Start Making Sense

How the Koch brothers transformed an obscure oil company based in Wichita into a $110 billion colossus, and reshaped the Republican Party—but failed to prevent Trump from becoming president: Christopher Leonard on Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America. Also: Indivisible, the big network of local Democratic Party activists that sprang up after Trump’s victory, faces a big challenge: whether to endorse a candidate in the Democratic Primaries.  Joan Walsh reports on the conflict between the Washington headquarters of the organization and the hundreds of grassroots groups. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

We’re still thinking about the terrorist attack in El Paso, where 22 people were killed at a Walmart and two dozen more were injured.  Like almost all of these attacks, the El Paso killings have been treated as an isolated event carried out by a loner.  But the attacks in Charleston, Charlottesville, Christchurch, El Paso and elsewhere are connected; they are all part of the White Power movement, with roots going back to the 1970s.  That’s what Kathleen Belew says -- she writes for the New York Times op-ed page, she teaches history at the University of Chicago, and she’s the author of the book “Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America,” it’s out now in paperback.   Also: HUAC is history; the heyday of the House Un=American Activities Committee was the 1950s.  But we’re still concerned about government attacks on people, and groups-- called “Un-American.”  David Maraniss has been thinking about that history – his father was called before HUAC in 1952 and then blacklisted from his j

The latest polls—including the highly respected Fox poll—show Trump in terrible shape at this point: Among registered voters he trails Biden 50-38, Bernie 48-39, Elizabeth Warren 46-39, and even Kamala Harris 45-39. He’s losing crucial segments of his 2016 base. And in many of the states he carried last time, he’s deep into negative territory on the approval polls. Jeet Heer comments—and takes up the question, how does he think he can win? Also: The synergy between politics and popular culture has never been clearer or stronger than in the Age of Reagan—and now there’s a wonderful new book on “movie culture in the Age of Reagan”—it’s called Make My Day, by J. Hoberman; for thirty years he was a film critic for the Village Voice.  He talks about Dirty Harry, Star Wars, Rambo, and Ghostbusters—and how Trump compares with Reagan, pointing to Howard Beale in Network and to Rocky's racist happy ending. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

If Bernie does NOT get the nomination, the Democratic Socialists of America will not endorse the Democrat who does.  “Bernie or Bust” was what they decided at their recent convention – but is that a good idea? Harold Meyerson comments--he’s editor-at-large of The American Prospect and a regular contributor to the LA Times op-ed page. Also: Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted pedophile and accused sex trafficker - who surrounded himself with an elite network of political leaders, wannabe billionaire types, and even scientists – and who committed suicide over the weekend. Katha Pollitt considers the people who have been named in court documents as having accepted invitations from Jeffrey Epstein and also had sex with the underage girls he provided.   Plus: Last week—after the El Paso killings by a white nationalist--Tucker Carlson said on Fox news that white supremacy was “not a real problem in America.”  He called it “a hoax, just like the Russia hoax.” John Nichols examines the history of white nationalism in rece

After Trump’s tweets about the El Paso killings, Beto’s response was the one of the best: “He’s not tolerating violence, he’s inciting racism and violence in this country.”  Joan Walsh, National Affairs Correspondent for The Nation, examines the mainstream media’s failures in covering Trump. Also: Trump gets worse every week.  Two years ago we had massive nationwide protest demonstrations--so why don’t more people take it to the streets these days?  Nation columnist Katha Pollitt has been thinking about that. Plus: last month was the 50th anniversary of Americans walking on the moon.  What would it take to get a similar mobilization today of money & effort—and vision–-to combat climate change?  D.D. Guttenplan comments – he’s editor of The Nation. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Are Trump’s recent racist tweets part of a political strategy, or an uncontrollable personal impulse?  Harold Meyerson comments – and also proposes ways to end the potentially devastating divide among Democrats over a Green New Deal.  Harold is editor-at-large of The American Prospect. Also: Was Al Franken railroaded, when he was forced to resign from the Senate in the face of #MeToo complaints about unwanted sexual touching and kissing?  Jane Mayer wrote a long report on the case for The New Yorker and concluded “Yes, he was railroaded,” but our national political correspondent Jeet Heer disagrees. And we’re still thinking about Paul Krassner, the sixties anarchist activist and editor of “The Realist” – he died July 21st – we re-play an interview where he talks about how he got Norman Mailer to come out against masturbation. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Amy Wilentz comments on the mental and emotional status of the president, as analyzed by 27 psychiatrists in ‘The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,’ a book edited by Bandy X. Lee. The book was number four on the New York Times bestseller list. Also: Would Pence be worse? Jane Mayer of The New Yorker reports—she interviewed more than 60 people in search of answers, including Pence’s mother. Several say he’s wanted to be president at least since high school. Plus: America After Trump: E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post argues that Trump has mobilized progressive political forces that can transform America—and he reminds us that Trump never had a majority of voters, and is the most unpopular presidents in our history. E.J. is co-author of ‘One Nation After Trump: A Guide to the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet-Deported’–it’s out now in paperback.   Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Democracy is not doing well these days – we have Trump, and Brexit, and a host of other examples.  Astra Taylor has been thinking about that: she talks about the paradoxes of rule by the people, the many ways it’s being frustrated, and why it remains at the center of our hopes for the future.  Her new book is “Democracy may not exist, but we’ll miss it when it’s gone.” Also: travel to Mars--now there’s a way to get away from Donald Trump!  Elon Musk, the billionaire who is co-founder of PayPal and Tesla, wants to build a colony on Mars.  Katha Pollitt thinks that’s not a good idea.  Actually she thinks it’s a terrible idea, but one that tells us something about the world we live in.   Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Racial anxiety was more important than economic anxiety in motivating Trump’s voters, Joy Reid of MSNBC argues.  A key factor in Trump’s victory was nostalgia for a white, Christian America where men were still in charge.  And of course Hillary fell short not only with male voters but with voters of color overall.  Joy’s new book is The Man Who Sold America: Trump and the Unraveling of the American Story. Also: Jared Kushner’s Mideast Peace Plan, announced in Bahrain to an audience of billionaires and Gulf potentates, promised $50 billion in economic development funds to Palestinians—if they would abandon their aspirations for an independent state.  Neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis participated in the conference.  Amy Wilentz, a longtime contributing editor at The Nation, comments – she was Jerusalem correspondent for The New Yorker.  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It’s an extraordinary victory: the first round of Democratic debates shows that all the major candidates are working within a progressive framework.  Robert Borosage says Bernie gets the credit—and that, although Biden currently is far ahead in the polls of Democratic voters, he has nowhere to go except down, once he is challenged on his record: Iraq, mass incarceration, NAFTA, and Clarence Thomas. Also: 50 years after Stonewall, historian Martin Duberman argues that, despite the obvious and necessary victories, the radical heart of gay liberation has been abandoned.  The Gay Liberation Front of the late sixties critiqued monogamy, rather than campaigning for marriage equality, and opposed militarism and imperialism, rather than fighting to get gays into the military.  Duberman is a longtime activist and writer on gay politics.   https://www.thenation.com/article/stonewall-gay-liberation-front/ Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Campaigning in Iowa, Elizabeth Warren has made her story an American story, Joan Walsh says, and thereby found a good way to connect her policy proposals to her own life, and thereby to other people’s lives--and also to refute critics who say she’s an out-of-touch policy wonk.  Also: Joe Biden and his friends: he says some of them were segregationist senators – and he thinks that was a good thing, something that made it possible for him to pass important legislation.  Jeet Heer says that’s a fantasy—Republicans are not going to work with Biden if he gets the nomination and defeats Trump.  Jeet is a new National Affairs Correspondent for The Nation.   Plus: Recently Andrew Basevitch visited the Middle East Conflicts Memorial – it’s like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, but for all the Americans who fought and died in all of America’s wars in the Mideast. But unlike the Vietnam Memorial and the World War II Memorial, it’s not on the National Mall in Washington DC; instead, it’s in Marseilles, Illinois.  That says

Elizabeth Warren may be running third in the Democratic polls, after Biden and Bernie, but she seems to be the clear leader in what we call “the ideas primary.”  Katrina vanden Heuvel comments—and suggests that foreign policy, where Warren has said little, should be a focus for the upcoming Democratic candidate debates. Also: Trump declared in his State of the Union speech “America will never become a socialist country.” Of course that only makes it seem like maybe it will.  Bernie Sanders gave an important speech on socialism last week, and our John Nichols spoke with him about it -- beforehand.  Also: One of the great progressive victories last November, along with the mid-term Congressional races, was the vote in Florida to restore voting rights to people who had been convicted of felonies and served their sentences–1.4 million people.  But the voting rights news from Florida since then has NOT been so good--Sasha Abramsky will explain. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & O

For most Americans, the question “Which is worse: Trump or Brexit?” has an easy answer: of course it’s Trump!  But D. D. Guttenplan, The Nation’s new Editor, says it’s more complicated than that: for starters, Americans can get rid of Trump in next November’s elections, but it’s almost impossible now for the Brits to get rid of Brexit. Also: Rashida Tlaib is one of the two the Muslim woman elected to the House. John Nichols spoke with her for the “Next Left” podcast, our sister podcast at The Nation.  Tlaib, who represents Detroit, was born there; her parents are Palestinian immigrants, and she a long and deep engagement with progressive politics in that city.  In this segment John introduces clips from his interview. Plus:  At a time when several states have passed draconian new abortion restrictions, you don’t have to be a woman to stand up for reproductive rights: Katha Pollitt talks about abortion and men.   Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com

Joe Biden was the only leading Democratic candidate who did NOT come to the California state Democratic convention last weekend in San Francisco – David Dayen reports on the biggest of the Super Tuesday primaries; he’s the new executive editor of The American Prospect. Also: The British should extradite Julian Assange to Sweden for the investigation of rape charges against him, but neither the Swedes nor the Brits should extradite him to the US – because the new “espionage” charges against him are a political threat to freedom of the press and to all journalists and publishers—Bruce Shapiro explains. Plus: Every Democratic primary candidate with more than 1 per cent in the polls has signed the Indivisible Pledge to support the Democratic winner – with one exception: Joe Biden.  Why not?  Ezra Levin comments—he’s co-founder of Indivisible, the nationwide network of grassroots progressive groups. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The indictment of Julian Assange on espionage charges is an attack on freedom of the press—that’s what Daniel Ellsberg argues.  Ellsberg too was indicted under the Espionage Act – and put on trial by the Nixon Administration in 1972, because he leaked a top secret history of American involvement in Viet Nam to the New York Times and other publications. They called it the Pentagon Papers.  Also: Medicare for All: Opponents say it would be impossibly expensive.  Exactly how are we going to pay for it?  Robert Pollin of U Mass Amherst explains; he’s one of 219 economists who just signed an open letter to Congress urging passage of Medicare for All. Plus: the politics of climate change. We know the world is getting hotter and the storms are getting bigger and the seas are rising.  What we need to know now is not what climate change will do, but rather what we should do—because, for us, climate change is a political problem. Alyssa Battistoni comments. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy

Bernie is back on Page One of the New York Times, but their report last weekend was not about his new plan to save public schools–the most progressive education program in modern American history–or his proposal to end all subsidies for oil and gas companies.  Instead, it was about a trip he made to Nicaragua in 1985, more than 30 years ago.  They didn’t like it.   How do we explain the New York Times’s coverage of Bernie Sanders?  Amy Wilentz comments. Also: John Nichols talks about Justin Amash, the first Republican member of Congress to say that Trump has committed impeachable offenses—and also about The Nation’s new podcast, which he hosts – it’s called “Next Left,” and the premiere episode, out now, features Ilhan Omar. Plus: There are 1,000 redactions in the 448 pages of the Muller report--individual names and entire pages--that we are not allowed to see.  They are part of a larger problem of government secrecy which started long before Trump and which is now threatening to cripple our democracy—Karen G

Joe Biden has one thing in common with Donald Trump: a campaign promising “restoration” of a lost past, rather than the kind of transformation we need to deal with our current problems--  That’s what Harold Meyerson says.  Of course the past Biden wants to restore is not the white man’s 1950s, but rather the pre-Trump America of the Clintons and Obama.  Harold is Executive Editor of The American Prospect and a regular contributor to the LA Times op-ed page. Also: during the presidential campaign, Donald Trump often talked about an American soldier in Afghanistan who became the longest-held American POW since Vietnam.  Trump said he was “a dirty rotten traitor” who should be shot or thrown from a plane.  He was talking about Bowe Bergdahl.  Michael Ames explains how the Bergdahl story reveals a lot about why the Afghan war has been a disaster.  Ames is co-author of the new book, “American Cypher: Bowe Bergdahl and the U.S. Tragedy in Afghanistan.” And we’ll also talk about immigrants, with Nation columnist

For the 2020 election, we’ve been focusing mostly on the candidates who want to challenge Trump – but we also need to consider the voters, and the changes in the electorate since 2016.  Especially significant: young people of color.  Steve Phillips explains – he’s the author of the  best-seller "Brown Is the New White: How a Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority." Also: climate change and living in the city, where the health effects of hyrdocarbon production and global trade are felt most intensely.  Ben Ehrenreich reports on local organizing in the city of Commerce, California, a transit point for the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Plus: Paris isn’t the only place where a cathedral of Notre Dame is in ruins and awaiting rebuilding – there’s another Notre Dame in Haiti, destroyed in the earthquake of 2010.  Amy Wilentz has a modest proposal about a source for the money: reparations -- from France.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: h

When Joe Biden finally declared his candidacy, he immediately pulled way out in front in the polls of Democratic candidates. The polls also show him the one most likely to beat Trump. Joan Walsh points to some of the problems with Biden, and considers the alternatives. Also: should the House Democrats open impeachment hearings? The politics may be debatable, but congress’s duty is clear. Joshua Holland says impunity always breeds more lawlessness, and there’s plenty of evidence that Trump plans to continue to act without regard for the law. Plus: we take a trip back back to the darkest days of the Cold War, when muckraking journalists, independent Marxists, trade-union rebels, freedom riders, beatniks, and peace protesters all found a home at America’s Oldest Weekly, The Nation magazine. That was the work of a great editor—who was also a great historian—Carey McWilliams. Peter Richardson explains—his new book is American Prophet: The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle

What can we do to reduce the speed of climate change?  Bill McKibben argues that we're at a bleak moment in human history -- and we'll either confront that bleakness, or watch the civilization our forebears built slip away.  Bill was one of the first people to warn of the dangers of global warming, 30 years ago with his book The End of Nature.  Then he founded the environmental organization 350.org, the first truly global citizens movement to combat climate change.  It offers some possible ways out of the trap.  His new book is FALTER: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? Also: Eric Hobsbawm was everybody’s favorite Marxist historian.  His books, especially “The Age of Revolution,” “The Age of Capital,” “the Age of Empire,” and “The Age of Extremes,” have been translated into 50 languages and sold millions of copies.  He was also a lifelong member of the British Communist Party, and his fight against Stalinist orthodoxy in the Party shaped his understanding of the past.  Richard J Evans expl