Democratic Party 
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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.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
5/16/2022
Lily Geismer on the Dismal Legacy of the "New Democrats"
A reviewer calls a new book on the 1990s a sobering look at the effects of tying social policy to the market.
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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.
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SOURCE: The Nation
4/20/2022
Lily Geismer: The Clinton Legacy is Well-Intentioned Failure
"I wanted to challenge the common view that the story of US politics after 1968 is solely about the rise of the right, and that the Democrats adopted the policies that they did as a way of playing electoral defense."
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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.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
3/1/2022
Can Biden Look to Truman for How to Get Presidency Unstuck?
by John Dickerson
Michael Kazin's new history of the Democratic Party hints at a possible path for Biden to manage Democratic dissention, Republican intransigence, and challenges domestic and international.
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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.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
1/23/2022
Giving up on Voting Rights Legislation Would be Unconscionable
by E.J. Dionne
Democratic politicians and their allies must commit to fighting for voting rights and stronger safeguards to the electoral process despite the crushing defeat in the effort to reform the filibuster.
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SOURCE: New York Times
12/9/2021
Why does Biden's Term Register as a Disappointment? We've Misread the Political Regime Cycle
by Corey Robin
The author was among those who thought Joe Biden might seize a "reconstructive moment" to push aside the social austerity politics of the Reagan Revolution. The problem hasn't been Biden's will, but the disproportionate obstructive power conservatives still hold.
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11/21/2021
For 2022, the Democrats Don't Have an Alternative to Embracing Left Populist Energy
by Wallace Hettle
The political field is tilted against the Democrats for the midterms and 2024; will the party embrace the energy of progressives and mobilize its voters the way that conservatives are successfully doing on the other side?
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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.
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SOURCE: New York Times
5/10/2021
In One of the Oldest Congresses Ever, the Democrats' Majority May Depend on Good Health
Jane L. Campbell of the U.S Capitol Historical Society offers perspective on the aging Democratic caucuses. Although it may be impolite to discuss, death in office for members of the House and Senate has been historically quite common.
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SOURCE: MSNBC
4/19/2021
On the Legacy of Jim Crow, Ted Cruz Picks the Wrong Partisan Fight (Opinion)
Ted Cruz imagines that the partisan affiliation of Jim Crow segregationists is a "gotcha" against the Democratic Party today, which only makes sense if you ignore everything that's happened since 1964.
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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?
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SOURCE: MSNBC
3/2/2021
Vernon Jordan, Civil Rights Icon and Former Clinton Adviser, dies at 85
"Born Aug. 15, 1935, in Atlanta, Jordan grew up in the segregated South and became an influential leader in the civil rights movement, Washington politics and Wall Street."
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