Politics Archives - Page 54 of 105

Democracy

Biden Is Waiting, Trump Is Plotting and the Votes Are Still Being Counted

The “blue wave” didn’t happen, but a messy, prolonged “blue shift” probably will

November 4, 2020 • by John Stoehr

I had a bad night, too. This morning was better. I had a good cry. That always helps. Then I thought about things. That also helps. It remains to be seen whether Joe Biden wins, but one thing seems certain: fascism will be with us for a long time to come. Perhaps ...

Biden Is Waiting, Trump Is Plotting and the Votes Are Still Being Counted

Literature

Poetry to Vote By

Reading Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic on the eve of the election

November 3, 2020 • by Evangeline Riddiford Graham

How many of us are brave enough for art? At the bakery down the block, polling shows Trump surging ahead. Each purchase of an election-themed cookie—Biden or Trump, with red, white, and blue sprinkles—is tallied by the bakers as a vote in favor for the relevant candidate. “Our forecast is never ...

Activism

When It Comes to Racial Justice, Why Is It Wrong to Demand the “Impossible”?

Because when white comfort matters most, Black lives are not a priority

November 3, 2020 • by Kristopher Burrell

On a recent episode of The Open Mind, Alexander Heffner asked his guest, activist minister and scholar Nyle Fort, about the connections between the Covid-19 pandemic and the reemergence of social justice protests across America. Referencing Arundhati Roy’s recent essay “The Pandemic is a Portal,” Fort meditated on the potential ...

When It Comes to Racial Justice, Why Is It Wrong to Demand the “Impossible”?

Democracy

Feel Better, Defeat Trump!

Some practical tips for putting your election emotions to good work

November 2, 2020 • by Leo Casey

Many of us are finding ourselves quite apprehensive, even fearful, because of what is happening with the 2020 elections and in American political life. There is value, I want to argue, in taking a moment to analyze those feelings, the role they play in the elections and what we can ...

Democracy

How to Suppress the Vote

One of the Constitution’s original provisions, delegating elections to the states, haunts us today

November 2, 2020 • by Jo Freeman

There has been a lot of talk in the last few months about vote suppression. Both Democrats and Republicans are accusing the other of an action that, we can all agree, is reprehensible. But vote suppression is nothing new. It has a long and (dis)honorable tradition reaching back to the founding ...

Politics

My Trump-Voting Brother and Me

The silences and anger that seeped into our families in 2016 are not going to end after the election

October 29, 2020 • by William Collins Donahue

We grew up in a family of six kids, and he is the one closest to me--in age, and in other ways, too. As I write this, he looks out at me from his official high school Senior photograph that hangs on my study wall. It is one of the ...

Democracy

The Showdown Between Democracy and Autocracy

Why the broad anti-Trump coalition must prepare for a post-election crisis

October 29, 2020 • by Claudia Koonz

Could democracy in the United States die? A number of troubling signs, such as Donald Trump’s refusal to endorse a peaceful transfer of power and his refusal to condemn white supremacists, lead many to worry about what has, until recently, been unthinkable. As a historian of Nazi Germany, I share this ...

The Showdown Between Democracy and Autocracy

History

What Julius Caesar and His Debts Can Teach Us About Donald Trump

The money Julius Caesar owed changed world history

October 29, 2020 • by Kenneth Pringle

Julius Caesar was said to be so far in debt that, on the morning of the 63 BCE election for chief pontiff, in which he was a candidate, he told his mother as she kissed him goodbye “that if he did not return to her as chief pontiff he would ...

What Julius Caesar and His Debts Can Teach Us About Donald Trump

Democracy

Five Lessons for Democracy From the Covid-19 Pandemic

An international evaluation of democracy in crisis

October 29, 2020 • by Jean-Paul Gagnon, Rikki J. Dean, Afsoun Afsahi, Emily Beausoleil and Selen A. Ercan

Who could have guessed, even one year ago, that America’s postal service would be central to the US Presidential Election? That political party conventions would become online events? Or that protests could be suppressed in the name of biosecurity and protesters could be fined for not wearing face masks? The COVID-19 ...

Five Lessons for Democracy From the Covid-19 Pandemic

Politics

The Silver Lining of the 2020 Census

The White House, by cutting short a key step in the census process, has inadvertently helped publicize that this census, like all those that preceded it, has errors – and that the Bureau is adept at finding and fixing them

October 27, 2020 • by Kenneth Prewitt

Every census produces not just one data product, but various products that serve different purposes and are delivered to different audiences over a period of months. The first polished data product the census produces is both its simplest – and most consequential. The “reapportionment data file” is normally supplied toward the ...

Democracy

The Thin Blue Line

The Trump campaign weaves evangelicals and the alt-right more tightly into the president’s increasingly fragile base

October 26, 2020 • by Heather Cox Richardson

------ Recognizing that he is losing the demographics he needs to win reelection, Trump has clearly decided that his best bet is to spur his base to turn out in vast numbers and vote. To that end, he has given up any pretense of appealing to voters outside his base. At ...

North America

After Trump

Towards democracy and social justice

October 23, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

That, of course, is the problem. And the problem is grave. In 2016, we were worried about what Trump’s victory might mean. Now we know that things have become much worse than most of us ever imagined, and not only for us in the United States. Trump has been a revolutionary—he ...