Make That 8

Daily Best of the Web   —   Posted on November 8, 2016

The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal’s “Best of the Web” at The Wall Street Journal written by the editor, James Taranto.

Make That 8

  • “7 Tasks Housekeepers Should NOT Do”—headline, Care .com, undated
  • “Clinton Directed Her Maid to Print Out Classified Materials”—headline, New York Post, Nov. 6

Question and Answer

  • “We Have a Chance to Make History by Electing America’s First Woman President. Why Aren’t We Celebrating?”—headline, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 6
  • “Hillary Clinton Is Now Heavily Favored to Win Electoral College”—headline, PoliticusUSA .com, Oct. 15

On the Road Again
Back in April, David Brooks of the New York Times hatched a plan to deal with Trump-induced cognitive dissonance of the sort we described in today’s top item:

I was surprised by Trump’s success because I’ve slipped into a bad pattern, spending large chunks of my life in the bourgeois strata—in professional circles with people with similar status and demographics to my own. It takes an act of will to rip yourself out of that and go where you feel least comfortable. But this column is going to try to do that over the next months and years. We all have some responsibility to do one activity that leaps across the chasms of segmentation that afflict this country.

So, how’s that working out? Here’s Brooks last Friday on PBS’s “NewsHour”:

Basically, less educated or high-school-educated whites are going to Trump. It doesn’t matter what the guy does. And college-educated going to Clinton. Everyone is dividing based on demographic categories.

And, sometimes, you get the sense that the campaign barely matters. People are just going with their gene pool and whatever it is. And that is one of the more depressing aspects of this race for me.

That seems like an invidious generalization, doesn’t it? But it’s not as if Brooks isn’t trying. Here’s the lead paragraph from his column last Friday:

A few weeks ago I met a guy in Idaho who was absolutely certain that Donald Trump would win this election. He was wearing tattered, soiled overalls, missing a bunch of teeth and was unnaturally skinny. He was probably about 50, but his haggard face looked 70. He was getting by aimlessly as a handyman.

Charming, isn’t it? Though come to think of it, we suspect it would be entertaining to hear the Idaho guy’s description of Brooks.

For more “Best of the Web” from The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto click here.