The worrisome Omicron variant lends fresh urgency to President Joe Biden’s months-long grind to vaccinate Americans against the coronavirus. He needs it. That 78 million Americans still resist protective shots confounds anyone examining the medical evidence of the vaccines’ effectiveness. But the evidence of history, turbocharged by the modern Republican […] Read more »
Biden ran on bringing people together. He’s failed so far
President Joe Biden ran on a campaign of bringing people together. But nearly a year into his administration, Biden has been overwhelmed by the long-term trend of polarization. He sports the lowest approval rating among the opposition party at this point in a presidency in at least 68 years, while […] Read more »
Democracy is ‘failed’ or ‘in trouble’ among young voters, a new poll shows
Last week, Harvard’s Kennedy School released a poll of young Americans, ages 18 to 29, and found a generation of voters that looks a little different than many people expected. There was not a lot of youthful optimism in the data and some findings showed that large divisions in the […] Read more »
Saving Democracy Will Require Institutional and Civil Resistance at All Levels
A sense of alarmed fatalism is starting to take hold among pundits and political scientists. It’s not hard to see why: The future of American democracy looks exceedingly grim under threat from a far-right authoritarian movement—and it’s not clear that any particular electoral or legislative response by Democrats can fix […] Read more »
Abortion wars have raged for decades. They could soon get worse.
… A decision to overturn Roe would forever etch the court of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. in the history books and trigger a political earthquake, potentially redrawing the balance between the supporters and opponents of abortion rights. … If Roe is overturned, its effect will burn into the […] Read more »
Identity Politics in Context
The Wall Street Journal columnist Gerald Seib recently noted that Republicans were gearing up to focus 2022 midterm voters’ attention on the “three I’s” — inflation, immigration and identity politics. … Identity politics generally refers to people evaluating issues through the lens of their association with a specific group. This […] Read more »