The real issue in the frantic final flailing over the fiscal cliff isn’t whether Washington can balance its books. It’s whether blue America and red America are capable of, or even interested in, mediating their differences. The evidence is growing more discouraging. Across almost every front, the process of pulling […] Read more »
How the Fiscal Cliff Battle Is Really Just a Battle of Demographics
Washington’s battle over the fiscal cliff is best understood as a confrontation not only between Democrats and Republicans, but also as an early skirmish in what could be a decades-long struggle for resources and influence between the Brown and the Gray. That’s a phrase I’ve coined, drawing on the work […] Read more »
When Looking at Job Numbers, Add In a Changing America
For decades, the American labor force grew at a rapid rate, helping to spur strong economic growth. Those days are past. In the coming years, the labor force should grow at a more moderate pace, as significant demographic changes take hold. … With those demographic shifts, the usual measures of […] Read more »
Could Marijuana Initiatives Swing the Youth Vote in Future Elections?
A new wave of high-profile ballot measures – along with the demographic groups they resonate with most – seem to crop up every few election cycles. Conservatives long relied on heavy turnout from evangelicals when abortion, same-sex marriage and similar hot-button issues appeared on ballots. But now, in states introducing […] Read more »
The 2012 Enthusiasm Mirage
Key subgroups of President Obama’s winning coalition including Hispanics, young voters, and unmarried women outperformed their 2008 turnout levels, even though these cohorts exuded less enthusiasm to get to the polls than Governor Romney’s core supporters. [cont.] Resurgent Republic Read more »
Report & video: The Obama Coalition in the 2012 Election and Beyond
Since Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1968 and George McGovern’s run in 1972, progressives have sought to create a multiracial, multiethnic, cross-class coalition—made up of African Americans, Latinos, women, young people, professionals, and economically populist blue-collar whites—supporting an activist government agenda to expand economic opportunities and personal freedoms for […] Read more »