Donald Trump - Dissent Magazine

In Defense of Civility

Melvin L. Rogers ▪ March 24, 2016

The danger of Trump is that he is completely removing the norms of public discourse—the same norms that have served to hold in check those unwilling to see their society transformed by greater equality and liberty.

Donald Trump is the Candidate the Republican Party Deserves

Lawrence Ware ▪ March 3, 2016

After years of stoking xenophobia and racism, the GOP now has a frontrunner whose only brilliance lies in his ability to seize the populist anxiety Republicans themselves have cultivated.

Who Owns the GOP?

Theda Skocpol ▪ Online Articles

Jane Mayer’s Dark Money is a magisterial portrait of the right-wing billionaires who have “weaponized” conservative philanthropy and pulled the GOP ever further right. Yet Mayer’s account fails to explain something just as alarming: the far-right surge from the grassroots.

Donald Trump, Pirate King

Jedediah Britton-Purdy ▪ January 27, 2016

Unlike his chief rival Ted Cruz, Donald Trump dismisses the high-church liturgy of American politics in favor of blunt tribalism. In Trump’s America, no one is looking out for you.

Scarlet Letter Politics

Nicolaus Mills ▪ January 25, 2016

Those who stand to suffer most from Trump’s attack on Bill Clinton’s sexual history are neither he nor Hillary, but the women linked to him. Their private lives are once again going to be tabloid fodder.

Bernie Is Not the New Obama—And That’s a Good Thing

Jedediah Britton-Purdy ▪ January 21, 2016

Bernie Sanders’ surge in recent national polls has brought inevitable comparisons to an insurgent candidate whose enthusiastic young supporters took Hillary Clinton by surprise eight years ago. But Sanders’s campaign is of a very different kind than Obama’s, with deeper potential and a different measure of success.