“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it sometimes rhymes,” Mark Twain is reputed to have said.

In the seven presidential elections since 1992, the Republican presidential nominee has won the popular vote exactly once. The lone GOP candidate to receive a majority of the national vote was George W. Bush in 2004. Bush's election-day victory over Democrat John Kerry, who had, in most obse…

Like all candidates, Democrats focus their campaigns on what they will do if elected. Progressives often accuse Joe Biden in particular of wanting to take America back to the Barack Obama years. And it's true that Biden often portrays his candidacy as a restoration of the era in which he ser…

If you're the typical U.S. consumer, you just shelled out money to celebrate Valentine's Day. Collectively, Americans spend multiple billions of dollars each year on candy, flowers, jewelry or some other gift to spark romance with a loved one.

Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative (cough) Union, which hosts the annual CPAC conference, tweeted that he was disinviting Mitt Romney from the confab this year because he "could not guarantee his physical safety" after the senator voted to convict Donald Trump in the impeach…

Vote blue, no matter who.

Legendary Democratic strategist James Carville was interviewed by Vox's Sean Illing last week after Carville's doom-and-gloom jeremiad on MSNBC got a lot of people's attention. In his inimitable fashion, Carville warned that Democrats' love affair with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is sending …

Contrasting the movies of a couple of generations ago with more recent movies – in how they depict the relationships between men and women– has led me to think about how it’s difficult to put it all together.

The laziest and most common campaign story right now is a version of the following:

The disproportionate number of African American special guests hosted by President Donald Trump at the State of the Union address made clear how very serious he is about courting the support of this community.

“A More or Less Perfect Union” is a three-part series, produced by Free to Choose Network, that will air on various PBS stations across the nation starting in February. The documentary is a personal exploration of the U.S. Constitution by Justice Douglas Ginsburg, who served on the U.S. Cour…

My friend in Omaha, Nebraska, assures me that a disturbing phenomenon once focused on the coasts has invaded the heartland. He speaks of young couples where the woman is nicely dressed and her male date or mate is in slob mode. The women are neat and stylish, often wearing some (or a lot of)…

In my more than half a century of hanging around the clubhouses and campaign halls of American politics, I have never once met a candidate with the first name or family name "Expected." Yet the enduring one-size-fits-all excuse/explanation for every presidential candidate who finishes in the…

Did we learn nothing from the so-called crack-cocaine plague of the '80s and '90s?

Bad enough that a tyrant is testing American democracy. Now an oligarch is trying to buy the presidency.

Let’s try a thought experiment.

It could be America’s greatest contribution to human civilization: the idea that the rulers are answerable to the people and must wield their power according to the rules.

 The Iowa caucuses have long been nearly useless as a measure of Americans' preferences for the next president. This year it has been more useless than usual.

Are we watching a great political party commit suicide?

It's a familiar plotline. An interloper runs for a party's presidential nomination and, with an anti-insider pitch, scores wins and near-wins in the first contests with vote pluralities.

Well, I've finally attended a Trump rally.

During his floor speech explaining his vote to convict Donald Trump, Mitt Romney was overcome by emotion and paused to compose himself. The intense moment came when he spoke of his devotion to God, saying: "I am profoundly religious. My faith is at the heart of who I am." Lump in throat. Lon…

There is poetic justice in the chaos we've witnessed in Iowa.

To get onstage at the last Democratic debate, a candidate had to have received contributions from at least 225,000 donors. That disqualified Mike Bloomberg. He has only one donor: himself.

The Tariff Man has done it again. President Donald Trump recently announced that he will expand import taxes on American consumers of auto parts, nails and other goods made in the United States with steel and aluminum. Apparently, untaxed imports of these metals put our national security at risk.

If you carry too much cash, the federal government can take it away from you. Yep, you read that right.

The old becomes the new. It’s less than a week from of the Iowa caucuses, and Bernie Sanders, born in September 1941, three months before Pearl Harbor, leads the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls by 4 points in Iowa, 10 points in New Hampshire and 5 points in the biggest delegate pri…

Even if you've been watching gavel-to-gavel television coverage of the Senate's impeachment trial, there's little you've been able to see beyond Chief Justice John Roberts and individuals talking at a lectern in front of a slab of busy marble.

A lot of things are going wrong on this planet, and a lot of those problems are made in China. The deadly coronavirus is being linked to "wet markets" that traffic in wildlife. Not only have these markets enabled the virus to pass from animals to humans but they have also contributed to the …

Attending a meeting near Union Station in Washington, D.C., requires me to park a few blocks away and then walk under a bridge to an office building. People in business attire, like me, step carefully around the homeless men and women who have pitched tents under the bridge. They look filthy…

“Kobe is dead.”

Certainly, if it's moral failures you're after, you can take your pick.

In the impeachment process in the Senate, two battles now loom. In these two battles, it is almost certain that the Republicans will show – more profoundly than at any previous juncture – what their party has become. And the Democrats, correspondingly, will show whether they can at last succ…

Are you among the countless Americans who feel so passionately about the upcoming presidential election that you wrote a check to your favorite candidate? But if your candidate dropped out of the race, can you get your money back?

WASHINGTON – In the Trump impeachment trial, the House Democrats have built a very strong factual case for removing the president, based on an exhaustive review of his scheme to extract a promise from Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to provide dirt on prospective political rival Joe Bi…

Bernie Sanders' campaign recently stabbed Elizabeth Warren in the back. She was the Vermont senator's comrade in arms. It also threw a pack of lies at Joe Biden, tarring him as corrupt with zero evidence. As former Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin told Politico, Sanders "will play dirty." The Demo…

This week marks 75 years since Soviet troops stormed the gates of hell.

The Senate trial of Donald Trump is under way. The universal expectation is that all, or nearly all, of the Republicans in the Senate will vote to acquit the president, rather than to remove him from office.

Sometimes the timing of events is so auspicious that it is hard to attribute it to coincidence.

We have reached that time in every presidential nominating year when distinguished, national opinion leaders beat up on Iowa and that admirable state’s influential role in determining the two major parties’ eventual presidential nominees and, therefore, the next president. The USA Today edit…

January 2020 ushered in a unique new law in New York state that abolished cash bail for defendants arrested for nonviolent crimes. Activists in the bail reform movement called it landmark legislation that stops judges from locking up the poor while they await trial simply because they can't …

Dear Stephen King:

“It is quite astonishing to see with what deadpan and neutral a tone our press and television report the open corruption — and the flagrantly anti-democratic character — of the Iowa caucuses.”

In Congress, the Democrats and the Republicans are accusing each other of acting – in this impeachment process – out of partisan interest, contrary to the good of the nation.

On Monday, singer John Legend, a star by any measure, tweeted his choice for president to his 13.2 million followers:

One thing Canadians tend to be is sensible. And so it is surprising how many would consider making Prince Harry and his wife, the former Meghan Markle, king and queen of Canada. Harry is a beneficiary of the lucky sperm club, and Meghan was TV actress from Los Angeles. Do Canadians really wa…

Donald Trump’s “phase one” agreement with China, expected to be signed this week, is intended partly to slow China’s move into new technologies like electric cars by protecting the intellectual property of American corporations.

On Tuesday, an impeached president who is up for re-election delivered a State of the Union address to the most divided union in living memory.

Retired Marine Corps Gen. Jim Mattis, the former secretary of defense and an exceptionally well-read warrior, has said, “Throughout history, we see nations with allies thrive, and nations without allies wither.”