While Donald Trump has officially secured a second term as president, all eyes remain on the Sunbelt state of Arizona, where election officials continue to tabulate ballots days after the Nov. 5 contest.

As of Friday morning, the Arizona secretary of state’s office estimates there are more than 780,000 votes yet to be counted. Preliminary results released thus far show Trump leading Kamala Harris by 5.9 points and Democrat Senate candidate Ruben Gallego leading Republican Kari Lake by 1.7 points.

Control of the state legislature and numerous local races are also yet to be officially determined as of Friday morning, according to The New York Times.

While winning Arizona is no longer necessary for Republicans to take control of the White House and Senate this year, the state’s reputation for taking days to produce final election results shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.

“The longer you drag it out, the more it raises suspicions that shenanigans are occurring, that fraudulent activity is occurring,” Arizona Free Enterprise Club President Scot Mussi told The Federalist. “The only way to eliminate that is to ensure that we have election results on election night.”

Failure to provide voters a definitive answer on the outcome of any given race within the day of the election undermines voters’ faith in the process. Imagine, for instance, if the outcome of the 2024 presidential race came down to which candidate won Arizona. The ineptitude of officials in Maricopa County — Arizona’s most populous locality — and other

Like lots of Americans, I tuned in Wednesday afternoon to hear Kamala Harris’ belated concession speech. I had low expectations for what she was going to say, but the spectacle of Harris graciously conceding to a man she had very recently warned was an incipient fascist was too jarring not to witness.

Anyway, I found the speech pretty innocuous and unmemorable right up until the very end when, rallying the crowd for something resembling a rousing conclusion, she said this:

There’s an adage a historian once called a law of history, true of every society across the ages. The adage is, only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. I know many people feel like we are entering a dark time, but for the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case. But here’s the thing, America, if it is, let us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion of stars.

Initially what gave me pause was that, while the rest of the speech had been inoffensive pablum, this was just terrible writing. Even by the standards of speechwriting in modern politics, this jumps out as uniquely bad. Why would this trite metaphor about stars be a “law of history”? And man, I hope “the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion of stars” wasn’t the actual text of the speech, because that’s not even grammatical. It was so bad that I wonder if she wrote it herself.

I don’t study politics, but I do study culture, and there have been some signs that a cultural shift leading to this election result has been brewing for years in America. Most of the professional political analysts just completely missed it.

Some of these may seem absurd, but hear me out.

1. The Popular Success of ‘Top Gun: Maverick’

After the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent protests and rioting in 2020, it seemed to many in the intelligentsia that “culturally relevant” films needed to directly address DEI or “systemic race issues” to find wide appeal. But by the time we could comfortably get back into theaters in 2022, the biggest box office success in America didn’t do any of that.

“Top Gun: Maverick” instead leaned heavily on classic modernist heroism themes, embodied by a white, male protagonist (Tom Cruise as Maverick) who is a traditional, rule-breaking figure dedicated to honor, duty, and meritocracy.

Maverick represented the more traditional American values of meritocracy over aristocracy amid what was supposed to be a cultural revolution intended to set up a new inverted aristocracy.

2. The Mass Cultural Influence of ‘Anti-Woke’ Comedians

While it seems that many of the political talking heads had no idea who Tony Hinchcliffe was until his Puerto Rico joke at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, Hinchcliffe’s show “Kill Tony” is one of the most watched and listened-to podcasts in America.

His show has sold out Madison Square Garden and other major arenas numerous times, and he is