[...] How can Democrats maximize their chances? First, they need to get the basics right. They should target widely because it’s impossible to know where the floor is for Trump. They don’t want to be in a situation where new terrain opens up and they’re unprepared. They need to start winning back state-level and county-level positions that feed into higher office. They’ll need money and an aggressive recruitment strategy to get good candidates to run. But, ultimately, the 2018 election, like all others, will be determined by who shows up.
[...] In short, our analysis indicates that Donald Trump successfully leveraged existing resentment towards African Americans in combination with emerging fears of increased racial diversity in America to reshape the presidential electorate, strongly attracting nativists towards Trump and pushing some more affluent and highly educated people with more cosmopolitan views to support Hillary Clinton. Racial identity and attitudes have further displaced class as the central battleground of American politics. [...]
If you’re a senior struggling with credit card debt like Green, you’re not alone. In 2012, for the first time, middle-income households headed by someone over 50 years old carried more credit card debt on average than households of people younger than 50, according to the Demos National Survey on Credit Card Debt conducted with AARP’s Public Policy Institute. Half of those over 50 had medical debt on their credit cards, and a third said they used credit cards to finance daily expenses. [...]
Last week, Massachusetts became the latest state to either settle or lose in litigation over complaints that it wasn’t providing adequate voter registration services at welfare offices.
The settlement is part of a broad effort by voting rights groups to reverse the decline in voter registrations at public assistance offices, which Congress intended to serve as a mechanism for signing up low-income voters. National voting rights groups argue that the decline in registrations is because of improper implementation by staff at government welfare offices. (...)
On Thursday, a day on which many New Yorkers were squinting in what seemed like the first full sunlight in months, New York Mayor de Blasio announced at Gracie Mansion that he, along with a number of other leading progressives, was putting forward a vision for how to address income inequality. Speaking first, de Blasio said that the group had come together to formulate a template for how best to conquer income inequality, which, he said, is worse today than it was at the height of the Great Depression.
Life happens. We have children to support. We lose jobs. Marriages fall apart. By the time we near our ‘Golden Years’ the nest-egg we may have envisioned may be a lot smaller than we thought and in many cases, not there at all due to heavy debt loads.
"You are in a Catch-22," said Emmanuel Caicedo, a senior campaign strategist with Demos, one member of a coalition of 79 labor and civil rights organizations that formed the NYC Coalition to Stop Credit Checks in Employment.
"You can't pay your bills and so your credit is bad. And then you can't get a job to pay your bills because of your credit."
The rationale behind the ban is simple: it’s unfair and useless to use a person’s credit history, which is often inaccurate or misleading, when assessing their job qualifications.
President Obama's recent comments on universal voting have spurred a debate about how such a policy would influence elections. On the Monkey Cage blog, John Sides examines the partisan consequences and argues that turnout would generally benefit Democrats, but that the effect would be modest.
While income is distributed unequally in the country, what few people know is how much more unequally wealth, financial assets and inheritances are distributed.
Barring a dramatic scandal or an unforeseen event, Hillary Clinton will be the 2016 Democratic party nominee for president. While many on the left have complained about her close ties to banks and her past unwillingness to tackle inequality, such complaints are unlikely to be solved by any challenger. Progressives should instead begin creating the infrastructure to shift American politics in a more progressive direction -- and do so while supporting Clinton in 2016.
To date, the Senate has been mostly unsupportive of the Moreland Commission's proposals. The good government groups are hopeful the current wake of scandal will be enough to finally persuade lawmakers to enact real change.
"We think that should be a wakeup call now to the Senate," Scharff said.
"This is not only a political decision,” said Emmanuel Caicedo, a senior campaign strategist with Demos. “This is a moment where our leaders can make a moral and ethical choice about whose voices matter."
This resource guide is intended to help advocates and local leaders make common-sense improvements to current voter removal practices and oppose bad bills that limit access to the ballot.
Leaders must reject false choices rooted in the idea that social and economic advancement is a zero-sum game or that working-class people must spar over scraps while all the spoils go to the elite few.
These executive actions are a clear signal of this administration’s enduring hostility toward the fundamental right to vote, citizenship for immigrants, and empowered workers.
The concurrence of today’s presidential inauguration and Martin Luther King Jr. Dayunderscores the promise of the multiracial democracy Dr. King envisioned and highlights the stark test our country is about to embark on.
