TLP Weekend Edition (January 25-26, 2025)

What we're reading and checking out.

TLP’s Darcy says she’ll be watching the rerun of the Australian Open Women’s Final later in the morning but wishes American Madison Keys the best of luck!

📊 “Split Ticket Atlas,” by Echelon Insights. After each election cycle, Echelon Insights puts together the Split Ticket Atlas, this time comparing Donald Trump’s performance to Republican Senate candidates.

The 2024 edition was just released, containing data on every state over the last two cycles with contested two-party Senate races, and you can download your copy here. Split ticket voting is still important and the hard data here helps you assess where and how much. Vital info! Here’s a preview of PA:

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📖 "The Birth of Aspirational Populism: How political scientists misunderstood Trump and missed his appeal," by Yascha Mounk. This is a really important argument from Mounk (on his personal Substack) as we move into Trump 2.0. If you miss the aspirational component of Trump's appeal, you really don't understand him. And if you don't understand him, how can you hope to beat or counterbalance him?

Though the term is much-overused and often misapplied, the concept of populism remains the most accurate frame for understanding his actions: He believes that, as the rightful voice of the people, he should not suffer any artificial restrictions on his actions—whether by unwritten norms or by explicit limits on the powers of a president.

But [a] second, widely overlooked, part of Trump was also in full evidence. He took evident pleasure in the fact that he owes his victory in large part to his growing popularity among Hispanics, Asian-Americans and African-Americans. He explicitly thanked those demographic groups for their support. He even invoked Martin Luther King Jr., promising to turn his dream into a reality....

For the most part, the executive orders Trump announced in his Second Inaugural are tailor-made to support this vision. His promise to restore order to American cities will resonate among the poorer and more diverse segments of his electorate who are the prime victims of urban crime. His promise to restore free speech is broadly popular among voters without fancy degrees who feel that elites are using their arbitrary moral codes and linguistic conventions as cudgels to wield against them at will. Even his promise to “drill, baby, drill” is broadly popular among voters who are more focused on realizing their American Dream in the next few years than on containing the threat to the climate over the coming decades.

Indeed, what is most striking about Trump’s vision is that, for all of its exaggerated laments about the dilapidated state of America, it is profoundly aspirational. His paean to colorblindness and meritocracy resonates among many Hispanic and Asian-American voters who feel much more secure in their membership in the American mainstream than Democratic invocations of the distorting category of “people of color” would suggest. And his promise to plant the American flag on Mars recalls the collective ambition and grandeur of the 1960s space race.

📺 "The Day of the Jackal," on Peacock. In this adaptation of the 1973 film, Eddie Redmayne stars as "The Jackal," an elite sniper and master of disguise who is contracted to assassinate prominent figures around the world. After he takes out a high-ranking German politician, an intrepid MI6 agent (played by Lashana Lynch of No Time to Die) begins chasing Redmayne's ghost around Europe, hoping to catch him before he completes his next job. The show's bingeable first season includes 10 episodes, each of which somehow seems to outdo the previous one in its action-packed drama. It's the perfect candidate for anyone looking for an easy watch.

🎾 Australian Open Women’s Final, on ESPN. American Madison Keys is through to the finals of the first Grand Slam of the year after her 5-7, 6-1, 7-6 (8) upset of No. 2 Iga Swiatek, saving a match point along the way. The 29-year-old American and No. 19 seed faces hard-hitting No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka in the finals. The match is on live at 3:30 AM (ET) this morning on ESPN and will be re-aired at 9:30 AM on ESPN2 if you’re not an insomniac or massive tennis fan and already know the result.

🎶 Wamono Groove: Shakuhachi & Koto Jazz Funk ’76, by Kiyoshi Yamaya, Toshiko Yonekawa, and Kifu Mitsuhashi. In preparation for an upcoming trip to Japan, TLP has been grazing on this collection of jazz/funk gems from the Nippon Columbia studios in the mid-seventies. Headphones on, grooves arriving. Enjoy the weekend!