Trump, CPAC, and The Elephant In The Room
Sings for sale outside CPAC 2021. Photo by VOA [Public Domain]
So went the opening of the hour and half speech former President Trump gave in Orlando to a crowd who had waited that long past the scheduled time to welcome the main event for CPAC 2021. “We went through a journey like nobody else, there’s never been a journey like it, there’s never been a journey so successful, we began it together four years ago and it is far from being over.”
Which is true. Trump as the dominating force of the Republican Party is far from over. The 45th president will be the overbearing force in the Republican party for the next few years, and as he has been the last four will be the singularity pulling all the political and media light towards him, bending it, and refusing to let any of it escape. The Donald J. Trump of CPAC2021 and of the hard-sold DonaldJTrump.com was clearly the same one we saw for four years as president.
Trump ran through his greatest hits — since he only really ever gives one kind of speech right down to ending with “YMCA”— touching on the wall, on his accomplishments as presidents, on the fake news media, on the Washington establishment that opposed him, and especially and by name all the GOP congress critters that had opposed him in either word or vote or both since he left office. The former president even broke some news, declaring there would be no 3rd party, that he was the titular head of the GOP, and — rightly — decrying that any such third party split would just hinder the Republicans plans to participate in the traditional first midterm switching of congressional power.
Its a speech that other than the long section on the stolen and illegitimate election could have been given at any point in his presidency. Other than rattling off the list of impeachment offenders in congress and the new fundraising pitch for DonaldJTrump.com and the Save America PAC, it could have been anytime between the November election and January 6th, or anytime after January 6th to the present.
Which is the problem. All the rhetoric, all the “74 million voters”, all the accomplishments of four years, all the stats, all the warm fuzzy feelings, all the nostalgia of Trump rallies of old, all the excitement of the CPAC faithful to once again have their beloved before them, all the “we really won and we won big” against all available evidence…all that requires one thing to make it all work. Or rather, it requires one thing to not be so that actually is.
January 6th didn’t happen, and whatever did happen had nothing to do with any of them.
The event organizers of CPAC and the cadre of Team Trump were all wise to steer well clear of what happened at the Capitol and January 6th. There is absolutely, positively no way any of it is beneficial to them or their cause of keeping the Trump money train going. There is no amount of applause lines that will cleanse the images of a Trump crowd before him giving a speech that could have large sections cut and pasted from the CPAC one, and then marching to the capitol where all hell broke lose. Time will no doubt do that for some, but only six weeks removed that time has not come for anyone not already a hardcore supporter of President Trump.
Just step back for a moment and let’s ask the questions that matter:
Would Donald Trump get 74 million votes today, post January 6th, post Georgia run-off, and post everything else that has happened since November 3rd, 2020?
Has Donald Trump done anything at all to convince any of the 81 million voters who voted for Joe Biden that they made a horrible mistake and should run to vote Trump when/if the opportunity presents itself?
Has Donald Trump done anything to convince the 84 million registered voters that took a look at the 2020 election and went “nah, I’m good” and didn’t vote at all to come out next time?
Does his behavior since January 6th up to and including this CPAC speech indicate he learned anything at all from his electoral failure, in which he propelled Joe Biden to the highest vote total in American electoral history?
Has Donald Trump done anything differently than the rhetoric and political moves that lost both Georgia Senate run-offs, the US Senate to Democratic control, and his own approval rating plummeting to end his presidency?
Anyone who wants to sell the general population on “yes” to any of those questions is going to have to show their work. The 2020 election was a loss for former President Trump and his supporters. Everything that happened between that loss and January 20th when Donald J. Trump ceased to be president was an unmitigated disaster for a political brand unseen in modern American history. Rhetoric to the faithful that ignores January 6th, blames Georgia on others, and mostly focuses on angering the crowd about a stolen election enough to keep sending in the money just doesn’t square with reality.
Will Trump run again in 2024? No one knows, probably including Trump. He would be 78 by then, there is a midterm yet to hash out that Trump’s CPAC speech made very clear that at least the Republican primary portion of would be a referendum on Trump loyalty, and a host of other things that might happen. If you think 20 months isn’t that far off, do consider only 15 months ago no one reading this had any idea what Covid-19 was. Two months ago no living American knew what an assault by a mob on the United States Capitol looked like. It hasn’t sunk in yet to the Trump faithful the assault on the Capitol was the high water mark of MAGA. That 74 million didn’t contain just the hardcore Trump faithful, and that cohort of folks who for various reasons voted for Trump while not fully supporting him recoiled at what they saw on January 6th, and are not coming back. The underlying ideology and desires that fueled the rise and election of the 45th president in 2016 existed long before Trump, and will after, but this particular branding of MAGA, Trumpism, and the like is for the foreseeable future relegated to only the true believers. And having just the true believers isn’t enough to win national elections.
Besides that, we have enough book on former-president Donald Trump to know a few things. He isn’t going to hand over the GOP anytime soon. He expects all things Republican to revolve around him. He and his team know the money is in the fundraising and keeping passions stoked and directed at the usual suspects to keep the cash flowing in. So, whether he actually runs in 2024 or not, Trump will make sure it looks that way in the meantime for the control of the party, the power that brings, and the refilling of coffers he needs.
However, his CPAC audience would be wise to take his “I might” and wink-wink nudge-nudge applause lines about a third campaign with a large grain of salt. No doubt some of the CPAC crowd was there at another Trump speech, when he declared “Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you.” Which meant he was going to hole up at the White House and go MIA for the better part of 4 hours while those who did go wrought havoc. So the CPAC and Trump faithful who take up the call to continue the movement, or the journey, or the fight, or however the fundraising and campaigning to come is going to be framed should keep in mind recent history. Just because he hints at going with you, or even tells you he will, doesn’t mean he is.
Plan accordingly.
Nice summary. I would urge a little caution, however, around phrases like “unmitigated disaster.” The mid-terms are barreling toward us, and it’s unclear whether GOP candidates will actually suffer from 1/6.
CPAC is a gathering of clowns. Clearly. But that doesn’t mean anyone else closed the deal for the hearts of the electrorate.Report
The real tell will be what happens to the 11 Republicans who voted to impeach. They’ll all be primaried, for sure.Report
3 years is forever in politics.
It’s even possible that Trump will run in 3 and it will be a good thing for the GOP. If Biden does a good job (and is lucky) he’ll be a juggernaut in 2024.Report
I would caution that we’re still too close to Jan. 6 to see what (if any) electoral impact it will have. My opinion is that the real legacy of Trump will be to have catapulted us much further into a post-truth (post-reality?) media environment than we otherwise might be. As we saw over the weekend conservative media has no interest in reckoning with the banal realities of Trump’s presidency. Very little got done and there was no institutionalization of a new philosophy of policy or governance. The administration was mostly ineffectual and completely incapable of dealing with crisis. If we’re being honest the whole thing ended with more of a bizarre and embarrassing spectacle than the attempted coup it’s been described as.
We also had the big legacy institutions use Trump as an excuse to do what everyone knows they’ve wanted to do for decades. Now that they’ve picked up the mantle of the resistance are they really going to take it down? Is the WaPo going to take ‘Democracy Dies in Darkness’ off the masthead? Will the combination of deference to woke gibberish and apologia for the kinds of soft authoritarianism coming from the permanent executive bureaucracy make way for a little critical thinking? I doubt it and Jan. 6 gives them the perfect excuse not to.
It almost doesn’t matter if Trump runs again. The damage has been done in the form of an acceleration of distrust in governing and societal institutions. What we’re really developing is closer to the kind of legal nihilism you hear about in Russia and other former eastern bloc countries.Report
Agreed 100%.Report
One of the things we have learned during the past 5 years is that Trump has both a hard ceiling and a hard floor of support.
He hasn’t gained or lost significant numbers of supporters regardless of what events transpire.
Since the Republican core is white male grievance, this is to be expected. After all, there is no legislation that can soothe their seething rage and wounded souls. A better economy can help around the margins but it won’t make Drag Queen Storytime go away and the Hispanic immigrants will still be down there at Home Depot.Report
Not entirely true. Legislation advantaging white conservative males in voting (eg Georgia) and legislation rolling back affirmative action would indeed assuage them for along time.Report
I can agree with you that practically no one changed his mind about Trump on January 6th. Maybe about his supporters, but not about him.Report
Concur. He didn’t do anything unexpected in the 4 years he occupied the White House. WYSIWYG.Report
Didn’t we just have a whole thread where our regular right-leaning commentators went all “well, actually….” on the idea that the Constitution does not prohibit literacy tests and they were all but stating that they think literacy tests will prevent “those people” from voting.
CPAC makes it clear that neither it nor Trump will concede they were outvoted in 2020 and seven million people preferred Biden over Trump. Biden voters do not count because CPAC’s see them as the wrong kind of people: too urban, too urbane, too liberal, and yes also, not male enough, not white enough, and not Christian enough. This ends up turning into a never ending grift with stuff like the golden calf, er golden Trump that was wheeled out. A statue so cartoonish that it somehow manages to give a Poe’s law vibe. If you told me that some Jeff Koons wannabe made that statue in the 1980s or 90s as a comment on Reganite Capitalism, I would believe it. If the artist who made that statue wheeled it to the Broad in Los Angeles instead of CPAC, he would have also received a favorable reception but from an audience with very different politics, and conservatives would complain about how over the top it was.
The premium press like the Atlantic and the Bulwark likes to run essays by #NeverTrump evangelicals who lament that their fellow Evangelicals have sold their souls to Trump but these voices are over represented in the media compared to their actual numbers. They are published because the premium press can’t bring itself to admit that principled conservatism or whatever you want to call it has a limited audience and that audience mainly consists of Democrats who need a mental health check that not all conservatives have gone fascist.
When I was a kid in the 1980s through my early adulthood in the Bush II years, the Christian Right held real power and there were censorious elements in the Democrats too. Tipper Gore was the one who panicked because her daughter was listening to a Prince song that referenced masturbation. But I think these days are long gone. My cohort has young children of their own and I doubt they will freak out over lyrics that refer to masturbation. A YA book like Simon vs.the Homo Sapiens Agenda would have been unthinkable when I was a kid and is common place now. The Christian Right especially white men who were so used to being the center of the political universe realize their time is up and they do not like it one bit and they are fighting like hell to prevent that from happening.
I think there is a kind of weird ideal that a lot of people have when it comes to political parties in a democracy. The weird ideal is that people (especially political writers) think that all parties will just pay attention to the polls and do whatever is broadly popular to get votes on election day. This view of democracy negates the power and pull of ideology. There are still lots of people around who were teenagers or young adults during the years of Regan, Thatcher, and the Gingrich Revolution. They absorbed all the stuff on small government and low taxes and low regulation but the time for this stuff is up and gone. But their brains are still stuck in Reaganland views and they would rather sabotage democracy than change that.Report
That thread was here, for the record.Report
I remember that thread. Who all but said that? Saul may have all but read that, but it wasn’t there.Report
The Republicans are bearing out David Frum’s prophesy that they will turn against democracy itself rather than moderate their views.
Unfortunately I think the next decade of American history will largely be determined by the Republicans. They will either accept others as equals and choose to live in peace with their fellow citizens, or not.
For the rest of us, its a bit like living with a family drunk or abuser. We have to accept that we aren’t in control of their behavior.Report
I’m voting for not. None of the Trump yard signs have been taken down here, an dour Congressional delegation continues to vote against our best interests to stick it to Biden. They fully intend to fight a hot and cold war simultaneously.Report
Is that equals as in “equal opportunity” or is that equals as in “equal results”?
Team Blue claims they’re interested in the former but a lot of their policies are built for the later.Report
Its way simpler then that – both political parties ignore polling and voting results because their campaign war chest are not (with the exception of Bernie and AOC) lined by ordinary people. Politicians don’t actually need voters to achieve and hold power.Report
Republicans have turned away from democracy in 13 charts.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22274429/republicans-anti-democracy-13-chartsReport
Note to Chip: When you are asked to support your claim that the GOP doesn’t like minorities, item number 5 is your evidence (assuming the survey questions are not loaded, I couldn’t see the questions).Report
“The Global Party Survey engaged a wide range of 1,861 academic experts on political parties, public opinion, elections and legislative behavior. These experts were asked to estimate the ideological values, issue position and rhetoric of parties in the country where they have their main expertise.”
Not a survey of the GOP on minorities, but a survey of academics on the GOP.Report
Oh, yeah, that’s not gonna have a serious political bias.
Forget I offered it up as useful evidence.Report
No, no, no, you misunderstand. They’re experts. 🙂Report
“Can you support your claim?”
“Certainly. Here are several sources, none of which is an academic and in fact, not one of them has ever so much as opened a book!”
“Whoa, that is mighty persuasive!”Report
It’s much better to just tell people “I’m not going to do your research for you” and give them a link to Google.Report
Abortion is murder! And here are a whole bunch of expert theologians (PhDs and all that) explaining exactly why.
Are you persuaded?Report
]What is the point being made here?
That experts disagree on debatable topics?
Or that experts can’t be trusted?Report
What’s the point made in your earlier reply to me? I figured you were just being snarky. But if there was a point, it didn’t come through. I mean, you’ve got to admit that there’s a difference between a survey demonstrating GOP dislike of minorities and a survey of academics who say that the GOP dislikes minorities. It doesn’t even look like the experts respond on countries they don’t reside in. So all it says is that US academics believe there’s a bigger difference between the US left party and the US right party than experts of other countries believe about their right and left parties. You’ve got to admit that’s not conclusive.Report
What would a “survey demonstrating GOP dislike of minorities” look like, that would be any different than “a survey of academics who say that the GOP dislikes minorities.”?
For the record, I don’t hold out this Vox thing as dispositive “proof” of GOP resentment of minorities.
The proof is the entirety of American history since 1964.Report
What would a “survey demonstrating GOP dislike of minorities” look like, that would be any different than “a survey of academics who say that the GOP dislikes minorities.”?
Could we compare stuff like segregation rates in heavily GOP areas to segregation rates in heavily DNC areas to measure dislike of minorities?Report
Funny how, judging by voting patterns, those who ought to be most aggrieved seem to have a different take on the issue.Report
I wasn’t measuring aggrievment.
If you’d like to suggest aggrievment testing methods, I’d love to read them!Report
“judging by voting patterns” is probably a contradiction in terms.
Back when the Dems were the party of the Klan, they were also the party of the black vote for economic reasons.
Similarly being on Team Blue doesn’t mean you’re totally in favor of gun control and voting Team Red doesn’t mean you’re opposed. It may just mean it’s not the issue you vote on.Report
If votes don’t count, try talking to some of the aggrieved.
And, as a historical matter, when the Dems were “the party of the Klan,” blacks were Republicans, when they could vote at all. That changed over time in ways we saw happen in real time, at least those of us who are old enough.
So if those aggrieved by blue-state segregation don’t hold it against blue-state Democrats, they probably have their reasons, and the moral gotcha on their behalf doesn’t hold up.Report
In 1924 Blacks weren’t even permitted to attend Dem political conventions.
In 1936 71% of Blacks voted for FDR, and that was pretty much the average until the civil rights period where it rose to 88%.
And yes, they called themselves Republican while they were voting for the party of the Klan.
One assumes they were holding their noses but whatever.
https://cdn.factcheck.org/UploadedFiles/Black_Vote_Pres.jpgReport
The “civil rights period” was “real time” for some of us, during which time the Democratic party alienated the remnants of its Klan-like elements to its moral credit and its lasting political cost. If the Republicans could get close to 30% of the black vote without losing its core, no Democrat would ever sit in the White House. But that’s a political circle that can’t be squared.Report
It would be a survey of GOP members, for starters. If it’s a survey of academics who aren’t GOP members, it’s an academic survey.
My question to you is, always, what can you point to that can only be explained by the theory that the GOP dislikes minorities? Not some personal interpretation of a policy, not some outcome of a policy. One thing that my assessment of reality (which doesn’t include the idea that the GOP is racist) doesn’t explain that your assessment of reality (which does include that idea) can explain.Report
Can you prove that highly educated, urban people dislike rural uneducated people? Or that liberal cosmopolitan secular people dislike conservative religious people?
The central core of Republicanism is the feeling of aggrievement and sense of persecution.
Yet these things can’t be proven in any rational sense of the word because we are talking about human relationships.
If someone can look at the history of America and sincerely believe that the contemporary GOP doesn’t resent ethnic minorities then I can’t persuade them with reason because reason didn’t get them to that point.Report
So, nothing. I’m not going to change my views if you’ve got nothing. It’s Occam’s Razor: my views explain everything your views do, but I have one fewer rule.Report
It would be a survey of GOP members, for starters.
“Sir, are you a racist?”Report
Having it be a survey of GOP members is also bad, for the same reason.
A survey of PoliSci academics from across the spectrum (academic faculty, think tanks, campaign operatives, political appointees, etc) limits opinions to those with requisite knowledge, while avoiding the bias trap.
Now, if that is what they mean when they ‘academic experts’, then it’s probably good data. If they limited themselves to the opinions of academic faculty, then it’s probably impossible to effectively control for bias.Report
It’s a tough issue in general. Cross-country policy comparisons are a nightmare, because the countries have different populations, borders, histories, and current laws. (Whatever you do, don’t ever try to compare the American and English unemployment safety nets. You will lose 40 years of your life and gain zero ground. And we have a common legal tradition.)Report
The point is that my experts can be trusted and the burden of proof is on you to discredit them.
And that the amateurs that you mistakenly call “experts” can be dismissed until you take up the burden of proof and demonstrate that they can be trusted on this.
And then I *STILL* get to say that I haven’t read any evidence that you happen to provide for me saying that I haven’t studied the statistical methods used by the experts that you provided wikipedia pages for.
AND THEN, AFTER THAT, I *STILL* GET TO ARGUE THAT I HAVEN’T SEEN ANY EVIDENCE THAT DISAGREES WITH MY PROPOSITIONSReport
Experts have bias just like everyone else. Did the survey control for bias?Report
Again, I am agnostic about the study. My claim doesn’t use that as a source.Report
Then what is your evidence?Report
The entirety of American history , particularly since 1964.Report
No, just your interpretation of the entirety…Report
That smacks of arguments for intelligent design. Try again.Report
Why bother?
You’re assuming I really, really want to make a convert of someone who can read American history and come away thinking that racism doesn’t form the core of Republican identity.
I don’t. It would be more enjoyable debating Creationism.Report
If you two don’t knock it off, I’ll turn this car around, and you’ll both be creationists!Report
This whole thing just underlines to me that the movement and the drama is going to lie mainly on the right. Yes there is conflict between the neoliberal/moderate wing and the arch liberal and woke illiberal wings but the former is perrenial and I do not thing that illiberal left has much actual voting constituency and it remains to be seen if it can maintain an internal coherence strong enough to contend.
But what happens to resolve the yawning chasm between the elite and the voting masses on the right; how the Trump conundrum is resolved and what replaces the steadily shrinking cachet of social conservativism strikes me as much larger and more lively questions and ones on which future elections will hinge.Report
The whole “woke illiberal” thing is a grift so Bari Weiss and Andrew Sullivan can generate those sweet, sweet Parler and Substack dollars. Bari Weiss revealed it was the grift all along when she went to the bat for Gina Carano who shared anti-Semitic stuff that she has criticized people on the left for.
I don’t agree with every policy that comes out of the Squad either but the whole woke illiberal thing is a conservative grift.Report
I wish I could just write it off as a conservative grift in total but I’ve observed too much of it rampaging about to be able to do so in good conscience.
Illiberal wokeness exists, that’s pretty assured. On a scale of 1-10 with 1 being “It’s a collection of meaningless virtue signaling on twitter with no real power behind it” and 10 being “It’s a powerful and growing modern version of 1984” I am certainly confident it’s nowhere near a ten but I can’t honestly say it’s a one. Personally I’d rate it maybe a 3 or a 4.Report
More like 2-3, if that and it is still pretty low on the scale of power where the conservative grift outweighs the actual existence by orders of magnitude.Report
If conservatives make horrible mistakes, become illiberal and lose an entire generation to their ideals then that’s a-ok with me. But if liberals start playing footsie with going down that same path I need to sit up and take notice. I, and those I love, live and flourish in the shade liberalism opened up for my kind in modern times. I am not so old that I am guaranteed to die before an alienated up and coming generation could make life hell for my kind. I’m not so selfish as to not care if woke imbeciles provoke a counterreformation that sends future people like me into exile. So saying conservatives are much worse may be true but is irrelevant to the question of whether the illiberal left is a problem- nascent or otherwise.
Conservatives regaining cultural power through their own actions? I am dubious they can pull it off. They’re too old, too hidebound and their ideals are poorly suited to the task.
But illiberal lefties overreaching and alienating future generations from liberal ideals? Oh yes, I can imagine that happening. I watched the conservatives do the exact damn thing.Report
If you have children the threat it poses becomes clearer. We’ve reached the point where racial segregation is more likely to be proposed in meat space by some well-meaning progressive spouting woke neologisms than a bunch of racist rednecks openly advocating reversal of Brown v. Board of Ed. The courts will eventually put the kibosh on the most ridiculous stuff but not before it has a chance to do plenty of irreversible damage to kids, not to mention further undermine faith in the ability of public services to function. You would think this would be obvious but even now Biden is re-installing Catherine Lhamon to undo one of the 2 or 3 sane things that happened under the Trump admin.Report
The author(?) of the “Dear Colleague” letter to colleges; i.e. “accusation is the same as guilt”.
Good chance we’ll see colleges stripped of due process again.
And I see there’s a movement to put her on the Supreme Court.
Yes, that.Report
Yeah, the Smith College thing is starting to get noticed by more people too.
The NYT is speaking out against it, at least (of course, this is within a month of the dismissal of Donald McNeil… did you know that he was one of the best advocates for the union members? Like he was one of the best negotiators for the union! I’m beginning to suspect that there may have been other dynamics at play in his dismissal on the part of management than how upset a handful of the discord folks were… but I digress).
Anyway, there are a bunch of things that are more and more reminiscent of Joe McCarthy anymore.
Lotta people without decency out there.Report
Oh my. Excuse me while I go roll on the floor and laugh for a bit. There are vast swaths of the country where racial segregation are alive and well and a daily thing. Or did the violence of last years social justice protests divert you from the actual message?
The Trumpians among us merely acknowledge their desire to remain and enforce racial prejudice. In that they are finally being honest about who they are and what they want. Doesn’t change the fact that American is STILL an openly racist country where segregation is still practiced, even though its been illegal for several generations.Report
So because you allege right wingers do segregation that’s justification for the left to start segregating and discriminating on the basis of race too? What the actual fish dude?Report
It is illegal to discriminate based on the color of someone’s skin.
Basing your choices on the content of their character is legal and expected.
For example, it’s fine for me to refuse to send my kids into the same school where my wife was beaten by one of her students. Similarly it’s fine to want no disruptive students in my kids’ classes.
Trying to pretend that the motivations for this behavior is “racist” doesn’t lead to solutions.Report
Philip, this is profoundly dishonest. The type of discrimination we’re talking about is illegal in all but the narrowest of circumstances and has been for over 2 generations now. It’s also been stigmatized for my entire (Xennial) life, and rightly so. We should be proud of that, unequivocally so.
What we have now are problems of negative disparate impact, particularly for a concentrated class of black Americans whose ancestors were slaves. This is a problem worth deep consideration. But the kinds of solutions we’re seeing in higher ed that are now trickling down to major school systems are anything but. I mean things like segregating students and parents by race, imposing racist struggle sessions, and eliminating standards of conduct and achievement as vestiges of ‘white supremacy.’
Frankly all liberal people should be aghast and ashamed of this kind of thing. It isn’t only wrong on its own merits. It also destroys the legitimacy of the kinds of public services our country sorely needs. The more these things look like vehicles of craziness bent on being society’s commissars the more they make the case against themselves.
So to Saul’s earlier point (and North’s) I am not particularly worried about a woke mob coming for me. Right now I’d probably agree with North that on the severity scale of 1-10 it’s about a 4 but it’s important to keep it there and eventually push it back to the rarified air of small private colleges. I am profoundly worried about what this does to a larger educational system that I as a taxpayer fund and from which I would like my family to benefit. It is an ax to an already sick tree. So is Trump and his followers for that matter, but this ‘avert your eyes’ stuff is pure gaslighting crap. Just because there are a bunch of people who really don’t want to talk about it doesn’t mean it isn’t real or worth talking about.Report
There are vast swaths of the country where racial segregation are alive and well and a daily thing.
Yes. There are.
I googled (without quotes): where are the most segregated schools
I pressed “I’m feeling lucky”.
The link that came up was this one.
If you’re not subscribed (or not in an incognito window), here’s from the middle:
If you want to read the Brown at 60 from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA, you can read it here.
I always jump down to Table 9.
What is the worst state in the Union for %Black in Majority White Schools?
Alabama? Mississippi?
Nope! California! (#2 is Texas, #3 is New York.)
Well, what’s the worst state for %Black in 90-100% Minority Schools?
Alabama? Mississippi?
Nope! New York! (#2 is Illinois. #3 is Maryland.)
How’s about the state for, copying and pasting this, “Black Exposure to White Students”?
Alabama? Mississippi?
Nope! New York! (#2 is Illinois. #3 is California.)
So when you say “There are vast swaths of the country where racial segregation are alive and well and a daily thing.”
Um… yeah. There are.
Hey. Look over there.Report
In fairness Jaybird there are a lot of devils in details that I think both people like Philip and your retort miss about what’s going on in these places. I’ll take my lovely home state. Here we have two big jurisdictions (Baltimore City and Prince George’s County) that are over 60% black. In a situation like that it would be strange for there not to be schools with extremely high concentrations of black students compared to national averages. Like, it’s literally who lives there.
Now, does this mean questions of historical racism and de jure segregation are off the table? Of course not. But a report like that can be quite misleading about causation and what’s really happening. Again, to my home state, Baltimore has a particularly horrendous problem of entrenched generational poverty on par with the worst performers in the country. In a lot of ways its more like a rust belt city than a coastal one due to loss of industry and hollowing out of the tax base. Prince George’s county on the other hand is one of the wealthiest majority black jurisdictions in the country, behind only parts of metro Atlanta. Its schools do not have a great reputation but they are very well funded and a top priority of the local government. Moreover, and unlike Baltimore, many of those who live there are gainfully employed in government or government adjacent industries and could easily leave for more diverse neighboring jurisdictions if they wanted to.
All of this is to say there are some very real questions about what that report is really measuring. I mean, I would say any comparison to our lovely neighbors in WVa for example is nowhere close to apples to apples and says very little about anything. It also undermines the purity politics narrative on both sides. On the one hand blue states aren’t some kind of integrated utopia. On the other it can raise uncomfortable questions about ‘racism,’ like… are these jurisdictions racist against their own children? Seems dubious to me and like more study is warranted.Report
If we want to run with “Segregation is quite complicated!”, that’s fine, I guess.
I’m just always interested in seeing “SEGREGATION IS AWFUL! IT’S EVIL! IT’S BLACK AND WHITE!” conversations turn into “hey, you know, if you’re familiar with Schelling mild preference theory, you’d see that a mild preference creates its own equilibrium…” the moment that someone looks up what the numbers ACTUALLY ARE.
If this is a matter of principle, then let us apply the principle.
If this is a really complicated set of circumstances, then let us explore the really complicated set of circumstances.Report
Well count me as an explorer of complicated circumstances! But also a rejector of easy answers. I’m less interested in ol’ B-more’s demographics and more why their outcomes suck so bad. Not enough white people reciting a need to decolonize their brains or whatever seems like an unlikely explanation.Report
It strikes me as similar to #MeToo.
Ideally, it’s a way for women who have suffered sexual harassment to come out and say, hey. Me Too. This behavior is everywhere and we need to knock it off.
It quickly became weaponized. Hey! We can use this to get rid of people we don’t like! Look! Trump!
But then Al Franken’s photos of him sexually harassing a woman on a USO tour surfaced and she made some statements saying that he took seriously offensive actions against her.
Suddenly, nuance was discovered. Well, you have to understand. Yes, this was awful. He shouldn’t have done it! But, let’s face it, she was a Playboy bunny and, not to slut-shame, but she marketed herself as a sex worker and it was just to this one lady!
And then, of course, a bunch of non-team players decided to hear “it was just this one example” and started saying #MeToo.
And then people started noticing that it was Democrats who kept resigning and not Trump.
Suddenly, #MeToo becomes something that makes a handful of people asking “why are we doing this? The only thing it results in is our guys resigning!”
Hey, remember back when #MeToo started? It wasn’t about getting anybody fired. It was about women talking about what happened to them. It was about raising awareness of how ubiquitous this sexual harassment was.
And, suddenly, you’ve got Democrats arguing that #MeToo might have had good intentions but.
And now we’re talking about Cuomo and, well, you have to understand.
To bring us back to Segregation, it’s weird that the Northeast is the only section of the country that has gotten *MORE* segregated since Brown instead of less segregated.
And any discussion of segregation that has any nuance at all ought to note that the changes in the rest of the country, though slower than ideal, are at least headed in the right direction… except in The Northeast.
And any discussion of segregation being bad that fails to explore why the Northeast is heading in the wrong direction is a discussion about something other than segregation, at its foundation. (Though it may look like one, on the surface.)Report
It seems to me your real issue is the making of poorly considered assertions which are then backed off on when they become inconvenient. And hey, I agree that those are stupid and we should identify them at the outset and try to avoid making them ourselves.
But it doesn’t follow that we should then draw a bunch of specious conclusions based on that original ill-informed assertion. To take it back to our examples, am I supposed to conclude that WVa has worked some magic by being better integrated than MD when the population of WVa is only ~3.5% black? Is there really any integration going on or are there just not many people to integrate (to say nothing of very divergent economic and migratory histories)?
There’s also the real question of what we’re measuring and why we’re measuring it. Would anyone care that Baltimore’s schools are 80%+ black if the outcomes were really good? Maybe we’d want to better understand whats happening but it wouldn’t be looked at as this very telling proxy for everything messed up about race in our society.
My point here is that these debates suffer immensely from a lack of clarity that helps no one. We can call each other hypocrites until the cows come home and not advance a damn thing.Report
Well, we can’t actually enact change.
If we could, you’d think that the progressive states would be exemplars.
So, in the absence of being able to do something, we have to yell.Report
I guess? My own inclination is to see it as a failure to set coherent goals, much less design policies that might have some shot at achieving them.Report
I lived in PG County for 11 years. I agree it would be weird for its student population to disproportionately represent white students.
But PG County (and Baltimore CIty & County) are national anomalies.Report
In East Baton Rouge Parish for the last two election cycles the vastly rich, almost exclusively white “St. George” community attempted to vote itself out of the unified parish government because its residents didn’t want to pay property taxes to support the Parish’s public school system – a system which has become more and more African American since the federal courts “desegregated” the schools by court order in 1980. Thankfully the voting in the Parish is set up so that seceding is nearly impossible, but it’s been tried twice. ALl the while those parents refuse to send their kids to the schools they despise, which means that the Parish’s system has effectively resegregated.
Here in MIssissippi state legislators are debating quite seriously ditching the state income tax and boosting sales taxes and attempting to boost lottery revenue to compensate – both things that will be deeply impactful to minority communities and are deeply regressive taxation approaches.
So no matter what is and or has been illegal there is still deeply morally racist activity in the nation. And it is currently seeing itself well stoked in many political arenas. Hell CPAC was an entire week of entitled white grievance.Report
I haven’t followed the argument up till now (I think it extends across multiple threads), but here’s my 2 cents in reply to this comment. Racist interpretations of policies by those who oppose the policies aren’t proof of racism. Differences in outcome aren’t proof of systemic bias.Report
Systemic differences in outcome are precisely proof of systemic bias. That’s what “systemic bias” means. What’s they’re not proof of is intentional racism.
For instance, many states have significantly longer wait times to vote in minority neighborhoods.That’s a systemic bias against minority voters. Is this intentionally racist? If the underlying motivation is to decrease the Democratic vote as opposed to the minority vote, arguably not. Despicable, sure, but (perhaps) not racist.Report
Agreed. Look at Georgia, where the State legislature is actively debating voting measures that will demonstrably suppress black voter turnout because they seek to eliminate ways in which more black people vote.Report
In case anyone needed proof, This just happened:
Screw them sideways, but it’s not racial animus, so it’s fine.Report
It’s bad, but not because of racial animus. It’s bad because the GOP is insisting it should be allowed to game the system to stay competitive. That fact that how they game the system harms minorities is at best, a side effect.
At worst, it is a measure of animus*.
*I’m sure some of the GOP enjoys the fact that minorities are harmed.Report
Federal courts have OKed this motivation.Report
OK’d what? The motivation that the GOP should be allowed to game the system to stay competitive?
Can’t say I’m surprised, federal judges OK all sorts of crap that supports entrenched interests.Report
This, exactly.
I doubt the bulk of the GOP is racist in a manner that is actively hostile to minorities (e.g. the KKK, Proud Boys, etc.). Rather, they are largely apathetic towards how some of their preferred policies maintain or bolster systemic racism.Report
After 4 years of DOnald Trump I’d say many of them are less apathetic.Report
In more ways than one.Report
We need to get the best predictor for whatever we’re looking at.
For example, is a lack of upward mobility best predicted by your skin color or is it best predicted by your parent’s education/social-economic/marriage status?
Upward mobility is silly connected to parental marriage. -0.764 Correlation is crazy high.
https://www.businessinsider.com/parents-determine-child-success-income-inequality-2014-1
“Systemic bias” appears to mean “different chances your parents were married”.Report
Are these groups behaving differently than the people in California and New York?
If not, you’re probably claiming color-blind behavior is racism because of its outcomes.Report
so, is the failure to return water to Jackson, Mississippi (which is 47% Black) racist or just stupidity?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/in-jackson-miss-two-weeks-with-no-running-water-and-no-end-in-sight/2021/03/01/2f5a787a-7adf-11eb-85cd-9b7fa90c8873_story.htmlReport
Jackson Miss is 79.4% Black.
Ergo almost all the voters are black and ditto the political leadership.
So is it the voters here who are racist or is it the people they elect?
If it’s the voters who are racist, what do you want to do? If it’s the leaders, what do you want to do?Report
My takeaway from the article is in the second paragraph:
If the city can’t deal with it, it’s a county problem. If the county can’t deal with it, it’s a state problem. If the state can’t deal with it, only then is it a federal problem. And the city, county, and state need to put up as much money as they can before they ask the people in my state to send more.Report
A 1% sales tax generated $13 million in taxes. They need about $2 Billion.
If the city is in that much trouble, then the easy thing to do is vote with your feet and leave.
I thought that and then checked wiki; The city’s population was estimated to be 160,628 in 2019, a decline from 173,514 in 2010. In 1980 they had 202,895.
So… ouch. The way to bet is the people who left are the ones with the skills and resources to do so. Negative growth / Urban decay in a city is seriously tough to handle. Very high crime rates.Report
MIssissippi’s politics are weird – we got $750 Million from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill criminal settlement (which was designated by the courts for coastal ecosystem restoration and coastal economic recovery), and the first thing the legislature tried to do with the funds was declare it could be used to pave roads and fix bridges in the northern part of the state. Whites here don’t want to pay taxes because it might benefit blacks.Report
I don’t know man. Conservatives are freaking out and raising cash on Potato Head and something about Biden failing to mention Dr. Seuss. Thee grift is way too stong.Report
We should officially start calling him “Mister Seuss”.Report
Well yes, conservatives perpetually allow themselves to be whipped up into hysterical defensiveness over minutia of the silliest order. It’s only natural that someone would want to profit on that. This is America after all.Report
This seems to be a human thing.
It says more about where their head is at than the math/reality of the overall situation.Report
I agree that it’s a human thing but it manifests itself in different ways across the spectrum. As a general principle I think that tendency is a part of why our political debates are increasingly detached from reality. We’re spending way more time fighting symbolic meta-battles than is healthy.Report
Why do you think that is?
What is the underlying fuel for these meta-battles?Report
Am I only allowed to pick one thing?Report
In no particular order:
1) Own the libs.
2) RACISM!
3) Weaponized nostalgia.
4) SEXISM!
5) LGBTQ-phobia.
Those are just off the top of my head.Report
Some of it is different world views. World views tend to have a lot of vested mental/emotional effort.
Some of it is virtue signaling, and getting people to pay attention to “me”.
At its most petty it seems soft targets are being picked, throwing down on Dr Seuss seems safe since he’s dead and pre-schoolers don’t riot.
And maybe most importantly, a lot of it is groups that profit from conflict. Threats from other people unify our tribe. CNN and Fox would lose viewers, and thus advertising money, if they didn’t spin people up. Trump gets campaign dollars and uses them in his owned hotels so he pays himself.
So, it’s profitable for someone to claim that the election was stolen and group [x] is being subjected to genocide by the police.
Combine that with our ability to self-select media that agrees with us and we have riots that look insane if you’re not in that group.Report
The broadest answer is that there is no incentive to approach any of it as other than a game. You get no follows, no network TV time, limited electoral success, and you make minimal impact on policy.
I’d have to point out, however, that symbols turn into precedents, and a lot of debates that look trivial are related to serious issues. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed that nearly every slippery slope argument has come true.Report
Are dog marriage, incestuous marriage and polygamy powerful advocated issues now? I was assured that if same sex marriage was instituted into policy that those would swiftly follow. I dare say it was -the- slippery slope argument of the aughts.Report
Or to put it succinctly, a slip usually requires a constituency.Report
Not yet. I remember unisex bathrooms and men in women’s sports being dismissed as fever dreams, though. I remember being told that the left would never resort to what we today call cancel culture, that there would never be a condemnation of whiteness. I also remember personally laughing off the idea of a mob of Trump fans rioting after the election. It was just Trump blathering; losers always do that and no one believes them.
The lesson behind the symbolism and slippery slope discussions, and this was a shocker for me, is that people are pretty consistent. This was always my problem with the Sandra Day O’Connor kind of thinking, that if we decide in the middle we’ll avoid extremes. I grew up when we were condemning hippees, but the girls dancing behind Dean Martin were wearing just as short skirts. Next thing, the great moral slide of the 1970’s, then a dude in a dress at HHS. It turns out that when you allow the concept of a thing, pretty soon people will be demanding its corollaries.Report
Obergefell v. Hodges was decided in 2015. Five years is an awful long time for the slippery slope assertions to delay in popping up. Heck, even the wedding service lawsuits (what few there genuinely were) seem to be mostly fizzling away.
Wasn’t there a dude in a dress at the Bureau of Investigations’ General Intelligence Division in 1919? Why such a big deal about one fifty years later? Just a little Hoover joke.
Do you really think that if the right had been even more immoderate, contra O’Connor, that the culture war battles would have turned out differently? I am a bit behind you time wise so I have a different perspective but my take has been that when one side has solutions to a given problem and the other side only has rejections for those solutions, the former side is likely going to eventually win.Report
My reference to O’Connor was a bit tangential.
I would rather have the Supreme Court rule clearly one way or another on a case, establishing rules and precedent. I wouldn’t need her to be more right or left, but just ruling in a way that would put issues to rest. So it was kind of an analogy to the way society approaches social issues, but not exactly an analogy.
ETA: Why would 5 years be too long for a slippery slope? Like the old line about impact of the French Revolution being “too early to tell”.Report
Well the slippery slope alarmists about polygamy et all resulting from SSM were quite emphatic that the slippery slope results would come about very promptly. There were even poly tv shows they could point at. Five years is a pretty long time in politics and there hasn’t even been a single poly marriage demonstration that I’m aware of. Nor am I aware of the animal marriage proponents even being numerous enough to form a political advocacy group. Heck, I don’t think they’ve even managed to find a liberal idiot professor to write a paper on their behalf and you can find liberal idiot professors to write a paper on behalf of just about anything.Report
“Well the slippery slope alarmists about polygamy et all resulting from SSM were quite emphatic that the slippery slope results would come about very promptly.”
No.Report
I believe we have moved on to “Three dads and sex robots”.Report
I’m sure your comment was facetious, but it wasn’t factually wrong. In fact the three dads story, while not “gamy”, is “poly”. I’m pretty sure the word “throuple” has made it into the dictionary in the past 5 years.
If North is saying it didn’t happen, and you’re saying it happened but it doesn’t matter, how can I argue with both?Report
Thing is, alternative non-nuclear families have always existed. The only real difference is that they don’t have to hide and they can try and enjoy some degree of legal protection. Perhaps they are becoming somewhat more common, but given how hidden they were previously, how would we know?
Still not seeing animal and incestuous marriages on the rise.Report
You must not be familiar with ancient Greek history.Report
I was sticking to American history, but hey, if we are rolling it way back…Report
Do recall that conservatives blamed the popping of the housing bubble on a law that was forty plus years old.Report
Tim Miller at the Bulwark realizes that movement conservatism has been the Star Wars bar at CPAC all along:
https://thetriad.thebulwark.com/p/cpac-was-the-real-republican-party
“By nature of being in or around Washington and drawing people who were passionate about policy—sometimes insane policies, but policies nonetheless—CPAC over-indexed away from the GOP’s core demo: the middle- and working-class exurban Boomer dittoheads who were the beating heart of the party all along.
And it turns out that those voters didn’t give a hoot about John Barasso’s Obamacare Replacement Plan or Ludwig Von Mises or the Fourth Great Awakening.
They just wanted their anti-elite grievances validated in the most entertaining (and/or bullying) way possible.
Sarah Palin tapped into this part of the GOP base during her rollicking 2013 keynote when she mocked Mike Bloomberg by bringing out her 172 ounce Big Gulp. Trump himself tried a not-yet fully-formed version of the Palin schtick in 2011 and 2013, taking the material that worked with him when he took the GOP electorate by storm in 2015.”Report
Whatever it takes to have people just give him money he is going to keep doing. To think he spent all those years doing things, occasionally even not failing at it, to make money when all he had to do was ask people for cash. It’s even easier then running casinos.Report
Related:
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Self-identification is a lot less important than how they vote. We have discussed this about nine trillion times. The overwhelming majority of so-called independents still vote straight-down tickets regularly. I don’t understand why so many people still make hay over it.Report
See it more as a “leading indicator” than proof that the Dems are in disarray and that the Republicans are better.
I mean, if I wanted an indicator of someone signaling that they’d be willing to vote for a change away from the same-old-same-old, I’d look to see if they’d done anything to change how they self-identified.
This goes back to the whole “Trump is a symptom” thing.Report
The graph, as presented, doesn’t indicate anything other than people are moving in some direction.
It doesn’t indicate what that direction is or why they are moving or how strongly they feel about what made them move and most importantly, whether they will likely go back or find a new home.Report
I see it as “currently dissatisfied with status quo”.
This should not be interpreted as me saying any of the following:
They regret voting for Biden
They wish Trump was President
The Democrats are morally bad
The Republicans are morally good
There are other statements that my statement that this indicates current dissatisfaction should not be interpreted as but those are the big four.Report
I agree those are the big four, but why work so hard to deny they indicate dissatisfaction?Report
Because I was writing my comment taking Saul and Chip’s comments into account and both of them were very interesting in arguing with the proposition that these people were now Republicans.
Personally, I think that there are three groups of voters…
But I begin to repeat myself.Report
Huh? This might confuse people as it’s me “arguing against my side”, but that data shows both parties dropping. Why would we see it as proof that one’s doing better than the other?
Also, looking over the prior numbers, it looks like there’s usually a mini-surge of party identification in early November, followed by embarrassment and distancing, then tending back to equilibrium. Not typically this much movement, but it happens. The levels being below equilibrium could indicate just a lack of Inauguration closure.Report
I’m not using it as proof that one side is doing better than the other.
My takeaway is, let me copy/paste this:
I mean, if I wanted an indicator of someone signaling that they’d be willing to vote for a change away from the same-old-same-old, I’d look to see if they’d done anything to change how they self-identified.
This goes back to the whole “Trump is a symptom” thing.Report
Except it doesn’t even do that.
Self-identifying as an independent may indicate a preference for the “same-old”, if the party itself is moving in a different direction.
For example the Bulwark guys are probably in that group, but they yearn for the same-old Republicanism of Reagan/ Bush.
I think you’re wishcasting here.Report
So maybe it’s the Republicans-turned-Democrats turning back the second that Trump is gone and that’s what can explain the people who switched from (D) to (I)?
While I can appreciate that explanation, I can’t help but notice that the change is 6% between August 12, 2020 and Feb 2, 2021.
6% seems like a *LOT* of Bulwarkians.
But maybe you’re right.
Maybe I’m just wishcasting when I see that 6% as representative of Democrats when really I should have seen them as DINOs.Report
I see it as, people who refuse to identify with a party are also less likely to give money or volunteer time to that party.
I think the flow of money and effort is much more interesting than voting habits.Report
Ironically, all this does is make partisans and ideologues in parties more powerfulReport
That’s not wrong.Report
Which the chicken, which the egg?
Report
Yeah, I’m not having this.
I think it was Frum who wrote “You’ll be shocked how much that never happened”, channeling Mad Men apparently. Of course he meant that pejoratively, but I think he’s right anyway. Contrary to the frustrations of a lot of libs and establishmentarians, I don’t think there will be much if any significant backlash from the Jan 6 riots. For matter I suspect a lot of individual defendants will either have charges against them dropped or beat.
What does have a lot of continuing importance, were the Georgia Senate elections, and what they mean in terms of partisan breakdown and mood of the voters going forward in future elections. But even though there will be lots of reverberations from there onto future elections (to say nothing of the concrete value for the Demos having 50 Senators) I think the tea leaves are still a little to vague to be confident of what those reverberations will be.
I’m quite a bit more confident that Donald Trump is declining force in American politics, which is very disappointing for some people but a blessing for some others, eg, me. Trump and some of his loyalists want to define the GOP in terms of its personal loyalty to Donald Trump. And a lot of Republican voters would be ok with this, but events aren’t going to allow for it. Donald Trump simply doesn’t function as a factional talisman for intraparty rivalry, a la Bernie Sanders. He doesn’t have the organization for it. He doesn’t have policy-based knowledge base for it.
Important events are going to transpire, pertaining to the virus, China, immigration and other unforseen things. There is already a significant debate within the Right about child allowances, how big they should be, and what if any work related strings ought to be attached. Trump is not meaningfully participating in this debate, and the Left isn’t either for the most part. But Mitt Romney already has written a proposal that’s the center of debate. Marco Rubio has already weighed in on it, I think. Ron DeSantis, Tom Cotton, Mike Lee, etc, surely will as the the issue rises in salience. The voters will too. Not just about this issue, but others that will come to the fore.
But Trump won’t. Whatever arises, he’s not going to care about very much, and he doesn’t have enough concentration to sort out the details to tell one thing apart from another.
The money issues are complicated, but I don’t think they’re going to allow Trump to own the party either. What’s more likely, I suspect, is that politicians like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are going to enter fundraising agreements with a Trump PAC wherein 20% of the contributions are going to go to the Mar A Logo Beautification Society, and the week after that Trump will be telling everybody how tremendous those two are.
I’ve been wrong about Trump before, but this time I really do think he’s going away.Report
I tend to agree that Trump is going away.
But I’m one of those folks who saw Trump as a symptom rather than a force in his own right.
Maybe he was lightning in a bottle. Let’s hope so.Report
I’m inclined to agree that Trump himself is past the peak of his power. It’ll be very interesting to see how much, if any, havoc he wreaks on the GOP in the process of his decline. On one hand he’s vowed to support primary challengers to politicians who’ve displeased him; on the other hand he’s notoriously fickle and has terrible follow through, on the other-other hand the GOP’s margins have been narrow at best so even a small number of Trump voters defecting can really fish them up- see GA.Report
Yeah, I suppose some downsides are possible, they just don’t seem very likely to me.
Offhand, there are two possibilities in that direction: first, that Trump could run for office, maybe cause turmoil by getting involved in primaries. But I’m not buying it. Mostly, now that Trump isn’t in office any more I don’t know how Trump would like one Republican better than another except to oppose the ones who voted for his impeachment. But that number is small, and isn’t getting any bigger.
The other thing he could do is lower turnout by trashing the GOP or talking about stolen elections or the like. But at this point, I don’t see much motive for Trump to do that, and perhaps more importantly, for the GOP Establishment to acquiesce to him if he does.Report
I agree that it feels unlikely to me that Trump will run again. He wants money and adulation- power is kind of incidental to those goals.
As for upsides or downsides? Well Trump pretty much made official the badly kept secret that republitarianism is popular only with the GOP money folks and the party leadership. He brought a good sized influx of voters into the party. So the possible upside is that the GOP actually addresses their needs and gets them to stay. They have to sort out the problem that the money folks still run the actual party.
Downside? Well Trump himself is a downside. If he just capers about in public or makes himself a highly visible figure in, say, 2022 then that’ll help liberal turn out and unity. That’s without even pondering if he can wreak havoc in the nomination fights for various offices. Maybe he could? Personally I don’t think he will; he doesn’t really do that level of attention to detail.Report
This is half right, I think. You are correct that the big challenge for the GOP post-Trump is to keep the voters they won at various times who were brought into the party by Trump. That may or may not happen. It’s very possible they could get lost in low turnout/low motivation elections.
But the idea that the voters are going to vote D against Trump histrionics? That’s not going to work. I think the D’s are going to campaign on that hope, but they will be disappointed with the results.
The problem with Trump was his histrionics, not his governance. The voters won’t be motivated to vote against that unless Trump himself is on the ballot.Report
Oh I’m not suggesting that the Dems campaign against Trump at all and certainly not Trumpism (it’s too nebulous to campaign against). Biden hit the sweet spot on that- you just focus on other things and leave the media to fixate on Trump all on their own while you talk about substantive non-Trump stuff. If Trump makes himself sufficiently noisy around 2022 then the media will focus on him plenty and historically the more prominent Trump is in the media the better the Dems do.
But don’t get me wrong- the biggest predictor of how 2022 goes for the Dems will be how Biden’s Covid push turns out and where the economy is sitting. Trump will only make a difference on the margins. Fortunately Biden’s admin seems to think the same thing I do and are acting accordingly.Report
See, I don’t think so. I’ve read from a couple Never Trumpers over the last couple of days that Biden is going to get a big political windfall when the virulence of the virus goes away in the second half of the year. In other circumstances, it may have worked out that way, but not now.
No, people are going to figure out well enough that it was the Trump vaccine that beat the disease, not the social-distance hand-washing mask-wearing put out by the D’s.
And the same things that caused the underperformance by the D’s in November are not being addressed. They are tanking Joe’s favorability now and will elect the GOP in 2022. Maybe something will change then (or maybe not).Report
Maybe Trump will, somehow, get credit for the vaccines. I doubt it. Setting aside the question of if he deserves credit, low info voters as a population don’t seem to process issues that way- they’re very present minded. If things are good in the run up to the election they credit the guys in charge and vice versa. No doubt the pro-trump cohort will adopt that spin on vaccines but their votes weren’t ever gettable in the first place.
Polarization being what it is Biden’s going to bob around 50% approval disapproval just as every other non-Trump President has in modern times.Report
No North, it’s not a matter of who gets the credit, it’s a matter of who doesn’t, ie, the libs, when the reasons why they don’t get the credit have been the center of political discourse for a year or so.
As far as approval goes, Obama and W were well over 50% at various points of his Presidency. Even Biden has lost ten points or so over the last month.Report
Heh, well we’ll see who does or doesn’t get credit when 2022 rolls around. It’s not like you’re gettable either, nor am I in the other direction.
I said they bobbed around but outside of honeymoon periods and 9/11 modern presidencies have generally been mired around 50/50 approve disapprove with the exception of Trump who stayed pat around 40/60 approve/disapprove.Report
I’m pretty sure Obama’s ratings were quite a bit more volatile than that, on the upside and the downside.Report
That’s what the polls claimed.
Those would be the same polls that claimed Biden would crush him by a heck of a lot more.
I think we have to assume Trump was never as unpopular as he was made out to be… to the tune of about 5 points.Report
The ‘Trump vaccine’? Come on man. The Democrats will have to do something extraordinary to buck the midterm trend. Based on 2020 I don’t see a lot of reason for optimism. But whatever drives the results it ain’t going to be that the public suddenly buys some dead issue spin about who really beat the virus.Report
It’ll be gas prices and whatever culture war bullshit happens in September 2022.
“I can’t believe they cancelled Wandavision!”Report
Heh Wandavision isn’t going to make it to Easter with this going around.Report
It’s just like you said, the direction we’re heading is for the GOP to have good 2022 midterms. Demos need a good story to change this trajectory. It could happen, but it’s not forthcoming yet. My best guess is, Demos best chance is for an explosive economic recovery to the point where all the particulars surrounding the pandemic are forgotten. Even then, I think that basically gets them to a draw.
Btw, it may rankle the libs and Demos but “Trump vaccine” is a completely fair characterization.Report
It’s probably an academic point but I can’t think of a coherent argument that he did anything that contributed to the vaccines. The techniques used to do this were under development years before Trump was elected.
Now obviously partisans convince themselves of all kinds of things of dubious merit but I just don’t see it as a factor. The Democrats will probably lose the house. By how much will depend on the vagaries of the few months leading up to it.Report
Well Trumps admin did a number of things, but they’re all things the Dems would enthusiastically endorse or would have done in his position. Guaranteed purchases, leaning hard on the FDA to fast track review etc. So it doesn’t present much of an ideological struggle.Report
Yea, I don’t think the various HHS agencies came out of this looking great but hard for me to imagine any administration not doing at least what the Trump admin did. The real heroes are these groups of researchers working the mRNA angle which I believe got under way in earnest after we dodged the MERs bullet.Report
I don’t know. Not all the hostility is ideological, but I think some of it is. There have been media reports come out just in the last day or so to claim that Nancy Pelosi refused to fund Operation Warp Speed and President Trump resorted to some accounting gimmicks to get it done.
I think it’s possible to think that the D’s could have gotten it done if they were in power, but it’s not by any means guaranteed.Report
My read on this is it wasn’t ideological hostility to OWS so much as trying to get Trump to drop the ball before the election… and/or trying to delay the creation of a vaccination until after the election.Report
The argument is a Blue administration would have (pseudo?)nationalised an industry and that would have been disruptive.
To be fair IDK if this is a reasonable concern, but “nothing happens unless the gov is in control” is a thing.Report
You will notice that there has yet to be any pushback from the right to Biden invoking the Defense Production Act to get Merck to manufacture the J&J vaccine.Report
I’m pretty sure that the DPA is defensible to a degree that using the AUMF to defend bombing Syria in 2021 isn’t.
(But it’s not like that got pushback either.)Report
More Stupid WordPress Tricks (I think).Report
Can somebody look at my comment, 3451981, which seemingly published last night but then appears to have vanished?Report
At least for me, shows up where it’s supposed to be in all the different views where it should appear (the post proper, State of the Discussion’s main page, and the SotD comment archives).Report
I dug it out. It was in spam.Report