What Is the State of Conservatism Today?
Know Your Enemy is a podcast about conservatism that takes analyzing its ideas and actions seriously. As we approach the end of Trump's presidential term, we talked to its hosts about the state of the Republican Party and the Right after nearly four years of President Trump.
Donald Trump at a rally in Prescott Valley, Arizona. (Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons)
As November’s election approaches, the conservatism of the Trump era appears to be in crisis. Between the administration’s disastrous response to COVID and Trump’s surreal handling of his own COVID diagnosis, the Republican campaign today has none of the novelty or heterodoxy of 2016. And yet, with the sudden death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, conservatives are closer than ever to realizing their dream of a right-wing supermajority on the United States Supreme Court.
Know Your Enemy, a podcast hosted by Dissent magazine, grapples with conservatism from the Left. Its hosts — Matthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell — joined Jacobin for a wide-ranging conversation on pandemic-era Republicanism, Amy Coney Barrett, and the state of the Trump project heading into next month’s election.
Luke Savage
Though it’s already fading into the rearview mirror, I think we’d be remiss not to discuss the bizarre spectacle that was last month’s debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden — especially as we’re about to endure another. There was a pretty vigorous meta-debate over whether what he did was effective, and there seems to be a consensus that, insofar as anyone “won” what was a total trainwreck of a debate, it was Biden.
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