About Paul Waldman
What is The Cross Section?
The goal of The Cross Section is to get beyond the superficial, repetitious coverage of current events to explore how politics works, what influences it, and what it does to us. There are plenty of places to get the latest poll results or speculation on whether there will be another government shutdown, and there’s nothing wrong with paying attention to those stories. But in order to gain a fuller understanding of the political world, we also have to go deeper.
This newsletter will explore every aspect of politics: not just what’s going on in the presidential campaign, the White House, or Congress, but the broader economic, social, and cultural undercurrents that determine the shape of our political world, including the media through which we learn so much of what we know (and think we know).
But it won’t all be grim!