Jay Caruso

In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) almost looks like a centrist now. That would have been a strange thing to say eight years ago, when she knocked off Rep.

Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico , in a recent CBS News appearance, had a problem he could no longer avoid.

California has spent years telling the rest of the country what good governance looks like. Now it is showing everyone what happens when voters refuse to accept change, no matter the results.

In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America.

I just turned 56, and as a Gen Xer, I am old enough to remember when the vice presidency was a ceremonial job that included attending funerals for

Ossoff is now 37, in his first Senate term, and running for reelection in a Georgia that Republicans are convinced they can still win. He is also, whether he will say so or not, a figure Democrats are projecting something much larger onto. On Polymarket, the prediction market that has become a go-to gauge for pundits and the press, Ossoff sits at 14%, second only to Gov.

Hawaii defended its gun law with an 1865 slave code. The Supreme Court called it a "tainted artifact" and struck it down.

In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America.

In the 2010s and early 2020s, as he rose to Senate Democratic leader and then majority leader, it meant a coalition that included a large, engaged, and historically well-organized Jewish donor and voter base, to whom he pledged, repeatedly and at length, a kind of loyalty that went beyond ordinary politics. Now, that coalition includes primary voters in Michigan who nominated a candidate built in direct opposition to everything Schumer said he stood for on Israel, and Schumer decided that getting Democrats back in control of the Senate was more important than anything else.