Power

Jimmy Carter, Democratic presidential candidate speaks to a crowd of supporters in Des Moines, Iowa, August 24, 1976.

How Did the Presidential Campaign Get to Be So Long?

U.S. presidential elections didn't drag on so long before the late sixties.
by Rachel Caufield via The Conversation on July 30, 2019
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger administering the oath of office to Richard M. Nixon on the east portico of the U.S. Capitol, January 20, 1973.

How the Republican Majority Emerged

Fifty years after the Republican Party hit upon a winning formula, President Trump is putting it at risk.
by Dov Weinryb Grohsgal, Kevin M. Kruse via The Atlantic on August 6, 2019
United States Senator and nominee for president, Barry Goldwater speaking at an election rally in Madison Square Garden, Oct. 28th, 1964.

How Never-Trump Republicans Went Extinct

Shared enemies and ideology matter more than Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric.
by Lawrence B. Glickman via Made by History on August 6, 2019
Richard Nixon greets Gov. Ronald Reagan in San Diego on August 16, 1968, to confer with Nixon and his staff about their plans for the fall campaign.

How a Historian Uncovered Ronald Reagan’s Racist Remarks to Richard Nixon

In a taped call with Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan described the African delegates to the United Nations in luridly racist terms.
by Issac Chotiner via The New Yorker on August 2, 2019
Sen. Ben Tillman, 1909.

The Trump Strain in American History

White supremacy has its own peculiar logic, to which the president is peculiarly attuned.
by Jamelle Bouie via New York Times on July 29, 2019

The Right Side

The revolutionary class politics of the Civil War.
by James Oakes via The Nation on July 15, 2019
Fox News host Tucker Carlson at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, DC, June 14th, 2019.

Flirting With Fascism

The National Conservatism Conference in Washington had a very 1930s vibe.
by David Austin Walsh via Jewish Currents on July 24, 2019

Lincoln Would Not Recognize His Own Party

He would see the Republicans as the antithesis of everything he fought for.
by David W. Blight via New York Times on July 23, 2019
Bernie Sanders, June 2019.

There’s One Heresy That Sets Bernie Apart From All Other Dem Contenders to Unseat Trump

And it’s not simply that he calls himself a socialist.
by Greg Grandin via The Nation on July 16, 2019
Chaplains, U.S. Marines and family members observe a moment of silence at memorial services for the 241 Marines killed during the bombing of the barracks at Beirut International Airport.

1984: The Year America Didn’t Go To War

Cabinet members slugged it out, but the one with the real war experience convinced Reagan not to avenge the Marine barracks bombing.
by Mark Perry via The American Conservative on July 16, 2019
A woman holds up a sign that reads

The Joy of Hatred

Trump and “his people” reach deep into the violent history of public spectacle in America.
by Jamelle Bouie via New York Times on July 19, 2019
John Tanton.

John Tanton Has Died. He Made America Less Open to Immigrants — and More Open to Trump.

The nativist activist helped make anti-immigrant politics mainstream.
by Carly Goodman via Made by History on July 18, 2019