Conventional Wisdom: Outspent Edition

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Originally a staple of Newsweek's print edition, Conventional Wisdom used arrows to track whose stock was rising or falling in the political circus. We're reviving it in the…

Quantity is supposed to be its own quality. The biggest company, the biggest studio, the closest friendship with the most powerful man in the room—each is meant to turn the outcome into a formality. But size also makes a target, and a large enough bet tends to find the one opponent who doesn’t need to match it. The people who come out ahead are often the ones who were outspent, written off or blamed in advance. Losing the right fight can be the best position on the board.

The commerce secretary promised at his confirmation hearing to be “very strong” on China, then spent a year slowing chip controls in ways that, his own defenders say, were what President Trump wanted. Now that Jensen Huang has resigned from Nvidia after admitting an affair with a former executive of a Singapore chip buyer who is alleged to be a Chinese spy, the questions land on Lutnick. Huang got to quit; Lutnick has to stay.

In 2023, the Ohio congressman lost three straight floor votes for Speaker because moderates in his own party wouldn’t back him. Three of those holdouts lost their seats in the midterms, and what was left of the conference elected him its leader over Steve Scalise, 106 to 73. Voters fired the Republicans who wouldn’t make him Speaker.

The Google co-founder put more than $100 million into defeating California’s Proposition 40, a one-time 5 percent tax on billionaires. Now that the measure has gone down, he’s avoided an estimated $13 billion. Not a bad return on investment.

The Japanese director’s Godzilla Minus Zero, made for less than $20 million, opened to $31.6 million in North America, the biggest debut for a foreign-language live-action film since The Passion of the Christ.

The Skydance chief closed his roughly $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. days after ousting film chief Pam Abdy, who told him on her way out, “I left you 39 movies.” One of them, The Cat in the Hat, opened to a disappointing $20.5 million last weekend and finished second to Godzilla.

For 57 years the…

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