President Donald Trump says he wants the United States “raring to go” in 2 1/2 weeks, on Easter, with “packed churches all over our country.” He and many other political conservatives suggest that we are responding to something like the flu with remedies that may be more devastating than the disease.
A half-hour before a Bernie Sanders rally Saturday night in Iowa, a line snaked around the nearly 900-seat Ames City Auditorium, but no one else was being let in: The theater was full.
Elizabeth Warren, in her interview with the New York Times editorial board on Dec. 4, largely stuck to her polished script — which the senior senator from Massachusetts said she has delivered 175 times — calling for “big structural change” to right the imbalances in the current American economy and end what she sees as endemic corruption in business and politics. She famously has “a plan for that” and had a (lengthy) answer for nearly every question.
The problems Amy Klobuchar has tried to tackle, often in partnership with a Republican colleague, since she was elected to the Senate in 2006 range from herculean (comprehensive immigration reform) to plain common sense (backup paper ballots).
Tom Steyer, a California businessman, jumped into the 2020 race with little political track record beyond supporting campaigns on climate change, youth activism and the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
Why Bernie Sanders animates so many young people on the campaign trail is instantly recognizable: The senator from Vermont offers an agenda of transformational change, promising to be as grassroots as he is stubborn. On Dec. 2, he spent 90 minutes with the Times editorial board, sparring over issues from foreign policy and climate change to antitrust regulation and gun violence, and tackled questions on health policy that went beyond his well-known Medicare for All proposal.
Andrew Yang’s message is remarkably similar to Elizabeth Warren’s and Bernie Sanders’ — the American economy is not working for enough Americans, and it’s going to require structural change to do better. Where Yang differs — beyond his almost complete lack of government or political experience — is in his prescriptions, including his signature Freedom Dividend.
Joe Biden commands a boardroom. Meeting with the Times editorial board on Dec. 16, he moved fluidly among policy issues, though at times he became tangled in his own syntax and fell back on what President Barack Obama famously referred to as his verbal “flourishes.” Biden said his eight years as vice president and his deep relationships on Capitol Hill, where he represented Delaware in the Senate, would help him step seamlessly back into public office. He promised, “If I’m able to pass what I...
This column tries to keep its cool, but last week I briefly surrendered to crisis and existential dread, to the sense that an entire world is dissolving underneath our feet — institutions crumbling, authorities corrupted, faith in the whole experiment evaporating.
Those of us in journalism primarily do one thing: cover events. We report and opine about events like election campaigns, wars and crimes. A lot of the events we cover are decisions — a decision to reform health care or write a tweet — so we tend to congregate in the cities where decision-makers live. The internet has sped up the news cycle. Now we put more emphasis on covering the last event that just happened. But it’s still mostly events.
No matter how bad your Thanksgiving is, mine will be worse, and I’ll tell you why. My sister thinks Jim Jordan is hot. Well, she didn’t say “hot” exactly, but the words “admire,” “forceful” and “fighter” have been thrown around. And then there’s Kevin. It has been a crazy year, even by Trump standards. So I asked my brother to tell us, in his annual Thanksgiving column, if he has any regrets. ROCKVILLE, Md. — Over the last three years, Maureen has frequently sent me reader emails demanding to...
I came to your house with a gun. At least imagine I did. I tied you to a chair, took a step back and repeatedly fired. But my arm twitched; every bullet missed. Meanwhile, you slipped your knots and fled.
People are always changing their minds, day to day. But over the past 20-odd years one group has shifted to an astounding degree: highly educated white Democrats. I’m not sure I understand why this group has undergone such a transformation, but it has, and the effects are reshaping our politics.
