That kind of polarization may only intensify in coming years. In a blog post today at Demos, a left-leaning think tank, Sean McElwee points out that young Democratic primary voters and donors are both more liberal than other democrats their age and more liberal than older primary voters and donors. All of that means that the Democratic party will soon be pulled further left, McElwee predicts. [...]
"These data all suggest that, rather than seeing racism as a persistent problem still in need of remedy, many young white people—including those who identify as Democrats—are inclined to believe America is a colorblind society and that little remains to be done to remedy past racial injustices," researchers Sean McElwee and Jesse Rhodes wrote.
It’s worth noting, first of all, that black and Hispanic college students are more likely to have to borrow to pay for a college education and that they end up having to borrow more money to cover college costs. A study from Demos analyzing federal data found that 86 percent of black students and 87 percent of Hispanic students got loans to attend private universities, compared to 72 percent of whites.
Larry Harmon, 60, hadn’t voted in a while when he drove to the high school in November 2015 to weigh in on a local referendum in Kent, Ohio. But he wasn’t allowed to cast his ballot. [...]
The Trump Justice Department is undermining the ability of people to vote, said Brenda Wright, the vice president of policy and legal strategies at Demos, which is representing the plaintiffs in the Ohio case.
Rather than try to dismantle one of the few tools we have to keep this problem from getting worse, this administration should take a more nuanced and comprehensive approach toward making our campuses more reflective of our society, particularly for the most diverse generation of students ever.
The Justice Department released an amicus brief in the case, currently before the Supreme Court, over whether Ohio can continue to remove “infrequent voters” who fail to cast a ballot over a six-year period.
But the A. Philip Randolph Institute, an African-American trade union group, the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, and Larry Harmon, a man who was purged from the rolls, are suing the state over the law.
The groups have stepped up their game, and more recently have targeted counties and states known to play crucial roles in elections. They also began attracting the attention of major voting rights groups like Demos and the League of Women Voters, which sought to intervene in the lawsuits and help the elections officials put up more of a fight.
I’ve met a lot of white people who believe that black students get so much financial aid and scholarships that they don’t have to pay for college. [...]
After 9/11, George W. Bush turned immigration into a national security issue. He created the ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, folding them both into the Department of Homeland Security. It was based “on the myth that our country would be more safe if we cracked down on immigration,” Katherine Culliton-González, a senior counsel for the left-leaning think tank Demos, told the New Republic. “ICE became part of this national security agency.”
The share of student loan borrowers who entered repayment owing $20,000 or more doubled — from 20% to 40% — between 2002 and 2014, according to a report published Wednesday by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. What’s more, the share of borrowers entering repayment with $50,000 or more in debt tripled during the same period, the CFPB report found, jumping from 5% to 16%.
“Class has always been racially determined in this country,” Heather McGhee, president of the left-leaning public policy group Demos, told me. “In a country where you can have a credo of equality and social mobility and the ability of any man to rise as far as his talents and drive can take him, that has always had to be put in relative terms.” [...]
The Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic party is convinced it has a solution: have the party move left. “People are looking for a populism, but a multi-racial populism,” Heather McGhee, of the leftist voting-rights group Demos, said on Meet the Press this morning. “They’re looking for candidates who say, ‘I’m willing to take on the wealthy and powerful, and also I’m not willing to let the wealthy and powerful divide us from each other so that they can have the spoils of our great nation.’”
“We got involved in this case because we’re concerned that overly aggressive efforts to purge voters off the rolls result in removing eligible people, something we’ve seen happen in other states, including Ohio and Georgia.”
