This Element explores the growing party divisions on the environment in the United States. It draws upon quantitative and qualitative data from several decades of national and state politics. The study contributes theory to the party position change literature, showing that interest groups change parties, but in turn are changed […] Read more »
The Economy and the Election
For as long as I’ve covered politics, the conventional wisdom has been that presidents win re-election in good economic times and they lose when the economy stinks. Ronald Reagan won re-election when the economy was booming. Jimmy Carter lost when we sunk into economic “malaise.” But, we also know that […] Read more »
The Democrats Are Still the Party of Obama, Part 2 (Joe Biden Edition)
After the 2018 midterm elections, much of the national media suffered from a collective misunderstanding of the Democratic Party. Multiple news stories described a party that was moving sharply to the left under the newfound leadership of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow Democratic Socialists. But Ocasio-Cortez wasn’t very representative of […] Read more »
Can Democrats Win On Immigration Policy In 2020?
Immigration is likely going to be a major topic in the 2020 election. From issuing a travel ban on many majority-Muslim countries to shutting down the government while seeking funding for a border wall, President Trump has made immigration perhaps the central defining issue of his presidency. And Democrats have […] Read more »
Arthur Finkelstein reprised with GOP’s ‘socialists’ cries
If you’re on any Republican list, you’ve undoubtedly received emails from one of the GOP campaign committees or a Capitol Hill communications staffer calling the Democrats “socialists.” To those of us who were around in the 1980s and 1990s, that’s nothing new. We remember the late GOP campaign consultant Arthur […] Read more »
Can Bill Weld unseat Trump? Let’s look at the history of challenges to incumbent presidents.
Recently, Massachusetts’ former Republican governor Bill Weld announced he will challenge President Trump in the Republican primaries for the 2020 election. … Before Weld, all nomination challengers have come from the parties’ ideological extremes: insurgent Democrats who accuse their presidents of straying from New Deal and Great Society liberalism, or […] Read more »