midterm elections – Page 2

The Problem With “Get Off My Lawn”

Okay–I’m going to indulge in yet another rant. (Then I’ll return this blog to its usual political preoccupations–promise!)

You will have to forgive me for these expressions of bile: as the midterms approach, and my patience and sanity continue to erode, I tend to get annoyed by things I would probably overlook if I was in a less fragile state of mind. But one commenter to this site–who often has very thoughtful and pertinent things to say–has a habit that has sent me over the edge.

That habit? Repeatedly denigrating the younger generation. Characterizing and dismissing all young people as cut from the same “me me” cloth.

You know who you are…

This wholesale dismissal of the younger generation–the tendency of us older folks to shout “get off my lawn!”– has been going on since the time of Socrates. (If you don’t believe me, here’s a compilation of insults directed at young people over the centuries.)

These sweeping denunciations were wrong when they were issued, and they’re wrong now.

First of all, there is really no difference between insisting that all Blacks or all Jews or all White Evangelicals are the same and [fill in your preferred negative label] and insisting that all members of a particular age cohort exhibit [fill in your preferred behavioral insult]. Bigotry isn’t limited to defamation based upon race, religion or sexual orientation.

Secondly, and more substantively, it’s inaccurate–and I don’t say that just because it is demonstrably inapplicable to my own children and grandchildren.

I taught classes filled with young people for 21 years–my students (I usually had a total of anywhere from 60-120 in a given semester) ranged in ages from 18 to 35, depending on whether they were undergraduates or graduate students. My classrooms were diverse, and my students were pretty representative of their generation–I taught at an urban campus that drew students predominantly from central Indiana. I had some students who came from more privileged backgrounds, but the majority did not. A significant number were the first in their families to attend college.

And while there was some “self-selection” due to our programs preparing students for public and non-profit careers, our largest academic program was public safety–and it attracted mainly would-be police officers. So I feel confident that I saw a pretty good cross-section of young Americans.

I would turn this country over to them in a heartbeat.

Overall, my students were inclusive, caring and community-oriented. I saw very little evidence of bigotry or “me-ism” and considerable evidence of a firm–even passionate– commitment to social justice and legal equality. The papers they wrote for my classes were, overall, thoughtful, and reflected genuine concern for their communities and for the underprivileged people in those communities.

Granted, when students entered my classrooms they rarely came armed with knowledge of the Constitution, Bill of Rights or other aspects of America’s legal structure, but their attitudes had been shaped by what I like to call “The American Idea”–a belief in both individual liberty and civic equality.

And they acted on those commitments.They volunteered and organized. When it comes to political participation, the data confirms that youth turnout has been on the rise; in 2020, it hit 50%, an 11 point increase from 2016.

Recent surveys tell us that 59% of them plan to vote this year.

There is a lot wrong with America right now, and a lot of structural problems that make solving those thorny problems difficult. It’s tempting to look for scapegoats–but it is neither accurate nor helpful to blame an entire generation for the unpleasant or unhelpful behaviors of some of them.

Sorry to pick on a reader I really like, butI feel better now…..

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Messaging

As the midterms get closer, the punditry gets more predictable. For the past several weeks, not a day has gone by without at least one column–usually more– bemoaning the Democratic Party’s lack of effective messaging.

To which I say bull-feathers.

The problem with “messaging” isn’t that candidates aren’t choosing to emphasize arguments likely to move voters; the problem is the civic ignorance of those voters and the siloed information environments they inhabit.

Take inflation. Republicans are convinced that an emphasis on inflation is a winner for the GOP, and they may well be right. If they are, it will be because the average voter has absolutely no understanding of economics–and is totally unaware that inflation is currently a global phenomenon (much worse elsewhere, actually) with multiple causes.

Progressives have been pointing to several of those causes–“messaging” about the effect of the war in Ukraine, the Saudi’s outrageous decision to cut production so as to raise gas prices (a transparent effort to help Putin by helping Trump’s MAGA base), the persistence of pandemic supply chain problems, and a healthy dose of corporate greed.

That last item has led to calls by some economists for a one-time windfall profits tax–but again, how many American voters understand how price gouging occurs, or what a windfall tax is or does?

American voters have historically blamed the President–no matter who is in office and no matter what his party–for economic conditions a President cannot and does not control. Those voters have historically gone to the polls in midterm elections and ousted members of the President’s party–despite the fact that the opposing party is generally offering zero credible policies to address the economic problem of the moment.

Right now, the GOP’s proposal to “fix” inflation is to cut spending on Social Security and Medicare, and stop supplying arms and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. How many voters know that, or are aware of the various statements to that effect made by Republican members of the House and Senate?

For that matter, how many voters understand how the filibuster works, and how its deployment by the GOP has doomed popular legislation?

Until the most recent session of the U.S. Supreme Court, few voters understood the connection between the politics of the Senate majority and the placement of qualified jurists on that Court. (Most still don’t understand how we got the current, highly politicized and retrograde Court majority.)

A number of the pundits decrying the inadequacy of Democratic messaging are convinced that the upcoming election is about saving American democracy–a point with which I agree–and that effective messaging should focus on that threat. They never seem to explain just how they would address the loss of American democracy in those 30-second TV ads or glossy mailed flyers.

If American voters understood how our government is supposed to work–if they all knew, for example, that we have three branches of government (a fact that was evidently a revelation to Tommy Tuberville, elected to the U.S. Senate from Alabama presumably because he was a good athlete), and how those branches are supposed to operate, perhaps it would be possible to make the case in a way that would resonate with those voters. Without that public understanding, Democrats (and disaffected Republicans like Liz Cheney) are reduced to making the accusation–and an accusation is not an explanation.

For that matter, even excellent messaging must be heard to be effective.

If American voters all tuned in to the same media outlets, it might be possible to educate them about these matters, but of course, they don’t. Democratic messaging–no matter how brilliant–isn’t likely to reach the legions of voters glued to Fox News and its clones.

What do American voters know?

Most know that an illegitimate Supreme Court has–for the first time in American history–withdrawn a constitutional right. Most know that the right to reproductive autonomy is critical to women’s health and equality, and a significant number know that Republicans are very likely to continue to chip away at other rights previously protected by the constitutional right to privacy.

Some portion of the electorate knows that the President doesn’t control gas prices, and that Republicans will continue their assault on the social safety net. Growing numbers recognize that the MAGA movement is dangerous; they may not be able to define fascism but–like pornography– they know it when they see it.

Will what American voters do know be enough to upend the history of midterm elections–a history that favors the party not currently in control of the White House? Will what they do understand motivate sufficient numbers to turn out to VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO?

I guess we’ll find out.

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The Rubber Has Hit The Road

Remember that old saying about “when the rubber hits the road”? Its import was that, when the rubber hit the road, it was time to act, to decide…Well, given overwhelming evidence of the GOP’s attempted coup, the neutering of Congress by use of the filibuster, and the morphing of the Supreme Court into a religious tribunal, it’s fair to conclude that the rubber has indeed hit pavement, and a failure to move quickly to recapture the institutions of American life will turn this country into a place most of us won’t want to inhabit.

In the wake of the Court’s ruling in Dobbs, The Guardian was especially blunt. In an article headlined “How the Christian right took over the judiciary and changed America,” it reported–quite accurately-

The supreme court decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which reverses the constitutional abortion rights that American women have enjoyed over the past 50 years, has come as a surprise to many voters. A majority, after all, support reproductive rights and regard their abolition as regressive and barbaric.

Understood in the context of the movement that created the supreme court in its current incarnation, however, there is nothing surprising about it. In fact, it marks the beginning rather than the endpoint of the agenda this movement has in mind.

At the core of the Dobbs decision lies the conviction that the power of government can and should be used to impose a certain moral and religious vision – a supposedly biblical and regressive understanding of the Christian religion – on the population at large.

Let me just repeat that last paragraph:

How did this happen? How did White Christian Nationalists effectively take over a major political party and the courts? As the Guardian article notes, answering that question requires looking back at the history of the Christian Nationalist movement, and how it “united conservatives across denominational barriers by, in effect, inventing a new form of intensely political religion.”

Christian nationalists often claim their movement got its start as a grassroots reaction to Roe v Wade in 1973. But the movement actually gelled several years later with a crucial assist from a group calling itself the “New Right”.

Among the many things the New Right opposed were feminism and the civil rights movement. One thing that they were not particularly angry about, at least initially, was the matter of abortion rights. A primary concern was that the Supreme Court might end tax exemptions for segregated Christian schools, but they knew “Stop the tax on segregation!” was unlikely to be an effective rallying cry for their new movement. They needed an issue that could be used to unify the various, disparate elements of the New Right, an issue that could draw in the rank and file.

In many respects abortion was an unlikely choice, because when the Roe v Wade decision was issued, most Protestant Republicans supported it. The Southern Baptist Convention passed resolutions in 1971 and 1974 expressing support for the liberalization of abortion law, and an editorial in their wire service hailed the passage of Roe v Wade, declaring that “religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision.”

On the other hand, abortion brought conservative Catholics into the movement with conservative Protestants and evangelicals, and allowed the New Right to blame abortion rights for all manner of perceived social ills of the age – especially women’s liberation .”The issue became a focal point for the anxieties about social change welling up from the base.”

In recent decades, the religious right has invested many hundreds of millions of dollars developing a complex and coordinated infrastructure, whose features include rightwing policy groups, networking organizations, data initiatives and media. A critical component of this infrastructure is its sophisticated legal sphere.

Movement leaders understood very well that if you can capture the courts, you can change society.

And so here we are. The Courts have been captured; the Congress (thanks to gerrymandering and filibuster Joe Manchin) has been neutered. Over 100 state candidates running for the right to count our votes are “Big Lie” proponents.

The rubber has hit the road. Americans must turn out in massive numbers this November to dislodge the theocrats and begin the process of reclaiming America.

All available research shows a majority of Americans strongly opposed to the Christian Nationalists who have assumed control of our no-longer-so-democratic institutions. All voting history shows that a disastrous number of those Americans won’t bother to vote.

If that doesn’t change in November, the America we know is over.

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The Wall And The Wave

No, not that wall. The wall that Republican partisan redistricting built to keep Democratic voters out.

A report from Politico in the wake of the midterm elections put it succinctly:the GOP had used partisan redistricting to build a “wall” around Congress; Trump tore it down.

For years, some Democrats said gerrymandering was an insurmountable roadblock to the House majority that couldn’t be cleared until after the 2020 census.

Then along came President Donald Trump.

House Democrats steamrolled Republicans in an array of districts last week, from those drawn by independent commissions or courts, to seats crafted specifically by Republicans with the intention of keeping them in the GOP column.

The overriding factor: a Republican president who political mapmakers could not have foreseen at the beginning of the decade. Trump altered the two parties’ coalitions in ways that specifically undermined conventional wisdom about the House map, bringing more rural voters into the GOP tent while driving away college-educated voters.

I’ve posted numerous times about the ways in which gerrymandering undercuts democratic decision-making, and discourages voter turnout. I’ve also referenced several books and articles detailing 2011’s “RedMap”–the GOP’s most thorough, successful national effort at locking in a Republican House majority. (The book Ratfucked said it all…)

The were two important structural lessons from this year’s midterms.

First, the results confirmed a truism among political operatives and observers: In order to surmount the gerrymandered wall, Democrats would need at least a 7 point vote advantage. Nationally, they got that, and a bit more.

Second–gerrymandering really does matter more than the geography of “sorting” would suggest. In Bill Bishop’s book The Big Sort, he pointed out that Americans currently migrate to locations where they feel philosophically and politically comfortable. We can see the results in the rise of the Urban Archipelago–those blue dots representing cities with populations over 500,000.

One argument against nonpartisan redistricting rests on the theory that–since we have “sorted” ourselves into red and blue enclaves– gerrymandering really doesn’t make much difference. The Politico article undercuts that argument, bigly.

Despite Democrats’ massive House gains — the party’s biggest since 1974, after Richard Nixon’s resignation — redistricting clearly held them back in some places. Democrats netted at least 21 districts drawn by independent commissions or courts — getting a major boost from courts in Florida, Pennsylvania and Virginia that altered GOP-drawn maps in the past two years — along with 10 districts drawn by Republicans and the two in Illinois that were drawn by Democrats.

As the article makes clear, Democrats did appreciably better in non-gerrymandered districts.

The blue wave was high enough to overcome a large number of gerrymandered walls, thanks to revulsion against and very welcome rejection of Donald Trump. But in districts drawn fairly–without partisan bias–they did even better.

Gerrymandering, vote suppression (Georgia, anyone?) and the other tactics being used by the GOP to game the system need to be eliminated. A few states–Missouri and Michigan among them–voted this month for fair elections; the rest of us need to do the same.

We shouldn’t need a “wave” to install a government that reflects the values of the majority of America.

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The Essence Of My Angst

A lot of Americans were breathing sighs of relief Wednesday. With Democrats in control of the House, there will be some accountability–at least some measure of those “checks and balances” not enough of us learned about in high school civics.

The problem is, while sanity won a skirmish, it didn’t win the war. Just two examples of what reasonable people are up against:

From The Hill, we learn that Republican state Rep. Matt Shea, who published a manifesto calling for “war” against enemies of Christianity, was reelected in Washington state.

Shea, a six-term legislator, won with 58.3 percent of the vote, defeating his Democratic challenger by a comfortable margin, according to local NBC affiliate KHQ 6.

In a manifesto he published and distributed, titled “Biblical Basis for War,” Shea calls for the end of same-sex marriage, abortion and the death of all non-Christian males in America if religious law is not followed.

Nice guy.

And then, of course, the news has been full of terrifying details about Jeff Sessions’ replacement at the Department of Justice. (If you thought it would be difficult to exceed the mismatch between Sessions and the word Justice, you were wrong…). In 2014, when the new acting Attorney General was a candidate for the U.S. Senate, he said he would only support federal judges who “hold a biblical view of justice.” And not just any biblical view–an explicitly New Testament view.

As a lawyer, one might expect him to know that setting religious conditions for holding a public office would violate the Iowa and U.S. constitutions. He was effectively saying that if elected, he would see no place for a judge of Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, agnostic or other faith, or of no faith. Yet no one in the audience or on the podium seemed to have a problem with that, and his answer drew applause.

Whitaker is also on record as criticizing the Special Counsel inquiry as a “witch hunt.” (hmm..where have I heard that phrase before?)

These are just two example out of the many, many others we might point to, and they underscore the points made in Gin and Tacos, in a post that may be the most perceptive commentary on the election and the country that I’ve seen in a very long time.

The post was titled I Know Why You’re Sad.

On paper, Tuesday was a good day for Democrats. They took the House for the first time in eight years. Several important Governorships (in advance of post-Census 2020 redistricting battles) were won. Notably vile Republicans like Kris Kobach, Scott Walker, and Dana Rohrabacher lost. The high-visibility Senate races Democrats lost (Missouri, Tennessee) were pipe dreams anyway. You already knew that Florida sucks, hard. So you’re not sad because “The Democrats did badly.”

You’re also not sad because Beto lost, or Andrew Gillum lost, or any other single candidate who got people excited this year fell short. They’re gonna be fine. They will be back. You haven’t seen the last of any of them. Winning a Senate race in Texas was never more than a long shot. Gillum had a realistic chance, but once again: It’s Florida.

So why are we sad? Because Ed (the author of Gin and Tacos doesn’t share his last name) is right. We are still sad.

No, you’re sad for the same reason you were so sad Wednesday morning after the 2016 Election. You’re sad because the results confirm that half of the electorate – a group that includes family, neighbors, friends, random fellow citizens – looked at the last two years and declared this is pretty much what they want. You’re sad because any Republican getting more than 1 vote in this election, let alone a majority of votes, forces us to recognize that a lot of this country is A-OK with undisguised white supremacy. You’re sad because once again you have been slapped across the face with the reality that a lot of Americans are, at their core, a lost cause. Willfully ignorant. Unpersuadable. Terrible people. Assholes, even.

There’s more, and every word is worth reading, but let me just share the conclusion.

These people are not one conversation, one fact-check, and one charismatic young Democratic candidate away from seeing the light. They’re reactionary, mean, ignorant, uninterested in becoming less ignorant, and vindictive. They hate you and they will vote for monsters to prove it.

Remember this feeling. Remember it every time someone tells you that the key to moving forward is to reach across the aisle, show the fine art of decorum in practice, and chat with right-wingers to find out what makes them tick. Remember the nagging sadness you feel looking at these almost entirely positive results; it will be your reminder that the only way to beat this thing is to outwork, outfight, and out-organize these people. They are not going to be won over and they will continue to prove that to you every chance they get.

We’re sad because he’s right.

There may be some “very fine people” among the Trump voters. But there aren’t very many. And we’re sad because we are beginning to recognize that there are some compromises that are impossible– and some aisles that simply can’t be crossed– without losing our souls.

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