Selected Writings

2025

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“How to Fix America’s Two-Party Problem” (with Jesse Wegman), The New York Times, January 14, 2025

“The 65-year-old theory that helps explain why the Democrats keep losing”, Vox, September 3, 2025

“Democrats keep saying America is an ‘oligarchy.’ Is that true?”, Vox, April 28, 2025

“What Elon Musk Gets Wrong About Our Broken Political System”, Politico, July 8, 2025

2024

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“The Case for More Parties” (Lead essay in forum), Boston Review, Summer 2024

“The Confusion About the U.S. Economy Reveals Everything About Politics Today”, Time, February 23, 2024

2023

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“Matt Gaetz Is Half Right: The House leadership model is obsolete. But Gaetz is part of the problem.” The Atlantic, October 9, 2023

“Our two-party political system isn’t working. The fix? More parties.” Washington Post, July 5, 2023

“Wish You Had More Political Choice? The Answer Isn’t a Third-Party Candidate. There’s a way out of this,” Slate, July 3, 2023

2022

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“Kyrsten Sinema and the Myth of Political Independence: Pretending to be independent in a partisan system won’t improve America’s politics. But more parties might.” The Atlantic, December 29, 2022

“Why Do People Who Don’t Like Politics Hold the Fate of the Country in Their Hands?” New York Times, November 2022 (with Charlotte Hill)

“What We Lose When We Lose Competitive Districts” FiveThirtyEight, June 2022

“How Democracies Revive,” Niskanen Center, April 2022

2021

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“Why Bipartisanship in the Senate is Dying,” FiveThirtyEight, September 2021

“Why The Two-Party System Is Effing Up U.S. Democracy,” FiveThirtyEight, June 2021

“How much Longer Can this Era of Political Gridlock Last?” FiveThirtyEight, March 2021

“Winning without the Courts,: The Supreme Court and other federal courts are lost for a decade. What is progressives’ recourse? Getting serious about multiparty democracy.” Democracy: A Journal of Ideas (with Aziz Huq), Winter 2021

“Reimagining our great political experiment may save it from terminal decline.” American Purpose, February 2021

2020 and earlier

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"The two-party system is killing our democracy," Vox, January 2020

"The two-party system broke the Constitution, The Atlantic, January 2020

"Let a Thousand Parties Bloom, Foreign Policy, October 2019

"To save our democracy (and our sanity), blow up the two-party system," Boston Globe, October 2020

"Escaping the Partisan Death Spiral," Cato Institute Policy Report, August 2020

"How Hatred Came to Dominate American Politics," FiveThirtyEight, October 2020

“Why There Are So Few Moderate Republicans Left,” FiveThirtyEight, August 2020

"The Case for Proportional Voting," National Affairs, Winter 2018

"Hyperpartisanship could destroy US democracy," Vox, September 2017

"The Best Way to Fix Gerrymandering Is to Make It Useless," New York Times, June 2018

On why the 2020s will be a decade of reform

"The Republican and Democratic Parties Are Heading for Collapse", Foreign Policy, September 2020

"Trump's Election May Have Been the Shock We Needed", New York Times, November 2019

Undercurrent Events