Welcome to Muhlenberg College's FYS 136: Bread, Circuses & American Electoral Politics (in 2014). We are a collection of first year students, a Writing Assistant, and a professor (some happy to belong to this community...others, not so happy), and this is our blog. Just as the Ancient Roman Satirist, Juvenal, worried that Rome's populace was so addicted to mass distraction (bread and circuses) that it ceased to be able to govern themselves, we are embarking on a semester long inquiry to determine what, if anything, the 2014 elections have to do with democracy.

We are not experts on American electoral politics. We are not journalists. We are not partisans. We are not entertainers. We are not professional writers.

We are thinkers and this blog is one of the main spaces where we are going to do some thinking.