The Lesson Republicans Refuse to Learn
Voters to GOP: We don’t like your MAGA candidates and their agenda.
Updated at 4:22 p.m. ET on November 14, 2022
Liberals reacted to the election of Donald Trump in 2016 with dismay, horror—and curiosity. Reporters ventured to Trump counties to ask questions. Political scientists studied the voting effect of international trade. Hollywood made a movie out of J. D. Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.
Liberals didn’t like what had happened—but for exactly that reason, they wanted to understand it. They strove for understanding until it became a kind of inside joke: the journalist on Trump safari in Pennsylvania diners. But the joke made its own kind of sense. Survival depends upon adaptation. Adaptation depends upon learning.
The question after the 2022 midterms