The 2020 Democratic primary took place in a disorienting atmosphere. The 2016 election, in which the supposedly unelectable candidate had defeated the supposedly safe one, seemed to overturn all the conventional assumptions about the electorate, and many activists and candidates went into the next election as if those assumptions weren’t […] Read more »
Yes, Sexism Really Did Doom the Warren Campaign
Elizabeth Warren has a new memoir out that is driving some interesting discussion this weekend. Unfortunately, some in the pundit world are using it to draw false conclusions in support of positions that mischaracterize both the Democratic base and the general electorate. Those misconceptions need correction. … As far as […] Read more »
In explaining the rise of populism, it’s not economic anxiety vs. identity politics – it’s both
Deindustrialization has decimated the blue-collar workforce in the US. … Our research examines the effects of deindustrialization on electoral politics. Specifically, we explore how deindustrialization affected voting in three US presidential elections (2008-2016), using county-level data which captures localized manufacturing job losses. Our argument is that responses to what we […] Read more »
Bidenomics Really Is Something New
Some of the changes are obvious: Compared with the economic strategies of former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Joe Biden is proposing more new spending and more new taxes than either of his Democratic predecessors, and he’s abandoned their support for negotiating new free-trade agreements. But Biden is also […] Read more »
How the Senate’s Long-Term Equilibrium Could Shape Democratic Decisions on the Filibuster
Key Points• A majority of states are now either solidly Republican or solidly Democratic on the presidential level, and the party a state prefers for president increasingly has a big edge in winning the state’s two Senate seats. Given these patterns, it’s possible to game out the basic contours of […] Read more »
The Six Factors That Will Shape 2022
In politics, as in weather, there can be a sudden change in the prevailing winds. Take the last three weeks before November’s elections, when a narrow but pivotal slice of voters, mostly independents, got cold feet about giving Democrats the big win that had appeared to be almost certain. Perhaps […] Read more »