Michael Thorning

Governance, Democracy, Congress, Institutions, Elections. Director @BPC_Bipartisan. Fmr @SenatorTomUdall. @UNM Alum. 🏳️‍🌈 Thoughts=my own, RTs≠endorsements.

[Michael Thorning @ThorningMichael]

@JakeSherman Todd Blanche is not the Librarian of Congress, acting or otherwise.

[Michael Thorning @ThorningMichael]

An aphorism regarding some members of Congress’s tweets:

Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.

[Michael Thorning @ThorningMichael]

The greats looking down upon us as we do the good work of @BPC_Bipartisan.

[Michael Thorning @ThorningMichael]

@EsotericCD @LouADunn @jpodhoretz

[Michael Thorning @ThorningMichael]

@marcidale I can see how that works for taking a vote. What’s the appropriate verification for introducing a bill?

[Michael Thorning @ThorningMichael]

@marcidale Isn’t this the world we’d be living in with remote voting though?

[Michael Thorning @ThorningMichael]

@marcidale @mattbotvinick @AnthropicAI We can hope!

[J.D. Rackey @JDRackey]

Congress has increasingly been described as chaotic! In a new piece for @BPC_Bipartisan, @ThorningMichael & I argue that the nature of the chaos is in the eye of the beholder stemming from the model that one prefers the institution operate under. 🔗👇

[Andy Hall @ahall_research]

Getting better people to run for political office is maybe our single most important governance problem today. I wrote a book about this back in 2019 called "Who Wants to Run?" It was about why Congress was getting more polarized in part because more-moderate people were not running for Congress very often anymore.

To encourage better candidates, here are some of the policies I argued for:

--Pay legislators more (yes, really)...but not our current legislators. Our future legislators!

--Reduce fundraising demands so that people can run for Congress without spending all their time begging for money

--Enhance congressional capacity so that being a member of Congress is appealing for people who actually care about governing

Some things have held up better than others in the book. If nothing else, I think the title diagnoses the key problem in American politics: who wants to run?

https://t.co/shuX3EMI4A

[Michael Thorning @ThorningMichael]

https://t.co/nAI4nEiTNa

[Michael Thorning @ThorningMichael]

No one is happy with Congress--voters, the president, SCOTUS, or even its own members.

@BPC_Bipartisan @JDRackey and I explore what's causing the tension: Congress is trying to be two different kinds of legislatures, and succeeding at neither. 🔗⬇️

[Michael Thorning @ThorningMichael]

@maustermuhle And if only the OP worked for someone who could have done something about it and definitely didn’t spend their time and power working toward the opposite.

[Michael Thorning @ThorningMichael]

@mattyglesias

[Michael Thorning @ThorningMichael]

We’ve only got one choice.

[vivian @vivian39_]

Reasons not to vote for McDuffie:

> property tax breaks for seniors
> won’t remove parking for bike lanes
> wants more historic districts

Reasons not, JLG:

> against curfews and evicting violent tenants
> bought out by unions, anti Waymo
> makes perfect enemy of good w housing

[Michael Thorning @ThorningMichael]

@mehdirhasan @ConorLambPA @malcolmkenyatta Yet we have to imagine you’ll continue to treat those who were on the other side of this as unprincipled, corrupt shills…

[Michael Thorning @ThorningMichael]

@MattGlassman312 Just talked with someone about this last night (perhaps because they too are a political scientist…).

[Rachel Porter @rachel__porter]

@colinrcase @AJPS_Editor One anxiety about American democracy is that congressional campaigns have become fully nationalized, with candidates adopting identical party positions. We find little support for this: fewer than 1/2 of candidates take consistent positions across all issue areas we examine

[Michael Thorning @ThorningMichael]

If only some other branch of government had the power To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof….

[Michael Thorning @ThorningMichael]

I am convinced that the growing democratization of airplane internet is significantly deteriorating its quality.