Josh Skolnick

@liamkerr Another, possibly related debate: did the working class leave the Dems because 40 years ago the Dems decided to sell out to corporations and oligarchs and move right on economics, or because the Dems moved left on culture issues?

One intra-Dem debate boils down to: Did the past decade teach us we need more candidates like Ironstache or like Jared Golden?

@IraStoll @DrJacobsRad But why is Brown an exception?

@JoshSkolnick_ @DrJacobsRad See here: freebeacon.substack.com/p/harvard-to-r…

American Jews are skipping Ivy League schools because of antisemitism. My nieces had perfect or near perfect SAT scores. The eldest went to an Ivy League before October 7th and then experienced severe antisemitism. The youngest didn't even apply to the Ivies.

@IraStoll @DrJacobsRad Any idea why?

@DrJacobsRad Important to note in this context as the chart shows, there is Brown, and then there is the rest of the Ivy League. 2 different stories.

@patdennis @daveweigel The politicians who are the biggest electoral over performers tend not to be the ones who are best at getting attention online by having ppl yell at them.

lots of dem staff think successful comms is "nobody yells at you" but successful comms is "the right people yell at you" the only world where nobody yells at you is where nobody cares about what you're saying

@havivrettiggur Appreciate that as always!

@JoshSkolnick_ Happy to debate this. Happy to learn.

This is thoughtful. Let's walk through why it's wrong. I’m going point by point, numbered according to Ilan’s post. 1. Ilan: “The author argues that Iran’s military infrastructure especially its drones and missiles are being systematically taken apart. True. But in the aftermath who is going to keep it that way? ... [Especially when] the region operates at a new unstable normal where all previous taboos on military action are off.” What Ilan calls “previous taboos on military action” were no taboos on anything. They were just fear of Iran. And under that “taboo” system, Iran built and massively armed proxies for a future war it explicitly framed as annihilationist toward Israel and an attempt to dominate the region. It armed Hamas and Assad and sent Hezbollah into Syria. It gave the Houthis ballistic missiles. It funded the Muslim Brotherhood in places like Jordan to destabilize the Jordanian monarchy. The comfortable stasis that Ilan longs for was a systematic Iranian march through the region. You can argue this war will fail. And indeed, it may yet fail. But inaction is a strategic choice too, one with no less dire potential downsides. It’s a decision to retreat. America can make that decision, of course. That was the Obama vision: Retreat and hand Iran, which they saw as impregnable and undefeatable, control of the Middle East and its oil supply. Better to negotiate on Iran’s terms than to challenge its regional hegemony. Alas, Israel doesn’t have that option. Iran didn’t give it that option. But America also doesn't really have that option, not in the long term. Iran’s regime is constructed on a vast theological discourse that is inherently and definitionally anti-American. Actually google it, O pundits. Read Khomeini on the “mustakbirin,” or Ali Shariati on the “Red Shia” revolution against the “oppressors.” America is not the "great satan" because it supports Israel. It's the other way around. America is seen as the original evil, and Israel is deemed the "little satan" because it is seen as part of the Western American-led order. If you let this regime spread, it will eventually bring its anti-American ideology and violence to the American homeland. 2. Ilan: “He argues that the nuclear infrastructure had to be disassembled because one president after another had just let Iran’s nuclear program grow. Not true. Obama had managed to dramatically and verifiably reduce Iran’s nuclear capacity through the JCPOA. Trump killed that.” Come on, Ilan. Most of the JCPOA’s restrictions would already have expired by now. The JCPOA itself literally says so. These are the famous "sunset clauses." The UN embargo on Iran's import/export of conventional weapons expired in 2020. UN restrictions on Iran's ballistic missile activities expired in 2023. The full 10-year term of Security Council Resolution 2231 expired in 2025 -- i.e., any remaining JCPOA restrictions on Iran's nuclear program, the "snapback" mechanism for reimposing UN sanctions in case of non-compliance, and UN Security Council oversight. The whole shebang. So if the JCPOA had remained in force, the following restrictions would now be wholly lifted — *under* *the* *explicit* *terms* *of* *the* *deal*. - limits on the number and type of centrifuges Iran can install and operate. - caps on uranium enrichment levels (the 3.67% limit is for 15 years — so still four years away — but oversight would already have ended, so there’d be no way to enforce this). - restrictions on enriched uranium stockpile size bans or limits on heavy-water production and Arak reactor modifications - ballistic missile restrictions - conventional arms transfers restrictions - "snapback" sanctions All gone if the deal had been adhered to. The deal was only ever kicking the can down the road. And we're now well into the post-deal era if the deal was still in force. This might have been a valid argument in 2016. It isn't one in 2026. 3. Ilan: “He argues Iran is self harming by stopping its own oil from going through the Strait of Hormuz. This was always an assumption before the war, but they’ve managed to shut down the Strait for everyone else while still exporting 1 million bbls per day of their own stuff. That makes this much more sustainable.” It also lowers the global oil price shock, lowering the cost of the war for domestic consumers, for China, for India, etc. I think all oil should stop. It's all or nothing at this point. But I nevertheless get the US logic for letting it continue to flow. 4. Ilan: “He argues that Iran’s proxy networks are dramatically weakened. True, but also as we’ve learned from previous conflicts they will regenerate and it’s impossible to root them out with a military strategy alone if there is no political follow up to create a better alternative.” Weaken them enough and a political follow-up becomes possible. If you can't weaken them, why would they ever acquiesce to any limits you'd try to impose with your "political follow-up?" You'd just get another JCPOA -- agreeing to everything they want, if only they'd delay it by a couple presidential terms. This is the point: Those who say military force never works also have no political strategy they can actually articulate. Ilan: “That is why Israel is on the verge of a major campaign in Lebanon only a year and a half after supposedly setting back Hezbollah for a generation.” This is kind of the crux of it. Iran, Hezbollah et al have long argued that Westerners, because they “love life” and live in relative luxury in individualistic societies, don’t have the resilience to see things through. They are thus always defeatable through sheer stubbornness. Harass them persistently enough, endure their occasional air strikes -- and even the mightiest of democracies will ultimately submit to your will. This is called the “muqawama,” the grand "resistance" strategy. I have a two-hour lecture diving into its intellectual and religious roots and its strategic brilliance. And until October 7, it was more or less working. Israel was playing the same game the Western commentariat still plays. These enemies were a tolerable nuisance, ultimately deterred and never worth the cost of confronting head on. But on October 7 we learned that these kinds of movements are not deterred -- are actually fundamentally undeterrable. That they will always and forever, and irrespective of the costs to their polities and societies, bring an ever-escalating war that will eventually, once they’ve built up enough firepower and tormented you enough to weaken your resolve, deliver their divinely mandated victory. They mean what they say, this will only ever end in October 7s at one scale or another, and they are thus an absolutely intolerable threat. The muqawama that sought to break Israel is now the driver of Israeli resolve. It's the main gap between what Israelis see and what Western commentators like Ilan see. I suppose we will soon learn whether the Israelis have better understood the nature of this enemy, or if they've merely fallen into their trap and the Ilans were right all along. Ilan: “These fights are costly Pyrrhic victories that will just need to be fought again and again and again unless there is a political strategy to consolidate victory which both Israel and the US have failed at since October 7th.” Everyone keeps saying this. I’d love to know what this political strategy might be. How do you make a sustainable political order with Hezbollah still in the mix, with Iran still spending billions to export its permanent 47-year “revolution” overseas? If the war must come -- if the ayatollahs and Hezbollah and Hamas and their ilk have decreed that there is no sacrifice too great for them to remain on this path of permanent zero-sum war forever -- then I'd rather fight it on my schedule than on theirs. 5. “Finally, the author argues that we need to ignore the President’s own words about regime change and the Iranian people rising up and focus on what the military is doing. But that’s not how war works. War is fought to achieve a political objective.” Both Trump and Netanyahu have been very clear about how much they *want* regime change, but also that only Iranians can bring it about, and therefore this war has two objectives: Rob Iran of its capacity to project power while also diminishing its internal oppression capabilities enough to make a popular uprising possible — possible but not certain. Both men have said that explicitly. I personally heard them. You can argue it’s going to fail, but you can’t keep repeating this empty claim that there’s “no clear objective set out by the political leadership.” Again, we don’t know how history will go. This war is being fought with astonishing competence. It serves regional and global US interests: China’s main ally and instrument in the region is being disarmed. And there were always going to be costs in going after the regime in this way. And the combination of what the Israelis showed was possible back in June and what the Iranian people showed was possible in January are good reasons to think this was a window of opportunity that shouldn’t be missed. And it all might still fail. But no, the JCPOA wasn’t a solution to anything happening now. And sitting back and letting Iran’s proxies grow and metastasize and collapse country after country in the region is not itself the “safe bet” that the left pretends it was. And no one has yet articulated any clear “political strategy” that has no military element for rescuing the Middle East from that fate — or even any military element that could somehow be contained to less than the current war. What kind of lesser military pressure would have done anything but expand Iran's offensives on all fronts? There’s a lot of rhetoric here, but no real alternative to the present course.

@havivrettiggur I don’t think it was everything it wanted. That’s hyperbole. Iran wanted nukes. It stopped them from getting them for ten years at a moment when Bibi warned they were weeks from getting them. It had a sunset, yes, but at end of sunset, US obligations ended just like Iran’s.

But almost everything in JCPOA was subject to sunset, including oversight over the nuclear restrictions and most of the restrictions themselves. And no one has ever explained to me how that's anything other than kicking the can down the road. It's legitimate to prioritize ISIS or pivot to China or whathaveyou. But it's still a retreat on the Iran front. The Obama WH thought Iran couldn't be brought down, so they wanted to convince it to be a stabilizing agent instead of a disruptive one. And so they handed Iran everything it wanted, but with a delay that made it another administration's problem. What did I get wrong in that description? I'm genuinely asking.

@havivrettiggur I think what you’ve stated above is already more nuanced and gives Obama more good faith than original post. It shows you’ve interacted with the argument in favor of JCPOA and understand what its proponents wanted to achieve. That said, we need to find you a good debate partner!

Not at all. I'm here to learn as much as teach. I opposed the JCPOA on day one, back in 2014. And always on the same grounds: I didn't believe the West had the will to use a military option if Iran violates the agreement. I didn't believe Khamenei could be trusted to follow the restrictions; his baseline regime ideology wouldn't leave that kind of asset off the table. And I didn't believe the restrictions themselves, especially after they sunset, actually prevented an Iranian nuke. I'm sorry to say this, but I've never actually heard a serious response to any of these points from the Democratic side of the aisle. I always got a lot of, "this is the best deal you could get," or, "so you're advocating war, you warmonger?" Still today, in Ilan's post, I see no actual answers or alternatives being articulated.

@havivrettiggur I’m so hungry for more ppl with audiences in this world to demonstrate nuance/thoughtfulness—to give the other side of arguments their due, even if they disagree. You’re one of those ppl & I get nervous when it seems like you’re drifting away from that. I don’t mean to police.

@JoshSkolnick_ Why? I meant it literally. They thought Iran was literally undefeatable and so the lowest-cost strategy for America was to "pivot" from the Middle East while empowering Iran. They also thought lowering the pressure on Iran would moderate the regime. Is any of that contested?

@jaycaspiankang Also, there are plenty of places in the country right now where community is great and strong. Would be interesting for more reporters to write about them and for others to learn about them.

Everything is downstream from the deep alienation people feel these days from loss of community. Immigrants aren’t why your kids don’t play in the park together or ride their bikes to some sandlot. That’s roads, helicopter parenting, relentless competition/activities .

@JAllen_NYC Senate race primary could actually be harder for her if it’s one on one vs. opponent like @PatRyanUC . Presidential primary she’d be running as sole leftist candidate against 15+ candidates who are more moderate.

@bigseb31213 @ActualDemocrats Going forward, a new factor in deciding who to vote for should be the information environment - i.e. the algorithms - that they and their staffs are soaking in.

as I said - the alarming fact about platner retweeting stew peters is that the accounts he and his staff's personal accounts follow are so openly antisemitic that stew peters content is routinely coming across his feed

@NadavPollak Why didn’t you think that was a likely action for Israel to take?

Israel taking out the HQ of the internal forces of the IRGC (those that killed the protestors) was not on my bingo card for 2026 #Iran

@mattyglesias @gelliottmorris The issue is there’s a group of people who refuse to believe that anyone *strongly* and *genuinely* holds the more moderate position. They assume moderation from a Democrat has to be due to either corruption or compromising one’s true beliefs to win over voters.

The big question for Democrats is not binary, it's a question of emphasis. Adam raised tens of millions in donor capital for a new think tank to "curb the influence of liberal groups." Center of gravity in elite Dem circles & media is clearly aligned with this vs other visions. But the data suggests Dems don't have an extremism problem, but a strength problem. So I think strength should be a larger part of the conversation. Biggest thing people say in our poll is that they don't know what the Dems stand for. Does "shut up about climate change" and "don't raise the salience of immigration" and "reform and retrain" read as strength? Not according to the actual survey data. x.com/AJentleson/sta…

@dansenor Hearing some echoes of Cheney before Iraq War in this framing.

Reading b/w the lines from Trump? Among the most important points in the #SOTU on Iran: “They have already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they are working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States.” Identifying and framing the threat as #AmericaFirst (@POTUS @realDonaldTrump)

@moseshessstan chas v'chalila 🪬

Vance is going to be president isn’t he?

@loganb @JakeAuch is trying hard to address this.

This pretty much sums up why the Dems keep losing. They can’t put together a story for how the typical American’s life is going to get better.

@magi_jay That was Biden’s signature move.

just lots more insertions of 'america' and 'we're americans.' it'll be good, i promise you.

Democrats should include more, 'this is America!' with fist-pounding energy when they talk about various issues, including trans rights

@MattZeitlin That’s how it works with City Managers actually.

american politics doesn't really work this way but imagine if someone like a brandon scott, instead of maybe running for governor or congress, could just be mayor of a bigger city, like chicago