Why Americans Are Becoming More Pessimistic When Americans look to the future, two mega-trends evoke the most optimism about the nation’s long-term trajectory, the latest Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll has found. One of these trends, the onset of the digital revolution, evokes optimism in every major segment of society. But the second one, the nation’s growing racial and ethnic diversity, divides Americans along lines of race, generation, and, above all, partisanship, thereby illuminating some of the fault lines in modern American life. The new poll asked respondents to consider whether six of the social and economic dynamics that are crucial to the nation’s future make them “more optimistic or more pessimistic about the direction the country is headed.” Only two of the six trends made a majority of respondents feel more optimistic. Submit your nominee to The Renewal Project But the feelings of optimism ended there.
America Is Becoming More Liberal Over roughly the past 18 months, the following events have transfixed the nation. In July 2014, Eric Garner, an African American man reportedly selling loose cigarettes illegally, was choked to death by a New York City policeman. That August, a white police officer, Darren Wilson, shot and killed an African American teenager, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri. For close to two weeks, protesters battled police clad in military gear. In December, an African American man with a criminal record avenged Garner’s and Brown’s deaths by murdering two New York City police officers. In April 2015 another young African American man, Freddie Gray, died in police custody, in Baltimore. Then, in July, activists with Black Lives Matter, a movement that had gained national attention after Brown’s death, disrupted speeches by two Democratic presidential candidates in Phoenix, Arizona. Anyone familiar with American history can hear the echoes. But I was wrong. George W. But that’s only half the story.
In Praise of Small Miracles Most of us don’t save enough. When governments try to encourage saving, they usually enact big policies to increase the incentives. But, in Kenya, people were given a lockable metal box — a simple place to put their money. Too many people die in auto accidents. The heckling discouraged dangerous driving by an awesome amount. These are examples of a new kind of policy-making that is sweeping the world. For example, people hate losing things more than they like getting things, a phenomenon known as loss aversion. People are also guided by decision-making formats. The World Bank has just issued an amazingly good report called “Mind, Society and Behavior” on how the insights of behavioral economics can be applied to global development and global health. Sugar cane farmers in India receive most of their income once a year, at harvest time. In Zambia, hairdressers were asked to sell female condoms to their clients. This corrects for a bias in the way governments often work.
Is the Democratic Party Relevant Anymore? (Image: Troy Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: samdupont / Flickr)Many Democrats examining what happened in the 2014 midterms are asking “what did the voters want?” But the right question is why did only 36.4 percent of potential voters bother to register and vote? Obviously Democrats did not give those voters a good enough reason to take the trouble. Is the Democratic Party relevant anymore? “New Coke” Democrats In 1985 Coca-Cola was the market leader, but Pepsi was gaining market share. Democrats were considered the majority party from the time of Roosevelt’s New Deal until the 1980s. In the 1970s corporations and conservatives launched a major marketing push, establishing a network of PR “think tanks” that pushed a neoliberal economic line. Instead of responding and countering this, most Democratic candidates and officeholders instead tried moving to where their pollsters perceived the pubic to be on an imagined political spectrum. Is Jim Webb The Answer? Identity (Sex and Race) vs.
Poll: Trust in government at all-time low Washington (CNN) – Four decades after President Richard Nixon resigned, a slight majority of Americans still consider Watergate a very serious matter, a new national survey shows. But how serious depends on when you were born. The CNN/ORC International poll's release comes one day before the 40th anniversary of Nixon's resignation on August 9, 1974. With the Watergate scandal escalating, the second-term Republican president had lost much of his political backing, and he faced almost certain impeachment and the prospects of being removed from office by a Democratic-dominated House and Senate. There's a big generational divide over the significance of the scandal, with a majority of those older than 40 describing Watergate as a very serious problem and those under 40 saying it was just politics. The poll also indicates that the public's trust in government is at an all-time low.
The Most Depressing Discovery About the Brain, Ever Yale law school professor Dan Kahan’s new research paper is called “Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government,” but for me a better title is the headline on science writer Chris Mooney’s piece about it in Grist: “Science Confirms: Politics Wrecks Your Ability to Do Math.” Kahan conducted some ingenious experiments about the impact of political passion on people’s ability to think clearly. His conclusion, in Mooney’s words: partisanship “can even undermine our very basic reasoning skills…. [People] who are otherwise very good at math may totally flunk a problem that they would otherwise probably be able to solve, simply because giving the right answer goes against their political beliefs.” In other words, say goodnight to the dream that education, journalism, scientific evidence, media literacy or reason can provide the tools and information that people need in order to make good decisions. The answer, basically, is no.
The Quiet Movement to Make Government Fail Less Often If you wanted to bestow the grandiose title of “most successful organization in modern history,” you would struggle to find a more obviously worthy nominee than the federal government of the United States. In its earliest stirrings, it established a lasting and influential democracy. Since then, it has helped defeat totalitarianism (more than once), established the world’s currency of choice, sent men to the moon, built the Internet, nurtured the world’s largest economy, financed medical research that saved millions of lives and welcomed eager immigrants from around the world. Of course, most Americans don’t think of their government as particularly successful. Only 19 percent say they trust the government to do the right thing most of the time, according to Gallup. Some of this mistrust reflects a healthy skepticism that Americans have always had toward centralized authority. Photo When the federal government is good, it’s very, very good. The evidence is abundant. As Mr.
Someone finally polled the 1% — And it's not pretty On May 22, The Campaign for America's Future gave a conference on The New Populist Majority. The keynote speaker was Elizabeth Warren. The conference confronted the meme that the US is a "center-right" country. Most interesting to me was the fact that they obtained poll results from "the 1%." The poll results for this comparison came from the Russell Sage Foundation. The poll results are below the squiggle. OurFuture.org, Derek Pugh: Memorandum: The American Majority is a Populist Majority (I apologize from the fuzziness. For additional information on the conference, check out these links: OurFuture.org: The New Populism Conference, May 22, 2014 OurFuture.org, Elizabeth Warren: The New Populism Is A Fight For America’s Values OurFuture.org, Robert Reich: The 6 Principles of the New Populism (and the Establishment’s Nightmare) OurFuture.org, Robert Borosage: What Is The New Populism?
Howard Dean: How to Move Beyond the Two-Party System Photo I stand with Hillary Clinton in the presidential race. Others will back Donald J. Trump. And so once again major party backers warn against wasting votes on “spoilers” and criticize minor party candidates for even running. We keep repeating this cycle. Question Five on the Maine ballot would establish ranked-choice voting in the 2018 primary and general elections for governor, Congress and State Legislature. It is fitting that Maine’s motto is “the way life should be.” Ranked-choice voting is already used by tens of millions of voters, including in Australia and Ireland’s national elections, London, Minnesota’s twin cities and eight other American cities when electing mayors. It’s as easy as 1-2-3. I learned to appreciate ranked-choice voting in 2000, when seeking re-election as governor of Vermont. Ranked-choice voting represents the latter — and better — approach. The fundamental issue is majority rule. The case for ranked-choice voting is nonpartisan.