Election
How America Broke Up With The Democratic Party
FDR signs the Banking Act of 1935. Photo: Wikimedia Commons Many grassroots Democrats separated from their party in the 1990s, and the 2020 election may be the last chance to save the marriage. While the GOP has been trying to establish a semi-permanent ruling...
The New Know-Nothings And Why We Must Impeach
Trump’s America feels more and more like the 1850s, when our country’s violent anti-immigrant movement was born. Anti-Catholic mobs, alarmed by a rapid influx of poor immigrants from Germany, Ireland and Italy, burned churches and killed Catholics in Philadelphia and...
What Trump And The GOP Learned From Obama
As President Trump’s impeachment unspools, news coverage is buzzing about conspiracy theories and geopolitical rivalries. But at the root of Trump’s effort to extort Ukraine was a simple motive: Trump hoped to influence our elections to preserve his power and that of...
Charter Schools' Billion-Dollar Fraud Stinks Worse Than We Thought
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore / flickr / cc Earlier this year, when members of Congress repeatedly confronted U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos about a study finding the federal government’s charter school grant program had wasted an estimated $1 billion on...
Mayor Pete, Get Big Money Out Of Your Campaign
What will it take to get big money out of politics? As a voter and a student, that’s what I want to know from any candidate who wants my vote, so I asked Mayor Pete Buttigieg this when he visited our campus – Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa – this weekend....
Will The 2020 Contenders Take On Inequality?
Is America’s political discourse on inequality finally getting real? In the early going of the 2020 presidential campaign, this has become a question worth asking. White House hopefuls have been condemning the maldistribution of America’s income and wealth with an...
Progressive Ideas Are Popular, They Win - Here’s How
How do we build a bigger “we”? Anat Shenker-Osorio says we do this when we talk about race and class in a way that welcomes everybody in, and leaves nobody out. This “Race-Class Narrative Strategy,” which she and UC Berkeley law professor Ian Haney López developed in...
Is Pete Buttigieg A Shill For The Donor Class?
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore / flickr / cc Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old Maltese-American mayor of South Bend, the fourth-largest town in Indiana, is the shiny new object in the race to become the Democrats' candidate for president in 2020. Coming from almost...
How Social Media Amplifies Trump's Rants And Disinformation
Photo credit: White House official photo / cc As 2020 nears, disinformation—intentionally false political propaganda—is increasing and getting nastier. Central to this disturbing trend is President Trump, whose re-election campaign and allies revel in mixing selected...
Warren Won't Back Down On Medicare For All
When Elizabeth Warren was criticized for not detailing how she would pay for Medicare for All, most pundits assumed she would duck and cover. M4A is Bernie Sanders’s signature legislation, but the establishment dismisses him as a movement candidate. Warren, on the...
