Some disasters can be seen coming a long way off. When I lived with earthquakes in Tokyo in the early 1990s, people wondered when the “big one” would come, just as people did and still do in San Francisco.
Other disasters are not natural but man-made. Shortly after I arrived in Washington in the late 1990s, a young Wisconsin Republican by the name of Paul Ryan was elected to the House of Representatives and began to warn that unsustainable federal spending would inevitably lead to fiscal disaster and must be reduced. Instead, especially in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it has massively increased, and the 2020 deficit topped a staggering $3.1 trillion. It is not so much a disaster waiting to happen as one that is happening before our eyes, which will push up the cost of borrowing and siphon more and more tax revenue away from things the public wants done.
And then there are events that are seemingly inexorable trends that delight some and horrify others, that move us all beyond a tipping point and change the political landscape for a generation. One such calamity may be about to hit the Republican Party. Back in the 1990s, there was talk that immigration, demographics, and migration from other states would eventually make Texas purple or even blue, not its customary red — that is, it would become winnable by Democratic presidential nominees. Psephologists at think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute notified everyone that this tectonic shift was a generation away but could make electing a Republican president a huge challenge, to put it no more strongly, for decades. Now, a generation later, Democrats and Republicans wonder with glee and fear whether this year might be when it happens.
In this week’s cover story, “The Battle For Texas,” Nicole Russell lays bare the trends that are stoking Democratic hopes that President Trump could be defeated in the Lone Star State. She concludes that the Republican will probably eke out a narrow win, but that will not end the matter. It will make Texas the mother of all battlefields in 2022 and 2024.
Philip Klein takes up the challenge thrown down by Democrats, who presented Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the Supreme Court as deeply dangerous, primarily because she might vote to demolish Obamacare. In his essay, “Revisionist History,” Klein makes it clear that, far from being the national treasure that Democrats claim, Obamacare gives Americans the worst of both worlds, higher deductibles and higher premiums, plus reduced choice.
Ben Sixsmith laments the suicide of magazines that bore readers with their relentless drift toward woke political opinionizing, and Karol Markowicz concludes that pandemic policies are sacrificing American children’s future, in contrast to Europe’s more enlightened approach. Peter Tonguette celebrates Clint Eastwood’s remarkable transformation from the Man With No Name to America’s finest movie director, and Eric Felten mixes you some delicious campaign cocktails.
