It isn’t always easy to keep up with what’s happening in the US. “Shorter America” is a series where Dr Emma Shortis loops you in on what’s going on in America and shares news and analysis that you can trust.
By Emma Shortis
Fri 7 Aug 2026 08.41 AEST
Photo: The White House/Flickr
In the lead up to the November mid-term elections, the Democratic Party is engaged in what probably too many commentators are describing as a “battle” over its “soul”. In the Michigan primaries this week, we got an important indication of how that battle is playing out.
This week:
The state of Michigan has been trying to tell Democrats some things for quite some time now. As I wrote last year in my essay “After America” – in 2024, Michigan tried to tell Democrats that they were losing their soul in Gaza. The Party – and Biden – didn’t listen. Fast forward to today, and Michigan is once again sending a message.
In the Democratic Senate primary, progressive Abdul El-Sayed beat an enormously well-funded centrist campaign to secure the nomination. Mother Jones has a good breakdown of the race, and what it might mean.
And in this excoriating New York Review of Books essay, Michael Greenberg offers a much stronger analysis of the “battle” consuming the party: the “hand-wringing” over the rise of democratic socialists in the party, he writes, “smacks of cowardice and exposes just how badly Democrats have lost their ethical bearings”.
Sadly, this creates no challenge for the Republican Party, which also lacks a “soul”, along with courage, an ethical core and integrity. All the hand-wringing does is further normalise the amorality and cynicism of contemporary American politics.
Mother Jones’ coverage of grassroots organising and local election races is really second to none. This great Dharna Noor piece, also on Michigan, documents the way opposition to AI data centers is playing into the midterms, and how it connects to longer-term organising around climate.
Our regular favourite Tressie MacMillan Cottom also has an excellent reading list on AI in the NYT this week, and an explanation of what she has dubbed “data politics”. And on her Substack, the also brilliant Kate Manne has an excellent essay on why men in particular love AI: because “they miss female subordinates who seamlessly do their bidding.” Ick.
Pretty much everyone I’ve spoken to about US politics over the last few weeks has asked me what I think about Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s new book about Trump. It’s everywhere, and I suppose I am professionally obliged to read it. But, a confession: I haven’t, and I probably won’t. Not because it’s not compelling. I’m sure it is. I’m just not convinced I’ll learn anything I don’t already know – and the reviews I’ve read seem to confirm this.
I think what the hype around the book also does is feed into this nostalgic (though very understandable) yearning we all have for a past in which good journalism mattered. It does still matter, of course! We need it more than ever. But as Craig Unger writes, it just doesn’t matter anymore in the way that it used to: now, “nothing moves the needle”.
We’ll just have to keep coming back to our theme of “oh my god, these men” – I’m sorry, but they just keep going. This week, it’s their thing about poo. Sorry, diet. The NYT published a story this week about how the “Most Powerful Men in America Are Eating Only Steak and Sauerkraut”. There’s a line in there about poo that I just…well, read it yourself. And try not to think about how the most powerful men in the world apparently don’t wipe their butts.
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