It’s important to remember, when considering the Republican plan to overhaul Obamacare, that the only constituency that fervently supports throwing out the Affordable Care Act is Republicans. In the most recent Post-ABC News poll, three-quarters of Republicans supported repealing Obamacare, sure — but 9 in 10 Democrats and two-thirds of […] Read more »
How conspiracy theories helped power Trump’s disruptive politics
We watched over the past year as a wave of conspiracy theories infected our national discourse. … Trump’s use of conspiracy theory politics proved to be a particularly ingenious form of populism. By focusing his populist appeals on conspiracy rhetoric — rather than substantive policy — Trump galvanized the broad […] Read more »
A scholar asks, ‘Can democracy survive the Internet?’
… Nathaniel Persily, a law professor at Stanford University, is among the many — academics, political practitioners, journalists, law enforcement officials and others — who are attempting to understand better the consequences of conducting campaigns and governance here and around the world in the Internet age. He has written about […] Read more »
Trump’s Method, Our Madness
… Much has been written about “post-truth” politics in the context of the recent presidential election, and rightly so, as Trump’s relationship with the truth is not the same old conservative legerdemain. But in an important sense, anti-fact campaigns, such as the effort led by archconservatives like the Koch brothers to […] Read more »
The political lexicon of a billionaire populist
From the start of his presidential campaign, Donald Trump pledged “total change,” delivering his promises with a scorched-earth political vocabulary — “Lyin’ Ted,” “Crooked Hillary,” “drain the swamp,” “lock her up.” Some found his language appalling, but others found it refreshing enough to make him president. Now, in the Oval […] Read more »
One-Third of Speech Watchers More Confident in Trump
President Donald Trump’s address to Congress on Tuesday night had a positive effect on many of those who watched it or read news coverage about it later. Almost six in 10 of this group rated the address as excellent or good, and more than one in three said it made […] Read more »