My latest at The Daily Beast: Hillary Clinton - Our Modern-Day Lady Macbeth

With Donald Trump’s campaign continuing to careen into incoherence, it’s becoming increasingly clear that barring some unforeseen circumstance (or low non-white voter turnout) Hillary Clinton will likely win the presidency. However, she will never win the peace. Hillary seems destined, if she wins, to be a president without popular devotion or even a public honeymoon. And she will likely spend four, or eight, years at constant war with a hostile press.

Why the relationship between Mrs. Clinton and the media is so fraught is a complicated tale. Journalist Jonathan Allen last year tackled the miserable web of mutual distrust and distaste that has defined the “rules” by which the press has covered the Clintons for more than a quarter-century.

The fact that many journalists approach the Clintons—especially Hillary Clinton—with a presumption that she has done something that if it’s not outright corrupt is at least worthy of looking into, inevitably colors the way the public views the former secretary of state, and the way they respond to her in the polls.Read the rest here.

And check out all of my Daily Beast columns here.

TNR photo/essay: Black Republicans at the RNC

To say that Donald Trump enjoys wide support among black voters, even those in his own party, would be an overstatement of truly Trumpian proportions. An estimated 18 black delegates attended the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this year—less than one percent of all RNC delegates, and only a third of the number who turned out to support Mitt Romney in 2012. Even among wealthy white scions, it seems, Trump has a race problem.The black delegates who showed up at the convention are acutely aware of their isolation, from both their own communities and their fellow Republicans. “I’m a unicorn,” laughs Henry Childs II, head of the Texas Federation of African American Republicans. Supporting the GOP, he says, has made him “the most hated man in America”—unappreciated by Republicans and held in suspicion by Democrats.So why do it? What drives these men and women to back a candidate who delights in playing the racial provocateur, who has campaigned with a rollicking mix of barking xenophobia and unabashed nativism surpassed only by George Wallace?Read and view the full piece here.

Why Black Lives Matter still confounds Democrats

As she watched the recent Democratic debate, former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner felt her party could take great pride in offering the country a substantive discussion, in contrast to the three-ring circus taking place on the other side. But as the lone question relating to the lives of 41.7 million African Americans was tossed to CNN’s Don Lemon, Turner, a political and social activist, was among many African Americans who had reason to cringe.The “black question” was about as facile as it gets, with all due respect to the “real person” chosen to deliver it: “Do black lives matter, or do all lives matter?”Cue the now well-rehearsed responses of the leading Democratic candidates, who in the recent past have been tripped up by their curious failure to prepare to respond to the most notable civil rights movement of the present era. The course correction goes something like this:“Of course black lives matter,” says Senator Sanders in his Brooklyn drawl.“You bet black lives matter!” says Secretary Clinton, with a Midwestern twang.“Black lives matter? Count me in!” Martin O’Malley chimes in, glancing warily around the room as if to make sure no one’s planning a follow-up about his time as Baltimore’s mayor.It’s not that the BLM movement is not important, says Turner. “It is,” she says. “But it seems the pendulum has swung too far to the superficial, and the media continues to perpetuate a misconception that the African-American community is homogeneous and its needs are singular.”Read the rest at The Daily Beast. 

The true story of the South Carolina Confederate flag debate (msnbc.com)

In the wake of the removal of the Confederate Battle flag (and the pole it flew on) from a place of honor on the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol, much of the media has been quick to paint one lawmaker as the hero. That narrative is both simplistic and wrong.Read more here.

Race and the Reformicons (Democracy, a Journal of Ideas, Issue #34, Fall 2014)

The reform conservatives are tackling a number of issues that could change their movement. But there’s one matter on which their silence is notable. A response to E.J. Dionne Jr.Read more here.