The New Republic

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 September 2009, as chief of staff to Senator Ted Kaufman, I sat in on a meeting with the then-senator and Lanny Breuer, who led the criminal division of the Justice Department at the time. Why, Senator Kaufman wanted to know, had the Justice Department not prosecuted financial institutions and the individuals who run them for criminal behavior? Breuer said he was “dependent on the pipeline” to bring forward cases, and added that bank regulators so far had provided no criminal referrals related to the financial crisis. READ MORE >>

The compromise on background checks died today in the Senate. And President Obama is as angry as we’ve ever seen him. READ MORE >>

There are many good reasons to support comprehensive immigration reform. There are some 11 million undocumented workers in the United States who exist in a legal and economic limbo: Their condition is worse than that of indentured servants. Proposals for emphasizing immigration of skilled workers are also welcome. And an influx of young workers is important to sustaining an aging citizenry’s social-insurance programs. 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 >>

When the Senate takes up the bill to expand background checks for gun purchases this week, we will hear plenty rationalizations for opposing it similar to the one offered recently by Heidi Heitkamp, the newly elected Democrat from North Dakota: “In our part of the country, [gun control] isn’t an issue. This is a way of life. READ MORE >>

One of the stars of Barack Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address was Jackie Bray, a single mother who was laid off in 2011 and struggled for months to find a good-paying job. READ MORE >>

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 >>

As a graduate student in economics, I have used Google search data to quantify the cost of racism on President Barack Obama's vote total. I compared the rate at which areas made racist searches on Google to Obama’s vote share, controlling for the vote share of the previous Democratic candidate, John Kerry in 2004. READ MORE >>

Political opponents are wont to describe Barack Obama as a polarizing figure in American politics. In fact, they angrily note, the most polarizing of all presidents. They decry this in the context of his 2008 campaign, during which he presented himself as a figure almost above partisanship, or at least capable of transcending it for the common good. READ MORE >>