Democrats and civil-rights advocates were devastated when Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema blocked a change in Senate rules last night and allowed a Republican filibuster to kill crucial voting-rights legislation. But for activists, the long battle over voter protections hasn’t been entirely in vain: It’s fundamentally changed the center of […] Read more »
Five Warning Signs for Biden as He Marks First Anniversary in Office
Key Points• As Joe Biden marks a year in office, he has found himself in a perilous position, and there are no obvious signs of improvement.• Among Biden’s challenges is an apparently weakened position among nonwhite voters as well as younger voters, two immensely important pillars of the Democratic coalition.• […] Read more »
America’s shift to the right in 2021 is worse news for Democrats than it seems
… Democrats have repeatedly hoped that Trump would prove so poisonous that the electorate would turn against the GOP. It worked in 2018, when the midterms served as a repudiation of Trump’s politics. It didn’t work in 2016, though, when Trump first won, and it offered only limited utility in […] Read more »
With help from Manchin and Sinema, a Republican revolution from below is driving national policy
Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country are approving a wave of new voting restrictions on virtually party-line votes that require only a simple majority to pass. The US Supreme Court has likewise decided the key voting rights rulings that helped trigger this surge of state legislation on a party-line, majority-vote […] Read more »
How Manchin and Sinema Completed a Conservative Vision
The decision by Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin to block their fellow Democrats from passing new federal voting-rights legislation clears the path for years of tightening ballot restrictions in Republican-controlled states. It also marks a resounding triumph for Chief Justice John Roberts in his four-decade quest to roll back […] Read more »
U.S. Political Ideology Steady; Conservatives, Moderates Tie
The way Americans identify themselves ideologically was unchanged in 2021, continuing the close division that has persisted in recent years between those describing themselves as either conservative or moderate, while a smaller share identifies as liberal. On average last year, 37% of Americans described their political views as moderate, 36% […] Read more »