… The coronavirus hit at a time when the world was already turning inward, largely in reaction to the global financial crisis of 2008. Nations have been erecting barriers to the free flow of people, money and goods, even as the flow of internet data has continued to rise rapidly. […] Read more »
‘Reopen’ protest movement created, boosted by fake grassroots tactics
Protesters seeking relief from lockdown restrictions, like these in Missouri, are being marshaled and egged on by conservative political operatives. AP Photo/Jeff Roberson Marc Ambinder, University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism Many Americans have been under strict stay-at-home orders, or at least advisories, for more than […] Read more »
Science Becomes A Dividing Issue In Year Of Election And Pandemic
It now seems apparent that COVID-19 will dominate American life for months to come, quite possibly through the national election in November. That means the disease, and efforts to respond to it, will likewise dominate the 2020 campaign and make it largely about something it has never been about before. […] Read more »
Why Americans Don’t Vote Their Class Anymore
For decades now, major left-wing parties throughout the West have been bleeding support from the working-class voters whose interests they claim to represent. In the mid-20th century, a voter’s socioeconomic position strongly predicted his or her partisan allegiance: In Britain, France, and the United States, voters with low incomes and […] Read more »
Trump Reaches Back Into His Old Bag of Populist Tricks
President Trump has chosen his pandemic re-election strategy. He is set on unifying and reinvigorating the groups that were crucial to his 2016 victory: racially resentful whites, evangelical Christians, gun activists, anti-vaxxers and wealthy conservatives. Tying his re-election to the growing anti-lockdown movement, Trump is encouraging a resurgence of what […] Read more »
What’s Driving the Right-Wing Protesters Fighting the Quarantine?
In an era when hardly anything feels nonpartisan, the coronavirus was starting to look like a consensus issue. … But this week, a rash of well-organized protests against state restrictions broke out — a jolting reminder that not everyone is on board with the new, government-mandated limits on public assembly […] Read more »