vox--2020-09-23--North Carolina’s all-important 2020 Senate race, explained

The road to a Democratic Senate majority runs through North Carolina .
Democrats hope former state lawmaker and military prosecutor Cal Cunningham can topple Republican Sen. Thom Tillis , who is up for his first reelection since his win in 2014 .
“ North Carolinians know Thom Tillis , and they have very strong negative views about him , about his service , about the things he has chosen to pursue in office on issue after issue of importance to North Carolinians , ” Cunningham told me in a recent interview .
“ He has either capitulated to the partisan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ special interests.
” Everybody I spoke to expects an extraordinarily tight Senate race .
The outcome could very well decide which party controls the Senate in 2021 , going by the Sabato ’ s Crystal Ball ratings .
Assuming Democrats lose in the Alabama Senate race but win in Arizona , Colorado , and Maine — which forecasters say is a fairly likely scenario — then they just need a win in either North Carolina or Iowa .
With one of those toss-up states , by Sabato ’ s reckoning , Democrats can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ three presidential elections have been decided in North Carolina by less than 4 percentage points ; Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter are the only Democratic presidential candidates to win in the modern era .
And despite Trump ’ s triumph here in 2016 , Democrat Roy Cooper won that same year , becoming one of two Democratic governors in the South .
And 2020 looks as though it ’ ll be no different .
Biden leads Trump by less than a point in the Real Clear Politics polling average ; Cunningham is polling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ polling gap between Trump and Tillis is one reason for Democratic optimism ; if an incumbent senator runs behind his party ’ s president , he seems to have some problems with the conservative base as well as persuadable voters .
But Tillis ’ s campaign is spending the final weeks of the race trying to erode Cunningham ’ s advantage by portraying him as a partisan Democrat .
North Carolina was already going to be one of the most fiercely contested Senates races of the year .
Now , with Justice Ruth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pledging to replace her in the middle of the campaign , the stakes of a Senate majority have never been clearer .
Why North Carolina is one of the swingiest of the swing states North Carolina has , like most southern states , undergone a fundamental political realignment in the last 50 years .
Conservative Democrats have mostly left that party behind and many have joined the Republicans .
At the same time , young people make up a growing percentage of the electorate , and while they officially register as unaffiliated , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their politics .
By voter registration numbers , the state is neatly divided in thirds among Republicans , Democrats , and unaffiliated voters .
But most of those unaffiliated voters are actually reliable votes for one party or the other .
Instead , according to the political scientists and strategists I spoke with , North Carolina looks more like this : 45 percent Republican voters , 45 percent Democratic voters , and 10 percent truly persuadable swing voters .
So any winning coalition in the state starts with turning out as many voters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — and then winning that small percentage of persuadable voters and ticket splitters .
Where are those gettable voters ?
The suburbs .
Urban voters overwhelmingly back Democratic candidates ( Hillary Clinton won 66 percent of the central city vote in 2016 , according to Catawba College political scientist Michael Bitzer , who writes at Old North State Politics ) .
Rural voters are reliable votes for the Republicans , with Trump commanding a 21-point edge there over Clinton .
That leaves the suburbs as the most important battleground .
But Bitzer distinguishes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which are pivotal in distinct ways .
Urban county suburbs are closer to their city centers , contained within the same county borders .
These areas were decided by a thin margin in 2016 : Clinton won them by 1 point , GOP Sen. Richard Burr took them by 3 points on his way to reelection , and Cooper by 4 .
These are moderate , sometimes ticket-splitting voters , and they helped Burr and Cooper win those races for their respective parties .
The surrounding county suburbs are a little farther out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more solidly Republican .
Trump won 65 percent of the vote in those places and Burr won 63 percent .
But even a slight underperformance there by Republicans can make a difference : Former North Carolina Gov .
Pat McCrory won 61 percent of this exurban vote , a notch lower than Trump and Burr , when he lost to Cooper .
Paired with Cooper ’ s edge in the urban suburbs , that was just enough to give the Democrat the statewide win .
In order to beat Tillis , Cunningham needs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The suburbs have been shifting toward Democrats in the Trump era , powering their big wins in the 2018 midterms , and they are an absolute must-have for the party in this state .
“ If North Carolina ’ s suburbs are acting like the national narrative , those urban suburbs are probably going to shift and the Republican margin in the surrounding suburbs is going to shrink , ” Bitzer told me .
Democratic odds would be aided by strong turnout among younger voters and Black voters .
Registration by voters in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been strong throughout 2020 .
But Democratic-leaning voters have not always turned out as reliably as Republican voters : A higher percentage of Democratic and unaffiliated voters registered in 2016 but failed to vote compared to Republicans , according to Bitzer ’ s research .
The pandemic is the other X-factor .
North Carolina is a state with a robust vote-by-mail and early voting apparatus , so the state ’ s voters are already comfortable with those procedures .
As of late August , 710,000 mail ballots had been requested .
At the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only 40,000 voters had asked for a mail-in ballot .
More than half of the ballot requests so far in 2020 are from Democrats , whereas in 2016 the parties were evenly split .
But Bitzer cautioned against reading too much into that data .
Mail-in ballots might just be an expression of the hardened opinions of partisan voters who have already made up their minds .
These could simply be early votes that would have been made regardless , they ’ re just coming in early because of Covid-19 .
“ I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Covid is the great unknown at this point , ” Bitzer said .
“ It could be the true partisans who are banking their ballots now.
” That would leave the persuadable voters to be fought over in the last few weeks of the campaign .
Both sides think they have a strategy for winning them .
Cunningham has the profile of many Democrats who won competitive races in the 2018 midterms : He ’ s a veteran and former military prosecutor who served two active-duty tours in Iraq .
He served one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the early 2000s , worked for various law firms and a waste reduction company over the years , and he ran for the US Senate in 2010 but lost the Democratic primary in a runoff .
Cunningham is also , as he will readily remind reporters and voters , a lifelong North Carolinian .
His campaign strategy is neatly captured in how he ’ s run on Covid-19 .
In his interview with Vox , he pointed out that the United States is capable of coming together for the national good — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ If it had been a terrorist attack , there would have been an address to the nation , probably to a joint session of Congress .
There would not have been a hesitation to invoke things like the Defense Production Act , ” Cunningham said in late August .
“ There would have been clear communication from the top to every corner of America about how we fight that enemy .
Here , we were told it was a hoax.
” It was a plea for unity , one that could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unlike the message often heard from Biden when he ’ s speaking to that part of the electorate .
Cunningham mostly leaves Trump out of it .
He said instead that he is “ incredibly laser-focused on Senator Tillis and the role a senator should play in a moment like this.
” Cunningham contrasted Tillis with Sen. Tom Cotton , a resolute conservative and Trump ally who still warned about the need to prepare for the worst after sitting in on a classified briefing in January about the Covid-19 threat .
In Cunningham @ @ @ @ @ @ @ example of a Republican urging vigilance early on , despite the Trump administration ’ s reluctance to acknowledge the severity of the coronavirus outbreak .
“ My guy , the person I hold accountable in this race , was not one of them , ” Cunningham argued to me .
“ He has demonstrated an unwillingness and an inability to ask the tough questions when a US senator , in a coequal branch of government , should be doing exactly that.
” So when given the chance , he decided to forgo any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stayed “ laser-focused ” on his Republican opponent .
That is the strategy that Democratic operatives and independent observers believe will serve him best as he zeroes in on the persuadable 10 percent of the North Carolina electorate .
“ I think he is playing a classic middle of the road [ card ] , focusing on issues like health care , more so than the ‘ I ’ m not in Donald Trump ’ s camp ’ card , ” Bitzer said .
“ Voters already know that .
There ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the two parties , I don ’ t think he needs to clear that up.
” Cunningham has instead hammered Tillis over health care , both before and during the Covid-19 pandemic .
North Carolina is one of 12 states that hasn ’ t expanded Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act , leaving more than 200,000 people without access to affordable health insurance .
Tillis , who was speaker of the state house from 2011 to 2015 , bears significant responsibility for that fact ; in 2013 , the state legislature passed a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expanding Medicaid .
That meant when Cooper became governor in 2017 , having run on expanding Medicaid , he was unable to enact his top agenda item .
Even though Tillis had left for the US Senate in 2015 , his actions as a leader in the North Carolina House are still being felt to this day — and Cunningham wants voters to know that .
“ North Carolinians , in particular , are more vulnerable than most to the public health crisis .
We have one of the highest rates of uninsured @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
... We know why we did that .
Tillis proudly takes credit for that , ” Cunningham told me .
“ Today , almost 1.3 million out of 10 million people in my state can ’ t go see a doctor without having to fear what the size of that bill is because they just don ’ t have coverage.
” Thom Tillis is trying to paint Cunningham as a radical in moderate clothing Tillis is in a weak position for an incumbent .
He ’ s averaging 42.3 percent support in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ behind Trump ’ s 46.6 percent average .
A Morning Consult analysis of the race found the senator lagging badly behind Trump with rural voters , with conservative voters , and with 2016 Trump voters .
He was also performing worse than Trump with suburban and moderate voters .
Tillis ’ s record contains something to annoy both the far right and the rigidly centrist .
He voted in favor of Obamacare repeal in the Senate , something Cunningham lumps together with Tillis ’ s opposition to Medicaid expansion in order to blame @ @ @ @ @ @ @ high uninsured rate .
Tillis has been working to convince voters he supports protecting people with preexisting conditions despite the fact that the bill he voted for would have stripped those protections .
He also clashed with Trump over the president ’ s plan for declaring a national emergency along the Mexican border , initially signaling opposition to that plan for fear of the precedent it would set for a future Democratic administration .
But he later reversed himself at the last minute and voted to affirm Trump ’ s plan ; Cunningham @ @ @ @ @ @ @ principled stands against Trump .
“ This race is as much about Tillis ’ s weakness as anything else , ” Morgan Jackson , a Democratic strategist in the state , says .
“ He ’ s angering both of these voters at the same time .
When he backs the president , he sends a signal to the swing voters that he ’ s not concerned about their issues .
But then when he puts a mask on , that ’ s a direct repudiation of Trump .
“ He ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s not working.
” There is an argument to be made Tillis has never been a particularly strong statewide candidate .
His slim 2014 win was unimpressive compared to some of the other Republican winners that year .
Over 2019 , Morning Consult found his approval rating with voters was 34 percent and his disapproval rating was 37 percent .
But nobody believes a Tillis loss is a foregone conclusion .
The state ’ s voters are too evenly divided for a landslide .
“ You have to fundamentally respect that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Jackson said .
And Tillis ’ s campaign and his political consultants believe they have an opening to shake up the race .
Their plan relies primarily on convincing those moderate voters that Cunningham is not the reasonable Democrat he ’ s presenting himself as and is instead a stalking horse for a more radical progressive agenda .
“ Cal Cunningham wants to appear to be part of the Democrats of the past , not of the future , ” Paul Shumaker , a Republican strategist supporting Tillis ’ s campaign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has been given a free pass until the last four weeks.
” They have seized on his comments at the first Senate debate in early September , when Cunningham expressed doubts about the veracity of a vaccine approved under the Trump administration .
That ’ s a concern shared by many voters , polls show , but it ’ s still one that the Tillis camp believes makes Cunningham look like a party-line Democrat .
In the same vein , they have been citing his stated rationale for opposing the most recent Senate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was a party-line vote .
“ He ’ s saying something to get elected , anything to get elected , ” Tillis said at the debate .
This is the message from Tillis going forward : Cunningham can ’ t be trusted , and neither can the Democratic Party .
The Republican side knows they entered the fall at a disadvantage , after Cunningham had spent much of the spring and summer building up his moderate bona fides with little pushback .
But they believe they can turn the race around in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of persuadable voters will make up their minds .
They have some reason to be optimistic .
A lot of the unaffiliated voters are formerly Democrats who are too conservative for the modern party .
In 2016 , Burr was polling just 2 points ahead of his Democratic opponent but ended up winning by 5 points .
There could be a hidden Tillis vote , especially if some of the conservatives currently sour on him come around and support him when they ’ re filling out their ballot for Trump .
Tillis ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Supreme Court fight , which affirms his importance to Republicans as a swing-state senator .
Cunningham will continue focusing on health care and his opponent , but not the president .
The two sides have been almost even in fundraising : about $ 13.7 million for Tillis and $ 14.8 million for Cunningham .
It ’ s the recipe for a razor-thin race .
“ That small percentage [ of ticket splitters ] can decide an election , ” Bitzer said .
“ But it ’ s a smaller and smaller slice.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ for all ?
The United States is in the middle of one of the most consequential presidential elections of our lifetimes .
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That is our mission at Vox .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ If you have already contributed , thank you .
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The road to a Democratic Senate majority runs through North Carolina.
Democrats hope former state lawmaker and military prosecutor Cal Cunningham can topple Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, who is up for his first reelection since his win in 2014.
“North Carolinians know Thom Tillis, and they have very strong negative views about him, about his service, about the things he has chosen to pursue in office on issue after issue of importance to North Carolinians,” Cunningham told me in a recent interview. “He has either capitulated to the partisan pressures or walked in line with corporate special interests.”
Everybody I spoke to expects an extraordinarily tight Senate race. The outcome could very well decide which party controls the Senate in 2021, going by the Sabato’s Crystal Ball ratings. Assuming Democrats lose in the Alabama Senate race but win in Arizona, Colorado, and Maine — which forecasters say is a fairly likely scenario — then they just need a win in either North Carolina or Iowa. With one of those toss-up states, by Sabato’s reckoning, Democrats can secure 50 Senate seats.
The last three presidential elections have been decided in North Carolina by less than 4 percentage points; Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter are the only Democratic presidential candidates to win in the modern era. And despite Donald Trump’s triumph there in 2016, Democrat Roy Cooper won that same year, becoming one of two Democratic governors in the South.
And 2020 looks as though it’ll be no different. Joe Biden leads Trump by less than a point in the RealClearPolitics polling average; Cunningham is polling 6 percentage points ahead of Tillis. That polling gap between Trump and Tillis is one reason for Democratic optimism; if an incumbent senator runs behind his party’s president, he seems to have some problems with the conservative base as well as persuadable voters.
But Tillis’s campaign is spending the final weeks of the race trying to erode Cunningham’s advantage by portraying him as a partisan Democrat.
The race was recently jolted by revelations that Cunningham sent romantic texts to a woman who is not his wife — which Cunningham admitted to and apologized for. On the same day, Tillis revealed he had tested positive for Covid-19 and would isolate at home.
North Carolina was already going to be one of the most fiercely contested Senate races of the year. Now, with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death and Republicans pledging to replace her in the middle of the campaign, the stakes of a Senate majority have never been clearer.
Why North Carolina is one of the swingiest of the swing states
North Carolina has, like most Southern states, undergone a fundamental political realignment in the past 50 years. Conservative Democrats have mostly left that party behind and many have joined the Republicans. At the same time, young people make up a growing percentage of the electorate, and while they officially register as unaffiliated, they tend to be more progressive in their politics.
By voter registration numbers, the state is neatly divided in thirds among Republicans, Democrats, and unaffiliated voters. But most of those unaffiliated voters are actually reliable votes for one party or the other. Instead, according to the political scientists and strategists I spoke with, North Carolina looks more like this: 45 percent Republican voters, 45 percent Democratic voters, and 10 percent truly persuadable swing voters.
So any winning coalition in the state starts with turning out as many voters in your 45 percent as you can — and then winning that small percentage of persuadable voters and ticket splitters.
Where are those gettable voters? The suburbs.
Urban voters overwhelmingly back Democratic candidates (Hillary Clinton won 66 percent of the central city vote in 2016, according to Catawba College political scientist Michael Bitzer, who writes at Old North State Politics). Rural voters are reliable votes for the Republicans, with Trump commanding a 21-point edge there over Clinton.
That leaves the suburbs as the most important battleground. But Bitzer distinguishes between two different kinds of suburbs, which are pivotal in distinct ways.
Related This North Carolina Democrat will try to unseat Thom Tillis this fall
Urban county suburbs are closer to their city centers, contained within the same county borders. These areas were decided by a thin margin in 2016: Clinton won them by 1 point, GOP Sen. Richard Burr took them by 3 points on his way to reelection, and Cooper by 4. These are moderate, sometimes ticket-splitting voters, and they helped Burr and Cooper win those races for their respective parties.
The surrounding county suburbs are a little farther out from the city and tend to be more solidly Republican. Trump won 65 percent of the vote in those places, and Burr won 63 percent. But even a slight underperformance there by Republicans can make a difference: Former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory won 61 percent of this exurban vote, a notch lower than Trump and Burr, when he lost to Cooper. Paired with Cooper’s edge in the urban suburbs, that was just enough to give the Democrat the statewide win.
To beat Tillis, Cunningham needs similarly strong performances in those areas. The suburbs have been shifting toward Democrats in the Trump era, powering their big wins in the 2018 midterms, and they are an absolute must-have for the party in this state.
“If North Carolina’s suburbs are acting like the national narrative, those urban suburbs are probably going to shift and the Republican margin in the surrounding suburbs is going to shrink,” Bitzer told me.
Democratic odds would be aided by strong turnout among younger voters and Black voters. Registration by voters in the millennial and Gen Z cohorts has been strong throughout 2020. But Democratic-leaning voters have not always turned out as reliably as Republican voters: A higher percentage of Democratic and unaffiliated voters registered in 2016 but failed to vote compared to Republicans, according to Bitzer’s research.
The pandemic is the other X-factor. North Carolina is a state with a robust vote-by-mail and early voting apparatus, so the state’s voters are already comfortable with those procedures. As of late August, 710,000 mail ballots had been requested. At the same point in the 2016 cycle, only 40,000 voters had asked for a mail-in ballot. More than half of the ballot requests so far in 2020 are from Democrats, whereas in 2016 the parties were evenly split.
But Bitzer cautioned against reading too much into that data. Mail-in ballots might just be an expression of the hardened opinions of partisan voters who have already made up their minds. These could simply be early votes that would have been made regardless, and they’re just coming in even earlier because of Covid-19.
“I’m still of an opinion that Covid is the great unknown at this point,” Bitzer said. “It could be the true partisans who are banking their ballots now.”
That would leave the persuadable voters to be fought over in the last few weeks of the campaign. Both sides think they have a strategy for winning them.
Cal Cunningham is running as a middle-of-the-road Democrat
Cunningham has the profile of many Democrats who won competitive races in the 2018 midterms: He’s a veteran and former military prosecutor who served two active-duty tours in Iraq. He served one term in the North Carolina state Senate in the early 2000s, worked for various law firms and a waste reduction company over the years, and ran for the US Senate in 2010 but lost the Democratic primary in a runoff. Cunningham is also, as he will readily remind reporters and voters, a lifelong North Carolinian.
His campaign strategy is neatly captured in how he’s run on Covid-19. In his interview with Vox, he pointed out that the United States is capable of coming together for the national good — just not, apparently, for Covid-19.
“If it had been a terrorist attack, there would have been an address to the nation, probably to a joint session of Congress. There would not have been a hesitation to invoke things like the Defense Production Act,” Cunningham said in late August. “There would have been clear communication from the top to every corner of America about how we fight that enemy. Here, we were told it was a hoax.”
It was a plea for unity, one that could be effective with moderate voters and not unlike the message often heard from Biden when he’s speaking to that part of the electorate.
Cunningham mostly leaves Trump out of it. He said instead that he is “incredibly laser-focused on Senator Tillis and the role a senator should play in a moment like this.”
Cunningham contrasted Tillis with Sen. Tom Cotton, a resolute conservative and Trump ally who still warned about the need to prepare for the worst after sitting in on a classified briefing in January about the Covid-19 threat. In Cunningham’s telling, Cotton was an example of a Republican urging vigilance early on, despite the Trump administration’s reluctance to acknowledge the severity of the coronavirus outbreak.
“My guy, the person I hold accountable in this race, was not one of them,” Cunningham argued to me. “He has demonstrated an unwillingness and an inability to ask the tough questions when a US senator, in a coequal branch of government, should be doing exactly that.”
So when given the chance, he decided to forgo any more direct criticisms of Trump and instead stayed “laser-focused” on his Republican opponent. That is the strategy that Democratic operatives and independent observers believe will serve him best as he zeroes in on the persuadable 10 percent of the North Carolina electorate.
“I think he is playing a classic middle-of-the-road [card], focusing on issues like health care, more so than the ‘I’m not in Donald Trump’s camp’ card,” Bitzer said. “Voters already know that. There’s a clean delineation in this state with the two parties, I don’t think he needs to clear that up.”
Cunningham has instead hammered Tillis over health care, both before and during the Covid-19 pandemic.
North Carolina is one of 12 states that haven’t expanded Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act, leaving more than 200,000 people without access to affordable health insurance. Tillis, who was speaker of the state House from 2011 to 2015, bears significant responsibility for that fact; in 2013, the state legislature passed a bill explicitly forbidding a governor from unilaterally expanding Medicaid.
That meant when Cooper became governor in 2017, having run on expanding Medicaid, he was unable to enact his top agenda item. Even though Tillis had left for the US Senate in 2015, his actions as a leader in the North Carolina House are still being felt to this day — and Cunningham wants voters to know that.
“North Carolinians, in particular, are more vulnerable than most to the public health crisis. We have one of the highest rates of uninsured because we didn’t expand Medicaid. ... We know why we did that. Tillis proudly takes credit for that,” Cunningham told me. “Today, almost 1.3 million out of 10 million people in my state can’t go see a doctor without having to fear what the size of that bill is because they just don’t have coverage.”
Thom Tillis is trying to paint Cunningham as a radical in moderate clothing
Tillis is in a weak position for an incumbent. He’s averaging 42.3 percent support in the RealClearPolitics average, well behind Trump’s 46.6 percent average. A Morning Consult analysis of the race found the senator lagging badly behind Trump with rural voters, with conservative voters, and with 2016 Trump voters. He was also performing worse than Trump with suburban and moderate voters.
Tillis’s record contains something to annoy both the far right and the rigidly centrist. He voted in favor of Obamacare repeal in the Senate, something Cunningham lumps together with Tillis’s opposition to Medicaid expansion in order to blame the senator for the state’s high uninsured rate. Tillis has been working to convince voters he supports protecting people with preexisting conditions even though the bill he voted for would have stripped those protections.
He also clashed with Trump over the president’s plan for declaring a national emergency along the Mexican border, initially signaling opposition to that plan for fear of the precedent it would set for a future Democratic administration. But he later reversed himself at the last minute and voted to affirm Trump’s plan; Cunningham therefore argues Tillis is unwilling to take principled stands against Trump.
“This race is as much about Tillis’s weakness as anything else,” Morgan Jackson, a Democratic strategist in the state, says. “He’s angering both of these voters at the same time. When he backs the president, he sends a signal to the swing voters that he’s not concerned about their issues. But then when he puts a mask on, that’s a direct repudiation of Trump.
“He’s trying to straddle this line, but it’s not working.”
There is an argument to be made that Tillis has never been a particularly strong statewide candidate. His slim 2014 win was unimpressive compared to some of the other Republican winners that year. Over 2019, Morning Consult found his approval rating with voters was 34 percent and his disapproval rating was 37 percent.
But nobody believes a Tillis loss is a foregone conclusion. The state’s voters are too evenly divided for a landslide.
“You have to fundamentally respect that North Carolina is a very purple state,” Jackson said.
And Tillis’s campaign and his political consultants believe they have an opening to shake up the race. Their plan relies primarily on convincing those moderate voters that Cunningham is not the reasonable Democrat he’s presenting himself as, and is instead a stalking horse for a more radical progressive agenda.
“Cal Cunningham wants to appear to be part of the Democrats of the past, not of the future,” Paul Shumaker, a Republican strategist supporting Tillis’s campaign, told me. “Cal Cunningham has been given a free pass until the last four weeks.”
They have seized on his comments at the first Senate debate in early September, when Cunningham expressed doubts about the veracity of a vaccine approved under the Trump administration. That’s a concern shared by many voters, polls show, but it’s still one that the Tillis camp believes makes Cunningham look like a party-line Democrat.
In the same vein, they have been citing his stated rationale for opposing the most recent Senate Republican Covid-19 relief package — that it was a party-line vote.
“He’s saying something to get elected, anything to get elected,” Tillis said at the debate.
This is the message from Tillis going forward: Cunningham can’t be trusted, and neither can the Democratic Party. The Republican side knows they entered the fall at a disadvantage, after Cunningham had spent much of the spring and summer building up his moderate bona fides with little pushback. But they believe they can turn the race around in the final stretch when that critical 10 percent of persuadable voters will make up their minds.
They have some reason to be optimistic. A lot of the unaffiliated voters are formerly Democrats who are too conservative for the modern party. In 2016, Burr was polling just 2 points ahead of his Democratic opponent but ended up winning by 5 points. There could be a hidden Tillis vote, especially if some of the conservatives who are currently sour on him come around and support him when they’re filling out their ballot for Trump.
Tillis’s closing argument will likely rest on the Supreme Court fight, which affirms his importance to Republicans as a swing-state senator. Cunningham will continue focusing on health care and his opponent, but not the president.
The two sides have been almost even in fundraising: about $13.7 million for Tillis and $14.8 million for Cunningham. It’s the recipe for a razor-thin race.
“That small percentage [of ticket splitters] can decide an election,” Bitzer said. “But it’s a smaller and smaller slice.”


vox--2020-09-23--How to fix Lebanon’s political crisis

How to fix Lebanon’s political crisis

The Beirut port explosion on August 4 , which killed more than 170 people , wounded thousands , and made 300,000 homeless , encapsulated all that has gone wrong with Lebanon ’ s 30-year political experiment .
The explosion was an accident resulting from years of buck-passing and negligence in Lebanon ’ s public institutions , which somehow allowed 2,750 tons of explosive material to lie in a warehouse unsecured for six years .
Today , many of these institutions are barely functioning , and neither is Lebanon ’ s economy .
The Lebanese pound is in free fall , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ accounts , unemployment is above 30 percent , and the import-dependent country is increasingly unable to secure the basic goods it needs .
Infrastructure is at a breaking point , with daily power cuts lasting as long as 20 hours .
Lebanese people are aware that their country is becoming unlivable .
What went wrong ?
And what can be done to fix it ?
The answers to both questions — like most things in Lebanon — are complicated .
Lebanon ’ s political system is the product of a decades-old power-sharing arrangement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ religious sects , the most important being the Sunni and Shia Muslims and Maronite Christians .
This system , known as confessionalism , parceled out political power according to sectarian quotas , with each sect usually led by one or several members of prominent political families .
Lebanon became a middle-income country with a relatively educated population living under a deeply unmodern political arrangement .
The ruling factions preserved their positions by providing their constituents with jobs , financial support , and protection from other factions .
In return , people provided their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ until a convergence of regional and internal divisions plunged Lebanon into a 15-year civil war in 1975 .
Although the war destroyed much of the country and killed some 120,000 people , the confessional system emerged intact when the war finally ended in 1990 .
Many of the same people who led militias during the war dominated the postwar order .
The confessional system is alive and well today , 30 years later .
It would not have lasted so long were it completely useless .
It has helped mediate sectarian conflict , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ constituencies , and prevented the heavy centralization of power that plunged much of the Arab world into dictatorship .
But this particular medicine has side effects .
Political elites have used their positions to bleed the economy dry and monopolize control over public institutions .
Parliament and many cabinets have been filled with some of the same faces for decades .
The speaker of Parliament , Nabih Berri , has occupied the post since 1992 .
As members of the traditional ruling class age or die out , their sons often replace them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ business for the Gemayels , Hariris , Aouns , and Jumblatts , to name a few .
Many politicians have amassed great wealth by taking cuts of public contracts , facilitating bureaucratic processes , or directly siphoning public funds .
Public servants are appointed by sect rather than on merit , and national loyalty competes with and often loses out to sectarian loyalty .
This has undermined civic life and turned politics into a zero-sum sectarian competition rather than a policy debate .
Questions as mundane as where to build a waste incinerator @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for example , take on sectarian dimensions over who gets what .
Why , then , do people not simply vote this rotten elite out ?
For one , they have played on sectarian insecurities to perpetuate distrust among the population , casting themselves as saviors of their community .
Attempts to unseat a particular leader are quickly seen as attacks on the sect itself , leading to a rallying effect around said leader regardless of their performance .
For example , public pressure on a particular leader to resign leads religious and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the name of defending the sect .
Thus , pressure on the Christian president is met with resistance from key Christian politicians and the church , while targeting the Sunni prime minister is cast by political and religious figures as targeting the Sunni sect as a whole .
Similarly , attempts to pressure the Shia militia Hezbollah to give up its weapons are quickly framed as attacks on the Shia community .
The political class has also skillfully used the state to provide constituents with jobs , financial support , and other privileges @ @ @ @ @ @ @ persuasion fails there is always coercion .
Parties routinely harass and intimidate those who seek reform or even dare to criticize their leaders .
All factions are complicit to some degree , but one in particular presents an altogether more difficult problem : Hezbollah .
Hezbollah is not solely responsible for Lebanon ’ s problems .
But it ’ s a huge part of them .
Hezbollah maintains a formidable militia with direct support from Iran .
It has turned Lebanon and its Shia community into the base of its “ resistance ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the West .
Hezbollah runs a state-within-a-state , complete with a military , security forces , and infrastructure ; at the same time , it has penetrated Lebanon ’ s institutions through politics or by cultivating powerful allies .
The Lebanese military lacks the will and ability to disarm Hezbollah .
Those who present a serious challenge to its armed status are intimidated or killed .
Hezbollah is not single-handedly responsible for the sectarian rot and corruption that has infected Lebanon ’ s institutions , yet it is deeply implicated in it and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decades of undermining the state and acting as a law unto itself has made a mockery of public institutions and state sovereignty .
In much of the country , Lebanese security forces operate at the pleasure of Hezbollah .
Attempts to constrain its military arm are violently repressed .
In May 2008 , for example , a cabinet decision to dismantle the militia ’ s independent telecommunications infrastructure was met with a military takeover of much of Beirut .
Hezbollah has also been implicated in a string of assassinations of political rivals , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that convicted Salim Ayyash of complicity in the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri .
Hezbollah is a reminder to all Lebanese that might is right .
Its intimidation and killing of rivals have fed the lawlessness and impunity that define Lebanese public life .
Hezbollah has also extinguished Shia politics through persuasion and force .
Its heavy-handedness antagonizes other sects and strengthens sectarian leaders .
Hezbollah is also a chief obstacle to reversing Lebanon ’ s decline .
The group does not want serious political reform , a state of laws @ @ @ @ @ @ @ monopoly over violence .
It also has no tolerance for political challengers from within the Shia sect .
Despite its professed radicalism on the “ resistance ” matter , in the Lebanese context Hezbollah is a status-quo player .
The shift to a genuinely pluralistic , sovereign state of laws therefore faces two formidable obstacles : the dysfunctional , corrupt Lebanese regime and its elites , and a powerful militia that is both part of and separate from this regime and can not live with a truly reformed Lebanon .
Lebanese seeking to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to fall into two camps .
The first camp believes reform is impossible as long as a heavily armed Hezbollah is a law unto itself .
Hezbollah ’ s military superiority means it can simply bully politicians , the security forces , and civil servants , and start wars at will .
Hezbollah is also a stain on Lebanon ’ s international reputation , preventing Western and Gulf Arab countries from lending the country full support .
At the extreme , Hezbollah will harass people lobbying for political change — and even kill @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of this camp advocate constant pressure on Hezbollah , domestic and foreign , including practicing civil disobedience , lobbying for policies that undermine Hezbollah ’ s position , and urging the armed forces to take a more confrontational posture against it .
If Hezbollah responds with force , so be it .
It can not control all of Lebanon or kill all of its rivals ; forcing confrontations saps its energy , isolating it , demoralizing its supporters , and deepening international hostility .
It may well be true that reform is impossible @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with this approach is that Hezbollah may well get away with mass violence , even with directly seizing the Lebanese state .
No one is in a position to stop it , and its Shia constituency may simply rally around it .
As for international hostility , there appears to be no appetite for rescuing Lebanon from Hezbollah .
Instead , if Hezbollah retains or expands its strategic dominance of the country , Lebanon may end up viewed as a rogue state .
Many Lebanese would then blame the country ’ s isolation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would lead to severe Sunni-Shia polarization that could derail any reform efforts .
The truth is that liberal reformers are ( to their credit ) not good at organized violence , while Hezbollah has mastered it .
This leaves one potential reform strategy , one that circumvents or “ outflanks ” Hezbollah , so to speak .
Proponents of this strategy believe Lebanon ’ s opposition movement should put the Hezbollah question on hold and focus on building an effective civil society , organizing politically , and broadening support for the movement .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ as an electoral law that creates room for nonsectarian parties ; a robust civil society that holds the government to account for governance failures ; educating the citizenry about its rights and the technicalities of Lebanon ’ s economic crises ; and building citizen journalism that can circumvent partisan media , scrutinize political elites and corruption , and so on .
The demand for a new electoral law through a transitional cabinet ( the last one resigned after the port explosion ) is central here , followed by parliamentary elections .
This camp @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nor sweeping reforms : The establishment has an enormous head start and a resource advantage , and it can draw on older primordial sentiments and fears to counter the newer , less-tested ideals of the opposition .
But even a minor electoral victory that lays the foundation for a substantial parliamentary bloc can demonstrate that the old sectarian game is not the only one around .
That would be an unprecedented achievement and a good start .
A reform strategy that focuses on creating a new political space and civic culture is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ creating a state of laws and citizens rather than subjects .
This strategy tackles problems that transcend sect and party — and while Hezbollah has already reacted with suspicion and occasional harassment and violence against activists , this is an awkward position for the party that takes it outside its comfort zone of violence and sectarian consolidation .
It may attract broader support than a purely anti-Hezbollah drive , or at least prove less divisive .
The flanking strategy is Lebanon ’ s best shot at becoming a real state .
The United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ avert catastrophe , as well as maintain pressure on local elites to open up the political system and on the military to exercise restraint in dealing with civil unrest in the context of economic calamity and deep popular alienation .
Bankrolling the political class ’ s broken economic model is pointless and would probably undermine reform .
Pushing the opposition to single out Hezbollah is understandable given US strategic interest , but this should not be a precondition to US engagement .
After all , successful reform is , by definition , bad @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reform strategies , I would classify the first as doomed absent a major geopolitical shift that either destroys Iran ’ s foothold in Lebanon or goes after Hezbollah directly and decisively .
This does not seem to be in the cards , and it would be no panacea anyway .
The “ flanking ” strategy is more promising .
It is , however , already facing a great deal of resistance from both Hezbollah and an entrenched political class .
The situation is so bleak that the Lebanese are tempted to give up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But that would be abandoning an improbable mission in favor of certain disaster as Lebanon hurtles down the path of state failure .
Faysal Itani is deputy director at the Center for Global Policy ’ s Non-State Actors and Geopolitics unit .
He is also an adjunct professor of Middle East politics at both Georgetown University and George Washington University .
He tweets at @ faysalitani .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
If you have already contributed , thank you .
If you haven ’ t , please consider helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world @ @ @ @ @ @ @ $ 3 .

The Beirut port explosion on August 4, which killed more than 170 people, wounded thousands, and made 300,000 homeless, encapsulated all that has gone wrong with Lebanon’s 30-year political experiment.
The explosion was an accident resulting from years of buck-passing and negligence in Lebanon’s public institutions, which somehow allowed 2,750 tons of explosive material to lie in a warehouse unsecured for six years.
Today, many of these institutions are barely functioning, and neither is Lebanon’s economy. The Lebanese pound is in free fall, banks have blocked people from accessing their accounts, unemployment is above 30 percent, and the import-dependent country is increasingly unable to secure the basic goods it needs. Infrastructure is at a breaking point, with daily power cuts lasting as long as 20 hours. Lebanese people are aware that their country is becoming unlivable.
What went wrong? And what can be done to fix it? The answers to both questions — like most things in Lebanon — are complicated.
A modern country with a deeply unmodern political system
Lebanon’s political system is the product of a decades-old power-sharing arrangement among leaders of Lebanon’s 18 religious sects, the most important being the Sunni and Shia Muslims and Maronite Christians. This system, known as confessionalism, parceled out political power according to sectarian quotas, with each sect usually led by one or several members of prominent political families.
Lebanon became a middle-income country with a relatively educated population living under a deeply unmodern political arrangement. The ruling factions preserved their positions by providing their constituents with jobs, financial support, and protection from other factions. In return, people provided their votes and loyalty.
That system endured until a convergence of regional and internal divisions plunged Lebanon into a 15-year civil war in 1975. Although the war destroyed much of the country and killed some 120,000 people, the confessional system emerged intact when the war finally ended in 1990. Many of the same people who led militias during the war dominated the postwar order.
The confessional system is alive and well today, 30 years later. It would not have lasted so long were it completely useless. It has helped mediate sectarian conflict, forced leaders to build consent among their constituencies, and prevented the heavy centralization of power that plunged much of the Arab world into dictatorship.
But this particular medicine has side effects. Political elites have used their positions to bleed the economy dry and monopolize control over public institutions. Parliament and many cabinets have been filled with some of the same faces for decades. The speaker of Parliament, Nabih Berri, has occupied the post since 1992. As members of the traditional ruling class age or die out, their sons often replace them, meaning politics has become a family business for the Gemayels, Hariris, Aouns, and Jumblatts, to name a few.
Many politicians have amassed great wealth by taking cuts of public contracts, facilitating bureaucratic processes, or directly siphoning public funds. Public servants are appointed by sect rather than on merit, and national loyalty competes with and often loses out to sectarian loyalty.
This has undermined civic life and turned politics into a zero-sum sectarian competition rather than a policy debate. Questions as mundane as where to build a waste incinerator or how to reform public utilities, for example, take on sectarian dimensions over who gets what.
Why, then, do people not simply vote this rotten elite out?
For one, they have played on sectarian insecurities to perpetuate distrust among the population, casting themselves as saviors of their community. Attempts to unseat a particular leader are quickly seen as attacks on the sect itself, leading to a rallying effect around said leader regardless of their performance.
For example, public pressure on a particular leader to resign leads religious and political figures to rally behind them in the name of defending the sect. Thus, pressure on the Christian president is met with resistance from key Christian politicians and the church, while targeting the Sunni prime minister is cast by political and religious figures as targeting the Sunni sect as a whole. Similarly, attempts to pressure the Shia militia Hezbollah to give up its weapons are quickly framed as attacks on the Shia community.
The political class has also skillfully used the state to provide constituents with jobs, financial support, and other privileges. And, of course, where persuasion fails there is always coercion. Parties routinely harass and intimidate those who seek reform or even dare to criticize their leaders.
All factions are complicit to some degree, but one in particular presents an altogether more difficult problem: Hezbollah.
Hezbollah is not solely responsible for Lebanon’s problems. But it’s a huge part of them.
Hezbollah maintains a formidable militia with direct support from Iran. It has turned Lebanon and its Shia community into the base of its “resistance” project of open-ended conflict with Israel and the West.
Hezbollah runs a state-within-a-state, complete with a military, security forces, and infrastructure; at the same time, it has penetrated Lebanon’s institutions through politics or by cultivating powerful allies. The Lebanese military lacks the will and ability to disarm Hezbollah. Those who present a serious challenge to its armed status are intimidated or killed.
Hezbollah is not single-handedly responsible for the sectarian rot and corruption that has infected Lebanon’s institutions, yet it is deeply implicated in it and its perpetuation. The organization’s decades of undermining the state and acting as a law unto itself has made a mockery of public institutions and state sovereignty.
In much of the country, Lebanese security forces operate at the pleasure of Hezbollah. Attempts to constrain its military arm are violently repressed. In May 2008, for example, a cabinet decision to dismantle the militia’s independent telecommunications infrastructure was met with a military takeover of much of Beirut. Hezbollah has also been implicated in a string of assassinations of political rivals, most recently through a United Nations tribunal that convicted Salim Ayyash of complicity in the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Hezbollah is a reminder to all Lebanese that might is right. Its intimidation and killing of rivals have fed the lawlessness and impunity that define Lebanese public life. Hezbollah has also extinguished Shia politics through persuasion and force. Its heavy-handedness antagonizes other sects and strengthens sectarian leaders.
Hezbollah is also a chief obstacle to reversing Lebanon’s decline. The group does not want serious political reform, a state of laws accountable to empowered citizens and enjoying a monopoly over violence. It also has no tolerance for political challengers from within the Shia sect. Despite its professed radicalism on the “resistance” matter, in the Lebanese context Hezbollah is a status-quo player.
The shift to a genuinely pluralistic, sovereign state of laws therefore faces two formidable obstacles: the dysfunctional, corrupt Lebanese regime and its elites, and a powerful militia that is both part of and separate from this regime and cannot live with a truly reformed Lebanon. Lebanese seeking to reform this regime recognize this and tend to fall into two camps.
The first camp believes reform is impossible as long as a heavily armed Hezbollah is a law unto itself. Hezbollah’s military superiority means it can simply bully politicians, the security forces, and civil servants, and start wars at will. Hezbollah is also a stain on Lebanon’s international reputation, preventing Western and Gulf Arab countries from lending the country full support. At the extreme, Hezbollah will harass people lobbying for political change — and even kill its rivals if need be.
Members of this camp advocate constant pressure on Hezbollah, domestic and foreign, including practicing civil disobedience, lobbying for policies that undermine Hezbollah’s position, and urging the armed forces to take a more confrontational posture against it. If Hezbollah responds with force, so be it. It cannot control all of Lebanon or kill all of its rivals; forcing confrontations saps its energy, isolating it, demoralizing its supporters, and deepening international hostility.
It may well be true that reform is impossible until Hezbollah is disarmed. The problem with this approach is that Hezbollah may well get away with mass violence, even with directly seizing the Lebanese state. No one is in a position to stop it, and its Shia constituency may simply rally around it.
As for international hostility, there appears to be no appetite for rescuing Lebanon from Hezbollah. Instead, if Hezbollah retains or expands its strategic dominance of the country, Lebanon may end up viewed as a rogue state. Many Lebanese would then blame the country’s isolation and pariah status on Hezbollah, which would lead to severe Sunni-Shia polarization that could derail any reform efforts. The truth is that liberal reformers are (to their credit) not good at organized violence, while Hezbollah has mastered it.
This leaves one potential reform strategy, one that circumvents or “outflanks” Hezbollah, so to speak. Proponents of this strategy believe Lebanon’s opposition movement should put the Hezbollah question on hold and focus on building an effective civil society, organizing politically, and broadening support for the movement.
The focus is on practicalities, such as an electoral law that creates room for nonsectarian parties; a robust civil society that holds the government to account for governance failures; educating the citizenry about its rights and the technicalities of Lebanon’s economic crises; and building citizen journalism that can circumvent partisan media, scrutinize political elites and corruption, and so on.
The demand for a new electoral law through a transitional cabinet (the last one resigned after the port explosion) is central here, followed by parliamentary elections. This camp does not expect a sweeping reformist victory nor sweeping reforms: The establishment has an enormous head start and a resource advantage, and it can draw on older primordial sentiments and fears to counter the newer, less-tested ideals of the opposition.
But even a minor electoral victory that lays the foundation for a substantial parliamentary bloc can demonstrate that the old sectarian game is not the only one around. That would be an unprecedented achievement and a good start.
A reform strategy that focuses on creating a new political space and civic culture is a prerequisite for transforming Lebanese public life and creating a state of laws and citizens rather than subjects.
This strategy tackles problems that transcend sect and party — and while Hezbollah has already reacted with suspicion and occasional harassment and violence against activists, this is an awkward position for the party that takes it outside its comfort zone of violence and sectarian consolidation. It may attract broader support than a purely anti-Hezbollah drive, or at least prove less divisive. The flanking strategy is Lebanon’s best shot at becoming a real state.
The United States should provide enough humanitarian relief to avert catastrophe, as well as maintain pressure on local elites to open up the political system and on the military to exercise restraint in dealing with civil unrest in the context of economic calamity and deep popular alienation. Bankrolling the political class’s broken economic model is pointless and would probably undermine reform.
Pushing the opposition to single out Hezbollah is understandable given US strategic interest, but this should not be a precondition to US engagement. After all, successful reform is, by definition, bad news for Hezbollah.
Of these two reform strategies, I would classify the first as doomed absent a major geopolitical shift that either destroys Iran’s foothold in Lebanon or goes after Hezbollah directly and decisively. This does not seem to be in the cards, and it would be no panacea anyway. The “flanking” strategy is more promising.
It is, however, already facing a great deal of resistance from both Hezbollah and an entrenched political class. The situation is so bleak that the Lebanese are tempted to give up altogether. Who can blame them? But that would be abandoning an improbable mission in favor of certain disaster as Lebanon hurtles down the path of state failure.
Faysal Itani is deputy director at the Center for Global Policy’s Non-State Actors and Geopolitics unit. He is also an adjunct professor of Middle East politics at both Georgetown University and George Washington University. He tweets at @faysalitani.
ntribute today from as little as $3.


The great rebuild

The Covid-19 pandemic is a tragedy , a massive policy failure , and an existential threat to the livelihood and health of millions of Americans — with the pain disproportionality falling on Black Americans .
With more than 30 million cases worldwide , more than 200,000 Americans dead , millions of US jobs eliminated , and schools and businesses shuttered , half measures won ’ t cut it .
It didn ’ t have to be this way .
However , there is still much we can do to recover — and not just recover , but rebuild .
Tapping @ @ @ @ @ @ @ economists , and policymakers , The Great Rebuild imagines how we could marshal the power of the federal government and the potential of its citizens to fight back against the catastrophic effects of Covid-19 , and in the process create a system steeped in fairness , inclusion , and sustainability .
The Great Rebuild is made possible thanks to support from Omidyar Network , a social impact venture that works to reimagine critical systems and the ideas that govern them , and to build more inclusive and equitable societies .
All Great Rebuild @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our journalists .
How to build a better American economy A blueprint exists for a more inclusive , successful nation that invests in the well-being of its citizens .
We only have to look to the past .
The problem with our social safety net is clear .
The solution is , too .
Young people are the new corps of engineers the US has been waiting for We have more than enough work to go around for the next generation if we address one of our nation ’ s biggest problems : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the police It ’ s time to ask why we continue to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on police misconduct lawsuits and billions more on policing that yields poor outcomes .
Building housing — lots of it — will lay the foundation for a new future A massive boom in new construction would create countless jobs and help finally end the legacy of racist housing policies .
The future of the economy hinges on child care We must bail out the industry that allows millions of parents to work .
The former presidential @ @ @ @ @ @ @ intelligence , and his next job in politics .
How to decarbonize America — and create 25 million jobs The US has the technology to decarbonize by 2035 .
Here ’ s a plan to do it .
What it would take to end child poverty in America Rep. Barbara Lee on why rebuilding the economy should mean investing in our kids .
What would Keynes do ?
What the 20th century ’ s most influential economist can teach us about rebuilding the US economy .
The failed dream of the American small @ @ @ @ @ @ @ communities , but economic and systemic forces left many fighting for survival .
Then came the pandemic .
Party of One is a collaborative creative studio founded by Melissa Deckert and Nicole Licht , based in Brooklyn , New York .
Through combined experience in fine arts and traditional design , Party of One creates compelling visuals with an emphasis on unique and often handcrafted prop design , styling , and sets .

The Covid-19 pandemic is a tragedy, a massive policy failure, and an existential threat to the livelihood and health of millions of Americans — with the pain disproportionality falling on Black Americans.
A problem this big demands a bold solution.
With more than 30 million cases worldwide, more than 200,000 Americans dead, millions of US jobs eliminated, and schools and businesses shuttered, half measures won’t cut it. It didn’t have to be this way. However, there is still much we can do to recover — and not just recover, but rebuild.
Tapping the voices of prominent American thinkers, economists, and policymakers, The Great Rebuild imagines how we could marshal the power of the federal government and the potential of its citizens to fight back against the catastrophic effects of Covid-19, and in the process create a system steeped in fairness, inclusion, and sustainability.
The Great Rebuild is made possible thanks to support from Omidyar Network, a social impact venture that works to reimagine critical systems and the ideas that govern them, and to build more inclusive and equitable societies. All Great Rebuild coverage is editorially independent and produced by our journalists.
A blueprint exists for a more inclusive, successful nation that invests in the well-being of its citizens. We only have to look to the past.
by Zachary D. Carter
The problem with our social safety net is clear. The solution is, too.
by Emily Stewart
We have more than enough work to go around for the next generation if we address one of our nation’s biggest problems: infrastructure.
by Andrew Yang
It’s time to ask why we continue to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on police misconduct lawsuits and billions more on policing that yields poor outcomes.
by Sean Collins
A massive boom in new construction would create countless jobs and help finally end the legacy of racist housing policies.
by Matthew Yglesias
We must bail out the industry that allows millions of parents to work.
by Anna North
The former presidential candidate discusses universal basic income, artificial intelligence, and his next job in politics.
by Ezra Klein
The US has the technology to decarbonize by 2035. Here’s a plan to do it.
By Ezra Klein
Rep. Barbara Lee on why rebuilding the economy should mean investing in our kids.
By Ezra Klein
What the 20th century’s most influential economist can teach us about rebuilding the US economy.
By Ezra Klein
Small businesses were once pillars of communities, but economic and systemic forces left many fighting for survival. Then came the pandemic.
By Laura Entis
Party of One is a collaborative creative studio founded by Melissa Deckert and Nicole Licht, based in Brooklyn, New York. Through combined experience in fine arts and traditional design, Party of One creates compelling visuals with an emphasis on unique and often handcrafted prop design, styling, and sets.


vox--2020-09-23--Welcome to The Great Rebuild Issue of The Highlight

Share All sharing options for : Welcome to The Great Rebuild Issue of The Highlight Six months have passed since the nation ’ s businesses , schools , and government offices shut down as part of a global effort to stymie Covid-19 , a virus that would spread despite the lockdowns .
Almost instantly , tens of millions of Americans found themselves unemployed ; millions of working parents were forced to take on the duties of full-time teachers ; shuttering businesses have left city landscapes culturally and spiritually barren ; and millions of 20- and 30-somethings are now realizing that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ burgeoning careers could affect their economic security all the way into retirement .
The pandemic has exposed the fundamental fractures in the economy : the underfunded unemployment insurance systems , the tenuous state of child care , the underemployment that has only become more entrenched in the years since the Great Recession .
But in doing so , the pandemic has also provided the nation an opportunity .
Policymakers now have every reason to intervene to stabilize the economy while making the future better for people it has historically left behind .
A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We only have to look to the past .
In 1945 , as Britain reached the conclusion of years of war and prepared for the inevitable contraction of its wartime economy , the economist John Maynard Keynes proposed not financial austerity , but its polar opposite : He sought to invest in people on an almost ostentatious scale , designing the new National Health Service and a pension and social support system , even investing in the arts on a grand scale .
To Keynes , the economy was less a series @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of social and cultural issues that must be addressed for the good of the nation .
Today , as Covid-19 continues to change the landscape for American workers and the economy at large , could these lessons of Keynes be applied , here and now ?
Could we federalize unemployment insurance , offering effective aid to the unemployed during times of crisis rather than shorting them because of the myth of personal responsibility ?
Could we find purpose for underemployed graduates sidelined by the pandemic , save child care as a means of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , fix our broken policing , and solve for housing shortages while addressing the racist barriers in our housing system ?
We can .
This month ’ s issue of The Highlight surfaces the pervasive issues that have left vast swaths of our economy vulnerable , and looks to economists , policymakers , advocates , historians , even former presidential candidates to answer the difficult question of how we might correct the missteps of the past .
The great rebuilding of the economy won ’ t be easy .
But we have the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it guide us .
How to build a better American economy A blueprint exists for a more inclusive , successful nation that invests in the well-being of its citizens .
We only have to look to the past .
The problem with our social safety net is clear .
The solution is , too .
Young people are the new corps of engineers the US has been waiting for We have more than enough work to go around for the next generation if we address one of our nation ’ s biggest problems @ @ @ @ @ @ @ defunding the police It ’ s time to ask why we continue to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on police misconduct lawsuits and billions more on policing that yields poor outcomes .
Building housing — lots of it — will lay the foundation for a new future A massive boom in new construction would create countless jobs and help finally end the legacy of racist housing policies .
The future of the economy hinges on child care We must bail out the industry that allows millions of parents to work .
Party of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by Melissa Deckert and Nicole Licht , based in Brooklyn , New York .
Through combined experience in fine arts and traditional design , Party of One creates compelling visuals with an emphasis on unique and often handcrafted prop design , styling , and sets .
These stories are part of The Great Rebuild , a project made possible thanks to support from Omidyar Network , a social impact venture that works to reimagine critical systems and the ideas that govern them , and to build more inclusive and equitable societies .
All @ @ @ @ @ @ @ produced by our journalists .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Even when the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work , and helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world .
Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

Share All sharing options for: Welcome to The Great Rebuild Issue of The Highlight
Six months have passed since the nation’s businesses, schools, and government offices shut down as part of a global effort to stymie Covid-19, a virus that would spread despite the lockdowns. Almost instantly, tens of millions of Americans found themselves unemployed; millions of working parents were forced to take on the duties of full-time teachers; shuttering businesses have left city landscapes culturally and spiritually barren; and millions of 20- and 30-somethings are now realizing that the second financial crisis to strike their burgeoning careers could affect their economic security all the way into retirement.
The pandemic has exposed the fundamental fractures in the economy: the underfunded unemployment insurance systems, the tenuous state of child care, the underemployment that has only become more entrenched in the years since the Great Recession. But in doing so, the pandemic has also provided the nation an opportunity. Policymakers now have every reason to intervene to stabilize the economy while making the future better for people it has historically left behind.
A mobilization this massive has been accomplished before. We only have to look to the past.
In 1945, as Britain reached the conclusion of years of war and prepared for the inevitable contraction of its wartime economy, the economist John Maynard Keynes proposed not financial austerity, but its polar opposite: He sought to invest in people on an almost ostentatious scale, designing the new National Health Service and a pension and social support system, even investing in the arts on a grand scale. To Keynes, the economy was less a series of numbers and indicators than a slew of social and cultural issues that must be addressed for the good of the nation.
Today, as Covid-19 continues to change the landscape for American workers and the economy at large, could these lessons of Keynes be applied, here and now?
Could we federalize unemployment insurance, offering effective aid to the unemployed during times of crisis rather than shorting them because of the myth of personal responsibility? Could we find purpose for underemployed graduates sidelined by the pandemic, save child care as a means of guaranteeing that millions of others might work, fix our broken policing, and solve for housing shortages while addressing the racist barriers in our housing system? We can.
This month’s issue of The Highlight surfaces the pervasive issues that have left vast swaths of our economy vulnerable, and looks to economists, policymakers, advocates, historians, even former presidential candidates to answer the difficult question of how we might correct the missteps of the past.
The great rebuilding of the economy won’t be easy. But we have the blueprint. We only have to let it guide us.
A blueprint exists for a more inclusive, successful nation that invests in the well-being of its citizens. We only have to look to the past.
by Zachary D. Carter
The problem with our social safety net is clear. The solution is, too.
by Emily Stewart
We have more than enough work to go around for the next generation if we address one of our nation’s biggest problems: infrastructure.
by Andrew Yang
It’s time to ask why we continue to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on police misconduct lawsuits and billions more on policing that yields poor outcomes.
by Sean Collins
A massive boom in new construction would create countless jobs and help finally end the legacy of racist housing policies.
by Matthew Yglesias
We must bail out the industry that allows millions of parents to work.
by Anna North
Party of One is a collaborative creative studio founded by Melissa Deckert and Nicole Licht, based in Brooklyn, New York. Through combined experience in fine arts and traditional design, Party of One creates compelling visuals with an emphasis on unique and often handcrafted prop design, styling, and sets.
These stories are part of The Great Rebuild, a project made possible thanks to support from Omidyar Network, a social impact venture that works to reimagine critical systems and the ideas that govern them, and to build more inclusive and equitable societies. All Great Rebuild coverage is editorially independent and produced by our journalists.


vox--2020-09-23--How to build a better American economy

How to build a better American economy

Part of The Great Rebuild Issue of The Highlight , our home for ambitious stories that explain our world .
The most intimidating figure in the British government during World War II received no salary and operated under the unassuming title of adviser to His Majesty ’ s Treasury .
By the 1940s , John Maynard Keynes didn ’ t need new sources of money or prestige .
The most famous economist in the world for more than two decades , he was friendly with US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter , King Alfonso XIII of Spain , celebrity journalist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , novelist Virginia Woolf , and too many other titans of the 20th century to count .
Keynes advised on military strategy , managed financial diplomacy with the United States , helped structure the internal economic program of the British Empire and represented his country in 1944 at the Bretton Woods Conference , the most important international summit in a quarter century , which set the terms of global economic cooperation for a quarter century to come .
He was a serious man who understood in painful detail just how much devastation the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nearly 450,000 subjects of the crown had been killed , including over 30,000 civilians in the London Blitz , which destroyed roughly 70,000 buildings and damaged millions more .
Factories and warehouses had been lost to explosions , and domestic resources exhausted on bombs and battalions .
So in the summer of 1945 , with Germany vanquished and Japan soon to follow , Keynes prepared a BBC address on what he believed to be one of the most critical issues facing Britain : great art .
The advent of radio , Keynes told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ landscape .
Where symphonies , operas , and stage plays had once been “ games ” enjoyed only by the elite , they were now the joy of the whole nation .
Broadcasting had revealed an “ enormous ” and “ unsatisfied demand ” for “ serious and fine entertainment.
” Keynes understood this firsthand .
With her dancing days behind her , his wife , the Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova , had embarked on a new career with the BBC , introducing symphonies and reading literary works .
Their home was flooded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ economist , but for the radio personality whose voice reached millions of homes .
With the end of the war , Keynes declared , it was time for Britain to devote itself to building a world-class artistic infrastructure .
London would be a priority , of course .
The British capital should be transformed into “ a great artistic metropolis , a place to visit and to wonder at , ” with a refurbished Royal Opera House at Covent Garden to serve as the crown jewel , hosting a new national opera and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than a performing arts center to rival pre-war Paris and St. Petersburg .
All over the country , in every city and county , theaters would be constructed and funds provided to hire local playwrights , composers , actors , and musicians .
“ Let every part of Merry England be merry in its own way , ” Keynes declared .
“ Death to Hollywood.
” This portrait of Britain as a vibrant global center of cultural expression startled his war-wearied audience , which was accustomed to decades of material decay and imperial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ subsidized the arts before .
The idea that it could afford to do so was almost beyond comprehension .
At the time of his 1945 radio address , Keynes himself had just negotiated a $ 2 billion loan with the Truman administration .
Keynes was calling for a full employment program for actors , dancers , and musicians .
To many ears , it seemed a preposterous extravagance .
But the new Arts Council of Great Britain was not some vague bohemian dream .
It was the spiritual lynchpin of a broad , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been assembling over the course of the war .
The more famous elements of this program included the new National Health Service — for which Keynes served as financial architect — and an ambitious pension and social support system that introduced the meager British welfare state to the possibilities that US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ’ s New Deal had opened across the Atlantic .
These programs offered meaningful material guarantees .
Things could only get so bad for citizens of victorious Britain — nobody would have to worry about medical bills or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Keynes believed such reassurances were essential to a public that had been battered by the tides of fate .
Assuaging such fears , however , was not enough .
The country needed something affirmative to believe in .
The war had given the beleaguered public a sense of shared national purpose .
The daily sacrifices made by householders getting by on rationed goods with loved ones in danger abroad were part of a greater cause .
The Arts Council projects would show the country that its perseverance had been worth it , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ambitious endeavors .
Keynes meant to prove it in every corner of the country , and to invest millions of citizens in the success of British rebuilding by creating careers for them in a cultural renaissance .
Keynes had endured war and its aftermath before .
After managing the empire ’ s finances through World War I , he watched the British economy collapse in 1919 , entering what we now call the Great Depression .
The government had managed almost every sector of the World War I economy , directing resources @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the war machine .
Unemployment had disappeared , but when the government pulled back its financial commitments at the end of the war , decay set in .
Reconstruction didn ’ t just happen on its own through the magic of the market .
It had to be directed by political leadership .
Keynes spent the interwar years developing a sophisticated new economic theory to explain why this was true , hoping to persuade economists and bureaucrats that only aggressive government action could secure the social aims most of them shared — low @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In the 1940s , he could at last put that theory into action , redirecting the targets of economic management away from bombs and battalions toward doctors and ballerinas .
Britain would mobilize for peace just as it had mobilized for war .
Today , America is in an economic position not so different from that of Britain in the 1940s .
Our nation is a global leader at the intersection of multiple crises .
It has just sustained severe economic damage .
The coronavirus crash , the breakdown of globalization , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ challenges unprecedented in living memory .
But they are not unprecedented in human history .
Peoples have confronted cataclysm before and , with the right leadership , emerged from it stronger than they believed possible .
We can conquer the trials before us .
But they will not conquer themselves .
Peoples have confronted cataclysm before and , with the right leadership , emerged from it stronger than they believed possible The economic era of the last half century is now over , for better or for worse .
International organizations designed to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ name , but their functions will be reinvented , or they will decay .
The World Trade Organization had devolved into an institutional fiction long before President Donald Trump began his tariff tirades .
The European Union is attempting to navigate a union without Britain , and the political relationship between the United States and China is breaking down .
How American leaders work with the rest of the world to navigate these crises will not be simple or easy .
The rest of this issue will be devoted to specific ideas and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resources in service of a better tomorrow .
This project need not be a step into the unknown .
We can look to the past for guidance .
Keynes did not live to enjoy the fruits of these labors .
He died in 1946 just as his dream was taking flight .
Unemployment , which remained in double digits between the wars and consumed nearly a quarter of the population at its peak , would not eclipse 4 percent until the mid-1970s .
The poverty rate plummeted and life expectancy increased .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tremendous national pride .
The British government ’ s public commitment to the arts persists to this day .
The products of that commitment include Keith Richards and Mick Jagger , who united at a publicly supported art school in the late 1950s and spent much of the early 1960s playing concert halls constructed and renovated by Arts Council funding .
Britain didn ’ t achieve all of this alone .
In addition to the $ 2 billion loan Keynes negotiated , it received $ 2.7 billion from the United States under the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aid was especially important , coming early in the rebuilding process when Britain was most vulnerable .
But the amounts pale in the context of postwar Britain ’ s spending ambitions .
Total American aid was about equal to one year of British government spending in the late 1940s , which rose considerably over the following two decades .
The nation could not , however , have succeeded in an international vacuum .
The Rolling Stones could not have become cultural icons absent an audience of millions of enraptured Americans .
Keith Richards @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Satisfaction ” without a new effect pedal designed by engineers in central Michigan and shipped tariff-free to Britain .
And British art students never would have thought to emulate American blues musicians if they hadn ’ t been able to purchase American albums in British record stores .
All of this depended on a postwar system of trade and monetary management that did not simply fall from the sky .
It was designed and negotiated by Keynes and his American counterpart Harry Dexter White at the Bretton Woods Conference .
It was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ universe that Britain would remain a prosperous nation or maintain its commitment to democracy — particularly amid the collapse of its overseas empire .
It did so because Keynes and his political allies mobilized resources and ideas for a common purpose that animated the national imagination and motivated international cooperation .
In 1942 , with Britain deep in debt , and still consumed by war , Keynes addressed the public through the BBC .
It was a mistake , he argued , to confuse accounting figures of debt and deficits with national economic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resources for new productive purposes would create the wealth that Britain needed to meet its obligations to citizens and foreign creditors .
Technology , expertise , and an active workforce gave even debt-ridden , war-torn Britain a productive potential that would have made the monarchs of other ages blush .
The key was mustering the political will to realize that potential .
“ Why should we not add in every substantial city the dignity of an ancient university or a European capital ?
” Keynes insisted .
“ Assuredly we can afford this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can actually do , we can afford.
” For America today , the project must begin with a broad attack on economic inequality .
The gap between the rich and the rest is wider now than it has been since World War I. Alleviating inequality is not just a question of improving the standard of living for millions of Americans who deserve a better paycheck — it ’ s about making sure everyone in America is engaged in the same political project .
We can not mobilize our economy for the greater good @ @ @ @ @ @ @ democracy works for all of us .
How can these Keynesian lessons be applied to a world in which Covid-19 continues to change the landscape for American workers , and the very structure of the global economy ?
Inside The Great Rebuild Issue , five writers explore how policymakers can transform social improvements and national well-being into an economic strategy that could secure America for years to come .
Zachary D. Carter is a writer for HuffPost and the author of The Price of Peace : Money , Democracy and the Life of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ part of The Great Rebuild , a project made possible thanks to support from Omidyar Network , a social impact venture that works to reimagine critical systems and the ideas that govern them , and to build more inclusive and equitable societies .
All Great Rebuild coverage is editorially independent and produced by our journalists .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
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Part of The Great Rebuild Issue of The Highlight, our home for ambitious stories that explain our world.
The most intimidating figure in the British government during World War II received no salary and operated under the unassuming title of adviser to His Majesty’s Treasury. By the 1940s, John Maynard Keynes didn’t need new sources of money or prestige. The most famous economist in the world for more than two decades, he was friendly with US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, King Alfonso XIII of Spain, celebrity journalist Walter Lippmann, poet T.S. Eliot, novelist Virginia Woolf, and too many other titans of the 20th century to count.
Keynes advised on military strategy, managed financial diplomacy with the United States, helped structure the internal economic program of the British Empire and represented his country in 1944 at the Bretton Woods Conference, the most important international summit in a quarter century, which set the terms of global economic cooperation for a quarter century to come.
He was a serious man who understood in painful detail just how much devastation the war had wreaked on his nation. Nearly 450,000 subjects of the crown had been killed, including over 30,000 civilians in the London Blitz, which destroyed roughly 70,000 buildings and damaged millions more. Factories and warehouses had been lost to explosions, and domestic resources exhausted on bombs and battalions.
So in the summer of 1945, with Germany vanquished and Japan soon to follow, Keynes prepared a BBC address on what he believed to be one of the most critical issues facing Britain: great art.
The advent of radio, Keynes told his audience, had revolutionized the cultural landscape. Where symphonies, operas, and stage plays had once been “games” enjoyed only by the elite, they were now the joy of the whole nation. Broadcasting had revealed an “enormous” and “unsatisfied demand” for “serious and fine entertainment.” Keynes understood this firsthand. With her dancing days behind her, his wife, the Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova, had embarked on a new career with the BBC, introducing symphonies and reading literary works. Their home was flooded with fan mail not for the famous economist, but for the radio personality whose voice reached millions of homes.
With the end of the war, Keynes declared, it was time for Britain to devote itself to building a world-class artistic infrastructure.
London would be a priority, of course. The British capital should be transformed into “a great artistic metropolis, a place to visit and to wonder at,” with a refurbished Royal Opera House at Covent Garden to serve as the crown jewel, hosting a new national opera and ballet company.
But Keynes wanted more than a performing arts center to rival pre-war Paris and St. Petersburg. All over the country, in every city and county, theaters would be constructed and funds provided to hire local playwrights, composers, actors, and musicians.
“Let every part of Merry England be merry in its own way,” Keynes declared. “Death to Hollywood.”
This portrait of Britain as a vibrant global center of cultural expression startled his war-wearied audience, which was accustomed to decades of material decay and imperial decline. The British government had never subsidized the arts before. The idea that it could afford to do so was almost beyond comprehension. At the time of his 1945 radio address, Keynes himself had just negotiated a $2 billion loan with the Truman administration. Keynes was calling for a full employment program for actors, dancers, and musicians. To many ears, it seemed a preposterous extravagance.
What would Keynes do? What the 20th century’s most influential economist can teach us about rebuilding the US economy.
But the new Arts Council of Great Britain was not some vague bohemian dream. It was the spiritual lynchpin of a broad, carefully planned economic strategy that Keynes had been assembling over the course of the war. The more famous elements of this program included the new National Health Service — for which Keynes served as financial architect — and an ambitious pension and social support system that introduced the meager British welfare state to the possibilities that US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal had opened across the Atlantic.
These programs offered meaningful material guarantees. Things could only get so bad for citizens of victorious Britain — nobody would have to worry about medical bills or the prospect of retiring into poverty. Keynes believed such reassurances were essential to a public that had been battered by the tides of fate. Assuaging such fears, however, was not enough. The country needed something affirmative to believe in.
The war had given the beleaguered public a sense of shared national purpose. The daily sacrifices made by householders getting by on rationed goods with loved ones in danger abroad were part of a greater cause. The Arts Council projects would show the country that its perseverance had been worth it, and demonstrate that Britain remained capable of big, ambitious endeavors. Keynes meant to prove it in every corner of the country, and to invest millions of citizens in the success of British rebuilding by creating careers for them in a cultural renaissance.
Keynes had endured war and its aftermath before. After managing the empire’s finances through World War I, he watched the British economy collapse in 1919, entering what we now call the Great Depression. The government had managed almost every sector of the World War I economy, directing resources and manpower to specific projects needed by the war machine. Unemployment had disappeared, but when the government pulled back its financial commitments at the end of the war, decay set in. Reconstruction didn’t just happen on its own through the magic of the market. It had to be directed by political leadership.
Keynes spent the interwar years developing a sophisticated new economic theory to explain why this was true, hoping to persuade economists and bureaucrats that only aggressive government action could secure the social aims most of them shared — low unemployment, social harmony, international comity. In the 1940s, he could at last put that theory into action, redirecting the targets of economic management away from bombs and battalions toward doctors and ballerinas. Britain would mobilize for peace just as it had mobilized for war.
Today, America is in an economic position not so different from that of Britain in the 1940s. Our nation is a global leader at the intersection of multiple crises. It has just sustained severe economic damage. The coronavirus crash, the breakdown of globalization, and the unfolding climate disaster each pose challenges unprecedented in living memory. But they are not unprecedented in human history. Peoples have confronted cataclysm before and, with the right leadership, emerged from it stronger than they believed possible. We can conquer the trials before us. But they will not conquer themselves.
Peoples have confronted cataclysm before and, with the right leadership, emerged from it stronger than they believed possible
The economic era of the last half century is now over, for better or for worse. International organizations designed to meet previous problems may well survive in name, but their functions will be reinvented, or they will decay. The World Trade Organization had devolved into an institutional fiction long before President Donald Trump began his tariff tirades. The European Union is attempting to navigate a union without Britain, and the political relationship between the United States and China is breaking down.
How American leaders work with the rest of the world to navigate these crises will not be simple or easy. The rest of this issue will be devoted to specific ideas and proposals intended to mobilize our people and resources in service of a better tomorrow. This project need not be a step into the unknown. We can look to the past for guidance.
Keynes did not live to enjoy the fruits of these labors. He died in 1946 just as his dream was taking flight. Unemployment, which remained in double digits between the wars and consumed nearly a quarter of the population at its peak, would not eclipse 4 percent until the mid-1970s. The poverty rate plummeted and life expectancy increased. The National Health Service remains a source of tremendous national pride. The British government’s public commitment to the arts persists to this day. The products of that commitment include Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, who united at a publicly supported art school in the late 1950s and spent much of the early 1960s playing concert halls constructed and renovated by Arts Council funding.
Britain didn’t achieve all of this alone. In addition to the $2 billion loan Keynes negotiated, it received $2.7 billion from the United States under the Marshall Plan. The timing of this aid was especially important, coming early in the rebuilding process when Britain was most vulnerable. But the amounts pale in the context of postwar Britain’s spending ambitions. Total American aid was about equal to one year of British government spending in the late 1940s, which rose considerably over the following two decades.
The nation could not, however, have succeeded in an international vacuum. The Rolling Stones could not have become cultural icons absent an audience of millions of enraptured Americans. Keith Richards could not have recorded the riff to “Satisfaction” without a new effect pedal designed by engineers in central Michigan and shipped tariff-free to Britain. And British art students never would have thought to emulate American blues musicians if they hadn’t been able to purchase American albums in British record stores. All of this depended on a postwar system of trade and monetary management that did not simply fall from the sky. It was designed and negotiated by Keynes and his American counterpart Harry Dexter White at the Bretton Woods Conference.
It was not written in the ether of the universe that Britain would remain a prosperous nation or maintain its commitment to democracy — particularly amid the collapse of its overseas empire. It did so because Keynes and his political allies mobilized resources and ideas for a common purpose that animated the national imagination and motivated international cooperation.
In 1942, with Britain deep in debt, and still consumed by war, Keynes addressed the public through the BBC. It was a mistake, he argued, to confuse accounting figures of debt and deficits with national economic potential. The very act of mobilizing resources for new productive purposes would create the wealth that Britain needed to meet its obligations to citizens and foreign creditors. Technology, expertise, and an active workforce gave even debt-ridden, war-torn Britain a productive potential that would have made the monarchs of other ages blush. The key was mustering the political will to realize that potential.
“Why should we not add in every substantial city the dignity of an ancient university or a European capital?” Keynes insisted. “Assuredly we can afford this and so much more. Anything we can actually do, we can afford.”
For America today, the project must begin with a broad attack on economic inequality. The gap between the rich and the rest is wider now than it has been since World War I. Alleviating inequality is not just a question of improving the standard of living for millions of Americans who deserve a better paycheck — it’s about making sure everyone in America is engaged in the same political project. We cannot mobilize our economy for the greater good if we do not collectively believe our democracy works for all of us.
How can these Keynesian lessons be applied to a world in which Covid-19 continues to change the landscape for American workers, and the very structure of the global economy? Inside The Great Rebuild Issue, five writers explore how policymakers can transform social improvements and national well-being into an economic strategy that could secure America for years to come.
Zachary D. Carter is a writer for HuffPost and the author of The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy and the Life of John Maynard Keynes.
This story is part of The Great Rebuild, a project made possible thanks to support from Omidyar Network, a social impact venture that works to reimagine critical systems and the ideas that govern them, and to build more inclusive and equitable societies. All Great Rebuild coverage is editorially independent and produced by our journalists.