Have a question for Matt Labash, ask him at [email protected] or click here.
Dear Matt,
Are you going on this damn WEEKLY STANDARD post-election cruise? I’m tempted but wary.
Signed,
Radio Free GOP guy (Mike Murphy)
Undisclosed location where the chair is against the wall…..
I, unfortunately, will not be able to attend THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s Caribbean cruise, as I have other pressing concerns. (Attempting to get a job as Milo Yiannopoulos’s personal shopper, so I have a say in who is hired by the Trump transition team.) But I highly encourage anyone else who is not in a post-election fetal position to please, come aboard. We’re expecting you.
There will be a cavalcade of stars, of course. Including, but by no means limited to: Bill Kristol, Fred Barnes, the Landers Sisters, Charo, the late Morey Amsterdam, and Steve Hayes, who is a bona fide Fox News All Star (not one of the fake Fox News All Star alternates they call in if, say, Charles Krauthammer falls ill with cuckservative fever.) Washington Free Beacon editor/champion diver Matthew Continetti will be doing can-openers into the pool off the Baja deck. Senior writer Jonathan V. Last, author of our much beloved weekly newsletter, will allow you the Last Word, assuming he doesn’t have something else to say. There will be a Hemingway write-alike contest (Mark and Mollie, not Ernest—and just to warn you, the former, unlike the latter, use subordinate clauses). And Mary Katharine Ham, fresh off the Marine Corps Marathon, might even let you hit her in the stomach in the ship’s bar, if you think you’re man enough not to break your hand on her abs of steel.
There will also be timely, important panel discussions with titles like: “We Told You Trump Would Win—A Revisionist History,” “Buying Gold—A Beginner’s Guide,” and “Shooting to Kill—How To Tend Your Prepper Garden.” Likewise, there will be card tricks, balloon animals, fistfights, key parties, mankini contests (early favorite: Erick Erickson), and Contemporary Christian Music karaoke night. (Rumor has it that Bill Kristol will be singing “El Shaddai” by Amy Grant.) Plus, with stops in Turks and Caicos, Puerto Rico, St. Maarten, and the Bahamas, it’s an excellent chance to scout bug-out property should you need to flee our country when the civil war starts. Assuming, that is, you don’t come down with the Zika virus, which, if you do, we’ll throw in a tastefully restrained burial-at-sea at no extra charge. So run, don’t walk, to sign up now.
Dear Matt,
Do you have any idea where all the Soccer Moms went? I was thinking of having a sort of end-of-season barbecue at my house and wanted to invite some over to talk about the presidential campaign.
Your friend,
Phil
Yes. Steve Bannon has them chloroformed and duct-taped in the trunk of his car. (Only kidding alt-righters. Please don’t paint a swastika on my kids’ book bags—we’re Renegade Goyim. #MAGA!)
When you say “Soccer Moms,” you’re making me nostalgic. Because Soccer Moms remind me of 1996. Which doesn’t just recall the year that we experienced the electromagnetic conductor that was Bob Dole. But which takes me back to when I was 26 years young. Which was just a year short of 27, the age Jim Morrison was when he died. Which reminds me of how I still harbored hope, at the time, that I could become the next Jim Morrison, slithering around in my skin-tight leather pants while singing “Ride the snake/to the lake….Father….I want to kill you”—even though I had no musical aptitude, and already worked at America’s premier journal of conservative political thought (sorry kids—Breitbart wasn’t around back then). This made editorial meetings somewhat awkward. But much to the relief of masthead mates, I’m now over my youthful illusions. I’ve swapped out my leather for age-appropriate dad jeans. And instead of singing apocalyptic Oedipal dirges around the office, I try to keep things upbeat—mostly with Maroon 5 tunes.
Apologies for falling down the memory hole, but Soccer Moms seem like so many fake voter demographics ago. Since then (and this is a very incomplete list), we’ve had NASCAR Dads, Security Moms, Mama Grizzlies, South Park Republicans, Dirty Uncles, Developmentally-Challenged Brother-in-Laws, and MS-13 MILFS (mothers of Salvadoran gang-members that you’d like to know biblically.) Not to mention whatever they called all those suburban women in Philadelphia this cycle, besides “People Chris Matthews Probably Has Hit On.”
Admittedly, I made up a few of those monikers. But the rest were inflicted on us by pollsters, pundits and other sad people who have not yet settled on employment that’s fit for adults. (Politico, alone, earlier this year tried to add: White Women of Vegas, Cuban Millennials, Lunch Pail Catholics, Out of Towners and Up and Comers, Coal Miners’ Daughters (And Sons), and Skittish Soldiers, Sailors, and Battleship Makers.) For now that all things are laid bare, 24/7, for two years straight before a general election, it’s hard for the “experts” to pretend any specialty knowledge anymore. Not long ago, at a family dinner, my 16-year-old nephew asked me what I thought about Trump’s Real Clear average in Michigan. I didn’t know what it was, I admitted, since by that time, I was so beaten down with election fatigue that I couldn’t muster the energy to look. But the point is, instead of playing Pokemon Go or sniffing glue or whatever it is 16-year-olds do for fun these days, he did know.
Which is why the political class, like secret-knowledge hoarding Gnostics, have to find ever-new ways to slice and dice the electorate, making the relatively remedial concept of a “swing voter” sound more complicated than it need be, so that they can look smarter when they’re right. If they’re right. Which they increasingly aren’t. In case you hadn’t heard, about 99 percent of everyone missed the call this cycle. (Me, included.) Putting me in the mind of William Goldman, the Hollywood screenwriter who famously wrote, “Nobody knows anything….Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess, and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.”
And this goes for self-satisfied amateurs too. Shortly before the election, I read one of those hardy perennials about how the children of Benjamin Franklin Elementary School in Yorktown Heights, New York—wiser than those of Salinger’s Glass family—have correctly predicted every election since 1968 (if they’re so smart, shouldn’t they be in middle school by now?). This year, they picked Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by a 52 percent to 43 percent margin.
Cocky little dopes. No wonder they bunged it up—with their government-funded recess and fat-cat lunchboxes. They might want to look outside of their elitist fourth grade bubbles and get in touch with Real America, which is hurting. Of course, I’m predicting that they’ll go on and predict the next election, blithely unconcerned with their failure. Which tells me something about the little bastards: They’ll make excellent pundits someday.
So go ahead and round up your Soccer Moms, many of whom are Soccer Grandmoms by now. I used to like them, personally. I’d happen by the field, in the middle of their kids’ soccer games, and would say, “Good job, Ashley.” (Which was a safe bet—everyone was named Ashley back then, and so the whole field would turn its head to soak up even more adult approval than had already been bestowed on them.) Afterwards, the Soccer Moms would fight to give me a ride home in their minivans, elated that someone had recognized their daughter(s)’ athletic genius.
I will tell you this: the Soccer Moms liked to party. So go ahead and kick it, 1996-style. Throw some steaks on the George Foreman grill. Pop a Zima. Put some Jamiroquai on the CD player. And if you can’t find your old Jamiroquai CD (or a CD player), just punch their name into Ask Jeeves and see if you can turn up an MP3 on CompuServe.
But don’t count on them to give you any insider tips on how the country is going. Things have changed since 1996. The world has gotten weird, and it’s getting weirder. Predict what comes next at your own peril.
Have a question for Matt Labash, ask him at [email protected] or click here.
