Category Archives: Random Blogging

Labels For The Intellectually Lazy

In a class discussion the other day, a student noted that she had taken one of those “where do you stand?” tests on the Internet, and had emerged dead-center–neither Left nor Right. She wondered what was wrong with her; evidently, her fatal flaw is that she actually thinks for herself.

These Internet “tests,” of course, are bogus; the questions lack nuance, and tend to reflect the “either/or” bipolarism of contemporary American politics.

I’m old enough to remember when the most common complaint about the parties was that there wasn’t “a dime’s worth of difference between them.” I also remember a popular libertarian illustration of the political spectrum as a circle, not a straight line–the accurate message being that, at the far left and far right, the extremes meet, with their only disagreement being whose agenda government should impose on the rest of us.

I’m also old enough to remember when issues we now consider “left” were held by many on the right: lots of limited-government Republicans used to be pro-choice and pro-gay-rights, for example, asserting that–as Barry Goldwater put it–government didn’t belong in your boardroom or your bedroom.

The tendency to apply labels that allow us to dismiss, rather than engage, positions with which we disagree is hardly new; in 2003, I wrote

This mania for labeling people so that we don’t have to engage with them on the validity of their ideas has accelerated during the past few years. Perhaps it is talk radio, with its tendency to reduce everything to name-calling sound-bites. Admittedly, it is much more efficient to call a woman a “feminazi” than to take the time and effort needed to discuss why her positions are untenable. And the tactic certainly isn’t limited to Republicans; Indiana’s very own Evan Bayh has solemnly warned the Democrats against the danger posed by “leftists” like Howard Dean. (I’m not quite sure when Dean’s support for gun rights, the death penalty and a balanced budget became “far left” positions. Perhaps when they were espoused by someone the Senator isn’t supporting.)

Intellectual honesty has not improved since 2003. Far from it.

Perhaps my memory is faulty, but when I became politically active, the major differences in political philosophy involved “how” rather than “what.” In other words, there was general recognition of the problems America faced, but different approaches to solving those problems. Today, the bulk of the Republican Party disagrees about the very existence of certain problems–think climate change.

Disputing evidence, however, is neither Left nor Right. It’s delusional.

For that matter, a number of America’s current challenges simply do not lend themselves to classic Left/Right classifications. Climate change is one. Globalization is another. The likelihood that automation will displace millions of workers, and the increasingly undemocratic structure of our electoral system are still others. Proposed solutions to these challenges may or may not fall on the familiar left/right spectrum, but any genuine debate about those solutions must be grounded in acknowledgment of their existence and complexity.

Admittedly, the resurgence of white nationalism on the one hand and calls for massive economic redistribution on the other fall on the familiar left/right spectrum–but even then, partisan labeling and name-calling are no substitute for considered analysis.

Yelling “snowflake” or “fascist” at those with whom you disagree may make you feel better, but it’s not only lazy–it’s no substitute for an evidence-based explanation of why you disagree.

Name calling is also unlikely to change anyone’s opinion  –although, given the rancor of today’s political tribalism, and the unwillingness of today’s zealots even to consider contrary positions, probably nothing is.

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Conspiracy Theories In One..Two..Three…

I still remember a meeting I attended many years ago, when I was in City Hall. A number of neighborhood groups–aggrieved about something I no longer recall–met with Mayor Hudnut and a small group of city officials and accused us of engaging in a devious conspiracy to undermine whatever it was they were exercised about. Bob Cross, then Deputy Director of the Department of Metropolitan Development, responded that incompetence usually explains far more than conspiracy. (Actually, as he remarked after the meeting, we would have been incapable of pulling off a conspiracy.)

It was a bit of wisdom I’ve not forgotten.

There are all sorts of ongoing problems with the Iowa Caucuses–working folks often can’t participate, Iowa is over 95% white and unrepresentative of the nation as a whole, and the parties and media pay far too much attention to the results. Perhaps the monumental cluster-f**k this year will prompt a re-evaluation. (I personally favor a national primary…or at this point, even a retreat to those despised “smoke filled rooms.” Trump would never have emerged from a smoke-filled room.)

In the wake of Iowa’s inability to issue immediate results, Talking Points Memo blamed complexity and an app that was definitely “not ready for prime time.”

Experts in cybersecurity and election administration told TPM on Tuesday that the app chosen by the Iowa Democratic Party failed to handle the complexity, providing an example of what not to do in administering an election.

But incompetence isn’t an explanation that feeds the fevered imaginations of conspiracy theorists.

Supporters of Bernie Sanders identified a donor who had given money to both Mayor Pete and to the company that developed the flawed app (as had four of the Democratic contenders) and concluded that Pete was part of a clandestine effort to rig the election. Anti-Bernie folks responded by identifying a guy with a “commie background” who has  donated to Bernie, so Bernie’s a commie.

For the record, Bernie’s campaign has said the caucuses were not rigged.

Business Insider reported that GOP operatives were gleefully piling on.

Amid the chaos surrounding the delayed results of the Iowa caucuses, multiple Republicans have pushed conspiracy theories that imply the process was rigged against Sen. Bernie Sanders.

With so much confusion in Iowa, some in the GOP saw an opportunity to be exploited.

There is no evidence whatsoever the caucuses were rigged, but some Republicans are pushing this conspiratorial narrative in what appears to be a fairly transparent effort to divide Democratic voters. The primary season is already heated, with supporters of the various Democratic candidates often duking it out online.

A column in the Washington Post summed up the various elements of this mess that should genuinely trouble Democrats, and the lessons this exercise in breathtaking incompetence should teach.

Transmitting results digitally opens up a whole cyber-world of hacking risk — yet Iowa insisted on doing it anyway. Organizers did try to guard against disaster by requiring precincts to include snapshots of an on-paper count. But there’s a lot more they didn’t do, such as test their system statewide or tell any security experts the name of the for-profit company that constructed the app in a hurried two months. (That name, by the way, is “Shadow, Inc.” Now don’t you feel better?)…

Iowa party officials started by crying “user error” to explain the struggles many precinct captains had downloading and uploading. Okay, if “user error” means very few people could use the app without encountering an error. Some encountered limited bandwidth because so many individuals were accessing the program at the same time, which the party might have anticipated considering they were running 1,681 caucuses simultaneously. Some in rural areas ran into poor wireless service, which the party also should have anticipated considering, well, it is Iowa. The next day, officials began to blame a “coding issue.”

The Iowa imbroglio, in other words, so far reveals lots of incompetence and little insidiousness. More tech isn’t always better, and, in this case, it was worse because a product wasn’t fully tested and didn’t function as it was supposed to.

The first two sentences of the column pointed to the real issue: Americans’ widespread distrust– distrust that encourages belief in conspiracy theories.

Want to cause countrywide confusion and sow doubt in the integrity of our democracy? Apparently there’s an app for that.

Indeed.

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Evan McMullin Sums It Up

David Evan McMullin–for those of you who have forgotten his brief emergence during the 2016 Presidential campaign– is the former Central Intelligence Agency operations officer and former Republican who ran for President as an independent that year. He is currently the Executive Director of Standup Republic.

In the wake of the shameful vote by Republican Senators in which they refused to call witnesses or demand documents, McMullin’s tweets have been short, not sweet and very much to the point.

Immediately following the vote, he tweeted:

Republican leaders in Congress believe—and privately say—that they fear the country is quickly changing in ways that may soon deprive them of power, and that they must use the power they have now to delay it as long as possible, even by harming the Republic if necessary.

That was followed by other, equally pointed observations.

For anti-Trump Republicans—a small but electorally significant segment—it’s been uncomfortably possible to oppose Trump but remain affiliated with the party, looking instead to more reasonable Republican senators for leadership. The witness vote may mark the end of that for many…

In a single bogus impeachment trial, Senate Republicans will have made Trump’s pursuit of foreign backing and obstruction of Congress unimpeachable. It’s hard to ignore the fact that they benefit from both, especially at a time when they’re facing increasing electoral headwinds….

We’re watching extreme Republican partisanship dismantle the separation of powers.

McMullin also retweeted an eerily apt quotation from Alice in Wonderland, from someone named Stuart Stephens.

 Who are you?” said the Caterpillar. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I—I hardly know, Sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”

People tweeting responses to McMullin’s observations are primarily former Republicans who share his disgust and dismay, although there are a few comments from folks who clearly think the GOP hasn’t changed–that the party has merely stopped pretending to be something other than the disgraceful collection of sycophants and moral cowards who have made a joke of constitutional checks and balances.

America faces existential questions that won’t be answered until November–and only tentatively answered then.

How many other former Republicans will join the Evan McMullins, David Frums, Max Boots, George Conways and other “Never Trumpers” at the polls? How many genuine conservatives–i.e., those who are neither theocrats nor plutocrats– will join or contribute to the Lincoln Project? 

We keep seeing polls that show Trump with solid Republican support; what we don’t see is how many Republicans remain, given the steady shrinkage of the percentage of voters who still identify with the party. (To belabor the obvious, eighty percent of twenty-two or twenty-four percent isn’t the same as eighty percent of 35 or 40 percent.)

How likely is it that the Democrats will disband their usual circular firing squad and “vote blue, no matter who” in recognition that the future of the nation depends upon ousting the criminal conspiracy that is raping and polluting our country?

And how likely is it that enough “blue no matter who” voters–whether Democrat or Republican or Libertarian or Independent or usually apathetic– will recognize the incredible importance of this election, and turn out in numbers sufficient to swamp the GOP’s predictable vote suppression tactics?

Because make no mistake: Evan McMullin is right when he says the remaining Republicans will use whatever means are at their disposal to cling to power–no matter the damage to America.

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Women To The Rescue

In the period between the 2016 election and the 2018 midterms, Harvard political scientist Theda Skocpol published a fascinating study. (A quick and dirty google search failed to find the link–if someone has it, please provide it in the comments.) She and a graduate student studied resistance groups that had emerged outside dependably blue cities and coastal areas, and found that they defied the common clichés. Most were based in suburbs or smaller cities, they weren’t particularly leftist, and most were run by middle-aged and older women who hadn’t been politically active before Trump’s victory jolted them out of complacency.

They were predominantly middle-class women’s networks, although with some men in them, and Skocpol predicted that, if the Democrats took the House in 2018, they would be a major reason.

I thought of that research when I received a lengthy email from a reader of this blog, telling me about just such a group here in red Indiana. She said that her particular story had started “on that awful day in November of 2016, when we all woke up in a fetal position…” She had quit her job of 17 years, and devoted herself full-time to bringing women in her local community in northwest Indiana together. Their initial efforts met with frustration.

In 2018, some ran for office, many ran for Precinct Committee Chair.  We all ran for State Convention Delegate.  We had a grand day out, demanding the Dem party establish a Women’s Caucus with voting rights on the SCC.  We navigated the convoluted system with no help from the party, and got a resolution passed and included in the platform package approved by the entire delegation.  Our posse was walking on air for a few weeks when we were informed by the State Chair that there would be no Women’s Caucus.  The Chair took a lesson from legislative committee chairs who listen to compelling testimony on popular bills, then decide not to take a vote.

The rebuff led to the establishment of a state-wide organization: 25 Women for 2020. The invitation to participate begins as follows, and explains the purpose of the new organization:

 You are cordially invited to participate in 25 Women for 2020, an Indiana-wide network of Democratic women candidates running for the Indiana House and Senate.

An Historic Opportunity

2018 was a landmark year. 45 Democratic women ran for the Indiana state legislature. Only 18 won their seats, but the other 27 gained invaluable experience and name recognition, positioning them for success in 2020.

The electoral prospects of this cohort of candidates will help and be helped by a spirited and consequential Presidential election. The Democratic candidate will need the mobilization of voters in every corner of Indiana; and women Democratic candidates will be well-served by the political optimism and enthusiasm which only a Presidential race can bring.

Participation in the 25 Women for 2020 Network will bring you the support of other women who are facing many of the same challenges as you. Each will bring their experience, knowledge, understanding, and support to make ALL members of the Network much stronger. The Network staff, Board of Directors, and Advisory Board Members will bring their experience and expertise to further support the strength of the Network and each candidate’s campaigns.

The network promises to provide “open, supportive and effective peer support” to those candidates. They have a website, and a presence on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Politically-active Hoosiers can appreciate the multiple barriers these Democratic women face in a gerrymandered, rurally-dominated state. But even the candidates who do not prevail will motivate turnout among Democratic voters in 2020, and test the limits of Trumpification in the state.

Women’s groups like this one were key to Democratic victories in 2018, and they will be critically important in 2020. They deserve all the support we can give them.

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Indulging My Confirmation Bias….

Oh come on–we all do it. Call it “cherry picking” or “confirmation bias” or just closed-mindedness, most of us scan information sources for items that tell us what we want to hear.

As the Trump Administration continues its daily assault on reason, ethics and democracy, and as evidence continues to emerge confirming its rampant criminality, the lack of movement in the polls becomes more and more worrisome. At 538.com, the average of polls measuring Presidential approval has shown virtually no change for months; some 54% disapprove and around 40% still approve.

I know that even the most sophisticated pollsters encounter all kinds of problems–and that too much reliance on their results is misleading. Figuring out which voters have cell phones or landlines, the dramatic decline in response rates, difficulty in determining the identity of likely voters (especially in atypical times), and other methodological challenges make polling a fraught exercise.

That said, the thought that four out of ten Americans actually approve of Trump’s performance is terrifying.( I know that level of approval is considered abysmally low historically, but this is not a “normal” horrible President.)

So when I saw this headline on a post at 538.com.--Trump May be Even More Unpopular Than His Approval Ratings Show–  I immediately clicked on it.

Polls have consistently shown that President Trump is pretty unpopular, with only about 42 percent of the American public approving of the job he is doing as president. These numbers are much lower than what one might expect given the bustling economy.

But does the standard presidential approval question actually capture what voters think of Trump’s job performance? There are several reasons it might not tell the full story. For one, in this hyper-partisan era, presidential approval numbers have become increasingly polarized and don’t move around all that much, so they may now say more about which “side” people are on (pro-Trump or anti-Trump, Republican or Democrat) than voters’ actual evaluation of how the president is doing.

In order to get what they described as a “more nuanced” result, the pollsters asked respondents to rank their feelings for Trump relative to other notable Republicans, rather than asking people whether they approve or disapprove of the president. The other Republicans they chose were former President George W. Bush, the late Sen. John McCain, McCain’s former running mate Sarah Palin, Vice President Mike Pence, and former President Ronald Reagan.

The results were comforting.

This is now our second survey where we’ve measured Trump’s favorability among likely voters, and in both surveys, we found that the standard presidential approval question may be overestimating Trump’s popularity. Our first survey was conducted before the 2018 midterm elections (July 3 to July 12) and our second survey was conducted soon after the Dec. 18 House vote that formally impeached the president (Dec. 20 to Dec. 22), but in both instances, likely voters rated Trump toward the bottom of our list of Republicans.

Before the midterms, Trump’s favorability rating was statistically indistinguishable from Pence’s, and only Palin was rated less favorably. Following impeachment, Trump was even lower relative to the other Republicans we asked about. Not only is he the least popular president to run for reelection since Gerald Ford according to polls asking the standard presidential approval question, but in our measure, he is now also rated less favorably than his vice president. He’s also essentially tied with Palin for the least favorable Republican on our list.

There was, as expected, a significant partisan split. But among independents thought to be potential swing voters, Trump ranked at the bottom of the list — statistically tied with both Palin and Pence. As the pollsters concluded:

The bottom line is that the president appears even more unpopular than previously thought, and more disliked than the standard presidential approval question is able to reveal. Although the electoral implications of Trump’s unpopularity and impeachment remain to be seen, the data we do have isn’t promising for Trump.

The survey confirms my strong belief that November will be all about turnout. If Democrats  get enough people to the polls to overcome predictable vote suppression efforts and other dirty tricks, we will rid America of the criminal cabal that is currently enriching itself while it trashes the environment, democracy, and the rule of law.

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