#campaign-distancing

#campaign-distancing

I wouldn't ignore the fact that [Harris is] absolutely a potent force in the Black community. I think she has been ignored, and we're going to raise that at our convention.

Kasparian argued Ocasio-Cortez appears to have taken a page or two out of President Donald Trump's political playbook, based on the lawmaker's response to a shot on social media from Kasparian.

Maddow stated, 'I am very disinterested in him as a person.' She emphasized that she does not have an interest in his opinions or in putting him on camera.

Robertson explained that language can have certain cues, often termed 'micro-cultures,' where meanings differ in specific locations. For example, a community might refer to a restaurant as 'the corner spot' instead of its actual name.

CNN's Manu Raju pointed out that Donald Trump frequently touted low gas prices during his presidency, but when prices rose under Biden, he shifted to attacking the current administration. Raju stated, 'And the person who liked to talk about it a lot was none other than Donald J. Trump.'

The principle of intellectual charity is fundamental to constructive political conversations. This principle states that, in any discussion, we should accept the best version of an opponent's ideas, not a distorted version or a "straw man." Exaggeration and distortion of opposing opinions (always present, to some degree, in political debates) have become the standard form of political argument in contemporary America.

Affordability has been, understandably, the watchword for Democratic candidates over the last year. After downplaying inflation under Joe Biden, the party learned a brutal lesson when Donald Trump rode the cost-of-living crisis back to the White House in 2024. In 2025, Zohran Mamdani put affordability at the center of his own campaign and surged from the back of the pack to City Hall.

In perhaps a vain attempt to prove themselves moderate, the Democratic lawmakers helped override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's vetoes. Voters responded with the kind of ballot-box fury that should serve as a lesson to other incumbents. It wasn't just a case that the incumbents lost. They were buried, with several of them getting trounced by margins of 40 points or more.

Listen and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Google | Wherever You Listen to receive our twice-weekly News & Politics newsletter. The Washington Roundtable is joined by Robert Kagan, a historian and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, for a conversation about the pressures facing American democracy, the security of elections, and how these domestic tensions interact with the collapse of international norms.