What I wrote about in 2024

Strengths, limitations and admitting mistakes

I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and had a happy new year. Normally at this time I would write about what happened during the last year and look ahead to the new year. That is what I have done for the last three years. I’m going to do things a little differently this time. Rather than go over what happened during 2024, I’m going to look back at some of the things I wrote over the year. I won’t make any predictions about 2025 here, but I have written a little about what to expect from Congress so feel free to check it out if you haven’t already.

Before getting into what I wrote last year, I’d like to briefly go over where things stand regarding the state of this blog. I’m happy to say, after more than four years of writing, I finally have more than 100 subscribers. As of this writing, I am at 110. Thank you to everyone who made that happen. I hope you enjoy what I write and I look forward to writing plenty more this year and beyond. I would love to expand my fanbase so feel free to tell others about this blog. You can forward this post to anyone or share the link to my blog, which is coldpoliticaltakes.substack.com.

Since I first began writing, I have published 263 posts. That is a little overstated because a few of them were just notices about my changing platforms, but it’s not too bad if I might say so. I make it my goal to write once a week or to average ~50 posts a year. Last year I came up just short at 49. I guess I owe you all 51 this year.

The biggest change to this blog since I first began writing was over the summer. I had been writing on WordPress, but switched over to Substack. It was a change I had been encouraged to make for some time, but was lazy about it. With the help of a certain subscriber, I finally got off my ass and made the transition. It was 100% worth it.

WordPress was fine, but Substack is where it’s at. Substack is like Meta and WordPress is like Myspace. Substack also makes it much easier for people to subscribe and doesn’t charge anything to use it.

Looking at what I wrote this year, it’s overall very responsive to things that were happening at the time. That’s usually how it works. I almost never know a week in advance exactly what I will be writing about. There are exceptions, but generally I figure out over the course of the week what I will be writing on over the weekend. Often, it’s because a certain event happened that I can’t ignore, but sometimes it’s because I read something or I’m responding to a discussion other writers have been involved in.

Even when I know what subject I will be writing about, I usually don’t know the specifics until very late and sometimes figure it out as I start writing. For example, after the election I knew what I would be writing about for the next few weeks, but I wrote some takes later because the results didn’t all come in at once. I also consider myself to be in the business of shooting down hot takes and those tend to come in at different speeds.

My writings focus heavily on US elections and that was especially true this year. That is the one area where I consider myself an authority and would be willing to argue over it with literally anyone. When it comes to understanding what impacts elections and what does not, I know it very well, much better than most who get paid to write and talk about it. I’m gloating a little, but it’s true.

I find most of those in the politics business are like average Division III quarterbacks. There is nothing wrong with that, average Division III quarterbacks are much better than most. The problem is they don’t think that’s what they are. They think they’re Tom Brady. I wouldn’t be so bold as to compare myself to Tom Brady. I’m more like Troy Aikman.

I like to have a little fun from time to time. I’m no comedian, but I don’t want this blog to be 100% business, maybe 98%. I have to keep you all engaged somehow. That’s why I try to write posts with humorous titles and/or subtitles. A good attention getter goes a long way.

What I wrote about last year and what makes me a good political writer

My writings last year featured posts not just on the presidential election, but on how parties in the US tend to work (or not). That’s another thing I know very well. It’s always a relevant topic, but especially so after presidential elections. Understanding how parties work and don’t work is key to understanding why political actors make the decisions they make and why they sometimes do things that to us make no sense and defy all logic.

While I know elections and the workings of parties very well, my knowledge of just about everything else is very limited. I wrote two posts in May explaining why my blog is worth reading and discussed what I don’t do. I’m not a policy expert. I have broad knowledge of some policy matters, but I’m looking at it from 30,000 feet. Anyone who wants to dive into the weeds of the tax code or healthcare policy will have to look somewhere else.

To the extent I write on policy, it is heavily skewed towards domestic issues. While my knowledge of domestic policy is limited, my knowledge of foreign policy is close to zero. I have some strongly held views, i.e., Putin and the CCP are bad, but don’t ask me the first thing about what should be done because I couldn’t tell you. Domestic policy is not just something I know better, but it also, obviously, hits closer to home. I care a lot about issues like healthcare, energy, immigration and abortion. I have written plenty on those last three subjects, including this year.

As readers know, I consider myself to be a center-left Democrat and am very supportive of what has been called the abundance agenda. I have written about that divide within the Democratic Party. My most recent piece discussed what I believe Democrats should do going forward. Much of it centered around pushing for policies to promote growth and abundance and to be willing to have intraparty fights in pursuit of it.

Since Trump won, there have been many elected Democrats and Democratic-aligned writers who have been vocal about the need to confront the huge amount of red tape standing in the way of what Democrats hope to accomplish. It’s a very welcome development, but is also indicative of how parties in the US operate. Those who are advocating for addressing the problem of red tape didn’t just suddenly start believing it. They have believed it for a long time. What changed is that their party lost another presidential election and so they’re speaking out.

Since 2016, the focus of national Democratic Party officials and groups has been on staying united and avoiding intraparty fights. That’s not necessarily a bad goal, but it’s not sustainable. Two major parties in a country of more than 330 million people are never going to go long without an argument. It’s not something most party actors want to have, but it happens all the time and is necessary and healthy.

I have written many times about the need for Democratic Party actors to be willing to push back on the left-wing advocacy groups that have gained a big foothold since 2016. I’m glad to see that finally happening. Prior to November, Democrats were doing pretty well, which is why there was little pushback against those groups. In 2018, they won back the House. In 2020, although it was narrow, they won the White House and the Senate. In 2022, they had an amazing midterm for the party in the White House.

I have no doubt if you had told most Democratic members of Congress you were worried about the bad influence of left-wing groups they probably would have agreed with you. But they probably would have told you there was no reason to rock the boat given that they were doing well. Having lost the election this year, that excuse is gone and so the gloves are finally coming off. That is how parties change. It takes losing a presidential election, particularly one where they lost the popular vote, to prod their elected officials and other actors to change things.

I have long been critical of the left and particularly the left-wing advocacy world. I wrote about that plenty last year and have been writing about it for some time. I think those criticisms hold up very well. I used to consider myself a part of the left, but no longer do and wrote about my own ideological journey.

While I don’t care for the left, I really don’t care for those who lay every problem on earth at their feet. I don’t like to write polemics, but couldn’t help myself in September. I wrote on that subject in 2023 as well. While the left is often guilty of living in a small, insular world, some of their critics are even bigger offenders.

A big mistake many critics of the left make is to talk about them like they rule the world. What they should be doing is encouraging people to push back against them and emphasizing that they’re a bunch of paper tigers. That will do way more to combat their influence than telling people to be afraid of them.

I wish it was the case that the left was the cause of every problem there is. If that was true, solving problems would be easy and straightforward. Pushing back on the left in almost all areas is necessary, but not sufficient. As I wrote about in my election post-mortems, Trump didn’t win because of wokeness or any left-wing stupidity. I have a very low view of those who claim he won because of their pet issue and automatically discount anything they have to say about elections.

If anyone has evidence that inflation was caused by gender affirming care, please let me know. Otherwise, I don’t want to hear it. Many of those in the politics business routinely fall victim to what is called the pundit’s fallacy. It’s the belief that “what a politician needs to do to improve his or her political standing is do what the pundit wants substantively.” I can’t promise many things, but one promise I can make is you won’t find that junk here.

Virtually everyone has a particular ideology, worldview and narrative about how things should be. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. I have an ideology and worldview and am heavily biased. That’s a big part of why I don’t like to prognosticate because what I predict will happen would probably overlap heavily with what I want to happen and I don’t want to do that. Sometimes, I think my particular view on an issue is good for Democrats and they should adopt it to win more elections. Most of the time, I don’t believe that either because adopting my view would be bad politics or it wouldn’t make much difference.

As far as narratives go, I’m sure I have one, but I don’t really know how to describe it. In looking at the presidential election, I think it’s explained almost entirely by inflation and not because Harris didn’t advocate for everything I like. That’s what distinguishes me from most political writers and others in the politics business.¹ You have to be able to separate “Here’s what Democrats should do” from “Here’s why Trump won.”

As the name of this blog says, my takes are cold. That’s in contrast to most others whose takes are hot and self-serving. Some of what I write is widely agreed on, but a lot of it is not. The latter is not why I write, but I think it does readers a service by giving a perspective you’re less likely to find on social media, podcasts or TV. You could call some of my writings contrarian, but please don’t. I don’t write to be contrarian and I can’t stand those who do.

One of my selling points is I have so far managed to avoid a lot of the mental diseases many other writers have become afflicted with. Contrarianism may work out in some other areas, but in politics it’s a guaranteed way to go off a cliff. Over the years, I have seen many writers make contrarianism against what they see as “the establishment” their entire thing and it has melted their brains.

The problem is not that contrarianism is always wrong. It’s that it will be wrong sooner or later and there is no way to course correct. Often times, what happens is a writer will start off in a good place, but because of contrarianism will quickly go down a bad path. For example, with contrarianism as your ethos, there is a very straight path from “Some pandemic interventions went too far” to “All vaccines are bad, RFK is right.” Once someone goes down that path, it only gets worse.

While I don’t like contrarianism, I’m no blind conformist either. I think criticism of institutions is good and warranted, especially when many of them screw up so badly. Where I differ from the contrarians is I’m not going to throw my lot in with arsonists. The solution is to demand accountability from our institutions and work to fix their shortcomings, not to burn everything down.

As I wrote about last year, I don’t like cranks and would never associate myself with them. Still, I think a mistake many Democrats have made is reflexively defending institutions. That was an understandable reaction because Trump is an arsonist, but it was wrong. Just because he lies about or criticizes something in bad faith doesn’t mean you should go in the opposite direction.

I don’t like Trump at all, but, unlike many Democrats and those on the left during his first term, I have never let him eat my brain. I anticipate writing many things critical of him soon, but I’m not ever going to say he’s the cause of every problem on earth. The red tape preventing all kinds of things from getting built long precedes him. On the state and local level, the failings of blue states and cities are the fault of Democratic elected officials there, not Trump.

What I got wrong

I think everyone in the politics business owes it to their readers, viewers and/or listeners to admit they were wrong when they get something wrong. My MO is to not make predictions so I tend to not be right or wrong about most things. Still, I have had some takes that aged poorly and I’m going to acknowledge some of it here.

The worst take I have had over the last two years is supporting Biden running for reelection. I wrote a post about being wrong over the summer, but my wrong take goes back much further. Beginning right after the midterms, I was emphatic that Biden should run again and supported it enthusiastically. Unlike most in the politics business, I appreciated that he was boring and had no fanatical following. I admired and still admire how much he was able to accomplish with a bare majority during his first two years.

Not only did I support him running again, but I was scathingly critical of his intraparty critics. A large majority of them didn’t support him in the 2020 primary and were never fans of his. They were also people who had written him off before only to be proven wrong time and again. Because of that history, I didn’t give much weight to anything they said.

On the age question, many say it was obvious how bad his conditions was, but that’s wrong. He had some bad moments, but nothing out of the ordinary for him. Because he had a long history of gaffes and flubbing words, I dismissed it whenever it happened. Long before last year, even as far back as 2019, his critics were saying he was senile and in decline. He kept proving them wrong again and again and so I believed his team when they said he was in good condition.

Plenty raised a fuss over Biden’s limited appearances in 2023 and early 2024, but I dismissed it as bed wetting from the usual suspects. I believed he and his team had a plan and there was a method to their madness. Their agreeing to a debate in June made me even more confident in them. At the time, Biden was behind in the polls and the debate was seen as an opportunity to change the game. I think his inner circle not only lied to everyone about his condition, but lied to themselves, too.

My view of Biden is lower than it was before the debate and my view of his inner circle is rock bottom. Not only did they hide his condition from the public, they hid it from his own cabinet and congressional Democrats. I feel foolish for having dismissed age concerns and having been so enthusiastic about him running again. It doesn’t take anything away from what he accomplished as president, but it will be a big black mark when the history books are written.

The one good thing about that whole saga is how unique it was. As far as what anyone should take away from it going forward, the answer, I think, is not much. Being old and frail was a problem unique to Biden. The few people in his inner circle should never work on a campaign or in an administration again, but they’re almost as old as he is and so they won’t be doing that anyway. I have no idea who Democrats will nominate in 2028, but whoever it is won’t have an age problem.

In large part because of anger over Biden hanging on for too long, there has been a push by younger Democrats in Congress against their much older colleagues in getting the top spots on committees. Democrats in Congress have, for decades, used seniority to determine who gets those spots. I think doing away with that is good. There is something to be said for having some older members around, i.e., Nancy Pelosi, but they can’t be in charge of everything and it’s time for some younger leadership.

Another thing I was wrong about was believing Trump was a much weaker candidate than he really was. Granted, he still is a weak candidate, but was strong enough to win again. Throughout 2023, I believed he would be nominated but was unlikely to win the general election. I had disabused myself of that notion by the time the summer of 2024 came around, but as recently as early last year I believed it was possible Biden could win in a rout. Looking back, not only was that not on the cards, but had he stayed in, he was probably going to lose handily. Harris deserves credit for saving Democrats from what could have been a much worse night.

I really believed the midterms and subsequent elections signaled something about the presidential election that people were missing. That Democrats thrived in those elections despite Biden’s approval rating being in the gutter felt like walking on water. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did and it kept repeating.

I didn’t think it automatically meant Biden/Harris would crush it, but I believed something was going on even if there was no way to quantify it. As it turns out, and this is something I knew and should have kept in the front of my mind, presidential elections are completely different from all other elections. Tens of millions of people show up in presidential elections who don’t otherwise vote. It wasn’t long ago when that benefitted Democrats, but today it benefits Republicans.

Trump won with the support of low propensity voters. The voters who show up regularly are more politically engaged and care about things like abortion and January 6 much more than those who are less engaged. I always knew that was a possibility, but I discounted it. I wasn’t surprised that Trump won, which I discussed was a good possibility in my pre-election post, but it still was something that I felt in my gut would be avoided.

Despite Trump’s win, I don’t think the midterms and 2023 elections meant nothing. It was very impressive how well Democrats managed to hold their own downballot this year. Currently, they are only three seats short of a majority in the House. Abortion and January 6 weren’t decisive, but they still mattered and without them as issues my guess is Republicans would have bigger majorities than they have now.

The good news for Democrats is that since they are the party of high propensity voters, they can likely look forward to having a good night this year, in the midterms and in 2027. 2028 is an eternity away and we have no idea what will be going on then. It’s entirely possible low propensity voters will support whoever the Democratic nominee is or they might not. We’ll just have to wait and see.

1. No, I’m not really in the politics business, I have a day job. I should get paid a fortune to write, but I do it for free. What is this world coming to?