Nevertheless, Xi Persisted

The Slate Political Gab Fest confronts a world in which the United States appears to be losing strategic ground on multiple fronts, with China’s growing influence and a disastrous war in Iran serving as central themes. Jane Perlez, former New York Times China correspondent, warns that Trump’s embrace of a 'G2' partnership with Xi Jinping is a catastrophic concession that cedes global parity to China, which is already positioning itself to dominate Asia, reshape global trade, and potentially supplant American manufacturing. The war in Iran, meanwhile, is described not as a victory but a strategic disaster: the U.S. has failed to achieve any of Trump’s stated objectives, has revealed severe military limitations, and now faces Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz—a chokepoint that could impose a global energy tax, directly benefiting China’s non-petroleum energy investments. The panel argues that the administration’s response—declaring victory while implicitly conceding defeat—is a political farce that undermines democratic legitimacy. On the domestic front, a wave of partisan gerrymandering has rapidly shifted the electoral map, with Republicans exploiting Supreme Court rulings to entrench power, leaving millions of voters—especially Black Americans—in unrepresented districts and turning the House into a mirror of the Electoral College. The episode ends with a bleak assessment: the U.S. is losing not just wars and elections, but the very foundations of democratic representation and global credibility. The most alarming takeaway is that the U.S. is not losing because it’s weak, but because it’s making self-inflicted strategic errors—declaring war without a plan, surrendering leverage in diplomacy, and allowing partisan gerrymandering to hollow out democracy. The panel warns that these decisions, driven by short-term political theater, are creating a future where China dominates Asia, Iran controls global energy flows, and American voters have no meaningful voice. The only path forward, they suggest, is a radical reimagining of democratic institutions and foreign policy, but with the Supreme Court and Congress both compromised by the very system they’re meant to uphold, that future feels increasingly out of reach.