Coming out of the grocery store yesterday afternoon, I was miffed to see that there was a flyer stuck under my windshield wipers. For those of you who don’t know me, this is one of my pet peeves, most likely because I rarely notice them until I am driving down the road and they start…
Guest post from Professor Raymond J. La Raja of UMass Amherst and Professor Brian Schaffner of Tufts University. With Election Day in just a few days, Massachusetts voters must make up their minds on three important ballot questions. Unfortunately too little attention has been paid to Question 2. We have several concerns about it. Question…
While the 2018 election season has been marked by spirited debate over an array of issues, few have garnered more attention from candidates running for office in Massachusetts than the environment and, more specifically, climate change. David Abel of The Boston Globe deemed climate change one of the central topics in the gubernatorial election, adding…
The coverage of the Bay State’s gubernatorial election this year is both business as usual and just a bit surreal. A Globe headline in today’s paper illustrates my point. It reads “Charlie Baker says he’s been tough on Trump when it matters. Is that enough for Mass. voters?” Average Massachusetts voters have taken no great…
Less than a week from the November 6th election and I am here to write on Massachusetts politics. Folks, all I got is a longing for the Buckeye state where I grew up. Sure, I far prefer living in Massachusetts when it comes to public policy. State commitment to universal healthcare, prioritization of funding for…
Last week Channel 5 WCVB reporter Karen Andersen did a very good report on “grey money” and Governor Baker’s campaign. (Trigger warning: I’m interviewed in the piece). Between dark money and grey money, figuring out who gives to sustain Governor Baker and his pet causes may be the most difficult job in politics. “Grey money”…
Yesterday the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, the private political dark money front run by Third CD Republican candidate Rick Green, referred what it calls its Voter Integrity Initiative to Secretary of State William Galvin. MassFiscal’s initiative has nothing to do with voter integrity. It is a blatant attempt to intimidate Latino, Asian, and African-American voters, a…
Economists and healthcare policy experts have weighed in on both sides of the debate over Question One. There are clearly compelling expert arguments on both sides. My analysis on this question to date (which can be reviewed here, here, here, and here) has been about how average voters ought to consider this and every other…
The most basic aspect of the international system is the fact that it lacks a centralized overarching authority. This is the sort of thing one learns on the first day of a basic intro course on international relations, but it makes it no less significant because given this characteristic, any positive international outcome that occurs…
Last night Donald Trump visited Texas in an attempt to save a red Senate seat by campaigning for his one-time punching bag, Ted Cruz. The surreal scene underscored the plummeting testosterone levels plaguing the Republican Party, America’s shriveling symbol of white male manhood. The Trump-Cruz tolerance-by-necessity fest was well-captured in a tweet from Princeton historian…