8 Comments

You and I see this in remarkably parallel ways.

Expand full comment
author

I imagine a lot of my readers do.

Expand full comment

Many of us who Hugh Hewitt describes as "Trump skeptics" have had similar journeys. Knowing I would never vote for Hillary in 2016, I still changed my party registration to Independent for a year over Trump becoming my party's nominee. What persuaded me (and millions of others) to vote for Trump? The Supreme Court. We've been largely vindicated. I voted enthusiastically for him in 2020 and again in 2024 (despite voting for Ron DeSantis in my state's primary).

Expand full comment
Nov 8Liked by Ilya Shapiro

Delightful. I look forward to your coverage of the upcoming administration.

Expand full comment
Nov 9Liked by Ilya Shapiro

Waiting eagerly for your new book!

Expand full comment
Nov 9Liked by Ilya Shapiro

The true spirit of an intellectual: being able to change one's mind when presented with new information.

Trump is the Gray Champion of our age. Honestly, he came in the most unlikely packaging, but we needed a bull in a china shop to wake us up. I did.

Expand full comment
founding

Think that the huge majority of voters in this election were either strongly pro- Trump or anti- Trump because his history and authenticity led them to have strong opinions about him. Whereas Harris was largely a cipher or chameleon depending on how you viewed her who went to great lengths to reveal,as little about herself as usual and whose pr8mary campaign strategy was to convince voters that Trump was an acceptable choice without ever defining herself and thus appearing inauthentic. Unless you suffered from TDS or are a single issue voter on the issue of Roe bring overturned, there was absolutely no reason to vote for a person who stated that she could not think of a single thing she would have done differently from Biden. After the initial any candidate but Biden euphoric her support got weaker the longer her campaign revealed her vapidness.

Expand full comment
author

I think that's right, with the additional wrinkle that Harris/the Democrats failed to make it a referendum on Trump (hard to do because he's not the incumbent) and so it was always a choice between the two, which she lost for the reasons you describe.

Expand full comment