Opinion

When I grow up, I want to be Charlie Pierce, who covers politics for Esquire magazine and has toiled in our scrivener’s trade, as far as I can tell, since the late ’70s.

Like all traumatic events eventually do, the U.S. presidential campaign will end. Polling places will close, votes will be tabulated and a new electoral map will be drawn up that shows how our 45th president-elect got elected. Unfortunately, the stink of this campaign season will stick around much, much longer. The vitriol has been too corrosive.…

Sometimes it is better to be wrong, and this election is definitely one of those times. More than a year ago, I posted a column that inquired whether Donald Trump is "a real live fire-breathing fascist." Based on what we had seen from him and his campaign even by then - his appeals to racial and…

Millions of voters believe putting Donald Trump in the White House will lift them out of the economic hell they have endured for decades, working more and getting nowhere except deeper in debt. They could not be more wrong.

Those who do not read their history are doomed to repeat it. As former Supreme Court Justice David Souter lamented a few years ago, our nation suffers from civic ignorance. Worse, few know about even recent presidential history. As Souter pointed out, Thomas Jefferson himself warned that “an ignorant people can never remain a free people."

The historian Richard Hofstadter wrote a still widely read 1964 essay for Harper’s Magazine outlining what he called the “paranoid style” in American politics. Marked by “a sense of heated exaggeration”, suspicion, and wild fears of political conspiracy, it was, he argued, a common part of American political life. It dated back to the rise of the antislavery movement before the Civil War, and every so often, it resurfaced at times of national crisis.

Niccolò Machiavelli, the great sixteenth-century Florentine diplomat, is synonymous with ruthless, immoral, self-serving behavior. Despite his bad rap, Machiavelli was actually an honorable and upright if somewhat bawdy and abrasive guy, and while he did habitually cheat on his wife as many Florentine men did at the time (not that it makes it right!), he was a loving father, loyal friend, and brutally honest observer of the human condition. He commented on everything he saw — the cruelty, brutality, lies, and deceit, as well as the bravery and brilliance — and wasn’t afraid to tell it like it is.

Throughout the US’s 2016 presidential election, the polls have consistently shown that Republican candidate Donald Trump lags well behind Democratic rival Hillary Clinton among the country’s ethnic minorities. The 2016 electorate is the most diverse in American history and, if Clinton wins, this demographic change may be the deciding factor.

As Election Day approaches, it's oh so easy to dismiss the important role you can play in this election. America is a big country, over 300 million people, but it's the actions that civic-minded people take that tip the balance. There are so many different ways to help the campaign and try to make a difference.

The FBI’s last-minute intervention in the 2016 presidential election is consistent with the agency’s history of undermining the left and progressive social movements and aiding the right. Its attempts to disrupt left-wing organizations such as the Communist Party and the Black Panther Party are well known.  Its attacks on the civil rights movement in the 1960s included efforts to get Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to commit suicide.

The New York Times and other national media sources are reporting that late Sunday night, the FBI obtained a search warrant to examine email messages belonging to top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. The messages were stored on a laptop belonging to her estranged husband, Anthony Weiner. The laptop was seized by the agency in connection with an investigation into Weiner’s alleged sexting with a 15-year-old North Carolina girl.

In the Presidential Election of 2016, we have two third party movements that could impact the results of the election and the future of the nation.