‘Biden’s failure to deliver this campaign promise might have cost Democrats’
Ryan Teague Beckwith at MSNBC
If Americans “want to debate what Biden should have done to put the Democratic ticket in a better place, we should start with what he wanted to do and couldn’t,” says Ryan Teague Beckwith. This “includes most of the social safety net expansion that Biden campaigned on.” To “break through that wall of indifference, a president needs not only to deliver, but to do it in such a tangible way that voters notice and connect the results with the president’s actions.”
‘How America embraced gender war’
Jia Tolentino at The New Yorker
The “big two genders are said to be at war. The results of the presidential election can hardly be read otherwise,” says Jia Tolentino. Kamala Harris’ strategy “reflected a reality that has since been unveiled by the results — a gendered battle intensified by young people, who are fighting for a sense of individual purchase on a world they have barely begun to properly live in.” For “those of us whom God made heterosexual, the intimate realm is politicized.”
‘Massie should go full Milei on the USDA’
Dominic Pino at the National Review
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) “would be a good person to lead” the USDA, which is “perhaps our most socialistic government department,” says Dominic Pino. Massie “would be a positive sign that Trump intends to keep his promise to shake up the federal bureaucracy.” Massie would be a “departure from Trump’s first term, when he increased subsidies and the farm bill continued its long-running expansion.” It “could be a good test case of the new powers available to cut the administrative state.”
‘Why Trump being president again is not actually good for Truth Social’
Alex Kirshner at Slate
There is a “paradox behind Trump’s win,” says Alex Kirshner. While “his victory has already been good for Trump Media stock, his return to power is unambiguously horrible for Truth Social’s actual business.” The “business fundamentals of Truth Social have so far been untethered from its company’s stock performance,” but Truth Social’s “path to being a serious player as a social media platform is even longer than it was before Trump beat Kamala Harris.”