… Even setting aside Barack Obama’s unique potential to appeal to African American voters as a historic racial figure, this frequent comparison of Senator Obama in 2007 and Senator Sanders in 2015 is deeply flawed. Just looking at the data from eight years ago shows how much better positioned Barack […] Read more »
Republicans Fear Donald Trump Is Hardening Party’s Tone on Race
Republicans are growing increasingly concerned that Donald J. Trump’s inflammatory language is damaging the party, fearing that his remarks are hardening the tone of other candidates on racial issues in ways that could repel the voters they need to take back the White House. Some party leaders worry that the […] Read more »
Hillary Clinton Relying on Southern Primaries to Fend Off Rivals
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign is methodically building a political firewall across the South in hopes of effectively locking up the Democratic nomination in March regardless of any early setbacks in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. … Mrs. Clinton’s Southern strategy shows in sharp relief the imprint […] Read more »
How Jimmy Carter championed civil rights — and Ronald Reagan didn’t
… Carter is largely remembered as a feckless leader; even his own party tends to ignore his time in the White House. But he had a strong record on civil rights, and his work to advance the cause would have been far more consequential if his successor, Ronald Reagan, had […] Read more »
Donald Trump doesn’t need Latino voters to win
It’s safe to say that virtually all political professionals think Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is doomed. The odds of him winning the Republican nomination are long, and the odds of him winning the general election are nonexistent, they say. … If the eventual Republican nominee needs 47 percent of the […] Read more »
What Donald Trump Understands About Republicans
Donald Trump’s success is no surprise. The public and the press have focused on his defiant rejection of mannerly rhetoric, his putting into words of what others think privately. But the more important truth is that a half-century of Republican policies on race and immigration have made the party the […] Read more »