What you need to read about politics 8/26 edition

My roundup of the week's most important news and best journalism

Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash

I never know where this column will end up when I start collecting links during the week (since I was off last week, this column covers links from two weeks). Sometimes I read stories and decide they’re not significant enough to share, or there are other more important things to spotlight. But I’m always looking for topics that might fly below the radar — things that aren’t front page stories, but which might shape what will become front-page news in the future.

That explains why this week’s collection of 22 links once again reaches beyond the Beltway to include critical stories from California, Tennessee, Florida, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. In a lot of ways, it’s these stories that are shaping the electorate and our politics — in Wisconsin it’s a story about a promise by Donald Trump and executives at Foxconn for an economic bonanza that hasn’t come close to fruition. In Virginia, it’s about national money pouring in to support Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who big donors want to run for president. Yet, this money could tip the crucial state elections in November. In Tennessee, it’s about a gun owning Republican mother who is lobbying for stricter gun laws in the wake of a shooting at her son’s school.

These are the kinds of issues and activism that make an impact in communities and help drive people to vote.

This week’s group of stories include some news that should trouble Democrats, and plenty that should concern Republicans. Maybe most fascinating: stories about a prominent social conservative thinker who has come to bemoan the right’s economic policies and the damage they have done, as well as a story that features a debate among academics over whether we’re seeing a partisan realignment because Democrats have embraced wealthy white liberals and their agenda.

When read in dialogue with one another, these pieces point us toward a slightly different conclusion: both party coalitions are increasingly unstable, because they’re inherently incoherent.