A Year Later, Democrats Roar Back

Post-election analysis, and inaugurating Purple Wednesday

It wasn't just Donald Trump's unexpected win over Hillary Clinton, but the year of political rancor and division that had set me adrift. I have friends and colleagues, mostly those who -- quite properly -- viewed Clinton's defeat as a bitter reflection of their own encounters with sexism, and who ...
Read More
Placeholder

The Times They Are a Changin’?

The Halloween Attack in New York and the Prospects for Democracy

I hope that the global march of authoritarianism, with Donald Trump in the vanguard, is a momentary reaction that will be overwhelmed by a broad democratic front, one that rejects xenophobia, terror, irrationality and fear. But, I also know that the authoritarian turn, a radical reinvention of political culture, is ...
Read More
Placeholder

Pentagon Anti-war March

50 years later Vietnam War protestors reunite

On October 21, 1967 some 50,000 people marched on the Pentagon to "Confront the Warmakers" about the War in Vietnam. Fifty years later about one hundred of them met in DC to commemorate the event. They began the evening of October 20 with a small rally in front of the Pentagon. After a couple speeches, ...
Read More
Pentagon Anti-war March

Syllabus: From Goldwater to Trump

A Political History of Tea Party America

In order to think this through with students, I re-did the course, and the syllabus below that I am teaching this fall is what I came up with. ___________________________________________________ This course is a survey of United States political history and domestic policy that puts the evolution of the American presidency at its ...
Read More
Placeholder

What Cass Sunstein Gets Wrong About Marxism, Sanders, and American Politics

Heightening the Contradictions and Missing the Point

Sunstein mentions, in his lone footnote, that his account of Marx and Lenin’s views on “heightening the contradictions” is “a brisk summary of some famously complex and ambiguous arguments.” But the problem is not that his summary is overly brisk, but that it is fundamentally inaccurate and is used as ...
Read More
Placeholder

The Manafort Indictment

Twelve Counts — and I’m Still Counting

For those of us who have been waiting almost a year for some good news, yesterday's indictment of Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates was a real lift. The bonus news that someone who had been flying under the radar -- George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser to the ...
Read More
Placeholder

Thaler’s Nobel Does Not Challenge Mainstream Economics

Prizing nudges over shoves misjudges what we need right now

Behavioral economics contends that economic agents  -- contrary to orthodoxy theory -- do not always behave in ‘rational’ ways.  Human beings base their decisions on "biases" or "heuristics." For example, behavioral economists argue that we tend to overvalue things we already own. This is known as an “endowment effect.” The experiments ...
Read More
Placeholder

Jeffrey C. Isaac, John McCain and Me

Thinking about a Democratic Antifa

Isaac documents the danger that is White House Chief of Staff John Kelly. General Kelley’s disciplined authoritarianism may be more “adult” than that of his boss. Yet, as Isaac observes, it is enabling and not controlling the threat Trump presents to American democracy. Analyzing the interactive context of Trump’s telephone conversation with ...
Read More
Placeholder

No Muslim Ban Marches in D.C.

October 18th 2017

Two thousand people rallied and marched from Lafayette Park to the Trump Hotel on October 18. Organized by immigrant and civil rights groups, it was the culmination of a couple weeks of activities to demand that there never be any ban in Muslims entering the U.S.   The day before a federal judge in ...
Read More
No Muslim Ban Marches in D.C.