Ezra Klein's Thoughtful Reflection on the Election
And a discussion about his essay
As usual, Ezra does a nice job of speaking my mind. There are parts of this that didn’t land well for me, but I’m still raw so I don’t make too much of that! And in any case, it seems directionally right. At and at the very least, his words are worth pondering.
For those who are tuning out the topic, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, please ignore this! But for others hungry to make sense of the moment, I recommend this as much better than most of the hot takes I’m seeing. I listened through my podcast player, but I’ve provided a YouTube link below as well, Don’t just read the essay in the NYT—Klein’s discussion of it on the podcast is an important part of the reflection.
A few things I appreciated:
Klein acknowledges the global background conditions bringing down governments everywhere and notes that Trump’s win is unimpressive. This means it could be easy to over-interpret the tea leaves.
But he also acknowledges that the swing in popular vote is still pretty significant, and that there was a lot of ticket-splitting. Incumbents and Democrats actually did pretty well—just not the administration. People wanted to reject the administration in particular, it seems.
Since this seems like a specific rejection, and not just part of that global wave, he then theorizes about why.
Here is where I wish he had caveated. It is possible that the global post-Covid “I hate the people in charge” phenomena is by itself enough to explain the swing and ticket splitting, since most people in America seem to think that the story of things like our economy is largely a Presidential one.
Klein acknowledges that Harris was dealt a terrible hand, and both that she played it with alacrity and made a couple significant mistakes. He also acknowledges that it is unclear that even a perfect campaign would have been sufficient, given the circumstance of an unpopular administration, a late hand-off, and a candidate who was at the center of the administration.
One of the most provocative statements Klein made in the after-interview was that the Obama coalition is done. I don’t know exactly what I think about that, but I do feel like the emerging demographic story points that way.
In any case, it behooves those of us who plan to work to thwart the ugliest actions by Trump and win the longer fight that we will have to stay curious about the causes and realignments, so we can fight without having our hands tied behind our backs.
Last, I want to thank the many of you who have written me such wonderful notes these last few days. I am glad that you have found some solace or encouragement here. This is a hard time; pull your people close.