Kevin Drum

Kevin Drum (born October 19, 1958) is an American political blogger and columnist. He was born in Long Beach, California and now lives in Irvine, California.

Drum attended Caltech for two years before transferring to California State University, Long Beach, where he received his bachelor's degree in journalism in 1981. While at CSULB he served as city editor of the university's student run newspaper, the Daily 49er.

Drum rose to prominence through the popularity of his now-defunct independent liberal blog Calpundit (2003–2004) and through his blog Political Animal (2004–2008) published by the Washington Monthly. In 2008, he took a writing and blogging position at Mother Jones magazine.

Stylistically, his blog is known for offering original statistical and graphical analysis, with special attention to oil supply, especially peak oil theory and related issues. Another provocative series suggested a link between the recent decline in US crime rates and the phaseout of leaded gasoline, a theory popularized by public health researcher Jessica Reyes and economist Rick Nevin, and criticized by Jim Manzi. His posts on education often spark discussion. He is skeptical about flavor-of-the-month school reforms which "disappear within a few years to be replaced by some new silver bullet – and always without producing any scalable, practical, long-lasting results," while he favors increased spending on three- to five-year-olds. At Calpundit, he is credited with pioneering the trend of "Friday catblogging."

Before writing full-time about politics, he worked as a technical writer, then moved into high-tech marketing. He was with Kofax Image Products for nine years as VP for Marketing and general manager of the software division. He also has worked as a consultant.

In an interview with Norman Geras, Drum stated that his intellectual heroes were Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Isaac Newton, John Maynard Keynes, Edward R. Murrow and Charles Darwin. He also considers Benjamin Franklin his all-time favorite political hero.

Drum has defended Hillary Clinton during her email controversy, stating that her actions were "non-scandalous" and that she is "honest to a fault when discussing policy."

The Iraq war

Drum supported the 2003 Iraq War in its early stages, but just before the United States launched its attack, he changed his mind. He said, "Before the war started I switched to opposition on practical grounds (i.e., that George W. Bush's approach was incapable of accomplishing the goals it was meant to accomplish). Since then, I've pretty much come to the conclusion that, in fact, I should have opposed it all along on philosophical grounds: namely that it was a fundamentally flawed concept and had no chance of working even if it had been competently executed."

On October 24, 2014, Drum posted that he was undergoing treatment for multiple myeloma. On October 18, 2016, he updated readers that it has been two years since his diagnosis and he is "still alive and kicking."