Mailbag: Alternate Trump

Plus flexible work and the 2028 succession

Before we get to today’s mailbag, a quick reminder that you can now order Slow Boring merch. We’ve currently got hats and quarter zips.

On a more serious note, it’s challenging to cover the frenetic pace of Trump-related events on this newsletter’s timescale, but we don’t want to ignore all the awful things that are happening.

In the spirit of avoiding doomscrolling, I thought it might be useful to highlight Trump-skeptical commentary from somewhat unexpected, non-resistance sources, in the hope that it might be persuasive to the conservative but concerned people in your life:

• Andrew McCarthy of National Review condemns the politicized and corrupt way in which the Trump administration is letting Eric Adams off the hook.

• In The Free Press, Eli Lake documents the harm done by dismantling the National Endowment for Democracy.

• Pope Francis writes to America’s bishops in defense of moral universalism.

• The Wall Street Journal editorial page explains that Trump’s steel tariffs are dumb.

These are not necessarily the most important stories of the week, and I don’t expect the scales to suddenly fall from anyone’s eyes. Most churchgoing Catholics vote Republican, and these articles are all from broadly pro-Trump publications. But sane people can criticize leaders they support on specific grounds, and soft pro-Trump voters might be interested to learn about these debates.

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Mariana Trench: Fascinating post by Alice Evans reviewing the way women’s magazines popularized feminism in the 1970s. Seems like a great example of Matt’s “appeal to the normies” method of persuasion. Despite hostility from the MSM (“As little as 50 years ago, feminism was bitterly opposed by mainstream media. The New York Times depicted feminists as wild radicals, out of touch with ordinary American women, who were either uninterested or vehemently hostile. Coverage centred on legislative battles, intellectual trends, and feminists’ disruptive protests”), women’s magazines introduced feminist ideas gently. “In Good Housekeeping’s first major piece about feminism, the author describes herself as happily married with children, but is nonetheless ‘grateful to the karate-choppers.’ She wanted men to share housework, abortion on demand, and for girls to believe they are equally good at maths.”

I thought this was a great piece (and said so on Twitter), not just because Evans is talking about making sure you appeal to normies, but because, as I said in my piece on unpopular ideas, I think a lot of contemporary progressive politics just wildly misunderstands what the modes of opinion change are.

I get that from the standpoint of being a grant-maker, it would be nice to think that there is a kind of “activist campaign in a box” strategy to generate change. You fund some people who are going to popularize a slogan or a few ideas, you have them work sympathetic media angles, and then you try to bully elected officials into embracing your ideas. This just does not work nearly as well as actually changing people’s minds, which typically unfolds much more slowly and involves engaging with not-that-political people in not-explicitly-political spaces.

Randy Mulvaney: Given Matt’s love of counterfactuals, what would have happened in the 2000 election if Democrats had a more “me too” attitude towards Bill Clinton’s behavior and forced him to resign. Assuming that Al Gore kept the economy going as happened in the real world from 1998-2000, would he have beaten George W. Bush easily or was the country always going to turn Republican in 2000 due to thermostatic equilibrium and 8 years of Democratic control of the White House?

The 2000 election was extremely close, so it’s quite easy to say “arbitrary variation of circumstances —> Al Gore wins.”