Maxwell School News and Commentary

The torrent of anti-Chinese rhetoric by the Trump administration recently has been countered by much softer actions, as the administration attempts to "thread the needle" of looking tough heading into the election while having the Chinese continue to purchase U.S. goods, says Mary Lovely, professor of economics.

"We've been talking to the same [3,000] Americans since early March, every six weeks or so," says Shana Gadarian, associate professor of political science. What they found is that Americans were "using their partisanship as the top way to screen new information and decide what to do."

"The Republican base has been more focused on that issue [Supreme Court] than the Democratic base has from Reagan forward, roughly," says Thomas Keck, professor of political science and Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics. "There’s some evidence that that’s shifting."

Measures to fight climate change tend to destroy some jobs while creating others, says David Popp, professor of public administration and international affairs.

Professor Grant Reeher says that Trump's exaggerations of labeling Democrats as socialists and radicals are having little impact, and that, "after four years, voters are used to the hyperbole."

"We still haven't elected a woman on the national ticket in either party," says Margaret Susan Thompson, associate professor of history and political science. "I think we still have a long way to go before we can talk about equality. But what we're talking about is progress."

"There is always higher turnout in a presidential election year, but what that will mean in any given district is less clear," says Margaret Susan Thompson, associate professor of history and political science. 

"The conventions this year might actually be more important than in relatively recent years past since the campaigns are very constrained in what they can do in person," says Grant Reeher, professor of political science. "Those in-person events would normally drive a lot of the media coverage in the last few months of the campaign. But that is only if people watch the conventions."

The eight essays include historical background and trends to explain the legacy of voters' choices in November. Also included in this edition are stories on historian David Bennett's 50-year-plus career, a new scholarship fund geared towards retention, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Grant Reeher, professor of political science, says that while Trump had said much worse than Biden in terms of "levels of offensiveness or levels of insensitivity or thoughtlessness," the peril for the Democrat lay in a somewhat different area. "It is less clear that Biden is saying those things on purpose."