… The idea of the self-declared single-term president has had a romantic appeal to editorial-page writers (and few others) since well before Biden became the oldest person in history elected to the job. Like many other ideas with romantic appeal, it is disconnected from political reality. Declaring oneself a lame […] Read more »
The Democrats Have An Ambitious Agenda. Here’s What They Should Learn From Obamacare.
… As a political science professor studying public perceptions of the ACA, I see two core lessons for Democrats to keep in mind. First, to stop high-profile laws from becoming unpopular, it helps to keep them simple. And the ACA was anything but: It sought to increase access to health […] Read more »
Republican voters are deeply divided over Trump. So why do most Republican lawmakers still support him?
Many Republican senators, watching the harrowing footage of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection played at Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial, were moved to tears, presumably remembering their own experiences that day. Yet it did not persuade many of them to vote to convict the former president on the charge of […] Read more »
Are voters’ preferences over stimulus checks driven by party loyalty or financial gain?
What happens when a president and Congressional leaders in his own party disagree on important policy issues? This is quite uncommon these days, but in December 2020 and January 2021, it happened. President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell publicly differed on a highly salient issue: stimulus checks. […] Read more »
How Long Can Democracy Survive QAnon and Its Allies?
Has a bloc of voters emerged that is not only alien to the American system of governance but toxic to it? “The central weakness of our political system now is the Republican Party,” Daniel Ziblatt, a political scientist at Harvard, said in an interview with Vox on Jan. 13, a […] Read more »
Why Republicans haven’t abandoned Trumpism
… Under Trump, the GOP lost the House, the Senate and the White House. So unless Republicans don’t understand the true distribution of public opinion, which is always possible, any rational vote-seeking party should recognize the risks of the Trump brand and move the party back toward the conservative center-right. […] Read more »