Sam Peltzman (Chicago): Polarizing Currents within Purple America. Can the GOP get its ideas mojo back? With Paul Ryan leaving and a backward-looking president in charge, the “party of ideas” faces an innovation crisis. The GOP has no new ideas because elderly billionaires own its brain. Daniel Nexon on mapping the American progressive movement. “Fetishizing centrism is a disease”: There are no centrists — there are only scared idealists. Jane Coaston on why conservatives love to hate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Republicans remain white, male as Democrats shatter diversity records ahead of 2018 midterm elections. Trump supporter on MSNBC: Facts don’t matter. Democrats don’t care about policy compromise anymore — just like Republicans.
Eitan Sapiro-Gheiler (Princeton): “Read My Lips”: Using Automatic Text Analysis to Classify Politicians by Party and Ideology. Are Trump supporters evil, or just wrong? A battle between two arcane-sounding theories about ideology actually wrestles with profound moral questions. Nathan Robinson on how to reply to a patronizing Wall Street Journal reader, and on how to build an effective Left alternative. Do conservatives know much about conservative history? This 1950 political science report keeps popping up in the news — here’s the story behind it. Are we beginning to see signs that the parties might one day split? Tana Ganeva on what Julia Salazar’s topsy-turvy summer may mean for future insurgent candidates on the far Left.
Thread: “Because if the Trump Era has shown us anything, it's that neither conservative voters nor conservative politicians give a SINGLE SOLITARY SHIT about those principles — moral, fiscal, procedural, any of them. They never did. It's all laid bare now, plain as day”.
