U.S. Public Doesn't Like Changing The Clock Twice A Year

 

The charts above are from the YouGov Poll -- done between February 13th and 19th of a nationwide sample of 1,075 adults, with a 4 point margin of error.

Adults/Voters Think Trump's Changes Make The U.S. Worse - Not Better

The chart above reflects the results of the NPR / PBS NewsHour / Marist Poll -- done between April 21st and 23rd of a nationwide sample of 1,439 adults (including 1,324 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.3 points for adults and 3.5 points for registered voters. 

A Few Charts On How Covid Changed The U,S, In 2020

 

The charts are from The New York Times.

Tax Changes For 2025

The following is from irs.gov: 

Notable changes for tax year 2025

The tax year 2025 adjustments described below generally apply to income tax returns to be filed starting tax season 2026. The tax items for tax year 2025 of greatest interest to many taxpayers include the following dollar amounts:

• Standard deductions. For single taxpayers and married individuals filing separately for tax year 2025, the standard deduction rises to $15,000 for 2025, an increase of $400 from 2024. For married couples filing jointly, the standard deduction rises to $30,000, an increase of $800 from tax year 2024. For heads of households, the standard deduction will be $22,500 for tax year 2025, an increase of $600 from the amount for tax year 2024.
   
• Marginal rates. For tax year 2025, the top tax rate remains 37% for individual single taxpayers with incomes greater than $626,350 ($751,600 for married couples filing jointly). The other rates are:
  • 35% for incomes over $250,525 ($501,050 for married couples filing jointly).
  • 32% for incomes over $197,300 ($394,600 for married couples filing jointly).
  • 24% for incomes over $103,350 ($206,700 for married couples filing jointly).
  • 22% for incomes over $48,475 ($96,950 for married couples filing jointly).
  • 12% for incomes over $11,925 ($23,850 for married couples filing jointly).
  • 10% for incomes $11,925 or less ($23,850 or less for married couples filing jointly).
     
• Alternative minimum tax exemption amounts. For tax year 2025, the exemption amount for unmarried individuals increases to $88,100 ($68,650 for married individuals filing separately) and begins to phase out at $626,350. For married couples filing jointly, the exemption amount increases to $137,000 and begins to phase out at $1,252,700.
   
• Earned income tax credits. For qualifying taxpayers who have three or more qualifying children, the tax year 2025 maximum Earned Income Tax Credit amount is $8,046, an increase from $7,830 for tax year 2024. The revenue procedure contains a table providing maximum EITC amount for other categories, income thresholds and phase-outs.
   
• Qualified transportation fringe benefit. For tax year 2025, the monthly limitation for the qualified transportation fringe benefit and the monthly limitation for qualified parking rises to $325, increasing from $315 in tax year 2024.
   
• Health flexible spending cafeteria plans. For the taxable years beginning in 2025, the dollar limitation for employee salary reductions for contributions to health flexible spending arrangements rises to $3,300, increasing from $3,200 in tax year 2024. For cafeteria plans that permit the carryover of unused amounts, the maximum carryover amount rises to $660, increasing from $640 in tax year 2024.
   

• Medical savings accounts. For tax year 2025, participants who have self-only coverage the plan must have an annual deductible that is not less than $2,850 (a $50 increase from the previous tax year), but not more than $4,300 (an increase of $150 from the previous tax year). 

  The maximum out-of-pocket expense amount rises to $5,700, increasing from $5,550 in tax year 2024.

  For family coverage in tax year 2025, the annual deductible is not less than $5,700, increasing from $5,550 in tax year 2024; however, the deductible cannot be more than $8,550, an increase of $200 versus the limit for tax year 2024. For family coverage, the out-of-pocket expense limit is $10,500 for tax year 2025, rising from $10,200 in tax year 2024.
   

• Foreign earned income exclusion. For tax year 2025, the foreign earned income exclusion increases to $130,000, from $126,500 in tax year 2024.
   

• Estate tax credits. Estates of decedents who die during 2025 have a basic exclusion amount of $13,990,000, increased from $13,610,000 for estates of decedents who died in 2024.
   

• Annual exclusion for gifts increases to $19,000 for calendar year 2025, rising from $18,000 for calendar year 2024.
   

• Adoption credits. For tax year 2025, the maximum credit allowed for an adoption of a child with special needs is the amount of qualified adoption expenses up to $17,280, increased from $16,810 for tax year 2024.

The Public Wants Change On The Supreme Court

 

The charts above are from the USA Today / Ipsos Poll -- done between August 2nd and 4th of a nationwide sample of 1,024 adults, with a 3.2 point margin of error.

Better Rules/Training Is Not Enough - Reform Police Culture

During a war, countries use a propaganda that defines their enemy as them -- as people that are different than themselves. This makes it easier to kill those people (and sadly, many times leads to war crimes being done and defended). 

We can debate whether that propaganda is good or not, but it also exists in our own society. Too often these days, people are quick to label their political opponents as enemies. This has led some to actually perpetrating violence against those seen as others.

We have seen a continuing violence by police. And with the advent of videos (especially on cell phones, which nearly everyone has), much of this violence is being documented. And rightly, this has resulted in calls for reforming the regulations and training in police departments.

There is no doubt that better regulations and training are needed. But they are not enough. Police culture must also be reformed, or the better training and regulations will mean nothing.

For far too long, many police have had an "us vs. them" view of their job. They consider themselves to be in a war against criminality, with the "us" (police) fighting against the "them" (criminals). This is the same kind of thinking that is used in a war, and it allows police to justify bending, or even breaking, the rules and regulations to win that "war".

Unfortunately, it also leads to innocent citizens being branded as the "them", and persecuted or even killed. The most recent example is the beatting death of Tyre Nichols by police. Some will try to say this is an isolated incident. It is not. 

There is far too much police violence in many departments across the country, especially toward minority citizens. And its due as much or more to the "us vs. them" police culture as it is to a lack of proper training and regulations.

Don't get me wrong. I believe there is a need for better training and regulations -- and it should be on a nationwide basis (with laws passed on a federal level). But the best training and regulations will not work until the "us vs. them" culture among police is changed.

The truth is that there is no "them" -- only "us". Even the most heinous criminal is a human, and deserves the constitutional rights afforded to everyone. Sometimes a physical alteration cannot be avoided, but it must always be initiated by the person being stopped by police -- not from the police themselves.

Police are to protect and serve the people, but they cannot do that if they consider a portion of the population as enemies.

Will GOP Change After Election Failure? (Hint: NO!)

The Republicans, in spite of what most polls were showing, expected a "red wave" election. They were convinced that they could take control of both houses of Congress. They were wrong. While control of Congress has yet to be officially decided (votes are still being counted), it now looks like the Democrats will probably keep control of the Senate and if they lose the House it will be only by a very small margin. The Republicans fell far short of their goal and expectation.

I have heard some pundits on TV say the GOP is ready to get rid of Trump and field more moderate candidates. I think those pundits are living in a dream world. That's not going to happen.

First, don't sell Trump short. He's still the most popular politician in the Republican Party. He may not be very popular with most Americans, but the base of the GOP still loves him.

Second, The party is controlled by its base -- and that base is composed of racists, homophobes, misogynists, and fascists. They have no desire to moderate, and they don't think they have to do that. They live in a Fox News world, and still think that most Americans are as extreme and downright crazy as they are. 

Third, party leaders can't moderate until the base does. If they try, they will meet the same fate as Rep. Cheney.

Fourth, while the midterm elections were a severe disappointment for Republicans, it wasn't a blowout. It's going to take a much more severe defeat to make Republicans realize they must change.

Fifth, while many MAGA crazies were defeated in this election, many were also elected (on a federal and state level. Enough are still in government to keep stoking the fire of crazy among party members.

We need a second political party -- one that can debate with Democrats and compromise for the good of the country. Sadly, today's Republicans are not that party. And they won't be until they change (become more moderate). But they just aren't ready to do that -- yet.

Today's GOP Is Not Conservative - It Is Radical

Traditionally, the Republican Party has been the conservative party. That means they oppose most change, wishing to protect the status quo. Today's Republicans are no longer conservative. They are radicals, who want to blow up the status quo and make radical changes. Here is how Robert Reich describes them:

This morning, I heard a commentator allude to “Mitch McConnell and other conservative senators.” Yesterday, a news report described the upcoming Alaska Republican primary as pitting Trump’s “conservative wing against Murkowski’s more moderate base.” I keep seeing references to the “conservative majority” on the Supreme Court.

Can we get real? There is nothing conservative about these so-called “conservatives.” They don’t want to preserve or protect our governing institutions — the core idea of conservatism extending from Edmund Burke to William F. Buckley and Barry Goldwater. They are radicals, intent on wrecking these institutions to impose their ideology on everyone else.

The Supreme Court’s Republican appointees have all but obliterated stare decisis — the conservative principle that the Court must follow its precedents and not change or reverse them unless clearly necessary, and with near unanimity. Recent decisions reversing Roe v. Wade, elevating religious expression over the Constitution’s bar on established religion, questioning Congress’s ability to delegate rule making to the executive branch, and barring states from regulating handguns, all call into question the legitimacy of the Supreme Court as an institution.

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell, are abusing the filibuster and undermining the legitimacy of the Senate.

Throughout much of the 20th century, filibusters remained rare. But after Barack Obama moved into the Oval Office in 2009, McConnell and his Republican senate minority blocked virtually every significant piece of legislation. Between 2010 and 2020, there were as many cloture motions as during the entire 60-year period from 1947 to 2006. Now McConnell and his Republicans are stopping almost everything in its tracks. Just 41 Senate Republicans, representing only 21 percent of the country, are blocking laws supported by the vast majority of Americans.

At the same time, Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress and in the states have upended the centerpiece of American democracy, the peaceful transition of power, and undermined the legitimacy of our elections. 

They continue to assert without any basis in fact that the 2020 election was stolen. Trump encouraged an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and threatened the life of the Vice President. Republican state legislatures are enacting legislation to suppress votes and take over election machinery.

Make no mistake: Republican appointees to the Supreme Court, most Republicans in Congress, and Trump Republican lawmakers across America are not conservative. They are radicals. They have embarked on a radical agenda of repudiating our governing institutions and taking over American democracy. 

It is time to stop using the term “conservative” to describe them and their agenda. 

And it is time it to fight back: Enlarge the size of the Supreme Court and limit the terms of justices. Abolish the filibuster and then pass laws most Americans want — protecting voting rights and reproductive rights, and controlling guns. Criminally prosecute Trump and his insurgents. 

These are conservative measures. They are necessary to conserve and protect our governing institutions from the radicals now bent on destroying them.

Senate Gun Plan Is A Failure - But Change Could Still Come

The Senate's "bipartisan" plan on gun violence will not succeed -- even if it is passed. That's because it doesn't address the real problems causing that violence. It does nothing to reduce the number of guns in our society (more than the total population), and the ability of anyone to buy any kind of gun they want. But things are changing in the country, and there is hope that real substantive change could happen in the near future.

The following op-ed is by Perry Bacon, Jr, in The Washington Post: 

There is good news about gun policy in America. But it’s not the bipartisan agreement that emerged on Capitol Hill this week.

The deal between 10 Republican and 10 Democratic senators is better than nothing. But it amounts to small-bore measures that don’t really address the central problem — the broad availability and circulation of guns in the United States, including weapons such as the AR-15 that are often used in mass shootings. The danger is that passing this legislation will take the heat off lawmakers, particularly Republicans, to adopt truly meaningful solutions.

But ultimately, I don’t think passage of the Senate bill will weaken the push for more far-reaching gun policies. The recent mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Tex., have cemented two big, important shifts on gun policy that were already happening and won’t be slowed by the passage of a minor congressional bill.

First, those involved in public policy who are not accountable to hardcore Republican voters have come to agree that guns are the problem. As a result, many in the media, top Democratic Party officials, think tanks and advocacy groups that don’t usually focus on guns are all pushing for policies such as banning the sale and ownership of military-style weapons and high-capacity magazines. Just as significantly, the reality-based policy community now agrees that while addressing, say, mental health, gangs and school security might help, what makes gun violence so prevalent in America is the unusually high number of guns in circulation.

Centering guns as the problem unifies issues that are often discussed separately: mass shootings at schools and in other public spaces; shootings that happen among acquaintances or rival gangs; instances where people shoot spouses or partners; and suicides. It also brings together the groups and experts that work on those disparate problems to push for one solution — fewer guns.

The second big shift is that the national Democratic Party is no longer afraid of gun control. A mythology developed in the early 2000s that supporting gun control was a key driver of the Democrats’ decline in the South. In particular, some strategists argued that Al Gore lost his home state of Tennessee, and therefore the 2000 presidential election, over his support for gun control. Now, it’s fairly clear that the Democrats’ struggles in the South were part of a broader political realignment, with the most important explanation likely being Southerners breaking with the party as it became more tied to Black people and causes.

Also, electoral politics aside, the sheer number of catastrophic mass shootings over the past decade has basically forced Democrats to take on this issue.

These shifts aren’t reflected much in national policy, because the Democrats don’t have the Senate votes to push through a serious gun-control bill. But having a general agreement about the problem still matters. Why?

First, clearly identifying guns as the problem is a big step toward finding actual solutions. Now, wealthy individuals, organizations and the Democratic Party know they must develop a comprehensive agenda aimed at reducing the number of guns in the United States and only backing candidates who believe in that goal. The Biden administration, too, will have to keep pressing this issue, even when there are no clear political benefits. Whenever the Democrats next have control of the House, Senate and presidency, gun control must be at the top of the agenda, in a way that it wasn’t in 2009 or 2021.

Second, blue cities and states where Republicans aren’t a roadblock should pass strong gun regulations, daring lower-level GOP judicial appointees who are often hostile to local gun regulations to strike them down and thereby put gun rights ahead of public safety. Cities and states as well as philanthropic organizations should also seek innovative ways to encourage people to voluntarily either get rid of guns or not buy them in the first place. For example, I’m hoping we see public service announcements urging people against gun ownership, perhaps modeled on successful anti-smoking campaigns.

Third, understanding guns are the problem makes one solution imperative: demanding that GOP-appointed judges, including those on the Supreme Court, accept that some expansive gun-control measures are simply necessary for public safety. Conservatives on the court have essentially created a right for all Americans to own a handgun with few restrictions, a view some scholars say is not grounded in the original intent of the Second Amendment. The court’s conservatives are expected to further expand gun rights in a ruling still to come this term. America will continue to have constant shootings as long as we have such sweeping gun rights. If conservative justices don’t change course, the only answer will be judicial reforms such as adding justices to shift the balance of the court toward common-sense gun policy.

So, no, I’m not celebrating this bipartisan guns deal too much. But I am excited to see lots of powerful Americans, including top Democrats, get more serious about reducing the number of guns in the United States. That’s the only real solution — and it’s good that so many people are finally acknowledging that.

Strong Public Support For These 4 Changes To Gun Law

The charts above reflect the results of the latest Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between June 4th and 7th of a nationwide sample of 1,500 adults (including 1,314 registered voters). The margin of error is 2.7 points for adults, and 2.9 points for registered voters. There is huge support for these changes.
 

U.S. Population Changes Between 2010 And 2020

 

From usafacts.org.

Congress Is Broken - Reform Is Needed

The following is just part of an op-ed at MSNBC.com by Jessica Levinson:

Many of us watched a legal hearing last week to determine whether a sitting member of Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., helped to incite an insurrection and is therefore constitutionally disqualifiedfrom appearing on an election ballot. While her testimony was jaw-clenchingly infuriating for a number of reasons, perhaps the biggest takeaway is that we need to examine how we got here in the first place and how to make sure we never, ever end up here again. . . .

Real electoral reform, of course, is not easy, but there are some big changes we can make to fundamentally improve our elections and hence our political system.

First, we should drastically limit the influence of money in our elections. Candidates should be elected because they have the best ideas, not the biggest campaign war chests. The public should be confident that elected officials are beholden only to their constituents, not their donors. And the public should have representatives who spend their time working for them, not dialing for dollars. Instead, members of Congress can spend 30 hours per week on fundraising, which is often necessary to finance our very costly elections. For context, the total cost of the 2020 elections topped $14 billion.

If we want to get money out of politics, we should recognize that money is not, contrary to the Supreme Court’s conclusion, the equivalent of speech. And it therefore can be limited in elections.

Second, we should pass real voting rights protections on the federal level. Once people are eligible to vote, we should not make them jump through pointless hoops to exercise that right. Laws that restrict the right to vote by making it harder to register to vote, reducing early voting hours, restricting the locations of voting centers and making it more arduous to obtain a vote-by-mail ballot do not serve legitimate purposes. Proponents claim they help reduce voter fraud, but we know that is a myth.

Third, we need more basic civics education. A representative system of government is based on an active and informed electorate who understand how our government functions and demand that those whom we choose to represent us support our norms and laws, rather than seek to undermine them.

In short, if you find your dentist applying sugar directly to your teeth, it is time to get a new dentist and probably to rethink how we choose our dentists to begin with. If you find your lawmaker in a legal hearing to determine whether she is constitutionally barred from running for office because those charged with making our government work are trying to undermine it, it is time to rethink our electoral and political systems.

A Profound Change In Labor Force Is Happening

 

The following thought-provoking article is from former Labor Secretary Robert Reich:

Across America, hospitals are pushed to the limit because so many health care workers have quit just as Omicron is surging. 

But hospitals aren’t alone, and Omicron isn’t the only culprit. We’re witnessing one of the most profound changes in the American labor force in a half century, at least since middle-class women entered paid work in large numbers during the 1970s. Only this time, women and men aren’t entering work. Many are leaving it (or at least, the way work has been organized). 

For decades, work has had a total grip on most people's lives because there have been so few alternatives to either working full time (often 50 or 60 hours a week, sometimes at two or more jobs), or not working at all and worrying about making ends meet. Instead of working to live, most of us have been living to work.

Yet in recent months there’s been something of a sea change. The so-called “quit rate” of workers voluntarily leaving their jobs has reached record levels. The labor-force participation rate (the percent of people of working age who are in the workforce) is remarkably low for this point in a recovery. More workers are on strike than at any comparable period in the last thirty years.

The pandemic has surfaced many issues that have been smoldering for years -- mandatory overtime, stagnant wages, dangerous working conditions, insecure employment, employment discrimination, and lack of paid sick leave or paid family leave. 

It has also forced -- or allowed -- many people to reconsider what they want from work and from their lives.

Donald Sull, Charles Sull, and Ben Zweig recently conducted a massive study of workplace data for the MIT Sloan Management Review, including more than a million Glassdoor reviews. What are employees complaining about at companies losing the most workers in this tsunami of resignations? Interestingly, not mainly pay. Complaints about pay ranked 16th of the issues that predict quits. The biggest predictor is a toxic culture – workplaces that fail to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion; that don’t make workers feel respected and valued; and make them to feel insecure. No one likes to be underpaid. But it turns out people like disrespect and insecurity even less. 

When Australian researchers recently reviewed data on more than 1,000 workers, they discovered that working for a companies that “fail to reward or acknowledge their employees for hard work, impose unreasonable demands on workers, and do not give them autonomy” triples the odds that workers will suffer major depression. 

I’m no soothsayer, but as I look ahead I’m fairly certain we’re going to see companies and nonprofits moving toward more flexible work, autonomous work, and mandatory limits on work hours. They have no choice if they want to recruit and retain reliable employees. 

We’re also going to see far more self-employment, more people moving to locales around the country where housing is cheaper, and, in general, more of us seeking to simplify our lives.

I also expect increasing demands for public policies that reduce the amount of time we have to spend working and give us more control of our own labor – such as a universal basic income, a ban on mandatory overtime, a shorter workweek, paid sick leave and paid family leave, and more tax incentives for profit sharing and self-employment. 

We’re not facing the end of work, but we are facing the end of work as we know it. It’s about time.

Poll Shows Public Support For Changes To U.S. Government

 

The chart above is from the recent Bright Line Watch Poll -- done between November 10th and 19th of a national sample of 2,750 adults.

Change Is Inevitable - We Must Make Sure It's Good Change

 The Trump supporters want to change this country. They dream of returning to a time when white men ruled the country, and everyone else was a second-class citizen (who didn't have the same rights as white men did).

They think after making that sick change, they can freeze time and not allow any more change. That is an impossible dream.

If there's one thing I have learned in my long life, it's that change is inevitable. It's going to happen, and cannot be stopped. The best we can do is to make sure the change is a good one -- one that benefits all the citizens of our country.

The following is part of an op-ed by Dan Rather at steady.substack.com:

Very little about what life was like when I was growing up remains intact. It is easy to focus on technology. I do video calls on my telephone with distant friends, even as I remember party lines when I was a child. (For those unfamiliar with the term, look it up. It wasn’t a party.) But the social changes are even more profound. 

I have witnessed broad recognition of systemic biases, injustices, and cruelties. But a lot of the necessary progress we need to make on race, LGBTQ rights, the environment, as well as many other issues, remains maddeningly elusive. For many in this country this lack of progress harms and even kills. We take steps forward and backward. . . .

We have just lived through an administration that sloganeered about going backwards to when America was “great.” Time travel is of course impossible. But the era they seek to return to was not one of unadulterated greatness. It was one of systemic injustices and white supremacy. 

We still live with the echoes of that era, of our past. The currents that haven’t changed in our country undermine our democracy. But we must all approach the present with humility. 

Things can change. They will change. It can be for the better. And for the worse. But what I have also learned is that change need not be a passive exercise. From climate change to changing and expanding the rights and democratic values of our nation, we can all play a role. Rather than frighten us, change can be a powerful inspiration for hope. 

There is so much about our nation in need of change that it can be overwhelming. But another lesson I have learned is that even small acts of change can add up. . . .

So perhaps we can all pledge today to endeavor this week to do something that we believe will change our neighborhood, our community, our city or town, and thus our nation and our larger world, for the better. Change need not be destructive. It can be just what we need to put us on a more peaceful, inclusive, and productive path into the future. 

The Population Is Changing And The GOP Can't Accept That

According to the 2020 census, the United States is more diverse today than it has ever been. The white population has shrunk once again, and in fact, all of the nation's growth was among its non-white inhabitants. This is scaring Republicans, whose party is mostly white and whose policies are anti-minority and racist. They could just change their policies to be more inclusive, but they have chosen a different path -- to suppress the votes of non-whites and gerrymander districts to hold on to power. If those methods work for them, it won't be for very long. The demographic changes being seen in the population is not going to go away, and by mid-century whites will no longer be a majority. Sadly though, their party has been taken over by the racists and bigots, so they will just continue to pursue white privileges -- and this will only hurt their party in the future.

Here's how Jennifer Rubin describes the situation in The Washington Post:

The 2020 Census shows that while Whites remain the largest ethnicity group in the United States, the demographic decreased by 8.6 percent over the past decade. Those identifying as multiracial, by contrast, grew by a stunning 276 percent. Hispanic, Black and Asian American populations all grew at a rapid rate, too. Now, the country is nearly 19 percent Hispanic, 12 percent Black and 6 percent Asian American.

The country grew at a slower pace than in any decade since the Depression. It is also aging. Nearly all the growth took place in urban centers (up nearly 9 percent) as rural populations shrank. The Hill reports: “Fewer than half of the 3,143 counties in the United States added population over the last decade, the new census data shows. The share of Americans who live in nonmetropolitan rural areas dropped by 2.8 percentage points, the Bureau said Thursday.”

The results speak to a truism that millions of Republicans would like to ignore: America is never static. It is — and has always been — in a state of flux, whether it comes to race, religious affiliation (or lack thereof), the divide between native-born and immigrant, or the geographic spread of the population (e.g., the Great Migration of Blacks from the South in the early 20th century or the rise of the Sun Belt population over the last few decades). Indeed, that is the essence of America — a country not defined by racial or religious identity.

That reality has, of course, freaked out a significant share of White Christians who do not see “their America” as predominate. It was never “theirs” to begin with, and the assumption that something is amiss if White Christians are not in charge is the essence of white supremacy and Christian nationalism. It is also fundamentally un-American; our country is defined, as President Biden rightly says, by an “idea.”

It is easy, then, to understand why a political party based increasingly on its appeal to White Christians has adopted so many anti-American traits. The sanctity of elections has given way to a sentiment that violence is sometimes necessary (for Whites to retain power). The decline in their numbers has led to worship of totalitarian thugs around the world and disdain for a free society. The desperation for a make-believe world of yesteryear has led tens of millions down the rabbit hole of right-wing media propaganda, where their worst fears and darkest impulses are amplified.

Less remarked upon, but equally important, is that the growth of urban areas (generally more productive, more tolerant and more diverse) leaves rural Whites increasingly at odds with the national ethos. The latter are also poorer, sicker, less educated and have shorter life-spans than their metropolitan counterparts.

A rational, pro-democracy party would recognize it needs a broader base of support and move to adjust its policies to appeal to a more diverse, more secular and more urban America. That’s not the GOP game plan.

The GOP is so dependent on the right-wing media generator of White angst and resentment, and so fearful they will lose their grip among Whites, that they have chosen instead to try to hold back the demographic and cultural tide washing over them. They resort to voter suppression, assault objective reality, disdain majority rule and weaponize apolitical institutions, such as the courts or the Justice Department. Moreover, given their White, wealthy donor base, they can offer only rhetorical populism while pursuing plutocratic economic policies (going so far as to refuse to increase funding for the Internal Revenue Service to enforce tax laws).

There is no single solution to solve the growing urban-rural divide. However, unless and until Americans in rural areas demand responsible governance, embrace the true “idea” of America and reject the temptation of racism and authoritarianism, little will change.

In the meantime, urban Americans, who constitute a greater share of the population than ever before, will lose patience with anti-democratic techniques (e.g., the filibuster, voter suppression) designed to give rural Whites disproportionate power. Demography may not be destiny, but it brings the weaknesses of American democracy into focus.