Ever since the 2018 election, the storyline around the Democratic Party has been at odds with the facts. The Democratic Party is, as it has been for many decades now, a center-left party and not a left-wing party in the style of European political parties. In the first Democratic debates […] Read more »
The Heartland Is Moving in Different Directions
The Democrats’ ability to wrest back Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa faces a steep hurdle. The population of the Rust Belt is aging at a much faster pace than the rest of the country. Exit polls show that people over the age of 50 put Donald Trump in the White […] Read more »
The core debate among 2020 Democrats: How progressive is too progressive to win?
… Given Trump’s success and given the number of 2012 voters who stayed home, is it possible to put together a campaign that energizes infrequent Democratic voters, doesn’t turn off those Democrats who vote regularly — and doesn’t further energize Republicans? Can the Warren-Sanders strategy of whipping up the progressive […] Read more »
Will a good economy save Trump?
Conventional wisdom holds that Trump won the 2016 election by appealing to voters left behind in Obama’s economy and may win re-election based on a stronger economy in 2020. But new research casts doubt on both stories. Sean Freeder finds that the effect of economic performance on the president’s re-election […] Read more »
Republicans don’t think Trump’s tweets are racist. That fits a long American history of denying racism.
During Donald Trump’s campaign and presidency, there has been an ongoing debate about whether Trump’s words and even the president himself should be called “racist.” … To understand this debate about Trump and racism, it’s important to put it in historical perspective. First, it is but one episode in a […] Read more »
Hating on Congress: An American Tradition
… Congress has suffered from a general public distrust of the major institutions of American society. But Congress, like the presidency, suffers a particular partisan dynamic. Voters may love their congressmen and hate Congress, but they hate Congress a little more when the other party is in control of it. […] Read more »