The roles of age, ideology, interest, and linked fate — White liberals have spent the past few years marching steadily to the left. This sentence is a rarity in American politics today: it garners pretty broad agreement across the political spectrum. (Although, predictably, with drastically different underlying sentiments depending on what part of said spectrum you ask). And this sentence…

Most independents are about as “moderate” as the partisans they profess not to be. — If you’re an observer of American politics, you’ve probably heard a lot about “Political Independents” — people who insist that they don’t identify with either the Republican or Democratic parties. …

They’re doing so more often and with far more consistency than any other major national TV news network. — [If] the Hunter Biden e-mail story was engineered to be an “October surprise,” it’s pretty safe to say that it’s fallen flat… On Tuesday, October 14th the New York Post dropped a report revealing what they claim is a “smoking-gun email” purporting that Hunter Biden introduced his father, then Vice-President…

The game is work, yes. But it’s work with meaning. — I recently came across Lewis Gordon’s piece in The Nation titled “Animal Crossing’s Embrace of Cute, Capitalist Perfection is Not What We Need.” In it, Gordon derides Animal Crossing: New Horizons as a hollow, uncritical work simulator — akin to “clicker” games where empty progress is made by, as the…

Yesterday (3/3/2020), 14 states concurrently held their presidential primaries. (The territory of American Samoa held its caucus as well). The quadrennial tradition — commonly called “Super Tuesday” — can often be a pretty big deal. They can make or break the campaigns of presidential aspirants before they even make it…

How proximity to a racetrack affected the vote to ban dog racing in Florida — On November 6th, 2018, Florida voters overwhelmingly decided to ban an activity that had been legal and lucrative for close to 90 years: Greyhound racing. Originally legalized in 1931, Amendment 13 put an expiration date of January 2020 on all dog racing in the state. The Amendment was one of…

Last night (June 19th, 2019), President Trump announced that he will seek reelection in 2020. Speaking before a packed crowd in Orlando, Florida, the speech was basically a greatest-hits album from his 2016 run: Hillary Clinton, Immigration, Mainstream Media is Unfair — although it did feature a remix (“Keep America…

What an analysis of 40 thousand tweets reveals about how we approach our 2019 goals. — It’s the start of a new year! People are changing out calendars, reaching out to loved ones, and deciding on what resolutions they want to try and hold themselves to this year. …

The Grand Old Party isn’t going away anytime soon. — Recently, I happened across an interesting piece from FiveThirtyEight talking about what the gender gap might look like in the 2018 midterms. For those who didn’t know, over the last few decades, women have been more likely to support Democratic party candidates over Republicans. Political scientists have been calling this…