Essays and Videos
Kamala Harris Did What She Had To
The racial-justice movement sparked by the murder of George Floyd had two quite different effects on Joe Biden’s presidential campaign. It intensified the pressure on Biden to choose a Black woman as his running mate. And it also intensified the pressure on him to choose a running mate with a history of challenging police brutality. Those two political imperatives collided in the debate over whether Biden should pick Senator Kamala Harris—a former prosecutor whom some progressives in California have characterized as too deferential to police. ...
Biden Goes Big Without Sounding Like It
Almost halfway through Chris Wallace’s July 19 interview with Donald Trump, an exchange occurred that encapsulates the current state of the presidential race. The president claimed that his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, “wants to defund the police.” Wallace contradicted him, which led a furious Trump to instruct his press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, to “get me the charter” of the unity task force that the Biden campaign had created with Bernie Sanders supporters. After riffling unsuccessfully through the document, Trump muttered, “We’ll find it.” But, as ...
Democrats Are Allowing Trump to Frame the Debate on China
“Have you ever met anyone who’s read the party platform? I haven’t,” the former Republican House Speaker John Boehner said during a 2012 interview about his party’s manifesto. Last week, the Democratic National Committee released a draft of its new platform. But in this case, when it comes to China, the document merits a close read. It shows how dramatically President Donald Trump has reframed the debate about relations with Beijing—and how challenging those terms will prove for Democrats, even if they’re lucky enough to ...