The race for the Democratic presidential nomination enters a new phase this week with the first debates taking place in Miami, starting with 10 candidates who will face off tonight and another 10 on Thursday. Those who will appear are a diverse group – by background, age, gender race and […] Read more »
As the Democratic debaters chase their base, Trump has a prime opening
Hardball presidential politics, a little like Mother Nature, has an unforgiving way of winnowing a field and this go-round there is more to winnow than usual with 24 Democrats vying for their party’s nomination. In the wild, it’s called survival of the fittest and that seems an apt description for […] Read more »
When Facts Change Opinions: A Discussion With Brendan Nyhan
When consuming the news, people bring their biases with them. However, University of Michigan professor Brendan Nyhan and other scholars have found that facts can — and do — change people’s minds when presented under certain conditions. We discuss his research on how to create a more widely-shared understanding of […] Read more »
Stark partisan divisions in Americans’ views of ‘socialism,’ ‘capitalism’
Republicans express intensely negative views of “socialism” and highly positive views of “capitalism.” By contrast, majorities of Democrats view both terms positively, though only modest shares have strong impressions of each term. CONT. Hannah Hartig, Pew Read more »
Is Centrism Doomed?
… Centrists may be extinct in the current Republican Party, but there are still plenty among Democrats. The presidential field is stacked with people routinely tarred as moderates by their left-wing opponents, including Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Beto O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand, John Hickenlooper and Joe Biden, the Democratic […] Read more »
Avoiding the Funhouse Mirror Effect in the Democratic Primary
In the aftermath of Election Day 2016, it became clear that we’d experienced the campaign through a funhouse mirror. Our friends, Facebook and Twitter feeds, even the New York Times election forecast needle: all of it had been wrong. Most of us inside the beltway were shocked by the result […] Read more »