Fear and Trolling on the Campaign Trail

Five political commentators who won’t bore you to death — Finding sharp, insightful voices in an online echo chamber of US political commentary can be difficult. Here are five figures you can rely on for intelligent coverage and scathing wit.

A presidential campaign starring Donald Trump once promised to be a comedy goldmine. Yet biting analysis seems in short supply as the race roars on with Trump at its forefront.

The problem, it turns out, is that it’s too difficult to lampoon a politician who treats campaigning like a comedy roast. Attempts to satirise him just sound believable. In fact one of the few effective parodies, ‘Your Drunk Neighbor: Donald Trump’, relied on genuine soundbites to highlight the absurdity of his bluster.

But while it feels like we’re a long way away from a Hunter S. Thompson of the snapchat generation, there’s still some political commentary out there more deserving of your time than parody Twitter accounts, YouTube clips and memes on Reddit.

Here are five figures you can rely on for intelligent coverage and scathing wit.

1. Matt Fuller

Trump: I'm gonna fix Social Security.

Moderator: OK, but, like, how are you gonna do that?

Trump: Let me tell you: It'll be tremendous.

— Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) February 14, 2016

Matt Fuller is a congressional reporter for Huffington Post known for dogged, knowledgeable stories that can connect with younger readers. Though his coverage focuses more on the ins-and-outs of Washington politics, he doesn’t hold back and lets his humour come to the fore on Twitter.

2. Molly Ball

Ah, Bernie rallies, where actors you've never heard of read Carl Sandburg poems to college students.

— Molly Ball (@mollyesque) February 8, 2016

Molly Ball is an award-winning staff writer for the Atlantic, covering topics such as Bernie Sanders’ feminist fans and the so-called “professional political class” panicked by Donald Trump’s rise. She’s also one of the wittiest voices in US politics.

3. Nate Silver

Ted Cruz has a huge math problem: https://t.co/7dhdgvj4I3 pic.twitter.com/4cxRFtdxKp

— FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) February 19, 2016

Nate Silver is the man who used data to disrupt the way people think about baseball. Now he’s doing the same with American politics, running one of the world’s best political blogs while also tweeting about sports, science and life in general.

4. David Corn

The Washington editor of Mother Jones, David Corn made a name for himself broken stories on presidents and writing best-selling books such as Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War.

5. Sean Davis

Sean Davis is the co-founder of The Federalist, an online magazine that covers politics, policy and culture, and a former congressional staffer who spearheaded a law that created USASpending.gov – a website that provides public access to information on how their tax dollars are spent.