Joe Biden needs a “Sister Souljah Moment.” At least, that’s according to the quickly congealing conventional wisdom in Washington. That is, Biden and Democrats are in dire danger of losing control of Congress next year, and the one thing that could save them would be by bashing someone to Biden’s […] Read more »
Mixed Patterns in Job Approval for Defeated Incumbents
Unofficial vote counts indicate Donald Trump has become the fourth U.S. incumbent president defeated for reelection in the Gallup polling era. Gallup will release its first postelection approval rating on Trump in the coming days. His final preelection approval rating was 46%, which ranks as the highest for a defeated […] Read more »
The strong economy didn’t make Trump, but coronavirus collapse could break him
The last time an incumbent president lost reelection — George H.W. Bush, in 1992 — an “it’s the economy, stupid” campaign theme took him down. Unemployment then was hovering around 7.5%. In the calamitous spring of 2020, that sounds like a long-lost boomtime. The Labor Department last week reported unemployment […] Read more »
Ross Perot brought us the tea party — and President Trump
Populism is the Old Faithful of American politics, erupting at intervals — from President Andrew Jackson railing against the “giant Augean stable” of Washington corruption to William Jennings Bryan’s “cross of gold” speech to Pat Buchanan’s “America First” tagline. What they all had in common was a vision of a […] Read more »
Farewell Ross Perot; Senate races on the fringe of the competitive map; the curious case of Justin Amash
There is a great quote from George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee and South Dakota senator: “You know, sometimes, when they say you’re ahead of your time, it’s just a polite way of saying you have a real bad sense of timing.” Given how American politics has developed over […] Read more »
How Ross Perot led the way for Donald Trump
Businessman and two-time presidential candidate Ross Perot died Tuesday at the age of 89. Perot’s life was more than just being a two-time non-major-party presidential candidate, but his campaigns changed the political landscape during his life and are influential to this day. … Perot showed that a populist businessman outsider […] Read more »