Politics

The Democrats' False Victory

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For all their cautious optimism yesterday, a mild Midterms victory may prove the last thing the Democrats need. If they had performed as predicted, the Democrats and their media adjuncts would now be busily dissecting their defeat.  read more »

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A Tale of Two Americas

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Yesterday’s Midterms were not a victory for conservative or progressive ideology, but an assertion of the growing power of geography in American politics. It was less a national election than a clash of civilizations.  read more »

The Cover Up

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On 16 September 2022 the 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in a hospital in Tehran following her arrest by Iran’s Guidance Patrol. Although the details surrounding her death has been disputed, given that she suffered from previous brain injuries  read more »

West Coast Blues

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Few regions have been more consistently Democratic than the West Coast. Even compared with the Northeast, where Republicans occasionally win governors’ offices, the appropriately named “left coast” has been adamantine in its progressivism. Republicans haven’t won statewide office in California in years; in Oregon, it’s decades. Washington has elected a Republican secretary of state, but she now serves in the Biden administration. And the region’s major cities are overwhelmingly blue.  read more »

Biden, Trudeau Choose Green War on Oil and Gas Over Working Class

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Canadians, outside of dual citizens, can’t vote in America’s midterms, but the results may well shape the country’s trajectory in the years to come.  read more »

The Real American Divide

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Elections are never easy to predict. But whatever the outcome of America’s Midterms next month, it does seem certain that vast swathes of the American electorate will be largely ignored. In state after state, voters face a Hobson’s choice between abortion-banning, election-denying Trump loyalists on the one hand and Democrats embracing the Biden administration’s unpopular economic and cultural agenda on the other.  read more »

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How Big is the Working Class — and Why Does It Matter?

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Americans without bachelor’s degrees outnumber college grads 2 to 1. But if you and most people you know and have ever known are college graduates, you might not realize that most Americans are not like you and your cohort.  read more »

From Boris to Trump, Yesterday's Men Won't Go Away

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Boris Johnson may not be the UK’s next Prime Minister, but he could easily become the Tory choice after the party’s likely drubbing whenever the next general election happens. Or perhaps earlier, if the party disintegrates ahead of schedule once again.  read more »

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Housing Affordability in California: Part 1 — The Situation

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There is probably no issue more requiring resolution in California than poor housing affordability. It is a threat to the preservation of the middle-class and the competitiveness of the state.  read more »

California's History of Water Discrimination

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In 1976, my ethnically diverse, working-class county where blue-collar union households worked in factories and refineries, owned homes and sent their kids to college, agreed to string a 6-mile long fire hose across the Richmond Bridge to supply water to California's wealthiest and whitest county.  read more »