Outside the Beltway

Tuesday’s election results were a defeat for the progressive effort to remake the Democratic Party in their image.

Republican Troy Balderson holds a narrow lead in a Special Election in Ohio. Even if he wins, though, the way this election played out does not bode well for the GOP in November.

Notwithstanding his dismissive public rhetoric about the former Vice-President, Donald Trump apparently sees Joe Biden as his biggest potential threat in 2020.

Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan, who challenged Nancy Pelosi for a leadership spot in 2016, is telling supporters he’s running for President in 2020.

The midterm elections are still four months away, but Democrats are already making moves to prepare for the race for their party’s Presidential nomination in 2020.

California’s Democratic Party endorsed “progressive” upstart Kevin de León over Senator Dianne Feinstein, but this is unlikely to stop Feinstein from winning election to a sixth term in office.

The Democratic National Committee is one step closer to adopting a rule change that would make superdelegates largely irrelevant to the party’s nomination process.

Democrats are making largely meaningless appeals to the so-called ‘Merrick Garland Precedent” to argue for a delay in confirming the President’s next Supreme Court nominee. The American people feel differently.

Democrats have decided to move up the date of their 2020 Convention.

Has the party paid too big a price to attract suburban voters?

Conor Lamb’s win in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District has set off an inevitable debate inside the Democratic Party about how to approach the upcoming midterm elections.

The senior Senator from Massachusetts denies interest in 2020 but won’t promise to serve out a new Senate term.

After skipping such events in his first thirteen months in office, the President tried his hand at stand-up last night to mixed reviews.

The Tea Party is dead, but it was never really alive to begin with.

While final votes remain to be taken, the Federal Government shutdown effectively ended this afternoon with an overwhelming bipartisan vote to reopen the government, combined with a commitment from Republicans to consider a DACA bill over the next three weeks. What happens next, though, is entirely uncertain.

House and Senate Republicans say they have reached agreement on a final tax bill, and Democrats are engaging in an effort to delay a vote in the Senate until Doug Jones can be seated.

Even a ceremony honoring American heroes wasn’t immune from President Trump’s habit of attacking racial minorities.

Will Joe Biden be ‘tan, rested, and ready’ enough to take on 2020?

The ‘No Labels’ movement is back, and it’s as irrelevant to contemporary politics as ever.

Senate Republicans are considering one more last-ditch effort to ‘repeal and replace’ the Affordable Care Act.

We’re a long way away from the start of the 2020 election cycle, but Democrats are already maneuvering for support and money.

On the special election for US Senate in Alabama

After seven years that mostly consisted of losing elections, there’s a battle going on over which direction the party should head.

In addition to the race in New Jersey, the statewide races in Virginia are also being looked to as a barometer of American politics in the first year of the Trump Administration.

Polling indicates that voters find the Democratic Party to be even more out of step than the Republican Party.

After a highly contentious nomination process, Jeff Sessions was confirmed last night as the new Attorney General of the United States.

There were fireworks on the floor of the Senate last night, but it was really just politics as usual.

An unsurprising win in the Pelican State.

Just 1,436 days until Election Day 2020!

Distinguishing between anti-elite populism and coded anti-Semitism is next to impossible.

Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is out as head of the Democratic National Committee after the release of a trove of embarrassing emails.

As expected, Hillary Clinton went with the ‘safe’ choice, and has selected Virginia Senator Tim Kaine as her running mate.

Well that took long enough.

Donald Trump has had a bad June, and it’s showing in the poll numbers.

A purported ‘short list’ of potential running mates for Hillary Clinton is out. Here’s how the candidates stack up.

Republican insiders are apparently still looking at ways to stop Donald Trump at a convention. It’s far too late for that, guys.

Senator Elizabeth Warren is the latest Democrat to unite behind the party’s presumptive nominee. A marked contrast to the chaos that reigns on the Republican side of the aisle.

With the race for the Democratic nomination over, President Obama is ready to hit the campaign trail for Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is beginning to look beyond Bernie Sanders and talk about running mates.

As expected, Hillary Clinton won big last night while Bernie Sanders largely floundered, thus going further toward making Clinton’s victory inevitable.

David Brooks has articulated a frustration many of us share.

Americans don’t trust their government or each other. There’s no reason to hope it’ll get better.

To the surprise of nobody who was actually paying attention to political reality, Vice-President Biden announced today that he will not be a candidate for President.

Joe Biden may want to run for President, but does anyone else? It doesn’t really seem like it.

Thanks in part to a slow summer news cycle, the speculation about Vice-President Biden entering the race for President seems to be reaching a fever pitch.

The buffoonish billionaire is tapping into something real.

A new poll shows Bernie Sanders ahead of Hillary Clinton, but within the margin of error, in New Hampshire. But a deeper examination suggests that Bernie-mentum is a mile wide and an inch deep.

Based on a recent poll, it doesn’t appear that Democrats are all that eager for Vice-President Biden to challenge Hillary Clinton.

Recent polling has shown the American public to be highly skeptical, at beast, of the Iran Nuclear Deal. That may not be enough to kill it in Congress, though.