Political Theater

When voters in North Carolina's 9th district vote in the Sept. 10 special election, the 2018 election cycle will finally conclude. Democrat Dan McCready is making it a competitive race against Republican Dan Bishop in a GOP district. Why? Simone Pathe and Nathan Gonzales explain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do you plan for the unplanned? That was the challenge for advance teams paving the way for the recent G-7 summit in Biarritz, France, and for President Donald Trump’s upcoming trip to Poland and, until recently, Denmark. That includes CQ Roll Call White House Correspondent John Bennett, who helped plan press logistics for the trips, and was as surprised as anyone at the way things worked out....

Politicians and pundits are fond of saying that Washington has never been more polarized and that the Senate in particular may never recover from hyper-partisanship and rule-bending. But it is assistant Senate historian Daniel S. Holt's job to remind us all that Senate disputes could result in pistols at dawn instead of dueling tweets.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoice...

For all its quaintness and fun, the Iowa State Fair does a pretty good job of approximating politics at the national level, be it questions about electability and charisma or trade and agricultural policy. Political Theater also gives our hits and misses, surprises and letdowns, of our time in Iowa. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Iowa plays a big role in presidential politics because of its first in the nation caucuses. Even by that standard, though, this time around feels busier, and the Iowa State Fair has been flooded with candidates for offices from the presidency on down. We talked to David Redlawsk, a political psychologist who is spending his ENTIRE sabbatical in Iowa, about why this is all happening. Learn more abo...

Yes, there are lot of politicians who attend the Iowa State Fair to court voters. But there is so much else to this unique event, from the almost 70 fried foods on a stick, to giant slides, sea lions, butter cows and butter Big Birds; even arm wrestling. A day in the life of the Iowa State Fair with Political Theater.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Political Theater is heading to the Iowa State Fair to check out how the 2020 races for president, Senate and four competitive House races are shaping up in this bellwether state. Why Iowa? Because that's where the candidates are! Here’s what we’ll be looking for in our trip to the Midwest, including what fried foods on a stick we might eat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adc...

How do you make a story about data interesting? That was the challenge of documentary The Great Hack. Filmmaker Karim Amer discusses the challenges and human tragedies behind chronicling the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Mueller Report might animate members of Congress and political operatives, but when it comes to drawing people to the bar in D.C., it's no contest: They'd rather be watching The Bachelorette. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why does President Donald Trump attack his opponents so viciously, sometimes using racist tropes? Because it’s effective. And Republicans know that. Our conversation with Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution is about Trumpism, norms and how it all fits into a political strategy. “I think you’ll have Trumpism without Trump to some extent at least, even if Trump is voted out of office in 2020,"...

Harry Reid might have retired from the Senate in 2017 and started battling cancer in 2018, but the former Democratic leader doesn’t seem to be the retiring type, especially when it comes to Nevada politics. “I’m a political junkie to say the least,” he tells CQ Roll Call's Niels Lesniewski in a wide-ranging interview in Las Vegas that we've excerpted for this edition of the Political Theater Podca...

The new film “Mike Wallace is Here,” shows how legendary journalist Mike Wallace shaped modern journalism and politics. But this world is one where journalists are in danger and their credibility is in question. What happened? Director Avi Belkin discusses the arc of Wallace’s career, and where things started to shift. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A North Carolina House race is dividing the GOP in Washington, D.C., reports CQ Roll Call's senior political reporter Simone Pathé. And Clyde McCrady talks about the emotional House hearing on reparations and why it was a significant moment in U.S. history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the Senate starts to debate one of the most consequential policy bills, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the chairman of the committee that is managing the Pentagon policy bill, Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma,  talks to Political Theater about working with Democrats, throws shade on some lawmakers on his committee and provides his take on Iran. Learn more about your ad choices. Vis...

It was on when Beto O'Rourke, center fielder for the Los Diablitos de El Paso, jumped up on hay bale when filmmaker David Modigliani, first baseman for the Texas Playboys Baseball Club, knew he could make a movie about the 2018 Texas Senate candidate and now one of nearly two dozen Democrats running for president in 2020. "I was playing first base, he got a single and he was, like, 'Hey, I am runn...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is a successful politician without being a typical one. He's proudly uncharismatic, relatively unpopular in his home state of Kentucky and embraces his self-styled role as the Grim Reaper of legislation. So why does he keep winning? In this episode, senior Senate reporter Niels Lesniewski explains how McConnell uses his negatives to win.  Learn more about you...

Everything about Werner Herzog becomes theater. His documentary “Meeting Gorbachev” combines his iconic narrative style, never-before-seen footage of the last days of Soviet rule and the personal side of the last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev. In this podcast, Herzog muses on how "deeply involved in all these events" he himself was and how “I never would have dreamt I would have spoken to Go...

For pure Political Theater, it will be hard to beat Pennsylvania during the 2020 campaign. The Keystone State will be, well, key to an Electoral College victory. President Donald Trump knows it. That may be why he has visited it six times since taking office, including to Montoursville in the north central part of the state on May 20. He won’t be alone, though, because the current Democratic front...

Five Democratic freshmen, all women with military or intelligence backgrounds, are banding together to help each other fundraise for their 2020 races. They all flipped Republican districts in 2018, and they know winning districts like theirs is the key to holding and expanding the House majority in 2020. After a few months in Congress, they've figured out who are the "workhorses" and who are the "...

A documentary about the late Notre Dame president Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, a real life "Forrest Gump" who challenged presidents and popes in the last half-century, resonates in today's turbulent times, the director of the film tells CQ Magazine managing editor Mike Magner, who grew up hearing about Father Ted's work and causes. The film, directed by Patrick Creadon, explores the challenges Father Te...

Political gerrymandering is losing friends fast, at least in the courts. Ohio and Michigan recently got smacked by federal judges for rigging the maps in favor of Republicans and states like Maryland are under court order to draw more politically neutral lines. Almost of all these fights end up in the same place, the Supreme Court. And a divided set of justices could decide by next month whether t...

Penny Lane’s documentary “Hail Satan?” is among the most entertaining civics lessons to come around in a long time. Chronicling in jaunty manner the origins and growth of the Satanic Temple, which the IRS just recently recognized as a bona fide church, Lane’s movie shows how the Temple has enforced the First Amendment’s separation of church and state across the country. Lane, the director of “Our...

Anytime Attorney General William Barr talks about the Mueller report it’s a big deal. It's a bigger deal in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Add a leaked letter, a bunch of presidential candidates on the committee and all kinds of almost Shakespearean context, and you've got a lot of political theater. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you listen to this podcast, you know Jason Dick loves movies, especially if they relate to politics. So on occasion, we’re going to bring you conversations with directors and actors — and even some movie reviews — for all the political movie-lovers out there. In this episode, we talk with Rachel Lears, director of the Netflix documentary “Knock Down the House,” which profiles four congressional...

  Democrats continue to throw their hats into the 2020 presidential race, and veteran strategist Rodell Mollineau thinks that’s a healthy way to work out the party’s message during a “once in a generation time” for them. “I’m all for this,” he says. Mollineau, a founder of American Bridge and Rokk Solutions, and previously a staffer for Senate majority leaders Tom Daschle and Harry Reid, discusses...