The first is in an interesting piece about Beto O'Rourke's campaign by Nate Silver at Five Thirty Eight. Silver observes that O'Rourke's campaign apparently played the media (or as Silver puts it, "trolled" the media) by setting reporters' expectations that Beto's initial fundraising effort would be underwhelming - only to triumphantly announce, a few days later, that it was a smashing success. After noting that this gamesmanship suggests that O'Rourke's campaign is getting more sophisticated in managing media coverage, Silver goes on to offer some more general reflections on the role of the media in shaping the narrative of primary season:
For better or worse, the primaries are partly an expectations game, meaning that it’s not just how well you do in an absolute sense that matters, but how well you do relative to how well the media expects you to do. Historically, for instance, the candidates that receive the biggest bounce to their national and New Hampshire polls after the Iowa caucuses are those who most beat their polls in Iowa — and therefore most beat media expectations, which are usually closely tied to the polls — and not necessarily the actual winners. The canonical example of this dynamic is Sen. Gary Hart and former Vice President Walter Mondale in the 1984 Democratic caucuses in Iowa. Even though Mondale dominated the caucuses with 48.9 percent of the vote to Hart’s 16.5 percent, it was Hart who got the favorable headlines as the media had finally found an alternative to the boring, predictable Mondale “juggernaut.” The next week, Hart came from well behind in the polls to win the New Hampshire primary.
The expectations game is dumb — among other things, it gives the media too large a role in the primary process — and maybe both voters and the media have become more sophisticated to the point where it matters less than it once did. (Recent Iowa caucuses have not produced especially large bounces, for instance.) I wouldn’t be so sure about that, though. Keeping expectations in check was a big problem in the Democratic primaries in 2016 for Hillary Clinton, who had one of the more robust victories of the modern primary era but who didn’t (and still doesn’t) get a lot of credit for it.The second observation, from an entirely different direction, comes from Bret Stephens in the New York Times. The column begins by describing how presidential candidate John Hickenlooper, who among other notable items on his resume apparently has been a successful entrepreneur, prevaricated during a television interview when asked whether he would describe himself as a "proud capitalist". Stephens uses that incident to illustrate his thesis: that the Democratic Party has shifted from one that wishes to "smooth the edges of capitalism, even to save it from itself" to one that is "ready to disdain and disavow it". Stephens then notes:
There’s a difference between taming a horse and shooting it. Until about, oh, a year ago, few Democrats would have disagreed. Not anymore. Moderate Democrats are by no means an endangered species, but increasingly they act like a hunted one. Watching Hickenlooper, you could read his mind as if it were a chyron at the foot of the screen. Don’t say “proud capitalist,” John. Don’t say it. Twitter will kill me if I do. Death by Twitter mob — or pre-emptive surrender to it — is how politics is largely conducted these days. Is this good politics? I doubt it.What I wish to highlight here is not Hickenlooper's televised discomfort, but rather the factor to which Stephens attributes that discomfort: "Death by Twitter mob". Not that I can't understand the discomfort. I fear the Twitter mob, too. But Stephens has me wondering to what extent that is a factor in the Democratic primary: the perceived need to placate the Twitter mob.
Many things have been written, including here and by me, of the multitudinous faults of our current president. But when it comes to generalship of media coverage, I would guess that Donald Trump's campaign revolutionized politics during the 2016 race (both GOP primary and general election). And I strongly suspect that most of the credit really goes to Trump himself; there is ample evidence that nobody else ever really successfully manages him. Here is Silver again:
Conversely, one of President Trump’s big strengths in the primaries was to completely dominate media coverage — a big advantage when you need to differentiate yourself in a field of 17 candidates — while keeping expectations low. Usually, more coverage and higher expectations go hand-in-hand; the more hype you get, the more the press expects you to perform well in debates, polls, fundraising and, ultimately, in primaries and caucus. But Trump had a knack for trolling the media and for hacking the news cycle to make sure that he remained the center of the conversation. It’s not that this necessarily required great skill on Trump’s behalf, but he was canny enough to know that the media’s behavior is fairly predictable and therefore easy to manipulate. Meanwhile, lots of folks in the media — and certainly us here at FiveThirtyEight — were way too willing to dismiss polls showing Trump well ahead of the Republican field from the summer of 2015 onward. A high volume of coverage but low expectations is the best of both worlds for a candidate in the primaries, and Trump got it.I would add that an important factor in Trump's political campaigning has been his use of Twitter to bypass the intermediary gatekeeping, filtering and interpretation of traditional media and reach his base directly. That approach also delivers the politically beneficial secondary consequence of generating additional media coverage, as reporters apparently spend a good part of their day reading Twitter.
My personal take-away from all this is: the traditional, mainstream media loves a horse race. If the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race develops such that Joe Biden stakes out an early lead (as polls indicate today), and nobody really rises from the large pack to challenge him, that storyline will both bore and irritate the folks in the media who cover and comment on the elections.
On the other hand, the Twitter mob is not interested in a horse race; it's a rage machine. Trump has defied the machine, with some success, for over three years now; but the mob's teeth presumably bite liberal candidates a lot harder and deeper. I doubt there are any Democratic candidates willing to defy the mob. Whether those who manipulate it the most successfully will also be the candidates who emerge with the most votes and delegates is yet to be seen.
"Death by Twitter", and Twitter as a rage machine. That pretty well summarizes it. It's hard for me to believe that people who use what amounts to a graffiti bulletin board for people stuck in adolescence to put their ideas out there, should be taken seriously. For one thing, it's pretty hard to express serious ideas in 140 characters or less. For instance, take congresswoman Ilhan Omar's recent Twitter postings which got her in all kinds of hot water. Contrast those to her later WaPo op-ed piece in which she lays out a nuanced position which doesn't seem unreasonable. So why can't we skip the politicians-on-social-media thing, which just muddies the water, and go to venues where they actually lay out their positions?
ReplyDeleteAnd this is a scary sentence: "Whether those who manipulate the mob most successfully will also be the candidates who emerge with the most votes and delegates is yet to be seen." Manipulating the mob is a reason, if not *the* reason for Twitter. I have called it an instrument of the devil, and I was only half kidding. For sure it is an instrument of our baser selves.
According to the Associated Press today, the only contact the Unites States currently has with with Palestinians is a guy in the Stare Department whose job is to answer, challenge and knock down tweets from Palestinian officials. To rub it in, the fellow's name is Greenblatt. Apparently, Jared Kushner, whose assignment was to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians, has failed to turn in his homework. Nothing good can come from this.
DeleteNate Silver is shooting at a couple of the most obvious fish in the barrel that was stocked, first by Teddy White's books on how backroom operations REALLY win elections, and second by the parties' abject abdication of the job of finding and nominating candidates who share their values. The result is the primary system, which is about the third or fourth worst way to find a national leader. It gives a "voice" in the ultimate choice to mischief-makers from the other parties and people who are too dumb or too lazy to pay attention before the morning of the "party (sic) primary."
DeleteAll of which produced a "press corps" that runs in a pack and acts like kids on Christmas morning, tearing open the wrappings on the next present before trying out the first one. I imagine Klobuchar is already eliminated by the Washington Post's discovery that she is a tough boss, since it was followed within hours by the New York Times and all the networks monkey seeing, monkey doing to the same astounding, amazing story. So Amy was out of it before the announcement snow in her hair melted.
It looks like the knives are out for the pretentious Mr. O'Rourke, whose nomination was definitely not approved by Mara Liasson or Dan Baltz. His bait and switch on fund-raising caught the boys and girls on the bus with their guards down, as Silver pointed out. The only thing left is to make him pay for it.
PS, Jim, I think you and people like Stephens are a lot more interested at this point in what the Ds are up to than I am.
Katherine- the WaPo basically has a hard paywall now. Formerly I was allowed to read WaPo content because our local suburban newspaper had some sort of content sharing arrangement with them, but that arrangement ended. Would you mind pasting 1-2 pertinent paragraphs from Omar's column?
DeleteThe Twitter rage machine is more than impotent teenage fulminating. It's got a few scalps hanging on its bedroom wall: people whose careers and lives have basically been ruined by it (corporate employers generally run away from any form of bad publicity as fast as they can). And beyond those direct hits, the rage machine surely a contributor to such worrisome trends as the deterioration of the right of free speech on college campuses. If this is direct democracy, I'm against it.
I can see its political potency: Twitter gives campaign managers instant feedback on whatever the candidate is saying or doing - no need to wait for polling to get at least an anecdotal window into the thoughts of the public (if it's stipulated, which seems unlikely enough, that the public's thoughts are the same as the subset which tweets).
Jim, here are some excerpts from the WaPo piece. I actually don't know why I am able to access it. Normally I am paywalled out. From the article:
Delete"...I believe in an inclusive foreign policy — one that centers on human rights, justice and peace as the pillars of America’s engagement in the world, one that brings our troops home and truly makes military action a last resort. This is a vision that centers on the experiences of the people directly affected by conflict, that takes into account the long-term effects of U.S. engagement in war and that is sincere about our values regardless of short-term political convenience"
"...Valuing human rights also means applying the same standards to our friends and our enemies."
"...This vision also applies to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. U.S. support for Israel has a long history. The founding of Israel 70 years ago was built on the Jewish people’s connection to their historical homeland, as well as the urgency of establishing a nation in the wake of the horror of the Holocaust and the centuries of anti-Semitic oppression leading up to it. Many of the founders of Israel were themselves refugees who survived indescribable horrors.
We must acknowledge that this is also the historical homeland of Palestinians. And without a state, the Palestinian people live in a state of permanent refugeehood and displacement. This, too, is a refugee crisis, and they, too, deserve freedom and dignity."
"A balanced, inclusive approach to the conflict recognizes the shared desire for security and freedom of both peoples. I support a two-state solution, with internationally recognized borders, which allows for both Israelis and Palestinians to have their own sanctuaries and self-determination. This has been official bipartisan U.S. policy across two decades and has been supported by each of the most recent Israeli and Palestinian leaders, as well as the consensus of the Israeli security establishment. As Jim Mattis, who later was President Trump’s defense secretary, said in 2011 , “The current situation between those two peoples is unsustainable.”
"...When I criticize certain Israeli government actions in Gaza or settlements in the West Bank, it is because I believe these actions not only threaten the possibility of peace in the region — they also threaten the United States’ own national security interests."
"...My goal in speaking out at all times has been to encourage both sides to move toward a peaceful two-state solution. We need to reinsert this call back into the public debate with urgency. Both parties must come to the table for a final peace deal; violence will not bring us any closer to that day."
Katherine, thanks for those excerpts. I guess it's a pretty good do-over on her part. I think it's okay to give brand-new freshmen a few Mulligans.
DeleteMy sense is that presidential races have long been covered as three-quarters spectator sport and one-quarter substance. Far more attention is paid to the candidates' poll numbers, war chest amounts, alleged misconduct (extra points if it's sexual in nature), and campaign tactics than is paid to the candidates' qualifications and likely foreign and domestic policy.
ReplyDeleteTrump put on quite a show during 2016, and, with the cooperation of major news outlets, has managed to keep the media focused on his stunts. Today, his feud with Kellyanne Conway's husband, George, shares equal billing with flood disasters in Iowa/Nebraska in "respectable" media.
We have myriad problems--from climate change to stagnating wages to crumbling infrastructure--that require our attention and our best thinking on both sides of the political aisle. But we are unable to concentrate on any of those problems because Trump uses media outlets to keep pouring sand in our underpants.
In another two years, covering Trump's Real Time Twitter Geek Show will have become such an ingrained habit among news organizations that it will be nigh on useless. After Trump's second term is over, American politics will have changed beyond all recognition to those of us who remember A Time Before Trump.
"PS, Jim, I think you and people like Stephens are a lot more interested at this point in what the Ds are up to than I am."
ReplyDeleteI do think they're interesting. I think their steady movement leftward is interesting (and, from my point of view, quite worrisome). The conventional wisdom is that they are overplaying their hand and it will come back to bite them on election day. But in 2016, the conventional wisdom was that that damned rascal nominated by the GOP could never, ever be elected president.
I see a pattern of the left becoming more left, and the right becoming more right. And the center (which I consider myself part of) being considered by both sides as a bunch of wimps, maybe like the lukewarm in Scripture which get spewed.
Delete"steady movement leftward ... is quite worrisome." How so? What do you see among Democrats that worries you? Just interested.
DeleteI see a continued trend toward giveaway programs rather than addressing problems at the root (weak labor, skyrocketing education and medical costs). Limousine liberals, liberal elites, whatever the current moniker is.
But among the right I see conspiracy theorists, climate deniers, xenophobes, and people freaking out about what other people do in the sack.
The liberal elite knows I have problems but isn't interested in solving them. But the right-wing ... they're living in an alternative universe.
Maybe traditional definitions of "left" and "right" don't hold anymore.
That "steady movement leftward" looks to me more like a media confection than a fact. Article in the current Commonweal turns, without much stretching, Sen. Warren into a crypto capitalist. More, though: Three first-term members of the House are getting an awful lot of publicity for first-term members who usually consider themselves lucky if their local newspaper still remembers them. The vivid three are about 50% of that "steady movement." 3/345 don't add up to much movement to me. Don't send for the smelling salts until you need them.
Delete"What do you see among Democrats that worries you?"
DeleteThe Green New Deal is at the top of my list, although it's mostly smoke and mirrors right now, so there's hardly any substance to sink one's teeth into.
As another fer-instance: here is my friend David Leonhardt, from Wednesday's newsletter, on immigration:
"The Democratic Party no longer has a clear policy on immigration. It used to, not so long ago. The party’s leaders knew what they favored and felt comfortable saying so. Their platform generally included: 1) a path to citizenship for immigrants who came to this country illegally but had since obeyed the law; 2) deportation of undocumented immigrants who had since broken the law in significant ways; 3) fairly robust border security and investigation of companies employing undocumented immigrants, to hold down current and future levels of illegal immigration. Besides favoring these policies, Democrats were also willing to talk about the benefits of limiting immigration and of assimilation."
Leonhardt goes on to give his own policy prescriptions on immigration; pretty clearly, he sees himself as a profile in courage for daring to offer something so to-the-right of the typical NY Times reader:
"My own view is that the country benefits from significant limits on immigration. As David Frum notes in a recent cover story for The Atlantic, immigration levels were quite low for much of the 20th century — from roughly the 1910s through the 1970s.
"The slowdown helped many of the immigrants who arrived in the waves before 1910 (including parts of my family). They faced less competition in the labor market. Labor unions were more easily able to grow, because they were organizing an increasingly assimilated workforce. The immigration slowdown played a role in the great income surge of the post-World War II decades.
"Today, I’d favor a policy with a lot of similarities to the Democrats’ platform of the Obama years, including humane treatment of immigrants already here plus tight border security. I’d change the mix of immigration, to let in fewer low-skills immigrants and more high-skills immigrants. Doing so has the potential to reduce inequality and lift economic growth.
"I recognize that this platform is probably too conservative for many Democrats. But high levels of immigration, stretching over many decades, is not an American tradition. It’s something new, and it brings both upsides and downsides."
Jim, I make it a point never to top the list of things I am het up about with something that is not going to happen. Having the Green New Deal "crammed down our throats" (as John Boehner always said about things like Obamacare, or, come to think of it, last year's Republican tax cut) simply ain't going to happen.
DeleteI do think a lot of it will come about piecemeal. And some won't. And much will come long after it would have done the most good. Because Benghazi. After all, China is running about five years ahead of what it promised on reducing carbon production, and the U.S. would be if Trump had not made a positive decision not to. Those facts on the ground were pie in the sky not too long ago. It would probably be a good idea for someone to open a thread on climate. But, believe me, Ed Markey and Alexandria Casio-Cortez are not Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey.
I don't know what "Democratic Party" Leonhardt is talking about. The last policy, Obama's, which Leonhardt seems to like, is de facto the party's policy until it writes a new platform. He may be worried about next year's platform. But next year's platform won't take place until next year. When I think of things to get het up about, I try to avoid premature het.
The Green New Deal has many critics but little in the way of an alternative or even constructive criticism. I would be less concerned about the GND being shoved down my throat as the bloated imperial military being removed from my throat.
DeleteAbout immigration policy, we need to think about the reasons conditions are so bad in their home countries that so many want to flee. And consider if there is anything we could do, policy wise, to help make things better. Because it is in our own self-interest that our neighbors enjoy stability and a degree of prosperity.
DeleteWe are losing population, and the population we do have is old. We need immigrants in Michigan to level out the age disparity, but we are too xenophobic outside of Metro Detroit to accept immigrants, even if they mean our survival. Immigration doesn't have to be a free-for-all.
DeleteAnd I think the Green New Deal is aspirational and meant to provoke conversation. It has gotten Joe Manchin and Lisa Murkowski to start working on a bipartisan alternative.
Fear "the far left" if you want. But if you're a conservative who wants to see real progress on real problems, you better get your own people to ditch Trump, and wake up and die right.
E.J. Dionne does the necessary balancing job on O'Rourke in today's WashPost...at a rally late at night in PA. Captures the charisma, reviews positively other emergent Dems: Harris, Warrend, and Buttigieg, and pokes the Beto balloon with a tiny pin.
ReplyDelete"None of this means that O’Rourke’s obvious gifts are irrelevant. But neither Beto-mania nor any other craze will suddenly upend a contest in which Democratic voters are fiercely serious and listening more to their heads than to their hearts."
And did you know that O'Rourke's official name is Robert Francis as in RFK? I had not idea. Where does Beto come from?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-reality-and-limits-of-beto-mania/2019/03/20/47ca0b28-4b4d-11e9-9663-00ac73f49662_story.html?utm_term=.88603e07500f&wpisrc=nl_opinions&wpmm=1
"Beto" is a diminutive nickname for "Roberto." To my knowledge, the man has no Latino heritage. It's a Texas thing, apparently.
DeleteThanks for the link to Dionne's article.
And thanks for the Commonweal article "Brexit's Colonial Roots".
Deletehttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/tracing-brexits-colonial-roots
Covers interesting takes on Brexit by the formerly colonized.
Thanks Stanley for reading it! I had a great time writing it, especially the final sentences.
DeleteI recommend to all of you tracking the craziness of Teresa May and Brexit...sorry state of affairs, to be sure, but honestly such a relief from Trumplestiltskin & Co...and the U.S. media obssesion with this clown.
AND....leading Brexiters were seen hustling at Mar-a-lago. The Tammany Hall of the Really Rich!
Deletehttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/21/arron-banks-andy-wigmore-brexit-supporters-trump-guests-mar-a-lago
If I were a citizen of the UK, I'd be more concerned about those Mar-a-lago conspiratorial possibilities than this US citizen is about putative conspiracies between the Putin and the clown college that is the Trump inner circle.
Delete... although, looking at that Guardian article, I guess it's a convergence of conspiracy theories - with a Chinese conspiracy thrown in for good measure.
DeleteVery nice piece there, Margaret. I'll have to get back to Fintan O'Toole. Been away from the Irish Times because I've been spending too much time with The Scotsman, where First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is witheringly and critical of her better in Westminster. (Trump told May Sturgeon drives him crazy. Another reason for following her.)
DeleteI was just hearing, in the car, Terry Gross interviewing Ed Caesar who has a piece in New Yorker on good ole Aaron Banks, who I never heard of until he was mentioned as a Mar-a-Lago regular in my morning paper. Banks was a big bankroller of Brexit with money that may have been laundered through his gold mine and may have come from another good ol' boy, Vlad Putin. Millionaire, money laundering, Brexit, currently under investigation by Britain's version of the FBI... He ought to fit right in with the crowd.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/25/the-chaotic-triumph-of-arron-banks
Never heard of Fintan O'Toole until his Brexit book appeared in????NYR, LRB... He does have a Monty Python surreal streak, which since I miss the MontyPs, I find refreshing and, in the circumstances, more than appropriate.
DeleteYes, Scotland! I will be interested in what they pull off, if England departs EU. I have been beguiled by the possibility that Northern Ireland cut off from England by a border in the Irish Sea will have no choice but return to its roots in Ireland... But if Scotland pulls out, I guess there's a ditch between England and Scotland, or Hadrian's Wall; I'm hazy on the geography.
P.S. E.J.'s column is up at CWL
Deletehttps://www.commonwealmagazine.org/enthusiasm-enough
What scares me is how empires never seem to stop collapsing. They eventually do unto themselves what they did unto others. The memory of empire also corrupts the minds of the root country's people. I am hoping that America can go back to being a country in alliance with other countries and no longer World Control. But then there's "Make America great again".
DeleteAbout "Make America great again", I just saw the oddest funeral notice I have ever seen, this morning. It was for someone in my hometown. The memorial service is at a building on the fairgrounds, and all attending are requested to wear red "in support of our president". It is none of my relatives, and no one I knew. God rest his soul. But it is a small enough town that I am sure I know people who knew the deceased, and will hear about the funeral that sounds like a political rally.
Delete"I have been beguiled by the possibility that Northern Ireland cut off from England by a border in the Irish Sea will have no choice but return to its roots in Ireland."
DeleteAs I understand it, the Easter Accord made some kind of provision for a referendum, to occur at some unspecified time, on reunification. I thought that would happen when hell froze over, but apparently the Protestant majority in the north has dwindled, and the feeling among Unionists (who support remaining with Great Britain) runs cooler than it used to, perhaps because Ian Paisley is no longer running around scaring the hell out of people about the Papists.
So, yes, might be interesting to watch.
Jim's main concerns are the Green New Deal and immigration policy.
ReplyDeleteKatherine has pointed out the obvious - immigration will be a challenge until the conditions are eliminated that cause people to pick up and WALK 1000 miles with little more than the clothes on their back, clutching the hands of their small children as they make this miserable journey - in hopes of getting to a safe haven in the US and a better life for the children trudging 1000 miles at their sides.
Not sure how that will be fixed until the demand for illegal drugs in the US is eliminated, and the US does something about stopping all the guns heading to central America from the US. The governments seem unable (or unwilling?) to do what needs to be done to eliminate the violent drug cartels. The US is the market - if there were no demand here, the drug gangs wuld go out of business. Meanwhile, there is a steady, large flow of weapons from the US to Mexico and Central America. There are 700+ gun stores within 100 miles of the border, and a lot of the guns bought there are headed for the drug gangs south of the border. The gun makers and the gun vendors are all making a lot of money, and quite happy to not worry too much about where the guns bought are going next.
Trade policy can be debated; legitimate immigration policies can be debated; climate change can be debated. We all have opinions as to the best course on these things, but they are legitimate areas for discussion and debate.
For me, one of the most important political issue is whether or not the US will be a force for good in the world in the future.
Under Trump, it is not. The US is no longer to be relied on by our allies. We are no longer trustworthy in the eyes of other nations.
In addition, this administration ran on a platform of inciting fear and hate towards non-white/non-christians.
Trump continues to shrug his shoulders whenever there is a white supremacist crime and claim that it is not important. Well, it is. Hate crimes have skyrocketed in this country in the last couple of years. Most terrorist attacks here and abroad are now conducted by far right terrorists, white supremacists. These movements in Europe look to Trump for support. Bannon has been going around Europe encouraging them. The CPAC last year cheered Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, niece of Marine Le-Pen, head of France's far right, white nationalist National Front party.
My biggest concern is shared by Joe Scarborough, like me, a former member of the GOP and #NeverTrump. He had an op piece in the WaPo yesterday that resonated strongly with me. Posted in the next comment
From Joe Scarborough's column:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obamas-presidency-will-be-hailed-as-transformative-trumps-will-be-viewed-with-scorn/2019/03/19/c4ba3742-4a7c-11e9-9663-00ac73f49662_story.html?utm_term=.c70f47dda075
As …with George W. Bush and every other president …, Barack Obama made policy decisions I found troubling.
Obama once described the driving principle of his foreign policy as little more than “don’t do stupid s---.” That reflexive reaction to Bush’s military adventurism led to U.S. inaction in the face of some 500,000 Syrian deaths and the greatest refugee crisis since World War II. Domestically…
… 100 years from now, Obama’s presidency will be hailed … and … Trump will … be condemned as a racial reprobate whose words and actions inspired white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
Last week’s slaughter .. in New Zealand was allegedly committed by a fascist who claimed to draw inspiration from .. Trump, among others.. the latest in a long line of tragedies that [Trump] failed to clearly condemn. After … Charlottesville, Trump proclaimed a moral equivalence between neo-Nazis and their opponents. Following the killings in Christchurch [Trump] dismissed the threat of white supremacy .. claiming the rising tide of violence coming from the far right was limited to a few troublemakers …
Trump’s acting chief of staff… declared that “the president is not a white supremacist.” … The president’s apologists denied that [Trump] was inspiring right-wing violence. But the Center for Strategic and International Studies reported in November that far-right attacks rose in Europe by 43 percent since 2016, while right-wing terrorist attacks have quadrupled in the US over the same time. Hate crimes rose 17 percent in 2017.
This troubling chapter in U.S. history has one author — and his name is Donald Trump. [Trump] has created a political identity and corrupt presidency inspired by [a] wave of racism …[Trump’s] 2016 calls for a Muslim ban and creation of a Muslim registry; the claim of ignorance toward former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke; the attack on a Hispanic judge’s integrity; the callousness shown toward a Muslim Gold Star family; and the anti-Semitic tweet featuring a Star of David and piles of $100 bills next to Hillary Clinton’s face. These are just a few of the racially charged offenses that Trump committed even before Americans elected him president.
… I remain shocked that this strain of bigotry still fuels the political careers of Trump and his enablers on Capitol Hill.
.. Martin Luther King Jr. .. said that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” That is but one reason why the rise in bigotry shown to Muslims, Jews, Hispanics, blacks and “others” has been so discouraging in the age of Trump. Like those who believed these racists were relics from a bygone age, I … convinced myself that my Republican colleagues were so repelled by racism that they would never support a leader who provided inspiration to neo-Nazis and white supremacists; the … New Zealand killer and the words of David Duke after Charlottesville showed just how wrong I was.
What has made me more sad than any other issue is learning that so many of my fellow citizens, many of whom do not consider themselves to be racist, are so willing to support a president and a political party that uses bigotry and hate to bring out the vote. They think they aren't racist, but they are not not-racist enough to refuse to support this man and his agenda. Most of the GOP is spineless, and it appears that right and wrong, morality, truth, and principle are far less important to them them not riling up "the base".
I grieve for our country, which has lost its soul, and the values it once stood for. If a candidate doesn't clearly repudiate white nationalism, and hate, and bigotry, he or she will not get my vote, much less my money, no matter what their trade policy, etc might be.
NYTimes, 3/22, headlines
ReplyDelete"Joe Biden Weighing Unique Steps to Reassure Voters Concerned About His Age."
This is the kind of story that makes you wish political bosses met in cigar-filled rooms to squash stupid ideas.
The idea (from Biden "advisors"): name your vice-president now, promise to be a one-term president, and skip the stories about how old you are--78.
A corollary: name Stacy Abrams as your VP. If Stacy Abrams is as smart as I think she is, she'll say, thanks, but no thanks. She should run for the U.S. Senate or for governor of Georgia. She is a very good politicians and shouldn't waste her talents on the likes of this scheme.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/us/politics/joe-biden-2020-election.html
Yes, I could scarcely believe I was hearing this in the radio this afternoon. Deeply disappointing.
DeleteIt seems the more serious our problems become, the sillier the political antics. I support either Warren or Sanders as real change, and prefer Warren for her age. The only reason to support any of the others is to hope they appeal to the irrational US public enough to defeat the Idiot and later can be arm twisted by public demonstrations to do the right thing. But accepting bribes from big money disqualifies, in my opinion. It was obvious during Obama's first presidential campaign that he was comfy in bed with Wall Street. And this showed in his appointments.
DeleteRe: the silliness of political antics, the disinformation machine is already at it. There is a (supposed) picture of Beto O'Rourke on social media, wearing nothing but tattoos, saying, "...and he wants to be president?" Turns out it isn't him, but someone at a gay pride parade in Greece. We really can't believe anything we see.
DeleteRussian trolls? American gullibility? Last week's This American Life had two of the most depressing pieces on Americans and conspiracies that I have ever heard. No wonder Trump won.
Deletehttps://www.thisamericanlife.org/670/beware-the-jabberwock
Jean, I listened to part of the American Life pieces. Yes, very depressing. I thought we still had libel laws. I kind of didn't see the point of engaging with the crazies, he was never going to convince them.
DeleteLibel is really hard to go through. You end up basically having to prove that you have been harmed and that you are not who they say you are. Leonard Pozner does have a libel pending against Jones.
Delete