David Faris

Energized by the Democrats' unexpected overperformance in the 2022 midterm elections, President Biden is reportedly leaning toward running for re-election in 2024. While he deserves his share of the credit for the party's history-defying showing last month, we should also be careful not to over-interpret the results as a sudden shift in popularity.

As Americans head into their third full winter accompanied by COVID-19, the Biden administration continues to disappoint in its management of the pandemic.

Even though Republicans still have a good chance to narrowly capture the House of Representatives, the midterm elections should be seen as a total and stunning rebuke of the GOP's extremist candidates and behavior.

If it's a Republican flood and they ring up a series of gubernatorial wins and continue dominance in legislatures in states like Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan, what exactly can we expect from these Republicans?

If they lose, Democratic leaders will need to dust themselves off and remember that American government still features an inexplicable two-month period after general elections during which the outgoing government gets to continue making policy.

The Democratic Party should should think harder about setting the bar a little bit higher.

There are a lot of reasons to dread a potential red wave election next month that delivers control of the House, Senate, and critical swing state governorships to a radicalized GOP, including the message that will be sent to gleeful Gilead Republicans hellbent on using Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization as a beachhead to expand their control of women's bodies.

Former President Donald Trump has moved his Twitter hate speech operation over to an online vanity ghost town that he's christened Truth Social. Perhaps feeling nostalgic for the days when he drove entire news cycles with some throwaway bit of poisonous rhetorical excess, Trump wrote Sunday, seemingly out of nowhere, that American Jews were insufficiently supportive of him and that they better shape up—or else.

Despite her unintentional hilarity, Tulsi Gabbard's acrimonious, public departure from the party is another reminder that Democrats must exercise a modicum of quality control for their next contested presidential nomination.

After failing to order a timely evacuation of counties that ended up directly in the monster storm's path, DeSantis beseeched the federal government for assistance.

Last week's duplicitous stunt by Florida's Republican governor and human outrage generator Ron DeSantis, who chartered a plane to deposit 50 Venezuelan migrants on Martha's Vineyard, has so far done nothing to stanch the GOP's bleeding in the midterm elections.

The powerful demonstrated effects of Trump's ongoing contempt for democracy and the efforts of his political allies in the Republican Party to reroute American political institutions so that the GOP can never lose power, already serve as a template for other aspiring tyrants.

Since 2014, Republicans have often significantly outperformed their polling averages in statewide races in the Midwest (and Florida). This was true in 2014, but it was in 2016 that it went from a few mildly inaccurate polls to a much-discussed trend.

The Justice Department released an extensively redacted version of the affidavit that federal authorities used to justify the warrant to search former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago compound earlier this month. Trump allies hoping that more information from the DOJ might reveal the whole thing to be an overreach are likely quite disappointed.

À la carte streaming was supposed to be liberatory. We would cut the cord. We would no longer subsidize the minority of people who mainline sports all day with our monthly fees. We would pay for what we want, no more and no less. If you wanted to watch only Babylon 5 reruns every day for the rest of your life, this new world would be for you!

Trump is a living, breathing security hazard, whose opaque finances, history of bankruptcy and shady real estate deals, longstanding business ties with tyrannical regimes, and open fondness for Russian strongman Vladimir Putin make him vulnerable to any and all types of subversion.

As Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine staggers through its sixth month, the risk of a catastrophic nuclear war between Russia and NATO grows with each bloody day.

The good news for Democrats, and the Earth, is that the party's two chief obstructionists in the Senate, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, have signed off on a huge climate, energy and tax package. The bad news is that, as always, Sinema put the interests of her lobbyist paymasters over those of the country by forcing Democrats to abandon a tax increase on hedge fund managers and private equity wizards.

In a red-leaning state like Pennsylvania, amid a difficult political environment for Democrats, the GOP candidate should be favored rather than trailing by double digits. And while there are still huge risks, both short and long term, to elevating their worst opponents, in this cycle it just might pay off for Democrats.

To hold or expand their majorities in this difficult environment, Democrats must run a fear-based campaign that ties all Republican candidates to broad themes most voters despise: the imposition of fundamentalist religious ideas, the rollback of civil rights and the embrace of far-right authoritarianism.

We've grown so accustomed to watching Trump wriggle off the hook, with the help of his army of apologists in Congress and the media, that we dare not dream of the man suffering actual consequences for his H-bombing of American democracy.

After all, without Texas' 40 electoral votes, double-digit House of Representatives delegation edge and two GOP senators, the national Republican Party would immediately lose any chance at a majority. So, if Texas wants to leave and take the political fortunes of the increasingly radicalized GOP with it, who on the left would stand in their way?

After promising to treat Saudi Arabia like a "pariah state" during the 2020 presidential campaign, it looks like President Biden has been brought to heel, just like virtually all of his predecessors, by America's unending thirst for cheap oil.