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Podcast: Hello, 2022: 1978 and 1982 are calling

Podcast: Hello, 2022: 1978 and 1982 are calling

Sabato’s Crystal Ball has been tracking how 2022 is different from previous midterm election years, when the party that holds the White House is often punished. The 2022 midterm elections feature an unpopular president, but there are indications that the unpopular president’s party won’t be strongly punished. In this episode, Kyle Kondik discusses how echoes of the 1978 and 1982 midterm elections may be reverberating in 2022.

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New York Post front page reads "Injustice." Daily News front page reads "Guilty."

New York's daily newspapers had very different headlines the morning after Donald Trump was convicted in s hush money trial.

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Why the American media and their critics won’t stop telling the same lie

The American media has a bootleggers-and-Baptists problem.

Bootleggers and Baptists” is one of the most useful concepts in understanding how economic regulation works in the real world. Coined by economist Bruce Yandle, the term describes how groups that are ostensibly opposed to each other have a shared interest in maintaining the status quo. Baptists favored prohibition, and so did bootleggers who profited by selling illegal alcohol. And politicians benefited by playing both sides.

There’s an analogous dynamic with the press today.

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Reading, Pennsylvania, can be a model for a path forward.

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The election couldn’t solve our crisis of belief. Here’s what can.

The stark divisions surrounding the recent presidential election are still with us, and will be for some time. The reason is clear: We have a crisis of belief in this country that goes much deeper than any single election.

So many people, especially young people, have lost faith in America. We have lost belief in our leaders, institutions and systems. Even in one another. Recent years have seen us roiled by debates over racial injustice, fatigued by wars, troubled by growing inequities and disparities, and worried about the very health of our democracy. We are awash in manufactured polarization, hatred and bigotry, mistrust, and a lack of hope.

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