Systemic Failure

In “What Was the Biggest Factor in Kamala Harris’s Defeat?” [January 2025], Isabella M. Weber and Elie Mystal debate whether it was the cost-of-living crisis or bigotry that was more decisive. Neither factor demolished Harris’s candidacy; it was “status-quoism” and its heresies, hypocrisies, and hubris that upended otherwise functional democratic governance. Jeet Heer’s penetrating analysis in the same issue [“All-System Fail”] cannot be overstated: “Democrats lost because they allowed Trump to be the only voice of antiestablishment rage.”

Brij Mohan
santa barbara, ca
 

Weber and Mystal both raise valid points about why Harris was defeated. But the framing of the debate sets aside what I think was the biggest factor: messaging. Trump’s team simply made better television. I use the term broadly to include all the ways in which people are taking in mediated information. Policies didn’t matter as much as they should have. Republicans have mastered the media—starting years ago with Fox News and Clear Channel Radio. Now it’s X and Joe Rogan and Steve Bannon’s the War Room. We don’t need to play the same disinformation game, but we at least need to understand it.

Zoe Edgecomb
karlsruhe, germany
 

Thank you for Kali Holloway’s column articulating so clearly the grief of many Black women voters [“The Sting of Betrayal,” January 2025]. I’m not so sure we were actually optimistic; it was more of Harris has to win because of how devastating a second Trump administration would be for all Americans. In many ways, those who stayed home are more responsible for the outcome than those who indulged in the delusion of his economic assistance for the masses.

Bernadette Janet
portland, or
 

Weber and Mystal argue whether it’s voters’ greed or bigotry that is to blame for electing Trump. Apparently inside the blue identity bubble you are not allowed to admit: (1) that we are an oligarchy and not a democracy anymore; (2) that Democrats have become the champions of the Forever Wars; (3) that the Biden-Harris administration is—even now—engaged in an ethnic cleansing that has ended thousands of innocent lives, destroyed America’s standing in the world, threatened international and domestic law, and showered our country in shame; (4) that donors control the Democratic Party and the wants, needs, and fears of ordinary voters have no weight inside the party at all anymore.

I get that you are not allowed to admit these things that virtually every American already knows, but in case there are any people still aligned with the war party who have the moral fortitude to look in the mirror and stand up for something real, here is the reason you lost: You are okay with slaughtering children.

Brian Fuller
portland, or
 

Current Issue

January 2026 Issue

Industry Capture

As a former hunter, I read Jimmy Tobias’s article on chronic wasting disease with interest [“Dawn of the Zombie Deer,” November 2024]. His reporting about the lack of a proper response to the disease is spot-on. Unfortunately, Tobias also repeats hunting industry misinformation that hunting is about putting food on the table, getting outdoors, and controlling the overpopulation of deer.

Chronic wasting disease managed to cross the Mississippi because infected animals were transported to deer farms. Deer farms are specifically designed to benefit hunters, from raising trophies for sport to selling scents (doe urine) for bait. Even the urine, which is sold as retail nationwide, can spread the disease. Species are intentionally manipulated to overpopulate, all so a shrinking minority of hunters can exercise bragging rights in what amounts to an expensive hobby. There will be no curtailing the spread of CWD so long as the hunting industry and its minions in our government wildlife agencies continue to enjoy such exclusive and unquestioned authority.

David Kveragas
newton township, pa
 

Tobias writes that chronic wasting disease in deer “threatens the ability of people to harvest protein for their families independent of the grocery chains and corporate meat suppliers that dominate our food system.” This contributes to the myth that our only source of protein is meat. If a hunter wants to harvest protein for his family, planting a vegetable garden would produce far greater yields of healthier and more sustainable food.

Our current consumption of meat not only leads to high rates of heart disease and cancers but is unsustainable. The fossil fuel energy, water, and land area required to raise livestock and the commodity crops to feed them could be drastically reduced and better directed if converted into growing fruits, vegetables, and grains that actually feed people. This is even before considering that shooting at wildlife as they wander through their habitats is cruel, inhumane, and barbaric.

Margaret Kramar
Hidden Hollow Farm
big springs, ks