Class Politics in America Is Far From Dead
A venerable theory about people’s political values is making a comeback: the theory of “postmaterialism.” But despite what you may have heard, the theory doesn’t say class politics is doomed in rich countries — and neither did the scholar who created it.
If the Democrats’ very existence as a governing party depends on reversing at least some share of their losses with working-class whites, how should it go about trying? But more fundamentally — is it even possible? (Brick Broadcasting / Flickr)
In his much-talked-about New York Times profile of Democratic data scientist David Shor last month, Ezra Klein dropped a G-bomb. That’s right. Götterdämmerung.
The word — which comes to us from the composer Richard Wagner and means “cataclysm,” basically — is an apt summary of the long-term disaster now looming for Democrats in the Senate, a threat Shor has been warning about for some time.
Klein relayed the jaw-dropping figures: If the Democrats perform as expected in next year’s midterms and then win 51 percent of the vote in the 2024 Senate elections — not an easy feat given the list of states that happen to have Senate elections that year — the party will walk away with just forty-three of the 100 Senate seats, seven less than they have now.
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