The Un-united States Of America and A Way Forward

For better or worse the radical remnants of the Republican party have now captured the American government completely. Whether they can hold it more than a month is all that is left to be seen.

The election of a leftist party in Mexico for the first time in decades has the potential to transform the country as it dislodges its ruling elite, challenges the economic consensus and promises to eradicate violence and corruption.

For Americans growing up between the 1950s and the 1980s, religion was not a regular presence on television. Today is different, however. Not only are there entire networks devoted to religious broadcasting, but also Christian television has moved directly into covering news and politics, reaching millions of Americans daily with a conservative perspective on current events.

Motherhood is taking center stage in U.S. politics. Two Democratic gubernatorial candidates, Maryland’s Krish Vignarajah and Wisconsin’s Kelda Roys, made waves with campaign ads that, in addition to touting their capabilities as leaders, also show them nursing their babies.

In late March, Congress passed a significant spending bill that included US$380 million in state grants to improve election infrastructure. As the U.S. ramps up for the 2018 midterm elections, that may seem like a huge amount of money, but it’s really only a start at securing the country’s voting systems.

As states begin to receive millions of federal dollars to secure the 2018 primary and general elections, officials around the country will have to decide how to spend it to best protect the integrity of the democratic process.

Although there were no outright winners in Italy’s parliamentary election on March 4, there were two clear losers – the European Union and immigrants.

From raising the minimum wage to enacting police reforms, here are ballot initiatives progressives should watch in 2018.

The Stein/Baraka Green Party Campaign is launching an effort to ensure the integrity of our elections. We are raising money to demand recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania-- three states where there is a significant need to verify machine-counted vote totals. Please donate to this initiative today.

Who will become the next chair of the Democratic National Committee? This leadership contest has significant implications for the future of American politics. The choice will help determine how the Democratic party responds to its extraordinary defeats in recent years, ending with the election of Donald Trump.

Experts rate the performance of recent American elections as the worst among two dozen Western democracies. Why?

Donald Trump has done incalculable damage to America – eroding the trust and social cohesion the nation depends on. 

A populist wave that began with Brexit in June reached the United States in stunning fashion on Tuesday night. In one of the biggest upsets in American political history, Donald Trump won a truly historic victory in the U.S. presidential election.

Now that the Presidential election is over, we can start to think about what life is going to be like after Tuesday, November 8th. This election season has not only been tough for our country, but also has wreaked havoc on many of our personal relationships.

Yes, we know! We're all tired of hearing about the elections. However, that doesn't make it less important. It's coming to a close this Tuesday, November 8th 2016, and some people are still "on the fence". Not only do they not know who they will vote for, but they don't know if they're even going to vote.

If you're a disheartened, disillusioned, angry Bernie supporter thinking about casting a vote for Jill Stein or staying home, I am talking to you. If you are one of those Millennials who embraced the Bernie campaign and then lost heart when he lost the primaries, this message is for YOU especially.

It's time to throw off our self-imposed shackles of Washington lobbyists and billionaire oligarchs, of wall street greed and corporate malfeasance, and of neocons, neoliberals, and political hacks to empower our lost unified American spirit.

A persistent mystery discussed in this presidential campaign has been double standards. In other words, while Donald Trump seems to have a “get out of jail free” card, Hillary Clinton can’t seem to “pass go.”

Iceland’s Pirate Party started life as a minor political movement inspired by its Swedish and German counterparts. Now it is a credible force. From marginal political interests, it has grown to produce positions on the most important issues of the day...

During the debates, fact-checkers like CNN and Politifact focus on evaluating the truthfulness of what each candidate said.

When Donald Trump repeatedly claims the election is “rigged,” it doesn’t just undermine voter confidence at home. It can also hurt the country’s standing around the world, where people have been closely following the presidential race.

Ranked-choice voting is catching on, and Maine might become the first state to help citizens vote for candidates they actually want.

Elections normally decide who is to govern. This upcoming election is about the very legitimacy of the system.

Hillary Clinton won’t be the only winner when Donald Trump and his fellow haters are defeated on Election Day (as looks increasingly likely). Another will be Paul Ryan, who will rule the Republican roost.

Donald Trump has a lot in common with former Confederates – white southerners who “redeemed” the South by bringing an end to Reconstruction 140 years ago.

I continue to hear from many people who call themselves progressives or liberals, but tell me they won’t vote for Hillary Clinton in the upcoming election.

What is the most important—yet neglected—issue in the political debate? Hint: It isn’t the ideal body weight of Miss Universe.

It would be wrong to ignore the psychological, social and political damage this poisonous election is causing. When the movement called Citizen Therapists Against Trumpism, an effort to awaken therapists to their public responsibilities.

The second US presidential election debate was widely billed as a heavyweight bout. In the event it was a score draw – but the clear loser was the American political process.

The Clinton campaign is relentlessly focusing on the defects of Donald Trump rather than the defects of the Republican agenda. That’s understandable, and it could be a winning strategy. But it has pitfalls.  

How do voters select a candidate when no one they like is on the ballot?

The vast majority of pundits declared Hillary Clinton the decisive winner of this week’s debate.

This year, much interest is focused on what The Economist calls drawbridge politics. Voters who believe in leaving the drawbridge down, so to speak, see opportunities in open borders for immigrants and trade.

Local school board elections increasingly are becoming national political battlegrounds, as millions of dollars in campaign cash pours in from out-of-state donors in the name of education reform.

Excerpts from the presidential debate and get response from Green Party presidential nominee Dr. Jill Stein.

Years ago, when I first started teaching and was at Syracuse University, one of my students ran for student body president on the tongue-in-cheek platform “Issues are Tissues, without a T.”

Charities tied to the Clinton family have received seemingly endless scrutiny throughout the presidential campaign. They’ve been accused of wasting funds, offering access to donors and even serving as a personal “piggy bank” for the Clinton family.

"America's two political parties spent $4 billion on the last election and it worked -- the American people were soundly defeated." (Swami Beyondananda)  We've been hearing for years the contextual question, "What would Jesus do?" So I offer my own question:  What would sanity do?

Donald Trump's campaign website implores voters to "Help Me Stop Crooked Hillary From Rigging This Election!" by signing up as observers.

Hispanics are the largest ethnic minority group in the United States, and their concerns will have a major impact on the 2016 presidential election.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump seems willing to reach beyond what has been previously acceptable in his quest to be America’s next president.

In a US presidential election year, Labor Day (the first Monday of September) marks the traditional start of what the Americans call the “fall campaign”.

The New York Times article “The 258 People, Places and Things Donald Trump Has Insulted on Twitter” is a pretty good indicator of the level of discourse of the Republican Party’s nominee for US president in November’s election.

From Washington state to South Dakota, voters are pushing for public-matching systems to replace the influence wealthy bankrollers have on government.

Hillary Clinton has put the Electoral College into checkmate. She’s closer to Donald Trump in many red states like Kansas and Texas than he is to her in key swing states.

On Election Day, what do you do if you were a die-hard Bernie Sanders fan and are now faced with a ballot that offers you a choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, whose favorability ratings are the worst among presidential candidates since CBS News and The New York Times started polling in 1984?

In this year’s unorthodox presidential election season, the latest campaign foibles can sometimes obscure the unprecedented fact that one major-party candidate for highest office in the United States is a woman.

There is a real possibility that hacking could affect the November presidential election, warns Herbert Lin, a cyberpolicy and security expert at Stanford University warns. But, he adds, a “baseline of hacking” among countries worldwide is occurring all the time.

Many have speculated how a Trump victory would affect the U.S., but few have thought about the consequences of a Trump loss. After falling behind Hillary Clinton in the polls, Donald Trump has already developed a narrative for his exit: The election was rigged.

Because a single powerful leader will draw from the rest of us powerful projections ranging from savior to devil, from healer to destroyer, I have long been interested, as a psychiatrist and Jungian psychoanalyst, in the relationship between politics, mythology and psychology. For people like me, this is our year.

If there is one key word we are likely to hear mentioned over and over again during the upcoming US election it will be “stupid”.

Every election cycle, there are citizens who don’t like either of the candidates nominated by the two major political parties.

“The Federal District and Appeals Courts are willing to do what the Supreme Court wouldn’t do, which is acknowledge the reality that racial discrimination in voting persists today.”

If Senate Republicans are true to their word, the next president of the United States will nominate Justice Antonin Scalia’s replacement. Given the age of several other members of the Supreme Court and rumors of others’ retirement, it is likely the next president will make as many as four nominations.

Supporters of Donald Trump’s campaign have recently employed an unorthodox tactic to secure additional votes in Pennsylvania and Ohio – forming a super PAC to mobilize Amish voters.

When longtime former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson filed suit July 6 for sexual harassment against the network’s former boss, Roger Ailes, the public response was less than kind. There were expressed disbelief and rebuttals that she was fabricating her story in retaliation for being fired.

In her speech accepting the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton said the nation was at “a moment of reckoning.”

Following the hack of Democratic National Committee emails and reports of a new cyberattack against the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, worries abound that foreign nations may be clandestinely involved in the 2016 American presidential campaign.

Donald Trump is not a normal American presidential nominee, and there has been very little normal about the Republican convention that has now officially confirmed his nomination.

At the Democratic National Convention, Hillary Clinton formally accepted the nomination of the Democratic Party. Republican nominee Donald Trump did the same at the Republican National Convention.

Bernie Sanders has the best policies. But Hillary Clinton has the chops to advance a progressive agenda—if we make her.

Ahead of the Democratic National Convention – on July 5 – Hillary Clinton announced a set of new proposals on higher education.

Does Hillary Clinton understand that the biggest divide in American politics is no longer between the right and the left, but between the anti-establishment and the establishment?

Donald Trump is now the Republican nominee for president of the United States and millions of people are asking: “How could this happen?”Donald Trump is now the Republican nominee for president of the United States and millions of people are asking: “How could this happen?”

Donald Trump accepted the Republican nomination for the presidency in a speech destined to be remembered by history as the “I am your voice” speech – a phrase that Trump repeated several times to tie together his themes of economic revitalization, military strength and government honesty.

Since the election of George W. Bush, I have been telling anyone who would listen that the 21st-century Republican Party was unlike any other centre-right political party.

Hillary Clinton’s 6-point lead over Donald Trump in last month’s CBS News poll has now evaporated. As of mid-July (even before Trump enjoys a predictable post-convention bump in the polls) she is tied with him.  Each garners the support of 40 percent of voters.

If we listen carefully to Trump’s supporters, we can hear their desire for progressive policies.

If, as multiple reports indicate, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has picked Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as his running mate, it may be for his connections to party conservatives — especially those who fund campaigns.

As the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump could learn a lot from his party’s first president, Abraham Lincoln. He should start with religion and immigration, topics on which he has appealed to fear and bigotry rather than “the better angels of our nature" as Lincoln did.

The 2016 American presidential election will boil down to one simple question: Who do we want to be as Americans?

With the Democratic primaries grinding to a bitter end, I have suggestions for both Clinton and Sanders supporters that neither will like.

Bernie offers a narrative we haven’t heard for at least two generations from a major political candidate.  “What should Bernie do?” That seems to be the question of the month. Permit me to weigh in.

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll released Sunday finds Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in a statistical tie, with Trump leading Clinton 46 percent to 44 percent among registered voters. That’s an 11 percent swing against Clinton since March.

Describing poverty as a "death sentence" for millions of Americans each year, Sanders supporters remain inspired by his call for a politics from below

Having outlasted all his opponents, Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party. Hillary Clinton is closing in on locking up the Democratic nomination.

Now that Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, we are likely to get all sorts of mainstream media analysis about how his narrow pathway to Election Day victory runs through white working-class America, the way Ronald Reagan’s did, while the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, must corral young people, minorities and the well-educated.

Will Bernie Sanders’s supporters rally behind Hillary Clinton if she gets the nomination? Likewise, if Donald Trump is denied the Republican nomination, will his supporters back whoever gets the Republican nod?

A crowning achievement of the historic March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King gave his “I have a dream” speech, was pushing through the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.

On Super Tuesday, voters from more than a dozen U.S. states vote in presidential primaries with important consequences for the candidates. We asked three scholars in different parts of the world to comment on the results and what they mean for the presidential race going forward.

Donald Trump’s December 7 Statement on Preventing Muslim Immigration has attracted worldwide disdain. Nearly 500,000 Britons have signed a petition asking their government to prevent Trump from entering their country. In the US, Trump’s comments have been denounced by Democrats, Republicans, the media and religious groups.

In a record-breaking turnout, 28,000 supporters crowded into the Moda Center sports arena in Portland, Oregon on Aug. 9 to hear Bernie Sanders speak.

As a society we believe that our political allegiance depends on which party best marries up with our needs and values – and that these are shaped by our life experiences. But research with twins suggests picking who to vote for in an election might have more to do with your genes than the policies of the parties.

by Marie T. Russell. In case you haven't noticed, it's election time again... Of course if you watch TV at all, or read newspapers, or listen to the radio, it would be difficult not to know that there are elections coming up in the United States. Everybody, it seems, is talking about it... 

If there is one person in the world most suited to govern the turbulent land of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani would be, by knowledge, temperament and sense of democratic justice, that person. Lo and behold, he was just elected president of Afghanistan!

Many of us can hardly believe the disrespect that is sometimes shown to President Obama. Not only has he been portrayed as un-American, but even as "not-an-American".. I understand how the right could be passionate enough to show disrespect to the man holding the office.

My father was a Republican for the first 78 years of his life. For the last twenty, he’s been a Democrat (he just celebrated his 98th.) What happened? “They lost me,” he says.

With all the Republican-candidate nomination hoopla and numerous debates, there needs to be some levity in the process. You might feel that the candidates have already provided a lot of entertainment on and off stage (not usually intentionally), but here is another humorous take on political candidates.

The report, Defending Democracy: Confronting Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in America, details a plethora of voter suppression initiatives, most of them pushed in states with large African-American populations and where voting turnout has surged.

 Congresswoman Michele Bachmann talks about meeting with Donald Trump, her family's Thanksgiving traditions and her new book.

Polls show Americans angrier and more polarized than at any time since the Vietnam War. Yet paradoxically the presidential race that officially begins a few months from now is likely to be as passionless as they come.

In a recent interview Herman Cain advisers must have wished for a Rick Perry moment. For those that missed that performance, what is a Rick Perry Moment? John Stewart adds to the moment of course.

Newt Gingrich has taken the lead in PPP's national polling.  He's at 28% to 25% for Herman Cain and 18% for Mitt Romney.  The rest of the Republican field is increasingly looking like a bunch of also rans: Rick Perry is at 6%, Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul at 5%, Jon Huntsman at 3%, and Gary Johnson and Rick Santorum each at 1%.

How boring was it? John Huntsman made the most sense. Maybe it was because the candidates hardly had time to get to South Carolina from the last debate. I hardly had time to rake my leaves.

Romney wins again by default in the "Anybody but Romney" GOP nomination process. This debate will undoubtedly be remembered as Rick Perry's last hurrah as a contender.

1,2...  Duh? Perry eliminates himself even for VP?

From the historic uprising in Madison, Wisconsin, to the Occupy movement that has swept the country, people power is becoming the coin of the realm. And Tuesday night in Ohio, that coin proved more valuable than the checkbooks of moneyed interests on either side of the divide.

Chris Mathews discuses the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll With Chuck Todd and why It might be Gingrich as the go To Republican

Gingrich moving up in polls. In John King's interview with Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker says his campaign offers substance and bold ideas that are attracting new support.