James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, Bloomington

North America

Heartland Despair and the Democratic Primary

The appeal of populism to marginalized white Americans is one of the strongest arguments for Bernie Sanders’s candidacy

March 9, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Both Brian and his wife Sarah are burdened by substantial medical and educational debts. Sarah works as a nurse, Brian works in a tire shop. They struggle to make ends meet, they worry about the future -- and, for now, they are putting off having children. The profile’s central theme is ...

Heartland Despair and the Democratic Primary

North America

If Sanders Wants to Lead the Democratic Party…

Then he should do more to build bridges and stop attacking “The Democratic Establishment”

March 3, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

At the same time, Bernie Sanders clearly has assumed front-runner status. It is no surprise that this has his supporters jubilant, and has his opponents concerned and even frightened. There surely are some Democratic donors and operatives who absolutely hate the thought of a Sanders nomination -- whether for ideological or tactical reasons -- ...

If Sanders Wants to Lead the Democratic Party…

North America

Buttigieg’s Nevada Speech Was Terrific if the Goal is to Defeat Sanders Rather Than Trump

Slandering the party’s leading candidate is bad

February 24, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

This does not obviate the real limits of the Sanders campaign and the challenges it must address moving forward, if Sanders is to successfully claim the nomination much less the presidency. On Saturday night Jacobin, the organ of Sanders’s hard-core ideological supporters, declared that “After the Nevada Blowout, It’s Bernie’s Party Now” (indeed, ...

Buttigieg’s Nevada Speech Was Terrific if the Goal is to Defeat Sanders Rather Than Trump

North America

No Candidate Who Cannot Win a Majority of Delegates Deserves the Democratic Presidential Nomination

February 21, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

I know that DSA is not a party (though it surely wishes it could be), but I wonder if the organizational rules would allow its leadership and platform to be decided by a simple plurality of the votes in open primaries throughout the country in which in most places anyone ...

No Candidate Who Cannot Win a Majority of Delegates Deserves the Democratic Presidential Nomination

North America

Why Bloomberg is a Disaster for the Democratic Party

And it will take a healthy Democratic party to defeat Trumpism

February 17, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Enter Mike Bloomberg, billionaire tycoon, former Republican mayor of New York City, master of social media, sincere adherent of some liberal causes (gun control, environmentalism) and sincere partisan of the new Gilded Age capitalism, and -- did I forget to mention it? -- mega-billionaire. Can Bloomberg outspend Trump? Surely. Can he outsmart ...

Why Bloomberg is a Disaster for the Democratic Party

North America

Things Fall Apart?

Perhaps, but in the shadow of Trump this is not a good thing

February 10, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Bruenig is one of many young writers on the left to take heart from the mainstream Democratic panic over Sanders’s ascendancy. On Facebook, Alex Gourevitch, a fine political scientist and frequent contributor to Jacobin, was even more emphatic. “The jury is out on what Bernie’s ultimate effect will be,” wrote Gourevitch, adding that ...

North America

Impeachment Has Always Been More Than Impeachment. And It Still Is

Trump must be defeated politically

February 3, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

My very first column on impeachment was published over a year ago: January 7, 2019. Written long before the release of the Mueller Report, “On Calls to Impeach the Motherfucker” made clear that impeachment was a serious option only when viewed as part of a broader strategy of resisting and ...

Impeachment Has Always Been More Than Impeachment. And It Still Is

North America

It Matters That Warren is a Woman

But It’s Not All That Matters

January 17, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Here is Cooper’s takeaway: "Wanting a woman to rise to the top of an almost all-male pack is not a position that needs defending. What should be defended is the uncritical desire to elect yet another man to a position that 45 men and zero women have held." I agree that ...

North America

The Warren-Sanders Squabble is Foolish

The real issues in this campaign have nothing to do with who said what in 2018

January 15, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Warren's electability argument might be right. Or it might not be right. Again, we will see how things unfold . . . . At the same time, I think the latest brouhahas about Sanders and his “dissing” of Warren are kind of absurd. First it was claimed that he was "going ...

North America

The Lincoln Project Should Be Cautiously Welcomed

Republican anti-Trumpists are allies in the defense of democracy, but they have an agenda of their own

January 14, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

Indeed, a number of initiatives have been undertaken by Republicans -- some Never-Trumpers since 2016, some more recent converts -- to challenge Trumpist authoritarianism. Another is Bill Kristol’s "Defending Democracy Together.” Here is the organization’s mission statement: today, the Republican Party finds itself entertaining some of the same unsettling nativist and ...

The Lincoln Project Should Be Cautiously Welcomed

Democracy

Iran, Impeachment, and Implosion

Trump keeps getting worse — and the crises are interconnected

January 8, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

On December 18 of last year, the House of Representatives voted to impeach in the face of very public Republican obstructionism. Within hours of the vote, Nancy Pelosi announced that she had yet to decide how to move forward with delivering the impeachment articles to the Republican-controlled Senate, and was ...

Uncategorized

Nancy Pelosi’s Leverage over Mitch McConnell

She can threaten to reopen the House investigation into the President

December 21, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

But what is done is done. And this past week the Democratic majority in the House voted to impeach Trump.. And then things took a strange, and perhaps not unexpected turn. McConnell and other Senate supporters of Trump very publicly expressed their disdain toward the impeachment; McConnell indicated that he was consulting with the ...