Kevin Drum

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." In August 2018 he reported that his multiple myeloma remained well under control.

Drum's blogging is known for offering original statistical and graphical analysis, with special attention to oil supply, especially peak oil theory and related issues. 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 intensive, early intervention. At Calpundit, he is credited with pioneering the trend of "Friday catblogging."

Drum has published a series of provocative blogs with evidence that suggests a link between crime and environmental lead, including the link between the decline in US crime rates and the phaseout of leaded gasoline. The theory was popularized by public health researcher Jessica Reyes and economist Rick Nevin; Drum's thesis was criticized by Jim Manzi in January 2013; Drum has continued to document new evidence in support of the theory.

Drum's blogging started in 2003, with his independent blog, Calpundit. The Washington Monthly, which wanted a blog, hired Drum in 2004 to launch Political Animal.

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."

Drum married in 1993; he and his wife Marian have no children.

After graduating from college, Drum worked at RadioShack for several years, becoming a store manager in Costa Mesa, California, in 1983. He subsequently got a technical-writing job with a local technology company, becoming a product manager at Emulex. In 1992 he began working at Kofax Image Products, an Irvine, California-based supplier of application software and image processing products. In 2000 he was promoted from the position of VP for Marketing, becoming the general manager of the Ascent Software Business Unit within Kofax. In 2001 he moved to newly created position with Dicom New Ventures, the business development arm of the Dicom Group, Kofax's parent company. He quit in 2002 to become a marketing consultant; he gave that up in 2004 to concentrate full-time on writing.

Drum graduated from Pacifica High School, in Garden Grove, California, then 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.

Kevin Drum (born October 19, 1958) is an American journalist. Drum initially rose to prominence through the popularity of his independent blog Calpundit (2003–2004). He was later invited to launch a blog Political Animal (2004–2008) for the Washington Monthly. In 2008, he took a writing and blogging position at Mother Jones magazine.