The independents increasingly decide elections but are muted in the primaries. We nominate candidates in the primaries that fare poorly in the general election, voting based on who they are not rather than who they are. This dynamic leads to political volatility.
Read MoreTheir grab for power in suggesting court packing, elimination of the filibuster and federalizing elections clearly suggests they cannot be trusted with centralized power.
Read MoreIdentify politics was doomed from the start and we are about to watch it unwind. We will discover that people are more than their race or sexual identity. Zogby noted years ago the car in your driveway and that balance in your 401k was a more accurate predictor of your vote than your race or sex. The left’s obsession with race and identity does not affect the conditions most voters face.
Read More“If you are not used to the intellectual compartmentalization required of an American politician, it can be jarring to hear, e.g., Senator Sanders demanding “revolution” at 10 a.m. and denouncing “insurrection” at 10:15 a.m”
Read MoreThe media would be better to trust their users than to damage their own credibility. The rules should be clear and simple about what is allowed and should be followed strictly regardless of content. No one who is suspended should be surprised and a suspension should not be judged by a board that will only likely reflect an organization’s internal bias.
Read More“For the politician, jobs are not a means to some end — Cadillacs, bales of cotton, iPhones — but an end in and of themselves.”
Read MoreTrump will not go away because 1) despite his flaws he reaches a demographic no one else reaches and 2) the left will not want to give up the lucre of Trump click-bait.
Read MoreTrump’s behavior was less foreign to their local norms than it was to the national audience. He resembled the local party bosses that protected their constituents, spoke plainly, and responded quickly and harshly to criticisms and disloyalty. Muravchik spoke of an honor culture in these towns very much like that found in groups of ethnic minorities. What seemed thin skinned to the coastal elite appeared normal to them. Trump spoke the language of local politics on a national level.
Read More“It turns out that the only place that blue wave existed was on Twitter or in a poll — never once in an experience or an interview.”
Read MoreWe remain a divided nation with two competing and incompatible narratives. One says we are irredeemably morally flawed and the other says we remain the land of opportunity and freedom, even if we are an unfinished and imperfect work. Trump may have lost but the latter vision remains intact.
Read More“And he’d warn that the damage being done — to civil order, public property and, most of all perhaps, to the values demonstrators claim to champion — may not be easy to undo. “Rage and phrensy will pull down more in half an hour, than prudence, deliberation and foresight can build up in a hundred years.””
Read MoreThe voters, however, cannot escape some responsibility for this outcome. The more dependent we become on the government to solve our local and personal problems the more disappointed we will become with the results and the more likely we will be seduced by radical solutions.
Read MoreBernie is the moral supremacist progressive of the first Progressive Era of 1900-1920 that reacted to the Gilded Age and inequality of that period. Bloomberg is the elite technocrat Progressive of the second Progressive Era of 1932-1980; beginning with the New Deal and ending with the Great Society. The irony of a “progressive” reclaiming old and exhausted positions from fifty to a hundred years ago is lost on most who accept progressivism.
Read MoreThe problem with greater federal power is no longer legitimacy but competence. The failure of the left to maintain control of their sacred institutions has not led them to decry it’s competence but to question its legitimacy; but by not supporting the institutions they relied on they have brought their own legitimacy into question.
Read MoreThe impeachment seemed liked a hail Mary from the inception, motivated more by rage than reason. That is precisely why the constitution designed the process as they did to start in the House and then move to the Senate. Rather than viewed as a Constitutional crisis, it should be affirmed as its proper functioning. It does not become a threat to the constitutional order just because you disagree with the outcome.
Read MoreA moderate Democratic party could have leveraged this impeachment to certain victory in Congress and the Whitehouse. The new radicalized Democratic party will have a much tougher time.
Read More“The president has become a convenient straw man for all the political anxieties on the left, which have manifested in an unhealthy obsession and antagonism toward the constitutional system that allowed Trump to win. “
Read MoreWhatever you may think of Trump, he has been the strongest unequivocal supporter of Israel since its independence and his recent executive order strikes a strong blow to anti-Semitism on college campuses. To draw a conclusion from this that he is a tool of the alternate right requires a willing suspension of the obvious.
Read MoreBy using their big weapon early in the campaign, the Democrats will be in weaker position during the campaign. Adam Schiff will be Pelosi’s fall guy; she warned against impeachment before she succumbed to the mob. And the Democrats will have yet learned the lesson from their previous fiascos: rage makes you stupid.
Read MoreA political party is a coalition of interests designed to convince a majority to trust it enough to let it govern. The Progressive Era in its aim to neuter the constitutional speed bumps to majoritarian democracy pushed for democratic primaries. Initially the parties retained some ideological commitment, but in the age of instant outrage media, they have descended into tribal warfare where emotions rule over ideas. The two sides do not share common information or common narratives that define us as a nation. There is no mere disagreement on how we arrive at common goals; we no longer agree on who we are.
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