History paints a stark portrait of winners and losers, and there’s often little room for nuance. Here’s part of an email exchange I had with friends on November 10th:

Another thing I’m always fascinated with is how winning or losing completely changes narratives. We probably wouldn’t be reading much about the power of rural white voters if the EC had swung just slightly the other way. We’d be reading instead of the dying Republican party and the decline of white voters. The shifting of a few thousand votes and now the perspective is completely different.

In an alternate universe, this is the analysis we’re reading today.