So what are we grateful for this Thanksgiving season? We ask this on a personal level this time every year. Tomorrow we’ll write a reflection for all our readers on the holiday, of course, and wish each and every one of you a blessed holiday.

Today, though, I want to express my professional (and personal!) gratitude for all our readers. We all managed to get through a strange election cycle in one piece and with enough lessons learned to benefit us in the upcoming presidential cycle.

I want to especially emphasize my gratitude for those readers who became VIP and VIP Gold members and who have created a lively and informative community of commenters on our essays and Headlines entries. When I took over my new position just before Labor Day, we had not applied much emphasis or focus on our members, so I wanted to make that my top priority in the general election and beyond.

If you haven’t had the opportunity yet to join our membership, we’re offering a short-term opportunity to get a big discount. Use the promo code THANKFUL at this link to join and get 40% off the membership price on either VIP or VIP Gold memberships. (Just to refresh memories: VIP Gold gets you VIP access to all Townhall Media sites.)

Even before then, we had a core of loyal members who doggedly stuck with us. Since that point, we have welcomed many new members, and that allows us to provide exclusive content in the members-only space. Not only do we on the regular staff get to do long-form editorials (and I get to do my weekly VIP Gold chat with Cam), but we also have new talent specifically for members: my friends Adam Baldwin, Duane Patterson, Tom Jackson, and other contributors in the Townhall Media universe as well.

And those memberships will pay for more content here soon as we approach the presidential cycle. We plan to expand in both overall and members-only content based on the support we already get from our VIP/VIP Gold members.

Most importantly, we are grateful for that support in light of attempts to silence and suppress political debate in online spaces. I’ve made this point before, but I don’t think any of us anticipated just how necessary it would be to have independent support as social media platforms kowtowed to mainstream media and government agencies in limiting debate and dissent. Our members are what make it possible for us to sustain free speech and debate in online spaces.

And for that, we are extremely grateful to you all.

Happy Thanksgiving, and let’s keep up the momentum for 2024!

Ed Morrissey
Managing Editor