Campaign 2016 | Praxis

Do Hillary Clinton’s Democrats Have an Actual Policy Agenda?

For the past two days, I put this question specifically to delegates and staffers, to the people who ought to know: “What, at core, is the Democratic message coming out of this convention?” […] Delegates I spoke to paused, backed up, rephrased. In each case, they settled on general virtues: justice, inclusion, progress, the idea that the party was not so much associated with a particular program but with goodness itself, with a progressive sensibility that will, on the whole, produce virtuous outcomes. […] This…

Koch Network Officially Declares It Won’t Back Donald Trump

Billionaire industrialist Charles Koch declared Sunday that his expansive political network would not support Donald Trump, but the 80-year-old conservative icon insisted he would not support Hillary Clinton, either. Koch, a popular target of Democrats, called any rumor that he would back the Democratic presidential candidate “a blood libel.” “At this point I can’t support either candidate, but I’m certainly not going to support Hillary,” Koch told hundreds of donors gathered for a weekend retreat in a luxury hotel at the foot of the Rocky…

After Wooing Them, Clinton Is Writing Off Liberal Voters

Even after a charged, protracted Democratic primary season that revealed deep philosophical fractures in the party, Hillary’s willingness to cater to actors on her left remains minimal. Accordingly, the historic Sanders delegate walkout is emblematic of what should now be obvious: there is a level of hostility toward Hillary among activist-minded progressives that never existed toward Barack Obama in 2008 or 2012. For one thing, the composition of the party has changed dramatically over eight years. Ideological progressives, who in 2008 yearned principally for emancipation from the…

Clinton, Trump Converge on Pennsylvania

Democrats have won Pennsylvania in every presidential election since 1992, and one reason the party chose Philadelphia for its convention is to keep the state in its column. The most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Marist poll, taken before the parties’ conventions, shows Hillary Clinton leads in the state by nine points. Still, Donald Trump’s ability to connect with white working-class voters, roughly half of the state’s voting population, gives Republicans hope that they can carry the state this year. The Clinton campaign’s challenge is to…

Was McAuliffe’s TPP Remark Actually Deliberate?

In the first five minutes of his first State of the Commonwealth address, [Virginia Gov. Terry] McAuliffe said he wanted to make Virginia the East Coast capital for agriculture and forestry. At the time, it was third behind Georgia and North Carolina; today it has overtaken North Carolina. “He is uniquely positioned to be successful at it,” said Maurice Jones, Virginia’s secretary of commerce and trade. “Why? Because he knows everybody everywhere.” McAuliffe formed many of those international relationships traveling the world with President Bill…

Clinton: You Might Not Really Like Me But at Least I’m Sane

As Donald Rumsfeld might have put it, “You go with the nominee you have, not with the nominee you might want.” Based on the speech she delivered Thursday night—the biggest of her life—Hillary Clinton and her campaign have decided that she will win or lose based on the strengths and weaknesses that have characterized her for decades. In the end, Clinton failed to transcend that issue. You, the voters, she seemed to say, simply have to accept me as I am in all my pedestrian…

Khizr Khan, Father of Fallen Soldier, Rebukes Trump’s Anti-Muslim Rhetoric

Given that Hillary Clinton’s Senate vote, on October 11, 2002, to authorize the invasion of Iraq might have been what cost her the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 2008, it was remarkable that the most powerful speech on her behalf on Thursday night in Philadelphia came from the father of an American soldier who was killed in that war. However, the words of Khizr Khan — a Pakistani Muslim immigrant, whose son, Capt. Humayun S.M. Khan, was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and Purple…

Democrats Aren’t Taking Trump’s Play for Liberal Votes Seriously

The Republican party wants my liberal vote. This was the most shocking wave to wash over my brain last week as I sat in the convention center in Cleveland. It was more startling in its way than the storm of hate that I saw descend on former GOP hero Ted Cruz, stranger than the absence of almost all the party’s recent standard-bearers, weirder than the police-state atmosphere that hovered over the streets of the city. The Republicans were trying to win the support of people…

Do Political Campaign Ads Actually Work? Research Suggests Not Really

Ever since Spiro Agnew’s 1970 speech blasting “nattering nabobs of negativism” in the media, attacking the political neutrality of the mainstream press has been a frequent activity of conservatives. By and large, however, the right-wing response to the media unfairness has been merely to complain about the situation rather than do something about it. Instead of buying, boosting, or starting mainstream media outlets, the primary response of conservatives to counter perceived bias against them in the press has been to purchase television, radio, and direct…

The Reddit Fan Club Powering Donald Trump Online

For a presidential candidate who hasn’t pursued a sophisticated tech strategy, Donald Trump has a huge base of support online. Facebook and Twitter have helped to showcase the Republican nominee’s incessant self-promotion. But it’s on Reddit where his supporters are fully in charge. During this crazy election season, the pro-Trump subreddit /r/The_Donald has emerged as a hub for some of the Republican candidate’s most Internet-savvy supporters. Today, those people claim the greatest Reddit reward: Trump himself will drop by tonight at 7PM Eastern for an AMA—the “ask me anything” question-and-answer session that has become…

Understanding the present is the key to the future