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Collage of American events in the 1990s.

The Nutty Nineties

What was in the water circa 1992?
Montage of 1980s Yuppies and a Trump rally.

How 1980s Yuppies Gave Us Donald Trump

If it weren’t for the young urban professionals of the 1980s, we’d never have MAGA.
1880 chart of American political history

Historians and the Strange, Fluid World of 19th-Century Politics

Why our understanding of the era has been hindered by the party system model.
George Eliot

“As If You Was a Insect”

George Eliot refused to stereotype the rural working class. Her outlook would serve us well today.
Ronald Reagan campaigns in Houston ahead of the Republican Convention in 1976.
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How Abortion Took Over the Republican Party

Ronald Reagan proved instrumental to Southerners bringing their cultural conservatism to center stage for the Republican Party.
Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Lyndon B. Johnson.

The Border Presidents and Civil Rights

Three US presidents from the South’s borders—Truman, Eisenhower, and Johnson—worked against Southern politicians to support civil and voting rights.
Mirror images of General James Longstreet.

How a Die-Hard Confederate General Became a Civil Rights–Supporting Republican

James Longstreet became an apostate for supporting black civil rights during Reconstruction.
Bayard Rustin speaks from the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington.

Bayard Rustin Showed the Promise and Pitfalls of Coalition Politics

Bayard Rustin tried to forge a mass coalition to deliver progressive change. His failure to do so in the 1960s tells us much about building one today.
Political analyst Kevin P. Phillips in September 1970.

The GOP’s ‘Southern Strategy’ Mastermind Just Died. Here’s His Legacy.

Kevin Phillips help set the Republican Party on the path that led it to Trump.
Hubert Humphrey addresses the Democratic National Convention in July 1948.

The Speech That Turned Democrats on Civil Rights and Lost Them the South

The president didn’t want to go too far on civil rights in 1948, fearing it would cost him reelection. But an obscure mayor changed the race — and his party.
Crowd of Black and White workers walking.

Affirmative Action Never Had a Chance

The conservative backlash to the civil-rights era began immediately — and now it’s nearly complete.
Demonstrators with signs supporting the legalization of abortion.

What Are the Lessons of “Roe”?

A new book chronicles the decades-long fight to legalize abortion in the United States.
The cover of "Sectionalism and American Political Development: 1880-1980"

Sectional Industrialization

Political scientist Richard Bensel explains the feedback loops between policy commitments of political elites and the regional distribution of political power.
Kevin McCarthy
partner

What 1856 Teaches Us About the Ramifications of the House Speaker Fight

The battle is worth winning for Kevin McCarthy — and could reshape the Republican Party.
Mike Lawler, Republican candidate for New York's 17th Congressional District.
partner

The GOP Can Thank Suburban N.Y. For its Slim Control of The House

How a red wave in a solidly blue state helped tip the balance.
Black and white photo of Charles Sumner

“A Solemn Battle Between Good and Evil.” Charles Sumner’s Radical, Compelling Message of Abolition

The senator from Massachusetts and the birth of the Republican Party.
Middle class neighborhood with sold home sign

Our Segregation Problem

The consequences of racial separation are significant for left political organizing aimed at building a multiracial working-class majority.
Ronald Reagan and Jerry Falwell speaking to each other in the White House.

It Wasn’t the Religious Right That Made White Evangelicals Vote Republican

To understand why evangelicals vote Republican, we shouldn’t focus just on Falwell; we need to look at a century or more of evangelical political culture.
FDR signing a bill into law.

On Economics And Democracy

High unemployment is extremely dangerous.
Drawing of a crowd of delegates at the 1972 Democratic National Convention. (Franklin McMahon / Getty Images)

A Big Tent

The contradictory past and uncertain future of the Democratic Party.
Blue and red donkey logo of the Democratic Party.

Hope in the Desert: Democratic Party Blues

In 'What It Took to Win,' Michael Kazin traces the history over the past two centuries of what he calls ‘the oldest mass party in the world’.
Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama walking together

How to Tell the History of the Democrats

What connection does the party of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson have to the party of Barack Obama and Kamala Harris?
At the filling station and garage at Pie Town, New Mexico, in October 1940. Photo by Russell Lee, FSA/Library of Congress.

Cowboy Progressives

You likely think of the American West as deeply conservative and rural. Yet history shows this politics is very new indeed.
A bronze statue of Civil War soldiers on horseback, in front of the U.S. Capitol building.

How Twitter Explains the Civil War (and Vice Versa)

The proliferation of antebellum print is analogous to our own tectonic shifts in how people communicate and what they communicate about.
The GOP elephant depicted as falling apart

What Is Happening to the Republicans?

In becoming the party of Trump, the G.O.P. confronts the kind of existential crisis that has destroyed American parties in the past.

The Real History of Race and the New Deal

Material benefits trumped FDR's terrible civil rights records.
New York workers, angered by the Mayor's apparent anti-Vietnam-War sympathies, wave American flags as they march in a demonstration near City Hall in New York City on May 15, 1970.

The 'Hard Hat Riot' of 1970 Pitted Construction Workers Against Anti-War Protesters

The Kent State shootings further widened the chasm among a citizenry divided over the Vietnam War.

Civility Is Overrated

The gravest danger to American democracy isn’t an excess of vitriol—it’s the false promise of civility.

Here's Why Republicans' Disturbing Romance With the Racist Confederacy Is so Troubling

The road to the violence around statues is paved with hate, lies, and political gamesmanship.
Mitch McConnell
partner

Partisanship is an American Tradition — And Good for Democracy

Bipartisanship is the exception, not the rule.

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