The Supreme Court has long painted itself as a safe space, in a country dominated by political partisanship, where the law and the Constitution rule. But data from recent years puts some weight behind the critics who argue that the highest court in the land has taken on a more […] Read more »
Harry Reid Had a Rare Political Superpower
Senator Harry Reid, who died a few weeks after his 82nd birthday, possessed a quality unique among politicians: profound comfort in his own skin. In his personal life, this brought him peace of mind. In politics, it was practically a superpower. … Mr. Reid’s deep-rooted sense of self had a […] Read more »
Reid’s final hang up
There will never be another like him. Not a chance. … Harry Mason Reid, who died Tuesday at 82, never stopped moving forward, always searching for the light, making the deals, cajoling those he could with his strategic brilliance, running over those he couldn’t without grace or remorse, never looking […] Read more »
Frozen in Anxiety: How Democratic Leaders Struggled to Confront Bernie Sanders
Late last year a group of first-term House Democrats, anxious over the party’s fractious presidential race, convened a series of discussions intended to spur unity. … That effort was just one in a series of abandoned or ineffective plans to rally the moderate wing of the Democratic Party, and the […] Read more »
How the GOP Prompted the Decay of Political Norms
President Trump’s approach to governance is unlike that of his recent predecessors, but it is also not without antecedents. The groundwork for some of this dysfunction was laid in the decades before Trump’s emergence as a political figure. Nowhere is that more true than in the disappearance of the norms […] Read more »
Glimmers of Hope on the Hill
The term “green shoots” is increasingly being used to describe the first positive signs of growth after an economic downturn. It is now possible to say that we are seeing green shoots on Capitol Hill, signs that the institution of Congress may be becoming a bit less dysfunctional than it […] Read more »