Democrats are also starting to confront something uncomfortable: Those ads highlighting Harris’s past support for taxpayer-funded transgender prison surgeries? They were a killer. For proof, just look at the 538 chart tracking Harris’s favorable ratings, which were rising until October 1, when she was high on vibes, and then started to sink the very week Trump and his MAGA allies started putting serious money behind those trans ads, which were absolutely inescapable on TV and streaming in the closing weeks. “I talked to so many people in the barbershop who asked about that ad,” [Richmond Democrat Mayor Levar] Stoney told me. “I get that it can be difficult to talk about those issues, but there was room for the campaign to respond to them. Why didn’t they? Because once you don’t respond, people start to believe it’s true.”

The ad was true though, as we documented back in mid-September after the Trump/Harris debate, where Trump was widely mocked on Twitter by journos and Democrat movers and shakers alike who were incredulous over the claim and thought it made him look like a fruitcake. Amazingly, it was CNN of all places that first broke that story - just two days before the debate.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

-- Winston Churchill
The Second World War (ed. 1952)

Like a lot of competitors in the global launch industry, Russia for a long time dismissed the prospects of a reusable first stage for a rocket.

As late as 2016, an official with the Russian agency that develops strategy for the country's main space corporation, Roscosmos, concluded, "The economic feasibility of reusable launch systems is not obvious." In the dismissal of the landing prospects of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, Russian officials were not alone. Throughout the 2010s, competitors including space agencies in Europe and Japan, and US-based United Launch Alliance, all decided to develop expendable rockets.

However, by 2017, when SpaceX re-flew a Falcon 9 rocket for the first time, the writing was on the wall. "This is a very important step, we sincerely congratulate our colleague on this achievement," then-Roscosmos CEO Igor Komarov said at the time. He even spoke of developing reusable components, such as rocket engines capable of multiple firings.

A Russian Grasshopper
That was more than seven years ago, however, and not much has happened in Russia since then to foster the development of a reusable rocket vehicle. Yes, Roscosmos unveiled plans for the "Amur" rocket in 2020, which was intended to have a reusable first stage and methane-fueled engines and land like the Falcon 9. But its debut has slipped year for year—originally intended to fly in 2026, its first launch is now expected no earlier than 2030.

On October 11, 1798, John Adams wrote to the Massachusetts Militia that

Because We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Gallantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

But are we still a moral and religious people? In “The Real American Founding: A Conversation,” professors of politics David Azerrad and Thomas West help us answer that question.

In the fifth lecture of that course, titled “Morality and Virtue,” professors Azerrad and West discuss the fact that government always legislates morality, but what that morality consists of depends on the beliefs of those who make the laws. The nature of the legislative power is to tell people what they can and cannot do, what is right and wrong.

In the Founders’ understanding, they believed that government ought to support true morality and virtue. That is, morality and virtue grounded in the laws of nature and of nature’s God, from which they derived man’s natural rights and duties.

The Founders also believed that the laws of nature and of nature’s God, along with the natural rights and duties derived from them, were in accord with their Christian beliefs. Government therefore ought not to be hostile to Christianity, but rather should support it with laws that are friendly to it and encourage its flourishing among the citizenry.

Never give in — never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

-- Winston Churchill
Speech given at Harrow School, Harrow, England, October 29, 1941. Quoted in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, 2008, p. 23 ISBN 1586486381

What is the true and original root of Dutch aversion to British rule? It is the abiding fear and hatred of the movement that seeks to place the native on a level with the white man … the Kaffir is to be declared the brother of the European, to be constituted his legal equal, to be armed with political rights.

-- Winston Churchill
On the Boer War, London to Ladysmith via Pretoria (1900).

Apt analogies are among the most formidable weapons of the rhetorician.

-- Winston Churchill
The Wit and Wisdom of Winston Churchill (1984)

I have derived continued benefit from criticism at all periods of my life and I do not remember any time when I was ever short of it.

-- Winston Churchill
in House of Commons 27 November 1914

Headmasters have powers at their disposal with which Prime Ministers have never yet been invested.

-- Winston Churchill

But it is a third theory for Trump’s resounding victory, posited by many on the left, that should cause grave concern to liberty lovers because it forewarns of an acceleration of efforts to control the marketplace of ideas. Here, Harris’ loss was blamed not on the far-left policies and candidate voters rejected or on the supposed racist and sexist beliefs of the electorate, but on voters purportedly being “misinformed” by the right-wing controlled media.

By the end of last week, this theme had flooded the airways and social media. But it was the New Republic’s article, “Why Does No One Understand the Real Reason Trump Won?,” that best capsulated this spin.

The New Republic’s article from Thursday declared the purported “reason” for Trump’s victory: “It wasn’t the economy. It wasn’t inflation, or anything else. It was how people perceive those things, which points to one overpowering answer.” “The answer is the right-wing media,” author Michael Tomasky pontificated, continuing:

“Today, the right-wing media — Fox News (and the entire News Corp.), Newsmax, One America News Network, the Sinclair network of radio and TV stations and newspapers, iHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel), the Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), Elon Musk’s X, the huge podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, and much more — sets the news agenda in this country. And they fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win.”

This argument was laughable to conservatives and Republicans who, unlike many of their liberal and Democrat contemporaries, do not limit their news intake to coverage from like-minded media outlets. Thus, the right saw what statistics bore out — “that broadcast evening news coverage of the 2024 presidential race has been the most lopsided in history,” with legacy outlets, like ABC, CBS and NBC, providing Harris “78% positive coverage, while these same networks have pummeled former Republican President Donald Trump with 85% negative coverage.”

The legacy networks also hosted and controlled the presidential and vice-presidential debates, providing even more skewed coverage of the competing candidacies. And these media outlets regularly pushed — or unquestioningly accepted — false and misleading claims about Trump and Vance.

The repetitive false reporting that Donald Trump had called neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville “very fine people” — a claim even debunked by Snopes — alone proves the point. But ordinary Americans, having lived through the Russia collusion hoax and the false claims that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation, and also having witnessed the blatant bias of the networks during the debate, no longer needed solid proof to question the veracity of the legacy outlets. And the populace then turned to alternative media to assess the truth.

Herein, we saw the difference about 2024: It isn’t that the right controls the media or misinforms the populace, but that the left no longer can — at least not unimpeded.