Today's Liberal News

Ronald Brownstein

The Challenges of an Electric-Vehicle Revolution

Judging by the ads during last weekend’s Super Bowl, electric vehicles are poised to imminently dislodge gasoline-powered cars and trucks from their privileged place on America’s roadways.An escalating dispute among President Joe Biden’s administration, congressional Democrats, and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy over modernizing the Postal Service’s vehicle fleet shows why the transition may not come quite that quickly.

Does Biden Have a Second Act?

Ronald Reagan did it. So did Bill Clinton. Barack Obama did as well.Can Joe Biden do it too?After a difficult first two years in the White House, Reagan, Clinton, and Obama each rebuilt enough public support to win a second term—not long after many observers had labeled them fatally damaged by their early setbacks.

The Fate of Bobby Kennedy’s Assassin

Maxwell Taylor Kennedy, one of the nine surviving children of the late Robert F. Kennedy, was at the family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, with a gaggle of his relatives and siblings last August when the California Board of Parole Hearings unexpectedly recommended the release of the man who assassinated his father, Sirhan Sirhan.“We were devastated,” Maxwell told me yesterday. “I was shocked, deeply dismayed, emotional.

It’s Time for Democrats to Break the Glass

The next few weeks will likely answer the most crucial question that emerged from last year’s insurrection by supporters of Donald Trump: Can one political party defend American democracy on its own?In the days after the January 6 attack, it appeared possible that many Republicans would join Democrats in a cross-party coalition to defend democracy against the autocratic threat.

When Bipartisanship Risks Undermining Democracy

Looking like a human grease fire, and burning nearly as hot, the right-wing provocateur Steve Bannon spat vitriol as he emerged from federal court on Monday afternoon. “This is the misdemeanor from hell for Merrick Garland and Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden,” Bannon, a former adviser to former President Donald Trump, insisted after appearing for the first time on contempt-of-Congress charges for his refusal to testify before the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.

Democrats Need to Count Up, Not Down

With the finish line in sight (if still stubbornly out of reach) for the Democrats’ massive social-programs and economic development bill, the party now faces the challenge of focusing the attention of its key constituencies and the public on what remains in the package, not on what was cut in the exhausting legislative maneuvering.

Democrats Need to Count Up, Not Down

With the finish line in sight (if still stubbornly out of reach) for the Democrats’ massive social-programs and economic development bill, the party now faces the challenge of focusing the attention of its key constituencies and the public on what remains in the package, not on what was cut in the exhausting legislative maneuvering.

Democrats Stare Into the Abyss

Since mid-summer, Democrats have been trapped in a downward spiral of declining approval ratings for President Joe Biden, rising public anxiety about the country’s direction, and widening internal divisions over the party’s legislative agenda. The next few weeks will likely determine whether they have bottomed out and can begin to regain momentum before next year’s midterm elections.

The California Recall’s Warning for Democracy

Governor Gavin Newsom of California defeated yesterday’s recall election by a large enough margin to squash earlier Republican threats to challenge the results no matter the outcome. But the proliferation of those allegations of voter fraud before the election, including ungrounded claims from former President Donald Trump that the contest was “rigged,” points toward an ominous future in which more GOP candidates challenge the results of any election that they do not win.

The California Recall Could Be a Road Map for Democrats

California Governor Gavin Newsom is confronting the toughest challenge Democrats may face in next year’s midterm election—and guiding his party toward a possible solution as the Republican-driven recall against him enters its final days.One key reason the president’s party historically fares so poorly in midterm elections is that its supporters turn out at lower rates than voters of the party not in the White House.

‘Everybody I Know Is Pissed Off’

The vaccinated, across party lines, have kind of had it with the unvaccinated, an array of new polls suggests.While most state and national GOP leaders are focused on defending the rights of unvaccinated Americans, new polling shows that the large majority of vaccinated adults—including a substantial portion of Republicans—support tougher measures against those who have refused COVID-19 shots.

The Tool That Joe Biden Refuses to Use

For all the passionate words President Joe Biden delivered in defense of voting rights in his speech yesterday, it was the one word he never mentioned that provoked the strongest response from civil-rights advocates: filibuster.Nowhere in his remarks did Biden utter what may go down as the political word of the year.

The Democrats’ New Voting-Rights Obstacle

There is a gnawing anxiety among voting-rights advocates that even if Democrats find a way to roll back the Senate filibuster and pass new federal legislation safeguarding access to the ballot, the Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court might still strike it down.

Democrats Have 1 Option Left

Today’s Supreme Court decision further weakening the Voting Rights Act affirmed that the only way Democrats can reverse the wave of restrictive voting laws in GOP-controlled states is to pass new federal voting rights by curtailing the Senate filibuster.Congressional action has long seemed the only realistic lever for Democrats to resist red states’ surge of voter-suppression laws, which are passing, as I’ve written, on an almost entirely party-line basis.

How to Hold Trump Accountable

A torrent of new revelations is filling in the picture of how Donald Trump used, and abused, his authority as president. But the disclosures may serve only to underscore how little remains known about all the ways in which Trump barreled through traditional limits on the exercise of presidential power—and highlight the urgency of developing a more comprehensive accounting before the 2024 election, when he may seek to regain those powers.

Watch What’s Happening in Red States

It’s not just voting rights.Though this year’s proliferation of bills restricting ballot access in red states has commanded national attention, it represents just one stream in a torrent of conservative legislation poised to remake the country. GOP-controlled states—including Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, Texas, Arizona, Iowa, and Montana—have advanced their most conservative agenda in years, and one that reflects Donald Trump’s present stamp on the Republican Party.

Don’t Sleep on Asian American Voters

When Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, and other prominent Democrats appeared online at a major fundraiser last night, they spotlighted one of the least discussed lessons of the 2020 election: Asian Americans are poised for a major leap in electoral influence.In Democratic circles, the bloc’s impact on the 2020 election has been largely obscured by the intense focus on understanding how Donald Trump improved his performance among another rapidly growing minority group, Latinos.

The New Swing Voters

The last election’s most unexpected twist is framing one of the most urgent questions confronting both parties today: What explains Donald Trump’s improved performance among Latino voters?The president who began his first national campaign by calling Mexicans “rapists,” drug smugglers, and criminals; who labored to build a wall across the U.S.

Why Democrats Are Fighting Over an Obscure D.C. Bureaucrat

Burnt buildings were still smoldering when Bill Clinton toured South Central Los Angeles, the historic center of the city’s Black community, in early May 1992. The presidential candidate had flown cross-country from the East Coast as the city was being consumed by waves of unrest following the acquittal of four police officers who had savagely beat Rodney King the year before.

The Decision That Will Define Democrats for a Decade

No decision facing Democrats over the next two years will shape the long-term political competition between the parties more than whether they end the Senate filibuster to pass their agenda to reform elections and expand access to the vote.The party’s immediate political fate in the 2022 and 2024 elections is likely to turn mostly on whether Joe Biden can successfully control the coronavirus outbreak—restarting the economy and returning a sense of normalcy to daily life.

Trump’s Parting Gift to Joe Biden

Donald Trump’s chaotic final days in the White House could present President Joe Biden with a historic opportunity to broaden his base of public support and splinter Republican opposition to his agenda.Recent polls have repeatedly found that about three-fourths or more of GOP voters accept Trump’s disproven charges that Biden stole the 2020 election, a number that has understandably alarmed domestic-terrorism experts.

Republicans Are Going Down a Dangerous Road

Republicans’ tolerance, if not active support, for President Donald Trump’s ongoing bid to overturn the 2020 election has crystallized a stark question: Does the GOP still qualify as a small-d democratic party—or is it morphing into something very different?

A Cold War Between Red and Blue America

GettyThe clearest message of this week’s complicated election results is that the trench is deepening between red and blue America.Late vote counts in Michigan and Wisconsin put Joe Biden in position to oust Donald Trump so long as the Democrat holds his leads in Nevada and Arizona, which he appears likely but not guaranteed to do.

Why Kamala Harris Is Still Showing Up Tonight

Watching Kamala Harris take the stage tonight for her debate with Mike Pence, many Democrats may be wondering the same thing: Why would she agree to appear in person, just a few feet away from the vice president, amid a coronavirus outbreak that has ravaged the White House and infected President Donald Trump?

Democrats Won’t Cede the Streets This Time

During the long legal battle in Florida that ultimately determined the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore, the Democratic nominee, specifically discouraged Jesse Jackson, the veteran civil-rights leader, from organizing public protests to demand a full counting of the disputed ballots.Gore wanted to fight solely in the courts, though that meant ceding the streets to Republicans, who held raucous rallies accusing Democrats of trying to steal the election from the GOP nominee, George W.

Just How Far Will Trump Go?

President Donald Trump’s open admission yesterday that he’s sabotaging the Postal Service to improve his election prospects crystallizes a much larger dynamic: He’s waging an unprecedented campaign to weaponize virtually every component of the federal government to partisan advantage.

Trump Is Determined to Split the Country in Two

New offensives against major cities from President Donald Trump and GOP governors are pushing at the central geographic fault line between the Republican and Democratic coalitions.On one front, Trump is taking his confrontational approach toward big cities to an ominous new level by deploying federal law-enforcement officials to Portland and potentially other locales over the objection of local officials.