Start Making Sense Clips

The victorious campaign in Britain to leave the European Union has many striking parallels to Donald Trump’s campaign to win the White House. D.D. Guttenplan says “that ought to keep Hillary supporters awake at night.” Also: the Supreme Court issued a sharp rebuke to Texas’s anti-choice laws on Monday in the most sweeping victory for abortion rights in 25 years. Zoë Carpenter comments. Plus: A tes...

The People’s Summit brought organizers and activists to Chicago last weekend for three days of planning about where to go next with the Bernie movement—at the Democratic National Convention, and after. RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, weighs in. Also, lessons for the left from the NRA in the wake of the Orlando shootings: David Cole, The Nation’s legal affairs correspo...

Orlando was one of the most gay-friendly cities in the South—and still is, says Nadine Smith of Equality Florida. Also: Bernie won the war of ideas in the Democratic party—what does that mean for Hillary now? Harold Meyerson comments. And historian Adam Hochschild talks about the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, American leftists who fought the fascists in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. Advertising I...

Everything you need to know about the California primary—John Nichols explains it all to producer Alan Minsky. Also: Andrew Cockburn of Harper’s magazine explains how Obama’s drone “kill list” is approved—and what happens after. Because politics isn’t everything, we talked about the great Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar Wai with John Powers—he’s critic at large on “Fresh Air with Terry Gross.” Advert...

Bernie Sanders’s campaign rallies in California have brought out more than 100,000 people—many of whom think he can win the state’s primary next week. Nicky Woolf of Guardian US has been following the campaign; he thinks they may be right. Also: Elizabeth Warren seems to be Donald Trump’s most effective critic—and she seems to enjoy the work. Margaret Talbot of The New Yorker comments. Plus: Can t...

Bernie Sanders has stopped his direct attacks on Hillary, and he’s been able to make some strong appointments to the platform committee for the Democratic National Convention. Is the unification of the party underway? Harold Meyerson explains. Plus: Most “independent” voters in fact have long-standing ties to one party or the other—very few swing from one party to the other between elections. Josh...

Hillary will have to do something different to beat Donald Trump, Bruce Shapiro argues—because appealing to moderates, like the Clintons did in the nineties, is not going to work this year. Also: The #BreakFree climate protests have mobilized tens of thousands in direct actions against coal, oil, and gas companies around the world. Zoë Carpenter reports. Plus: Patrick Cockburn, who Seymour Hersh h...

Donald Trump’s ideal opponent is a member of the establishment, Steve Fraser argues—the kind that used to be called a “limousine liberal.” Hillary Clinton, he argues, fits the bill perfectly. Also: The only way Trump could win, says Ari Berman, is through suppressing the vote of Democrats in half a dozen swing states. A state-by-state survey suggests he’s unlikely to succeed. And historian Eric Fo...

When Hillary Clinton defeats Donald Trump in November, his millions of supporters will be told that their American birthright has once again been stolen from them. Rick Perlstein talks about the potential for violence in the streets after election day. Plus: What really happened to Sandra Bland? To understand that, you have to begin way before she died in a Texas jail. Debbie Nathan reports. Adver...

Trump says he’ll fight for jobs against NAFTA-type trade deals, and he doesn’t take money from Wall Street. Is that enough to win some of Bernie Sanders’s supporters to his side? John Nichols weighs in on this week’s primary results. Plus: The Prince of Sex: Richard Kim explains why Prince is a gay icon today—despite the artist’s lack of support for the gay movement. Also: Challenging “Political C...

A Clinton vs. Trump campaign in the fall would be a battle of the negatives, Frank Rich says--and Hillary’s are dangerously high. Plus: Hillary and Haiti—a long relationship, and a revealing one. Amy Wilentz comments. And we speak with Viet Nguyen—his novel "The Sympathizer" just won the Pulitzer Prize. It begins in Saigon on the last day of the Vietnam war, and features a Viet Cong spy in...

Naomi Klein argues that the problem with Hillary Clinton’s climate policy is not her corporate contributions; it’s her corporate ideology. The climate justice movement, she says, "requires the kind of boldness Bernie Sanders represents." Also: Military historian Andrew Bacevich says America can never win its twenty-year war for the Middle East. Plus: Amy Goodman talks about how she got arr...

John Nichols says that, after the Wisconsin primary, Bernie has momentum on his side. Also: David Cole argues that citizen activists are the real force behind changes in constitutional law—look at how the NRA changed the meaning of the Second Amendment; look at how the gay rights movement changed the meaning of “marriage.” His new book is Engines of Liberty. Plus, Obama’s legacy: Gary Younge contr...

Sasha Abramsky asks, if Donald Trump were president, would he be a familiar kind of New York deal-maker—or a deluded demagogue? Campaign contributions go mostly to TV ads that don’t work, and consultants who are even more useless, Andrew Cockburn reports—what counts is face-to-face canvassing to build voter turnout. Obama is a “folk hero” in black America, says Erin Aubrey Kaplan—her new book is &...

Bernie Sanders is the leading edge of the historical forces bringing the 40-year Reagan era to an end, says Richard Parker of Harvard’s Kennedy School. Plus: Obama’s legacy for black America is mostly symbolic, Gary Younge argues—the wealth gap between black and white Americans has grown over the last eight years, along with black poverty. Gary writes for The Guardian and The Nation. Also: the rea...

John Nichols answers the question, what’s left for Bernie Sanders after Tuesday’s primaries? Quite a bit, he says—he’s The Nation’s National Affairs correspondent. Plus: North Carolina’s new voter ID requirements, the most restrictive in the country, went into effect on Tuesday—Ari Berman explains the problem. He's the author of 'Give Us the Ballot.' And Thomas Frank asks the question,...

Harold Meyerson says Bernie’s victory in Michigan shows he'd be a stronger candidate than Hillary in big industrial states with diverse populations and big problems. Harold is executive editor of The American Prospect. Plus: Donald Trump: fascist, or clown? John Powers says there are clownish aspects to Trump’s performance at his rallies, but also an aura of violence against those who would ch...

Joan Walsh on panic in the GOP establishment over Trump's triumphs on Super Tuesday; Joan is The Nation’s national affairs correspondent. Plus: What Trump supporters really think. Sasha Abramsky interviewed a bunch of them; he reports regularly on politics for The Nation. Also: Trump says he reviles Muslims and reveres veterans—but some vets have been speaking out in defense of the Muslims the...

John Nichols says it’s hard to see how the Republican Party can stop Trump from winning the nomination—for starters, nobody is trying—and it’s not hard see how his appeal to working class white voters could make him president. Julianne Hing reports from Nevada on what it's like to go to a Trump rally and a Cruz rally—on the same day—and what voters who are not white are saying about the campai...

Katha Pollitt asks, “Is it wrong for women Democrats to want to vote for a woman Democrat?” In 2008 she voted for Obama rather than Hillary; today she’s a Clinton supporter. Gary Younge looks back on Hillary’s 30-plus years in American politics and argues that “It is easy to forget what a mould-breaking, bad-ass figure Hillary cut when she first appeared on the national stage in 1992.” Award-winni...

Republican disarray deepens after New Hampshire: Rick Perlstein explains the dilemma of the GOP establishment, as their chosen candidates continue to slide. Also: The startling success of Bernie Sanders in New Hampshire. It’s not just that he’s from the state next door, says D. D. Guttenplan. And Hillary’s problem is bigger than “the messaging.” And Jane Mayer of The New Yorker examines the secret...

Gary Younge says Donald Trump is not a uniquely American phenomenon, but part of a broader Western European phenomenon of white, nativist responses to globalization, immigration and terrorism. Joan Walsh analyzes the Republicans after Trump’s second-place finish—as the party establishment has a chance to reassert itself, John Nichols explains how Bernie went from 50 points behind to tie Hillary in...

The GOP establishment is moving toward accepting Donald Trump as their candidate, says Frank Rich—they think he will make deals with them, while Ted Cruz won’t. Also: Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, the global climate movement: he says the fight to end the fossil fuel era is happening almost in secret, as local activists battle on thousands of fronts around the world. Plus: Anna Deavere Smith,...

The Nation magazine has endorsed Bernie Sanders for president; editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel explains why. Also: Dave Zirin, sports editor of The Nation, talks with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar about black politics, Ferguson, John Lewis, Donald Trump, and also Gil Scott-Heron. Plus: The Big Short is probably the best movie Hollywood has ever made about an economic crisis—it’s fun, but it’s als...

Katha Pollitt says feminists should vote for Hillary Clinton, who will be good for women, and who is the only Democratic candidate who can win. But Liza Featherstone says feminists should not vote for Clinton—her record is full of attacks on poor women, starting with “welfare reform.” Also, Tavis Smiley talks about Martin Luther King’s last year—the year that began with his speech condemning the w...