Is that really the issue [of bathrooms and gender] we want to be pushing leading up to a momentous election like this one? It's that shortsightedness that comes from identity politics.

I prefer a dirty victory to a noble defeat.

The Republican presidential candidate [Donald Trump] provoked condemnation from leaders in both parties and around the world. He did that by proposing to bar all Muslims from entering the United States.

Here is a needle President Obama needs to thread if he chooses a ninth. The nominee would need to be so strongly qualified that he or she would be hard to reject. The person must also be willing to be nominated even though leading Senate Republicans have said they will not consider anyone the president names.

People don't know where they stand and what they're going to lose, and that makes things uncertain. The political parties try to meld people together, but then that becomes a problem. There are parallels here, to American cities, which, in the '80s, with massive rural to urban migration, saw incredible amounts of violence.

[Democrats] have lost the capacity to speak to the vast middle of America, an America that is, in large part, white, very religious and not highly educated.

We've learned something about President-elect [Donald] Trump's choice for secretary of defense. Lawmakers in Congress intend to proper debate over whether retired General James Mattis meets a requirement for civilian control of the military.