Tea at Trianon: Trump Wins: What a Comeback

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

Thursday, November 7, 2024

Trump Wins: What a Comeback

From The Reactionary:

We were optimistic on Monday - if you looked at the crosstabs closely, Trump was making gains with independents, Black men, and Hispanics. He was making gains with 2020 Biden voters. There was widespread disapproval of Biden’s economic policies and Trump was trusted on the most two important issues this election: the economy and immigration. Momentum favored the Republicans. Nobody was enthusiastic for Kamala.
Contrary to the findings of the public pollsters - most of which had Kamala winning the election and the popular vote - the campaign’s internal polling was correct. (Credit to AtlasIntel and Rasmussen Reports and others who did a great job.) Those media reports about “terrible morale” inside the Trump campaign - like Trump’s “Hitler comments” and that last-minute Kamala +3% Iowa poll - were completely false. The Trump Team believed they would win. They were confident.
Kamala had a tough assignment. One that exceeded her abilities. How do you motivate voters without charisma? How to reassure voters with an economic plan when you wouldn’t do anything different than Biden? How do you convince voters that you’ll secure the border when you failed as “Border Czar”?
How do you win a Presidential election when you spectacularly failed as a candidate in 2020? You can’t. (A rhetorical question - how did those 20+ million Democrat votes from 2020 just vanish??)
Republicans finally traded the neocons for the working class. And it worked. Rural voters and Hispanic voters showed up for Trump. Rural counties shifted right across the country. Texas border counties, for example, are 90% Hispanic Democratic strongholds. Trump lost those counties by 10%+ in 2020. He won those counties last night. (Read more.)