Political Commentary

Our elections have been melting down. Disastrous, spectacular collapses have become commonplace in this unimaginable year already filled with a pandemic, record unemployment, and civil unrest. While the failures are complex and manifold, many have been predictable and similar from state to state. The patterns are clear. There are not …

Warnings about the crisis went unheeded. Scientists were ignored and called doomsayers. The press accounts were labeled fake news and brushed aside. “The cure would be worse than the illness” went the argument. Government watchdogs saw their budgets gutted. Lawmakers misled the country and did more harm then good. We …

People have had to risk their lives to cast a ballot before in this country, but not because of a pandemic: John Lewis and his fellow marchers were bloodied on a Selma bridge 55 years ago this month, and that’s just one example. But even when there may not be …

It shouldn’t be difficult to determine who is winning this. Bernie Sanders is the only candidate who has shown the ability thus far to form any kind of firm base within the Democratic electorate —younger voters who may find him personally popular even more so than a platform that Republicans …

Hagiography usually waits until someone has died, but Mitt Romney is still very much alive. In the Senate’s final vote to acquit Donald Trump of all charges, Romney became the first Senator to vote to convict and remove from office a president of their own party, with the Utah Republican …

As 2019 wound down, well-known press figures sounded alarms about the “erosion of truth.” MSNBC’s Chuck Todd spoke to our own Peter Wade about the “epidemic” of “disinformation.” Washington Post editor Marty Baron and New York Times editor Dean Baquet joined Todd on Meet The Press to talk about how …

If there’s a worse idea than the Pentagon becoming Editor-in-Chief of America, I can’t remember it. But we’re getting there: From Bloomberg over Labor Day weekend: Fake news and social media posts are such a threat to U.S. security that theDefense Departmentis launching a project to repel “large-scale, automated disinformation …

Not too many campaign websites first ask visitors if they are unsure about the candidate in question. But if you click the “I’m not sure yet” button on the ElizabethWarren.com launch page, you can enter your email before answering the question “What’s holding you back?” one of three ways. Two …