For the energy sector a lot is at stake with this next election. Of the GOP front runners, only Marco Rubio has an energy or climate plan on his website. A few choice nuggets are doing away with “Obama’s carbon mandates” (whatever that means), approving Keystone XL immediately, rewriting the offshore drilling plan and creating … Continue reading »
2016 presidential election
Why Trump?
Donald Trump is winning Republican presidential primaries at such a great rate that he seems likely to become the next Republican presidential nominee and perhaps the next president. Democrats have little understanding of why he is winning — and winning handily, and even many Republicans don’t see him as a Republican and are trying to … Continue reading »
The birth of a new white supremacist movement
We’re seeing the birth of a new white supremacist movement in the US. I want to talk about the responsibility of white liberals and progressives for letting it happen. This movement has been growing, and growing bolder, since President Obama was elected. It’s not covert or subtle; it doesn’t pretend to be anything other than … Continue reading »
Using explanatory journalism to fight polarization and dysfunction
In the present-day world of media and politics, we live (as the saying goes) in the best of times and the worst of times. A motivated consumer of information on politics and policy — the ideal citizen in a representative democracy — has access to an unprecedented number of sources of excellent journalism in a … Continue reading »
What do young women want from Bernie Sanders?
I’ve been watching the cross-generational dialogue here on the Berkeley Blog between Ph.D. candidate Peggy O’Donnell and professor emerita Robin Lakoff, which started with Lakoff’s interesting observation about how Hillary Clinton is being “hyperinterpreted” and concluded with O’Donnell’s defense of young women who vote for Bernie Sanders. Meanwhile, over in my corner of UC Berkeley, I’ve … Continue reading »
A response to Professor Robin Lakoff
Dear Professor Lakoff, Now it is my turn to thank you for your passionate response to my blog post from last week, in which I expressed my frustration about statements made by Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright about young women who support Bernie Sanders. A careful reader of our pieces would see that your argument is not dissimilar … Continue reading »
Behind the Republican implosion
The profound dysfunction on display in the Republican party’s contest for its 2016 presidential nomination reflects an intra-party civil war that has been simmering for the past 25 years and has now burst out of control. In the year 2000, George W. Bush’s signal political achievement was uniting an already fractious Republican Party behind him … Continue reading »
My Hillary prediction
I am now in a position to make a prediction: Hillary Rodham Clinton will not be the Democratic candidate for president in 2016. Remember: you read it here first. Why do I think that? Because I have been following the rants of the commentariat on the topic for the last couple of years, and I … Continue reading »
Ever since Eve: Hillary and the War on Women
There have been recently several attacks by Republicans (just for example, Karl Rove and Reince Priebus) on the character and competence of Hillary Rodham Clinton: about her complicity in Benghazi and the Boko Haram kidnappings, her age, her health, and more. The response by the Democrats and the supposedly liberal pundit class has been less … Continue reading »
The ever-fascinating Christie
The most interesting thing about Chris Christie’s apology is that it was no apology. An apology is a speech act – an utterance that is in some way world-changing. Apologies change the world by reversing the power of speaker and addressee: the speaker puts himself intentionally in a one-down position as a result of actions … Continue reading »