Commentary by Michael Barone

Most Recent Releases

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
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                            October 23, 2026What's Ahead If the Polls Are Right -- or Wrong By Michael Barone
   With less than two weeks until the midterm elections, things look bad for President Donald Trump's Republican Party. \

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                            October 16, 2026Has Trump Broken His McDonald's Promise? By Michael Barone
The defining moment of the 2024 presidential campaign, it can be argued, came almost exactly two years ago, on Sunday, Oct. 20, when then-former President Donald Trump traded his suit coat for a yellow apron and worked the fry station and the drive-thru window at a McDonald's.

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                            October 9, 2026How Populist Politics Succeeds and Fails  By Michael Barone
 Why is populism, broadly defined, on the brink of historic victories around the world, while populism in the form of President Donald Trump's Republican Party is poised to lose one or both houses of Congress in the United States?

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                            October 2, 2026Toward the Final Stretch -- and Beyond By Michael Barone
Haven't we seen this movie before? Voters, weary of a Republican president whose foreign or domestic policies don't seem to be delivering as promised, seem on the verge of a massive rejection of his party.

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                            September 25, 2026Toward a Post-Trump Politics  By Michael Barone
 From the clutter of midterm election poll results, it's possible sometimes to see new patterns of political support emerging.
September 18, 2026Both Parties Aiming to Lose the Off-Year Elections By Michael Barone
This election is a contest to see which party can do its best to lose. Looking forward from mid-September, President Donald Trump's Republicans seem to be well ahead at this. But the Resistance (or don't they call themselves that anymore?) Democrats are putting up a contest.

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                            September 11, 2026Hey, Germany. It's Legitimate to Limit Immigration. By Michael Barone
        Just weeks after far-left candidates have won surprising victories in Democratic primaries in Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, Colorado and New York City for the Senate and House in the United States, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has won a widely predicted victory in the election last Sunday for the legislature of Sachsen-Anhalt, one of Germany's 16 federal states.

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                            September 4, 2026What a Stalin Biography Tells Us About Our Time By Michael Barone
   History illuminates the present. I've been reading Stephen Kotkin's widely and justly praised multivolume biography of Joseph Stalin and have encountered many passages that illuminate the present.

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                            August 28, 2026Democrats Try to Brush Aside 'Woke 1' By Michael Barone
   "'Woke 1' was crazy." So said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on ABC News' "This Week" earlier this month.

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                            August 21, 2026Socialists Shove the Resistance Aside in Florida By Michael Barone
   The most surprising result in the batch of primaries held this week over the vast stretch of America from Florida through Wyoming to Alaska was the defeat of famed anti-Trump whistleblower Alexander Vindman by state Rep. Angie Nixon in the contest for the Democratic nomination against appointed Republican U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody in Florida.

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                            August 14, 2026Midwest Shows DSA Left Could Take Over the Democratic Party By Michael Barone
   It's worth poking around the entrails of the returns for the agonizingly close and, given the pre-primary polls, surprising results of recent Democratic primaries in the key swing Midwestern states of Michigan and Wisconsin, with a side look at Minnesota.

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                            August 7, 2026The Long Rise of the New Democratic Party By Michael Barone
        Can I claim to have predicted, way back in 1988, the result of Michigan's fiercely contested Democratic primary for U.S. senator this week?

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                            July 31, 2026America's Peak Socialism -- Abandoned a Century Ago By Michael Barone
        The emergence of the Democratic Socialists of America and their political victories, from New York City across the fruited plains of Michigan and Wisconsin, all the way to Colorado, strikes many as a new thing in U.S. politics.

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                            July 10, 2026Dropping Candidates Is Getting to Be a Habit -- and It's Not a Sign of Strength By Michael Barone
   It's beginning to be a habit. It, in this case, is the messy business of center-left political jettisoning one leader suddenly deemed unelectable and, without resort to the usual rules or democratic procedure, designating a replacement. It's the process that came fairly close to giving Americans President Kamala Harris in 2024.

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                            July 3, 2026America's Multicultural Miracle By Michael Barone
   The welcoming reception that so many European soccer fans have received as they have crossed the nation in pursuit of World Cup games has struck many as a happy surprise of the summer of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

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                            June 26, 2026The Background That Made the Revolution Possible By Michael Barone
        As we inch toward the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, let me share a couple of reflections on the background of how this extraordinary, unprecedented and daring event succeeded.

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                            June 19, 2026Not Following the Example of President James K. Polk By Michael Barone
        A president orders the onset of hostilities -- war -- without authorization of Congress and without much in the way of making a case with the public. His troops win important victories and decapitate large parts of the government of the enemy. But in the enemy capital, no one surrenders or will even negotiate seriously.

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                            June 12, 2026Gordon Wood and the Historians Who Told the Real Story of the Founders By Michael Barone
   The sudden death of the historian Gordon Wood, just weeks before the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, is one more mark of the closure of a golden age of the historiography of the Revolutionary era. It's an occasion to reflect on the uniqueness, indeed the idiosyncrasy, of the emergence of the primacy of this United States among the nations of the world.

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                            June 5, 2026Which Party Will Recover First From Its Current Self-Harm? By Michael Barone
   Tuesday saw the usual first-week-of-June gaggle of state primary elections. It's a feature of the American federal system that states choose when to hold primary and local elections.

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                            May 29, 2026The California Dream Ends in Empty Reservoirs and Homeless Tents By Michael Barone
        Many years ago, sometime after Ronald Reagan replaced Pat Brown as governor of California, I was driving up the coast from Los Angeles to San Francisco and visited Hearst Castle, William Randolph Hearst's epic mansion in San Simeon. It was state property then, donated by the Hearst family, and the uniformed guide struck me as knowledgeable, competent and proud of her work.