There is a model of American history I’ve been toying with lately that helps to explain the moment we are in. I’m sure I’m not the first person to have come up with this, but I find it more useful than the dominant lens that is typically used. The normal model that you come across in political science is the sun and moon parties. You have the era where there is a dominant party and then a minority party that reflects the issues and concerns of the sun party.

I’ve largely avoided commentating on recent events. The murder of Charlie Kirk was a horrific crime. Even as I think that he employed a style of debate that was needlessly provocative (to put it mildly), and he took positions that I think are terrible, no one should be murdered while engaging in peaceful debate and conversation. I was listening to a podcast earlier and I thought the host spoke very powerfully about our politics.

David French had a really good newsletter this week. I’m pretty sure it’s gated to subscribers, but it’s about Article II of the Constitution and the ambiguity of the opening sentence: “The executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States of America.” The problem is in the vagueness of the phrase “executive power”. It’s so open ended that we end up with a chief executive officer who can in a sense do whatever they want as long as they are executing some action, at least in theory.

The Constitution of the United States clearly lays out that due process applies to “all persons”, not just citizens. The Trump administration is clearly trying to challenge that with Abrego Garcia case as they sent him, a legal resident, to a prison in El Salvador alleging that he is a member of a Venezuelan gang without giving him due process. Aside from whether or not there is evdience to substantiate that, it doesn’t matter because he is owed his time in court.

This week Trump implemented his tariffs universally at 10% and much higher tariffs than that on some countries in particular. Although a few Republicans protested, the vast majority have been deathly silent. The party that claimed to stand for economic freedom has been completely silenced as they have been bound to their leader. I take no delight in this as I wasa a Republican because I believed (and still do) in the freedom of the individual to pursue their lot in life as much as possible as they see fit in both the economic and civic spheres of life.

One of the things I want to use this blog for is documenting my thoughts and feelings over the next four years of the Trump presidency. Obviously there is much to be uncertain of as we ultimately don’t know what he is going to do. As Matt Yglesias has pointed out in his latest newsletter at Slow Boring Trump is a liar and his followers know he is a liar and that is part of the reason they like him.

I was reading Taeggan Goddard’s excellent Political Wire and he had a great piece of analysis, called “Out of Touch”. It’s behind a gateway I believe, but he highlighted that the one thing that all the pieces by Democrats trying to figure out what went wrong have in common is that Democrats are out of touch with the people whose votes they need. I think that is the smartest piece I have come across so far.

One other thought I have is that President Obama wanted to be a transformation president who ushered in a new Democratic majority. Instead, with Trump’s win it feels more like Obama was actually the last president of an old order. We have a new one that Biden never actually fully rolled back. Democrats will be pivoting from here and we will see how things unfold.

So Donald Trump has been elected president once again. I have had a feeling for a while that this would happen, but was hoping it would not be the case. It turns out the sense of doom felt by Democrats was justified. Mr. Trump will take the presidency having most likely secured the popular vote for the first time for him, as well as the first time for a Republican in 20 years.

For a few years now the country has been dealing with skyrocketing housing prices that were driven by a variety of factors. A large factor is that the supply of housing never actually caught back up after the Great Recession. Combined with increased demand during and after the pandemic, along with interest rates that were sent up because of inflation, pushed housing costs beyond what many are able to afford.