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Inside the Republican Plot for Permanent Minority Rule
Here’s one all-too-plausible way that Election Night 2020 might play out. It’s just after 11 p.m., when Fox News cuts live to President Trump’s reelection party. Millions of mail-in ballots remain to...
View ArticleThe Mysteries of Emily in Paris
The ruinous effect contracting Covid-19 has had on my short-term memory is, happily, not a problem when it comes to remembering the key plot points of Netflix’s soapy, flimsy sitcom Emily in Paris,...
View ArticleThe Devastatingly Low Bar of “Official” Poverty
We now have new numbers to confirm what everyone who received a $1,200 stimulus check or extra unemployment benefits over the summer likely already knows: Additional government money is a good thing...
View ArticleNBC Did Joe Biden a Big Favor
Before Thursday evening’s dueling town halls began, the conventional wisdom was that, once again, Donald Trump, the greatest showman, had hoodwinked the news media. The second presidential debate had...
View ArticleDiary of a Channel Surfer
Donald Trump’s bumptious, boisterous, blustering performance in his first face-to-face debate with Joe Biden changed the trajectory of the presidential race—giving the former vice president a hefty...
View ArticleThe Fiercely Despairing Fiction of Susan Taubes
A woman lies dead, decapitated by a passing taxi on a Paris street. Or maybe she is just dreaming. For a moment, she is window-shopping in Paris, but then she is in her lover’s bedroom in New York and...
View ArticleThe Media’s Obsession With the Mythical Republican Swing Voter
In September, as the presidential campaign entered its final weeks, a woman named Danielle Pletka published an op-ed in The Washington Post entitled “I never considered voting for Trump in 2016. I may...
View ArticleThe Democrats Aren’t Serious About Campaign Finance Reform
This week, Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon announced that the campaign had $432 million in cash on hand. This is a truly absurd amount of money for any campaign to have. It is mental....
View ArticleThe Dishonesty of Amy Coney Barrett’s “Textualist” Pose
In their two days of interrogating Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats deftly executed Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s messaging strategy: “Health care, health...
View Article“Over Half of the People Who Used to Grow Crops Here Can’t Do It Anymore”
Since 2017, extreme drought has ravaged Canyon de Chelly, on the Navajo Nation in northeastern Arizona. In normal years, the area receives an average of 12 inches of rain. That’s not the case recently....
View ArticleFacebook and Twitter Have Made a Mess of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden Story
Twitter and Facebook knew this was coming. For the last four years, they have ostensibly been preparing for foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election. Pressed by lawmakers, executives from...
View ArticleBen Sasse Is a Fraud
Right on time, Senator Ben Sasse has done it again, and by “it” I mean the one thing he’s good at: generating positive media coverage for himself. In a telephone town hall with his constituents this...
View ArticleThe Media’s Both-Sides Brigade Is Wrong About the Covid-19 Stimulus Deal
One of the more irritating manifestations of both-sidesism in the political press in recent days has been the vilification of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for refusing to accept the compromises that the...
View ArticleSelf-Help Hacks at the End of the World
At the beginning of the lockdown I came across a meme that made me laugh and laugh. It was Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but each level above physiological—safety, belongingness and love,...
View ArticleThe Constitution Is the Crisis
It is an almost entirely foregone conclusion that Amy Coney Barrett will be seated on the Supreme Court, cementing a 6–3 conservative majority that will serve as an obstacle to Joe Biden’s policy...
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Living With White Supremacy in a Swing State
For most of the summer, downtown Columbus, Ohio, looked like the downtown of many other cities. Depending on the day, protesters might secure some small victory against the ever-growing presence of...
View ArticleA Broken Census Can Break Democracy
As the 2020 census winds down, it’s important to remember why it matters and what’s at stake. Its primary purpose is to allocate seats in the House of Representatives and provide geographical...
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Susan Collins and the Death of the Senate
The political epitaph for Susan Collins of Maine, who is in the fight of her career to keep the U.S. Senate seat she has held since 1997, may well read: “Susan Collins is disappointed.”Collins’s...
View ArticleI’m a Cleaner at a New York City Public School. The Pandemic Has Thrown My...
I’m a local guy from the Rockaways, and my school is located in Far Rockaway, Queens. I’ve been in the system for 22 years. I like my job; some people try to put us down—They’re janitors—but I know we...
View ArticleThe Socialist Win in Bolivia and the New Era of Lithium Extraction
Just under a year after Evo Morales’s government was ousted by U.S.-backed far-right forces, his Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party looks almost certain to take back power after Sunday’s...
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