Terry McAuliffe’s campaign strategy in the Virginia governor’s race has been to relentlessly link his opponent, businessman Glenn Youngkin, to former President Trump. … To borrow a line from President Biden, McAuliffe only needs three words to make a sentence: a noun, a verb, and Donald Trump. The strategy to […] Read more »
Democrats’ problem is not focusing on issues most vital to independents, 2 prominent pollsters say
Joel Benenson has a feeling of deja vu watching President Biden’s agenda grind into a long, drawn-out negotiation as middle-of-the-road voters recoil at the process taking place in Congress. “History doesn’t really often repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” said Benenson, who served as Barack Obama’s pollster in the 2008 […] Read more »
Virginia’s gubernatorial race tests the fear-of-Trump factor as a political motivator
… No single election ever answers all the questions of the moment in politics, but fairly or not, the Nov. 2 Virginia contest has taken on outsize importance, particularly to nervous Democrats who are justifiably fearful about losing their congressional majorities in the 2022 midterms. It’s as if the future […] Read more »
Democrats Stare Into the Abyss
Since mid-summer, Democrats have been trapped in a downward spiral of declining approval ratings for President Joe Biden, rising public anxiety about the country’s direction, and widening internal divisions over the party’s legislative agenda. The next few weeks will likely determine whether they have bottomed out and can begin to […] Read more »
Reform or Renewal?
It’s hard not to be depressed watching our political system at work. Red and Blue Americans are not only moving farther apart on social, cultural and economic priorities, but have convinced themselves that the other side is dangerous. … We haven’t just lost faith in one another; we’ve also been […] Read more »
Racing Apart: Partisan Shifts on Racial Attitudes Over the Last Decade
… The 2020 election took place amid a remarkable shift in attitudes about issues related to racial, ethnic, religious, and national identities. After decades of relative stasis in racial attitudes, Democrats and independents became dramatically more liberal on these issues. This leftward shift was already underway as of the 2016 […] Read more »