Ed Kilgore

Gage Skidmore/Flickr Aside from all the speculation about the trajectory of Donald Trump’s and Ben Carson’s and Marco Rubio’s presidential campaigns, the big question is whether the appropriate model for understanding Jeb Bush’s candidacy is McCain ’08 or Walker ’16. It’s pretty obvious which model the Jebster’s people would prefer: the one in which their […]

Gage Skidmore/Flickr Now that we’ve seen a host of surveys, nationally and in Iowa, that show Dr. Ben Carson to be the current leader of the Invisible Primary for the Republican presidential nomination, it’s as good a time as any to look seriously at the nature of his appeal, and eschew easy dismissals of him […]

You don’t have to be a media analyst to understand that the current wave of mistrust in government and politicians has coincided with a long-term decline in granular media coverage of what government does, in Washington and elsewhere. But as John Heltman explains in an important piece in the November/December issue of the Washington Monthly […]

Gage Skidmore/Flickr Well, so much for a clear demonstration that poor Democratic performance in downballot races could soon come to an end. It wasn’t a complete debacle, but on the other hand, when your signature partisan achievement is hanging onto one statewide constitutional office in Mississippi, it was no night for Donkeys to be pouring […]

Blues and country singer and guitarist Delbert McClinton is 75 today. Here he is with “Blues As Blues Can Get.”

Looks like we’ll be signing off before any election returns are in, but we’ll have a full recap tomorrow. For tonight, as always, I recommend Daily Kos Elections for up-to-the-minute one-stop coverage of the results. * Politico‘s Steven Shepard has a good preview of election results to watch tonight, including a possible pro-Democratic flip of […]

Every political junkie knows how steadily–and for the most part, successfully–Marco Rubio has worked to atone for his disqualifying heresy in championing comprehensive immigration reform in the Senate in 2013. He’s now ruled out any reform until a whole bunch of “enforcement” measures are enacted and adjudged as effective, and for good measure, ruled out […]

One of my most distinct memories from the epochal election year of 1980 was sitting in a motel room in Reno waiting to watch the Carter-Reagan debate, and gazing in awe at a long series of ads for people running for the Nevada Supreme Court. I don’t remember the exact scripts, but one candidate did […]

Tim Evanson/Flickr If, like me, you view efforts to minimize voting as one of the principles challenges to progressive values in this country, you should, like me, be disturbed by a piece from FiveThirtyEight‘s Eitan Hersh citing research on certain kinds of down-ballot races where Democrats prefer off-cycle, extremely-low-turnout elections. You know, like many elections […]

Just got offered a speaking gig down at UCLA for the day after Super Tuesday next March, alongside one of my favorite number-crunchers, Sean Trende. Should be fun. Here are some more immediate midday news/views treats: * WaPo’s Jonelle Marte explains the “file-and-suspend” strategy for maximizing high-earning couple’s Social Security benefits that was eliminated in […]