The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves. The […] Read more »
One Thing We Can Agree On Is That We’re Becoming a Different Country
A highly charged ideological transition reflecting a “massive four-decade-long shift in political values and attitudes among more educated people — a shift from concern with traditional materialist issues like redistribution to a concern for public goods like the environment and diversity” is a driving force in the battle between left […] Read more »
Trump’s Cult of Animosity Shows No Sign of Letting Up
In 2016, Donald Trump recruited voters with the highest levels of animosity toward African Americans, assembling a “schadenfreude” electorate — voters who take pleasure in making the opposition suffer — that continues to dominate the Republican Party, even in the aftermath of the Trump presidency. With all his histrionics and […] Read more »
Trumpism Without Borders
America is embedded in a world that is troubled by insidious parallel variants of the same structural problems — anti-immigrant fervor, political tribalism, racism, ethnic tension, authoritarianism and inequality — that led to a right-wing takeover of the federal government by Donald Trump. The peculiarly American characteristics of the Trump […] Read more »
Thomas Edsall on the new ‘anti-democratic party,’ and the challenges for the media
New York Times contributing op-ed writer Thomas Edsall warns about Republicans attempting to enforce “white political dominance;” anti-democratic trends in American politics; and the blind spots he sees in media coverage. “Trump and the Republican Party have created a real dilemma for the media,” he tells Brian Stelter. “When you […] Read more »
Prepare for Post-Trump Trumpism
Any conversation about the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential election inevitably veers to former President Trump, including the role he will play and whether the Republican Party will functionally be an extension of him, for better or for worse. My hunch is that Trumpism in all of its potency […] Read more »