Well, folks, it’s that time of year again. Thanksgiving!
It’s the day you gather together with family and friends in a joyful feast to celebrate each other’s company, to give thanks for life’s blessings, and, of course, to discuss politics.
OK, if you’re normal, you don’t look forward to the last one. You don’t even care about the last one. Because it’s effing Thanksgiving and can we not just have one effing day to just revel in the things that actually matter.
Unfortunately, there are some media outlets out there who don’t think it’s Thanksgiving unless we steer every single conversation back to politics. And that’s where Politico’s Playbook comes in:
As you prepare your holiday plans, you’ll probably want to be armed at the dinner table with something smart to say about the midterms – like how the anti-Trump coalition that elected Biden in 2020 seemed to hold together for the Dems. More in Playbook: https://t.co/OadDcchcLJ
— POLITICO Playbook (@playbookdc) November 22, 2022
Why — whyyyyyyyyyy — do they do this every single year? Don’t they know that literally no one, at least no sane person, has ever asked for this?
As you prepare your own holiday plans, you’ll probably want to be armed at the dinner table with something smart to say about the meaning of the midterms.
It is admittedly a confusing subject. There was no red wave, but Republicans flipped the House. The anti-Trump coalition that returned Pelosi to the speakership in 2018 and elected Biden in 2020 seemed to hold together for the Democrats, and yet some of the biggest gains for Republicans came among college-educated suburban women and Black and Latino voters. We have been hearing for years that politics is becoming more nationalized, partly because of the decline of local news and the rise of partisan national cable networks, but lots of midterm races turned on local issues or candidates. Ticket-splitting was said to be dead, but it was one of the most conspicuous features of the voting on Nov. 8.
But if you want to filter out a lot of the noise in the results and focus in on the signal, this morning’s Ron Brownstein piece at CNN is a good one to clip and save for Thursday.
And if you want to filter out even more noise, don’t take Thanksgiving conversation advice from Politico. Or from any outlet that’s telling you to spend Thanksgiving discussing the midterm elections. Don’t clip Ron Brownstein’s piece at CNN and bust it out at the dinner table.
Unless, of course, you’re a glutton for punishment and are looking for any excuse to get kicked out onto the street. Which is what I’d definitely want to do to you if you decide to ruin Thanksgiving with your personal midterm election postmortem.
I personally don’t get super excited about Thanksgiving. With few exceptions, I think the food is pretty meh. Green bean casserole is nasty and Pillsbury crescent rolls are nothing to write home about. And don’t even get me started on gravy. Blech.
But I do appreciate the opportunity to spend time with my family, and, having had past experience with relatives who want to rehash a recent election, I can tell you firsthand that I’d rather chug gravy than listen to a discussion about politics. Seriously, miss me with that crap. I don’t need it, and I don’t want it.
Every article like this is “parrot our left wing talking points until your uncle flips a table” pic.twitter.com/xeygU00ba2
— Angela Morabito (@AngelaLMorabito) November 22, 2022
I was actually starting to wonder if maybe they’d take a break this year. Usually by now, you’ll have seen something from The Atlantic or Vox or Mother Jones or whoever about How to Enlighten Your Right-Wing Uncle from MAGA Country at Thanksgiving This Year, but the annual tradition of publishing those pieces doesn’t seem to have started as early as has in past years. I should’ve known at least someone would show up to try to spoil the party.
Did we all get so busy catastrophizing Twitter that we forgot to catastrophize having to be at a dinner table w people who might disagree with your politics? I'd like to think it's progress, but it's probably that people who needed guidance on how to do that just stopped trying.
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) November 22, 2022
I haven't seen any of the annual, "How to explain X to your stupid uncle" pieces this year.
— Passably Affable (@tbrusletten) November 22, 2022
Right? A conspicuous drop-off. Supply chain issue for this dumb column.
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) November 22, 2022
If they’re capable of learning anything at all from past experience, they’ll eventually realize that it’s better to just let people have their holidays and stop trying to ruin every single aspect of our lives.
And if they’re not, well, they can get stuffed.
The beauty of having, in no particular order, grandkids, dogs, and bourbon, on Thanksgiving, negates the need for anything political.
— Allen Robertson (@RobertsonAllen) November 22, 2022
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