There’s this long-running debate about what the Democratic Party “message” should be. It then manifests with stuff like this:

“We need to remember that one of the reasons young voters, especially, were uninspired is you can’t have a message of, “I’m not him,’” cautioned DNC vice chairman R.T. Rybak, the former Minneapolis mayor.

I don’t remember that at all. Hillary Clinton won millennials handily, and if any were uninspired, it was because of claims that she was “neoliberal blah blah no difference.” Here’s the reality:

• “No” as a message is powerful, and gave Republicans control of government. The fact that Republicans are scrambling now that they’re the dogs catching the bus is irrelevant. They won with “no.” 
   
• Our biggest non-Obama-year victory in recent memory was 2006. What was our message? “We’re not Bush.” Shit works. 
   
• We’re liberals. Good luck trying to settle on a message we can all agree with. Having attended countless brainstorming sessions with top liberal groups and activists, I’ll tell you right now—it ain’t gonna happen. Luckily, it doesn’t have to. See bullet point above!
   
• Party message is irrelevant. Republicans are well branded, right? Strong national security, strong family values, and lower taxes! Except that they nominated and elected a guy who violated two of those three tenets—a Russian puppet who may be the single-most morally loathsome individual in the country. In other words, the message we’re taking into 2020 will be the message of whoever ends up being our nominee. 
   
• “We’re not him” works better after someone is president than before, and that will go triple for Trump.

So keep our message simple: we are the resistance, and we oppose Trump and his Republican cultists. Period. The End. 

A new poll from PPP confirms that Donald Trump, though he’s been president less than a week, is already underwater with most Americans. But the people he’s surrounded himself with are even more despised:

Donald Trump

Favorable: 44

Unfavorable: 50

Sean Spicer

Favorable: 24

Unfavorable: 37

Kellyanne Conway

Favorable: 32

Unfavorable: 43

Vladimir Putin

Favorable: 10

Unfavorable: 67

Only the best people, right, comrade?

Now this is more like it. Donald Trump signed an executive order to cut off funding to cities that don’t turn over their immigrants to Trump’s deportation force or other federal (anti-)immigration officials on Tuesday, but the mayors of those sanctuary cities didn’t back down. In fact, they were defiant.

Boston’s Marty Walsh was truly inspiring. "This is America who's behind me,” he said, standing in front of a group of immigrant city workers. He promised support for immigrants in Boston:

“To anyone who feels threatened today, or vulnerable, you are safe in Boston,” Mr. Walsh said at a news conference. “We will do everything lawful in our powerful to protect you. If necessary, we will use City Hall itself to shelter and protect anyone who’s targeted unjustly.” [...]

“They can use my office, they can use any office in this building,” Mr. Walsh said. “They’ll be able to use this building as a safe space.”

Other big city mayors stood just as firm:

"This city will not be bullied by this administration," [Seattle Mayor Ed] Murray said. "We believe we have the rule of law and the courts on our side."

They’re also ready for a legal fight:

Both [San Francisco Mayor Ed] Lee and [New York City Mayor Bill] de Blasio said that early readings of the executive order by their cities' attorneys suggest that the document is vaguely written and predicted that the Trump administration would face a tough legal battle if it tries to use it as a basis to slash funding.

“There is less here than meets the eye,” De Blasio said of the order.

“Less here than meets the eye” could be the motto of the entire Trump regime, unless you’re talking about evil. Then it’s always more than meets the eye. This willingness to stand and fight is so good to see. More of this, please.

The new Republican regime is off to an extremely rocky start as they meet in Philadelphia to map out the new American dystopia. They're having a hard time getting down to business because their new leader, popular vote loser Donald Trump, is, well, what he is.

House and Senate Republicans began the week expecting specific guidance on what will replace the Affordable Care Act, how quickly taxes might get slashed and how the government will pay for a new border wall and infrastructure plan.

But on Wednesday, Trump offered up a fresh set of distractions with a flurry of announcements and early-morning tweets. […]

That left Republicans scrambling with few details and fewer answers at a moment when they had intended to secure the opposite. […]

The first signs of trouble came at midday Wednesday, when Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) faced reporters in a hotel ballroom here at the start of a two-day party strategy session.

They came prepared to talk about health care and the tax code but were barraged with questions about Trump’s latest moves.

Thune was asked about voter fraud and said he'd not seen evidence of it (remember that for the future, kids), but that if Trump wants "take that up, that is a decision that obviously he can make." On the attempt to reinstate torture, Thune was a little more forceful saying blankly "that’s banned," pointing to the 2015 law that had overwhelming bipartisan support. Then he tried to "focus on the things that unite us." 

That didn't really work either.

No one wants to wait until 2018—or 2020—to fight back against Donald Trump. The good news is, we don’t have to.

Daily Kos is excited to announce that we’re endorsing investigative filmmaker Jon Ossoff, a Democrat running in this year’s first competitive special election for the House, down in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District. In addition to making documentaries that have exposed crime and corruption worldwide, Ossoff is also a former congressional staffer, and you’re going to like hearing who he used to work with: none other than Rep. John Lewis, civil rights legend and Trump antagonist number one.

Even better, Lewis endorsed Ossoff when he launched his bid earlier this month, and we’re only too pleased to follow suit. Ossoff has put together by far the most impressive campaign of any Democrat running, and one rival already dropped out and gave his backing to Ossoff, calling him the front-runner. With Lewis leading the way and Georgia Democrats rallying behind Ossoff, it’s time for us to get involved, too.

Now, for a little background on this race, which is taking place in suburban Atlanta. The 6th District is about to become vacant because servile Senate Republicans will prove only too happy to confirm Rep. Tom Price as Trump’s Health and Human Services director: Price may be mired in insider trading allegations, but his zeal for destroying Obamacare is all that matters to the GOP.

But while Price might love him some Trump, his district doesn’t feel the same way. In fact, the 6th saw a remarkable shift on election night. Four years ago, voters in this conservative but well-educated area supported Mitt Romney by a wide 61-37 margin. In 2016, however, hostility toward Trump gave the president just a 48-47 win—a stunning 23-point collapse. That dramatic change in attitudes means this seat might just be in play.

Please give $3 to Jon Ossoff today to help him beat the GOP and fight the Trump agenda.

This is big—and perhaps just the tip of the iceberg in terms of veteran federal employees who value their sanity and integrity. (UPDATE: CNN reports they were fired.) Josh Rogin of the Washington Post writes:

[Rex] Tillerson was actually inside the State Department’s headquarters in Foggy Bottom on Wednesday, taking meetings and getting the lay of the land. I reported Wednesday morning that the Trump team was narrowing its search for his No. 2, and that it was looking to replace the State Department’s long-serving undersecretary for management, Patrick Kennedy. Kennedy, who has been in that job for nine years, was actively involved in the transition and was angling to keep that job under Tillerson, three State Department officials told me.

Then suddenly on Wednesday afternoon, Kennedy and three of his top officials resigned unexpectedly, four State Department officials confirmed. Assistant Secretary of State for Administration Joyce Anne Barr, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Michele Bond and Ambassador Gentry O. Smith, director of the Office of Foreign Missions, followed him out the door. All are career foreign service officers who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. [...]

In addition, Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Gregory Starr retired Jan. 20, and the director of the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations, Lydia Muniz, departed the same day. That amounts to a near-complete housecleaning of all the senior officials that deal with managing the State Department, its overseas posts and its people.

“It’s the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that’s incredibly difficult to replicate,” said David Wade, who served as State Department chief of staff under Secretary of State John Kerry.

It's hard to overstate just how much of a stabilizing braintrust is lost with resignations like these. Career federal employees are the people who keep things running smoothly in a government that experiences highly disruptive turnovers every four to eight years. The people who just tendered their resignations know that better than anyone and they obviously saw something that made them very very nervous about the direction of the State Department. 

A lot of people—supposedly smart people—apparently felt that Donald Trump, the "I Could Stand In the Middle Of Fifth Avenue And Shoot Somebody” candidate, the man who never failed to inflate the size of his own rallies, the man who loves seeing his name in giant gold letters, that Donald Trump, would settle down once the mantle of power was draped over his shoulders. But there’s a basic problem with that assumption. With great power may come great responsibility, but (with apologies to Spider-Man) not if the person being handed great power is a totally self-obsessed ass. 

In that case, you just get an even bigger ass obsessed over the smallest perceived slight, who pretends that even absolute disasters were some kind of triumph.

DAVID MUIR: Mr. President, I just have one more question on this. And it's -- it's bigger picture. You took some heat after your visit to the CIA in front of that hallowed wall, 117 stars -- of those lost at the CIA. You talked about other things. But you also talked about crowd size at the inauguration, about the size of your rallies, about covers on Time magazine. And I just wanna ask you when does all of that matter just a little less? When do you let it roll off your back now that you're the president?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: OK, so I'm glad you asked. So, I went to the CIA, my first step. I have great respect for the people in intelligence and CIA. I'm -- I don't have a lot of respect for, in particular one of the leaders. But that's okay. But I have a lot of respect for the people in the CIA.

That speech was a home run. That speech, if you look at Fox, OK, I'll mention you -- we see what Fox said. They said it was one of the great speeches. They showed the people applauding and screaming and -- and they were all CIA. There was -- somebody was asking Sean -- "Well, were they Trump people that were put--" we don't have Trump people. They were CIA people.

What does a man like Trump do when handed the vast powers of the presidency? Show what “pathetic” means, writ large.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren explains why she will be voting to confirm Ben Carson as head of HUD:

Yes, I have serious, deep, profound concerns about Dr. Carson’s inexperience to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Yes, I adamantly disagree with many of the outrageous things that Dr. Carson said during his presidential campaign. Yes, he is not the nominee I wanted.

But “the nominee I wanted” is not the test.

You have a vote. You can either cast a vote saying “I want this guy heading the department," or you cast one that says “Oh hell no, I don’t want this person heading the department.” So yeah, that is exactly the test. 

Warren further argues that if Carson goes down, Trump might send up someone even worse. And who knows, he very well might find someone even more stupid and unqualified than Carson. But who says Carson will lose? Republicans need only simple majorities to confirm these nominees, which is why all of them—regardless of their qualifications or ties to Russia—will be confirmed. So Carson doesn’t need Warren’s vote. He’s fine with the votes on his side of the aisle. 

Furthermore, what do Democrats like Warren get in return for that pro-Carson vote? Nothing! Because Republicans don’t need or care for it. There is no upside and loads of downside. Thus, Democrats should make sure Republicans own every single bit of this regime. Let them pass these nominees with nothing but Republican votes and a smattering of red-state Dems.

Resistance means resisting. All those people in the streets last Saturday didn’t march for Democrats to make nice with the GOP. They marched to resist—whether it’s Trump, or his acolytes like Carson. And if even progressive champions like Warren can’t figure that out, we really are in trouble. 

Amid rumors that he would cancel his trip to the United States, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Wednesday night said firmly that “Mexico will not pay for a wall.” On Thursday, Donald Trump did what looks like the international relations equivalent of “you can’t fire me because I quit,” tweeting that:

If Mexico is unwilling to pay for the badly needed wall, then it would be better to cancel the upcoming meeting

Mexico has not changed its story once. Mexico is not willing to pay for the insulting, racist wall. Trump is the one who’s gone from insisting that Mexico would pay, period, to saying that “we will be in a form reimbursed by Mexico” sometime in the future after building the wall with U.S. money, to canceling the meeting because Mexico won’t pay for the wall. But the wall has to be built because he campaigned on it, even though he also campaigned on Mexico paying for it, and that’s not happening. Whatever, though, no worries, because:

House Speaker Paul Ryan says President Donald Trump's border wall will cost $12 billion to $15 billion — and Ryan says Congress will pay for it by this fall.

For eight years, congresssional Republicans have rejected real investment in America’s bridges, railroads, schools, roads, water systems, and so many other troubled pieces of infrastructure. But an ineffectual wall that will damage relations with a neighboring country? Shoot, yes!

Donald Trump wants to turn his sour grapes at having lost the popular vote into an attack on voting rights, but really he wants to talk about how he could have won the popular vote if he’d tried. ABC’s David Muir pressed Trump repeatedly on his voter fraud claims Wednesday in an exchange that lasted for more than 2,000 words as Trump lied, evaded, and, of course, kept insisting he could have won the popular vote. “Word salad” doesn’t begin to describe it. “Thought salad,” also, because what comes through loud and clear is that Trump doesn’t understand the difference between being registered to vote and voting. He just understands that there has to be something wrong about the fact that more people voted for his opponent than voted for him.

You have people that are registered who are dead, who are illegals, who are in two states. You have people registered in two states. They're registered in a New York and a New Jersey. They vote twice. There are millions of votes, in my opinion. Now ...

Millions of votes in his opinion. No evidence, just Donald Trump’s opinion that because he lost the popular vote there must be wrongdoing. And that confusion between being registered and actually voting. Mind you, Trump’s chief adviser, treasury secretary, and daughter are all registered in two states, so he could do a little research in his immediate circles. Not that it’s illegal to be registered in two states—it’s totally legal as long as you don’t vote in both of them. 

When Muir pointed out that “What you have presented so far has been debunked,” Trump insisted that it hasn’t, and told him to “Take a look at the Pew reports.” Muir was ready for that line, saying “I called the author of the Pew report last night. And he told me that they found no evidence of voter fraud.”

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Really? Then why did he write the report?

DAVID MUIR: He said no evidence of voter fraud.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Excuse me, then why did he write the report?

It’s less than a week into Trump’s term as POTUS and he can’t go anywhere without being reminded that people did not actually vote for him.

Not only did they not vote for him, they kind of hate him. No, they actually hate him—no “kind of” about it. 

The day after his inauguration he was officially welcomed to Washington with the largest protest in U.S. history. And people aren’t done yet. On Tuesday there were more than 100 Stop Trump protests conducted around the country. And now in the latest example of organized resistance, Philadelphia, otherwise known as the City of Brotherly Love, plans to show Trump on Thursday just exactly what they think of him.

President Trump’s visit to Center City on Thursday will be met with traffic, parking, and pedestrian restrictions as well as a large contingent of protesters…

A group on Facebook was organizing a lunch-hour “die-in” on Thursday to protest Trump’s proposed repeal of the Affordable Care Act. The protesters will gather at Thomas Paine Plaza across the street from City Hall and then march to Loews, where they will fall to the ground.

A “Queer Rager” dance party to protest the proposed health care repeal was planned for outside the Loews on Wednesday night.

An immigrant-rights group from New York was planning to send protesters to Philadelphia on Thursday morning.

Protests, queer dance parties, and die-ins, oh my! Imagine organizing the resistance so that these types of events greet him in every American city he visits. What would it do to his fragile little ego then?

Poor, sad demoralized little Trump, reminded every day that he is hated by the country that didn’t actually elect him. 

Oh, well. Since we know his favorite thing is himself, we could always send him this sweet elephant dung greeting card with his image on it to make him feel better. Loser!