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Will Clinton claim a bigger win in S.C., and will Trump move farther from the...
LAS VEGAS — Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s victories Saturday in Nevada and South Carolina raise two big questions for the next stops in the primary season. Can Clinton build on her narrow...
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Episode 128: South Carolina’s unholy alliance
Long ago in South Carolina, an unholy alliance was made to keep the races separate. In the second episode of our two-part series on the politics of race in the Palmetto State, we introduce you to two...
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It will take a village to stop Trump
In the early 1980s I was a mediocre graduate student at the feet of the legendary British philosopher and historian, Isaiah Berlin. The University of Oxford used a tutorial system, which meant I met...
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Episode 129: What’s so super about superdelegates?
Superdelegates. Maybe you’ve heard something about them, but might not know how they came to be, how they work, who they are and why they matter. But if you want to make sense of the delegate math in...
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Who’s to blame for Trump’s rise? Everybody.
I have bad news and I have bad news. First, the bad news: The Republican Party has not been able to stop Donald Trump because the Republican Party is morally responsible for Donald Trump. Now, more...
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Sanders shies away from emphasizing Jewish roots in Florida campaign
MIAMI -- Florida will be the first state where a Jewish voter base could make a significant dent in a primary election, but the only candidate with Jewish heritage isn't leveraging his roots. Bernie...
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Democrats trying to make GOP ‘loyalty’ a bad word
The RNC pressured the party’s presidential candidates to take a "loyalty pledge" last year, and now it's backfiring as Democrats are using it to tie candidates in hotly contested state races to Donald...
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Magic of GOP’S voodoo politics running out
Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are successfully fracking the Republican Party. The loudest explosions and most noxious fumes are coming from the crackup of the tectonic plate that once supported the...
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Confessions of a Hillary-phobe
I have never liked Hillary Clinton but I don’t recall exactly why. It has been such a long time. Something like half of all voters don’t like Hillary either, according to years and years of polls....
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More democracy in parties means less democracy in government
There is too much democracy in American politics. But there is not enough democracy in American government today. This isn’t the paradox it seems. Government and politics are not the same thing....
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Trump is no R, Sanders is no D: RIP American political party
It seems so obvious now. The entire global commentariat, as far as I can tell, has completely missed a fundamental dynamic in both parties’ nomination campaigns. The 2016 campaigns have been...
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We need a plot for saving America from Trump
Solving the baffling mystery of Donald Trump’s political success is the all-consuming whodunit of the campaign season. I have argued that explaining Trump’s rise is far less important than plotting...
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Episode 140: What’s behind the split in the Democratic Party?
Dick Durbin is a four-term senator and the Democratic whip, whose job is to keep the party together. So what does he make of the fact that the GOP has its presidential nominee while the Democrats are...
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Hillary needs Bill’s luck
The obvious solution to Hillary Clinton’s massive Donald Trump problem is to replicate her husband’s all-time greatest political coup. In 1992, Brilliant Bill lured a flamboyant, high-pitched Texas...
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Trump is a political superbug
Public health officials were alarmed last month when an international superbug was discovered in a Pennsylvania patient, its first appearance in the U.S. The superbug is a strain of E.coli bacteria...
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Episode 142: Pissed off millennials are taking on the Democrats
Can you feel the Bern yet? With the California primary less than a week away, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders continues to battle erstwhile frontrunner Hillary Clinton despite a clear deficit in...
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The road to Trumpdom
“As is so often true, the nature of our civilization has been seen more clearly by its enemies than by most of its friends.” — F.A. Hayek, from “The Road to Serfdom” — — — In the primetime hours of...
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Conservatives at RNC wear their hatred of Clinton
CLEVELAND -- The Republican Party is still working to close the split created by a long, sometimes-nasty, divisive primary season, but conservatives in Cleveland this week for the Republican National...
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Trump caps chaotic convention with polished, pessimistic address
“I am your voice.” That was the message to the American people tonight from Donald J. Trump, a man who claims to be one of the richest people in the world and also the working man’s best friend; a man...
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5 things the Democrats need to accomplish during the DNC
Modern political conventions are governed by the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm. This is especially true of this year’s Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. The convention will be a...
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Hillary’s story: It takes a village
No march to the White House has been longer. No contestant has been constantly in the arena for so many years. No major party has ever nominated a woman to be its candidate for president. No...
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Marijuana advocates at DNC see big moment for legalization
PHILADELPHIA - The Democratic Party is poised to put marijuana on its party platform for the first time in history and pro-legalization groups and some members of Congress are overjoyed. “This is the...
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DNC Day One: Democracy live and on TV
The history books record convention opening nights smoother and happier than the Democrats’ performance in Philadelphia on Monday night, but it was a good show under some tough conditions. I suspect...
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Bernie Sanders gets rousing, emotional reception at DNC
Bernie Sanders got a reception Monday evening at the Democratic National Convention that was defined by repeated applause, cheers, chants and tears. His speech came at the end of a day in which he'd...
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Yeah, yeah, convention polls are useless. But, yikes!
We have all heard the lecture many times. Yes, Professor Polly Sigh, we know that polls taken during and after the national conventions are notoriously unreliable, erratic, ephemeral, meaningless and...
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Hillary’s nomination, Bill’s heartfelt talk top off well-crafted evening
The Big History Tuesday night came when Hillary Clinton was declared the Democratic nominee for president, the first woman to scale that summit. The convention also made some Little History later...
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Trump’s most daring gambit yet: Treason
Ingrained conceptions of what is possible, permissible, responsible, patriotic and mentally sane in American politics, diplomacy and government were violently discombobulated Wednesday when Republican...
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Maybe conventions aren’t phony, useless relics after all
It might be many a decade before Americans have the chance to watch a night of masterful oratory and sophisticated, substantive political persuasion like the Democratic National Convention produced...
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The Democratic Village is ready to fight for Hillary Clinton
Old Will Rogers was spinning in his grave tonight. The Oklahoma cowboy philosopher and wise guy famously said, "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat." That pretty well...
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Trump’s promises of a stronger military well-received at N.C. rally
FAYETTEVILLE- Donald Trump never has apologized for the comments he made last week about a Muslim Gold Star family whose son died in Iraq, and he didn’t do so Tuesday when he marched into a rally of...
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For Trump supporters, election fraud is a real fear
It’s become one of Donald Trump’s go-to lines: If he doesn’t win in November, it will be because of a rigged election. “First of all, it [the primary season] was rigged, and I'm afraid the [general]...
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America needs a vast leftwing conspiracy
I have good news and I have bad news. First, the bad news: The lead Hillary Clinton’s enjoyed in national polls for most of August has been cut roughly in half. The good news: Much of the #NeverTrump...
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Are you an undecided voter? You’ve got company
You might find it hard to believe that after so many months and so much partisanship, and now with so little time left, an unusually large percentage of voters remain undecided —unless you happen to...
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Second presidential debate solidifies or moves undecided voters toward Clinton
DecodeDC is following four undecided voters as part of “Voters on the Fence,” a series of stories about people who are struggling to make a decision about which presidential candidate is right for...
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2016 election roundup: Nothing is certain in this year of uncertainty
If this were a remotely normal election year, it would be over. All of the data now points to a landslide victory for Hillary Clinton. Unpredictable, however, has beaten predictable all year. The...
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The next Trump might win if we ignore real political reform
When this miserable but revelatory election is finally over, the country’s most serious need will not be national security or economic. It will be political: Repairing the near total erosion of public...
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Undecided voters getting more conflicted as election nears
DecodeDC is following four undecided voters as part of “Voters on the Fence,” a series of stories about people who are struggling to make a decision about which presidential candidate is right for...
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The final daze of 2016 campaign: Races are tight, stomachs in knots
There was a perfect tweet during the rain delay in the epic seventh game of the World Series: “Most Americans want neither of these teams to lose. Most Americans want neither of these presidential...
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What our undecided voters ultimately decided
DecodeDC has followed four “voters on the fence” since early September. They graciously agreed to share with us — and you, the readers — what they were thinking as they tried to decide on which...
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The silence of the lambs: Democrats in defeat
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Fool us once, shame on us. Fool us twice, a pox upon our house. Along with too few others, I am mortified that President-elect Donald Trump is successfully fooling the custodians...
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Democrats can’t pussyfoot around Trump
The practice of waging legislative “total war” against a White House controlled by the opposition is fairly new to American politics. It was invented after Bill Clinton was elected in 1992. A...
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WATCH LIVE AT 9 P.M. ET: President Trump addresses Congress
President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress on Tuesday for the first time. “The theme will be the renewal of the American spirit,” according the White House press secretary Sean...
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A confident Trump addresses a divided GOP Congress
WASHINGTON, D.C. — It is obvious and probably redundant to say that President Donald Trump’s first address to a joint session of Congress was a political event without precedent or prototype. The...
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What Trump supporters say about Trump
WASHINGTON — A few weeks ago, I asked supporters of President Trump to e-mail me their views of how he is doing so far. They did, and I thank everyone who took the time to write. This is not, of...
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Decoding the TrumpCare plan
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Using the unofficial new White House platform of record, Twitter, President Donald Trump embraced the health care plan unveiled Monday by House Republicans as “our” package. This...
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House health care vote: Decoding the smoke signals
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The House of Representatives on Thursday is scheduled to vote on the American Health Care Act, the Republican legislation intended to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act....
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2020 vision: Who are the Dems eyeing for next time?
After the unpredicted, shocker elections of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, predicting whom the Democrats might nominate in 2020 is a fool’s errand. But fools must run errands, too, and the lists of...
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4 ways Trumpcare victory could haunt House GOP
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The House of Representatives narrowly passed a health care bill Thursday that received no votes from Democrats and barely enough from Republicans. Speaker Paul Ryan and President...
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Trump isn’t the main issue anymore
How many times have we been through this? Donald Trump commits some colossal trespass of existing political morality (no, that is not an oxymoron), and frenzied friends and foes ask, “Is this it? Is...
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Comey’s testimony: No smoking gun, but four political bombshells
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Though former FBI Director James Comey didn’t hand over any smoking gun evidence of either collusion between aides to Donald Trump and Russian agents or obstruction of justice by...
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