One Can Justify Anything — It’s probably Richard Nixon’s fault. Tricky Dick lost a squeaker of an election to JFK in 1960 (see here for a quick refresher) and never got over the feeling that he was cheated and penalized for playing by the rules. When his time came ‘round again in 1968, nothing was…

You will probably only ever come across one of three kinds. — Today we’re talking about political conversions. Not slow evolution in thought on a particular issue, say, becoming more receptive to gun control after years of mass shootings, or growing more concerned about taxes as one makes more money. Nor do we mean formally adopting what you were demographically destined for…

The Soft Treason of Donald Trump — In the U.S. Civil war, the Confederacy faced almost insurmountable challenges from the very beginning. True, this wasn’t universally known or understood at the beginning of the conflict, but by 1864 it was obvious to all but the most delusional that the Union had enormous advantages in manpower, industrial strength…

Not All Shots Score the Same — In this time of lost submersibles and rouge Russian warlords, it is important to keep an eye on the domestic political scoreboard. Also, it’s almost midnight in New Orleans and the heat index is still like 120, so I’m going to stay right here on this couch and try not…

In our hyper-reductive age, it is perhaps his strongest asset — Politics move quickly. Americans have attention spans like goldfish. The media trend toward laziness, and just about everyone likes neat, simple stories. Whole decades, given enough time, get mushed down in the collective memory into a few moments. Ask your average millennial about the 60s and they’ll mention the Kennedy…

Start by saying what it truly is, who is attacking it, and why they are doing so. — Democracy is the evidently-still-radical-after-2500-years idea that the people that make up a society should decide what that society does. It shouldn’t be one guy who makes all the decisions, just because his dad was the one guy before him. It shouldn’t be whoever has the most guns or money. …

And leave women and drag queens alone? — I know, this is crazy talk, but just hear me out. Certain political leaders are staking their careers on protecting us from the ill-defined dangers of Drag Queen Story Hour and letting women decide whether or not to give birth, so I have to imagine that these are real, existential…

There are only two ways to win in politics — I’ve been circulating the above in the short-form world of Twitter and Mastodon these past few weeks, just trying to see what it felt like to make a short argument without context. It was not easy. I’ve been a candidate for public office, taught a university course in foreign policy…

One-third of the Republican party is in the MAGA cult. That means there are only two ways 2024 can go. — Dozens of polls conducted over the past two years show generally the same thing. Donald Trump has the unshakable support of about a third of the GOP. One can scarcely imagine anything he could do at this point that could alienate that core. Interestingly enough, when given only one alternative…