Nate Cohn: “While the history books will rightfully dwell on whether Democrats could have forestalled another Trump presidency, the question of whether Mr. Trump cost conservatives a more decisive victory might be the more useful one to understand American politics today.”

“Voters wanted change, badly. They were repelled not just by Mr. Biden’s faltering condition, but also by rising prices and perceived failures of Democratic governance on everything from immigration to energy. While it didn’t yield a more decisive Republican victory, the backlash against pandemic-era restrictions, rising prices and ‘woke’ all help explain why a close election felt like a conservative ‘vibe shift.’”

A good time to recall that a) almost all political analysis is based on counterfactuals, ie, what would h

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