Walter Duranty’s Holodomor Coverage And Pulitzer
Walter Duranty, who served as its Moscow bureau chief from 1922 through 1936, has been criticized for a series of stories in 1931 on the Soviet Union and won a Pulitzer Prize for his work at that time however, he has been criticized for his denial of widespread famine, most particularly Holodomor, a famine in Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s in which he summarized Russian propaganda, and the Times published, as fact: “Conditions are bad, but there is no famine”.
In 2003, after the Pulitzer Board began a renewed inquiry, the Times hired , professor of Russian history at Columbia University, to review Duranty’s work. Von Hagen found Duranty’s reports to be unbalanced and uncritical, and that they far too often gave voice to Stalinistpropaganda. In comments to the press he stated, “For the sake of The New York Times’ honor, they should take the prize away.”The Ukrainian Weekly covered the efforts to rescind Duranty’s prize. The Times has since made a public statement and the Pulitzer committee has declined to rescind the award twice stating, “…Mr. Duranty’s 1931 work, measured by today’s standards for foreign reporting, falls seriously short. In that regard, the Board’s view is similar to that of The New York Times itself…”.
Women’s Issues And Abortion
In 2013, Cuomo called for the passage of a Women’s Equality Act. The Women’s Equality Act included 10 component bills affecting issues such as domestic violence, human trafficking, and pregnancy discrimination. The tenth bill of the Women’s Equality Act was the Reproductive Health Act, which would have “enshrine in state law existing federal protections for abortion rights,” “shift the state’s abortion law from the criminal code to the health care laws,” and ” it clearer that licensed health care practitioners as well as physicians could perform abortions”. During his 2013 State of the State address, Cuomo said, “Enact a Reproductive Health Act because it is her body, it is her choice. Because it’s her body, it’s her choice. Because it’s her body, it’s her choice.” The New York State Assembly passed the Women’s Equality Act on June 20, 2013. The Republican leadership of the New York State Senate expressed support for the nine non-abortion-related planks of the Women’s Equality Act, but objected to the Reproductive Health Act and expressed unwillingness to allow a vote on it.
The Real Median Voter
In elite circles, including Capitol Hill, people often misunderstand American public opinion in a specific way. They imagine that the median voter resembles a type of political moderate who is quite common in those elite circles somebody who is socially liberal and fiscally conservative.
Michael Bloomberg is an archetype, as are some Republican mayors and governors in blue states. Many people in professional Washington, at think tanks and elsewhere, also fall into the category.
In the rest of the country, however, this ideological combination is not so common, polls show. If anything, more Americans can accurately be described as the opposite socially conservative and economically liberal. Thats true across racial groups, including among Black and Hispanic voters.
Most Americans are religious, for example. Most favor restrictions on both abortion and immigration. Most oppose reductions in police funding. At the same time, most Americans favor higher taxes on the rich and a higher minimum wage, as well as government actions to reduce drug prices, expand health care and create good-paying jobs.
Many centrist Democrats are aware of this reality and cast themselves as culturally moderate populists. But they can also be influenced by the elites misunderstanding of popular opinion. That seems to be happening right now.
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Why Is This Happening
Some of the vaccination gap stems from the libertarian instincts of many Republicans. They understand freedom as being left alone to make their own choices, and they resent being told what to do, William Galston has written in The Wall Street Journal.
But philosophy is only a partial explanation. In much of the rest of the world, vaccine attitudes do not break down along right-left lines, and some conservative leaders have responded effectively to Covid. So have a few Republican governors in the U.S. It didnt have to be this way, German Lopez of Vox has written.
What distinguishes the U.S. is a conservative party the Republican Party that has grown hostile to science and empirical evidence in recent decades. A conservative media complex, including Fox News, Sinclair Broadcast Group and various online outlets, echoes and amplifies this hostility. Trump took the conspiratorial thinking to a new level, but he did not create it.
With very little resistance from party leaders, my colleague Lisa Lerer wrote this summer, many Republicans have elevated falsehoods and doubts about vaccinations from the fringes of American life to the center of our political conversation.
In Pennsylvania The Democratic Lean Is Slight But Durable
We continue our Presidential Geography series, a one-by-one examination of each states political landscape and how it is changing. Here is Pennsylvania, the Keystone State. FiveThirtyEight spoke with Terry Madonna, a professor of public affairs and director of the Franklin & Marshall College Poll and , an assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania.
New reports indicate that the 2012 presidential campaign is coming to Pennsylvania. After a spate of advertising during the summer, Pennsylvania in a break from tradition has largely avoided the volume of campaign commercials that states like Ohio and Virginia have seen.
Pennsylvania has been a swing state in presidential elections since the 1950s. In the last 60 years, the candidate who carried the state has also won the national popular vote in every election but two. Over that time, Republicans have carried Pennsylvania in six elections, and Democrats have carried it in nine.
But while Pennsylvania has swung between the two parties, its relative partisan bent has remained remarkably consistent: slightly Democratic.
In fact, Pennsylvania is the only state in the nation that has been unfailingly Democratic-leaning relative to the national popular vote in every presidential election since 1950. With the exceptions of the landslide elections in 1964 and 1984, however, Pennsylvanias leftward lean has been fairly narrow, between one and five percentage points.
The Bellwether: Bucks County
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Y Trends And Geography
The balance of the parties was formerly less decided, with a large Democratic majority in populous New York City, Rochester and Buffalo, but Republican dominance in the upstate and the eastern part of Long Island. Historically, the only Democratic outpost in upstate New York was Albany. In recent years, with the political transformation of former Republican strongholds of Long Island, the Hudson Valley and the Syracuse area, New York has grown more reliably Democratic. In particular, Westchester County currently has a Democratic county legislature for only the second time in three decades.
Unlike most states, New York electoral law permits electoral fusion thus New York ballots tend to show a larger number of parties. Some are permanent minor parties that seek to influence the major parties, while others are ephemeral parties formed to give major-party candidates an additional line on the ballot.
The total enrollment of the various parties in New York State is as follows, according to the New York State Board of Elections report of Enrollment by County dated April 1, 2016. Percentages are of the total with a declared affiliation.
- Democratic: 5,792,497
Additionally, 2,485,475 persons were enrolled with no party affiliation.
Politics Of New York City
The city government of New York City controls a budget of about $78.3 billion a year, as of 2016. Officials receive municipal funding for their campaigns, and are elected for a maximum of two terms. City government is dominated by the Democratic Party, which also normally attracts majority support within the city in State, Congressional, and Presidential elections. The suffrage has been extended in stages since the founding of the state: African-Americans received the vote in 1870 and women in 1920. Since 1968, electoral district boundaries at all levels have been drawn so as to ensure minority representation.
New York City politicians have often exerted lots of influence in other countries represented in the city’s ethnic mix, as in the development of the MacBride Principles affecting employment practices in Northern Ireland.
The city contains many headquarters of Federal institutions and military installations.
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Isanship Can Turn Violent
Parties dont just matter in elections. They affect how people identify, not just the other way around. Some people adjust their religious habits to better match their partisanship: For example, Republicans in search of other Republicans might start attending church more often. Put another way, people arent just sorting themselves into parties. Parties are sorting people, too, making cultural and racial rifts wider and harder to bridge.
And because partisan identities tend to be deeply held, political events rarely shake adults party preferences, which means the resentment from identity-based polarization probably isnt going to spontaneously dissolve. In fact, it might get worse. Dr. Abramowitz writes in his book The Great Alignment: Race, Party Transformation, and the Rise of Donald Trump that polarizing forces increased racial diversity, the waning influence of religion and the rise of partisan media are far from spent.
Nathan Kalmoe, a political scientist at Louisiana State University, has examined political parties during the most divided period in American history: the Civil War. In his book With Ballots & Bullets: Partisanship & Violence in the American Civil War, he demonstrates how newspapers and party leaders encouraged citizens to fight by exploiting their partisan identities, fueling a war that killed 750,000 people.
Sahil Chinoy is a graphics editor for The New York Times Opinion section.
Term Limits And Campaign Finance
New York has a municipal campaign finance system. The New York City Campaign Finance Board gives public matching funds to qualifying candidates, who in exchange submit to strict contribution and spending limits and a full audit of their finances. Citywide candidates in the program are required to take part in debates. Corporate contributions are banned and political action committees must register with the city.
A two-term limit was imposed on most elected officials, including the Mayor and City Council, but excluding the Districts Attorney, after a 1993 referendum. In 1996, voters turned down a City Council proposal to extend term limits. The movement to introduce term limits was led by Ronald Lauder, a cosmetics heir, who spent $4 million on the two referendums.
In 2008 the City Council voted 29â22 to overturn two referendums and to extend the term limitation to three terms.
These limits were reinstated as part of a NYC Charter update voted in by the electorate.
| 47.53% | 280,343 |
The Democratic Party holds the majority of public offices. Sixty-eight percent of registered voters in the city are Democrats. There are pockets of Republican strength in some sections of Brooklyn and Queens and a large Republican stronghold in the more Suburban Staten Island.
The Working Families Party, affiliated with the labor movement and progressive community activists, is a force in city politics. Party platforms are centered on affordable housing, education and economic development.
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Age Gender Marital Status And Religion
As a group, young adults under age 40 sided with Obama. More married men voted for McCain, but more single men voted for Obama. Generally, the same held true for married versus single women, but a higher percentage of women overall voted for Obama than for McCain. Catholic and ProtestantChristians were more likely to vote for McCain than for Obama, whereas voters of other faiths, as well as secular atheist and agnostic voters, predominantly favored Obama. White, middle-aged, Christian, married males made up McCain’s largest constituency.
Why Democrats See 3 Governors Races As A Sea Wall For Fair Elections
Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania all have Democratic governors and G.O.P.-led legislatures. And in all three battlegrounds, Republicans are pushing hard to rewrite election laws.
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By Reid J. Epstein and Nick Corasaniti
MADISON, Wis. In three critical battleground states, Democratic governors have blocked efforts by Republican-controlled legislatures to restrict voting rights and undermine the 2020 election.
Now, the 2022 races for governor in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania states that have long been vital to Democratic presidential victories, including Joseph R. Biden Jr.s are taking on major new significance.
At stake are how easy it is to vote, who controls the electoral system and, some Democrats worry, whether the results of federal, state and local elections will be accepted no matter which party wins.
That has left Govs. Tony Evers of Wisconsin, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania standing alone, in what is already expected to be a difficult year for their party, as what Democrats view as a sea wall against a rising Republican tide of voting restrictions and far-reaching election laws.
The prospect that Mr. Trump may run again in 2024 only compounds what Democrats fear: that Republicans could gain full control over the three key Northern states in 2022 and, two years later, interfere with or overturn the outcome of a narrow Democratic presidential victory in 2024.
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Democrats Spending Fight Carries High Stakes For Their Candidates
Failure of moderates and progressives to reach a deal would fuel Republican attacks on their competence with consequences as soon as November in Virginia, and in the midterms next year.
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WASHINGTON With President Bidens approval ratings falling below 50 percent after the most trying stretch of his young administration, pushing through his ambitious legislative agenda has taken on a new urgency for Democratic lawmakers.
Recognizing that a presidents popularity is the best indicator for how his party will fare in the midterm elections, Democrats are confronting a stark prospect: If Mr. Biden doesnt succeed in the halls of Congress this fall, it could doom his partys majorities at the polls next fall.
Not that such a do-or-die dilemma is itself sufficient to stop Democrats intraparty squabbling, which the president on Friday termed a stalemate. Divisions between moderates and liberals over the substance, the price tag and even the legislative timing of Mr. Bidens twin priorities, a bipartisan public works bill and broader social welfare legislation, could still undermine the proposals.
But it is increasingly clear to Democratic officials that beyond fully taming the still-raging pandemic, the only way Mr. Biden can rebound politically and the party can retain its tenuous grip on power in the Capitol is if he and they are able to hold up tangible achievements to voters.
Accusations Of Liberal Bias
In mid-2004, the newspaper’s then-public editor Daniel Okrent, wrote an opinion piece in which he said that The New York Times did have a liberal bias in news coverage of certain social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. He stated that this bias reflected the paper’s cosmopolitanism, which arose naturally from its roots as a hometown paper of New York City, writing that the coverage of the Times‘s Arts & Leisure Culture and the Sunday Times Magazine trend to the left.
If you’re examining the paper’s coverage of these subjects from a perspective that is neither urban nor Northeastern nor culturally seen-it-all if you are among the groups The Times treats as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide if your value system wouldn’t wear well on a composite New York Times journalist, then a walk through this paper can make you feel you’re traveling in a strange and forbidding world.
Times public editor Arthur Brisbane wrote in 2012:
When The Times covers a national presidential campaign, I have found that the lead editors and reporters are disciplined about enforcing fairness and balance, and usually succeed in doing so. Across the paper’s many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism for lack of a better term that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times.
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The Relationship Between Education And Party Has Flipped
College-educated white people have left the Republican Party over the past decade, but higher-income voters are, as ever, disproportionately Republican. Wealthier people tend to be more educated, too, but now these forces push in opposite directions. That complicates the traditional relationship between Democrats and the white working class.
For decades, working-class people voted for Democrats, but recently, the difference in party affiliation between the white working class and other white people has evaporated. This trend, experts say, might make it difficult for the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee to mobilize voters by appealing to working-class identity.
Among white Americans:
Only white
Americans:
Some political scientists have attributed the emergent diploma divide to less educated white voters racial resentment. Dr. Sides, Dr. Tesler and Dr. Vavreck argue that during Barack Obamas presidency, less-educated white people who may not have followed politics began to link the Democrats to progressive attitudes toward race and fled the party as a result. Even education is, in a sense, a proxy for opinions about race, the brightest line in todays partisan conflict.
Potential Us Senate Appointment
After Hillary Clinton became President Obama’s choice for U.S. Secretary of State, then New York governor David Paterson was charged with appointing a temporary replacement until a special election. Cuomo was seen as a leading contender for this appointment.Caroline Kennedy was another leading contender, but withdrew for personal reasons two days before Paterson was set to announce his choice, leaving Cuomo and U.S. representative Kirsten Gillibrand as the most likely appointees. On January 23, Paterson announced he would appoint Gillibrand to the U.S. Senate.
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