Politics | Voter.org

Why This Election Is So Weird

September 15, 2022 This, Weird, Election0 comment

The two major factors shaping the 2022 midterm elections collided in tumultuous fashion on Tuesday morning. First came the government report that inflation last month had increased faster than economists had expected or President Joe Biden had hoped. The announcement triggered a sharp fall in the stock market, the worst day on Wall Street in two years. That same afternoon, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina introduced legislation that would impose a nationwide ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The inflation report captured this year’s most powerful tailwind…

What the Student-Loan Debate Overlooks

September 11, 2022 debate, StudentLoan, Overlooks0 comment

A core conservative critique of President Joe Biden’s executive action on student-debt forgiveness is that the plan requires blue-collar Americans to subsidize privileged children idly contemplating gender studies or critical race theory at fancy private colleges. That idea, articulated by Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, among others, aims to portray the GOP as the party of working Americans and Democrats as the champions of the smug, well-educated elite. But it fundamentally misrepresents who’s attending college now, where they are enrolled, and the reasons so many young people are graduating…

The Val Demings Gamble

September 7, 2022 gamble, Demings0 comment

On a hot D.C. Wednesday in the middle of July, an 11-foot statue honoring Mary McLeod Bethune—carved out of marble extracted from the same Tuscan quarry that Michelangelo used for his David—stood draped in a black cloak in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. A group of distinguished guests had gathered to honor Bethune, the prominent educator and civil-rights activist who founded a college for Black students in Daytona Beach, Florida, and later served as an adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. She is now the first Black American to…

The Mar-a-Lago ‘Raid’ Put Ron DeSantis in a Box

August 30, 2022 DeSantis, raid, MaraLago0 comment

That the FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s Florida home has become a rallying point for Republicans—ever eager to demonstrate fealty to the former president and rage at government overreach—is not exactly a shock. What is noteworthy is how the news might shift political considerations in MAGA world. In another universe, last week’s FBI search could have provided a perfect opportunity for a wannabe party leader like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to set himself apart. A reckless has-been running off with nuclear secrets? Not my president! But in this universe—and given…

How the Democrats Rallied

August 22, 2022 Democrats, Rallied0 comment

By now you’ve surely heard: Reports of the Democrats’ inevitable defeat this November (might) have been exaggerated. The party infamous for its disarray is suddenly passing legislation left and right (well, center), making a mockery of its effete opposition, and scoring huge abortion-rights victories in Republican strongholds. Inflation may have peaked, and President Joe Biden slayed a terrorist (while sick with COVID). On Capitol Hill, Democrats finally mounted an effective case against former President Donald Trump, who, by the way, had his mansion searched by the FBI for the possible…

‘Stop the Steal’ Is a Metaphor

August 14, 2022 stop, Steal, Metaphor0 comment

Starting in 2008, a widely circulated conspiracy theory was that Barack Obama was not actually born in America. Strivers on the political right scrounged around to try to produce a Kenyan birth certificate for him; they filed state and federal legal complaints alleging that Obama was not eligible to be president. But proof of this theory was never a requirement for subscribing to it; you could simply choose to believe that a Black liberal with a Muslim-sounding middle name was not one of us. And at several points during Obama’s…