Departments

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Democratic Party

  • SOURCE: Salon
    5/14/2022

    We're Facing the Results of the Dems' Retreat from Secularism

    by Jacques Berlinerblau

    By trying to match the Republicans on bringing Christian faith into policy, Democrats abandoned the difficult but necessary struggles to define how a diverse society protects religious freedom for majority and minority faiths – and those of no faith. 

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    5/5/2022

    Why the End of Roe Isn't Likely to Energize the Democrats

    by Natalie Shure

    Until the Democratic Party and its pro-choice supporters decide to take action to fix the fact that abortion restrictions are already harming poor and working-class women, they are unlikely to win elections based on their nominal support for abortion rights. 

  • SOURCE: New Left Review
    3/7/2022

    Thanatos Triumphant

    by Mike Davis

    Russian's invasion of Ukraine has revealed the nihilism of the world's leaders from Moscow to Washington, and the failure of the American left to develop a meaningful alternative to a global death-wish led by oligarchs.

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    2/15/2022

    Michael Kazin Asks: What Defines the Democratic Party?

    by Sam Rosenfield

    Kazin's new history of the Democrats examines broad ideas of economic fairness that resonate with the party's faithful, but also the pattern of lurching compromise and triangulation that frustrates its progressive critics. 

  • 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?