MSNBC
Our country’s youth may not be old enough to vote, but they are watching. And some even grow up to become young leaders. Iowa State Sen. Zach Wahls and 17 year old Eric Willoughby both went viral for their youth activism and talk about the importance of it at any age.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Patty Murray look at their Project 2025 poster during a press conference on Sept. 12.
Corbin is professor emeritus of marketing at the University of Northern Iowa.
It’s becoming crystal clear, as we near the Nov. 5 presidential election, that voters need to seriously check out the radical government reformation policies contained within the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. Here’s why.
The right-wing think tank has written not one, not two, but nine “Mandate for Leadership” documents for Republican presidential candidates, with its first playbook published in 1981. The Heritage Foundation spent $22 million —serious money — in 2023 to create Project 2025 for Donald Trump to implement.
Trump’s claim he knows nothing about Project 2025 is questionable to say the least. The Heritage Foundation’s website notes Trump “fully embraced” 64 percent of its 321 policy reform recommendations during his 2017-2021 presidency.
Heritage also compiled a database of Republicans whom Trump could hire if elected in 2016. Sixty-six of them served in his first administration, including five key Trump acolytes: Betsy DeVos, secretary of education; Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency; Mick Mulvaney, White House chief of staff; Rick Perry, secretary of energy; and Jeff Sessions, attorney general.
Trump asked the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society to compile a list of 21 potential Supreme Court nominees. John Malcolm prepared the list for Heritage and when Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, Politico referred to Malcolm as “the man who picked the next Supreme Court justice.”.
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In a Sept. 7 entry in Letters from an American, Boston College history professor Heather Cox Richardson wrote that on Sept. 5, Trump — at an event with Sean Hannity of Fox News – “embraced the key element of Project 2025 that calls for a dictatorial leader to take over the U.S. That document maintains that ‘personnel is policy’ and that the way to achieve all that the Christian nationalists want is to fire the nonpartisan civil servants currently in place and put their own people into office.”
She also noted that, during a rally in Mosinee, Wis., Trump publicly embraced Project 2025’s promise to eliminate the Department of Education.
Twenty-three videos have been prepared to coach future Trump administration appointees on how to implement Project 2025. Twenty-nine of the 36 speakers in the videos worked for Trump or his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance.
At least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration were involved in writing Project 2025 (CNN, July 11).
CBS News identified 270 of Project 2025’s policy proposals that matched Trump’s past political and current campaign rhetoric.
Evidence is replete the Heritage Foundation and the Trump-Vance ticket are joined at the hip and, therefore, Project 2025’s extremist policies are implicitly on the Nov. 5 ballot.
Two-thirds (68 percent) of Americans are opposed to Project 2025’s extremist policy proposals. And no former GOP presidents or vice presidents have endorsed Trump.
Voters need to find out on their own accord what outlandish policies the Heritage Foundation wants Trump and Vance to implement. I am grateful that The Fulcrum, a cross-partisan publication not associated with the Harris-Walz campaign, has become a platform for an analysis of Project 2025, having published over 30 op-eds devoted to analyzing Project 2025’s content.
The entire series is accessible for free.
The Fulcrum contributors who delve into the nitty-gritty details of Project 2025 policies are cross-partisan and are not associated with the Harris-Walz campaign.
Here’s a partial list of Project 2025 policy topics that have been thoroughly examined, individually, in The Fulcrum: Department of Education, Christian nationalism, Department of Defense, Federal Reserve, Department of Energy, Parents Bill of Rights, Department of Veteran Affairs, Education Savings Accounts, Department of Homeland Security, Voting Rights Act, Department of Labor, Christo-fascist manifesto, Department of Health and Human Services, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of State, Federal Communications Commission, Department of Justice and Schedule F (firing civil servants).
Since Trump implemented 64 percent of Heritage Foundation’s 2017-2021 manifesto and knowing he’s not a policy wonk, odds are great — if elected — he will embrace the latest version of Project 2025 lock, stock and barrel. Remember, past actions are the best predictor of future behavior.
Let’s agree that the soul of America is democracy. On Nov. 5, will you embrace Project 2025’s extremist-oriented policies that threaten our form of government or support well-reasoned policies that protect and preserve our constitutional rights?
The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
LaRue writes at Structure Matters. He is former deputy director of the Eisenhower Institute and of the American Society of International Law.
Few people are better able to relate the U.S. Constitution and its history to today's civic challenges than Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
In this Constitution Day conversation, we connected the "American Idea" at its roots to the present. We also highlighted the lessons that still resonate from the work of the nation's founders.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Rick LaRue: What stands out from your experiences on Constitution Day?
Jeffrey Rosen: The most inspiring memories I have of Constitution Day are without question participating in naturalization ceremonies. We do it every year at theNational Constitution Center. There is never a dry eye in the house when you hear speeches from the most eloquent spokespeople for the American idea — new citizens. It’s just a privilege to participate.
RL: What’s next for the Constitution Center?
JR: This Constitution Day we are launching our newConstitution 101 class in collaboration with theKahn Academy. It is the Kahn Academy’s first civics course and we think it will be a game changer, making the Constitution Center’s nonpartisan approach to constitutional education available to hundreds of thousands of high school students for free. That is the kick-off for our initiatives leading up toAmerica250 in 2026. We are creating a new civics tool kit on the core principles of the Declaration [of Independence] and the Constitution and the American idea — liberty, equality, democracy, separation of powers, federalism and the Bill of Rights — that will help learners of all ages relate these principles to current questions in American life.
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RL: Is there an underappreciated delegate to the Constitutional Convention whom you think should be more recognized?
JR: There’s the great James Wilson, the apostle of popular sovereignty. It was Wilson who came up with the idea that we the people of the United States, rather than we the people of the several states, were sovereign. There’s Gouverneur Morris, the most eloquent opponent of slavery at the convention. And George Mason, whose opposition to the Constitution led to the adoption of the Bill of Rights.
RL: Are there other standouts?
JR: James Madison, because he understood the dangers of faction and the central importance of moderation, compromise and listening to differing points of view. He is the most important framer of the Constitution, but George Washington is the most important delegate to the Constitutional Convention because of the quiet force of his authority. Had he not shown up, then we wouldn’t have a Constitution.
RL: Is there an amendment that stands out for you?
JR: Amendments are determined by “we the people.” We love them all. If you have to choose, it would have to be the First Amendment, dedicated to what Jefferson called the illimitable freedom of the human mind. It’s so inspiring to see the founders’ devotion to freedom of conscience embodied in all five freedoms of the First Amendment.
RL: The conventional wisdom right now, although it’s cracking a bit, is that it’s impossible to amend the Constitution. Do you agree?
JR: We’ll see, Things change fast. … It’s true that our politics have become extremely polarized and therefore it’s hard to mobilize a consensus even around structural amendments, but politics can change, so there’s no reason to think the Constitution has in fact become unamendable.
RL: There are partisan initiatives to try to call a constitutional convention and, with some exceptions, equally partisan opposition or concern. What are your thoughts about this?
JR: We posted some great debates about whether to hold a constitutional convention. The arguments in favor include that it is hard to get amendments through Congress, and therefore a convention might better represent the views of the majority of the American people. The argument against a convention is that it could go rogue. Madison was very opposed to holding another convention on the grounds that it had been a miracle that the first one succeeded, and a second one might undo its good work. Opponents of a convention today fear that it would be subject to the same dysfunction as state legislatures and could subvert constitutional values. The counterargument is that you need three-quarters of the states to ratify the special convention’s work, and therefore any unusual proposals would be checked at the ratification process. Just as Madison feared another convention, Jefferson thought we should have a convention every 19 years. Much depends on whether you share Jefferson’s faith in direct democracy or Madison’s skepticism of it.
RL: Your recent book, “The Pursuit of Happiness,” marvelously touches upon the intellectual roots of our system and the role and value of virtue (perhaps considered “character” today). Each chapter highlights one founder for each of the 13 classical virtues that Ben Franklin cherished. Any one you’d like to mention?
JR: That would be John Quincy Adams. For me, he most inspiringly embodies the classical ideal of self-mastery, self-improvement and using your powers of reason to overcome your unreasonable passions and emotions. His story of recovering from his defeat at the presidency, as well as the tragic suicide of his oldest son, and reinventing himself as the greatest white abolitionist of his age is unmatched in American history.
RL: The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of course will be followed in 11 years by the 250th anniversary of the Constitution, 2037. That will be a big Constitution Day. It won’t be as big as the Declaration’s anniversary, but how do you envision it being marked?
JR: Well, we hope that 2037 will be as big as 2026, and in fact we view the path from ’26 to ’37 as a decade of commemorating the American Constitution and the American idea. The Constitution is the silver frame around the Declaration’s apple of gold, as Lincoln put it, and it is urgently important for Americans to view these documents’ anniversaries as part of the same story of freedom and to think about celebrating them together.
RL: Any thoughts for how we can all observe Constitution Day?
JR: Learning and reading about the American idea is the best way to celebrate the anniversary.
RL: Thank you, Jeff.
Berman is a distinguished fellow of practice at The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, co-editor of Vital City, and co-author of "Gradual: The Case for Incremental Change in a Radical Age." This is the ninth in a series of interviews titled "The Polarization Project."
The problem of polarization has been on Daniel Stid’s mind for a while.
Trained as a political scientist, Stid has spent time working in government (as a staffer for former Rep. Dick Armey), business (at Boston Consulting Group) and the nonprofit sector (at the Bridgespan Group). But Stid is perhaps best known for founding and leading the Hewlett Foundation’s U.S. democracy program. From 2013 to 2022, Stid helped give away $180 million in grants to combat polarization and shore up American democracy. Since leaving Hewlett, he has created a new organization, Lyceum Labs, and launched a blog, The Art of Association, where he writes frequently about civil society and American politics.
In all of these settings, Stid has argued for taking an expansive view of American democracy. “Democracy is the means through which we resolve our political disputes and determine what government does,” he wrote. “But to reduce democracy to politics … is to see only part of it. Such a truncation ignores the extent to which democracy in America is ultimately grounded in and supported by our civic culture.”
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The strength of American civic culture was the subject of a conversation I had with Stid. Has there been a hollowing out of American civil society? What role have foundations and nonprofits played in fueling polarization? Are we heading toward a new civil war? These are just a few of the topics covered in the following conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Greg Berman: You are a few years removed from your time at Hewlett. I'm wondering how you reflect on your experience there. It seems like you were ahead of the curve in identifying polarization as a threat to U.S. democracy. But in all candor, I can't honestly say that I think things are better today than they were in 2013, when you started.
Daniel Stid: Fair enough. My term at Hewlett, from 2013 to 2022, was certainly not the best days for democracy in America. My overall assessment is that even though we were rowing the boat and making some headway, but a strong tide was pulling us out to sea.
I think both Larry Kramer, who was the foundation's president, and I had a realistic conception of how our system of government is meant to work. Elections bring forth new majorities and new leaders. There's always a lot of hollering and horse trading, but new policies are eventually produced that are responses, in aggregate, to the problems facing the country.
When we started in 2013, we felt that that process had broken down and that, until that was fixed, the problems our country was facing were not going to be solved. I think that was a fair assessment. I think we were early to spot the problem. And yet, we still failed to size it up properly and appropriately. We said at the time we were starting that if we didn't get this process back on track, in 20 or 30 years time, the country would be encountering very strong headwinds. We were off by an order of magnitude because it was only two or three years later that the country was really reckoning with those headwinds. [Editor’s note: Hewlett was an initial funder of The Fulcrum.]
GB: Did your thinking change in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election in 2016?
When we were starting, Tea Partiers like Ted Cruz had shut down the government
DS: I think there were three things in particular that we did not understand initially. In the fall of 2013, when we were starting, Tea Partiers like Ted Cruz had shut down the government for three or four weeks to try to get President Obama to defund Obamacare. That was the hyper-partisan, ideologically framed conflict that made us say, "This is the problem: The bipartisan space for policymaking has really completely eroded."
Very early on, we decided to pressure test our strategy. We got a lot of good feedback. One thing we learned was that the problem was much deeper than we supposed. It was less about polarization amongst our political elites and more about a growing body of activated citizens on the poles who were picking up cues from elites.
This was quite obvious on the right, but over time, it became clear that this pattern was happening on the left, too. I think the Trump phenomenon, the populist phenomenon, is clearly something that doesn’t, at present, have an analog on the left, but the partisan antipathy and feelings of disrespect and contempt clearly exist on both sides. We realized that we were thinking about things too narrowly and too rationally. So the first learning was: The problem of polarization is much more complicated and based in psychology and irrational impulses than we originally suspected.
I think the second thing that I came to understand — and in fairness, Larry Kramer might disagree with this — was that polarization was not just an American problem. Initially I thought this was an exceptionally American challenge, but as we came into 2016, and we were looking at this in a comparative perspective, we saw Brexit in the U.K., the National Front in France, the reaction to the influx of immigrants and the rise of the AfD in Germany. … Very similar strains of populist thought were emerging. It had different expressions in different places, but a range of things, including globalization and immigration, were generating a populist backlash.
At the same time, we were not seeing reasonable responses from the center-left. There’s been a hollowing out. There's a great Irish political scientist, Peter Mair, who wrote a book called “Ruling the Void,” which is really looking at what happens in liberal democracies when political parties and intermediating structures like unions and churches are hollowed out. I think that's a pattern that we've seen in lots of places. So the second learning was that this was less of an exceptionally American problem and more something that post-industrial democracies in a lot of places, at least in North America and Europe, were grappling with.
And the third learning for me was that, over time, I became increasingly skeptical about what I would call "if only" solutions, which are things like nonpartisan redistricting, or open primaries, or campaign finance reform, or proportional representation, or citizens’ assemblies. There was this sense in the field that if only we could impose those kinds of solutions systematically, then somehow the problem of polarization would be solved. By 2015, I was really deeply skeptical of this idea, primarily because of the sheer challenge of trying to do implementation on a state-by-state basis. The idea that there would be some kind of a big national bill to do this never struck me as practical.
GB: At some point, you said that the goal of your grant program at Hewlett was to improve public perceptions of Congress. In retrospect, was that the right goal? Do you feel like you made progress toward that goal?
DS: In retrospect, that goal was too narrow. I think that modest and limited goal was what we started off with, but we had basically moved on from it by 2017.
When we started, public approval of Congress was below 10 percent. Unlike executive approval, congressional approval almost never rises above 50 percent. But if you look at the periods of time when American government was working best, you see approval ratings fluctuating between 35 and 50 percent. And so that seemed like a reasonable bellwether to us.
One thing that's worth noting is that we wanted to go out of our way to establish that we were doing this on a nonpartisan basis in a field where there's a lot of frankly partisan actors. And so we, I think, erred on the side of having a goal that was more about the process than about specific policy outcomes. But we got feedback early on that said, "This seems like pretty thin gruel. Are you aiming high enough?”
When we started, I don’t think we felt the need to articulate that the program wasn’t just about getting Congress working better again. It was about restoring the importance of pluralism, the rule of law, free and fair elections, and all of that. After the election of 2016, we realized those were the things that were now at stake, and we tried to articulate more clearly the goals we were trying to achieve.
GB: Since you left Hewlett, you have offered some targeted criticisms of philanthropy. Walk me through how you think philanthropy could improve.
DS: I think philanthropy has changed pretty profoundly, at least in the democracy and civic life space, since Trump came down the escalator. To quickly sketch out the context, when we first started funding in 2013, there was roughly a billion dollars a year going to support democracy, more or less. This year, there is likely to be upwards of three billion.
The other big change is that philanthropy is really politicized. Several funders in the center that were, like Hewlett, intentionally and openly prepared to work with people across the political spectrum, have exited. A number of funders that had been in the center-left have moved sharply to the left. And some funders on the right, after Trump came on the scene, have broken further to the right. More and more funders now see themselves as having effectively taken a side, whether it's resisting Donald Trump or supporting efforts to combat the administrative state.
Whatever the political framing is, the foundations are increasingly joined to the party coalitions. I think that is a huge problem. Much of what people call “strengthening democracy,” particularly on the left, is really just an effort to support the Democratic Party and its candidates. Not that people in philanthropy are breaking the law, but they aren't really serving the spirit of it in terms of the ban on electioneering.
Even before Trump came on the scene, there was generally a boom-and-bust cycle to philanthropy in this area. You tend to see a lot more giving to democracy in an election year. There's far less long-term funding. Organizations working on longer-run change efforts that aren't trying to impact the next election have a harder time attracting funding. That’s a shame because I think philanthropy is really bad at shifting near-term political outcomes, but it is uniquely positioned to shape longer-run developments and ideas.
GB: In a similar vein, you've also been a gentle critic of the nonprofit sector. My sense is that belief polarization is a problem at a lot of nonprofits. Does that jibe with your experience?
DS: It's a huge, huge problem. Belief polarization within organizations that leads to these organizations being less effective in pursuing their professed goals is a much bigger problem on the left than the right, mainly for sociological reasons. The people at foundations and NGOs are almost always overeducated. They spend a lot of time marinating in hermetically sealed environments.
I was really struck by the story you told in your book about Darren Walker and the backlash after he said that New York City should build decentralized jails to replace Rikers Island. I think that kind of thing is happening below the surface at a whole bunch of organizations. And not just at the Ford Foundation, but also at more mainstream or even nonpartisan organizations, especially related to questions of race and racial equity.
I think one of the reasons for our current political impasse is this phenomenon of the “shadow parties” that Ruy Teixeira and John Judis have put their finger on. I think this is a phenomenon on both the left and the right. You've got these networks of media, NGO activists, foundations, think tankers and policy wonks that are effectively pulling both parties out to the hyper-partisan poles, and making it harder for them to get back to the middle ground where they can start winning over the median voter.
I think philanthropy is particularly implicated in this phenomenon. The different entities that comprise these shadow parties are all underwritten by philanthropy. Philanthropy isn't just one among several participants, they're bankrolling most of the elements of the so-called shadow parties.
GB: There’s an argument that maybe nonprofits don’t need to worry about being too radical, that their job is to move the Overton window.
DS: The one thing I would say to a nonprofit or philanthropic or civil society intermediary about why we should be concerned about polarization is that if we're trying to realize our vision of a good society, we are going to need ultimately not just a narrow majority, but a sustained Madisonian majority for that. And we're much more likely to be able to build up to that if we cast the widest possible net for potential allies. And the way we can ensure we're casting the widest possible net is to be listening to people who disagree with us. Because if we're listening to people who disagree with us, then we're almost certainly going to be better allies and a safer harbor for the people who may not be a hundred percent on board with us, but are closer to us than those who disagree with us.
GB: We're in an election year, which brings with it all sorts of passions. As you look to the remainder of this year, how worried are you about the potential for political violence in the U.S.?
DS: For actual physical shooting, rioting, beating people up? I'm less worried about that, and I think there actually has been some progress.
If I can back up, this is another area where my thinking has really evolved. As it happens, a couple of grantees that we were supporting at Hewlett, in particular Rachel Kleinfeld at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, started flagging that there were things afoot in the U.S. that would seem to be empowering groups disposed to violence. This was in the years 2017, 2018 and 2019. Rachel had sent me her early writings on political violence, and my thinking was, "I'm not quite sure this is a huge issue, but if you think it is ..." In retrospect, of course, it was a huge issue, and thank God someone had been thinking and doing work around that before 2020.
I remain skeptical about the "next civil war" hypothesis. I think that is something that is very convenient for conflict entrepreneurs on the left and on the right to invoke. Certainly when you have someone like Donald Trump and the forces that he's encouraging in the mix, that always brings a whiff of violence. But in terms of malicious people challenging the election results, I think there's actually a massive deterrent effect occurring. Seemingly every day, there's two or three more people from Iowa or Idaho or Mississippi or California or New Hampshire going to jail because of what they did on January 6th. I think that sort of thing sends a strong signal. Now, obviously, if Trump is re-elected and proceeds to systematically pardon and free all of those people, that is definitely a mixed message. But at least for now, I'm not expecting to see a large group of people rallying to challenge the 2020 election.
To me though, the issue is more that there is a diffused climate of threats and intimidation. I've been talking with a lot of state and local elected officials across the country, and these are really public-spirited people, from both parties. And it's something all of them are encountering in new and more intense ways. It's often associated with online vitriol—the death threats and the intimidation. And in some cases people have had to have enhanced security. I think it bears more heavily on women. It bears more heavily on people who are different, whether it's racial minorities or those with a different sexual orientation. It bears more heavily on them, but I think it is really throughout the system.
Have you ever read “The Field of Blood” by Joanne Freeman? She’s a historian at Yale and she looks at Congress in the run-up to the Civil War. It's a really powerful book, and one of her main points is that there were these outbreaks of violence. In the most famous instance, a senator was nearly caned to death on the Senate floor. But what really comes through in the book is that violence was part of the subtext of everything. People would be walking past colleagues who everyone knew had knives under their coats. That kind of intimidation within legislative bodies is corrosive. And I think, over time, thanks to the online world, that kind of thing is now much more diffused. ... I guess what I'm trying to say is I may be less alarmed about the immediate physical threats of violence and civil war, but more alarmed about the diffusion of a political setting in which people feel at liberty to make death threats and undermine everyone’s sense of security, not least the people in elected office.
GB: How closely are you following what's going on on campus now and the reaction to the war in Gaza?
DS: I follow it. I've gotten to know the people at FIRE and Heterodox Academy and others, like Eboo Patel and Interfaith America, that are working to try and open up dialogue in higher ed. It should be possible to say that the attack on Oct. 7 was an outrage and at the same time be able to say that the humanitarian crisis visited upon the Palestinian people, both by Hamas and by Israel's response to Hamas, is also an outrage. But there doesn't seem to be, in my mind, a lot of nuance on campus. I think the threats and the extent to which people are actively shutting down or endeavoring to intimidate groups on campus feel like a naked form of illiberalism.
GB: Much of what has happened at Harvard, where you got your PhD, has played out over social media. My instinct is that social media has helped to drive division, but I haven’t been able to find good research that supports this idea.
DS: I got on Twitter around 2010, and I left it for reasons I won't bore you with here, but my mental health and physical health and everything else dramatically improved.
There are scholars who have shown that rates of polarization tend to be much higher among older Americans, who are the least likely to be online. And so my view is that what social media does is serve as the glue that holds together the partisan media outrage complex. I think the signals that are emanating from other parts of that complex, whether it's television or friend networks and the like, is what does the damage. I don't think social media is driving the underlying distrust. I think the Twitter thing in particular is an elite phenomenon. The vast majority of Americans aren’t on Twitter. Twitter is the way that elites speak to each other in dumbed-down ways. But the cues that elites send to their followers can do a lot of damage.
GB: What's giving you hope? Where are the sparks of light for you these days?
DS: I actually think all over the country, you're seeing the emergence of locally situated, community-based activity. Often it isn't described as democracy or bridge-building or depolarization, but it is just healthy communal activity. The more that we can try to solve this problem away from the thunderdome of national politics, the more I think we can make headway. I think the solutions to polarization are likely to be found in Ingham County, Michigan, or Paducah, Kentucky, or Fresno, California.
So that's where I'm really focusing my time and energy now—on trying to lift up those solutions. That’s also why I'm focusing on political leaders at the local and state level. Because I think there's many more impressive and encouraging stories at that level than if you're sitting around talking with members of Congress, who are so beleaguered and worn out.
I think you're also seeing the emergence of a handful of philanthropic initiatives that are focused explicitly on tackling longer-run challenges in a scrupulously nonpartisan or nonpolitical way. There's the New Pluralists collaborative, which is really focusing on the underlying culture and community dimensions of our democracy and our civic life. The Trust for Civic Life is focused on trying to strengthen civic life in small town and rural America. The Trusted Elections Fund is an effort to bolster the mechanisms of elections, not so much for this year, but to provide longer-run support for strengthening elections over time. Those I would see as notably countervailing efforts to what is in general, I think, an increasingly polarized and politicized philanthropic field.
This article originally appeared on HFG.org and has been republished with permission.
You don't need to be Steve Kornacki to know which states (and counties) to watch on election night.
Klug served in the House of Representatives from 1991 to 1999. He hosts the political podcast “Lost in the Middle: America’s Political Orphans.”
The odds are you don’t go to sleep at night and dream of precinct maps and tabulation deadlines like NBC’s breathless election guru Steve Kornacki. Watch him on election night and you will be dazzled and exhausted by his machine-gun-like sharing of statistics and crosstabs.
But you don’t need a human copy of the “Almanac of American Politics” to navigate election night.
Here is what you need to know. America’s 50 states have 3,242 counties. But in our latest episode of the “Lost in the Middle“ podcast, we explain why you only need to focus on seven states on election night. Hard to believe but that’s where we are today. Just seven in a shrinking number of swing states.
So where to start? Amy Walter of the prestigious Cook Political Report keeps her eyes on one really large state.
“I play this game a lot, and I really call it ‘If you could ask God one question.’ Now I would hope that if I had one question to ask God it wouldn't be about who won. But, anyway, if he said, ‘You could ask me one thing about the 2024 election,’ I really want to know Pennsylvania,” she told us.
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Pennsylvania ranks sixth in electoral votes and it’s tough for Democrats to win if they lose i,t as Hillary Clinton found in 2016. And chances are you are, “Thinking should I watch Philadelphia or Pittsburgh?” Kornacki would be disappointed in you. The battleground county on Walter’s list is Erie, in the far northwestern corner close to Ohio. Its residents cheer for the Cleveland Browns, not the Steelers or Eagles.
Retiree Mary Buchert has a tough time explaining her neck of the woods, which has an amazing track record of picking winners.
“Well, Erie County itself is strongly Republican, very pro Trump. The city is strongly Democratic,” she said. “It’s just kind of baffling, and actually in much of Pennsylvania, they view us as belonging to Canada. They're just sort of baffled by us. And we are kind of baffled by the election coming up. I have no clue which way it will go. I have no clue what way I'm going to go.”
In “Lost in the Middle,” we profile her neighborhood and the six other counties to watch on election night. Gwinnett County, Ga.: Dane County, Wis. Jackson County, Mich.; Maricopa County, Ariz.; and Washoe County, Nev.
Of course, that’s only five. You don’t have to be Steve Kornacki to remember the 2000 trainwreck that was, and perhaps will be again, Miami-Dade County, Fla.
Degefe is a research associate in Duke University's Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity. Ince is an assistant sociology professor at the University of Washington.
Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah) recently launched the Merit Caucus to prevent diversity, equity, and inclusion from dominating education. Owens, chairman of the Education and Workplace subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development, argued that the left is waging a "war on meritocracy" and is threatening America’s excellence, all in the name of equity.
Such sentiment is clearly becoming more prevalent, as evidenced by the Supreme Court’s decision to effectively end race-conscious admission programs at colleges and universities and by Texas, Florida, Alabama and Utah banning the use of state dollars for DEI programs in public universities, effectively closing these offices.
Unfortunately, the essential principle of finding the balance between merit and offering a fair chance to those in our society who have often been denied equal opportunity has become a political minefield totally devoid of critical thinking and analysis.
Clearly, the idea of “merit” has changed in recent decades as our institutions have become more diverse. Diversity of student populations is becoming the rule rather than the exception.Traditionally, higher education and its respective fields of study were reserved for members of the elite and now that more women, people of color and first-generation students are engaged in formerly homogeneous professions, schools and workplaces, many feel threatened. One manifestation of these negative reactions is the downgrading of once prestigious fields as less rigorous when women and other members of historically excluded groups start joining them.
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While advances have been made, more can be done. A recent study on the genetic propensity for education and social class found that, while 62 percent of affluent teenagers with a low aptitude for education attended university, only 47 percent of poorer teenagers with a high aptitude attended university. Ivy League universities are significantly more diverse than 30 years ago yet 58 percent to 72 percent of Ivy League students come from families that are in the top 20 percent of earners, with only 2 percent 6 percent from “poor” families.
To be clear, we are not arguing against the concept of meritocracy. Our successes in life should be directly tied to our ability and effort. Those with the most prestigious positions should be the hardest-working and most capable. But a world in which merit matters can also be fair and just. That is the challenge we face.
It is incumbent upon us to not allow ourselves to be triggered by discussions of diversity, inclusion, equity and opportunity. All too often any discussions related to merit or lack thereof are filled with soundbites, harsh rhetoric and a general lack of critical thinking.
However, it is important to recognize that systems of inequality disadvantage the majority of Americans. With some deep reflection and with an openness to the disadvantages and prejudices many in our nation face, we can as a people co-create a sense of social cohesion through the development of dialogue that leads to understanding. A dialogue allows us to search for the best way to offer opportunities to all underrepresented groups in our county.
We need to get away from terms like “meritocracy.” It is a piece of propaganda designed to get people to support systems of privilege that they do not benefit from. This type of thinking does little to build upon the motto of our nation, “E pluribus unum.” Out of many we are one.
Rather than think of DEI in terms of eliminating merit, DEI instead should aim to even the playing field for everyone. Initiatives for inclusion have helped steadily raise the number of women in corporate leadership positions: Companies with DEI programs having10 percent more women leaders than those without. Since the Obama administration, the number of Black and Hispanic college students has increased by4 percentage points. And, more recently, there has been a push to include social class in companies’ DEI campaigns, aiming to better help everyone in the working class.
In short, diversity aims to invite everyone to the table, allowing everyone who was previously excluded a slice of the pie. It is in our best interest as a nation to see diversity as an operating system, not a quota.
