Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Democratic Party (US)

  • Midterms Could Have Gone Worse for Democrats

    United States Capitol Washington
    Skyline of Washington DC at night (Shutterstock)

    Tuesday’s midterm elections in the United States could have gone worse for Democrats.

    Many states are still counting their votes, but early results suggest Republicans underperformed.

    371 of the 435 elections for the House of Representatives have been called: 172 for Democrats and 199 for Republicans. Democrats are still expected to lose their majority of 220 seats.

    In the Senate, where 35 out of 100 seats are contested, the parties may swap Pennsylvania and Nevada but keep fifty seats each, which would give Vice President Kamala Harris the deciding vote.

    Democrat John Fetterman is projected to win outgoing Republican senator Pat Toomey’s seat in Pennsylvania, defeating Mehmet Oz. Republican challenger Adam Laxalt is ahead of Democratic senator Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada, but only by 22,000 votes with 72 percent of the votes counted.

    Democratic incumbents Mark Kelly and Raphael Warnock are leading in Arizona and Georgia. With 99 percent of the votes counted, it looks like Republican senator Ron Johnson will win reelection in Wisconsin by 30,000 votes, a margin of 1 percent. (more…)

  • Where Is the Party of Middle America?

    United States Capitol Washington
    Workers clean the steps of the United States Capitol in Washington DC in the early morning of January 8, 2021 (Victoria Pickering)

    59 percent of Americans believe Democrats will “open the US-Mexico border” if they win the election on Tuesday. 53 percent worry they will cut police funding.

    They won’t. Nor will they step up border enforcement or raise police budgets, and they should: illegal border crossings and violent crime are rising. But only far-left extremists believe in open borders and defunding the police. Few have been nominated by Democrats. Even fewer will win elections.

    The other half of the country sees Republicans as the extremists: 56 percent believe a Republican Congress would ban abortion and overturn democratic elections.

    There is more justification for those beliefs. Many Republican candidates support a federal ban on abortion. Many were complicit or silent when Donald Trump tried to steal the 2020 election. But the party is divided on both questions.

    More than anything, the results of the CBS poll reveal that Democrats and Republicans believe the worst about each other.

    What about the 40 percent of Americans who identify with neither party? (more…)

  • Biden Would Repeat Dutch Mistakes in Regulating Freelancers

    Joe Biden
    Then-former American vice president Joe Biden gives a speech in Des Moines, Iowa, January 4, 2020 (Phil Roeder)

    President Joe Biden would make the same mistake as the Netherlands in regulating independent work.

    In 2015, the European country required employers to put freelancers on an open-ended contract after two years of work.

    In an attempt to bring more workers into regular employment, a coalition government of the center-left Labor Party and center-right liberals also made it costlier and more time-consuming for companies to fire employees, and it increased severance pay.

    The reforms didn’t cause a shift from freelancing to salaried employment. They did destroy some 77,000 — mostly part-time — jobs in child care, hospitality, nursing and other industries, according to an analysis by ABN Amro bank.

    After Labor lost the election in 2017, the liberals formed a government with center parties and repealed the reforms. They made it cheaper for companies to hire, and easier to fire, employees. Freelancers were allowed three contracts per employer every three years.

    Employment rose. There are more Dutch people in work than ever before. Almost every industry, from construction to schools to the national railway, struggles to fill vacancies. (more…)

  • Democrats Taxed and Regulated, Now Subsidize, Chips and Energy

    Joe Biden Nancy Pelosi
    American president Joe Biden and Democratic House speaker Nancy Pelosi in the Capitol in Washington DC, October 28, 2021 (White House/Adam Schultz)

    Ronald Reagan summarized government’s view of the economy: “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.”

    Economists now call this cost-disease socialism: first restrict supply, then subsidize the costs. The United States does this with everything from health care (examples here) to housing (although Joe Biden’s reforms go in the right direction).

    Democrats are making the same mistake with their technology and climate laws.

    There is plenty to like about the CHIPS and Science Act and the (albeit misleadingly-named) Inflation Reduction Act. The first doubles government funding of research into 6G communications, advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence and other breakthrough technologies; the latter creates a 15-percent minimum tax on the largest corporations, lowers annual out-of-pocket drug payments for Medicare patients from $7,050 to $2,000 beginning in 2025 and will allow Medicare to negotiate some drug prices starting in 2026.

    But both laws also spend billions of dollars in subsidies and tax credits to prop up technologies and industries that could have been deregulated instead. (more…)

  • Why Congress Let Biden’s Child Benefits Lapse

    Washington DC
    Skyline of Washington DC with the United States Capitol in the distance, September 28, 2017 (Ted Eytan)

    A year ago, I wrote that the child benefits Joe Biden snuck into his $1.9 trillion coronavirus recovery program might outlive the pandemic. Once American parents had accustomed to receiving monthly cheques of $250 or $300 per child, I figured it would be hard for Congress to let the program lapse.

    But that’s what they did. (more…)

  • Democrats Are Losing Touch with Middle America

    Joe Biden
    American president Joe Biden walks away from a news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington DC, January 19 (White House/Adam Schultz)

    The easiest way to win an election is to appeal to the voter in the center. Fanatics will come up with all sorts of reasons to deny it, and lose. It’s not a perfect rule. In a tight election, turning out your base matters too. But in a two-party system, the party that puts the most distance between itself and the median voter is the one most likely to end up in opposition.

    Take Britain’s Labour Party. It kept Jeremy Corbyn as leader for five years through six defeats. His supporters insisted his policies (raising the minimum wage, a four-day workweek, universal child care) were popular, and many, polled individually, were. But his approval rating was always under water. Middle England didn’t trust the man who opposed the Falklands War in 1982 and the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999; who called the assassination of Osama bin Laden a “tragedy” and praised Hamas for their commitment to “peace”. Corbyn’s fans mistook his refusal to compromise for principle. It accomplished nothing for Labour voters.

    Democrats in the United States are in the process of making a similar mistake. Many of their policies — the $1.9-trillion coronavirus recovery program, $1 trillion in infrastructure spending, canceling the worst of Donald Trump’s immigration policies, subsidizing child care, rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement — are popular, but the party is not.

    43 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Democrats. 42 percent support Joe Biden and 42 percent plan to vote for a Democrat in the midterm election.

    The only consolation is that Republicans are disliked even more: just one in three have a favorable view of them. Yet 46 percent would vote Republican in November. It seems Republicans don’t need to be loved to win. (more…)

  • How Can Biden Be Successful and Unpopular At the Same Time?

    Joe Biden
    American president Joe Biden disembarks Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington DC, October 15 (White House/Erin Scott)

    Earlier this week, I argued the media consensus about Joe Biden is too negative; that the first year of his presidency has been more successful than the headlines suggest.

    But Biden is also unpopular. Just 42 percent of Americans believe he’s doing a good job, down from 53 percent when he started. His party is projected to lose the midterm elections in November.

    Two things can be true:

    1. Biden had been moderately successful.
    2. He has focused too little on the issues Americans care about. (more…)

  • Democrats Would Make American Child Care More Expensive

    Joe Biden
    American president Joe Biden walks down the colonnade of the White House in Washington DC, August 20 (White House/Erin Scott)

    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. (more…)

  • Democratic Recriminations Argue for Switch to Multiparty System

    United States Capitol Washington
    Skyline of Washington DC at night (Shutterstock)

    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.) (more…)

  • Biden Wins American Presidency, Trump Refuses to Concede

    • Former vice president Joe Biden has defeated incumbent Donald Trump in the American presidential election.
    • Biden won 5.5 million more votes nationwide and an Electoral College majority by flipping Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
    • Trump has yet to concede and falsely accused Democrats of “stealing” the election.
    • Most Europeans preferred Biden, but Trump had fans in Central Europe. (more…)

  • Biden Would Pull America from the Brink

    Joe Biden
    Former American vice president Joe Biden campaigns in Des Moines, Iowa, August 8, 2019 (Gage Skidmore)

    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. (more…)

  • Biden Outpolls Trump in Swing States

    Joe Biden
    Former American vice president Joe Biden campaigns in Greenville, South Carolina, August 30, 2019 (Biden For President)

    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. (more…)

  • What Biden Wants

    Joe Biden
    Former American vice president Joe Biden gives a speech in Des Moines, Iowa, January 4, 2020 (Phil Roeder)

    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. (more…)

  • Speechmaking Isn’t Governing

    Dilma Rousseff Barack Obama
    Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff welcomes her American counterpart, Barack Obama, and his family in Brasília, March 19, 2011 (White House/Pete Souza)

    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. (more…)

  • Education Has Become the Dividing Line in American Politics

    Cleveland Ohio
    Downtown Cleveland, Ohio (Shutterstock/Pedro Gutierrez)

    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.) (more…)