Politics Literature Arts Ideas

Election 2020

Michael Tomasky

What Did the Democrats Win?

The minority repeatedly thwarting the will of the majority is intolerable and untenable.

December 17, 2020 issue

Walter M. Shaub Jr.

The Presidential Transition Meets Murphy’s Law

One senior official is charged with ensuring a peaceful transfer of power when there is an apparent election winner. The Trump appointee is jeopardizing all that.

November 13, 2020

Fintan O’Toole

Democracy’s Afterlife

Trump, the GOP, and the rise of zombie politics.

December 3, 2020 issue

Wallace Shawn

Developments Since My Birth

October 27, 2020

Henry Louis Gates Jr.

How Societies Go Backward

November 19, 2020 issue

Annette Gordon-Reed

Hopes for the American Experiment

November 19, 2020 issue

Samuel Moyn

How Trump Won

He failed as an autocrat, despite opponents’ overblown fears, but succeeded in breaking the neoliberal consensus of the Beltway. We ignore that at our peril.

November 9, 2020

Peter Beinart

How Trump Lost

If he’d governed as he ran in 2016, as an economic populist, he would likely have been reelected. Instead, he reverted to the same old Republican playbook.

November 7, 2020

The Latest

Radcliffe Roye

‘God, Guns, & Trump’: Anatomy of the Crowd

What the body language of Trump supporters tells us about America’s divided future.

January 22, 2021

Mark Danner

‘Be Ready to Fight’

Trumpism is driven by cruelty and domination even as its rhetoric claims grievance and victimization. The attack on the Capitol showed that Donald Trump’s army of millions will not just melt away when he leaves office.

February 11, 2021 issue