Adam Serwer

I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog writing about purges and other forms of voter suppression, but Ezra‘s right that the most time tested way of driving down votes has to be the “time tax,” dearth of voting machines that force lines of voters to stand for several blocks just to cast a […]

Barack Obama is adept at code-switching — the deliberate or unconscious use of different linguistic tropes among different people — and it’s something he’s been criticized for, on the grounds that it shows he’s insincere. But the fact is that code-switching is a pretty common phenomenon, especially among middle class black folks. I can remember […]

Sure, election day is tomorrow, but Kenyan director George Orido‘s musical about the presidential campaign opened in Nairobi over the weekend. The play appears — though I can’t confirm this — to be sympathetic towards Obama: Scriptwriter and director George Orido complies with Kenyan preferences in his casting of Mr McCain, his running-mate Sarah Palin, […]

Zachary Roth has been doing some important reporting on the leak of Obama‘s aunt’s immigration status. This marks the second time in the past month or so that a law enforcement official has leaked privileged information to the AP in a manner that could affect the election, the first being the leak about an alleged […]

One of the underreported stories this cycle is the unprecedented success of voting rights groups in defending the right to vote and preventing states from implementing illegal purges based on flawed databases. Preserving voter access is the mandate of the Justice Department, but the Bush administration’s politicization of the Justice Department in general, and the […]

Palin, the bright, shining avatar of the right wing id, explains their position on the First Amendment: If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations,” Palin told host Chris Plante, “then I don’t know what the future of our country would be […]

On the edge of a potential Obama triumph, Ta-Nehisi Coates says light skinned brothers are making a comeback: That’s what the I’m talking about. All you Morris Chestnut chocolate boy wonders. All you Denzel Washington mocha macks. All you Mekhi Phifer/Omar Epps/Michael K. Williams/Derek Luke/Pete Rock mofos, I got two words for you–Time’s. Up. Honestly, […]

While John McCain has been making coded racial appeals by using well-worn tropes like “welfare” and superimposing Barack Obama‘s face over maps of the Middle East, in the South Republicans are being considerably more forthright about their feelings, especially with regard to black turnout. In Florida, local GOP county chairman David Storck blasted out an […]

Sarah Palin’s favorite publication, The Economist, seems to have snubbed her ticket by endorsing Obama: Political fire, far from rattling Mr Obama, seems to bring out the best in him: the furore about his (admittedly ghastly) preacher prompted one of the most thoughtful speeches of the campaign. On the financial crisis his performance has been […]