23 Days Earlier

I’m writing this Election Day, and replacing yesterday’s Gang recording that was derailed by the usual Musk-baiting. 23 days earlier, the talk was of metaspheres, the creator economy, and prop badges in the pivotal Georgia race. Finally, most of the issues have been overtaken by the beginnings of the raw numbers, and my general feeling is: bring it on. Record early voting could be a factor, but so could a more traditional midterm dynamic of party out of power. As the election approached, newsletters seemed to frame things as deeply polarized, while cable networks did their eyeball dance with a mixture of anxiety and fundraising pitches.

The barrage of political churn will likely persist through the end of the year, driving people away from their wallets and toward divided government, trending red. If I’m wrong, a blue wave will not quiet the gathering storm, but the tech jockeying will get all the noisier. It’s there where the likely Trump campaign will show its true impact. Perhaps politics will drop lower on the list of priorities as we measure the severity of the economic retrenching and handicap what will be the impact on our lives of post-pandemic normalization. It may be that Trump will not weather the transition to 2024 well, and adopting the wave of lateral deurbanization will level out the peaks and valleys of the digital economy. Biden’s stewardship of the move to electric and virtual hybrid second employment may be the thing we should be focusing on as the divided government proves difficult to undermine the rolling back of social services the Republicans promise.