“I AM not a number. I am a free man!” was the famous cry of prisoner Number Six, who could never escape his Kafkaesque village on the 1960s television show “The Prisoner.” This is a prescient cry for an era when numbers follow us everywhere. Jim Messina, the victorious Obama campaign manager, probably agrees that you are not a number. That’s because you are four numbers.

Read more of Zeynep Tufekci’s Op-Ed »

Weekly pieces by the Op-Ed columnists Charles Blow and Ross Douthat, as well as regular posts from contributing writers like Thomas B. Edsall and Timothy Egan. This is also the place for opinionated political thinkers from all over the United States to make their arguments about everything connected to the 2012 election. Yes, everything: the candidates, the states, the caucuses, the issues, the rules, the controversies, the primaries, the ads, the electorate, the present, the past and even the future.

Is Rush Limbaugh’s Country Gone?

The 21st century version of class conflict sets the stage for an exceptionally bitter face-off between the left and the right in Congress.Read more…

A New Southern Strategy

Enough with the condescension. Take our liberalism seriously.Read more…

Beware the Smart Campaign

The new winning formula: very expensive voter research.Read more…

Social and Anti-Social Media

The very groups who made the difference in President Obama’s re-election are among the fastest adopters of social and mobile media. Can Republicans catch up?Read more…

Is the Voting Rights Act Doomed?

The central question in the constitutional debate on the Voting Rights Act is whether times have changed enough to make the law obsolete.Read more…

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