Trayvon Martin

While some of the facts about what happened to Trayvon Martin are still up in the air, it is clear that his death is a heartbreaking tragedy and one that raises questions about the role of racial stereotyping in American culture and highlights the constant wariness with which many African Americans still view the police and the justice system.  Many good things have been written about this in the last weeks — two of the best appeared in the papers today.  Read this piece by Washington Post columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner Eugene Robinson and this one by New York Times columnist Charles Blow.

Since the election of Barack Obama, we Americans frequently pat ourselves on the back for living in a post-racial society.  Do we?

Budget Politics

So Republican Representative Paul Ryan is out with his budget, and this year’s doesn’t look appreciably different from last year’s.  What has changed is the political context: last year Ryan was hailed as a serious budget hawk, but last year public concern about the deficit was high.  This year the issue of inequality is a bit more prominent and Ryan’s budget is being viewed through that lens.  This means that the reaction is far more focused on the fact that Ryan’s budget 1) contains a sizeable tax cut for the wealthy, and 3) it pays for it with cuts to progams like Medicare, education, transportation and others like Medicaid and foodstamps that the least well-off depend upon, and 3) Ryan doesn’t actually balance the federal budget. There is a lot of good policy wonkish stuff out there about this, but as always, I like Ezra Klein’s analysis in the Washington Post.  You don’t need to read this whole post — just the column portion at the beginning — stop when you get ot “Top Stories.”

Super Tuesday

This piece by Dan Balz of the Washington Post does a good job of sorting out where the Reoublican race is right now.

Conservatism Today

One of the best pieces I have read on the internal struggles in the Republican Party.  Think about the section of Chapter 1 of KTR where we talk about the ideas that divide us.  What does this piece by Jonathan Chait suggest about what it means to be conservative today?

So Where Are We?

In the midst of the most unusual primary season I have ever seen, that’s where.  Best summary of events to date is this article in today’s Washington Post, by Karen Tumulty.  It’s a little long, but read it all.  Everything you need to know about the state of the race and the big picture.  Think about what she says in light of our discussion about the internal pressures parties face to be true to their bases and yet to win the votes of independents and moderates. Will any of these candidates be able to move back into the center to face Obama?

Speech!

President Obama gave a speech yesterday that launched themes of the campaign that he will wage agaisnt Romney or Gingrich next fall.  It’s just under an hour long.  Watch it.

Giving Thanks for New York Magazine

Hope you all had a fabulous holiday weekend.  As we gear up for the final push of the semester, I want to call your attention to two terrifically smart articles that appeared in New York Magazine while the rest of us were busy eating turkey.  I highly recommend that you read both articles and yes, to my Y103 students, they are both required.  I know they are long, but you will be smarter for having read them.

In a way the two articles — one by Jon Chait about why liberals are unhappy with President Obama and one by David Frum about why conservatives are unhappy with President Obama — are bookends.  Both are writing about how the most extreme elements of the party they identify have left the mainstream behind.

But in another way they are very different pieces.  Chait’s liberals are pie-in-the-sky-dreamers who are disappointed that President Obama doesn’t just wave his magic wand to get things done — they don’t understand the rules of American politics that limit what a president can do and they won’t be satisfied with less than a full slate of liberal reform.  They are doomed to disappointment as the world they live in fails to measure up to their ideals.  The biggest danger they pose is to themselves and their fellow Democrats as their search for a progressive savior may very well mean that the pragmatic Democrat they put in the White House serves only one term.

Frum argues that conservatives, on the other hand, have lost touch with reality.  A committed Republican, he nonetheless argues that members of his party’s base today are simply delusional — they aren’t disappointed in the world in the same way that liberals are because in a very real sense they live in a different world altogether. Their refusal to accept the facts that govern our lives mean that they pose a danger to all of us — in their willingness to let the US default on its loans, for instance, or their refusal to entertain any increases in revenue in the quest to balance the budget.

One conclusion from reading these two articles is that it is a false equivalence to say that both parties have a similar problem with the radical element of their bases.  As David Frum himself would argue, the consequences of the radicalization of the American right are more severe and far-reaching than the consequences of the American left. Chait is exasperated by the extremists in his party; Frum is worried by the extremes in his.

For more on Frum, see the Profile in Citizenship in the KTR chapter on Parties for our interview with David Frum.  We picked the former Bush speechwriter for our profile because despite his frustration with the current state of his party, he remains loyal to it and steadfastly believes that if he hangs on long enough, the party will cycle back to him and its original principles.

Debatable

There was another Republican debate last night. I am not really sure what to say about it, except that I think it was probably a pretty good debate for Barack Obama. I won’t put you through the agony of watching, but if you want to read a dry and funny commentary, here is Time Magazine’s Michael Scherer.

Edited to add — there is a lot of talk today about Rick Perry’s bad “brain freeze” last night.  Smart journalist James Fallows has a collection of other classic and memorable debate moments here.  Worth watching!!

More Ezra Klein on the Presidency

Excellent piece!

Elections!

Yesterday was Election Day and while most of the issues and campaigns were at the state level, two results are particularly worth noting for what they might say about how the national political winds are blowing.

Ohio voters defeated State Bill 5, a law championed by Republican governor John Kasich, which would have ended collective bargaining rights for public employees like cops, firefighters and teachers.

Mississippi voters defeated a constitutional amendment that would have changed the definition of the word “person” in their state constitution to include a fertilized embryo. This would have had the effect of banning abortion and likely banning many forms of birth control as well.

There will no doubt be good things to read about these results during the day and I will add any I think especially worthwhile.  In the meantime, read the New York Times here and here.  Why do the authors of these pieces think that these elections tell us something about the national political mood?  What do they think it means?