Beyond Labels

A 360° Discussion of Foreign, National and Local Policy Issues

Scott Miller

For Next Week: More Post-Election Stuff

Although many of us feel like we’ve discussed the recent election as much as we care to, we’re going to try to approach the election aftermath from a bit of a different perspective next week.

There has been a strong reaction from the Democrats/Liberals/Progressives (choose your preferred label) in the wake of the election, with questions such as:

  • What went wrong and who’s fault was the Democrats’ loss?
  • How should Democrats react to a Trump Administration with both houses of Congress controlled by Republicans?
  • What adjustments to the Democrats’ efforts to appeal to voters should be undertaken (which issues to emphasize, constituencies to target, etc.)?

Here’s some food for thought:

  1. Mike Wolf’s link to the “You Are Still Crying Wolf” slatestarcodex.com post.
  2. An opinion piece in Friday’s New York Times entitled “The End of Identity Liberalism.” As of this writing, the piece prompted over 2460 comments. If 2400+ comments is more than your attention span will accommodate, you might want to focus on the “Readers’ Picks” (1475 comments) or “NYT Picks” (42 comments).
  3. Another opinion piece from today’s New York Times, written in response to End of Identity Liberalism, entitled “Identity Politics and Its Defenders.”

If you don’t have a New York Times subscription, here are links to those articles in PDF form:
20161118-the-end-of-identity-liberalism-the-new-york-times
20161121-identity-politics-and-its-defenders-the-new-york-times

Have more related stuff? Make a comment to this post with a link to it.

For November 14

Last week, we agreed to continue the discussion about single parenthood and poverty in Maine.

But there has also been a fair amount of demand to revisit the election results and discuss the implications.

Be prepared to discuss one or both!

Single Mothers in Maine

This week, we plan to discuss single mothers and their children in Maine. Both the Ellsworth American and the Weekly Packet have run the first part of a five-part series written by a staff member of the Maine Public Interest Research Group.

Here are links to all five parts:
1: 500% Rise in Single Parenthood Fueling Family Poverty in Maine
2: One Wrong Guy and an Endless Struggle
3: Chaos in the Classroom
4: The Childless Fathers
5: Removing Obstacles

When I read the first article, it struck me that there were lots of anecdotes and experts quoted about the problem, but essentially no solutions were offered. (There is some discussion of possible policy reactions in Part 5.)

This is a problem with no easy solutions–even “Band Aid” fixes are expensive, contentious and do not address the problem–and its prevention–head on.

I challenge all who participate today to think about what they would propose to address the problems attendant to single parenthood in our state.