All posts tagged: right time

The GOP’s Big Chill in Iowa

The GOP’s Big Chill in Iowa

Published by skeptic

The arctic chill that upended the final weekend of the Iowa Republican caucus provided a fitting end to a contest that has seemed frozen in place for months. This caucus has felt unusually lifeless, not only because former President Donald Trump has maintained an imposing and seemingly unshakable lead in the polls. That advantage was confirmed late Saturday night when the Des Moines Register, NBC, and Mediacom Iowa released their highly anticipated final pre-caucus poll showing Trump at 48 percent and, in a distant battle for second place, Nikki Haley at 20 percent and Ron DeSantis at 16 percent. The caucus has also lacked energy because Trump’s shrinking field of rivals has never appeared to have the heart for making an all-out case against him. “I think there was actually a decent electorate that had supported Trump in the past but were interested in looking for somebody else,” Douglas Gross, a longtime GOP activist who chaired Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign in Iowa, told me. But neither DeSantis nor Haley, he adds, has found a message …

The Books Briefing: Against Counting the Books You Read

The Books Briefing: Against Counting the Books You Read

Published by skeptic

This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. Last year, I read something like 40 books, not counting all of the titles I picked up and abandoned out of disinterest, the ones I half-skimmed for work, or the advance copies I read 20 pages of. Depending on your point of view, that number may seem impressive or underwhelming. It’s much higher than the average number of books read yearly by American adults, according to Gallup, but it feels lower than I’d like, and might be lower than you’d expect from a professional journalist on the literary beat. But I also maintain that this figure doesn’t offer any real insight into my 2023 reading habits—and that in 2024, we should all consider dropping the “books read” metric entirely. First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic’s Books section: What does 40 books even mean? I could have read three long classics and three dozen middle-grade chapter books. Should that number include …

The Republicans Who Won’t Quit Trump

The Republicans Who Won’t Quit Trump

Published by skeptic

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Prominent Republicans criticized Donald Trump for two years. So why are even these supposed moderates now pledging to support him? First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic: Career Over Country Breaking up, Neil Sedaka told us many years ago, is hard to do. But it shouldn’t be impossible. When a Republican governor describes Donald Trump as a “three-time loser,” warns that the party will lose “up and down the ballot” if Trump is the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, and calls the former president “fucking crazy,” it’s easy to imagine a responsible politician who has packed his bags and is waiting on the steps of the GOP’s Delta House for his taxi back to the world of sensible adults. Governor Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, however, is not such a politician. Sununu gained a lot of media attention …

Trump’s Rivals Pass Up Their Chance at the GOP Debate

Trump’s Rivals Pass Up Their Chance at the GOP Debate

Published by skeptic

“We’ve become a party of losers,” the conservative businessman Vivek Ramaswamy declared during the opening minutes of tonight’s Republican primary debate in Florida. He bemoaned the GOP’s lackluster performance in Tuesday’s elections, and then he identified the Republican he held personally responsible for the party’s defeats. Was this the moment, a viewer might have wondered, that a top GOP presidential contender would finally take on Donald Trump, the absent frontrunner who hasn’t deigned to join his rivals on the debate stage? Of course not. Ramaswamy proceeded to blame not the GOP’s undisputed leader for the past seven years but Ronna McDaniel, the party functionary unknown to most Americans who chairs the Republican National Committee. After calling on McDaniel to resign, Ramaswamy then attacked one of the debate moderators, Kristen Welker of NBC News, before turning his ire on two of his onstage competitors, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. The moment was a fitting encapsulation of a debate that, like the first two Republican primary match-ups, all but ignored the candidate who wasn’t there. Five Republicans …

How to Talk About the Middle East

How to Talk About the Middle East

Published by skeptic

Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here. Last week, I noted the polarizing conflict in the Middle East and asked how citizens of faraway countries should handle differences about the best way forward so as not to tear their own societies apart. Replies have been edited for length and clarity. I just think people need to remember they aren’t required to publicly declare their opinions on world events. We all need to calm down, try to educate ourselves on the history behind the conflict, and listen to the people actually being directly affected by this tragedy, instead of just pumping more empty, ill-informed rhetoric into the world. I generally think I have answers to every question but on Israel versus the Palestinians, I am at a loss. The monstrous atrocities by Hamas on October 7 have placed the Israelis in the most clear-cut, no-win situation I have ever seen. …

A Book That Changed How I Think

A Book That Changed How I Think

Published by skeptic

The right book read at the right time can alter not just what you think, but how. The effect can feel like putting on a new set of glasses: Everything remains the same, but you view reality with sudden clarity. It can also be more unsettling—great writing may make the ordinary utterly unfamiliar, so that the reader experiences it unmoored from prior assumptions. Many books can pull off this life-altering trick, depending on how we encounter them; the timing is as important as the subject. The transformation can happen in childhood, when transcendent writing has the power to let loose imagination. Sometimes the book in question might look deceptively simple—an author reconsidering something as automatic as sleeping or breathing. The information may not be news to everyone: A revolution in one’s thinking can be both obvious and meaningful. You may find a writer who deploys language in unfamiliar, thrilling ways, or who changes your philosophy on raising children. The books below, selected by The Atlantic’s staff, demonstrate how writing can take a person apart and …