One moderate; one progressive: the Democratic race has come down to Joe Biden against Bernie Sanders, with the chips increasingly falling Biden’s way.
- Associate Professor in American Politics and Foreign Policy, US Studies Centre, University of Sydney
Americans didn’t always have primaries and caucuses to choose presidential candidates. The system was meant to be more democratic, but it places too much attention on largely white, small states.
While the prime minister will no doubt discuss the US-China trade war with US President Donald Trump, the relationship is a friendly one, and that will not change under the current regimes.
Neither the spurious ‘facts’ about killings of police nor the supposedly ‘colour-blind’ logic of the backlash against Black Lives Matter hold up under scrutiny. Instead, they confirm its point.
The US has never been opposed to international engagement, or even international co-operation – but it must always be co-operation on American terms.
The Conversation’s experts respond to the first US presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
The 2016 US presidential race has been a strange campaign in many ways, but the swing state map looks very familiar.
The US debt crisis is over for now, but legislators have just kicked the can down the road. In this series on the US debt ceiling, academics from Australia, the UK and the US assess the lingering global…
At midnight, the United States government was shut down after Congress could not agree to a deal on changes to president Barack Obama’s signature health-care legislation, Obamacare. Around 800,000 non-essential…
On Tuesday night Washington time, US president Barack Obama made a public plea to Congress to authorise a military action in Syria that he probably doesn’t want. The tell-tale sign Obama doesn’t actually…
A dog saved Richard Nixon’s political career. In September 1952, Republican presidential nominee Dwight Eisenhower was furious with Nixon, his running mate in the coming presidential election. Nixon, who…
The criminal justice system has always been at the sharp end of race relations in the United States. Not only have African Americans been treated more harshly than whites as suspects and offenders, they…
For all its international power, the United States government seems increasingly powerless to make laws for the benefit of its own people. The recent failure to implement popular gun control measures in…
Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard? Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year…
With eight days until the US presidential election, Mitt Romney seems to have a very slight edge in the national polls. However, every respectable poll aggregator, along with all the betting and futures…
On Election Day in 2012 many Americans will vote against a candidate they hate, not in favour of a candidate they like. This is often the case. During the 2004 contest between George W. Bush and John Kerry…
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. – Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Political fact checkers seem to perform a vital public service for American democracy. Websites such as FactCheck.org…
In the first of The Conversation’s video explainer series - produced in collaboration with SBS Online - Dr David Smith from the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney discusses the importance…
Immediately after the Oak Creek massacre, many suspected the killings were a continuation of the post-9/11 wave of attacks on Sikhs who were mistaken for Muslims because of their turbans and beards. The…
American author and essayist Gore Vidal died at his home on Tuesday from complications of pneumonia. The 86 year old was the author of 25 books, including the historical novels Burr and Lincoln. He also…
When Barack Obama was under fire for his foreign policy inexperience in 2007, he told the New York Times that his unique biography could be a vital instrument in a new American foreign policy. “If you…
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