Scott walker

The top ten worst modern presidential campaigns, ranked

The decline and fall of the Ron DeSantis campaign has led several people within the commentariat — which these days means anyone online with the ability to type a thought and hit send in even a semi-coherent way, despite lack of experience, background or the skill to even qualify as a volunteer — to weigh in on how awful, how terrible, how wasteful has been the DeSantis effort to run for the presidency. The effect is amusing, in part because it has led outright idiots to claim that if only DeSantis had refrained from criticizing Donald Trump at all, or if only he had criticized Donald Trump more, he would have succeeded.

Could abortion be a vote-winner for Democrats nationally?

Could abortion be a vote-winner for Democrats nationally? Former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker is concerned for the future of the GOP. Walker is an authority here: he’s one of the few elected officials to have ever won three elections in four years, after Democrats mounted a boneheaded attempt to recall him from office back in 2012. What worries Walker now, per comments he made to Fox News Thursday, is the result of this week’s election for his own state’s Supreme Court that saw liberals secure a judicial majority for the first time since 2008. That election centered largely on abortion — the soon-to-be justice who won, Janet Protasiewicz, made very clear that she was pro-choice.

janet protasiewicz

The musical benefits of not playing live

From our UK edition

Glenn Gould considered audiences ‘a force of evil’. ‘Not in their individual segments but en masse, I detest audiences.’ He retired from public performance on 10 April 1964, at the age of 31, having given fewer than 200 public recitals. The Canadian classical pianist had longstanding philosophical objections to the ritual of performing live. He found applause automatic and insincere, and often asked spectators not to bother. He even wrote a (partly) tongue-in-cheek manifesto, the Gould Plan for the Abolition of Applause and Demonstrations of All Kinds, in which he called for clapping to be banned. Gould believed that the most useful and honest response to music came following a period of solitary reflection, rather than as instantaneous public display.