Outside the Beltway

When a prominent political scientist committed suicide yesterday, I was deeply struck by how much he was like not only me but most of the people in my professional circle.

It’s not at all clear that there is a useful strategy at work here.

Donald Trump is historically unpopular for a new President. What does that mean when his first foreign policy crisis comes, as it inevitably will?

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch even as it became inevitable that Republicans would be forced to invoke the ‘nuclear option’ to confirm him to the Supreme Court.

The ordinary and the extraordinary with the latest SCOTUS nomination.

So far, there’s no sign that Donald Trump is having much of an impact on the economy.

Donald Trump isn’t going to change, and that’s bad news for all of us.

The president’s skinny budget would eliminate most funding for science and the arts to fund more Defense spending.

Rachel Maddow hyped the fact that she had obtained a copy of Trump’s 2005 tax return last night. It turned out to be much ado about nothing.

It was both the best speech Trump has ever given and the worst presidential address I can recall

One month in, some Trump supporters are starting to wonder if he will actually deliver on what he promised.

Milo Yiannopoulos was a troll and a peddler in offensiveness, but the fact that he became a star on the American right was the result of a transformation of American conservatism that has been entirely unhealthy.

The Washington State Supreme Court has ruled against a florist who refused to provide services for a same-sex wedding.

While vigilance is called for, America will survive Donald Trump just as it has survived everything else we’ve faced since the nation’s founding.

The answer is pretty straight-forward.

No, the EC is not going to elect Clinton.

Democracy produces good rulers, right?  Sometimes.  What good democracies actually produce best is good losers. Let us then be grateful for gracious losers, for our losers no less than our winners carry forward the American experiment in self-rule.  

Calling it neo-fascist is not hyperbole.

So what’s wrong with the Whitelash Backlash thesis?  Not everything, actually.  But plenty.

The incoming president’s business interests are a yuuuge problem.

Mike Pence’s night at the theater included a message from the cast. Good for them.

If one believes the electoral college is awesome, one cannot make an argument from the position of “the wisdom of the Founders” nor from a viewpoint based on original intent.

On Tuesday night the Establishment won and won yuge. (From new OTB contributor, Michael Bailey)

It has become necessary to destroy the party in order to save it.

A look at the Electoral College shows that It is far more likely that Hillary Clinton will win the election than that Donald Trump will.

Depending on what state you live in, taking a picture of your ballot and yourself on Election Day may or may not be legal.

Are these the faces of Clinton voters? George P. Bush thinks so.

I’ve been something of a political news junkie for 40 years now. This year has burned me out.

The personal, the political, and the Foundation are so intertwined as to be one enterprise.

Has any major party nominee for president ever damaged his reputation in this manner?

Donald Trump is losing something much more important to him that an election.

Last night’s debate, sadly, lived down to my expectations.

Candidate trumps party in a presidential system.

Even if Donald Trump loses next month, the political forces inside the GOP he tapped into are likely to remain very powerful.

Donald Trump is doing worse with white voters than Mitt Romney did in 2012.

Political Science research suggests that the election is, in basic ways, about what we would expect.

The reputation of the US matters in global affairs.

Judging 2016 by historical standards hasn’t worked out well thus far.

It wasn’t exactly Lincoln-Douglas but, in the end, Hillary Clinton clearly outperformed Donald Trump last night.

Trump had a much lower bar than Clinton going in. Neither cleared it.

Donald Trump has spent more time recently attacking the news media than anything else. He ought to be condemned for it.

With Donald Trump floundering, there are a whole lot of nervous Republican Senators up for re-election.

It just keeps getting worse.

President Obama will leave office as the first two term President who presided over eight years of war. It didn’t start with him and it won’t end with him.

The Dallas shooting spree ended with police killing the perpetrator with a drone. I’m okay with that.

Hillary Clinton’s extreme carelessness with classified information probably won’t cost her the election, but it should.

The presumptive Democratic nominee for president won’t be going to jail. But we knew that.

The Supreme Court has once again issued a ruling that further chips away at the protections of the Fourth Amendment.

National tragedies, whether man-made or natural disasters, used to bring Americans together. Now they just seem to pull Americans apart.

In case anyone noticed: I got the Trump nomination wrong.