Jonathan Chait

Left-leaning pundits worth their salt know that Donald Trump isn’t a movement conservative, but many of them believe nonetheless that his candidacy is, in some social/cultural/emotional sense, a fundamentally righty phenomenon. That said, Daily Kos founder and publisher Markos Moulitsas, whose lefty credentials are hardly in question, argued in a Friday post that while Trump “happened to land on…

Commenting Friday on National Review’s anti-Donald Trump editorial and symposium, The New Republic’s Jeet Heer and New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait agreed that conservatives are responsible for Trump’s Republican frontrunner status, but differed on which unpleasant right-wing trait, “white identity politics” or anti-intellectualism, was the prime mover.

In a Wednesday post, New York magazine's Chait sought to debunk the belief that Marco Rubio is a moderate. As for why some might see him that way, Chait suggested a few reasons, among them that Rubio, unlike fellow Republican presidential contenders Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, “avoids statements that make him appear ostentatiously deranged.” Chait argued that while Rubio’s focus on positioning…

New York magazine’s Chait thinks that in a sense, conservatism and Communism aren’t such strange bedfellows when it comes to economic matters. In a Sunday post, Chait categorized “American conservatism” and Marxism as “rigid dogma,” whereas liberalism, he argued, focuses on “data.” Chait contended that “liberals would abandon, say, new environmental regulations if evidence persuaded them the…

When it comes to global warming, Esquire’s Charles Pierce implies, it’s now conservative Republicans and a few hidebound Democrats versus pretty much everyone and everything else, including the world’s non-human animals and its plant life. Meanwhile, New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait opined that the Paris climate deal was “probably the [Obama] administration’s most important accomplishment."

Robin Williams’s first album was called Reality…What a Concept. More than one lefty blogger implied that Unreality…What a Concept would have been a fitting title for Tuesday night’s Republican presidential debate.

Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio put media bias on the front burner at CNBC’s Republican presidential debate, but conservatives and liberals differed sharply on whether what was in the pot smelled appetizing. Several lefty bloggers turned up their noses at the idea that in last night’s event and in general, the media favor Democrats.

It has only been a few hours since Hillary Clinton has announced that in contrast to her previous enthusiastic support of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, she now opposes it (with convenient caveats). Of course, her new opposition to TPP is a completely principled position and has nothing to do with politics. Yeah, right! However, will those on the left be so skeptical of such an obvious political…

Asked to name something that stands alone, a lot of people would say, “The cheese.” To New York magazine's Jonathan Chait, another reasonable answer is “the Republican party,” at least in regard to global warming specifically and hatred of government in general. Chait’s main point is that the GOP is extremist not only in an American context but also by international standards: “Of all the major…

A few months ago, many liberals, including much of the bloggerati, were afraid that Walker had a good chance to win not only the Republican presidential nomination but also the presidency. Now that Walker’s out of the GOP race, several lefty pundits have weighed in on why.

Among the insights: Fiorina "has a notable facility for delivering answers that thrill conservatives but fall apart under close examination"; a discussion of childhood vaccines showed that the party is "fervid, claustrophobic, recklessly insinuating, and, at the same time, utterly timid when it comes to extremism in its own ranks”; and the GOP as a whole is "wedded to the tenets of [George W.]…

Politics involves the heart and the mind, and in general the best politicians appeal to both. Then there’s Donald Trump. Jonathan Chait of New York magazine argues that Trump’s campaign is pretty close to mindless, but it seems that to many rank-and-file Republicans, that’s a feature rather than a bug. “Outsiders have struggled to comprehend how Republican voters can attach themselves to an…

Boldly combining the investigative techniques of David McCullough and Maury Povich, New York magazine’s  Chait has done a little historical paternity testing and determined that Andrew Jackson “is, clearly, the father of the modern Republican Party.” Chait argued that Jackson’s status as “the progenitor of the Democratic Party” is based on “a myth.” On the other hand, Jackson “believed the…

Richard Nixon’s campaign did what it could to make sure the Democratic party didn’t nominate its strongest presidential candidate in 1972, thereby facilitating Nixon’s re-election. President Obama won’t be on the ballot in 2016, but New York magazine's Jonathan Chait speculates that Obama is trying to smooth Hillary Clinton’s path to the Oval Office by nudging Republicans into nominating Scott…