Politics | Voter.org

Black Success, White Backlash

October 16, 2023 White, black, Success, backlash0 comment

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here. For more than half a century, I have been studying the shifting relations between white and Black Americans. My first journal article, published in 1972, when I was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, was about Black political power in the industrial Midwest after the riots of the late 1960s. My own experience of race relations in…

The Israeli Crisis Is Testing Biden’s Core Foreign-Policy Claim

October 12, 2023 crisis, Claim, Israeli, ForeignPolicy, CORE, Testing, Biden's0 comment

President Joe Biden’s core foreign-policy argument has been that his steady engagement with international allies can produce better results for America than the impulsive unilateralism of his predecessor Donald Trump. The eruption of violence in Israel is testing that proposition under the most difficult circumstances. The initial reactions of Biden and Trump to the attack have produced exactly the kind of personal contrast Biden supporters want to project. On Tuesday, Biden delivered a powerful speech that was impassioned but measured in denouncing the Hamas terror attacks and declaring unshakable U.S.…

Virginia Could Decide the Future of the GOP’s Abortion Policy

October 8, 2023 Virginia, GOP's, decide, Policy, could, abortion, Future0 comment

A crucial new phase in the political struggle over abortion rights is unfolding in suburban neighborhoods across Virginia. An array of closely divided suburban and exurban districts around the state will decide which party controls the Virginia state legislature after next month’s election, and whether Republicans here succeed in an ambitious attempt to reframe the politics of abortion rights that could reverberate across the nation. After the Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to abortion in 2022, the issue played a central role in blunting the widely anticipated Republican red…

The Only Sin That Republicans Can’t Forgive

October 4, 2023 Republicans, Only, Can't, Forgive0 comment

The fall of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy today demonstrated again that the one sin that cannot be forgiven in the modern Republican Party is being seen as failing to fight the Democratic agenda by any means necessary. Of all the accusations that could be leveled against McCarthy, the notion that he was insufficiently committed to battling Democrats would not seem high on the list. As the GOP minority leader in the previous Congress, McCarthy voted to reject the 2020 election results in two key states and tried to impede the…

Kevin McCarthy Finally Defies the Right

September 30, 2023 right, Kevin, finally, defies, McCarthy0 comment

For weeks, Speaker Kevin McCarthy seemed to face an impossible choice as he haggled over spending bills with his party’s most hard-line members: He could keep the government open, or he could keep his job. At every turn, McCarthy’s behavior suggested that he favored the latter option. He continued accepting the demands of far-right Republicans to deepen spending cuts and dig in against the Democrats, making a shutdown at tonight’s midnight deadline all but a certainty. [Read: Why Republicans can’t keep the government open] With just hours to go, however,…

How We Got ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’

September 26, 2023 dies, Democracy, 'darkness'0 comment

I should not have been surprised, but I still marveled at just how little it took to get under the skin of President Donald Trump and his allies. By February 2019, I had been the executive editor of The Washington Post for six years. That month, the newspaper aired a one-minute Super Bowl ad, with a voice-over by Tom Hanks, championing the role of a free press, commemorating journalists killed and captured, and concluding with the Post’s logo and the message “Democracy dies in darkness.” The ad highlighted the strong…