Mischiefs of Faction
This post is part of Mischiefs of Faction, an independent political science blog featuring reflections on the party system.
A good speech is more than just appropriate words and emotional manipulation.
Even if the Constitution is functioning more or less as designed, it effectively excludes many people from its protections.
An evidence-based approach to political panic.
Consumers would lose; big banks would win.
One can find the language of Trump in the language of Tea Party websites first.
Remember, a dollar is 10 dimes or 100 pennies.
The pen isn’t mightier than the independent regulatory commission.
Republicans are more afraid of primary challenges than general election voters right now.
Filibusters help members of the majority party when they are pressured to support proposals that they privately believe are bad policy or risky politics.
The highest office in the land is subject to the highest degree of public scrutiny and critique.
Experts can help citizens who seek to respond to executive actions that pose the most potential damage.
Identity politics are constitutional politics.
Most campaign activities won’t matter much, but they’ll be part of the post-election narrative in 2018.
From hope to Trump, what have we learned about Obama’s presidency?
By promising to change health care, Trump has committed one of the classic blunders.
When we present ourselves as scholarly experts on a subject, we ask for our audience’s trust — and we owe them the best that academic research has to offer.
After a failed shot at the founding of a new regime, we remain in a time of close political competition.
Democrats now have the incentive change the system. There are many moving parts.
Plenty of women offered insights that turned out to be correct, prescient, and very valuable for explaining what happened in November.
Congress could amend its electoral vote-counting process so that if a state does not allocate its electoral votes proportionally, its electoral votes are subject to a challenge that requires a two-thirds supermajority to overcome.
Lack of party constraints will shape Trump’s presidency.
Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas explains the 2016 election far better than it did the election cycle in which it was published.
Trump’s election is without historical precedent — but still fits a historical pattern.
Trump played a strategy. America is still the same.
What is the case that Democrats actually, in reality, have “abandoned” the working class?
Do political scientists have a responsibility to express more judgment than the discipline typically allows?
The competing narratives about why Trump did well among whites are actually complementary. To truly understand his success means acknowledging that economic insecurity was part of the story, but so too were racism and sexism.
Forecasting is only a small part of what political science does, and the forecasters actually got it right.
The “right” to filibuster is fragile: It has never been affirmed in the rules of the Senate, it has always been subject to limitation by precedent, and the 2013 precedent highlighted how easy it is to restrict or eliminate the right.
Trump picked up the undecided and some supporters of third-party candidates.
This was a divisive election in an uncertain world.
In the alt-right media cycle, an anecdote becomes a scheme, a scheme a conspiracy, and through unchallenged repetition, the conspiracy becomes a coup. Open debate and a roll call putting Republicans on the record would be far better.
A look at where Trump and Clinton have been spending their money, and why, in the final days of the campaign.
And recent elections have been more consequential than expected, not less.
This is what’s wrong with American democracy (part one).