We're at war. If you find yourself cheering for the other side, you've lost your way.

The word traitor gets thrown around too much.

But, uh, this is a United States senator openly cheering on Iran against American military forces. pic.twitter.com/TYVYGO44oR

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) April 21, 2026

And look at him, grotesquely smiling, as he makes the excuse that we don't understand "sarcasm" anymore — you know, the form of humor that consists of saying the opposite of what you think:

JUST IN: Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy doesn't say he has any regrets after furious backlash to his X post calling reports of Iranian ships slipping past the U.S. naval blockade "awesome."

"I guess I just have to be more careful about sarcasm on Twitter," Murphy exclusively told… pic.twitter.com/MB6nuZjY9V

— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 21, 2026

"Twitter has become kind of a cesspool, I probably should give up on sarcasm on Twitter," Murphy says, as if the debased speech of others — who?! — undermines our capacity to understand sarcasm. Why? If anything, this "cesspool" quality ought to make us more likely to think somebody's just talking shit.

But Murphy wants to elevate his cynically spit out "awesome" into something subtle. He's doing sarcasm and the shitheads of the cesspool can't figure it out. They can't see that when a Senator says something, it really counts as the opposite of what he said through the magic of the time-honored device known as sarcasm.

Does Chris Murphy need to apologize? Of course, not. He's essentially already said he's sorry — sorry "Twitter" made the people so shitty they don't understand sarcasm anymore.

"What is Demthink? It’s what you’d end up with if you trained a large language model solely on the inner monologue of people who..."

"... either work in Democratic politics or watch MSNBC for eight hours a day.... The problem with Demthink is not merely that it tends toward cynical triangulation. No, it’s that it tends toward triangulation that isn’t even politically effective because it’s so finely tuned for the in-group that it comes across as uncannily out-of-tune to everyone else."

Writes Nate Silver, purporting to read the collective mind of Democrats, in "Is America ready for a gay president? Kamala Harris and a subscriber have questions about Mayor Pete, and I have annoyingly nuanced answers."

I've already blogged about what Harris said in her book about not picking Pete for VP — here, 10 days ago — and I don't want to redo that. I'm blogging Silver's piece because of the idea of "Demthink" and I liked these examples of how wrong it can go:

"On this question of how you unrig the economy... Democratic economic policy during the Biden administration, I would argue, was very heavily reliant on subsidy."

"The child care tax credit, the increased Obamacare subsidies, the forgiveness of student loans, essentially a whole bunch of efforts to write families a check in order to paper over the unfairness of the economy: I don’t think that’s actually what voters want. Those are good economic policies, but they feel kind of dirty, kind of lousy to have to be compensated for the fact that work doesn’t pay, that my inputs don’t match my outputs. Which is why that has to be the structure of our efforts to unrig the economy: making work pay. That means a much higher minimum wage. That means much more empowered labor unions. That means the deconstruction of corporate power, so that if you do start up a small bookstore in your community, you don’t get squashed out of existence in the first week. A suite and a set of policies that say to families: If you play by the rules, you are going to have a much better shot of getting ahead than you did under the old rules...."

Says Chris Murphy, in "Can Democrats Win the Working Class and Save the Republic?/Senator Chris Murphy on the Democrats’ 'five alarm' crisis" (NYT podscast, but my link goes to Podscribe, with audio + transcript).

The figurative use of the word "lousy" — literally, full of lice — has been around nearly as long as the literal use. Both go back to the 14th century. The OED records one writer complaining about the word in 1849: "I wish I could never hear the word lousy again. I am willing to bet that Tommy Plunkett uses it fifty times a day, but he is no worse than the others. It is ‘lousy’ this and ‘lousy’ that. The rain is lousy, the trail is lousy, the bacon is lousy, and Gus Thorpe, losing in the card game, has just said that he has had a lousy deal."

Anyway, maybe you can sift through that Murphy stuff and find his "suite" and "set of policies" that Democrats could credibly offer the working class. Trump figured out a way to do it. Do it back. I'd like to see them try. Credibly.

"There’s still a big part of the party that wants to fall in love, and there’s another part of the party that will settle for anything that will beat Trump."

"I think that’s a real, daily tension in the party that’s going to play out in real time.... It just happened that in 2008 and 2012 we fell in love with the most electable candidate.... I would generally make the case that the Democratic Party should always be nominating the next-generation candidate... except I’m not sure any of the old rules apply."

Said Democratic Senator Christopher S. Murphy, quoted in "Beto O’Rourke is 46. Bernie Sanders is 77. Does Age Matter Anymore for Democrats?" (NYT).

I like to say I'm for Boring, but I can see elections are about love... and hate.

Murphy sounds pretty boring, but that's what appealed to me in that quote.

Trump is trying to figure out who's going to run against him in 2020.

It's really hard to figure out.*

Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, asked consultants to scour the backgrounds of four outspoken Democrats — Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, two sources close to the administration said....

The White House believes both Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren are “too old” to mount a serious campaign three years from now, sources said....

“Elizabeth Warren is 100 years old....” the second source said....

She's 67.

Trump’s political team is also counting out [NY Governor Andrew] Cuomo and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, because they’ve been tainted by corruption probes....

[Kirsten] Gillibrand, 50, has been raising her profile thanks to a series of “no” votes on Trump’s Cabinet picks, but White House officials view her as “too young” and believe she lacks the network in the party to run a nationwide campaign, the sources said.

So 67 is too old and 50 is too young. Noted.
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* I'm steeling myself for all the born-lame jokes about how hard it is to see in 2020. The headline at the link is "Trump’s White House eyes potential foes in 2020 election." Did they write "eyes" because it will be 2020? No 20/20 jokes. I'm pre-banning them. It's bad enough to have to plunge back into another campaign season.