We continue our preview of the new (Winter) issue of the Claremont Review of Books with the third of four essays on the outcome of the election (on Friday we will have a fifth, on the Electoral College). Today we turn to the contribution of CRB senior editor William Voegeli. Bill’s contribution to the issue’s essays on the election is “You’re fired!” Subhead: “Understanding Trump’s defeat.” Here is his opening paragraph:
Baseball hall-of-famer Vernon “Lefty” Gomez often said, “I’d rather be lucky than good.” The Occam’s Razor interpretation of the 2020 presidential election is that President Donald Trump was neither lucky nor good enough a politician to secure a second term. His bad luck, in particular, was compounded. The worst pandemic in a century beset the country on his watch, causing a public health crisis that, in turn, generated severe economic and social dislocations. And it did so over the eight months preceding Election Day, the worst possible time for Trump, because the crisis was the dominant question before the nation just as voters were deciding how to mark their ballots.
Bill is author of Never Enough: America’s Limitless Welfare State (2012) and The Pity Party: A Mean-Spirited Diatribe Against Liberal Compassion (2014), both due for rereading at the outset of the Harris-Biden administration. If you still have an open mind about the election and are trying to understand the outcome, I invite you to consider Bill’s essay. If not, as Yeats puts it, Horseman, pass by!
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