RealClearPolitics Articles

“But you can tell the story of why this year might genuinely be different as well! In particular, you can see how there may be many Republican-leaning voters who genuinely like his [Trump’s] policies but dislike him personally on such a visceral level that they cannot bring themselves to vote for him.” – Sean Trende, RealClearPolitics senior elections analyst, Oct. 20, “What a Big Biden Win Would Look Like.” What Trende wrote is true, but also there is an opposite reaction — Republicans who admit that they personally despise the president but are...

The “fracking” revolution has unleashed an incredible American energy boom over the past decade. America is now the biggest producer of oil and gas in the world, beating Saudi Arabia and Russia. Fracking has contributed to an economic revival in areas of the country once in freefall. Pennsylvania is now second only to Texas in natural gas production, and Ohio is now fifth. This has reduced air pollution by displacing coal. Joe Biden wants a counter-revolution, but he does not want you to know about it.  Candidate Joe Biden has sent mixed messages. During the primary...

It is finished. The final debate of 2020 is done. Donald Trump walked off his last debate stage on Thursday night, and soon the country will decide whether to let him keep his job or hand the presidency over to Joe Biden.  Both men were on better behavior than the last time they met, no doubt because they were under constant threat of being muted by the NBC moderator Kristen Welker, but also because both campaigns apparently believe the race is far from finished. Biden wants to solidify, if not widen, his lead while Trump had to go on offensive to avoid a crushing defeat. The result was...

Good morning, it’s Friday, Oct. 23, 2020, the day the week when I reprise an instructive or inspirational quotation. Today’s comes from Winston Churchill, a statesman whose eloquence did not readily come to mind during last night’s tedious set-to between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. It’s true that both men were less rude than the first time they debated. It’s also true that NBC correspondent Kristen Welker moderated with poise and professionalism. But truth took a beating Thursday night. Media fact-checkers could have saved themselves time...

Are both presidential candidates trying to lose? Or at least pursuing campaign strategies which put them at grave risk of defeat? In nearly four years, Donald Trump has made little effort to win over the 50%-plus of voters who didn't support him in 2016. Having proved that he could win the presidency without a plurality of the popular vote, he has ignored the possibility that he could govern more effectively if he were reelected with an absolute majority. You can see the results as Trump supporters scan the polling data for encouraging information. They quickly pass over the national polls...

When Amy Coney Barrett was nominated to a judgeship on the U.S. Court of Appeals in 2017, Sen. Dianne Feinstein was taken aback by the Notre Dame law professor's Catholic convictions about the right to life. "Professor," said Feinstein, "when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that's of concern." Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, got a second chance to quiz Barrett during the Supreme Court nomination hearings conducted by Chairman Lindsey Graham. Believing, after four days, that she and her...

Big Tech titans Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg better lawyer up. These enemies of free speech and a free press will be hauled in to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee to explain their brazen censorship of conservatives. The ever-growing list of those censored includes the president of the United States, his White House press secretary and the New York Post, whose account is still locked for posting a credible story about Joe Biden and his son during an election. In light of Twitter's unprecedented and willful censorship, Jack Dorsey could also be facing...

In the RealClearPolitics polling average, Joe Biden has a 4.2% lead in the battleground states at the time of this writing. That is more relevant than the national polls. Had 2016 not happened, we'd all be writing the obituary of the Trump campaign right now. By any normal metric, President Donald Trump is toast, and the GOP is losing the Senate. But these are not normal times, and 2016 showed that there is an undercounting of Trump voters out there. There are also some pollsters who just excel at really poor polling that skews polling averages. For example, I don't know any pollster this...

First, Joe Biden's Praetorian Guard in the media argued that the New York Post's Hunter Biden scoop was "Russian disinformation." The DOJ, FBI and DNI each publicly disagreed. No one in the Biden camp has denied the veracity of a single email thus far. Yet, as of this writing, the Post's Twitter account is still frozen, and most major news outlets won't report the story. The next deflection was to play on your emotions: "How dare you mock a father struggling with the addiction of his son?!" This isn't about Hunter's addictions, predilections or life choices, but about his favor-trading, and...

It’s Thursday, Oct. 22, 2020, the date of the second and final debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Is it anti-climactic? Well, it means little to the 35 million people who have voted early. And judging by the difficulty the networks have had in finding actual “undecided” voters for their televised town halls, many of the 100 million Americans who haven’t yet voted have made up their minds. At least the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has taken its share of grief, didn’t counterprogram against a World Series game. What a difference a year makes....

The coronavirus may finally fulfill the most enduring cliché of modern politics now that the coming presidential election is widely considered the “most important ever.” But it took 220,000 dead Americans. Donald Trump and Joe Biden will soon meet for a final debate on Thursday in Tennessee to discuss that pandemic and to argue over who is better suited to lead the country through that crisis and for the next four years. The moderator will have a mute button. This is unusual, as the Commission on Presidential Debates is not in the business of silencing speech. But the chaos...

The coronavirus, widespread quarantines, an unprecedented self-induced recession, and unchecked rioting, looting and protesting -- all in a presidential election year -- are radically disrupting American habits and behavior. Rents, home prices and office occupancy rates in major cities, especially on the two coasts, are dropping fast. Techies and young professionals have discovered that they can work from home without paying sky-high housing costs in order to be close to the office. Those more fortunate wonder why they should get bogged down with commutes and urban traffic -- or navigate city...

Let us examine the Great Barrington Declaration with the respect it deserves, which is very little. The advocates, who include Dr. Scott Atlas, President Donald Trump's preferred pandemic expert, argue that all these shutdowns are causing economic and psychological havoc that's worse than the disease. Better to let the coronavirus infect the young and healthy, thus building immunity in numbers large enough to nearly stop the virus' spread. The elderly and other vulnerable Americans can lock themselves away. Dr. Anthony Fauci, most other Americans' preferred pandemic expert, has called the...

Rapper/actor Ice Cube is on the brink of understanding the left-wing con! He appears on the verge of understanding the fake product that the Democrats and the media have been peddling: that America remains guilty of "systemic racism."  In a video Cube posted on social media, he wondered what Blacks are getting in return for their virtually unquestioned loyalty to the Democratic Party. In explaining why he recently met with Democrats  and Republicans, Cube tweeted: "Every side is the Darkside for us here in America. They're all the same until something changes for us. They all lie...

Good morning, it’s Thursday, Oct. 22, 2020, the date of the second and final debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Is it anti-climactic? Well, it means little to the 35 million people who have voted early. And judging by the difficulty the networks have had in finding actual “undecided” voters for their televised town halls, many of the 100 million Americans who haven’t yet voted have made up their minds. At least the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has taken its share of grief, didn’t counterprogram against a World Series game. What a difference a...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats are set to boycott voting on Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett at the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, but there is little they can do to prevent Republicans from rushing to confirm President Donald Trump’s pick before Election Day. The Judiciary Committee, which is controlled by Republicans, is expected to change the rules if necessary to recommend Barrett’s nomination to the full Senate. Senators are planning a rare weekend session to secure her confirmation on Monday. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Former President Barack Obama blasted President Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, his culpability in national discord and his overall fitness for the job on Wednesday as he made his first in-person campaign pitch for his former vice president, Joe Biden. With less than two weeks before Election Day, Obama used a drive-in campaign rally in Philadelphia to assure voters that Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, can mend a fractured country. He lauded the merits of democracy and citizenship as “human values” that the United States must...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday granted clemency to five people convicted of committing drug and financial crimes, all of them cases that were pushed by prison reform advocate and Trump ally Alice Johnson. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Wednesday in a statement that Trump was granting the clemencies “in light of the decisions these individuals have made following their convictions to improve their lives and the lives of others while incarcerated.” The latest round of clemencies comes less than two weeks before Election Day and as...

Good morning, it’s Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2020. Seven years ago today, with a government shutdown settled (for the time being), President Obama turned his attention back to a vexing issue causing him heartburn and no small measure of personal ignominy: the administration’s botched rollout of the health insurance exchanges mandated by the Affordable Care Act. Implementing Obamacare, as its opponents called it (a moniker the president privately enjoyed), was always going to have its hiccups, especially in “red” states where it was actively undermined by Republican...