… The underlying political logic behind attacking “MAGA Republicans” is sound. Large chunks of the GOP are ensnared in a Trumpian cabal that is about a cult of personality rather than policy issues. It may have taken the Biden team six months (and probably dozens of meetings) to realize that […] Read more »
Biden pushes ‘ultra-MAGA’ label on GOP as he defends record
President Joe Biden on Tuesday warned voters unhappy with soaring inflation and his stalled domestic agenda against turning power over to “ultra-MAGA” Republicans in the midterm elections as he increasingly tries to cast former President Donald Trump and his adherents as a political foil. … Biden’s branding of his opposition […] Read more »
The strategy behind Biden’s new language about Republicans
… In 2018 and 2020, Democrats ran successfully against Trump’s unpopular persona and agenda. But he’s neither president nor on the ballot now, facts that undercut Democratic attempts to use him as the foil in Virginia’s gubernatorial race last fall. That’s when the liberal Center for American Progress began exploring […] Read more »
The Economy, Biden’s Approval, and How to Fight Back
There is no political saying more trite — or more accurate — than James Carville’s famous aphorism from the 1992 campaign “It’s the economy, stupid.” Electoral success and economic performance are intrinsically tied together. The party in power is usually rewarded for a strong economy and punished for a weak […] Read more »
Is Wokeness ‘Kryptonite for Democrats’?
… The past 12 months have seen a centrist countermobilization designed to strengthen a mainstream image of the Democratic Party and to block the power of the more radical left to set policy. New groups and digital publications include Persuasion, Counterweight, American Purpose, Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism and the […] Read more »
How Issue Consensus Turns to Dust
Partisan polarization has been fingered as the cause of any number of problems in contemporary politics from the rise of divided government and ideological extremism to beliefs in conspiracy theories and the spread of misinformation. A less examined aspect of how partisan sectarianism degrades democracy involves the role of party […] Read more »