National

NATIONAL RIGHT TO CARRY. The right of self-defense doesn’t stop at the end of your driveway. That’s why I have a concealed carry permit and why tens of millions of Americans do too. That permit should be valid in all 50 states. A driver’s license works in every state, so it’s common sense that a concealed carry permit should work in every state. If we can do that for driving – which is a privilege, not a right – then surely we can do that for concealed carry, which is a right, not a privilege.

As long as Trump leads, it's impossible to maintain the fiction of equally extreme "both sides do it" partisanship. As long as Trump rules (and, to a lesser extent, that Bernie Sanders continues to rise on the left) It's also increasingly difficult to pretend that "moderates" in either party are actually the center of public opinion, rather than caterers to a unique brand of corporate-friendly upper-class comfort that labels itself as moderate without holding any legitimate claim to the title. Acknowledging those realities would force the press to start reporting the fundamentals of American politics as they stand today: First, that the Republican base wants a rebel leader to take their country back from the inconvenience of being nice to women, gays and minorities; Second, that the wealthy Republican establishment and its center-right Third Way Democratic counterparts don't actually have a legitimate base of voters, but rather illegitimate institutional capture of government via legalized bribery; and Third, that the rest of the country wants liberal public policies that would resemble a Scandinavian government, but most of them are so turned off by the futility of the American political process that not enough of them turn out to vote to make a real difference outside of the bluest states. Those would be very uncomfortable admissions for the establishment press, so they settle instead for hoping that Donald Trump will go away and lose support organically so things can return to "normal." That's not going to happen.