Summary: low-information voters will be the death of us all.

Increased turnout helping Trump has been true the whole Trump era, it's why Republicans underperform in midterms now.

I genuinely don't understand what's up with the youngs. Is it TikTok somehow? We're talking about an age group that's 30% queer and only 50% non-Hispanic white.

Stupidity used to be uncorrelated with ideology. That hasn't been true for a while.

Because propaganda works.

That gender gap graph is wild.

How much truth is there to the whole apps + pandemics broke dating narrative?

I wonder if 3 is actually true and how you'd go about proving it. Right now education level correlates well with politics, but it isn't that long since it correlated equally well in the other direction.

"but it isn't that long since it correlated equally well in the other direction"

I really don't think that's true at all, and I'm pretty surprised you think it's true. I wonder whether this is a UK/US difference?

Anyway, here's a graph:
https://images.app.goo.gl/P1hJWTdSg6yaUBrW9

What was true in the US was that education correlates with income, and income used to correlate with conservatism, but when you correct for income then education went the other way. What's happened is that income has become less strongly correlated with voting, so you remove that cross-cutting effect.

Ah, that graph doesn't go back far enough. You have a point if you go back to the 70s:

https://images.app.goo.gl/oMaQ44ppDQTDyaqF6

6: You can read Phil Converse if you want the details. He puts it less certainly and more politely. When he was older, he looked at little bit like Colonel Sanders. You need to separate political ideology and political party though. Education used to correlate positively with Republican Party membership, not so much with conservative ideology (even as it existed then).

But education level isn't, or isn't necessarily, correlated with stupidity, depending on how you define "stupidity". Education level correlates well with ignorance, I would think, but that isn't quite the same thing as stupidity.

20-year olds, or people in their twenties? It would be irresponsible to say anything about the former, you can't possibly get a big enough sample size.

I can't access the link; something with my work firewall doesn't like foreign country TLDs.

11: They measured political knowledge and the like.

I'm struck by the amazing level of ignorance among some of my immediate age-group peers and the use of words like "woke" as if they were some kind of magic word. These are educated people in their late 40s and early 50s that I know to be fairly intelligent, and who aren't personally malicious, but I'm shocked at how easily they recite what were fringe right-wing talking points centred strongly around US politics, and take them on board as if they apply in the UK. They'll cite all kinds of fucking evil policy positions as "good" if they are sold to them as somehow combating the scourge of "woke" even thought they couldn't coherently define what "woke" is if you held a gun to their heads.

I'm pretty sure that social media and the pernicious and far-reaching influence of propaganda is to blame.

I don't think anyone tried to measure actual stupid. "Low information", as in the OP, was the main thing assessed.

15: ah, makes sense.

Interesting and relevant:
https://www.deadcarl.com/p/the-kaiser-and-a-mediocre-man-theory

Wilhelm, far from being a mere "shadow emperor" succeeded in centralizing power following his accession. While not a traditional autocracy, his power over personnel and the need for royal assent ensured the Kaiser's ability to shape policy. Germany's constitution made it particularly susceptible to this kind of "personal rule."... Wilhelm was to rule out candidates on the basis that they weren't tall enough to cut an impressive figure. In fact, the Younger Moltke owed his appointment to Chief of the General Staff less to his famous name, and more to his personal friendship with Wilhelm and his conformity with what the Kaiser thought a soldier ought to look like.

This power had extreme effects on the behavior of Germany's ruling bureaucrats and officers. To incur the Kaiser's displeasure meant the end of a career. As such, those that attained influence at court were those who could judge which topics were safe to broach in front of his majesty. There was no question of discussing harsh truths.

Wilhelm certainly brought Europe closer to the precipice of war through his actions and rhetoric, yet he was far from the warmongering brute often imagined. In fact, the Kaiser was far more peaceably inclined than many of his advisors, particularly Chief of the General Staff Moltke (the Younger) and War Minister Falkenhayn who strongly pressed for "war, the sooner the better." Wilhelm, in keeping with the theme of mediocrity, was thoroughly ambivalent. At times, he raged, declaring his desire to crush Germany's enemies. During the Boxer rebellion, he ordered Beijing to be razed in revenge for murdered German dignitaries. He was convinced to rescind this order, which is illustrative of the manner in which he was given to flights of fancy and malicious rage. When he spoke to foreign representatives or even the foreign press, he expressed the most fervent desires for cooperation and cordial relations. But the moment he felt slighted, particularly by the English, he seethed, calling for a humbling war.

I had a thought about the whole "DEI" thing. I was thinking about the "people want an angry moderate" thing, and I was thinking that I get that, I'm angry. And who am I angry at? The leadership class. All the college presidents who somehow all get raises and all do the same thing as each other. And what was that leadership class doing from like 2015-2023? Well a lot of it was kinda weird emails about DEI stuff. I'm still not sure why the college presidents group text decided that was the main priority, and I don't think it's because they actually cared about DEI, but it is what happened. Similar with corporate emails.

Which all makes me wonder whether the sudden overt rightward turn among the leadership class will cause a big backlash?

I hadn't even heard of the term "DEI" until the election last year. And I get Juneteenth off as a paid holiday.

they couldn't coherently define what "woke" is if you held a gun to their heads

In the US*, they would eventually stammer out that it mostly just means black, with a garnish of LGBTQ for plausible deniability.

*Guns to heads being decidedly less metaphorical.

I thought David Shor was on the good liberal shitlist post SBF? Like this and this.

I think 19 is overly simplistic. Like pronouns in bios is mostly cis straight people doing it. Also it's not like DEI hiring preferences aren't a real thing. We had 8 year stretch where the rule was we could only hire women (punctuated by one year where we had one position that was open and another only for women). Like the (male) dean wrote in all caps to our (female) chair that "in no circumstances will you be able to hire a man." At one point he said we wouldn't be able to make a two body offer to a woman's trailing spouse unless they got legally married because he was worried they'd break up and we'd end up with just the guy.

Now, did we need to hire women? Yes. (And to put my money where my mouth is, the only woman we hired in that time period was my candidate.) But all of this is blatantly illegal, but it's what got you attention in the leadership class then. (Not that they were actually helpful in actually making the hiring work, the point is the browbeating being leadership, and finding ways to cut faculty.)

Sure, there are always kernels of truth and examples to point to. But there's also a nearly straight line that runs through "DEI" to "CRT" to "woke" etc etc back to "busing" and "states rights" and probably beyond. My perspective might be colored by provincialism, but I generally hear the same people make the same arguments against each new season's bête noire.

Throughline from bleeding-heart to PC to DEI, always trying to make it seem like something new and ominous.

There's obviously some element of that, especially if you focus on demographics where that thread does in fact continue. But I don't think Trump's significant popularity relative to other conservatives among recent immigrants, hispanics, and conservative Black people is part of that.

I thought David Shor was on the good liberal shitlist post SBF?

I'm sure that I haven't paid attention to all of the criticisms of Shor, but my impression is that (1) he is knowledgeable and a useful source of information (2) his perspective is that political professionals should often be more humble and produce a strategy aimed at the electorate-as-it-is rather than trying to figure out a strategy to form public opinion. I think the latter perspective is worth keeping in mind, but there are good reasons to not only think of politics in that way.

As far as the linked article, I thought it provided more detail but generally matched what I have seen elsewhere.

But like a lot really did change relatively quickly in the *6 year* period that includes legalization of gay marriage, me too, and BLM. It's not just the same old, same old.

re: 19.1

Some kind of low-lying racism is probably a factor, although at least one of the little friendship group I am thinking of is black, and the group in general is pretty diverse in background, and several are either immigrants or married to immigrants. This is urban London.

The T part in LGBTQ is definitely a factor, though. I've explicitly heard nonsensical ranting about the "trans" agenda that is a mixture of US driven culture war politics and UK centric Rowling/TERF shit and completely unrelated to any actual facts.

Sure, everyone's a little racist, and I don't deny that racism is playing some role here. That said, unless you're highly educated you probably don't think being a little racist is a bad thing, as long as you're not like the bad kind of racist. And it really is true that old-school overt racism has wildly declined! Black conservatives are genuinely accepted by other conservatives. *Both* the songs that have spent the longest time at number 1 on the Hot 100 are country songs by Black artists.

I think 19 is oversimplistic, and that kind of oversimplistic thinking is short-circuiting actually thinking about the problems.

I've learned that "LGB" or "LGBT" work better in chanting than "LGBTQ" or "LGBTQX".

I mean, I've said it before, and I'll say it again. My baby brother is a Black republican, and he hangs out at biker bars and cop bars in rural PA with zero problems. That's a massively different world from the 1990s.

*Both* the songs that have spent the longest time at number 1 on the Hot 100 are country songs by Black artists.

I really doubt they enjoying entertainment from black singers precludes even old school overt racism. Which may have declined or not, but it's certainly not the immediate firing offense it was twenty years ago.

Not in country. Hootie was literally the second Black person to become a member of the Grand Old Opry in 100 years.

And I get Juneteenth off as a paid holiday.

Not anymore.

(I assume.)

But like a lot really did change relatively quickly in the *6 year* period that includes legalization of gay marriage, me too, and BLM. It's not just the same old, same old.

This is kind of a disingenuous collection, since two of those are partially backlash to Trump, who was himself backlash to Obama. It's not a steady linear procession to be wokier and wokier.

33: It's still on the calendar.

The story that I would tell in response to your question is that in this election, voters trusted Republicans way more than Democrats on all of the most important issues, but they also bought into this idea that Donald Trump was a terrible person who couldn't be trusted with power. That's what made the election close.

This paragraph gets at something that often bugs me about polling and commentary on polls, namely, uncertainty about how it should all be interpreted, both by us and by the people being polled.

For example, I trust Republicans on abortion, in the sense that they're reliably bad. Given that a Republican is facing a choice about abortion, I'm confident they'll pick the worse option. Given that a Democrat is facing a choice about abortion, they're more likely to pick the better option, but it's far from reliable. Maybe this is an issue they're willing to triangulate on, maybe they're a Catholic or come from a Catholic district, maybe they'd be good on some abortion questions but they've got a wonky legalistic disagreement about this one, who knows? Whereas you can trust a Republican to fuck it up as thoroughly as possible. So I don't know if I'd my understanding of that question would match that of the pollster or the reader of an article about it.

Or from shortly before the "angry moderate" line, "voters cared a lot more about delivering change than preserving institutions." I cared about change partly because it would increase the odds of Democrats winning, therefore preserving institutions.

Sorry if I'm not engaging with the recommendations or messages of the article more, but I'm not sure what they are. The article ends with "at least until 2026, it's mostly going to depend on what Republicans do," in which case, no shit.

I'm also somewhat skeptical of the whole "backlash to Obama" theory. Like, that's why Trump ran, but I don't think it accounts for much beyond that. First of all, there's always a backlash to every president, especially in midterms. Secondly, Obama would have thrashed Trump if it weren't for term limits. Thirdly, Biden would have thrashed Trump if he'd been the nominee. Finally, Trump got less of the vote in 2016 than Romney did in 2012. People liked Obama, they didn't like Hillary Clinton, and even she won the popular vote easily.

I get 11 or 12 paid holidays. Plus over 5 weeks of PTO. It's pretty nice.

Also, the hard right turn of rural areas happened in every developed country at around the same time, whether they had their first Black president or not.

29 is prosodically true, but the "LGB" acronym by itself has become a TERFy rallying cry for 27.3 reasons and is all the more alarming on federal websites.

Sorry if I'm not engaging with the recommendations or messages of the article more, but I'm not sure what they are.

I don't know that the article has many recommendations (except that it's important to figure out how to connect to young voters), but it does just offer information. It offers quite a bit of detail about how people voted in 2024. For that reason I found it interesting.

My theories are:

1) Racism has substantially decreased and so has decrease salience among minority voters, leading to a move of conservative minorities towards the Republicans, and especially US voting patterns among Latin voters looking more like the rest of Latin America.

2) Everywhere rural areas are going hard right, with the basic driver being that the 09 recession completely ended the economic viability of rural areas (which was already on the decline for a number of reasons, somewhat related to "globalization", but more nuanced), and people are looking for something to blame, and far right media is filling that void.

3) High education voters, especially high education women and men in good relationships, are moving left, with the basic driver being gender politics.

4) Everywhere incumbent parties lost due to inflation. The Democrats actually held on much better than most, because the Biden administration did an unusually good job of managing inflation. That combined with an unpopular opponent, meant we lost in a close election rather than the more typical collapse.

Also 3b, this is counterbalanced somewhat by divorced and never-dated men, moving right for the same reason.

My theory about rural areas is that everyone educated moved to Omaha or Lincoln or Souix Falls over the past forty years and the rural areas turned into cultural deserts. Every small town used to have multiple doctors, lawyers, and other professionals. But those people moved to cities and make the rural people drive.

I've never been to Souix Falls, but I can assure you that it's much nicer living in Lincoln or Omaha than rural areas.

Absolutely 44 is a big part of what's going on. Combine that with the decline of "regional" retail (regional banks, regional grocery stores, etc.) and most cities smaller than Souix Falls that once had a business headquartered there don't anymore.

My grandfather owned a camera store in a town built around the Rubbermaid headquarters. His brother was a VP at regional bank. There's no longer camera stores. Rubbermaid was bought by "Newell Brands" and moved the HQ to Atlanta in 2003. If I have the right regional bank, it was sold (after 130 years!) in the 2000s to a larger bank in Cleveland and then again to an even larger bank in Pittsburgh. What good jobs are left?

At least they're lucky enough to have a college, so the town hasn't completely died. But it's not like a local is going to get a good job at the college.

Er, my dad's brother, not my grandfather's brother.

12. Yes, twenties, not twenty.

20. He may be objectionable and moving too fast, but I read this as both substantive and thoughtful, similarly his book suggestions.

Apple and Trader Joe's make me drive 90 minutes, because we're not important enough for them to deign to open a store. At least they're at the same place.

Fortunately we have a university cinema, which is amazing, but sometimes you just wanna go see a normal movie and not drive 45 minutes to do it.

But that's also a good reason why the rural right turn should matter less. There are fewer votes. I mostly blame people like me, demographically, who vote Republican for the decline of America.

So many people in rural Pennsylvania were (are) living off of government programs. Not just social security, but farmers were getting grants to do things like make cheese and give tours to scouts and promote the scenery to leaf-related perverts and normal tourists. Presumably, that's going away?

It does matter less than if there were more people. But it's still a lot of people (mostly retirees), so if the turn is hard enough it still matters a lot. And it really really matters in the Senate. The 08 Senate had Democrats in MT, MT, ND, ND, SD, NE, IA, MO, IN, AR, AR, WV, WV.

Robert Byrd was a man who lived past his era. Ben Nelson died to give us Obamacare.

I'm pretty sure Ben Nelson is still alive, but whatever.

Baucus won Montana 73%-27% losing zero counties. Johnson won SD 62.5% to 37.5% losing four counties. Harkin won Iowa 63% to 37% losing 5 counties. Pryor won Arkansas 79% to 21% losing zero counties. Rockefeller won WV 64% to 36% losing three counties.

In my own organization, post Floyd we had programs to try to address disparities in hypertension control, mainly by giving black and Hispanic patients first dibs on appointments. Leadership just said that if the Federal government which pays half our bills is opposed, we'll stop equity efforts.

MA is not particularly representative, but I do know that some heavily Latin working class areas went for Trump, like Fall River.

There are also a few professional women (or at least 1 on the radio) who were not well off enough to go with private schools who were pissed about Covid and how schools were shut for so long but didn't want any mitigations. Basically feeling that nobody should do anything to protect the weak and vulnerable and they were burdened. This is less about the quality of education and more about not wanting to babysit their kids. Look, I can't blame them. But they're opposed to closing the bars to keep the schools open or wearing masks pre-vaccine too. They argued that the whole thing was overblown.

I think there were some people who felt that going back to Trump meant going back to life before COVID.

I don't know how much of the cost of living is strictly speaking about inflation and groceries. I think it's the fact that even with insurance a lot of people find medical care too expensive - premiums eat up raises. Even in MA, where we practically have universal coverage (2.5% uninsured) access is bad and 40% of residents report avoiding care due to cost. And in the 80's there were more primary care docs per insured person, so it was nicer for people with good insurance. Soaking the rich and subsidizing medical care even more is not the preferred solution of a majority of the population. The elites seem to want medical care provided by AI for the masses.

It's too hard to buy a house or even a condo. I think that's the biggest complaint. People don't want programs to help them. They just want to go to a regular real estate person and for everything to be cheper.

For lower-middle class people who don't qualify for help, childcare is prohibitive, but that's kind of girly. Essentially, things that make you feel middle class are just too expensive.

As a middle class person, I'm pissed off how much money is going to the C suite too. The most elite schools have pretty generous financial aid packages but a lot of schools don't and all but the richest families probably have to take out some kind of student loans to pay for college. Everybody complained when I went about how much more expensive it was, because in the 60's you could pay out of current income if middle to upper middle class, in the 90's you could do it if you saved since the kid was born, now, I think all but the top 1% need aid of some kind. It is annoying to me that being responsible and paying off your house early means that the colleges want every last dime out of you.

I'm pretty sure Ben Nelson is still alive, but whatever.

I'm pretty sure Ben Nighthorse Campbell is also still alive, but whoever.

37: You think the Biden of 2024 (not 2020) would have thrashed Trump? He won last time, but it was no Reagan landslide or even an Obama-level victory. And he looked old and kind of frail.

I meant in 2016. I think Biden would have lost in 2024.

59: Oh, yeah, HRC as the nominee was a big mistake.

I do think Joe Manchin would have won in 2024.

I don't know. The odds of a Manchin nomination producing a significant left-wing 3rd-party candidate seem pretty high to me. Not that it would have been sound strategy, especially with current hindsight, but I suspect inevitable.

Via Bluesky, David Roberts points on of my issues with some of people like Shor's analysis. Although some parts of Shor's stuff takes explicit account of the media/information environment, others neglect it in significant ways:

Shor: This cycle, Trump did a good job of convincing voters he was a moderate: in our polling after the election 49% of swing voters said Harris was more liberal than they were vs 39% of voters who said Trump was more conservative than them (similar to what we saw in 2016)

Roberts: Did *Trump* convince voters of this? Or are there perhaps a series of institutions in between Trump & voters, mediating what they hear & how things are framed, that affected their views? You could call them ... mediators ... or maybe, for short ...

With RFK already in the race, another 3rd party bid would have been wild.

This interview was an unimpeachably thoughtful, systematic, balanced discussion of polling and difficult questions about human behavior and motivation, and it also left my heart filled to the brim with hate. I don't think I can really explain.

I don't think Manchin would have won in 2024 either.

If Biden really loved America, he should have killed a mentally retarded guy the way Clinton did.

66: I'm still angry about that. But I'm not representative, obviously.

The only Clinton I have ever voted for is Hillary.

Not because of the execution. He just bugged me, in terms of mannerisms and what not.

Plus, that was back when you could look at Bob Dole without thinking of him with a boner pill and Britney Spears.

Also, the hard right turn of rural areas happened in every developed country at around the same time, whether they had their first Black president or not.

I think a key point that's lost in trying to explain recent politics in terms of demographic shifts and gestures towards cultural trends is that there are organized, well-funded, local, national, and international campaigns led by people who generally cooperate with each other at high levels despite internal disagreements that are promoting extreme right-wing politics through all forms of media at the broadcast, community (forums, social media), and interpersonal (text, whatsapp, etc.) levels. And they've been kinda effective across a whole set of demographic backgrounds.

As effective as a pill that can give Bob Dole an erection.

68: I was raised Republican. I voted for Dole in the primary in 96 so that Buchanan would lose, and I wasn't old enough to vote in 1992.

Assume I voted for Kerry in 96 but not completely sure. Romney was a lightweight in 94 up against Kennedy. Plus my Republican leanings were outweighed by my Mormon prejudice. I wasn't living in MA when he won the governorship.

I'm sure that I haven't paid attention to all of the criticisms of Shor, but my impression is that (1) he is knowledgeable and a useful source of information (2) his perspective is that political professionals should often be more humble and produce a strategy aimed at the electorate-as-it-is rather than trying to figure out a strategy to form public opinion. I think the latter perspective is worth keeping in mind, but there are good reasons to not only think of politics in that way.

I think Shor is kind of half-right about this. Yes, the opinions of the electorate on a lot of issues are pretty much baked in and a campaign would be foolish to think it can change people's minds on those issues. But this also applies to their opinions on the "brand" of your candidate/party! A strategy that relies on changing your positions on issues to align with how the electorate feels isn't going to work if that goes against their longstanding view of what you probably actually think. Campaigns actually have even less ability to affect the political environment than Shor thinks.

For as much as the "wave" metaphor gets used in politics, a lot of people, including Shor, don't seem to take it seriously enough. Surfers don't control the waves! At all!

There's a big problem of incentives here, in that most of what political operatives like Shor do doesn't have any effect whatsoever on election outcomes, but it's very much against their interests to admit that.

For as much as the "wave" metaphor gets used in politics, a lot of people, including Shor, don't seem to take it seriously enough. Surfers don't control the waves! At all!

It's funny to hear you say that; one of Shor's comments which I remember most was that campaigns are like being in a hot air balloon -- you can't control the wind, you can just try to steer as close as possible to the desired direction given the environment.

Yeah, Shor takes the metaphor more seriously than most, which is to his credit. But even he doesn't take it seriously enough, to judge by his actual advice.

A hot air balloon is actually an even better metaphor than surfing, because at least there you know what general direction the waves are going (toward the shore). The winds can go anywhere, though, and a balloon can't really steer at all. All it can do is go up or down to try to catch a favorable wind going in the direction it wants. Very little is under the balloonist's control.

...because at least there you know what general direction the waves are going (toward the shore)....

You want to drown in a rip tide? Because thinking like that is how you drown in a rip tide.

But we should also work on changing the Democratic brand between cycles.

80: Fair point, yeah. Make sure your campaign consultant friends know.

81: Sure, on some issues, but that's a much larger and more difficult task that's not within the power of any individual campaign.

If Biden really loved America, he should have killed a mentally retarded guy the way Clinton did.

I can think of one deeply addled possibility who would have been no loss to humanity.

But I deplore political violence.

"In my own organization, post Floyd we had programs to try to address disparities in hypertension control, mainly by giving black and Hispanic patients first dibs on appointments. Leadership just said that if the Federal government which pays half our bills is opposed, we'll stop equity efforts."

Identifying material, causal factors that disproportionately affect Black and Hispanic patients and addressing those factors is great. Particularly when (not if) those interventions are rolled out in a race- and ethnicity-blind manner. Simply rationing care based on race is gross.

I think you are talking about this and I am hoping that you are mischaracterizing it: https://bwhbulletin.org/2023/09/06/to-eliminate-inequities-in-hypertension-primary-care-program-looks-beyond-blood-pressure/

I don't see how Manchin would have won a primary or convention. And if he made the general, I think turnout wouldn't have been much better for him as for Harris. More people voted in 2020 than in 2024, and Biden's 2020 total would have beaten Trump 2024 by 4 million votes. A lot of people didn't turn out for Harris who also didn't turn out for Trump, and even if Manchin gained over Harris in whatever remains of the "center", I don't think it would have been enough to overcome people further left not voting.

I do think there are other Democrats who could have done better. But probably not without a real open primary first. Maybe this is what "angry moderate" is getting at, but my non-poll-based view is that when Democrats tack right in the hopes of peeling off Republican votes, they often sound like Republicans who don't mean it, and if I'm a Republican, why vote for the candidate who sounds a lot like my party's candidate when I can just vote for my party's candidate? An angry moderate might give the impression they're offering an actual alternative, I guess.

I'm thinking of giving what I used to give the DSCC to Walz. Because of the healing power of the rural Nebraskan.

The disinformation brain drain is super real. 20 year olds were 16 year olds in 2020 and they basically missed a year of having somewhat neutral educated adults have eyes and ears and on them ,.and extra hugs for them, and got waaaaay more time just living in their phones. These were my freshmen and the girls who were vaguely self-aware ( and liked talking to me about social issues) now sound like like refugees from their whole generation. And this is in the Bay Area.

That makes me slightly hopeful that the youth weirdness is a blip and not a wave.

71: Yeah, I think the "media loves Trump" thing is true and in 2016 was driven by clicks and ratings, but tech and media elites over the past 8 years have been driven much farther right because their friends got taken down by MeToo (or they have skeletons in their own closets), they had the shit scared out of them by BLM, and the Biden economy meant disciplining workers was harder. Theyre ok with a recession if those problems go away.

83: Completely agree. I think there were structural winds going against her. And that needs to be the work of the party, not just a single campaign.

They're ok with a recession if those problems go away.

To what extent do you think this happened in 2008-09 -- recovery disproportionately benefiting those elites as well as adjacent groups?

85: We are not sophisticated enough to do that. Addressing the racism of clinicians would also have been good. If you define hypertension control as a no

Nobody has the patience for the casual factors, because the ROI is too low and the turnaround isn't fast enough. They did find that black heart failure patients benefit from being admitted to the cardiac unit more than white patients who weren't particularly harmed by going to the general medicine floor.

For our Medicaid patients there are SDOH supports but not for others. How these things get rolled out is always kind of gross. Certainly at one point we prioritized people based on insurance type. We have more financial risk for outcome depending on the insurance type.

85:

That sentence should have said "if you define hypertension control as a bp less than 140/90 once a year then the name of the game is to get those patients in for visits and to prioritize aggressive home BP monitoring follow up with free cuffs.

Yeah, that program sounds wonderful. That's more of a community benefit type of thing that will be advertised. I work in a more financially motivated portion of the "enterprise".

For example, systems are incentivized to recapture risk to get the most money from Medicare. See the link to ucsf's guide.

https://populationhealth.ucsf.edu/sites/g/files/tkssra9646/f/wysiwyg/Intro%20to%20Risk%20Adjustment%20May%202024.pdf

Since an in-person visit is required, the hospitals make sure to get those patients in. There's a good argument that it is important for sick patients to see a PCP annually. But one of the challenges is that black and Hispanic patients have less well documented illnesses or don't seek care early enough so the payments are insufficient given social risk etc.

Medicaid had a specific requirement for depression screening and follow up within 48 hours that was different from other insurers, for example. Last year they chased depression screening for Medicaid ACO patients.

85: My experience is that the leadership class was in fact often doing the less sophisticated thing. They might know how to talk in public like they're being more sophisticated, but they're busy people and it's easier to just say "in no circumstances will you be allowed to hire a man" than to try to do something more subtle and legal.

I know 55 was me, but boy was I not expecting those results to be that dramatic. What the fuck happened and how did it happen so quickly?

My Name is Mahmoud Khalil and I Am a Political Prisoner
A letter dictated by Mahmoud Khalil over the phone from ICE detention in Louisiana.
Mahmoud Khalil March 18, 2025

My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.

Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn't the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn't the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.

Justice escapes the contours of this nation's immigration facilities.

On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor's safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours -- I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.

My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January's ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.

Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns--based on racism and disinformation--to go unchecked.

I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel's use of administrative detention -- imprisonment without trial or charge -- to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.

I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the U.S. has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.

While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing -- based on racism and disinformation--to go unchecked.

Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration's latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students -- some stripped of their B.A. degrees just weeks before graduation -- and the expulsion of SWC President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.

If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change -- leading the charge against the Vietnam War, standing on the frontlines of the Civil Rights Movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice.

The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa-holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.

Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.

In my own organization, post Floyd we had programs to try to address disparities in hypertension control, mainly by giving black and Hispanic patients first dibs on appointments.

I tried to imagine the kind of media coverage we would get if we started doing this in my patch, and I think all my internal organs cringed simultaneously, including the lymph nodes. We do a lot of targeted outreach - hypertension for black patients, diabetes for the Indians, vaccination for the GRT - and that's fine with everyone, but if we just went out and said "black dudes? Front of the queue" everyone involved would have lost their jobs by the end of the word "queue".

98: i mean, the active outreach went to blacks and Latinos first because that was BCBS' priority in their contracts.

There's actually interesting research about how the actual practice of medicine is quite regulated, but the administrative side and operations aren't. So, many systems, not mine, use AI to predict who might know-show, using things like public vs private insurance, and then double book the ones statistically likelier to. So they might be stuck with a shorter appointment.

People love to hate on insurance companies, but the big health systems are far from blameless.

Re Manchin: he killed the refundable child credit. I think inflation would have bit less if that had not gone away.

tl;dr: America is too dumb to live. You had a good run, considering.

What I have here is the share of voters who get their news from TikTok, broken down by year. The share of young voters who get their news from TikTok has more than quadrupled in the last four years. [...[ But if you run the regressions, there's clearly a causal element at play. And when you zoom in specifically on people who get their news from TikTok but don't care very much about politics, this group is eight percentage points more Republican than they were four years ago -- which is a lot.

I think that TikTok is genuinely different from other platforms that came before it. Its audience is more politically disengaged and more working class.

More constructively.
I agree covid essentially reduced the number of educated people. 2-3 years of schooling missed, and the younger they were the more that'll cascade through their whole educational careers. This wave of dumb voters will be entering the rolls until 2032.
The Anxious Generation thesis collapses into get-off-my-lawn shit, but might accidentally be correct.
These dumb 18yos were born in 2006. Some of their earliest memories will be of their parents losing their jobs. Even if their families weren't directly or badly affected, they grew up surrounded by anxiety; and then 2-3 years of terror.
The global synchronization of the GFC and covid may go some way to explain the similar politics we're seeing in a lot of spaces. Fear makes people stupid, and more "conservative".
Also, lockdown-specific filter bubbling may be very real. IIRC actual research on filter bubbles found no real effects, but the results I'm thinking of must be 10 years old bby now. The filters have changed a lot.

103 to 103.

104 -b. spaces s/b places.

Too dumb to live, too beautiful to die.

The one exception to this -- and I know this is controversial, and it might get me in trouble -- is Nebraska. If you look at Nebraska, the single biggest overperformance that we had was Tom Osborne running as an independent. He outperformed the top of the ticket by 7.1 percent. Now obviously, Nebraska is an extremely red state. But I think it's worth noting that we've only ever really tried this strategy -- running candidates who are formally not tied to the Democratic Party -- in extremely red states. I think the argument for doing that kind of thing in merely red states -- places like Florida, Ohio or Iowa -- is a tough question. And it's not up to me to decide what we end up doing, but I think it's something that we have to seriously consider.

104: Also, those couple of years of alarmingly rising murder rates you had.

You should probably find a political commentator who knows the difference between "Tom Osborne," who makes all Nebraskans feel good in their private places and "Dan Osborn" who ran as an independent in the last senate race in Nebraska. But, lots of people were probably confused so that probably helped Dan. Tom Osborne was in Congress, as a Republican. The last time I saw him was at the Village Inn on Van Dorn Street by the Hobby Lobby.

The Anxious Generation thesis collapses into get-off-my-lawn shit, but might accidentally be correct.

A perfect summary.

I have never seen Dan Osborn eat a pancake.

RFK may be bitching about seed oil, but the USDA is offering payments to oil seed growers to offset low commodity prices.

Agree with 111.

Apparently, there's a bribe to farmers in the thing passed by Schumer.

Thirty silver dollars?

$43 per acre for corn, $30 for beans.

Possibly for reasons related to hummus, you get $31 for small chickpeas and only $24 for large.

Anti-Semite.

102: And when Republicans hand you a Tiktok ban on a plate, you won't even take it.

Holy fuckballs! The unique badness if Tiktok!

Dean Baker adds what I believe is absolutely essential context to Shor and Klein.

https://cepr.net/publications/ezra-klein-david-shor-and-elite-excuses/

"Ezra Klein, David Shor and Elite Excuses: The Hermetically Sealed TikTok Influencer"

Apparently Tiktok is now convincing kids they should arrive at the airport 15 minutes before their flight. Energy and persistence conquer all things, but dumbassed.

I always think of temperament and ideology as being separate axes in American politics that we connect too much. So we think that people who are moderates often have a moderate temperament. What this is implying is what people want are moderate policies in a more revolutionary or certainly more upset temperament.

Exactly! The rational bit of the electorate generally want moderate policies (because extreme policies are by definition not widely popular) and the non-rational bit just want good vibes and interesting stories on their screens.

Why has the NYT decided that we aren't allowed to know that Ezra Klein uses the word "piss"?
Why replace every time it appears in the transcript with "[expletive]"?
It isn't that the NYT has a rule against putting the word "piss" in print; check the archives. Hundreds of mentions in all contexts, literal and figurative.
Prissy, juvenile, self-important [expletive].

One thing here I find interesting is whether it makes sense to think of opinion formation as deductive and bottom-up or inductive and top-down - do people see candidates or parties as bundles of issues, and their opinion of them as a consequence of issue positions, or do they make up their minds about candidates and then answer issue questions accordingly, perhaps even use issue questions to explain/rationalize the decision. I suspect the point about politically-engaged people having correlations among issues suggests that it's the latter for a lot of people.

This operationalizes as the question of whether the Ds did something specifically wrong on particular issues and/or with particular groups, or whether a generally bad result necessarily means bad results on specifics and which ones is secondary. I appreciate Shor's willingness to consider both possibilities and his scepticism generally.

I wasn't convinced by this although it's Klein rather than Shor:

It seems plausible to me that social media and online culture are splitting the media that young men and women get. If you're a 23-year-old man interested in the Ultimate Fighting Championship and online, you're being driven into a very intensely male online world. Whereas, if you're a 23-year-old female and your interests align with what the YouTube algorithm codes, you are not entering that world

If you were a 23 year old man in 2003 and you were interested in football your media diet would have been very different to the 23-y/o female specified, I mean, you bet. That was when FHM, GQ etc were at the peak of their success and influence. This is a strange thing to say and I think it's because EK is a massive nerd and was probably even more so in 2003.

One point not really touched on: if you do well with nonvoters that's usually a bit like playing tennis without a ball, as 100% of the nonvoters is zero votes, so they plainly must have done something on turnout and mobilization. Has it become easier to drive engagement/turnout?

124: Consider this thread from my twitter account - https://x.com/yorksranter/status/1641491678119833617

On that occasion it was being weirdly coy about the word tits.

they plainly must have done something on turnout and mobilization.

Yeah, they figured something out. I really wish I understood what it was. From the outside it appeared that Trump had just demolished the regular Republican party infrastructure - and I thought that was going to hurt them - but it didn't seem to be a problem.

This is a bit tendentious:

What's interesting is if you break it down by age, the Conservatives actually increased their vote share among 18- to 24-year-old voters by 2 or 3 percent, even though they did 8 or 9 percent worse overall.

Sure, they did 2 points better than 2019 on a demographic they lost by twenty-three percentage points. See YouGov's poll here: https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49978-how-britain-voted-in-the-2024-general-election

127: I thought this article was interesting: https://yastreblyansky.substack.com/p/the-last-post-mortem

Newly emerging stories in The New York Times suggest that the Trump strategy was a lot more effective than I imagined it would be: a lot more like the 2016 campaign, ... [with] everything Chris LaCivita and Tony Fabrizio had learned from that experience: making their money go as far as possible by targeting their advertising at the narrowest possible set of voters, as identified by Fabrizio's polling.

These were (according to The Times's Shane Goldmacher) the lowest-propensity voters, the most genuinely undecided because the least informed about the campaign, mostly young and I think largely male and somewhat though not extremely low-income, reachable through ads on streaming services like Max, Tubi, and Roku, which provide advertisers with a lot more information than broadcast or cable TV do, right down to the specific individual, where the Harris campaign was stuck with the usual broad geographical targeting:

"In the seven states, we were talking to 6.3 million people -- they were talking to 44.7 million," explained David Lee, a top pollster for the super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc. "There's roughly 38 million people that they're hitting who've already made up their mind. So I don't care how much more money you have than us to spend, you're wasting 85 percent of your money."

I thought this was a bad population to work on when it was originally reported, because they were people obviously not interested in voting, but the math of the actual outcome is inescapable: to get the 230,000 or so votes they needed on an investment in 6.3 million people, they had to have a conversion rate of just under 4%, and that's not so unachievable.

129: that's quality, yes. I feel nobody takes the Trump data operation seriously; there's a weird combination of both performative hating on the STEM Monsters and also a snobbish assumption they can't have anyone competent. But data scientist skills are not super rare and they're presumably willing to pay top dollar.

I want to read that Sasha Issenberg book, because I have the impression the Ds have regressed compared to the online and analytical excellence of the Obama years. Remember Mitt Romney's GOTV mobile-web application?

People were very dismissive of Cambridge Analytica's overblown claims of omniscience, as I recall; not sure if that carried over to later developments as a habit of thought.

If you were a 23 year old man in 2003 and you were interested in football your media diet would have been very different to the 23-y/o female specified, I mean, you bet.

That did occur to me as well. Possibly it didn't occur to Klein because at the age of 23 he was a wonk blogger and all the other 23 year olds he knew, male and female, were also wonks or bloggers.

But, yes! When has there ever been a time when the media diets of typical 23-year-old men substantially overlapped with the media diets of typical 23-year-old women?

Maybe back in the Victorian period where the paterfamilias ensured a common media diet by sitting at the head of the breakfast table reading out excerpts from the Times (NOT OF FUCKING LONDON) and the family sat around listening quietly and respectfully to the leader on "What Must Be Done About Bulgaria" or "The Importance Of Imperial Preference"? But even then the daughters would also be reading silly novels by lady novelists (or even "Silly Novels By Lady Novelists") and the sons would be reading "The Field" and "The Spectator" and "Blackwood's Magazine".

whether it makes sense to think of opinion formation as deductive and bottom-up or inductive and top-down - do people see candidates or parties as bundles of issues, and their opinion of them as a consequence of issue positions, or do they make up their minds about candidates and then answer issue questions accordingly, perhaps even use issue questions to explain/rationalize the decision.

Or even a bit of both. For all except incredibly engaged people there are going to be some issues that you just don't know or care about. Introspectively it seems very plausible that someone goes "I want a government that will support education. I think Labour will be good on education so they get my support and trust. I don't actually know much about the single market but Labour are all for it, so it's probably a good thing too."

133: IN the U.S. from 1946 to about 1980, the typical family had 1 radio, updated to 1 tv, and if they had more than one they were limited to very few networks, so couples had the same media. Also the median age of first marriage was at or below 23. But that was an odd historical period. In 1942-45, the young men were all at war. Before that the depression there were even fewer radio networks, but 23-year-olds generally weren't married.

I'm also wondering how much anti blackness from other people of color affected the vote, including the use of the term "people of color" by PC white liberals/activists/organizers. Lots of Asians and Latinos (sorry, Latinx) don't like being lumped in with black people in some large non-white category.

Secondly, one thing I find fascinating about American Nazism is there is a post racial quality about it. You can be a black Nazi, or a dark skinned Latino Nazi, or a Jewish Nazi, or Albanian or Sicilian or Russian or Korean etc. Importantly, as long as you're a true believer you seem to be fully and earnestly accepted into the movement. AFAICT American Nazis are 95% made up of people who would have been labeled untermenschen by the OG Nazis. I think this sort of weird capaciousness of American Fascism/white supremacy hasn't really been analyzed much in public.

There's clearly other things going on, but much of it is just misogyny.

IN the U.S. from 1946 to about 1980, the typical family had 1 radio, updated to 1 tv, and if they had more than one they were limited to very few networks, so couples had the same media.

OK, I didn't realise we were talking purely about broadcast media. In that case, slightly more true - but still the entire family didn't all watch the same stuff, though. Cartoons, soap operas, etc all have very definite demographics.

137

Yes that too.

> I'm also wondering how much anti blackness from other people of color affected the vote, including the use of the term "people of color" by PC white liberals/activists/organizers. Lots of Asians and Latinos (sorry, Latinx) don't like being lumped in with black people in some large non-white category.

People love hating on white PC activists, but a lot of the POC activists talk the same way and are just as disconnected from what the flip-to-Trumpers report to care about, which, like everyone else, seems to be basic Hobbesean goods: jobs, purchasing power, public order and safety.

> I'm also wondering how much anti blackness from other people of color affected the vote, including the use of the term "people of color" by PC white liberals/activists/organizers. Lots of Asians and Latinos (sorry, Latinx) don't like being lumped in with black people in some large non-white category.

People love hating on white PC activists, but a lot of the POC activists talk the same way and are just as disconnected from what the flip-to-Trumpers report to care about, which, like everyone else, seems to be basic Hobbesean goods: jobs, purchasing power, public order and safety.

138: My Dad's family was the first one on their block to have a television, because my grandfather worked for Sylvania. In the 50's everyone sat down in front of the television together in the evening when it was watched. In fact, the whole neighborhood came over to their house to watch TV.

137: There are plenty of women Trumpers, but it does seem like more women are willing to stand up to him than men. I don't have data. Anecdotally, there's that Associate at Skadden Arps who quit, for example.

NMM to 5 of the 6 George Foremans.