President Donald Trump has long been associated with lust. The 2016 election prominently featured "the Access Hollywood tape" in which he can be heard boasting about grabbing women "by the pussy." But recently, his affections have turned to men.
"I examined his ass," Trump said of Sen. Jon Husted (R–Ohio) at an October 17 rally. "I examined his ass. And then I looked at his shoulders; I looked at his feet; I looked at his hand; I looked at his jawline." He liked what he saw.
There is one candidate, however, whose ass appears to be safe from the president's admiration. "He may not dress right. He may not talk exactly perfectly, and he may not be the best-looking guy I've ever seen," Trump told the crowd on the first night of the GOP midterm convention in Dallas, Texas. Even still, "he deserves to be your next senator."
Such was the pitch for Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general asking voters to promote him to the U.S. Senate. It has been a tough sell, much more so than is typical for a Republican fighting to represent Texas on the national stage. His opponent, state Rep. James Talarico of Austin, has often led in the polls in a place where a Democratic Senate victory would usually be relegated to liberal fever dreams. As A.G., Paxton has been dogged by an impeachment and by longstanding accusations, including from within his party, that his ethics compass is all but demagnetized.
There is another potential obstacle in his way, something Trump hinted at repeatedly in his Trumpian way over the course of that two-day convention. The main characters in the MAGA movement often have a kind of crass charisma—not necessarily a literal beauty, but certainly a talent for performance and presentation. This is a theme in populist movements for a reason: It's the people versus the elite, the outsiders versus the establishment, us versus them. So too can it serve as a helpful distraction when policies' practical results fail to match the promises made, as well as when allegations of corruption surface.
Paxton has the baggage with fewer obvious tools to combat it. And yet if one word best describes him, it may be survivor.
Paxton had been Texas' top law enforcement officer for about six months when he became a defendant.
In July 2015, a grand jury indicted him on three felonies. The charges—two counts of first-degree securities fraud and one count of third-degree failure to register as an investment adviser—concerned work he had done while in the Texas House of Representatives. As state representative for part of Collin County, he convinced investors to put hundreds of thousands of dollars into Servergy, a tech startup, while allegedly failing to disclose that he was paid to attract those very investments.
A state attorney general showing up for a mug shot reverses the typical arrangement. Still, there were signs that this was on the way. In 2014, while Paxton was a state senator, the Texas State Securities Board disciplined him and fined him $1,000 for not completing the required registration to solicit investors. But while the criminal investigation delving into the full scope of alleged misconduct had been announced to the public, it was put on hold until after the election so as not to potentially sway the outcome.
It did not sway the next one either. Paxton was reelected in 2018. But that run-in with the law turned out to be just the beginning.
In 2020, the scandal that would come to define his career began to take shape. Several senior officials from Paxton's office went to the FBI to report him for what they said was an inappropriate and illegal relationship with his friend Nate Paul, an Austin real estate developer who was already under federal investigation.
Paxton, the officials said, had leveraged his office to help Paul in various legal disputes, such as foreclosure proceedings. They also alleged that the attorney general had deployed a special prosecutor to go after Paul's enemies. Paxton denied the accusations. He was reelected in 2022.
"These were upstanding people that Ken Paxton himself had hired because of their conservative bona fides. And yet they all left stating, 'I don't want to have anything to do with this guy,'" says one Republican official who worked alongside Paxton in the Texas government. "It's basically the story of Ken Paxton in my mind. If he doesn't cross the line and literally break the law, he constantly skirts it. And therein lies the problem.
"Now, that's not me saying that he doesn't break the law," the official continues. "I'm just saying that is kind of his MO."
The following year, the Republican-led Texas House of Representatives impeached Paxton for conduct related to the same scandal. The information aired during his trial, particularly as it related to his love life, arguably made the biggest impression on the public consciousness. Paul, it seemed, had set up a fake Uber account under the name "Dave P." It had a mysterious habit of summoning cars to pick up a passenger a block from Paxton's house so it could travel to the apartment of Laura Olson, Paxton's girlfriend.
This was complicated, because Paxton also has a wife, Angela Paxton, herself a member of the Texas state Senate. That body would go on to acquit Paxton of impeachment in September 2023. Angela announced two years later that she was filing for divorce "on biblical grounds."
As for that 2015 criminal indictment, the attorney general was set to go to trial in April 2024, after a series of protracted delays, when he cut a deal at the 11th hour. He would pay restitution and do community service, and in exchange, the prosecutors ultimately dismissed the charges. Had he been convicted, he faced decades in prison, and, per his own guidance, he would likely have been precluded from running for public office in Texas again as a felon.
Paxton declared his candidacy for the U.S. Senate the next year.
Paxton's knack for survival has long baffled onlookers. "The guy's ability to take shots and just keep moving on and stay in elected office is unlike anything I've ever seen in my career in 25 years of running campaigns," Ash Wright—previously a senior adviser to George P. Bush, who invoked the incumbent's mug shot in a 2022 bid to be attorney general—told the Associated Press in July.
How he does that is a matter of some mystery, given he does not possess the showmanship the president favors. One answer might provide a window into how the Republican Party has evolved in recent years. What Paxton may lack in stage presence, he makes up for in a willingness to use his office as a performative blunt instrument.
The attorney general's lengthy tenure has been consumed almost entirely by two categories: high-profile scandals and high-profile lawsuits. During the 2026 Senate primary, as he made his case that he should replace Republican John Cornyn, Paxton advertised his conservative credentials with a statistic: He had "sued [President Joe] Biden over 100 times."
His lawsuits covered quite a bit of ground. There was his attempt in 2020 to overturn the election results, which the U.S. Supreme Court rejected. But he did not always fare poorly. Within days of Biden taking office in 2021, Paxton sued to stop the then-president's 100-day pause on certain deportations, which a federal court granted. He also secured enormous settlements against Meta and Google—$1.4 billion and $1.375 billion, respectively—for alleged privacy violations, although neither company admitted wrongdoing.
Paxton has not lost steam. In 2025, he filed a lawsuit against former Rep. Beto O'Rourke, a Democrat, and his advocacy organization, Powered by People, over donations that supported Democratic lawmakers who left the state to block new Republican-drawn congressional maps. "Our Texan founding fathers—like our American founding fathers—took prior restraints on political speech out of the tool kit," a Texas appeals court later wrote, "when they enshrined the right to free speech in our Constitution." The year prior, Paxton filed suit against Annunciation House, a Catholic charity that shelters migrants in El Paso; one judge called his office's conduct in that case "outrageous and intolerable." Yet Paxton has succeeded in drawing out both cases with lengthy litigation. Even when he may lose the final battle, he often hamstrings his opponents for long periods, a different kind of victory.
Has that helped make Paxton nearly bulletproof? Maybe. But it is also a snapshot of the power of branding in this political moment and how he has leveraged it offstage. "How hard is it for anybody, any Republican, to go into the A.G.'s office and sue the president of the opposing party?" says the Republican former official. "It's just typical stuff, you know. It's nothing of this great political fighter that they think he is."
When it comes to the other category—those high-profile scandals—Paxton has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, casting his legal tribulations as politically motivated witch hunts. He is, he always insists, the victim, not the perpetrator. It may be another sign of how the political landscape has changed, particularly in the GOP, in that transgressions can become capital when marketed savvily.
In the May runoff with Cornyn, who has represented Texas in the Senate since 2002, Paxton won by 28 points.
Party conventions usually exist to formally nominate a president and vice president. Those trappings were still there in the GOP's midterm convention, though no one was being nominated. There were state delegations, their role entirely symbolic. There were balloons and sequins and Lee Greenwood, who introduced the president both nights by singing "God Bless the USA." Trump, of course, loves a good production.
You couldn't help but get the feeling sometimes that the event was largely mounted for Paxton. It took place in Dallas, after all, and his race was a constant part of the discussion.
"He is a weird-looking dude," Trump said. That time, he was referring to Talarico, whom he called "Talafreako." That comment didn't come with an endorsement. "I mean, I don't like talking about looks, but there's something missing there."
Talarico's general presentation has been a subject of fascination on the right throughout the race: his appearance, whether he likes football, accusations he's a vegan (he isn't). An ad run by Paxton deems Talarico "too low-T for Texas"—not macho enough.
How this mudslinging resonates may vary. "Policy is all that matters," Kyle Biedermann, a Republican who served with Talarico in the Texas House of Representatives, told me on the sidelines during the second night of the convention. "I don't care if he's a vegan. I don't care what he does. But his policies are horrible, terrible for our state." Those policies, he said, "are so socialist, so far, far left" that anything else is beside the point.
The night prior, when the president offered $5,000 to every American adult if Republicans won the midterms, a victory in Texas may have been at the top of Trump's mind. On closing night, during the president's second speech, Paxton was featured heavily again. Trump described how he had rehearsed for the moment with his circle. "I'll tell you what I was thinking about saying. I said, 'I don't like the way Ken dresses,'" he recounted to the audience. "And then I said, 'I don't really like the way Ken talks.' And then I said something that they really hated….I said, 'I don't really like the way he looks.'"
In the VIP section, Paxton smiled awkwardly. He is, after all, a survivor.
The post Ken Paxton Survived Indictment, Impeachment, and Scandal. Can He Survive a Senate Race? appeared first on Reason Magazine.
Texas might finally turn blue, and the man poised to do it is a mask-wearing, trans rights–supporting, Gnostic Gospel–quoting liberal from Austin. In an already tough year for Republicans, voter dissatisfaction at the state's data center boom is giving the Democrat an edge.
A few weeks out from the 2026 midterm elections, the polls have been giving state Rep. James Talarico (D–Austin) a small, steady edge over Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in the race to fill the Senate seat currently occupied by Republican Sen. John Cornyn.
Texas has not elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994. The chattering class's constantly misfiring prediction that the latest liberal challenger will beat the favored Republican has made "Texas turning blue" a mockable meme—the political equivalent of Charlie Brown winding up to kick the football.
But this year may be different. The national environment is very bad for Republicans. President Donald Trump's unpopular tariffs and unpopular war have made him, well, unpopular and given GOP candidates little to run on. Texas Republicans are also saddled with Paxton, who won a hotly contested primary despite having little natural charisma and a lot of scandals (both personal and political) to explain away.
Republicans' political headwinds have made Talarico, a 37-year-old legislator with a history that puts him solidly to the left of the median Texas voter, a surprisingly competitive candidate. Some of Talarico's edge can no doubt be chalked up to the candidate's own political skill and fundraising advantage. But he is also benefiting from a late-breaking development that few saw coming: the Lone Star's data center revolt.
For as long as Republicans have run Texas, they've been able to claim credit for the state's decades-long economic growth streak. But the grassroots groundswell of opposition to Texas' data center boom has helped to neutralize that traditional GOP advantage. In solidly red rural areas, large majorities are telling pollsters that they are opposed to the hundreds of data centers proposed in their backyard.
When Republicans thus talk about their economic stewardship today, it conjures up not positive feelings of persistent prosperity but dissatisfaction at all the ways the party has allowed an unpopular data center to be built next door. In a tight race, that might just be enough to give Talarico the last little push he needs to finally turn Texas blue.
All the Texas Senate races of the past couple of decades have taken place within a growth machine. From 1998 through 2024, the Lone Star state posted the fourth-highest GDP growth rate, a period that roughly matches the GOP's unbroken record of statewide election wins. Not a day goes by, it seems, without a major corporation announcing a Texas megaproject or a billionaire relocating to booming Austin.
The state's frenetic growth rate has given the Texas GOP a good story to tell voters about why they should continue Republican rule: Under their low-tax, low-regulation regime, Texas has prospered. The jobs and businesses flooding into the state tend to be coming from states ruled by the Democrats trying to unseat them.
Those Texas Democrats whose bids for statewide office have managed to electrify liberals, meanwhile, have been ill-suited to convince voters that they'll keep the "Texas Miracle" going. There's an old joke that "Republicans fall in line, Democrats fall in love." In Texas, this hopeless romanticism has led to repeated heartbreak. In 2014, Wendy Davis inspired a national media buzz with her pro-abortion messaging while running for governor against Greg Abbott. Beto O'Rourke's style-over-substance challenge to Ted Cruz in 2018 produced a similar mania. Both lost.
You might expect Talarico to meet a similar fate. The fresh-faced lawmaker seems almost grown in a lab to leave liberals giddy while making swing voters stick with the GOP. A former teacher, he first won elected office in 2018, when he flipped an open Texas House seat in the Austin suburbs from red to blue. At 29 years old, he was then the youngest member of the Texas Legislature.
Analyses of lawmakers' voting record put Talarico squarely in the ideological middle of his fellow Democrats, and well to the left of the state's political center. His national star began to rise among Democrats when he used religious arguments to challenge Texas Republicans' culture-war battles over education.
In 2021, Texas Republicans proposed a bill requiring K-12 athletes to play on girls' or boys' sports teams according to the sex listed on their birth certificates. Two years later, they introduced a measure that would require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms. Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian, cited his liberal brand of Protestantism to oppose both bills. "Trans children are God's children, made in God's own image. There's nothing wrong with them. Nothing at all. They are perfect. They are beautiful, and they are sacred," he said in a floor speech opposing the sports bill. In a debate on the Ten Commandments bill, he declared the legislation "deeply un-Christian," citing Christ's instructions in the Gospel of Matthew to pray privately. (The sports bill eventually passed. The 2023 Ten Commandments bill failed, but a near-identical bill would pass in 2025.)
Conservative Christians would quibble with Talarico's progressive readings of the Bible. For national Democrats and liberal-leaning magazine writers, however, his penchant for reframing the Annunciation as a pro-abortion parable and his citations of the noncanonical Gospel of Thomas to support trans rights all served as proof that this "deeply religious" Democrat could effectively speak to Christian swing voters in their own terms.
Talarico has also taken many secular positions that might be hard sells in Texas. In May 2020, a couple of months into the COVID-19 pandemic and weeks before George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, Talarico declared that racism was the real virus. At a 2022 animal welfare fundraiser, a mask-wearing Talarico said he was running a vegan campaign. The same year, he said in a public hearing, again wearing a mask, that "fossil fuels are destroying the planet."
In a state where oil, gas, and beef are champion industries, swing voters to not swoon ordinarily for race-critical, carbon-neutral veganism. Talarico himself seems to have conceded that point. He's dispelled rumors of his veganism by eating barbecue on camera and waved away his past wokisms as "cringey" and "miss[ing] the mark." Even so, Talarico's campaign platform remains stridently progressive. He wants to tax billionaires and raise the minimum wage. If it were up to him, he'd open up Medicare to everyone, regardless of age, and would codify abortion protections into law. He's pro–marijuana legalization and fanatically anti–school choice.
So why are polls showing Talarico maintaining a consistent two- to six-point edge over Paxton?
In one sense, his continued leftward lean is an electoral boon. In a race with a clear enthusiasm gap, some 91 percent of Democrats say they'll be supporting Talarico in the general election. Only 79 percent of Republicans say the same about their candidate. Talarico has also been blessed with a national environment that's shaping up to be a bloodbath for Republicans, who have to answer for the rising prices driven by Trump's tariffs and the Iran war.
But there is one final factor putting Talarico over the edge: a statewide data center revolt that's souring Texas voters on their state's growth machine and neutralizing the pro-growth message that has carried the GOP through so many other tough election cycles.
In November 2025, on the heels of Google's decision to invest $40 billion in data center development in the state, Gov. Greg Abbott proudly declared, "Texas is the epicenter of AI development, where companies can pair innovation with expanding energy." Just a few months later, the governor was vowing to impose new regulations on data centers to "protect" Texans from the consequences of their rampant development.
The U.S. has experienced a rapid revolt against data centers this year, and in few places has that backlash been more sudden or more pronounced than in Texas. According to a 2025 poll by the University of Texas at Austin, nearly 60 percent of Texans were either supportive or neutral about a data center being built in their neighborhood. In August 2026, 57 percent said they would oppose a local data center project.
This backlash against data centers couldn't have come at a worse time for Texas Republicans, or, consequently, at a better time for Talarico. The policies the Texas GOP have long touted as the key to the state's economic success—loose land use and environmental regulations, no state income tax, and the cheap commercial energy prices created by its deregulated energy sector—are the same policies attracting data centers. When the most visible recent consequence of those pro-growth policies is a data center boom most Texans hate, the state's Republicans are having to run away from what were once their prime selling points.
The sudden negative turn in public opinion on data centers has "proven a catalyst for people raising questions about governance and the economy in the state," says James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Making matters worse, says Henson, is the geography of the data center backlash. Opposition to these projects is concentrated in rural areas that have long been Republican strongholds and in suburban areas where the party needs to stay competitive to win statewide elections.
As Abbott's pivot demonstrates, Texas Republicans feel acutely vulnerable on this issue and are scrambling to adopt policies that ensure these developments do not lead to higher electricity prices for residential consumers. Paxton himself has called for a raft of new regulations on these facilities' water and power use and for ending a sales tax exemption on data centers, as well as some more off-the-wall conservative-coded policies, such as holding data centers criminally liable for facilitating AI chatbots that "endanger" children.
Talarico's data center proposal isn't all that different. He too would require data centers to pay for the full costs of their power and would end the sales tax exemption they can currently claim on equipment purchases. He'd also give local communities veto power over data center projects. That makes him more moderate on data centers than fellow Democrat Gina Hinojosa, who is running for governor against Abbott. She's called for a moratorium on data center construction until the state Legislature can convene to discuss "protections" for Texans.
Talarico's moderation could be partly explained by the fact that data centers are more popular, relatively speaking, in heavily Democratic urban areas. He also represents a slice of Austin, which has become a booming tech town. Why risk upsetting one's base when long-ruling Republicans already have to own the data center boom they were so recently bragging about?
The 2026 midterm environment seems almost tailor-made to neutralize Republicans' long-time advantages in Texas. Nationally, they have to own higher prices. Locally, they have to own an unpopular data center boom. Waning voter concerns about illegal immigration have caused their favored red-meat issue to turn a dull brown.
The Texas GOP's only weapon left is personal attacks on the man they call "Talafreako"—some weirdo liberal who calls trans kids "perfect" and thinks racism is the real virus. Talarico's persistent lead in the polls and on the prediction markets (which, in late October, put the chances of him winning at nearly 70 percent) suggest that these attacks are not working.
One could sense Republicans' desperation when right-wing influencers spun up a rumor that Talarico was absent from the campaign trail in early October because he was in a mental health facility in Ohio. (The hospital publicly denied ever treating Talarico. The candidate himself said he'd been recovering from the flu and said he'd never even visited Ohio.)
When Republicans call Talarico a freak, they mean to cast him as abnormal and off-putting: a "freak of nature." But freak has multiple usages. The word can also mean an unpredicted or unusual event: a "freak occurrence." Talarico succeeding in ending Republicans' three-decade run of statewide victories in Texas would fit the latter definition.
Rather than run from the Talafreako barb, Talarico's campaign has emblazoned merch with the intended insult. They at least seem to appreciate the irony of it all.
If Talarico is a freak, that will make his likely victory all the more freaky.
The post Will a Data Center Backlash Help James Talarico Turn Texas Blue? appeared first on Reason Magazine.
Le elezioni di metà mandato non sono mai favorevoli al presidente in carica, ma nessun presidente si è mai speso quanto lui per fare campagna elettorale in quell’occasione. E’ questa in sostanza la tesi del comizio di Donald Trump a Corinth, in Mississippi, a sostegno della senatrice repubblicana Cindy Hyde-Smith, impegnata in una sfida elettorale contro il candidato democratico Scott Colom. Trump sottolinea che “abbiamo fatto il giro, abbiamo girato in lungo e in largo”, evidenziando il suo impegno personale nella fase conclusiva della campagna repubblicana per le elezioni di midterm del 3 novembre prossimo. Il presidente ha aggiunto poi come in questo appuntamento il partito al governo incontra spesso significative difficoltà e “non ottiene buoni risultati”. “Per qualche motivo, i presidenti non ottengono buoni risultati alle elezioni di metà mandato, a prescindere da quanto siano bravi – ribadisce – anche se sono eccezionali, come noi. Ma devo dire che nessuno ha mai fatto campagna elettorale come ho fatto io“. Gli ultimi sondaggi: repubblicani sotto di dieci punti rispetto ai democratici.
Trump, nel suo comizio nello Stato del Mississippi ha promesso di non ribattezzare il fiume Mississippi, diversamente da quanto ha detto per il Messico e il lago Ontario. “Sto pensando all’Oceano Atlantico. Lo chiamiamo Oceano Americano. Credo che all’Europa piacerà moltissimo. E sapete una cosa? Non lo farò. Lo prometto. Il fiume Mississippi: non gli cambierò il nome. Riuscite a immaginarlo, signore e signori? ‘Sono lieto di annunciare che cambieremo il nome del… Oh, in quale Stato ci troviamo? Oh, siamo nel Mississippi. Sono in un bel guaio'”, ha scherzato il tycoon. Trump, che si è impegnato a fondo nelle elezioni legislativedi midterm, aveva già detto in altri eventi della campagna elettorale che non intendeva cambiare il nome del fiume più imponente degli Stati Uniti.
Il vicepresidente degli Stati Uniti JD Vance ha insultato un contestatore che in Kansas aveva interrotto il suo comizio elettorale. “Ecco un altro che dice str…”, ha reagito Vance scatenando la base Maga che ha risposto intonando il coro “Usa Usa”.
Un giudice federale, Ana Reyes, ha prorogato l’ordinanza che blocca i piani dell’amministrazione di Donald Trump per la ristrutturazione del campo da golf pubblico, costruito un secolo fa, nella capitale americana. Emessa, nell’ordinanza di 70 pagine firmata da Reyes, anche un’ingiunzione preliminare per bloccare l’abbattimento di 500 alberi e altri lavori presso l’East Potomac Golf Course. Il 18 ottobre, Trump ha annunciato sui social media l’intenzione di chiudere il campo da golf per 15 mesi e di riqualificarlo, a dispetto degli stop legali e del contenzioso in corso. In precedenza, lo stesso giudice aveva ordinato all’amministrazione di sospendere i lavori del progetto fino al 26 ottobre. Trump veva fatto un post sulla sua piattaforma social Truth Social dicendo che la ristrutturazione sarebbe iniziata a novembre.
L'articolo Elezioni di midterm, Trump mette le mani avanti: “Nessun presidente le vince”. E Vance (molto nervoso) passa agli insulti proviene da Affaritaliani.it.
Ogni volta che leggo qualcuno spiegare, con una certa sicumera, che le elezioni di metà mandato, quelle che si svolgeranno tra una settimana negli Stati Uniti d’America, saranno un trionfo per i Democratici, perché gli elettori hanno capito, perché Trump è finito epperciò terrorizzato sta tentando di andare contro la volontà popolare, perché alla fine arrivano i nostri come quando esisteva il cinema, ogni volta io penso che martedì prossimo mancheranno ancora nove giorni al decennale della mia analisi politica di riferimento.
La mia analisi politica di riferimento andò in onda il 12 novembre del 2016, sulla Nbc, all’interno del “Saturday Night Live”, il programma comico del sabato notte. La mia analisi politica di riferimento è uno sketch di meno di sei minuti intitolato “Election night”. C’è una parte del cast fisso del programma, c’è Dave Chappelle, che conduceva quella puntata, e c’è Chris Rock, che arriva a sorpresa.
La scenetta è ambientata in un salotto qualunque di una casa di americani di sinistra cinque sere prima, la sera dello spoglio elettorale. Le ragazze dibattono di quanti punti vincerà Hillary – lo so che vi sembrano passati trecento anni, ma quelle del 2016 sono le elezioni in cui Hillary Clinton è candidata contro Donald Trump: devo ricordarvi come va a finire? – e continuano a ripetere che è una serata storica, avranno la prima presidente donna. «Certo, lei vincerà il collegio elettorale, ma c’è uno scenario da incubo in cui il voto popolare lo vince lui». Dave Chappelle fa una faccia alla Dave Chappelle: ah, è quello lo scenario da incubo?
Potrebbe, giura uno di quelli pieni di sicumera, non esserci mai più un presidente repubblicano in questo paese: la demografia sta cambiando. Chappelle continua a fare facce: ma tu hai mai dato un’occhiata a questo paese? (Quelli con la sicumera sono tutti bianchi, e man mano che lo spoglio procede dicono che evidentemente è un paese razzista, e Rock e Chappelle ridono fortissimo).
Quest’estate, quando l’algoritmo ripescava qualunque intervista di Matt Damon perché “L’Odissea” era il gusto del momento, ne ho vista una del 2008: Damon si diceva terrorizzato dalla possibile vittoria di McCain e di Sarah Palin, candidata come vicepresidente nelle elezioni che poi vinse Barack Obama.
Non ho mai più smesso di pensarci, perché io le interviste di diciott’anni fa non me le ricordo, ma mi ricordo quelle del 2016, mi ricordo che nel 2016 era davvero come in “Election night”: erano tutti convinti che avrebbe vinto Hillary, così come due anni fa erano convinti che avrebbe vinto Kamala. Che secondo alcune brillanti analiste politiche hanno poi perso perché io le chiamo senza cognome delegittimandole, ma ora non divaghiamo e restiamo a: com’è possibile che la capiscano sempre al contrario? È perché quando hai un candidato evidentemente forte – Barack Obama – diventi scaramantico?
È perché quando hai una candidata evidentemente debole devi tirarti su convincendoti che ce la farai di sicuro?
E l’altra domanda che mi faccio è: è stato Obama un caso irripetibile non di vittoria di uno di sinistra, non di vittoria di un nero, ma di vittoria di un figo? Nel weekend Obama ha fatto alcuni comizi di sostegno a candidati delle elezioni di metà mandato, e sappiamo tutti che è un oratore formidabile, ma leggendo le reazioni a quel suo discorso mi si è consolidato un sospetto: la forza di Trump sta nella sua orrendezza. Obama sarebbe stato un’ambizione, un secolo fa: quando i ricchi si prendevano degli istitutori per imparare ciò che non sapevano e non fare figuracce in pubblico. Adesso che i ricchi si instagrammano con voluttà con cinquantamila euro di vestiti addosso e quindici errori di ortografia a didascalia, Obama è una rottura di coglioni: l’insopportabile promemoria che c’è qualcuno fotogenico e anche con la parlantina.
A un certo punto del discorso di Obama c’era una battuta sulla quale vale la pena soffermarsi. Partiva dallo stesso rimprovero che fanno tutti a Trump: pensa più alla ristrutturazione della Casa Bianca che al paese. E poi diceva una cosa che pensiamo tutti da sempre, io la pensai entrando per la prima volta nella Trump Tower nel 1988: ma cos’è tutto quell’oro?
L’oro è una fissa di Trump, avrete visto le foto di prima della presidenza, quando si faceva scattare nell’appartamento appunto della Trump Tower, oro ovunque e soffitti tragicamente bassi. Non ha esattamente un gusto minimalista, che è un altro modo in cui piace alle masse. Se fossero ricche, anche le masse di elettori si farebbero fare un cesso d’oro, anche loro si farebbero portare cartocci di McDonald’s dal maggiordomo in livrea: cosa credevate avrebbe fatto il cittadino medio con gli eventuali profitti di un gratta e vinci, comprato il catalogo Adelphi?
Se dite – e lo state dicendo tutti, parlo a voi che scrivete sui giornali – che è normale che i ragazzi sfascino le boutique perché il desiderio della cosa costosa è bruciante e cogente e tale e quale a quello del tizio della “Locomotiva”, se dite che appropriarsi della cintura Vuitton senza pagarla è la versione 2026 di «pensava al magro giorno della sua gente attorno, pensava a un treno pieno di signori», beh, poi non potete meravigliarvi se all’elettorato piace il cesso d’oro del Donald più di quanto gli piaccia l’elenco di romanzi fighetti che il Barack condivide ogni anno.
Barack Obama prende l’osservazione sull’oro e la completa così: «Ma cos’è tutto quell’oro, sembra che Saddam Hussein abbia ristrutturato una Cheesecake Factory». Cheesecake Factory è una catena di ristoranti per famiglie assai popolare negli Stati Uniti, ci vanno quelli che se invece vogliono mangiare italiano vanno da Olive Garden (altra catena popolare), non esattamente gente sofisticata come d’altra parte non lo è la massa da nessuna parte, figuriamoci in America.
Mentre scrivo sono quarantott’ore da quando Obama ha fatto questa battuta, che non ci vuole Chris Rock per capire sia una battuta imperniata su «Saddam Hussein», non su «Cheesecake Factory», e sono quarantott’ore che leggo dibattiti lunari sul classismo di Barack Obama che secondo questi giganti del pensiero non capisce che all’americano medio la Cheesecake Factory piace.
Ho letto migliaia di commenti, e a stravolgermi non sono tanto quelli che dicono che Obama è elitario, che il suo disprezzo per il popolo è evidente, che tu a me la Cheesecake Factory non me la tocchi capitoooo, che è proprio alienandosi l’elettore medio che va alla Cheesecake Factory che i Democratici sono diventati irrilevanti. Quella potrebbe essere propaganda. Quelli potrebbero essere commentatori che travisano apposta, per poter criticare Obama. A stravolgermi sono quelli che lo difendono.
Quelli secondo i quali l’esempio era giusto, perché se vi piace la Cheesecake Factory e avete più di cinque anni avete un problema. Secondo i quali l’esempio era giusto, perché lo sappiamo tutti che la Cheesecake Factory è famosa per gli arredi kitsch, e un vero patriota americano mai vorrebbe che la Casa Bianca le somigliasse. Amici, compagni, concittadini, io non sono qui a seppellire le vostre licenze medie, ma non ci vuole un dottorato in costruzione delle battute per capire che, in quella similitudine lì, la Casa Bianca è già la Cheesecake Factory (cioè: un’istituzione americana che tutti conoscono e che a tutti va bene resti com’è), e Trump è il dittatore iracheno che la ristruttura stravolgendola, mettendoci troppo oro, facendola troppo pacchiana. Non c’è niente di più triste che spiegare le battute, e infatti in genere non si fa.
In genere, se sei un politico con una certa qual abilità oratoria, sai fare battute che non hanno bisogno di didascalie, che possono essere travisate solo per malafede e non perché si è estinto il pubblico non completamente stupido.
Un paio di settimane fa ho sentito un dibattito tra il sindaco di Torino e il presidente della regione Piemonte. Non so neanche chi dei due fosse quale, e chi dei due fosse quello di destra e chi dei due quello di sinistra, ma ne sono uscita stravolta da quanto fosse scarsa l’oratoria di entrambi. Forse è quello che vogliamo.
Forse lo stesso pubblico che vuole solo romanzi scarsi perché così non si complessa pensando che non li avrebbe saputi scrivere, e film scarsi perché così anche se si distrae gli ripetono venti volte qual è la legge di Zeus e all’uscita non deve chiedere a ChatGpt di spiegargli la trama, forse quel pubblico, che è pubblico ma anche elettorato, vuole anche politici scarsi. Non si fida di chi arreda troppo fino, né di chi parla troppo bene. Chissà chi c’è tra due sabati al “Saturday Night Live”. Chissà se torna Chris Rock a dire ma tu pensa, chi l’avrebbe mai detto che finiva così.
L'articolo Non date Trump per spacciato, all’americano medio piace la sua orrendezza proviene da Linkiesta.it.
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