Articles by Greg Orman

Primary season is upon us again. With each passing Tuesday, the major parties across the country are selecting more combatants for November’s electoral battle. By mid-August, thousands of Republicans and Democrats will have been anointed to oppose the other team in the general election. But despite the countless number of names on the ballot, it’s a process that excludes a large percentage of voters and is the principal driver of a system of government that no longer serves the American people....

“Those who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to face the facts.”  ― Henry David Thoreau, “Slavery in Massachusetts” It was disappointing to read that Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin is spending public money urging voters to leave the United Independent Party ahead of an important registration deadline. But it was not a surprise. Massachusetts has a long history of using the power of incumbency to cripple political opponents. In fact, it’s ...

Last week marked the end of the presidential primary season. After 18 months of speeches and debates and millions of tweets, Facebook posts, and email blasts, it will go down in history as a pivotal moment in our experiment with democracy. And while Donald Trump’s antics and unconventional campaign style will fill political science textbooks, his approach to seeking the highest office in the land isn’t the central lesson of this election cycle. What the last year and a half revealed is that our...

Last month, House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) lukewarm embrace ended months of speculation about the tenuous relationship between the Republican Party’s most prominent elected official and its standard bearer. We all knew Speaker Ryan would get to this point. It seems fitting that his explanation for supporting Donald Trump was as disingenuous as it was tepid. Paul Ryan’s column in the Janesville Gazette seemed to imply that he and Donald Trump had a shared agenda for our country. Let’s examin...