Luke Savage is the author of The Dead Center: Reflections on Liberalism and Democracy After the End of History and a writer on Substack.
Like the monarchy in Old Regime France, the mystique of the presidency has always played a crucial role in maintaining the symbolic legitimacy of an oppressive American political order. In four years, Donald Trump has systematically destroyed that mystique.
Know Your Enemy is a podcast about conservatism that takes analyzing its ideas and actions seriously. As we approach the end of Trump’s presidential term, we talked to its hosts about the state of the Republican Party and the Right after nearly four years of President Trump.
America’s political institutions are designed to keep democracy at bay. But evidence is mounting that Americans have had enough and want reform.
The real scandal isn’t that Donald Trump is secretly poor — it’s that our system let such an obvious fraud get so rich.
An entertaining new documentary helps explain the strange visual alchemy of the internet — and how a goofy cartoon of Pepe the Frog became, despite its creator’s opposition, a mascot of the postmodern right’s virulent reactionary politics.
Last night’s debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump was a ninety-minute stream of consciousness that pitted a mediocre-at-best challenger to a raving, dangerous reactionary. Were we expecting anything different?
Joe Biden wants to have it both ways, issuing bold rhetoric about the climate emergency while refusing to adopt a policy agenda to match. But taking the science of climate change seriously means banning practices like fracking — something Biden has so far refused to do.
A new report estimates that 76 million households will be vulnerable to utility shutoffs by next month. Congress needs to act now to stop these shutoffs — it’s a matter of life and death.
Joe Biden has made clear he would veto Medicare for All because it costs too much. But when it comes to the military, ballooning the budget by several trillion additional dollars isn’t enough for him — Biden wants more.
Contrary to the rosy predictions of liberal pundits, Joe Biden has not embraced the Left or its priorities. The only viable left strategy under a Biden administration will be one of confrontation.
Bloodred skies. Entire towns torched. The West Coast wildfires are the latest proof that we have no alternative to a Green New Deal — and that the urgency, in the face of increasingly apocalyptic conditions, is mounting rapidly.
For four decades Sen. Ed Markey was a run-of-the-mill liberal Democrat. But when he found himself threatened by a potentially career-ending defeat, he turned toward young voters and the Left — and it worked. Could Biden do the same? Maybe. But he probably won’t even try.
Despite Trump’s posturing, crime is nowhere near top of mind for most of the American electorate. So why is Joe Biden running on a triangulating law-and-order message?
For most of his campaign, incumbent senator and Green New Deal cosponsor Ed Markey was losing to Joe Kennedy III’s well-funded and establishment-backed primary challenge. Markey won by doing something few Democrats today are willing to: embracing the Left.
This year’s RNC was predictably a circus, while the DNC was largely pitched to a relatively small sliver of affluent professionals and suburban conservatives. While conservatives are pulled ever rightward by an increasingly radicalized fringe, liberal elites discipline their base into accepting a message crafted for someone else.
In 2016, Democrats put their chips on winning over conservative voters disgusted with Donald Trump and ended up with their worst electoral college margin since the days of Michael Dukakis. For some reason, they seem intent on trying the same strategy again.
Joe Kennedy’s campaign for Senate against Ed Markey is utterly pointless, a vacuous bid to leverage his youth and his family crest into another position of power.
Open contempt for the progressive left, speeches from Republicans, and a liberal class hopelessly out of touch with the moment, this week was 2016’s DNC all over again — and the Democrats are at risk of the same result: failing to defeat Donald Trump.
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party once vowed never to shut down the House of Commons for political reasons, as Trudeau’s conservative predecessor did. This week, as a major scandal continues to engulf his government, Trudeau did exactly that.
The recent news that the Democratic Party may abandon the public option after November’s election vindicates the Bernie Sanders strategy for pushing no half-measures on health care reform and demonstrates yet again why nothing short of unwavering support for M4A is enough.