My OP-ED in US News

US News published my OP-ED about the use of gridlock as a tactic in Congress. Feel free to give it a read!

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2022 Midterm Projection: Fundamentally Republican

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I think this is going to be an ugly election cycle for the Democrats. We can expect losses for the president's party in Congress in their first midterm election, and Joe Biden has not done anything to change my expectation. This is compounded by the fact that the economy seems to be the most pressing concern for voters, and inflation is a very difficult issue for policymakers to make go away or minimize. Since inflation is effectively making money less valuable, people that have a lot of money hate it , and even though unemployment is at a record low right, and many people in lower tax brackets have money in their pockets, it doesn't seem to go as far when you have to pay large bills for gas, heating your home or buying groceries.  So I believe we'll see the US House of Representatives swing to Republicans, probably with about 15-20 Democratic seat losses. Oddly, this is not actually that high of a number (Trump's party lost 41 in his only midterm, Obama lost 63 in his ...
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Grad school tips

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Today, my doctorate from Penn was officially conferred. In honor of this moment, I want to share some knowledge, how to be a graduate student. 1) A political science Ph.D. is a two-part process. The key dividing point is your comprehensive examinations (or field exams, or qualifying exams, or whatever. At Penn they were called "comps", which is the lingo I'll use). I would recommend a different approach to each side of the comps. Before comps, you should take advantage of what a graduate education is, a chance to get paid to read and explore a field of your interest. I took an eclectic collection of courses during my first two years, including an infamous "Great Books" of comparative politics. But what you want to do here is to scrape the surface of all these different possible fields you could be interested in, to see what works for you. A mistake that I've seen many graduate students fall into is being held prisoner by the topic they discussed in their...
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The 2016 Projection: Hillary's day finally comes

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Clinton 323, Trump 217 Since it became clear that Donald Trump would win the Republican nomination in June, I have been about 80% certain that Hillary Clinton would beat him in the General Election. So I put my money where my mouth is, buying stock in Clinton the day before the Democratic Convention when the price was $0.64 to win $1.00, in essence a 64% chance of winning. Like any good scientist, I was prepared to factor new information into my view. But the real threats to Hillary's candidacy (an indictment from the FBI investigation, a Lehman Brothers like collapse, etc.) never materialized. On Twitter, I doubled down on this confidence a number of times in response to particulary silly moments in the news cycle, such as when Hillary was struck was pneumonia... If you're a bettor, feel free to cash in on this ridiculous news cycle that has Hillary's chances at $0.64 to pay $1 https://t.co/nWJbkxXoNK — Alex Garlick (@garlicksauce) September 13, 2016 or wh...
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