American Politics Today Chapter Summaries

The first seven chapters of the textbook, American Politics Today, are discussing topics ranging from civil liberties, federalism, and the media. It goes into great detail about how the United States political world really operates. It gives examples of past and present topics in American politics. The first seven chapters of the textbook all together give you a great introduction to American Politics. Chapter one is basically the introduction to American Politics and Government. The chapter dwells upon why we actually need government. Chapter one goes into detail about how separation of powers and checks and balances keeps the government in check. It’s a very good introduction chapter. Chapter one also discusses how Liberals and Conservatives

It describes how the Articles of Confederation’s downfall helped spark new ideas for the current constitution. The most interesting thing about the constitution was the fight between the antifederalists and the federalists. Both of the groups felt like their ideals should’ve been represented within the constitution. Gilderlehrman.org states “Federalists’ beliefs could be better described as nationalist. The Federalists were instrumental in 1787 in shaping the new US Constitution, which strengthened the national government at the expense, according to the Antifederalists, of the states and the people. The Antifederalists opposed the ratification of the US Constitution, but they never organized efficiently across all thirteen states…” The Federalists ultimately won and helped strengthen the national government after the Articles of Confederation

The textbook discusses how there is a primary in each election and then a general election. The primaries are between parties to see who will represent each party in the general election. The textbooks also talk about how campaigns try to get funded and how they’re set up. Presidential elections are all about winning the electoral vote. So presidential candidates mainly only campaign really hard in a certain few key states. Pewresearch.org wrote “Donald Trump won 304 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton’s 227, with five Democratic and two Republican “faithless electors” voting for other people. That result was despite the fact that Clinton received nearly 2.9 million more popular votes than Trump in November’s election, according to Pew Research Center’s tabulation of state election results.” This just goes to show that the Electoral College is the main thing that matters when it comes to Presidential elections. Donald Trump did not even win the popular vote, but because of the states he did win, he is president. Some may say that we need to reform the Electoral College but at the current moment it is the best option we