Harold Meyerson

Two cheers for the comeback of American manufacturing. Or maybe just one.

The manufacturing sector has experienced a modest renaissance since it hit bottom during the Great Recession. The number of manufacturing jobs is set to rise this year, as it has every year since 2010. Profits are soaring — in 2012, after-tax profits of manufacturing firms hit a record high of $289 billion. Share values have soared with them. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Industrials Index has risen 59 percent more than the overall 500-stock index since 2009, Bloomberg reported last month.

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If you thought this “corporations are people” business was getting out of hand, brace yourself. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court accepted two cases that will determine whether a corporation can deny contraceptive coverage to its female employees because of its religious beliefs.

The cases concern two of the most politically charged issues of recent years: who is exempted from the requirements of the Affordable Care Act, and whether application of the First Amendment’s free speech protections to corporations, established by the court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United, means that the First Amendment’s protections of religious beliefs must also be extended to corporations.

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Better bring some identification — and not just any identification, official though it may be — if you plan to vote in Republican-controlled states. However, if you contribute tens of millions of dollars to sway an election on Republicans’ behalf, the party will fight to keep your identity a secret.

Consider, for instance, what happened to some attempting to participate in this month’s elections in Texas. The New York Times reported that “Judge Sandra Watts was stopped while trying to vote because the name on her photo ID, the same one she had used for voter registration and identification of 52 years, did not exactly match her name in the official voter rolls.”

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The steady stream of Watergate revelations, President Richard Nixon’s twists and turns to fend off disclosures, the impeachment hearings, and finally an unprecedented resignation—all these riveted the nation’s attention in 1974. Hardly anyone paid attention to a story that seemed no more than a statistical oddity: That year, for the first time since the end of World War II, Americans’ wages declined.

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New York–area voters had the opportunity this fall to cast their ballot for one of two Democrats who are divided by more than the Hudson River. Cory Booker, the Newark mayor, whom New Jersey’s electors sent to the U.S. Senate in October, and Bill de Blasio, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, personify two distinct futures for the Democratic Party.

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Senate Republicans say that the cosmic order may soon be torn asunder. In response to the GOP’s recent filibustering of two Obama nominees — particularly, that of Patricia Ann Millett to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — Democrats have threatened to diminish the power of a minority of senators to block confirmations by changing the filibuster rules. Republicans counter that this would, in the words of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), “destroy the very fabric of the United States Senate.”

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