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Adele M. Stan

Adele M. Stan is a columnist for The American Prospect. 

Recent Articles

No, Trump Hasn’t Destroyed the Christian Right

Adele M. StanOct 12, 2016
AP Photo/Steve Helber
AP Photo/Steve Helber Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump gestures during a speech at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, Monday, January 18, 2016. L eaders of the Christian right find themselves at a most uncomfortable moment: Do they stick by their man, the GOP nominee, who claimed a right to sexually assault women, boasted of a failed attempt to commit adultery, and generally revealed himself to be a pig in the endlessly looped video recording of Donald Trump and Billy Bush bantering on a hot microphone in 2005? Truly, they have cast their pearls before swine . And nonetheless, the ones who count are standing fast. The big names—James Dobson, Ralph Reed, Tony Perkins, Marjorie Dannenfelser, Penny Nance, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell Jr.—remain at Trump’s side. Much is being made of the defection or long-term opposition of other right-wing Christian figures, but these are not the operatives who mobilize voters. Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious...

Decoding Mike Pence's Misogyny

Adele M. StanOct 05, 2016
(Photo: AP/David Goldman)
(Photo: AP/David Goldman) GOP vice presidential nominee Mike Pence answers a question during the debate on October 4. I f there’s any one thing the Trump campaign wants you to remember about Hillary Clinton, it’s that she’s a woman—a play for the votes of people who believe that’s not a good thing. In Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, Mike Pence, the right-wing extremist Indiana governor who is the running mate of Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, attempted to paint the foreign policy of Trump’s Democratic opponent as weak, saying of the war in Syria, “Look, we have got to lean into this with strong, broad-shouldered American leadership that begins by rebuilding our military.” Ah, that broad-shouldered leadership. You know who doesn’t have broad shoulders? The woman! It’s not the first time Pence has trotted out the term. Just before the September 26 debate between Trump and Clinton—the first time a woman has stood on the debate stage as a major-party...

#NeverTrump Crowd Raises Big Money for Trump

Adele M. StanSep 28, 2016
(Photo: AP/CQ Roll Call/Bill Clark)
(Photo: AP/CQ Roll Call/Bill Clark) A #NeverTrump sticker was placed on the windshield of the car belonging to Representative Greg Walden, an Oregon Republican, in front of the Republican National Committee office in Washington, D.C., prior to a meeting between House Speaker Paul Ryan and Donald Trump on May 12, 2016. A fter months of protestations over the presidential candidacy of the crass, openly misogynist, and race-baiting Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, members of the Republican cabal once known by the hashtag #NeverTrump are throwing some impressive assets his way—in secret, of course. Todd Ricketts, whose family owns the Chicago Cubs, is the latest to join the trend, according to reporters Kenneth P. Vogel and Alex Isenstadt at Politico , with the creation of a nonprofit group that is not required to reveal its donors, but is permitted by law to make so-called issues ads—the kinds of ads that are usually deployed against a candidate who is opposed by the group’s...

Debate Prep: How Sexism Makes Hillary’s Task Infinitely More Difficult Than Trump’s

Adele M. StanSep 21, 2016
AP Photo/Matt Rourke
AP Photo/Matt Rourke Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during a campaign stop at Temple University in Philadelphia, Monday, September 19, 2016. E verybody who’s ever watched Hillary Clinton in a debate knows just how very good she is in that format. No one comes more prepared on matters of fact; she has a keen sense of debate strategy and can land a zinger—even while bearing the burden of gender, that weight that deems a woman to not only prove herself smarter than her male opponent, but to do so while smiling more than he does (though not so much that she lacks gravitas) and being very careful not to completely emasculate her male opponent, lest she be seen as a knife-wielding bitch. This is the challenge Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, has faced in her past debates against Democratic opponents in two presidential primaries, and against her Republican challenger in her successful bid for a seat in the United States Senate—all events in which her...

The Normalization of Evil in American Politics

Adele M. StanSep 14, 2016
Olivier Douliery/Abaca/Sipa via AP Images
Olivier Douliery/Abaca/Sipa via AP Images Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at the 11th annual Values Voter Summit, in Washington, D.C., on Friday, September 9, 2016. T ime was when a presidential candidate who played footsie with segregationists and white supremacists would have been banished to the fringes of the American political scene. But Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump has changed all that. Oh sure, there have been plenty of codes telegraphed to the anti-black base of the GOP’s southern flank: Ronald Reagan’s choice of Philadelphia, Mississippi , as the place to make a “states’ rights” speech in his 1980 presidential campaign; Richard Nixon’s southern strategy and “Silent Majority” framing. But after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, expressions of outright racism were frowned upon in presidential politics. And articulations of misogyny were generally doled out in the form of withering condescension . I don’t need to recount for you...

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