bullying.

Our candidates have, generally speaking, been modeling this well. The pundits & political class should follow suit.

I’m making this my fall resolution, and maybe you can join me: While I won’t stop trying to be right 😈, I am going to do my best to stop performing being right.

I’m going to win — and I’m going to be gracious as fuck afterwards.

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A request: At some point in the next few weeks, I’m down to do a mailbag/AMA post! I’ll answer whatever questions you’ve got. Leave ‘em in the comments, reply to this email, or DM them to me directly.

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When We’re in Charge is my leadership book for millennials and gen Z trying to do things differently. Pick up a copy in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books, including Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to for free right this very minute. It’ll be out in paperback in September.

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I tapped in and watched, absolutely captivated, as she explained she was going to be opening up about her upcoming experience freezing her eggs.

I’ve since watched every video she’s posted about this — the 10 minute vlogs about her shots, the explainers about how the reproductive system works, all of it.

I’ve read/watched the follow-up pieces — the inimitable Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom’s today is my favorite, but also Moira Donegan in The Guardian, the NYT on AOC’s growth in public, breaking down the conservative backlash, Jessica Valenti’s reaction on why conservatives are actually freaking out, Jill Filipovic’s take, Brigid Bergen in Gothamist on the personal angle, Madeline Peltz’s take on the tradwife of it all, and more.

I am rapt, and I’m not alone in my fascination. Her videos on her egg freezing journey are some of her most-watched in the last year+ on her Instagram. She shared a few of the thousands of comments and DMs she’s gotten — an example:

I’ve never done fertility treatments — I’m lucky and grateful that getting and staying pregnant has been relatively easy for me — but that makes me somewhat unusual among my peer group of ambitious women in our late 30s.1

I have countless friends who’ve gone through egg freezing, IUI, and/or IVF for all kinds of reasons, from wanting to preserve optionality for later to friends in same sex relationships to carrying genetic markers that would benefit from embryo screening in advance.

I’ve also consumed a metric fuck ton of internet made specifically for 30-something women intending to have kids, and she seems to have done the same — she’s fluent in the language and format of these types of videos, tapping the syringe in front of the camera with ASMR-like clicks.

The honesty, vulnerability, and the service AOC is doing for her community are all overwhelming and generous. The social media skills, the politics, the gender performance, the conversation about ambition - there’s just so much to talk about.

Two things in particular I want to dig in on…

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Her authentic-but-boundaried social media

One of the things I’ve really appreciated about AOC’s public presence over the last 8 years is that she perfectly exemplifies what I call “responsible authenticity.”

She knows who she is and what she believes. She knows what she’s trying to accomplish. And most importantly, she knows which parts of her life are for public consumption and which are for private. She’s never hashtag-unfiltered; she’s simply herself, with intentionality.

I wrote about the way she uses the internet in When We’re in Charge (in a section that was later excerpted in The Daily Beast):

AOC has perfected the boundaries of her parasocial relationship with her community while still being a serious public servant. (Zohran Mamdani is the only other politician who matches and maybe even exceeds her skills — his role as mayor versus hers as a legislator gives him a leg up.)

When we talk about politicians being authentic on the internet, this is why it matters: Authenticity allows for a (false) sense of intimacy, which is a fundamental building block for trust — and trust is what allows a voter to believe in someone even if they disagree with them.

In particular, live vlogging her egg freezing is fucking genius. She’s not the first member of Congress to do this — Rep. Sara Jacobs did similarly a few years ago — but she’s the first with the platform of her scale and with the looming political future over her.

She could’ve gone the route of keeping it secret, or of writing a first-person essay about it for Vogue next month. Instead, she’s using the process as an entry point for conversations not just about what she’s doing but also about gender, ambition, the right’s war on women’s futures and reproductive health, what it means to feel like your family planning is constrained by economics, the broken health insurance system, and so much more.

AOC is perfectly connecting the dots between her lived experience and the policy/politics of reproductive health care in a way that’s digestible and engaging. It’s incredible communications work.

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There is no right way to be a woman

After watching that initial story, I immediately texted a number of my fellow 30-something female friends. “Go watch AOC’s story — question answered.”

Over the last few months these friends and I had talked about the 2028 presidential primary and the thing that came up around AOC was not whether or not she can win — I think she can win both the primary and the general — but whether she’d be able to run if she wanted a family.

I confess, I hate that we thought like this. Someone else’s family planning is none of our business. I absolutely reject the conceit that women cannot have both big jobs and kids. It’s hard, but with good partners, it is possible. I try to prove that out every day — it’s why I talk constantly about being a mom while also loving my job.

But there is big job and then there’s President of the United States.

I think a mom will someday be president. I hope so! But I just don’t know if America is ready to wrap our heads around a woman possibly becoming pregnant while being president.

We don’t even give normal people paid time off after birth — would the president be able to take leave? How sexist would the blowback be? How much pressure would she feel to “bounce back” immediately after birth? What if there was a crisis? I believe it is possible. I also believe it will be exhausting.

But I love that she’s talking about this decision-making process and the way it ties into her career. (Again, Dr. Cottom’s op-ed on this is spot-on, as always.)

I’ve worked with and talked with so many young women running for office over the last decade who have grappled with exactly these challenges. Things I’ve heard:

• If you’re a single woman running for office, you get asked what will happen if you get married or why I’m not married

• If you’re married but don’t have kids, you get asked what will happen if you get pregnant

• If you do have kids, you get asked who will take care of them

There is simply no right way to be a woman, especially a woman seeking power. There are only a multitude of wrong ways. So fuck it, do it your way.

Last night’s vlog in particular, spoke so powerfully to this.

Even if you’re not particularly interested in fertility treatments, watch this one. She responds to some of the discourse and the freak out — she notes: “I am very grateful for my life. I go after what I want, but maybe that’s what they don’t like either. Too bad for them.”

It’s audacious. Ballsy, even. And it’s the kind of unrestrained ambition (not just for a job but for a type of life) that hit me right in the gut.

One of my mantras — especially when I know I might get some skepticism for making choices that might seem on face value to be kind of insane or like choosing to do things on hard mode — is simple:

I deserve to have the life I want.

If I want a family and also a big job and also a puppy (LOL) and also to live in NYC and also a social life, etc etc etc, I deserve, at the very least, to try. I shouldn’t self-censor or stop myself just because someone else might think it’s objectively nuts.

To see a woman in some of the highest echelons of power model what it looks like to proactively go after whatever it is she wants — to leave as many doors open as possible, to claim agency in her future — is so moving.

I hope her egg freezing results in the outcome she wants, whatever that may be. I hope her side effects aren’t too brutal. And I hope that every woman watching (young or old) sees that it is possible to, if not have it all, to be unashamed and unafraid to want it all.

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When We’re in Charge is my leadership book for millennials and gen Z trying to do things differently. Pick up a copy in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books, including Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to for free right this very minute. It’ll be out in paperback in September.

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I really was going to write about something else this week — something non-politics, perhaps the new Claudia Goldin paper.

But then yesterday morning a story came out in the NYT that Third Way, a moderate think tank, is preparing for “war” against DSA.1

Reporter Shane Goldmacher explains:

This got me so fucking irritated.

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For starters, why would you do the GOP’s work for them? They’re already going to demonize socialism — remember how they called Joe Biden a socialist?? — and we don’t need to help them do it.

Second: It’s remarkable how much money is being given to ostensibly Democratic groups explicitly to shit-talk other (popular!) Democrats (especially when so many organizing and infrastructure groups are struggling to raise right now.)2

I seem to recall a number of centrist pundits and organizations making this point about some of the lefty organizations over the years — weird how it doesn’t apply to them! (And not for nothing but I did a video on my fury about this yesterday and the amount of comments of people being like “I thought they put their HQ up for collateral!! where is the money!??!” — misunderstanding that Third Way is not the DNC — tells me that efforts like this are bad for the brand too!)

Beyond that, I wish these people would define their terms. When they say “Democrats” — do they mean party electeds, or donors, or gatekeepers, or pundits? Do they mean random people on the internet? (Usually, yes — either randos or other operatives online who are willing to spar.)

Or do they mean Democrats as in our voters indicating how they feel by literally casting votes in Democratic primaries?

DSA-affiliated or far-left candidates are winning — often against the odds and ungodly amounts of money, like in Michigan earlier this week, when Abdul El-Sayed won despite being outspent 11:1, state Rep. Donavan McKinney beat a sitting Congressman, and a progressive won a competitive primary for a flippable House seat.

And if one is going to define the Democratic Party as OUR VOTERS — as I think we should — then the kinds of candidates who won those elections shape who we are as a party.

Or at the very least, it’s who we’re on track to becoming.

Now, of course the left isn’t winning every time. There are plenty of examples just in the last week of the establishment holding its own, like in Missouri when Wesley Bell beat Cori Bush.

But it’s happening enough and in enough places that the old guard is freaking out; this isn’t the first shot in their war against the DSA.

There are a few arguments Third Way et al. are making that are worth taking step by step. (I’m paraphrasing these here but I see them enough to respond to them…)

This is what happened to the GOP — the Tea Party takeover gave way to the Trump hostile takeover — and we don’t want that happen to us.

Totally. Yes. That was bad for democracy and bad for the American people. But also: After that transformation (which, again, on the whole, bad!), the GOP won the White House twice, basically cemented control of the Supreme Court for a generation, and at various points has controlled one or both chambers of Congress.

Figuring out how to leverage anti-establishment anger in service of long-term power is worth the effort. But that’s not what the center is doing right now…

The DSA harms the broader party brand, and battleground candidates get maligned even if they’re not DSA-affiliated.

The party brand is already in the toilet.

And if a candidate can’t clearly say: “I disagree with my colleague on X Y and Z but I look forward to working together to lower costs and get money out of politics” with their full chest, then they’re not a good candidate to begin with.

Democrats shouldn’t elect people who can’t win the general.

It is true: Being able to win the primary alone is not proof someone can win the general. (The GOP has proven that wrong many times over the years.)

But the inverse is also true. If you cannot win the primary, you absolutely cannot win the general, because you cannot inspire the party’s most active members to show up and vote. (This is why we shouldn’t have super PACs messing around in primaries — candidates should have a mostly independent chance to make their case.)

And the argument of “Vote for me because I’m the most electable” is not particularly compelling when the Democratic establishment/old guard has lost the voters’ trust.

Without an argument on electability — which they have no ground to stand on after Trump won twice3 — they’re coming up empty.

Because if you think the DSA or left candidate is bad, then who is your alternative? Where are the non-DSA or non-”scary” candidates you think Democrats should be electing instead?

In the same way that it is not sufficient to just be “not-Trump,” it’s not enough to just be “not the hippies” either.

Instead of decrying what you are not, I wish they’d make the affirmative case.

Make an argument for why you would be better for the American people. Rally people behind a vision.

Present clear solutions for the housing crisis, the childcare crisis, the trust crisis — tell voters that you’re angry, you understand why they’re angry, and you’re going to do the work together.

Find and support charismatic community-driven leaders who can communicate in a way that meets the moment.4

It would be better if there was a cohort of vibrant, interesting values-aligned center-ish candidates — our democracy would benefit from a rigorous conversation about policy and prioritization (because alas, we’re definitely not getting one from working with the GOP.)

And there are some orgs trying to build this! I hope they succeed, because the more political homes we can create, the better!

But that’s not what this particular initiative is.

This plan is not coming up with proposals to speak to the challenges people are experiencing, or finding ways to channel people’s anger into action.

It’s not organizing, or movement building, or restoring the civic ties and creating a bigger sense of community.

It’s explicitly tearing down the people who annoy them online — because the intra-factional war is generally 99% a social media construct (that I sometimes engage in, sorry!!), 1% a thing that some voters are in the splash-zone on.

Listen, I sort of get the impulse to want to spend millions of dollars shit-talking my trolls.

I get yelled at a decent amount by all sides (much to the entertainment of my husband, who thinks it’s all very silly when I show him my mentions where I’m somehow a neo-liberal shill, a dirtbag leftist commie, and an anti-Semitic slur, all at the same time.)

Alas, I am not a moderate. I’m also not a DSA member!5 But I appreciate how they’ve built a political home for people seeking community and connection. They do the organizing work, even when it’s messy and conflict-heavy.

They are accountable to each other — which raises the question: Who are these center-left and moderate orgs accountable to? Who are their stakeholders? Since they don’t have a membership-based model and don’t serve a clear constituency, I assume it’s the people who give them money. Who’s that? Well, they don’t release their donors — wonder why!

I’m also not a working class voter in Michigan or Texas or anywhere else. I’m a Brooklyn mom in the back half of my 30s; I don’t presume or assume to know what those voters want to hear. That’s why I’m not the one shaping communication with them.

Instead, I’ve spent the last decade building an organization that recruits and supports thousands of people rooted in community across the pro-democracy side of the spectrum, from (yes) DSA-affiliated candidates to former Republicans winning in Trump+40 districts.

My job is not to recruit candidates that reflect my politics; it’s to recruit candidates that understand what their neighbors care about and can speak to them.

And from that, I’ve learned one big rule that holds true across the country:

Candidates need to be able to answer the question of “why should voters want me to win” — and right now, the left are the only ones who are telling a story at the emotional tenor voters want to hear.

To be fair, I don’t think the left always does this perfectly.

Progressive policies might benefit working class people but that doesn’t always correlate to progressive candidates winning working class voters, for any number of reasons that I hope the left is both honest and curious about — there is more work to do here.

And while I know the temptation to be all ~Vote Blue No Matter Who applies to you guys too!!~ to the more center-leaning Democrats, being shitty doesn’t serve the end goal of winning power.

Fight like hell in the primary, unite in the general. (To their credit, Rep. Haley Stevens and Sen. Mallory McMorrow are modeling this incredibly well in Michigan!)

Ultimately my questions about this program and nearly everything else are simple:

Have you chosen the fight you need to win? Or are you choosing the fight that satisfies your ego?

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I regret to say, this is not my first time engaging in the intra-factional debate. (My self-loathing about this participation is deep and vast — but also, I cannot help myself.) Read my last essay on this:

When We’re in Charge is my leadership book for millennials and gen Z trying to do things differently. Pick up a copy in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books, including Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to it for free right this very minute. It’ll be out in paperback in September.

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Phoebe Berman’s Gonna Lose It - Brooke Averick [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

Phoebe is ready to lose her virginity - now that she’s committed to the task, she end sup dating three different guys (a handsome new teacher at her school, a Words with Friends opponent, and her roommate.) Very charming, manages not to get into purity culture re: virginity.

The Lowe Job - Grace Alexander [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

Lili Lowe gets caught having an affair with her married boss (a politician) — her mom, Lydia, a former talent agent, capitalizes on it and throws Lili and her other two sisters, Stevie and Iris, into the spotlight. It’s Kardashian-esque, but also loving, a sharp, a little heartbreaking — very juicy. I liked this a lot and was fascinated to see where it was going.

The Whistler - Ann Patchett [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

A sweet intimate novel about 53-year old Daphne running into one of her former stepfathers at the Met and figuring out what really happened during her childhood. I kept waiting for something bad — and something bad does happen, but not the bad thing I expected — and instead it was sweet/loving/endearing. Not my top Ann Patchett novel but as good as you’d expect.

The Romance Revival - Christina Lauren [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

Emery married Luca despite their opposite natures — three years in, Emery is sucked up in her deep research job creating technology that possibly brings people back to life. And whoops, Luca gets hit by a car and needs to use it. Now they have to figure out: Do they still belong together? A little silly at times but I really like Christina Lauren.

In Stormy Weather - Chelsea Curto [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

Enemies-to-lovers/childhood friends who become more in the form of two meteorologists storm chasing and competing for a job in Florida, while also being livestreamers. A lot going on here but it works.

Extracurricular - Rachel Lynn Solomon [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

Ramona’s a child star turned young adult pop star who burns out fast in her mid-20s and decides to go to college, where her first professor is handsome new divorcee Nick. They hit it off, etc, etc. I like famous-people-date-normal-people stories so this worked for me, and Rachel Lynn Solomon is a reliable hit for me.

Love You More - Emily Giffin [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

Billie is a thriving fertility doctor in NYC engaged to handsome nice guy Dean — when her best friend dies in a car crash and she’s called back to her hometown in Wisconsin by her first love, Mick, to help deal with the ramifications (including a kid.) A little sad and spooked me out about possibly leaving my kids parentless, but mostly sweet and hot.

The Parisian Heist - Jo Piazza [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

I love - this is another perfect summer read. Two timelines: (1) Emma’s a struggling artist in Paris in the 90s (I think) working as a cleaning lady for rich lady Stella Swanson, who ultimately enlists her in pulling off a heist. (2) In the late 1800s, Claire befriends Jo van Gogh, the widow who inherits hundreds of her brother-in-law’s Vincent van Gogh’s paintings and is determined to build his legacy. I don’t know shit about art but I love a good heist story and I love light historical fiction. Really fun.

The Shampoo Effect - Jenny Jackson [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

Soapy goodness about Caroline, a nepo-baby writer who moves to a beach town in Massachusetts for a fellowship and falls for handsome scientist Van, who runs with the same crew he grew up with. Dive into the mess about rich people behaving badly (in ways both understandable and not), some love triangles, exposed secrets, and how the more things change, the more they stay the same. A very good beach read.

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For more book reviews:

• February

• March

• April

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• June

When We’re in Charge is my leadership book for millennials and gen Z trying to do things differently. Pick up a copy in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books, including Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to for free right this very minute. It’ll be out in paperback in September.

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Bookshop.org

My current assessment: We might win this November (and I really hope we do, for the sake of democracy), but it won’t be because of anything we do — and if/when we do win, that won’t solve our bigger problems as a party.

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We might win…

Per at least one new poll, Trump’s approval rating is at a record low — barely cracking 32%. (That’s the same as what George W. Bush’s was when he left office…)

Meanwhile: Per a NYT poll back in May: 89% of likely Democratic voters are almost certain or very likely to vote, another 9% are somewhat likely.

Emerson College says that Democrats have an 11 point advantage over Republicans on the generic ballot.

CNN’s new poll out yesterday says that Democrats are +8 with registered voters — with a 20 point advantage among voters who say they’re extremely motivated to vote.

Basically: Our people will crawl over broken glass to cast their ballots. And Republicans are less than thrilled about candidates that aren’t Trump.

…but not because of anything we do.

People don’t like the war in Iran. They definitely don’t like the economy (because holy shit things have gotten expensive, and they’re only getting more expensive). They don’t like the president, who got us into the aforementioned war and made the prices go up.

They also don’t particularly like the Democratic Party! (Or the Republican Party, for that matter.)

But! Voters generally like the Democratic candidates enough. One spring poll showed that even among people who dislike or sort of dislike the party, 57% say they’ll still vote for Democrats anyway. (Hell, I’m probably one of those people: I’m pretty meh on the party as a whole and I will absolutely always vote for Democrats!)

They're voting for the Democratic party and/but: They also want it to change.

Again, I certainly fall into this bucket. 96% of Democratic voters say the party needs to be changed — 39% said minor changes, 47% said major changes, and 10% said completely reformed.

From yesterday’s CNN poll:

• 80% say it’d significantly improve the Democratic Party to replace the current leadership

• 83% say it’d be better for us to take a stronger stand against Trump

• 85% (!!) say it’d be ideal for us to nominate younger people for major offices

Part of the reason people are demanding change: They simply don’t believe we’ll do what we say.

They don’t trust us.

Only 15% of all voters say they trust the Democratic Party and feel like it represents their interests — and 58% of likely voters say they won’t vote for a candidate they don’t trust, regardless of issue positions.

Per that new CNN polls, 52% of Americans say Democrats aren't spending enough time on cost-of-living issues — and even among those who hear the message, a majority (59%) say Dem policies would hurt or make no difference on costs vs. 41% who say they'd help.

That means they hear us but don’t believe us.

And beyond that: They don’t believe we can do anything about anything. (But again, they’re also not that optimistic about the GOP.)

Our institutions and old guard aren’t helping the cause.

The distrust started in 2016, with the feeling that the party rigged the primary,1 and then really ramped up in 2022/2023…

• Voters really did not want Biden to run for re-election.
  
  In JULY 2022 (!!), only 26% of Democratic primary voters wanted Biden to the nominee in 2024; one third of the people who wanted a different nominee because of his age. 94% of Democrats under the age of 30 wanted someone new.
  
  He did so anyway, seemingly with the support of the entire party apparatus — even as he was obviously decaying (sadly) before our eyes. (Putting aside for a moment: As I’ve talked about at length elsewhere, no one is incentivized to tell an older leader to step down, and that conversation is really really hard — and no one but Biden himself could’ve made the call.)

• They feel like the party establishment concealed his decline. A June 2025 poll showed that 68% of voters — including 52% of Democrats — believe the administration was dishonest about Biden’s condition. (I’d also add people felt prettttty gaslit by an administration saying “the economy is good, actually!” when they didn’t feel that in their day-to-day lives.)

• Then voters didn’t get a say in his replacement.
  
  There isn’t a ton of data on this, but it’s worth noting: Before Biden dropped out, some polling (from Welcome PAC, who had some self-interest in this finding, so take it with a grain of salt) showed that 64% of Democratic Primary voters would have wanted an open convention.
  
  And while people rallied behind her fast, I suspect there’s a broader sentiment that Harris was made the nominee without the voters’ explicit consent or approval. (I understand why that happened - there really was no way to hold a super-fast primary, and she almost certainly would’ve won any convention or primary anyway, but still: Buy-in matters!)

• Then congressional Democrats absolutely ate shit against Trump through most of 2025, mistakenly believing that just because he won the popular vote, what he was doing was popular. Quinnipiac shows Dems went from 21% approval in February 2025 to 18% approval in December. Not great!

On top of all that: Ken Martin undermining trust in the DNC doesn’t help with our own party!

Now, I hear the counter-argument, which is that Biden did keep his promises on many things. Sure! Maybe! But if he couldn’t sell it, and people couldn’t feel it (for example: the infrastructure bill that just recently started kicking off construction projects…), then it may have been good policy but it doesn’t actually matter for political purposes.

Trust is not the same as ideology

Again, from this week’s newest CNN poll:

• 54% say it would be better if the party moved left. 45% say it wouldn’t.

• 54% say it would be better if the party moved center. 46% say it wouldn’t.

Real clarity on the path forward there, huh.

But tbh, this makes sense to me.

As I’ve said many times before — including on Pod Save America just a few weeks ago: People don’t have ideologies. They have problems; they want solutions, and mostly they want to not think about politics that much.

The left is offering solutions, while the center is offering…hippie-punching, mostly.

And if the argument is around electability, or “well, trust us, we know what wins” — well, most of the last decade proves that wrong.

As put it: it’s not that the left is rising so much as the “center” is falling. It’s worth reading his newsletter in full — I absolutely agree with this:

Rebuilding trust is about feelings — not facts. (Sorry.)

People don’t trust our establishment, they don’t trust our party, they want change, and they want things to get better. They want to believe that leaders can make things better!

If you’re selling small nibbles around the edges — even if that’s realistically what might happen if we take power — you’re not speaking to the way voters are feeling, and politics is about feelings even more than it’s about facts.

And/but, there’s a real tension in all this: Most of our candidates who are promising big solutions aren’t going to be able to deliver them — especially those running for Congress, which will not be able to meaningfully govern until Trump’s out of office and we hopefully have a Democratic president.

And if they can’t keep their promises, the trust deficit grows.

This is why centering leaders at the state and local level is fundamental to restoring the party brand.2

In 2021, Mayor Brandon Scott proposed a violence reduction strategy that Baltimore had already tried and failed at twice — once in the ‘90s, once in 2014. He was asking a city that had been let down on this exact promise, twice, to believe him anyway. Baltimore ended 2025 with 133 homicides — down 60% from 2020, substantially outpacing the national decline.

Governor Mikie Sherrill declared a state of emergency on utility costs on day one in New Jersey and told the BPU to get credits onto people’s bills by summer. More than $70 million in credits have landed.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani is mid-promise-keeping: 2,000 free 2-K seats this fall, universality in four years. (And in the meantime, he’s filling potholes and having fun.)

And/but, the ceiling here is real: none of this fixes what a Democratic Congress can’t do until 2029.

Mayors and governors may be able to do a ton on affordable housing, child care, and public safety (among other things), but they cannot deliver a functional federal government. They can’t get us out of wars. They can’t bring about universal health care or solve the immigration crisis or keep Trump’s picks off the Supreme Court.

Pretending otherwise is exactly the overpromising that got us into the trust hole.

What they can deliver is proof that when someone in our party says a thing, the thing happens. You can’t message test trust and you certainly can’t buy it with TV ads.

All you can do is do.

Do the work, sell the work, rinse, repeat. Do it enough, in enough places, and we’ll stop having to ask people to trust us. They’ll see and live the proof.

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A few other things I’ve written about the Democratic Party:

When We’re in Charge is my leadership book for millennials and gen Z trying to do things differently. Pick up a copy in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books, including Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to for free right this very minute. It’ll be out in paperback in September.

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Bookshop.org

Two days after that, I got onto an airplane to head to Chicago for two days, then home again for two days, then California and DC for four days — a stretch that involved many flights and accordingly, a lot of time to sit in my feelings and scroll the internet.

Almost immediately, I started looking at dogs.

I downloaded Petfinder, set up an account at adoptapet.com and shelterluv, and spent a lot of time going down Reddit and research rabbit-holes about what kind of dog we might want.

Did we want a pure bred, and if so, what kind? Did we want a puppy or a senior dog? What kind of dog would be best for an urban home with two toddlers?

One might suggest the only correct answer is “don’t get a dog, you crazy person.”

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Here’s the thing though: I don’t know how to live without a dog. I grew up with dogs from birth until I left for college and I got Sadie barely a year after I graduated from Northwestern — save for those few years, I have never not had a dog.

The apartment felt too empty. I missed the click-clacks of her nails on the wood floors. The muscle memory of yelling “Sadie, crate!” when we were getting ready to leave was hard to shake.

I knew there was simply no way I was going to go without a dog forever. And looking ahead to the next 18 months or so, given my travel schedule and a bunch of other stuff going on, this summer was basically the only good time to welcome a new dog into our home for the foreseeable future.1

So as a way of coping with my sadness (and filling the time on airplanes), I filled out applications for as many rescue groups as I could find, submitted inquiries to various breeders, and sent my husband dozens of dog listings, seeing if there were any that piqued his interest.

When I saw a 12 pound 3 month old black lab/beagle mix2 named Wrangler — who was being fostered in a house with kids and other dogs and had already proven to be extremely social and friendly — on Ziva Dog Rescue’s website, I pounced.

Alas, I was too slow. Erin, the lovely president of Ziva, wrote back to me quickly:

”Thank you for your application for Wrangler. I know it's been super quick but he already has a pending adoption. However, both of his siblings are still available. We haven't posted them yet and likely won't have to, given the interest in Wrangler. Let me know if you might be interested in one of his siblings - Hank or Bonnie. They are both SUPER cute, almost spitting images, and their temperaments are the same - great with everyone.”

An off-market dog?? I hadn’t even considered that as an option. And all things being equal, when I asked my 3 year old if she wanted a girl dog or a boy dog, she repeatedly said girl.

Then the rescue group sent me this:

Those eyes! Those ears! I was sold.

So as my Mother’s Day gift, we rented a car, piled the kids (and my mom) in, and drove out to New Jersey where the three puppies were being fostered in a gorgeous house with two other older dogs, two kids (who’d been putting the dogs in American Girl Doll clothes, among other things), and a very kind couple.

The minute we got to the property, the puppies were playing outside — when the girl dog ran up to me and crawled into my lap to give me kisses, I nearly cried.

“This is my dog” I said to my husband. “Sorry, honey. We need her.”

Two weeks later, after the dog had gotten one last round of shots (and completed her obligations to the rescue group — she had been promised for a puppy yoga fundraising event, I love a girl who raises money!), a friend and I got back in the car on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend to bring this dog home.

After much debate and brainstorming (and consulting with our big girl, who had very strong opinions about what was and was not a good dog name3), we decided to name her Chili Dog — first name Chili, middle name Dog, and my husband’s last name.

In the two months since we brought her home, we seem to have gotten very very lucky.

Chili is 5 months old now and so far, she has proven to be possibly the gentlest dog in America. Our toddlers handle her like a stuffed animal (under supervision) and she doesn’t bat an eye.

My big girl gives her hugs and asks me near-daily when Chili can sleep in their room. (“When she no longer pees in the house” is the answer.) The baby — who was terrified of dogs at first — got over her fears and now treats her like a lion tamer treats a lion, basically daring Chili to get mad.

But Chili has already figured out that the girls are reliable sources for snacks (because they don’t understand the concept of “treats are for obedience…”), so they are her gods; she worships at their feet.

Within a few days of coming home, we immediately started working with a dog trainer (A Wild K9, if you’re local and looking for someone —Anastasia is phenomenal!) and after an intense month of thrice weekly sessions, Chili has a pretty good foundation for walking on the leash, sit, stay, leave it, and come.

We’ve taken her on a weekend trip to Rhode Island, to the dog beach and off-leash hours at Prospect Park, to the playground many many times over, and in a real saving grace for our time management, to pick up and drop off with us every morning and night.

She doesn’t really bark, mostly doesn’t whine, doesn’t counter surf, has quickly figured out how to leave the kids’ toys alone, and will happily hang out in her crate. Within a week or so she was sleeping through the night.

My algorithm has been serving me a ton of dog training content and in particular, a lot about teaching your dog to settle, to be ignored, to not be showered with attention 100% of the time.

We do not have that problem. I love Chili, but when stack-ranking the tiny creatures under our care, she comes third — she has quickly gotten used to just hanging out in the girls’ toddler-sized chair, taking in the chaos and occasionally chewing on a bone. (The downside of this ranking: I definitely don’t take as many pictures of her as I would if we didn’t have the kids.)

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not all sunshine and roses.

Housebreaking is extremely slow-going — after one poorly timed just-before-we-crated-her-for-the-night pee in the middle of our bed, I was grateful we had put waterproof sheets on during our newborn days.

But like all parts of caregiving, that will change. And tbh, we also slowly potty trained a toddler over the last year, so we’re used to cleaning up accidents pretty regularly (and as any parent knows, your relationship to bodily fluids post-kids is completely transformed.)

At least the dog doesn’t have a meltdown or scream at me after she pees on the floor — she just does her business and moves on.

And she’s not cheap — there’s pet insurance, food, vet bills (she gets spayed next month!), lots of treats, the trainer plus bonus obedience classes, and obviously I can’t help but buy her toys.

This week in particular, my husband has been solo at home with the kids and dog while I travel for work (my only trip of the summer) and he has said to me multiple times: The dog makes this a lot harder.4

But we can only be who we are — and I am a person who enjoys doing things on hard-mode.

And phew, when I watch my kids play with her — my big girl shouting “come here Chills!” and petting her tummy; the baby screaming “CHEE-EE, SIT!” and waving food directly into the dog’s face, equal parts delighted and mad when Chili takes a bite (as she should); all three of them chasing each other up and down the hallway outside our apartment — my nervous system settles down.

It’s something akin to healing for the post-partum anxiety I had about Sadie eating the baby.

There are few better ways to start a day than my current routine:

My husband gets up at 5:30 and takes Chili out of her crate and outside to pee. When they come back in, Chili leaps into bed with me and turns into a cinnamon-bun snuggled up, warm and safe next to my head. An hour later, the girls “surprise” me by coming into bed, too. They drink their milk, tell me their good/bad/silly things from the day before, nudging Chili out from her spot so we can all “be cozy” together.

So yes, bringing home a puppy to a home with two toddlers barely a month after my last dog died is objectively a crazy thing to do.

But subjectively? 10/10. (And will be 11/10 when she stops shitting in our closet.)

Consider this my strongest recommendation: When in doubt, get the dog.

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When We’re in Charge is my leadership book for millennials and gen Z trying to do things differently. Pick up a copy in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books, including Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to for free right this very minute. It’ll be out in paperback in September.

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In early 2025, Ben ran for DNC Chair and while he came up short (sadly, sigh), he didn’t let that stop him from putting pen to paper on a plan to save democracy.

His new book, This Is The Plan, comes out on Tuesday — and if you read this Substack or follow me anywhere on the internet, you’re going to like it.

This is not a book about messaging or policy — it’s not a Project 2029.1 Rather, it’s about power in service of making people’s lives better, something I think too many political operatives and pundits forget is the point.

He dives in on what you can do to actually win, how the different levels of government actually function (and why, as I like to say, the way to win the big elections is to win lots of small ones), and what the Democratic Party actually is.

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I’ve known Ben for a while now and think he’s just an all-around good guy — his equal parts pragmatic and optimistic approach to politics really hits with me. (I also admittedly love books that tell me I’m right.)

We chatted earlier this week about his book — which is excellent, with lots of Dad Jokes and Princess Bride references — and the broader misconceptions people have about how politics actually works. Pre-order it now.

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ME: The thing I really loved about the book is that it’s not particularly ideological. You don’t get into the intra-factional debates inside the Democratic Party — it’s not really about issues (and I mean that as a compliment). How’d you land there?

BEN: The central idea is that all of us who believe in democracy, who believe government should work for regular people and not just the ultra-wealthy and well-connected, have to get together — because we’re up against a trillionaire, a multi-billionaire president, and a cabal with more wealth and power than maybe any group in history. They’re going to use everything they have to divide us and cement control, whether the public likes it or not.

So I’m trying to draw the biggest circle I can.

I call it “the big we” — a group that has to include a ton of people who disagree with each other about a lot of stuff, in order to protect this incredibly sacred, non-guaranteed thing: the idea that the majority of the public gets to decide who controls the most powerful military and biggest budget any government has ever had.

Most people around the world have no say over what their government does. The fact that we still have even a prayer of winning an election and having our choice lead the country is something worth fighting to protect at all costs.

I’m not writing a book arguing that one wing of the Democratic Party should beat another wing.

I’m arguing that everyone who believes we should have the most fundamental freedoms in this country needs to agree on that one thing and fight for it together.

There’s a data point on page 30 that stopped me — you cite data journalist , who asked people an open-ended question in November 2025 about what their ideal political party would argue for.

A quarter of respondents were generally left-leaning, a quarter generally right-leaning, 4% called for centrists specifically, and 38% gave answers that didn’t fit the left-right spectrum at all — things like “helping people,” “treating everyone the same,” kitchen-table stuff. You wrote that most people aren’t mapping a left-right spectrum. For them, politics is over there, and real life is over here.

This gets at one of my pet peeves about a lot of punditry — it misses that most people don’t have ideologies. They have problems, they want solutions, and they’d rather not think about politics at all.

How has that shaped your organizing?

When you knock on doors — talking to voters who might vote one way or the other, or might not vote at all — every elaborate theory about how to position yourself ideologically falls away.

You’re in a conversation with a real human being living their own life, and most of what political professionals think about every day is just noise to them. They don’t know or care who started the redistricting fight in Texas. They want to know if their kid can join the sports team, or if the cost of the uniform is competing with the cost of medicine. That’s true across race, ethnicity, rural areas, cities, suburbs — everywhere.

If you already have strong views on a bunch of political issues and candidates, you already know who you’re voting for.

The people who actually decide close elections — both whether to vote at all, and which party to support — are overwhelmingly people who just don’t put politics at the center of their lives, the same way most political professionals don’t put competitive curling at the center of theirs. It’s something they think about once every four years, maybe get briefly interested in, then it fades into the background while they deal with more urgent things.

That shaped how I thought about my work as chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party: I saw myself as protecting an immensely valuable thing — our neighbor-to-neighbor, friend-to-friend organizing program. That’s been building for years, some of it dating back to teams that launched under the Obama campaign in 2008 — people who’d meet in a living room or coffee shop and then go talk to their neighbors about city council races, mayoral races, all the way up to president.

There’s a million forces in politics trying to pull everyone away from that focus — the money, what donors want, candidates who don’t want to be on the same doorknocking script as each other. All of it is about the political world’s internal drama, not about voters’ actual lives.

I think of the real work of politics as bumper bowling. If you’re actually listening to what voters care about, you’re not going to wind up in the gutter — you’re going to hit pins, because meeting people where they are is how democracy is supposed to work. Your message works when it gets people nodding who otherwise wouldn’t be paying attention to politics at all. The practice of listening pulls you out of your own head, out of the Twitter wars and cable news fights, and into the real-life question underneath all of it: can my life be a little bit better, a little less hard, in an environment that often feels bleak.

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I really appreciated your chapter on the Democratic Party, because you get at something I’ve written about before — the party doesn’t exist the way people think it does. You call it “the blob.” I call it a loosely connected series of group chats. What’s the biggest misconception people have? What myth do you most want to bust?

People think of the Democratic Party as this giant force looming over Democratic politics — calling the shots, choosing candidates, deciding when and how to fight.

The reality is it’s a handful of people, mostly volunteers, desperately trying to keep the lights on and say something anyone will notice. For the people who work inside these institutions, it often feels like yelling into a hurricane while getting blamed for every outcome that happens.

My argument in the book is that functionally, the party works like a civic club — like an Elks Lodge that also happens to have a bank account candidates can raise money into, which the party can then spend to help them. That’s essentially it, in most places, most of the time. But it can be something bigger: a vehicle for people who disagree about a lot of things but share a commitment to doing the year-round organizing work that builds political power at every level of government — a permanent campaign.

That’s what we built in Wisconsin, and I’ve seen the impact of it community by community across the state. There are places doing the same thing around the country. If more places did it, we could create enormous change, because a lot of the outcomes that make us want to pull our hair out today trace back to small local elections nobody was paying attention to five or ten years ago.

There was a state supreme court race in North Carolina in 2020 — the Democratic candidate, Cheri Beasley, lost the race for Chief Justice by 401 votes. Four hundred and one people. If they’d voted for her instead, North Carolina wouldn’t have been re-gerrymandered before 2024. Republicans wouldn’t have won three additional U.S. House seats. Mike Johnson wouldn’t have become Speaker. Donald Trump wouldn’t have had the votes to cut a trillion dollars from health care.

Four hundred and one votes, in a race no one was watching — and those elections happen constantly. What all of us can do is bring our fundamental commitment to a free and fair democracy to the work of building a party that does that organizing on the ground, in the races far from the headlines that end up affecting everything.

I have a theory here, and I’m curious if yours matches: why doesn’t the Democratic Party do this? Why doesn’t every state party, or the DNC, build this kind of infrastructure? It feels so obvious — why doesn’t it exist?

Part of the challenge is that most people live in places where very little actually feels on the line — you already know who’s going to win your governor’s race, your congressional race. Most states, most districts, are solidly blue or solidly red. Most people don’t know many people who vote differently than they do. Non-voters hang out with non-voters; Democrats hang out with Democrats. So the idea that we all have this superpower — that we can change the fate of American democracy by getting some friends together — feels abstract, especially while we’re bombarded with fundraising texts and emails saying the sky is falling, which can’t all be true at once.

There’s a real disillusionment that follows, and often the people who stick around are there because the local party is a place to see friends, or because the national convention is genuinely a blast.

[ED NOTE: I made a face at Ben here - the convention sounds exhausting!]

It is! I talk in the book about the moment Lil Jon kicked off Georgia’s roll call: “Georgia, how do you cast your ten electoral votes?” Genuinely one of the best moments of my life.

But it’s not necessarily a magnet for organizers who want to think strategically and throw themselves into the work — and when they do show up, they sometimes get chewed up by people who’ve always done things a certain way.

Most of these roles are unpaid. Most state party chairs are paid zero dollars. Most executive directors are paid far less than they’d make doing something else. Most people who work at a state party stay less than a year. High turnover, tough conditions — hard to build anything on that foundation.

Part of the reason Wisconsin worked: two chairs before me, an operative told the then-governor he’d only take the job if it was paid. The governor agreed. That chair discovered the party was in debt and about to miss payroll, but got it on firm footing over years. His successor made it her full-time job, and launched the year-round organizing program. I came in standing on their shoulders and built it further. That takes years — and in a moment when a lot of people are furious at “the party” and don’t want to fund a stranger’s salary, it’s hard to make the case that this is a garden worth tending.

But that’s how political power gets built. It’s how the Christian right built theirs, starting with school board races in the 1980s under Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson. They’ve been doing that work for decades, and even though most Americans reject their policies, the infrastructure has paid off enormously.

You plant a tree knowing you won’t taste the apple for years. That’s the work anyone who wants a democracy in the 2030s needs to start now.

You spoke around it, so I’ll say it plainly: there’s no money for this in most places, unless someone like you is at the top raising it. I’ve spent years trying to raise money for long-term infrastructure with a long-term plan, and that’s just not how money moves in Democratic politics — it’s so different from how Republicans fund things.

When I explain to non-political people that the Leadership Institute, which is Run for Something’s closest Republican analog, has a $50 million annual budget and we work off of $8 million, they can’t believe it. Our billionaires are just different.

It’s not just billionaires — it’s millionaires, and it’s “thousanders” too.

Some of the most successful Democratic fundraising happens through giving-circle programs, where working- and middle-class folks each chip in a few dollars a month and it adds up. Part of the imbalance is the systematic destruction of unions — organizations that actually understand long-term infrastructure building, and that have been dismantled by federal and state governments as part of a deliberate effort to defund Democratic politics.

Part of it is a kind of shiny-object syndrome that’s easy to fall into on our side — long-shot candidates who pull in unbelievable money every cycle, and at the end of it there’s nothing left to carry forward, because every dollar went to TV ads that pay the owners of TV stations rather than building political muscle. I’m not saying don’t run TV ads — you should. You just also have to do the other stuff.

My view is all-of-the-above: out-communicate and out-organize in every medium, every channel, every geography, every constituency, every time period. Do that and you win by half a percent in Wisconsin. But you can’t skip the infrastructure.

Something that shocked me every cycle as chair: more than half our budget would come in after Labor Day of the election year — just the last two months before a November election.2 That creates a huge incentive to spend every cent getting through Election Day and come out the other side broke. Which means most campaigns and state parties scale up fast with people who haven’t built trust or ways of working together, and then almost everyone gets laid off, and you start from scratch next time. That’s no way to build a movement, a party, or power. You need staying power.

If people are thinking about where to put their political dollars: invest in something that will be stronger after the election, win or lose — not just something with a two-month impact that disappears the moment the election’s over.

I write a lot in the book about Run for Something, because I think it exemplifies this — building a cohort of leaders who move through the political system and exercise power now, in ways that make their communities better. About a quarter of members of Congress served as local elected officials earlier in their careers; half served as state legislators. And even for the people who never run for higher office, a local elected official right now — protecting democracy, the rule of law, our fundamental freedoms — is essential. They’re the most important line of defense we have.

One of the things I grapple with a lot, especially around current leadership — and I think this shows up across government, politics, and business — is the declining trust in institutions.

People trust individuals now, not institutions. Why should people trust the Democratic Party right now?

I think the key shift is moving from a Democratic Party that’s a them to one that’s an us. If you’re skeptical of the party, the biggest way to build trust in it is to join it and help build it into what you want it to be. It’s much more plastic and open to revitalization than people realize. 3

Go to a school board meeting — nearly everyone sitting on that board got mad about something happening in the district, got mad enough to run themselves, and now they’re shaping local policy. The Democratic Party works the same way. For people who are fed up: it’s time to join and think about how to make it the organizing force you want it to be.

I don’t think trust should be granted — I think it has to be earned. Across thousands of counties in this country, some county parties are a total disaster and others are amazing, undiscovered gems of people organizing together. But the way this changes is if the party becomes an institution embedded in your community’s life — the table outside the high school musical asking people to sign up, a presence beyond the two months before an election.

Trust ultimately comes from seeing that something is on your side over time, in an enduring way — not just trying to get something from you, but actually being for you. That’s how the party earns trust: showing up consistently. And that takes people.

I have the same refrain for people: if you don’t like the party, join it — this is a membership-based institution, so be a member. People tell me, “I went to a meeting and it was six senior citizens sitting in a room not doing anything, it wasn’t even worth my time.” And I think: you couldn’t take that over? Couldn’t bring ten friends next time? That’s a skills issue on your part, my dude.

If it’s so incompetent and you can’t transform it, what are we even talking about?

No shade to those senior citizens — sometimes they’re leading amazing county parties. But I’ve seen it happen over and over: a group of young folks, or old folks, wanting to transform something, do a little organizing, and suddenly they’re running the county party and transforming it.

It’s one of my favorite things to watch — a local party organization suddenly blooming, tripling in size. You can do that between now and November. There are elections in local party organizations constantly — every year in some counties, every two or four in others — and there are very often open leadership spots.

Most people with extremely strong opinions about the Democratic Party will never go to a county party meeting, formally sign up, or attend a state convention — and that’s fine, that’s just how the world is. But it’s mind-blowing how much power you can have if you just show up. If you’re ever at a party where everyone’s complaining about the Democratic Party, that room probably has enough people in it to win an election for your local party chairship and transform the energy there.

Last question: I think about November, and I’m both incredibly optimistic that we’re going to win big, and also genuinely worried it’ll be because of the environment — not because we did enough of the kind of rigorous introspection and infrastructure work our party actually needs, even when that introspection is miserable.

Looking at the next 18 months into 2028, what do you hope are the questions we ask, and the work we do to prepare?

The book is meant to make the case for how to build and organize in a way that creates enduring change.

If people only read a couple chapters, I’d point them to chapter one — “Your Superpower,” about organizing — and chapter four, about the Democratic Party.

The rest is about the individual fights: state and local government, ballot initiatives, state supreme courts, the House, Senate, presidency.

But fundamentally, it’s about moving away from the idea that there’s a magic set of words, or one office, that ends the darkness and begins some glorious new era. It’s a shared commitment to building a democracy, a community, a civic life — work that doesn’t come out of a focus group and doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker.

I write about how the First Amendment isn’t just freedom of speech — it’s freedom of assembly, the freedom of people getting together to do something. Democracy is as much about what we do as human beings in community together as it is about what we say.

My hope is that we win in 2026, whether or not we do everything right — and that the day after, we come back together and talk through what worked and what didn’t. Then we ask: when’s the next local election? Maybe it’s three months out. (It certainly will be in Wisconsin — we’ve got a Supreme Court race in 2027.)

Who are the new people who showed up at the local office? Who did I meet for the first time — let me get everyone together for a drink. What can we actually build coming out of this? And we make that part of a longer story.

Zoom way back: community in America rises and declines. Political engagement rises and declines. Right now we’re in an era of incredibly low trust, toxic politics, and constant shifts in power because there are no enduring coalitions and so many people are tuned out. It won’t be like this forever — we’re perched on a knife’s edge, with more shifts in the House, Senate, and presidency than in any comparable period in U.S. history.

I want the people who believe in a democracy where everyone can thrive, where everyone’s rights are protected, where everyone has a voice — I want that big “we” to win this era, so those things become a shared agreement in this country, and we can go back to arguing about the marginal tax rate as part of the 2032 election instead. Democracy itself, people’s fundamental freedoms — those shouldn’t be on the table.

That work only happens if we find the joy that comes from common cause together. I want us to rebuild an America we can all be proud of. That, to me, is the work.

Pre-order Ben’s book anywhere you get your books — Amazon, Bookshop.org, or anywhere else — and get it first thing on Tuesday. It’s really great. And subscribe to his Substack for more from him!

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When We’re in Charge is my leadership book for millennials and gen Z trying to do things differently. Pick up a copy in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books, including Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to for free right this very minute. It’ll be out in paperback in September.

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For the longest version of my takes, I chatted with Vox about how we got to this point — the heartbreak, the frustration, and being honest about what decisions were made with what info when (and what the consequences would have been), so we can avoid making the same mistakes again.

I also highly recommend ’s essay in NYMag, which speaks to the complicated moral questions in this election and as always, nails the nuance that I’m also grappling with.

But I do want to dig in on one of the sub-plots that has come up out of this scandal: The role of political consultants in politics.

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ICYMI: Two of the many villains in the Platner saga are the consultants who recruited him to run and led his campaign. They had been traveling the country recruiting working-class candidates (or at least, people who match their imagined aesthetic of working class) and then throwing them into the deep end without rigorous vetting.

You should watch this video — it’s kind of insane they said this shit on camera.

Moraff and his partner are taking a lot of heat, as are the consultants1 that pushed Platner into the spotlight and kept him there throughout the scandals.

The fact that consultants were running the show on the campaign is emblematic of a structural problem in Democratic politics (and probably the GOP too, but I don’t know the ins and outs of their shit as well so I can’t speak with 100% certainty).

So I want to zoom out and answer one of my favorite (?) cocktail party questions2:

If everyone hates political consultants, why do they exist?

Let’s start by defining our terms: What even is a “political consultant”?

By definition, just a subcontractor — the person or firm you hire when you can’t or won’t build a function in-house.

Consultants do all kinds of things: Direct mail, digital ads, social media, email and major donor fundraising, IT, TV, polling, research, vetting, compliance, press, even volunteer organizing, and of course, general consultants (or GCs) who function as overall strategists.

At this point, there are consulting firms that cover nearly any function in a campaign; many will take on multiple roles (like: one firm will handle both online fundraising and paid digital ads, for an example.)

Some are firms, some are individuals. Some consultants have ideological frameworks for taking on clients; others have regional focuses or “types” of people.

Others do both for-profit and political clients — usually the corporate work underwrites the political work.

Most of the contempt aimed at “consultants” is typically aimed at the paid advertising consultants, since they tend to control the biggest chunk of the campaign budget and therefore have a prominent seat in campaign leadership. Paid ad firms also tend to be the ones driving messaging (although sometimes that also comes from the comms firms.) GCs also get a bad rap as the ones driving campaign.

Consultants don’t typically do candidate recruitment — in part because, as we’ve seen, it tends not to work out well, but also because who pays the consultant if there is no candidate?

Are consultants bad people?

No.

I mean, not any more so than any other group of people. Some of them are bad, in the way that some people writ large are bad.

But even if they are, the problem isn’t really their morality.

It’s that the incentive structure around them rewards the wrong behavior — and no one is ever held accountable.

Explain the incentives…

Most consultants charge with a retainer — a defined scope of work with a flat fee per month. Consultants could be as cheap as $5k a month for a solo operator doing a small specific project or as expensive as $25k+/month or more for big fancy firms with lots of manpower.

Then there’s commission… While most fundraising consultants I’ve heard of don’t take a cut of what they raise, there are certainly a few (both small dollar and big dollar) who do.

Ad consultants — both TV and digital — get a cut of the buy, usually single digits but could be up to 15%. Then there are often production fees for developing the creative.

Notably, TV is the most profitable, least labor-intensive thing a firm can sell — one media-buying shop can service two dozen clients, whereas digital or direct mail needs ten times the staff for the same revenue.

Accordingly, commission-based consultants are financially incentivized to push more of whatever they make money off of, even if that’s not actually what is the best path to win.

That’s not to say they’re always acting in their own best interest and against the campaign, but it’s a tension at hand that needs to be named.

The second thing to note about the money is that the commission doesn’t get paid out until the money is spent.

The timing is important because campaigns are obsessed with “cash on hand,” the number reported to the FEC every quarter that reporters and opponents use as a proxy for how healthy a campaign is.

Raise a lot, spend a lot? No bueno.

Raise a lot, sit on it? Great candidate, ready to win.

Put those two facts together and you get something genuinely absurd: Campaigns can theoretically let a consultant work for a year and a half, driving strategy that personally benefits them, then get the entire commission at the very end, conveniently after the number that matters has already been reported.

And that’s just run-of-the-mill normal conflict of interest shit.

I’m barely scratching the surface of the consultants who start PACs and then raise money into those PACs — money that then goes back into the consultant’s pocket as a commission.

Or the donor advisors (who are also consultants!) who advise their donor to give to projects the donor advisor themselves run.

The grifts are, sadly, limitless.

It’s worth naming: Many (hopefully most?) consultants do not operate unethically. But it’s simply the water they’re swimming in.

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Why else do people hate consultants?

Because of the financial nature of their relationship, consultants are not incentivized to take risks.

Let’s say a candidate decides they’re going to rebuff the system and decline to run TV ads, or run fewer TV ads than their opponent. Then they lose.

Maybe it’s because they didn’t run TV ads and all the haters were right — or maybe it’s because the candidate was boring and couldn’t get voters excited to show up, or maybe it was an election year in which the winds were blowing against the candidate’s political party and nothing they could’ve done would’ve made a difference.

Doesn’t matter. Winning campaigns have always done X Y Z — so if you don’t do X Y or Z and then you lose, that’s why.

The same is true for campaign messaging: If you go with the same old framework that has usually won elections in the past and you lose, so be it.

It’s rare a campaign is willing to be the guinea pig for the new approach. The stakes are too high to risk a negative outcome.

This is a system where every individual actor is behaving rationally and the aggregate result is still broken.

What about what happened in Maine? How’d those consultants mess up?

Well for starters, they did a fucked up version of candidate recruitment. I’ll quote Michelle Goldberg from the New York Times here:

(She goes on to say the Run for Something method is much preferable — I agree!)

Then they of course failed to deeply vet their chosen candidate and per their own retelling, didn’t take the vetting flags that did come up seriously.

But zooming out even further: One of my go-to questions to ask when assessing political strategy is “who is this person accountable to?”

Is it their donors? Their bottom lines? Their constituency?

The consultants who recruited Platner in Maine were not accountable to anyone but themselves. They had a theory of the case on who could win and they set out to prove it, consequences be damned. While I do appreciate people who just do things, this was supremely not the time or place for that kind of careless behavior.

Don’t people face consequences for any of this?

Not really!

There’s no database, no real accountability layer, no consumer reports for hiring a political consultant.

Work gets referred in through networks and friendships — I know so-and-so, I worked with your last campaign — which is a terrible way to hire anyone on merit and a great way to keep the same people in the same rooms.

And since often those referrals come with a finders fee (that then raises costs even further), the whole thing is just donor money moving through a supply chain that’s been marked up more than once before anyone with actual oversight ever sees the number.

Consider that basically every consultant who worked in the 2024 election — one where Democrats spent over a billion dollars and lost — is still working today.

I’m not saying all of them should be out of work.

But no one is ever going to be truly honest about what worked, what didn’t, and what money was wasted because their livelihood depends on it.

Seems like the consultant class is mostly white men. True/not true?

True. Because the barrier to becoming a “known” consultant is money, time, and relationships — which is a nice way of saying it selects hard against everyone but the already-connected.

I have a distinct memory of a senior leadership retreat during the 2014 Florida governor’s race — about thirty people, maybe twenty of them consultants — and not one woman among them, and only one person of color.

I have friends who work as consultants have been brought into rooms specifically so the firm doesn’t look “too white,” or “too male” — and then the firm was not hired anyway.

That’s not just an equity problem. It’s a strategy problem.

If the people building the messaging, the ads, the entire theory of persuasion are disproportionately white men, there’s a real gap between who’s deciding what resonates and who actually needs to be resonated with. (And also, we’re still somehow not winning white men!)

If everyone hates this, why does it keep happening? Why do consultants still exist?

Because working as a consultant is one of the only ways you can keep working on campaigns and also have a life outside of them.

If you want to keep doing electoral politics and also make a good living, stay in one city, have a family, have time with your kids, etc, you literally cannot do that while also jumping from one campaign to the next.

Consulting firms are the infrastructure — campaigns stand up and then get shut down, vendors live forever.

The ecosystem’s failure to fund year-round organizing and state or local parties that build political power means the best, most talented senior people tend to join or start consulting firms because they have no alternative if they want to have health insurance past Thanksgiving.

Every incentive in the system is pointing the same broken direction at once.

Feels like this is a problem that’s been happening forever…

Indeed. (I actually hosted a podcast episode about this back in 2021 if you’re interested.)

It’s been interesting, however, to see how it’s changed especially in the last five years.

For starters, the anti-consultant critique has gone from insider baseball to part of a broader diagnosis (and arguably, a correct one) for our party’s failure to win: We play it safe, spend too much on paid media, and don’t trust in our guts. We look to the same old people to drive the same old strategies.

I’m also fascinated by how “consultant-driven politics” has become part of factional warfare — even though let’s be real: Every side has their own consultants. There are leftist consultants, moderate ones, centrist ones, etc. But whatever, make a villain of whoever you need, I guess.

Outside spending has also made this much worse — more money going into politics means more opportunities to make a buck by spending it on advertising.

So what would actually fix it?

Not “abolish consulting,” which is a fundamentally unserious proposal.

But rather, like most things, consider what we can build to solve the systemic problems:

• Ensure (through funding!) that there are sustained staff jobs with benefits that don’t evaporate the day after an election so good people can stay in senior roles in electoral work.

• Encourage risk-taking. Acknowledge that so much of elections are out of our control anyway, so campaigns that try new things should be celebrated because the world is changing fast, the old ways aren’t working anymore, and we have to be willing to take a big swing if we’re going to catch up.

• Empower candidates to have backbones. Much like with “The Groups,” people put responsibility on the wrong parties. If candidates know what they want to say, consultants can be helpful in guiding them how and where to say it in the way that breaks through. But consultants are just that — consulting — they’re not the final decision-makers. Candidates are in charge.

• Take vetting seriously. Some of the stuff that has come up would never have been found out, even in the deepest of vetting reports. But some of the stuff would have! One of the things we tell candidates going into a campaign — even just for school board — is to assume your worst mistakes will end up on the front page of your hometown newspaper and plan accordingly.

• Hold people accountable! When consultants fuck up — as we’re seeing in Maine — consider whether they should stay in this line of work. I know this is sticky shit. Everyone makes mistakes and should be given a chance for growth and a redemption story. (And I don’t take suggestions about how to fuck around with people’s livelihoods lightly.) But/and: Actions should have consequences.

The reality is: Most consultants are not evil grifters.3 Many are just doing their best to make a living doing good work for causes they believe in.

Many of my friends are political consultants; I assume that at some point later in my career, I will do consulting — it is not definitionally a bad thing.

However: Consulting shouldn’t be the only option for senior people. Consultants shouldn’t be the driving force behind our campaigns. And maybe this is in my own best interest to say, but: They for sure should not be leading on candidate recruitment.

What other questions do you have? What else can I debunk for you?

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When We’re in Charge is my leadership book for millennials and gen Z trying to do things differently. Pick up a copy in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books, including Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to for free right this very minute. It’ll be out in paperback in September.

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This will be my only newsletter of the week — RFS is closed & childcare is open M-Th, so I’m using my “vacation” to focus on some fiction writing (and yapping a little on TV if you’re curious for my political thoughts this week.) Happy July 4th!

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Down to Earth - Julia Turshen [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

Frankie’s a farmer in upstate NY; Paige is an imminently-separated mom of an eight year old son who just moved to town for the summer to figure her life out. They meet and fall for each other. Very sweet, very hot, will make you want a tomato sandwich.

Tropesick - Lauren Okie [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

Katie’s a ghostwriter for Meredith Bradford, the bestselling romance novelist of all time; Tyler is a literary fiction writer hired to partner with Katie on Meredith’s next novel. Whoops, Tyler was also the best friend of Katie’s older brother, who died of an overdose eight years ago. (And whoops round two, Tyler was also Katie’s high school love.) They end up living out the tropes that they’re writing into the novel. This is sweet, and also a tiny bit convoluted until the ending, which I admittedly didn’t really see coming. It’s longer and more ambitious (in a good way!) than the usual romance and that mostly pays off!

Lies Between Us - Jessica Goodman [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

A twisty murder-mystery in a beach town! The Gold sisters and the Silver brothers have grown up together — with some complicated romantic entanglements between them. When someone shows up dead on the beach, all those relationships get caught up in a web of lies. Jess is a friend, her books are all great summer-y reads about rich people and messy friendships.

Alan Opts Out - [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

Alan’s a powerful ad executive trying to win over Big Dairy — when the farmer he’s flown in for the pitch bombs his presentation, Alan has a mental breakdown of sorts and spirals, wondering what the point of capitalism really is? Meanwhile, his wife, Vivian, is just a few dinner parties away from joining the elite women’s club in Greenwich, CT — and freaking out about one daughter who possibly speaks to animals and another who wants to put on a play.

Fun satire of wealth, capitalism, and advertising in particular, with a dash of rich women behaving badly just for kicks.

The Hill - Harriet Clark [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

Suzanna’s mother is sentenced to life in a hilltop prison after robbing a bank with fellow radicals. Suzanna promises to visit her every Saturday forever while during the week she lives with her grandparents, and then just with her grandma, who spent years in the Communist Party. The book covers Suzanna from ages 8 to 18 as she pushes and pulls against her mom, her grandma, and the worlds she’s a part of.

I read this for book club; I probably wouldn’t have finished if I didn’t need to. The beginning made me very sleepy. There are some gorgeous scenes and some convoluted ones. Not a lot happens! But it does make me interrogate the question I come back to a lot: What sacrifices are you willing to make for your beliefs? What if trying to make the world better for your kids tomorrow makes you a worse parent today?

What’d you read last month that you liked? Tell me what’s good.

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Past book round-ups…

When We’re in Charge is my leadership book for millennials and gen Z trying to do things differently. Pick up a copy in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books, including Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to for free right this very minute. It’ll be out in paperback in September.

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ICYMI: The remote work1 war has been raging yet again, primarily waged through a series of pieces the NYT.

Round #1 was an op-ed provocatively titled: “We liked remote work. Then we looked at the data.”

The gist: Remote work makes people lonelier and more depressed — specifically, people who live alone.

I have a ton of quibbles with this piece.

First, seems like the problem is actually living alone — which I’ve done and LOVED, but can understand how that’s a challenge.

Second, as I’ll get into shortly, the way many companies transitioned into remote work was by force during COVID. They didn’t intentionally build a flexible or remote work culture, they just tried to translate their in-office vibes to Zoom and Slack. That’s not remote work in its ideal form.

And third: The piece places the onus on the workplace to fulfill the entirety of people’s social needs. Yes, work is where people get their most regular low-touch social interactions. But work cannot be your primary source for friendships. It’s nice to like your colleagues! But it’s good to have a life outside of it (and leadership should aim to build workplaces that make that possible.)

Round #2 in the remote work wars was a story about how remote work is transformative for working parents, both for how they parent and how they’re able to stay in the workforce in the first place. Obviously, I liked this piece.

There is no world in which I could survive or enjoy parenting without remote work.

As many of the parents in this story note — and still more in this Pew survey of working parents affirm) — it’s simply an impossible balancing act. We are never balancing, we are only constantly recalibrating. The world may demand two working parents in order to live, but boy is it not set up for two working parents to thrive.

And of course, as I’ve written about before: Return to office (RTO) mandates are a roundabout way to kick women out of the workforce.

Round #3 was an op-ed from experts Adam Grant, Marissa Shandell, and Courtney Elliott, laying out new research that shows RTO mandates are really about ego, not productivity.

“The only trait that consistently predicted objections to remote work was narcissism — the tendency to be self-centered and entitled. The higher the opinions of themselves leaders expressed, the more they coveted power and status — and the more they favored return-to-office mandates.”

Not surprising!

And while this is not chronologically round #4, I consider it the final blow: Per the WSJ: “Work From Home Is Here to Stay—Even if Some CEOs Don’t Love It”

“An average of 26% of paid, full days were worked from home in May, according to a monthly work-from-home survey run by economists Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom and Steven Davis. That is down, but not by much, from the 27% registered two years earlier.”

A notable finding that is the bat signal for me: A real generational divide. Younger leaders were less opposed to hybrid and remote work environments.

That’s my bat signal.

Remote/flexible work is major theme in my book, When We’re in Charge, because a new generation of leaders (generally speaking) do not adhere to the belief that work must be seen to be happening.

Many of us became leaders in remote work environments; others of us simply can’t afford to live in the same place our work might be physically located. (Housing Theory of Everything hits again.)

You should know: I’m a remote-work enthusiast.

I love it all: no commuting, more flexibility in my schedule, the time to quickly sweep up the seemingly unending amounts of dog kibble on the floor in between meetings, the ability to squeeze in a work out (or, more often, a couple minutes of TikTok-ing on the couch) in the half hour between when my kids leave the house and my first call of the day starts.

I can be physically comfortable in my environment. I get to spend as much time as possible with my family. I eat home-cooked meals more. Since I spend so much of my day on the phone, anyway, I can often take my calls while sitting on our balcony or out walking the dog.

I’ve been building and leading a diverse, fully remote team for close to a decade, in an industry known for burning people out hard and fast. I believe in remote work. I will go to the mat for it.

Remote/flexible work is good! It enables people to live where they want to live and have lives outside of work. It’s mission-critical for working parents and for many people with disabilities. It’s a core part of keeping women (especially moms and caregivers) in the workforce. It helps companies hire more diverse talent in all possible ways.

But I get why companies don’t do it.

Among other reasons (the sunk cost of real estate and the narcissism Grant and others wrote about earlier, most notably), it is objectively true that remote work is significantly harder for leadership.

Remote/flexible work can be isolating. It’s hard for more junior people. It’s more work for management. It can be expensive in other ways (travel, in-person gatherings, facilitators, etc). It can lead to days in which some staff are commuting to an office and then spending all day on Zooms with other people working from home.

The all-too-common boomer style of “management by walking around” has always been ridiculous, and it’s particularly laughable in the modern work environment. But at least that style had a logic to it — you could see people working, you could catch a problem before it metastasized, you could tell who was struggling just by watching them in the hallway.

In a remote environment, you lose all of that passive data. Which means you have to replace it with active intentionality. Management in a remote environment simply requires more of everything: more time, more communication, more clarity, more feedback loops.

Pretending otherwise — or just doing it without putting in the actual set-up work it requires — is what makes leaders look naive and gives the “get back in the office” crowd ammunition.

It’s not for everyone and (obviously) not for every job. But those who dismiss it out of hand (or, ahem, call it “white collar crime”) are missing the pros, and more importantly, missing that flexible work, whether in location or time or both, will be part of any company that wants to succeed moving forward.

I wrote a lot about how to do it right (and what I’ve learned from doing it wrong) in When We’re in Charge, to the point where when I tried to pull out some of the best tips, I ended up having something like 20,000 words long.

So here’s the gist: Remote work is kind of like TikTok.

Seriously. Consider that the remote office is analogous to TikTok or any other algorithmically defined social media platform — each person’s experience of it is structurally the same, meaning we’re all swiping up or down, but simultaneously, we’re having fundamentally different exposure.

(For example: I’m hypothetically somehow stuck on a series of clips of snake eggs hatching while you’re watching people do home renovations.)

In an in-person office, everyone enters the same physical space, shaped by the same norms — people leave for lunch, or use headphones, or show off pictures of their pets in their cubicles, or whatever.

The office decor gives a sense of how the organization defines itself — cool, or formal, or bro-ey, etc. The forced proverbial watercooler interactions with people you might not otherwise collaborate with have some work benefit and some social benefit and help dictate what the vibes of the office are.

In a remote team, there is no lobby to shape how you feel when you walk into the office. There is no shared space beyond a Slack team or comparable chat system — few people have the same experience of a day; there is no common “someone microwaved fish in the kitchen” story to bond over.

My experience of my workplace is wildly different from that of any person on my team, based fully on whom we interact with and the one-to-one or one-to-few communications we’re on.

The task as the leaders is to be explicit about what shared experiences or behaviors can rise to the top of everyone’s metaphorical office FYP — what does the “office algorithm” embrace, and what does it reject?

So to torture the metaphor, as the boss, you’re the office programmer. You have to be intentional about what you’re writing into the culture because if you’re not doing it deliberately, it’s happening anyway — just not the way you intended.

An example here: Celebrating each other is really important to me for any team I run. So at Run for Something, we have something called the “Fionas,” named after Fiona the hippo at the Cincinatti Zoo. (It was my cofounder Ross’s idea, go with it.) At every all-staff meeting, three people are named the Fionas for good things they’ve done; at the next meeting, they name three new people as the Fionas. It’s extremely cheesy. It’s also really important that we have a bottom-up/lateral-out way of highlighting people doing great work.

As you define the algorithm, you have to be extremely pedantic. (It’ll be annoying.) But get nitty-gritty. Define what “on time” means in your rules around punctuality, what “prompt” means in your expectations around responses, what “asshole” means in your “don’t be an asshole” code of conduct. What the organization is, and what it’s not — all of it goes on paper or Google Doc.

This can feel silly with a small team or in an informal work environment — I chafed against it at first because it can feel like process-process bullshit or like you’re infantilizing grown-ups who should know better.

But it’s absolutely necessary, especially if your team grows. If you don’t, everyone is set up to fail.

I have lots of examples of how to actually do this in my book (including great guides to icebreakers, codes of conduct, #Celebration channels in Slack, org value-setting, and more). Get the whole thing if you’re interested.

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If you do it right, remote/flexible work can be transformative.

For you! For your team! For your bottom line! For your family, kids, friends, community.

I come back often to my guiding question:

What would be possible if things didn’t suck?

Specifically: What might it open for you if your work didn’t suck your spirit dry?

What kind of parent, partner, citizen, neighbor, person could you be if you had the time/space/energy to give to those roles the same way you (probably) have to give time/space/energy to your employment?

What would it feel like to have more agency about how you spend your days?

That’s what this debate is really about: Agency and autonomy.

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When We’re in Charge is my leadership book for millennials and gen Z trying to do things differently. Pick up a copy in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books, including Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to for free right this very minute. It’ll be out in paperback in September.

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I made a video about this on Instagram earlier this week, reflecting on the connection from Mamdani to Minneapolis to the Knicks, and I was bombarded in the comments and in my DMs with even more examples of big moments over the last 18 months that felt emblematic of where we’re culturally headed.

Let’s diagram this along a timeline.

To really see the change over time, you need to go back 18 months…

November 2024 thru spring 2025: Trump wins, and we hit rock bottom of the bad place. He wins the popular vote and therefore the elites believe he is popular so immediately acquiesce, showing that no amount of fuck-you money is enough to make them say fuck-you to a bully.

Top-level cowardice matters because a vibe shift cannot come from solely the top. Like all good movements, it must be bottom-up; a collective effort that is spurred forward by symbols and leaders but symbols and leaders alone are not enough to change the mood.

May 2025: Pope Leo is chosen as our first American pope! The memes and jokes begin flying. Pope Leo is about as good a pope as we can hope for, calling for better treatment of migrants, throwing shade at JD Vance, and speaking out for humanism and against AI.

June 2025: Zohran Mamdani wins the primary and we are reminded that actually, good can triumph over evil, and that hope is never foolish.

November/December 2025: Heated Rivalry airs on HBOMax (or whatever it’s called these days) and the discourse is flooded with pleas to please oh please take us to the cabin. Women especially (but not exclusively!) are taken in by a story of sweet, tender love and also hot butts. The show illustrated a very different kind of masculinity, in direct contrast to how the GOP is pushing gender norms right now.

January 2026: Minneapolis shows us what is possible in the fight against ICE, as Minnesotans come together in a way that would make Mr. Rogers proud. The same is true in Chicago, LA, Portland, and elsewhere — a sense of responsibility for their neighbors drove people to action.

February 2026: The Bad Bunny halftime show at the Super Bowl is pure undiluted joy (and incredible beats) and shows a version of America that is a direct rebuttal to what Trump and his ilk are trying to shove down our throats.

February 2026: The Olympics! Remember those?? Remember how fun it was to watch Alysa Liu when she won the gold with a style she cultivated completely on her terms? She was happy, authentic, and free.

April 2026: The Artemis II mission takes over the internet as four charming astronauts fly around the moon and delight us with their antics. We all get sucked in to the sense of awe at the glory, fragility, and vastness of space. (Plus, again, great memes.)

June 2026: The Knicks win the NBA championships and New Yorkers flood the streets in an outpouring of collective joy and effervescence, kicking off what feels like will be a Summer of Outside.

June/July 2026: The World Cup (or as TikTok is calling it, the Great American Slumber Party) comes to North America, and we are all treated to the delight and earnestness of getting to experience America through the eyes/stomachs/cameras of the world’s most exuberant soccer fans.

In her newsletter this week, Anne Helen Petersen asked: Is it a vibe shift … or is it the World Cup?

My answer is simple: Yes! Both!

A few things each of those events have in common:

Great content. It’s so silly to say that, but it’s true:

Each of those allowed the collective internet to talk about something fun/joyful/unifying in a way that made space for both humor and hope.

Memes in particular are powerful tools for creating a common culture and sense of tribe. For an event to be memeable is a compliment.

Those events and the ensuing content were also extremely funny, which matters in comparison to Trump. I remember this coming up in 2016: The man doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t really make jokes. He is just an angry orange ogre with no sense of humor. (He is sometimes objectively very funny, but never on purpose.)

Not politics but not a-political either! Only one of those was explicitly political (Zohran Mamdani’s win in 2025) but all speak directly to the political moment we’re in: A direct counter-argument to a top-down leader trying to beat us down, make us feel small, angry, divided, and very racist.

Fostering a sense of belonging. In 2017 I saw a presentation from a neuroscientist at NYU that talked about what the brain does when it encounters information that is obviously fake news — they specifically looked at MRIs of the brains of people who saw pictures of Trump’s inauguration and then heard Sean Spicer say it was the biggest inauguration ever. Even when then shown pictures of Obama’s inauguration (which was exponentially bigger), Republicans would refuse to accept reality. Their identity as “Trump voter” gave them the space to work through the cognitive dissonance.

The academic suggested that the way you break through that block and get people to incorporate new information that challenges their political identities is to appeal to a more important identity — parent, or patriot, or New Yorker, or Christian, or whatever makes sense for the moment.

What all these moments have in common is they create containers for belonging, which then fosters a new identity. The memes, as I mentioned earlier, are crucial here because they give the in-group a shared language.

Permission to hope. While I’m not sure the Obama Presidential Center opening broke through in the same way as everything else on this list (beyond my feed, and also because I was there!), I highly suggest watching both Obama’s speech and Zohran’s speech from the Knicks ceremony, which happened within a few hours of each other. Different tone, very similar themes, both connecting the dots between resilience, optimism, hope, and the work we do in the political sphere.

I’m not saying everything is good now.

But I believe we’re finally really shaking off the darkness of COVID and creating a cultural mood that can sustain us into November and beyond.

Vibes can’t save democracy but good vibes (and the stronger ties and more stubbornly optimistic attitude inherent in this mood) will be a necessary prerequisite for us to do the work.

Tell me what I’m missing — or leave a comment with your favorite content from any of the above events. 😎

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When We’re in Charge is my leadership book for millennials and gen Z trying to do things differently. Pick up a copy in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books, including Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to for free right this very minute. It’ll be out in paperback in September.

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So I was curious to see the reports of this year’s TPUSA women’s leadership summit now that Erika Kirk is fully in charge of the organization, slightly complicating their previous argument against women in positions of power (not that hypocrisy has ever stopped them, but whatever.)

You can read about it on NPR, the Nation, and Politico — I particularly liked Elaine Godfrey of the Atlantic’s story and Kara Voght (formerly of the Washington Post, now at the WSJ)’s recounting.

The gist seems to be: While Charlie Kirk went hard on the argument that if you’re single, you’re a failure to the movement, Erika softened the message, saying explicitly “Your marital status is not God’s report card.” There was lots of beef tallow, an excessive amount of floral prints, and an omnipresent reminder that feminism is evil and must be resisted.

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One thing that has come up in every article about the event: For an explicitly political organization, that was very little explicit discussion of politics.

Elaine wrote in the Atlantic:

I didn’t hear a single speaker allude, even casually, to the upcoming midterm elections, or attempt to rally women to prevent a Republican shellacking in November. Instead, this once-doctrinaire and overtly political women’s conference felt more like a Christian women’s-empowerment seminar—set not in a state with one of the country’s most closely watched Senate races but instead on a remote island where elections don’t exist.

Kara wrote in the WSJ:

There wasn’t a MAGA hat in sight at the Marriott in downtown San Antonio—not on women’s heads, not for sale among the dozens of vendors inside the exhibition hall. … The only Trump administration officials present were former press secretaries, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany. The only mention of the current president was in passing. The only nod to the midterms came from buttons on offer in the foyer: “Pretty girls don’t vote for socialists.”

It’s baffling upon first read — but nearly 3,000 of the most engaged women in conservative politics in a room and no one actually mentioning politics is not an accident.

TPUSA wasn’t built to just win elections — it was built to create identity and give people a space for belonging. If they do that well, winning elections is just one of many things that becomes possible.

There is no comparable Democratic or left-leaning/left-adjacent institution that shows up for young women (or really, anyone!) in non-election years just to hang out and be together.1 There simply aren’t the resources for one (nor is there a singular vision of femininity or womanhood to align around.) But clearly there is a value in it if we could find a way to make it work: TPUSA institutionalizes the kind of relationships that last beyond Trump.

I’m reading about the summit and thinking about all this — and how the pro-democracy side struggles to build a sense of community — as I watch the Knicks celebrations happening around New York City. (Bear with me on this…)

I don’t think I’ve ever watched a full basketball game. I don’t say this from a place of judgment — I used to be a huge baseball fan until the Nationals won the World Series in 2020 and then I basically stopped watching, knowing it would never get better than that.

Basketball simply isn’t my sport, and at this particular moment in my life, I don’t really have the emotional capacity to add another thing to care a lot about.

So while I haven’t watched any of the games live, I have consumed hours upon hours of footage of people celebrating the Knicks victories.

I cannot get enough. Give me every single clip of parents hugging their kids, of people storming the streets, of games projected onto the sides of apartment buildings and crowds gathered outside bodegas and fans losing their shit as they climb on top of lightpoles in midtown. I want the pure, unadulterated joy.

The vibes in New York over the last few weeks have been immaculate and a huge part of that is the Knicks, which really have captured the city’s imagination.

(But also: The warm weather after a truly miserable winter feels hard-earned. That Mamdani has exceeded expectations and brought a sense of optimism and levity to leadership in the midst of all the doom-and-gloom on the national level is like an antidote to despair. The World Cup is imminent, and people seem pretty hyped about that, too.)

Whatever the reason: There is a feeling as you move through the city that you are part of something bigger. There is a sense of camaraderie and shared identity. There are Go New York Go New York Go chants on subway cars and Knicks jerseys on toddlers and dogs alike.

I am not a longstanding and long-suffering Knicks fan2, but I’m a fan of Knicks fans3 — and more than that, I love this city in a way that feels cliche and sappy. And I love when people lean all the way in and find earnest delight in something together, without irony or artifice.

I imagine that is akin to what those women at the TPUSA Women’s Leadership Summit felt, too.

Married or single, working or staying at home, moms or not, those conservative women came together in the sickly pink ballrooms of that hotel in San Antonio to feel like they belonged somewhere. They were given a story they could see themselves in. They had uniforms (floral prints and cream dresses), they had mantras (holistic, empowered, redeemed,), and of course, they had merch (so much merch.)

Don’t get me wrong, the Knicks are good (at least, for now) and spark so much joy. TPUSA is bad and mostly makes me furious — and I am extremely tempted to mock them.

And in many ways, they are so so mockable, and more importantly, dangerous for the future of our country.

But I understand why the women are there, in the same way I understand why someone might spend their life savings on game 4 tickets: When everything feels hard, you grab on to the joy wherever you can find it.

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When We’re in Charge is my leadership book for millennials and gen Z trying to do things differently. Pick up a copy in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books, including Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to for free right this very minute. It’ll be out in paperback in September. And alert: The Kindle version is on sale this month for $3.99!

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(I followed up with additional thoughts on MSNOW on Wednesday night.)

I wasn’t originally sold on his candidacy when he launched, but once it was clear he was going to win the nomination, I got on board.

Now that more stories have come out, here’s where I’ve landed:

Everything about this sucks.

It sucks that Graham Platner did shitty things.

It sucks that each of his mistakes alone are problematic — and together, they paint a picture of someone voters might not trust.

I've spent a decade building a pipeline of first-time candidates who are not perfect, who didn't grow up wanting to run for office their whole lives. I believe people can change. I believe we need permission structures for imperfect leaders. I also believe — and I've watched this play out enough times to say it with certainty — that trying to cover up your imperfections is always, always, always a mistake. You can only get ahead of your past if you own it from the start.

It sucks that Platner and team seemed to have known about his vulnerabilities early on — they did a self-research book (meaning: a deep dive into your own candidate’s past to know what your opponents might bring up so you can get ahead of them). They could have played this differently. More importantly, he could have. As a person, this is on him to clean up.

It sucks that some people will forgive him for his behavior toward women, other people will be encouraged by it (ugh), and some people will be so repulsed by it that they might not vote at all — three outcomes that are each bad in different ways.

It sucks that if he wins, he won’t even rank in the top 5 of the shittiest men in the United States Congress.

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It sucks that a woman running with just one of his many scandals would have been discarded from the jump.

It also sucks that the Republican Party has elected Donald Trump (twice) — who is exponentially worse — along with any number of other Republicans with extremely shitty pasts.

Yes, I hear you, Democrats should be better than the Republican Party. We should (and mostly do!) care about who our leaders are. After all, the GOP’s embrace of Trump after all the scandals in 2016 is a big reason we got into this mess.

The counterargument to that is that, well, Trump’s been president twice. They got what they wanted. They prioritized winning above all else. (I still think that was bad for society. But here we are.)

It sucks that Chuck Schumer, the Maine Democratic Party, and all other relevant parties didn’t spend the last six years (or longer) doing succession planning. This was not a surprise scenario — Susan Collins was always going to be up again in 2026.

The job of a party is to identify and cultivate possible leaders before you desperately need them. Don’t put all your hopes onto one person’s shoulders. Find many leaders. Run them for state legislature, city council, school board. Build the bench so that when a moment like this arrives, you have options.

We failed to do that here. I'll include myself in that “we” — RFS has incredible alum in Maine, but clearly not enough, and none that are ready to run for Senate in this moment. Had we had more resources back in 2017-2020, maybe things would be different.

It sucks that most of the possible people who might have been able to run for the Senate seat didn’t seem to see it as winnable and chose to run for governor instead.

It sucks that the only person the establishment could get to run in this race was Janet Mills, a 78 year old governor who had to be dragged into the campaign, who couldn’t get people excited, who dropped out of the primary months ago because she was behind by double digits in every poll and didn’t have the cash to continue.

It sucks that that they cleared the rest of the field for her. It sucks that her staff and consultants have been shitty throughout the entire primary and will continue to be shitty now, as if being smug changes the outcome or helps win the Senate.

It sucks that Platner has been genuinely good at reaching people, with some strongly held values and policies that are resonating with Mainers and people across the country — he’s been building a movement. Something like 1% of all Mainers have signed up to volunteer for his campaign. People were stepping up to get involved who never have before. That’s amazing and inspiring. (And it sucks that some might feel betrayed, or like that hope was foolish.)

It sucks that as far as I can tell, the only mechanism for a new candidate is for Platner to drop out sometime after the primary but before the end of July, and then for the state party to nominate someone new. It sucks that any candidate put up through that process or as a write-in has no shot of winning against Susan Collins.

It sucks that this is happening in an election that is — once again, always — literally existential.

One of the only things the Senate will do until January 2029 is confirm or reject judges.

If the GOP holds the Senate, Trump will get to keep stocking the federal bench with every judge he wants and will likely get at least one more Supreme Court justice.

That’s the cost.

It fucking sucks to look at the facts as they are and conclude that even as we deserve so much more and better from our leaders, anyone who wants to flip the Senate has to hope he wins.

Not because it doesn’t matter what he did or because character is optional — it matters, and it’s not.

But the alternative if he loses is worse.

To say “don’t vote for him” is to, in effect, say “give Trump another Supreme Court seat.” And that sucks, too.

Sorry to say, I don’t know where to go from here — at least, not today. I don’t have a silver lining or an upside, or any of my preferred practical next-steps. I’m just mad and disappointed.

Let me know what you think.

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When We’re in Charge is my leadership book for millennials and gen Z trying to do things differently. Pick up a copy in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books, including Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to for free right this very minute. It’ll be out in paperback in September.

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Love is an Algorithm by Laura Brooke Robson [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

Eve’s a very popular musician figuring out how to feel about AI and her work; Danny is a tech founder who runs a dating app with an AI chatbot, Bug, that helps people work through their dating anxiety. As they begin a relationship, they have to work through it — one of the first genuinely thoughtful books about AI and relationships that I’ve read in a while. I really liked this.

Like, Follow, Subscribe by Fortesa Latifi [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

A deeply reported look at the world of mom-influencers, specifically those who mine their children for content. What does it feel like to grow up as a kid on the internet? What happens to your sense of self when you are the economic engine for your family? So so so good and scary, and reaffirmed my position about how I talk about/show my kids online (me talking about motherhood = fine, me talking about their childhoods or showing them in public = not fine.)

Transcription by Ben Lerner [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

A very quick read in three parts about (1) the narrator meeting with his 90-year old mentor for an interview and his phone breaking just before the session (2) the response to the publication of the interview later and (3) a narrative from the mentor’s son about fatherhood and family. I liked part 3 a lot, the first two I could take or leave. He’s an objectively great writer.

Our Perform Storm - Carley Fortune [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

Frankie’s fiance ditches her the morning of her wedding and she melts down — then her handsome best friend George volunteers to go with her on the honeymoon that’s already paid for. You can see what happens next, but it’s a fun ride, even if I found Frankie to be kind of annoying. Carley Fortune is just so good.

June Baby by Shannon Garvey [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

As a teenager who just lost her mother, Ruth gets sent to Block Island to live with a stranger, Diana, and Diana’s nephew, Charlie. 10 years later, Ruth is struggling to figure out her life when Diana dies and her shit gets rocked. She reconnects with Charlie and also learns some secrets about her deceased mom. Sweet, sad, made me want to be on a beach in Rhode Island.

Score by Kennedy Ryan [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

Verity and Monk dated in college — when they broke up, they were both devastated. Now a decade+ later, they have to work together on the set of a Harlem Renaissance biopic that Verity’s writing and Monk is composing the score for. Sparks fly again. this is an unbearably hot (like four chili peppers) book and very classic Kennedy Ryan (complimentary.)

The Write Off by Kara McDowell [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

West and Mars briefly dated in college; Mars inspired the hero of West’s very famous YA fantasy trilogy. A decade later, they reconnect at a writing festival on campus where Mars is also an author speaking. I don’t know why I read so many second-chance romances this month but they were all fun!

How to Rule the World - Theo Baker [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

Theo Baker was a freshman at Stanford on the college paper when he uncovered a scandal about the university president messing around with research data that ultimately led the president to resign. This is his memoir about that year — with a deep dive into the total insanity that is the inner circle at Stanford. It was extremely well-written and propulsive; I read it fast! I kind of which he’d write it again in a decade+ because I’d be curious how his feelings on it all change with some time away.

Dolly All the Time - Annabel Monaghan [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

Dolly Brick is a single mom spending the summer in her hometown in Rhode Island to help her dad and brother out — she ends up pretend-dating handsome billionaire Stewart to help him restore his reputation (and maybe have a little fun.) Sometimes fake-dating stories grate on me but this one is so so well done, I stayed up late finishing this. Annabel Mongahan is so good.

The Shippers - Katherine Center [ Amazon / Bookshop ]

After being a runaway bride, JoJo decides to spend her sister’s destination wedding (on a cruise ship) fixing her intimacy issues by trying to reconnect with the guy who granted her her first kiss — with the help of her wingman/childhood best friend, Cooper. Yet another sort-of second-chance romance! Silly, charming, and sweet. I love predictable genre reads.

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Earlier book reviews…

When We’re in Charge is my leadership book for millennials and gen Z trying to do things differently. Pick up a copy in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books, including Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to for free right this very minute. It’ll be out in paperback in September. And heads up, the Kindle version is on sale all of June for just $3.99!

Amazon

Bookshop.org

(1) I do not fight with strangers on the internet.

I wrote about this rule a few months ago and have mostly stuck with it.

TLDR: I don’t have time for playing keyboard warrior, and if I do, I should be working on the rough draft of my romance novel instead.

That doesn’t mean I don’t engage in back-and-forths — I do! But I try to curb my impulse to tell someone they’re wrong or to get into any kind of argument with a stranger in my mentions. It rarely serves me.

Rule #2 is a newer one that I developed more recently…

(2) If you have my phone number — or we meet IRL — and you have been shitty to me on the internet, I will say something to you directly.

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I’ve experienced this a few times in the last month or so as I’ve (unfortunately) been posting more on Twitter/X.

The intra-Democratic Party conflict is happening there in a way I cannot ignore, so I’ve been weighing in when I have a take, as is appropriate.

Sometimes, people don’t like what I have to say, which is their right as an American. Disagree with me all you want, that’s fine.

My frustration rises to the surface when the disagreements go from variations of “you’re wrong” and transform into “you’re a bad person because you’re wrong” — or worse, become a pile-on. I especially cannot abide it when they come from people who actually know me.

I get it to a certain extent: Everyone in politics is just playing a role online; we’re all doing our jobs, advocating for our causes, and generating productive conflict. It’s part of doing business.

But there is a point at which it goes from helpful to hurtful.

So I’ve made it my new MO: If someone I can directly reach out to is being crappy to me on the internet, I say something to them.

I’ve done it via text, DM, and even in person. I ran into someone I had never met at a conference who’d spent a lot of time being rude in my replies and I said directly: Hey, I wanted to introduce myself. We’ve never met before but you’ve been really shitty to me on Twitter, and I wanted you to know that sometimes you veer into personal attacks and it hurts my feelings. I get you’re doing your job, but there’s a person behind the posts.

(After this person tried to push back and tell me I was the crazy one for being hurt, I redirected us to a new topic. A thing I’ve learned from my toddlers: Do not try and litigate the past.)

Sometimes I’m ignored. Sometimes I’ve gotten good responses with something approaching an apology.

Either way: I have been able to let go of my irritation, knowing that at the very least I said my piece.

I know this might seem deranged or like overkill. And admittedly, as my husband gently noted when I explained this rule to him, sometimes I see personal insult where there’s just honest disagreement. (I’m working on it!)

But I really do want to lower the temperature — especially among my peers and colleagues — and collectively remind ourselves that we’re all real humans (sometimes), not just avatars behind a screen.

Making this rule for myself has also pushed me to consider: Would I say whatever I’m about to post to someone directly in person or over text? If not, why should I say it on the internet? I will inevitably fuck this up from time to time, but at the very least, I pause!

It’s possible that my rules make me less effective because the internet and attention economy thrive on conflict. But try as I might, I am not one of those chronic posters in it for the love of the game — my nervous system needs a break from time to time.

If I end the day with slightly lower social media reach but also slightly less rage, I think that’s a worthwhile trade.

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Some other stuff I’ve written about social media:

When We’re in Charge is my leadership book for millennials and gen Z trying to do things differently. Pick up a copy in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books, including Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to for free right this very minute. It’ll be out in paperback in September.

Amazon

Bookshop.org