Tag: college degrees
Trump Is Coming for Obamacare Again
Donald Trump’s renewed pledge on social media and in campaign rallies to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act has put him on a collision course with a widening circle of Republican constituencies directly benefiting from the law.
In 2017, when Trump and congressional Republicans tried and failed to repeal the ACA, also known as Obamacare, they faced the core contradiction that many of the law’s principal beneficiaries were people and institutions that favored the GOP. That list included lower-middle-income
Nothing Defines America’s Social Divide Like a College Education
Updated at 5:17 p.m. ET on October 4, 2023
Inequality is one of the great constants. But what sets those at the top of society apart from those at the bottom has varied greatly. In some times and places, it was race; in others, “noble” birth. In some, physical strength; in others, manual dexterity. In America today, most of these factors still matter. The country is racially unequal. Some people inherit great wealth; others become celebrities through sporting prowess.
‘Working Class’ Does Not Equal ‘White’
That the words working class are synonymous in the minds of many Americans with white working class is the result of a political myth. As the award-winning historian Blair LM Kelley explains in her new book, Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class, Black people are more likely to be working-class than white people are.
Kelley’s Black Folk opens our minds up to Black workers, narrating their complex lives over 200 years of American history. Kelley looks
Donald Trump Fights Indictments – The Atlantic
The dilemma for the Republican Party is that Donald Trump’s mounting legal troubles may be simultaneously strengthening him as a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination and weakening him as a potential general-election nominee.
In the days leading up to the indictment of the former president, which Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced two days ago, a succession of polls showed that Trump has significantly increased his lead over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, his closest competitor in the race for
Biden’s Blue-Collar Jobs Bet – The Atlantic
When President Joe Biden visited Kentucky yesterday to tout a new bridge project, most media attention focused on his embrace of bipartisanship. And indeed Biden, against the backdrop of the GOP chaos in the House of Representatives, signaled how aggressively he would claim that reach-across-the-aisle mantle. He appeared onstage with not only Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, but also GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, a perennial bête noire for Democrats.
But Biden also touched on another theme that will
Democrats’ Long Goodbye to the Working Class
As we move into the endgame of the 2022 election, the Democrats face a familiar problem. America’s historical party of the working class keeps losing working-class support. And not just among white voters. Not only has the emerging Democratic majority I once predicted failed to materialize, but many of the nonwhite voters who were supposed to deliver it are instead voting for Republicans.
This year, Democrats have chosen to run a campaign focused on three things: abortion rights, gun control,
How Old Is Too Old in Politics?
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Last week, I asked: “How should voters assess the physical and mental fitness of politicians, and how should the press cover such matters?”
Bekke points out that voters have a tough job:
… Read moreHow to decide who is mentally fit to
Young People, Not College Grads, Drive Wokeness
Overeducated people are ruining political discourse by embracing “woke” language. If you pay attention to modern fights about language and social justice, you’ve probably heard some version of this complaint. The Democratic patriarch James Carville has bemoaned the idea of “people in faculty lounges in fancy colleges” coming up with “a word like ‘Latinx’ that no one else uses.” John McWhorter, the linguist, Atlantic contributor, and author of Woke Racism, has asserted that “everybody is afraid of being called
Biden’s Agenda is Equal America
In the past few weeks, the Biden administration’s domestic agenda has come into sharp focus: a bipartisan Senate bill for physical and environmental infrastructure projects nearing passage; new statistics showing that COVID-19 relief has dramatically reduced poverty across demographic groups; an executive order aimed at concentrated market power, promoting competition and worker power; a $3.5 trillion budget proposal with large outlays in social spending, paid for by taxes on the rich and corporations; presidential speeches on behalf of better jobs