2024 Election with Benjamin Wallace-Wells

The year is 2025. Department of Government Efficiency dons Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have broken ground on their new taxpayer-funded palace, the architectural plans of which look suspiciously like a Cybertruck. HHS Secretary RFK Jr. has received a standing ovation from Congress after announcing that children will be given brain worms at birth instead of vaccines. Attorney General Matt Gaetz has just announced that people who successfully stand their ground will be mailed a sticker from DOJ.

How did we get here? To help us break down the results of last week’s elections, and to offer a sounding board to Sam and David’s hot takes, joining the pod is New Yorker staff writer and political reporter Benjamin Wallace-Wells. We start off by discussing swing voters, the failures of the Democrats and the Harris campaign, and what the election results hint about the future of the Republican party. (FWIW, we recorded before the Hegseth/Gabbard/Gaetz nominations.)  We work through how the election was shaped by local concerns including perceptions of crime and disorder all the way to big international topics like the Russia-Ukraine war. Putting their heads together, Sam, David, and Wallace-Wells come up with a grand unified theory of local, national, and cultural politics in America today. Listen to find out everything you need to know about the election—and let us know if we got it right.  

This podcast is generously supported by Themis Bar Review.

Referenced Readings

• Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam

• “The Future Is Faction” by Steven M. Teles and Robert P. Saldin

• “Trump Is About to Face the Choice That Dooms Many Presidencies” by Oren Cass

• “The Improbable Rise of J. D. Vance” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells

• “This Is All Biden’s Fault” by Josh Barro

• “The Failures of Urban Governance” by David Schleicher