Departments

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Democratic Party

  • SOURCE: The Guardian
    11/8/2021

    If the Dems Turn to the Center, They Will Lose to Trump

    by Samuel Moyn

    In the wake of the Virginia gubernatorial election, centrist Democrats have revived calls for austerity as the only safe electoral strategy. They will find out how wrong that analysis is if they are successful in pulling the Biden administration away from a broad agenda. 

  • SOURCE: NPR
    10/10/2021

    Dems' Unity Problems Nothing New

    "Throughout its history, the party has featured dissent and even radical differences of viewpoint. It has been defined by these internal contrasts and conflicts as often as by its achievements."

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    9/22/2021

    Why Are Moderate Dems Trying to Blow Up Biden's Economic Plan?

    by Zachary D. Carter

    Centrists' efforts to chisel away at the Build Back Better bill threaten its passage, its effectiveness, and the prospects of Democrats to hold power in the future. A biographer of John Maynard Keynes wonders why they're doing it. 

  • SOURCE: Dissent
    8/30/2021

    An American Conception of Justice

    by Michael Kazin

    While historians have demonstrated the racist operation of American institutions, it's important to recognize that those institutions have also been instruments for justice. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    7/8/2021

    How Democrats Lost the Courts

    "Some Democrats are starting to suspect that the story is simpler: They’ve been chumps. They have clung to norms Republicans long ago abandoned. They have championed moderates in order to appeal to their enemies, only to watch those moderates twist in the wind."

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    6/8/2021

    Social Fissures have Made Building a Broad Liberal Coalition Hard for 50 Years

    by Steven M. Gillon

    Hostility toward the welfare state, frequently driven by the idea that government programs unfairly benefit minorities at the expense of whites, has prevented the Democratic party from consolidating a political majority for decades. Worshipping fallen heroes like Robert Kennedy obscures the political work needed to build and keep a coalition.

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    4/15/2021

    Whither the Religious Left?

    by Matthew Sitman

    Has the considerable effort spent for decades to court a "religious left" as a Democratic constituency been a waste of time? Why haven't faith-based social justice movements been more signiicant in the party's base? 

  • 2/21/2021

    Neal Gabler's "Catching the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Liberal Hour"

    by James Thornton Harris

    Neal Gabler's first volume of a biography of Ted Kennedy praises the long-serving senator as the driving force of a hugely consequential period of liberal legislative success. Those looking for gossip or consideration of his personal failures may be disappointed.

  • How Democrats Lost the Great Plains

    by Ross Benes

    Ross Benes argues that the Democratic party has lost an entire political generation of influence in the Great Plains by forfeiting the region's legacy of farmer populism, making the Plains a Republican stronghold and a barrier to progressive legislation. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    1/29/2021

    What Should Drive Biden’s Foreign Policy?

    Columnist and Humphrey biographer James Traub says the former Senator and VP's interventionist liberalism in foreign policy is a model for Joe Biden's administration to reestablish American preeminence in world affairs. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    1/18/2021

    Warnock’s Election Reminds Us that Black Churches are Vital to Democratic Success

    by Robert Greene II

    Democratic politicians must recognize the historical role of Black churches not just as gathering places where visiting politicians may speak to voters, but as organizing spaces where political agendas are formed. Dems who wish to emulate Rev. Warnock's victory need to embrace Black churches in a deep way.

  • SOURCE: Jacobin
    1/2/2021

    Stop Worrying About Upper-Class Suburbanites

    by Lily Geismer and Matthew Lassiter

    Two suburban historians argue that the changing demographics and political composition of American suburbs mean the Democrats' strategy of courting white moderates will foreclose building the ethnically and economically diverse coalition they need to win. 

  • SOURCE: Boston Review
    12/9/2020

    How Did the GOP Become the Party of Ideas?

    by Lawrence B. Glickman

    The Republican Party's reputation as the "Party of Ideas" in the late 1970s and 1980s was generally created by Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who derided the New Deal and Great Society as stale and outdated in a struggle to push the Democratic Party to the right.