Obama's Victory Wasn't Thanks to Black Turnout
Even with 2004's turnout, Mitt Romney still would have lost
After decades dreaming of high black turnout, Democrats finally got their wish in the last two elections, with obvious results. President Barack Obama overcame a strong Republican performance among white voters last November, and Monday, an analysis by William Frey, a demographer at Brookings, found that black turnout actually exceeded white turnout in 2012. He also concluded that Mitt Romney would have won last year if racial turnout levels had mirrored 2004's. Both conclusions are premature—and the latter is plain wrong. READ MORE >>
A major theme of American politics in the years since 2008 has been how voters react to a grim economy. Of course, that theme doesn’t apply everywhere. One swath of the country that has experienced good times: The chunks of North Dakota and eastern Montana that have witnessed a shale oil boom. READ MORE >>
Immigration Reform Would Not Be a 'Bonanza' for Democrats
Politico's analysis makes way too many false assumptions
The next few months could determine the fate of 11 million undocumented immigrants, so, naturally, the question is how those undocumented immigrants would vote. Today, Politico's lead story attempts to explain how immigration reform could be a “bonanza” for Democrats, since today’s undocumented workers could swing states like Texas or Arizona in the 2028 election. READ MORE >>
More than a decade after 9/11, the “war on terrorism” continues to produce new legal questions. The Supreme Court has plenty of cases about “enemy combatants,” the Bush-era designation for detained Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists, but it’s never had to consider Senator Lindsey Graham’s latest idea. READ MORE >>
I’m relatively agnostic about gun control. I’m from the West; I have friends who really like their guns. And I live in the East; I have friends who really hate guns. But it should be troubling to partisans of all stripes when terrible political analysis dictates public policy. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what’s happened with gun control. This week, the Manchin-Toomey amendment requiring background checks on gun purchases failed in the Senate, in part—perhaps in large part—because senators bought into the myth of an omnipotent National Rifle Association. READ MORE >>
That's Rich
Wealthy Americans, more than the middle class, say the Grand Old Party is out of touch
Ever since last year's election, the nation's conservatives have been in self-preservation mode: They know something about the GOP needs to change, but they don’t want it to be them. The party establishment would prefer to jettison cultural issues, since it never cared much about cultural issues, anyway. And the faction of fiscal conservatives argues that well-educated, affluent voters are more natural GOP constituents, anyway. READ MORE >>
In every election over the last 20 years, Appalachia shifted toward Republicans and the West revolted against the incumbent party’s candidate. These patterns continued in 2008 and 2012, but Seth Stephens-Davidowitz argues that these more recent manifestations are due to racism, since they correlate with the prevalence of racist Google searches. Although this explanation matches the data, it’s not persuasive. READ MORE >>
The Unlikely Underdog
Against Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden would break the vice presidential nomination streak
When vice presidents seek their party’s nomination, they win. The last failed veep candidacy was in 1952, when Alben Barkley’s passive campaign failed at the DNC when labor union leaders expressed grave doubts about whether an ill 74-year-old was fit for the presidency. Since then, vice presidents Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, George H.W. READ MORE >>
After two clear victories and “Bradley Effect” no-shows, it would seem that the fear that racism could cost Barack Obama the presidency was overstated. But Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at Harvard, begs to differ; he thinks that racism significantly hindered Obama. READ MORE >>
The future of the GOP has been up for debate since its defeat in last November’s elections, and for the most part the question has been not if, but how Republicans should change. More recently, though, well-respected analysts are debating whether the GOP really needs to change at all. READ MORE >>
