A quick aside before I start: I called this site the World According to Brian instead of something political to give myself room to write on occasion on non-political topics. You’ll see a few of those pieces in the next few weeks on things like higher ed and baseball, but never fear, this will still be your home for top notch political analysis. On Wednesday, I’ll be live with from the Bulwark at 1 PM to talk all things elections…

I’ve seen a lot of social media posts from colleagues either announcing that they’re going tech free in the classroom, or cheering along others who have.

I certainly understand the impulse; there are a lot of corrosive impacts of technology and our constant need to be tethered to devices. Like so many of my colleagues, I’ve cringed watching groups of students sitting two feet apart and communicating through a Google Document instead of talking with one another. I’m also wary of the potential complications and problems caused by the rise of AI.

Yet, I think technology bans are misguided for four reasons.

First, part of how I view college — what makes it different from high school — is that it’s a place where students learn how to be adults. That means making choices that work for them as individuals. And in my view, faculty should be helping to facilitate this personal development, not creating rules to save students from themselves.

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Sometimes developing as an adult means making bad choices and learning from the consequences. Who among us didn’t decide to sleep in and skip an occasional early class during college?

In the case of technology, making poor choices can mean coming to class and being distracted by the internet, and paying the price when it comes to either a grade or just in terms of knowledge not gained.

In high school, strict rules are the name of the game to prevent students from making those kinds of bad choices. But if we make college similar, then students don’t get the chance to learn how to make the right choices for themselves in the context of work habits and behavior before entering the workplace.

They might learn when it comes to choices in their personal lives, but the more rules we make, the less like an adult workplace university classrooms will be.

As a corollary, every student learns differently. And part of making the right choices is recognizing how one learns best. For some, that absolutely is tech free, taking notes by hand, focusing on listening and engaging, etc. There are ample studies showing it.

But that’s not true for everyone. I took all of my notes in college by hand, while my laptop remained locked to the desk in my dorm room. The problem: my writing was terrible, especially as I sped up to get more down. So a lot of the time I spent studying was devoted to simply trying to decipher my notes.

When I started using a laptop to take notes, both in graduate school and later, to do interviews for my book, it became much easier to not only get things down, but to find them later.

As professors, we can’t know who is like me, and who will learn better without technology. We can look at generalized studies, but those don’t always reflect the individuality of our students.

Which brings me to argument two against technology bans: they single out students with disabilities. Many students with disabilities have the right to use computers/technology, regardless of an instructor’s policies. But if a professor bans technology, using those accommodations means a student implicitly telling their peers that they have some sort of disability warranting accommodations.

That’s both not fair, and may also discourage them from using accommodations that help them to learn better.

In lecture classes, especially, there is a happy medium that addresses the issues raised by these first two arguments, while recognizing the potentially corrosive and problematic aspects of technology: splitting lecture halls into tech free and tech areas. That lets students make their own choices, and it avoids stigmatizing those with disabilities, while also encouraging and supporting students who recognize the perils of having the internet at their fingertips during class.

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The third argument against technology bans is simple: technology can enrich the classroom experience.

I’ve had students pull up facts while we’re talking in class that add to conversations. Similarly, on occasion, a student will message a parent who lived through something we’re discussing, and the resulting anecdote makes everyone in the room better off. Finally, I have students use technology to produce outputs — like memes — from group discussions that fit our modern communications style.

The fourth argument against technology bans is a bit different. But it’s maybe the most important of all. By virtue of our power in the classrooms, we can attempt to stay one step ahead of technology — blue book exams, device bans, etc. And at least for a while, it will work.

But part of our job as educators is to prepare students for the world they encounter beyond the classroom. And, for better or worse, that is a tech filled world.

Every job our students will have in the future will involve AI in some way. That’s just a basic reality — whether we like it or not. Which means that best preparing them for the world requires us to figure out how to teach them to use AI and technology in a positive way, instead of trying to keep it away from our classrooms.

If we ban devices in class, I worry that over time, we won’t be able to keep up with the developments in wearable technology that allow students to get around bans, and also that we’ll become a musty insular world that bears no relation to what people confront outside of the ivory tower.

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We can all think of industries throughout history that tried to resist technological development. Spoiler: it didn’t go well. Blue chip companies have died, industries have crumbled, etc.

Resisting the inevitable with rules and policies risks exacerbating the problems already facing higher education, as students and parents question whether a college degree is really worth the amount of debt/cost involved?

I abhor the idea that society has come to view college as something that solely ought to focus on preparing people for careers. College can be — and is — so much more. Universities are a place to develop as an adult, a place to engage different types of people than one has encountered in their hometowns, a place to learn to be a better thinker, and a place to develop the knowledge necessary to be part of the educated citizenry that is so essential in a democratic republic.

But the reality is, if careers demand using technology well, and higher education becomes a technology free world, we risk becoming a dinosaur.

None of this is to say that I’m necessarily going to be on the cutting edge of technology adoption or immersion. I don’t use slide shows in my seminar (though I would in a lecture class), I encourage students not to use devices in some group discussion, and while I play video clips and music, technology isn’t really at the center of my classroom.

But I will continue to experiment with technology, including AI, and to try to strike a balance that avoids the worst downsides of a device filled world, while taking advantage of the good sides of having all of that knowledge at our fingertips.

It may take experimentation and time to get the balance right. I’ve toyed with creating a customized AI chatbot for my students, and even pondered whether creating a chatbot might be a worthwhile final project for students.

I’m sure I’ll keep tinkering, thinking, and adjusting my syllabus every year. I know I’ll make a mistake or two along the way.

But it seems like a better option than trying to keep technology out of the classroom. Over the long term, that’s going to prove to be impossible, and I think it will harm our students and our profession more than it benefits them.

1. The most significant result on Tuesday night wasn’t in a primary election. It was in a special election for a state house seat in Western Pennsylvania. Democrat Brandon Dukes edged Republican Scott Timko by 88 votes. While that might not sound all that impressive, the district voted for President Trump by 18 points in 2024, and was represented by right wing firebrand Daryl Metcalfe for a quarter century before he retired in 2022.

The result is yet another sign that a major wave is building. This is the final special election before Election Day, and it brings Democrats’ average over-performance (vs. 2024) to 11.7 points (hat tip to the Twitter User Ethan C7, who tracked this data). That’s slightly higher than their over-performance in 2017-2018. In 2018, we had a D+7 national environment. So this over-performance number fits with a slightly more blue environment than the one we saw in 2018, which matches my sense of things from numerous other data points.

That would put a lot of R+low double digit seats into play, even if Democrats probably won’t win most of them in the end. And it’s absolutely an environment in which control of the Senate is a toss up.

In Pennsylvania, I’d lean toward Democrats picking up three U.S. House seats, and knocking off Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, maybe the most moderate Republican in Congress, isn’t out of the question. Democrats also have a real shot at their first legislative trifecta in the state since 1994.

2. One again, the media is touting a massive upset for democratic socialists/the left. And once again, they’re dramatically oversimplifying a story. Yes, DSA member and state representative Angie Nixon upset favorite Alexander Vindman in Florida’s Democratic Senate primary. But there is little sign that it was Nixon’s leftist views that propelled her.

   Rather, by all accounts, Vindman ran a crappy campaign. The first time candidate was outworked, and left most of his money in the bank for a general election campaign that will never be.

   On Tuesday morning — before the election — Axios’s Mark Caputo wrote, “Democrats' consensus view is that likely nominee Alex Vindman has run such a lackluster campaign that he may come uncomfortably close to his underfunded left-wing opponent, state Rep. Angie Nixon.”

After the election, operative Steve Schale, as a smart a Democratic voice as there is when it comes to Florida politics, wrote,

Angie Nixon won because she flat hustled. Much has been made of the money difference, but in reality, these were two candidates who had virtually no statewide presence. Neither candidate was spending enough to build a statewide brand, and in the end, the candidate who put more effort into it personally won.

And the New York Times chimed in with a story that recounted blunders by Vindman and his wife during the campaign.

Finally, as journalist Eric Michael Garcia observed, Nixon did exceptionally well in heavily Black areas, suggesting that her race may have helped more than her leftist ideology. In other races around the country, Black voters have tended to lean against socialist candidates, but in the wake of the demolition of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court and subsequent moves by Republican legislators to eliminate Black representation, African American voters in the South have shown up at the polls in droves and strongly favored Nixon.

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Other Florida results offered even more evidence that it’s wrong to conclude from the Senate race that socialism is ascendant in the Democratic Party: moderate, former-Republican David Jolly won the Democratic gubernatorial primary in the state and he got more votes than Nixon did. Additionally, Rep. Jared Moskowitz smoked his left-wing challenger 63.5%-36.5%.

Sometimes, therefore, a result isn’t about ideology. It’s about campaign quality, shoe leather, and more.

Having Nixon on the ticket might hurt Democratic candidates down ballot in South Florida, where socialism is anathema to the large Cuban community. Yet, it also might juice turnout among young voters, left-wing voters, and Black voters, and therefore help Jolly and Democratic House candidates in competitive races.

Additionally, it might help Democrats in another way: Florida is an enormously expensive state to compete in. And Vindman was going to raise a lot of money because of his role in the first impeachment of Donald Trump. Now, that money can flow toward other more winnable races (Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, even South Carolina) in places where running a top notch campaign is far cheaper.

3. In bright red Wyoming, the state’s legislative Freedom Caucus, which had controlled the state house, got massacred on Tuesday night. It lost control of the state house to less right wing conservatives, and suffered setbacks elsewhere. Additionally, President Trump’s endorsed gubernatorial candidate lost to the preferred choice of outgoing Gov. Mark Gordon.

It’s a sign that even Republican primary voters (in a state where the primary basically decides who wins most races) are tiring of extremist verbal-bomb throwers who care more about fighting culture war battles than governance. I don’t want to overstate the implications, given that most of the winning candidates were conservatives, not moderates or liberals. But it’s a win for governance and focusing on local issues, at the expense of turning everything into part of a national political war.

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4. I am hesitant to draw sweeping conclusions from Alaska’s Senate primary results, because we only have a limited history with this electoral system — and more importantly, 20% of the vote is outstanding. Yet, it’s hard to see the results as anything other than a good sign for Democrat Mary Peltola. Currently, she has 48% of the vote to Senator Dan Sullivan’s 42.8%. Even if one thinks that most of the votes cast for the other Dan Sullivan on the ballot were people trying to vote for the Senator, he’d still be down 3+ points.

Now, as my friend Sean Trende and others have pointed out, Peltola got an outright majority of the vote in her 2024 House primary, before losing by two points in November. So this is far from a guarantee that she’ll beat Sullivan in November.

But it’s yet another sign that the enthusiasm is with Democrats, and it’s a singularly unimpressive showing for a two term incumbent senator. If I was redoing my race ratings today, I’d strongly think about moving this race to the pure toss up category (at least if Peltola’s lead holds or expands when all of the votes are counted).

5. It’s time to tighten disclosure requirements and devise other tools to limit meddling in primaries to get weak candidates into general elections. In Alaska’s House race, it appears as if a candidate serving a 20-year prison sentence who has never set foot in the state is going to be one of the top four candidates who advances to the general election after a Super PAC boosted him, presumably to weaken the independent challenging Rep. Nick Begich III.

Both parties have increased their meddling in the other party’s primaries in recent years. And it’s confusing and misleading to voters, and elevates extremists.

A Fox News poll (they’re a good pollster despite the network’s fiercely right-wing ideological slant) last week ignited another round of handwringing and debate among Democrats, because it showed firebrand Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed trailing Republican Mike Rogers by four points, even as Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson was up five points.

While it’s only one poll, and El-Sayed should still be favored given the building Democratic wave (more on that in the Senate rankings below), it’s clear that his brand of politics repels voters who otherwise would favor a Democrat. While many commentators will argue that El Sayed’s victory is reflective of the left surging in popularity, in truth it more reflects a broken electoral system.

El Sayed captured 48.5% of the vote, while his more moderate opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens, won 47.5%. The remainder went to Mallory McMorrow, who had dropped out of the race weeks before the primary.

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The result exposes two problems with our nominating systems: first, many states have neither runoffs, nor ranked choice voting. That means candidates like El Sayed can win primaries with less than a majority of the vote. That’s anti-democratic, and it often undermines primary voters’ top goal, which is winning in November.

The problem with this type of system was even more starkly evident in a few other key primaries over the last two weeks than it was in the Michigan Senate race, where at least El-Sayed got close to half of the vote.

Wisconsin Democrats barely avoided imperiling the state’s governorship (and the potential for their first trifecta in years). Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong came within 3,796 votes of winning, even though she only captured 39.4% of the vote. A multi-candidate field meant that no one got to 40%, and a few thousand more votes would’ve landed Hong the nomination despite more than 60% of the primary voters opting for non-socialist candidates.

Meanwhile, in Michigan’s 7th congressional district, a fiercely contested swing seat, Democratic chances dimmed when progressive activist William Lawrence beat two more moderate candidates in the primary. Yet, Lawrence only won 43.7% of the vote. The problem was that his two moderate opponents spent the campaign attacking each other and almost evenly split the other 56.3% of the vote.

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Such an outcome is inexcusable, given the advent of ranked choice voting. In a ranked choice system, Lawrence almost certainly would’ve lost on the second ballot because most of the supporters of Matt Maasdam, the moderate who finished third, would have chosen Bridget Brink, the moderate who finished second, as their second choice.

The result would have been more democratic, because it would have reflected the will of the majority of primary voters, not just a plurality. Additionally, it would’ve offered Democrats a far better chance of winning the seat — the top priority for most Democratic voters in the district.

Ranked choice voting is better than run off elections, because they’re expensive to run and turnout tends to plummet. Even so, run offs are better than letting candidates win nominations despite being opposed by the majority of voters in their party — sometimes a strong majority.

The low turnout in run offs brings us to the other systemic problem that benefitted El-Sayed. Michigan’s Senate primary actually featured the highest turnout for a midterm Democratic primary since 2002. Sounds good, right? Yet, despite this “huge” turnout, only 18% of registered voters voted. Nationally turnout is even worse in congressional primaries: 7% in 2024.

The abysmal turnout in primaries favors more extreme candidates, who excite passionate base voters. Analysis of Catalist voter file data for 2024 found that 53% of Americans identify as either conservative or liberal, while 47% of the voting public identifies as moderate. Yet, in primaries that year, conservatives and liberals constituted 89% of voters, while moderates only made up 11% of the electorate.

In swing states and districts, this disparity can cost parties an election, because they nominate candidates like El-Sayed who repel the vast majority of voters who don’t show up for primaries.

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Additionally, the gap is awful for the country, because it produces a Congress far more extreme than the country writ large — and one that is gridlocked and dysfunctional as well. Especially in the wake of geographic polarization and extreme gerrymandering, many members of Congress only have to worry about primaries, so it makes sense to avoid alienating more extreme voters in the name of legislating. Even those moderate in inclination must be wary of losing their next primary.

What can be done? The best choice might be a system like the one currently in use in Alaska: the top four candidates in an all party primary advance to the November ballot, and then voters rank those candidates in order of preference. It’s how moderate Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski beat a more conservative challenger in 2022: supporters of Democrat Patricia Chesbro ranked Murkowski second, and when Chesbro was eliminated, their votes pushed the senator over 50%.

As the good government party, Democrats should be pushing for such a system, because it’s better for the country. But they should also prefer this kind of system because it’s good for the party.

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This summer’s primary fights, and the left’s relative success, will only spawn additional leftist challengers that risk fumbling away seats — as Republicans have been doing for 15 years. Of note, Florida Democratic Representative Jared Moskowitz faces a far left primary challenger on Tuesday in a newly gerrymandered district that President Trump won by nine points in 2024. The moderate Moskowitz might have a shot of holding the seat in a strong Democratic year (the district is fairly evenly split among Democrats, Republicans, and independents). A far left Democrat almost certainly won’t.

Likely to flip:

1. North Carolina: there isn’t much to say about this race. Democratic former governor Roy Cooper is up by 9.5 points in one polling average, and 8.7 points in another. While the race will probably tighten, in a state just left of the nation, Cooper is in excellent shape in an environment that will favor Democrats.

Slight lean toward flipping:

1. Maine: Senator Susan Collins has proved exceedingly difficult for Democrats to unseat, despite no Republican winning the state at the presidential level since George H.W. Bush in 1988. Yet, Collins has only run in one truly awful year for Republicans: 2008, when ticket splitting was much more common (Republicans held both Senate seats in the state at the time).

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The death of Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) at the age of 71 on Saturday stunned the political world. After all, by the standards of the geriatric Senate, Graham had been a spring chicken, with few signs of slowing down.

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