Ed Kilgore

Well, it’s obvious that Anderson Cooper did not want to look friendlier than Jake Tapper. There’s not as much to work with as Tapper had with Republicans in the way of quotable attacks on one candidate by another. But he’s deploying whatever criticisms he can find. Cooper asks Clinton about emails and her handling of […]

Clinton asked about what to do with Putin. She argues stronger “leadership position” in Syria will help rein in Putin. Sanders asked abut Syria, calls it “quagmire,” compares it to Iraq which he calls “worst foreign policy blunder in American history.” Dana Bash tees up Chafee to call HRC “disqualified” over Iraq vote; he obliges. […]

Nice little Obama video to kick things off. Last time there was a lame-duck president, Republicans didn’t much want to hear from George W. Bush. Interesting venue. The Wynn Hotel is pretty posh; I’ve never been able to talk myself into spending what it takes to stay there. There’s going to be a Republican debate […]

So the first Democratic presidential candidate debate, sponsored by CNN and Facebook, is about to begin. It’s hard to say what this debate will “feel” like. The format won’t differ (so far as we know) from the CNN-sponsored slugfest last month. But the substitution of Anderson Cooper for Jake Tapper as the chief moderator could […]

As is my habit, I will be live-blogging tonight’s Democratic presidential candidate debate, which begins at 8:30 PM EDT. I’ll be back a bit before then to preview the debate. But for now I’m going to chill for a bit and maybe take a nap, and generally gird up my loins for an evening of […]

Of all the takes I’ve read so far about the stakes for tonight’s debate, by far the most sweeping–and at the same time, very precise–is from TNR’s Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig, who says “it stands to predict not just the Democratic Party’s immediate future, but the future—if there is one—of the American left.” Aside from that […]

So you think there’s “chaos in the House?” How’s about Chaos in College Football, where in the last 48 hours two coaches (Sarkisian of USC and Edsall of Maryland) have been fired and another (Spurrier of SC) abruptly retired. Mighty weird. Here are some less turbulent midday news/views treats: * Despite desperate media anticipation, no […]

Michael Vadon/Flickr There’s been enormous attention given the last few months to Bernie Sanders’ ideological challenge to Hillary Clinton and all she is supposed to represent, and to HRC’s own efforts to tamp down progressive hostility and fears towards her. But as Brian Beutler notes in an important TNR column today, ideology is a relatively […]

Michael Vadon/Wikimedia Commons In case you’ve missed it, and given the reluctance of the MSM to get into this sort of thing, you probably have, there are two pretty interesting religious “stories” kicking around in the background to the Republican presidential contest. The first, which I’ve mentioned here now and then, is Dr. Ben Carson’s […]

Regular readers may recall a fine feature article at Washington Monthly in 2012 by Tim Heffernan about the rapidly developing horizontal and vertical integration of the beer industry in the US and its unsettling implications for recreating the pre-Prohibition (and in the UK, contemporary) incentives for heavy drinking. Heffernan particularly pointed to the likelihood that […]