Uncategorized
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New NYT: Donald Trump, the Green Lantern candidate
From my new Upshot column: Why is Donald Trump leading the polls in the G.O.P. presidential race? One explanation is his celebrity and the media attention he attracts. But he has also exploited our vulnerability to pleasing fictions about presidential power. We like to pretend that presidents exert vast control over the country, commanding not
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New NYT: Biden is already running
From my new Upshot column: Is Joe Biden running for president? Effectively yes, even though he is not yet a declared candidate. Buzz has grown about a potential Biden candidacy this week after The Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that he was considering entering the race, in part because of urging from his son Beau,
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New NYT: How to follow presidential polls
From my new Upshot column: The onslaught of presidential polls has already begun. You may be tempted to avoid the polling deluge, but the results of these surveys do influence the campaign, including who will get invited to the first G.O.P. debate. That’s why we want to show you how to read (or ignore) the
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New NYT: Hillary Clinton *is* likable enough
From my new Upshot column: Is Hillary Rodham Clinton in trouble? You would think so from the coverage of recent polls showing that her unfavorable ratings have increased nationally and in key states. Multiple media outlets and pundits have suggested that her personal unpopularity 20 months before the presidential election is a major problem for
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New NYT: Is the Roberts Court really drifting left?
From my new Upshot column: The Supreme Court continued a trend Thursday morning toward making seemingly more liberal decisions. In two important cases, the court’s conservative majority was again split, putting liberal justices in the majority on decisions upholding the legality of certain subsidies to help Americans purchase insurance under the Affordable Care Act and
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New NYT: Clinton’s campaign not very narrow
From my new Upshot column: Is Hillary Rodham Clinton running a campaign focused on “secondary, base-ginning issues”? That’s what Josh Kraushaar of The National Journal argued in a column on Tuesday. He stated that until recently she “has seemed content to energize small slices of the electorate” like blacks and Hispanics with “side issues” like
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New NYT: Hillary Clinton and wishful-thinking politics
From my new Upshot column: Hillary Clinton’s campaign took a beating among some pundits this week for telling the truth: She’s going to employ a strategy focused on a narrow set of the most competitive states. In other words, she’s running as a modern presidential candidate. Mrs. Clinton’s statement is what’s called a Kinsley gaffe
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New NYT: Debate access and third party candidates
From my new Upshot column: What is keeping third-party and independent candidates from mounting credible campaigns for the presidency? According to Level the Playing Field, a nonprofit that is attracting national media coverage, the problem is candidates’ access to televised debates. In a recent ad in The Wall Street Journal, the group blamed the requirement
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New NYT: Trade and the power of the affluent
From my new Upshot column: The Pacific Rim trade deal making its way through Congress is the latest step in a decades-long trend toward liberalizing trade — a somewhat mysterious development given that many Americans are skeptical of freer trade. But Americans with higher incomes are not so skeptical. They — along with businesses and
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New NYT: Criminal justice reform vs. 2016
From my new Upshot column: For the first time in decades, a consensus is building behind reform of the criminal justice system. But will the 2016 election get in the way? In February, a dizzyingly wide coalition encompassing the conservativeKoch Industries and the liberal Center for American Progress announced an effort to try to overhaul