Republicans gained a seat in the Connecticut state Senate this week. They won a special election in a district that President Joe Biden won by more than 20 points in 2020. Any individual special election such as this one comes with its caveats, but the trend in special state elections […] Read more »
California’s vaccinated say unvaccinated are adding risk; strong support for mandates
As Californians express widespread concern about the Delta variant, they overwhelmingly say the state’s recent rise in cases was preventable, had more people gotten vaccinated and taken more precautions. … Meanwhile, as the effort to recall Governor Gavin Newsom heads into its final month, Newsom faces what looks like a […] Read more »
The Trump Factor for 2021 and 2022
For the first time in more than four years, Donald Trump has receded into the background. He no longer grabs the headlines and wall-to-wall cable TV coverage that he craves. Banned from social media, his opinions on everything from the women’s national soccer team to the troop withdrawal in Afghanistan, […] Read more »
Democratic leaders are increasingly at odds with their own voters
Democrats are a Shontel Brown party stuck in a Cori Bush world. That’s the conclusion to be drawn from a week in which a pragmatic Democratic candidate (Brown) achieved a come-from-behind primary victory against a left-wing Bernie Sanders acolyte (Nina Turner), all while Democratic leaders fell all over themselves to […] Read more »
What some progressive activists fail to realize: Democrats like their party
Mainstream Democrats have been winning a lot of big primaries in 2021. Their latest win came on Tuesday in the primary for Ohio’s 11th Congressional District special election: local legislator and party chair Shontel Brown – backed by South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn and 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton – […] Read more »
In Democratic contests, the moderates strike back
When New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shocked the political world by unseating a 10-term incumbent in a Democratic primary in 2018, some analysts believed the victory might foreshadow a party shift to progressivism. But three years later, the evidence for the great turn leftward is scant. In fact, looking at […] Read more »