| The thirty-eight-year-old “anti-woke” polemicist and political novice has become one of Trump’s main rivals.  It’s that time in the Presidential-election cycle, the moment when a long-shot curiosity candidate starts polling surprisingly well and gets a closer look. Think Herman Cain, in 2012, or Andrew Yang, in 2020. This time, that candidate is the Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, a thirty-eight-year-old biotech entrepreneur and Fox News favorite who has never before run for public office. A recent poll put him in double figures, in (distant) second place to Donald Trump. Benjamin Wallace-Wells followed Ramaswamy on the stump recently, in New Hampshire, and found him extolling a kind of cheerful radicalism. Speaking near a banner of his campaign’s de-facto Ten Commandments—“1. God is real. 2. There are two genders. 3. Human flourishing requires fossil fuels. 4. Reverse racism is racism,” etc.—he proposed culling seventy-five per cent of the federal bureaucracy through mass firings and using military action to secure the southern and northern borders. For now, Ramaswamy’s appeal seems to be concentrated among young voters, but, as Wallace-Wells notes, “an excess of rabid young supporters is an asset anywhere in politics, especially in a party devoid of youth.” As for the candidate’s chances in the months ahead, Wallace-Wells adds, “no one really knows whether the right vibes and a Molotov cocktail in your hand still beats a political record and voter loyalty.” Plus: For more on the 2024 race, read Wallace-Wells’s deep reporting on Ron DeSantis’s struggling campaign, which has narrowed its focus to an all-out effort in Iowa. Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | 
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