The Atlantic Daily: The Future of American Party Politics
Partisan loyalty continues to threaten the process of lawmaking. Our writers reflect on the past and future of party politics in America—and how partisanship affects the American people.
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This month, President Joe Biden signed a historic $1.9 trillion coronavirus-relief package. Now the president’s advisers are expected to recommend up to $3 trillion in new spending to boost the economy.
Taking such legislation to the finish line is no small feat. As the journalist Jonathan Cohn notes: “Passing big pieces of legislation is a lot harder than it looks … It requires seriousness of purpose—a deep belief that you are working toward some kind of better world.”
Today, partisan loyalty continues to threaten the process of lawmaking. Below, our writers reflect on the past and future of party politics in America—and how partisanship affects the American people.
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Biden is choosing American prosperity over vengeance. “The future of the Democratic Party depends on Biden’s ability to show ... that even when the Republican Party loses, Americans who vote Republican do not,” Adam Serwer argued last week, after the president signed the American Rescue Plan Act into law.
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The Senate filibuster has killed accountability in Congress. “Democrats can propose legislation that voters strongly support, and [Mitch] McConnell can strangle it off camera with a minimum of notice or fuss,” two political-science professors argue.
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The Biden agenda doesn’t run through Washington. Partnering with America's biggest cities would allow the president to advance his agenda without worrying about red-state obstinance or an uncooperative Congress, Ronald Brownstein writes.
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The real reason Republicans couldn’t kill Obamacare over the past decade says a lot about the party, Jonathan Cohn argues. The GOP didn’t have a clear idea of what it was trying to achieve—“except to hack away at the welfare state and destroy [Barack] Obama’s legacy,” Cohn writes, 11 years out from the passage of the Affordable Care Act.
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Meanwhile, the GOP’s state-level efforts to restrict voting rights could hurt not just democracy, but the party’s own voters. “In their eagerness to demonstrate their loyalty to Trump, Republican legislators are rushing to apply scattershot solutions to an imagined set of problems,” David A. Graham writes.
One question, answered:
I lost my sense of smell from COVID-19. Can I do anything to get it back? Sarah Zhang reports:
Many years before the emergence of the novel coronavirus, a German doctor helped develop and standardize smell training for patients who had lost the sense, typically because of head trauma or viral infections. It involves sniffing four essential oils for 20 seconds every day over several months; some proponents of smell training recommend that patients recall memories associated with each scent—remembering lemon pie while smelling lemon oil, for instance.
While supposed “cures” for smell loss, such as eating a charred orange or poking your forehead while getting flicked in the back of the head, have gone viral on TikTok, smell training is the only scientifically proven intervention for this kind of smell loss.
Read on for more about the strange journey of recovering from smell loss.
Today’s Atlantic-approved isolation activity:
Today’s break from the news:
What to read if you believe in miracles … or even if you don’t: Recent speculations in physics reveal that believers and nonbelievers may have more in common than they think.
Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.