Joe Biden will seek to restore the place of science in policymaking. Science leadership will need to be reshaped to achieve this result. Thus, the incoming president should nominate someone to head the White House science office who has a background in the life sciences and is also a woman or a person of color. … Read more
The GOP has succeeded in unfairly packing the courts with conservative judges who are out-of-step with the American people. Joe Biden’s surprising counterpunch with a bipartisan commission might be just the right thing after all, despite criticism from the left. Read more here …
Donald Trump’s favorability rating has never much passed 40% that’s OK with him. In fact, it’s his reelection plan. His strategy is one that assumes mobilizing an energetic base is more important than appealing to undecided middle-of-the road voters. His far-right policies and combative rhetoric reinforced by conservative media are intended to keep his base … Read more
Kamala Harris’s selection as vice-president sets a new standard for what it means for a political party to balance its ticket. Ticket balancing for the parties used to be largely geographic or ideological in nature. Now for the Democrats it has come to mean greater demographic balance — namely, selecting a ticket that looks more closely like … Read more
My advice to Super Tuesday Democrats is simple: vote for whom you think would be the best president and stop worrying so much about beating Trump. Then enthusiastically support the eventual nominee. Yes, beating Donald Trump is the top priority, but honestly no one really knows who the best candidate would be. (BTW: I vote … Read more
Thanks Iowa. The technical mess which is your caucus is a reminder that the primary system is a political mess too. That makes this a good time to rethink why Iowa and New Hampshire get to go first in the nomination process anyway. Especially given how bad they are in selecting wining candidates for president. … Read more
Trump produced the longest government shutdown in history. It was also the dumbest. He always wants to have the greatest of everything. Well, here’s one of the greatest mistakes of his presidency. Congress finally crafted a budget deal to provide border security that President Trump was willing to sign. This was made possible only after … Read more
I admit to the guilty pleasure of finishing Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury this weekend. Given that the release of this book finished off Steve Bannon at Breitbart because of an angry Donald Trump, it might well have been titled, Fired by the Furious. But the saga that Wolff sets out, based on extraordinary White … Read more
Trump bet big that a political strategy attacking President Obama and Hillary Clinton for a “war on coal” would pay off. But if the current polling showing Clinton still ahead in the race turns out to be correct, we will be able to say this ploy was an outright bust. Sort of like placing a … Read more