… Long before the coronavirus crisis, another one was brewing: a slow but steady decline in how many Americans trust the federal government. That number has been declining for decades, through Democratic and Republican administrations. And in 2019, it reached one of the lowest points since the measure began: Just […] Read more »
The Pandemic Hasn’t Changed Voters’ Minds About Trump
For all the focus on the gender gap, the diploma divide over Donald Trump is looming as an even greater factor in the 2020 presidential race—just as it was in 2016. … It’s remarkable how the outbreak has disrupted every aspect of American life without hugely reconfiguring the landscape for […] Read more »
The Phony Coronavirus Class War
… Lately some commentators have suggested that the coronavirus lockdowns pit an affluent professional class comfortable staying home indefinitely against a working class more willing to take risks to do their jobs. Writing in The Post, Fareed Zakaria tried to make sense of the partisan split over coronavirus restrictions, describing […] Read more »
Americans differ on views of COVID-19 impact
Americans perceive wide disparities along class, racial, and geographic lines in terms of whose health they think will be most affected by the coronavirus: the working class, more so than the wealthy; cities and suburbs, more than rural areas; African-American and Hispanic communities, more so than white communities; and more […] Read more »
The ‘Hard Hat Riot’ Was a Preview of Today’s Political Divisions
This was something genuinely new, and raw. Even jaded viewers tuning in to the network news on May 8, 1970, must have been shocked to see helmeted construction workers waving enormous American flags and chanting “All the way, U.S.A.” as they tore through an antiwar demonstration in Manhattan’s financial district […] Read more »
Essential, and No Longer Disposable
The greatest irony of the coronavirus pandemic may be that many of the American workers now considered the most essential were among those treated as the most disposable before the outbreak began. Meatpackers, farmworkers, grocery-store cashiers, warehouse clerks, janitors, nursing-home and home-health-care aides—all of these positions offer some of the […] Read more »