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John Fea

John Fea is Executive Editor of CURRENT and the author of The Way of Improvement Leads Home blog.

Election Day was 5 days ago. What are evangelicals saying?

John Fea   |  November 10, 2024

It seems like there are two kinds of Trump evangelical voters. Those who voted for Trump as the “lesser evil” and those who saw Trump as the candidate that God favored. Blogger Samuel Sey seems to fall in the former […]

What is going on at MSNBC?

John Fea   |  November 9, 2024

Princeton professor Eddie Glaude shows why it is going to be a long time before the Democratic Party wins over working class people. His argument here–that Kamala Harris lost because she is Black–will play well in the Ivy League faculty […]

The “testosterone podcast election”

John Fea   |  November 9, 2024

“Young men feel unseen by the Democratic Party,” says NYU professor Scott Galloway. It seems like a lot of Americans got sick of all the toxic masculinity language and they pushed back on Election Day. What fascinates me is that […]

Smerconish: The 2024 presidential election was Wildwood vs. Stone Harbor

John Fea   |  November 9, 2024

Excellent analysis here from Michael Smerconish. As longtime readers of this blog know, I am passionate about the Jersey shore and have often offered class-based analysis of “the shore (as we Jerseyans call it) here at the blog. Here is […]

Michael Kazin: Democrats must “revive aggressive populism on the left”

John Fea   |  November 9, 2024

Here is the Georgetown historian at Dissent: Perhaps the only positive consequence of the victory of an utterly despicable nominee and his down-ballot faithful is that progressives inside and outside the Democratic Party are groping their way toward a common […]

The “identity politics” crowd loses Maureen Dowd

John Fea   |  November 9, 2024

Here is a taste of Dowd’s New York Times column today: Some Democrats are finally waking up and realizing that woke is broke. Donald Trump won a majority of white women and remarkable numbers of Black and Latino voters and […]

Thomas Frank: “The Elites Had It Coming”

John Fea   |  November 9, 2024

Thomas Frank, the author of What’s the Matter With Kansas and The Conquest of Cool, offers his take on the election: Liberals had nine years to decipher Mr. Trump’s appeal — and they failed. The Democrats are a party of […]

It’s four days after Election Day. What are evangelicals saying?

John Fea   |  November 9, 2024

The National Association of Evangelicals has issued a press release: “Elections inevitably produce winners and losers,” said NAE President Walter Kim. “We pray for God’s guidance and blessing on those who have won, that they will be good stewards of the […]

Josh Hawley endorses John Cornyn for Senate majority leader. The MAGA crowd goes nuts.

John Fea   |  November 8, 2024

It is apparently a three way race for Senate majority leader. The candidates are South Dakota’s John Thune, Texas’s John Cornyn, and Florida’s Rick Scott. Scott is the favorite of the MAGA movement. Thune is the closest to former leader […]

A post-election statement from CURRENT

John Fea   |  November 8, 2024

The political landscape in America changed on November 6, 2024. We at Current are grappling with what that means. If you are a regular reader, you can continue to expect us to defend the free institutions of democracy when they […]

Does Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles see the court evangelicals as passengers in the “clown car?”

John Fea   |  November 8, 2024

In case you missed it, president-elect Donald Trump just announced that Susie Wiles will be his chief of staff. Here is CNN: CNN reported earlier Thursday that Wiles was considered the front-runner for the job but had some reservations about […]

Democrats need to “ditch” DEI thinking and “get back to fighting for the poor, the working class, and the middle class”

John Fea   |  November 8, 2024

Writer Rand Richard Cooper asks whether the Democrats have “lost the country.” Here is a taste of his piece at Commonweal: The wealthy, worldly, and highly educated parts of this nation are Democratic, while the struggling, provincial, and undereducated parts […]

Thomas Chatterton Williams: “It wasn’t sexism and racism alone”

John Fea   |  November 8, 2024

Here is a taste of Williams‘s piece at The Atlantic: “What the Left Keeps Getting Wrong“: Yet I fear that far too many elite Democrats will direct their ire and scrutiny outward, and dismiss the returns as the result of […]

Trump is us

John Fea   |  November 8, 2024

Carlos Lozada of The New York Times thinks we should stop pretending that Donald Trump is not who we are. Here is a taste: Trump is very much part of who we are. Nearly 63 million Americans voted for him […]

Democratic politicos on what their party needs right now

John Fea   |  November 8, 2024

Politico has gathered the thoughts of ten “Democratic thinkers” to reflect on their party’s “pathway out of the wilderness.” They are Andrew Yang (2020 presidential candidate and math guy), Matthew Duss (former Bernie Sanders adviser), Sandra Peri (former Obama speechwriter), […]

Liz Cheney as James A. Bayard

John Fea   |  November 8, 2024

I tell my students that the present often shapes our understanding of the past. In a short piece at The Panorama, veteran American historian James Banner Jr. writes about how Liz Cheney’s resistance to Donald Trump and her defense of […]

Election Day was two days ago. What are evangelicals saying?

John Fea   |  November 8, 2024

Over at The New York Times, Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham write: “Mr. Trump is not only the leader of the Republican Party but also the de facto figurehead of conservative American Christianity.” *** The Christian Right is not alone […]

In the Fall of 2024, history matters

John Fea   |  November 7, 2024

Here is Harvard intellectual historian James Kloppenberg at Commonweal: Before entering graduate school I had read a little book by the Oxford historian E. H. Carr, What Is History? I found his answer persuasive: it is a practice of interpretation. Historians can […]

David Brooks: “As the left veered toward identitarian performance art, Donald Trump jumped into the class war with both feet.” 

John Fea   |  November 7, 2024

Check out David Brooks’s New York Times piece, “Voters to Elites: Do You See Me Now?” A taste: The Democratic Party has one job: to combat inequality. Here was a great chasm of inequality right before their noses and somehow […]

Pamela Paul: By making abortion rights a centerpiece of her campaign, Harris had a “reductive view of women’s lives as citizens.” 

John Fea   |  November 7, 2024

New York Times columnist Pamela Paul joins the chorus of voices trying to explain what happened on Tuesday. Here is a taste: But do not blame women for Kamala Harris’s loss. Blame Kamala Harris and her campaign strategists. Apart from […]

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