By Abigail
Charlie Kirk’s death first made me think of John Adams’ famous line in a letter to his political opponent, Thomas Jefferson: “You and I ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other.”
(more…)Tag: Abigail
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I bet this will fix everything!
By Abigail
California has finally done it! After decades of bitter debates, lengthy court battles, and public mudslinging, the Golden State has finally ended inequality in higher education. Who knew all you had to do was ban legacy admissions?
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Kamala takes a stand (sort of)
By Abigail
footnotes from Ashkan
Kamala Harris has always been a sort of political chameleon. If we learned anything from her first televised interview as the 2024 Democratic nominee last Thursday, it’s that she’s finally found an environment she’s (relatively) well-suited to. That’s not to say that she excelled, by any means, when going toe-to-toe with Dana Bash while Tim Walz did a remarkable job placidly smiling and waving by her side, but she put on a performance that was more confident than anything else we’ve seen from her during the last four years.
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The Veepstakes: Bad rural represenation
By Abigail
footnotes from Askhan
I don’t like JD Vance. I also remember instinctively not liking him during his libby Hillbilly Elegy days the way you don’t like people who are the same age as you but world-famous when you are not. At the time, this dislike was more grounded in the feeling that he was stealing my thunder: there can only be so many narratives about overcoming a low-income childhood in rural America and then attempting to claw your way up the tax bracket by attending an Ivy League before they go out of style.1 Now, more reasonably, I don’t like him because after his ideological shapeshifting act he stands for all of the MAGA values that I find most unappealing. But then I’m a moderate Democrat—there’s no world in which I would vote for Trump. What’s hard for me to gauge is if Vance is a hit with his target audience and whether that even matters.
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The Dropout: Biden is already old news
By Abigail
footnotes from Ashkan
I guess my begrudging endorsement three days ago didn’t mean much to Joe Biden. After four mediocre innings, he’s been pulled by the proverbial manager (84-year-old Nancy Pelosi, apparently?) after giving up one too many runs. And our bullpen, which should be crowded with exciting alternatives, has opened its gate to spit out relief in the form of Kamala, who, despite gay Twitter’s best efforts, is not the charismatic up-and-comer America seems desperate for.
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Opening Statement: Whatever happened to Julián Castro?
By Abigail
No heartily ringing endorsement of a presidential candidate has ever been accompanied by a near-endless list of caveats, qualifying statements, and preemptions to counterpoints, but at this stage in the 2024 election cycle, it is impossible to honestly write about Biden without doing all these things. Will he even be in the race in two weeks?
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