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Post by JON on Nov 10, 2016 12:24:01 GMT -5
Tell me all about it on Nov. 8, jon. ;-)¨ OB 9/15/16.
Well, I'm a day late, from celebrating the political demise of the corrupt Clinton Crime Family, but there it is.
Need any details, or do you have enough information to now understand how wrong you were? But I'm not one of those bitter clingers----Iĺl be glad to buy you a celebratory drink on 1/20/17
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Post by brisco on Dec 4, 2016 20:03:21 GMT -5
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Post by brisco on Dec 4, 2016 20:06:42 GMT -5
www.cnn.com/2016/12/04/politics/clinton-deplorables-apology/index.html"Hillary Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook acknowledged the former secretary of state calling half of Donald Trump's supporters "deplorables" alienated voters, saying that's why the Democratic presidential nominee publicly expressed regret over the remarks so quickly thereafter...On a special assignment from the Clinton campaign, Diane Hessan studied how undecided voters were responding to the campaign. She wrote an op-ed in the Boston Globe sharing reflections from her study, which showed the reaction to the "deplorables" was stronger than when FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to Congress saying they were probing to see if additional emails on the laptop of one her top aides could have an impact on a closed investigation to Clinton's use of a primary email server..."There was one moment when I saw more undecided voters shift to Trump than any other, when it all changed, when voters began to speak differently about their choice," she wrote. "It wasn't FBI Director James Comey, Part One or Part Two; it wasn't Benghazi or the e-mails or Bill Clinton's visit with Attorney General Loretta Lynch on the tarmac. No, the conversation shifted the most during the weekend of Sept. 9, after Clinton said, 'You can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.'" "All hell broke lose," she added."
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Post by brisco on Dec 4, 2016 20:17:33 GMT -5
www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-hillary-clinton-lost-podcast_us_58420694e4b017f37fe4c532?ncid=engmodushpmg00000003"But his dominant performance among white working-class voters wasn’t due to his campaign message alone. Much of Clinton’s poor performance resulted from her campaign’s strategic decision to not even contest the demographic. A good chunk of the Democratic Party intelligentsia applauded Clinton for taking the moral high ground, declaring the entire white working class to be a deplorable racist swamp. The notion that economic issues played literally no role ― zero ― in Trump’s appeal became a common Democratic talking point. Democrats were Good People, and anyone even considering voting for Trump was a Bad Person. There is no need to pretend the white working class is a monolith of moral excellence. Many working-class people, like many middle- and upper-class people, are bigoted, hostile to all kinds of people and lifestyles. But the job of a presidential candidate is to appeal to our better angels and win votes anyway. In 2008, the Democratic coalition included millions of black churchgoers who opposed same-sex marriage. In 2012, Democrats welcomed millions of Catholic Latino voters who opposed abortion. These people were not scolded for their shortcomings but celebrated for their virtues. This year, Democratic elites decided that the entire white working class was unworthy of sharing their company." If Democrats want to really learn something from this election, the last sentence is absolutely true and critical...
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Post by brisco on Dec 4, 2016 20:21:54 GMT -5
www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-obamacare-trump-democrats_us_582a4402e4b0c4b63b0e3988?section=politics"Elizabeth Warren delivered a blunt message to a large group of wealthy liberal donors Monday, arguing that the Democratic Party’s failure to connect with working and middle-class people had opened the door for Donald Trump to win the presidency. Warren, according to sources in the room, ran through a litany of issues on which Democrats had left people behind, either by offering too little or nothing at all. Perhaps her most surprising criticism was directed at the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare...Speaking at the gathering of the Democracy Alliance, she also highlighted Democrats’ inability to help homeowners during the financial crisis, even though banks were bailed out. She blasted the failure to prosecute the bankers, saying that it suggested to working people just whose side the party was on. She also picked up on corporate-friendly trade policies, arguing Democrats were too eager to push deals that hurt the working class. “That’s where we failed, not in our messaging, but in our ideology,” she said, according to people in the room."
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Post by Old Badger on Dec 5, 2016 23:04:03 GMT -5
www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-obamacare-trump-democrats_us_582a4402e4b0c4b63b0e3988?section=politics"Elizabeth Warren delivered a blunt message to a large group of wealthy liberal donors Monday, arguing that the Democratic Party’s failure to connect with working and middle-class people had opened the door for Donald Trump to win the presidency. Warren, according to sources in the room, ran through a litany of issues on which Democrats had left people behind, either by offering too little or nothing at all. Perhaps her most surprising criticism was directed at the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare...Speaking at the gathering of the Democracy Alliance, she also highlighted Democrats’ inability to help homeowners during the financial crisis, even though banks were bailed out. She blasted the failure to prosecute the bankers, saying that it suggested to working people just whose side the party was on. She also picked up on corporate-friendly trade policies, arguing Democrats were too eager to push deals that hurt the working class. “That’s where we failed, not in our messaging, but in our ideology,” she said, according to people in the room." Yeah, Elizabeth Warren thinks the answer is to move to the far left. Unfortunately for that that view, shared by Bernie Sanders, the voters aren't necessarily out there. For example, she wants a simple single-payer system instead of the ACA's complex system of requirements and subsidies. So do I. But after Vermont announced plans to create a single-payer system under an ACA waiver it had to withdrew the idea because voters weren't so enthusiastic. On Nov. 8, while Hillary was carrying Colorado, voters in that state easily defeated a single-payer system in a referendum. Ideologues such as Warren always think the answer to "losing" an election is to move further to the ideological boundaries. That's rarely worked, however. I put "losing" in quotation marks because I\at the moment Clinton has nearly 3 million more votes than Trump. Only in America can you lose a presidential election while getting more votes than the "winner" (more on that another day).
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Post by brisco on Dec 6, 2016 12:02:10 GMT -5
www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/elizabeth-warren-obamacare-trump-democrats_us_582a4402e4b0c4b63b0e3988?section=politics"Elizabeth Warren delivered a blunt message to a large group of wealthy liberal donors Monday, arguing that the Democratic Party’s failure to connect with working and middle-class people had opened the door for Donald Trump to win the presidency. Warren, according to sources in the room, ran through a litany of issues on which Democrats had left people behind, either by offering too little or nothing at all. Perhaps her most surprising criticism was directed at the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare...Speaking at the gathering of the Democracy Alliance, she also highlighted Democrats’ inability to help homeowners during the financial crisis, even though banks were bailed out. She blasted the failure to prosecute the bankers, saying that it suggested to working people just whose side the party was on. She also picked up on corporate-friendly trade policies, arguing Democrats were too eager to push deals that hurt the working class. “That’s where we failed, not in our messaging, but in our ideology,” she said, according to people in the room." Yeah, Elizabeth Warren thinks the answer is to move to the far left. Unfortunately for that that view, shared by Bernie Sanders, the voters aren't necessarily out there. For example, she wants a simple single-payer system instead of the ACA's complex system of requirements and subsidies. So do I. But after Vermont announced plans to create a single-payer system under an ACA waiver it had to withdrew the idea because voters weren't so enthusiastic. On Nov. 8, while Hillary was carrying Colorado, voters in that state easily defeated a single-payer system in a referendum. Ideologues such as Warren always think the answer to "losing" an election is to move further to the ideological boundaries. That's rarely worked, however. I put "losing" in quotation marks because I\at the moment Clinton has nearly 3 million more votes than Trump. Only in America can you lose a presidential election while getting more votes than the "winner" (more on that another day). What are your thoughts OB on Rep Ellison seeming to be the front runner to be the head of the DNC? He seems to be in line with Warren and Sanders in wanting to take the party to the left so I'm guessing by your comments this may concern you a little?
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Post by brisco on Dec 6, 2016 12:16:28 GMT -5
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Post by Old Badger on Dec 6, 2016 22:47:54 GMT -5
"“Hillary’s loss has exposed a collapse of power for the Democratic Party,” Brock is set to tell a gathering hosted by the State Innovation Exchange, according to a copy of his remarks provided to The Washington Post...“The truth is, our party faces a crisis of competence at all levels,” Brock is set to tell the group. “Progressive politics in America is an organizational disaster.” And yet, the Democratic candidate got nearly 3 million more votes than the Republican candidate. Go figure. That said, the current President just squandered 8 years doing little or nothing for the party, instead directing his resources to a useless organization that came out of his campaign. It's no surprise that the party organization has atrophied, and putting another House member in charge on a part-time basis is, frankly, stupid.
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Post by brisco on Dec 7, 2016 8:24:32 GMT -5
"“Hillary’s loss has exposed a collapse of power for the Democratic Party,” Brock is set to tell a gathering hosted by the State Innovation Exchange, according to a copy of his remarks provided to The Washington Post...“The truth is, our party faces a crisis of competence at all levels,” Brock is set to tell the group. “Progressive politics in America is an organizational disaster.” And yet, the Democratic candidate got nearly 3 million more votes than the Republican candidate. Go figure. That said, the current President just squandered 8 years doing little or nothing for the party, instead directing his resources to a useless organization that came out of his campaign. It's no surprise that the party organization has atrophied, and putting another House member in charge on a part-time basis is, frankly, stupid. You have mentioned the popular vote a couple of times however I think that is a little misleading for a couple of reasons. The first is that that 3 million vote gap can largely be attributed to California and New York. And as we are republic, not a democracy, the electoral college - while maybe antiquated - was put into place to make sure the less populated states had a voice in elections. If you made the election based solely on the popular vote, then states like California and New York would carry huge influence over the results. And as someone who lives in the flyover states, that would be a bit scary for me. Second, having the electoral college instead of a popular vote influences how the candidates campaign. Since Trump had no shot at winning California's electoral votes he spent no time campaigning there. If the election was based on a popular vote, he may have campaigned there and potentially gotten more votes and reduced the gap. I know that is hypothetical but still needs to be taken into consideration when looking at the election results. And if you look at the results in the states Clinton lost, she lost votes that Obama had gotten in his elections in cities like Milwaukee, Detroit and Philadelphia. After the convention she spent no time in Wisconsin which may have been a strategic mistake.
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Post by Old Badger on Dec 7, 2016 17:56:55 GMT -5
And yet, the Democratic candidate got nearly 3 million more votes than the Republican candidate. Go figure. That said, the current President just squandered 8 years doing little or nothing for the party, instead directing his resources to a useless organization that came out of his campaign. It's no surprise that the party organization has atrophied, and putting another House member in charge on a part-time basis is, frankly, stupid. You have mentioned the popular vote a couple of times however I think that is a little misleading for a couple of reasons. The first is that that 3 million vote gap can largely be attributed to California and New York. And as we are republic, not a democracy, the electoral college - while maybe antiquated - was put into place to make sure the less populated states had a voice in elections. If you made the election based solely on the popular vote, then states like California and New York would carry huge influence over the results. And as someone who lives in the flyover states, that would be a bit scary for me. You have put your finger on a fatal flaw in the Constitution--not that it created a Republic, but that it created an undemocratic one. France is a Republic, too, but there the actual winner of the presidential election becomes President. Same happens in Mexico and Venezuela, which also have states, just like we do. We are the only country in the world where the winner of a presidential election does not necessarily become President. I will have more to say on this in a later post.Second, having the electoral college instead of a popular vote influences how the candidates campaign. Since Trump had no shot at winning California's electoral votes he spent no time campaigning there. If the election was based on a popular vote, he may have campaigned there and potentially gotten more votes and reduced the gap. I know that is hypothetical but still needs to be taken into consideration when looking at the election results. This is a frequently-made argument, but really beside the point. Every candidate would campaign differently in a national election. But this does not change the fact that twice in the past 5 elections the candidate with the most votes did not take office. A 40 percent failure rate is no more acceptable in elections than it is in, say, automobile brake systems.And if you look at the results in the states Clinton lost, she lost votes that Obama had gotten in his elections in cities like Milwaukee, Detroit and Philadelphia. After the convention she spent no time in Wisconsin which may have been a strategic mistake. So what? She still got nearly 3 million more votes than Trump did, and about the same number as Obama got in 2012.
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Post by jon on Dec 19, 2016 18:21:30 GMT -5
Well, Trump just beat Hillary again. Let's see..... The recount scam netted Trump a few extra votes. The intimidation campaign against electors, including numerous death threats, revealing the true character of Dems failed. I guess they are still trying to blame their loss on the Russians , with Donna Brazille calling her own emails false information. What's next---demands for impeachment before the inauguration? Of course the winner of the election becomes President. the founders had very good reasons for the electoral college, as anyone who has seriously studied the American Revolution and establishment of the nation understands. ¨The Constitutional Convention of 1787 considered several methods of electing the President, including selection by Congress, by the governors of the states, by the state legislatures, by a special group of Members of Congress chosen by lot, and by direct popular election. Late in the convention, the matter was referred to the Committee of Eleven on Postponed Matters, which devised the electoral college system in its original form. This plan, which met with widespread approval by the delegates, was incorporated into the final document with only minor changes. It sought to reconcile differing state and federal interests, provide a degree of popular participation in the election, give the less populous states some additional leverage in the process by providing “senatorial” electors, preserve the presidency as independent of Congress, and generally insulate the election process from political manipulation.¨ www.history.com/topics/electoral-collegeA Primer, for those whose understanding is so limited they might believe what the press & other Dems are feeding them www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/12/defending_the_electoral_college.html Be careful what you wish for.
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Post by brisco on Dec 20, 2016 8:30:11 GMT -5
What I found interesting is that 5 of the 7 faithless electors chose not to vote for Clinton as opposed to those going against Trump. With all the talk about this since the election, I would've thought any elector that broke rank would've decided not to vote for Trump yet the majority in the highest amount to go rogue in history went against Clinton. EDIT - actually as I read further there were a few more democratic electors who refused to vote for Clinton and were subsequently replaced. If you include those, there were at least 7 democratic electors that went rogue. As Spock would say, fascinating... www.yahoo.com/news/trump-wins-u-electoral-college-vote-few-electors-011544380.html
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Post by Old Badger on Dec 20, 2016 16:10:28 GMT -5
As Spock would say, fascinating... Not really. Four of them were from Washington, where the Dem electors were chosen last spring by Sanders supporters. At least one of the remaining three also apparently was a Sanders supporter. It's essentially a cost-free bit of grandstanding.
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Post by brisco on Dec 28, 2016 12:17:22 GMT -5
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Post by Old Badger on Dec 29, 2016 0:06:02 GMT -5
Well, they basically talked to a handful of Republicans who "came home" in the final week of the election; that's hardly proof that the Comey letter had no effect on the outcome of the election. The whole point of survey research is to do better at representing public opinion than these non-random interviews with small numbers of people ever can do. When the American Election Survey data come out we'll have much better data on which to determine what the Comey effect was, but it's unlikely to be zero, as this article implies.
Did you get to the part with the buyer's remorse? Already setting in:
But for some of the other late deciders who went to Trump or avoided Clinton, there seems to be a creeping sense of guilt. Shutt, of Iowa, said he wished Trump would abandon the campaign-like rhetoric he’s carried over to the transition. “He hasn’t blown anything up yet,” he said of the president-elect. “But that’s a pretty low bar, I know.”
Mooney, of Florida, said that if he had his vote back now, he’d probably support Clinton rather than Ryan. He didn’t expect Trump to win when he wrote the speaker’s name on his ballot. “In my eyes, he had to pull a royal straight flush to win,” he said. “And he did! He drew the river card.”
And while Bagley said he didn’t want his vote back ― at least not yet ― he was open to the possibility that Trump’s presidency would prove damaging in ways similar to, if not greater than, what he worried about with Clinton.
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Post by brisco on Dec 29, 2016 12:29:38 GMT -5
Well, they basically talked to a handful of Republicans who "came home" in the final week of the election; that's hardly proof that the Comey letter had no effect on the outcome of the election. The whole point of survey research is to do better at representing public opinion than these non-random interviews with small numbers of people ever can do. When the American Election Survey data come out we'll have much better data on which to determine what the Comey effect was, but it's unlikely to be zero, as this article implies.
Did you get to the part with the buyer's remorse? Already setting in:
But for some of the other late deciders who went to Trump or avoided Clinton, there seems to be a creeping sense of guilt. Shutt, of Iowa, said he wished Trump would abandon the campaign-like rhetoric he’s carried over to the transition. “He hasn’t blown anything up yet,” he said of the president-elect. “But that’s a pretty low bar, I know.”
Mooney, of Florida, said that if he had his vote back now, he’d probably support Clinton rather than Ryan. He didn’t expect Trump to win when he wrote the speaker’s name on his ballot. “In my eyes, he had to pull a royal straight flush to win,” he said. “And he did! He drew the river card.”
And while Bagley said he didn’t want his vote back ― at least not yet ― he was open to the possibility that Trump’s presidency would prove damaging in ways similar to, if not greater than, what he worried about with Clinton.
I agree that those comments are interesting but I consider the source - who strongly supported Clinton - so they cherry picked a few with buyer's remorse to prove a point. However I think those comments also point directly back to the media coverage of the election that had Hillary pegged as the winner, and in some cases in a landslide - the Huffington Post chief among them. What I think the media and pollsters alike failed to dig deep enough to understand is that Trump supporters weren't publicly acknowledging their support - they didn't participate in or answer polls and in some cases kept their support hidden out of fear of being ridiculed. Any polls that showed Trump winning were immediately discounted and discredited. All that said, I provided a link previously - from a democratic researcher - that also said Comey's letter had little impact. Her research showed Hillary's deplorables comment had greater impact...
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Post by Old Badger on Dec 30, 2016 1:15:55 GMT -5
However I think those comments also point directly back to the media coverage of the election that had Hillary pegged as the winner, and in some cases in a landslide - the Huffington Post chief among them. All of the major polls showed the race tightening in the final couple of weeks. And, in fact, Hillary's 2-point plurality was in line with those poll results. "Hidden" voters had nothing to do with it; Republican voters who decided late to "come home" allowed Trump to squeak by in a few states.
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 1, 2018 15:03:53 GMT -5
"Hostility to the opposition party and its candidates has now reached a level where loathing motivates voters more than loyalty." That's the conclusion of a body of Political Science research into voting behavior and political attitudes. Ironically, this tends to re-inforce party-line voting, even as voters increasingly view all candidates negatively. This is a marked change from where we were as recently as 2000 (though the roots can be found earlier). Here's what makes it such a big problem: "When citizens’ support for a candidate stems primarily from their strong dislike for the opposing candidate, they are less subject to the logic of accountability. Their psychic satisfaction comes more from defeating and humiliating the out-group, and less from any performance or policy benefits that might accrue from the victory of the in-party. For this group of voters, candidates have every incentive to inflame partisan negativity, further entrenching affective polarization...If partisans care less about their own party’s performance and instead focus on their distrust of the opposition party, elected officials no longer need campaign on their own merits; instead, they have good reason to try even harder to denigrate the opposition.." And that's exactly what we've seen. But that's not the worst of it. As the "us vs. them" politics embeds itself, not only are candidates less accountable for their policy decisions, they “are less likely to be sanctioned for demonstrating incompetence, dishonesty and unethical behavior” (e.g., Roy Moore, though charged with being a child molester, nonetheless got 91 percent of the votes of Alabama Republicans in the recent special election). But also something more insidious to democratic governance: "As partisan conflict increasingly resembles guerrilla warfare, as political opponents despise each other as a matter of routine, the tactic of 'enemy construction' takes root. A 'friend-enemy' dichotomy gains strength. Opponents are demonized, defamed, delegitimated and dehumanized — 'justifying the compromise of ordinarily recognized liberties.”
What's frightening about that last sentences is this: it's exactly what politics looks like in nominally democratic countries that in fact are dictatorships with cosmetic elections. I hope that's not where we're headed, but right now our democracy looks a lot like that in such countries.
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Post by goldenbucky on Mar 1, 2018 17:36:49 GMT -5
"As partisan conflict increasingly resembles guerrilla warfare, as political opponents despise each other as a matter of routine, the tactic of 'enemy construction' takes root. A 'friend-enemy' dichotomy gains strength. Opponents are demonized, defamed, delegitimated and dehumanized — 'justifying the compromise of ordinarily recognized liberties.”
What's frightening about that last sentences is this: it's exactly what politics looks like in nominally democratic countries that in fact are dictatorships with cosmetic elections. I hope that's not where we're headed, but right now our democracy looks a lot like that in such countries. Leftist.
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Post by Old Badger on Mar 1, 2018 17:51:31 GMT -5
LOL! Reminds me of the time The Fiancee and I were at the Kennedy Center, where we had seats in the same row and Bill Kristol for several years. One night as we were returning to our seats from intermission we had to get past him and his wife. Finacee: "Excuse me, we're to your left." Kristol: "Most people are."
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Post by goldenbucky on Mar 1, 2018 19:20:54 GMT -5
Leftist. LOL! Reminds me of the time The Fiancee and I were at the Kennedy Center, where we had seats in the same row and Bill Kristol for several years. One night as we were returning to our seats from intermission we had to get past him and his wife. Finacee: "Excuse me, we're to your left." Kristol: "Most people are." Haha! At least Bill Kristol still has his dignity, which is more than can be said for some of his compatriots.
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Post by Old Badger on Jul 12, 2018 10:08:24 GMT -5
This is a really interesting piece of political science research (I'll move it to the proper thread later): "At first glance, President Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court would seem a perfect reminder of why so many religious white Americans vote Republican: to promote conservative moral values. Religious values. Their values. The values that — the story goes — devout white Christians and Catholics want to see in Washington. As it turns out, that narrative has it partly backward. It’s not just that our religious beliefs affect our politics — it’s that our politics affect our religious choices. We don’t just take cues about politics from our pastors and priests; we take cues about religion from our politicians. "To see this, consider that as recently as the 1970s, white Republicans were no more religious than white Democrats. Today they are nearly 20 percent more likely to go to church regularly and likewise about 20 percent more likely to believe in God. The familiar explanation is that this religiosity gap arose because religious Americans shifted into the Republican Party while less religious and secular Americans became Democrats. Supposedly, this sorting began in response to the changing political landscape of the 1970s and 1980s, when social issues were intensely debated, religious elites like Jerry Falwell rose to prominence, and Republican politicians increasingly focused on morality and faith. "But this explanation misses a key fact: Most Americans choose a political party before choosing whether to join a religious community or how often to attend religious services. Faith often becomes a peripheral concern in adolescence and young adulthood — precisely the years when we tend to form stable partisan attachments. Religion typically becomes relevant again later, after we have children and start to think about their religious upbringings. By that time, our political views are set, ready to guide our religious values and decisions. "This is precisely the pattern that produced the religiosity gap between Democrats and Republicans. In 1965, M. Kent Jennings and Richard Niemi conducted a survey of over 1,500 American high school seniors, and then followed up with those people when they were in their 20s and 30s, and at 50. Analyzing these data, I find that twentysomething Democrats and Republicans were equally secular: Most had pulled away from religion after high school, and Democrats and Republicans did so at similar rates. But nine years later, Republicans had become much more likely to attend church than their Democratic counterparts. In contrast, even those who bucked the secular trend and remained religious in their 20s were no more likely than less religious members of their cohort to join the Republican ranks in their 30s. In other words, those who were already Republican sought out kindred political spirits at church, while Democrats opted to spend their Sundays elsewhere. "The religiosity gap between Republicans and Democrats grew wider during George W. Bush’s first term in office. Using data from a survey that interviewed a sample of Americans in 2000 and then re-interviewed them in 2002 and 2004, I find that Democrats’ rates of church attendance dropped precipitously between 2002 and 2004 — precisely the years when abortion and gay marriage rose to the top of the domestic political agenda. Religious Americans, on the other hand, did not change how they viewed the Republican Party or President Bush during this time. Hearing messages that placed Democrats and Republicans on opposing sides of religiously laden issues, many Democratic parents felt that they didn’t belong in church. Republican parents, for their part, felt comfortable in the pews." linkThis comports with my own experience over the years. Both my ex-wife and I were very religious growing up, but that waned during our college years. It did not revive until we had kids old enough to take to church, and at that point we found ourselves looking for churches in which we could feel comfortable. That excluded both her (Missouri Synod Evangelical Lutheran) and my (Roman Catholic) childhood churches, and eventually sent us to First Congregational in Madison (whose spire is visible in TV shots of Camp Randall), and later to a Unitarian-Universalist congregation in Ann Arbor. (Definition of a Unitarian: an atheist with kids.) The key was not theology; it was socio-political compatibility. Many of those we met along the way had a similar story to tell. One of the things I take from this is that politics is closely woven into the fabric of our lives, even when we don't see it. Several years ago political scientists confirmed that communities were becoming more and more politically homogenous ("the big sort"), leading to more polarized government, as candidates did not need to appeal across partisan lines. link This new research suggests that one of the mediating institutions--religion--that could provide bridges across the partisan divide actually is exacerbating the that divide because it's part of the sorting itself. This is dangerous for a democratic political system because eventually it leads to conflicts that simply cannot be resolved through elections. And elections are war by peaceful means, so when they don't work...see 1860.
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Post by Old Badger on Nov 5, 2019 10:04:02 GMT -5
The latest WP-ABC national poll shows an amazingly consistent spread between Trump and leading Dems:
Biden 56 - Trump 39 Warren 55 - Trump 40 Sanders 55 - Trump 41 Buttigieg 52 - Trump 41 Harris 51 - Trump 42
The differences mostly amount to random error. What's remarkable is that Trump's support is essentially 40 percent no matter who the Dem candidate is. This is consistent with approval ratings over most of the past three years. Moreover, it's surprising for an incumbent during the peak of an economic cycle; economics models suggest he should be running in the high 50s at this point. The gap between expected and actual almost certainly can be attributed to voters' reactions to Trump himself, rather than the fundamentals that typically define elections (economics, war and peace, incumbency). The problem for Dems is that state polling shows many of the Midwest states they barely lost last time still are toss-ups, so we could have another election in which Trump loses the popular vote but still wins in the Electoral College. Madison must be kicking himself over that mistake, lol.
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Post by Old Badger on Dec 16, 2019 12:51:27 GMT -5
Here's a nice analysis by Amanda Taub in the NYT of how the first-past-the-post election system failed in last week's UK elections, with implications for our own elections here:
LONDON — The answer to Brexit, the Conservative Party’s election victory and everything in British politics is (with apologies to Douglas Adams) 336,038. That number is what you get when you divide the 3,696,423 total votes cast nationally for the Liberal Democrats party in last week’s election by the 11 seats the party actually won. By contrast, Prime Minister Boris Johnson led his Conservative Party to victory via a far more economical average of 38,265 votes for each of its 365 seats — a roughly tenfold difference in the parties’ ability to translate votes cast into seats won.
The Conservatives’ triumph and the Liberal Democrats’ disaster were both the result, in large part, of a factor that is rarely discussed but crucial for understanding the country’s political chaos: Britain, like the United States, operates a “first past the post” electoral system, in which parliamentary seats are awarded to the candidate who wins the most votes in each individual race, rather than by proportion of the total national vote. Brexit, which has polarized Britain around a new political divide since the 2016 referendum in which the country narrowly voted to leave the European Union, has thrown into sharp relief the ways that first-past-the-post systems can skew political outcomes. And so 336,038 also serves as an epitaph for the political career of Jo Swinson, the dynamic 39-year-old who was the leader of the Liberal Democrats until she lost her seat on Thursday. Just months ago she seemed triumphant, her party surging in the polls. But Thursday’s election put an end to those hopes.
The first-past-the-post system works well within a two-party system, but not where there are multiple parties. For Britain, that generally wasn’t a problem until Brexit fractured the long-stable coalitions of its two major political parties, creating an opening for challengers like the Liberal Democrats and Brexit Party. “When you don’t have two parties, the first-past-the-post system is really bad at translating voter beliefs into seats,” said Sara Hobolt, a political scientist at the London School of Economics. That weakness was on display in the most recent election, in which the roughly half of the electorate who oppose leaving the European Union found that their votes had only a fraction of the power that votes for the pro-Brexit Conservatives did.
Things looked very different last September, when Ms. Swinson took the stage at her party’s conference in Bournemouth, an old-fashioned resort town on the south coast of England. To rapturous applause, she promised a future that much of the country had hoped for since the 2016 referendum: If her party won power, she would stop Brexit. In a different political system, that might have been her moment. “There is a pattern to how small parties break through,” said Dr. Hobolt, a co-author of a coming book about challenger parties in Europe. “They find an issue that cuts across a mainstream party coalition and exploit it as a wedge.”
Across much of Europe, the same issues at the heart of the Brexit debate, such as immigration and membership in the European Union, have been just such a wedge for small parties. In countries with proportional representation, the result has been a major party realignment: instead of two major parties, on the center left and center right, many countries now have four parties divided along both social and economic lines. In Germany, for instance, the Green Party on the far left and the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany on the far right have drawn support away from the center-left and center-right parties that have traditionally dominated politics. Though that means no party wins an outright majority, coalitions and compromise offer a way to reflect voter beliefs with relative accuracy.
If Britain had a proportional system, the pro-Remain parties could have formed a coalition with a majority in Parliament. The Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National Party, the Greens and Labour, which all promised to stop Brexit directly or hold a new referendum offering that as an option, won over 50 percent of the votes between them. But under first past the post, things played out very differently. Instead of giving Remain voters the option of a powerful coalition government, the increased popularity of the Liberal Democrats and other small parties split the pro-Remain electorate, ultimately helping to hand victory to Mr. Johnson’s Brexiteers. For example, in Kensington and Wimbledon, wealthy districts of London that voted to remain in the 2016 referendum, Conservative candidates scraped to victory with less than 40 percent of the vote after Remain voters divided between Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
The European Parliament elections in May, by contrast, used a proportional system. Although the results are not directly comparable — voters tend to treat European elections as more of an expressive choice than a practical one — they did offer a hint of what a different system might bring. The British electorate was much more atomized, with the Brexit Party in first place with 30 percent of the vote, the Liberal Democrats second with just under 20 percent and then the Greens, Labour and the Conservatives clustered around 10 percent each. But in first past the post, casting a vote outside of the two largest parties is a risky move. “Two-party systems are particularly problematic when you have the kind of crosscutting dimensions you have now,” Dr. Hobolt said. And, she added, “it’s really hard to break through as a third party in this kind of system.” Reflecting the will of the people can be political suicide.
Which brings us to another mystery: Why weren’t Ms. Swinson and her party able to exert more influence over Labour’s Brexit platform, as the far-right Brexit party did over Mr. Johnson’s Conservatives? To stave off the Brexit Party threat, Mr. Johnson made support for Brexit by any means necessary a litmus test for Conservative politicians, going so far as to expel 21 legislators for voting to block a no-deal Brexit. But pressure from the Liberal Democrats did not have a similar effect on the Labour party. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, grudgingly agreed to hold a new referendum, but avoided focusing on the Brexit issue, instead emphasizing his party’s economic platform and commitment to expanding the welfare state.
“That’s a geography story,” said Simon Hix, a political scientist at the London School of Economics who studies European politics. Brexit had divided the country along geographic as well as political lines: Large, cosmopolitan cities like London voted heavily to remain, while rural areas and postindustrial towns that have seen little benefit from globalization, including many traditional Labour strongholds, voted to leave. The result was that Conservative Remainers were concentrated in a smaller number of wealthy areas, mostly in London, leaving the Conservatives with relatively few seats to lose from alienating them. Labour Leave voters, on the other hand, were more spread out — putting many more Labour seats at risk. Mr. Corbyn tried to “have his cake and eat it,” Dr. Hix said, by prioritizing economic messages instead. But in an election where Brexit was the most salient issue, that strategy proved disastrously ineffective. Mr. Johnson’s promise to “get Brexit done” attracted leave voters in traditional Labour strongholds, winning those districts by often-narrow margins. Mr. Corbyn, meanwhile, failed to pick up areas like Wimbledon and Kensington where many wealthy Leave voters could not stomach his far-left economic policies and cast ballots for the Liberal Democrats.
That may offer some lessons for the United States, which shares first past the post. “When you have all these liberal cosmopolitan voters piled up in urban areas, the left are winning those seats by massive margins,” Dr. Hix said. “But the right can win many more seats with smaller margins.” That helps to explain why immigration, transgender rights and other social issues, which are effective wedge issues in rural and postindustrial areas, have become so prominent in American politics. The United States does not have small party challengers akin to the Brexit Party or the Liberal Democrats. But its primary system offers an opportunity for populist challengers within the major parties to exploit wedge issues. That strategy propelled Donald Trump to victory in the 2016 Republican primary. “People say that the good thing about first-past-the-post systems is you don’t get radical-right parties,” Dr. Hobolt said. “But there’s a danger that the radical right wing of a party takes over.”
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Post by bigapplebucky on Jan 8, 2020 19:22:07 GMT -5
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are "far left wing" only relative to the general rightward trend of American politics. In terms of the rest of the world they would be in the general area of Social Democrats, i.e. Center-left. Biden (and Obama, the Clintons and maybe the Bushes) would be Christian Democrats, i.e. center-right. The Trumplicans would be the various right wing nationalist parties, sympathetic to Nazi goals even if not overtly fascist.
The idea of universal healthcare has been around for a century. 32 of the 33 most advanced countries have it. All of them with significantly lower healthcare costs in terms of per capita and percent of GDP. Most, if not all of them, have longer life expectancies and lower infant and maternal mortality. Where is America's "can do" spirit about this? The answer is than "can do" got washed away with massive political campaign cash "donations". (bribes)
Free college tuition has existed in a good number of countries for years. Given the need for an educated work force for the country to maintain its economic competitiveness, one would think the idea a simple and good one. Much the same as the country switched from an 8th grade system to secondary schooling in the first half of the 20th century.
Maternity leave? Yes if you want to have better success raising healthy children.
Warren's wealth tax is kind of a new idea. We've been taxing real estate, which is a form of wealth, to pay for public schools for years. Perhaps some sort of focused form of wealth tax to pay for the bloated defense budget would be in order. She wants to use it to pay for some of her other proposals such as college tuition.
If the Democrats nominate Biden, I believe they will lose again in 2020.
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Post by Old Badger on Jan 9, 2020 0:10:34 GMT -5
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are "far left wing" only relative to the general rightward trend of American politics. In terms of the rest of the world they would be in the general area of Social Democrats, i.e. Center-left. Biden (and Obama, the Clintons and maybe the Bushes) would be Christian Democrats, i.e. center-right. The Trumplicans would be the various right wing nationalist parties, sympathetic to Nazi goals even if not overtly fascist. Yes, well they're running in a US election, not a European one, so both are "far left" in the American context. That's one reason why neither of them can win. We don't have a Social Democratic (much less Democratic Socialist) party here for a reason...well, a number of them. For one thing, property restrictions on voting were lifted much earlier in the US than in most of Europe, so there was no need to form a political party around that issue. By contrast, the Labour Party was organized in part around a demand for universal (male) suffrage, and when it finally was granted in 1918 Labour immediately displaced the Liberal Party as the major contender against the Conservatives. A similar history can be traced in many other European countries. In the US, many social democratic policies (such as Social Security) have been absorbed into the existing political parties, first in the Progressive Era, then the New Deal, and since then through the Democratic Party, effectively limiting the scope for a true social-democratic movement. Second, democratic socialism/social democracy have been most successful where supported by a sense of social solidarity. Research confirms that people in highly homogeneous societies--the Nordic countries, in particular--long supported strong welfare states because they saw themselves as helping other people just like themselves, effectively a national extended family. In the US, by contrast, all our politics are riven by racial/ethnic differences. Social programs that are normal in, say, Denmark here are seen as taking from "us" to give to "them" by large numbers of voters. Indeed, even many of our most progressive social programs have been designed to exclude, or at least limit participation by, blacks and immigrants, often by giving states strong control over administration and regulation of the programs. ( NOTE: Denmark and Sweden have taken steps to limit their social services to "foreigners" since the immigration crisis a few years ago, moving somewhat in the direction of the US.) Given the current state of the economy, and barring an actual war with Iran, most political science election models will predict an easy win by Trump. Only Trump's own behavior is keeping him from that--he simply repels many voters who otherwise might vote to re-elect him. No Democrat will sail into the White House in November. But neither Bernie nor Warren would be a strong candidate, except in places where any Democrat would win anyway. Most of their ideas will be easy to pillory: taxpayer-paid "free" college for Jeff Bezos's kids? Take away your hard-won health insurance for Medicare (which is inferior to most union plans...I say that having been in both)? You (Bernie) want to raise my taxes to pay for that, but you can't even guess by how much? You (Liz) plan to pay for all this by taxing a few billionaires--seriously? Like, don't they have tax lawyers, accountants, and off-shore banks? And hasn't the wealth tax been dropped by most countries who adopted it because it just doesn't work? Then there's that whole race gap. Neither Bernie nor Warren has any real following among the most loyal high-turnout Democrats: black women. What they're peddling isn't selling to those voters, and without them the Dems cannot win. I don't see any magic bullet that will solve that problem for either. So, yes Biden well might lose to Trump; but Bernie and Warren almost certainly would, too, and likely would hurt more of the down-ballot Democrats we just got elected in 2018.
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Post by bigapplebucky on Jan 9, 2020 10:55:51 GMT -5
Why we need a progressive agenda in America: NY Times: Who Killed the Knapp Family?By Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn Mr. Kristof is an Opinion columnist. Ms. WuDunn is a business consultant. Jan. 9, 2020, 8:01 a.m. ET YAMHILL, Ore. — Chaos reigned daily on the No. 6 school bus, with working-class boys and girls flirting and gossiping and dreaming, brimming with mischief, bravado and optimism. Nick rode it every day in the 1970s with neighbors here in rural Oregon, neighbors like Farlan, Zealan, Rogena, Nathan and Keylan Knapp. They were bright, rambunctious, upwardly mobile youngsters whose father had a good job installing pipes. The Knapps were thrilled to have just bought their own home, and everyone oohed and aahed when Farlan received a Ford Mustang for his 16th birthday. Yet today about one-quarter of the children on that No. 6 bus are dead, mostly from drugs, suicide, alcohol or reckless accidents. Of the five Knapp kids who had once been so cheery, Farlan died of liver failure from drink and drugs, Zealan burned to death in a house fire while passed out drunk, Rogena died from hepatitis linked to drug use and Nathan blew himself up cooking meth. Keylan survived partly because he spent 13 years in a state penitentiary. Among other kids on the bus, Mike died from suicide, Steve from the aftermath of a motorcycle accident, Cindy from depression and a heart attack, Jeff from a daredevil car crash, Billy from diabetes in prison, Kevin from obesity-related ailments, Tim from a construction accident, Sue from undetermined causes. And then there’s Chris, who is presumed dead after years of alcoholism and homelessness. At least one more is in prison, and another is homeless. We Americans are locked in political combat and focused on President Trump, but there is a cancer gnawing at the nation that predates Trump and is larger than him. Suicides are at their highest rate since World War II; one child in seven is living with a parent suffering from substance abuse; a baby is born every 15 minutes after prenatal exposure to opioids; America is slipping as a great power. We have deep structural problems that have been a half century in the making, under both political parties, and that are often transmitted from generation to generation. Only in America has life expectancy now fallen three years in a row, for the first time in a century, because of “deaths of despair.” ***** Biden's policies will not address this:First, well-paying jobs disappeared, partly because of technology and globalization but also because of political pressure on unions and a general redistribution of power toward the wealthy and corporations. Warren's will.***
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Post by Old Badger on Jan 9, 2020 12:00:01 GMT -5
First, well-paying jobs disappeared, partly mostly because of technology and globalization but also because of political pressure on unions and a general redistribution of power toward the wealthy and corporations. The big driver here is technology. We have been going through the kind of technological change that wreaked havoc on agricultural employment at the end of the 19th century, with similar disruptions to people's lives, leading directly to the Populist and then Progressive Movements. We're seeing almost exactly the same thing playing out now with the industrial sector. The decline in manufacturing, mining, and construction jobs--those good-paying blue-collar jobs--has been going on for decades. In 1950 they accounted for more than 40 percent of all jobs; by 1980 that was down to 24 percent; and by 2018 only 14 percent. That's despite the fact that US industrial output has increased by nearly 650 percent over the same time period. Producing lots more without needing more employees is a consequence of mechanization. The auto industry is the largest user of industrial robots because many of the jobs are so routine that robots can do them as well as--actually better than--people; and robots are cheaper over the long run. No wishful thinking and no government policy is going to bring back those kinds of good-paying, but low- to moderate-skill jobs. Hell, Donald Trump promised to revive the coal industry, but this past year saw the biggest decline in coal mining jobs in history. Government's role here is to ameliorate the hardships visited on individuals and communities by these ongoing changes, and prepare coming generations for the future. Every Democratic candidate has ideas for doing just that, and there's nothing about Warren's that make them obviously superior to others'. Her decision to follow Bernie down the Medicare-for-All rabbit hole without figuring out the cost, and her subsequent retreat when the size of that cost became apparent, do not encourage one to believe her other plans are all that well thought-out.
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Post by Old Badger on Jan 18, 2020 11:42:30 GMT -5
Political scientists Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein expose: Five myths about bipartisanship
It is common for Americans to rue the absence of bipartisanship. Even expressly partisan figures like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Trump have called for more cross-party collaboration. Former vice president Joe Biden has said that “no party should have too much power.” And there is even a prestigious think tank, the Bipartisan Policy Center, dedicated to the idea. The calls may be nothing new, but they have increased in intensity and volume as our times have become hyper-polarized, rendering bipartisanship the subject of many myths. Myth No. 1- Bipartisanship was the norm through most of U.S. history.NPR lamented that Sen. John McCain’s death in 2018 symbolized “the near-extinction of lawmakers who believe in seeking bipartisanship to tackle big problems.” A bipartisan pundit duo wrote in the Hill before the 2018 election that bipartisanship had a “strong record of success,” citing President Bill Clinton collaborating with Republicans and President Ronald Reagan working with Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill. But our history is littered with times when partisan rancor was literally deadly. As historian Joanne Freeman’s “The Field of Blood” points out, disputes between the parties included plenty of violence in Congress in the decades before the Civil War. In 1902, a fistfight broke out on the Senate floor when Democratic Sen. Benjamin Tillman was angered that fellow Democrat John McLaurin was even considering siding with Republicans. Physical altercations between the parties abated in the 20th century, at least, but partisan conflict has remained the norm. The period from the 1930s into the 1970s, when a “conservative coalition” of Republicans and Southern Democrats worked together to form majorities, is the exception. And that bipartisanship was achieved at the cost of preserving and protecting Jim Crow. Myth No. 2 - The partisan divide is driven by policy.In their platforms, the parties have stark differences in outlook and policy. Journalist Jonathan Salant says they are “180 degrees apart.” The Pew Research Center concludes that Democrats and Republicans are growing ever more divided on fundamental priorities. But more than specific policies, strong tribal identities and intense competition for control of government drive our partisan polarization. One psychology study found, for instance, that public views on climate change polarize when Democrats and Republicans are told that the policies they are asked to evaluate were supported or opposed by the other party. The Affordable Care Act was designed to appeal to Republicans by adopting key elements from the GOP alternative to the 1993 Clinton health-care plan and from then-Gov. Mitt Romney’s plan in Massachusetts. The unified Republican opposition was not about policy differences but was part of a deliberate strategy, crafted on the eve of Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009, to oppose and delegitimize all his major initiatives. On immigration reform, the Senate had broad bipartisan agreement during the Obama years, but legislation died in the House because of a desire to keep the president from securing a victory. Once Donald Trump took office, Republican senators who had supported those reforms turned against them. For example, Florida’s Marco Rubio, one of the key architects of the earlier reform, shifted to back Trump’s more restrictive approach. From health care to climate to stimulus to deficit reduction to trade, debates where there was long common ground — and where there still is significant overlap — have been superseded by partisan warfare. Myth No. 3 - Bipartisanship is more valued by voters than by politicians.Voters often express frustration that their elected representatives just won’t stop bickering and do the right thing. More than two decades ago, John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse documented in their book “Congress as Public Enemy” that voters have little patience for the actual workings of democracy, its unruly debates and inevitable compromises. As a result, they embrace the rhetoric of bipartisanship to avoid the unseemliness of politics. A recent survey from USA Today, Public Agenda and Ipsos found that Americans “are sick and tired of being so divided.” In reality, the voters who are best informed — who make up less than a majority of voters — are also the voters most attached to parties. Reinforced by activists and partisan media, these voters expect their representatives to toe the party line, not embrace bipartisanship. This is consistent with well-demonstrated affective negative partisanship: Voters view the other party as the enemy and don’t approve of their representatives consorting with it. The credible threat of a primary challenge is a frequent topic of discussion and concern in the halls of Congress. Myth No. 4 - Major policy changes require bipartisanship.When then-first lady Hillary Clinton struggled with the administration’s version of health-care reform in 1993, then-Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) said, “Something like this passes with 75 votes or not at all.” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) has said a reason most of his legislation is bipartisan is that “if you introduce legislation that only has support from one party, it will not last very long.” But the notion that major social policy requires broad bipartisan consensus has been belied by a host of examples. It is true that many Republicans joined Democrats in the final votes to pass Social Security and Medicare, and a larger number worked with the majority Democrats on improving the legislation and making sure the programs were implemented. The same happened with Democrats’ support for implementing George W. Bush’s Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit. But bitter partisan warfare and rhetoric marked the lead-up to these programs’ passage, and successes came because enough members of the majority party backed those proposals. On Medicare Part D, for instance, initial Democratic support declined dramatically in the face of partisan hardball played by then-Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate Republican leaders. The New York Times reported the day after the House vote: “A fiercely polarized House approved legislation on Saturday that would add prescription drug benefits to Medicare, after an all-night session and an extraordinary bout of Republican arm-twisting to muster a majority. The Senate opened its debate under threat of a filibuster.” Myth No. 5 - The two parties are equally to blame for partisan squabbles.
Democrats and Republicans are often both held responsible for the rise of hyper-partisanship. The term of choice among a minority of skeptics is “false equivalence.” After McCain’s death, former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw said that “both parties, they’re more ideologues than they are authentic people.” Howard Schultz’s aborted independent effort early in the 2020 presidential campaign also faulted both parties for Washington’s problems. But our research has found that one party bears more of the blame. The bipartisanship that was common in the House through the mid-1970s began to fray as racial and cultural differences came to define the increasingly polarized and competitive parties. Partisan polarization began with these shifts in the coalitional bases of the parties, but Republicans, because of their increasingly homogeneous positions on race, religious traditionalism and other cultural issues, had more incentive to move right than Democrats had to move left. In the 1990s, Newt Gingrich and his allies fomented tribalism, using the House ethics process as a political weapon and uniting the GOP into a parliamentary-style opposition party. They had important and vocal allies in partisan media, starting with Rush Limbaugh and talk radio. Much the same happened a bit later in the Senate, where McConnell turned the filibuster into a weapon of mass obstruction and got his party to unite against every Obama initiative. Today, Republicans are one of the most extreme (even radical) conservative parties in the democratic world, with no members in the House and arguably barely one in the Senate who would qualify as moderates or traditional conservatives, while Democrats look like a traditional center-left party. Though the “Squad” of Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib receives much attention, a breakdown of voting records shows that the Democratic caucus is populated by more moderates than leftists. The asymmetric nature of this polarization makes bipartisanship almost impossible. www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/five-myths-about-bipartisanship/2020/01/17/35853dca-3873-11ea-bb7b-265f4554af6d_story.html
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