On Tuesday, Donald Trump announced his third run for the presidency at Mar-a-Lago. This came on the heels of a week-long, post-midterm rejection of MAGAism, and its leader. Fourteen candidates endorsed by Trump lost their races, leading to the best midterm result for a Democratic president in decades. Since then, the pundits have been asking: Is Trumpism over? Even if it may seem like the GOP is ready to move on from Trump, it’ll be tougher to move on from Trumpism. This week in The New York Times, Tom Scocca wrote that it’s difficult to “declare defeat for a movement that is built around refusing to accept defeat.” Though some may call Trump a loser, noted Scocca, they haven’t yet gathered up the courage to find another “less Trumpy” way to win. Even so, “Trumpism is Over” is the dominant post-midterm political narrative.

Prior to the election, however, politics reporters were enthralled by other narratives — an inevitable Red Wave of Republican success, a "bleak" future for Biden, and the Dems, as always, "in disarray." James Fallows has been writing about the jarring gap between reality and the predictions of political reporters for forty years. He also writes the Substack newsletter “Breaking the News." Fallows speaks with Brooke about the political press' obsession with telling the future and the narratives that have a chokehold on elections coverage.

This is a segment from our November 18, 2022 show, Flipping The Bird.