5 Comments
Nov 10Liked by James daSilva

Always a good week when Larry writes a column. Him watching a Prisoner marathon to skip a wedding is an all timer.

The housemate article is gold but minor meaningless nitpick, if Doogan has his own bedroom & hasn’t been kicked out why has he spent two weeks on the living room couch?

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Ooh, that's a good catch! Maybe loss of his bedroom is one of the sanctions? And yes, Larry Groznic wasn't a columnist I really remembered when I started writing this newsletter, but now I can't wait for his columns.

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Nov 10Liked by James daSilva

The coverage of the 2004 election seems like it reflects a pretty standard view of the time. I'd guess that the author had read "What's the Matter with Kansas". It was published in June 2004 and theorized that Republicans voted against their own economic interest because Republican candidates stoked fear about cultural issues. Or maybe they had just read the blurb - the actual book was more nuanced and focused on how Democrats adopting conservative economic policies meant that Republicans could focus on cultural issues since they didn't have to argue against a different economic platform. In other words, Buddy would have also lost his factory job under Gore, but would have just felt more alienated from their leadership. I'd say that the article is mocking the poor as rubes

I was surprised that Hispanic voters were mentioned, but apparently there was a surprisingly big swing. Ironically, the 7% swing you mentioned still resulted in Bush getting less than a majority of the demographic(44%) but I think that many people assume that Republicans get around 0%. This NYT article theorizes that the gain was partly due to Spanish language ads.

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/09/politics/campaign/hispanic-voters-declared-their-independence.html

For comparison, I saw a stat that Trump got 42% of that vote this year.

I always have a soft spot for the articles that describe everyday things like serious politics. I love the roommate article and the Federal Confectionary Reserve.

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Thanks for this! Now that you say it, of course, "What's The Matter With Kansas" must have been familiar to The Onion, but it's one of those mid-2000s things that I couldn't quite retrieve from my memory when I was writing this.

I don't think 2004 and 2024 are particularly similar, but the coincidences have been wild to look at. Bush definitely made an effort to reach Hispanic and/or Spanish-speaking voters in 2004, but I don't think it was appreciated until later Republican candidates saw their percentages plummet.

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Nov 11Liked by James daSilva

I really like "Gay marriage killed the dinosaurs"-- reminds me of, and is possibly based on, politically slanted arguments about what caused the fall of Rome.

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