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This was among the most joyless and despair-ridden years I've ever known. But I did get to publish some things I felt good about, so I'm going to do the thing where you collect your favorite clips in a thread for kicks and RTs...
Off Ezra Klein's book, I wrote about how our republic's problem is the conservative movement not polarization (but empathy for Trump voters is part of the solution.) https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/polarization-republicans-democracy-ezra-klein-book-review.html
Scribbled a premature autopsy of the Sanders campaign in the wake of Super Tuesday, 75 to 80 percent of which holds up in my opinion https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/why-bernie-sanders-lost-super-tuesday-results-joe-biden.html
Education polarization strikes me as the electoral left's defining challenge. Hazarded this account of the causes and consequences of the phenomenon. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/why-americans-dont-vote-their-class-bernie-sanders-marxist-electoral-theory.html
The take-mongering game can feel pointless at times; who needs another dilettante's glib opinion on the trending topic du jour? But the gig also affords me the privilege of directing attention to the vital research of actual experts like @JWMason1 https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/09/biden-climate-green-new-deal-world-war-two.html
After RBG's death, wrote about how the myth of an apolitical judiciary — whose judges harbor disparate legal philosophies but not ideological agendas — enables conservatives to advance their plutocratic objectives with little public scrutiny https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/09/mcconnell-hypocrisy-rbg-trump-democrats-court-packing.html
The 2020 election witnessed a historic divergence in men and women's voting preferences. Tried to put that development in global and historic context. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/10/2020-polls-gender-gap-women-voters-trump.html
Social media's encouragement of groupthink and ritual shaming is bad. But anti-"cancel culture" crusaders must ask what material conditions are necessary for empowering all people to fully and freely participate in the debates that shape their lives. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/persuasion-yascha-mounk-cancel-culture.html
The United States is full of lily-white, deep-blue suburbs with lawn signs that shout Black Lives Matter — and zoning laws that whisper, "but preserving 'neighborhood character' matters more." Wrote about why that's bad! https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/trumps-racist-defense-of-nimbyism-may-aid-housing-justice.html
Conservative elites can buy themselves immunity from most of the social ills that their movement exacerbates. This struck me as the key context for understanding why the White House became super-spreader central. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/10/gop-elites-thought-they-could-buy-exemption-from-a-pandemic.html
Wrote a polemical profile of Steve Mnuchin, noting that -- if America’s brand of capitalism actually required the superrich to assume great personal risk in order to reap outsize returns -- they wouldn’t be so invested in it. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/steven-mnuchin-coronavirus-bailout.html
Wrote about how much industrial development in the U.S. isn't shaped by market competition, but by small groups of experts picking winners and losers.
The question isn't whether parts of our economy will be planned, but which, and by who. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/wework-venture-capital-central-planning.html
The question isn't whether parts of our economy will be planned, but which, and by who. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/wework-venture-capital-central-planning.html
In November, the reign of a racist kleptocrat was cut short, as a historic number of voters opted for a more inclusive conception of American society. So, I promptly reassured my readers that they needn't cease feeling terrified of the future https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/11/2020-election-results-biden-won-democrats-senate-loss.html
The coolest thing about my job is being able to talk to people whose work I find fascinating. This year had the great privilege of talking to Adam Tooze about COVID, the balance of power between nation-states and capitalists, and the true engine of history https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/08/adam-tooze-how-will-the-covid-19-pandemic-change-world-history.html
I also got to speak with the great Mike Davis about how the global food and pharmaceutical industries laid the foundations for an age of epidemics, and the obstacles to preventing a COVID-like disaster from recurring. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/coronavirus-next-pandemic-mike-davis-avian-flu-covid.html
Finally, I met @davidshor in 2018 and found him fascinating. He seemed to have an empirically-grounded, counterintuitive, sometimes tendentious but always interesting answer to every question about U.S. politics I could think to ask...
Tried to interview him for years, but the takes of a random data dude didn't seem newsworthy and his job limited his ability to speak on the record. But then he got fired and became a culture war icon - and I finally got to introduce Shorism to the masses https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/david-shor-cancel-culture-2020-election-theory-polls.html
