John Stoehr

Bernie Sanders has campaigned as the anti-politician. Much of his message is based on the conceit, even as he takes funding from those who work for fossil-fuel interests, even as he dodges questions about his tax returns. There’s actually nothing wrong with those things per se. But Sanders act as if Hillary Clinton is the […]

DR Tucker does progressivism a great service in calling out Thomas Frank. Frank is the author of What’s the Matter with Kansas? as well as the founder of The Baffler. He has made a career out of blasting the kind of Democratic Party that emerged post-1968 in which liberals profess concern for rights, cultural issues, […]

The Hill reported yesterday that seven Republican senators are willing to meet with Merrick Garland, President Obama’s pick to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Until then, Senate Republicans had presented a united front in refusing to consider anyone Obama brought forth. Some no doubt might think that this signals mediating circumstances to […]

Hillary Clinton did not win the Iowa caucuses with a coin toss. She didn’t “win” at all. Not really. Delegates in Iowa are allotted proportionally. She won half. Bernie Sanders won half. Yes, some of those delegates were decided by an obscure rule requiring the toss of a coin, and Clinton winning of all the […]

Marc Nozell/flickr I’m reading a lot about how left-liberal voters will never ever support Hillary Clinton now that she has come out aggressively against her chief rival, Bernie Sanders. Part of me wonders if this is the result of magically thinking that Sanders is as pure as the driven Green Mountain snow. I admire many […]

I have argued that Donald Trump is pushing the issue of Ted Cruz’s Canadian birth to wedge evangelical voters in Iowa. The state’s largest Republican voting bloc does not likely believe his professing to faith in a Christian God. My argument was that Trump is combating one kind of suspicion with another. If evangelicals won’t […]

Lawrence Tribe has said the issue of Senator Ted Cruz’s eligibility for the presidency, with respect to being born not in the U.S. but in Canada, is not “settled.” His recent comment is being taken among pols and partisans as a political attack, as if Harvard University’s preeminent legal scholar were trying to derail Cruz’s […]

I’m a bit stunned that on the subject of ‪gun control‬ pretty much the entire Republican presidential field, as well as GOP leadership in Washington, is out of step with Bill O’Reilly. The Fox News pundit said last night that President Obama’s executive orders increasing regulation of gun sales were “reasonable.” To those who might […]

The yokels in Oregon are not like ISIS. They are not the same. They are not similar. They are not in the same ballpark. To assert otherwise is to misunderstand a potentially volatile form of political protest and to permit oneself to feel oh-so superior. ISIS beheads men on camera, enslaves women, rapes boys, forces […]

An intelligent Republican columnist said this morning that ‪#‎DonaldTrump‬ is not *really* a Republican but instead a big-city Democrat who loves government. The reason for this comment was Trump’s remark during the GOP debates last night that the $4 trillion wasted in Iraq could have been used to rebuild roads and bridges at home–a remark […]