The Weekly Sift

The aftermath of an election is a good time to step back from tactics and the day-to-day news cycle. So this week I’ll discuss what I learned from reading Timothy Snyder’s recent book The Road to Unfreedom. It provides the broadest vision I’ve seen so far of the global swing towards right-wing populism. That article should be out around 11 EST.

The weekly summary will summarize what is known about the mid-term election results, which are still not completely decided. As the final mail-in ballots from California get tabulated, the Democrats’ margin in the national popular vote continues to grow. It’s now well beyond the Republicans’ margin in the 2010 wave.

I’ll also cover the rebellion against Nancy Pelosi, the now-forgotten migrant caravan, the similarly forgotten middle-class tax cut, California wildfires, the Brexit mess, and a string of deaths of significant pop-culture figures, including Stan Lee. The closing is an amazing out-of-genre guitar solo from one of the recently departed, country-music star Roy Clark. That should be out a little after noon.

This week I’ll also be trying out a new approach to covering Trump. The challenge Trump poses is that you end up talking about whatever ridiculous thing he just said or tweeted, and the underlying issue gets lost in the Trump-said-a-bad-thing furor. And yet, like most other commentators, I feel like I can’t just let him say this stuff without some kind of pushback. So this week, while discussing underlying issues, I will also mention in passing that Trump had something stupid or offensive to say about this. I’ll provide a link for those who think they need to know what it was, but I won’t repeat it.