Donald Trump leads in primary polls and is well-liked by his party — but his position is worse than it was a year ago. Surveys show half of Republican voters are considering other candidates. Candidates endorsed by the former president have lost in Georgia, Idaho, Nebraska, North Carolina and South […] Read more »
Textbook Reactionary Populism
… The specifics of the “Schedule F” plot also track with how I’ve come to understand Trumpism: as a specific form of reactionary populism. Reactionary populism has – in one form or another – been around for quite some time. If I remember correctly, we can find a reactionary-populist faction […] Read more »
Why Conspiracy Theories Flourish in Trump’s America
Whether he is out of power or in office, Donald Trump deploys conspiracy theory as a political mobilizing tool designed to capture anger at the liberal establishment, to legitimize racial resentment and to unite voters who feel oppressed by what they see as a dominant socially progressive culture. The success […] Read more »
How Elites Misread Public Opinion
… As the political scientists Joshua Kertzer and Jonathan Renshon detail in a new paper in the Annual Review of Political Science, the rise of populist movements has coincided with a rise in the use of “elite experiments” — or randomized studies using elite subjects — in academia as a […] Read more »
Trump’s MAGA is marching down a trail blazed by the Tea Party
A little more than a dozen years ago, a new movement erupted in American politics calling itself “the Tea Party.” In the midterm elections of 2010, that movement remade Congress and helped the Republican Party to a decade of dominance in electing the legislatures of roughly 30 states. The phrase […] Read more »
Trumpism is terrible. It also might be popular.
Authoritarianism, American-style fascism, Trumpism — or whatever other term you choose for the radical turn that the American right has taken — is terrible for our nation and the world. But something can be both terrible and popular. … I think the most important explanation is that the sentiments that […] Read more »