NY Mag: “For the president’s base, the defacement of a single George Washington statue might seem like a matter of urgent national concern. After all, for many cultural conservatives, such vandalism is a stand-in for a broader transformation of American civic identity that their movement exists to beat back. But it is hard to fathom how a relentlessly statue-themed campaign message is supposed to appeal to the median American. How many single-issue ‘anti-statuary vandalism’ voters could there possibly be? Who, precisely, is thinking to themselves, I have deep concerns about the way Donald Trump has handed this pandemic (which has made my life worse in almost every respect), but now that I’ve learned that leftist activists sprayed paint on a monument to George Washington, I can’t in good conscience vote for Joe Biden (who has himself called for the ‘protection’ of monuments to our founders)? Is there really a critical mass of white working-class swing voters in Wisconsin who were so perturbed by James Bennet’s ouster at the Times, they now intend to give their ballots to whichever candidate takes the strongest stand against cancel culture?”