Thanks for another well written piece. The football analogy works for me. My only complaint is that the Seattle team represented the right wing. Being from Seattle that hurt a little. Just giving you a friendly dig for that.
Brilliant! Another analogy that illuminates systems & shines a light on the reality of the playing field -- although depressing in one sense, it makes sense and lights a fire.
So well written! Concise. I love the football analogy too. I always disliked football because of the violence. Thanks for the further explanation, because it is probably the violence of the game that draws so many people to it…
I’ll meet ya halfway Bela by saying this: I hate I have to use football analogies but see this is part of the problem I was trying to expose. We need to be operating in the world as it exists and not in the ideal world that should be.
Not a football fan either, and I admit I skimmed thru it - BUT the analogy works.
One sentence (No.1, actually) ""Treat state politics as a front line, not a side quest."" That felt to me to be the typical Democrat failing. (among many others) We all have watched for years (decades?) Dems concentrate on the "big" states and actually just ignore all else and your football analogy makes clear how we keep getting pounded into the dirt!
These days on top of that, they refuse to support ALL Democrats. The whole assinine reaction to Mamdani and there are others being treated the same way.
X!!!!!! You know it. See the racist people like Megyn Kelley expose themselves. It was too Black and too Brown. Just like Kendrick Lamar’s performance. There was nothing wrong about it. Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance was a beautiful description of America. He shouted out my people. And see they don’t like it because it’s dangerous to them. Oh no what happens when Everybody is united???? How do we gaslight. You got it X. You know exactly what they’re doing.
I've been reading Corbin Trent's posts (Americas Undoing) for a while now - This is a good one.
""Four people. That’s what it took. Four conservative operatives spent the Biden years, the years we were supposedly winning, quietly building the legal and regulatory and political infrastructure to kill the federal government’s ability to fight climate change. Russell Vought. Jeffrey Clark. Mandy Gunasekara. Jonathan Brightbill. They drafted executive orders. They got scientists to write white papers for them. They got Heritage Foundation money. They built the whole thing in secret so nobody could stop them before it was done. And now they’re about to revoke the endangerment finding, which is the scientific determination that has been the foundation of every federal climate regulation since 2009. Myron Ebell, a guy who’s been attacking climate science for damn near three decades, told the Times they were “pretty close to total victory.”"
Yeah, Libs are too nerdy to play football well. BUT.... you do remember MASH, don't you? "His ringer spotted our ringer." The good guys won by superior intellect (or cheating?) when they tackled and injected the star player on the other team with something and took him out of the game.
Bravo!! I’m just strumming the same old tune, though. The part about how we shift the whole damn paradigm. The frame. Whether football or democracy, is the frame itself dangerously flawed?
Your works prompt me to think and to plan and to challenge myself. Thank you!
We all knew Project 2025 was the MAGA pipe dream. What many didn’t understand, was its utility as a playbook. Now we see it implemented at breathtaking speed.
You’re absolutely right, Democrats have no game, let alone a game plan or long term strategy. Republicans have been brilliant at farming new talent at the local level and controlling the courts.
Yes, and No. You are downplaying the Republican use of infotainment and the persistent lie, and downplaying the Opposition (many but not all Dems', some Others') chess game with legal strategies. It makes for a fine narrative, a stump speech. I want better analysis.
Ann, look, listen, that’s a fair pushback. There is no way I could encapsulate the whole strategy in one post: infotainment, the persistent lie, dark-money infrastructure, the legal chess, and the Democratic side’s real (if uneven) legal counterplay all deserve their own lanes. My “football” frame was aimed at one failure mode I keep seeing in our crowd. We watch the spectacle and miss the mechanics of possession, clock, field position, staffing, and rules.
Where I think the last 4–6 years get especially dangerous is that parts of the Republican coalition have shifted from the long game into Payback Politics: short-term crowd-pleasing escalations that produce receipts and unforced errors. And here’s where your “legal chess” point actually fits my argument: a lot of the current legal maneuvers don’t feel like some unstoppable, unapologetic offense as much as disciplined opportunism that feeds on the opponent’s mistakes. In football terms, it’s not always marching 80 yards on purpose. It’s waiting for the turnover, then taking the short field.
Now that’s why I used the Super Bowl LI choke as the analogy. When a team is already ahead, the fastest way to lose is panic disguised as aggression: trying to win “beautifully” instead of clean, giving the other side a short field, and letting them look like geniuses when they’re really just cashing in on your missteps. That’s the warning I’m trying to land: if Republicans keep chasing payback instead of disciplined offense, they create openings. If Democrats keep treating those openings like proof we’re winning, instead of building our own offense, we’ll stay trapped in reaction.
Thanks for another well written piece. The football analogy works for me. My only complaint is that the Seattle team represented the right wing. Being from Seattle that hurt a little. Just giving you a friendly dig for that.
Brilliant! Another analogy that illuminates systems & shines a light on the reality of the playing field -- although depressing in one sense, it makes sense and lights a fire.
So well written! Concise. I love the football analogy too. I always disliked football because of the violence. Thanks for the further explanation, because it is probably the violence of the game that draws so many people to it…
Well done! This is a really well written blog and I love the football analogy.
I had tried to a much smaller extent to use football as an analogy with Super Bowl.
Epstein Files — Super Bowl Edition: Trump announces defensive lineup
https://thedemlabs.org/2026/02/08/trumps-epstein-defense-the-super-bowl-lx-roster/
I hate the football analogy.
I’ll meet ya halfway Bela by saying this: I hate I have to use football analogies but see this is part of the problem I was trying to expose. We need to be operating in the world as it exists and not in the ideal world that should be.
Not a football fan either, and I admit I skimmed thru it - BUT the analogy works.
One sentence (No.1, actually) ""Treat state politics as a front line, not a side quest."" That felt to me to be the typical Democrat failing. (among many others) We all have watched for years (decades?) Dems concentrate on the "big" states and actually just ignore all else and your football analogy makes clear how we keep getting pounded into the dirt!
These days on top of that, they refuse to support ALL Democrats. The whole assinine reaction to Mamdani and there are others being treated the same way.
X!!!!!! You know it. See the racist people like Megyn Kelley expose themselves. It was too Black and too Brown. Just like Kendrick Lamar’s performance. There was nothing wrong about it. Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance was a beautiful description of America. He shouted out my people. And see they don’t like it because it’s dangerous to them. Oh no what happens when Everybody is united???? How do we gaslight. You got it X. You know exactly what they’re doing.
I don't like professional football, and yet I still think your comparisons are excellent. One of your best Substacks thus far, methinks!
I've been reading Corbin Trent's posts (Americas Undoing) for a while now - This is a good one.
""Four people. That’s what it took. Four conservative operatives spent the Biden years, the years we were supposedly winning, quietly building the legal and regulatory and political infrastructure to kill the federal government’s ability to fight climate change. Russell Vought. Jeffrey Clark. Mandy Gunasekara. Jonathan Brightbill. They drafted executive orders. They got scientists to write white papers for them. They got Heritage Foundation money. They built the whole thing in secret so nobody could stop them before it was done. And now they’re about to revoke the endangerment finding, which is the scientific determination that has been the foundation of every federal climate regulation since 2009. Myron Ebell, a guy who’s been attacking climate science for damn near three decades, told the Times they were “pretty close to total victory.”"
https://www.americasundoing.com/p/a-wealth-tax-just-wont-cut-it?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=57821&post_id=187503231&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=b9ign&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Yeah, Libs are too nerdy to play football well. BUT.... you do remember MASH, don't you? "His ringer spotted our ringer." The good guys won by superior intellect (or cheating?) when they tackled and injected the star player on the other team with something and took him out of the game.
Bravo!! I’m just strumming the same old tune, though. The part about how we shift the whole damn paradigm. The frame. Whether football or democracy, is the frame itself dangerously flawed?
Your works prompt me to think and to plan and to challenge myself. Thank you!
We all knew Project 2025 was the MAGA pipe dream. What many didn’t understand, was its utility as a playbook. Now we see it implemented at breathtaking speed.
You’re absolutely right, Democrats have no game, let alone a game plan or long term strategy. Republicans have been brilliant at farming new talent at the local level and controlling the courts.
I think the analogy is excellent. And there's something about that that makes me very sad. Nevertheless, this is very well thought out and written.
Yep, another winner, X Dude. The football metaphor helped. Thank you.
Yes, and No. You are downplaying the Republican use of infotainment and the persistent lie, and downplaying the Opposition (many but not all Dems', some Others') chess game with legal strategies. It makes for a fine narrative, a stump speech. I want better analysis.
Ann, look, listen, that’s a fair pushback. There is no way I could encapsulate the whole strategy in one post: infotainment, the persistent lie, dark-money infrastructure, the legal chess, and the Democratic side’s real (if uneven) legal counterplay all deserve their own lanes. My “football” frame was aimed at one failure mode I keep seeing in our crowd. We watch the spectacle and miss the mechanics of possession, clock, field position, staffing, and rules.
Where I think the last 4–6 years get especially dangerous is that parts of the Republican coalition have shifted from the long game into Payback Politics: short-term crowd-pleasing escalations that produce receipts and unforced errors. And here’s where your “legal chess” point actually fits my argument: a lot of the current legal maneuvers don’t feel like some unstoppable, unapologetic offense as much as disciplined opportunism that feeds on the opponent’s mistakes. In football terms, it’s not always marching 80 yards on purpose. It’s waiting for the turnover, then taking the short field.
Now that’s why I used the Super Bowl LI choke as the analogy. When a team is already ahead, the fastest way to lose is panic disguised as aggression: trying to win “beautifully” instead of clean, giving the other side a short field, and letting them look like geniuses when they’re really just cashing in on your missteps. That’s the warning I’m trying to land: if Republicans keep chasing payback instead of disciplined offense, they create openings. If Democrats keep treating those openings like proof we’re winning, instead of building our own offense, we’ll stay trapped in reaction.
If you’re open to it Ann,and anyone else reading this, here is the longer version of what I mean by payback creating the “turnover” conditions: https://open.substack.com/pub/xplisset/p/minneapolis-ice-shooting-payback?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web