Outside the Beltway

“America can survive the demagogues themselves, it’s their audience that will kill us.”

Hardball politics or dirty pool?

Capitol Hill Republicans are turning the concept on its head.

The Forward Party will almost certainly go nowhere.

Can American democracy survive its information bubbles?

A proposal by Jamell Bouie

Are plurality winners less legitimate than popular vote losers?

What should conservatives who can’t support the party of Trump do?

Another comment on the American presidency and its critics.

Assuming they had the votes, should Democrats carve out yet another exception?

The pressure and expectations of a king, but with considerably less power.

The implications of modes of interpretation.

Yet another reminder of the pathologies of American institutions.

How long can the unsustainable be sustained?

This will just reinforce minority rule in the US.

From J. S. Mill.

Could Alaska point the way to a solution?

Tweaking the message and getting out the vote don’t matter as much as strategists think.

Are you going to believe this index or your own lyin’ eyes?

The laying out of the case begins.

They’re taking their eye off the ball.

The NYT and CA41 and yet another example of telling the wrong story.

The first round produced two very different candidates.

Donald Trump and friends speak to the NRA.

The obstacles to fixing the problem are many.

Alas, it’s unlikely to change the policies that enable them.

The President continues his recent penchant for saying the quiet part out loud.

The combination of a horrendous rollout and a social media onslaught was disastrous.

An ongoing series of observations.

Quite often, political fights are about attitudes rather than issues and polices.

Ezra Klein discusses the dynamics of American conservatism in historical perspective. Plus, he helps illustrate a key problem that we have in thinking about American politics (IMHO).

Is harassing judges, mayors, Senators, and the like in their private lives just free speech?

Hopefully answering a reader question (but probably just making it all worse).

More on primaries with a foray into Madison and the general politics of power-seekers and incentives.

The Ohio GOP Senate contest.

Nobody is keeping the gate.

The role of American political institutions.

When doing the right thing is the wrong thing.

A illustration from the Senate race in Georgia.

How rules shape the game.

And yet the state still extracted their pound of flesh

Added historical context to ongoing conversations about American democracy.

It’s happened. What does it mean?

A follow on from yesterday.

Has the Internet made us more selfish?

Brussels has gotten ahead of Washington in regulating mostly American-based Internet companies.

Seeing no way to win under their own label, they’ve called a Hail Mary.

Our representation problems are far, far more about structure than they are about the messaging of the parties.

More willingness to subvert the election.