Showing results for "The Dead" in Elections & Political Process

In Quarterly Essay 49, Latham argues that the time has come to go beyond criticism to solutions. In that spirit, he offers a timely assessment of the future for Labor. He examines the key challenges: the union nexus, the Keating settlement, a real education revolution, a new war on poverty, climate change, and handling the Greens. With wit and insight, he suggests that Labor's biggest problem is the steady erosion of its traditional working-class base.

Who reminds you of Donald Trump more? John F. Kennedy or Richard Nixon? Keep that thought to yourself for a second as I remind you that JFK and Nixon ran against each other in 1960. A member of a popular two-term administration ran against a phenom running without permission. The race saw a revolutionary use of new media. The side that lost tells anyone who will listen that nefarious outside help tipped the election.

Rarely has America been so bitterly divided. Partisans now view those with differing opinions as the enemy. Cable news programs inflame passions rather than inform viewers. Social media provides the most irrational partisans a venue to spew their hatred and bias. Town hall meetings, once the staple of representative democracy, have degenerated into choreographed shouting matches. Money flows into campaigns at unprecedented rates. Centrists are nearly extinct in Congress, where compromise has become a dirty word.