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There’s something about Marjorie. That would be Marjorie Taylor Greene, a freshman Republican congresswoman from Georgia who has filled a void as big as Donald Trump’s hair in the media since the Orange Man left the White House to hit the links full-time. Greene is by all accounts bonkers, or at least appears to have driven herself mad in a way that is all too common in the Trump era. She also seems to be a real nasty piece of work, at least in terms of how she comports herself with ideological — if that is even the right word — foes. The last four years have created a phenomenon by which people work themselves into a lather about Trump and 'doom scroll' to confirm their wildest hopes and worst fears. Add in a year of social isolation and voila!

Joe Manchin could be the most powerful man in the Senate. The senior senator from West Virginia is the last Democrat hanging onto federal office in a state that twice voted for Donald Trump by 40 points, but he doesn’t always toe the party line. Of the ‘defund the police’ movement that gained traction on the Left over the summer, Manchin says, ‘Defund my butt.’ If you were unsure about federal funding of his posterior, he went on to elaborate: ‘We do not have some crazy socialist agenda, and we do not believe in defunding the police.’ Manchin described a Democratic proposal to continue trying to impeach Trump after the 45th president leaves office as ‘so ill-advised’. Yet he did not vote to acquit Trump in his Senate trial last year.

On the eve of making Donald Trump the first twice-impeached president in American history, the Democratic House majority attempted a clever workaround: passing a resolution exhorting Vice President Mike Pence to invoke an obscure constitutional provision for dealing with presidential disability to remove Trump himself. The 25th Amendment was ratified in the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in order to clarify presidential succession and establish continuity of government in the event that a sitting president became incapacitated. It normally involves the temporary, voluntary transfer of power to the vice president during presidential colonoscopies and other medical procedures involving anesthetics.

In one sense, the two runoff elections taking place in Georgia on Tuesday are relatively simple. If Democrats win both of the seats that are up for grabs, they gain control of the Senate. Anything less than that and they don’t. A Republican sweep of the seats means Joe Biden will begin his presidency alongside a 52-48 GOP Senate majority. Nothing is that simple in the strangest White House transition process on record, however. As with so much else over the past four years, President Trump looms large. He has not conceded the presidential race and Georgia is one of the states where he is contesting the results, even though that puts him at odds with local Republican elected officials.

When Donald Trump took his famous escalator ride, the Republican party was too attached to abstract principles at the expense of the material interests of its own voters. It wasn’t even doing a particularly good job of adhering to its preferred ideological abstractions. Whatever the Democratic party’s ideological failings, its leadership understands the importance of delivering tangible benefits to the electoral coalition that puts them in power (although their newfound suburban voters could be in for a rude awakening if the Democrats ever get too much power). Trump presented an opportunity to change this.

Joe Biden's selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate is a classic good news/bad news scenario for President Trump's re-election campaign. First, the good news: as is the case with the top of ticket, you can employ the old horseshoe strategy against the senator from California. Hit 'em from the left, hit 'em from the right. Harris is simultaneously too liberal in her policy preferences for much of the country and too insincere in the brand of progressivism she adopted as it became in vogue in the Democratic party. When it was fashionable even in California for Democrats to lock ’em up, she did so, few questions asked. When the way to get ahead was playing footsie with defund the police, she quickly adapted to that new reality too.

'No corporate bailouts,' says Michigan Rep. Justin Amash as lawmakers debate an economic stimulus package in response to coronavirus. Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle, usually somewhere in Amash's orbit if not quite a fellow traveler, demurs. She wrote that the proper response to the outbreak is, much to her chagrin, 'subsidize everything'. Libertarians are divided on coronavirus, an unusual event (the virus, that is, not intense disagreements among libertarians). Of libertarians, it has been said of late that there are none in a pandemic. We are all Andrew Yang — he of the universal basic income — now. What about conservatives? My longtime TAC colleague Matt Purple says they too are ill suited to the current crisis, as are perhaps humans more generally.

The results from Iowa are still trickling in, but however much confusion there is in Des Moines, the choices that lie ahead for Democrats are clear. There are some questions the party’s leaders and voters can’t put off answering for much longer. How long will they prop up former Vice President Joe Biden? Whoever is ultimately crowned the winner in Iowa, Biden was among the losers — a distant fourth place finish from the nominal frontrunner and establishment favorite in the kind of state he is supposed to be able to win back from President Trump. We’ve seen establishment candidates survive weak showings in the early states only to right the ship in a state like South Carolina before, usually on the Republican side. But nobody has had to do so from such a position of weakness.

It’s Donald Trump’s party now, but Republicans are still struggling with what that means. The primaries weren’t especially kind to insurgent candidates who imitated the president’s brash style — albeit almost uniformly without his humor or marketing flare — or wrapped themselves in the MAGA flag. That’s not to say Trump didn’t have an outsized influence in the party’s nominating contests this year. He most certainly did, as Ron DeSantis, Brian Kemp and Kris Kobach — the Republican gubernatorial nominees in Florida, Georgia and Kansas, respectively — can all attest. So can soon-to-be former Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina. When Alabama’s Rep.

In a bruising midterm election year, the race for governor of Georgia could be the most contentious in the country. It’s certainly the most ideologically polarised. Here’s why. Democrats rejected a relatively moderate candidate in the primary and nominated Stacey Abrams, an Ivy League-educated liberal who if elected would be the nation’s first black female governor (she won with 76 per cent of the vote). Republicans rebuffed their sitting lieutenant governor to nominate Brian Kemp, a self-proclaimed ‘politically incorrect’ white conservative boosted by President Trump (he won with 69 per cent of the vote).

It seems like ancient history now, but the week before the ill-fated summit in Helsinki President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. It was Trump’s second nomination to America’s highest court in as many years and conservatives overwhelmingly cheered his choice. “I’ve often heard that, other than matters of war and peace, this is the most important decision a President will make,” Trump said in the East Room of the White House. “The Supreme Court is entrusted with the safeguarding of the crown jewel of our Republic, the Constitution of the United States.” Kavanaugh was picked to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Republican appointee who was nevertheless a swing vote on the Supreme Court.

Depending on who you believe, the departure of White House chief of staff John Kelly is either imminent or “fake news.” Under President Trump, today’s fake news often becomes tomorrow’s confirmed headline. What is beyond dispute is that Kelly’s attempt to impose order on Trump’s wild West Wing is a failure, at least by comparison to his predecessors. That of course may be an unfair standard by which to judge Kelly. Most previous presidents came into office with disciplined political operations that translate well to the workings of the White House and advisers whom they trust. Trump essentially inherited all that from the Republican National Committee, with his most trusted confidantes actually having little to no Washington experience.

For Americans who can’t stand Barack Obama but don’t want to vote for Mitt Romney, November’s presidential elections look bleak. There are other candidates, however, none more obvious than Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico and the Libertarian party nominee. A greying triathlete who once climbed Mount Everest, he may not have a realistic chance of reaching the White House. But he is a politician to be reckoned with, especially since so many Americans are grumbling about the Washington status quo.  As a Libertarian, Johnson favours essentially open immigration. He also wants lower taxes and less state spending than even the vast majority of Republicans.

Right-wing Tea Party activists might well reshape the US Congress – but they have already routed the Republican establishment When angry right-wing American voters started taking to the streets to protest against the Obama administration’s policies, leading Republicans were ecstatic. In the group of protesters who became known as the Tea Party, they saw a grassroots movement they could ride back to power. Now, with the midterm elections approaching, Tea Partiers may indeed change the balance of power in Washington — but a lot of establishment Republicans will be joining their Democratic counterparts in the unemployment queue.