There’s a reason why the people who run campaigns are rarely the people responsible for implementing policy. The job of a campaign operative is to work in absolutes – you win or you lose, there’s no gray area. The job of a policy operative, of course, is to look for […] Read more »
Women’s Economic Agenda: Powerful Impact on the Vote and Turnout in 2014
This is a turning point in the 2014 off-year elections when parties, candidates and leaders can recognize how central are unmarried women and the Rising American Electorate to the Democrats’ chances and how clear a path there is to get their votes and get them to vote. This is the […] Read more »
The Health Care Reform War Without End
In the 1936 election, one year after President Roosevelt signed the law creating Social Security, his Republican opponent Alf Landon called it a “cruel hoax” and promised to repeal it. Landon won just two states—and, four years later, Republican nominee Wendell Willkie ran on expanding Social Security. … Although the […] Read more »
Large Majorities of Republicans and Democrats Agree on How to Reform Social Security
When a representative sample of Americans were given information about the projected insolvency of Social Security and presented options for dealing with it, overwhelming majorities—including three in four Republicans and Democrats—favored taking steps that would eliminate most of the Social Security shortfall and a modest majority favored steps that would […] Read more »
In Deficit Debate, Public Resists Cuts in Entitlements and Aid to Poor
As President Obama prepares to sign a bipartisan budget agreement that its proponents describe as a modest step toward addressing the deficit, the public shows little appetite for making some of the spending cuts often discussed as part of a broader “grand bargain” on the budget. The latest national survey […] Read more »
How much are we willing to pay for the pursuit of happiness?
Never mind the conventional speculation about whether the resolution of some political standoff in Washington favors Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, “entitlement” fans or skeptics. The more fundamental question, says Benjamin Radcliff, is this: Does it make people happier or not? Radcliff is a political scientist at Notre Dame […] Read more »