VOLUME 27, NUMBER 1 Winter 2016
VOLUME 27, NUMBER 1 Winter 2016
co-editors Robert Kuttner, Paul Starr
co-founder Robert B. Reich
editor-at-large Harold Meyerson
Senior editor Eliza Newlin Carney
Deputy Editor Gabrielle Gurley
Art DirectorMary Parsons
managing editor Amanda Teuscher
associate Editor Sam Ross-Brown
Writing Fellows Nathalie Baptiste,
Rachel Cohen,
Justin Miller
proofreader susanna Beiser
editorial interns P.R. Lockhart, Julian Notaro, Isaac Park
contributing editors Marcia Angell, Gabriel Ar ana, Jamelle Bouie, Alan Br inkley, Jonathan Cohn, Ann Cr ittenden, Garr ett Epps , Jeff Faux, Michelle Goldberg , Gers hom Gorenberg , E.J. Graff, Bob Herbert, Ar lie Hochschild, Christopher Jencks , Randall Kennedy, Bob Moser, Karen Paget, Sarah Posner, Jedediah Purdy, Robert D. Putnam, Richard Rothstein, Deborah A. Stone, Michael Tomask y, Paul Waldman, William Julius Wilson, Matthew Yg lesias
Director of Business Operations Ed Connors
Development Manager Joseph A. Gallant Jr.
board of directors Michael Stern (Chair), Sarah Fitzrandolph Br own, Lindsey Franklin, Jacob Hacker, Stephen Heintz, Randall Kennedy, Robert Kuttner, Mario Lugay, Miles Rapoport, Janet Shenk, Adele Simmons, William Spriggs , Paul Starr
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Going After the big bucks
By Eliza Newlin Carney
Pumping big money into the national political parties, as many now propose, would weaken the parties in the long run and invite another round of soft-money abuses.
Progressive California: The Long Road Back
by Peter Schrag
The Golden State is the nation’s most liberal— but it has yet to untie its fiscal knots.
Tickets Out of Poverty?
By Jake Blumgart
Housing voucher recipients can move to better neighborhoods only if states and localities break down suburban barriers.
Grace Under Fire
By Rachel M. Cohen
Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards is one of the nation’s premier political strategists and organizers—exactly what the cause of reproductive rights needs now more than ever.
The Uber Challenge
By Steven Greenhouse
The aggressive on-demand ride company is the focus of a new struggle for workers’ rights.
The Other Tech Bubble
By Margaret O’Mara
How tech companies became detached from urban life and its problems—even when the city is their home
Black Culture & History Matter
By Kirsten Mullen
It took 150 years after America officially abolished slavery to get a national museum on the black experience.
The New Inequality Debate
By Robert Kuttner
More mainstream economists now find that the income mal-distribution reflects the political sway of elites, not economic imperatives
Can the Democrats Channel America’s Discontent?
By Harold Meyerson
The party has moved left in response to hard times. That should help it at the polls—but will it?
The Likely Persistence of a White Majority
By Richard Alba
How Census Bureau statistics have misled thinking about the American future
Race & Representation in the Twilight of the Obama Era
By Derrick Jackson
Will the eight years of America’s first black president lead to more political voice for black citizens—or less?
That Sinking Feeling
By Nathalie Baptiste
Why is Miami—America’s most vulnerable metropolis to sea-level rise—having yet another beachfront development boom?
Labor Goes South
By Justin Miller
Can the movement rebuild itself below the Mason-Dixon line, and change Southern politics in the process?
Perpetually Outraged, Perpetually Outrageous
By Paul Waldman
Donald Trump, a candidate with all the subtlety of talk radio, is the perfect expression of both the politics and media of our time.
Leading from the Left
By E.J. Dionne Jr.
For Ted Kennedy, political leadership meant moving public opinion—not chasing after an elusive center.
The Big Financial Divide
By Lisa J. Servon
Why we have one banking system for the well-off and a “Wild West” fringe for everyone else
Shall We Be Released?
By Dana Goldstein
The mass folly of mass incarceration and the road back to sane prison policy
The War on the Poor
By Peter Edelman
The welfare reform of the 1990s left millions of Americans near destitution.
Cover photo by Peter Yang / AUGUST