Category: Politics

RFK Jr. Was My Drug Dealer

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T he leading third-party candidate for president—an environmental lawyer and activist, a son and nephew of legendary liberal Democratic politicians—just quit the race and announced that he is joining the campaign of the most anti-environment president and presidential nominee in recent history, the leader of a Republican Party he has turned into a right-wing, anti-democratic, protofascist personality cult.   I could go on and on and on, cataloging the contradictions and abandonment of principle, all gobsmacking. But Donald Trump and Bobby Kennedy—as I’ve referred to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. since we…

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Politics 

Kamala Harris accepts the Democrats’ nomination to be president

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On Thursday night Kamala Harris accepted the Democrats’ nomination to be president. Just over a month after Joe Biden exited the race and passed her the baton, this was the most important speech of Kamala Harris’s career. Harris emerged on the blue carpeted stage at 9:31 pm to thunderous cheers. She is the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to be a major party nominee for U.S. President. Harris told her story on the historic night. Harris was in control, shared her values, told the country where…

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We Still Need to Trump-Proof America

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What will happen if Donald Trump secures a second term as president? Polling remains close—and though a Democratic victory seems far more likely than it did before the Biden-Harris swap, it’s hardly assured. Should Trump pull out a win in November, voters might imagine that they know what to expect: more chaos, more grievance, more all-caps rants on social media. But a second Trump term would be much more dangerous than the first. Trump’s unexpected victory in 2016 left him flailing to staff the executive branch and unequipped with the…

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Trump’s Crocodile Tears for the Jews

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Last week, Donald Trump went on Fox News and took offense on behalf of the Jews. Asked about Vice President Kamala Harris choosing Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate over Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, the former president declared: “I think it’s insulting to Jewish people.” Trump’s own running mate, J. D. Vance, expressed similar sentiments at a Philadelphia rally, saying that he “felt bad” for Shapiro, and that “whatever disagreements on policy you have about somebody,” the fact “that the vice-presidential race on the Democratic side became so focused…

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The Myth of Female Unelectability

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Perhaps nothing has been more damaging to women running for office than the idea that voters simply won’t pick female candidates. There’s just one problem: It isn’t true. After Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election, many people, including some of her top staffers and the unsuccessful Democratic nominee herself, concluded that she had been penalized for her gender. Even two years after the election, Jennifer Palmieri, her former communications director, argued that “I think that a man would have survived” the barriers Clinton faced, such as the scandal over…

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The Walz-Vance Inversion

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Sign up for The Decision, a newsletter featuring our 2024 election coverage. Both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have now selected vice-presidential nominees who hail from the Midwest, have humble backgrounds, and bear the expectation of appealing to white working-class voters. But the choices also serve as wagers on two very different theories of electoral politics. The case for Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is that the progressive base will like his policy agenda and swing voters will like his style. For Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio, it’s the inverse:…

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