Kamala harris

Thursday

Ben Domenech

The end of NeverTrump

From our US edition

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.

NeverTrump
Aidan McLaughlin

How podcasts swayed the 2024 election

From our US edition

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.

podcasts
Charles Lipson

The two final battles of the culture war

From our US edition

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.

culture
Bridget Phetasy

How the Democrats Bud Lighted their brand

From our US edition

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.

budweiser

Tuesday

Matt Purple

The case for practicing electoral abstinence

From our US edition

I have a confession to make. This year, I practiced electoral abstinence. By that, I mean I mostly tuned out from the election campaign. No posting a spicy GIF every time one of the candidates dodged a question. No clicking refresh on the RealClearPolitics polling average until I could feel the slow onset of carpal tunnel syndrome. It was a serious change of pace. For more than a decade, I was a conservative journalist, and before 2024, I’d covered every election cycle since 2012 (if sitting on my couch in sweatpants watching CNN and writing about it counts as “covering,” which in our current media landscape means yes!). I wrote reaction pieces after each of the Obama-Romney presidential debates. I watched on my TV as the events of January 6, 2021 unfolded five miles up the road.

electoral abstinence

Wednesday

Julie Burchill

I listened to a solid week of Woman’s Hour…

I was a weird kid, and though I harboured the usual innocent girlish ambitions of being a drug fiend and having sex with pop stars, I also nursed a desire to appear on Woman’s Hour. As a shy, provincial virgin, the programme opened up a world of women’s troubles from anorexia to zuigerphobia – and I was keen to have A Complicated Life. Here was the wet hand of today’s lily-livered sensibilities I had anticipated From my twenties to my fifties I appeared on it several times; my last outing was in 2016, as – like most other institutions – it was captured by the trans cult, leading to the show’s best presenter, Jenni Murray, leaving in 2020. Since then, the programme might more accurately be named What Is A Woman’s Hour.

trans athletes
Charles Lipson

What disputes about trans athletes say about Democratic politics

From our US edition

In the minds of many progressive Democrats, Representative Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Dem, just committed an unpardonable sin. He told the New York Times that his two girls should not have to compete in sports against men who have become women: Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face. I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that. Moulton’s statement is really about two issues, not one. It is important to distinguish them. The first, obviously, is about women and athletics.

Cockburn

How the Harris campaign blew $1 billion in 107 days

From our US edition

Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign spent more than $1 billion in three months, according to a detailed report from the Washington Examiner’s Gabe Kaminsky. FEC records not only show that Kamala paid $1 million to Oprah Winfrey’s production company, but six figures on a building set for her Call Her Daddy podcast, as well as millions on digital consultants and “event production” — also known as her supposed “in” with the celebrity world. TMZ, true to form, asked Oprah in the street if she had been paid by the Harris-Walz campaign. Oprah said the reports were “not true” and that she was “paid nothing — ever.

Monday

Stephen L. Miller

Kamala Harris ran the Fyre Festival of campaigns

From our US edition

As the finger-pointing begins, and the autopsy of the Kamala Harris campaign continues, financial details are being released on how the Harris campaign managed to blow more than $1 billion in war-chest funds — and not only lose, but get wiped off the electoral map by Donald Trump, who ended his campaign with roughly $488 million. That’s not a Dr. Evil typo: Kamala Harris not only blew a billion dollars, but actually ended up $20 million in debt. Where did the money all go? To celebrities mostly, and elaborate sets and stages. As it turns out, not all of those celebrity “activists” appeared with Kamala Harris because they believed in her or were doing their civic duty by getting engaged. They charged fees — and some were astronomical.

Friday

The Spectator

Tracking the Trump transition

From our US edition

Donald Trump has successfully won his second term, which means it’s time for him and his allies to buckle down and fervently start hiring for the incoming administration. Prior to his election, Trump announced that his transition would be chaired by former head of the Small Business Administration Linda McMahon and billionaire businessman Howard Lutnick, with assists from Trump’s sons as well as former Democrats Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard.The president-elect made his first pick for his administration on Thursday, announcing that his campaign co-manager Susie Wiles would be his chief of staff. She will be the first ever woman to hold this key White House post.

Thursday

Ben Domenech

God bless America

From our US edition

Welcome to Thunderdome. I have been part of the television coverage of election nights going back twenty years. I have stories from all of them that are of note. Election nights bring out the craziness in people: they lose their minds, lose the plot and react with a jittery manic mindset based on disabused assumptions about the world they inhabit. This happens often. I even made Jamelle Bouie so mad he left the CBS bureau in 2016 to take a walk. That’s how much of a jerk I can be on election nights when people are desperately holding on to hope for their candidates... Since my candidates always lose, I don’t care about their feelings, and that’s very freeing. Oh, your hopes for the future have been irrevocably dashed? This must be something new for you.

Curt Anderson

Finally: a Democrat autopsy from a Republican consultant

From our US edition

Republicans have, very foolishly, engaged in “autopsies” after recent election losses. This election, it’s the Democrats’ turn! The Democrats will engage in a circular firing squad for the next couple of years, with all factions doing their best to gain the upper hand by giving their rivals the shiv in the jailhouse shower. Allow me, a Republican political consultant without a dog in this fight, to answer the pressing question: who will Democrats blame for the campaign that inconceivably allowed the bad Orange Man to win and the obviously superior Kamala and Clooney and Oprah to fail? First, let’s start with the obvious — black voters. The people at DNC HQ will be furious that black voters did not obey instructions and vote 95 percent for Democrats.

democrat
Niall Ferguson

Not even close: how Trump confounded the pundits

It was supposed to be close. On the eve of election day, Donald Trump was up just 0.1 per cent in the RealClearPolitics polling average. FiveThirtyEight projected a tiny Trump advantage. PredictIt had Kamala Harris ahead. A celebrated pollster ran 80,000 simulations, and Harris won 50.015 per cent of them, versus 49.985 per cent for Trump. And it made some sense to expect a close result. With the exception of Barack Obama’s victories, every US election since 2000 has been close. In two cases, 2000 and 2016, the winner didn’t win the popular vote, which before then hadn’t happened since 1888, when Benjamin Harrison beat Grover Cleveland.

Freddy Gray

American titan: inside Donald Trump’s remarkable political comeback

Palm Beach, Florida Donald Trump’s bid to take back the White House has been triumphant. It is a decisive victory and even Trump’s bitterest enemies should recognise him for what he is: an American titan, the most extraordinary politician of our time. He has just pulled off arguably the biggest comeback in US history – a feat greater even than Richard Nixon’s Lazarus-like return in 1968. To understand the scale of his victory, recall how weakly he began. On 15 November 2022, when Trump launched his now-triumphant bid to regain the presidency, he did not seem himself.

Wednesday

The Spectator

The top election takeaways from Trump’s beatdown

From our US edition

President Donald Trump will be the 47th president of the United States after a historic political comeback and complete annihilation of his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris called Trump to concede this afternoon after failing to appear at the campaign’s planned victory party at her alma mater, Howard University, in Washington, DC. Instead, she delivered her concession speech there this afternoon. More on that below the fold. Biden is also said to have called Trump to congratulate him and express his desire for a smooth transition. It was a relatively short night compared to most predictions, with Trump sealing victory a couple of hours after midnight (although the result seemed obvious by that point).

Kate Andrews

Lionel Shriver on the election that smashed identity politics

29 min listen

News that Kamala Harris has called Donald Trump to concede defeat means that the US election is all but over. Of the seven crucial swing states, Trump has so far won North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Republicans have taken the Senate back from the Democrats. How did things go so badly for Kamala Harris? Is this the end of identity politics? Lionel Shriver, author and columnist, joins The Spectator’s economics editor Kate Andrews to reflect on what happened, and how she's feeling now considering she disliked both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump as candidates.

Matthew Parris

In defence of the liberal elite

You can hear it already. Rising from the tents of the dejected Democrat camp comes the whimper of self-reproach. It’s all our fault. Liberalism created this monster. There’s a distinct whiff of mea culpa in the air. Nostra culpa, nostra maxima culpa for the alienation of half the American people.  Donald Trump and his mob? It’s the fault of liberals for not feeling Trump-America’s pain. We fed their despair. Nigel Farage and his Reform party? Liberal Britain’s fault for being too stuck up to take Red Wall voters’ concerns seriously. Noses in the air (apparently), deaf to the woes of all those deplorables, and babbling about trans rights, preferred pronouns and all the rest of the woke agenda, we have lost the trust of those we (apparently) secretly consider negligible.

Kate Andrews

Why Donald Trump won and the real reason Kamala Harris lost

33 min listen

Donald Trump has won the election and will be 47th President of the United States after winning the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia. ‘America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,’ the Republican candidate told supporters. ‘This is a magnificent victory for the American people, that will allow us to make America great again,’ he said at the rally in Florida. It has been total victory, with the Republicans also winning Senate and the popular vote. Kate Andrews is joined by Sarah Elliott and Rick MacArthur to unpack a historic election night.

Kate Andrews

Election night: early signs suggest it’s Trump’s to lose

21 min listen

Results are coming in across the United States, and the early signs (though it is still very early) look good for Donald Trump. At the time of recording, the betting markets are with him and the famous New York Times ‘Needle’ has swung to a 'likely' Trump victory. It is still much too early to call in an election that could drag on for days to come. No media outlet has called it for either candidate yet. To give you the latest updates from the States, Kate Andrews is joined by The Spectator’s team on the ground: Amber Duke is in battleground state Michigan; Matt McDonald joins from Washington DC, where Kamala Harris is having her election night party; and Freddy Gray speaks from team Trump's party in Palm Beach, Florida.

donald trump wins
Matt McDonald

Donald Trump wins back presidency

From our US edition

Washington, DC He's back: Donald Trump will be elected the 47th president of the United States. In the end, it was not a close affair: Trump triumphed over Vice President Kamala Harris, with a win in Pennsylvania called by Fox News at 1:20 a.m. ET bringing him within a whisker of the requisite 270 Electoral College votes and a call in Wisconsin at 1:47 a.m. pushing him over the precipice. Decision Desk, meanwhile, included Alaska's Electoral College votes and called the election for Trump at 1:21 a.m. ET. Victory in the remaining states — Arizona, Michigan and Nevada — would give him a landslide. The New York Times is also currently projecting a popular vote triumph for Trump. The Republicans have also won control of the US Senate.