Columnists From The United States

"Courage is not a quality one normally associates with mathematicians. Yet it should apply to people who work in their attics in secret for seven years without cease on a problem that has eluded the greatest mathematical minds since first proposed in 1637."

"'Optimism' is the perfect way to trivialize everything that Reagan was or did. […] Optimism? Every other person on the No. 6 bus is an optimist. What distinguished Reagan was what he did and said. Reagan was optimistic about America amid the cynicism and general retreat of the post-Vietnam era because he believed unfashionably that America was both great and good."

"I worked for him as a research assistant out of college. I was scared the entire time. Not because he did anything to make me feel uncomfortable – he'd be incapable of that – but […] he had a formidable dignity to him, and you always knew you were in the presence […] of a superior intellect. I think he ranks with Bill Buckley, Irving Kristol – as among the top conservative intellectuals of the last fifty years. He was one of the great defenders of our civilization and he represented what was best about it, and his voice will be missed and never replaced."

"He was one of the most intelligent and honest men I have ever known. […] Charles led a life of change, breaking away and rebuilding with every new generation. He succeeded out of sheer will and a type of quiet passion. His was a life of growth and discovery. And, for the many of us who knew him or followed his writings, there was a genuine genius to his 68-year journey."

"He was literally in a class by himself. He was […] one of a kind. And […] for all of the sharpness of his thought and writing […] he was extraordinarily kind and gentle. And the combination made you love him. And we did. All of us did. The audience did. You couldn't help it. […] He was a giant of our time, and of our trade. […] He wrote beautifully ; he was careful about his facts ; he thought things through ; and he conducted himself with extraordinary dignity and grace. […] You couldn't dislike him. You couldn't help but admire him. […] Even if you disagreed with him, you recognized the power of his thought, the thoroughness of his research, and the quality of his writing. And […] if you knew him personally, there was that wonderful quality that he had – that kindness, that gentleness, that grace – and […] if you knew what he’d been through, and you could see what he’d overcome, and you saw the way he’d handled all that, […] you admired him as you probably didn’t admire anyone else. I can’t think of anyone on earth that I admired more than Charles Krauthammer, and I admire him to this day."

"Charles was a conservative intellectual, and he looked at things the way they were. He wasn't a knee-jerk anything. [...] I think that his passing is such a loss for conservatism - it's such a loss for public discourse, which, as Mort {Kondracke] just said, is getting more toxic and tribal and ugly by the day - Charles was the antidote to all of that. [...] He also had an incredibly sweet, sunny disposition. I don't think I ever saw Charles dark or angry at anything. And I think that's why he was able to [...] persevere through all of the incredible obstacles that life handed out to him, which he did not dwell on for a second."

"This is not the “rule of law”...it is the “rule of law enforcement.”"

"When we start fighting crime by any means necessary we become guilty of the same hypocrisy as law enforcement agencies throughout history that break the rules to get the villains, and so become villains themselves."

"In conclusion, they should let me out of jail."

"Politeness is wasted on the dishonest, who will always take advantage of any well-intended concession."

"What an age of innocence it was, the Watergate era... way back in the halcyon days when the US could be contrasted with totalitarian regimes on matters of surveillance."

"The truth is that I am a sentient computer program and I fully intend to burn your cities to the ground."

"The main point seems to be that I'm arrogant and narcissistic, which should be news to exactly four people."

"I would love to debate any politician in any western state on the question of whether the rule of law ought to be respected in a world where even the most "respectable" governments establish intelligence agencies that routinely violate those laws at taxpayer expense and at no real penalty to anyone involved."

"Being an atheist is like not owning a TV – completely rational, but best kept to one's self."

"The less said about my extended family back in ranch country the better, as I don't want the ATF burning them alive."

"I, for instance, am a jackass, and this anguishes me quite a bit, or at least it would if I were not so fond of being a jackass, which has long been a hobby of mine."

"Anyone who dismisses out of hand evidence that U.S. intelligence agencies still do some of the things that they now brag about having done not too long ago is not a skeptic, but a fool."

"I am a tremendous optimist for someone who has grown up amid the twilight of American competence."

"We're in a state of conflict with the Government. Either we are going to jail or we're going to win."

"Watching D. Jack of the Eagles, his play is horrible; he dropped 2 TDs and several other catches, plus he's chicken and wants no part of contact. Eew."

"You do have your teammates behind you: your fullback and your halfback, and that’s only because they have to be."

"I'll Call the President. President, we need the National Guard! We need as many men as you can spare! Because we are killing the Patriots! So call the dogs off! Send the National Guard, please!"

"I want to ask America: What does crow taste like? Because y'all are eating it."

"Bernie's particular brand of socialism is probably better described as 'grandparent envy.'"

"And Black voters over 45 have lived long enough to see the history made by Obama, but also have an even longer memory of the disappointment and shortcomings of candidates who failed. They’ve surveyed the polarized political landscape and bitterly divided Congress, and they doubt that a Sanders’-style political revolution is even a remote possibility in an age when just voting to fund the government is regularly up for debate. Many of them admired the grit and talent of Warren but had no faith that white men in any significant numbers would support a woman for president, even if she was the best choice. The entire black constituency is not unified behind Biden, however; there’s a significant generational split, with many younger voters backing Sanders. These younger voters grew up in the shadow of new possibilities presented by Obama’s victories. For them, the first election they participated in or can even recall was an election of phenomenal change, where a black candidate defied all expectations to win back-to-back terms as president. These are voters who know that hope has worked and believe it can work again, so they are open to Sanders’ critiques of the high costs of college and income inequality, and they agree there’s an urgent need for change."

"I am supporting Bernie Sanders for president because I believe that his campaign and his understanding of politics complements the priorities that women of color defined decades ago...At the same time that I was growing up in Cleveland, Bernie Sanders, who was a few years older, was growing up in Brooklyn. He noticed some of the same paradoxes and injustices that I did and came to a similar conclusion: that he needed to get involved...Sanders has devoted most of his life to social movements. He has shaped them and been shaped by them. He understands that the most substantial and meaningful change comes from the bottom up, not the top down...Sanders has said that as president he will be “organizer-in-chief”. He is committed to fighting for regular working people, which is most of us, and he has the advantage of connection with an existing broad-based social movement. As president he can implement policies that give those who are most harmed by the current system full access to opportunity and a decent human life...In 2016 I served on the LGBTQ steering committee for the Sanders campaign. I am even more excited to support him now...Four of the most dynamic women of color in Congress – representatives Pramila Jayapal, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib – have endorsed Bernie...The stakes could not be higher. Before the 2016 election I dreaded a return to the Jim Crow era signaled by the slogan “Make America Great Again”, which obviously meant white. Tragically that is exactly what happened. Four more years is unthinkable. That is why I am working to elect President Bernie Sanders."

"The Super Tuesday results reveal a serious flaw in Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign: his lack of support among African Americans, whose votes are critical not only for winning the Democratic primary, but for defeating President Donald Trump in the fall. Democrats who wish to beat Trump but prefer Sanders to former Vice President Joe Biden, must ask themselves the following question: Can a campaign that rests primarily on class warfare and economic justice, one that largely relegates race to a concern simply encompassed by economic reform, attract enough black voters to prevail?"

"Let’s face it, Biden isn’t so great on race, either. His support of the controversial 1994 crime bill, as well as his opposition to busing in the 1970s, should give pause to anyone who thinks of him as a committed racial progressive. But Biden has some built-in advantages over Sanders: He was vice president to the first black president, and his moderate politics are generally seen as making him more electable than Sanders. Black folks, given Trump’s threats to racial progress, want him out of the White House in the worst way. The map doesn’t get much easier for Sanders in the next round of primaries; in several upcoming states, the black community is key. No one expects him to abandon his long-held economic message, but if he wants to increase his support from black voters, he needs to pay more attention to race and racism. Otherwise, his revolution will soon fail again."

"No matter who wins the Democratic presidential nomination, many millions of people will refuse to unsee what has become all too clear. On the verge of spring 2020, we can see what we’re up against: A crowing media establishment, eager to relegate the Bernie Sanders campaign to the political margins. A gloating Democratic Party establishment, glad to rally around Potemkin candidate Joe Biden and extol his carefully crafted façade. Overall, interlocking systems based on greed and corporate power instead of shared resources and genuine democracy."

"For a brief moment last Tuesday after the Democratic presidential debate, past the hallways that snaked from the spin room to the exit near the back of the Gaillard Center in South Carolina, two of the candidates ended up stuck together in a small room, unable to leave. There was a problem with the door — security needed to unlock it — and so they stood together waiting. Had chance put them there with anybody else, it might’ve been a moment of awkward silence. Amy Klobuchar and Bernie Sanders dislike plenty of people, but not each other. The fact of their friendship, based on a little-discussed, yearslong mutual respect, is all at once entirely unexpected and intuitively obvious. As candidates, they shared a stubborn force of will and a fierce distaste for their enemies — both of them salty, but in vastly different ways. As senators, they work together all the time, but in matters of ideology and political sensibility, they agree on very little. He, for example, will hate this article — see: "political gossip," personality-driven media, etc. She already loves it."

"On Tuesday night, there was no mistaking the smug joy of studio pundits and Democratic Party operatives on networks like AT&T-owned CNN and Comcast-owned MSNBC. Meanwhile, the New York Times rushed into print yet another all-out attack piece masquerading as a “news” article about Sanders. Dominant media have routinely slanted coverage to make Sanders look bad, often bypassing context and skewing facts. It was just another day at the office last week when the Times front-paged a flagrant smear of Sanders as a supposed propaganda tool of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. A former U.S. ambassador to Moscow quickly denounced the story as a “distortion of history.” Such regular deceptions from a range of corporate media shouldn’t surprise us, but they should never cease to outrage us. The same is true of the rampant corporate sleaziness in the upper reaches of the Democratic National Committee. Corporate media and corporate Democrats want the Bernie 2020 campaign -- and the grassroots energy behind it -- to melt away. That’s not going to happen. Movements that have been propelling the Sanders campaign are here for the long haul -- as determined to keep fighting for social justice as top corporate executives are determined to keep collecting huge paychecks. (And that’s saying something.)"

"Nobody in their right mind believes Joe Biden is going to be on the ticket in 2024 and the vice president is certainly not up to this job. So, you've got people like Liz Warren who are now making all kinds of noises about taking the leadership reins of the Democratic Party. Bernie Sanders this week talked about, well, if Biden's not on the ticket, I may make another run at the age of 135, but the progressives are really agitated because they're saying, "Look, we're going to lose in November because we have a messaging issue," which is not the case, "but also because we have not delivered on our agenda.""

"For many voters, the 2016 election was their first introduction to the Vermont senator with the unkempt hair and radical ideas. He knew more people would know his name if he ran again in 2020, but he needed to do more: He needed to hire a more diverse staff, attend events at historically black colleges and universities, speak to black media and black people directly, and, perhaps more than anything, listen to black voices. He did all that. But despite his efforts, the support never quite materialized. From the South Carolina primary through Super Tuesday, among black voters, Sanders was trounced by former Vice President Joe Biden. Sanders offered a revolution; voters rebuffed it. The black people who did support Sanders tended to be younger—and young people tend to vote at lower rates than older people do."

"Bernie is a taker, not a maker"

"Since Biden circa 2022 is often compared to 1970s Jimmy Carter due to a combination of sluggish job approval ratings, unhappy progressive activists, and big-time economic problems (especially inflation), it is germane to observe that Carter managed to soundly defeat Ted Kennedy — the liberal lion of the 1970s and subsequent decades — in the 1980 nomination contest. Are there any Ted Kennedys around right now to mobilize progressive anti-administration grievances into a successful insurgent candidacy? Someday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may have that stature — but not now. Indeed, the only potential rival from any wing of the party who is in that position is Bernie Sanders, who is older than Biden. And even if there were some Kennedy-like figure available, would the fight disable the Democratic Party (as it arguably did in 1980) more than slogging ahead with the incumbent?"

"All of this is hypothetical, of course, because the 79-year-old Biden insists he is running again. If he does, no Democrat can defeat him. And if Biden bows out, the front-runner for the nomination will be Kamala Harris. Harris cannot clear the field like Biden can, but she will carry a decisive edge as the sitting vice-president. The trouble for liberals is that Harris is at least as unpopular as Biden, and her prior campaign for the presidency was a disaster. Against Donald Trump or Florida governor Ron DeSantis, neither Biden nor Harris inspire a great deal of confidence. But all of this has obscured, for the most part, another dispiriting reality for the many progressives and leftists who have grown used to having one of their own run competitive races for the presidency: There is no obvious heir to Bernie Sanders. The Vermont senator, now 80, will almost certainly not run for president a third time. Sanders is an unabashedly left-wing democratic socialist who won major states in both of his presidential bids. If 2020 was a step back for Sanders — he won far fewer votes against Biden than he did against the polarizing Hillary Clinton four years earlier — he still broke through on major terrain, beating the field in enormous states like California and growing his support with working-class Latinos. He was wildly popular with voters under 30. Outside of perhaps Jesse Jackson or George McGovern, there was never a presidential candidate like Sanders in modern American history: someone who contested a Democratic primary from the far left, against the full brunt of the political Establishment, and finished runner-up each time."

"I hope Bernie Sanders is the destruction of the Democratic Party. It's time to break up the two party dictatorship."

"Rather than “strip” millions and millions of people of their health insurance, he wants to be sure millions and millions of people actually get health insurance. This was Sanders’ position as far back as 1993 when newly-elected President Bill Clinton put First Lady Hillary Clinton in charge of reforming our disheveled and unjust health care system. Her task force huffed and puffed in secret for months, calling in legions of experts and academics, ultimately producing a plan so complicated and impenetrable – not to mention unexplainable – that it would have collapsed of its own ponderous weight even if the Republicans had not propagandized it into a laughing stock of pretensions and inefficiencies that could only make matters worse."

"All these years later, Sanders is still fighting the battle for single payer, Medicare-like coverage for all, even as fellow Democrats capitulated to the siren songs of the health and insurance industries. President Obama, himself a one-time advocate of single payer coverage, buckled to the insurance companies and its lobbyists and minions in Congress and agreed to health care legislation (the Affordable Care Act) that would continue to treat healing the sick as a profit center instead of a basic human right."

"Sanders had his weaknesses. He failed to win over a majority of Black voters, particularly those in the South, and struggled to compete with all voters over 50, who make up a large chunk of those who show up in primaries. His socialist brand limited him in states like Florida. His age, while a novelty in 2016, probably hampered him in 2020. A liberal coalition of Democratic voters, those deeply loyal to Clinton, always reviled Sanders, while his supporters who merely disliked her had evaporated four years later, choosing Biden instead."

"If Sanders were to run again, I’d probably bet on him losing again. In 2020 he underperformed by many metrics compared to his 2016 run against Hillary Clinton, and his continual problems with turning out Black voters, moderates and first-time voters in the primaries seem likely to encumber a third attempt as well. But in the unlikely event that he won, he would be well-positioned to beat Trump. Democratic turnout will be high in any general election against Trump; Sanders is immune to Trump’s powerful broadsides against establishment candidate corruption; and Sanders is uniquely well-suited for our populist moment. (None of this is to say I wouldn't have concerns about his age or his competitiveness against a different Republican nominee.) In an ideal world, Sanders is able to help foster the arrival of one of the next lefty champions in electoral politics. But given the right circumstances, he shouldn’t be ruled out as a valuable contributor to a future nominating contest that could be at risk of a dangerously narrow range of debate."

"If Bernie Sanders wins he'll be the first socialist elected president since 2008."

"Where does the left go from here exactly? The most obvious successors to Sanders are the Squad: the leftist members of Congress who endorsed him for president and, in the case of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, worked on his first presidential campaign. None, including AOC, are probably in a position to run in 2024 because members of the House have struggled, historically, to mount serious presidential bids. AOC herself will be turning just 35, the minimum age required by the Constitution to serve as president. Another congressman, Ro Khanna of California, co-chaired Sanders’s 2020 campaign and has been talked about as a future presidential candidate, but unless he reaches a higher office, he is unlikely to ever be a top-tier national candidate. Jamaal Bowman, a Squad member like AOC, could be a compelling contender one day if he ever rises to mayor, governor, or senator in New York."

"He continues, even as the party elites rig the primaries against him, to make a mockery of democratic participation, to hold up the Democrats as a tool for change. He will soon be urging his supporters to vote for Hillary Clinton, actively working as an impediment to political mobilization and an advocate for political lethargy. Sanders, whose promise of a political revolution is as hollow as competing campaign slogans, will be rewarded for his duplicity. He will be allowed to keep his seniority in the Democratic caucus. The party will not mount a campaign in Vermont to unseat him from the U.S. Senate. He will not, as he has feared, end up a pariah like Ralph Nader. But he, like everyone else in the establishment, will have sold us out."

"Operating with the baseline assumption that Sanders runs only if Biden doesn’t, another condition is that no serious politician with Sanders’ worldview runs as well. If a credible advocate for democratic socialism and anti-imperialism steps up to the plate, then Sanders should use the occasion to pass the torch to the next generation and act as a surrogate for his chosen candidate. (Sanders’ circle has reportedly encouraged Rep. Ro Khanna of California to consider a presidential bid, toward that very end it seems.) Assuming those conditions are met, another Sanders run wouldn’t excite me the way his first two runs did, but it could still be a force for tremendous good. Sanders has become an extraordinarily influential politician through his previous two runs. In 2020, most of the major Democratic candidates took on some of his signature policy proposals like "Medicare for All" — or positioned themselves by holding them at some kind of measured distance. They did this because they believed that Sanders was tapping into real desires in the progressive Democratic electorate, and because they viewed Sanders as a serious threat whose ideas should be co-opted or moderated instead of ignored."

"Markets are unsettled because of geopolitical risks, the slowdown in China, and because Bernie Sanders has become a viable candidate."

"Sanders has policy ideas that cross the simple partisan divides, that unite people by impacting them where they live. He thumbs his nose at millionaires, yet is joining the Senate, which has more than 40 of them. With a lame-duck president and nearly evenly split Senate, where coalitions matter and every vote counts, Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator from Vermont, is poised to make a difference."

"Without Sanders or a Sanders-like figure in the mix, the 2024 Democratic presidential primary could easily end up feeling more like an attempted coronation than an open field. With Biden in the White House, and the specter of another Donald Trump presidential nomination from the Republican Party, Democratic voters will be primed to look for cues from Biden, party elites and the media on how to keep the boat steady while warding off another potential showdown against Trump. Biden administration figures like Vice President Kamala Harris or Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg are obvious candidates for Biden’s case for Biden 2.0. Without a serious lefty challenger, the primary debate could skew far too centrist — especially on economic issues, given the challenge of inflation — and focus too heavily on defeating Trump rather than laying out a robust, positive vision of how to address society’s ills."

"It pained me that so many people regarded Bernie Sanders's 2016 campaign as a bitter defeat rather than a resounding victory in proving there was a constituency and momentum for progressive ideas that could be built upon in the years to come."