Whither the Dems?: More Democrats should be spitting hot fire like Sen. Harry Reid is right now, Michelle Goldberg argues. People who voted for Hillary need to feel like they’re being defended. And leaderlessness isn’t always negative, Jim Newell writes. Take advantage of a chance to reinvent. But next time, Rachael Larimore adds, don’t run the candidate whose “turn” it seems to be.
How the con happened: Fresh from the campaign trail, Seth Stevenson shook the dirt off and wrote about what he saw at Donald Trump rallies over the past week: a candidate who lied convincingly enough to persuade his followers that he would bring the “elites” down a peg.
Note to young people: Daniel Byman, who teaches students who are hoping for careers in government, beseeches them not to give up on the idea because of Trump’s election. Just, he counsels, have an exit plan set ahead of time: “I urge students to think about when they would resign.”
R.I.P.: Leonard Cohen died on Thursday at age 82. Carl Wilson remembers a much-loved fellow Canadian: “His departure right now—was his life force likewise overtaxed by this week?—feels more like the sort of joke God played on Job or Abraham, the kind of subject he liked to sing about.”
For fun: You can now stream A Tribe Called Quest’s last album, featuring a final track called “The Donald.”
Phife’s crystal ball,
Rebecca
