This is a compendium of the reporting and commentary that best explains the America's political, economic, and social conditions – and, most important, how we can find a way back from the dark days ahead. You will rarely find anything here from the New York Times or Washington Post or any of the other Big Journalism companies that failed us so completely during the 2024 elections and are now sucking up – even more than usual – to Donald Trump, his cult, and corporate oligarchs. My focus will be on smaller, more honorable outlets (and individuals). I hope you'll support them with your attention and your money.
The American people want Donald Trump. And now they will get him. He will bring with him a horde of cranks, frauds, religious zealots, gutter racists, and vindictive thugs unprecedented in modern American history. The Nixon White House will look like a zen temple compared to what is coming. Trump’s second term will be a wave of pure malevolence. There will be revenge against his enemies, and there will be assaults on innocent and vulnerable Americans of the sort that our government usually reserves only for people overseas. Fringe lunatics will dictate health policy; Crypto grifters will dictate economic policy; Christian evangelicals will dictate Middle East policy; Flinty corporate lawyers will dictate labor policy; and the mighty American federal government will be run with all the propriety of a late night infomercial selling miracle cures to insomniacs. The cure will be branded “TRUMP,” in large golden letters. It won’t work. There will be no refunds.
I've quoted the most pessimistic portion of this commentary from In These Times, because it reflects a lot of how I'm feeling at the moment. It could even be worse than this. But the author also offers a partial prescription for bringing our nation back on the course of justice. He rightly says that the core of the issue is the completely rotten version of capitalism that has taken over America, and that only if we fix that do we have a real hope. Do we have even a small chance of pulling that off, given the power and wealth arrayed against average Americans (including Trump supporters who are immune from recognizing that they are about to be major targets)? Many millions of people are ready and eager to get started on rebuilding. We have to be clear, however, that we are in for immense pain along the way – and that it's more than possible that the worst people may have won not just in the short term but for a generation or more.
[W]e are already seeing Trump and his supporters say he has a historic mandate after a big election victory. First of all, mandates aren’t real. When you get elected you can do whatever you can get away with. Mandates aren’t real. It’s also not a big election victory, if we mean that in any quantifiable sense. It looks like Trump will get 51% of the popular vote, just slightly under what Joe Biden got four years ago. Winning is winning. But the last time I heard this kind of talk about big historic mandates was back in 2004 when George W. Bush won a close election, proceeded to try to push through a series of highly ideological programs that no one voted for, stumbled quickly and basically never recovered. Will that happen again? I have no idea. But I think there’s a pretty decent chance it will.
No one brings more thoughtful reflection to political analysis than the founder of Talking Points Memo. He speaks from long experience. With regret, I think he's more wrong than right this time – for many reasons, not least our corrupt Supreme Court's grant last spring of essentially unlimited, unaccountable presidential powers. But Josh knows a lot more than I do, and his staffers punch way above their weight in their coverage our national politics. So I pay close attention. I want to say again here that TPM is in the top tier of political journalism organizations, vastly superior in almost every way to what you will find in this era of garbage political coverage from essentially all of the Big Journalism outfits. Please subscribe or contribute. You can get an ad-free experience, and support people who have earned it.
The guardrails are gone. The idea that checks and balances of the constitution would always be able to restrain a man like Trump now seem ludicrous. Only the relative autonomy of state governments will offer any resistance to a dictatorial regime. Democrat governors such as Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, Gavin Newsom in California and Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania have a degree of power in this unprecedented situation, but their power is restricted to their states. Who will rally Americans nationally against Trump’s onslaught on democracy, his mass deportations, the persecution of his enemies and the destruction of institutions?
This commentary, from the UK's Prospect magazine, asks an important question. I'm far less sure that the author's tentative answer – the Obamas – is anything close to the right one. The best thing about them is their communication style. Barak Obama was always an excellent orator, but Michelle Obama has become one of the most formidable political speakers in America. She could plausibly be a singular voice for a truly progressive era where traditional but broadly defined family and community values merge with tough-as-nails insistence on policies that stop sending regular people's declining wealth to the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the fossil fuel barons. But the Democratic left surely remembers that the Obama administration was progressive mainly in rhetoric, not action. Beyond the Affordable Healthcare Act, Obama's eight years in the Oval Office – stained by his shameful, enraging kowtowing to the bankers who nearly destroyed the global economy – helped create the conditions under which a demagogue like Trump could replace him. Maybe they can rally progressives now, but we'll need a new generation of charismatic leaders to carry the fight forward.
Looking into an even more destabilized future is not easy. If you’re like me, you’re already tired. The prospect of more drama is daunting. But authoritarianism isn’t going away no matter the election results. So here’s some thinking about ways to orient so we can ground ourselves better for these times ahead.
I'm not remotely an expert in this arena, but the advice on the Waging Nonviolence site strikes me as wise, and practical. One of the points that resonates loudly for me, for what I hope are obvious reasons, is this: "Do not obey in advance, do not self-censor." Jeff Bezos' cowardly veto of a milquetoast Harris endorsement by the Washington Post showed how even powerful people think they are being practical to cower before the ruler, when in fact they are giving the regime what it craves most: an object lesson for everyone else who is worried about the ramifications of his or her exercise of free speech. Again: Do not obey in advance.
Josh Marshall
Henry Porter
Daniel Hunter
