The Rational Nationalist

Following the Republican defeat in the 2026 midterms, commentators are questioning the future of Trumpism. But what if the movement was never primarily about Donald Trump himself?

This week, Lee Ellis traces the rise and decline of the post–Cold War political consensus, the expectations surrounding Barack Obama's presidency, and the growing backlash against progressive institutional power.

From the fall of communism to Brexit and the rise of Trump, we explore how opposition to a common political establishment can unite otherwise disparate voters—and what happens when that coalition must govern.

A look at political identity, democratic accountability, and the limits of protest movements.

Read and subscribe: https://leejellis.substack.com

How I Got Brazil's Election Wrong

There's nothing quite as humbling as a high-confidence prediction that turns out to be completely wrong.

Going into Brazil's presidential runoff, prediction markets gave Bolsonaro an 80% chance to win, while I gave him roughly a 92% chance of victory. Instead, Lula won by more than three percentage points.

In this week's podcast, I examine the assumptions behind my forecast, where my reasoning failed, and how we should evaluate unexpected election results—including the inevitable questions about fraud and electoral legitimacy.

The larger question is how to distinguish genuine evidence from the psychological temptation to explain away an outcome we didn't expect.

Family, faith, and country are among the things people value most. But what happens when our loyalties to these groups come into conflict?

In this episode of The Rational Nationalist, Lee Ellis explores how personal relationships and group identities shape our political and social behavior. Using examples ranging from Jack and Diane to Romeo and Juliet, we examine why communities encourage certain relationships, distrust outsiders, and sometimes demand loyalty at the expense of competing attachments.

We also explore how family, religion, and national identity can reinforce one another—and why authoritarian organizations often view independent loyalties as threats to their control.

Read more and subscribe to The Rational Nationalist: https://leejellis.substack.com

Why would a political party support a candidate who's less likely to win an election?

Because winning the election isn't the only consideration. Party leaders and political activists also care about what their candidates will do once elected.

In this episode of The Rational Nationalist, Lee Ellis examines the trade-off between electability and political loyalty—and why a weaker candidate may sometimes offer party leadership more influence than a stronger, more independent one.

We explore:

Why independently popular politicians have greater freedom to defy party leadership.

How primaries create incentives for ideological conformity.

The difference between partisan voting records and actual obedience to leadership.

A simple probability model for comparing a candidate's electoral prospects with their expected value to party leaders.

How political dependence can shape the relationship between elected officials and the people who helped put them in office.

Ultimately, the episode asks whether political movements are trying to elect the most effective representatives—or the representatives they can most easily influence.

We measure success because we need to know whether we're making progress. But what happens when the measurement becomes more important than the goal?

In this episode of The Rational Nationalist, Lee Ellis explores how metrics can reshape the incentives, priorities, and even values of the people using them.

From politicians celebrating legislation without examining its results to journalists chasing page views, individuals competing for wealth and status, and policymakers navigating the Cold War, the same problem keeps appearing: once we establish a scoreboard, people start playing to win.

How do we distinguish genuine progress from impressive-looking numbers? And how can we hold institutions accountable without encouraging them to pursue the wrong objectives?

This week's episode examines how the way we keep score can change the game itself.

Americans increasingly experience politics as a national struggle over everything—from presidential power and cultural disputes to issues that once would have been settled locally.

But nationalizing politics comes with a cost.

In this episode of The Rational Nationalist, Lee Ellis examines the relationship between democracy, political scale, and individual agency. Larger governments can provide greater resources, expertise, security, and economic coordination—but as political systems grow, each individual has less influence over the decisions that govern his life.

We look at how national partisanship increasingly shapes state and local politics, why one-size-fits-all policies often fail in a diverse country, and how federalism can combine the advantages of national cooperation with greater local self-government.

The larger question is simple: if democracy is supposed to allow people to determine their own futures, how many decisions really need to be made nationally?

In a healthy democracy, political parties are supposed to be instruments — means by which citizens pursue what they believe is the common good. But what happens when the party becomes the goal itself?

In this episode of The Rational Nationalist, Lee Ellis examines the relationship between national identity, partisan loyalty, and the shared “we” that democratic government requires. Parties can be useful tools for organizing disagreement, but when loyalty to the team overtakes loyalty to the broader polity, political competition becomes increasingly zero-sum.

The discussion explores polarization, tribalism, hardliners, constitutional limits, executive power, and the conditions under which democratic disagreement can remain productive rather than destructive.

Confidence is useful for a reason. When someone answers quickly and decisively, it often tells us something about how certain they are.

But what happens when confidence stops tracking knowledge?

This week on The Rational Nationalist, Lee Ellis examines the gap between what people know, how certain they feel, how certain they sound, and what everyone else ultimately believes. From ordinary overconfidence to deliberate manipulation and the “noble lie,” distorted confidence can give the least calibrated people a rhetorical advantage over more careful thinkers.

The episode concludes with a different problem: good leadership still requires decisiveness. How do we preserve epistemic humility without turning uncertainty into paralysis?

Why can someone who has almost everything remain miserable, while someone enduring hardship can still find contentment?

This week on The Rational Nationalist, Lee Ellis uses Maslow’s hierarchy as a starting point to examine the difference between material needs and the higher-order search for esteem, identity, and fulfillment. When self-worth depends on status and comparison, there may never be an “enough.” But gratitude, faith, and a more diversified sense of identity can provide alternatives to the endless pursuit of external validation.

The episode also explores how social identity can become a source of political radicalization when belonging, status, and purpose become concentrated in a single group.

Winning a conflict and securing a durable victory are not necessarily the same thing.

Defeat an opponent too weakly and they may believe they can simply try again. Humiliate them too thoroughly, however, and overturning the new order can become more important than their own self-interest.

This week on The Rational Nationalist, Lee Ellis explores the strategic cost of humiliation—from locker-room material and the Ender's Game problem to Reconstruction, postwar Germany, political identity, and the need to give defeated groups an off-ramp into a new social order.

The question isn't simply how to win. It's how to make the victory last.