I've been seeing parts of Trump's macro policy speech and I believe it should be paid attention to. Leaders usually do what they say they're going to do. Here is one:
What I learned about Trump's landslide victory from one night in New York City.
On election day, I caught the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Sitting across from me an elderly woman wore a t-shirt with the image of Trump pumping his fist in the air with the words “fight, fight.” A small "I Voted" sticker was pressed onto her lapel.
She sat with an easy confidence. There were no disapproving glances from other passengers. There was no tension. No conflict. It struck me that in 2024 it was now perfectly acceptable to express support for Trump in a deep blue (Democratically held) city. As I travelled to my destination I wondered: if one could support Trump this openly in New York City, what might support look like in the rest of the country?
A few hours later I attended an exclusive well-heeled party. I spoke to various professionals who said that they had never voted Republican in their lives, but had voted for Trump that day due to his support—in their words—“for the Jews”. These Manhattanites told me that Kamala was too sympathetic to the “pro-Hamas contingent” of the far-Left, and at a time of rising antisemitism, they couldn’t bring themselves to support her. This small group of cosmopolitans represented a contingent far-removed from the stereotypical MAGA voter. And yet listening to their views, it again occurred to me: if I could find such support for Trump in the middle of a Democratic heartland—what might it look like in the rest of the country?
When I arrived at my final stop of the evening—a private underground bar in the Lower East side of the city—a celebratory atmosphere had begun to explode. The betting markets tipped a Trump win, and online supporters of Harris started to express acceptance of defeat. The beer here had already run dry. It was so bustling that it was hard to move, with young men in their twenties and early thirties outnumbering women by 2:1. These men were diverse: white, black, Hispanic, Asian. A few wore Trump caps, but the aesthetic was more like a university dorm than a MAGA rally. “This is the counter-culture” one party goer told me. "This isn't just about Trump," another said. "It's about Vance and Musk. It's about American dynamism."
In the coming days, much will be written about working class concerns—issues that have become familiar focal points for those seeking to understand Trump’s support. But while inflation and border policies will have no doubt played a role in the Republicans’ landslide victory, we might also want to look at the sentiments expressed by young male voters—voters who represent a new and emerging contingent in American politics. Nothing about the young men I spoke to appeared particularly conservative or “right-wing”. Yet it was easy for them to explain why they voted for Trump. And if we zoom out and look at broader cultural trends, it should be easy for us to understand too.
If we take a macro perspective, we see that such young men have never known a culture in which males are not routinely described as “problematic,” “toxic,” or “oppressive”. Going to university, and working at modern companies, they live in a world of Diversity Equity and Inclusion policies—many of which promote an insidious and pervasive form of anti-male discrimination. Yet to talk about it in public invites social ostracism. To criticise DEI is to risk being called a Nazi.
These young male voters know about theories of patriarchy and white supremacy, but they have never known a culture which celebrates the Great Man Theory of history. Thomas Carlyle’s nineteenth century framework for understanding the past is seen as an anachronism, not worthy of serious thought. Today we acknowledge historical figures not for their feats, but for their crimes. Whether it is due to slavery, colonisation, racism, or sexism, we tear down the monuments of our past, while building no new heroes for our future.
The problem with this way of viewing the world is that it is alienating and self-defeating. It is also wrong. By any objective standards Elon Musk is a great man of history, who is influencing the course of human civilisation for generations to come. As one party-goer told me “he caught a fucking rocket with mechanical chopsticks.” Yet despite his achievements, Musk is more likely to be scorned than celebrated by the Democratic establishment.
This tension between achievement and resentment explains much about our current moment. The young men I met that night in Manhattan weren't just voting for policies. They were voting for a different view of history and human nature. In their world, individual greatness matters. Male ambition serves a purpose. Risk-taking and defiance create progress.
This is why the Trump victory transcends conventional political analysis. It represents more than a rebuke of border policies or inflation rates. It signals a resurrection of old truths: that civilisation advances through the actions of remarkable individuals, that male traits can build rather than destroy, and that greatness—despite our modern discomfort with the concept—remains a force in human affairs.
The elderly woman on the subway, the Manhattan professionals, and the young men at the underground bar all sensed a shift. They saw in Trump not just a candidate, but a challenge to a psychosocial orthodoxy that has dominated American institutions for a generation. Their votes marked not just a political preference, but a cultural correction.
As the final results came in that night, it became clear that what I witnessed in New York was playing out across the nation. The election wasn't just a victory for Trump. It was a victory for a way of seeing the world that many thought dead: one where individual achievement matters, where male ambition serves a purpose, and where great men still shape the course of history.
Look, I'm no Trump guy (I wrote in Condoleeza Rice), but I'm far less anti-Trump than most of the denizens of the CosmoGlob. I've tried and tried to get people to put themselves in the mind of the people who support Trump. I know a lot of these folks and they aren't the one-eye-in-the-center-of-the-forehead troglodytes many suppose them to be, and they aren't blind to Trump's obvious faults.
But life in America is bad for a lot of people right now. I spent the first seven months of the year unemployed, and I finally got a job at a non-profit making a third what I was making. And mine isn't the only such story. And now as I run a small food bank and community assistance program, I see first hand the impact of the economy, shrinking budgets, increasing food prices, yadda yadda. But I think more...shocking...is the story of my niece, who we'll call Suzie, so I don't have to keep calling her "my niece".
My wife messaged me today and said "I did you see Suzie's post today?! She voted for Trump and shared a photo of him!" Now here is Suzie's story, in brief: her mother is Native American and her father an immigrant from Mexico. She had a childhood that I'm guessing most of Claire's readers can scarcely imagine. Her parents were drug addicts, and she herself took to using at a young age, and that lasted in to adulthood. But she got clean, worked her way through college and is working as a drug and alcohol counsellor at a treatment facility in Washington State. She literally works her ass of to better herself and provide for her family. To say I was flabbergasted by her public support for Trump is an understatement. I asked her "Why did you vote for Trump? And why do you think there's growing popularity among Hispanic voters?" Her answer, in her own words "This was hard, but necessary. Because survival is essential." I pressed her a bit: "So in your view, you've had a harder time under Biden than under Trump, despite all of Trump's obvious flaws?" She said "Exactly."
Now listen: you can argue with her perspective. I can make the argument as easy as anyone that the economy isn't dependent, completely, on the occupant of the White House at any given moment. It's much too complex for that. But what you cannot do, as some of my well-to-do, retired, white Harris supporting friends have tried, is convince Suzie or myself that things aren't really, really bad for a lot of people. Is Trump going to make them better? Debatable. But Harris did nothing to convince Suzie that she was going to get anything other than the same over the next four years.
I'm very worried about the state of the world. But I'm not convinced that Trump's election is the disaster so many people think it's gonna be.
Some of my high school friends from New Hampshire, who went all in for Trump despite being women, also keep telling me I don't get it, that Biden has destroyed the country and the economy has never been worse. I can show them all the statistics, they just say I am gullible and believing fake news. All of them are employed, take vacations, even seem in reasonably good health. And their kids are employed. They enjoy a quality of life they probably wouldn't have dreamed of when we were in our early 20s. But apparently Biden is the worst President ever. If you ask them for evidence, they will point to homeless people in Concord, the rent is too damn high and have you seen the price of eggs? But don't ask them whether they have gotten raises, of course they have, but that is just their own merit I guess. So I don't know where you go from there.
I do take Spin's point and feel sympathy but I had several friends in their 50s who lost their jobs under Trump. I lost a job under Trump. Americans over 50, especially in higher paying positions, have been vulnerable for quite a while. That's modern capitalism and technological change for you. Maybe things didn't get much better for people like us under Biden but they didn't get worse. As far as Suzie, I have tremendous respect for what she's accomplished, but again, she's extrapolating from her life to a whole economy. Life on the margin is unfortunately far too common in America, and is part of the deal we've made to not support a social welfare state on the European model in favor of forcing people like Suzie to be productive or die. Every time I'm in the US the relative economic progress America has made vs. Europe is shocking. Yes, that divergence started under Obama, continued under Trump but really under Biden is when just to the naked eye American wealth has become too obvious to deny. Except for Trump supporters apparently. It is certainly true Biden did maybe too much for the upper middle class voter - we are all doing fantastic, and the effects of the infrastructure investment and union support are just not happening fast enough for the working class voter on the margin. Of course every attempt to help working class voters on the marign is heroically resisted by Republican politicians both in Congress and the state levels, but once again it's all Biden's fault apparently.
You are missing the point. Whether Suzie is right or wrong about her vote, the point is the Harris campaign didn't reach her. I wonder if the Harris campaign even tried to reach her. They probably they figured they had all the minority, working class moms in the bag.
Actually I am starting to think Suzie has a point. A professor at CUNY has pointed out that withdrawing pandemic income support programs in 2022 worsened lower income people's material conditions significantly. Not surprising if they blame Biden for a dramatic reduction in income that did in fact happen under Biden's watch. Under Trump in 2020 the US actually did come close to achieving a European style safety net, then lower income people watched all that vanish again in 2022. Republican controlled Congress deserves some of the blame but not all of it.
I'm confused why you are now saying the point is that the Harris campaign didn't reach her. I thought you were saying there was no way the Harris campaign could reach her: "But what you cannot do, as some of my well-to-do, retired, white Harris supporting friends have tried, is convince Suzie or myself that things aren't really, really bad for a lot of people."
I discounted the Selzer poll when I learned that the Des Moines Register, which commissioned it, told the pollster not to release the cross tabs. That led me to suspect that there was something fishy going on. In the event, it was off by sixteen points. Trump carried Iowa with 56% of the vote.
Niall Ferguson on the enormity of Trump’s comeback.
“This is a bigger comeback than Grover Cleveland’s in 1892, when he became the first—and, until last night, only—American president to win a second nonconsecutive term. This is a bigger comeback than Richard Nixon’s, when he was elected president in 1968, eight years after he lost by a dubious whisker to John F. Kennedy. It’s bigger than Winston Churchill’s multiple comebacks, the biggest of which were in 1940 and 1951. It’s bigger than Charles de Gaulle’s in 1958. It’s bigger than Napoleon’s Hundred Days in 1815. In fact, I am tempted to say that the only comeback it’s not bigger than is the Resurrection.”
Niall is high. Trump never really went away. He has been hanging around the hoop continuously since January 2021. He didn't have to fight for the nomination. He has had the Republicans in Congress in his pocket and working for him the entire Biden administration, as well as Fox News. It's barely a comeback at all. It's more impressive than Putin returning to office after turning it over to Medvedev, sure, but not De Gaulle level.
I know I am considered an honorary Canadian around these parts and something that dawned on me is the reaction I am seeing in Blue America reminds me a lot of that in the immediate aftermath of the failure of the Meech Lake Accord. I have always been fascinated by this type of sectionalized and factionalized Canadian politics(I love the term "double legitimacy") even though I know most Americans definitely don't want this brand of Canadian politics to be imported into the US. Anyways I think it already has been and I will share more thoughts on it later. I felt like Laetitia James and Kathy Hochul's press conferences in New York reminded me a lot of Robert Bourassa's defiant response to English Canada after the collapse of Meech Lake Accord.
The issue is not that people think Trump is normal. Everybody knows he's not. The issue is that people think the Democrats are also abnormal: that they do not give a shit about crime (except by Republican presidential candidates) or the economy (except for its effects on poor people of color) or immigration (generally). For these people the cure was not worse than the disease. Why Trump? That's easy. He's who they had. We would have preferred supporting almost anyone other than Stalin in the 40s, but we supported Stalin, because that's who was on the stage.
* >The Democrats went after Big Tech? When? How?
A lot of reporting on Lina Khan and the FTC in the last few years has revolved around this.
Yes, who could think otherwise? Must not have been Trump after all with his "very fine people on both sides" comments regarding Charlottesville's Unite the Right rally -- "Jews will not replace us," chanted by those comfortable enough to do so without the anonymity of wearing hoods. The MAGA tent grows larger.
Perhaps. Such lies would have to be extensive, consistent and nearly ubiquitous, though. And to the contrary, transcripts remain available.
From Saturday, 12 April 2017 (originally written here as "1967", see following response from Scot) -- containing no mention of white supremacists, of the alt-right, of neo-Nazis -- merely "We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides."
Tuesday, 15 April 2017 (also originally entered as "1967") -- press conference. Trump is asked by reporters about his apparent reluctance on Saturday to blame white supremacists and neo-Nazis. The record here shows a lengthy equivocation concerning his announcement of more than 48 hours earlier, and includes his suggestion that the behavior of the "alt-left" must be considered as well.
Eventually the transcripts note this exchange (which continued beyond the end of this quoted material):
Reporter: "The neo-Nazis started this. They showed up in Charlottesville to protest .."
DJT: "Excuse me, excuse me. They didn't put themselves in -- and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides."
To be as scrupulous as possible, we read later his ".. and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists -- because they should be condemned totally."
Yet this too is equivocation. It's difficult to envision an easier political question to address: if the neo-Nazis are involved, condemn the activity directly, immediately, simply and without any reliance on conditionals, comparatives or the subjunctive mood. Rather like the reactions richly deserved by those celebrating Hamas's barbarity, say?
The number of antisemites on the right is probably about the same as it's always been. True, they've been more vocal since Oct 7th 2023, but not much new there. The rise in antisemitism is almost completely from the left.
Trump surrounds himself with antisemites: Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, RFK Jr, MTG. Orban is his hero. Jews have been begging him to distance himself from Tucker Carlson, but he won't. The general rule of thumb is that right-wing antisemites tend to range from country-club bigots to neo-Nazis and more likely to be the ones who shoot up a synagogue; left-wing antisemites insist they're not antisemites while levying every traditional calumny against Jews toward the state of Israel and finding in themselves a remarkable sympathy for every terrorist group or state that has as its central aim the murder of Jews. Both the left and the right have a serious antisemitism problem; both see it in the opposite camp but are blind to it in their own.
I don't believe the number of antisemites on the right is "probably about the same as it's always been." There are *far* fewer antisemites on the right than there were before the Holocaust, but *far* more than there were twenty years ago. Or rather, the taboo against expressing it, post-Holocaust, was so strong that I was able to grow up in Seattle and literally never once in my childhood hear an antisemitic remark. Not one. (Perhaps people were secretly antisemitic, but I don't give a damn if people are secretly antisemitic: why should I? I have no desire to police other people's souls.)
The amount of *overt* antisemitism I now see on the right is jaw-dropping. If you want to test this, make a new account for yourself on Twitter, call yourself "Schlomo Goldberg," and put a Star of David in your profile. Then continue to use Twitter exactly as you usually do. You'll see what I mean very quickly.
Yossi Klein-Halevi described this, accurately, I think, as the post-post-Holocaust era. In the wake of the Holocaust, the shock and revulsion was so great that overt expressions of antisemitism were, for several generations, completely taboo. With Trump's rise, almost every social taboo and inhibition melted. The taboo against public expressions of anti-semitism was one of them.
Couple this with social media, a massive rise in disinformation generally, state- and terrorist-group sponsored antisemitic propaganda all over social media, the growth of a conspiratorial and paranoid mindset among a massive segment of the population, the passage of time (with the Holocaust becoming a memory to which few Americans have a living connection) and the outbreak of a major war in the Middle East, and you have an ideal Petri dish. I've been watching this ancient sickness come roaring back, on the right and the left alike, with a combination of horror and, I admit, intellectual curiosity: Why are these ideas about Jews so sticky and ineradicable?
The taboo against antisemitism was very strong for two or three generations in America, to the point that I genuinely believed antisemitism was a completely dead ideology--in the US, anyway. I no more expected to see its recurrence in my native country than I expected to see a recurrence of slavery, or at least the ideas used to justify slavery. You would think that since several generations of Americans grew up without exposure to antisemitic thought, it would be pretty much impossible to re-introduce it, right? The chain of transmission, you'd think, would be broken. After all, antisemitism is basically a very weird, arcane idea: No one would naturally land on the idea that Jews secretly control everything and are the font of all evil in the world. That's just *so dumb.* Why Jews, of all people? Why not Parsis, or Italians?) "It's the Jews" is *not* such an obvious idea that it just makes sense that sooner or later, everyone lands upon it. So I figured if you managed to go one or two generations without this idea being frequently voiced, people will just forget this, the way they've forgotten lots of bad ideas. Like "drawing and quartering," or the idea that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
So how did this get back into our bloodstream? Why have so many people taken to it so quickly? I see people sharing Third Reich antisemitic propaganda on Twitter all the time. Not "like" the Third Reich, but the actual, original stuff--and they don't even realize that's where it comes from. They just know it really speaks to them.
I suspect that antisemitism never really went away in the halls of academia, where it's always ready to pop up again. Similar to a virus like herpes maybe. Anywhere what you might now call neo-Marxism is embraced, and where you get concepts like decolonization, DEI, and all that rubbish.
After Oct 7th it suddenly became socially acceptable again to be antisemitic (I share in wondering why it didn't dissappear in broader society though). Which led to all the right wing nuts coming out of the woodwork and realizing they didn't have to hide their hate any more. But it's also led to a huge upswing in hating Jews on the left, including in younger people. From their perspective Jews are colonizers, capitalists, white (or white adjacent), Islamophobic, and think they're better than Palestinians. What's not to hate?
"Israelis can get off the blacklist only by publicly saying what the boycotters want them to say about Israel.
Which is what, exactly? The language of the Palfest letter is deliberately vague, so much so that even some signatories may not fully understand what it is they are demanding. What does it mean, for instance, to “justify Israel’s occupation” of the West Bank? A religious Zionist might justify it on the grounds that the land was promised in the Bible to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob forever. A secular Israeli, by contrast, might justify it on the grounds that withdrawing from the West Bank would mean handing it over to a dangerous enemy bent on Israel’s destruction—which is what happened when Israel ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005. According to the Palfest letter, both of these positions constitute complicity in genocide.
The phrase “the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people” is similarly unclear. Does it mean that the Palestinian people have a right to a state of their own on part of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea? Or does it mean that the descendants of refugees who left or were driven out of Israel in 1948 have a right to return and take back their ancestors’ land? In that scenario, Jews would become a minority in the world’s 23rd Arab country. Respecting the “inalienable rights of the Palestinian people,” in this view, means that the Jewish state must disappear.
A customer in a bookstore in Tel Aviv in 2020. Photo: Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg News
It is hard to think of another boycott with demands so far-reaching: not that a country change its policies or leadership, but that it cease to exist altogether. So it makes sense that, according to a press release issued alongside the letter, of the 92 Israeli publishers contacted by Palfest, 91 refused to accede to its demands. The only exception was a small publisher called November Books, which declared, “We are committed to the idea, in line with Palestinian and democratic voices in Israel, that Israel should not be a Jewish state.”
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
Do you think writers should boycott Israel? Join the conversation below.
Why frame a demand in such extreme terms that it is guaranteed to be rejected? This strategy wouldn’t make sense if the goal of the literary boycott were to energize Israeli opposition to the war in Gaza. Like the earlier academic boycotts, this one will punish exactly the kinds of people who, in Israel as in America and Europe, are most likely to be progressive themselves: professors and artists and writers.
Jonathan Lethem Photo: Willy Sanjuan/Associated Press
But if the goal of the literary boycott is to shape intellectual opinion in the U.S. and other Western countries, then its means are well chosen. The writers who lent their reputations to this cause are sending a clear message: If you support the existence of a Jewish state—in any borders, under any government—you deserve to be treated as a moral pariah.
The Palfest letter targets Israelis, not Jews per se. But over the past year, there have been a number of incidents in which writers and literary institutions have refused to associate with Jewish writers, on the presumption that they are “Zionists” and therefore complicit in genocide. In July, for instance, a Chicago bookstore announced that its book club wouldn’t feature the popular novel “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” because, a manager of the store wrote, “It was brought to my attention that the author Gabrielle Zevin is a Zionist.” In fact, Zevin, who is of Jewish and Korean descent, had never spoken publicly about Israel. Apparently the reason for the boycott was that Hadassah, a women’s Zionist organization, had chosen “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” for its own book club.
How long will it take for the boycott aimed at Israelis to affect writers elsewhere? Is a writer who sets a novel in Israel, or invents an Israeli character, also complicit in genocide? How about one who visits the country or donates to an Israeli nonprofit? In practice, the Palfest boycott is a green light to supporters of the Palestinian cause to “deplatform” any writer who will not publicly reject Israel or Zionism in terms that will satisfy those making the demand.
There are Jewish writers who will be happy to comply—a number have already signed on to the boycott. But surveys consistently find that 80% of American Jews say caring about Israel is an important part of their Jewish identity. The literary boycott of Israel won’t change the way Israel fights in Gaza, or convince Israelis to dissolve their country, but it will encourage literary people and institutions to ostracize American Jews who refuse to deny a central part of their identity." (Essay.)
"Oct. 7 is “a tragic date” for the Israelis, Ms. Albanese told a crowd at Georgetown’s event at Washington, D.C., cafe Busboys and Poets, “but it is also what triggered the opportunity for the Israelis to complete . . . the project of what I call colonial erasure.” She means Israelis used Oct. 7 as an excuse to kill Palestinians and grab their land. The event was hosted by Georgetown’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.
Ms. Albanese has a long record of trivializing the Holocaust and suggesting that the U.S. is controlled by the “Jewish lobby.” On Oct. 7, 2023, Ms. Albanese said on X that “today’s violence must be put in context. Almost six decades of hostile military rule over an entire civilian population . . . are in themselves an aggression.”
In June 2024, she tweeted that while Israel could have released all hostages through an exchange, the country “refused in order to continue to destroy Gaza and the Palestinians as a people.” But Hamas could end the war at any time if it wanted to. In August 2024, she tweeted “Time to #UNseatIsrael from the UN.”
The Biden Administration has called Ms. Albanese’s rhetoric antisemitic. Germany calls it “appalling” that Ms. Albanese can “justify the horrific terror attacks” and “deny their antisemitic nature.”
But not Princeton. The School of Public and International Affairs invitation said it is “honored” to host Ms. Albanese, who “will provide unique insights into the challenges facing the region.”
Princeton’s disclaimer says sponsorship “does not constitute institutional endorsement of external speakers or views presented.” Nice to know. No counterpoint from the Israeli perspective is included in Princeton’s Dean’s lecture series. Georgetown’s speech list includes such lecture gems as “Israel’s System of Domination and U.S. Complicity” and “Gaza, Indigenous Urbanism Amidst Elimination.”
Ms. Albanese told her Georgetown audience that “apartheid is a structural feature of settler colonialism” and Hamas leaders had been “exterminated” by Israel, likening Israel’s war against terrorists to the Nazi slaughter of Jews in Europe. She added that South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice was “amazing” and “so symbolic seeing South Africa taking Israel to justice.”
The U.N. Code of Conduct for Rapporteurs requires that those serving in that role “ensure that their personal political opinions are without prejudice to the execution of their mission.” She’s far from doing that as she apologizes for Hamas’s terrorism.
As for the universities, by all means allow diverse voices. But Ms. Albanese’s warm welcome goes a long way to explaining why antisemitism is a problem on campus. Would a pro-Israel speaker get the same treatment?"
A note of analysis from Aaron Zitner in The Wall Street Journal- "The shift by young men likely adds support for some signature Trump policies. Young men support the idea of extending the tax cuts that Trump signed into law, and which expire in 2025, whereas young women hold the opposite position, Journal polling shows. Young men are less supportive of some transgender policies than are women. Trump has praised efforts to end Biden-administration programs to forgive federal student loans. Young men are less supportive of loan forgiveness than young women, who attend college and take on student debt at higher rates than men.
White, working-class men remain the bedrock of Trump’s support. He won 68% of their support, and his advantage over his Democratic opponents grew from 30 points in 2020 to a gaping 38 points this year.
Still, the 2024 results show the Republican Party cutting a somewhat more diverse profile. In 2020, 57% of Trump’s votes came from white, working-class voters. This year, 54% of his support comes from that group, VoteCast results show.
Working-class voters from minority groups rose to 11% of his coalition, from 9% four years ago. Overall, the survey results show Trump drawing 16% of his support from racial and ethnic minorities, 2 points more than in 2020.
The shift of Black and Latino voters propelled dramatic changes in the political leanings in much of the country. In Pennsylvania, Trump appeared to benefit from increased Latino support in Philadelphia, which Democrats count on as their major vote-generating machine in the state.
With most of the vote counted, a Journal analysis found Trump gaining nearly 6 percentage points in his share of the two-party vote in wards where Hispanic residents make up a quarter or more of the population. That was more than double the shift across the city as a whole.
In Florida, heavily Latino Miami-Dade County had backed Democrat Hillary Clinton by 30 points in 2016 and Biden by 7 points in 2020. On Tuesday, it made a dramatic swing toward Trump, who won it by nearly 12 points. Trump also flipped majority-Latino Osceola County, near Orlando, in a narrow win after Biden had carried it by nearly 14 points.
“That is a sea change when it comes to the racial makeup of the Republican Party,” Roberts said. “This is the Trump era. We are sitting in a place where we’ve got this very different figure in American politics, and he’s changing the electorate by bringing in a different approach.” (Zitner.)
"Don’t underestimate the emotional value of Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote back in 2016. It allowed Democrats to convince themselves, and others, that Trump’s 2016 was a quirk of the Electoral College, a fluke, a reflection of Clinton never visiting Wisconsin and Russians buying ads on Facebook and FBI director James Comey’s late announcement and a million other excuses. Think about how many times you were reminded that Clinton won the popular vote by 2.9 million votes.
Democrats believed that progressivism was still popular — and the traditional midterm backlash of 2018 convinced them that Trump had proven to be so unpopular, they could move as far to the left as they wanted, and the electorate would still always pick them over Trump and his MAGA candidates.
They thought wrong.
Progressivism, liberalism, woke-ism — they will never be the same. They won’t wither away completely. But the Democrats just learned the hardest of hard lessons: The electorate — not just straight white males — doesn’t want their brand of deeply divisive identity politics, deliberate conflation of legal immigration and illegal immigration, policies that reflexively recommend and enact permanent bodily changes for teenagers questioning their gender identity, and basically the entire agenda of the 2019 Kamala Harris presidential campaign.
At the Bradley Impact Fund conference last month, I told the joke about the advertising genius who’s brought in to revitalize the sales of a brand of dog food. He redesigns the packaging, runs a whole bunch of appealing commercials, and gets a bright, vibrant display for the brand right in the front of the supermarket. But as he’s shopping for groceries, he watches a customer walking a dog reach down to buy the other leading brand. Exasperated, the advertising genius goes up to the man and asks why, despite the new packaging, commercials, and display, he bought the other leading brand and not the ad man’s client’s brand of dog food. The customer shrugs and points to his dog, saying “He won’t eat it.”
Democrats, the electorate is just not going to eat your dog food. It doesn’t matter if you raise more money and spend more on ads and have more campaign offices and have more doorknockers and volunteers. The sales pitch isn’t really the problem; the product is." (Jim Garaghty.)
"There will be a lot of questions about “how did the pollsters miss this . . . again?” (Ann Selzer says she’ll be reviewing her data after her final poll of her home state of Iowa had Harris winning, 47 percent to 44 percent. Last night, Trump won Iowa, 55.8 percent to 42.6 percent.)
But there should also be really tough questions asked about how the heck the Harris campaign was so blindsided by their weakness in places like Virginia, and softer support than Biden everywhere. I believe it was our Michael Brendan Dougherty who theorized that a significant chunk of Biden’s support in 2020 amounted to, “I’m tired of the pandemic, and so I’m voting for a different president.”
There will be a lot to chew over and analyze in the coming days, but allow me to offer my favorite explanation for why last night’s results blindsided Democrats (and a lot of other folks; I predicted a Trump win and a Republican Senate, but didn’t foresee wins on this scale).
The mainstream media’s coverage of American politics is so often so indistinguishable from cheerleading for the Democratic Party that Democrats never actually have a good, reliable, realistic sense of how they’re doing. As I wrote a few days ago, Democrats hate self-scouting and can never take a clear-eyed look at how they’re doing: “Instead of self-scouting, Democrats walked around in a fog of optimistic happy talk.”
Allow me to point to a handful of Senate races to illustrate.
In Florida, anyone with a realistic sense of that state’s politics knew Trump was going to win handily, and incumbent Republican senator Rick Scott was going to win reelection. But you didn’t have to look hard to find left-of-center columnists insisting Democrats might finally have a path to victory in Florida’s Senate race. In early September, Ed Kilgore wrote over at New York magazine, “The possibility that Scott could actually lose this race is manna from heaven for Democrats not just in Florida, but nationally.” The Nation magazine, September 30: “Could Harris Take Florida and North Carolina? The Data Suggests She Can.”
Last night, Trump won Florida by more than 1.4 million votes, 56 percent to 42.9 percent.
Rick Scott won reelection by a margin of 1.37 million votes, 55.6 percent to 42.7 percent.
Similarly, almost all of us knew Ted Cruz was going to win reelection in Texas . . . emphasis on almost. The New York Times wrote that Cruz was “again fighting for political survival” in late September. Bloomberg columnist Nia-Malika Henderson’s October 4 column was titled, “A Democrat Could Actually Beat Ted Cruz in Texas.”
Last night, Ted Cruz won reelection with a margin of more than 980,000 votes, 53 percent to 44.6 percent. This morning, even Beto O’Rourke is scoffing, “I could have done better.”
Finally, I kept telling you that there was no reason to expect Republican incumbent senator Deb Fischer to lose her bid in Nebraska. I might have even gotten a little obsessive about it, but this is what happens when someone suggests I’m oblivious to a huge Democratic — er, “independent” — upset under the radar.
This morning, with 99 percent of precincts reporting, Deb Fischer has 53.9 percent of the vote and “independent” Dan Osborn has 46.1 percent, a margin of more than 69,000 votes. I don’t think Fischer was ever in serious danger of losing her reelection bid in a deep-red state. As I wrote back on Halloween, the Osborn campaign convinced a whole bunch of gullible national reporters and columnists that the race was neck and neck, just by releasing internal polls.
Finally, as I mentioned last night, the notion that Joe Biden gleefully stabbed Kamala Harris in the back as revenge for being pushed out as a nominee is a fun and entertaining one. But it’s not particularly likely, because as much as Harris lost tonight, Biden lost, too. First, there’s a strong case that if Biden had remained as the nominee, he would have lost by an even worse margin. Second, whatever else Democrats felt about Biden, they loved him for being “the man who beat Trump.” And now, approaching 82 years of age, Biden is the man who couldn’t beat Trump, and who picked a running mate who couldn’t beat Trump, either. In January, Trump and Republicans will get to work dismantling the Biden legislative legacy.
Biden was not the end of the Trump era. He was just the intermission." (Jim Garaghty.)
Question: who’s the happiest man in America right now?
Answer: Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California. Now he can seek the Democratic nomination for President in four years instead of having to wait eight years.
Konstantin Kisin explains Trump’s victory to his British and European friends (from Twitter):
1. Americans love their country and want it to be the best in the world. America is a nation of people who conquered a continent. They love strength. They love winning. Any leader who appeals to that has an automatic advantage.
2. Unlike Europeans, Americans have not accepted managed decline. They don't have Net Zero here, they believe in producing their own energy and making it as cheap as possible because they know that their prosperity depends on it.
3. Prices for most basic goods in the US have increased rapidly and are sky high. What the official statistics say about inflation and the reality of people's lives are not the same.
4. Unlike you, Americans do not believe in socialism. They believe in meritocracy. They don't care about the super rich being super rich because they know that they live in a country where being super rich is available to anyone with the talent and drive to make it. They don't resent success, they celebrate it.
5. Americans are the most pro-immigration people in the world. Read that again. Seriously, read it again. Americans love an immigrant success story. They want more talented immigrants to come to America. But they refuse to accept people coming illegally. They believe in having a border.
6. Americans are sensitive about racial issues and their country's imperfect history. They believe that those who are disadvantaged by the circumstances of their birth should be given the opportunity to succeed. What they reject, however, is the idea that in order to address the errors of the past new errors must be made. DEI is racist. They know it and they reject it precisely because they are not racist.
7. Americans are the most philosemitic nation on earth. October 7 and the pro-Hamas left's reaction shocked them to their very core because, among other things, they remember what 9/11 was like and they know jihad when they see it.
8. Americans are extremely practical people. They care about what works, not what sounds good. In Europe, we produce great writers and intellectuals. In America they produce (and attract) great engineers, businessmen and investors. Because of this, they care less about Trump's rhetoric than you do and more about his policies than you do.
9. Americans are deeply optimistic people. They hate negativity. The woke view of American history as a series of evils for which they must eternally apologise is utterly abhorrent to them. They believe in moving forward together, not endlessly obsessing about the past.
10. America is a country whose founding story is one of resistance to government overreach. They loathe unnecessary restrictions, regulations and control. They understand that freedom comes with the price of self-reliance and they pay it gladly.
I actually think this is a very level-headed (not an American but have citizenship) take on what happened. I would have voted for a piece of wilted lettuce over Trump but I also think the progressive movement was way too far left that people just were over it.
The US will not leave NATO, and we have a lot of work to do to help Ukraine. Much of that work involves helping ourselves. We need to have the resources to defend ourselves, and help our friends, which we currently can't do.
Imagine for a moment that you are the director of MI6 or MI5, of the DGSE or DGSI. How quickly will you move to cease all security sharing with the US, or even with a country which still allows it? Come to that, while there are no doubt elements of the Israeli government pleased with the results of the American election, it will soon occur to them that there is already a history here of the once and future White House occupant exposing sources and methods of Israeli actors to the Russians What are the risks for -them-, do you think?
Well, with Trump reentering the White House, all bets are off. A second term for Trump will spell the end of what remained of the conservative wing of the GOP. Mitch McConnell will be leaving, so who in the GOP could (and would be willing to) counter Trump‘s worst instincts?
I've been seeing parts of Trump's macro policy speech and I believe it should be paid attention to. Leaders usually do what they say they're going to do. Here is one:
https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1854717077837562314
A very interesting perspective:
Claire Lehmann
@clairlemon
Revenge of the Silent Male Voter
What I learned about Trump's landslide victory from one night in New York City.
On election day, I caught the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Sitting across from me an elderly woman wore a t-shirt with the image of Trump pumping his fist in the air with the words “fight, fight.” A small "I Voted" sticker was pressed onto her lapel.
She sat with an easy confidence. There were no disapproving glances from other passengers. There was no tension. No conflict. It struck me that in 2024 it was now perfectly acceptable to express support for Trump in a deep blue (Democratically held) city. As I travelled to my destination I wondered: if one could support Trump this openly in New York City, what might support look like in the rest of the country?
A few hours later I attended an exclusive well-heeled party. I spoke to various professionals who said that they had never voted Republican in their lives, but had voted for Trump that day due to his support—in their words—“for the Jews”. These Manhattanites told me that Kamala was too sympathetic to the “pro-Hamas contingent” of the far-Left, and at a time of rising antisemitism, they couldn’t bring themselves to support her. This small group of cosmopolitans represented a contingent far-removed from the stereotypical MAGA voter. And yet listening to their views, it again occurred to me: if I could find such support for Trump in the middle of a Democratic heartland—what might it look like in the rest of the country?
When I arrived at my final stop of the evening—a private underground bar in the Lower East side of the city—a celebratory atmosphere had begun to explode. The betting markets tipped a Trump win, and online supporters of Harris started to express acceptance of defeat. The beer here had already run dry. It was so bustling that it was hard to move, with young men in their twenties and early thirties outnumbering women by 2:1. These men were diverse: white, black, Hispanic, Asian. A few wore Trump caps, but the aesthetic was more like a university dorm than a MAGA rally. “This is the counter-culture” one party goer told me. "This isn't just about Trump," another said. "It's about Vance and Musk. It's about American dynamism."
In the coming days, much will be written about working class concerns—issues that have become familiar focal points for those seeking to understand Trump’s support. But while inflation and border policies will have no doubt played a role in the Republicans’ landslide victory, we might also want to look at the sentiments expressed by young male voters—voters who represent a new and emerging contingent in American politics. Nothing about the young men I spoke to appeared particularly conservative or “right-wing”. Yet it was easy for them to explain why they voted for Trump. And if we zoom out and look at broader cultural trends, it should be easy for us to understand too.
If we take a macro perspective, we see that such young men have never known a culture in which males are not routinely described as “problematic,” “toxic,” or “oppressive”. Going to university, and working at modern companies, they live in a world of Diversity Equity and Inclusion policies—many of which promote an insidious and pervasive form of anti-male discrimination. Yet to talk about it in public invites social ostracism. To criticise DEI is to risk being called a Nazi.
These young male voters know about theories of patriarchy and white supremacy, but they have never known a culture which celebrates the Great Man Theory of history. Thomas Carlyle’s nineteenth century framework for understanding the past is seen as an anachronism, not worthy of serious thought. Today we acknowledge historical figures not for their feats, but for their crimes. Whether it is due to slavery, colonisation, racism, or sexism, we tear down the monuments of our past, while building no new heroes for our future.
The problem with this way of viewing the world is that it is alienating and self-defeating. It is also wrong. By any objective standards Elon Musk is a great man of history, who is influencing the course of human civilisation for generations to come. As one party-goer told me “he caught a fucking rocket with mechanical chopsticks.” Yet despite his achievements, Musk is more likely to be scorned than celebrated by the Democratic establishment.
This tension between achievement and resentment explains much about our current moment. The young men I met that night in Manhattan weren't just voting for policies. They were voting for a different view of history and human nature. In their world, individual greatness matters. Male ambition serves a purpose. Risk-taking and defiance create progress.
This is why the Trump victory transcends conventional political analysis. It represents more than a rebuke of border policies or inflation rates. It signals a resurrection of old truths: that civilisation advances through the actions of remarkable individuals, that male traits can build rather than destroy, and that greatness—despite our modern discomfort with the concept—remains a force in human affairs.
The elderly woman on the subway, the Manhattan professionals, and the young men at the underground bar all sensed a shift. They saw in Trump not just a candidate, but a challenge to a psychosocial orthodoxy that has dominated American institutions for a generation. Their votes marked not just a political preference, but a cultural correction.
As the final results came in that night, it became clear that what I witnessed in New York was playing out across the nation. The election wasn't just a victory for Trump. It was a victory for a way of seeing the world that many thought dead: one where individual achievement matters, where male ambition serves a purpose, and where great men still shape the course of history.
I hate to say it, but looks like those who responded to the polls here did rather poorly in many cases.
Look, I'm no Trump guy (I wrote in Condoleeza Rice), but I'm far less anti-Trump than most of the denizens of the CosmoGlob. I've tried and tried to get people to put themselves in the mind of the people who support Trump. I know a lot of these folks and they aren't the one-eye-in-the-center-of-the-forehead troglodytes many suppose them to be, and they aren't blind to Trump's obvious faults.
But life in America is bad for a lot of people right now. I spent the first seven months of the year unemployed, and I finally got a job at a non-profit making a third what I was making. And mine isn't the only such story. And now as I run a small food bank and community assistance program, I see first hand the impact of the economy, shrinking budgets, increasing food prices, yadda yadda. But I think more...shocking...is the story of my niece, who we'll call Suzie, so I don't have to keep calling her "my niece".
My wife messaged me today and said "I did you see Suzie's post today?! She voted for Trump and shared a photo of him!" Now here is Suzie's story, in brief: her mother is Native American and her father an immigrant from Mexico. She had a childhood that I'm guessing most of Claire's readers can scarcely imagine. Her parents were drug addicts, and she herself took to using at a young age, and that lasted in to adulthood. But she got clean, worked her way through college and is working as a drug and alcohol counsellor at a treatment facility in Washington State. She literally works her ass of to better herself and provide for her family. To say I was flabbergasted by her public support for Trump is an understatement. I asked her "Why did you vote for Trump? And why do you think there's growing popularity among Hispanic voters?" Her answer, in her own words "This was hard, but necessary. Because survival is essential." I pressed her a bit: "So in your view, you've had a harder time under Biden than under Trump, despite all of Trump's obvious flaws?" She said "Exactly."
Now listen: you can argue with her perspective. I can make the argument as easy as anyone that the economy isn't dependent, completely, on the occupant of the White House at any given moment. It's much too complex for that. But what you cannot do, as some of my well-to-do, retired, white Harris supporting friends have tried, is convince Suzie or myself that things aren't really, really bad for a lot of people. Is Trump going to make them better? Debatable. But Harris did nothing to convince Suzie that she was going to get anything other than the same over the next four years.
I'm very worried about the state of the world. But I'm not convinced that Trump's election is the disaster so many people think it's gonna be.
Your comment is very wise, Spin. I really enjoyed reading it.
Well, I'm not altogether wise, but I'll take the compliment.
Some of my high school friends from New Hampshire, who went all in for Trump despite being women, also keep telling me I don't get it, that Biden has destroyed the country and the economy has never been worse. I can show them all the statistics, they just say I am gullible and believing fake news. All of them are employed, take vacations, even seem in reasonably good health. And their kids are employed. They enjoy a quality of life they probably wouldn't have dreamed of when we were in our early 20s. But apparently Biden is the worst President ever. If you ask them for evidence, they will point to homeless people in Concord, the rent is too damn high and have you seen the price of eggs? But don't ask them whether they have gotten raises, of course they have, but that is just their own merit I guess. So I don't know where you go from there.
I do take Spin's point and feel sympathy but I had several friends in their 50s who lost their jobs under Trump. I lost a job under Trump. Americans over 50, especially in higher paying positions, have been vulnerable for quite a while. That's modern capitalism and technological change for you. Maybe things didn't get much better for people like us under Biden but they didn't get worse. As far as Suzie, I have tremendous respect for what she's accomplished, but again, she's extrapolating from her life to a whole economy. Life on the margin is unfortunately far too common in America, and is part of the deal we've made to not support a social welfare state on the European model in favor of forcing people like Suzie to be productive or die. Every time I'm in the US the relative economic progress America has made vs. Europe is shocking. Yes, that divergence started under Obama, continued under Trump but really under Biden is when just to the naked eye American wealth has become too obvious to deny. Except for Trump supporters apparently. It is certainly true Biden did maybe too much for the upper middle class voter - we are all doing fantastic, and the effects of the infrastructure investment and union support are just not happening fast enough for the working class voter on the margin. Of course every attempt to help working class voters on the marign is heroically resisted by Republican politicians both in Congress and the state levels, but once again it's all Biden's fault apparently.
You are missing the point. Whether Suzie is right or wrong about her vote, the point is the Harris campaign didn't reach her. I wonder if the Harris campaign even tried to reach her. They probably they figured they had all the minority, working class moms in the bag.
Actually I am starting to think Suzie has a point. A professor at CUNY has pointed out that withdrawing pandemic income support programs in 2022 worsened lower income people's material conditions significantly. Not surprising if they blame Biden for a dramatic reduction in income that did in fact happen under Biden's watch. Under Trump in 2020 the US actually did come close to achieving a European style safety net, then lower income people watched all that vanish again in 2022. Republican controlled Congress deserves some of the blame but not all of it.
I'm confused why you are now saying the point is that the Harris campaign didn't reach her. I thought you were saying there was no way the Harris campaign could reach her: "But what you cannot do, as some of my well-to-do, retired, white Harris supporting friends have tried, is convince Suzie or myself that things aren't really, really bad for a lot of people."
I discounted the Selzer poll when I learned that the Des Moines Register, which commissioned it, told the pollster not to release the cross tabs. That led me to suspect that there was something fishy going on. In the event, it was off by sixteen points. Trump carried Iowa with 56% of the vote.
Niall Ferguson on the enormity of Trump’s comeback.
“This is a bigger comeback than Grover Cleveland’s in 1892, when he became the first—and, until last night, only—American president to win a second nonconsecutive term. This is a bigger comeback than Richard Nixon’s, when he was elected president in 1968, eight years after he lost by a dubious whisker to John F. Kennedy. It’s bigger than Winston Churchill’s multiple comebacks, the biggest of which were in 1940 and 1951. It’s bigger than Charles de Gaulle’s in 1958. It’s bigger than Napoleon’s Hundred Days in 1815. In fact, I am tempted to say that the only comeback it’s not bigger than is the Resurrection.”
Niall is high. Trump never really went away. He has been hanging around the hoop continuously since January 2021. He didn't have to fight for the nomination. He has had the Republicans in Congress in his pocket and working for him the entire Biden administration, as well as Fox News. It's barely a comeback at all. It's more impressive than Putin returning to office after turning it over to Medvedev, sure, but not De Gaulle level.
I know I am considered an honorary Canadian around these parts and something that dawned on me is the reaction I am seeing in Blue America reminds me a lot of that in the immediate aftermath of the failure of the Meech Lake Accord. I have always been fascinated by this type of sectionalized and factionalized Canadian politics(I love the term "double legitimacy") even though I know most Americans definitely don't want this brand of Canadian politics to be imported into the US. Anyways I think it already has been and I will share more thoughts on it later. I felt like Laetitia James and Kathy Hochul's press conferences in New York reminded me a lot of Robert Bourassa's defiant response to English Canada after the collapse of Meech Lake Accord.
The issue is not that people think Trump is normal. Everybody knows he's not. The issue is that people think the Democrats are also abnormal: that they do not give a shit about crime (except by Republican presidential candidates) or the economy (except for its effects on poor people of color) or immigration (generally). For these people the cure was not worse than the disease. Why Trump? That's easy. He's who they had. We would have preferred supporting almost anyone other than Stalin in the 40s, but we supported Stalin, because that's who was on the stage.
* >The Democrats went after Big Tech? When? How?
A lot of reporting on Lina Khan and the FTC in the last few years has revolved around this.
Yes, watching a few hours of MSNBC should be enough to convince anyone that American progressives are abnormal.
"79% of Jews voted for Kamala Harris"
Said it before.
Jews need a better class of friends.
Like the guy who invited Nick Fuentes to dinner? The one whose new best friend is Elon Musk?
Like the guy who moved the embassy to Jerusalem and who got the Abraham accords going.
The major source of antisemitism in the US today is on the left. A very few idiots on the right notwithstanding.
Yes, who could think otherwise? Must not have been Trump after all with his "very fine people on both sides" comments regarding Charlottesville's Unite the Right rally -- "Jews will not replace us," chanted by those comfortable enough to do so without the anonymity of wearing hoods. The MAGA tent grows larger.
You realize that you've been lied to about that "very fine people on both sides" comment?
Perhaps. Such lies would have to be extensive, consistent and nearly ubiquitous, though. And to the contrary, transcripts remain available.
From Saturday, 12 April 2017 (originally written here as "1967", see following response from Scot) -- containing no mention of white supremacists, of the alt-right, of neo-Nazis -- merely "We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides."
Tuesday, 15 April 2017 (also originally entered as "1967") -- press conference. Trump is asked by reporters about his apparent reluctance on Saturday to blame white supremacists and neo-Nazis. The record here shows a lengthy equivocation concerning his announcement of more than 48 hours earlier, and includes his suggestion that the behavior of the "alt-left" must be considered as well.
Eventually the transcripts note this exchange (which continued beyond the end of this quoted material):
Reporter: "The neo-Nazis started this. They showed up in Charlottesville to protest .."
DJT: "Excuse me, excuse me. They didn't put themselves in -- and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides."
To be as scrupulous as possible, we read later his ".. and I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists -- because they should be condemned totally."
Yet this too is equivocation. It's difficult to envision an easier political question to address: if the neo-Nazis are involved, condemn the activity directly, immediately, simply and without any reliance on conditionals, comparatives or the subjunctive mood. Rather like the reactions richly deserved by those celebrating Hamas's barbarity, say?
I'm not going to go back and forth with you on this.
I will note that either you, or the person you copied that from is sloppy. **1967** twice?
You don’t see people wearing MAGA hats waving the Palestinian flag or tearing down hostage posters.
The number of antisemites on the right is probably about the same as it's always been. True, they've been more vocal since Oct 7th 2023, but not much new there. The rise in antisemitism is almost completely from the left.
Trump surrounds himself with antisemites: Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, RFK Jr, MTG. Orban is his hero. Jews have been begging him to distance himself from Tucker Carlson, but he won't. The general rule of thumb is that right-wing antisemites tend to range from country-club bigots to neo-Nazis and more likely to be the ones who shoot up a synagogue; left-wing antisemites insist they're not antisemites while levying every traditional calumny against Jews toward the state of Israel and finding in themselves a remarkable sympathy for every terrorist group or state that has as its central aim the murder of Jews. Both the left and the right have a serious antisemitism problem; both see it in the opposite camp but are blind to it in their own.
I don't believe the number of antisemites on the right is "probably about the same as it's always been." There are *far* fewer antisemites on the right than there were before the Holocaust, but *far* more than there were twenty years ago. Or rather, the taboo against expressing it, post-Holocaust, was so strong that I was able to grow up in Seattle and literally never once in my childhood hear an antisemitic remark. Not one. (Perhaps people were secretly antisemitic, but I don't give a damn if people are secretly antisemitic: why should I? I have no desire to police other people's souls.)
The amount of *overt* antisemitism I now see on the right is jaw-dropping. If you want to test this, make a new account for yourself on Twitter, call yourself "Schlomo Goldberg," and put a Star of David in your profile. Then continue to use Twitter exactly as you usually do. You'll see what I mean very quickly.
Yossi Klein-Halevi described this, accurately, I think, as the post-post-Holocaust era. In the wake of the Holocaust, the shock and revulsion was so great that overt expressions of antisemitism were, for several generations, completely taboo. With Trump's rise, almost every social taboo and inhibition melted. The taboo against public expressions of anti-semitism was one of them.
Couple this with social media, a massive rise in disinformation generally, state- and terrorist-group sponsored antisemitic propaganda all over social media, the growth of a conspiratorial and paranoid mindset among a massive segment of the population, the passage of time (with the Holocaust becoming a memory to which few Americans have a living connection) and the outbreak of a major war in the Middle East, and you have an ideal Petri dish. I've been watching this ancient sickness come roaring back, on the right and the left alike, with a combination of horror and, I admit, intellectual curiosity: Why are these ideas about Jews so sticky and ineradicable?
The taboo against antisemitism was very strong for two or three generations in America, to the point that I genuinely believed antisemitism was a completely dead ideology--in the US, anyway. I no more expected to see its recurrence in my native country than I expected to see a recurrence of slavery, or at least the ideas used to justify slavery. You would think that since several generations of Americans grew up without exposure to antisemitic thought, it would be pretty much impossible to re-introduce it, right? The chain of transmission, you'd think, would be broken. After all, antisemitism is basically a very weird, arcane idea: No one would naturally land on the idea that Jews secretly control everything and are the font of all evil in the world. That's just *so dumb.* Why Jews, of all people? Why not Parsis, or Italians?) "It's the Jews" is *not* such an obvious idea that it just makes sense that sooner or later, everyone lands upon it. So I figured if you managed to go one or two generations without this idea being frequently voiced, people will just forget this, the way they've forgotten lots of bad ideas. Like "drawing and quartering," or the idea that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
So how did this get back into our bloodstream? Why have so many people taken to it so quickly? I see people sharing Third Reich antisemitic propaganda on Twitter all the time. Not "like" the Third Reich, but the actual, original stuff--and they don't even realize that's where it comes from. They just know it really speaks to them.
It's weird. And it's really mysterious, too.
I suspect that antisemitism never really went away in the halls of academia, where it's always ready to pop up again. Similar to a virus like herpes maybe. Anywhere what you might now call neo-Marxism is embraced, and where you get concepts like decolonization, DEI, and all that rubbish.
After Oct 7th it suddenly became socially acceptable again to be antisemitic (I share in wondering why it didn't dissappear in broader society though). Which led to all the right wing nuts coming out of the woodwork and realizing they didn't have to hide their hate any more. But it's also led to a huge upswing in hating Jews on the left, including in younger people. From their perspective Jews are colonizers, capitalists, white (or white adjacent), Islamophobic, and think they're better than Palestinians. What's not to hate?
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/a-writers-boycott-of-israel-betrays-the-values-of-literature-e9085a38?mod=WTRN_pos5&cx_testId=3&cx_testVariant=cx_169&cx_artPos=4
"Israelis can get off the blacklist only by publicly saying what the boycotters want them to say about Israel.
Which is what, exactly? The language of the Palfest letter is deliberately vague, so much so that even some signatories may not fully understand what it is they are demanding. What does it mean, for instance, to “justify Israel’s occupation” of the West Bank? A religious Zionist might justify it on the grounds that the land was promised in the Bible to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob forever. A secular Israeli, by contrast, might justify it on the grounds that withdrawing from the West Bank would mean handing it over to a dangerous enemy bent on Israel’s destruction—which is what happened when Israel ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005. According to the Palfest letter, both of these positions constitute complicity in genocide.
The phrase “the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people” is similarly unclear. Does it mean that the Palestinian people have a right to a state of their own on part of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea? Or does it mean that the descendants of refugees who left or were driven out of Israel in 1948 have a right to return and take back their ancestors’ land? In that scenario, Jews would become a minority in the world’s 23rd Arab country. Respecting the “inalienable rights of the Palestinian people,” in this view, means that the Jewish state must disappear.
A customer in a bookstore in Tel Aviv in 2020. Photo: Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg News
It is hard to think of another boycott with demands so far-reaching: not that a country change its policies or leadership, but that it cease to exist altogether. So it makes sense that, according to a press release issued alongside the letter, of the 92 Israeli publishers contacted by Palfest, 91 refused to accede to its demands. The only exception was a small publisher called November Books, which declared, “We are committed to the idea, in line with Palestinian and democratic voices in Israel, that Israel should not be a Jewish state.”
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
Do you think writers should boycott Israel? Join the conversation below.
Why frame a demand in such extreme terms that it is guaranteed to be rejected? This strategy wouldn’t make sense if the goal of the literary boycott were to energize Israeli opposition to the war in Gaza. Like the earlier academic boycotts, this one will punish exactly the kinds of people who, in Israel as in America and Europe, are most likely to be progressive themselves: professors and artists and writers.
Jonathan Lethem Photo: Willy Sanjuan/Associated Press
But if the goal of the literary boycott is to shape intellectual opinion in the U.S. and other Western countries, then its means are well chosen. The writers who lent their reputations to this cause are sending a clear message: If you support the existence of a Jewish state—in any borders, under any government—you deserve to be treated as a moral pariah.
Annie Ernaux Photo: christine olsson/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
The Palfest letter targets Israelis, not Jews per se. But over the past year, there have been a number of incidents in which writers and literary institutions have refused to associate with Jewish writers, on the presumption that they are “Zionists” and therefore complicit in genocide. In July, for instance, a Chicago bookstore announced that its book club wouldn’t feature the popular novel “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” because, a manager of the store wrote, “It was brought to my attention that the author Gabrielle Zevin is a Zionist.” In fact, Zevin, who is of Jewish and Korean descent, had never spoken publicly about Israel. Apparently the reason for the boycott was that Hadassah, a women’s Zionist organization, had chosen “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” for its own book club.
How long will it take for the boycott aimed at Israelis to affect writers elsewhere? Is a writer who sets a novel in Israel, or invents an Israeli character, also complicit in genocide? How about one who visits the country or donates to an Israeli nonprofit? In practice, the Palfest boycott is a green light to supporters of the Palestinian cause to “deplatform” any writer who will not publicly reject Israel or Zionism in terms that will satisfy those making the demand.
There are Jewish writers who will be happy to comply—a number have already signed on to the boycott. But surveys consistently find that 80% of American Jews say caring about Israel is an important part of their Jewish identity. The literary boycott of Israel won’t change the way Israel fights in Gaza, or convince Israelis to dissolve their country, but it will encourage literary people and institutions to ostracize American Jews who refuse to deny a central part of their identity." (Essay.)
Academia, Claire, academia and the "settler colonialism narrative." https://www.wsj.com/opinion/francesca-albanese-college-tour-antisemitism-hamas-israel-georgetown-princeton-1cdf88f0?msockid=2b7fd0357f5961fe097bc37b7b596f81
"Oct. 7 is “a tragic date” for the Israelis, Ms. Albanese told a crowd at Georgetown’s event at Washington, D.C., cafe Busboys and Poets, “but it is also what triggered the opportunity for the Israelis to complete . . . the project of what I call colonial erasure.” She means Israelis used Oct. 7 as an excuse to kill Palestinians and grab their land. The event was hosted by Georgetown’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.
Ms. Albanese has a long record of trivializing the Holocaust and suggesting that the U.S. is controlled by the “Jewish lobby.” On Oct. 7, 2023, Ms. Albanese said on X that “today’s violence must be put in context. Almost six decades of hostile military rule over an entire civilian population . . . are in themselves an aggression.”
In June 2024, she tweeted that while Israel could have released all hostages through an exchange, the country “refused in order to continue to destroy Gaza and the Palestinians as a people.” But Hamas could end the war at any time if it wanted to. In August 2024, she tweeted “Time to #UNseatIsrael from the UN.”
The Biden Administration has called Ms. Albanese’s rhetoric antisemitic. Germany calls it “appalling” that Ms. Albanese can “justify the horrific terror attacks” and “deny their antisemitic nature.”
But not Princeton. The School of Public and International Affairs invitation said it is “honored” to host Ms. Albanese, who “will provide unique insights into the challenges facing the region.”
Princeton’s disclaimer says sponsorship “does not constitute institutional endorsement of external speakers or views presented.” Nice to know. No counterpoint from the Israeli perspective is included in Princeton’s Dean’s lecture series. Georgetown’s speech list includes such lecture gems as “Israel’s System of Domination and U.S. Complicity” and “Gaza, Indigenous Urbanism Amidst Elimination.”
Ms. Albanese told her Georgetown audience that “apartheid is a structural feature of settler colonialism” and Hamas leaders had been “exterminated” by Israel, likening Israel’s war against terrorists to the Nazi slaughter of Jews in Europe. She added that South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice was “amazing” and “so symbolic seeing South Africa taking Israel to justice.”
The U.N. Code of Conduct for Rapporteurs requires that those serving in that role “ensure that their personal political opinions are without prejudice to the execution of their mission.” She’s far from doing that as she apologizes for Hamas’s terrorism.
As for the universities, by all means allow diverse voices. But Ms. Albanese’s warm welcome goes a long way to explaining why antisemitism is a problem on campus. Would a pro-Israel speaker get the same treatment?"
A note of analysis from Aaron Zitner in The Wall Street Journal- "The shift by young men likely adds support for some signature Trump policies. Young men support the idea of extending the tax cuts that Trump signed into law, and which expire in 2025, whereas young women hold the opposite position, Journal polling shows. Young men are less supportive of some transgender policies than are women. Trump has praised efforts to end Biden-administration programs to forgive federal student loans. Young men are less supportive of loan forgiveness than young women, who attend college and take on student debt at higher rates than men.
White, working-class men remain the bedrock of Trump’s support. He won 68% of their support, and his advantage over his Democratic opponents grew from 30 points in 2020 to a gaping 38 points this year.
Still, the 2024 results show the Republican Party cutting a somewhat more diverse profile. In 2020, 57% of Trump’s votes came from white, working-class voters. This year, 54% of his support comes from that group, VoteCast results show.
Working-class voters from minority groups rose to 11% of his coalition, from 9% four years ago. Overall, the survey results show Trump drawing 16% of his support from racial and ethnic minorities, 2 points more than in 2020.
The shift of Black and Latino voters propelled dramatic changes in the political leanings in much of the country. In Pennsylvania, Trump appeared to benefit from increased Latino support in Philadelphia, which Democrats count on as their major vote-generating machine in the state.
With most of the vote counted, a Journal analysis found Trump gaining nearly 6 percentage points in his share of the two-party vote in wards where Hispanic residents make up a quarter or more of the population. That was more than double the shift across the city as a whole.
In Florida, heavily Latino Miami-Dade County had backed Democrat Hillary Clinton by 30 points in 2016 and Biden by 7 points in 2020. On Tuesday, it made a dramatic swing toward Trump, who won it by nearly 12 points. Trump also flipped majority-Latino Osceola County, near Orlando, in a narrow win after Biden had carried it by nearly 14 points.
“That is a sea change when it comes to the racial makeup of the Republican Party,” Roberts said. “This is the Trump era. We are sitting in a place where we’ve got this very different figure in American politics, and he’s changing the electorate by bringing in a different approach.” (Zitner.)
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/democrats-get-a-wake-up-call-about-how-unpopular-their-agenda-really-is/
"Don’t underestimate the emotional value of Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote back in 2016. It allowed Democrats to convince themselves, and others, that Trump’s 2016 was a quirk of the Electoral College, a fluke, a reflection of Clinton never visiting Wisconsin and Russians buying ads on Facebook and FBI director James Comey’s late announcement and a million other excuses. Think about how many times you were reminded that Clinton won the popular vote by 2.9 million votes.
Democrats believed that progressivism was still popular — and the traditional midterm backlash of 2018 convinced them that Trump had proven to be so unpopular, they could move as far to the left as they wanted, and the electorate would still always pick them over Trump and his MAGA candidates.
They thought wrong.
Progressivism, liberalism, woke-ism — they will never be the same. They won’t wither away completely. But the Democrats just learned the hardest of hard lessons: The electorate — not just straight white males — doesn’t want their brand of deeply divisive identity politics, deliberate conflation of legal immigration and illegal immigration, policies that reflexively recommend and enact permanent bodily changes for teenagers questioning their gender identity, and basically the entire agenda of the 2019 Kamala Harris presidential campaign.
At the Bradley Impact Fund conference last month, I told the joke about the advertising genius who’s brought in to revitalize the sales of a brand of dog food. He redesigns the packaging, runs a whole bunch of appealing commercials, and gets a bright, vibrant display for the brand right in the front of the supermarket. But as he’s shopping for groceries, he watches a customer walking a dog reach down to buy the other leading brand. Exasperated, the advertising genius goes up to the man and asks why, despite the new packaging, commercials, and display, he bought the other leading brand and not the ad man’s client’s brand of dog food. The customer shrugs and points to his dog, saying “He won’t eat it.”
Democrats, the electorate is just not going to eat your dog food. It doesn’t matter if you raise more money and spend more on ads and have more campaign offices and have more doorknockers and volunteers. The sales pitch isn’t really the problem; the product is." (Jim Garaghty.)
"There will be a lot of questions about “how did the pollsters miss this . . . again?” (Ann Selzer says she’ll be reviewing her data after her final poll of her home state of Iowa had Harris winning, 47 percent to 44 percent. Last night, Trump won Iowa, 55.8 percent to 42.6 percent.)
But there should also be really tough questions asked about how the heck the Harris campaign was so blindsided by their weakness in places like Virginia, and softer support than Biden everywhere. I believe it was our Michael Brendan Dougherty who theorized that a significant chunk of Biden’s support in 2020 amounted to, “I’m tired of the pandemic, and so I’m voting for a different president.”
There will be a lot to chew over and analyze in the coming days, but allow me to offer my favorite explanation for why last night’s results blindsided Democrats (and a lot of other folks; I predicted a Trump win and a Republican Senate, but didn’t foresee wins on this scale).
The mainstream media’s coverage of American politics is so often so indistinguishable from cheerleading for the Democratic Party that Democrats never actually have a good, reliable, realistic sense of how they’re doing. As I wrote a few days ago, Democrats hate self-scouting and can never take a clear-eyed look at how they’re doing: “Instead of self-scouting, Democrats walked around in a fog of optimistic happy talk.”
Allow me to point to a handful of Senate races to illustrate.
In Florida, anyone with a realistic sense of that state’s politics knew Trump was going to win handily, and incumbent Republican senator Rick Scott was going to win reelection. But you didn’t have to look hard to find left-of-center columnists insisting Democrats might finally have a path to victory in Florida’s Senate race. In early September, Ed Kilgore wrote over at New York magazine, “The possibility that Scott could actually lose this race is manna from heaven for Democrats not just in Florida, but nationally.” The Nation magazine, September 30: “Could Harris Take Florida and North Carolina? The Data Suggests She Can.”
Last night, Trump won Florida by more than 1.4 million votes, 56 percent to 42.9 percent.
Rick Scott won reelection by a margin of 1.37 million votes, 55.6 percent to 42.7 percent.
Similarly, almost all of us knew Ted Cruz was going to win reelection in Texas . . . emphasis on almost. The New York Times wrote that Cruz was “again fighting for political survival” in late September. Bloomberg columnist Nia-Malika Henderson’s October 4 column was titled, “A Democrat Could Actually Beat Ted Cruz in Texas.”
Last night, Ted Cruz won reelection with a margin of more than 980,000 votes, 53 percent to 44.6 percent. This morning, even Beto O’Rourke is scoffing, “I could have done better.”
Finally, I kept telling you that there was no reason to expect Republican incumbent senator Deb Fischer to lose her bid in Nebraska. I might have even gotten a little obsessive about it, but this is what happens when someone suggests I’m oblivious to a huge Democratic — er, “independent” — upset under the radar.
This morning, with 99 percent of precincts reporting, Deb Fischer has 53.9 percent of the vote and “independent” Dan Osborn has 46.1 percent, a margin of more than 69,000 votes. I don’t think Fischer was ever in serious danger of losing her reelection bid in a deep-red state. As I wrote back on Halloween, the Osborn campaign convinced a whole bunch of gullible national reporters and columnists that the race was neck and neck, just by releasing internal polls.
Finally, as I mentioned last night, the notion that Joe Biden gleefully stabbed Kamala Harris in the back as revenge for being pushed out as a nominee is a fun and entertaining one. But it’s not particularly likely, because as much as Harris lost tonight, Biden lost, too. First, there’s a strong case that if Biden had remained as the nominee, he would have lost by an even worse margin. Second, whatever else Democrats felt about Biden, they loved him for being “the man who beat Trump.” And now, approaching 82 years of age, Biden is the man who couldn’t beat Trump, and who picked a running mate who couldn’t beat Trump, either. In January, Trump and Republicans will get to work dismantling the Biden legislative legacy.
Biden was not the end of the Trump era. He was just the intermission." (Jim Garaghty.)
Question: who’s the happiest man in America right now?
Answer: Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California. Now he can seek the Democratic nomination for President in four years instead of having to wait eight years.
and he has very presidential hair!! 🤣
It’s true. Have we ever had a bald president? I can’t think of one. Why is there so much discrimination against bald men?
My husband is sort of balding - he just always makes jokes about presidential hair. I think Mitt Romney was one of his top choices 🤣🤣
Konstantin Kisin explains Trump’s victory to his British and European friends (from Twitter):
1. Americans love their country and want it to be the best in the world. America is a nation of people who conquered a continent. They love strength. They love winning. Any leader who appeals to that has an automatic advantage.
2. Unlike Europeans, Americans have not accepted managed decline. They don't have Net Zero here, they believe in producing their own energy and making it as cheap as possible because they know that their prosperity depends on it.
3. Prices for most basic goods in the US have increased rapidly and are sky high. What the official statistics say about inflation and the reality of people's lives are not the same.
4. Unlike you, Americans do not believe in socialism. They believe in meritocracy. They don't care about the super rich being super rich because they know that they live in a country where being super rich is available to anyone with the talent and drive to make it. They don't resent success, they celebrate it.
5. Americans are the most pro-immigration people in the world. Read that again. Seriously, read it again. Americans love an immigrant success story. They want more talented immigrants to come to America. But they refuse to accept people coming illegally. They believe in having a border.
6. Americans are sensitive about racial issues and their country's imperfect history. They believe that those who are disadvantaged by the circumstances of their birth should be given the opportunity to succeed. What they reject, however, is the idea that in order to address the errors of the past new errors must be made. DEI is racist. They know it and they reject it precisely because they are not racist.
7. Americans are the most philosemitic nation on earth. October 7 and the pro-Hamas left's reaction shocked them to their very core because, among other things, they remember what 9/11 was like and they know jihad when they see it.
8. Americans are extremely practical people. They care about what works, not what sounds good. In Europe, we produce great writers and intellectuals. In America they produce (and attract) great engineers, businessmen and investors. Because of this, they care less about Trump's rhetoric than you do and more about his policies than you do.
9. Americans are deeply optimistic people. They hate negativity. The woke view of American history as a series of evils for which they must eternally apologise is utterly abhorrent to them. They believe in moving forward together, not endlessly obsessing about the past.
10. America is a country whose founding story is one of resistance to government overreach. They loathe unnecessary restrictions, regulations and control. They understand that freedom comes with the price of self-reliance and they pay it gladly.
I actually think this is a very level-headed (not an American but have citizenship) take on what happened. I would have voted for a piece of wilted lettuce over Trump but I also think the progressive movement was way too far left that people just were over it.
May 1959 ...
What It Feels Like To Be a Goy:A Poet's Talk in Tel Aviv
The poet talking was Robert Graves♥️♥️♥️
Hoping it'll keep me sane, I'll spend the day to understand historic references in this lecture
https://www.commentary.org/articles/robert-graves/what-it-feels-like-to-be-a-goya-poets-talk-in-tel-aviv/
Ah, Claire, I could have told you how it would have turned out.
So Trump performed well in two swing states (248 electoral college) and is inching closer to victory. I fear for the future of NATO and Ukraine.
The US will not leave NATO, and we have a lot of work to do to help Ukraine. Much of that work involves helping ourselves. We need to have the resources to defend ourselves, and help our friends, which we currently can't do.
Imagine for a moment that you are the director of MI6 or MI5, of the DGSE or DGSI. How quickly will you move to cease all security sharing with the US, or even with a country which still allows it? Come to that, while there are no doubt elements of the Israeli government pleased with the results of the American election, it will soon occur to them that there is already a history here of the once and future White House occupant exposing sources and methods of Israeli actors to the Russians What are the risks for -them-, do you think?
Well, with Trump reentering the White House, all bets are off. A second term for Trump will spell the end of what remained of the conservative wing of the GOP. Mitch McConnell will be leaving, so who in the GOP could (and would be willing to) counter Trump‘s worst instincts?