Rep. Karen Bass (D., Calif.) speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., June 17, 2020. (Kevin Dietsch/Reuters) I have a gut feeling that most Americans will not react enthusiastically to a vice-presidential selection that they’ve never heard of before. This is a separate question from whether someone with low name recognition would make a good

Former Vice President Joe Biden speaks about his plans to combat racial inequality at a campaign event in Wilmington, Del., July 28, 2020. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) Joe Biden says he wants equality. Who could be against that? But if just declaring yourself in favor of equality were enough, we would not still be arguing about equality

Signs advertising the 2020 U.S. Census in Seattle, Wash., March 23, 2020. (Brian Snyder/Reuters) Including illegal immigrants in the census increases the voting power of states that have lots of them. NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE T he Trump administration recently moved to exclude illegal immigrants from the census count used for apportioning House seats and Electoral

President Donald Trump speaks about legislation for additional coronavirus aid in the Oval Office at the White House, July 20, 2020. (Leah Millis/Reuters) President Trump outdid himself this morning with a tweet floating the idea of delaying the election. Obviously, this is an incendiary and absurd idea unworthy of being spoken — or even thought

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks during the first presidential debate with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., September 26, 2016. (Lucas Jackson/Reuters) Donald Trump went and kicked the beehive again this morning on Twitter, and it was even worse than usual: With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which

Joe Biden may well be the next president of the United States, and if that scenario comes to pass, it will because he was in the right place at the right time, and met two minimally difficult criteria. He won the Democratic primary because he wasn’t Bernie Sanders, and he will have won the general

Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. (Gary Cameron/Reuters) Take the Lincoln Project at its word. About the Lincoln Project — those irrelevant people we can’t stop talking about — a few thoughts. First — before we even really get started — we should dismiss the contemptible smear that something foul is afoot because there is money

Whether Donald Trump hangs on for four more years, or turns the White House over to Joe Biden, his first term has exposed a tremendous danger to the office of the president. Unfortunately, that danger is the White House itself, and the larger executive branch around it. The elected president is in peril of being

Democratic presidential candidate and former vice president Joe Biden during a campaign event in Wilmington, Del., June 30, 2020. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters) One of the depressing features of the current election is the mounting evidence that the two major-party candidates, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, are not just deficient men to start with, but — with

President Donald Trump speaks during a coronavirus task force news briefing at the White House, July 22, 2020. (Leah Millis/Reuters) The Republican National Convention will no longer hold events in Jacksonville, Fla., President Trump said Thursday, citing a coronavirus “flare-up” in the city. “I looked at my team and I said the timing for this

Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign event at a recreation center in Lancaster, Pa., June 25, 2020. (Mark Makela/Reuters) Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden leads President Trump in recent polls of voters in battleground states, including Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania. The former vice president performs strongly with non-white,

MSNBC debate moderators Chuck Todd and Rachel Maddow during the first Democratic presidential debate in Miami, Fla., June 26, 2019. (Mike Segar/Reuters) Media Democrats focus on a few non-scandals of surpassing triviality. As the Democratic presidential campaign moves toward its last three months and narrows down to the false claim that the president has mismanaged

Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks about his plans for tackling climate change during a campaign event in Wilmington, Del., July 14, 2020. (Leah Millis/Reuters) Despite the lack of faith people had in Biden at the start of the election cycle, he’s led the Democrats nationally almost since the start of

President Donald Trump speaks during a coronavirus task force news briefing at the White House., July 22, 2020. (Leah Millis/Reuters) It doesn’t matter what candidates and their supporters have to say about the election’s result. It only matters what the Constitution says about it. NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE T here have been many “interesting times” in

ers fill out ballots during the primary election in Ottawa, Illinois, U.S., March 17, 2020. The polling station was relocated from a nearby nursing home to a former supermarket due to concerns over the outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus. (Daniel Acker/Reuters) Today marks 99 days until Election Day. But Americans will start voting much sooner

Sen. Bernie Sanders arrives for a vote at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., June 25, 2020. (Al Drago/Reuters) Endorsing Joe Biden for president would be like eating a “bowl of s**t,” Bernie Sanders campaign co-chairwoman Nina Turner commented in an article that appeared in the Atlantic on Monday. The Biden campaign has attempted to reach out

Michael Brendan Dougherty asks, “Is there a reluctance to acknowledge that Donald Trump is a serious underdog for reelection?” It depends whom you ask, of course: Most liberal or progressive Trump critics are pretty stridently certain by now that Joe Biden will win in November. But there is unquestionably, even in some liberal quarters, a

Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign event at Delaware State University in Dover, Del., June 5, 2020. (Jim Bourg/Reuters) Former vice president Joe Biden claimed in a Wednesday interview that President Trump “is going to try to steal this election” through unfounded allegations of voter fraud, adding that

Then GOP nominee Donald Trump points at the gathered media at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, July 21, 2016. (Rick Wilking/Reuters) Three GOP officials briefed on the plans told the Washington Post that the party has tentatively settled on Jacksonville, Fla., as the new host city for the Republican National Convention in August. One

Rep. Steve King holds a Town Hall in Grundy Center, Iowa, August 17, 2019. (Brenna Norman/Reuters) A wide array of leaders at the state and national level joined forces to back a conservative primary challenger. Bob Vander Plaats possesses an increasingly rare commodity in American politics: influence. The evangelical Iowan, who runs the socially conservative

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden celebrate at their election-night victory rally in Chicago, Ill., November 6, 2012. (Jim Bourg/Reuters) Battleground states have decided many presidents’ reelection campaigns, for good and ill. NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE E lsewhere today I explore the overall trends in reelection campaigns of incumbent presidents. Here are charts summarizing

President Trump no doubt believes that he followed his instincts throughout the 2016 campaign and won, and he believes his instincts will not fail him in 2020. He believes that his tweets help him more than they hurt his bid for reelection. (During the last days of the 2016 campaign, the New York Times reported,

President Donald Trump delivers a statement in the Rose Garden at the White House on the ongoing protests in the wake of the death of George Floyd, June 1, 2020. (Tom Brenner/Reuters) Most Americans think that police departments need to be reformed and improved, not abolished. NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE O n the campaign trail in

Joe Biden speaks during a campaign event at Delaware State University in Dover, Del., June 5, 2020. (Jim Bourg/Reuters) The resignation of the editorial page editor of the New York Times for publishing an op-ed by Senator Tom Cotton calling for the military to quell the riots marks the completion of the long, slow transformation

A viral photo showing the White House with its lights off, shared by numerous Democrats during demonstrations in Washington, D.C., is at least five years old and was edited to make it seem darker, the Associated Press reported on Monday. The image can be found in Getty Image’s stock photo collection. The … Read More

Sen. Lisa Murkowski arrives back from a break during the Trump impeachment trial in Washington, D.C., January 31, 2020. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters) Senator Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) on Thursday told reporters she could have difficulty backing President Trump in the November elections. Murkowski made the admission after praising former defense secretary James Mattis’s criticism of Trump’s

Former vice president Joe Biden at a campaign stop in Los Angeles, Calif., March 4, 2020. (Mike Blake/Reuters) On the menu today: good news for everyone who wanted this newsletter to go back to covering politics and end the all-coronavirus-all-the-time coverage of the past few months. Also, would you believe we actually got some good

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., October 22, 2019 (Carlos Jasso/Reuters) Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) backed the primary challenger to fellow Democrat Eliot Engel, after Engel was caught on hot mic saying he only wanted to speak at a George Floyd rally because of the upcoming election. A day before Engel’s

Former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson poses at the 36th American film festival in Deauville, France, September 9, 2010. (Vincent Kessler/Reuters) In a week full of bad news, the defeat of Valerie Plame in a New Mexico Democratic congressional primary is easily overlooked. Had Plame won, she would have had a good chance of winning

It is now conventional punditry that should Joe Biden win in November, his vice president, in 1944-style, will sooner rather than later become president. Biden, to reboot and secure the identity-politics base, thought he had to discriminate by sex and race in advance by selecting his vice president. But given … Read More