… The case for Democrats both running on populism and centering their electoral strategy around appealing to Midwestern white voters without college degrees is fairly strong. After all, polls show that voters are more aligned with the Democrats on some high-profile economic issues than on some hot-button cultural ones. … […] Read more »
Trump’s Approval Rating Is Incredibly Steady. Is That Weird Or The New Normal?
If there’s one thing that’s been consistent about President Trump’s time in office, it’s his approval rating. Sure, it has moved around a bit — his average approval has hovered between 36 percent and 45 percent, a fluctuation of 9 points, over practically the entire course of his presidency, according […] Read more »
The Obama moment is gone. For 2020, Democrats need a different kind of magic.
Barack Obama can’t run for president again. But so far, it seems as though the 2020 Democratic primary could be defined by efforts to recapture the magic he briefly seemed to sprinkle over the party. It’s a logical ambition. The former president is very popular among Democrats. Hillary Clinton would […] Read more »
How White Identity Shapes American Politics
President Donald Trump’s supporters tend to get angry when they’re accused of racism. To many liberals, their outrage is laughable: After all, they support a leader whose racist impulses are increasingly difficult to deny. In fact, though, there’s an excellent chance that many of those supporters aren’t technically racist, in […] Read more »
Americans Are Divided by Their Views on Race, Not Race Itself
Amid the uproar over the Ralph Northam blackface photograph, a Washington Post poll asked Virginians if he should remain governor. The results were striking: Only 48 percent of whites felt that he should stay in office. That percentage was exceeded by the nearly 60 percent of black Virginians who thought […] Read more »
Battleground States Then (2012/2016) vs. Now (2018/2019)
Was the 2016 election a one-off — a once-in-a-lifetime contest between two fundamentally flawed contestants? Or, was it a realignment election; the end of Democratic dominance in the industrial Midwest as well as the loosening of the Republican grip on southwestern states like Arizona and Texas? Was Clinton the outlier […] Read more »