Co-Executive Editor, Public Seminar and Professor of History, The New School for Social Research

From the Editors

Where Have You Been, Michael Bloomberg?

A nation turns its lonely eyes to you — or not

February 19, 2020 • by Claire Potter

Of course, New Hampshire, and the Nevada caucuses that are coming up on Saturday, February 22 have been overshadowed by an elephant that has been lurking in the room for weeks. Former Republican New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has, to date, spent over $300 million in advertising, has ...

North America

The Bloomberg-Clinton Ticket is a Myth

But it points to the troubling fact that political disinformation is being deliberately spread by legitimate news outlets

February 16, 2020 • by Claire Potter

What was also predictable is that Donald Trump’s media handmaidens would find a way to bring Hillary Clinton into it. They will do this regularly for the rest of the 2020 cycle. They will do this, not just to increase the chaos, but to divert attention from the charges of ...

North America

Democrats are Haunted by 1972

Re-examining McGovern’s devastating loss — and the collapse of party unity that changed everything

February 13, 2020 • by Claire Potter

Worse, the pundit class, which should be challenging the electorate with ideas and analysis and instead seems to be taking a cultural studies approach to covering the candidates, is engaged in endless handwringing, triggered by the emergence of a viable left in the Democratic party. Because if this, they predicted a Biden boom that ...

From the Editors

When Steve Kornacki Has to Scroll Down the Big Board to Find You…

…You don’t have a ticket out of New Hampshire

February 12, 2020 • by Claire Potter

Settling in for the long night that all elections seem to have become now, we recalled, as if it had occurred in another country, the 2016 New Hampshire Primary that changed everything. Sanders drubbed Hillary Clinton by 22 points, something that had not seemed possible. Donald Trump beat John Kasich, which seemed just -- ...

When Steve Kornacki Has to Scroll Down the Big Board to Find You…

From the Editors

The App That Ate the Iowa Caucuses

As we head into the New Hampshire primary, politics – and political media – need a reboot

February 4, 2020 • by Claire Potter

One thing that was clear is that our system for broadcasting elections needs overhauling. Election night shows are over-reliant on provided endless amounts of trivial information, in the name of context, that actually distracts audiences from taking in, or thinking about, the bigger picture. In fact, the MSNBC team seemed desperate to persuade us ...

North America

Andrew Yang’s Unexpected Appeal

As we approach the Iowa Caucuses, it’s useful to remember that Democratic politics is about reinventing government — and it always has been

January 31, 2020 • by Claire Potter

Andrew Yang fits nowhere in this framework, but he does point to what all these Democratic candidates have in common: to one degree or another, they all believe that politics is a conversation about how, not whether, democratic government will be renewed. For the limits of this idea, see an essay by Ian Zuckerman ...

From the Editors

49 People, 33 Doors

Partisans are slogging through the snow in Iowa and New Hampshire

January 29, 2020 • by Claire Potter

The first primary is, of course, in the great state of Iowa, a place our volunteer has visited exactly once, to give a talk at a university, and had a lovely time. This week, Iowa is being bombarded with volunteers, journalists, camera crews, and a great many surrogates for the Senators who are ...

From the Editors

Impeached Forever

As of this week, the United States is still a country of laws

January 22, 2020 • by Claire Potter

As we go to press this week, all 50 United States Senators have spent the entire day in the same room together, something that almost never happens. In fact during lulls when they are not voting on anything, Senators can go for days or weeks without fully convening; Senate speeches ...

From the Editors

#Megxit

Is it a coincidence that a pair of Windsors are crossing the pond as the effort to topple King Donald of Trump intensifies?

January 15, 2020 • by Claire Potter

By now everyone knows that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex (aka, Harry Windsor and Meghan Markle) have announced that they are leaving “the Firm,” and who is surprised? Everyone agrees that it was a beautiful wedding, but the fairy tale ending, in which the House of Windsor merged seamlessly ...

From the Editors

State of Emergency

As Donald Trump wags the dog, we try to remember where and how all this violence started

January 8, 2020 • by Claire Potter

There are days when it seems like we have been living in a state of emergency since September 11, 2011. Maybe it started even before that: on August 20, 1998, President William Jefferson Clinton, in the middle of an investigation into his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, initiated something ...

From the Editors

The Things We Promise

Happy New Year from Public Seminar

January 1, 2020 • by Claire Potter

Public Seminar looks different than it did in 2016, a new platform and publishing style that allows us to create a new reading experience for you. For New Year’s, we are launching a new kind of feature: three essays that take on a controversial article and slow the conversation down to a pace that ...

Sex & Gender

The New Sex Wars: A Roundtable

Debating Liza Featherstone’s “Moving Beyond Misogyny: Why do they hate us?”

December 31, 2019 • by Claire Potter

Needless to say, perhaps, a lot of feminists – often younger men as well as women – were pissed. Although there were a number of appreciative responses, the reader had to wade through a mountain of outrage to get there. The essay was a “bizarre and a really frightening misreading of previous feminist movements,” ...