Skip to content
Project 2025
Donate to support
diverse voices
Search

Latest Stories

Follow Us:
Top Stories
Supreme Court’s decision on birthright citizenship will depend on its interpretation of one key phrase

Supreme Court’s decision on birthright citizenship will depend on its interpretation of one key phrase

This really may be the political end for Trump

This really may be the political end for Trump

Americans wrapped in a flag

What It Means to Be an American and Fly the Flag

California’s Governor Race Is a Democratic Nightmare, But There’s One Easy Fix

California’s Governor Race Is a Democratic Nightmare, But There’s One Easy Fix

Close up of President Trump signing an excutive order.

Just the Facts: Trump’s Mass Pardons Grab Headlines

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right

Donald Trump and Joe Biden debate

Nearly half of voters are somehwere in the middle.

Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Steve Corbin
By Steve CorbinApr 05, 2024
Steve Corbin
See More Writings by author

Corbin is professor emeritus of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa.

Clowns to the left of me
Jokers to the right
Here I am
Stuck in the middle with you.

These are lyrics from the song “Stuck in the Middle With You,” co-written by Garry Rafferty and Joe Eagan and released by their band, Stealers Wheel, in 1972. The 43 percent of voters who are independent would agree that the line “stuck in the middle” speaks to them and our 2024 presidential election.

On March 12, Joe Biden and Donald Trump locked up their respective political party nominations, starting a 244-day campaign to Nov. 5. Research reveals the vast majority of registered Democrats are committed to vote for Biden despite his octogenarian age (though former special counsel Robert Hur told Congress that the president had “ photographic recall ”).

Likewise, research finds that MAGA Republicans will vote for Trump, regardless of past legal issues (e.g., $83.3 million E. Jean Carroll sexual abuse finding, New York’s $453.5 million Trump Organization litigation, 2005-2021 Trump Organization criminal tax fraud, etc.) and pending cases (2020 federal election interference, Georgia’s RICO case over 2020 election interference, stolen classified documents, 2016 porn star hush-money election interference and 34 counts of falsifying business records).

Research also shows that due to Democratic and Republican polarization, independents will determine – on Nov. 5 – who will be America’s president in 2025.

A number of Democratic and Republican loyalists are turning against their respective party’s designated candidate. Let’s explore that issue.

Joe Biden

Back in the summer of 2022, Politico reported that RootsAction – a left-wing activist group that supported Biden’s 2020 election, tried to persuade him not to run in 2024. Se leve.

There’s sufficient rumbling that some Black, Latino and young voters are suspicious of supporting Biden again in 2024. However, 15 millennials and members of Generation Z recently endorsed Biden and joined the Students for Biden-Harris coalition in arguing that his achievements supersede his age.

Gallup’s annual governance poll reveals 63 percent of voters want a third-party choice. American Bridge, Third Way, MoveOn and Save our Republic PAC – all left-of-center groups – worry the centrist group No Labels and political activists Robert F. Kennedy, Cornel West and Jill Stein will take votes away from Biden.

Third-party candidates are Biden’s biggest re-election threat.

Donald Trump

Turmoil in Trump’s world is more troubling than in the Biden camp. Business Insider reports 40 of Trump’s 44 former cabinet members (91 percent) are not endorsing his 2024 candidacy. Wikipedia’s “List of Republicans who oppose the Donald Trump presidential campaign” features 128 individuals, from party leaders to judges to members of Congress to a former president.

Trump’s former attorney general Bill Barr testified before Congress that Trump is “a troubled man” who must face justice. Former Vice President Mike Pence announced on Fox News that his ex-boss has strayed too far from conservative philosophy. Both are not endorsing Trump’s campaign.

A GOP group calling itself Republican Voters Against Trump launched a $50 million ad campaign featuring first-person video testimonials of more than 100 former Trump voters.

The Guardian notes Fox News on-air personalities’ relationship with Trump started eroding with the Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt and ensuing $1.6 billion lawsuit by Dominion against the network.

On Jan. 25, the Wall Street Journal (like Fox, controlled by the Murdoch family) criticized Trump for meddling in congressional talks on border security and his blatant threat to permanently bar Republicans from the MAGA camp who supported Nikki Haley’s campaign. The Journal called his actions “a high act of self-sabotage” and “it would be a good reason to vote for someone else.”

The WSJ-Trump romance has been eroding for years as witnessed by the editorial board’s leading op-ed on Nov. 9, 2022, titled “Trump Is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser.”

Biden and Trump

Turnover of employees is a standard measure of business stability (or chaos). Trump had a 35 percent first-year turnover of senior executives while Biden only had an 8 percent first-year turnover. By Trump’s last day of office, 60 of the 65 senior executives (92 percent) had left his administration. Currently, Biden’s turnover rate is 71 percent.

Between now and Nov. 5, continue to do your independent homework, versus being a lemming and getting hoodwinked by the political parties’ disinformation, misinformation and propaganda.

Let’s admit it. We have clowns to the left, jokers to the right and here I am – like 43 percent of voters – stuck in the middle with you.

Latest news

U.S. capitol.
Governance & Legislation

Congress Votes With Only One House or Senate Dissenter, 2025

Texas redistricting map
Democracy

SCOTUS Upholds Texas Map, Escalates Gerrymandering Crisis

Things are about to get worse for Mike Johnson
Governance & Legislation

Things are about to get worse for Mike Johnson

Read More

After the Ceasefire, the Violence Continues – and Cries for New Words

An Israeli army vehicle moves on the Israeli side, near the border with the Gaza Strip on November 18, 2025 in Southern Israel, Israel.

(Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images)

After the Ceasefire, the Violence Continues – and Cries for New Words

Since October 10, 2025, the day when the US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was announced, Israel has killed at least 401 civilians, including at least 148 children. This has led Palestinian scholar Saree Makdisi to decry a “continuing genocide, albeit one that has shifted gears and has—for now—moved into the slow lane. Rather than hundreds at a time, it is killing by twos and threes” or by twenties and thirties as on November 19 and November 23 – “an obscenity that has coalesced into a new normal.” The Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik describes the post-ceasefire period as nothing more than a “reducefire,” quoting the warning issued by Amnesty International’s secretary general Agnès Callamard that the ”world must not be fooled” into believing that Israel’s genocide is over.

A visual analysis of satellite images conducted by the BBC has established that since the declared ceasefire, “the destruction of buildings in Gaza by the Israeli military has been continuing on a huge scale,” entire neighborhoods “levelled” through “demolitions,” including large swaths of farmland and orchards. The Guardian reported already in March of 2024, that satellite imagery proved the “destruction of about 38-48% of tree cover and farmland” and 23% of Gaza’s greenhouses “completely destroyed.” Writing about the “colossal violence” Israel has wrought on Gaza, Palestinian legal scholar Rabea Eghbariah lists “several variations” on the term “genocide” which researchers found the need to introduce, such as “urbicide” (the systematic destruction of cities), “domicide” (systematic destruction of housing), “sociocide,” “politicide,” and “memoricide.” Others have added the concepts “ecocide,” “scholasticide” (the systematic destruction of Gaza’s schools, universities, libraries), and “medicide” (the deliberate attacks on all aspects of Gaza’s healthcare with the intent to “wipe out” all medical care). It is only the combination of all these “-cides,” all amounting to massive war crimes, that adequately manages to describe the Palestinian condition. Constantine Zurayk introduced the term “Nakba” (“catastrophe” in Arabic) in 1948 to name the unparalleled “magnitude and ramifications of the Zionist conquest of Palestine” and its historical “rupture.” When Eghbariah argues for “Nakba” as a “new legal concept,” he underlines, however, that to understand its magnitude, one needs to go back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which the British colonial power promised “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, even though just 6 % of its population were Jewish. From Nakba as the “constitutive violence of 1948,” we need today to conceptualize “Nakba as a structure,” an “overarching frame.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Ukraine, Russia, and the Dangerous Metaphor of Holding the Cards
a hand holding a deck of cards in front of a christmas tree
Photo by Luca Volpe on Unsplash

Ukraine, Russia, and the Dangerous Metaphor of Holding the Cards

Donald Trump has repeatedly used the phrase “holding the cards” during his tenure as President to signal that he, or sometimes an opponent, has the upper hand. The metaphor projects bravado, leverage, and the inevitability of success or failure, depending on who claims control.

Unfortunately, Trump’s repeated invocation of “holding the cards” embodies a worldview where leverage, bluff, and dominance matter more than duty, morality, or responsibility. In contrast, leadership grounded in duty emphasizes ethical obligations to allies, citizens, and democratic principles—elements strikingly absent from this metaphor.

Keep ReadingShow less
Beyond Apologies: Corporate Contempt and the Call for Real Accountability
campbells chicken noodle soup can
Photo by Girl with red hat on Unsplash

Beyond Apologies: Corporate Contempt and the Call for Real Accountability

Most customers carry a particular image of Campbell's Soup: the red-and-white label stacked on a pantry shelf, a touch of nostalgia, and the promise of a dependable bargain. It's food for snow days, tight budgets, and the middle of the week. For generations, the brand has positioned itself as a companion to working families, offering "good food" for everyday people. The company cultivated that trust so thoroughly that it became almost cliché.

Campbell's episode, now the subject of national headlines and an ongoing high-profile legal complaint, is troubling not only for its blunt language but for what it reveals about the hidden injuries that erode the social contract linking institutions to citizens, workers to workplaces, and brands to buyers. If the response ends with the usual PR maneuvers—rapid firings and the well-rehearsed "this does not reflect our values" statement. Then both the lesson and the opportunity for genuine reform by a company or individual are lost. To grasp what this controversy means for the broader corporate landscape, we first have to examine how leadership reveals its actual beliefs.

Keep ReadingShow less
Donald Trump

When ego replaces accountability in the presidency, democracy weakens. An analysis of how unchecked leadership erodes trust, institutions, and the rule of law.

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

When Leaders Put Ego Above Accountability—Democracy At Risk

What has become of America’s presidency? Once a symbol of dignity and public service, the office now appears chaotic, ego‑driven, and consumed by spectacle over substance. When personal ambition replaces accountability, the consequences extend far beyond politics — they erode trust, weaken institutions, and threaten democracy itself.

When leaders place ego above accountability, democracy falters. Weak leaders seek to appear powerful. Strong leaders accept responsibility.

Keep ReadingShow less
© Copyright 2025