I’ve gotten a range of responses to yesterday’s post (“Trump’s Already Lost“) on Trump’s gambit and whether he’s already lost. There were a few specific questions, however, that came up again and again, that I wanted to answer.
First: What is “it” exactly that he’s lost? Complicated and complex question in a way. But what I mean is this. I think Trump has probably already lost in his effort to impose a Viktor Orbán (Hungary) or even a Victor Orbán-lite model on the USA.
Second: Why was I saying this? Was I making a prediction? Not exactly. I don’t like making predictions. It goes to my basic philosophy about TPM and perhaps about journalism generally: fundamental honesty with readers. That means more than not lying to readers. It means not keeping things from readers. It means trying to create as little gap in relevant/meaningful information between what we know and what our readers can learn from reading us. There are certain things we can’t share: confidential information, information that is either inappropriate to share or invades people’s privacy for no valid reason. But within those bounds we want that Venn diagram to be as close to overlapping as possible. That’s why I wrote yesterday’s post. It’s not a prediction. It’s not something I’m going to get into an argument trying to prove to anyone. But it’s what I am seeing. So I wanted to share that with you even if it leaves me vulnerable to some criticism.
