The legacy of the first session of the 113d Congress is sufficiently bad to make this Political Animal eager to cover campaigns rather than feckless policymaking. But the thing about PA is that even in our horse-raciest mode (which I perfected in my days of writing for Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight), we don’t forget policy or ideology or the real-life aspects and consequences of elections. So this is a good, morally safe place to follow pure politics, if that’s possible. You can help preserve this election year fallout shelter with a tax-deductible donation today.

Ed Kilgore

Ed Kilgore is a political columnist for New York and managing editor at the Democratic Strategist website. He was a contributing writer at the Washington Monthly from January 2012 until November 2015, and was the principal contributor to the Political Animal blog.