Long Election Day hangover
We did it.
It wasn’t the thorough repudiation of Trump and Trumpism that I’d hoped for, but we achieved the most important goal of the 2020 election. In the very near future, Donald Trump will no longer be the president of the United States.
I don’t often write about general politics in my published pieces, but I made an exception for this election to explicitly endorse libertarians voting for Biden. I’m going to claim vindication for this. My article was written one month before the election, when polling suggested we might see a much larger victory for the Democrats. One of my main arguments was that the election could turn out to be much narrower than polling predicted, and that Trump would take advantage of a close result to throw the legitimacy of the election into doubt. As I wrote at the time, “the most useful role for libertarians in this election is to prevent a potentially violent legitimacy crisis over its results or the winning of a second term for Donald Trump. Whatever tactics he may be tempted to employ to undermine the election, they are more likely to fail the wider the margin of his defeat. By throwing our votes to Biden, we can help make his victory not merely technical, but decisive.”
That was hardly a bold prediction. The Trump campaign has been telegraphing its intentions for months. The question for those sympathetic to at least some aspects of the Republican agenda was how to measure the risks of a second term. The approach of some was to treat Trump as a normal (if embarrassing) politician, weighing the pros and cons of various policy positions. For others, it was to view him as outside the range of normal politicians, to take seriously the proposition that democracies can die and that Donald Trump is the kind of man that kills them.
I was firmly in the latter camp. His persistent refusal to concede the race and elected Republicans’ willingness to continue this half-assed, farcical attempt to overturn the result are confirmation that this worry was justified. If you're looking for a reason to believe that today’s GOP wouldn't be all-in on tearing down our democratic institutions if the results were a little bit closer, good luck finding it. They’re going to fail, thankfully, but indulging the tantrum will do plenty of damage on the way out. Everything we’re seeing now confirms that Trump is exactly the aspiring autocrat we said he was and that the Republican party is too cowardly and unprincipled to restrain him. I couldn’t feel better about endorsing Joe Biden.
Post-election coverage
Josh Barro takes a deserved victory lap: “thank god we nominated Joe Biden.”
Ezra Klein offers a smart frame for thinking about Trump’s attempt to steal the election: how would press cover this if it were happening in another country?
Yascha Mounk takes an international view, noting that defeating an authoritarian populist (especially an incumbent) is no easy task. We have every reason to celebrate that achievement. But, warns Zeynep Tufekci, Trump has exposed our country’s susceptibility to strongman politics. Our next authoritarian leader may be prove more competent.
At Arc Digital, Nicholas Grossman takes stock of the winners and losers after four years of Trump.
Second to ousting the president, the best outcome of this Election Day was a decisive, multi-state rejection of the carceral war on drugs. In every state, red or blue, that had an opportunity to liberalize drug laws, voters passed the measure. Oregon went furthest of all, voting decisively to decriminalize personal use and possession of all drugs. This makes our state the absolute leader in pivoting to a humane, harm reduction approach to drug use, and the entire country will be watching to see how it turns out. Read Zachary Siegel for more. (Alas, at the same time, Oregonians predictably rejected my advice to embrace tobacco harm reduction, voting to impose substantial new taxes on vaping.)
Also close to home, Nancy Rommelmann covers the current state of the Portland protests. Approval for the protests this summer was aided by the fact that they were concentrated on the federal courthouse and could tie into anti-Trump sentiment. With Trump on the way out, one effect I'm hoping for is that the window-smashing nihilists among the protesters will no longer be able to bask in the glow of anti-Trump resistance, forcing a renewed focus on legitimate tactics and not undermining noble causes.
The funniest part of the week by far was Rudy Giuliani’s degrading press conference at the Four Seasons. Not that Four Seasons, the Four Seasons Total Landscaping on the outskirts of Philadelphia. I could read about this debacle forever and am consumed by envy for the reporters who got to write this lede. Bonus link: Slate interviews the owner of the Fantasy Island sex shop next door to Rudy’s press conference.
Covering COVID
This newsletter is running too long already, but I can’t not mention the good news about the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine. Preliminary results suggest that it’s 90% effective. That’s tremendous and wonderful cause for optimism, even if those results turn out to overstate the effect. It’s also a long road from development to delivery, so it’s not going to change anything instantly. I’ll note just two things about it. One is that the vaccine was developed by Turkish immigrants to Germany with production facilitated by partnership with the American company Pfizer; this is a victory for globalization and immigration. The second is that knowing an effective vaccine is very likely in sight strengthens the case for remaining vigilant with masking, testing, and social distancing until it can be produced and deployed. The winter is going to be grim, with rising cases and deaths, political turmoil, and an outgoing president derelict in his duties. But we can see this now as the last gasp of a failed regime. The future is bright ahead.
Social distancing
OK, enough of all that. On to the fun stuff.
To cook: My new article this week is about being pizza-obsessed in a pandemic, making better pizza at home, and cooking in portable backyard ovens that reach in excess of 900°. Learning to make really good pizza has been one of my most rewarding projects of the pandemic. If you’d like to go down that road yourself, check out my piece in Inside Hook.
To read: Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin D. West’s Calling Bullshit is far more fun than I anticipated for a book about spotting misleading statistics, bad science, and biased news. The examples and illustrations are smartly chosen and it never gets too technical while remaining a very smart read. Recommended.
To wear: Tomorrow is Veterans Day, but it’s also Corduroy Appreciation Day, celebrated every year on 11/11, the date that most resembles corduroy. While there will be no corduroy parties this year, don’t let that stop you from marking the occasion at home. Should you be in need of corduroy apparel, I’m really liking the Porter shirt jackets from Far Afield in the UK. They won’t arrive in time for tomorrow, but at least you’ll be warm this autumn and prepared for 2021.
To drink: A Corduroy cocktail, of course! I created this for Corduroy Appreciation Day back in 2011 I think, a combination of English (or English-marketed) ingredients. If you add a dash of celery bitters and swap Linie aquavit for the Old Tom gin in the recipe below, you’ll have a Nordic Corduroy, aka Norduroy. Trust me, it works. Also, this should go without saying, but get one of the good sloe gins made with real fruit. If it costs ten bucks and sits on the bottom shelf of your liquor store, it’s not what you’re looking for!
1 1/2 oz Old Tom gin
1 oz cream sherry
3/4 oz sloe gin
lemon peel, for garnish
Stir with ice, serve up, and garnish with a twist of lemon peel.
A favor
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