Whenever I’m asked, “Who do you pay particular attention to on politics and political trends?” one invariable name I offer is that of my former National Journal colleague, Ron Brownstein, now a senior political analyst for CNN and senior editor for The Atlantic. … One recent piece of Ron’s in […] Read more »
How the Urban/Rural Political Divide Plays Out in America’s Suburbs
America’s suburbs have been competitive battlegrounds in recent elections. But a new UChicago Harris/AP-NORC Poll finds that, contrary to popular perceptions of suburbanites as swing voters, there are actually fewer true independents in the suburbs compared to urban and rural areas of the country. While the average overall opinions of […] Read more »
Red town, blue town
Last week I read a column by Timothy Egan about books by J. D. Vance and Tara Westover, which he said were “guides to a Trumpland that is terra incognita to most Americans.” Vance grew up in southern Ohio and Westover grew up in Idaho. A couple of days later, […] Read more »
Tennessee Politics: From Boss Crump to Howard Baker to . . . Marsha Blackburn?
Only one chapter in V.O. Key’s classic 1949 book Southern Politics in State and Nation named an individual in its title: “Tennessee: The Civil War and Mr. Crump.” Key described an era in Tennessee history when the Democratic primary decided who controlled statewide politics and Memphis political boss E.H. Crump […] Read more »
Three profoundly dangerous myths about the 2018 elections
In the days immediately after the 2018 elections the most widely circulated analysis held that along with high turnout among minority voters the significant Democratic gains in the House of Representatives and in a range of state level elections were the result of the significant defection from the GOP of […] Read more »
How Red-State Democrats Became An Endangered Species In The Senate
One theme of the 2018 election was that Democratic senators from rural, red states became an endangered breed. Three Democratic senators on deep-red turf — Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota — lost their seats. Two others managed to squeak out wins […] Read more »