A compendium of the best reporting and commentary surrounding the pivotal 2024 elections in the United States. You won't find horse race coverage here, or the standard "both sides" BS that passes so often for political journalism. What you will find are links, with brief commentary, to work that I believe advances the conversation we should be having about America's – and the world's – future. Remember: Everything is at stake this year. (Unfortunately, some of the work I point to is behind paywalls.)
As you would expect, the White House compilation of accomplishments is flattering to the current occupant, overly so in some cases. It's also surprising to see it, because the Biden administration has been, in a word, incompetent when it comes to telling the American people about the better things it has done – and it's a long list that many Americans don't know much about. And Big Journalism tends to take its cue from the Republicans. The fact is that this has been the most progressive administration on social and economic issues in decades. If she's elected, Harris will have a lot to build on.
Tariffs tax the middle class, make the rich richer
So the net effect of Trump’s tariffs would be to raise the price of goods made in China as well as goods made here in America. Whether buying single-use wooden utensils for a backyard barbecue, computers for your children to do schoolwork, or new shoes, you will pay much more to buy Chinese or American-made goods.
Johnston, who won a Pulitzer for an expose on the tax system and wrote very skeptical biography of Trump, explains in simple language how the Trump tariff plan wouldn't just raise auto prices for Americans who might want to buy a Chinese-made car. It would invite U.S. companies to raise their prices as well, giving them windfall profits. This would be true across many sectors of the economy. Win-win if you're a corporate boss, executive, or big shareholder. Not so much for the rest of us.
Which leaves us with this: One of the two biggest political parties in the country, the one that controls the highest courts, has as a decent-sized and growing segment of its base people who like to make bomb threats. The party as a whole lives within a prolonged and deranging fantasy of political violence, and offers its base nothing but the license to further lavish over those fantasies, as well as the teasing possibility that they will someday be permitted to make them real. Last Friday, at a rally, Trump said that he would deport Springfield's Haitian community, which is living and working in this country legally, en masse, to Venezuela. All of these people are unserious and behave unseriously, but it would be foolish to assume they don't mean it.
This excellent essay shows how Trump, Vance, and their acolytes are using the incendiary lies about immigrants as a test: to see how far they can go with this stuff. My contempt for them, and yours, doesn't matter at all. And it's irrelevant for the increasingly prone-to-violence extremists who take political direction from Trump, and who someday may follow direct orders to do much, much worse. Look up the "Overton Window" to understand how the far right in America has pushed our discourse, and if we don't stop them cold, and soon, our lives.
“If you’re willing to get some satisfaction out of feeling like you punished Harris, and that’ll help you sleep at night, I can respect that,” Alawieh said. But, he added, “In order for me to try and start sleeping at night, I need to know that I’m blocking Donald Trump because his plans are very clearly to enable Netanyahu to do more murdering.”
I don't want to be a broken record on the topic of third-party spoiler campaigns, but this is an alarming (if logical)development. Muslim Americans – and many others – are incensed with the Biden administration for its policy in the Middle East. Some of them want to use their vote to protest, and are looking at third-party candidates like Jill Stein, who has less than zero chance of being president but gets some traction by telling people what they want to hear. Wanting better from Biden and Harris, but making a statement that turns over the government to someone who absolutely despises Muslims, just doesn't parse.
So there you have Long’s playbook for state capture: Capture the legislature, take over independent institutions, intimidate the media, and then employ violence. And the whole is made possible with a propaganda that strategically divides the state, where you have blind loyalty from your voters, who will always support you for anything—and I mean anything—you want to do.
This podcast episode – with a transcript! – is part of a series. This one is excellent, with obvious lessons for today.
Voting is just part of democracy, but it's the essential place to start. Make sure you're registered. Doublecheck in the fall, well before Election Day, because in some states Republican officials are removing people, mostly those who tend to vote for Democrats, from voting rolls.
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David Cay Johnston
David Roth
Noah Lanard
Anne Applebaum, Peter Pomerantsev
