Michael Barone
Washington Examiner
Washington, DC, United States
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Past articles by Michael:
Disinformation Inc vs the Founding Fathers
How many people believe, really believe, in freedom of speech? Or, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, not just “free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate”? → Read More
Will Biden's Primary Schedule Have Unintended Consequences?
For a president who proclaimed proudly in his annual speech that his policies have made the state of the union good, Joe Biden betrayed a certain insecurity when, just two days before, he caused the Democratic National Committee to change its presidential primary schedule for 2024. The reasons for Biden's insecurity are obvious. Only 31% of self-identified Democrats want to renominate Biden for… → Read More
Time for truth and reconciliation on the Russia collusion hoax
What are “the major problems this country faces”? Writing in the Atlantic, New York Times columnist David Brooks leads off his list with “inequality, political polarization, social mistrust” before concluding with the inevitable “climate change.” Today’s “inequality,” he notes, is as “savage” as the inequality in the 1890s. → Read More
Three Big Surprises of 2022: Weakened Russia, Weakened China, Weakened American Economy
2022 was a year full of surprises. Important things didn't work out as many people had expected on just about every point on the political spectrum. The prime example: Ukraine. When Vladimir Putin's Russian troops invaded on Feb. 24, it looked like an independent Ukraine was toast. Military experts on cable channels said Russia had overwhelming superiority. It would take Kyiv and occupy the… → Read More
Give Thanks for the Northwest Ordinance
Unsure of what to be thankful for this Thanksgiving season? Here's a suggestion of something to be thankful for: the Northwest Ordinance. You might ask, what is the Northwest Ordinance? The answer: It's a law passed by the Confederation Congress meeting openly in New York in July 1787, even as the Constitutional Convention was meeting behind closed doors and windows in Philadelphia. The… → Read More
Give thanks for the Northwest Ordinance
Unsure of what to be thankful for this Thanksgiving season? Here’s a suggestion of something to be thankful for: the Northwest Ordinance. → Read More
On Ukraine and on Welfare, Morale Trumps Materiel
Morale matters more than materiel.Again and again, experts' predictions, based on readily quantifiable data and logical extrapolations, have proved disastrously wrong. The phenomenon is seen in apparently unrelated areas in → Read More
Political Careers Are Ending in Failure Because of Outdated 'Expert' Theories
"All political lives, unless they are cut off at midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs." So said → Read More
The Verdict on Lockdowns: High Cost, Minimal Benefits
What were the benefits and costs of the COVID-19 restrictions implemented over the last two years? It's a good time to ask that question, especially now that the masks are → Read More
Voters Oppose 'Transformative' Policies, Want Reform of Dysfunctional Bureaucracies
Do Americans really want transformative change? The evidence accumulates that they don't.That is a problem for the Joe Biden Democrats, whose policies are premised on the proposition that they → Read More
Plague-Year Immigrants Headed to Trump Country
I want to add a few notes to my Christmas weekend column on the Census Bureau's July 2021 state population estimates and what stories they tell about growth and decline → Read More
A (Statistical) Journal of the Plague Year
As a Christmas present to statistics lovers, the Census Bureau has released its estimates of the population of the nation and the 50 states as of July 1, 2021. The → Read More
Kyle Rittenhouse's Offense: Insufficiently Respecting Rioters
Why the hatred of Kyle Rittenhouse? Why was there such widespread dishonest news coverage of the case against him that his acquittal by the Kenosha, Wisconsin, jury came as an → Read More
Partisan Strife Produces High Voter Turnout
The last decade has seen a boom in voter turnout -- for both parties. Between the 2012 and 2020 presidential elections, total voter turnout rose 23%, with Democratic turnout up → Read More
The Year America Went Crazy
Did America go crazy in 2020? I suspect observers years hence will think so because of the responses, of both elite officials and ordinary Americans, to the COVID-19 pandemic starting → Read More
Immigrant Voters Trended Toward Trump
Like Sherlock Holmes' dog that didn't bark in the night, so goes in politics: Uncharacteristic behavior can turn out to be crucially significant -- uncharacteristic behavior in politics being defined → Read More
Biden: Identity Politics and No Apologies
Identity politics seems to be sticking around. Important election results seemed to refute the notion that Americans vote for their ethnic or racial identity. Hispanic voters trended significantly toward the → Read More
Republicans Retain a Marginal Advantage in Redistricting
One of the many big surprises in this month's surprising election was the Democrats' failure to overturn Republican majorities in state legislatures. Various Democratic committees budgeted $88 million to flip → Read More
Californians
Among the most surprising of the multiple surprising results in this election was California's rejection of Proposition 16. The ballot measure was supported by the Democratic supermajorities in the state → Read More
A Country Where People Are Afraid to Tell Pollsters What They Think
"I like a good contrarian argument as much as the next guy," tweets mild-mannered RealClearPolitics senior elections analyst Sean Trende, "but there's really no getting around the fact that the → Read More