21 November 2016

David Brooks says conservatism has failed, but he misses the biggest reason: race

Zack Beauchamp


‘We Are in for a Pretty Long Civil War’

"He has been making arguments that he can't possibly believe, on behalf of the man he can't possibly believe in." To them, Pence made a pact with the devil, and says Wehner, "There should be consequences for that."

Julia Ioffe


16 November 2016

Republicans told their voters that politics is inherently evil. That stuck them with Trump.

Republicans set the stage for Trump not only by stoking Tea Party anger, but by convincing their constituents that the very idea of politics is repugnant, and only someone untainted by it could lead their party. And then they're amazed when the political neophyte they nominated turns out to have no idea what he's doing.

Paul Waldman


The Chris Wallace debate question that set off a firestorm

Ana Swanson


04 November 2016

Term limits are a bad idea

It's a nice fantasy that what Washington needs is a bunch of good old-fashioned common sense — common sense that can only come from people who aren't "career politicians." But the machinery of government is now incredibly complex. And the more we cling to the fantasy of electing uncorrupted political neophytes as saviors, the more we empower the lobbyists and bureaucrats who can accumulate a lifetime of experience and knowledge.

Lee Drutman


There Is a Conspiracy to Rig the Election, and Donald Trump Is Part of It

Forget the lurid fiction about voter fraud. Trump and the GOP are openly attacking the legitimacy of black voting.

Jamelle Bouie

02 November 2016

12 October 2016

Why WikiLeaks hates Hillary Clinton

Zach Beauchamp


How Breitbart Conquered the Media

Political reporters were taken aback by Hillary Clinton’s charge that half of Trump’s supporters are prejudiced. Few bothered to investigate the claim itself.

07 October 2016

What O. J. Simpson Means to Me

An Anniversary of Shame

Fifteen years after 9/11, we're still entangled in the bad decisions America made following the disaster. But some in the CIA say the whole thing could have been over in six months.

05 October 2016

26 September 2016

15 September 2016

Olympians Don’t Need a Tax Break

Adam Chodorow

Two out of three ain’t bad

The Mundell-Fleming trilemma:

A fixed exchange rate, monetary autonomy and the free flow of capital are incompatible, according to the last in our series of big economic ideas

The Economist

06 September 2016

There's a simple fix for Obamacare's current woes: the public option

Jacob Hacker


If we've learned anything from the news of Aetna's retaliatory withdrawal from the healthcare markets, it's that allowing these firms to remain in business in 2010 was a huge mistake.

Donald Trump’s strange speaking style, as explained by linguists

Tara Golshan


09 August 2016

20 July 2016

17 June 2016

30 March 2016

Grand Old People Party

Reihan Salam

#690: All In [audio]

We talk to a professional poker player who lost on the first day of poker's most famous tournament--but went on to get a huge payout. Turns out there's a game behind the game.

Planet Money

23 February 2016

Freedom: Three Varieties and a Caveat

Peter Dorman

I'm from New Hampshire, and the New Hampshire primary has to go

By putting Iowa and New Hampshire first, the Democratic and Republican parties are effectively saying that disproportionate power and influence should go to a small group of overwhelmingly white people in rural areas and small cities. That influence shouldn't go to a state or region with a large Hispanic population. It shouldn't go to a state or region with a large black population. It shouldn't go to a state with large cities and a strong interest in urban issues. It should go to these people instead.

That does a profound disservice to the millions of Americans living in diverse, densely populated areas. Or, to put it more bluntly, it gives white people outsized power in determining nominees, and disenfranchises black, Hispanic, Asian-Americans, and Native Americans relatively speaking.

Dylan Matthews

America’s Long History of Trashing ‘New York Values’

And why it tells us more about America than New York.

Kevin Baker

17 February 2016

The Constitution was designed to weed out demagogues. Now it encourages them.

Andrew Sabl


Hillary Clinton and the audacity of political realism

What Clinton is relearning in the snows of Iowa and New Hampshire is that there's nothing audacious about hope. Hope is the one commodity every voter wants to buy. It's pragmatism that you can't sell.

Ezra Klein


16 February 2016

The Republican establishment can fix its problems by picking a name out of a hat

In the language of game theory, this is a focal point problem. If all the establishment voters/donors could agree on one of the “establishment four” candidates, that candidate could be a viable competitor to Trump and Cruz. But establishment voters/donors are uncertain about which one of the four that will be — and so votes and money get split.

Joshua Tucker

Potemkin Ideologies

Paul Krugman

12 February 2016

Book Review: "Economics Rules"

Noah Smith

City Upon A Hill: A History Of American Exceptionalism [audio]

In his final State of the Union address, President Obama called America "the most powerful nation on Earth," saying, "When it comes to every important international issue, people of the world do not look to Beijing or Moscow to lead—they call us." President Obama is hardly the first leader to talk about American exceptionalism. But just how "exceptional" is America? And why does it matter? In this episode of BackStory, we'll go behind the rhetoric to unpack the history and meaning of the term and assess the changing meanings of "American exceptionalism" over time.

BackStory

05 February 2016

101ism

Noah Smith

The Theory of Everything and Then Some

In complexity theory, physicists try to understand economics while sociologists think like biologists. Can they bring us any closer to universal knowledge?

David Auerbach