I have a new piece out for Current Affairs about rights, and whether we ought to think of them as natural, human, or civil. You can read it here:
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/05/thinking-more-clearly-about-the-idea-of-rights/
One of the core components of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 strategy is to turn out fringe voters–people who sometimes don’t turn out. For this reason, many Sanders supporters hoped Sanders would out-perform the 538 projection, which predicted he’d secure 28% of the vote. Instead, he under-performed, managing just 26%. This was still enough to win, but the campaign shouldn’t get overconfident. The data shows that voters are behaving very differently from the way the Sanders campaign initially anticipated. Read the rest of this entry »
Now that it’s become clear that we’ve failed to stop Brett Kavanaugh, a fascinating debate is brewing about what the American left’s position ought to be with respect to the Supreme Court going forward. There are two big, radical proposals vying for people’s attention and support:
I want to discuss the merits and demerits of both approaches and propose a long-term strategy that I think will be more effective than immediately picking up and running with either.
There are lots of folks who think that the answer to America’s woes are more political parties, and the way to get more political parties is to adopt electoral reforms which move America in the direction of continental European-style proportional representation. I used to like electoral reform once upon a time, but I have increasingly become convinced that this is not only never going to happen but it is actually a bad idea. Here’s why.
Benjamin Studebaker 