Plus, a substantial minority of white people don't care what happens to them as long as it happens worse to black people.
It says it's looking at impact of inequality on Democratic share of the House, which implies the analytic unit is the country as a whole, which makes me wonder how complex a model they had to build to draw meaning. Lottttta collinearity. (Why not compare by inequality within individual congressional seats, or at least states?)
My first reaction to OP is that you got some balls on you. You thought the Iraq war was a good idea, and now you think you know what's wrong with US politics?
Der Spiegal has a take: "The Democratic Party Opened the Way for Trump" https://www.spiegel.de/consent-a-?targetUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Finternational%2Fworld%2Fharvard-philosopher-michael-sandel-on-the-trump-phenomenon-a-1c97a86a-0e55-484f-ac39-90ec55ff39f8&ref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nakedcapitalism.com%2F2020%2F09%2Flinks-9-25-2020.html
I think it is easy to show that voting Republican increases inequality. It don't prove much though. Voting for Democrats also increases inequality. So what's a poor bigot with rage issues supposed to do?
It really is playing politics on easy mode, as British people say about the Tories. We also know that the Republican platform is that the government is incompetent and corrupt, so when they take over the government and make it incompetent and corrupt it benefits them. And the police (now an extension of the Republicans, though this wasn't true a couple decades ago) always believe that they benefit politically when there's crime and unrest, either directly because they are still widely trusted, or indirectly as a way of holding the mayor hostage, so they have the constant temptation to spread propaganda about how there is crime and unrest everywhere. Or make no effort to control real crime and unrest. Or just create it themselves.
And as happens worldwide, not just in places obsessed with anti-government theorizing: make people's lives worse, and they feel they need to fight with each other instead of feeling generous.
I think it is easy to show that voting Republican increases inequality. It don't prove much though. Voting for Democrats also increases inequality
No, it doesn't.
How can you use events back to 1913 and make statements about Democrat power share? There been a huge amount of sorting and shifting of positions between the parties in the last 100+ years.
Do a quick google search on black household wealth during the Obama administration. https://jacobinmag.com/2017/12/obama-foreclosure-crisis-wealth-inequality
Between 2007 and 2016, the average wealth of the bottom 99 percent dropped by $4,500.
Gee, strange stat range to pick when Obama was in office 2009-2017. Wonder if anything unusual happened to the economy in 2008.
Blame him for not doing enough to fix it- HAMP was a shitshow because of Summers and Geithner- but don't blame him for causing it.
That's just repeating Republican propaganda. Yes, Obama was bad for the poor if you count 2007, when the economy collapsed and Obama was not president.
The Obama presidency was a disaster for middle-class wealth in the United States. Between 2007 and 2016, the average wealth of the bottom 99 percent dropped by $4,500.
Jesus. Between 2007 and 2016.
I suppose Obama was president in 2001 as well which is why 9/11 was his fault?
You have so little respect for people here that you post articles with that sort of stupidity in the first line?
Obama seems like a hundred years ago. This has been a really long four years.
Do a quick google search on black household wealth during the Obama administration
Make me a sandwich.
Also, twenty years ago today, and still nobody has topped this dunk. Thanks, Democrats.
Now make me one with everything.
You're one of those people who thinks a hot dog is a sandwich?
The joke "What's brown and sticky?" is a tired one around this house. ("A stick") But I thought I was very funny for making fish sticks for dinner and announcing we're having something brown and sticky for dinner.
4 I haven't read much of it, but the assertion that HRC's use of the term 'deplorables' shows an arrogance towards the les educated is straight up bad faith. She was referring to the troll subset of the Trump movement, and absolutely said as much.
Related to "their" motivations, my book club is considering reading Hochschild's Strangers in Their Own Land. I searched the archives and found people saying it was okay, much better than Hillbilly Elegy, but also dj lurker saying Hochschild "became a troll" at some point. Any idea what that was in reference to?
Didn't Halford regularly suggest the the University of Chicago should be nuked or struck by an asteroid?
24: False!
Instead of burning it to the ground and salting the earth in Hyde Park, I might leave the University of Chicago standing as an utterly defaced ruin, so that all may know of its destruction. The gallows holding the libertarians will certainly be up for a while regardless. I dunno, we'll see what happens.
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_13490.html#1658817
'Taxes are too high' is a pitch that resonates pretty far down the scale -- and my ex-recto sociological view on this is that unlike racism (eg cmt 2) a whole lot of people in the middle and lower do not say 'I don't mind paying more, so long as the rich pay a lot more' but deal with the question as 'I don't have enough money, and having the government take more of it is going to be worse for me.' Add in the inextricable racism/classism part -- they're going to take more from me to spend on 'those people' -- and you get Republican consistently polling better on the economy, even in the midst of collapse.
And while relitigating the 1992 election is surely more tiresome than even 2016, I'll say I've never seen anything that suggests to me that Bill Clinton wasn't right about the compromises he had to make in order to win. We're that shitty a country, as Ronald Reagan demonstrated conclusively in 1984.
We're getting better as generations die out (especially mine), I like to think, but we, like the rest of humanity, are probably always going to have a weakness for snake oil.
I think in the rush to mock Roger's 10, people have unfairly overlooked how stupid Roger's 4 is.
I think 10 is stupider than 4.
As if what's meant by the kind of "inequality" that causes white people to feel more threatened and vote for Republicans is "black people not getting ahead".
I saw it! It's a good start! But there's a whole lot more that could be said about that Der Spiegel piece. I mean, the whole thesis that working class people voted for Trump is reliant on: 1.) ignoring minority working class people and 2.) ignoring better-educated working class people.
The idea that the less well-off are resentful of the way the wealthy dominate society and therefore voted for Trump -- and will vote for him again -- well, it seems to me that there is an obvious problems with that thesis.
The real working class are people with boats that cost as much as my house.
Like always, it needs to be clear whether someone is talking about people who always vote Republican, or people who switched from Obama to Trump.
22: they're also saying she told Biden not to concede the election. She did say not to concede that night and to make sure that all of the votes were counted first. Meanwhile, Trump is threatening not to transfer power if he loses, because the mail in ballots are bad.
34: So okay, now we have to discount Republicans when we talk about why Trump was able to finish a fairly strong second among voters in the 2016 election.
Fine. But if you actually ask the Obama-Trump voters about their attitudes, it turns out you still find that economic anxiety wasn't the issue.
better-educated working class people
And non- or partially-college-educated elites - car dealers and aspirants.
Now I have like three reasons to hate buying a car.
I have no short-form thoughts on voter motivation or utilitarian dismissals of the virtues of reading an interview with Michael Sandel, so I'll just share this short piece of access journalism: no real difference between kidding and not kidding, just as truth is meaningless. It's all about power and will, and a great deal of power belongs to Trump's apparently inexhaustible stream of enablers.
Meanwhile, people are suffering invisibly:
Spent 36 hours on r/unemployment, which has seen 2,000 new subscribers in the last week. It's impossible to capture the despair and brokenness there, as the country focuses elsewhere, hunger "like the beak of a terrible bird at the vitals" . . . Anyone with the instinct to shame non-voters needs this context. People can't pay for gas, or internet, or cell phones to look up their poll info. People can't feed their children. They are selling their plasma.
I admit I'm feeling a bit "JFC, who cares about elegant formulations of political dysfunction?" right now.
26. So he was more lenient than I remembered!
26 reads as open to multiple scenarios.
40 I don't think anyone is judging that actually unable. As opposed the theatrically unwilling.
Bree Newsome Bass is tweeting about this today: of course voting isn't enough, but come the fuck on people, this one really matters.
43: within my family there's the perennial conversation about Why Milwaukee Voters Don't Show Up -- as a class -- and this year, dire circumstances are probably germane to that. But I didn't mean to imply that criticism of nonvoters was unwarranted.
That said, that article I linked the other day about the blockwalking gap in Florida really spooked me. Is it accurate? If that alleged calculus about how they'd get more shit for Covid hypocrisy if they went door-to-door than they'd get voter registrations is an accurate reflection of the situation... that really, really sucks.
It definitely is true that Democratic campaigns are mostly avoiding door-knocking this cycle while Republicans aren't. This is partly to avoid hypocrisy charges, but there is also some polling showing that voters are legitimately concerned about the COVID risks of people knocking on their doors, and anecdotally I've found that this is a concern among potential volunteers as well. There's no mandate from the Biden campaign not to do it, though, and some local candidates are still knocking. Those that aren't are still doing lots of phone calls and leaving flyers on doors (while wearing gloves!). The registration drive concern in Florida seems to be a local dynamic and I'm not sure how to adjudicate what the different people quoted by Politico are saying about it.
Also, re: 23 m, I would also appreciate knowing what the troll references for Hoschild are because it was on my list.
There's been a theory in certain political-data circles for a few years, picked up by some pundits like Yglesias, that door-knocking is an inefficient use of resources that should be redirected to phone-banking and/or paid advertising. This theory probably has little or no role in the actual shift away from door-knocking this cycle, but it will turn out to be a sort of natural experiment to test its validity. I haven't looked deeply into any of the data that allegedly support the theory, but to the extent that it's presented as a trade-off between door-knocking and phone-banking it seems a little unmoored from reality to me; I've never seen a campaign before this year that didn't invest heavily in both.
I think there's going to be a big jump in deaths after the election regardless of campaigning and balloting. Restrictions are being lifted and people pressured to behave as if Covid isn't an issue in an attempt to boost the economy. It takes a few weeks to get a good run going in the less vulnerable and then a couple to jump to the very vulnerable and then a couple of weeks for them to start dying.
People like doing one or the other, IME. I like door knocking better, and will start soon. I can't imagine that the Biden campaign would have told people not to do whatever it takes to register voters -- that sort of thing isn't in their remit. What they might have done is decline a request for funding, but I'd be surprised if they told anyone outside the campaign itself not to do it.
A state district court here just enjoined our voter-adopted ballot collection law* -- restricting who can collect people's ballots and turn them in -- as an unconstitutional infringement of the rights of Natives living on reservations. I suppose our Republican Secretary of State will appeal, but I can't imagine he'll get a reversal. The district court decision looks like a very thorough application of the law to the facts.
* Put on the ballot for voter suppression purposes by our Republican legislature. It won handily because 'security' sounds good to voters. It failed strict scrutiny because it's 'a solution in search of a problem' -- or. more correctly, the problem it was designed to solve is too many poor and Native people voting too easily,not non-existent ballot handling fraud.
Here's my new nightmare fuel in case anyone wants to debunk it.
51 Without looking state by state, I think it's not just common but maybe even universal that states have statutes that determine how electors are selected. To me, that means that if they'd need the governor to go along with a change. This shrinks the number of states that can do this.
I think also that a lot of people are way overblowing the length of time it would/will take to resolve election disputes. There's a hard deadline for states to resolve presidential election disputes (Dec 8, 2020) and the various court systems are going to be very stringent on timelines. The burden is going to be on the challenger to the county canvas to get evidence and prove his case on that timeline. Trump will wave his arms and jump up and down, but his lawyers are going to have to have specific mailed-in ballots to object to, and present their very quickly.
I door knocked for Dean in NH in 2004, but I went up with a bunch of friends I had been volunteering with. I used to like phone banking ok when you went to a place with a bunch of phones, and they gave you free coffee.
As it happens, I just now played a voter answering the door in some b-roll footage that the campaign for the Dem candidate in my state house district was shooting. So there's one data point of a campaign that at least wants people to think they're knocking on doors. (I don't know to what extent they actually are.)
Bring your A game to the B roll by method acting. Think how Daniel Day Lewis would insist on using a real door instead of saving money with CGI.
Rest assured that we used a real door.
Wow. Absolutely stunning, enraging video of Bob Woodward condescendingly interrupting and belittling a professional journalist (Karen K. Ho of Quartz) who asked him which health experts he had consulted before deciding not to release Trump's comments on Covid until his book came out. She's very clear that it's an ethics question and he's just madder and madder that she dares to question him.
Something I think is funny about this sitiuation; in the last thread everyone was able to acknowledge that life is inexorably sucking worse for the later arrivals all the time. There was basically no controversy about it. But because people feel the need to defend their team at all costs; any statement that points out that this process continues during Democratic administrations has to be attacked.
I don't think pointing out that Obama wasn't inaugurated until 2009 counts as defending at all costs.
In conclusion, time is a river but not the kind of river that people can make go backwards do that Chicago smells better.
Or so that boats can go to St. Louis, if that was the first reason.
59. Damn shame when the facts don't support the narrative.
59: Not "any statement." Just dumb ones. Specific, factual objections have been raised to your nonsense that you decline to answer.
Democrats, as a group, have taken direct steps to ameliorate the problems the nitwit in 4 is unhappy about. In this, the Democrats have uniformly been opposed by Republicans. The electorate knows this, which is why voters who are concerned about those problems vote for Democrats.
The reason you misunderstand the "team" thing is that you won't distinguish unthinking support for a "team" with conscious membership in a "political coalition." I am part of a political coalition. Sometimes that coalition makes choices I don't agree with. I complain about that. Often, it just loses. I complain about that, too. Here's what I don't do: I don't reject the coalition; I don't deny the need to build coalitions; and I don't pretend that a voting majority of Americans can be formed whose members are in lockstep with my opinions.
The nomination of Joe Biden (which I opposed) directly addresses the actual issues -- not the pretend issues -- that caused some voters to abandon the Democratic coalition. The desire of Democrats to address those concerns -- to broaden the real-world coalition -- is, I suspect, what put Joe over the top. I don't much like it, but the truth is, my views in some cases can't even command a voting majority of Democrats, much less attain the supermajority of Americans that is necessary for liberals to govern. So I join a coalition.
Update: Our state senator just knocked on our door.
Ours always runs fast enough that we don't know who left the flaming bag of poop.
65:. Did you see who it was, and pretend no one was home?
It just dawned on me that we've had this conversation before. Bob McManus used to argue that Obama had been terrible for black people and he once cited exactly that Jacobin article in support. And got the piss taken out of him for exactly the same reason - that you can't start counting in 2007!
67: Not deliberately, but it took us a while to get to the door so he had started to walk away by the time we opened it.
68: I think so, yes. Sullivan has been running tons of ads recently in a way that suggests that he's legitimately afraid he'll lose. He's been damaged most recently by leaked audio of executives from the company pushing a controversial mining project implying that he tacitly supports them despite his public statements of skepticism. Gross is a strong candidate and it's definitely a real race, though I think Sullivan is still more likely to win. If anyone is interested in donating to individual senate races this is definitely a good one to look at.
Tom Ridge and the Rock have come out for Biden. I hope that helps.
Lots of bad trends continue under Democrats, especially but not exclusively because Republicans actively prevent reversal of course. But only fools vote for Republicans -- or vote/not vote in ways that enable Republicans -- because of that.
71: thank you. I'm a very small dollar donor, like I have Sarah Gideon $25, and I was thinking of giving Jaime Harrison $15. Al Gross was on my list as was the Senate candidate from Iowa. Can't google because my internet is slow. Any progressives who have a chance that you can recommend?
The correct responses to the OP, which evidently has been annoying me for days, are Minivet @ 3, SP @ 9, and 19. McManus posting the Jacobin link would be anachronistic -- he was banned in early 2017, I think. There are substantive claims in the calmer, pseudo-scholarly report underlying the Jacobin article (see pp 7-8 for one set): I'm somewhat skeptical, but they're not risible. (Concluding from that episode that you should just not vote, or whatever, is risible. It's not just Murc's Law, but some further incredibly confused idea about the relationship between presidential administrations and the entire political system down to the city council. But I'll say to Roger directly that I'm not sure I got a coherent point or position out of your comments, which, to your credit, you didn't describe as a "great koan" the contemplation of which would bring enlightenment.)
On the Murc's law front, I saw a comment from a very well meaning lawyer friend re Coney that she was sure that there were plans to prevent the nomination from coming to a vote.
Her appointment is, as C Pierce put it, the Republican Holy Grail. There's no 'one weird trick' that's going to stop it.
On the 'one weird trick' front, I don't suppose it was national news, but one of our federal judges has invalidated the purported acting head of the BLM and all his acts. It takes time for these things to work their way through the legal system, but if the Biden DOJ decides not to defend cases of this type, you have a way to reverse Trump administrative decisions that'll give industry proponents of those decisions less to work with than a new rule-making.
77: I'm guessing (without reading the PDF) that "BLM" means something other than my initial reading of "Black Lives Matter"
<Standpipe>I'm assuming it's Bureau of Land Management</Standpipe>
75- I don't claim I was making a big point. In hindsight I wish I hadn't let Ogged troll me. I think all this is very academic at this point, and even if I were as persuasive as I wish I were it wouldn't make any difference.
I think things have been getting worse for the median American since the 70s. I don't think most people think it matters much which party is in power for their lives. I kind of think they are wrong, but I wish Democrats offered them enough that I could claim their beliefs were ridiculous.
If being in a coalition means something besides voting for Democrats, and occasionally supporting the ones you like with money and volunteering I don't know about it.
Not that I expect it will change many minds, but god, put him on the back foot, please and thank you.
I think that deserves its own thread, but "Summation" is an excellent choice.
It IS ridiculous.
And I don't think that most people fit into a venn diagram that includes all of (a) people who don't think the rights of LGBT people matter; (b) don't think action should be taken on climate change; (c) don't think choice matters; (d) don't think Medicaid expansion is a big deal in the states that did it, and would be a big deal in the Republican states that didn't do it. And a huge part of why people who aren't at the intersection of all these sets think the parties aren't that different is because unprincipled fools keep telling them, despite vast evidence to the contrary, that it doesn't matter.
There are two kinds of people who can't tell the difference between Thurgood Marshall and his successor Clarence Thomas: (1) Kluxxers and (2) the self-proclaimed Left. Even Kluxxers can tell the difference between Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her all-but-certain successor Amy Coney Barrett. The differences between the people in these pairs have huge impacts on the actual lives of most people. Everyone saying that these differences won't matter to regular people is engaging in dishonesty on an epic scale.
McManus posting the Jacobin link would be anachronistic -- he was banned in early 2017, I think
Ah, OK. I have a clear memory of him using the argument and being stepped on repeatedly, though, so maybe he came up with it independently.