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.

Harrison Butker is the latest victim of cancel culture culture

Future generations will find the phrase “cancel culture” baffling. It is a phrase so thoroughly co-opted by the American political right that it barely has meaning, and to the extent that it does, that meaning is divorced from the notion of the literal cancellation of anything.

The first time I heard the phrase “cancel culture” was in 2014, though this is also coming from a very white man—the term, not unlike “woke”, originated primarily within the African-American community before it was co-opted pejoratively by those opposed to it. And in 2014, it was referencing a literal cancellation—the proposed banishment of Cosby Show reruns from television airwaves. Bill Cosby as a public figure was already a bit complicated—he was simultaneously an iconic African-American trailblazer and criticized for an often paternalistic attitude towards the African-American community—but once his *gestures wildly at everything that became more well-known about Cosby over the last decade* became a defining part of his legacy, there was little-to-no effort to rehabilitate Cosby. There were those so offended by Bill Cosby that they didn’t want him, even as a very old man who was for all intents and purposes retired from public life, to make a cent of residuals, and there were those who wished to separate art from artist: there was never much effort to defend him.

In a literal sense, there has never been any attempt to cancel Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker: the most recent game in which he played was the most watched event in American television history, and his teammates Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce are arguably the two biggest draws in the league. Following his commencement address last Saturday at Benedictine College, Butker faced heavy criticism for his comments, which addressed the role of women in society (namely that their role is primarily as a homemaker). The criticism was nothing new for Butker, who has a long and vocal history of expressing his extremely conservative views, citing his strident Catholicism for why he opposes abortion and the COVID-19 vaccine for some reason.

My own personal worldviews have virtually nothing in common with those of Butker, though I do admire his willingness to express them. He was able to express his views to a captive audience, and the vitality of the video allowed an even wider reach. That’s the upside to speaking on controversial issues. The downside is a lot of people like me were going to make fun of him. I was already familiar with Butker’s views, but for some who weren’t, they were suddenly alienated. Harrison Butker has a right to free speech; the same goes for those who mocked him.

The official Twitter account for the city of Kansas City joined in on what had essentially become a meme of mocking Butker—the Los Angeles Chargers made a point of putting Butker in the kitchen in a Sims-inspired schedule release video—and noted that Harrison Butker lives in Lee’s Summit, a suburb of Kansas City. The bit was too obvious to be genuinely funny—“he’s not OUR problem”, essentially. Not too long after, the tweet was deleted and the account apologized.

In the moment, the tweet made literally no impression on me. I don’t follow Kansas City on Twitter, I don’t follow any Chiefs-related accounts aside from a few fans without formal affiliation with the team, and I was watching Thunder-Mavericks Game 5 like a normal person. I became aware of the post this morning, via Missouri Secretary State and gubernatorial candidate Jay Ashcroft, who posted a screenshot of the since-deleted tweet, referring to the event, as did Missouri attorney general Andrew Bailey, as “doxxing”.

Lee’s Summit, it should be noted, is a city with over 100,000 people—it would be nearly impossible to specifically find Harrison Butker there. But legitimate concern for Butker’s safety was clearly not what fueled the rage from Ashcroft and Bailey. Instead, it greatly expanded the audience for the information. The Streisand Effect at play here is extraordinary: a minor story became a major one by virtue of protest. The problem is that Barbra Streisand probably didn’t want pictures of her house disseminated online. Jay Ashcroft wanted to go viral. By extension, he wanted everyone to see the post that revealed Harrison Butker is from Lee’s Summit.

Again, I cannot stress enough just how little danger the original post, which I don’t even particularly enjoy as it just throws a nearby place under the bus for no good reason, endangered Butker. Every suburb in America has a guy as aggressively pro-life as Harrison Butker. It is a matter of public record where many American conservatives far more impactful than Butker live. The idea that anyone who is publicly conservative is in imminent danger of violence fits neatly into justifications for an imminent need for gun ownership.

The idea that Republicans, who have spent weeks arguing that anti-Israeli government protestors should not be legally permitted to wear face masks as a means of publicly exposing them, have a deeply held and ideologically consistent commitment to absolute personal privacy is absurd. The commitment is instead to generic conservative grievances, a belief that facing any level of criticism is beyond the pale. Harrison Butker, a legitimate candidate for being the best kicker in the NFL, is under no threat of losing his job. As a player at a notoriously unmarketed position, it’s not as though he is even being subjected to a financial boycott of any real magnitude. Harrison Butker is admittedly better at his job than Colin Kaepernick, a fine but mostly unexceptional quarterback, was at his, but those critiquing the cancelation of Butker, who has not and almost certainly will not, lose a cent from the actions of this week, were silent when Kaepernick, post-protests of police brutality, could not garner even a backup position in the NFL.

24 hours ago, I had no idea that Harrison Butker lived in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. I now know, and granted I don’t really care, and it’s not because of a snarky anti-Butker tweet, but because of a purportedly pro-Butker one, as posted by an opportunity who does not actually care about anything that does not concern him. And when a Missouri Republican, free for the time being from ever facing any real electoral consequences for their actions, has the opportunity to make themselves the story, they are always going to jump on that opportunity.

#HillaryBarbie, #Swelce, and the memeification of selective white feminism

 On Tuesday, the film Barbie was nominated for eight Academy Awards, the fourth-highest total of this year’s upcoming ceremony. The film, the highest-grossing of 2023 at nearly $1.5 billion, was a massive culture phenomenon and a great critical success, a refreshing bit of fresh air in an environment where most blockbuster hits are sequels and/or superhero movies. It was a sharp satire filled with humor and heart; while its theatrical opening alongside Oppenheimer as “Barbenheimer” was initially a comedic juxtaposition of the seemingly lighthearted and comic Barbie and the existential horror of Oppenheimer, each film had more of the other’s expectations than most assumed.

And although Oppenheimer is easily the favorite to take home Best Picture, Barbie too was nominated, as were two actors (Ryan Gosling and America Ferrera for Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress, respectively), screenwriters Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, costume designer Jacqueline Durran, production designers Sarah Greenwood and Katie Spencer, and the film garnered two nominations for Best Original Song, Billie Eilish’s heart-wrenching “What Was I Made For?” and Ryan Gosling’s power ballad quasi-parody “I’m Just Ken”.

Not nominated from Barbie include Greta Gerwig for the film’s direction and Margot Robbie for her performance as the title character. Although both women have received nominations for these awards before (Gerwig for Lady Bird; Robbie for I, Tonya), their failures to do so in the 2023-24 Oscar season raised eyebrows. Many weighed in to proclaim that the two had been snubbed, though none more cringeworthy than Hillary Clinton, who punctuated an otherwise tepid statement with the instantly infamous hashtag #HillaryBarbie. But more on her in a bit.

I expected that Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig, in that order of likelihood, would receive nominations, though I am fairly unqualified to explain whether they should have. Robbie, who has spent a decade crafting her reputation as one of the most charming and exciting actresses of her era, was simultaneously funny and sincere as the film’s focal point, but I also have only seen one nominee, Lily Gladstone of Killers of the Flower Moon, and I would give her performance as a woman caught between her marriage and the constant suffering of her fellow Native Americans the edge over Robbie. Regarding Gerwig and Best Director, she competed against English-language cinema’s greatest living director (Martin Scorsese) and a beloved name-brand director who is the favorite to win his first Best Director award (Christopher Nolan).

It is a largely disrespected cliche to note that the real honor of the Academy Awards is just being nominated, but there is very much truth to this. And 2023 was a strong year for pop movies. 

Margot Robbie was not assured of a nomination not because she wasn’t great, but because a lot of other women also were. By definition, to include Robbie would mean to exclude one of Annette Bening, Sandra Hüller, Carey Mulligan, Emma Stone, or especially the aforementioned Gladstone, who became the first Native American to be nominated for Best Actress. With the possible exception of Stone, a bankable star who already has an Oscar to her name, Margot Robbie had less to gain from a nomination than anybody. Consider what this means for Hüller, the 45 year-old German star of two Best Picture nominees, or for Bening or Mulligan, Oscar veterans trying to win their first statues. A bad-faith argument that has been dispensed is noting that “Ken got nominated and Barbie didn’t”, which is a statement of fact but also neglects how much easier it is get a nomination for supporting actor than in a lead category. A major part of the reason Gosling campaigned for supporting actor rather than lead, despite a ton of screen time, is because it was easier to get a nomination that way. You could make a case that Ryan Gosling’s hilarious if less emotionally enriching performance as a meathead literal boy toy was in some ways better than Robbie’s, but the case would be much weaker for America Ferrera, whose role as a Mattel employee-turned-Barbie ally was not especially developed. But it’s just a lot easier to have a top five supporting performance than a top five lead one.

Meanwhile, although Greta Gerwig was omitted from the list of Best Director nominees, history was made via another woman when Justine Triet became the first French woman nominated for the award. Triet, an outspoken critic of Emmanuel Macron’s government as being insufficiently to the political left, being recognized is a victory for women in cinema, whether it is a bigger victory than a Gerwig nomination would be or not. Perhaps Gerwig was more deserving than Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things, box office returns at 3.5% those of Barbie) or Jonathan Glazer (The Zone of Interest, 0.2% of Barbie’s box office), but based on the popularity of those films, it is unlikely that the typical person critical of Gerwig’s omission would have an educated guess on the matter. As was the case with Robbie’s, the criticism of Gerwig’s omission seems far less about the awards and more about the abstractions they are perceived to represent. But for those who want to take a wider-ranging look at the landscape of filmmaking, the fact that 20% of Best Director nominees were women should be an indictment not of the Academy, which actually overrepresented women compared to how frequently they get the opportunities to direct major feature films, but of an industry that is largely unwilling to give women the chance they deserve.

There is something about losing a presidential election that seems to scar people, usually in ways less harmful than compelling your most gullible supporters that your loss was a political conspiracy. Mitt Romney escaped the public eye, resurfacing as a more-small-c-less-capital-c conservative than ever as a senator from Utah after running as a relatively centrist Massachusetts Republican. John McCain defined his personal legacy so much as a political loser than he insisted that the manufacturers of his two biggest career losses, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, speak at his funeral. Hillary Clinton, perhaps more than any other losing presidential candidate, took her loss personally, in ways diametrically opposed to her longstanding political reputation, one built on not being willing enough to show emotion (a darkly ironic twist on the common sexist trope that women are too emotional to be involved in politics). When Saturday Night Live’s all-too-loving parody of Hillary Clinton, portrayed by Kate McKinnon, looked into the camera in a sketch about a 2016 presidential debate and said, “I think I’m going to be president”, it had all of the subtlety of a Michael Bay explosion montage but it was directionally pointed at the cockiness that the Clinton camp had.

To be clear, while Hillary Clinton was flawed and not very good at playing presidential politics, she was qualified for the job in ways that Donald Trump (who was also, to put it lightly, flawed and not very good at playing presidential politics) was not. But unlike the other Clinton administration-associated person to lose a presidential bid, Al Gore, who emerged post-2000 as an advocate for action on climate change, the vast majority of Hillary Clinton’s work and public statements post-2016 have been meditations either on herself or on Donald Trump. In fairness to Clinton, the extent to which Donald Trump became the main character in American life cannot be overstated; it’s difficult to blame her for acting in a manner not dissimilar to those belonging to her political coalition. But almost by definition, this means re-living her greatest professional trauma. Whether out of her own personal ego or out of constantly seeing Donald Trump’s remedial mistakes that any American president should be too competent to make, likely some combination of the two, the belief that Hillary Clinton was done wrong by American voters only exacerbated; for those of us who voted for her but were far more enthusiastic about the “not voting for Trump” piece of that equation, the issue is that America was done wrong by American voters. I am apathetic to the personal feelings of Hillary Clinton in the same way that I am apathetic to the personal feelings of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or any of the many Democrats that I view more favorably politically—I want these people to win not as a fan of a sports team does, but as somebody who wants their governance. Barbie made a billion and a half dollars; it didn’t need awards recognition to demonstrate to the movie industry that a type of movie like Barbie can and should continue to be worth the investment. And in that way, even if by accident, Hillary Clinton’s analogy of Barbie to herself does make some level of sense.

An unfortunate side effect of the era of “poptimism”, in short the belief that popular things ought to be valued as legitimate art and not disregarded simply because people enjoy them (true), is that critical analysis of popular things is somehow problematic. For instance, Barbie devoted a huge chunk of its run time to a Will Ferrell-led chase subplot that, despite having Literally Will Ferrell in it, turned out to be the least funny part of the film. It was too self-congratulatory about the toy’s significance as a feminist icon. Although America Ferrera’s monologue about feminism will likely be played on Oscars night and was by any reasonable assessment categorically true, it was so on-the-nose that it felt a bit distracting. And again, I liked Barbie. I liked it more than the movie that is probably going to beat it out for Best Picture. But it is not beyond reproach, and if anything, the financial security of the film should make people more comfortable to nitpick, not because popularity is a bad thing but because it’s not like one sick burn is going to turn major studios off Greta Gerwig. And nobody in modern popular culture has better embodied the poptimism pivot quite like Taylor Swift.

Taylor Swift is the most popular musician on the planet and has been in the inner circle of candidates for that title continuously for over a decade-and-a-half. Reputation, her supposed comedown from massive popularity, went triple-platinum in 2017, when streaming had largely rendered the album sale as a commercially dead artform, spent four weeks at #1 in the United States, and produced four top-twenty singles including a #1 and a #4 hit. All ten of her studio albums have, to some degree or another, been enormous hits and critical darlings. I am, personally, more an enjoyer of Swift’s music than a hater of it—I think Fearless is one of the great pop albums of the 21^st century though I also would support, if not outright charges, at least a resolution at the Hague condemning “Welcome to New York”. But despite her massive popularity, Swift has managed to be a deeply personal artist for millions of people. It’s not just that her fans enjoy listening to and discussing her music—it’s that her fans view her, personally, as an important figure in their lives. There are levels to this—some of which are categorically unhealthy but many of which are mostly harmless. Let’s put it this way: I am a massive fan of Oasis. I bought all their albums well into the streaming era, I would book the first flight I could find if they were ever to reunite, and I just had to look up if the Gallagher brothers were married (Liam is not; Noel is married but separated). But there are legions of Taylor Swift fans who feel genuine and personal happiness at the relationship between Swift and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. And that’s fine.

Considering the relative lack of headlines that Taylor Swift’s six-year relationship with British actor Joe Alwyn generated, the sensation surrounding Swift and Kelce is astonishing—yes, the future Hall of Fame NFL player is more famous than the extremely private character actor, but Swift and Kelce’s few months of courtship have received British Royalty levels of attention. Maybe it’s the juxtaposition of the two—the quiet and artsy skinny Brit along with Taylor Swift wasn’t as interesting as the guy who looks and behaves like a professional wrestler. And while celebrity gossip is usually unveiled through paparazzi photos and such, public knowledge of the Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce relationship has been disseminated via the most popular television program in the country—National Football League broadcasts.

Swift’s presence at the games is, objectively, innocuous. She goes to games, sits in a private box with people who are not clamoring for her attention, watches the games, and cheers when something good for the Chiefs happens. Many have speculated that her appearances, or perhaps even the entire relationship, is a ploy for attention; I have no reason to believe that it is, and if it were, it would be rather confusing because she isn’t really doing anything. That Swift’s star power is so high that broadcasts when she is present are so transfixed on her is itself an argument against the relationship being a public work—Taylor Swift’s profile has not particularly increased because of dating Travis Kelce. Kelce’s has, but that doesn’t explain why Swift would feel motivated to help him.

Backlash to the constant camera shots of Taylor Swift was inevitable, as she has faced backlash large and small throughout her career, but that it has taken on a particular political valiance has been somewhat unusual. Swift, who was notorious in some circles for being publicly apolitical (a certain particularly bored subsection of Hillary Clinton supporter blamed Swift, who it cannot be stressed enough never said a single positive public thing about Donald Trump, for Clinton’s 2016 loss), has since taken public political stances—they began in earnest when she advocated against conservative Tennessee senator Marsha Blackburn and have since extended to pro-choice, pro-LGBT, pro-Black Lives Matter liberalism. Although calling Swift an ardent leftist would seemingly be overselling it—she has notably come under fire from environmental activists for her extensive use of private jets—it would be fair to say that Swift fits within the established parameters of American liberalism. Kelce, for his part, has never really been known to be publicly political—the closest thing to political activism he has ever done was appearing in commercials for COVID-19 boosters, a political stance echoed by such socialist revolutionaries as Donald Trump.

The Kansas City Chiefs are a uniquely toxic organization in several ways. The team, named after (white) former Kansas City mayor Harold Roe Bartle, who himself was nicknamed based on a widely criticized Boy Scouts sub-section formed by Bartle, has now spent over sixty years marketing itself with Native American imagery. The name of both the team and of its home stadium, Arrowhead Stadium, have been criticized, but even more egregious examples have permeated throughout the years. And while the Chiefs have nixed some of their traditions, such as the horse Warpaint, who was worn by a man dressed in a headdress years into the twenty-first century, others have remained intact. Despite years of Native American activist organizations imploring the organization to stop using such imagery as the “war drum”, fans dressing in traditional Native American clothing, and most infamously the “Tomahawk Chop”, the team has largely escaped the severe scrutiny levied against the former Cleveland Indians and Washington (it’s such a heinous slur that I don’t even feel like typing it out—if you somehow don’t know, just search “Washington Commanders” and go from there), and while the presence of the Atlanta Braves in the 2021 World Series invited an onslaught of criticism of their use of the Tomahawk Chop, the Chiefs have somehow avoided such a large public reckoning despite appearing in four Super Bowls in five years and not exactly sliding under the public radar

One can easily make the argument that Kansas City Chiefs ownership, headed by Clark Hunt, is not materially worse than the typical NFL owner. But as a lifelong resident of the St. Louis area whose readership has primarily come from the St. Louis area, the “normal” ways in which the Hunt family has behaved perniciously are especially personal. In 1988, Lamar Hunt voted to approve the relocation of the NFL’s St. Louis Cardinals to Phoenix. In 1995, he voted against the relocation of the St. Louis Rams to St. Louis. In 2016, Clark Hunt was the lone owner (on a six-owner committee) to vote against a stadium plan in Carson, California that would have saved NFL football in St. Louis, and once that fell through, voted in favor of the Rams’ relocation to Los Angeles. The Hunt family finally gave away the game for good the month the Rams moved and admitted that they planned to market the Chiefs in St. Louis. The results have been somewhat impossible to gauge—the Chiefs likely are the favorite team of a plurality of St. Louisans, but it is hardly unanimous and hardly akin to the popularity of the Rams when they were in St. Louis, or even of, say, the Green Bay Packers in Milwaukee, despite the Chiefs being treated as a de facto home team as far as NFL broadcasting has been concerned and despite the Chiefs giving their fans an absurd amount of success in the eight seasons since the Rams left St. Louis.

The previous paragraph is not intended to engender Chiefs hatred among neutral fans—it’s not as though the ownership of the York family of the San Francisco 49ers is exactly spotless—but rather to engender an understanding of why this hatred exists. The same goes for the controversies regarding Native American imagery, except for the part about it not being intended to engender Chiefs hatred—you should absolutelycondemn the Tomahawk Chop, even if allegiance to Kansas City ties you to still root for the team. As for me, I was a lifelong St. Louis Rams fan with abandonment issues, an extremely socially liberal sensibility, and a Native American wife who hates the Chiefs every bit as much as I do (for the obvious reasons) despite never having been a St. Louis Rams fan and despite Taylor Swift being her favorite musical artist of all-time—I am essentially the exact demographic destined to hate the Kansas City Chiefs. And the point here is that these reasons already existed.

In the wake of particularly stupid right-wing cranks like sports radio host Clay Travis, recent presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamay, and countless right-wing media freaks claiming preposterously that Taylor Swift is somehow a CIA plant (which might be a bit but post-Pizzagate, it is essential that we take even the dopiest sounding conspiracy theories seriously on their face), it has now become fashionable among a certain well-off white liberal milieu to openly support the Kansas City Chiefs as a means to spite the Clay Travises of the world. Having an instinct of repulsion towards this group is sensible, but it’s also worth remembering that very few, if any, of these people actually care. This group of culture warriors that gave us Bud Light protests because Anheuser-Busch (a company with plenty of actual questionable business decisions of its own) provided one special Bud Light to one transgender person got bored and have moved from one Extremely Online cultural grievance to another, and now, years after declaring that they had abandoned the NFL after Colin Kaepernick, the extremely anodyne “END RACISM” signage on end zones, or some other controversy that we have all likely forgotten, have moved on to getting angry because TV networks are showing Taylor Swift too much for their liking. 

I don’t personally find the Swift cutaways especially annoying—it’s not like they are cutting away from game action (the NFL famously has no shortage of down time)—but some people do for the same reasons they get annoyed whenever Fox’s broadcast of the World Series will cut to conspicuously placed stars of an upcoming show that will last eight episodes. Yes, there are certainly misogynists among the NFL’s fan base, but do you know how I’m pretty confident that the misogyny factor isn’t all that significant? Because the NFL, for better and for worse, is a deeply, deeply capitalist organization, and every move they make is with an eye on maximizing profits, and the networks keep showing Taylor Swift. The NFL’s blackballing of Colin Kaepernick was a business decision—a gross and evil one, but a business decision nonetheless. Kaepernick was dispensable (I have long speculated that Tom Brady, or even a Black equivalent of Tom Brady, so I guess Patrick Mahomes now, would have survived the blowback he received in 2016) because whatever people were turning off their televisions in disgust was higher than the percentage tuning in for Kaepernick taking a knee during the national anthem. Taylor Swift is bringing people in.

But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I have cogent reasons for hating the Kansas City Chiefs, but that is barely material in this—if I rooted against them because I hated the color red, stewing about Taylor Swift might seem silly but it would be ultimately harmless. But the idea of expressly backing the Kansas City Chiefs, as an ostensible liberal, as solidarity with arguably the single woman on the planet who least needs solidarity at this moment, ventures into the territory of the truly absurd. It is the same uniquely white liberalism that prompted such reactions as those who were up in arms about Barbie’s lack of Oscar nominations. Posting about Barbie or Taylor Swift is, almost literally, the least one can do for the feminist cause.

I hope the San Francisco 49ers win the Super Bowl by so much that the traveling Kansas City Chiefs fans who managed to get an audible Tomahawk Chop going after the team’s road victory over the Baltimore Ravens are shamed into leaving Allegiant Stadium. But just as Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie woke up on Wednesday as extremely wealthy and respected auteurs, Taylor Swift will wake up on Super Bowl Monday as a literal billionaire. We know that Taylor Swift will root for the Kansas City Chiefs, just as we can reasonably assume that Oscar nominee Lily Gladstone, via her social media retweets, will root against the team whose name she has advocated changing. And a version of feminism that regards the opinions of a white woman but not the concerns of a non-white woman is not true feminism—it is white supremacy.