“Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.” -H.L. Mencken
I am an occasional contributor to the popular political science blog, The Monkey Cage, which is now hosted by The Washington Post. You can always find my posts at the Post by visiting my contributor page.
You can read my first two guest posts, written before the blog joined The Washington Post, by clicking on the links below:
In Why Romney’s Debate Win May Be a Loss among Female Voters I discuss how Mitt Romney’s “win” in the first debate of the 2012 presidential campaign came in a packaging that was actually likely to lose him key swing voters. This post made the “Happy Hour Roundup” on The Plum Line at The Washington Post.
In Trayvon Martin and the Burden of Being a Black Male I discuss the number of ways race could have played a role in the confrontation that resulted in Trayvon Martin’s death and in the jury’s interpretation of the evidence that led them to acquit George Zimmerman. I highlight current research of my own on Americans’ particularly negative views of black men, and how resulting implicit racial bias against black men may be key to understanding the circumstances of the confrontation and the trial. My research in this post was picked up by Andrew Sullivan on his popular blog The Dish, in a post titled A Unique Stigma.
Popular posts:
In the post Donald Trump wins. Megan Kelly wins. Girls lose I explain what the Trump-Kelly conflict during and after the first GOP debate in 2015 illustrated about how girls and young women are taught that politics is not for them. James Warren of the New York Daily News followed up with me and wrote a column elaborating on the gender divide in political participation by ordinary American citizens and how the nature of politics may be to blame.
In Forget Susan B. Anthony I argue that fixation on movement figures like Susan B. Anthony has hidden the actual politics that delivered women’s voting rights, and thus the lessons for contemporary voting rights politics that the suffrage movement can impart. I highlight the main argument and central finding from my book The Woman Suffrage Movement in America: A Reassessment that the key to winning new voting rights was successful coalitional politics, not changing hearts and minds. This piece got much-appreciated nods from Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg View and Greg Dworkin at Daily Kos.
In Why we can’t see Jordan Davis and why it matters, I argue that Jordan Davis, the individual human being, was problematically absent from the trial of the man who killed him–Michael Dunn–and from the media coverage thereof. (Recall this was the so-called “loud music trial.”) I detail not only how cognitive biases based on race and gender were thus capable of influencing the case, but how failure to individualize Davis may have had consequences for the potential of the case to have political impact.