Some commentators think Hillary Clinton’s problem in wooing the progressive young is her lack of authenticity. I disagree. In the way she talks about political change, Clinton is entirely authentic. She believes in working inside the system for incremental change. She always has. Were Hillary Clinton a college student today, she’d probably vote for Hillary Clinton. Unfortunately for her, she has run up against a ...
Pundits keep reminding us that the two men who won New Hampshire, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, are both “outsiders.” But that doesn’t mean much. George Wallace and George McGovern were both outsiders, too. While the Trump and Sanders campaigns both represent insurgencies against party elites, they represent insurgencies aimed at taking America in radically different directions. One way of understanding those different directions is ...
For close to a decade, the trauma of the Iraq War left Americans wary of launching new wars in the Middle East. That caution is largely gone. Most of the leading presidential candidates demand that the United States escalate its air war in Iraq and Syria, send additional Special Forces, or enforce a buffer zone, which the head of Central Command, General Lloyd Austin, has ...
It sounds like laughable pro-Hillary spin but it’s true. For Hillary Clinton, a virtual tie in Iowa was an accomplishment. That’s because, demographically, the Hawkeye State was her worst nightmare. Among the Democratic Party’s three major constituencies—racial minorities, white moderates, and white liberals—Hillary has always fared worst among the latter. In 2008, she lost voters in Iowa who described themselves as “very liberal” (almost all ...
Marco Rubio’s last minute surge in Iowa has a lot in common with John Kerry’s last minute surge to victory in Iowa in 2004. Like Rubio, Kerry was an early frontrunner. Like Rubio, Kerry underperformed all fall as an anti-establishment candidate (Howard Dean) came from nowhere to dominate the field. Like Rubio, Kerry benefitted in the closing weeks from a nasty battle between the two ...
You can learn a lot from the words politicians use, and even more from the words they don’t. At last night’s Republican debate, candidates and moderators mentioned “immigration” 27 times. No surprise there. It may the single biggest issue in the GOP race. The word “Mexican,” however, wasn’t mentioned once, even though in recent years Mexicans have constituted America’s largest immigrant group. Neither did anyone ...
In the final days before she and Bernie Sanders face the voters of Iowa, Hillary Clinton is leveling the same attack she leveled against Barack Obama. She’s saying that on foreign policy, she’s the only adult in the race. …
In endorsing Donald Trump, Sarah Palin faced a challenge. How does a woman who has built her brand on hating cultural elites endorse a billionaire, Manhattan TV star? Her answer: by turning Trump into a victim. …
It was a debate with several ugly moments. Chris Christie called President Obama a “petulant child” and vowed to “kick” his “rear end out of the White House come this fall,” evidently forgetting that the man he once hugged is leaving at the end of this year anyway. Ben Carson said “secular progressives” don’t know “there is such a thing as right and wrong.” Ted ...
To put President Obama’s last State of the Union speech in context, I reread his first. Placing them side-by-side illustrates not just the way Obama’s agenda has changed during his terms in office, but the way America’s entire political debate has changed. …