Colin Woodard is the author of six books, including Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood, American Nations: The History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, and American Character: The Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good.
Following the Money in the Race to Replace Olympia Snowe: an Early Snapshot
If you’re curious how the race to replace retiring Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) is going, I’ve got some campaign finance data for you to chew on. For those who haven’t been following the Maine race closely, the conventional wisdom is that former governor Angus King, a two-term independent, is the frontrunner, and that the national… Read more »
Lessig: Occupy Americans Elect
In recent years, Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig has taken up the struggle against what is perhaps the root problem of American dysfunction: money’s corrosive effects on our political system. His recent book, Republic, Lost, outlined the systemic nature of the problem, its horrific cost both to the health of our society and to… Read more »
Super Tuesday and the American Nations
For those Washington Monthly readers who don’t believe America’s regional cultures, properly identified, have predictive value in contemporary politics, I offer a two-part warning. First, I’m about to deploy the American Nations paradigm for this purpose once again. Secondly, the facts once again support the thesis, so stop reading now if this will put you… Read more »
Romney’s Next State Challenges: Why the Midwest is a myth
If I were stranded on a desert island and allowed access to only a single source of U.S. political analysis, I’d request Nate Silver’s Five-Thirty-Eight blog at NYTimes.com. Timely and data-driven, it presents the stuff upon which opinions can be built, rather than simply opinion. True, Silver’s predictive engine completely fumbled the 2010 gubernatorial contest… Read more »
Jon Huntsman’s Conquest of Yankeedom
Jon Huntsman kicked off the most successful week of his presidential candidacy, speaking before a standing room only crowd in the function room of the Plymouth public library, perched on a hill overlooking this tidy northern New Hampshire college town. “Nobody is working the state quite like the Huntsman campaign,” he told the attendees of… Read more »