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The GOP’s Authoritarian Strategy

Demographic trends threaten the party’s electoral future—but it does have another option.

Jonathan Schell

No Place Like Home

In a desperate election, nostalgia for an America before the decline is the GOP’s only message.

JoAnn Wypijewski

The GOP Throws a Tampa Tantrum

The long-running feud between moderates and conservatives is over. The wackos have won.

Rick Perlstein

What We Can’t Talk About When We Talk About Elections

This is the most polarized presidential choice since 1980. Yet issues fundamental to the nation’s future have been excluded from the debate.

The Editors

Paul Ryan Quietly Requested Obamacare Cash

In a letter to the Obama administration obtained by the The Nation, Ryan asked that a clinic in his district receive a grant made possible by the Affordable Care Act.

Lee Fang

Noted

Ryan Devereaux on a SEAL’s bin Laden book, Ari Melber on Obama and Twitter, Michael Youhana on Marines in Guatemala, Dave Zirin on the NFL and LGBT rights

Various Contributors

The C-Word

But does his DNC speech signal that Obama will now champion the climate fight? Or was he just telling the Democratic base what they wanted to hear?

Mark Hertsgaard

New York’s Fractivists Keep the Heat on Cuomo

As the Democratic governor considers whether to allow the controversial gas drilling practice, anti-fracking forces vow to stop it—even if they have to go to jail to do so.

Nicholas Kusnetz

Convention Bounce

Calvin Trillin

Naomi Wolf’s ‘Vagina’: No Carnations, Please, We’re Goddesses

In her loopy new book, the celebrity feminist acknowledges that every woman is sexually unique, but then she argues that they’re all the same—i.e., just like her.

Katha Pollitt

The Real Risks of Fake Outrage

A manufactured controversy aimed at Elizabeth Warren shows the damaging ways we exploit trivial kerfuffles and pass them off as political stories.

Patricia J. Williams

The Generalist: On Charles de Gaulle

How Charles de Gaulle’s story became a collective fairy tale that the French have agreed to believe in.

Thomas Meaney

A Form of Order: On Paul Taylor

Paul Taylor Dance Company has sustained a signature style, and without having left modern dance behind.

Marina Harss

The Plague Years

David France’s How to Survive a Plague, Heidi Ewing and Rache Grady’s Detropia, Nicholas Jarecki’s Arbitrage.

Stuart Klawans

Letters

Remembering Alexander Cockburn

Our Readers

Puzzle No. 3252

Joshua Kosman and Henri Picciotto