Evelyn Reynolds

One has signed historic climate and infrastructure legislation, steered the economy past a recession and rallied the west against Vladimir Putin. The other spent Monday on trial for fraud ranting and raving against a judge in a puerile display from the witness stand.And if a presidential election were held today, Joe Biden would lose to Donald Trump by a lot, according to the latest swing state polls.Maybe it’s the pandemic, or inflation, or tribalism, but it is increasingly hard to deny that something strange and perverse is happening in American politics.Since Biden took office the US economy has added a record 14m jobs while his list of legislative accomplishments has earned some comparisons with those of Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. Yet in a recent Gallup poll the 80-year-old’s overall approval rating was just 37%.Trump, meanwhile, is facing 91 criminal indictments in Atlanta, Miami, New York and Washington DC, some of which relate to an attempt to overthrow the US government. Yet the 77-year-old is running away with a Republican primary election from which Mike Pence, the vice-president who opposed the coup, made an ignominious early exit.On Monday Trump was in court for a New York civil business fraud case in which he has already been fined $15,000 for twice violating a limited gag order that prevents him from criticising court staff.The case threatens to tear down the Trump Organization, revealing that the emperor has no clothes. Voters do not seem to care. Swing state voters say they trust Trump over Biden on the economy by a 22-point margin, 59% to 37%, according to this weekend’s poll from the New York Times and Siena College.The same poll showed Trump beating Biden in five of the six most important battleground states exactly a year before the presidential election, although if Trump were to be convicted of criminal charges against him, some of his support would erode by about 6%.Conventional wisdom used to hold that Trump’s myriad legal woes would help in the Republican primary and hurt him in the presidential election. Now even that no longer seems certain as Trump appears politically bulletproof and Democrats sweat over the disconnect between Biden’s record and his flagging numbers.It seems no event or behavior in court hurts those dynamics. In the sober trappings of a Manhattan courtroom, Trump’s belligerent, boorish conduct was thrown into sharper relief than at his knockabout political rallies. Trump repeatedly clashed with Judge Arthur Engoron, prompting him to warn that he might remove the ex-president from the witness stand if he did not answer questions directly.As if pleading with parents to discipline an unruly child, the judge entreated Trump’s lawyers: “I beseech you to control him if you can. If you can’t, I will. I will excuse him and draw every negative inference that I can.”Engoron added: “This is not a political rally. This is a courtroom.”It was a telling observation, given the way in which Trump has consciously and deliberately conflated his court appearances with his 2024 election campaign, frequently addressing reporters in the hallway. The mountain of legal troubles that would end most candidacies has turned into a USP of his White House run.There is no better symbol of this than the mugshot taken in August when Trump surrendered and was booked at the Fulton county jail in Atlanta. For any other politician, it would be career-ending; for any other citizen, a badge of shame. For Trump, however, it has become a valuable to asset to slap on campaign merchandise, make money and rally the base.Again, on Monday, Trump knew well that his courtroom antics would grab media attention. He told reporters: “So while Israel is being attacked, while Ukraine is being attacked, while inflation is eating our country alive, I’m down here.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“These are all political opponent attack ads by the Biden administration, their poll numbers are terrible. The New York Times came back with a poll that I’m leading all over the place, but it’s a very unfair situation.”He whined petulantly: “I’m sure the judge will rule against me because he always rules against me. This is a very unfair trial, very, very unfair and I hope the public is watching.”He rambled, hurled insults, boasted about his properties and his wealth and questioned the motivations of the Democratic New York attorney general, Letitia James, who brought the case and is seeking $250m in fines. He said: “This is a political witch-hunt and I think she should be ashamed of herself.”As a distraction technique, it worked. Neal Katyal, a lawyer who has argued dozens of cases before the supreme court, wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: “Everyone is talking about his temper tantrums, instead of talking about his commissions of fraud and that he is a cheat. He’s already lost the merits of the case, so this is his best play.”It was a show of impunity from a man who demonstrated on 6 January 2021 that rules and rituals mean nothing to him. Few of Trump’s critics doubt that he would burn democracy down given half the chance.But Trump also acknowledged that his company did not provide accurate estimates of the value of apartment towers, golf courses and other assets. New York state lawyers said those values were pumped up to win better financing terms, and Engoron has already ruled that they were fraudulent.Trump emerged from court after five hours of testimony into his happy place: a barrage of camera flashes, live coverage on the cable news networks CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, a chance to talk about his poll numbers. Anyone traumatised by the 2016 election might be suffering flashbacks.“I think it’s a very sad day for America,” said Trump, channeling grievance, resentment and victimhood as only he can. The polls suggest these are the most potent forces in politics right now. Biden has a year to find the antidote. More

As he approached another door in Fredericksburg, walking past Halloween decorations and trees starting to lose their autumn leaves, Muhammad Khan prepared his pitch to voters. Over the past several weeks, Khan has spoken to many of his Virginia neighbors, stressing to them that the upcoming legislative elections will determine the future of their state.Addressing fellow union organizers on Friday morning, Khan said: “We really need to fight, and we need Virginia blue.”Members of Unite Here, a hospitality workers’ union, have knocked on 230,000 doors on behalf of Democratic candidates in Virginia ahead of Tuesday, when all 140 legislative seats in the battleground state will be up for grabs.Republicans are looking to maintain their narrow majority in the house of delegates and flip control of the state senate, which would clear the way for the governor, Glenn Youngkin, to enact his policy agenda. But Democrats warn that Republicans would use their legislative trifecta in Richmond to enact a 15-week abortion ban and roll back access to the ballot box.The results in Virginia carry national implications.As one of only a handful of states holding elections this year, Virginia will serve as a crucial test of each party’s message to voters before the crucial presidential race next year. Should Republicans win, supporters of Donald Trump will see it as vindication that their party’s rightwing message still resonates. Should Democrats prevail, it will be seen as a boost for Joe Biden, who has lagged in recent polling but will then be able to point to a stronger Democratic performance in actual votes.In the final days before polls close on Tuesday, Democrats and Republicans in Virginia are working furiously to turn out as many voters as possible in these off-year elections.On Friday, Khan and his door-knocking partner, Linda Harris, canvassed a neighborhood in Fredericksburg and encouraged voters to support the house delegate candidate Josh Cole and state senate candidate Joel Griffin, whose races will help determine the majority in each chamber of the legislature.Cole lost his house of delegates seat in 2021, when Republicans secured a narrow majority in the chamber on the back of Youngkin’s success. Just one year after Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by 10 points in Virginia, Youngkin won the state’s governorship by two points in 2021.But Cole feels that the political environment in Virginia has shifted since 2021, giving Democrats an opportunity to take back full control of the legislature. Running in a new district after Virginia redrew its legislative maps following the 2020 census, Cole said he was “cautiously optimistic” about Tuesday’s outcome.“Republicans had momentum [in 2021]. We had just won the presidency; people were frustrated at the administration,” Cole said. “And Glenn Youngkin just came out of nowhere. He was this bright, shining star, and people were attracted to that. And as we fast-forward to two years later, some people are still excited about Youngkin, but people are starting to see that he hasn’t put everything together like he said he would.”The 2022 midterms suggested that swing voters in Virginia may indeed be drifting back toward Democrats following Youngkin’s election. In 2022, Republicans targeted three congressional seats in Virginia, but they only managed to flip one district while Democrats held the other two.Despite that setback, Rich Anderson, chair of the Republican party of Virginia, said he believes Youngkin’s leadership has positioned the party for success this year.“We now are on an arc that was established in 2021,” Anderson said. “So our trajectory, I think, is a very promising one, and we will see if it holds throughout this cycle.”But the issue of abortion has presented a challenge for Republicans in Virginia and across the country.Since Roe v Wade was overturned last year, Republican-controlled states have passed a wave of laws banning or strictly limiting access to the procedure. Virginia is now the only state in the US south without severe restrictions on abortion access, and Republicans are pushing for a “reasonable 15-week limit with exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother”, as Youngkin’s political action committee said in a recent ad. Democrats predict that Republicans’ stance on curtailing abortion access will help Democrats take full control of the Virginia legislature.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The stakes of this election are so crystal clear,” said Heather Williams, interim president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. “The states have been so incredibly important always, but I think the understanding of how critically important they are has become clear to voters since the fall of [Roe]. And the stakes in Virginia align perfectly with that.”Polling indicates the election will be very close. According to a Washington Post-Schar School survey conducted last month, 47% of likely Virginia voters indicated they planned to support a Democratic candidate for the house of delegates, while 45% of likely voters said they would back a Republican candidate.As always, the final results will come down to turnout, and data compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP) suggests early voting is down compared with 2021. As of Sunday, 776,931 voters had already cast ballots, while 1,194,185 Virginians had voted by the same point in 2021.Despite Trump’s false claims about the legitimacy of early and absentee voting, Youngkin has encouraged his supporters to cast their ballots early, and Republicans say that strategy will pay off on Tuesday.“We don’t have to win the most votes this year early, but we have to take a bigger bite out of the field that the Democrats have previously commanded,” Anderson said. “And in our targeted districts, those numbers are very promising for us.”With Democrats and Republicans running neck and neck, Unite Here believes their members’ organizing efforts could make a decisive difference in helping voters understand the crucial significance of these elections.As he has knocked doors in Virginia, Khan has shared his personal story of immigrating from Pakistan and finding good-paying union work to support his family, and he has used that story to make a larger argument about the need to elect pro-union Democrats.Mario Yedidia, Unite Here’s national field director, said: “Without the kind of personal contact that you get when a working-class person knocks on your door, if you’re a working-class voter in all these districts, you’re much less likely to get out there and vote.”Harris has similarly used her own personal background to connect with voters, framing her campaign work as a way to ensure a better future for her family. Although she lives in Georgia, Harris traveled to Virginia to help with Unite Here’s campaign efforts there, saying she wants to be able to tell her grandchildren that she did everything she could to protect the right to vote.“If you don’t use it, you lose it, and right now they’re trying to take it away. So it’s very important that they don’t take it away,” Harris said. “And as long as I’m living and breathing, I’m doing what I can.” More

When Donald Trump took the witness stand Monday morning, he started what might turn out to be his most expensive rally ever.This was supposed to be his chance to give his side of the case in a $250m fraud trial that threatens to end his business career in New York state. On the stand, Trump mentioned crime in New York City and “election interference” as if he were in front of a crowd.“Many people are leaving New York… you have the attorney general sitting here all day long, it’s a shame what’s going on,” Trump said. “We have a hostile judge, and it’s sad.”The former president’s appearance on the witness stand would feel familiar to anyone who’s ever seen a glimpse of Trump’s rallies. Outside a huge line of reporters waited to get in. Banks of TV cameras parked outside the venue. Protesters shouted. The trial judge is the sole decider of this case and the fine that is at stake. But when Trump comes to town, the circus follows.Even his testimony was reminiscent of his rallies. His statements about his real estate company were wistful, boastful and bizarre. “If I want to build something, I built a very big ballroom, a big ballroom that was built by me, it was very large, very beautiful,” Trump said when talking about using the value of Mar-a-Lago. Talking about his Scottish golf club, he promised: “At some point, at a very old age, I’ll do the most beautiful thing you’ll ever see,” he didn’t reveal what.But these pastoral passages were short-lived and overshadowed by an anger, seemingly uncontrolled at times on the stand, that was hot and furious. And the audience – at least the one that matters in the court – was having none of it.At multiple points during Trump’s testimony, Judge Arthur Engoron interrupted the former president for making “speeches” on the stand, instead of answering the prosecutor’s questions.The usually affable judge has tired of Trump and his lawyers’ grandstanding.“Did you ask for an essay on brand value?” Engoron asked the prosecutor after Trump started speaking at length about how his brand value upped the worth of his properties.Within an hour of Trump being on the stand, Engoron appeared to grow more impatient with Trump’s rambling.“I beseech you to control him or I will,” Engoron told Trump’s lawyers after Trump said “all you have to do is look at a picture of a building” to understand its value.Trump’s lawyers often stood up quickly to come to Trump’s defense, saying that he was delivering “brilliant answers” and referring to him as the “former and assumed-to-be chief executive of the United States”. When Trump’s lawyer Christopher Kise told the judge that he should hear what Trump should have to say, Engoron snapped.“No, I’m not here and these people are not here, the office of the attorney general is not here to hear him. We’re here to hear him answer the questions,” Engoron said as Trump shook his head. When Trump’s lawyers protested the judge’s comment, he sternly told them to “sit down”.Trump scored few if any legal points in the court. He often returned to the same lines of arguments, lines that the judge has rejected or questioned. He argued that the financial documents were past the statute of limitations or that he had enough cash to make lenders happy. His favorite argument seemed to be that his financial disclosures contain a disclaimer or “worthless” clause that means the banks never relied upon them.Engoron has already called that argument worthless and at one point, implored Trump to read his pre-trial ruling, where he ruled the disclosures “do not insulate defendants from liability”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“If you want to read about the disclaimer clause, read my opinion,” Engoron told Trump.Before lunch, it looked like an exasperated Engoron was so fed up of Trump’s non-answers he would throw Trump out of the courtroom. Even Trump seemed – briefly – chastened. Asked how it was going during the break, he motioned zipping his mouth shut.That didn’t last long.“The fraud is on behalf of the court,” a furious Trump barked after lunch, turning red, hands waving back and forth in front of the witness stand. He pointed to Engoron sitting next to him and, later, to New York attorney general Letitia James. “He’s the one that didn’t value the property correctly. … It’s a terrible thing you’ve done, you believed the political hack back there and that’s unfortunate.”A pause settled over the courtroom. Prosecutor Kevin Wallace looked up at Trump. “You done?” he asked the former president.“Done,” Trump responded.The trial continues. More

Mike Johnson, the hardline conservative and outspoken Christian who was elected House speaker in October, has raised eyebrows after he admitted using an app which bills itself as a tool to help people “quit porn”.A year-old clip posted online over the weekend showed Johnson discussing how he and his son use Covenant Eyes, an app which tracks users’ phone and computer use, to monitor each others’ online activity.“Covenant Eyes is the software that we’ve been using a long time in our household,” Johnson said in the clip, which was reportedly filmed at a “War on Technology” event, hosted by Cypress Baptist church in Louisiana in October 2022.The Covenant Eyes website describes the app as a tool which “helps you live porn-free with confidence”.“Porn is a human problem, we provide a human solution,” the website says.“Covenant Eyes helps you and the ones you love live porn-free through transformative accountability relationships.”There is no suggestion that Johnson, who last month told Fox News his worldview was, “Go pick up a Bible”, has a pornography addiction. In the video, posted to X by user @receiptmaven, Johnson did not say he had been using Covenant Eyes to control pornography usage.Covenant Eyes, Johnson said: “Sends a report to your accountability partner. So my accountability partner right now is Jack, my son.”The pair receive a report on one another’s internet use once a week, Johnson said, although if “anything objectionable comes up”, Johnson or his son will receive an immediate notification.Johnson said his son has “got a clean slate so far”. In the video Johnson did not comment on his own slate.Johnson’s office did not immediately respond to questions.The rightwing and socially conservative newly installed speaker of the House has made his Christian faith a cornerstone of his political career and professional life.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBefore entering politics Johnson, 51, worked for Alliance Defending Freedom, a rightwing Christian legal organization which aims to overturn same-sex marriage, enact a total ban on abortion, and strip away the already minimal rights that trans people are afforded in the US.Speaking to Fox News after he became House speaker, Johnson said: “Someone asked me today in the media, they said: ‘People are curious. What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it – that’s my worldview. That’s what I believe and so I make no apologies for it.”As well as raising questions about what Johnson does – or does not do – on his phone and computer, the Louisiana congressman’s use of Covenant Eyes could raise security concerns.In 2022 Google determined that Covenant Eyes violated its policies after a Wired investigation raised questions over how, and how much, information the app collected, although the app has since been returned to the Google Play store. More

Senior Democrats have sounded the alarm after an opinion poll showed Joe Biden trailing the Republican frontrunner Donald Trump in five out of six battleground states exactly a year before the presidential election.Trump leads in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, with Biden ahead in Wisconsin, according to a survey published on Sunday by the New York Times and Siena College. Biden beat Trump in all six states in 2020 but the former president now leads by an average of 48% to 44% across these states in a hypothetical rematch.Additional findings released on Monday, however, showed that if Trump were to be convicted of criminal charges against him, some of his support in some swing states would erode by about 6%, which could be enough to tip the electoral college in Biden’s favour.Even so, the survey is in line with a series of recent polls that show the race too close for comfort for many Trump foes as voters express doubts about Biden’s age – the oldest US president in history turns 81 later this month – and handling of the economy, prompting renewed debate over whether he should step aside to make way for a younger nominee.“It’s very late to change horses; a lot will happen in the next year that no one can predict & Biden’s team says his resolve to run is firm,” David Axelrod, a former strategist for President Barack Obama, wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “He’s defied CW [conventional wisdom] before but this will send tremors of doubt thru the party – not ‘bed-wetting,’ but legitimate concern.”Bill Kristol, director of the Defending Democracy Together advocacy organisation and a former Republican official, tweeted: “It’s time. President Biden has served our country well. I’m confident he’ll do so for the next year. But it’s time for an act of personal sacrifice and public spirit. It’s time to pass the torch to the next generation. It’s time for Biden to announce he won’t run in 2024.”Andrew Yang, who lost to Biden in the 2020 Democratic primary, added: “If Joe Biden were to step aside, he would go down in history as an accomplished statesman who beat Trump and achieved a great deal. If he decides to run again it may go down as one of the great overreaches of all time that delivers us to a disastrous Trump second term.”The New York Times and Siena poll suggests that Biden’s multiracial and multigenerational coalition, critical to his success in 2020, is decaying. Voters under age 30 favour the president by only a single percentage point, his lead among Hispanic voters is down to single digits and his advantage in urban areas is half of Trump’s edge in rural regions.Black voters – a core Biden demographic – are now registering 22% support in these states for Trump, a level that the New York Times reported was unseen in presidential politics for a Republican in modern times. The president’s staunch support for Israel in the current Middle East crisis has also prompted criticism from young and progressive voters.Survey respondents in swing states say they trust Trump over Biden on the economy by a 22-point margin. Some 71% say Biden is “too old”, including 54% of his own supporters. Just 39% felt the same about Trump, who is himself 77 years old.Electability was central to Biden’s argument for the nomination three years ago but the poll found a generic, unnamed Democrat doing much better with an eight-point lead over Trump. Congressman Dean Phillips of Minnesota has launched a long-shot campaign against Biden in the Democratic primary, contending that the president’s anaemic poll numbers are cause for a dramatic change of course.Next year’s election could be further complicated by independent runs from the environmental lawyer Robert Kennedy Jr and the leftwing academic Cornel West.Trump is dominating the Republican presidential primary and plans to skip Wednesday’s third debate in Miami, Florida, in favour of holding a campaign rally. He spent Monday taking the witness stand in a New York civil fraud trial. He is also facing 91 criminal indictments in four jurisdictions.The Biden campaign played down the concerns, drawing a comparison with Democratic incumbent Obama’s 2012 victory over Republican Mitt Romney. Biden’s spokesperson, Kevin Munoz, said in a statement: “Predictions more than a year out tend to look a little different a year later. Don’t take our word for it: Gallup predicted an eight-point loss for President Obama only for him to win handedly a year later.”Munoz added that Biden’s campaign “is hard at work reaching and mobilizing our diverse, winning coalition of voters one year out on the choice between our winning, popular agenda and Maga [Make America great again] Republicans’ unpopular extremism. We’ll win in 2024 by putting our heads down and doing the work, not by fretting about a poll.”The margin of sampling error for each state in the Sunday poll is between 4.4 and 4.8 percentage points, which is greater than Trump’s reported advantage in Pennsylvania.Charlie Sykes, host of the Bulwark podcast and a former conservative radio host, wrote on X: “Ultimately, 2024 is not about re-electing Joe Biden. It is about the urgent necessity of stopping the return of Donald J Trump to the presidency. The question is how.” More

At least 15 other people are running for president in 2024, but none of them look like Brooklyn’s Paperboy Love Prince. When the artist, rapper and non-binary activist filed to run in the New Hampshire primary last month, they showed up wearing a voluminous brocade jacket, gold pantaloons and MSCHF’s Big Red Boots, Super Mario-esque shoes made by the designers behind Lil Nas X’s Satan sneakers.They looked like a cartoon character. It’s all part of the act.“The folks who are in office have been in there more than many kings, queens and monarchs,” Paperboy says. “At that point, they become so out-of-touch with what it’s like to be an everyday American. My focus now is to highlight that by not blending in with them.”Blending in has never been an issue for Paperboy. They achieved local recognition during a 2021 New York mayoral run with a platform that included canceling rent, abolishing the police and legalizing psychedelics. Paperboy Prince is also a rapper, releasing topical songs such as Futuristic Schools, a rallying cry to improve public education. (Sample lyrics: “We need to raise the IQ of our nation / See the future of schools like That’s So Raven”).Working out of their Love Gallery, a community space in Brooklyn’s rapidly gentrifying Bushwick neighborhood, Paperboy sells merch, distributes food, clothing and books, and holds a 24/7 Twitch live stream. Outside sits the Love Bus, painted pink, green and rainbow cheetah print; during an impromptu photoshoot Paperboy jumps on top and starts waving to drivers passing by.Love is all around Paperboy, who has made it the center of their campaign. “I’m fighting for centering this country around love, putting it first, being anti-war, and pro-love, and creating love centers around the country,” they say. Think of these as town halls where people can gather, meet friends, learn new skills, or, in Paperboy’s words, “create a love connection”.Running against candidates who espouse racist and transphobic rhetoric only validates Paperboy’s campaign of compassion, they say. “If you’re going to choose love, confidently choose love, because the people who are choosing hate right now are confidently choosing hate.”Paperboy does not give their age – they believe reporters place too much focus on it. Ask where they’re from, and they’ll say “the African side of the moon”. They don’t like to claim heritage in any one place. “That’s what gets us to start separating ourselves from other people,” they explain. “I’m all about bringing us together.”Paperboy was born on Earth, though, growing up between New York and Maryland, with a Pentecostal bishop grandfather and equally devout parents. Paperboy counts their father as one of their biggest inspirations, alongside Kid Cudi and Bob Marley. (During an interview, Paperboy blasted the reggae icon’s music from a nearby speaker.)“When I was a kid, I watched my dad working with people who were homeless, or unhoused, or incarcerated, along with mothers and students,” they say. “He created programs for the youth, using whatever resources he had, to better the lives of people around him. That’s what inspires me to do the same.”Paperboy got into politics through rapping, taking an interest in Andrew Yang’s presidential campaign and promise of universal basic income.They were also fed up with parking tickets: while working as a TaskRabbit, Paperboy got so many parking tickets (“like, $1,000 worth”) that traffic cops booted their car. They needed their car for work and called their local representative for help getting it back. They didn’t hear back.“I realized [politicians] don’t actually care about us,” Paperboy said. “There’s not enough compassion, so I decided to run on love.” Paperboy likes to campaign outside New York City’s department of finance, where people go to pay parking tickets. “It’s still one of my biggest areas for recruitment into my campaign,” they said.As someone who wears a Game Boy around their neck and who advocates for building underwater cities and mandating recess for all, Paperboy’s used to getting treated like a joke by mainstream politicians.They’ve made friends with Vermin Supreme, a longtime satirical candidate in New Hampshire primaries, known for wearing a boot as a hat and promising a free pony for every American. But Paperboy’s dead serious about their platform and feels their antics bring attention to the ridiculous nature of modern politics.“Right now, the folks who are running for president are basically the mouthpieces for major corporations that have bought out political parties,” they said. “These people are way less genuine than any character; Mickey Mouse has more soul than these folks. So, yeah, I’m a character, but I’m the character that’s here to wake people up.” More

‘The whole secret of politics is knowing who hates who,” Kevin Phillips told the journalist Garry Wills during the 1968 US presidential campaign.Phillips, who has died aged 82, was the political analyst behind Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy”, aimed at exploiting racial tensions to draw to the Republican side the more conservative voters in the south, where the Democrats had dominated since the American civil war primarily because Abraham Lincoln had been a Republican.Although both he and Nixon later played down his direct influence, Phillips’ keen perception of the changing antipathies of the American electorate, detailed in his 1969 book The Emerging Republican Majority, lay at the heart of Nixon’s victory.Phillips’s analysis was not limited to the south. He realised that traditional working-class Democrats were becoming alienated not just by the party’s embrace of civil rights, but were also sympathetic to conservative positions against the Vietnam war, protest, federal spending and the 1960s “cultural revolution”.Though he predicted their drift rightward to the Republicans, he could not foresee the long-term effect of this political tsunami, stoked by culture wars, and he eventually disavowed the division his work had sowed, becoming, by the George W Bush presidency, a leading voice of apostate Republicanism.Phillips’ analysis echoed a century of US political history. After John F Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon Johnson pushed the Civil Rights Act (1964) and Voting Rights Act (1965) through Congress. Johnson was a master of political compromise, but when he signed the latter bill, he supposedly told an aide, “there goes the south”.The so-called “solid south” always voted Democrat, but these naturally conservative “Dixiecrats” were at odds with the rest of their party, which primarily represented working people in the north.Similarly, the Republicans were traditionally a party of big business, led by industrial magnates whose sense of noblesse oblige rendered them relatively liberal on social issues. But they also harboured a fierce right wing committed to undoing Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and opposed to any hint of government regulation.These factional divisions facilitated legislative compromise, but Johnson’s prediction soon proved true, as Dixiecrats deserted to the Republicans. Starting with Nixon’s re-election in 1972, Republicans swept the south five times in nine presidential elections, stymied only by the southerners Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.Phillips was born in New York City, where his father, William, was chairman of the New York State Liquor Authority, and his mother, Dorothy (nee Price), was a homemaker. He graduated from Bronx high school of science at 16, by which time he had already begun studying the political makeup of his city, discerning an antagonism towards the black and Hispanic community by the white working-class children of an older generation of immigrants.Already a loyal Republican, after graduation he headed the Bronx’s youth committee supporting the re-election of Dwight D Eisenhower. He earned his BA in political science from Colgate University in 1961, having spent a year at Edinburgh University studying economic history, and took a law degree from Harvard in 1964.His political career began as an aide to the Republican congressman Paul Fino, from the Bronx, where he realised that despite Fino’s relatively liberal domestic positions Republicans could not depend on minority voters.Phillips lent his prodigious research into the breakdown of the nation’s congressional districts to the Nixon campaign, and after the election he became a special assistant to the attorney general John Mitchell, Nixon’s campaign manager, who would be jailed in the fallout from the Watergate scandal.He left Mitchell in 1970, becoming a commentator, with a syndicated newspaper column, his own newsletter and regular appearances as a broadcasting pundit. Phillips later traced Republican failures back to Watergate, although ironically it was his tip to the Nixon aide Jeb Magruder about the damaging information that might be in the Democratic party chairman Larry O’Brien’s Watergate office that precipitated the fatal burglary.Phillips coined the terms “sun belt” for the fast-growing areas of the southern and south-western states, and “new right” to distinguish the populist politics of Ronald Reagan from those of “elitists” such as Nelson Rockefeller. But as the white working-class shrank, along with its jobs, the politics of resentment grew more divisive. Dog-whistles to racists, from Reagan’s “welfare queens” to George HW Bush’s Willie Horton ads portraying a black murderer, culminated in the 1994 “Republican revolution” which captured Congress and proceeded to shut down the government.What Phillips had not foreseen was the impossibility of political compromise now that all the different reactionaries were in the same Republican boat. Watching the growing economic inequality which sprang from the Reagan years, he began to have second thoughts. His belief in his party as a stable, serious preserver of the status quo began to fall apart.Starting with Wealth and Democracy (2002), Phillips produced a series of books excoriating what he saw as George W Bush’s plutocratic revolution, recalling the robber barons of the 19th-century Gilded Age. He warned of an instinct toward authoritarianism under the guise of fighting so-called liberal permissiveness.Phillips castigated the Bushes further in American Dynasty (2004) for aiding already rich investors, especially in the sun belt’s energy and defence industries, at the whim of the Pentagon and CIA. American Theocracy (2006) recognised the growing influence of fundamentalist Christians in the Republican party, a dystopian vision of ideological extremism mixed with greed-driven fiscal irresponsibility.His 2008 book Bad Money focused on what he called “bad capitalism”, relying on financial services instead of industrial production. After the 2008 financial crash, he wrote a sequel, After The Fall (2009). By now he was a regular in such centrist outlets as National Public Radio or the Atlantic, where he found himself explaining how his analysis of the changing American electorate led, with some inevitability, to the polarised society that elected the authoritarian Donald Trump.Among his 15 books, Phillips also produced a biography of the US president William McKinley (2003) and 1775: A Good Year for Revolution (2012), about the circumstances which precipitated that war.He is survived by his wife, Martha (nee Henderson), whom he married in 1968, and their three children, Betsy, Andrew and Alec. More

Despite facing multiple criminal charges, Donald Trump remains the frontrunner in the 2024 Republican presidential primary. But in South Carolina, a traditionally conservative southern state, a split is opening up between Trump loyalists and more moderate Republicans who are fearful of what their party has become. The Guardian’s Oliver Laughland and Tom Silverstone investigate More