This week we published our endorsement leader—an increasingly unfashionable undertaking, it turns out. But we still think the practice is worthwhile. An endorsement captures the mood, it distils the campaign’s themes and, amid the din and chaos of the candidates’ closing arguments, it helps clarify thinking. Who knows, it might even change some readers’ minds.

Tone is everything, and this year we decided to address our cover editorial to a particular set of Trump voters—not MAGA diehards or aggressive nationalists, but pragmatic, Economist-reading Republicans. These voters might not like or admire Mr Trump, but they probably look on Democratic criticism of him as wildly over the top. For them, putting Mr Trump in the White House is a calculated risk that his second term, like his first, will turn out just fine. Our leader argues that this calculation is reckless.