Lanny Davis Purple Nation Weekly

by Lanny Davis – 7/5/17 “It is the unwarranted invasion of individual privacy which is reprehended, and to be, so far as possible, prevented…. There are persons who may reasonable claim as a right, protection from the notoriety entailed by being made the victims of journalistic enterprise…” — Samuel D. Warren, Louis D. Brandeis, December […]

by Lanny Davis – 5/31/17 Former Connecticut Senator Joseph I. Lieberman has been my friend for more than 40 years, going back to the days when we changed diapers together when our now oldest children were newborns. He is the godfather of my oldest son. That is my full disclosure. But this column is about […]

by Lanny Davis – 2/16/17 The race for chair of the Democratic National Committee is an important one. This is especially so when Democrats are the party in opposition to a Republican president, and especially when that president is Donald Trump, and thus there may need to be an almost daily public response or rebuttal […]

by Lanny Davis – 1/19/17 Historians usually look to various factors when they rate U.S. presidents. The consensus top tier-rated, Mt. Rushmore-type recognition as nation’s top-ranked presidents by historians, in a class by themselves, are usually, Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and both Roosevelts (FDR and TR). My analysis is that each of them are included […]

by Lanny Davis – 12/14/16 I decided to read J.D. Vance’s book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” a few days after the November presidential election. I was still in a state of shock and grief over Hillary Clinton’s loss. Clinton received almost 3 million votes more than Donald Trump. She would be president had there been a switch […]

by Lanny Davis – 12/5/16 Congress has an opportunity to enact important legislation — an updated version of the International Religious Freedom Act. This is not only necessary to permit broader protection for religious freedoms around the world; it presents a golden opportunity, in this season of political polarization, for a bipartisan purple moment by […]

by Lanny Davis – 11/16/16 We all know that on Oct. 28, ten days before the election, FBI Director James Comey wrote a public letter to congress suggesting Hillary Clinton was still under FBI investigation for emails. All her momentum after she won the last presidential debate on Oct. 19 was lost. Instead, the media […]

by Lanny Davis & Drew Halunen – 11/10/16 Dear Purple Nation readers and friends: A young colleague in our public affairs / media strategy firm, Trident DMG, Drew Halunen, is from rural Minnesota. After last Tuesday’s sad outcome in the presidential election and in some U.S. Senate races, I asked Drew how Trump could have […]

by Lanny Davis – 11/7/16 A redundancy is two words side by side that mean the same thing. The two words “Trump” and “hypocrite” amount to a redundancy. We’ve seen GOP nominee Donald Trump’s hypocrisy during his entire campaign — as most of his Republican opponents pointed out repeatedly during the GOP primaries. On Sunday, […]

by Lanny Davis – 11/5/16 There has been a lot of media and pundit commentary in the last several weeks suggesting that Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton may face difficulty in the presidential race because African-Americans are voting in lower percentages in early voting tabulations than they did in 2008 and 2012 when Barack Obama was […]