We begin today with E.J. Dionne of The New York Times writing about the backlash against the tacky shoe salesman.
A significant share of the voters who backed Mr. Trump have decided that he has largely ignored the primary issue that pushed them his way, the cost of living. A billionaire regularly mocking concern about affordability only makes matters worse. They see him as distracted by personal obsessions and guilty of overreach, even when they sympathize with his objectives. Many of his former supporters see him breaking promises he made, notably on not messing with their access to health care.
Some abuses are too blatant to be ignored. A recent The Economist/You Gov poll found that 56 percent of Americans said Mr. Trump was using his office for personal gain; only 32 percent didn’t. A similar 56 percent saw Mr. Trump as directing the Justice Department to go after people he saw as his political enemies; just 24 percent didn’t. [...]
I think of these shifts as the triumph of reasonableness — and not because I agree with where these fellow citizens have landed (although I do). I’m buoyed by the capacity of citizens to absorb new facts and take in information even when it challenges decisions they previously made. It turns out that swing voters are what their label implies. The evidence of their own lives and from their own eyes matters.
The “triumph of reasonableness?” Let me translate that.
A “significant share” of voters in the 2024 presidential election decided that they wanted to buy Trump’s bullshit in spite of Trump being a established piss-poor manager of everything that he has ever touched, including his first term occupying the Oval Office (we can argue about the reasons).
And now that they’re going broke because of their decisions, their a*s is out for the foreseeable future.
G. Elliot Morris writes for his “Strength by Numbers” Substack about the “huge blue wave” to come.
The 2025 elections already gave us a preview of what an affordability midterm might look like. In the races for governor in New Jersey and Virginia, for example, roughly half of voters said the economy was the most important issue facing the country, according to the exit poll. Those voters backed Democratic candidates for governor over their Republican challengers by 30 percentage points — a 90-point swing relative to the 2024 election. [...[
According to this data, voters who say inflation or the economy is their top issue favor Democrats over Republicans for the 2026 midterm election in their local House district by a 12 percentage point margin. It’s not proof that the data above are perfect, but note that a 12-point margin is exactly what you’d get if you shifted the 2024 national environment (R+1.5) to the left based on the 13.3-point pro-Democratic swing we’ve been seeing in special elections this cycle.
Put a little more concretely: if the 2026 electorate ended up looking like the voters who say affordability is their top concern, we’d be looking at a huge blue wave, with a swing 50% larger than in 2018. And this is not some tiny, niche group in the electorate: in our October Strength In Numbers poll, 30 percent of adults name prices or inflation as the most important problem facing the country today, and another 18 percent say “jobs and the economy” are the most important. That puts nearly half the country into my bucket of affordability voters.
We shall see.
New York Times oped columnist Roxane Gay posted an interesting post on Bluesky that deserves comment.
x
The way the word elites has become devoid of all meaning is interesting. It’s a placeholder for “someone I don’t like” and it fascinates me that the people who use it most are wealthy, went to “elite” schools and hold positions of power. Look in the damn mirror. You’re talking about yourself.
— Roxane Gay (@roxanegay.bsky.social) 2025-12-14T04:18:35.292Z
True...but I do see a lot of commentary at Daily Kos about these “elite” schools as well.
Barack Obama (Columbia/Harvard Law School), Michelle Obama (Princeton/Harvard Law School), Susan Rice (Stanford/Oxford), Cory Booker (Stanford/Oxford/Yale Law School), Sonia Sotomayor (Princeton/Yale Law School), and former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf (Dartmouth/MIT) are in the exact same “elite” boat as George W. Bush (Yale/Harvard Business School), JD Vance (Yale Law School). Josh Hawley (Stanford/Yale Law School), the faux folksy sounding Louisiana Senator John Kennedy (Vanderbilt/University of Virginia,/Oxford)...the list could go on.
As far as I am concerned, They’re all in the same or similar buckets as far as their attendance at “elite schools.”
One difference I do note between between liberals and conservatives who attended “elite” schools is in the way that they talk about their attendance and liberals, at least, do not try to perpetrate the fraud that conservatives generally do.
Sure, methodologies of teaching and what not at these various schools can (and should be) questioned but, generally, I don’t think that it’s the individual school’s fault that Barack Obama turned out one way and JD Vance turned out another.
That’s (for the most part) a character issue.
Judd Legum writes at his “Popular Information” Substack that two major news outlets have announced partnerships with an online predictions market.
Two major news networks, CNN and CNBC, recently announced partnerships with Kalshi, an online predictions market. Kalshi allows the public to place bets on a dizzying variety of news events. There are currently Kalshi markets for the winner of the 2028 presidential election, next month’s unemployment rate, next week’s top TV show on Netflix, whether the announcers will say “Cheesehead” during Sunday’s Green Bay Packers football game, and thousands of other future events.
The CNN deal, which starts immediately, involves the “integration of Kalshi data across CNN programming“ and “a new Kalshi-powered real-time news ticker that will run during segments that feature Kalshi data.” The CNBC deal, which begins in 2026, will “incorporate real-time prediction data into CNBC’s editorial coverage across its TV, digital, and subscription channels.” Kalshi will also create “a CNBC page on its site, featuring CNBC-selected markets.”
The economic terms of the arrangement between Kalshi and the two networks were not disclosed.
What could possibly go wrong?
Daryn Dickens writes for The Contrarian bout the joys and sorrows and agonies and hopes of being a Howard University student in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election.
We imagined what that would feel like. A Howard grad, a Bison woman, leading the country. We pictured future prospective students pointing at the White House saying, “She came from where I came from.” It was bigger than politics; it was symbolic, generational, and validating.
But optimism is a fragile thing.
When that hope dissolved, the disappointment on campus was layered. It was not just sadness; it was the quiet, heavy deflation that comes from feeling something extraordinary slipped away. And just as we were processing that, D.C. and the world seemed to hit us with waves after wave of crisis, conflict, tension, policymaking, policing, and political hostility. [...]
Still, we never lose that sense of community that makes Howard feel at home. In fact, the more chaotic the world around us became, the more we leaned into the bubble--not as avoidance, but as refuge. Howard students have always existed at the intersection of activism and education. It is almost an unwritten requirement to be here. But this past year has pushed many of us inward. We still care deeply about the world, but we are also tired. We are proud, but we are wary. We are hopeful, but our hope is more cautious now.
A couple of things:
1) My life’s biggest regret is that when I was 18, I had other choices that I could have made to attend university. I could have chosen to attend Howard or Michigan State. I don’t like the idea of “do-overs” but I wish I had that specific one.
I say Michigan State because I did not have University of Michigan grades. I would estimate that roughly 25% of my graduating class went to the University of Michigan (mostly Black). Which leads us to…
2) Ms. Dawkins first paragraph hit hard especially this past week in a very very very different context. Youtube college football commentator RJ Young sums it up.
Young is not a Michigan fan (he cheers for the Oklahoma Sooners). I know a few Black University of Michigan alumni and even more Black University of Michigan fans (and let’s not even talk about Black students currently attending the University of Michigan). This hurts. RJ Young summed it up well, IMO.
I’m also glad that The Contrarian has chosen to pick up and publish quite a few works by (mostly young) Black journalists.
Tania Myronyshena of the Kyiv Independent reports that a number of Ukrainian citizens are suing US tech manufactures over the chips used in Russian weaponry.
The lawsuit seeks to hold three major U.S. chipmakers accountable for helping enable Russia’s war against Ukrainian civilians by failing to control where their products end up.
Despite years of sanctions and export controls, U.S.-made electronic components — which have unique markings and cannot be copied — continue to appear in Russian cruise missiles and drones. Investigations have repeatedly found these chips inside weapons used in some of the war’s most devastating attacks.
With that argument, a group of Ukrainian civilians has now brought their case to a U.S. court. The lawsuit, filed on their behalf by U.S. attorney Mikal C. Watts, targets Intel Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), and Texas Instruments Inc.
It accuses the companies of negligence in allowing their technology to power weapons like the Kh-101 cruise missile, the Iskander-M ballistic missile, and the Iranian-made Shahed drones — all of which have been used to strike civilian areas in Ukraine throughout the full-scale war.
Finally today, Jenn Hatfield of Pew Research Center looks at polling that indicates that most Americans would rather live in the past.
- 45% of U.S. adults say that if they could choose, they would live sometime in the past. That includes 25% who would live less than 50 years in the past and another 20% who would live more than 50 years in the past.
- 40% of adults say they’d live in the present.
- 14% say they’d live sometime in the future. That includes 5% who would live less than 50 years in the future and 9% who would live more than 50 years in the future.
[...]
The partisan differences persist even when controlling for education level and for race and ethnicity.
Men and women are equally likely to say they’d choose to live in the distant past. But women are somewhat more likely than men to say they’d choose the more recent past – that is, less than 50 years ago (28% vs. 22%).
Sure, I could see myself being one of the 20% that might want to live in the distant past. Doctor Doom’s time machine could drop me off in 245-235 BCE in Alexandria, Egypt somewhere in the vicinity of The Great Library. I can take it from there.
Everyone have the best possible day that you can!
Update: Oh...and I’ve been checking this. Actor Dick Van Dyke made it! Happy 100th Birthday!
