… Analysts like me remarked over and over again during Trump’s time in office that he was one of, if not the most unpopular presidents. He left office with the lowest approval rating of any president at the end of his first term (39%) and the highest disapproval rating (58%) […] Read more »
A 1955 book on right-wing extremists predicted the Jan. 6 attack
The year was 1954, and the Cold War was in full swing. Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) was seeing Soviet spies in every corner of the government. And a young sociologist at Columbia University, Daniel Bell, convened a seminar to come to grips with the menace of McCarthyism. Bell enlisted an […] Read more »
A tale of many Americas
Next week Congress will hear witness testimonies and present learnings from the select committee’s January 6th investigation into the storming of the Capitol and the attempt to disrupt and overturn the certification of the 2020 presidential election. The question of election legitimacy has become a firebrand issue and rallying call […] Read more »
The Democratic Deficit in the West
Russia’s war on Ukraine has focused the world’s attention on the ideological battle between liberal democracy and totalitarianism—systems of government based on national sovereignty, freedom, the rule of law, and individual rights versus those based on military aggression, societal repression, one-party rule, and state control of people’s lives. … But […] Read more »
Christian nationalism on the rise in some GOP campaigns
… Christian nationalism is emerging alongside and in some cases overlapping with other right-wing movements, such as the conspiratorial QAnon, white supremacy, and denialism over COVID-19 and the 2020 election. Christian prayers and symbols featured prominently in and around the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection there. … […] Read more »
Voters Have Come To Accept, or Even Demand, the Unorthodox
It seems that almost every week we see primary-election outcomes that not too long ago would have seemed highly unlikely, if not downright preposterous. Candidates in both parties who would have been seen as unorthodox, eccentric, or even extreme a decade or two ago are now winning nominations in unusual […] Read more »