Random Blogging – Page 6

The Indiana GOP’s Theocratic Ticket

My sister says we need “brains, not Braun.”

Braun’s recent, mis-named “education plan” reinforces that observation. As State Affairs has reported, Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Braun wants to remove all income limits for the state’s private school voucher program. Currently, only the wealthiest Indiana families are excluded from the use of our tax dollars to attend private–overwhelmingly religious–schools, so this proposal would further enrich the wealthy Hoosiers who disproportionately constitute Braun’s donors.

But it would do far more than that–and its disregard for evidence sheds a lot of light on why Braun has been such an undistinguished Senator.

When voucher programs were first introduced, some advocates were sincere in believing that they would improve education. We now have mountains of evidence that they don’t–that test scores of voucher students not only don’t improve, but often decline. That would be reason enough to oppose them, but the documented negative consequences go well beyond their lack of efficacy. Vouchers not only haven’t improved educational outcomes, they have increased racial segregation, facilitated religious discrimination, and been a windfall for the wealthy (many of whom already had children in private schools), all while robbing the nation’s public schools of desperately needed resources.

Braun is endorsing a program that all available evidence tells us has failed miserably while diverting millions of dollars that would otherwise be available for public education and underfunded physical and social infrastructure purposes.

(Braun’s disregard for evidence joins his disregard for public opinion. Just recently, he joined other Republicans in the U.S. Senate in defeating a bill that would offer legal protection for IVF. )

Granted, of the four candidates on Indiana’s GOP ticket, Braun has been the least militant Christian Nationalist. For that matter, he comes across as one of those candidates running for office in order to “be someone” rather than “do something.” It is probable that–just as with his dutiful obeisance to Trump–he’s just going with the GOP’s far Right flow. If that’s the case, we certainly can’t count on him to oppose the “theocrats-R-us” positions of the rest of the ticket.

I’ve previously reported on the extremist, unconstitutional ambitions of Micah Beckwith. (Since that enumeration, Beckwith has confirmed that he opposes the exceptions for rape and incest in Indiana’s draconian abortion ban.) At least Beckwith is honest; he publicly embraces a Christian Nationalist identity.

I’ve also written numerous times about the odious Jim Banks, running for U.S. Senate. Banks is an anti-woman, virulently anti-LGBTQ, pro-gun, climate-denying culture warrior who lives in a million dollar home in Virginia. He wants a national abortion ban with no exceptions.

And I can’t even count the number of posts I’ve devoted to Indiana’s unethical publicity-hound Attorney-General Todd Rokita. (Here’s just one of those numerous commentaries…) I’m hardly the only one who has reported on Rokita’s efforts to pander to the most extreme MAGA folks–and his persistent use of the office to pursue culture-war efforts unrelated to the duties of an Attorney General.

The Democratic ticket, on the other hand, is refreshingly competent and sane.

Jennifer McCormick is a warrior for public education. She’s pro-choice. She wants to legalize medical marijuana. She’s the only candidate with an actual property tax plan. Terry Goodin, running for Lieutenant Governor, has significant experience with farm policy–a primary task of the LG’s office. Valerie McCray, running for Senate, is a mental health professional who is pro-choice, pro-human-rights, and concerned with the needs of America’s veterans. Destiny Wells is an Army Reserve Lt. Colonel in Military Intelligence, and an attorney committed to returning the office of Attorney General to its proper functions.

If survey research is to be believed, the Democratic ticket is far more representative of the beliefs and priorities of Indiana’s citizens than the Republican ticket. That said, Hoosiers who follow politics have recently been treated to two contending polls, one of which shows the Democratic ticket within striking distance of the theocrats, and one of which shows the Hoosier electorate still comfortably wedded to them, albeit somewhat unenthusiastically.

Polls typically report the preferences of “likely” voters, not registered voters. Pollsters have what are called “likely voter screens,” and in normal election cycles, their assessments of who among the registered voters is likely to go to the polls is reasonably accurate–although, as these dueling polls show, they can differ. But this year, there is evidence that–much like the year in which Obama was elected–a lot of unlikely voters may turn out. Registrations have spiked, and enthusiasm for the Harris/Walz ticket is palpable.

In Indiana, unusual turnout might give us a respite from 20 years of increasingly theocratic Republican control.

Comments

A Different Kind Of Homelessness

I recently had breakfast with two former faculty colleagues. The bulk of our conversation focused on the upcoming election, and thinking back on it, a couple of things struck me: despite MAGA folks’ belief that all college professors are left-wing socialists or communists, in a former, more rational time, all three of us would have been considered somewhat right of center.

But of course, the center has moved. A lot.

In 1980, I ran for Congress as a Republican. I won a Republican primary. I was pro-choice, and (to the extent it even came up then) pro-gay rights. For a couple of years after I lost the general election, people came up to me and said things like “I just couldn’t vote for you because you were so conservative.”

My husband and I met as officials in a Republican city administration; when we married, a reporter who covered the city (we had those back then) told me “the press guys like both of you, but you are both kinda right-wing.”

I don’t think I was ever “right-wing” –my positions were more consistent with what was then the GOP mainstream than with the Rightwing fringe of the party–but I was a traditional Republican.

Since 1980 I’ve changed positions on a few issues, because I learned more about them, but my basic political philosophy and approach to policy has not changed–yet today, I’m considered “far Left.”

I stood philosophically still, but the Overton window moved.

Part of the problem is political vocabulary. Americans talk about Liberals and conservatives, but those terms don’t describe our contemporary politics. MAGA and Trump are anything but Conservative as that term has historically been understood. (For that matter, they lack any coherent political philosophy at all, unless grievance and animus can be considered political positions.)

That reality has left genuine conservatives politically homeless. There’s a reason so many prominent conservative Republicans have endorsed Kamala Harris. (When George Will supports Harris, you know the GOP has jumped the shark.)

To the extent Trump has any policy positions, they are anathema to real conservatives. When the GOP was a genuine center-right party, it championed free trade, not tariffs and protectionism. Conservatives wanted limited government– Barry Goldwater insisted that “Government doesn’t belong in your boardroom or your bedroom.” As Reagan left office, he made a speech about the importance of immigration. In foreign affairs, conservatives were strong supporters of NATO and opponents of dictators–and they understood the importance of joining with liberals in a unified approach to issues beyond the “water’s edge.”

Real conservatives venerate the Constitution and its checks and balances. They celebrate freedom of speech and a free press. When the GOP was conservative, it stressed the importance of respect for democratic processes and institutions, for law and order. Trump and MAGA constantly attack the very foundations of a working democracy– the press, the Department of Justice, the FBI, even our military leadership and especially the integrity of the electoral system. The old GOP might have disagreed with Democrats and liberals about how these principles should be applied, but they endorsed the principles.

Let’s be accurate: whatever else today’s GOP may be, it is not conservative.

As an essayist in USA Today recently put it,

As someone who works in the world of words, I understand that their meaning – and use – can change over time. Yet, something I greatly resent is how the Republican Party has conflated Donald Trump with conservatism… To me, conservatism means a belief in free markets, individual liberty and limited government.

As a result of the party’s move toward neo-fascism and theocracy, authentic conservatives have found themselves homeless. Thoughtful conservatives–appalled by what the GOP has become and unwilling to call themselves Democrats–have nowhere to go. Many of them will vote Blue this year rather than holding their noses and voting for Trump (or, in Indiana, for our Hoosier Christian Nationalists). Some won’t vote at all.

The disaffection and homelessness of genuine conservatives will help Democrats this year, and in a year where our choices really are between good and evil, that’s something to celebrate. But going forward, the transformation of one of the major parties in a two-party system into an anti-democratic cult is a disaster, and not just for real conservatives.

Good policy requires negotiation and compromise among good-faith advocates of varying perspectives. Civic peace requires respect for democratic institutions. This country needs two adult parties equally committed to the democratic process.

It is increasingly doubtful that the GOP can be redeemed from its current status as the new Confederacy, but unless that happens– or a third party somehow emerges– genuine conservatives will remain homeless.

NOTICE: TOMORROW evening at 7:00 P.M. I will introduce a Zoom event featuring four candidates who have the ability to shift four seats in the Indiana House from Republican to Democrat and break the super-majority’s stranglehold: Josh Lowry, District 24; Tiffany Stoner, District 25; Victoria Garcia Wilburn, District 32 (incumbent); and Matt McNally, District 39. I will begin the event by explaining why one-party rule keeps dragging Indiana in the wrong direction.

You can register here. There is no charge.

Comments

The Book Of Beckwith

The Snyde Report–an Indiana website promoting the state’s Democratic candidates–has begun including what it calls The Book of Beckwith–quotes from Micah Beckwith–in its daily reports.

As Indiana readers know, Beckwith is one of the four far-Right theocratic candidates on this year’s statewide Republican ticket. He’s the only one who has publicly described himself as a Christian Nationalist, although it is highly probable that Jim Banks and Todd Rokita share that mindset. (Unlike Beckwith, however, they’re sufficiently politically savvy to avoid publicly embracing it.)

Here are some “Beckwithisms” from a recent report on “the book of Beckwith.”

Micah, 1:8 -Pastor Micah Beckwith pushes the racist White Replacement Theory in post.
Pastor Micah Beckwith, Republican candidate for Lt. Governor and self described Christian Nationalist pushed the racist White Replacement Theory in a recent Facebook post.

Micah, 1:7 – Micah Beckwith compares vaccination policies to Nazi Germany’s treatment of Jews.
“And that to me is the issue here, because now you’re, it’s what the, it’s what the Nazis did to the Jews. They legitimized some citizens to be legal citizens and, they, they delegitimize, they made delegitimize citizens out of the Jews.”

Micah 1:6 – Pastor Micah Beckwith shares post advocating that brown people crossing the border should be shot
Pastor Micah Beckwith, the MAGA Republican Lt. Governor candidate shared a post on Facebook advocating brown people crossing the border should be shot. No comment from Pastor Beckwith’s running mate, Mike Braun.

Micah, 1:5 – Micah Beckwith states people should not vote for a politician who is not pro-life
“I always tell people. Don’t vote for a politician if they’re not first pro-life because the Declaration of Independence says there are three unalienable rights that our creator has given us and has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And if he will not protect, your life, he will not protect your liberty and he will not protect your pursuit of happiness.”

Micah, 1:4 – Micah Beckwith states The Indy Star, members of the left and Methodist and Lutheran ministers want to cut off the private parts of children “they were praising that these pastors for saying you’re doing the right thing by, by allowing people to be able to cut off the private parts of children and, and so I think again the reason that The Indy Star sees me as a threat and they should because they want to do an act, they want to act things that are just plain wicked.”

Micah, 1:3 – Micah Beckwith states The Indy Star wants to mutilate children, put pornographic material in the hands of children and murder babies. “They want to murder babies. I mean, like, so I’m against that. So, they probably are a little scared.”

Beckwith is running for Lieutenant Governor, a post dealing with tourism and agriculture, not “biblical fidelity,” but like his fellow culture warriors, he displays little to no interest in those boring governmental tasks. And while Braun constantly minimizes the importance of his running-mate’s theocratic extremism, Braun–as Star columnist Briggs recently pointed out–is 70, an age where life insurance “gets more expensive for a reason.”

If Beckwith was truly an aberration, that would be one thing–but he isn’t. Thanks to Indiana’s extreme gerrymandering, which has moved the “real” election in many districts to the primaries (where GOP challenges come from the Right), Republican candidates for legislative office have become more and more extreme. I’ve written about the contest in District 24, where the Republican running for the Statehouse is a Beckwith clone, but that isn’t the only Indiana contest featuring a looney-tunes Republican more focused on culture war than on the mundane tasks of governing.

I would ordinarily hesitate before calling a political candidate a “looney-tune,” but a look at the “Book of Beckwith” really requires that label. Does any sane American really believe that the “Star, members of the Left and Methodist and Lutheran ministers” want to “cut off the private parts of children”? That we should indiscriminately “shoot Brown people at the border”? That vaccinations are a Nazi plot? Etc.

Granted, the Presidential election is by far the most important choice voters will face this year, closely followed by contests for the House and Senate. But we ignore state down-ballot races at our peril. Thanks to a state legislature in thrall to a super-majority of Rightwing extremists, Indiana is rapidly becoming a “health desert,” where medical care–especially but not exclusively for women–is increasingly difficult to access, where public education is being purposefully starved in favor of religious schools, and gun ownership with no pesky “strings” attached is proliferating.

Hoosiers need to Vote Blue all the way down the ballot.

Comments

Do Endorsements Matter?

Harris pretty much destroyed Trump in the debate, but as I keep reminding myself, this year, we can’t take anything for granted.

Nothing about this campaign is normal.

For example, seasoned political folks tell us that endorsements rarely make a difference, but then they’re focusing on the traditional endorsements issued by newspapers and political allies. It will be interesting to see whether the steady roll-out of very untraditional endorsements from sources that haven’t previously issued them will matter, and if so, how much.

According to CNBC, declarations for the Harris/Walz ticket include a recent letter from eighty-eight business leaders.

Eighty-eight corporate leaders signed a new letter Friday endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
Signers include former 21st Century Fox CEO James Murdoch, Snap Chairman Michael Lynton, Yelp boss Jeremy Stoppelman and Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen.

If the Democratic nominee wins the White House, they contend, “the business community can be confident that it will have a president who wants American industries to thrive.”

In the past, most business leaders have avoided taking political positions, based upon the common-sense belief that public support for one party would likely piss off customers belonging to the other party and would thus be bad for business. It is likely that the CEOs who signed this letter did so because of their conviction that a Trump victory would destabilize America and the economy in ways that would be far worse for business than some temporary partisan pique.

I think it’s unlikely that an endorsement from corporate leaders will matter to–or even be seen by– the average voter. But another group of endorsers is a lot more high-profile and far more unusual. They are the very visible Republicans who have publicly joined with “Never Trump” Republicans like those at the Bulwark and the Lincoln Project to support Kamala Harris.

A few days ago, I posted a copy of the letter signed by over 300 members of past Republican administrations, urging other members of the GOP to support Harris. Since then, both Liz Cheney and her father, former Vice-President Dick Cheney, have publicly come out in support of Harris, each of them confirming a personal intent to vote for her. (Interestingly, former Vice-President Mike Pence, who served with Trump, has said only that he will not vote for his former boss. Maybe he’ll write in “Mother”?)

Will those unprecedented endorsements–which in any other campaign would be politically earth-shaking–matter?

An article from ABC, announcing them, asked that question.

Big-name Republican endorsers of Vice President Kamala Harris are testing just how many disgruntled GOP voters are up for grabs in her race against a polarizing former President Donald Trump.

Former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, a member of pre-Trump GOP royalty, became the latest and most prominent Republican to back Harris Wednesday. Harris also has endorsements from former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., and hundreds of local Republican officials to try to puncture what her campaign views as Trump’s soft underbelly with Republican voters who are uncomfortable with the former president’s brash and unorthodox brand of politics.

The campaign’s consistent outreach is just one part of Harris’ overall path to Election Day, but now, with no bigger names left on the table for support, the vice president will likely find out if there’s more support to be had from dissatisfied Republicans — or if she’s already maxed out.

My own analysis borrows a couple of terms from economics: micro and macro.

My “micro” level analysis is necessarily limited– circumscribed by the people I personally know. Most of the Republicans I worked with back when I was a Republican are appalled by what the party has become. Those I know and still interact with loathe Trump, and are forthright in saying they intend to vote for Harris. Several have completely abandoned the GOP. Rather obviously, the new endorsements won’t affect them.

More significantly, they aren’t representative of the millions of people who voted for Trump in 2020.

That means that the “macro” question is the all-important one: how many Americans are MAGA partisans who will go to the polls and enthusiastically vote for a neo-fascist movement headed by a mentally-ill (and increasingly senile) would-be autocrat? How large is the cult that comprises his base–and (given the Electoral College) where do they live?

There are two aspects to that “macro” question: 1) how many people have actually “drunk the Kool-Aid” versus the rest of us? and (actually more consequential)–2) how many members of each of these incommensurate groups will show up to vote?

All of this ignores the weirdest question of all: how many previously politically-unengaged “Swifties” will vote thanks to Taylor Swift’s endorsement?

Comments

What Keeps Me Up Nights

I sure hope I make it to November–not because I’m old (although I am), but because I spend my days obsessively following politics–both national and local– and vacillating between hope and despair. Indiana is scary enough, but as I noted yesterday, the national election will pose an existential challenge: America will either go forward or far, far back.

The source of my angst about the Presidential election was recently summarized in one of Robert Hubbell’s daily Substack newsletters. As he wrote:

The election will be decided by hundreds of millions of Americans taking democracy seriously by voting in tens of thousands of elections at a moment in history when one party wants to deny women full citizenship and personhood, deny Black Americans the right to vote, deny LGBTQ Americans their dignity and equality, deny children safe schools, deny all Americans a future free of man-made climate catastrophes, deny workers of a living wage, and deny the peaceful transfer of power every four years.

When I look at the threat posed by that party–once (in a very different world) my own party–I fear for the futures of my grandchildren and the others of their generation. I get bitter when I think about a reversal of the social progress made by activists of my own and previous generations who worked hard to bring the American “body politic” closer to our founding aspirations of liberty and equality.

But most of all, I mourn the death of my long-held belief that the great majority of my fellow Americans are sensible, good-hearted and fair-minded. Until very recently–actually, 2016–although I knew that there were angry, disturbed and hate-filled people “out there”–I estimated their percentage of the population at something between 10%-15%. I have been rudely disabused of that estimate, given the grim recognition that millions of my fellow-citizens continue to support a man who is defiantly ignorant, hateful and very obviously deeply mentally-ill–presumably, because he gives them permission to revel in and voice their own bigotries and grievances.

And then there’s the Electoral College, which scholars estimate gives Republicans a 3% advantage….

But then I get hopeful. (I have emotional whiplash..)

The Harris/Walz ticket is so normal, and the enthusiasm they’ve generated is so encouraging. Not only do the Democrats have better candidates, former Republicans–including very conservative ones like Liz Cheney– are coming out of the woodwork daily to endorse them. They’ve raised much more money, which–in addition to powering their campaign–is another sign of support and enthusiasm. They have a widespread “ground game” with far more field offices than the Republicans. New registrations are up, especially among groups that tilt Democratic, calling the “likely voter” screens employed by pollsters into question.

In the wake of 2016, there has also been an explosion of grass-roots organizing. According to a 2019 report from the American Community Project, those post-2016 grassroots groups — sometimes labeled “Resistance” groups — have become an electoral force to be reckoned with.

Reporters and academics have established certain baseline facts: The new groups are disproportionately composed of middle-aged to retirement-age college-educated women.

They are especially prominent in America’s “suburbs.”

Their hands-on campaigning formed part of the “Blue Wave” that flipped suburban seats to the Democrats in November 2018.

Since 2019, those groups have continued to grow and multiply, in significant part thanks to Dobbs, the Supreme Court’s reversal of a constitutional right to reproductive liberty which continues to motivate voters, especially but not exclusively women voters.

I can’t shake my belief that if Americans of good will and good sense turn out to vote, Democrats will not only win, but win big, that November could really be a “Blue Wave” election, a turning point that could revive my previous faith in the American public.

MAGA is, after all, a reaction to the broad cultural changes in this country–changes that include widespread acceptance of the growing equality of women, LGBTQ+ Americans and people of color. Large numbers of families now include same-sex couples and/or religious and racial intermarriages. Fewer Americans report memberships in fundamentalist Churches. Workplaces are increasingly diverse, and Americans from a variety of backgrounds now work together and get to know each other. All of those cultural changes have lessened fears of the “Other” that were once more widespread.

I remained convinced that MAGA Republicanism is a panicked reaction to those cultural changes by people who feel threatened by them. Social change is destabilizing, especially for people who lack the personal or communal resources to adapt–but surely, that doesn’t describe a majority of Americans.

In November, we’ll see which of these contending analyses is correct, and we’ll know what kind of world my grandchildren will inhabit.

Comments