Tea at Trianon: Trump’s Map to the White House

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, February 6, 2024

Trump’s Map to the White House

From Daniel McCarthy at Chronicles:

In 2020, Joe Biden won three states by less than 1 point: Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin. If Donald Trump can flip these three in November—he took them all in 2016—he’ll be back in the White House this time next year. Can he do it?

First he has to hold every state he won last time. Trump’s narrowest victory was in North Carolina, where his margin was a little more than 1.3 percent. His home state of Florida was his next-closest win, with a margin around 3.4 percent. Biden, by contrast, has six states to defend where he prevailed by less than three points, including Pennsylvania, which he won by less than 1.2 percent. The Keystone State’s Sen. John Fetterman might be saving Biden’s reelection effort: By condemning the Hamas-sympathizing left and corruption in the Democratic Party—at least where his colleague from New Jersey, Sen. Bob Menendez, is concerned—Fetterman has reminded Pennsylvanians of Democrats’ claims to the political center.

But Trump can get the Electoral College votes he needs even without Pennsylvania. One potentially decisive question is whether Biden has lost the momentum that carried him to his narrowest victories in Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin.

In 2020, the sitting president got the blame for COVID, the recession it caused, and the George Floyd crisis in our cities. The buck stopped with Trump. Today it’s Biden who can’t evade responsibility for everything going wrong, from the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East to Americans’ continuing dissatisfaction with the economy. Yet, to capitalize on this, Trump’s team must run a more disciplined campaign than the disastrous one Brad Parscale led in 2020. (Read more.)