Morning Ed: Political Science {2017.04.02.Su}

Will Truman

Will Truman is the Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. He is also on Twitter.

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26 Responses

  1. Re: polling errors, the reported error is a random error, as opposed to a systematic error – i.e. it tells you mathematically what percent the results may go up and down each time said poll is theoretically administered. It does not account for, nor can it account for, systematic error, which I define as basically when a surveyer believes he is omniscient and gets a huge face-pie of hubris from the universe in return.Report

  2. Oscar Gordon says:

    So Big Pharma is worried that changes at the FDA will make it harder to get insurance approval for pricey drugs? I have to wonder, why doesn’t Pharma just coordinate with insurance to make sure that everyone is happy?

    (i.e. this smells of some flavor of capture or rent seeking)Report

  3. Saul Degraw says:

    Trump cobbled Clinton among whites without a college degree because white people have been trending for the GOP for decades, especially since 1964. LBJ famously said that the Democratic Party lost the South for a generation when the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act were passed. It took a bit longer than expected for this to start, maybe between 1980-1994 depending. What is happening in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Iowa (states where the population is older and whiter than average) is that they are going through mini-Southernizations in terms of their politics.

    Meanwhile, Texas, Arizona, and Georgia are turning slightly more purple but not as fast as Iowa and Ohio are going solidly GOP.

    Meanwhile HRC beat Trump solidly among whites who earned less than 50,000 dollars a year. Meanwhile as has been reported since the Summer of 2016, the average Trump supporter might be a white without a college degree but they also had incomes of around 70,000 dollars a year. Not super-wealthy but certainly well above the national average.

    In old fashioned European and Marxian terms, the Palin/Trump voters are known as the “petit bourgeois.” The Petit Bourgeois have always been forces and the first and second waves of nationalistic and right-wing politics.Report

  4. LeeEsq says:

    Besides what @saul-degraw said about 2016 being the culmination of electoral shifts that started in 1964, there is a big fight on liberal blogs about the Democratic Party and white voters. The more pragmatic sorts argue that the Democratic Party is going to need at least some people who shifted from Obama to Trump to be electorally viable. Others worry about having to sell the soul of the party and betray people of color, women, and LGBT people to get them on board.Report

  5. LeeEsq says:

    Dear God, I don’t get this complete hatred for the Democratic Party that exists in certain quarters. Its pathological. Republicans at their craziest don’t get the hate that some people on the Left give the Democratic Party.Report

  6. Saul Degraw says:

    Did some posts go missing?Report

  7. Saul Degraw says:

    https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/04/01/opinion/sunday/in-trump-country-shock-at-trump-budget-cuts-but-still-loyalty.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0&referer=https://t.co/x7jaJjmc6Z

    Moreno was sitting at a table with his boss, Rocky Payton, the factory’s general manager, and Amy Saum, the human resources manager. All said they had voted for Trump, and all were bewildered that he wanted to cut funds that channel people into good manufacturing jobs.

    “There’s a lot of wasteful spending, so cut other places,” Moreno said.

    Payton suggested that if the government wants to cut budgets, it should target “Obama phones” provided to low-income Americans. (In fact, the program predates President Barack Obama and is financed by telecom companies rather than by taxpayers.)

    This is the kind of racism that I am talking about influencing Trump voters and Trump voters being shocked shocked that Trump is a Republican plutocrat.Report

    • notme in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      Which part is racist? I didn’t see that person mention race at all just things they thought were wasteful spending.Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to notme says:

        @notme

        All of it. I generally don’t respond to you because it is often comes across as a waste of time based on Kazzy’s and others obvious frustration in going back and forth with you. But here is something that always seems to strike the right like thunder, people on the left think the category of racist speech and actions is much broader than directly bigoted speech. You can be racist without using various bigoted words. So here is why this statement is racist:

        1. The so-called “Obamaphone” program is an extension of the FCC Lifeline Assistance program which was started in 1984 when Ronald Reagon was President. The Lifeline Assistance program was designed to help low-income people have phones so they did not end up socially and economically even more marginalized. And possibly help them out of poverty.

        2. The cell phone aspect of Lifeline Assistance started under Bush II in 2008 as cell phone costs were going down and they were becoming more and more present in everyday life.

        3. The money for the program comes from fees charges to Telecommunications companies.

        But the cellphones are not called “Reagan phones” or “Bush phones.” They are called “Obamaphones” after the first African-American President. The program doesn’t cost taxpayers anything and the monies used on the program are a tiny part of the Federal Budget. The program came to the minds and attention of the fever dreams of the right-wing based on highly misleading footage from right-wing media organizations. This is the very definition of racism. Nothing seems to change the minds of people who believe that this program is horrible government waste. They can’t be directed on the age of the program, they can’t be corrected, there is just the feeling that this program costs huge amounts of money (which it doesn’t), that it comes from taxpayer money (it doesn’t), that it started with Obama (it didn’t). There are probably lots of people in Trump country with “Obamaphones” and these people would be “shocked, shocked” that their friends lose their cell phones if the program gets cut or canceled.

        But I suspect none of what was written above will change your mind because I have never seen anything change your damn mind.Report

        • notme in reply to Saul Degraw says:

          First, let me give you my profuse thanks for lowering yourself to speak with me.

          Not surprisingly, you seem to be mixing two things, neither of which is racist, together to come up with racism. The first is a lack of knowledge about the funding source of the Obama phones. Yes, he is wrong. However, that has nothing with actual racism or imputed. The second is his use of the name “Obama phones.” Given that the expansion of the program to provide cell phones happened under Obama, it seems accurate to label them as Obama phones. This doesn’t seem to be racist to me because it is accurate.

          In conclusion, this accusation of racism seems to be more unsupported liberal BS.Report