To understand two of the most volatile currents in modern politics, the best place to start is with a fundamental shift in the geography of economic opportunity. Reversing the pervasive urban decline of 20th century’s final decades, opportunity is once again flowing into the urban cores of the nation’s largest […] Read more »
Iowa’s Swing to Republicans Is a Matter of (Lacking a) Degree
… Iowa’s dramatic change has been both abrupt and a long time in coming. In 2008, the state propelled Mr. Obama to the White House. A year later, it was the first in the Midwest to legalize same-sex marriage. But last November, Mr. Trump won Iowa by a larger margin than […] Read more »
California Is the Future
America is stuck between two historical eras. That’s the best way to understand the strange, unprecedented politics of Trump, the political polarization and paralysis of government, the deep dissatisfaction of public opinion, the lack of trust in all institutions — all of it. The post-Industrial era that blossomed in the second half […] Read more »
How Immigration Foiled Hillary
Democrats point to a thousand reasons that Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election. Here is another. … What Democrats missed was the profound political impact recent immigration trends were having on the more rural parts of the once homogeneous Midwest — that the region had unexpectedly become a flash point […] Read more »
Nothing Divides Voters Like Owning a Gun
Americans are deeply split along demographic lines, but there aren’t many demographic characteristics that embody America’s cultural divide better than gun ownership. In the wake of the mass shooting in Las Vegas on Sunday, the polling firm SurveyMonkey published a pair of maps from its 2016 presidential election exit polls. […] Read more »
The NFL, Charlottesville, and Trump’s pattern of racial division
… From the first day of Trump’s presidential campaign in 2015 — when he denounced Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and “criminals” — Trump has targeted the groups in the electorate who polls show feel the most threatened by demographic, cultural and economic change, particularly older, blue collar, evangelical and non-urban […] Read more »