Metapolitics | Praxis

The Religious Right Loves Vladimir Putin More Than Donald Trump Does

One of the most notable but mostly uncovered political developments in recent years has been how enthusiastically many Religious Right leaders have embraced Russia’s anti-democratic president, former KGB official Vladimir Putin. It seems even more remarkable that the Republican Party’s presidential nominee has been lavishing praise on Putin even as Russia maneuvers to diminish America’s influence in the world. As president, Putin has consolidated his power through attacks on the independent media, the persecution of political opponents, and restrictions on civil society. He has annexed…

The Politics of Tomorrow Isn’t Right vs. Left, It’s Managers vs. Verbalists

Since the Cold War ended, U.S. politics has seen a series of insurgent candidacies. Pat Buchanan prefigured Trump in the Republican contests of 1992 and 1996. Ralph Nader challenged the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party from the outside in 2000. Ron Paul vexed establishment Republicans John McCain and Mitt Romney in 2008 and 2012. And this year, Trump was not the only candidate to confound his party’s elite: Bernie Sanders harried Hillary Clinton right up to the Democratic convention. What do these insurgents have…

U.S. House Seats Almost Never Change Parties

With Election Day 2016 a little over two months away, many political analysts are projecting Democrats to gain seats in both the House and Senate. But winning the 30 seats they need to wrest control of the House from the Republicans is generally seen as a longer shot than the four or five Senate seats they’d need to lead that chamber (depending on whether or not Hillary Clinton is elected president and Tim Kaine, as vice president and president of the Senate, has a tie-breaking vote). Shifts of that…

Post-Trump, Conservatives Need Conversation, Not Cocoons

As election day draws closer, tensions are increasing on the right about Donald Trump and (a distinct topic) the futures of conservatism and the Republican party. Many of Trump’s opponents, especially on the right, have offered numerous scapegoats for the rise of Trump: among them, talk radio, racism, and the American public’s supposed lack of virtue. However, one of the single most important structural forces that allowed Trump to win the Republican nomination was the combination of elite incompetence and extreme cultural cocooning. Incompetence and…

Politico’s ‘Republican Insiders’ Appear to Know Little About Politics

Politico’s “Political Caucus” is one of my favorite destinations for 2016 political coverage. It’s a running series of weekly interviews with a fixed roster of political “insiders” who offer their allegedly unguarded takes on the 2016 election from behind the protective shield of anonymity. I love it because, despite the promise of juicy details from behind the curtain, reading it will teach you nothing about the way politics works or how the presidential campaigns are doing. The Political Caucus does, however, stands a stark and unassailable case that…

Roger Ailes Was Undone by the Women He Disregarded

It took 15 days to end the mighty 20-year reign of Roger Ailes at Fox News, one of the most storied runs in media and political history. Ailes built not just a conservative cable news channel but something like a fourth branch of government; a propaganda arm for the GOP; an organization that determined Republican presidential candidates, sold wars, and decided the issues of the day for 2 million viewers. That the place turned out to be rife with grotesque abuses of power has left…

Liberals Cried ‘Racist’ So Much, the Public No Longer Listens

Conservative commentators and die-hard Republicans often brush off denunciations of Donald Trump as an unprincipled hatemonger by saying: Yeah, yeah, that’s what Democrats wail about every Republican they’re trying to take down. Sing me a song I haven’t heard so many times before. Howard Wolfson would be outraged by that response if he didn’t recognize its aptness. “There’s enough truth to it to compel some self-reflection,” Wolfson, who was the communications director for Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid in 2008, told me this week. […] “And…

According to Political Science Data Models, Hillary Clinton Shouldn’t Be Leading

Donald Trump’s poll numbers have slumped over the past three weeks. His campaign is perpetually being re-configured. Meanwhile, a new survey of political experts by the site PollyVote forecasts that Hillary Clinton will win 347 electoral votes to Trump’s 191. She is, at least tentatively, planning her work as president. To be sure, with just under three months to go, it’s too soon to be hanging the proverbial Oval Office drapes. Trump still has somewhere between a 15 to 30 percent chance of winning, according to various…

Rush Limbaugh, Not Hillary Clinton, Legitimized the Alt Right

When Hillary Clinton took to the microphone to pin Trump to the racialists and racists in the Alt Right (the so-called “alternative right” that bases its philosophy in racial separatism), some on the right accused her of promoting them. But Clinton’s speech last Thursday was not the coming-out party of the Alt Right. The true debut to the national stage was in a little-covered Rush Limbaugh monologue in January where he took the words of the micro-movement’s intellectual godfather to explain Trump’s appeal. On January…

How Fox News Harms Conservatives

It’s hard to overstate the power of Fox News for those seeking a career in the conservative movement. I’ve seen the most accomplished of lawyers suddenly become “somebody” only after they regularly appear on Fox. I’ve seen young activists leave senators or representatives languishing alone in rooms as they flood over to Fox personalities, seeking selfies. Fox has become the prime gatekeeper of conservative fame, the source of conservative book deals, and the ticket into the true pantheon of conservative influence. It’s killing the conservative…

Understanding the present is the key to the future