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Eric Levitz

Features Writer, Intelligencer
@EricLevitz

Eric Levitz is a features writer for Intelligencer. He covers politics and economics.

  1. coronavirus stimulus
    3 Reasons Pelosi Should Take Trump’s $1.8 Trillion Stimulus DealThe U.S. economy needs stimulus now — and there’s a high risk that Biden won’t be able to provide any next year.
  2. supreme court
    Amy Coney Barrett’s Judicial Neutrality Is a Political FictionWhen Barrett says that she interprets “the laws as written,” she is really asserting that right-wing jurisprudence is objective truth.
  3. authoritarianism
    Mike Lee Opposes Democracy — But Supports Rule by ‘The People’Like other Republicans, Lee’s view on whether “government by the people” is desirable depends on who counts as “the people.”
  4. 2020 vice-presidential debate
    No One Won the Pence-Harris Debate. But Trump Lost.The jarringly normal debate drove home how much worse Trump is at politics than his “generic Republican” running mate.
  5. the senate
    The GOP Is Sabotaging Trump’s Economy a Month Before Election Day. Here’s Why.McConnell can afford to walk away from COVID relief because the Senate’s partisan skew tightly limits how many seats his party can lose.
  6. vision 2020
    Harris and Pence Represent Two Different AmericasEven more than Trump and Biden, the California liberal and conservative Evangelical answer to wildly disparate constituencies.
  7. president trump
    Trump’s New Message Helps the Coronavirus, Not His CampaignThe president is effectively prioritizing getting Americans killed above his own reelection.
  8. president trump
    GOP Elites Thought They Could Buy Their Way Out of a PandemicFor the cost of 200 rapid COVID-19 tests, attendees at Barrett’s nomination party thought they could purchase reprieve from a plague.
  9. vision 2020
    3 Reasons Catching Coronavirus Could Be Bad for Trump PoliticallyShifting media attention away from COVID and toward Biden’s liabilities just got a lot harder.
  10. presidential debates
    Trump Has No Power to Block a Change in the Debate RulesIf the president boycotts the second debate, he’ll give his rival a free primetime infomercial, broadcast across all the major networks.
  11. corruption
    Trump Orders Agencies to Aid His Campaign — and Its Violent SupportersThe president is stuffing self-promotional letters into food-aid boxes and giving pro-vigilante talking points to Homeland Security staffers.
  12. presidential debates
    Even Trump’s Base Found His Debate Performance Off-puttingTrump voters called his showing “annoying,” and “overboard,” while his biggest media champions meekly declared the debate “a tie.”
  13. presidential debates
    5 Reasons Joe Biden (Probably) Won the First DebateA tie goes to the guy who’s winning by seven points.
  14. satire
    Source: Biden to Debate Wearing Brain Implant, ‘Super Bazooka’ ArmsThe Democratic nominee refused to consent to pre-debate brain scan to prove that there is no AI homunculus lodged behind his eyes.
  15. trump tax returns
    Trump’s Returns Make Case for Funding the Tax PoliceThe president’s taxes are full of evasion schemes that our underfunded IRS has failed to punish.
  16. supreme court
    Dems Should Turn Barrett Hearings Into an Anti-GOP InfomercialThe party has no chance of blocking Trump’s nominee. But they do have an opportunity to spotlight the GOP’s unpopular judicial agenda.
  17. intelligencer chats
    Would Court Packing Be Too Slippery a Slope?In the face of a 6-3 majority pushed through before the election, would Democrats favor an expanded Court? Filibuster reform? Guam statehood?
  18. climate
    The Economy of World War II Proved a Green New Deal Is PossibleAmericans didn’t have to choose between guns and butter during the war. And they don’t need to choose between prosperity and sustainability today.
  19. qanon
    QAnon Is Madness. But Believing In It Can Be Rational.For those who lack the resources to understand or influence political reality, conspiracy theories are more useful than the truth.
  20. vision 2020
    Trump’s Closing Message to Seniors: I Don’t Care If You Die“It affects elderly people,” Trump said of COVID. “It affects virtually nobody.”
  21. supreme court
    If the McConnell Rule Is Dead, Court-Packing Is PermittedTrump has a right to appoint RBG’s replacement. And Biden will have a right to award himself a 7-6 Supreme Court majority.
  22. vote by mail
    How Democrats’ Reliance on Mail-In Voting Could Help TrumpEven if the Postal Service does a perfect job this November.
  23. authoritarianism
    It Is Not Undemocratic to Call Trump’s Presidency ‘Illegitimate’Fear of Trump’s authoritarianism isn’t hysteria, and disputing the legitimacy of his rule isn’t anti-democratic.
  24. climate change
    Biden’s Climate Messaging Skirts an Inconvenient Truth“It’s too late to make things better, but we can limit how much worse things get” doesn’t seem to play well on the stump.
  25. inequality
    Study: Inequality Robs $2.5 Trillion From U.S. Workers Each YearIf America’s level of income inequality had remained constant since 1970, the median U.S. worker would now make $100,000 a year.
  26. public health
    Congress Must Bail Out Bars for Public Health’s SakeIn the absence of federal help, states will gamble on reckless reopenings to prop up falling revenue.
  27. the republican party
    The GOP Is No Longer the Pro-Business PartyThe right’s contempt for climate science and Keynesianism makes it incapable of governing in capital’s long-term interests.
  28. vision 2021
    Biden 2020: Change That Wall Street Liberals Can Believe In?Biden seems interested in redistributing income, but not in challenging the private power of his party’s favorite industries.
  29. q&a
    The Conservative Case for Organized LaborA dissident conservative think tank — and Marco Rubio — is calling on the GOP to embrace collective-bargaining rights.
  30. vision 2020
    5 Reasons Biden’s Odds of Victory Look Better Than EverThere’s still plenty of time on the clock, but the past 48 hours of news and polling makes Biden’s lead look sturdier than before the RNC.
  31. authoritarianism
    Many GOP Voters Value America’s Whiteness More Than Its DemocracyA new study found that anti-democratic sentiments have broad support among GOP voters — especially those who resent nonwhites’ political power.
  32. coronavirus news
    Here’s the Latest Good (and Bad) News About COVID-19America’s epidemic is slowing — but a globe-spanning, coronavirus-induced hunger crisis is just beginning.
  33. republican national convention
    The RNC Treated Blue America Like Occupied TerritoryRepublicans claimed federal grounds as their partisan property, then spoke of Democratic cities as though they were hostile foreign countries.
  34. republican national convention
    RNC Warns That If Biden Wins, Things Will Be As Bad As They Are NowThe RNC argued that the “continuous riots” unfolding in America’s cities today give “a good view of the future under Biden.”
  35. federal reserve
    In Historic Move, Fed Will No Longer Kill Jobs to Fight Phantom InflationFor decades, the central bank has deliberately slowed growth whenever unemployment got “too low.” Jerome Powell says that era is over.
  36. republican national convention
    On Night Two, the RNC Went on Offense Against Objective RealityOn Tuesday night, Republicans paired bald-faced lies with indictments of every entity that could hold them accountable to the truth.
  37. republican national convention
    The RNC Has Made a Strong Case for America’s Imminent CollapseThe paranoid authoritarianism on display at the Republican convention makes it clear that our Republic’s fever isn’t breaking anytime soon.
  38. populism
    The Populist Case for Trump Is Now 100 Percent Policy FreeIn an op-ed, GOP senator Josh Hawley argues that Trump has fought Wall Street to aid working people, citing no examples.
  39. the economy
    America Is Drowning in Joblessness — and Swimming in CashThanks to the CARES Act, Americans have saved roughly $930 billion more in recent months than they were on pace to do before the pandemic.
  40. democratic national convention
    Joe Biden’s DNC Speech Was Spectacularly AdequateBiden successfully conveyed that he is a decent family man who is competent at his job — which by itself qualified as an indictment of his rival.
  41. vision 2021
    Biden Has Nothing to Fear But Fear of Deficits ItselfA Biden aide just warned that Trump’s deficits will leave little room for new spending. That kind of thinking could doom a post-pandemic recovery.
  42. democratic national convention
    At the DNC, Democrats Put Social Liberalism Above Political CautionThe Electoral College overrepresents culturally conservative whites. Democrats used their convention to defend the rights of the marginalized anyway.
  43. democratic national convention
    To Put America Back Together, Biden Must Ditch BipartisanshipTo revive the economy — and restore faith in politics — a unified Democratic government will need to embrace ruthless partisanship.
  44. postal service
    Americans Must Defend the Postal Service Like Our Democracy Depends on ItAmerica’s postal system unified the nation and midwived mass democracy. Under Trump, it threatens to deliver disunion.
  45. foreign interests
    UAE Strikes Peace Deal With Israel, Sells Out PalestiniansIn exchange for a promise that Israel won’t immediately illegally annex the Jordan Valley, Abu Dhabi normalized relations with the Jewish state.
  46. the economy
    As Big Business Feasts on Cheap Credit, Small Firms StarveAnd Congress isn’t coming to the little guys’ rescue anytime soon.
  47. vision 2020
    The Flaw in Trump’s Plan to Paint Biden As Kamala Harris’s PuppetEven as he casts Biden as a tool of left-wing extremists, Trump compulsively portrays himself as a tool of right-wing ones.
  48. veepstakes
    The Pros and Cons of Kamala Harris As Biden’s VPThe California senator has all the relevant experience — and several relevant liabilities.
  49. coronavirus stimulus
    The GOP’s Big Lie About Why COVID Stimulus Talks FailedMcConnell accuses Democrats of holding relief hostage to ideological priorities unrelated to the pandemic, but that is precisely what he did.
  50. conservatism
    ‘Working Class’ Conservatism Doesn’t Work Without UnionsSelf-styled “populist” Republicans — who oppose pro-labor policies — are just Reaganites in different clothes.
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