Author Archives: Sheila

Can A Pandemic Have A Good Side?

Pollyanna here! (I know– this is a rare appearance of my positive side…)

What prompted my question was a series of posts on my neighborhood listserv, which is usually dominated by complaints about trash pickup, potholes and porch thieves. The first of the series was this one:

If there are any elderly or immunosuppressed neighbors who have an errand they cannot run, I’d be happy to help! I work in a nursing facility and know there are many elderly that are fearful of getting to the store.

That was followed by one titled “Be Kind,” which read

Please keep an eye out for neighbors, friends, kids, even people on the street that look stressed. Be kind to everyone since we cannot know the problems they are having with the stress of this slow moving crisis. Whether emotional or financial, it will bring out depression in those trying to keep it together. Domestic violence is likely to increase. It is unlike a hurricane in that we don’t know when, where, how, or how long.

Forty-nine neighbors had responded to that post when I last checked, and the comments were uniformly positive, thanking the poster for the reminder, suggesting ways to be helpful to neighbors, and indicating an intent to check on the well-being of older residents or those with medical problems.

I live in a downtown neighborhood–often referred to (scornfully) as “the hood” by people who assume that urban life is dangerous, faceless and anonymous. I actually know most of my neighbors, who are unfailingly pleasant and helpful, so I was gratified, but not surprised, by the attitudes expressed in these posts.

Also on the potentially positive side is growing recognition that a robust social safety net doesn’t just help “those people”–i.e., the poor or marginalized. If people living paycheck to paycheck (and there are more of them than you think) don’t have paid sick leave, they are likely to come to work when they shouldn’t, and to infect “us.”

And it probably goes without saying that if everyone had access to healthcare, it would be easier to identify and isolate sick folks and thus contain pandemics. Perhaps the virus will help more people understand why a society that protects the most vulnerable is actually better for everyone.

Finally, despite the best disinformation efforts of Faux News, there are signs that this public health challenge is creating a renewed appreciation for the importance of a properly functioning government.

Periodically, America’s historic penchant for anti-intellectualism and distaste for “pointy-headed” experts facilitates the election of a “politically-incorrect” public official.  Previously, this has been a more common outcome at the state and local level, but in 2016 it elevated a toxic and profoundly ignorant man to the Presidency.

When resentment of knowledge unites with fear of social displacement–in our case, the escalating panic of less-educated white “Christian” males facing loss of their dominant status–it creates an opening for the con men and would-be autocrats who view government office as an opportunity for graft rather than a call to serve.

Unfortunately, when an emergency arrives that requires a government solution, the utter inability of these bozos to perform–to use the powers of government for their intended purpose– becomes too obvious to ignore.

The Trump administration’s multiple transgressions against science, the environment and the most basic principles of good government will be responsible for many deaths that  might have been avoided. There isn’t much average Americans can do about that at this point–but going forward, we can and must learn a lesson: competent government matters.

And at a time where so many Americans have displayed their ugliest sides–their racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and more–we can take comfort in the humanity and genuine goodness of so many ordinary citizens.

It may not be enough, but it’s important.

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It Wasn’t “The Establishment”

In the wake of Joe Biden’s victories on Super Tuesday, there has been a concerted effort by Sanders’ most rabid supporters (undoubtedly abetted by some Russian ‘bots’) to accuse a nefarious (and conveniently un-defined) “Establishment” of dirty tricks.

The folks crying foul look a lot like the Trump supporters who dismiss any and all facts that contradict their fervently-held beliefs as “fake news.”

The data says otherwise.

An analysis of actual data by Thomas Edsell in the New York Times is instructive. Here’s his lede:

Four years ago, in Grant County, Oklahoma, Bernie Sanders crushed Hillary Clinton, 57.1 percent to 31.9 percent.

This year, Sanders didn’t just lose Grant County — 87.5 percent white, 76.9 percent without college degrees — to Joe Biden, his percentage of the vote fell by 41 points, to 16.1 percent.

Grant County reflects what has become a nationwide pattern in the Democratic primaries, including those held Tuesday night: Sanders’s support among white working class voters has begun to evaporate.

What happened?

Edsell mines the data. It shows that large numbers of voters in 2016 were extremely hostile to Clinton; they voted for Sanders because they detested her–not because they were part of Bernie’s “revolution.” Once she captured the nomination, a surprising number voted for Trump.

Edsell suggests that the aversion of these (mostly) male voters to Hillary was also a factor in Elizabeth Warren’s inability to do better in the primary. He cites a recent study,

“Understanding White Polarization in the 2016 Vote for President: The Sobering Role of Racism and Sexism,” by Brian Schaffner, a political scientist at Tufts, and Matthew MacWilliams and Tatishe Nteta, political scientists at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, was published in 2018 in the Political Science Quarterly.

Trump, according to the authors, deliberately put racism and sexism at the center of the campaign in order to make these issues salient and advantageous to his candidacy:

Trump’s rhetoric went far beyond targeting racial and ethnic groups; he also invoked language that was explicitly hostile toward women. These remarks were often focused directly at opponents, such as Carly Fiorina and Hillary Clinton, or news reporters, such as Megyn Kelly.

Edsell goes into some detail about the study, and it’s worth clicking through and reading, but his larger point was that considerable research demonstrates that a very significant percentage of non‐college‐educated whites hold sexist views.  So we shouldn’t be surprised by post-primary analyses that show non-college educated whites –many of whom voted for Sanders in 2016–breaking for Biden in significant numbers now that Sanders no longer faces Hillary.

Overall Sanders is running well below his 2016 vote share everywhere. A lot of people underestimated just how much of his support in 2016 was an anti-Clinton vote, and now that he’s not running against Clinton, those voters aren’t backing him anymore.

Other interesting data points: between 10 and 12 percent of Sanders’s 2016 primary voters voted for Trump in the general election, with an additional 12 percent either voting for a third-party candidate or not voting at all. And many weren’t Democrats; interviews with Sanders-Trump voters over the years suggest that only 35 percent of them had voted for Obama in either 2008 or 2012.

What separated Sanders-Trump voters from Sanders-Clinton voters was simple racism.

When asked how they felt about whites and blacks on a 0-100 scale, Sanders-Trump voters rated blacks 9 points less favorably than Sanders-Clinton voters. But Sanders-Trump voters rated whites 8 points more favorably.

Nate Silver has also crunched the numbers, pointing out that in 2016, Sanders won 43 percent of the primary vote against Clinton; however, if “24 percent of that 43 percent were #NeverHillary voters, that means Sanders’s real base was more like 33 percent of the overall Democratic electorate.”

If Edsell and the scholars he quotes are right about the extent and effect of latent sexism (and not-so-latent racism), it explains why Sanders’ support diminished this time around–although it doesn’t explain the significant reduction in turnout by young voters, especially in a year when Democratic primary turnout overall has skyrocketed. (One tongue-in-cheek explanation: Young people tweet. Old people vote.)

One thing, however, is clear. No matter how distasteful the evidence is to Bernie’s most passionate supporters, neither the pathetically inept DNC nor some shadowy “establishment” are responsible for his likely failure to win the nomination.

It may seem inconceivable to them that a majority of Democratic voters prefer Biden. But the data says they do.

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Laughing So We Won’t Cry….

Credit where credit is due… one thing Trump has been truly– even magnificently– good for  is satire and snark.

It isn’t only the late-night comedians, although they have dominated. Editorial comics have been unrelenting. Then there are Andy Borowitz’ headlines…Trump Plans to Destroy Coronavirus with an Incredibly Mean Tweet..Mexico Tightens Border After Trump Pardons White-Collar Criminals…Cruise Ship Passengers Demand to be Housed at Mar-a-Lago….

Think too about Randy Rainbow, whose most recent song parody is “Any Dem Will Do,” (Play it over and over if your favorite candidate isn’t the nominee), but who has issued dozens–maybe hundreds–of clever and devastating take-offs of popular songs, aimed directly at the buffoon pretending to be President.

Even the legacy press has gotten into the game; Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank has been turning out some of the best snark anywhere. I particularly loved his column about “Dr. Trump.”

Do you have a nagging medical concern? A rash that won’t go away? Unexplained hearing loss? Are you currently bleeding out from a severed femoral artery?

Well, fret no more. America now has a leading medical expert — some say the best — who will dispense diagnoses and prognoses to all — for free! This bold new telemedicine initiative, “Ask Dr. Trump,” will be offered on an unpredictable but highly frequent basis to all Americans (whether they like it or not).

Granted, Trump has given him an enormous amount of material to work with.

Dr. Donald J. Trump, of course, is the pioneering scientist who first determined that climate change is a hoax and, more recently, discovered that windmills cause cancer. In between, he proved that forest fires could be contained by “raking”and identified a previously unrecognized tropical cyclone pattern targeting Alabama.

Dr. Trump acquired what he calls “a natural instinct for science” not through formal education but because “my uncle was a great professor at MIT for many years.” Sadly, the elder Trump didn’t live to see his nephew’s greatest discoveries in the medical field: The flu shot is basically “injecting bad stuff into your body” and exercise can shorten your life. Dr. Trump used his instinctive grasp of medicine to become “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency” with an innate life expectancy of 200 years.

Milbank went on to incorporate recent quotations from our idiot-in-chief, whose “pathbreaking epidemiology” has allowed him to dispute the World Health Organization’s report that 3.4 percent of people with reported cases have died. Trump says that’s a “false number.”

Trump’s research, based extensively on “my hunch,” puts the true figure at “way under 1 percent.”

The entire column is worth reading. I also highly recommend the “oeuvre” of Randy Rainbow for those mornings when we get up, have coffee, listen to the news and contemplate suicide.

Laughing is better than crying…

I personally liked the advice of a young Facebook friend who says that–should he be diagnosed with the Coronavirus–he will spend the three-week quarantine period traveling to MAGA rallies….

Speaking of the Coronavirus, there may be one positive to emerge from the administration’s mismanagement of the pandemic.  It is demonstrating the massive incompetence of the administration and the increasingly demented behavior of the President to millions of voters who haven’t been laughing at the late-night jokes or reading the Washington Post. Recent polling finds large numbers of people saying the mismanagement makes them less likely to vote for Trump.

“By a 20-point margin, voters say his administration’s handling of the virus makes them less likely to vote for him this fall,” Public Policy Polling reported. “Independents say they’re less likely to vote for Trump by 32 points because of how he’s dealt with this issue.”

The day when the “Doctor” is out can’t come soon enough….

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Inexcusable

Policy debates are rarely one-sided. Even when I feel strongly that side A is obviously, clearly, self-evidently the right way to go, I know deep down that sides B and C have their points too. And as I tell my students, cases don’t get to the Supreme Court unless there are at least two sides (often more) to the issue.

But every rule has its exception, and the Indiana General Assembly periodically refuses to take an action that is self-evidently, obviously right. As Indiana Public Media has reported,

House Republicans this week voted down Democrats’ attempts to help ensure Indiana’s voting machines are more secure in the 2020 election.

More than half of Indiana’s 92 counties have voting machines without a paper backup. Election security experts say those backups are critical to electoral integrity.

The General Assembly budgeted $10 million last year to help upgrade. But that amount only covers about 10 percent of the machines that need it. And they plan to get to the rest of them by 2030.

Really? By 2030? How helpful!

Rep. Carey Hamilton (D-Indianapolis) says waiting 10 years to fully upgrade the machines is a mistake.

“Providing secure elections based on the best available technology that we know exists, that we know the Secretary [of State] could utilize in an efficient way before November elections is the right thing for us to do,” Hamilton says.

According to WFYI, Secretary of State Connie Lawson (a Republican, it should be noted) had asked the legislature for additional funds, but had been rebuffed

Lawson says she initially asked budget writers for more money.

“But they told us to get real,” Lawson says. “So, we got real and we tried to hone it down to where it was possible to get the dollars.”

Get real? “Real” is something our lawmakers know very little about–or choose to ignore.

What is “real” is the importance of public confidence in the integrity of the vote. What is “real” is the significant decline in the public’s trust in government. What is “real” is the growing cynicism and anger fed by blatant gerrymandering and multiple, visible Republican vote suppression efforts around the country.

Here in Indiana, what is also “real” is the legislature’s animus toward urban counties, and lawmakers’ continuing efforts to privilege both rural Hoosiers and the deep pockets of their contributors, constituencies that just happen to favor Republicans. (How else can we interpret efforts this session to protect coal and landlords, and to sabotage public transportation?)

Donald Trump may insist that American Intelligence operatives who continue to warn about Russian interference with our elections are part of some “deep state hoax,” but rational people know that those who work for our Intelligence agencies are far more credible than the buffoon who stands to benefit from that interference. Ensuring that our voting machines are tamper-proof, providing a paper trail, and taking other precautions against threatened interference (or for that matter, domestic game-playing and/or malfunction) is simply common sense.

Granted, common sense has never been the most obvious attribute of Indiana’s General Assembly.

If there is “another side” to providing proper election security, I don’t know what it is.

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Words Of Wisdom

One of the insights that comes with age is the recognition that nothing is ever perfect. That recognition is particularly applicable to politics, which is by its very nature combative, messy and endlessly contested.

There is no perfect candidate. No perfect president. No perfect system.

That being the case, I found a recent column from Buzzfeed absolutely “on point.” It was titled “What To Do If You Hate The Democratic Nominee.” It began

After the 2016 election, you promised yourself you’d do everything you can to beat Trump in 2020. You marched and protested, knocked doors in the midterms, wrote postcards to voters, donated to anyone whose video caught your eye, and maybe even got caught up in some ridiculous social media squabbles.

Now the time has finally come. The 2020 election is here, and the Democratic primary is very slowly narrowing, with only a handful of candidates remaining. You’ve been preparing for this for three years, and yet: When you look at the possibilities, you’re deflated. Or maybe you feel it more viscerally: You cannot stomach the idea of casting a ballot for ______, let alone knocking a door for them or giving them money. You know you have a moral responsibility to act, but there is simply no way you can do it on behalf of ________.

Don’t worry. There is another, equally important, way to make a difference this November that won’t require you to fake it through a canvassing shift: Go local.

With your time, money, attention, and most importantly, your vote, you can help beat Trump and build sustainable power for Democrats without ever saying the Democratic nominee’s name.

As the article points out, within an hour of almost every American zip code, there’s an election where a Democrat not running for President can use your help. In some of those states (think Kentucky), your help can really make a difference.

Those down-ballot elections, from Statehouse to “district attorneys, school board, county clerks, tax collector, judges, justices of the peace, and library boards” are incredibly important–more than the lack of media attention might suggest.

Go knock doors for those state and local candidates. Your energy will yield dividends — because the voter contact you do will make a difference for the entire ticket: young people and communities of color, especially, who often feel dismissed or ignored by national candidates, can be more directly energized by local issues and candidates. And at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter which Democratic campaign gets someone to the polls as long as they get there

What about your money–assuming you have some to contribute? Given Citizens United and the prevalence of dark money (which is spent on behalf of even the most anti-money ticket), It probably wouldn’t make all that much difference to the Presidential nominee anyway. But it will matter to candidates for city council and your local statehouse. A lot.

Take whatever money you’d budgeted for beating Trump, and split it in down the middle. Give half of it to local candidates who catch your eye. Give the other half to an organization (or a few) that will exist past Election Day 2020…. Give to organizations that do deep relationship-building in states that a presidential campaign is never going to organize in because the Electoral College doesn’t incentivize it. If you can afford to, make your donation recurring and plan to let it run into 2021.

So what about that Presidential vote? Should you work for those local candidates and then refuse to vote for President? Or write in someone you’d prefer? That’s your right, after all.

But especially if you’re a person with any kind of privilege, you have a responsibility to think beyond your self-interest. This election is about the most vulnerable among us who need you to be an ally.

This election is also for the soul of America.

Every vote against Donald Trump is a vote against racism, misogyny, autocracy and incompetence. No matter how much you dislike the eventual candidate, no matter how imperfect he (we know it will be a “he”)is, he will be immeasurably better than the mentally-ill criminal who daily disgraces the Oval Office.

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