How Hitler enablers undid democracy in Germany : Germany had its own Big Lie - that it had not been defeated on the battlefield in 1918 and instead that Jews, Marxists, democrats and internationalists had betrayed the country and ushered in an un-German form of democracy. 📖 - Obama’s forgotten manuscript : Long before he became America’s first Black President, Barack Obama laid out an ominous path to rebuilding democracy in a 250-page manuscript written with his friend and former economics professor Robert Fisher entitled “Transformative Politics.” The manuscript, which was never completed or published, was largely critical of the left for “rudderless pragmatism” that, as historian Timothy Shenk describes in a New York Times column, led Democrats to seek victory in the judiciary when they couldn’t win at the polls, a sign that “progressives talked a good game about democracy, but they didn’t really seem to believe in it.” Read more here. So next time you get wonky in a tweet remember, you may just be preaching to the choir. Of the more than 1.4 million Twitter users tracked in a study, only 2.5% followed accounts considered to be run by “political elites.” About 1 in 4 followed at least three. 🐦 - Twitter isn’t the political echo chamber you think it is : While those of us who contribute to Sunburn and you who read it might spend a not insignificant amount of time chugging through headlines and scouring Twitter, most people don’t. Basically, as the explainer highlights, if Democrats lose any of those seats, the chances of a GOP majority increase significantly, but when the model assumes a Republican loss, Democrats’ chances only increase slightly. Eleven are toss-ups, eight lean Republican and 1 is likely Republican. FiveThirtyEight describes the disparity, noting that not a single “tipping-point” district - those most likely to put either party over a majority - leans Democrat. House of Representatives, despite the generic polling average showing Democrats leading. 👎 - Why Democrats probably won’t hold the House : FiveThirtyEight’s Deluxe model gives Republicans about a 70% chance of winning control of the U.S.

As Steven Shepard of POLITICO writes, polling is trending toward another 50-50 tie - a Democratic majority under the current presidential administration - with the most likely flips being Nevada for the GOP and Pennsylvania for Democrats.

Senate majority is still looking like a nail-biter. 😬 - With one month to go before Election Day: The battle for the U.S.

Here are some items which caught my attention over the weekend.

Blue october approaching normal torrent