Rebooting Bernie Sanders
While these are still the early days of the Democratic primary, things are plainly not going well for Bernie Sanders. Joe Biden’s landslide victory in South Carolina and commanding performance on Super...
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Fear and Loathing in Mumbai
On the fourth page of his new novel, Low, the author Jeet Thayil steps outside the proceedings to offer this parenthetical, qualifying the ringing of some bells: “(The bells are an omen, and they ring...
View ArticleThe Democrats’ Cult of Pragmatism
“Nobody likes him!” Hillary Clinton said of Bernie Sanders in remarks taped last year for a documentary. She didn’t mean it literally, of course. Lots of people clearly like Sanders, sometimes with a...
View ArticleIs Zero Hedge a Russian Trojan Horse?
About a week before Christmas, I received a most unwelcome email. A criminal complaint had been filed against me in Bulgaria, a country I have never visited and with which I had no personal connection....
View ArticleIn 2020, Endorsements Matter More Than Ever
Speaking to reporters after dropping out of the presidential race last week, a deflated Elizabeth Warren admitted that her theory of the Democratic primary was wrong. “I was told at the beginning of...
View ArticleThe Kleptocrat Next Door
Two months ago, the Trump administration made a momentous, and surprising, decision to put post-Soviet oligarchs on notice. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in an unexpected January 13 announcement,...
View ArticleWhat Happened to Jordan Peterson?
The Canadian psychology professor Jordan Peterson has been described as “the most influential public intellectual in the Western world.” He is an exponent of the Jungian concept of the hero’s journey,...
View ArticleThe Most Important Role in a Biden (or Sanders) Administration
With only two major candidates left in the Democratic primary, speculation is turning to who might potentially serve as the next vice president. At this early stage, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have...
View ArticleJoe Biden’s Sketchy Climate Record
On Super Tuesday, Joe Biden did relatively well with people who cited climate change as their top issue in the election. The former vice president received 34 percent of those climate voters according...
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Why Deaths of Despair Are Rising
Deaths of Despair, a new book by Princeton economics professors Anne Case and Angus Deaton, begins with some sunny facts. For a little more than a hundred years in the United States, beginning in 1900,...
View ArticleHow to See Yourself in a Presidential Candidate
The crumbling of Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign just after Super Tuesday also spelled the end, many have mourned, of the most diverse primary field in history. The 2020 Democratic race...
View ArticleNo Justice for Harvey Weinstein’s Victims
Harvey Weinstein is far from the only person who felt a sudden pain in his chest upon being convicted of a felony in Manhattan’s criminal court. Shortly after the verdict in his sexual assault case was...
View ArticleThe Coronavirus Could Reset the Democratic Race
The coronavirus has broken containment in the United States. This past weekend saw 236 more confirmed cases, bringing the total to at least 730 across 30 states as of Tuesday morning. The epidemic has...
View ArticleIn Defense of Rude Politics
Last week, Amber Rudd, the former home secretary of the United Kingdom—akin to the United States’ Homeland Security chief—was disinvited from an International Women’s Day event at Oxford University at...
View ArticleDemocrats Sleepwalk Into the Nomination of Joe Biden
There are millions of votes left to be cast in the Democratic primary contest, but the outcome appears fairly set. Joe Biden will likely be the Democratic nominee for president, having won a blowout...
View ArticleThe Political Realignment From Hell
On Tuesday, President Trump met with Republican senators to discuss policies to fight the economic shock of the coronavirus and dramatic fall in oil prices that’s accompanied it. Ahead of the meeting,...
View ArticleCan $500 a Month Change Your Life?
Jovan Bravo and his wife knew they wanted to move, but could never quite make it happen: They would sock away $100 to $150 a month and then have an expense come up—a car breaking down, their daughter’s...
View ArticleThe Coronavirus Exposes Amazon’s Algorithmic Greed
At a press conference on Monday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that the state would begin to manufacture its own hand sanitizer at the cost of $6 a gallon, as part of a broader effort to...
View ArticleLegal Weed Is the Next Tribal Sovereignty Test
On Tuesday, the Oglala Sioux Tribe overwhelmingly voted to legalize marijuana for recreational and medicinal use on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. As Chase Iron Eyes, a spokesman for...
View ArticleThe Gauzy Myth of the Sanders Campaign
Dressed in a dark suit and a muted tie, with his flyaway hair neatly combed, Bernie Sanders looked funereal as he belatedly read a statement to the media on Wednesday afternoon—17 hours after the polls...
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