Over the summer, I wrote here that President Joe Biden’s child benefits — $300 per month for children under the age of 6 and $250 for kids up to the age of 17 — help American parents pay for child care, but don’t make child care less expensive.
Now Democrats propose to make it more expensive. Read more “Democrats Would Make American Child Care More Expensive”
Democrats in the United States were hoping for more than a simple victory over Donald Trump. Polls had suggested they could win in a landslide.
That didn’t happen. Joe Biden decisively beat the president by more than six million votes, or a margin of 4 points, but Democrats lost seats in the House of Representatives and failed to take the majority from Republicans in the Senate.
Democrats also lost seats in state houses, giving Republicans control of redistricting in most states; a power they could use to make it even more difficult for Democrats to win a majority of the seats even when they win a majority of the votes. (Districts are withdrawn every ten years following the Census.) Read more “Democratic Recriminations Argue for Switch to Multiparty System”
The rest of the free world will never look at America the same way again.
Donald Trump’s election in 2016, coming on the heels of a disastrous Iraq War few Canadians and Europeans supported, disillusioned even the most fervent Atlanticists. The land of the free was no longer impervious to the dark forces of nativism that necessitated the Atlantic alliance in the first place.
A restoration under Joe Biden may be unlikely. America is drawn to Asia and Europe must take responsibility for security in its own neighborhood. But four more years of Trump could shatter even pragmatic cooperation between nations that are still committed to an open and just world. Biden would pull America from the brink and rejoin the West. Read more “Biden Would Pull America from the Brink”
Polls puts Joe Biden ahead of Donald Trump in the states that decided the outcome of the last presidential election:
Trump is narrowly ahead in the swing states Iowa and Ohio as well as once solidly Republican Georgia and Texas. As recently as 2012, Democrats didn’t even campaign or spend money in those two states.
National polls give Biden an average of 50 percent support against 42-43 percent for Trump.
Although the presidential election will be decided state-by-state, national polls tend to be of higher quality and are still useful. Polling guru Nate Silver points out that Biden would need to win the national popular vote by 3 points or more to have a higher than 50-percent chance of prevailing in the Electoral College. Read more “Biden Outpolls Trump in Swing States”
Joe Biden could become the most progressive president of the United States since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
That might sound odd after he was declared a “centrist” and the “establishment” candidate in the Democratic primaries.
The former vice president isn’t as left-wing as some of his former rivals, like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. He doesn’t want to break up big tech, defund the police, forgive all student loans or nationalize health insurance.
But the whole Democratic Party has moved to the left and Biden has moved with it. He has involved Democrats and allies from the left to the center, including environmental and minority rights groups, gun control advocates and trade unions, in drafting his program. Left-wing congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez helped write his climate policy. Biden incorporated Senator Cory Booker’s proposal to tie federal funding to looser building codes in his housing plan.
The result is that Biden has buy-in from across the Democratic coalition, which — provided the party wins not just the presidency but the Senate in November — means his plans stand a good chance of becoming reality. Read more “What Biden Wants”
American political culture puts too much importance on oratory.
Michelle Obama, the wife of former president Barack Obama, gave a good speech to the Democratic National Convention, held virtually this year, on Monday night and even intelligent commentators suggest she would make a “formidable” presidential candidate in 2024.
No matter that Obama has never held elected office or so much as contested an election.
Communication is an important part of the job of any politician, but it’s not the job. It’s a lesson Michelle’s husband learned in 2009. Read more “Speechmaking Isn’t Governing”
America’s two major parties continue to trade voters based on education.
An analysis by Pew Research of the 2018 electorate found that one in ten voters have switched parties since the election.
Of the 2018 Republicans who now call themselves Democrats, most are college-educated. Of the 2018 Democrats who have become Republicans, most are not.
This reflects a longer-term trend of white Americans sorting into the two parties according to their educational attainment. (Education is less predictive of party affiliation for voters of color.) Read more “Education Has Become the Dividing Line in American Politics”
Joe Biden has tapped California senator Kamala Harris as his vice presidential candidate for the election in November.
It’s a good choice. Elite-educated, the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, a former prosecutor and incumbent senator, Harris ticks many of the right boxes.
When she herself ran for president earlier this year, I argued Harris was “ideologically right where many Democrats want their candidate to be.” She could appeal to key Democratic constituencies: “women, voters of color, party loyalists and West Coast progressives.” Read more “Harris Is a Good Choice”
Donald Trump is disliked by so many Americans that Democrats could win not just the presidency but the Senate in November.
Longer term, however, Republicans have baked-in advantages that make Democratic control of the upper chamber elusive.
The solution: turn America’s overseas dependencies into states. That would give 3.5 million Americans the federal representation they deserve and add ten more seats to the Senate, most of which would lean Democratic. Read more “Democrats Should Give Caribbean and Pacific Islands Statehood”
