Beto O’Rourke in Running with Beto (Charlie Gross/Courtesy of HBO) Duuuuuude. Why did we try to pitch Texas on Reality Bites Bobby Kennedy? Picture you and a couple of buddies spending a long night with a couple of cases of Schlitz and some moderately strong weed, then being told the next day that it was

At the time of the Roe v. Wade decision, I was a college student — an anti-war, mother-earth, feminist, hippie college student. That particular January I was taking a semester off, living in the D.C. area and volunteering at the feminist “underground newspaper” Off Our Backs. As you’d guess, I was … Read More

Difficulties with Iran will recur regularly, like the oscillations of a sine wave, and the recent crisis — if such it was, or is — illustrates persistent U.S. intellectual and institutional failures, starting with this: The Trump administration’s assumption, and that of many in Congress, is that if the … Read More

Senator Kamala Harris walks on stage as she speaks during her first organizing event in Los Angeles, Calif., May 19, 2019. (Mike Blake/Reuters ) Forcing employers to police gender pay could hurt working women. California senator Kamala Harris has unveiled a new plan to close the gender-pay gap. Under Harris’s proposal, companies with 100 or more

Senator Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) in Houston, Texas, April 24, 2019. (Loren Elliott/Reuters) California senator and Democratic presidential contender Kamala Harris is set to announce Tuesday a proposal that would require the Justice Department to approve new state laws restricting abortion before they could be implemented. Harris’s proposal would require states and localities with a history

Former Vice President Joe Biden in Washington, D.C., April 5, 2019 (Joshua Roberts/Reuters) Former vice president Joe Biden’s role in passing the 1994 crime bill has come under new scrutiny from both sides of the aisle, earning rebukes from President Trump as well as his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination. Biden, who was chairman

Christopher Hitchens, journalist and author, poses in N.Y., June 7, 2010. (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters) Yesterday morning Pete Buttigieg spoke with Washington Post reporter Robert Costa, a National Review alumnus. They spent a few minutes talking about abortion. Buttigieg, who supports abortion rights, made no surprising arguments or observations. He repeated three common fallacies that have long

Game of Thrones ends where it began: The mad monarch has been assassinated; the king-slayer, who had vowed to defend that mad monarch with his life, takes on the sins of the polity as a holy, royal scapegoat, simultaneously prince and pariah; a pair of siblings, whose main claim to power is that they already

Beto O’Rourke speaks at a rally in Los Angeles, Calif., April 27, 2019. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters) Markets are information-generating mechanisms, and the political market is working. Washington — “We’re cutting out some of this ear hair that you get when you get older,” said the 46-year-old man-child who is auditioning to be Skateboarder-in-Chief. Live-streaming his visit

Presidential hopeful Joe Biden takes the stage at a campaign rally in Philadelphia, Pa., May 18, 2019. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) Twenty or so are going to end this presidential-election cycle deeply disappointed. Every presidential primary ends with one winner and a lot of losers. Some might argue that one or two once-little-known candidates who overperform low

Democratic presidential candidate Representative Tim Ryan (D., Ohio) speaks in Washington, D.C., April 10, 2019. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters) Tim Ryan, the Ohio congressman and Democratic presidential candidate, said Wednesday on MSNBC that he supports scrapping the so-called Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or threat to the mother’s

Pete Buttigieg speaks at a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa, April 16, 2019. (Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters) You are just not going to believe how this week is progressing. A Yale professor contends Pete Buttigeig represents “heterosexuality without women”; the philosophies of identity politics and intersectionality leave a slew of Democratic candidates arguing that the process and media

Pete Buttigieg speaks at a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa, April 16, 2019. (Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters) He may not want to demolish the Jefferson Memorial, but his PC instincts and conventionally liberal views suggest he won’t stand up to the Left. The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy took a cheap shot at Mayor Pete Buttigieg this week.

Former Vice President Joe Biden addresses a campaign rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, April 30, 2019. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) Paul Waldman of the Washington Post is unhappy that Democrats are constantly being asked to reach out to Republicans while nobody asks Republicans to reach out to Democrats. It’s “an absolutely ridiculous double standard.” Democrats are, he says,

Sen. Bernie Sanders participates in the She the People Presidential Forum in Houston, Texas, April 24, 2019. (Loren Elliott/Reuters) Sanders seeks to kneecap what has been an astonishingly successful experiment in education. Few things offend Bernie Sanders as much as people escaping from command-and-control government systems, even minority students whose parents are desperate to get

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison with his family after winning the 2019 election in Sydney, Australia, May 18, 2019. (Dean Lewins/AAP Image/via Reuters) Good morning. If we could harness the heat from every hot take being offered about the Game of Thrones finale that aired last night, we could solve the world’s energy problems overnight. Making the

Tomorrow is primary day in Kentucky’s statewide races. Democrats will select their gubernatorial nominee, and they feel optimistic about their chances of knocking off incumbent GOP governor Matt Bevin in November. Four Democrats are running for governor: state representative Rocky Adkins, state attorney general Andy Beshear — the son of Bevin’s predecessor, Steve Beshear — former

Biden had a big rally in Philadelphia yesterday. As with his announcement video, it was all pretty standard rhetoric, with a memorable zinger on Trump inheriting the recovery and everything else in his life that we’ll likely hear many times again. But no one else in the Democratic field has this message of wanting to

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio attends the dedication of the new Statue of Liberty Museum on Liberty Island, May 16, 2019. (Mike Segar/Reuters) Could the unimpressive mayor of New York City stumble to the front of the parade? The most rational response to the news that New York City mayor Bill de Blasio

Former Vice President Joe Biden announces his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination, April 25, 2019. (Biden Campaign Handout via Reuters) His voting record places him solidly on the left. Poor Joe Biden. The Delaware Democrat has served the liberal cause since he reached the U.S. Senate in 1973 as a barely legal 30-year-old, just

New York City mayor Bill de Blasio attends the dedication of the new Statue of Liberty Museum on Liberty Island, May 16, 2019. (Mike Segar/Reuters) De Blasio seems to think he’s running to be the ringleader in a heist movie, but he’s really a sad sack trying to catch up with the cool crowd. Dear

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard at the She the People forum in Houston, Texas, April 24, 2019. (Loren Elliott/Reuters) An odd turn of affairs: The RNC touted a Daily Beast story that reported “Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination is being underwritten by some of the nation’s leading Russophiles.” Not donations from Russians,

Joe Biden at a campaign stop in Iowa City, Iowa, May 1, 2019. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) Has Donald Trump made the Democrats pragmatic? The Joe Biden polling surge has raised the frightful specter of Democratic rationality. What if Donald Trump hasn’t driven Democrats insane, sending them into a spiral of self-defeating radicalism, but instead made them

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks during a news conference in New York City, N.Y., November 13, 2018. (Jeenah Moon/Reuters) New York City mayor Bill de Blasio on Thursday announced a run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, joining a large field of 22 other candidates. “As president I will take on the

Joe Biden joins Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti at a campaign stop in Los Angeles, Calif., May 8, 2019. (Kyle Grillot/Reuters) I think it’s safe to say that there are many, many progressive Democrats who are more than a little surprised — and a lot chagrined — at Joe Biden’s polling dominance. Look at FiveThirtyEight’s

It’s still very early, but Biden’s initial strength should force us to contemplate a disturbing possibility, as I wrote for Politico today: The Joe Biden polling surge has raised the frightful specter of Democratic rationality. What if Donald Trump hasn’t driven Democrats insane, sending them into a spiral of self-defeating radicalism, but instead made them

Representative Tulsi Gabbard speaks at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pa., July 26, 2016. (Mike Segar/Reuters) During a recent appearance on comedian Joe Rogan’s podcast, Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D., Hawaii) became the first and only Democratic presidential contender to voice opposition to the censorship of Facebook users. During the interview, Gabbard split with fellow

Molly Hensley-Clancy and Nidhi Prakash report for Buzzfeed: Talk of replacing ICE, or even of the agency’s problems, has all but disappeared from the Democratic campaign trail, and from Democrats’ political platforms. For all the work by activists to push abolishing ICE into the Democratic Party debate, the idea was starkly unpopular with voters: By

(Mana Rabiee/Reuters) Making the click-through worthwhile: The Alabama legislature passes the most pro-life law in the nation, Elizabeth Warren refuses to grace Fox News with her presence, and a new poll shows Joe Biden leading President Trump by five points in . . . Arizona. The Abortion Debate Comes to Alabama On Tuesday, the Alabama

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand speaks at the We the People Summit in Washington, D.C., April 1, 2019. (Carlos Barria/Reuters) Using ‘sexism’ as an explanation every time something goes wrong for you is an excellent way to make people stop listening to accusations of sexism at all. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is struggling with poll ratings in the