William Galston for the Brookings Institution: Challenges to the legitimacy of elections and candidacies have disfigured our politics for the past four presidential elections, a trend that may well continue into 2017 and beyond.
In the wake of the botched vote count in Florida and the Supreme Court’s controversial Bush v. Gore decision, many Democrats never accepted the legitimacy of George W. Bush’s inauguration. In 2008 and beyond, conspiracy theories about Barack Obama’s birthplace convinced many Americans that he was not an American citizen and was therefore ineligible to serve as president. This year’s Republican nominee, a principal proponent of these theories, has repeatedly warned his supporters that the election may be “rigged.” If he loses by a relatively narrow margin, there is a real danger that he may question the outcome and give his supporters additional reasons to reject the winner’s legitimacy.
Third, and most fundamentally, the 2016 campaign has further divided Americans along demographic lines, according to a just-released report from the Pew Research Center. Among whites, men are 10 percentage points more likely to identify as Republicans than they were in 2008; individuals over 50 are 13 points more likely; whites with a high school education or less, 14 points more likely. Because white women haven’t shifted nearly as much, the gender gap among whites has widened significantly. …
Summing up, Democrats are becoming the party of minorities and college-educated whites, while Republicans are becoming the party of whites with lower levels of education. These two coalitions have fundamental differences of outlook and interest. The Democratic coalition welcomes diversity, believes that the present is better than the past and that the future will be even better. The Republican coalition regards increasing diversity as a threat, sees a marked decline in their quality of life since the 1950s, and views the future with pessimism. These are differences of kind, not degree, and they create a gap that the winner of the 2016 presidential election will find it hard to narrow unless he or she focuses on an agenda of national reconciliation starting or Day 1 of the transition.
Refugee crisis will get worse
Joshua Hampson for the Niskanen Center: Mosul is Iraq’s second-largest city, with more than one million people under Islamic State control. Nearly 84,000 people have fled the area as the Iraqi government and militia advance on the city, with many more expected. With the full assault on the city expected in November, the United Nations is warning that caring for those fleeing the city will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. This new flow of refugees comes on top of the millions of refugees who have already been displaced. To properly manage the wave of people who could flee Mosul and to weed out extremists in the mix, it is critical to relocate as many vetted refugees as quickly as possible.
The logical step for processing refugees from Mosul, including processes to determine if any are [Islamic State] terrorists, is to place them in the camps already handling this process. However, refugee camps in the region are already full beyond capacity. While the United Nations is looking to build more camps, getting funding and finding suitable land is proving difficult.
With the battle over Mosul expected to generate up to 1.3 million new refugees, already strained refugee services in the region will be unable to cope. The inability to find safety and shelter in Iraq may force refugees to flee to other countries. For the surrounding countries that are already managing millions of refugees, this massive new displacement may be difficult to cope with. The numbers alone will make it hard for Middle Eastern countries to provide care for and to vet these refugees in real time. Refugees may then try to flee onwards to Europe.
We can take action before the battle for Mosul begins, however. If refugees can be resettled outside of the camps and strained neighboring countries, there is a higher chance that displacement from Mosul will be manageable.
Making these schools free won’t help
Tamar Hiler and Lanae Erickson Hatalsky for Third Way: Our analysis of the Department of Education’s College Scorecard data reveals that not all four-year public schools are giving students, or taxpayers, a good return on their investment. In fact, at many of these institutions, first-time, full-time students are not graduating, a large number are unable to earn wages higher than the typical high school graduate, and many cannot pay back the loans they’ve taken out. …
Among our key findings:
- A typical four-year public college graduates only 48.3 percent of first-time, full-time students within six years of enrollment. That means first-time, full-time students who enter the average public institution are more likely to not graduate than they are to graduate from the school where they first enrolled.
- At only 80 schools, 15 percent of four-year public colleges, did more than two-thirds of first-time, full-time students manage to earn a degree within six years. The graduation rates of the remaining 455 schools are so low that if they were high schools instead of colleges, they would be flagged as dropout factories and be required by federal law to intervene to improve their completion rates.
Compiled by Joseph Lawler from reports published by the various think tanks.
