• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Events
  • Civic Ed
  • Campaign Finance
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • Independent Voter News
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Newsletter>
  3. newsletter>

Reframing judicial elections & the blurring of government and media

The Fulcrum
March 16, 2023

Welcome to The Fulcrum’s daily weekday e-newsletter where insiders and outsiders to politics are informed, meet, talk, and act to repair our democracy and make it live and work in our everyday lives.


Reframing judicial elections — not “who should we elect,” but “why should we elect them at all?”

The nation is watching Wisconsin as a state Supreme Court race with major implications for democratic outcomes—at both state and national levels—becomes an all-out spending war on behalf of the liberal and conservative candidates. No one expects the record-breaking spending or heated partisan rhetoric to die down until the race in this crucial swing state is decided.

Yet while coverage of this race makes clear the public distaste for the polarization of an ostensibly nonpartisan position, few articles have been written about the systems in play that have driven up the stakes and rhetoric to a once-unimaginable degree. The framing should not be “which candidate will come out on top” but “why do we elect judges in the first place?”

Read more.

Seven Days in March

In 1961, shortly after John F. Kennedy had been sworn in as president, two journalists, Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey, set to writing a political thriller. It was inspired by the unsettling behavior of two generals, Edwin Walker and Curtis LeMay, both of whom had a history of using their positions to spout dangerous right-wing rhetoric that threatened to provoke nuclear war. In Knebel and Bailey’s version, a highly decorated Air Force general and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff plots with other senior military officers to seize power from the president to prevent a disarmament treaty with Russia from going into effect.

And so, the nation got Seven Days in May, which shot to the top of the New York Times best sellers list and remained on the list for months. When Kirk Douglas and director John Frankenheimer decided to adapt the book to the screen, Kennedy, who had read the novel and thought it frighteningly plausible, encouraged the project and even helped in the production. The film, as the book, enjoyed enormous success.

Read more.

Video: Modernizing Congress: The business case to upgrade government

Antiquated operations and processes, out-of-date technology, and 20th-century personnel and management practices make it difficult for members of Congress to provide business and other constituents with the level of service they deserve — including businesses, large and small.

In the 118th Congress, BFA is mobilizing the business community to advocate for adopting additional recommendations to revitalize Congress to make it work better for every American.

Watch.

newsletter

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Reform in 2023: Leadership worth celebrating

Layla Zaidane

Two technology balancing acts

Dave Anderson

Reform in 2023: It’s time for the civil rights community to embrace independent voters

Jeremy Gruber

Congress’ fix to presidential votes lights the way for broader election reform

Kevin Johnson

Democrats and Republicans want the status quo, but we need to move Forward

Christine Todd Whitman

Reform in 2023: Building a beacon of hope in Boston

Henry Santana
Jerren Chang
latest News

Podcast: Inequitable ability: Electoral and civic challenges faced by those with disabilities

Our Staff
7h

Is reform the way out of extremism?

Mindy Finn
11h

Changing pastimes

Rabbi Charles Savenor
12h

Political blame game: Never let a good crisis go to waste

David L. Nevins
20 March

Tipping points

Jeff Clements
20 March

Your Take: Bank failures, protection and regulation

Our Staff
17 March
Videos

Video: The hidden stories in the U.S. Census

Our Staff

Video: We asked conservatives at CPAC what woke means

Our Staff

Video: DeSantis, 18 states to push back against Biden ESG agenda

Our Staff

Video: A conversation with Tiahna Pantovich

Our Staff

Video: What would happen if Trump was a third-party candidate in 2024?

Our Staff

Video: How the Federal Reserve is the shadow branch of the government

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Inequitable ability: Electoral and civic challenges faced by those with disabilities

Our Staff
7h

Podcast: A tricky dance

Our Staff
14 March

Podcast: Kevin, Tucker and wokism, oh my!

Debilyn Molineaux
David Riordan
13 March

Podcast: Civic learning amid the culture wars

Our Staff
13 March
Recommended
Podcast: Inequitable ability: Electoral and civic challenges faced by those with disabilities

Podcast: Inequitable ability: Electoral and civic challenges faced by those with disabilities

Podcasts
Is reform the way out of extremism?

Is reform the way out of extremism?

Threats to democracy
Changing pastimes

Changing pastimes

Civic Ed
Video: The hidden stories in the U.S. Census

Video: The hidden stories in the U.S. Census

Political blame game: Never let a good crisis go to waste

Political blame game: Never let a good crisis go to waste

Big Picture
Tipping points

Tipping points

Big Picture