Seth Masket

Jonathan Bernstein has been making a strong case that the major problem in American politics right now isn’t polarization; it’s that the Republican Party is broken. That is, our political system can function just fine when the parties are strongly opposed to each other, but when a major party has lost interest in policymaking or […]

There may be an interesting struggle between an incumbent lawmaker and her party coming up soon in Colorado. Anti-gun-control activists in the district of state Senator Evie Hudak (D-Arvada) are trying to assemble enough petition signatures to force a recall election against the incumbent. This is coming on the heels of two successful recalls of […]

So here’s some quick analysis of the vote (h/t Christian Grose) in the U.S. House of Representatives tonight to end the shutdown and raise the debt ceiling. I have only looked at Republican House members, since all Democrats voted aye. Of the 46 members of the Tea Party Caucus, 39 (85%) voted no. Among the […]

We are now just hours from a possible government shutdown and just days from a possible debt crisis. James Fallows has a nice piece up explaining that these situations are not simply the result of “gridlock,” despite many journalists’ (understandable?) efforts to frame the story as a both-sides-do-it situation. Yes, gridlock is a problem when […]

In 2006, Senator Joe Lieberman, who had represented Connecticut’s Democrats in the Senate since 1989, lost his re-nomination bid. Activists in his party had grown tired of his alliances with the Bush administration, especially on issues related to the Iraq War, and they decided they no longer wanted him as their standard-bearer. Famously, Lieberman ran […]

Derek Thompson has a new piece up at the Atlantic claiming that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the Obama stimulus) are the “most divisive” pieces of legislation in modern American history. He draws from a JP Morgan analysis examining partisan divisions on major pieces of legislation over the […]

In a state first, two Colorado senators, Democrats John Morse (Colorado Springs) and Angela Giron (Pueblo), were recalled yesterday, largely owing to their votes in support of gun control regulations earlier this year. Here are some lessons I think we should be learning from this event: This doesn’t tell us much about future elections Some […]

CNN political report Peter Hamby has an interesting paper out analyzing changes in political journalism, specifically focusing on coverage of the 2012 presidential election. Hamby thinks current coverage is seriously lacking and thinks this has a lot to do with the relative youth and inexperience of the press corps and their overuse of social media. […]

Laura Meckler in the Wall Street Journal suggests that immigration reform may have an improved chance in the U.S. House thanks to the moderating effect of California’s top-two election system, under which all candidates compete among the same primary voters and the top two vote-getters go on to a November runoff: At least four Republican […]