“Trump’s innovation is to have mined a deeper vein of cynicism, exhausting the weary tropes of polite political discourse”
…Trump is pivoting constantly. Or perhaps more accurately, the man is so erratic that...
Tag Archives: Politics
“It remains unclear whether anti-establishment voters, in this election or others, tend to choose the most anti-establishment platform, the most outside-the-system leader or the opposite of whoever is in power”
Few systems in the world are more complex than the one between a person’s...
“Part of what makes the modern use of ‘winning’ so strange is that it’s often used in contexts that are not competitions”
Part of what makes the modern use of “winning” so strange is that it’s...
“The guiding principle in Mr. Trump’s government is to turn the politics of white resentment into the policies of white rage…”
If there is one consistent thread through Mr. Trump’s political career, it is his...
“Leaks are most often an outsider’s tool, and they look different from a vantage of power”
Leaks are most often an outsider’s tool, and they look different from a vantage...
“Democrats have given Republicans the priceless gift of letting them be the party that talks more about good jobs for working-class Americans”
Democrats have given Republicans the priceless gift of letting them be the party that...
“I want to know what my rabbi thinks of Jacob and Rachel, not of Pence and Pelosi”
I know outstanding rabbis on the left of the political spectrum and others on...
“By virtue of their unvarnished nature, leaks have evolved into the realest of facts”
In politics, the word “leak” conjures whistle-blowing and heroism or villainy and subterfuge, depending...
“To label something ‘un-American’ is to imagine America as it should have been or as it might yet be but not as it ever was”
On the surface, “un-American” implies consensus: It carries a punch only when everybody agrees...
“The parties and politicians of the center have become the managers of the status quo in an era when people want change. So, the center — in both its center-right and center-left camps — is marginalized, even despised”
The same dynamics are splintering the left, too. One element has aligned with the...