Outside the Beltway

How the West Virginia Democrat came to vote for the stimulus bill.

The politics of bait-and-switch.

The ongoing codependency that is the Trump-GOP relationship.

Reflections on the events of 6 January two months later.

It’s easy if you try.

A story that is both unserious and yet emblematic of our age in a serious way.

The Lone Star State is celebrating its independence in a big way.

This feels like resignation territory.

The annual gathering showed us what the Republican Party would become years ago.

A CPAC speaker and the return of the problem of the Heritage electoral fraud database.

Yet another reminder about pathologies of US democracy.

The Senate parliamentarian has ruled against ramming it through in the COVID relief bill.

What was mere signaling under a Republican Senate and President could now become law.

What’s taking him so long?

Democrats are already jockeying to influence President Biden’s pick should a vacancy arise.

And a discussion of markets (and a warning about partisanship).

The man most famous for getting screwed out of a Supreme Court seat has a more interesting backstory.

The loaners, the dreamers, and schemes.

The Senate’s last conservative Democrat is taking President Biden’s call for unity seriously.

Now, we’re just haggling over price.

It is really so hard to understand that you don’t go on vacation during a massive disaster?

The 97-year-old former Senator and Presidential candidate is ill.

Nevada is mounting a challenge to the rural, lily-white states that always go first in the presidential primary gauntlet.

Another empirical indication of the toll of the pandemic.

The disgraced loser remains as popular as ever with his base.

America’s institutions are undemocratic but only some of them are a product of the Constitution.

The distance in accountability between the highest and the lowest must be shortened.

Early analysis merely confirms analysts’ priors.

Historical, but not enough.

And illustrations of the fact that this isn’t a regular trial.

Its founders are laughing all the way to the bank.

Details of a heated phone discussion with the top House Republican have emerged.

Of course, it depends on what case one thinks needs to have been made.

Most agree that it was good theater. But it’s not clear what they’ve proven.

Some marginal Republican formers are thinking about maybe doing somethingoranother.

Most Americans have never even heard of it.

As expected, the second impeachment trial of the 45th President will proceed.

Could the Vice President end the filibuster herself?

Specifically: the former confederacy and Democratic dominance.

An opportunity for unity and a restoration of normal order.

Some political history,

Implications for Alabama and the GOP as well as considerations on the evolution of American politics.

House Democrats have done what their Republican colleagues refused to do.

Not.

Mitch McConnell is testing out his spine again.

Weeks of claims of rigged elections may well have cost the GOP the Senate.

It is not a tool to foster compromise. It is tool of obstruction, plain and simple.

Our two-party system distorts the representativeness of our politics.

Voting ourselves out of this mess is not so easy

The Republican Party is not really a thing.