Jonah Goldberg Columns category, Page 3
Jonah Goldberg: Amid a combative election, party realignment continued apace
The term “realignment” gets used and abused a lot, because people have agreed to use it without agreeing on a definition. Traditionally, realignments are said to have occurred when majority and minority parties switch places. Starting in 1932, FDR pulled Blacks and working class and immigrant whites into the Democratic...
Jonah Goldberg: Donald Trump or Kamala Harris? Here’s how I’m going to vote in this election and why.
Contrary to what some newspaper owners think, this is the time for endorsements. Look elsewhere if that’s what you came here for. Instead, I’ll just focus on how I personally think about the election, starting with my vote. I’m not going to vote for either of them. But that doesn’t...
Jonah Goldberg: Here’s why the race between Trump and Harris looks so impossibly close
The political analyst Samuel Lubell introduced the concept of the sun and moon parties in 1951. The sun party is the majority party, and “it is within the majority party that the issues of any particular period are fought out; while the minority party shines in reflected radiance of the...
Jonah Goldberg: Here’s what Ta-Nehisi Coates got right about Israel and Palestinians
The writer Ta-Nehisi Coates has gotten far more attention than he deserves for his new book, “The Message,” which contains a blistering condemnation of Israel. The response from Israel’s defenders has been equally and deservedly blistering. The heart of their criticism is pretty simple: Coates doesn’t know what he’s talking...
Jonah Goldberg: Donald Trump seems to think he’s losing. Would the Republican Party survive his defeat?
If Donald Trump loses the election, to hear him and his campaign tell it, the fate of the Republican Party should be the least of our concerns: his defeat would spell the end of the nation itself and all that we hold dear. But let’s assume Trump and company are...
Jonah Goldberg: The strategy behind Trump’s increasingly dark and disturbing rhetoric
Last weekend, Donald Trump delivered what even he admitted was a “dark” speech. Beyond the usual nonsense about America ceasing to exist if he loses, he called immigrants here illegally “vile animals” and “monsters” who “will walk into your kitchen, they’ll cut your throat.” The supposed enemy of censorship said...
Jonah Goldberg: Why the next president — whether it’s Trump or Harris — won’t have a mandate
Let’s skip ahead to after the election. No matter who wins, the next president will declare that they have a “mandate” to do something. And they will be wrong. The whole canard that a newly elected president is for some reason entitled to have their way is an invention. The...
Jonah Goldberg: The rhetoric of Harris and Biden isn’t what’s sparking political violence. Here’s why.
Another unwell person sought to kill Donald Trump, according to the FBI and other officials. We should all be grateful that no one was hurt and that the Secret Service and local law enforcement appear to have done their jobs properly. I’m also grateful to former President Trump for assigning...
Jonah Goldberg: The problem with Liz Cheney’s endorsement of Harris
Of all the living Republicans who have run on a presidential ticket, only two are publicly backing Donald Trump: Sarah Palin, the 2008 vice presidential candidate, and JD Vance, Trump’s current running mate. Everyone else is going a different way. Trump’s two-time running mate and vice president, Mike Pence, is...
Jonah Goldberg: Kamala Harris and Donald Trump both call for unity. Here’s why they’re wrong.
The single most abused, misused and misunderstood word in American politics is “unity.” All presidential candidates vow to unite Americans. Nearly every pundit and public intellectual laments the lack of unity. “When America is united, America is totally unstoppable,” Donald Trump declared in his inaugural address. “With unity, we can...
Jonah Goldberg: Kamala Harris wants to tackle corporate ‘price-gouging.’ Here’s what she’s missing
The best thing about Kamala Harris’ policy debut last week was the backlash. I don’t mean the political backlash; Harris’ attack on “price-gouging” was probably smart politics. It amplified her campaign’s message that she’s “fighting for the people.” That economists scoff at the tools she would use in that fight...
Jonah Goldberg: Trump turned politics into reality TV. Now Harris is the show to watch
Never has the GOP been more unified, and Donald Trump deserves all the credit. The issue uniting pundits, editorial boards, virtually all Republican politicians, GOP consultants, MAGA warriors and rallygoers: the need for Trump to lay aside personal gripes and grievances and to stick to the issues and attack Vice...
Jonah Goldberg: This is why Kamala Harris is avoiding the press — and getting away with it
To the surprise of just about everyone, Kamala Harris has had a remarkably good two weeks (whether her selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz marks the end of that honeymoon or an extension of it remains to be seen). Democrats, of course, have been pleasantly surprised. Prior to President Joe...
Jonah Goldberg: It’s hard sharing a party with Trump or Vance. They taint the right’s good ideas.
One of my great peeves of the Trump era is the Greenland effect. I belong to a small group of people who think America should peacefully acquire Greenland. It’s an old idea. The State Department pitched buying the vast arctic island in 1946, but the Danes didn’t want to sell...
Jonah Goldberg: Is replacing President Biden as his party’s nominee an attack on democracy? Hardly.
Alas, the coronation of Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee is complete. Democrats are surprisingly ecstatic with the decision, and Republicans, or at least the Trump campaign, are very cross about it, complaining that democracy has been subverted. This is something of a reversal, given that Republicans argued Biden was...
Jonah Goldberg: Trump assassination attempt leaves Biden with just 1 viable political option
One can hardly fault Donald Trump for believing divine providence is on his side. He’s had the most impressive lucky streak in living political memory. While his debate performance was exceptional only if graded on a curve, his opponent’s was a debacle by any objective standard. Then the Supreme Court...
Jonah Goldberg: What too many Republicans still don’t understand about Donald Trump’s agenda
Donald Trump isn’t normally thought of as a consensus-builder, but in one sense that’s exactly what he is. Many of Trump’s most ardent fans and foes alike believe he is the leader of a political movement with a clear and defined set of principles and goals. They disagree only on...
Jonah Goldberg: Democrats’ defense of Biden reminiscent of Republicans’ rallying around Trump
The fallout from President Biden’s miserable debate last week is giving me deja vu. In the political right’s intramural arguments over Donald Trump, I got some things correct and some incorrect. But I believe I was indisputably right in one respect: From the outset, I argued that Trump’s presidency would...
Jonah Goldberg: Presidential debates generally don’t matter, but this Biden-Trump faceoff could be different
I’ve changed my mind: This presidential debate matters. Before I continue, a quick recap: Last month, I expressed my longstanding view that presidential debates aren’t very meaningful and are very stupid. They are pseudo-events, the historian Daniel J. Boorstin’s term for manufactured media spectacles that feel significant because we imbue...
Jonah Goldberg: Immigration could get Trump elected again. Here’s how Democrats keep getting it wrong
For more than 20 years, I have held one position constant when it comes to immigration policy: We should have one. I am less concerned about the number of immigrants we take in every year than I am about the fact that we — voters, policymakers, politicians, what have you...
Jonah Goldberg: Could the guilty verdict cost Donald Trump the election? Sure it could.
How much will Donald Trump’s conviction in the New York hush money case matter come November? The obvious answer is that nobody knows. Still, I suspect the verdict will matter, just not in ways that are easy or even possible to predict. A lot of the instant reaction revolves around...
Jonah Goldberg: What’s convincing voters that the economy is worse than it ever was?
One of the worst things about democracy is the way we talk about it. For instance, politicians love to talk about unity, but our constitutional system was set up to keep unity at bay, preferring a more adversarial approach, pitting faction against faction. Checks and balances, separation of powers and...
Jonah Goldberg: Trump and Biden agreed to debates. That’s a lot less important than it was made out to be.
The Biden and Trump campaigns agreed to two presidential debates last week. Who among us can contain our excitement? Well, it depends on what you mean by “us.” In my corner of the professional world — pundits, commentators, political junkies — there was much rejoicing. Watching the Sunday shows, you...
Jonah Goldberg: Biden’s problem goes beyond inflation, Gaza and age
A batch of new polls from The New York Times, Siena College and the Philadelphia Inquirer has very bad news for President Biden: He’s losing. Among registered voters, he’s significantly behind in five of the six battleground states that are most likely to decide the election. He does slightly better...
Jonah Goldberg: What happened to the Republican war on ‘woke’ — and what we should have learned from it
This isn’t going to be more musing about whether America has reached “peak woke.” But that is part of the story. So let’s start there. About a decade ago, many on the left embraced the word “woke,” a term with roots in African American culture and activism. It originally meant...
