A compendium of the best reporting and commentary surrounding the pivotal 2024 elections in the United States. You will rarely find horse race coverage here, or the standard "both sides" BS that passes so often for political journalism. What you will find are links, with brief commentary, to work that I believe advances the conversation we should be having about America's – and the world's – future. Remember: Everything is at stake this year. (Unfortunately, some of the work I point to is behind paywalls.)
A Harris policy that could rescue countless families
Harris’ proposal (for Medicare to cover long-term home care) would have enormous impact on middle-class Americans — a focus of her campaign. Unlike Medicaid, Medicare is not based on income and is available to all Americans over 65, as well as some younger people with specific medical conditions. Women in particular are poised to benefit from the proposed change as they are more likely to be caregivers for family members who need long-term care and to require care themselves as they age due to living longer on average than men. In addition, many families are currently part of what’s called the “sandwich generation,” meaning they are caring for both aging relatives and children at the same time.
This is an absolute blockbuster of a policy proposal, and it's gotten relatively little attention in our major news organizations' reports. But this detailed explainer gives you a sense of how powerful the impact could be – in all kinds of positive ways – if it was somehow passed by Congress and signed into law. Among the many reasons it'll face a steep uphill climb is the reality that Republicans (and probably some Democrats) will call it a budget-buster. I'd gladly pay higher taxes to help make this happen, and I suspect regular people who understand basic arithmetic would, too.
A Republican congressman representing areas devastated by Hurricane Helene has implicitly rebuked members of his own party, including Donald Trump, by issuing a scorching rebuttal of misinformation and conspiracy theories spread by the former US president and his supporters about the storm and the government’s response. Chuck Edwards, the member for North Carolina’s 11th district, contradicted criticism from Trump and others of the Biden administration’s handling of the disaster by voicing praise for “a level of support that is unmatched by most any other disaster nationwide”.
As the Biden administration frantically tries to get help to the people who need it in the hurricane-ravaged Southeast, fighting poisonous liars all the way, a few – a very few – Republican office holders, angry enough to be brave, are promoting the truth. As this article chronicles, one of them is in the heart of North Carolina's most hard-hit region. He is pissed, and saying so. His office put out a detailed press release explaining what is true, meanwhile. (His statements would be even stronger if he called out Trump et al by name, but there are apparently limits.) This is an important story because it shows the power of standing up for reality at a time when so many powerful politicians, aided in evil by social media owners and denizens, are trying to turn reality into whatever they say it is.
Although some, such as Adam Serwer of the Atlantic, have said “the cruelty is the point” of the MAGA movement, we believe that the cruelty is a means to an end: further subordinating already vulnerable and marginalized individuals and communities. If successful, the American right will prevent the targets of its terrorist campaigns from making what would otherwise be powerful and effective political demands at precisely the moment when white Christians fear the loss of their dominant position in society. Suffocating democracy is the point.
Michaels and Noll are professors of law at UCLA and Rutgers, respectively, and authors of “Vigilante Nation: How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy.” Their LA Times op-ed, from which it is adapted, is a stark warning – and one of the few Big Journalism observations of the campaign of intimidation and outright terror the extremist are already waging on their neighbors across the nation. The implications are bad enough if Harris wins, but terrifying if Trump and his extremist apparatchiks (including basically all Congressional Republicans) and cultists completely take over the national government.
Kudos: Jon D. Michaels and David L. Noll
Tech billionaires' threats and cash are buying the (weak) government they want
After Porter’s defeat, it became obvious that the super PAC’s message had been received by politicians elsewhere. Candidates in New York, Arizona, Maryland, and Michigan began releasing crypto-friendly public statements and voting for pro-crypto bills. When Porter tried to explain to her three children why she had lost, part of the lesson focussed on the Realpolitik of wealth and elections. “When you have members who are afraid of ten million dollars being spent overnight against them, the will in Washington to do what’s right disappears pretty quickly,” she recalls saying. “This was naked political power designed to influence votes in Washington. And it worked.”
Take some time and read this superbly reported article all the way through. It's instructive, and chilling. The cryptocurrency and "AI" tech bosses – and their financial backers – are waging war on every vestige of government of the people, by the people, and for the people. They're putting several hundred million dollars into punishing any politician who wants common-sense regulation – because they want either no regulation at all or regulation that entrenches them as the winners – and their sleazy tactics are working. A notable sub-plot in this story is the éminence grise behind this systematic attack on the public good: a former top Democratic operative. His amorality fits well with the cynical moneybags tech barons whose values are so warped that they would attack democracy to gain even more obscene wealth and power. They're the heirs to the worst of what we've seen before, but are thriving in an environment in which – thanks to the moneyed interests' capture of the Supreme Court and Congress – money has it all over people.
Voting is just part of democracy, but it's the essential place to start. Make sure you're registered. Doublecheck in the fall, well before Election Day, because in some states Republican officials are removing people, mostly those who tend to vote for Democrats, from voting rolls.
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Sara Luterman, Jessica Kutz
Robert Tait
Jon D. Michaels and David L. Noll
Condé Nast
