President Trump has a knack for getting Republicans to reverse their stances on important policy issues. Free trade is probably the best-known example. … These trends can seem disconcerting, because they appear to reverse the idealized direction of influence in a democracy, where the views of citizens are supposed to […] Read more »
2020 Republican National Convention Recap
This week’s Republican convention did an especially efficient job of encapsulating the current state of the party after four years of Donald Trump’s leadership. In terms of the roster of speakers and the venues at which they spoke, the convention reflected the extent to which the party has become a […] Read more »
The Flight 93 Convention
In 2016, an anonymous author described the battle between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton as the “Flight 93 election.” In dark, urgent terms, the article argued that a Hillary Clinton victory would change America so irrevocably that conservatives needed to think of themselves as the passengers on United Airlines Flight […] Read more »
The GOP is strapped to a ticking time bomb
The Republican Party’s intellectual crisis was on full display during the GOP convention. On Monday, the party announced that it wouldn’t publish a new platform: Instead, its members promised to support “the President’s America-first agenda” and threw out some half-baked bullet points. In the days that followed, speakers heaped praise […] Read more »
‘Many People Are Saying’ Trump’s Republican Party Doesn’t Stand For Anything … But They’re Wrong
Did you hear that the Republicans aren’t writing a traditional platform this year? Did you read that the party has only approved a resolution pledged to “enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda”? Did you happen to catch the quote in today’s Politico story from veteran GOP congressional hand Brendan Buck, […] Read more »
Bernie Sanders: From Biden rival to supporter
In Sen. Bernie Sanders’ second bid for the presidency, he repeated his strong support among young voters, and had some success in moving the Democratic party toward some of his more progressive ideas. … Sanders endorsed Biden soon after exiting the race, and most Democrats say Biden has struck the […] Read more »