A stunning 385 filibusters were initiated between 2007 and 2012—equal to the total number of filibusters in the seven decades between World War I and the end of the Reagan administration.
Day after Hitler became chancellor, a prominent conservative who aided him admitted, I have just committed the greatest stupidity of my life; I have allied myself with the greatest demagogue in world...
Years after Chávez’s presidential victory, Rafael Caldera explained his mistakes simply: Nobody thought that Mr. Chávez had even the remotest chance of becoming president. And merely a day after Hitle...
White evangelicals—who had leaned Democratic in the 1960s—began to vote Republican. In 2016, 76 percent of white evangelicals identified as Republican. Democratic voters, in turn, grew increasingly se...
We know that extremist demagogues emerge from time to time in all societies, even in healthy democracies. The United States has had its share of them, including Henry Ford, Huey Long, Joseph McCarthy,...
Uma coisa que distingue autocratas de líderes democráticos contemporâneos é sua intolerância à crítica e a disposição de usar seu poder para punir aqueles que - na oposição, na mídia ou na sociedade c...
Trump also found new ways to use old media as a substitute for party endorsements and traditional campaign spending. A candidate with qualities uniquely tailored to the digital age, Trump attracted fr...
This perception may explain the rise of a discourse that distinguishes real Americans from those associated with liberals and the Democratic Party.
The real protection against would-be authoritarians has not been Americans’ firm commitment to democracy but, rather, the gatekeepers—our political parties.
The president may break the law, threaten citizens’ rights, and even violate the constitution without having to worry that such abuse will be investigated or censured. With the courts packed and law e...
The post-1972 primary system was especially vulnerable to a particular kind of outsider: individuals with enough fame or money to skip the invisible primary. In other words, celebrities.
The norms sustaining our political system rested, to a considerable degree, on racial exclusion. The stability of the period between the end of Reconstruction and the 1980s was rooted in an original s...
The first sign is a weak commitment to the democratic rules of the game. Trump met this measure when he questioned the legitimacy of the electoral process and made the unprecedented suggestion that he...
The apogee of 1990s constitutional hardball was the December 1998 House vote to impeach President Clinton. Only the second presidential impeachment in U.S. history, the move ran afoul of long-establis...
Opposition strategies in Colombia under President Álvaro Uribe were more successful.
Finally, in principle, congressional leaders could seek the president’s removal. This would be politically costly for them.
Even if Donald Trump does not break the hard guardrails of our constitutional democracy, he has increased the likelihood that a future president will.
Despite popular enthusiasm for his candidacy, Ford was effectively locked out of contention. Senator James Couzens called the idea of his candidacy ridiculous. How can a man over sixty years old, who…...
Beginning with Ronald Reagan in 1980, the GOP embraced the Christian Right and adopted increasingly pro-evangelical positions, including opposition to abortion, support for school prayer, and, later,...
Although many factors contributed to Donald Trump’s stunning political success, his rise to the presidency is, in good measure, a story of ineffective gatekeeping. Party gatekeepers failed at three ke...