Last weekend was boring because the College Football Playoff committee got it right

On Friday night, in a stinging indictment of the Big Ten Conference, supposedly one of the two top-tier conference in college football, Indiana lost to Notre Dame. In the next game, the Big Ten’s runners-up Penn State proved the superiority of the conference once and for all and demonstrated that SMU and the Atlantic Coast Conference are the true frauds, while that night, by defeating Tennessee, The Ohio State University proved that the Big Ten is superior to the Southeastern Conference, who demonstrated their superiority when runners-up Texas handily beat Clemson. In total, the only team that lost over the weekend that did not demonstrate that they should not have made the playoff was Clemson, and that was only on a technicality—if the format did not mandate five conference champions, Clemson would have been sitting at home because clearly they were not one of the twelve best teams in the country.

The purpose of the college football is nominally to determine the best team in the country, though more accurately, the purpose is to validate an organic search for the best team in the country. For most of college football history, Oregon would have been crowned national champions already. But the real purpose is to create a compelling television show. There is a reason that ESPN has produced weekly rankings specials about rankings that absolutely, positively do not matter—if the playoff committee decides that their old rankings no longer matter (they did this last season with Florida State), that’s all that matters.

There has been a lot of criticism of the College Football Playoff format, though I think that under the assumption that a playoff ought to be twelve teams, this one works out well in creating valid incentive structures throughout. Since the early 1990s, when the ranks of Division 1-A independents with a national profile was reduced pretty much just to Notre Dame, winning one’s conference is considered of major importance, and the playoff structure gives automatic first-round byes to its high-end champions while also dangling another bid to a fifth conference champion (most did not expect this bid to go to a perennial power such as Clemson in its first year). Being a strong non-conference champion gets something beneficial, though less beneficial than an outright automatic qualification to the quarterfinals—a home playoff game. Critics would try to make the case that a team like SMU was not punished for losing its conference championship game, but the reality of the situation is that because Clemson made a last-second field goal, they went from receiving a first-round bye to having a challenging matchup at Penn State which ultimately ended their season. A team like Texas, which made it to overtime of the SEC Championship Game, did not need a win to secure a playoff berth, but it did make the difference between a trip directly to the quarterfinals and the less-than-fifty-but-certainly-higher-than-zero percent chance of falling to the Clemson Tigers on their home field.

The first team to be deemed frauds last weekend was Indiana, and there were two approaches to the argument—one sensible and one borderline cruel. The latter is thumbing one’s nose at the very idea of Indiana having a viable football program and assuming they were on borrowed time. The former embraces a new reality of modern college football, particularly in the major conferences—there is a wild disparity in schedule quality even between teams in the same conference. Indiana only lost one game in the regular season, and it was a game that a college football power would ordinarily be forgiven for losing (on the road against Ohio State), but the quality of their wins was sorely lacking relative to the rest of the conference. Indiana won just one game against a team with a winning conference record, at home close against four-loss Michigan.

Indiana had a very flawed resume. This does not mean that they were not a good team, but it is completely reasonable that their one-loss schedule would not be seen as analogous to the one-loss Big Ten schedule of Penn State—the Nittany Lions defeated a 6-3 team (Illinois) and won on the road against a 5-4 team (Minnesota)—or two-loss Ohio State, which lost to the undefeated Oregon Ducks team that Indiana and Penn State avoided and which scored victories against not only Indiana and Penn State but also 6-3 Iowa.

Indiana coach Curt Cignetti told anybody who would listen that he believed Indiana deserved a better draw in the College Football Playoff—I disagreed, but with a one-loss season in a brand-name conference, I did not blame him for shooting his shot. But especially after their loss on Friday, it became more fashionable to argue that Indiana did not belong in the tournament at all. Yes, the Alabama Crimson Tide lost two more games than the Hoosiers, but they also boasted at least four wins that looked stronger than defeating Michigan—wins against Georgia, South Carolina, Missouri, and a decisive four-touchdown victory on the road against LSU. The argument against Alabama was pretty easy, though—while their seven-point loss at Tennessee could be considered a parallel to Indiana’s at Ohio State, their losses at Vanderbilt and especially at 6-6 Oklahoma by three touchdowns were a blight on their schedule.

There is a massive assumption that those who support, either from the beginning or in hindsight, Alabama over Indiana are making—that Alabama is a better team than Indiana. This is unprovable, but certainly possible. We know that Indiana lost by ten points (and this is a deceptively close margin given the overall tone of the game) at Notre Dame, but we do not know how Alabama would have fared. But the other assumption is that the purpose of the selection committee is to predict the future and not to evaluate the past. Unfortunately, there is not really a codified explanation of what the committee is supposed to do. I disagreed vehemently when the committee predicted the future (accurately) with regards to how Florida State would fare last season with quarterback Jordan Travis injured; my strong preference is to evaluate based on what has already happened. This doesn’t make the answers easier—yes, 3>1 in the loss column is a good and very easy to comprehend point, but had Alabama’s losses been at home to Georgia and at LSU and they had instead won at Vanderbilt and Oklahoma, we couldn’t really argue that a single game Alabama lost was more shameful than even Indiana’s best win. But then Alabama is a three-loss team whose best win is probably one at home against Missouri, which is also a better win than at home against Michigan but is it two losses better? These things do not have answers.

Ultimately, I think the committee got the 12-team bracket correct—I could quibble with some of the order, but I believe the four best conference champions got byes, the next four best teams got home games, and the next four best teams went on the road in the first round. And what those complaining about the lack of quality games this weekend seem to be missing is that the first round is supposed to be difficult for seeds 9 through 12. SMU suffered because of their conference championship loss. Clemson suffered because they needed a last-second field goal just to make the field in the first place. Tennessee suffered because they couldn’t win against a 3-5 SEC team in Arkansas. And Indiana suffered because in their one true test of the regular season, they failed it. Had Alabama made the playoff field, they would have faced an immense challenge—winning at Notre Dame, Penn State, Texas, or Ohio State is not easy! Alabama would have, and should have, been underdogs in any of these scenarios. So would Miami, so would Mississippi, so would South Carolina or BYU or Iowa State.

Assuming the current format remains, road teams will eventually win some playoff games. But they should not win most or even half of them, because if the games last weekend were essentially determined by random chance, it demonstrates a lack of credibility of the playoff. But because the home teams won, the remaining field is the six highest ranked teams in the country, a Boise State team whose one loss—a three-point one on the road against Oregon—is arguably the strongest in the country, and an Arizona State team that as the weakest team in the field on paper will face a challenge in Texas that they may have avoided had they themselves not lost to Texas Tech or Cincinnati.

The reason the games stunk last weekend is because the College Football Playoff committee got it right.

Drake is taking the biggest Thanksgiving week L since the post-Barry Sanders Lions

 If one is to regard a hip-hop battle as a sport, a binary in which any battle which is won is therefore also lost by another party, then Kendrick Lamar won his 2024 squabble with Drake in resounding fashion. On Future’s “Like That”, Kendrick already entered the pantheon of great rap battle verses, but Kendrick did not respond to his lead by playing defense—he ran up the score. First came “Euphoria”, a relentless, ferocious six-plus minutes of pure hatred placed over a trap beat. Then came “Meet the Grahams”, a horrorcore message to Drake’s family with shades of Eminem’s terrifying letter-as-song “Stan”. And then came the magnum opus, “Not Like Us”, which doubled as a danceable party track and a continuation of Drake criticism. “Not Like Us” became Kendrick Lamar’s third number-one single, and on paper by far the least likely. It was one thing to go to number one while guest-versing on a Taylor Swift single off what was already a juggernaut album (“Bad Blood”). While “HUMBLE.” was not exactly pop radio friendly in terms of lyrical content, it was the hip-hop equivalent of arena rock, an anthem of seismic proportion that was destined to live forever as a stadium beat. “Not Like Us” is a song in which the lead performer cracks jokes about one of the two or three biggest pop stars in the world being a sex predator, and it became arguably the song (and inarguably the hip-hop song) of Summer 2024.

But if you view the rivalry strictly as a narrative structure around which artists build their discographies, Kendrick winning does not inherently mean that Drake lost. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, for instance, were significant inspirations for one another—the Beatles’ songwriting was a driving force for the Rolling Stones to evolve beyond the covers of American blues songs which filled their initial sets, while the more streetwise image and raw sound of the Rolling Stones served as a template of sorts for much of the Beatles’ post-Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band work, an evolution which allowed the band to avoid succumbing to self-parody. And Drake’s response to “Euphoria”, “Family Matters”, was one of the best pure demonstrations of Drake’s talents of his career—his flow is impeccable and the barbs at Kendrick are pointed. Drake, unfortunately, followed this up with his “Not Like Us” response “The Heart Part 6” (not to be confused with Kendrick Lamar’s “Heart Pt. 6”, which is great), easily the weakest of the duo’s back-and-forth, but this song was also largely forgotten. “Not Like Us” wasn’t, but the song arguably became too successful to continue to exist primarily as a referendum on Drake. Calling “Not Like Us” a Drake diss track is like calling “Sweet Home Alabama” a Neil Young diss track: like, it is, but it has taken on a life of its own far beyond these origins.

Kendrick Lamar keeps winning in ways that are mostly independent of Drake, who remains exceptionally famous and popular, one of the few artists in the world who is indeed more popular than Kendrick. His livestreamed concert “The Pop Out: Ken & Friends”, though undeniably linked to his broader cultural moment, was a cultural phenomenon. He was announced as the halftime performer at this year’s Super Bowl, just three years after he was a relatively minor part of the game’s LA-centric hip hop ensemble. And last Friday, he released GNX, his widely-hailed sixth studio album which combines the consistency of Good Kid, M.A.A.D City and the sheer force of Damn. Although various tracks off GNX have been interpreted as Drake references, none of the references are specific. One could make the case that the album is either the finale of the Drake-Kendrick beef or perhaps the first major work by either artist to follow it.

But Drake isn’t moving on. And while all logic indicates that Drake, a man that even his many detractors will openly admit is a technically hyper-gifted emcee, should simply release a pop-rap smash that he seems to churn out with ease, he has instead responded in what has to be the least endearing way possible—he called the cops. Drake has filed two lawsuits against Universal Music Group over “Not Like Us”, claiming both a payola-like scheme to inflate Kendrick Lamar’s streaming numbers and that the song defames Drake by accusing him of pedophilia.

The former claim seems patently absurd, though it makes some level of sense in the context of who Drake is. While Drake has been acclaimed throughout his career, very few who are passionate about such debates have claimed that he is an inner-circle, all-time great rapper, but one thing that he undisputably has on pretty much any artist ever is immense popularity. Drake is a massive hitmaker by any objective measure, and while any analysis declaring “Not Like Us” a knockout blow for Kendrick is inherently subjective, if consensus, what must truly be appalling for Drake is what a huge pop hit it became. Because that is the arena in which Drake plays the game. Of course, the problem is that it wasn’t as though Kendrick Lamar, an extremely popular artist by the standard of anyone that is not Drake already, having a huge hit is some big surprise. There is a reason that “Meet the Grahams” wasn’t a pop smash while “Not Like Us” was, and I’m not sure that I can even articulate it, but it’s there—it’s the same factors that make ABBA more popular than Primus. It is self-evident.

In terms of Drake’s claims to defamation, he has more of a point in this case. But in the realm in which he exists, bringing it to court is confounding. Drake, on “Family Matters”, accused Kendrick of domestic abuse and claimed that his child wasn’t biologically his, two claims which have no more merit as true than any claims Kendrick had made. But what will truly destroy Drake’s credibility is simply that bringing the law into the feud comes across as the move of a giant dork. Drake has been accused of being soft throughout his entire career, but for the most part, he has been immune to these criticisms in the court of public opinion because he never claimed to be some sort of hardcore gangster. His perceived sensitivity and emotional side is part of his appeal. But while Drake was never meant to be edgy, he was also never meant to be a loser. And it’s not as though a rap battle, even one with a clear victor, is meant to destroy the credibility of the other party. Biggie and Tupac both enjoy sterling reputations, even among those with a strong preference to the other; Jay-Z and Nas had a long-standing feud that has ended with both considered giants.

It should be okay that Drake lost a battle. He can go back in the studio, make some party anthems and sonically pristine love songs, and remain a superstar. That was always an option, and it probably remains one. But by getting into the legal system, Drake is risking something more devastating than losing a battle. He is risking losing a war.

A Democratic coalition that excludes the trans community is not a Democratic coalition worth saving

As of the time that I wrote this sentence, Donald Trump was leading Kamala Harris by 2.2% in the United States popular vote, though with much of the outstanding vote being concentrated in the liberal state of California, this number is likely to contract to something close to a point-and-a-half victory for Trump nationwide. In 2020, Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump with a 4.5% victory in the popular vote, and the margin was considered so narrow that Trump’s supporters stormed the United States Capitol to dispute the results. With a victory a third as narrow by the popular vote, Democrats have been asked to capitulate to what must be regarded as the true reflection of the will of the American people.

I have a few theories as to why this is. The perception of how much of a blowout a presidential election is seems to boil down to a combination of three factors: Who won the popular vote (Democrats lead 7-2 in elections since 1988), who won the electoral vote (Democrats hold a 5-4 lead), and which party’s share just looks bigger on a red and blue electoral map (more subjective, but with the possible exception of Bill Clinton’s Montana-including 1992 coalition, the map consistently looks more red than blue). With the current urban-rural divide in the United States, it is practically impossible for Democrats to look dominant. Another factor is that while Election Night coverage is treated as a first-past-the-post race to 270 electoral votes, there is effectively a predetermined outcome based on fifty-one separate races which have mostly concluded by the time results are projected. There is a bias in coverage towards states whose polls close earlier—the reason Kentucky is frequently the first state called is not because it is the most politically uncompetitive state (like many “red states”, its largest cities, Louisville and Lexington, tend to vote Democratic, but they are ultimately overwhelmed by elsewhere in the state) but because they process results fairly quickly. During the Trump era, two former swing states, Ohio and Florida, went red fairly early in the night because of how they tabulate votes, and this set a (sometimes misleading) pro-Trump tone.

But if 2004, the last time a party got the popular vote-Electoral College-map vibes trifecta, is any indication, the lesson will not simply be that Republicans did well in 2024; the lesson will be that they have asserted a truly remarkable, historic victory which constitutes a mandate for absolute rule. To be clear, it is much more healthy for a democracy for a political party to recalibrate itself following an electoral loss, so as to better address the needs of the American electorate, rather than, say, dressing up in audacious bear costumes and trying to defecate in Nancy Pelosi's office. But it seems almost inevitable that all of the wrong lessons will be learned.

There is an extremely obvious thesis statement for why the Democrats lost, one which does not forgive the party of its individual sins but which places the improbability of them emerging victorious in proper context. Democrats lost in 2024 for the same reason that every party in power in the western world in 2024 has lost a share of votes, whether the party was considerably to the left or right of the Democratic Party, because there was economic hardship around the world in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Functionally shutting down the economy for a year caused economic stress (while Donald Trump's handling of it, to put it lightly, left much to be desired, it's hard to deny that he faced a legitimate challenge with the emergence of the pandemic), and inflation devastated the middle-and-lower classes around the world.

Democrats could have handled this better. They could have explained (it may not have been easy, but it very much helps that it was true) that inflation was an unavoidable problem, but that Democratic policies would help to ease the tensions far more than Republican policies, to the extent that they have politics beyond yelling about Democrats. They could have noted that high grocery prices were not caused by some dial that the government turns but rather by increasingly powerful and unregulated semi-monopolies and that while Donald Trump is often called a populist, he is in reality a crotchety billionaire who does not even pretend to care about the struggles of everyday Americans anymore. It's possible that these things would not have worked, but in any election with a distinct winner and loser established regardless of margin of victory, whatever Democrats did must now be viewed as bad, even as Kamala Harris made a nearly-historic comeback from Joe Biden's low poll numbers early in the summer.

The party keeps searching for One Big Thing that can be reversed and change everything. Many have tried the ultimate self-congratulatory takeaway: Democrats lost because they nominated a woman of color. This is a theory which presents the Democrats as undeniably noble and makes any further self-reflection borderline offensive. Those who believed that Kamala Harris should have picked Josh Shapiro as her running mate made their argument, though there is little reason to believe that Tim Walz was particularly unpopular, and even if (and it's a big "if") Shapiro could have delivered Pennsylvania, this alone would not have been enough. 

But ultimately, some people would rather just blame a minority. This happened in 2004, when Republican opposition to same-sex marriage activated the conservative religious right. Democrats, by and large, weren't even campaigning on a pro-gay rights platform--same-sex marriage was already illegal in nearly every jurisdiction in the country, but Republicans largely supported a Constitutional Amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman. A few years later, that Democrats had been on the less-wrong side of history, when gay marriage became legal nationwide and its popularity skyrocketed, became a political advantage. But more importantly, it was the right thing to do.

I am not convinced that anti-trans panic had any meaningful impact on the presidential election. This does not mean that pro-trans politics are necessarily a strong political issue for the left, but rather that it does not seem to be of exceptionally high priority for most people. Republicans, of course, have framed these debates under their own terms, using language about protecting women's sports (every competitive women's sports organization in the country has strict rules regarding hormone levels to assure that, to use a particularly ludicrous suggestion, the league is not simply a bunch of men claiming that they are women) and protecting children, largely because Democrats mostly haven't talked about trans issues. In some ways, I think Democratic silence is instructive behavior--if trans people living their lives aren't a big deal, why should others try to make a big deal out of it?--but the more conservatives push anti-trans messaging, the more it becomes clearly that trans people need genuine allyship.

But while I don't think anti-trans panic had a meaningful impact on the 2024 election, it wouldn't matter if it had. Democrats have overwhelmingly popular positions on just about every issue as an organic result of their own worldviews--they should be allowed to have some positions based not on polling but on what is simply the right thing to do. The extreme shift on gay marriage--Barack Obama ran the most socially liberal campaign in a generation while still opposing gay marriage in 2008--demonstrates that our social views are not inevitable. And while opposition to gay marriage at least had some tenuous biblical backing (which, to be clear, should not inform national policy), opposition to trans rights largely comes down to an unarticulated sense of discomfort. This is the sense we are going to use to determine our future?

Democrats are consistently being asked to defend unpopular positions that their candidates have not actually taken. Liberals are ridiculed for advocating for defunding the police, a dead-on-arrival activist slogan. They are ridiculed for using the term "Latinx" or for being "too woke". If Democrats took an explicitly anti-trans stance, it would not stop Republicans from accusing them of whatever the most hateful stereotypes one could imagine. It would probably land much like the Biden's pro-Israel Middle Eastern posture: Republicans still call them anti-Israel. There is nothing Democrats could theoretically do to assuage fears of the most rabidly anti-trans corners of the political discourse.

Can Democrats force the issue and make trans rights viewed as a legitimate civil rights issue? I'm not sure, but whether it would work politically should not define the actions. Democrats should stand up for trans people because it's the right thing to do.

Repealing and replacing the American Dream

How could Missouri, a blood-red state so clearly aligned with the Republican Party that the major news networks declared it won by Donald Trump the minute that polls closed in the state, also vote to enshrine abortion rights in its state constitution? How did the state overwhelmingly approve a minimum wage increase that the people elected to positions of power have resoundingly, repeatedly rejected?

Missouri has had a wide chasm between how it votes for ballot measures and how it votes for candidates for a while now. The year that Missouri replaced its flawed but ultimately pro-labor senator Claire McCaskill with Josh Hawley was the year that voters resoundingly rejected Right to Work legislation that aligned with Hawley’s politics. 

It helps Republicans that they have largely avoided taking public stances on some of their less popular policies. When Donald Trump was asked how he would be voting on Florida’s abortion amendment this year, he evaded the question. Despite a pretty clearly anti-union voting record, Josh Hawley has adopted pro-labor posturing and claimed to be a representative of the working class.

Donald Trump, in nearly a decade as a public political candidate, has consistently run as an oppositional candidate, even when he was the incumbent president. By running as an agitator, it shielded Trump from the single most obvious criticism one could levy at him: a complete lack of actual ideas for how to improve the country. In 2024, his speeches were primarily an airing of personal grievances—anger at the media or at his political rivals, but to the extent that he discussed actual political issues, he criticized Democrats for being soft on border control (while simultaneously strong-arming the party into shutting down bipartisan legislation regarding the southern border), criticizing trans women in sports (while, mercifully, not offering any sort of plan to mitigate this—just kind of plastering photos of some of the most vulnerable people in the country on ads and pointing and laughing), and vaguely saying “The economy” and gesturing wildly with the seemingly correct understanding that this would be enough.

I was not alive the last time a president was replaced with a president of the same political party. The margins of victory in presidential elections have largely narrowed—that a presidential candidate in 1984 won just one state (plus the District of Columbia) seems impossible by modern standards—but the end result of the 1984 election was not a permanent Reagan Republican majority but rather enough of a wave for precisely one more electoral victory before a loss of power.

In 1984, in a story from the world of music but one which intersects more with politics than most, the Bruce Springsteen album Born in the USA was released. Although many of the edges from Springsteen’s previous album, Nebraska, had been sanded off and the production was considerably glossier, it was still a broadly cynical album, most famously through the album’s title track, a (fictional) first-person account of a disenchanted Vietnam War veteran. In the forty years since its release, the song “Born in the USA” has become infamous for its misappropriation in politics—despite Springsteen’s well-known liberal politics and perhaps now billions of “actually ‘Born in the USA’ is about how America is bad, not a lot of people realize that’” takes, it is still used by Republicans as a patriotic anthem. This is its ultimate legacy.

But just because “Born in the USA” is a critique of conservatives does not mean that it is a celebration of liberals—it was Democratic president Lyndon Johnson who escalated American participation in Vietnam, after all. The nameless protagonist of “Born in the USA”, if based loosely on Ron Kovic, almost certainly did not vote for Ronald Reagan, but he probably didn’t vote for Walter Mondale, either. The particulars of 1984 presidential politics were not the resonant theme of the song; cynicism was. A belief that the American Dream, the idyllic world where merely working hard would get one everything they could reasonably expect, was crumbling. Despite Ronald Reagan’s massive Electoral College margins, it wasn’t as though he was universally beloved—Mondale did receive over 40% of the vote—and his “it’s morning in America” optimism was never built to last.

Despite the persistent use of the word “Hope”, Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign was, in the broad sense of American politics, cynical. Now, to be clear: I think that cynicism was completelyfounded—when the country has been ruled for eight years by a guy defined primarily by war crimes and a lack of responsiveness to the immediate needs of the American people, you should have a healthy dose of cynicism. Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016 was every bit as cynical, albeit in a way that I found off-putting. Joe Biden, even with all of his hopelessly naïve talk about healing the nation, was fundamentally running on an adversarial message—his primary selling point in the Democratic primaries was not his wealth of experience and certainly was not the specifics of his agenda: it was that he could beat Donald Trump. 

Americans take an odd sense of pride of being unaware of anything outside of our own borders. Single-payer health care or restrictions on individual citizens buying murder machines would not work and we must debate whether this would be the case rather than looking at the many actual, empirical examples around the world demonstrating that they would. But the signs pointed to a strong anti-incumbency sentiment all around the world, because inflation was not a uniquely American problem. Left-wing and right-wing governments were criticized for inflation, which existed no matter what fiscal policies specific governments implemented because inflation was not inherently caused by spending nor austerity but by the fact that the world spent over a year with minimal economic activity around the world because millions of people were dying in a global pandemic. A pandemic that was exacerbated by wildly disproportionate cases in the United States, where the right-wing federal government refused to take proper precautions because they wanted to keep short-term economic indicators looking good. It worked.

Donald Trump will likely get favorable marks on the economy once he takes office because the economy is doing well, just as he did in 2017. And if the second Trump term goes anything like the first one, the Republicans will almost certainly lose in 2028 because Donald Trump doesn’t have any plans. His primary motivation is to stay out of jail. But the ripple effect is going to be massive. Even if Trump’s laziness means that some of his worst plans never come to fruition, he will almost certainly appoint a majority of the United States Supreme Court. That is going to impede progress in the United States for generations.

We are already inundated with a bevvy of incredibly obtuse takes about how Democrats lost the election by capitulating to Never Trump Republicans—the reason Joe Biden dropped out is because he was on track to lose in a landslide, and the fundamentals that led to that never changed. Kamala Harris ran a pretty good, if imperfect, campaign. Donald Trump ran an absolutely terrible campaign, and it did not matter. And as deflating as it is that all sorts of unpopular collateral damage will come as a result of Trump’s re-election, this is simply a visceral reaction to our dissatisfaction less with Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or progressivism, but with the knowledge that the America we were promised is never going to be available for most of us. The result of this anger will be unpopular and destructive, but it’s the result on which we landed.

Until next time.

The electoral college was not built for politics like this

Like so many institutions of American power, the Electoral College is based on the understanding that politicians will ultimately stand up for what is right and not for what is convenient for them. It is probably worth remembering that when the Constitution was written, American political parties functionally did not exist, so the notion of political factions pulling levers when convenient did not widely exist. When the Supreme Court had a vacancy, the president would simply appoint the best man for the job, the Senate would surely approve the nomination, and everybody would continue as normal.

There has always been an artificial imbalance between the Electoral College and popular sentiment around individual elections, even when the two do tend to strongly correlate. The insistence of the American South that disenfranchised Black voters, owned as property at the time, should count as citizens for the purpose of representation led to the absurd compromise, built on the premise that the truth must always be somewhere in the middle even if one party is barely pretending to act in good faith, that the enslaved would count as three-fifths of a person. Even setting aside the tilting of the scale that counting both proportional representatives and disproportional senators (again, the truth must be somewhere in the middle) towards the Electoral College causes, this created white electorates in Slave States wielding disproportionate individual power. This was arguably exacerbated in the period between Reconstruction and the 1960s, when Black voters were functionally kept from voting but they still counted when determining how many electoral votes the white majority received when they inevitably voted for those who would maintain the status quo.

The Electoral College has never been necessary, though it has rarely had a major effect on the results of presidential elections—between 1888 and 2000, every Electoral College winner also won the national popular vote. In 2000, the absurdity of the system came into full view for the American people when the result came down to the 25 electoral votes in Florida. Much has been written in great depth about irregularities and political corruption around the state, but two things are rarely disputed: the margin of victory in Florida was extremely narrow, and Al Gore won the national popular vote. The final tally in Florida was 537, less than a tenth of the margin of victory for Gore in Wisconsin. Had 538 of Gore’s Wisconsin voters moved to Florida, Al Gore would’ve won the election. Had all 5,708 of Al Gore’s margin of victory plus one moved from Wisconsin to Florida, Al Gore would’ve won the election.

For all of George W. Bush’s many flaws as a president, his 2000 campaign was a relatively moderate one—he cited the need for education reform in poorer areas and stressed the virtues of immigration. But the 2000 election marked a turning point in American politics not only because of how absurdly close the final tally was, but because of how much focus there was on the electoral map itself, a color-coded representation of electoral vote distribution with Democrats represented in blue and Republicans represented in red, a random color choice (uncalled states were white—red, white, and blue) that alternated every year and in this particular case contrasted with typical western color conventions which mark left-wing parties in red and conservative parties in blue. Because of the attention paid to Florida, these colors would become permanent fixtures. At the very first major party primary after the 2000 election, the 2004 Democratic National Convention, then-little-known Illinois state senator Barack Obama referred (with animosity to political divisions) to red states and blue states and everybody watching the convention at Boston’s FleetCenter and across the nation knew what he was referencing.

2000 exposed the anti-democratic (small d very intentional) nature of the Electoral College, but it did little to impact George W. Bush’s governance. The attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 was not an attack on a blue state—it was an attack on America. In the most notable case of George W. Bush being accused of political favoritism, the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, it was regarding damage in a state that had voted for George W. Bush twice. Although residents of rural America, which mostly did not vote for him, would often accuse Barack Obama of elitism, this rarely manifested in concrete policy favoritism towards blue cities.

And then came Donald Trump.

On an organizational level, going beyond Trump’s own base impulses, the strategy for the Republican Party in 2016 gravitated around swing states, those which may have been won by narrow margins by Barack Obama but might flip from blue to red on the political map with a less popular Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, heading the presidential ticket. I do not begrudge the team for doing this—they were simply playing the game they had been tasked to play. And while Donald Trump has falsely claimed voter fraud is the reason he lost the popular vote by nearly three million votes, there is something to the idea that by focusing on swing states, such as Michigan or Wisconsin, he neglected to campaign in larger states where he could have padded his popular vote total. But this was the first time in modern history where a candidate truly and decisively won the popular vote—a 2.1% margin was barely smaller than the margin by which George W. Bush won re-election in 2004—and failed to win the presidency.

The problem, not in terms of political races but in terms of political execution, is that Donald Trump did ally himself primarily with states that had helped him win. When wildfires ran rampant in California, a state which Trump had decisively lost, Trump withheld federal aid until it was explained to him that more people had voted for him in Orange County, California than had voted for him in Iowa. When Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico, a territory which is home to over three million Americans but zero electoral votes, Donald Trump withheld aid for months. When the COVID-19 pandemic first struck down in the United States, primarily in Democratic-leaning coastal states such as Washington and New York, many Trump surrogates framed the virus as confined to blue cities and thus less consequential.

In the 2020 presidential election, 81,283,501 people voted for Joe Biden. 74,223,975 people voted for Donald Trump. 66,208,929 people, more than had voted for any prior presidential candidate aside from 2008 Barack Obama, voted for a candidate who did not win their home state. The state in which Donald Trump received the most votes was the aforementioned, neglected California. The states in which Joe Biden received the second and third-most votes were Florida and Texas, both of which were won by Donald Trump and are expected to be won by Trump again in 2024.

In addition to the fact that each state, regardless of size, has two senators, imbalance in the electoral college is caused by population shifts over the course of the decade in which electoral votes are assigned. In Florida, there was one electoral vote for every 381,636.41 voters; in Alaska and Wyoming (Trump states) and the District of Columbia (a Biden territory), there was one electoral vote for less than every 120,000 voters.

Supporters of the Electoral College have long advocated that without it, large states would control elections and small states would be absorbed into the electoral stew. But consider the gap in attention paid to Arizona, a narrowly decided Biden state with 11 electoral votes, and Tennessee, a state with 11 electoral votes that swung more heavily for Trump than any other state. Arizona was a major prize, highly coveted by both parties—in 2024, Senator Mark Kelly was frequently cited as a potential Kamala Harris running mate based largely on his ability to win voters in Arizona. Meanwhile, Tennessee was effectively ignored; neither Tennessee senators Marsha Blackburn nor Bill Hagerty received any serious consideration to be Donald Trump’s running mate in 2024 partially because it made no tactical political sense.

That the Republican Party hosted a rally on Sunday at Madison Square Garden, in the heart of Manhattan, was much-mocked by political journalists who noted that New York, particularly New York City, is not considered up for grabs in 2024. These pundits are not incorrect from a tactical perspective, but this is a referendum on the political system that campaigning in a city with over eight million people is considered a tactical misfire. More residents in New York City voted for Donald Trump than did residents of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming combined. Both Brooklyn and Queens had more Trump voters than Wyoming or Alaska. Only two “red states”—Texas and Florida—had more Republican voters than the state of New York.

And because New York does not matter from a political standpoint in 2024, where Kamala Harris will almost certainly sail to victory—although the state party has been in disarray of late, Biden’s 23.13% margin of victory should be a bridge too far one election later—Republicans are comfortable dismissing the people who live there. In addition to, most notably, the residents of Puerto Rico, the nearly 600,000 New York City residents of Puerto Rican heritage are so disposable to them that the Republicans can trot out a comedian to open for their presidential candidate, refer to the island as a pile of trash, and reasonably expect the political consequences to be negligible.

The American Electoral College is functionally a game, giving a handful of relatively small states the nation’s political power. By placing all of a state’s electors to one candidate, there is great incentive to win that state, but not great incentive to increase one’s margin in that state. Ironically, two otherwise small, fairly partisan states have given themselves disproportionate political power by eschewing the winner-take-all model—Nebraska and Maine. Although Nebraska is a blood-red state as a whole, the city of Omaha is a liberal bastion and while its suburbs and exurbs give its congressional district a more purple hue, Nebraska’s second congressional district will receive far more attention from political candidates than any of, say, Missouri’s congressional districts will receive at the presidential level. Conversely, while Maine as a whole tends to vote Democratic at the presidential level, its second district, the more rural of the state’s two, has a more Republican lean.

The idea that Wyoming would be ignored if elections were determined by a national popular vote is not itself incorrect, but the idea that it would be any more ignored does not carry much weight. With a national popular vote, 66,208,929 people whose votes were not a part of the 2020 election would be included. The Electoral College is a system whose very existence is based on precedent—if we had a national popular vote and somebody proposed a system in which census data up to a decade old influences a mostly-but-not-exactly system of representation, they would be laughed out of the room.

The reason that this stupid system continues to exist is because it does have a partisan lean—Republicans have particularly sought out less densely populated states, and with the exceptions of Florida and North Carolina, the eight states in the top ten of least proportionally represented voted for Joe Biden. One of the more openly cynical arguments made by Mitch McConnell in his mostly admirable case against challenging certain states in the 2020 election was that he expected his fellow Republicans to stand by these results because he understands that while these results do not assure Republican victory, they make one considerably more likely.

What is the road forward? Well, if Texas—slowly but surely becoming a little bit more progressive every year—is narrowly won by a Democrat in the near future, it is within the realm of possibility that a Democrat could win the Electoral College but not the popular vote (though Republicans have only won the popular vote one time since I was born in 1989). In theory, states can break up their electoral college votes like Maine and Nebraska (which functionally offset each other), but the Democratic majority in California or New York is not going to sign off on a system in which they receive a majority-but-not-all of the votes when Republican-led states will still give all of their votes to a Republican candidate.

The Electoral College is a textbook example of the prisoner’s dilemma. It would take collective action to upend this system, and it would benefit American democracy to do so, but if one side relents, they acquiesce to the other side. But in the meantime, we see a political system where the parties, especially the Republicans, have gamed it enough that anti-democratic results are inevitable.

The left shouldn’t fear bringing up January 6th

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when it was in the wake of Donald Trump’s 2016 election that the hyper-online concept of the hashtag-resistance began, but it didn’t take long. Legions of people who had either shied away from potentially divisive political conversations (or were easily able to forget their previous opposition to George W. Bush) stylized themselves as freedom fighters in what was sure to be a uniquely toxic era. Mostly, it was a coping mechanism—while anybody can surely admit when pressed that tweeting #resist is not a sincere form of activism, it wasn’t as though it was acting as a substitute for anything other than posting about one’s latest meal. There were inevitable feelings of helplessness, exacerbated by an administration that barely pretended to have interest in governing for those Americans who voted for Hillary Clinton.

There was, and is, an easy counterpoint that can be made from the political left—for as off-putting as Trump’s decorum could be, it wasn’t as though his practical agenda differed dramatically from boilerplate American conservatism. Trump ran on fantastical promises that inevitably did not come to fruition—a pledge to save American jobs in increasingly obsolete industries, a plan lacking even a first step to solve the American opioid crisis, and most infamously, a promise to build a massive wall across the southern border and force Mexico to pay for it. Trump, of course, did not accomplish any of these things, but he did get Congress to pass massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. His first three years were mostly par for the course for a Republican administration: even, in my opinion, his most egregious mistake, a lack of response to Hurricane Maria clearly inspired by his lack of belief that Puerto Rico is not really part of America, did not result in materially less efficient results than the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina. Bush mostly handled things, despite Kanye West’s comments to the contrary, with visible (if performative) empathy, while Trump’s idea of assistance was to throw toilet paper at the displaced like they were throwed rolls at Lambert’s Cafe, but when the end result is ultimately homelessness, small gestures of caring probably don’t matter that much.

From an administrative perspective, the low point of the Trump years was the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. To be clear, there were many factors beyond Trump’s control which were inevitably going to put the United States behind much of the western world in stopping the disease’s spread—stopping the disease relied heavily on individuals looking out for others, and treating the disease relied heavily on a functional health care system, and neither of those things are strengths of America before, during, or after Trump. But ultimately, it was so much worse than it needed to be. And the primary driver for this was that Donald Trump was motivated to win another term as president. A voluntary pause of the economy, which would destroy the metrics by which many undecided voters ultimately make their electoral decisions, was inconceivable.

When it came time to vote in November, most Americans saw an economy which had suffered simultaneously with a much higher mortality rate than the rest of the world. And while Donald Trump received a historic number of votes—more than any candidate prior to 2020 ever had—Joe Biden received even more. More relevantly from a practical perspective, Joe Biden had also won by the Electoral College, the bizarre and absurd but ultimately more significant system by which Americans actually choose their president. It took four days for major television networks to declare a winner, but this was more the result of an unusually high number of mailed ballots (many of which could not legally be counted until polls closed in their respective states) than of the race being particularly close—Biden had defeated Trump by an identical margin to Trump’s 2016 victory in the Electoral College, and it was the largest margin of victory by a candidate in the popular vote since 2008.

In 2016, in the very first election of Donald Trump’s political career, Ted Cruz won the Iowa caucuses, and Trump responded by claiming that the fix was in. Ultimately, nothing came of this—Cruz retained his Iowa victory while Trump eventually ran away with the Republican nomination. By the time of the Trump/Hillary Clinton general election showdown, when asked if he would honor the results win or lose, Trump pledged to accept the election results if he won. Even in the wake of his victory, Trump claimed that he had actually won the 2016 popular vote but that corrupt Democrats had fixed the vote (as much as the Democrats of the 2010s could be questioned for their political acumen, “rigging an election that does not matter rather than the one that does” seems pretty dubious even by their standards). When Donald Trump claimed that the 2020 vote had been fixed, nobody who had paid attention could be surprised—no, he hadn’t done this before, but it was only because he had never needed to do so.

Almost immediately after January 6, 2021, there was a specific brand of norms fetishist that compared what happened at the United States Capitol to 9/11, and let me be very clear—from a perspective of tangible effect, this comparison is downright offensive. Not to diminish the deaths and injuries that occurred on that surreal Wednesday afternoon and evening, but in terms of pure scale, it was not close. It is ultimately an apples and oranges comparison. The real event to which January 6^th could be compared reasonably in semi-modern American history is the Watergate scandal, the event which forced the lone resignation in the history of the American presidency. And yet, such a comparison seems offensive in the opposite direction. What Richard Nixon did—helping to cover up espionage committed by his political cronies—was a bad thing. What Donald Trump did was exponentially worse.

The only comparison in American history that seems even remotely close to what Trump did was the outright treason of John Tyler, the former president who served in the Confederate congress. And by the time that happened, John Tyler’s career in American politics was essentially over. Donald Trump is essentially a coin-flip to be the forty-seventh president of the United States. This after, with no tangible evidence and not even particularly compelling anecdotal evidence, Donald Trump not only refused to personally admit that Joe Biden had defeated him, but compelled his most fervent supporters to risk their own lives and freedom. He threatened to withhold critical support to Georgia governor Brian Kemp and secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, extremely conservative politicians by any definition of the word other than “ones with the most fealty specifically, individually, to Donald Trump”, if they couldn’t uncover the 11,780 votes that would have been necessary to make Trump victorious in Georgia. When the violent mob that Trump had incited chanted that Mike Pence, an extraordinarily sycophantic vice president for Trump during the first 99.42% of his term, should be hanged for his refusal to overturn the Electoral College results, Trump agreed with the mob.

Conservative Republicans, in the moment, condemned the violence, even if Donald Trump has proceeded to attempt to gaslight Americans into believing that what they could easily see play out on their televisions was not reality. But if what these Republicans were claiming—that a massive conspiracy had undermined the sincere will of the people in order to install an unelected commander-in-chief to the nation’s highest office—then committing property damage and boldly asserting that we would not stand for such a miscarriage of justice would be entirely justifiable. The problem, of course, is that Joe Biden had won the election. There were rightfully recounts in close states, and they further established that Joe Biden had won. Donald Trump, however, was incapable of admitting that he had lost, just as he had in the 2016 Iowa caucuses and just as he almost surely would have had Hillary Clinton won the Electoral College that November.

That Donald Trump was not convicted in his second impeachment trial, which would have formally prohibited him from holding office ever again, is a definitive example that convicting a president in the Senate is impossible in the modern era without a supermajority holding power. There was some case against voting to convict at Trump’s first impeachment trial; at the second, it was the equivalent of O.J. Simpson’s murder trial if the murders had also been caught on camera. And while all 48 Democrats and two independents (Angus King and Bernie Sanders, both of whom caucus with Democrats) voted to convict, only seven of the fifty Republicans in office voted for conviction. Of the seven, three have since left the Senate, one has announced his retirement at the end of his term, two have yet to face re-election, and only Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has survived into another term. There were grave consequences for many House Republicans who had voted for impeachment—most famously, Wyoming representative Liz Cheney, a hyper-conservative politician, lost badly in the 2022 Republican primaries as a consequence of her vote for impeachment.

To be clear, Democrats should not run for office solely on January 6^th as a political identity. While I believe in giving credit to the Liz Cheneys and Mitt Romneys of the world for doing the right thing, that doesn’t mean I believe that they should not be competed against for a litany of other reasons. But turning January 6^th into the territory of the corniest of #Resistance libs is completely missing the point. This isn’t a matter of Donald Trump tweeting out something crass—this is a matter of Donald Trump outright prioritizing himself over the 81 million-plus people who contributed votes to Joe Biden’s winning 2020 campaign. My senator, noted coward Josh Hawley, should be forced forever to answer for the fact that he objected to recognizing the votes of Americans due to political expedience, and my representative, Ann Wagner, although she gets some modicum of credit for voting to recognize all electoral votes, should forever be forced to wear her “no” vote on Trump’s second impeachment. Only two of the ten Republicans from the 2020 class who voted to impeach Trump survived into a 2022 term; it is appalling that these representatives received such a backlash for doing the right thing while Republicans who catered to Donald Trump, some of whom had the audacity to claim that impeachment inquiries were unnecessary because Donald Trump was clearly done with his political life.

It sucks knowing that if justice is served and Donald Trump once again loses a presidential election, he isn’t going to concede. I am not even going to add a “probably not” caveat—he has proven repeatedly that he will not do this. He is once again going to encourage his supporters to fight the unfair system, and the only thing that might stop us from something on a 1/6/21 scale is that somebody other than Donald Trump will be in charge of dispatching security. But this is the point we’ve reached.

Grading the DNC Roll Call Playlist

When it was announced that Joe Biden was not going to seek re-election, I thought I might get to see the first interesting roll call in my lifetime at a convention. And then everybody coalesced quickly around Kamala Harris and I abandoned my dream. But then they brought out a DJ and it somehow worked.

On a political level, turning the Democratic National Convention into a party was a good idea--complaining about Donald Trump isn't as fun as being genuinely excited about one's candidate. But as somebody who is fascinated by politics and music, I feel so seen.

Here are my grades for every song played during the roll call. Admittedly there were a couple I missed so if I got any wrong I apologize!

Alabama. "Sweet Home Alabama"--Lynyrd Skynyrd. F. The politics of Lynyrd Skynyrd are famously complicated--they were Jimmy Carter-loving, George Wallace-hating Democrats who are today mostly embraced by, and mostly embracing personally, Republicans. The real problem here is that Lynyrd Skynyrd isn't even from Alabama. I could give this a pass under some circumstances, but Alabama has plenty of other songs to play. Play "Machine Gun" by Commodores and call it a day.

Alaska. "Feel It Still"--Portugal, the Man. A. Look, the bench of songs by Alaskan artists that would get people excited is really thin. I would have preferred "Live in the Moment" but at least they didn't go with Jewel.

American Samoa. "Edge of Glory"--Lady Gaga. D. It's a fun enough song but if you're going to have the choice of every American song ever if you aren't committing to your own territory, I'm holding you to an extremely high standard.

Arizona. "The Edge of Seventeen"--Stevie Nicks. B. It's an anthem and it's by an artist from Arizona. What more do you want?

Arkansas. "Don't Stop"--Fleetwood Mac. C. It's a great song and an iconic political song, but going with the Clinton song in 2024 feels exhausting. That was 32 years ago, guys. It can almost run for president itself.

California. "The Next Episode"--Dr. Dre/California Love--2Pac/Alright--Kendrick Lamar/Not Like Us--Kendrick Lamar. A. I guess it's weird that the candidate from Oakland didn't go with a single NoCal artist but back-to-back-to-back-to-back bangers will have to do.

Colorado. "September"--Earth, Wind and Fire. B. Everybody loves it and Philip Bailey is from Colorado, but this is not a band formed or defined by Colorado so it's a little confusing. "Rocky Mountain Way" by Joe Walsh or OneRepublic or something could've been fine, too.

Connecticut. "Signed Sealed Delivered"--Stevie Wonder. C. An absolutely baffling choice. But I guess Connecticut isn't exactly known for hitmakers.

Delaware. "Higher Love"--Kygo/Whitney Houston. D. Either pick a song Joe Biden would like or pick a George Thorogood song.

Democrats Abroad. "Love Train"--The O'Jays. B. People all over the world are joining hands. I get it.

District of Columbia. "Let Me Clear My Throat"--DJ Kool. B. It's a party and they're from DC. A B is the minimum grade this could possibly receive.

Florida. "I Won't Back Down"--Tom Petty. A. Iconic song, iconic political song (Republicans have been receiving cease and desist orders for decades for it), Florida musician and a song with specific ties due to it being sung at Florida football games. No notes.

Georgia. "Turn Down for What"/"Get Low"--Lil Jon. A. On sheer energy this one was an A, but realistically it's an A+ once Lil Jon himself showed up. No song checked every box this thoroughly.

Guam. "Espresso"--Sabrina Carpenter. C. Uhhh, okay. Fun song, though.

Hawaii. "24K Magic"--Bruno Mars. C. Going with Bruno instead of like Don Ho is the right call but just go with Uptown Funk. I know it's technically a Mark Ronson song, but also nobody is going to complain.

Idaho. "Private Idaho"--The B-52s. B. It's pretty incongruous with the state itself, but it's also a bop.

Illinois. "Sirius"--Alan Parsons Project. A. No, they aren't from Illinois. They aren't even from America. But it is synonymous with the Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls and, especially playing in the United Center, is simply beautiful. Though they should've probably donated it to Nebraska, who also uses the song and is much more desperate.

Indiana--"Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough"--Michael Jackson. B. Jackson vs. Mellencamp is a tough decision--I enjoy the music of both, and while Mellencamp has the distinct advantage of not being credibly accused of pedophilia, picking an extremely white guy for boomers isn't a great message (even if he himself is an ardent political liberal). Also, they picked the (I think I mean this) best Michael Jackson song.

Iowa. "Celebration"--Kool and the Gang. D. Not sure what Slipknot song would've worked here but picking a song this generically obvious is a letdown.

Kansas. "Carry On Wayward Son"--Kansas. A. I don't even like this song. But, like, it's obviously the correct song.

Kentucky. "First Class"--Jack Harlow. C. I guess Harlow is cooler than other Kentucky natives, and it's not like Cage the Elephant was going to move the needle. Maybe go "Lovin on Me"? Not exactly an artist who makes convention-ready jams.

Louisiana. "All I Do Is Win"--DJ Khaled. C. He's from Louisiana but he's mostly associated with Miami, so I might've gone a different direction. But apparently this is also an LSU song.

Maine. "Shut Up and Dance"--Walk the Moon. D. Options were limited in Maine but again, you could've picked anything if you were gonna go with a band from Cincinnati.

Maryland. "Respect"--Aretha Franklin. D. Look, I'm not going to be the one talking smack on friggin Aretha Franklin. But she's not from there. This song has no discernible connection to Maryland. And it's not like Baltimore is lacking in cultural imprint. Weird choice!

Massachusetts--"I'm Shipping Up to Boston"--Dropkick Murphys. A. Yes, it's a cliche, but there's a reason Martin Scorsese finally won Best Director when he decided to use this song twenty times in a movie. It's a killer.

Michigan. "Lose Yourself"--Eminem. B. Look, it's a banger. Even if it's the kind of song that is the one rap song some people know, it's not a bad one to know! But also, Michigan has so many classic songs by artists of color (including but not limited to Motown) so bequeathing Stevie Wonder was kind of odd. But this is still better than most states have.

Minnesota. "Kiss"/"1999"--Prince. A. Playing something off the album "Tim" by the Replacements would've been a little too spot-on. Yeah, they could've gone with a deeper cut, but these songs are classics for a reason.

Mississippi. "Twistin' the Night Away"--Sam Cooke. B. Sure.

Missouri. "Good Luck, Babe!"--Chappell Roan. A. As a lifelong Missourian, I was dreading Nelly. I would've settled for Chuck Berry. But they went with an actual contemporary song with actual popularity at this very moment. Love it! And an explicitly gay song for a red state!

Montana. "American Woman"--Lenny Kravitz. D. The original artist is The Guess Who, who are from Winnipeg, which is close to Minnesota and vaguely close to Montana. This is all I've got.

Nebraska. "Firework"--Katy Perry. F. Why? Just...why?

Nevada. "Mr. Brightside"--The Killers. A. When you pick your state's greatest native banger, you've made a solid choice. No arguments from me.

New Hampshire. "Don't Stop Believin'"--Journey. F. An absolute cliche and an artist that is absolutely nowhere near New Hampshire on the map. Pass.

New Jersey. "Born in the USA"--Bruce Springsteen. C. Its use by the right has been mocked for years, but to be clear, it's not exactly a song about how great Democrats are, either. But also it's a definitively New Jersey song by a New Jersey legend so I'm not going to play dumb about why they went with this.

New Mexico. "Confident"--Demi Lovato. B. Did you know Demi Lovato is from Albuquerque? I did not know this until today. Salute.

New York. "Empire State of Mind"--Jay-Z. D. Jay-Z has a million bangers about New York and they go with this boring nonsense.

North Carolina. "Raise Up"--Petey Pablo. B. A generation ago, this would be "Carolina On My Mind" by James Taylor after he got passed over yesterday. But this ain't your boring uncle's Democratic Party.

North Dakota. "Girl on Fire"--Alicia Keys. D. I guess because Kamala Harris is a woman? If you wanted to honor her, you should've snagged one of those California songs.

Northern Mariana Islands. "Ain't No Mountain High Enough"--Marvin Gaye and Tami Terrell. C. I don't know anything about Northern Mariana Islands. Maybe this is a perfect fit for them. I don't know. It's fine.

Ohio. "Green Light"--John Legend. C. Well, he's from there. I might've gone with "Cleveland Rocks"--heck, the version most people know at this point is by a band called Presidents of the United States of America. Could've gone with some other Ohio song too, but I guess it doesn't matter.

Oklahoma. "Ain't Goin Down til the Sun Goes Up"--Garth Brooks. A. He's certainly the state's biggest star and he's been a longtime Democratic supporter and it's a fun song. What more do you need?

Oregon. "Float On"--Modest Mouse. B. From Oregon. A popular riff. Probably the most popular song of that type of Oregon band.

Pennsylvania. "Black and Yelow"--Wiz Khalifa. A. A Pennsylvania artist is one thing but an explicitly pro-Pittsburgh song, an area that is arguably the most important metro area in the entire election? You know what it is.

Puerto Rico. "Despacito"--Luis Fonsi. A. This sounds insane but is this the single most significant pop culture thing from Puerto Rico ever? Like, it was a massive song in the English-speaking world. I can't even imagine how big of a song it was in the Spanish-speaking world. 

Rhode Island. "Shake It Off"--Taylor Swift. D. Deeply confusing choice. Even Pennsylvania didn't go with a Taylor Swift song!

South Carolina. "Get Up"--James Brown. B. He's more associated with Georgia at this point, but James Brown is a South Carolinian who made some of the most widely liked music in American history. Solid choice.

South Dakota. "What I Like About You"--The Romantics. D. I like the song but it feels so strange without any local connection to go with this song. They're from Michigan but it feels like they could be from like Utah or something, and in that case this would be a good choice.

Tennessee. "9 to 5"--Dolly Parton. A. White liberals need to chill the hell out about Dolly Parton from time to time but the song that's inherently about working hard is the right choice. Even I can't dispute this one.

Texas. "Texas Hold'Em"--Beyonce. A. Texas Democrats had to choose whether to honor their large nonwhite contingent or the state's country music legacy and they managed to do both.

Utah. "Animal"--Neon Trees. B. It's not "Everybody Talks" so I approve. It is funny for me to imagine that Neon Trees might be a huge deal in Utah, though.

Vermont. "Stick Season"--Noah Kahan. B. It's a good song but it's like an anti-bop. But he's from Vermont! At least it wasn't Phish!

Virgin Islands. "VI to the Bone"--Mic Love. B. I've never heard this song in my life but shouts to a territory picking a true local artist.

Virginia. "The Way I Are"--Timbaland. A. Virginia has more cool music than you might realize. They could've gone with Pharrell. They could've gone (relatedly) with Missy Elliott. They could've appealed to 2024 and picked Tommy Richman and that would've been fine. But Timbaland is simply wild in all the best ways. Thumbs up.

Washington. "Can't Hold Us"--Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. C. I'm done with getting getting mad at Macklemore--I don't think he's great but I do think he's sincere. This isn't some Post Malone-style culture vulture. But I'm so sick of this being the only Washington song. There's so many other options.

West Virginia. "Take Me Home Country Roads"--John Denver. B. I am an all-time hater of this song being used at St. Louis sporting events because, well, St. Louis is quite famously not in West Virginia. But even though John Denver isn't from there, it's undeniably a song about West Virginia. Could've maybe gone with "Lovely Day" if you wanted to pick Bill Withers or "Accidental Racist" if you wanted to pick the funniest possible choice, but this is good.

Wisconsin. "Jump Around"--House of Pain. A. Wisconsin is weirdly lacking musically, hence why Green Bay Packers broadcasts constantly play Steve Miller Band. And "Take the Money and Run" is more of a Trump message, so going with the hype song for the University of Wisconsin is a great call. I don't even like the song in a vacuum but sometimes you just need a jock jam.

Wyoming. "I Gotta Feeling"--Black Eyed Peas. C. I don't care for the song and they are obviously not from Wyoming, but as the last song of the rotation (although they went back to Minnesota and California for the sake of the ticket), this does work, as corny as it is.

Donald Trump is a political loser

An underrated phenomenon in American electoral politics is the disadvantage that political parties tend to have in presidential elections. Post-World War II, an imperfect but reasonable proxy for when the mass media age began, there have been seven cases of a political party winning two presidential elections in a row—Eisenhower, Kennedy/Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, W. Bush, and Obama. And in only one of those cases—George H.W. Bush succeeding Ronald Reagan—did the winner of the third election come from the same party as the winner of the first two.

There are, of course, some extenuating circumstances. Post-Watergate and post-Iraq/Katrina/economic collapse Republicans were so deeply unpopular that Gerald Ford and John McCain were likely drawing dead before the election began. But America was relatively prosperous and peaceful when it eschewed the vice presidents of Eisenhower and Clinton and a Secretary of State of Obama. Richard Nixon’s 1960 loss is perhaps the most instructive of the cases—he had the largest margin of defeat by electoral votes and was the only one to also lose the popular vote. And it wasn’t as though Dwight Eisenhower’s popularity tanked in his second term: the moment from the 1960 campaign that is most remembered today was the televised presidential debate in which John F. Kennedy appeared handsome and charming while Richard Nixon, by any reasonable standard a very intelligent man, looks sweaty and came across as standoffish. What America wanted was less of a political realignment and more of a national vibes shift.

When Hillary Clinton participated in her first election, for a Senate seat in the blue state (albeit, a less blue state than it is today) of New York, she was running essentially even with Republican New York mayor Rudy Giuliani when Giuliani, amidst a cancer diagnosis and a public divorce, abruptly dropped out of the race. Clinton eventually beat Republican Rick Lazio by 12.26% in a state that Al Gore carried by 24.98% in the presidential election. Clinton, as an incumbent in a strong 2006 for Democrats, won re-election handily, but she ran behind New York gubernatorial non-incumbent Eliot Spitzer. In 2008, she was the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, backed by most of the party establishment, but she lost to freshman senator Barack Obama. And then when she ran again in 2016, despite the overwhelming (and possibly nefarious) backing of the Democratic Party, she lost 23 of the 57 Democratic contests to the severely underfunded Bernie Sanders, a mid-seventies self-described socialist who never ran for office as a Democrat before.

I am not reciting Hillary Clinton’s electoral history as a means of dunking on her as a person nor as a civil servant—I think she is very obviously competent and was the subject of plenty of unfair (though quite a bit of fair) political criticism. But she was simply never successful as a political candidate. There is no evidence to suggest an ability to win elections that were not slam dunks.

In the single greatest victory of his political career, Donald Trump received nearly three million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. In a cycle where Republicans won by 1.1% over Democrats in House elections, Trump lost by 2.1%.

Obviously, the popular vote was irrelevant in determining who would become the 45th president of the United States, but the popular vote did still happen, and it marked the first time that Hillary Clinton ever outperformed the Democratic Party. But this popular vote loss was still one of Trump’s better electoral performances. Despite candidates such as Ted Cruz, John Kasich, and Marco Rubio dropping out along the way, Trump still received less than 45% of Republican votes. In 2020, he once again was outrun by Republicans in House elections en route to the biggest popular vote defeat by a major presidential candidate since 2008 while running against a former longtime political loser in Joe Biden.

The perception that Donald Trump is a good political candidate is largely based on two things, one of which is inaccurate and one of which is accurate. The former is that he keeps claiming everybody loves him—even before he encouraged his supporters and his vice president to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election under the presumption that he must have clearly won as a tautological result of his self-evident greatness. The latter is that Donald Trump’s supporters are passionate, which is true. The parts of rural Illinois I’ve driven through dozens of times to or from my wife’s family in Wisconsin have typically voted Republican, but Ron DeSantis wasn’t inspiring conservatives to paint murals on the roofs of their barns. They weren’t gathering in droves just to be a part of a Nikki Haley rally. But in an inversion of Richard Nixon’s “silent majority”, Trump supporters are the extremely loud ones. In a flip from the Obama era, it was Republicans who were relentless in online canvassing. Surely there are exceptions in Joe Biden’s family, for instance, but every Biden voter (and Clinton voter, and inevitable Kamala Harris voter) I have ever known does not view this as a central part of their identity. Even in the cases of two potential history-making candidates, and even in the case of those who wear their politics on their sleeves, the movements are built around a collective vision. The ones who brought down the house at a recent Harris rally in Georgia were Megan Thee Stallion and Quavo. Even if Trump did a better job of courting more hip celebrities, the star at any Trump rally will inevitably, always, be Donald Trump.

In modern American history, parties tend to jettison those who lost presidential elections from presidential politics. Even when they remain involved on a legislative level, such as Mitt Romney or John Kerry, there has never been a clamoring for them to run again. The last presidential loser to become a candidate again was Richard Nixon, who had the benefits of reassessing his political coalition over an eight year gap and of having mounted a much stronger campaign in 1960 than Barry Goldwater did in 1964. But Donald Trump hasn’t felt the need to reassess his approach because he has deluded himself into a belief that he actually is extremely popular, having won in two popular landslides if not for massive electoral corruption. To be clear it is possible, perhaps even probable, that Trump does not actually believe this line, but it is what he keeps telling anyone who will listen. He hasn’t made any effort to sway Joe Biden voters, and while in 2016 he at least made (vague) overtures to corporate outsourcing and the opioid epidemic, vowing to end these bad things that Barack Obama had not fixed, at this point, the entire Donald Trump campaign is centered around Donald Trump. When recently asked about his increasingly unpopular running mate J.D. Vance and whether he would be ready to take over as president if Trump were to die in office, he dismissed the notion that vice presidents actually matter. And in the mind of Donald Trump, the protagonist of his own reality and somebody for whom the world ends when his life does, this was probably a vanishingly rare example of him telling the absolute truth as he sees it.

Kamala Harris has not previously held a particularly strong reputation as a political candidate—not unlike Hillary Clinton, she won races in a dark blue state by somewhat less than you might expect margins. And in the last presidential election cycle, despite some pointed criticisms of Joe Biden in their first presidential debate, Harris 2020 didn’t even survive 2019. But she also found herself at a crossroads: she was not an unapologetic lefty like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, nor a committed centrist like Joe Biden or Pete Buttigieg; she didn’t even get the monopoly on a historic campaign given the presence of another woman in Warren (and to a lesser extent Amy Klobuchar) and an openly gay/historically young man in Buttigieg. In a ranked-choice voting scenario, where she would likely finish third on a ton of Sanders/Warren or Warren/Sanders ballots, Harris didn’t have a reasonable path forward.

The reason that Kamala Harris has a considerably better chance of becoming the 47th president than she did of becoming the Democratic nominee for the 46th is because unlike in 2020, she now has the chance to run against a historically unpopular presidential candidate who has made no efforts to change. This is a man who got *shot at a political rally*, got a photo opportunity that a PR team could only dream to concoct, and his popularity remained stagnant. Donald Trump has been the main character in America: The Series for almost a decade; people have made up their minds. And the verdict seemingly is what it always has been—America doesn’t like Donald Trump.

So does the right care about the integrity of women’s sports or not?

The participation of trans women in women’s sports is one of those issues where I have some sympathy, in the beginning, for those on the political right. After all, prohibiting trans women from participating is not rejecting their rights to live their lives as they choose—it is about preserving a level playing field.
But the right has so co-opted this issue that the rules which are actually in place to preserve the competitive integrity of women’s sports are ignored. Contrary to the entire premise of the bizarre Daily Wire film Lady Ballers, I (a cisgender male) could not claim that I am a woman and join the WNBA (aside from the fact that I’m not good enough at basketball to do so)—women’s sports leagues have long engaged in testosterone regulation in order to assure that trans women—people assigned male at birth who transition to and identify as female—do not have an unfair competitive advantage. I admittedly do not have the biological knowledge or even scientific language fluency to dig into the nuances here—I merely want to establish that there arenuances here. I have heard smarter people than I am argue that people assigned male at birth who go through male puberty have size advantages that most people assigned female at birth do not have, and I am willing to hear out those arguments. I am not willing to hear out “guys are just gonna dress as women so they can dominate women’s sports”—this is demonstrably not the case.
High-level women’s sports have been in a battle for respect my entire life—it was once considered perfectly acceptable to ridicule women’s basketball or soccer as an inferior product that nobody in their rights minds would watch. And what seems to have led to an uptick in popularity, one which predates the phenomenon known as Caitlin Clark, is that women’s sports have been marketed less as a cause—a good thing for good liberals to applaud as a means for equality—and more as a fun thing to watch which features high-level athletes who truly care about the results. Caitlin Clark is a perfect example of this—it would be naïve to pretend that her whiteness and her girl-next-door looks do not play a role in her marketability, but she is hardly the first women’s basketball player to fit into those categories. What separates Caitlin Clark is her transcendent performance—the all-time leading scorer in NCAA Division I college basketball, male or female, she is an electrifying shooter who became notable for scoring on contested shots well beyond the three-point arc and is a brilliant passer. The most frequent comparison in the men’s game is Golden State Warriors future Hall of Famer Stephen Curry, and while Curry is a better defender, the parallels are not hard to see.
I am a fan of Caitlin Clark for the same reason I am a fan of Steph Curry (even if Warriors dynasty fatigue has complicated that somewhat)—she has an exciting style of play that is fun to watch. When the Indiana Fever drafted her at #1 overall in April’s WNBA Draft, it was the correct decision on basketball grounds.
But the transition to the professional game was a difficult one for Caitlin Clark. This is not unique to Clark—the WNBA is arguably the toughest major league in the United States to crack. There are only twelve teams—40% of what the NBA has—and because high-end salaries are far lower relative to the salaries of younger, cost-controller players than in major men’s leagues, teams have far less incentive for roster churn. Charli Collier, the #1 overall draft pick in the 2021 WNBA Draft, only lasted two seasons in the WNBA and has not played in the league since 2022. As maligned as Anthony Bennett was as a #1 overall draft pick in the NBA, he still lasted twice as long. The WNBA is brutally difficult—that Caitlin Clark is 15^th in the league in points per game and fourth in assists, in a world of fair expectations, would be considered an accomplishment.
The United States women’s basketball team has not lost a game in Olympic competition since 1992. They have not lost a competitive game at all in a full generation—since 2006. While the men’s team will enter Olympic play this summer as Gold Medal favorites, some of the best players in the world, including Nikola Jokic, Luka Doncic, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander will be playing on other teams; that’s not even to mention the potential terrifying French duo of Rudy Gobert and Victor Wembanyama. It is well within the realm of possibility that any of these guys could take over a game and defeat the United States. It would be astonishing for the women’s team to lose, as they have compiled a twelve-player roster intended to spark copious amounts of fear in any country so unfortunate as to have to compete against them.
Every player on the United States team has been a WNBA All-Star no fewer than two times. All but three players have been on the All-WNBA first team (and likely would have been had they not been forced to compete with their Team USA teammates) and only Kahleah Copper, a three-time All-Star and WNBA Finals MVP, has never made at least a second-team All-WNBA. Probably the worst player on the team in terms of current talent is Diana Taurasi, a forty-two year-old five-time Olympian with a credible WNBA GOAT case—ten first-team All-WNBAs plus four second-teams and an MVP award—who is largely there as a veteran leader (she is over eight years older than the next-oldest player on the team). The two most dominant players in the WNBA today, two-time MVPs A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart, will be there. This team is built for Dream Team-like dominance.
The Dream Team, the 1992 men’s Olympic basketball team that was the first to employ professional players and which dominated its competition, had its own share of roster controversies. The presences of Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, two players that are among the twelve greatest players of all-time (never mind the twelve greatest American players of 1992), were criticized as the two had been hobbled by health issues (Bird by back injuries; Johnson by his HIV diagnosis several months earlier). The absence of Isiah Thomas, the heated rival of team stalwart Michael Jordan, raised eyebrows. And arguably as infamously was the presence of Christian Laettner, who had recently completed his college career at Duke and had never played a minute in the NBA. He would eventually go on to a competent if uninspiring NBA career (he is the only member of the roster who is not in the Hall of Fame as an individual player), but he was purely ceremonial in the Summer of 1992. A final spot had come down to fellow recent college star Shaquille O’Neal, and while the future NBA legend Shaq would stick out less in hindsight, neither player was there to actually play meaningful minutes. They were simply representatives of the college game.
The men’s team had a similar spot in 2004, when Emeka Okafor made the roster. But unlike the Dream Team, this marked a low point for the United States team, as they had to settle for a Bronze Medal following losses to Puerto Rico, Lithuania, and Argentina in the tournament. From that point forward, the men’s team refocused and wasted roster spots were no longer tolerated. The women’s team has never faced that level of reckoning, but they have maintained that same competitive spirit. It’s not that they would refuse a college player so much as they are going to grab the twelve best players available to them and prepare to step on the throats of the competition. And Caitlin Clark is not one of those twelve players.
Had Caitlin Clark made the U.S. Olympic team, she would have been by far the youngest player on the team. Her absence has garnered headlines in a way that the absences of fellow recent #1 overall picks (both of whom have been All-Stars) Rhyne Howard and Aliyah Boston, or the absences of fellow 2024 draftees Cameron Brink and Angel Reese (both of whom would have filled a more pressing positional fit than Clark) have not. The youngest player on the roster serves as a pretty clean comp to Clark—New York Liberty star point guard Sabrina Ionescu. Like Clark, Ionescu bypassed super-programs like UConn or South Carolina and played college ball relatively close to home (in Ionescu’s case, hailing from the Bay Area and attending Oregon). Like Clark, Ionescu was a three-time all-conference collegiate player who went on to become the #1 overall pick in the WNBA Draft. Like Clark, Ionescu is known for her sensational shooting and leadership at the point guard position. Like Clark, not that such things should matter in the context of this conversation, Ionescu is a white, heterosexual woman who is in a relationship with a fellow alum of her college athletics program (Ionescu is married to Hroniss Grasu, a now-free agent NFL offensive lineman who ironically has twice been teammates with Darren Waller, a tight end whose estranged wife is Ionescu’s Olympic teammate Kelsey Plum). And like Clark, Ionescu was not named to the United States Olympic team following her WNBA debut. Like Ionescu, I suspect Clark will get her chance the next time the Olympics come around.
Had the Olympic team included Caitlin Clark, it likely would have come at the expense of the aforementioned Ionescu or Plum. But neither of these women—both white and both heterosexual, despite repeated claims that Caitlin Clark is some sort of superminority in the WNBA—are often cited in relation to Clark’s presence. The right has opted not to critique the inclusion of these relatively similar types of players, nor even of Diana Taurasi, but instead has focused on the least stylistically similar player to Caitlin Clark on the entire roster—Phoenix Mercury center Brittney Griner.
Brittney Griner has, for reasons both comprehendible and baffling, long been a lightning rod for those on the political right, which until recently had not especially inhibited a pro career followed by a fan base whose furthest right elements tend to have roughly the politics of Hillary Clinton. Early in her WNBA career, Griner was charged with domestic violence. In 2020, Griner led national anthem protests across the WNBA. And in 2022, following an arrest (and subsequent extreme sentencing) in Russia for drug smuggling charges (by most accounts, she erroneously carried a vape and was not intending to distribute illegal substances), she spent nearly a year in prison before returning to the United States as part of a prisoner exchange.
Griner, even if you (like me) do not mind the national anthem protesting and can easily disregard the drug charges as more about international political leverage than the actual sins of an individual, is not a perfect representation of all that is good with the world thanks to the domestic violence charges, if nothing else. But it’s also impossible to hear the conjecture about Griner and not recognize that the intensity of vitriol towards her is not primarily about her politics, but about her identity. Griner is, and since college has been, openly gay. At 6’9”, she is extremely tall even by the standards of basketball players. And while many WNBA players, including many LGBT ones, have celebrated their femininity, Griner has openly modeled for Nike menswear.
I shouldn’t have to say this, but I should reiterate: Brittney Griner is a cisgender woman. Online lunatics have claimed otherwise for years and it has roughly as much validity as that rumor that Kurt Cobain faked his own death and reemerged as Rivers Cuomo of Weezer, an anecdote that is much more amusing if you neglect that there were many years of the documented existence of Rivers Cuomo before Cobain’s death. This is admittedly a subjective observation, but facially, she doesn’t even especially look masculine. The entire case that she is somehow skirting the system is based on the vibes that some people have about a woman that is deemed insufficiently feminine. Breanna Stewart is married to a woman, but she also dresses “like a woman”, so she doesn’t receive as much scrutiny.
The irony in Brittney Griner being cisgender is that, for those who decry trans women as having an unfair advantage in terms of size, a player like Griner whose game is so predicated on physical size would be more vulnerable than anybody to lose her job, if trans women were all magically so dominant on the court. If this were about protecting all cisgender women, those claiming to be all about protecting women’s sports might see Griner as somebody worthy of protection. Instead, they see her as an enemy.
Of course, citing Brittney Griner, the only center on Team USA (A’ja Wilson and Breanna Stewart, both 6’5”, are power forwards, though I expect that one will play some nominal center during the tournament), when trying to make room for a six-foot-even point guard whose primary on-court criticisms center around her relative lack of physicality, reveals an ignorance about women’s basketball so thorough that it is impossible to get the impression that anybody who sincerely believes it has ever watched a basketball game before. Caitlin Clark played the maximum number of college games she could have played last season and playing in regular season WNBA games less than a month and a half later. Fatigue alone is a reasonable argument against putting a recent college player on the Olympic court.
You should disregard what those who have not followed the WNBA actively for years have to say about Caitlin Clark’s Olympics omission, including me. There is an overwhelming consensus among WNBA experts, which is that Caitlin Clark, awesome as she is, has not yet proven herself worthy of a spot in the Olympics. And as with those who assumed Caitlin Clark would enter the league and flat-out dominate the sport, claiming her superiority seems flat-out disrespectful about the level of talent in the sport as a whole. 
And when the Stephen A. Smiths of the world dismiss Caitlin Clark’s absence as a missed marketing opportunity for the sport, it not only disrespects those who made the team but it undermines the talent of Caitlin Clark as a publicity stunt, rather than as a great athlete in her own right. Caitlin Clark, for her matter, accepted not making the team and said that it would fuel her going forward. Clark has been openly reverential to those who came before her—one of the more notable moments of her late Iowa career was when she got to meet her idol, Minnesota Lynx legend Maya Moore. Caitlin Clark understands women’s basketball as well as anybody, and she understands that the WNBA and the United States Olympic women’s basketball team are not institutions that she would ever hope to transcend. Being the greatest player in the WNBA is what Caitlin Clark wants and watching her strive for it should be a lot of fun for years to come. Just let her do it.