Newsletter
Monday is Presidents’ Day, a national holiday which most Americans will celebrate by wondering why the mail never came. The history of the holiday itself is one of steady expansion. First, it was a president’s day, singular, devoted to celebrating George Washington’s birthday. The inspiration for the holiday
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When President Harry Truman decided to run for re-election in 1948, there wasn’t a whole lot of enthusiasm. He had been a compromise vice-presidential pick at the previous Democratic convention, an afterthought who was only thrust into the presidency when FDR died in April 1945. The new president started
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It’s been four months since I left the Nazi bar formerly known as Twitter, but that doesn’t mean I’m not keeping up with news about what’s going on there. Increasingly, it seems, the site isn’t just “a bar that lets some Nazis hang out” but
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Now that the hilariously inept Ron DeSantis campaign has come to a merciful end, it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on what it meant for him and for us. For the candidate himself, the collapse of his presidential campaign represents a reversion to the mean. He never possessed
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For decades now, conservatives have insisted that Martin Luther King Jr. had Only One True Quote and argued that “color-blind” conservatives were therefore the true defenders of his legacy. But it looks like they might be starting to give up the charade, with Charlie Kirk announcing today his sudden discovery
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It’s no secret that the Republican Party has become a cult of personality during the Trump era. While the GOP has had its share of hero worship in the past, celebrating leaders ranging from Abraham Lincoln to Ronald Reagan, the party’s prostration before Donald Trump is in a
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In wake of the courts in Colorado and the secretary of state in Maine each ruling that Donald Trump should be disqualified from their state ballots due to his considerable role in the insurrection effort after his defeat in the 2020 election, a lot of commentators on the right are
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Happy New Year! In the time since my last post, I’ve been busy trying to find a new home for Campaign Trails, but it’s proved much harder than I’d been led to believe. I’ve spent much of the last two weeks sorting through the alternatives, and
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The Substack folks have shrugged off our concerns about the Nazis here, which means I’ll be looking for a new home in the near future. I’m with family for the holidays now, so I can’t write much more, but Ken White’s post speaks for me: Substack
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As things wind down on an exceptionally tiring year, I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who’s subscribed to this newsletter. As you can see, we crossed the 10k mark for overall subscriptions and, as promised, Henry Kissinger died not long thereafter. (That’s a clear case of
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Apologies for the interruption in our regular programming, but I’m joining with a number of other Substackers today in asking the leadership of Substack to do something about the white nationalist outlets that use this place. I only regret that “(Web) Surf(ing) Nazis Must Die” couldn’t be
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Sad to see that the legendary TV producer and liberal activist Norman Lear has passed away at the age of 101. You’ll see lots of terrific tributes today from those who knew him well and worked with him — here’s Rob Reiner, for instance — but I wanted to share