Features

Thursday

November 21, 2024

The three reasons Trump won

Bishop Butler once observed that probability is “the very guide of life.” This is true. It follows that possibility is cheap, an errant muse. Yes, we must stash away in the back of our mind the admonition that “in this life... we must always distinguish between the Unlikely and the Impossible” (that’s the philosopher R. Psmith, courtesy of P.G. Wodehouse). Nevertheless, we should not run our lives or write our columns on that basis. “Why Trump won.” That is my assignment. I shall treat it as a declaration, not a question. And even though I write before the returns are in, I can give you the reasons. After all, I have been predicting that Donald Trump would win “in a landslide” at least since July.

Amber Duke

The realignment election

We’re sitting at the airport bar in Lansing, Michigan when we notice a MAGA hat next to the cash register. “What’s that?” my husband asks the black bartender. The bartender curls up the corners of his mouth and says, “I’m a Trump supporter.” He tells us that he was raised to be a Democrat by his grandmother and his mother but found himself disillusioned with the Obama administration and the bailouts of Wall Street and the auto industry. “They got their annual bonuses and their stock buybacks. What did we get? We got the bill. That was my breaking point.” “I got tired of hearing the same shit every four years,” he asserted. “Now I wear my hat out and people look at me like, ‘a black Trump supporter?

Ben Domenech

The end of NeverTrump

Donald Trump’s sweeping victory in the 2024 election saw the end of a host of political assumptions — about the country, the inevitability of the left’s generation-shifting agenda and the inability of the Republican Party to penetrate key demographics that have proven resistant to its message. But it also ends one of the most vile and corrupt strains of political activity in the past eight years: the professionalized NeverTrump movement, which raised scads of cash — “generational wealth,” in the phrasing of Steve Schmidt — selling an obviously failed product to Trump’s antagonists.

Aidan McLaughlin

How podcasts swayed the 2024 election

Around 2:45 on the morning of November 6, Donald Trump beckoned Dana White to the lectern to address the sea of MAGA-hatted supporters assembled to celebrate the former president’s election victory. In his brief but animated remarks at the Palm Beach County Convention Center, the CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship made sure to thank a cadre of figures who might just have been the key to Trump’s shocking triumph. “I want to thank the Nelk Boys, Adin Ross, Theo Von, Bussin’ With the Boys,” White said, “and last but not least, the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan!” You would be forgiven for not knowing who all these people are. No doubt many of the faithful assembled to cheer Trump were perplexed as well.

Joseph Moreno

How the lawfare campaign against Trump backfired

The effort to bankrupt, disgrace and banish Donald J. Trump to a jail cell in Riker’s Island has instead helped pave his road right back to the Oval Office. The unprecedented abuse of the American legal system fueled plenty of cable news coverage, but it also alienated the electorate. As with President Joe Biden’s mental decline, voters trusted their own eyes over the tale being told on their screens and delivered a decisive verdict against an eight-year politically-motivated lawfare campaign — exit polls showed that Trump voters were more likely to say democracy was under threat.

Charles Lipson

The two final battles of the culture war

On issue after issue, conservatives — and Republicans — have lost the “culture wars.” Not just lost but lost decisively and permanently. The victories are so secure on most issues that conservatives have abandoned the fight. At times, the result has been a more tolerant public consensus, for example regarding gay rights and marriage. There are two notable exceptions, however, where the cultural battles remain white-hot: abortion and transgender rights. Both issues motivated voters in 2024. On abortion, voters have been mobilized by controversial Supreme Court decisions. The fight began in earnest in 1973, when Roe v. Wade effectively legalized abortion throughout the country and throughout the nine months of pregnancy.

Marc Oestreich

The death of the American museum

It starts with the promise of skipping school — always an illicit thrill at nine years old. My son and I, seasoned truants, hop the early train to downtown Chicago for what I’ve convinced him is a real education. The day’s agenda: two of the city’s iconic museums — grand, intimidating and, up until recently, somewhat sacred. These sprawling neoclassical behemoths, both originally constructed for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, dot the waterfront like ancient ruins. They once felt like temples to knowledge, where wonder and learning collided, where static displays ignited curiosity. But as we step inside, I can’t shake the feeling that maybe, just maybe, their magic has faded. Can museums as we know them survive my lifetime?

Ben Domenech

Ta-Nehisi Coates, the DEIty

A decade ago, in June 2014, the Atlantic published a cover story with a simple declarative title: “The Case for Reparations,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates. The piece had taken him two years to write, and the work paid off — with praise sweeping through the ranks of media, prizes from the most prominent elite institutions. The piece was named the “Top Work of Journalism of the Decade” by New York University’s journalism institute. It was hailed as a rare piece of writing which pushed open a cultural dialogue about a controversial subject.

Neal Pollack

Why I quit poker

I played my last hand of poker on an innocuous Saturday afternoon in October. My pocket Kings lost to 4-7 offsuit. They shouldn’t have been in the hand at all, but I still did everything wrong at the end, and there went $500 to some sweaty moron directly to my right. “Clock me out,” I said to the dealer, my hands shaking. They’d seated me at the table right by the door, so I at least was able to contain my temper tantrum until I got outside. “FUCK,” I screamed loudly enough so they could hear me inside — and also probably down the block. “SHIT SHIT GODDAMN IT FUCK!” I bashed my lunchbox against the wall. It tore at the handle. I kicked a post. It bent my toenail back. And I kept screaming, cursing my luck, damning the gods, destroying my lunchbox.

Teresa Mull

In praise of American charity

Here’s a bittersweet headline to warm your heart this holiday season: “Woman set up GoFundMe that raised over $1 million for her children before she died.” And another: “GoFundMe benefiting pregnant wife of Matthew Gaudreau has raised over $500K.” And one more for good measure: “GoFundMe raises over $26K for Massachusetts State Police trooper’s family.” I see stories like these weekly — and what’s remarkable about them is not so much that people are willing to help neighbors enduring tragedy, but how so many people are willing to go above and beyond what is being asked. The first fundraiser, for instance, was set up by a single mother from Utah dying of cancer to raise $5,000 for her own funeral expenses and a little money for the kids she left behind.

Bridget Phetasy

How the Democrats Bud Lighted their brand

Last spring, a marketing grunt at Bud Light sent TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney, a trans woman, custom cans of beer featuring her picture. As intended, Mulvaney posted about the beer on social media, igniting a firestorm and a boycott of the brand. Men revolted. Bars stopped serving it. Bud Light lost its status as the top-selling beer in America; it’s only back up to number three today. I became aware of the left’s man problem when I wrote for Playboy back in 2015. When I’d ask my audience to submit their thoughts about hair loss, erectile dysfunction or dating, I would often receive thousand-word screeds, with a “thank you for actually caring” theme. Thank you for listening. Thank you for writing about men like we matter.

Dylan Colligan

A prayer in Ukraine

By the summer of 2024, Kyivans could joke that there was no way the Russian army could take their city now — they’d never get through the downtown traffic. The simple normality of urban congestion, crawling through grand boulevards in the shadows of buildings that, with fresh coats of paint, would suggest a Wes Anderson vision of Mitteleuropa, could lull a visitor into thinking he could be in any capital on the old Orient Express route. So, too, would the world-class Fenix restaurant, run by a celebrity chef and festooned with Chihuly-inspired decor. It was between the salmon tartare eclair and the rabbit ravioli that I heard for the first time, face-to-face, what it’s like to be persecuted for worshipping God in the wrong way.

Daniel McCarthy

Panicking over the planet and population is pointless

One sign of moral panic is that when the facts change, the fears remain the same. In the 1970s, the Washington Post, TIME and Newsweek stoked fears of “a new ice age.” As soon as scientists updated their models to show a trend in the other direction, “global warming” became as threatening as global cooling. And when winters stubbornly kept happening and the direst predictions of new-age prophets like Al Gore failed to come to pass, the whole thing was rebranded as “climate change.” Whatever the label, and whatever the underlying phenomenon was thought to be, the moral implication remained the same — human beings were ruining the earth and must curtail their comforts to save the planet. Bad weather used to be God’s punishment for human sinfulness.

Benji Shulman

South Africa’s international decline

South Africa’s recent foreign policy has both surprised and dismayed Western diplomats and strategists. Many of these entered their careers during the era of the “end of history” when the Soviet Union had collapsed and with it, or so the thinking went, the last serious threat to the Western liberal order. Western democracy had triumphed, and policy doctrines of hard power and deterrence could give way to strategies of acquiescence and engagement. In South Africa, the African National Congress Party of Nelson Mandela was coming to power. Given that its key ally the Soviet Union had collapsed, the ANC took a sufficiently circumspect view of the new unipolar global order for Western diplomats to conclude that it had become their ally.

The Spectator

The Spectator’s 2024 Books of the Year

William Boyd It makes grim, compelling and minatory reading, but Hitler’s People (Penguin, $35) by Richard J. Evans is not only the only book you ever need to read about Nazi Germany but a salutary example of what happens when crazed populist leaders win power. Twenty-two short portraits of the key players and lesser apparatchiks of the Nazi years manage to encompass the whole history of the Third Reich and its baleful legacy. Evans’s hundred-page chapter on Hitler — the “Boss” — is masterly. Evie Wyld’s fourth novel, The Echoes (Knopf Doubleday, $28) with its edgy and moody supernaturalism (the narrator is a ghost) establishes her growing reputation as one of our finest young writers.

Monday

October 21, 2024

Spectator Editorial

The 2024 Hobson’s choice

After what seems like four straight years of a presidential campaign, we’re finally here. When we say “here,” we are talking of course of the last stage of grief, exhausted acceptance. One half of the population accepted that their nominee could be replaced without a single primary vote. The other half accepted that their 2020 nominee couldn’t be replaced at any cost. Many this year are casting votes with considerable pain as they select from two less than ideal options. Andrew Sullivan details his grudging support for Kamala Harris; while Bridget Phetasy describes the reluctant undecided voters pulling the lever for Trump. We’re sure they’re not the only ones holding their noses. The lesser-of-two-evils election is nothing new.

Roger Kimball

Why Kamala Harris will lose

When you look back on the 2024 presidential election and try to understand why it was that Kamala Harris lost, there are a few things to remember. The first is that the two most important issues for American voters were the border and the cost of living. By “the border” I do not just mean the incomplete physical barrier along our southern frontier. That structure is merely the objective correlative of a policy that has its roots in such lofty ideas as sovereignty, the meaning of citizenship and national identity. After her coronation as the Democratic candidate in late July, Harris began to squirm and prevaricate about her appointment by Joe Biden as the “border czar.” But we have the phrase in black and white in the record of the appointment.

Amber Duke

The turnout election: a tale of two ground games

In the past two months, the Harris-Walz campaign has texted five times asking me to join its door-knocking efforts in Virginia. I am a young woman living in Northern Virginia, so I am statistically likely to be a Democrat. But a data file of reasonable quality would also tell you that I have voted in every Republican primary since 2012, that I am a weekly Mass-attending Catholic and that I am married: three signs that I am probably not going to spend my weekend pounding the pavement for Kamala. This is anecdotal evidence, but it suggests to me that contrary to mainstream media reports, the Harris-Walz campaign doesn’t have the most sophisticated ground-game operation. “In 2020 the DNC actually wrote a press release bragging about appending cell phone numbers to the voter file.

Ben Domenech

Unpacking the race for the US Senate

In the middle of the most chaotic presidential election in the modern era, with its death race through senility, assassination attempts and a manufactured coup, voters can be forgiven for their lack of focus on the partisan makeup of the United States Senate. But when it comes to what a Trump or Harris presidency could achieve, the answer may be determined by a handful of extremely close senatorial elections where a dearth of reliable polling has even longtime political insiders flying blind. Democrats have held the Senate since 2021, thanks to Republicans’ bungled attempt to hold on to two key seats in Georgia in the wake of Donald Trump’s attacks on early voting and mail-in ballots.

Declan Leary

The life and times of Sheldon Whitehouse, the last patrician liberal

It is not often that an American politician publishes a book of genuine interest. It is even less often, breaking through the veil of ghostwriters and marketers and political risk consultants, that such a book provides real insight into its author. Hillbilly Elegy is an obvious example: an unusually vulnerable self-portrait whose sales shot through the roof after J.D. Vance was tapped to be Donald Trump’s running mate this summer. Josh Hawley may never be vice president, but his ambitions and his politics are already apparent in the biography of Teddy Roosevelt he published a full sixteen years ago.