Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

I personally wouldn’t be caught dead financing either one of them, fwiw. The people I want don’t (and may never) win. However, I’m not going to judge people by how they vote or which political candidates they give money to, because I can’t know all of the reasons.

I do know Reid is historically an honest person and most likely made a mistake here. I doubt he’d ever do this on purpose. I just don’t like the hypocrisy. Had this been Peter, the coverage and hate would have been felt around the world. It’s very politically motivated.

Hate? Because he has a multi-year long track record of associating with and/or funding candidates and figures who have directed threats & hateful speech in a way where real violence or harm is possible at individuals or members of specific ethnic or racial groups?

Anyway, Reid and everyone else in this space, whatever their politics, should just have to openly publish all 501c4, 501c3, PAC and dark money spending, maybe in a yearly statement with some overarching statement about their strategy/intent. Or it should just be very restricted.

Too often these conversations are mired from the outset because distinctions aren't made between tactics & goals. The question isn't who's tribe has the right values — it's always yours, of course — it's whether the home team gets a pass on defecting from the norms of engagement

Right, but that's what makes it weird to bring up Thiel in this conversation. Thiel is critiqued for goals, whereas Hoffman is being critiqued on tactics. It isn't a helpful comparison in the context.

The point, AFAICT, is that we're (increasingly?) unable to have a good faith conversation about norms re: tactics because people actually care more about immediate outcomes than stability/process. "Would you be so forgiving if he wasn't wearing your colors?" is a reasonable Q

Maybe it’s hard to talk about norms because someone very overtly wants to erode and destroy democratic norms?