Greg Sargent:
How big a demographic advantage do Democrats really wield in the 2016 election? A comprehensive new analysis from the Center for American Progress tries to assess this question, and concludes that while the demographic trends are clearly moving in the Democratic Party’s direction, giving Democrats a “clear advantage,” the 2016 election remains “wide open.”
To win, the report concludes, Democrats need to replicate something close to 2008 and 2012 levels of enthusiasm among the core Democratic voter groups that powered Barack Obama’s two victories. That’s hardly a slam dunk, given widespread voter dissatisfaction and a historic pattern that has shown that “time for a change” sentiment works against the party that has held the White House for eight years.
OTOH, Donald Trump is a terrific motivator.
After Gabriela Pineda exited the Los Angeles Convention Center this month clutching her naturalization papers, the newly minted citizen marched straight over to a table set up by Democratic Party organizers to register voters.
Among the registration forms was a pamphlet titled "GOP Clown Car 2016." It featured pictures of each of the Republican presidential candidates.
A word balloon above the image of Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, quoted his controversial remarks about illegal immigrants from Mexico: "They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime," it read. "They're rapists."
David Frum:
You hear from people like them in many other democratic countries too. Across Europe, populist parties are delivering a message that combines defense of the welfare state with skepticism about immigration; that denounces the corruption of parliamentary democracy and also the risks of global capitalism. Some of these parties have a leftish flavor, like Italy’s Five Star Movement. Some are rooted to the right of center, like the U.K. Independence Party. Some descend from neofascists, like France’s National Front. Others trace their DNA to Communist parties, like Slovakia’s governing Direction–Social Democracy.
These populists seek to defend what the French call “acquired rights”—health care, pensions, and other programs that benefit older people—against bankers and technocrats who endlessly demand austerity; against migrants who make new claims and challenge accustomed ways; against a globalized market that depresses wages and benefits. In the United States, they lean Republican because they fear the Democrats want to take from them and redistribute to Americans who are newer, poorer, and in their view less deserving—to “spread the wealth around,” in candidate Barack Obama’s words to “Joe the Plumber” back in 2008. Yet they have come to fear more and more strongly that their party does not have their best interests at heart.
…
It was these pessimistic Republicans who powered the Tea Party movement of 2009 and 2010. They were not, as a rule, libertarians looking for an ultraminimal government. The closest study we have of the beliefs of Tea Party supporters, led by Theda Skocpol, a Harvard political scientist, found that “Tea Partiers judge entitlement programs not in terms of abstract free-market orthodoxy, but according to the perceived deservingness of recipients. The distinction between ‘workers’ and ‘people who don’t work’ is fundamental to Tea Party ideology.”
Long read, and a lot more there but worth your time. More:
It’s uncertain whether any Tea Partier ever really carried a placard that read keep your government hands off my medicare. But if so, that person wasn’t spouting gibberish. The Obama administration had laid hands on Medicare. It hoped to squeeze $500 billion out of the program from 2010 to 2020 to finance health insurance for the uninsured. You didn’t have to look up the figures to have a sense that many of the uninsured were noncitizens (20 percent), or that even more were foreign-born (27 percent). In the Tea Party’s angry town-hall meetings, this issue resonated perhaps more loudly than any other—the ultimate example of redistribution from a deserving “us” to an undeserving “them.”
And now for something completely different: music.
Brendan Ryan noticed it right away.
A professional appraiser, he recently visited the home of a Greenwich woman who was looking to sell some belongings, when his eyes lit on a yellowing sheet of music behind glass, stippled with notes.
More than just a musical composition, the sheet was ferociously dotted with German words, directions and symbols that practically flew off the page with manic intensity.
“When I saw it, I knew what it was. I’d seen his handwriting before,” said Ryan, who works for Butterscotch Auction Gallery in Bedford, N.Y.
A musician himself, Ryan had been obsessed with Ludwig van Beethoven as a younger man. Standing in the Greenwich home on a late summer afternoon, he was all but certain the music he was looking at had been penned by the great composer.
“I’ve been in a lot of homes and seen hundreds of things, but this will be one of the most memorable moments of my career,” he said.
Matthew Herper:
On Sunday morning my 6-year-old daughter woke, picked up her brother’s battered toy lightsaber, and hit the button that makes the “shwoom” noise.
Finally, the Force was with her. Disney’s new Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens, and its mysterious main character, Rey, worked magic: they welcomed her into a galaxy from which she had previously felt excluded. Finally, we have a woman taking on the kind of quest that Luke Skywalker did — not to mention wielding a lightsaber. The Joseph Mitchell archetype is no longer a frat.
When I was my daughter’s age, in the early 1980s, I clung to Star Wars with boyish religiosity. I started obsessing about Luke Skywalker in preschool when I heard his name mentioned in a toy advertisement, and the first time I saw the movie I desperately had to pee but refused to leave my seat.
Star Wars wasn’t just exciting. It was a map to adulthood, a fantasy that lent moral weight to the struggles of growing up. When I had trouble with schoolwork, my father would quote Yoda, telling me: “There is no try.” And I listened.
Monte Frank:
According to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a San Francisco think tank, a study in 2003 analyzing data from seven years of unintended firearm deaths or deaths of undetermined intent found that 37 percent of the deaths — including children shot because they found and fired a parent's gun, — could have been prevented by smart gun technology. A 2001 survey found that 73.6 percent of Americans favored a requirement that all new models of handguns be personalized. These technologies, already found in most smartphones, have been in existence for years, but not in guns.
When industries fail to keep up with current safety technology, under ordinary circumstances, product liability laws consider such products "defective" and manufacturers are held accountable in civil suits by those who are injured as a result. This accountability forces manufactures to make safer products and, at the same time, provides a remedy for those who are injured. The automobile industry changed many of its practices only as a result of such civil suits, which is why we now have safer cars with seat belts, air bags and antilock braking systems, to name just a few improvements. Other products, as well, have changed – child-proof medicine bottles, safe toys, machine guards and the list goes on.
Why, then, has simple, inexpensive smart technology not been incorporated in firearms sold in the United States today? The answer is that prior to 2005, firearms manufacturers, fearful of being sued for product liability, were in the process of developing smart guns. But that development came to a screeching halt when the gun lobby convinced Congress to enact the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA). PLCAA immunizes gun manufacturers from product liability suits where they would be otherwise liable under state laws. This extraordinary regulatory shield is not available to any other consumer product manufacturer…
The epidemic of gun violence that currently plagues America will continue unless we take a multifaceted approach. One important strategy, which can be immediately used to attack the current public health crisis posed by firearms, is to use the power of the courts to force the gun manufacturers to sell smart guns. Repeal PLCCA now.
Ryan Cooper:
Why the Democratic Party can't beat Bernie Sanders' democratic socialist army
Nevertheless, the question of tactical voting is an important one and deserves to be taken seriously. If you're one of the relative few who live in a swing state, the case for voting for whatever Democrat wins the presidential primary is very strong. But that is not the end of the political system — there are midterm and off-year elections, and the zillions of local and state-level offices. It's more important to vote during these elections, when lower turnout typically means the electorate is more conservative and that one's vote counts for relatively more.
However, as Daniel Davies writes, that is very different from arguing that voting Democratic is always the right move. Some Democrats, such as Andrew Cuomo or Rahm Emanuel, are so vile and corrupt that it would even be worth eating a temporary Republican victory just to get them out of office. And tactical considerations are pointless for the effectively disenfranchised people who don't live in a swing state, at least at the presidential level. Go hog wild, it doesn't matter.
Therefore, for Sanders' supporters, I suggest that the overriding electoral priority ought to be to continuing to participate in the political system. Demonstrate that there is a bloc of votes out there for social democracy; tactics come second. Vote for the left-most candidate in the primaries, vote for the Working Families Party, vote for some single-issue candidate, or even try and get yourself elected to something. If you feel like voting for a doomed protest candidate, or writing in Eugene Debs, or some other form of "throwing your vote away," go ahead, and don't listen to any party hacks who try and bully you out of it.
But always vote.
This Sady Doyle blog post isn’t about voting for Hillary (vote and support whoever you want to), it’s about appreciating the misogyny in media coverage:
And finally: You’d think, given the impressive amount of unfair and often cruelly personal scrutiny this woman faces from the media, it would make sense for her to be pretty cautious about how she presents herself in public. Any misstep or miscalculation will result in a flood of negative headlines, and stands to damage her. Well, apparently, that doesn’t make sense at all. Hillary Clinton, you see, has a reputation for seeming “distant” to the press, not “open” enough to media exposure, “secretive,” “paranoid.” That public presence of hers sure does seem “calculating.” I mean: It’s almost like, after over twenty straight years of being attacked for her appearance, personality, and every waking move, breath and word, Hillary Clinton is highly conscious of how she is perceived and portrayed, and is trying really hard to monitor her own behavior and behave in ways people will accept. Which is disgusting, of course. Nowadays, we want “authentic” candidates. Hillary Clinton isn’t “trustworthy.” She doesn’t seem “real.”
Again: Remind me of exactly how well the public and/or the media reacted the last time she showed up in public without makeup. Or raised her voice. Or laughed. Or went to the goddamn bathroom. Or did any “authentic” thing that a real life person does every day.
John Sides:
It’s entirely plausible that older women feel a more urgent need to elect a woman, compared to their daughters’ generation. But at the same time, there is some important context that the article doesn’t discuss, and that puts any generation gap in a different light.
The article compares only older women to younger women. Let’s introduce a different point of comparison: men. Below is the percent of Democrats who support Clinton (as opposed to Sanders or O’Malley) in all the YouGov/Economist polls conducted since Vice President Biden declared he would not be a candidate
NPR:
'Sometimes Progress Is A Little Uncomfortable': President Obama On Identity Politics