Point & counterpoint | Healing America: Karen Dolan - Beneath division lie common goals
Karen Dolan
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Biden has promised to bring a divided electorate together. Is this even possible?
Social divisions may take a generation to heal. But with enough political will, the answer on policy questions should be a resounding yes.
Despite our divisions, progressive responses to bread and butter issues enjoy broad, bipartisan support. Majority support exists for everything from cash relief payments during the COVID-19 crisis to increasing the minimum wage and expanding health care.
The most acute crisis facing the nation is the continuing pandemic and its fallout. Communities of color and low-income families have suffered the most, but Americans of all backgrounds and political parties have suffered sickness, death and growing economic insecurity.
Point & counterpoint | Healing America: Iain Murray - Political realignment provides hope for less-polarized future
Iain Murray
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America seems deeply divided. The House of Representatives is split down the middle between Democrats and Republicans. Half the country, as in 2016, appears to believe the presidential election was stolen from their preferred candidate. It appears as if polarization is here to stay.
Or, maybe not. A careful look at underlying shifts in support among the parties suggests that America is in the middle of a political realignment. The process has yet to play out, but when it does it is likely that neither the MAGA wing of the Republican Party nor the democratic-socialist wing of the Democratic Party will be calling the shots.
Commentary: Matthew Thompson -Unemployment system dangerously outdated
Matthew Thompson
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When you think of states calling in the National Guard, you might imagine rescuing people from floods or providing emergency relief. But this summer, Washington state had to call in 54 National Guard troops to help them investigate cybercriminals who targeted the state’s COVID-19 relief funds.
Washington wasn’t the only state to suffer, either the problem is widespread and ongoing, affecting almost every state in the nation.
Congress recently approved an 11-week extension of $300 unemployment benefits to all jobless people as well as self-employed workers and gig workers generally ineligible for state unemployment insurance.
Commentary: J. Mark Powell - The bloody past of nation s Capitol
J. Mark Powell
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‘We have built no temple but the Capitol. We consult no common oracle but the Constitution.”
Those words, from former Massachusetts Sen. Rufus Choate, are inscribed on the wall of the U.S. Capitol the same walls desecrated by rioters who ransacked the building. For many Americans, seeing such acts of violence and vandalism occurring in the Capitol was something unimaginable.
In fact, our civic “temple” has a surprisingly bloody history. It was still under construction when British troops seized it during the War of 1812. The Brits torched the structure, also destroying the U.S. Supreme Court and the Library of Congress, which were both housed there. Only a violent thunderstorm’s arrival put out the flames, thus sparing the original walls, which are incorporated in today’s building.
Commentary: Llewellyn King - Capitol enshrines all the best of our aspirations
Llewellyn King
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Cry, the beloved building.
I have been lucky and have walked the halls of the Houses of Parliament in London, visited the Elysée Palace in Paris, the Bundestag in Berlin and the Kremlin in Moscow.
But it is the Capitol, the building on a hill in Washington, that fills me with awe but it isn’t awesome or frightening, and doesn’t exalt in power.
The Capitol is at once romantic, imposing and egalitarian. Ever since I first set foot on Capitol Hill, the building has been for me, an immigrant, the elegant expression of everything that is best about America: open, accessible and shared.