The Told-You-So Primary Starts Tomorrow

John Harris: “One paradox of 2026 is that for all the intensity of contempt the country’s two major coalitions have for one another — one side fully dominated by President Donald Trump, the other fully devoted to his personal repudiation and the demolition of his movement — this did little to suppress bone-on-bone factional disputes within the coalitions. To the contrary, the higher the stakes rose this year, the more surliness grew between competing wings inside each party.”

“Republicans and Democrats face different versions of the same basic contest. There is one side in both parties that believes the new hyper-online age of politics rewards a liberated political id: aggression, sharp lines, loudmouths, care and feeding of the most zealous members of one’s own tribe. There is another side that believes politics hasn’t changed so much that it doesn’t still reward conventional political virtues: message discipline, keen antenna for finding ideological safe ground, a determination to not let the opposition cast one as exotic or extreme.”