Stuff You Should Read - March 20, 2022

Welcome to this week’s edition of ”Stuff You Should Read” — a weekly email for Message Box subscribers with recommended articles, polling, and opinion pieces that help explain our current moment in politics. Thanks to everyone that has preordered my new book. I am so grateful for your support. If you haven’t bought it yet, the special discount for Message Box subscribers continues until Thursday, March 24th.

Connecting with Voters on Gas Prices by Garin-Hart Research for Climate Power

One of the most important takeaways from the survey is that it’s essential for Democrats and clean energy advocates to be on the offensive in addressing voters’ concerns about gas prices—both by fixing blame where it belongs and offering a clear path forward to voters. It would be dangerous and political malpractice to stand on the sidelines and let the other side define this debate.

2021 VA/NJ Vote History Analysis by Josh Yazman and Anna Mather, Civis Analytics

Vote switching accounts for about 80% of the shifts in each state from Biden in 2020 to the Democratic candidates for governor in 2021. Changes in turnout only account for about two-tenths of overall movement1. In terms of the final margin, a switched vote is worth twice as much to the recipient because one side loses a vote while the other side gains one.

‘We Want People That Are Going to Fight the Left,’ Says the Man Out-Trumping Trump by Thomas Edsall, New York Times

Politically speaking, however, DeSantis’s stance on Covid policy, together with his culture war agenda, has been a success. His favorability ratings have soared and in the third quarter of 2021, the most recent data available, Florida’s gross domestic product grew by 3.8 percent, third fastest in the nation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, behind Hawaii and Delaware.

“We Have Reached a Hinge of History” by Ben Rhodes, The Atlantic

Out of this kind of righteous rage—shaking democracies from complacency, forcing citizens to discard the luxury of cynicism, rejecting the inevitability of autocracy—perhaps a new world can be born. We have reached a hinge of history. At issue is not just the future of Ukraine but that of the world that will emerge on the other side of this war. If we heed the lessons of this moment, we can rebuild from the rubble a renewed international order that once again places democratic values over the more transitory impulses of profit and immediate gratification. If we don’t, things could get much worse.

“Who’s Unhappy With Schools? The Answer Surprised Me” by Jessica Grose, New York Times

Digging deeper into the Gallup numbers revealed that the people who seem to be driving the negative feelings toward American schools do not have children attending them: Overall, only 46 percent of Americans are satisfied with schools. Democrats, “women, older adults and lower-income Americans are more likely than their counterparts to say they are satisfied with K-12 education,” Gallup found. My hypothesis is that it’s a bit like the adage about Congress: People tend to like their own representatives (that’s why they keep sending them back year after year) but tend to have a dim view of Congress overall.