… While a majority of American adults support his infrastructure proposal — 56% — including 9 in 10 Democrats and half of independents, Republicans overwhelmingly do not, according to the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey. Republicans also disagree with how Biden wants to pay for it all, indicating the president is […] Read more »
McConnell blasts big business stands
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) diatribe against big business could spawn volumes of analysis. The text tells many tales: the frayed coalition between the board room and the pick-up truck, hypocrisy, and more. What struck me most was the fundamental inaccuracy of nearly every assertion and premise on which […] Read more »
Presidential ‘fast starts’ come with electoral risk
“President Donald Trump is off to a fast start,” I wrote in a Jan. 30, 2017, column for Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales, before warning that the same “aggressiveness could produce the same sort of reaction that Barack Obama’s fast start did in 2009: It could lead to a […] Read more »
Don’t Blame the Public for the Failure to Pass New Gun Laws
Earlier this month, Gallup’s Frank Newport reviewed public opinion on proposed changes in gun laws. His review of the polls is solid and objective, as one would expect from the deservedly esteemed former editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll. But his explanation of why public support for increased gun regulation has […] Read more »
Polling data reveal a real opportunity for Democrats
… From our vantage point, the data plot line that is the most meaningful for Democrats, as we look ahead to big races in 2021 and the 2022 midterms, is the 6-point increase in independent affiliation from just a few months ago at the end of 2020. Today, 44 percent […] Read more »
Why Biden is making more progress on economic than social issues
The magnitude of the economic proposals that President Joe Biden may pass through Congress this year is drawing legitimate comparisons to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. But Biden simultaneously faces the prospect that almost all of his legislative initiatives revolving around social, cultural and […] Read more »