"One other thing: We’ve seen lots of comments recently to the effect that Morning Shots has been a real doom parade recently—which, yeah, it sure has! We aren’t losing hope or our taste for the fight, but it’s hard to argue that things don’t look grim right now. If you’ve got thoughts on how we should be approaching this moment with a minimum of bumming you out over your coffee, we’d love to hear them."

I'll take a moment to defend our hosts here on this count. From where I sit, and with all due respect to my fellow posters, whose wise words I take in and learn from each day, it's not their job to massage our feelings and tell us what we want to hear, how we want to hear it. We may not see eye-to-eye with their perspective sometimes, but they are informed observers, not hacks, and draw reasoned conclusions based on the available evidence. The discussions here are civil and courteous because that is the tone that they have set, and we all should take a little time in this uncivil era to appreciate that and extend to them the same courtesy that they have gifted to us. Likewise in terms of thinking of canceling subscriptions here over the tone and content -- is it their fault that the news has been consistently bad lately? Did they create the Go Joe or Stay Joe controversy? Does anything they say have any power of influence over the Democratic decision-makers or do they merely analyze and comment as do the rest of us? Would canceling a subscription change any of that, or would it equate to one less informed, participating soldier in the battle that we need to fight?

Let's not lose our heads over things here over which we have little to no control, and find strength in both our numbers and our ability to communicate our ideas. Discord and divisiveness are the devil's workshop in this case. Or MAGA's glee if we fracture and fail in our purpose. Or both. Let's not go there, please and thank you.