Happy Birthday to Political Commentator Josh Barro

Josh Barro was born today, July 17, in 1984. He is an American journalist who currently contributes to Business Insider as a political commentator.

After growing up in Massachusetts, Barro received a bachelor's degree in psychology from Harvard University. While in college, he spent a summer interning for Grover Norquist.

Barro previously worked as a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, as a real estate banker for Wells Fargo, as the lead writer for the Ticker, an economics and politics blog hosted by Bloomberg L.P., and as the politics editor at Business Insider.

He appears regularly on Bloomberg Television and MSNBC and has appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO and on All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC.

Time named Barro's Twitter feed one of "The 140 Best Twitter Feeds of 2013," one of 10 in the Politics category. In 2012, Forbes selected him as one of the "30 Under 30" media "brightest stars under the age of 30," and David Brooks listed him as part of the "vibrant and increasingly influential center-right conversation." A former aide to Barack Obama included Barro on a short list of Obama's favorite columnists. He is currently the host and moderator of KCRW's Left, Right & Center.

In 2014, Barro left Business Insider to join The New York Times' "The Upshot." In 2016, Barro was again hired by Business Insider as a senior editor.

Early in his career, Barro described himself as Republican but criticized many policies. He also identified as a neoliberal. Barro has been opposed to traditional Christian beliefs regarding homosexuality, stating that they "linger and oppress" and must be "stamped out ruthlessly."

After the 2012 United States elections, Barro became increasingly critical of the Republican Party and wrote that "the party’s economic agenda, as embodied in the latest Ryan budget, is simply terrible for the vast majority of Americans." Barro called Congressional Republicans "crazy and awful." Reactions by other conservatives in the media led The Atlantic to name Barro "the loneliest Republican." Ezra Klein said that based on Barro's views, "He doesn't come across as much of a Republican."

On October 11, 2016, following the Republican Party's nomination of Donald Trump for president, Barro said he had left the Republican Party and registered as a Democrat. Barro cited as reasons for his decision the "fact-free environment so many of its voters live in, and because of the anti-Democrat hysteria that had been willfully whipped up by so many of its politicians," which created a "vulnerability in our democracy."

Barro lives in Manhattan and is out as a gay man. In 2017, he married Zachary Allen, chairman of TIPAH Consulting and a former Democratic National Committee official.

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