Biden supporters in Washington, D.C., on November 7, 2020, the day his victory over Trump was confirmed.
We danced in the streets when Joe Biden was elected. Do you remember? American cities staged the greatest spontaneous outpouring of joy since V-J Day with cars honking and strangers high-fiving one another on an unusually warm November weekend. When I ventured down to Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, D.C., on a Sunday night, a day and a half after the election had been called, the street party was still going. That was just three years ago.
I would estimate that a very tiny percentage of the joy was attributable to specific policy objectives of the incoming Biden administration and that virtually all of it reflected relief that the bad man was gone. The 81,268,924 voters who pulled the lever for Biden were united by the belief that Donald Trump’s presidency was a civic emergency.
The underlying basis for the belief— that Trump’s defeat mattered more than any other political question—has not changed. On the contrary, it has become only more obvious. The 2020 election took place before Trump tried to overturn the result, before he summoned a mob, before he started describing his opponents as “vermin.” But the conviction behind the idea has dissipated. “As a Biden campaign theme, I think the threat to democracy pitch is a bust,” Mitt Romney—who made that theme the core of his own Trump-era political identity—confessed to the New York Times. “Jan. 6 will be four years old by the election. People have processed it, one way or another.”
Esta historia es de la edición January 15-28, 2024 de New York magazine.
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Esta historia es de la edición January 15-28, 2024 de New York magazine.
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THE BEST ART SHOWS OF THE YEAR
IN NOVEMBER, Sotheby's made history when it sold for a million bucks a painting made by artificial intelligence. Ai-Da, \"the first humanoid robot artist to have an artwork auctioned by a major auction house,\" created a portrait of Alan Turing that resembles nothing more than a bad Francis Bacon rip-off. Still, the auction house described the sale as \"a new frontier in the global art market.\"
THE BIGGEST PODCAST MOMENTS OF THE YEAR
A STRANGE THING happened with podcasts in 2024: The industry was repeatedly thrust into the spotlight owing to a preponderance of head-turning events and a presidential-election cycle that radically foregrounded the medium's consequential nature. To reflect this, we've carved out a list of ten big moments from the year as refracted through podcasting.
THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - BEST BOOKS
THE BEST THEATER OF THE YEAR
IT'S BEEN a year of successful straight plays, even measured by a metric at which they usually do poorly: ticket sales. Partially that's owed to Hollywood stars: Jeremy Strong, Jim Parsons, Rachel Zegler, Rachel McAdams (to my mind, the most compelling).
THE BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
2024 WAS one big stress test that presented artists with a choice: Face uncomfortable realities or serve distractions to the audience. Pop music turned inward while hip-hop weathered court cases and incalculable losses. Country struggled to reconcile conservative interests with a much wider base of artists. But the year's best music offered a reprieve.
THE BEST TELEVISION OF THE YEAR
IT WAS SURPRISING how much 2024 felt like an uneventful wake for the Peak TV era. There was still great television, but there was much more mid or meh television and far fewer moments when a critical mass of viewers seemed equally excited about the same series.
THE BEST COMEDY SPECIALS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - COMEDY SPECIALS
THE BEST MOVIES OF THE YEAR
PEOPLE LOVED Megalopolis, hated it, puzzled over it, clipped it into memes, and tried to astroturf it into a camp classic, but, most important, they cared about it even though it featured none of the qualities you'd expect of a breakthrough work in these noisy times.
A Truly Great Time
This was the year our city's new restaurants loosened up.
The Art of the Well-Stuffed Stocking
THE CHRISTMAS ENTHUSIASTS on the Strategist team gathered to discuss the oversize socks they drape on their couches and what they put inside them.