Democrats are still soul-searching about losing last month's election. Was it the Harris campaign? The price of butter? The ASPCA vote?
It could be a little of all three. However, the fundamental reason is simple: The U.S. is the among the wealthiest countries in the world per capita, but the American people are not happy.
The Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, but the founding documents do say we all have an equal right to pursue it. The ...
Opinion
UnitedHealthcare shooting highlights US insurance crisis
The shocking murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan street corner last week suggests an unsettling truth about American healthcare: Our system hasn't just failed — it has lost its moral legitimacy entirely.
The chilling messages inscribed on the shell casings, "deny," "defend" and "depose", read like an indictment of our entire healthcare apparatus.
What's even more disturbing is the public response. Across social media, many are not expressin...
Republicans just won a permanent Senate majority
Kamala Harris’s defeat was damaging to the left. But her loss overshadows the true scope of the damage wrought on the Democratic Party: the permanent loss of the Senate.
Democrats have lost the Senate before, but this loss is different from 2014. This time, it may well be for good. For the first time in a century, there is not one Democratic senator from a reliably red state.
We have entered an era of one-party rule — at least where the Senate is concerned.<...
Democrats, forget ‘resistance’ and focus on ‘betrayal’
Over the last month, we’ve woken up to many stories that sound a lot like this one, from the New York Times: “The Democratic Party emerged from this week’s election struggling over what it stood for, anxious about its political future, and bewildered about how to compete with a Republican Party that some Democrats say may be headed for a period of electoral dominance.”
But that piece was actually published on Nov. 7, 2004 — 20 years ago.
That doesn’...
How America can make health insurance great again
You may be thinking, “When was health insurance in America ever great?” Point taken, but at least there was a time when health insurance was more affordable and individuals were better able to buy what they wanted, not what the government demanded. And the good news is Republicans can take steps toward getting us moving in that direction again.
For 30 years Democrats have tried to make health insurance “affordable” — or even “free” if Sen. Bernie Sanders (I...
A new agenda for a new Democratic Party
Following Vice President Kamala Harris’s defeat — which also saw Democrats lose the Senate and fail to retake the House of Representatives — one thing is fundamentally clear: The Democratic Party needs a new agenda if it hopes to win in the future.
Quite simply, Democrats cannot continue with the same playbook they’ve used for much of the past decade. It has alienated their base and threatens to relegate the party as a whole to minority status for years to come....
What big change in health care really looks like
Health care reform is an evergreen topic that keeps thousands of health policy wonks busily wringing their hands. Yet, little meaningful reform ever takes place, while spending continually rises at an unsustainable rate.
It’s as if we’re watching the famous psychology experiment where participants are so focused on counting basketball passes that they fail to notice a person in a gorilla suit walking through the scene. In health care, we’re so fixated on the min...
Trump thinks he won a mandate to change America. History says otherwise.
In the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, a wave of fear and reflection has taken hold across much of America. Much like Trump’s initial 2016 win, when journalists rushed to small-town Ohio diners to gauge what “real America thinks,” there’s a renewed sense that large swaths of experts and elites — not to mention the entire Democratic Party — may be out of touch with the zeitgeist and the electorate.
This feeling isn’t unwarranted, and it’s worth taking t...
How a French political movement from the 1950s helps explain Trump’s win
In the 1950s, France was swept by a right-wing populist movement founded by a rural bookstore owner named Pierre Poujade.
Poujade, a Royal Air Force pilot during World War II and a powerful orator, found his business squeezed by taxes and price controls. His complaints struck a note among other small business owners, tradespeople, service providers and farmers who felt oppressed by the government. His individual protest gained traction and ignited a political movement — “Pouja...
How a French political movement from the 1950s helps explain Trump’s win
In the 1950s, France was swept by a right-wing populist movement founded by a rural bookstore owner named Pierre Poujade.
Poujade, a Royal Air Force pilot during World War II and a powerful orator, found his business squeezed by taxes and price controls. His complaints struck a note among other small business owners, tradespeople, service providers and farmers who felt oppressed by the government. His individual protest gained traction and ignited a political movement — “Pouja...