Commentary by Michael Barone

Most Recent Releases

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
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                            October 24, 2025The Trends in New Jersey and Virginia By Michael Barone
        No two states voted more alike and closer to the national average in last year's presidential election than the two states that have gubernatorial elections in this odd-numbered year: New Jersey and Virginia. New Jersey voted 51.8% for Kamala Harris and 45.9% for Donald Trump. Virginia voted 51.8% for Harris and 46.1% for Trump. Aside from the seven target states and Democratic underperformance in New Hampshire and Minnesota, these were the two closest states in the country.

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                            October 17, 2025Trump Defies Conventional Wisdom ... So Far By Michael Barone
        "What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass." That was the mordant comment of Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria's first prime minister, on the failure of a liberal reform to achieve the results promised with great assurance by the articulate liberal eminences of the day.

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                            October 10, 2025Are Democrats the Party of Murder? By Michael Barone
        Why are so many Democrats fond of wishing death on their opponents? That's a question raised by two astonishing developments early this month. On Oct. 3, National Review's Audrey Fahlberg revealed texts Jay Jones had sent, perhaps mistakenly, to Virginia state Del. Carrie Coyner, bemoaning the cordial remarks then-Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert, a Republican, was delivering after the death of a Democrat.

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                            October 3, 2025Donald Trump: Energy in the Executive By Michael Barone
        Whatever else you want to say about him, President Donald Trump has what Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 70 called "energy in the executive." Announcing a peace plan for Israel and Hamas, ordering the dispatch of federal troops to protect immigration enforcement personnel in "sanctuary" states, authorizing his budget director to use reorganization powers available after Senate Democrats shut down the government, and announcing a pediatric cancer initiative.

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                            September 26, 2025Democratic Party Isolation Is Getting Worse By Michael Barone
        We Americans, it seems, continue to live in two separate countries. Consider two items in the news this week and the inconsistent responses they evoked.

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                            September 12, 2025Recovering From the Insanity of Summer 2020 By Michael Barone
        What a difference half a decade makes. This summer's prevailing ethos, zeitgeist, vibe -- call it any fancy name you want -- was sharply different from the summer, just five years ago, of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter.

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                            September 5, 2025Britain, Land of the Unfree By Michael Barone
        When the Irish comedian Graham Linehan arrived at London Heathrow Airport this past weekend, he was greeted by five armed British police officers who arrested him for -- get this -- three rude tweets.

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                            August 29, 2025Governance by Threat, Not Constitutional Order  By Michael Barone
        The Constitution of the United States lays out a complex scheme of governance that has mostly worked for the 237 years since it became effective with the ratification of the ninth state, New Hampshire, in 1788.

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                            August 22, 2025Will Trump Help Ukraine Stop Russia's Westward Drive? By Michael Barone
        The extraordinary pair of meetings in the past week -- the Trump-Putin summit in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday and Donald Trump's hosting of the leaders of Ukraine, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Finland, as well as the NATO alliance and the European Commission -- were prompted by the latest iteration of a continuing source of instability over hundreds of years.

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                            August 15, 2025Redistricting in Historic Perspective By Michael Barone
In assessing the current controversy over Texas Republicans' proposed redistricting of the state's U.S. House seats, two historic facts should be considered.

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                            August 8, 2025Learning From America's Immigrant Past By Michael Barone
        When debating current issues, it's helpful to avoid inaccurate depictions of past policy, especially on immigration, in which both opponents and advocates of President Donald Trump's policies have views based on not altogether accurate renditions of the past.

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                            August 1, 2025Heading Toward Midterm Elections, Democrats Not Up Off the Floor By Michael Barone
        Here's a clue that the off-year elections in November 2026 may not go the way conventional wisdom suggests. That conventional wisdom is that the president's party almost always loses the House and, slightly less often, Senate seats.

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                            July 25, 2025Are Ex-Presidents a Help or Hindrance? By Michael Barone
For a generation, Americans have had a historically large number of ex-presidents around, a possible source of counsel from one of only 45 people who have exercised the broad powers conferred by Article II of the Constitution.

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                            July 18, 2025Higher Education in Trouble: Political Repercussions By Michael Barone
   Nine months after the 2024 election, we've been graced with definitive dissections of the electorate and how it has changed since that escalator ride 10 years and one month ago. There's wide agreement in the analyses of the Associated Press/Fox News Vote Cast, the Democratic firm Catalist's What Happened and the Pew Research Center analysis.

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                            July 4, 2025What the 12-Day War Hath Wrought By Michael Barone
Not many people today remember the exhilaration so many Americans felt after Israel's victory in the Six-Day War in June 1967. The liberal folks around me at work and law school then had been frustrated and puzzled at the lack of progress being made in Vietnam by the 448,000 U.S. troops stationed there, and the sudden and astonishing success of the Israel Defense Forces, symbolized by the eye-patched Gen. Moshe Dayan, was a refreshing contrast. No talk then of Israelis as colonialist settler oppressors.

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                            June 27, 2025The Barista Proletariat Wins in New York By Michael Barone
Zohran Mamdani's lead in first choices in New York City's ranked-choice mayoral primary, and his inevitable victory when second, third, fourth and fifth choices of trailing candidates are allocated to candidates voters ranked lower, mean that he'll be the Democratic nominee for mayor of the nation's largest city and the likely winner of the general election in November.

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                            June 20, 2025Fast-Changing Events Making, or Remaking, History By Michael Barone
Events are moving fast. Seven days ago, as I write, Israel had not yet launched its first attacks on targets in Iran. Seven days from now, things may well have changed -- significantly.

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                            June 13, 2025Los Angeles Riots May Encourage Illegal Immigrants to Self-Deport By Michael Barone
"How'm I doin'?" the late New York Mayor Ed Koch used to ask constituents on his travels through the city. President Donald Trump, in the opinion of most Americans, is doin' pretty well.

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                            June 6, 2025The New Politics of Metropole vs. Heartland By Michael Barone
You see the same pattern over much of the world. In three consecutive presidential elections in the United States. In the latest polls in Britain, where the 2016 Brexit referendum was the first notable outbreak. In France's most recent national election and in Germany's. In Canada's election last month. And maybe in Poland and South Korea last weekend.

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                            May 30, 2025Trump's Eyes Opened on Putin. Now What Will He Do? By Michael Barone
   "I'm not happy with what Putin is doing. He's killing a lot of people, and I don't know what the hell happened to Putin," said Donald Trump on Truth Social over the holiday weekend.