Journalist moving from New York magazine to The Atlantic magazine, reflecting on his time at the former.
Over the past 13 years I have watched the national political environment roll back and forth several times. When I began, Obama was beginning to beat back a reactionary national mood that treated him as a socialist naïf who was risking a Greece-like fiscal crisis with his free-spending ways. His reelection fostered an atmosphere of triumph (which I shared), which led to the hubris that a rising liberal tide in the electorate would free Democrats from the need to compromise their beliefs. Then came Trump, followed by the repudiation of Trump, followed by the repudiation of the repudiation of Trump.
Things change faster than you think. Keep that in mind when you listen to the current din of Trumpists beating their chests about their candidate squeezing out a margin of probably less than 2 percent in a global atmosphere of incumbent parties losing everywhere.
