Politics and Elections

Elections as Popularity Contests

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ 1 Comment

I just read this post at Bearing Drift and posted a comment.  The author, Brian Shoeneman, is a Virginia GOP activist who has run for local office on old-school conservative policies.  He comes across to me as an establishment conservative who reveres the past and finds himself annoyed that Donald Trump, Tea Party activists, and other extremists have hijacked his Republican Party.  In the old joke about how many Virginians it takes to change a light bulb, Brian Shoeneman is the one holding the ladder and waxing eloquently about how great the old light bulb was.

Here Shoeneman complains that elections come down to popularity contests, and rational voters, who “make decisions based on things like policy, ideology, and electability” don’t exist.  As examples he uses Trump of course, but also Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.  To be sure, he has named three popular politicians (though I would say that Trump appeals to a much more limited constituency), but he says nothing about the reason why people like them so much.  Charisma matters, but I point out in my comment that policy matters as well.

Since the comment is rather long and makes what I think is an important point about why some Americans seem to like Donald Trump so much I thought I would repost my comment here:

This is an interesting, but in my view rather superficial, take on the election campaigns so far. A couple of thoughts.

First, let me challenge your assertion that voters don’t “make decisions based on things like policy, ideology, and electability.” For starters, the chief hermeneutic voters use to select a candidate is party identification. Those without the free time to spend conducting detailed research start by assuming that Republicans and Democrats differ in certain fundamental ways. This is why the core attack made on Trump is that he’s not really a Republican, and he’s not a “conservative.” His opponents try to tell voters not to apply this hermeneutic to Donald Trump. So yes, ideology makes a lot of difference.

I would also respectfully suggest that your Clinton and Obama examples do not support your claim. Bill Clinton won the Presidency on some very specific policy proposals – raise taxes on the wealthy to fix the budget and health care system, energy conservation and environmental protection to name two – against a very popular incumbent President. Barack Obama also ran on a specific policy platform that included higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for economic stimulus and ensuring better access to health care and ending needless war in the Middle East, among other ideas. To the extent these elections were “popularity contests” it’s because the policies these candidates proposed made them…popular.

Donald Trump is popular for another reason: he has tapped into residual white (especially male) anger at changes in American society that threaten their power. He appeals to the Warmac9999s of the world by suggesting that American is no longer great because we’ve let in too many brown people and given to much voice to women. These people are pissed because they can no longer express racist, bigoted, and sexist opinions without someone calling them out. This explains the emphasis on “political correctness” and the fact that evangelicals support Trump – note that a key reason his supporters like him is that he “speaks the truth.”

Conservatives have spent the last 45 years demonizing government and any effort to create an egalitarian society. They did this mostly in the service of corporations by enlisting religious leaders and disaffected white men using dog-whistle messages (e.g., “welfare queens”). As wealth inequality has grown, women assert themselves more, and the country becomes demographically more diverse these disaffected white men seek a hero. Donald Trump is popular with this constituency not because he’s famous. He’s popular with them because the believe he agrees with them that Mexicans cause their economic woes, Muslims cause their security fears, and no one can say the truth about this because “political correctness.” Warmac9999 and his ilk like Trump because they think he’ll “make American great again” by giving them the specific policies they want: a wall to keep Mexicans out, deportation of Muslims, and government support for rhetoric that accepts racist and sexist attacks on people they don’t like. He’s not popular because he’s famous and on television a lot. He’s popular because he gives angry white Americans license to express their racism and bigotry openly.

Sunday Morning Coffee

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment

A few links I read this morning over coffee:

“The Believer,” a short essay on how Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi became leader of the Islamic State.  Lots of insight here, but I”d like to highlight this passage:

Many of the ex-Baathists at Bucca, some of whom Baghdadi befriended, would later rise with him through the ranks of the Islamic State. “If there was no American prison in Iraq, there would be no [Islamic State] now,” recalled the inmate interviewed by TheGuardian. “Bucca was a factory. It made us all. It built our ideology.” The prisoners dubbed the camp “The Academy,” and during his ten months in residence, Baghdadi was one of its faculty members.

It appears that the US invasion of Iraq not only created the power vacuum that helped create the conditions for the rise of ISIS, our treatment of civilians radicalized some and provided the schoolhouse prison that helped them prepare their leadership.  Another data point suggesting that George W. Bush, a Republican and neoconservative, made the US less safe.

Speaking of W., this Salon article about the 2000 election reminds that in fact Americans almost certainly elected Al Gore President that year though the Electoral College did not reflect this intent.  Though we have no way to know how differently events might have unfolded under President Gore, it’s a good bet that his administration would have paid more attention to the Bin Laden threat in 2001, and would not have responded to a terrorist attack by invading Iraq. Whether or not this would mean a world without ISIS…

A recent New Yorker article, “The Siege of Miami,” highlights another issue President Gore might have formulated a policy to address: climate change.  I”m not a scientist, but it seems straightforward enough to me that venting all manner of pollutants and other crap into Earth’s atmosphere and water has to have some effect.  In any event, the scientific consensus    seems pretty solid that human activity has at least helped to warm the planet.  Perhaps we can innovate our way out of this mess, but we won’t if our political leaders keep sticking their fingers in their ears singing “la, la, la, I can’t hear you.”

Last night’s Democratic Primary debate of course touched on terrorism, and once again the Democratic candidates provided a much more nuanced discussion than what we’ve heard from the GOP field.  Bernie Sanders, for example, in a poke at Donald Trump’s bigotry, hinted that conservatives wish to inspire fear of terrorism in voters as a way to distract them from corporate threats to US economic health and the Middle Class.

The tone this campaign has taken fascinates me.  Republicans repeatedly argue that the US is going to hell in a hand basket – debased culture, corrupt government, feminized men – in a way that makes me wonder why they hate America.  In today’s conservative world, Americans – except wealthy ones – get nothing right.  How in the world does this resonate with voters?

 

Sunday Morning Coffee

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment

In no particular order, a few links:

Take a look at this very interesting article at Bacon’s Rebellion about the tension between conservation easements in Virginia and corporate efforts to push through pipeline and transmission line projects over the objections of landowners.  One key point here is that these easements may mean less than landowners think.  If so, we’ll see fewer of them.

Was Ohio’s Marijuana Vote Stolen?  Hard to believe, but note the screenshots that show the “Yes” vote going down from almost a million votes with 39% of precincts reporting to a bit over 600 thousand with 45% in.  This might be nothing more than mistaken labeling, but it bears watching given the importance of Ohio as a swing state in Presidential contests.  If an anti-voting-rights Secretary of State is willing to fix a corporate pot referendum he’s certain to make sure his party wins Ohio’s electoral votes.

I’ve written about the silliness of the “Pick-Up Artist” community before, but this is just too much. This guy is a very special kind of…uninformed.  H/T Lawyers, Guns and Money and We Hunted the Mammoth.

At The Federalist (America’s Most Poorly Named Web Magazine), G. W. Thielman tells conservatives how to fix their “Single Woman Problem.”  His recommendations?  Help single mothers through charities and tell them stories about villainous government authorities.  Or, conservatives could stop calling them sluts because they want reproductive health care.

Sunday Morning Coffee

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment

It’s difficult to overstate how much the Select Committee on Benghazi hearing on Thursday helped Hillary Clinton.   Republicans on the panel came across as defensive, dishonest, and disrespectful.  Secretary Clinton looked…Presidential…while withstanding a total of about 11 hours of interrogation.  She appeared to be in control of the facts, the proceedings, and herself.  Conservatives by and large agreed.

Republicans held this hearing because they wanted to showcase their attacks on Secretary Clinton.  The problem is that their attacks have no real factual basis – they cannot show that Clinton did anything wrong.  That they refused to back off – and instead gave her a golden opportunity to prove it – showcases the poor political judgement of the people Republicans send to Congress these days. But if you think Trey Gowdy is an amateur, wait until the new special committee to investigate Planned Parenthood.starts holding hearings.  This Committee will attempt to use demonstrably fake videos to make a case for withdrawing federal funding from the organization.  Like the Benghazi Committee hearings on Thursday this will backfire by giving those they’re out to get a prominent platform on which to defend themselves.

Check out this post attacking Congressman Dave Brat on immigration at Bearing Drift, self-described as “Virginia’s Conservative Voice.” This blog provides a broad range of conservative voices and sometimes even offers valid and well-reasoned challenges to liberal thought.  But the real fun comes in the comments when the more…activist…wing of the Republican Party stops by to show its bigotry. As an example take a look at this comment from “mpolito.”  To this person blacks and Hispanics “are more prone to crime [and] welfare use…emphatically, unequivocally, and consistently.”  And the only way to stop them is to put them all in jail.  As of right now this post has 231 comments, all too many of them in this bigoted vein.

Why Democrats Got Hammered

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ 1 Comment

Jamelle Bouie at Slate riffs on a Charlie Cook article to ask “What Could the Democrats Have Done Differently?”

“Democrats are still reeling from the Great Whupping of 2014, trying to orient themselves for the next two years of Republican control in Congress. The recurring question, even now, is: What happened? Unemployment is down, and Republicans are unpopular. How did Democrats lose so badly?”

Cook argues that “Bad Decisions Came Back to Haunt Democrats in Midterms.”  His case boils down to a claim that Americans still blame Democrats for shifting to climate change and health care after “checking the box” on economic stimulus in 2009.  Dems should have focused on “action that would have turned the economy around and created jobs for many working-and-middle-class Americans.

Bouie agrees that “economic anxiety drove last Tuesday’s results,” but disagrees that ‘a ‘focus’ on the economy would have saved Democratic prospects.”  He rightfully points out that the first stimulus debate “strained the Democratic coalition,” and Democrats could have “talked about the economy more” and “kept a rhetorical focus on economic growth.” But he doesn’t see how this would have changed the 2014 election results.

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