… Aside from whether tax experts and Washington politicians are willing to upend the tax code, it is important to note where the American people stand on the need for action on taxes. It must be remembered that taxpayers may dislike the current tax system but not be convinced that […] Read more »
Differences, in black and white: Rural Americans’ views often set apart by race
… A new nationwide Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll conducted this spring finds that although rural Americans are more likely to see their communities as neighborly, safer and having better public schools than people in large cities, those opinions come with wide racial disparities. Black rural Americans — most of […] Read more »
Rural divide
The political divide between rural and urban America is more cultural than it is economic, rooted in rural residents’ deep misgivings about the nation’s rapidly changing demographics, their sense that Christianity is under siege and their perception that the federal government caters most to the needs of people in big […] Read more »
The Democratic Party Is in Worse Shape Than You Thought
Sifting through the wreckage of the 2016 election, Democratic pollsters, strategists and sympathetic academics have reached some unnerving conclusions. What the autopsy reveals is that Democratic losses among working class voters were not limited to whites; that crucial constituencies within the party see its leaders as alien; and that unity […] Read more »
Absent a More Progressive Economics, the Democrats Will Lose
The challenge Democrats face today—uniting a broad coalition of working class Americans that spans racial, regional, gender, and generational lines—is far from new, but it has not always been this daunting. … Where working people of all races once helped deliver Democratic victories under Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, winning a […] Read more »
Has the Democratic Party Gotten Too Rich for Its Own Good?
During his primary campaign against Hillary Clinton, Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed socialist, lived up to the grand Democratic tradition of favoring the underdog at the expense of the rich. … But Sanders spoke to the Democratic Party of 2016, not the Democratic Party of the Great Depression. … In […] Read more »