Götterdämmerung

"I know Trump voters told pollsters that it was all about the economy, and maybe it was. Eggs and milk are higher. I'm not disputing that, but people like me thought our fellow Americans recognized that the cause of that inflation, and which the Trump administration initiated and the Biden administration continued, kept the economy afloat, and that President Biden steered the nation towards the soft recovery every economist believed was impossible. People like me were wrong."

Michael Ian Black at The Daily Beast reacts to Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 presidential election.

As do David Frum and Spencer Kornhaber at The Atlantic.

As do John F. Harris, Steven Waldman, and other writers at Politico.

As do Mona Charen and Scott Conway at The Bulwark.

As do Robert Kuttner and David Dayen at The American Prospect.

As do Ed Kilgore and Jonathan Chait at New York.

As do Timothy Noah, Kate Aronoff, Greg Sargent, Jonathan Zimmerman, Eric Schmeltzer, and Michael Tomasky at The New Republic.

As does Sophie Clark at Newsweek.

As does Sam Wolfson (in an interview with Richard Reeves), Ben Davis, and John Harris at The Guardian.

As does Ashleigh Fields (in an interview with Sen. John Fetterman) at The Hill.

As do Paul Rosenberg and Jim Sleeper at Salon.

As do John West and Kara Dapena at The Wall Street Journal.

As do Jeet Heer and Joan Walsh at The Nation.

As does David Brooks of The New York Times.

As do John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira at The Liberal Patriot (who earlier argued that "the progressive moment is well and truly over").

And in subsequent week, reactions continue from:

James K. Galbraith, Jeet Heer, and Neil Kraus and Jon Shelton at The Nation.

Chauncey DeVega at Salon.

Jesse Ferguson and Austin Sarat at The Hill.

Jared Abbott, Dustin Guastella, and Sean Mason at Jacobin.

Conor Friedersdorf, Jon Favreau, Annie Lowrey, Ed Kilgore, and Jonathan Chait at The Atlantic.

Andrew Prokop at Vox.

Walter Russell Mead at Tablet.

Bharat Ramamurti at The Bully Pulpit blog.

And Michael Bahraeen, Juan David Rojas, Justin Vassallo, and Ruy Teixeira at The Liberal Patriot.

"'Resentments' and Grievances"

"Since he will not have the direct debate with Macron over the issues that his supporters care about most, Mélenchon instead wants to force Macron to try, for the first time, to convince young people, poor people, working-class people, immigrants, city people, to vote for him, and not to take them for granted as he has thus far. Le Pen will surely make a play for these voters, or at least try to get them to avoid voting for Macron. Macron's chance of winning depends on his ability to convince enough Mélenchon voters to vote for him, and that means convincing them that he will be a decidedly different president in his second term than he was in his first. One thing is certain, though: If Le Pen defeats Macron, elites will blame Mélenchon's voters for failing to fulfill their role in the neoliberal order, which is to be contemptuously and continuously ignored and then called on, every five years, to save the Republic from fascism."

Moshik Temkin at Journal of Democracy surveys the French presidential election.

"A Historic Candidate"

"In spite of its ultimate failure, the Sanders campaign was successful in several ways. It has forced the other candidates to address long-neglected matters that Sanders singlehandedly brought to the fore. Medicare-for-All and the proposed Green New Deal are now nearly mainstream positions. Sanders won the primary in the largest, richest, and most diverse state in the country, California. He was one of two men left standing after besting many candidates that started with high hopes and strong support from party insiders and donors. He went further, and came closest to real power, than any leftwing political leader in his lifetime. He helped build a political movement that will remain a force in American life and will keep trying to win. Because his support is so concentrated among the young, and because the problems he vowed to fight will only get worse whether Trump or Biden wins, this movement is only likely to grow, and its next leaders might eventually succeed where he failed."

Moshik Temkin at Newsweek assesses Bernie Sanders's place in political history.

And Paul Heideman at Jacobin warns against a leftist retreat.

"What Is Their Role in the Age of Trump?"

"While his rise clearly coincides with a global turn toward authoritarianism and away from democracy, he is very much a product of recent American history.

"He may not be usefully analogous to politicians of the past, but like them he benefited from historical processes that we can understand and respond to: our worship of celebrity; the persistence of gender, racial and economic inequality; the devastation of foreign wars; voter suppression; and a political system that does not reflect the diversity or policy preferences of the American people."

Moshik Temkin at The New York Times argues that "Historians Shouldn't Be Pundits."

Julian E. Zelizer and Morton Keller at The Atlantic dispute Temkin's argument.

As does Zachary Jonathan Jacobson at The Chronicle of Higher Education.

"The Orphan in Political Life"

"But Americans are reluctant to relinquish national sovereignty under international agreements, he says, and 'don't use the language of human rights to analyze our own politics.' Instead, they tend to think about the death penalty in civil-rights or constitutional terms. National decision-making about this matter, Temkin explains, 'has been handed over, collectively, to the Supreme Court.' Opponents have attacked capital punishment at its weakest legal points, while supporting state-by-state abolition. Beyond a brief moratorium on executions in the 1970s, the lasting result has been regulation and restriction. In a series of decisions between 2002 and 2008, the Court ruled that juvenile offenders, people with certain intellectual disabilities, and those convicted of non-murder offenses could not be put to death. These developments have convinced some observers that the death penalty itself will soon be declared unconstitutional, but Temkin remains skeptical. 'My argument, based on the history, is that this is not a track that leads to the sort of permanent abolition we see in other parts of the world.'"

Sophia Nguyen in Harvard Magazine talks with Moshik Temkin about the death penalty.

"The Global Dimensions of His Public Career Remain Underexplored and Misunderstood"

"In particular, I highlighted the international context for Malcolm’s activism, the scope and significance of his plans abroad, the distinctions he made between civil rights and human rights, the separation he allowed between religion and politics, and the many ways that his afterlife has overshadowed his actual life."


In Humanity, Moshik Temkin introduces his 2012 essay about "the meanings of Malcolm X's life and death," which occurred forty-nine years ago this month.