Government
The Congressional Races Urbanists Should Be Watching
And some other House races to keep your eye on.
It's sad that the only reminder in presidential politics that more than four-fifths of Americans live in urban areas comes from the news that early voting lines in Cleveland and Miami were so long a voter could watch the entire Star Wars trilogy before casting his or her vote.
Why has the question of American cities -- which were not so long ago the site of massive federal government intervention, nearly to a fault -- been entirely absent from political discourse this fall? Largely because urbanites vote so reliably for Democrats that they tend to be ignored by both parties, spurned in campaigns and under-served in policy. We've scarcely heard the candidates, one of whom lives in Chicago, the other in Boston, even use the word "city."