NOVEMBER 2024

11.11 Eagles along the Mohawk.

11.10 Will Bunch in the Philadelphia Inquirer: “The things that pundits have been talking about since Tuesday — an economy that hasn’t worked for the working class since the time of Ronald Reagan, anxieties among white voters about a potential end to white privilege and the patriarchy, and a Democratic Party that’s lost touch with the great American middle — all factored into this election. But nothing mattered more than this: Donald Trump was returned to power by the most badly informed electorate in modern American history. In October, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found a powerfully strong connection between people who believed provably false information and whether they planned to vote for Trump or Harris. For example, Democrats held a plus-65% advantage among voters who correctly said that big-city violent crime rates are at or near record lows, while Republicans led by 26% with voters insisting this was false. The same was true for 2024’s recent sharp drop in border crossings (true, plus-59% Democrat; false, plus-17% Republican) or the stock market’s current all-time high (true, plus-20% Democrat; false, plus-9% Republican). This very much jibes with where voters get their news. An NBC News survey back in May — when Biden was still the Democrats’ deeply troubled candidate — found nonetheless that he led by landslide proportions among the shrinking number of Americans who still read a newspaper, with a 70%-21% lead. It provides some context to the never-ending online chatter complaining about tepid “both sides” traditional newsrooms underplaying the threats to democracy posed by Trump. I agree these critiques are important — a bad New York Times headline sets the tone for the entire media ecosystem — but that’s not why Trump won. The now-president-elect, according to that NBC survey, posted his biggest margin of 53%-27% among voters who don’t follow any news. Trump’s win was a triumph of the ill-informed.”

11.10 Thomas Hendrickson on The Bro Vote in The Atlantic: “It’s not just one type of talkative bro who has boosted Trump and made him more palatable to the average American. Trump has steadily assembled a crew of extremely influential and successful men who are loyal to him. Carlson is the preppy debate-club bro. Rogan is the stoner bro. Elon Musk is the tech bro. Bill Ackman is the finance bro. Jason Aldean is the country-music bro. Harrison Butker is the NFL bro. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the crunchy-conspiracist bro. Hulk Hogan is the throwback entertainer bro. Kid Rock is the “American Bad Ass” bro. And that’s hardly an exhaustive list. Each of these bros brings his own bro-y fandom to the MAGA movement and helps, in his own way, to legitimize Trump and whitewash his misdeeds. Some of these men, such as Kennedy and Musk, may even play a role in the coming administration. Spencer Kornhaber wrote this week that Democrats are losing the culture war. He’s right, but Trumpism extends even beyond politics and pop culture. I’ve been thinking a lot about that day I spent at the University of Georgia. Students I spoke with told me that some frat houses off campus make no secret of their Trump support, but it seemed less about specific policies and more about attitude. That’s long been the open secret to Trump: a feeling, a vibe, not a statistic. Kirk’s “free speech” exercises, which he’s staged at colleges nationwide for a while now, are only nominally about actual political debate. In essence, they are public performances that boil down to four words: Come at me, bro! Perhaps there is something in all of this that is less about fighting and more about acceptance—especially in a culture that treats bro as a pejorative.”

11.10 Ron Brownstein, in conversation with William Kristol: “The magnitude of it was startling. I think everyone expected that, in States that weren’t being fought, Trump would improve, whether they were blue states or red states, because you can’t have 75% wrong track, 60% disapproval of the president, and not have an erosion of his party’s position. But, the idea that you could put the swing states under a dome and, in those states, you could counteract the underlying trend by spending money to focus people on what they didn’t like about Trump and the Republican Party: that worked in 2022. It worked to a slight extent in 2024 but not nearly to the extent they needed. And, essentially, we saw a nationwide, uniform verdict that voters were dissatisfied with what they got over the past four years. And whatever doubts they had about the alternative, that seemed to them less risky than continuing on the course that we are on. And, as we have seen in elections like Carter, H.W. Bush, replacement of Truman, replacement of LBJ, replacement of Bush, stability is risk to most voters, and that’s what we had. . . .I remember writing toward the end of that [1992] campaign a story in The L.A. Times, whose lead remains one of my guideposts for covering politics. I wrote, “Stability is risk. When people are dissatisfied with the way things are going, stability is risk.” 11.9 Maureen Dowd in the Times: “A revealing chart that ran in The Financial Times showed that white progressives hold views far to the left of the minorities they champion. White progressives think at higher rates than Hispanic and Black Americans that “racism is built into our society.” Many more Black and Hispanic Americans surveyed, compared with white progressives, responded that “America is the greatest country in the world.”’ 11.8 Roge’ Karma in The Atlantic: `“For all his apparent divisiveness,” wrote the Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini, “Trump assembled the most diverse Republican presidential coalition in history and rode political trends that will prove significant for decades to come.” That statement neatly describes Donald Trump’s sweeping electoral victory this week. But Ruffini wrote it more than a year ago. Even though Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, he dramatically improved his performance that year among Black and, especially, Latino voters compared with 2016. According to Ruffini’s 2023 book, Party of the People, this was no fluke. American politics was undergoing a fundamental reordering in which the old dividing lines of race and wealth were being supplanted by new ones, namely education and trust in institutions. The ties that once bound low-income and nonwhite voters to the Democratic Party, he argued, were breaking. “If this trend continues,” Ruffini wrote, “it would mean the birth of a new party system, replacing the old twentieth-century class divide between the parties.”’ 11.7 Thomas Chatterton Williams in The Atlantic: “Were Trump not such a singularly polarizing, unlikable, and authoritarian figure, one of the most salient and—when glimpsed from a certain angle—even optimistic takeaways. . .would be the improbable multiracial and working-class coalition he managed to assemble. This is what Democrats (as well as independents and conservatives who oppose Trump) must reckon with if they are ever going to counter the all-inclusive nihilism and recklessness of the new MAGA majority. Much attention has been paid to the gender gap in voting, and it’s true that more men voted for Trump than women. But the fact that so many citizens of all geographies and skin tones wanted to see Democrats pay a price, not just for policy differences but also for the party’s yearslong indulgence of so many deeply unpopular academic and activist perspectives, must be taken seriously.” 11.6 Derek Thompson in The Atlantic: “Inflation proved as contagious as a coronavirus. Many voters didn’t directly blame their leaders for a biological nemesis that seemed like an act of god, but they did blame their leaders for an economic nemesis that seemed all too human in its origin. The global rise in prices has created a nightmare for incumbent parties around the world. The ruling parties of several major countries, including the U.K., Germany, and South Africa, suffered historic defeats this year. Even strongmen, such as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, lost ground in an election that many experts assumed would be a rousing coronation. This has been a year of global anti-incumbency within a century of American anti-incumbency. Since 2000, every midterm and presidential election has seen a change in control of the House, Senate, or White House except for 2004 (when Bush eked out a win) and 2012 (when Obama won reelection while Republicans held the House). The U.S. appears to be in an age of unusually close elections that swing back and forth, in which every sitting president spends the majority of his term with an underwater approval rating.’

11.5 Trump wins.

11.5 Vote No. 92 in the 25th Elelction District in the 112th Assembly District of New York State

11.4 Quincy Jones dies at 91.

11.3 Saquon Barkley performs a backwards hurdle over a would-be tackler.

11.2 Conclave with Ginny in Saratoga Springs.

11.1 At a rally in Milwaukee, Trump had microphone problems. “Fix the mic huh. You gotta be kidding. Do you want to see me knock the hell out of people backstage? I get so angry. I’m up here seething. I’m seething, I’m working my ass off with this stupid mic. I’m blowing out my left arm, now I’m going to blow out my right arm and I’m blowing out my damn throat too because of these stupid people.”   he said. Trump then took the microphone off the stand and began simulating fellatio.