Lanny Davis Purple Nation Weekly

by Lanny Davis – 1/27/16 As we wait for tonight’s Democratic town hall debate in Iowa, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) owes it to all progressive Democrats, including himself and his enthusiastic supporters, to answer the following three questions posed by fellow progressives: 1. Progressive New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, often a Hillary Clinton critic, […]

by Lanny Davis – 1/17/16 Question: Does Bernie Sanders have a “better message” vs. Hillary Clinton? Major media and certain Democrats who love Sanders say “yes,” and have been saying so for a long time. What is the evidence from the latest public opinion surveys? The opposite. Clinton has a far more effective and popular […]

by Lanny Davis – 1/1/16 So I can just imagine Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s inner voice giving him advice in his usual fact-free zone — the same voice that told him he “watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down” — though […]

by Lanny Davis – 11/24/15 SEXTUS: You can break a man’s skull. You can arrest him. You can throw him into a dungeon. But how do you fight an idea? MESSALA: Sextus, you ask how to fight an idea. Well, I’ll tell you how … with another idea! — From the movie “Ben Hur,” 1959 […]

by Lanny Davis – 11/20/15 With the murderous and frightful terrorist attacks in Paris just last week, once again we are reminded of the need for law enforcement and our international intelligence agencies to have the ability to anticipate and prevent terrorist attacks and to protect us. We in Washington, D.C., feel special fear this […]

By Lanny Davis – 11/5/15 A unique moment for this writer: I agree with the Republican presidential candidates. At least, I agree with their complaints about most of the questions that the moderators of the primary debates seem obsessed with, too often concerned about a political “gotcha” moment rather than asking about issues and solutions […]

By Lanny Davis – 10/21/15 South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy’s Special Committee on Benghazi has been now thoroughly outed — not by Democrats but by his fellow Republicans. First House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) bragged that Gowdy’s committee had succeeded in bringing down Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers in her bid for the White House. […]

By Lanny Davis – 10/14/15 There are a lot of ways to contrast the Democratic debate with the Republican debates, but one thing I believe would get agreement across the spectrum – voters Red States and Blue States, liberals and conservatives: Democrats avoided personal attacks and insults and debated the issues; Republicans have spent much […]

By Lanny Davis – 10/8/15 We all remember the scene in the classic 1939 movie “The Wizard of Oz” where the little dog Toto goes to a curtain and pulls it back, revealing not the great and mighty wizard but an old man using smoke and mirrors and a microphone to defraud the good citizens […]

By Lanny Davis – 9/29/15 This weekend’s NBC-Wall Street Journal poll has been widely reported all over Sunday’s news media and on the Internet: Hillary Clinton now leads Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) by only 42 percent to 35 percent in the race for the Democratic nomination. At the very end of the press release, it […]