A Senator Who Loved to Kibitz

Say what you will about Joe Lieberman, the self-described “Independent Democrat” senator from Connecticut and onetime Democratic vice-presidential candidate. He was many things—honorable, devout, sanctimonious, maddening, and unfailingly warm and decent—all of which have been unpacked since his death yesterday, at 82. He elicited strong reactions, often from Democrats, over his various apostasies to liberal orthodoxy. But what I’ll miss and remember most about Lieberman was that the man loved to kibitz. It is something of a lost art, at least the in-person version, which has largely given over to…

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Why Trump Won’t Stop Suing the Media and Losing

Why would the most notoriously cash-strapped man in America waste money on frivolous lawsuits? On Monday, Donald Trump—whose lawyers recently announced that he can’t come up with the money to post a $ 454 million bond in his civil fraud case—fired off yet another suit against a news organization that reported facts he didn’t like. The targets this time are ABC News and its anchor George Stephanopoulos, who Trump alleges defamed him by stating that Trump had been found liable for raping E. Jean Carroll. The case looks like a…

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What Trump Supporters Think When He Mocks People With Disabilities

Last weekend, I stood among thousands of Donald Trump supporters in a windy airfield, watching them watch their candidate. I traveled to the former president’s event just outside Dayton, Ohio, because I couldn’t stop thinking about something that had happened one week earlier, at his rally in Georgia: Trump had broken into an imitation of President Joe Biden’s lifelong stutter, and the crowd had cackled. Mocking Biden is not the worst thing Trump has ever done. Biden is a grown man, and the most public of figures. He does not…

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D.C.’s Crime Problem Is a Democracy Problem

Matthew Graves is not shy about promoting his success in prosecuting those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. By his count, Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, has charged more than 1,358 individuals, spread across nearly all 50 states and Washington, D.C., for assaulting police, destroying federal property, and other crimes. He issues a press release for most cases, and he held a rare news conference this past January to tout his achievements. But Graves’s record of bringing violent criminals to justice on the…

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Trump Repeats Obama’s Mistake

Donald Trump has long detested Barack Obama and sought to present himself as the opposite of his presidential predecessor in every way. But in his takeover of the Republican National Committee, he risks echoing one of Obama’s biggest political mistakes. Last night, Trump’s handpicked leadership of the RNC took charge and conducted a purge. The new regime, led by the new chair, Michael Whatley; the vice chair, Lara Trump; and the chief of staff, Chris LaCivita, fired about 60 employees—about a quarter of the staff—as part of “streamlining.” The “bloodbath”…

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Can Biden Begin a Reset Tonight?

As President Joe Biden prepares to deliver his State of the Union address tonight, his pathways to reelection are narrowing. His best remaining option, despite all of the concerns about his age, may be to persuade voters to look forward, not back. In his now-certain rematch against former President Donald Trump, Biden has three broad possibilities for framing the contest to voters. One is to present the race as a referendum on Biden’s performance during his four years in office. The second is to structure it as a comparison between…

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