What Trump’s Rise Means for Democracy
Trump’s astounding rise isn’t the result of too much democracy, but of too little.
Trump’s astounding rise isn’t the result of too much democracy, but of too little.
Donald Trump’s statements about migration and foreigners should not be dismissed as an anomaly of primary season politicking. From a historical perspective, they express broadly shared although largely implicit ideas about the relationship between the United States and Latin America.
Beyond the delegate race lies the Sanders campaign’s larger potential: that a rising generation will emerge from it to transform American political life in ways that until recently seemed impossible. Here’s where they might start.
The danger of Trump is that he is completely removing the norms of public discourse—the same norms that have served to hold in check those unwilling to see their society transformed by greater equality and liberty.
Bernie Sanders’s plan for higher education would go a long way toward improving graduation rates, raising incomes, and lowering unemployment among millennials—African Americans and Latinos most of all.
While Hillary Clinton’s and Bernie Sander’s positions and voting records on abortion may be similar, Clinton has engaged more proactively with the issue, even if not always perfectly.
After years of stoking xenophobia and racism, the GOP now has a frontrunner whose only brilliance lies in his ability to seize the populist anxiety Republicans themselves have cultivated.
No matter who becomes the Democrats’ nominee, Bernie Sanders’s campaign marks a sea change within the Democratic Party.
South Carolina, and the South in general, has served as a bellwether for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination since 1992.
Why does the white-haired firebrand from Vermont insist on identifying himself with socialism, a political faith that has never been popular in the United States?
The cultural-political influence of unions is rising even as membership declines.
The Democratic elite’s dismissal of the Sanders campaign ultimately reflects a contempt for democratic ideals.
Jane Mayer’s Dark Money is a magisterial portrait of the right-wing billionaires who have “weaponized” conservative philanthropy and pulled the GOP ever further right. Yet Mayer’s account fails to explain something just as alarming: the far-right surge from the grassroots.
Unlike his chief rival Ted Cruz, Donald Trump dismisses the high-church liturgy of American politics in favor of blunt tribalism. In Trump’s America, no one is looking out for you.
The Trump phenomenon is best understood as an amalgam of three different, largely pathological strains in American history and culture.