The need for political accountability has never been greater. The advances in data science and visualisation in the last decade provides opportunities for creating social awareness to an extent that was not possible for many before. To this end, I built adavis, an open-source, interactive website that visualises nearly 70 […] Read more »
The Electability Fallacy
During the recent boomlet of speculation about a potential Oprah Winfrey run for the presidency, rarely was the question of her electability raised. It seems we have Donald Trump to thank for that omission of narrative: His 2016 election victory changed the calculation, even the definition, of electability. And we’re […] Read more »
The Fake News Crisis That Wasn’t
The media often attributes a portion of Donald Trump’s election to fake news — as in the vintage, original meaning of that term: Macedonian teens making bank on preposterous headlines; the Islamization of Texas, Pizza-shop child-sex conspiracies, etc. Such fabrication, commentators worried, reverberated around online echo chambers so resoundingly that […] Read more »
The Television President
It’s fair to say that Donald Trump owes his political career to the medium of television. It was television that successfully sold Trump to the nation as the personification of American business success—from his frequent appearances on talk shows and newsmagazines in the 1980s and 1990s to his prime-time network […] Read more »
The Despot’s Apprentice: Donald Trump’s Attack on Democracy
… A lot of people say to me: ‘Trump is not Mussolini or Hitler.’ That’s absolutely true, there’s no question. … I think because of Trump’s showmanship and his bumbly nature, people falsely believe that he is less insidious. They think, ‘that’s Trump, we can focus on the tax plan,’ […] Read more »
For New Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith, a Lesser Form of Incumbency
On Tuesday, now-former Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) officially resigned from the U.S. Senate following allegations of inappropriate behavior toward women. As we discussed in our last newsletter for 2017, Franken’s resignation means that Minnesota will hold a special election for Senate this coming November, which will take place at the […] Read more »