This week, four presidents journeyed to Austin, Tex., to address the Civil Rights Summit and remark on President Lyndon B. Johnson’s legacy on the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act. That landmark act brought an end to legal racial segregation in public places. But now we are […] Read more »
Rich people rule!
… A forthcoming article in Perspectives on Politics by (my former colleague) Martin Gilens and (my sometime collaborator) Benjamin Page marks a notable step in that process. Drawing on the same extensive evidence employed by Gilens in his landmark book “Affluence and Influence,” Gilens and Page analyze 1,779 policy outcomes […] Read more »
How Democrats Can Compete for the White Working Class
On the surface, the Democratic Party’s bid to win back the votes of the white working class looks like an impossible task. Between 2008 and 2012, President Obama’s already weak support among these voters dropped from 40 percent to just 36 percent. Looked at from a different perspective, though, Democratic […] Read more »
Is a ‘national shift toward envy’ underway? Maybe not.
Jay Livingston is a one-man truth squad for Arthur Brooks. Livingston is a professor of sociology at Montclair State University in New Jersey, and Brooks is the president of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and an occasional op-ed writer for the New York Times. … A new example came […] Read more »
The Downside of Inciting Envy
… My own data analysis confirms a strong link between economic envy and unhappiness. In 2008, Gallup asked a large sample of Americans whether they were “angry that others have more than they deserve.” People who strongly disagreed with that statement — who were not envious, in other words — […] Read more »
Exceptionalism Ending?
In a well-researched and provocative National Journal column, journalist Peter Beinart seeks to jujitsu conservatives’ charges that President Obama has undermined “American exceptionalism.” … I offer some reservations. Beinart exaggerates the convergence of Americans with other western peoples. What is really striking is how long-lasting aspects of American exceptionalism have […] Read more »