Trump’s Financial Troubles

What happens if a corrupt man who owes hundreds of millions is President?

NYT (“Trump Spurned by 30 Companies as He Seeks Bond in $454 Million Judgment“):

Donald J. Trump’s lawyers disclosed on Monday that he had failed to secure a roughly half-billion dollar bond in his civil fraud case in New York, raising the prospect that the state could seek to freeze some of his bank accounts and seize some of his marquee properties.

The court filing, coming one week before the bond is due, suggested that the former president might soon face a financial crisis unless an appeals court comes to his rescue.

Mr. Trump has asked the appeals court to pause the $454 million judgment that a New York judge imposed on Mr. Trump in the fraud case last month, or accept a bond of only $100 million. Otherwise, the New York attorney general’s office, which brought the case, might soon move to collect from Mr. Trump.

Putting this dilemma in the larger context of the former President’s other financial difficulties, TNR’s Timothy Noah asks, “Is Donald Trump About to Go Bankrupt?

Debt is becoming a major campaign issue in 2024. I don’t mean the national debt, which today stands at 99 percent of gross domestic product and which, the Congressional Budget Office projects, will total 116 percent of GDP 10 years from now. Nor do I mean student debt, which President Joe Biden has either reduced or eliminated for close to four million people, to the tune of nearly $138 billion. 

No, the debt that haunts campaign 2024 is personal debt—specifically the half-billion in fines that former President Donald Trump owes from two recent legal judgments against him. It’s a campaign issue because, judging from Trump’s past behavior, he will pay off this half-billion-dollar debt just as soon as pigs fly. So it was hardly shocking when The New York Times reported Monday that the former president’s plea for a loan to secure a bond against the largest share of his mounting debt was spurned by some 30 companies, prompting his lawyers to tell a New York State judge that raising the money is a “practical impossibility.”But one firm, Chubb, was willing to offer Trump $91 million to secure his bond in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case. Given the extreme unlikelihood that its generosity will be repaid in the traditional way, it’s an eyebrow-raising arrangement, aswhoever lends Trump money will likely have to seek some other, less savory, compensation.

Let’s first take a tally of the red in Trump’s legal ledger. The first judgment against him is an $83 million penalty for continuing to shoot his mouth off on social media about Carroll. This comes after Carroll won a separate $5 million judgment against Trump for sexually abusing her three decades earlier, and for defaming her after she wrote up the incident in 2019. 

The second judgment against Trump is a $355 million civil fraud penalty for misleading banks and insurers by pretending to be richer than he really was. Interest accrued before the ruling brought the total to about $454 million as of February 16, the day the judgment was handed down. Since then, additional interest has been piling up at a rate of $112,000 a day, adding another $3 million to the tab thus far. 

Between the two court judgments and their attendant penalties, Trump owes $539 million. Even for Trump, that’s a lot of money. Trump is rich but not (as Justice Arthur Engoron, who presided over the second trial, pointed out) anywhere near so rich as he pretends. In April 2023, Trump said in a deposition that he had “substantially more than $400 million in cash,” but Mother Jones’s Julianne McShane says it’s more like $350 million. Forbes puts Trump’s net worth at $2.6 billion; the trajectory over the past decade has been downward. The $539 million Trump owes in penalties represents 20 percent of his fortune. That’s a lot.

Let’s not forget the additional financial liabilities Trump has lately accrued. There’s $392,000 that Trump paid The New York Times a couple of weeks ago for filing a frivolous lawsuit. There’s $938,000 that a judge last year ordered Trump and his attorney to pay Hillary Clinton for filing a frivolous lawsuit. There’s $382,000 that a London judge earlier this month ordered Trump to pay Orbis Business Intelligence, founded by Christopher Steele (of the “Steele dossier”), for filing a frivolous lawsuit. There’s the aforementioned $5 million that Trump paid earlier in the Carroll case. There’s $110,000 in contempt fees that Trump accrued for bad-mouthing New York Attorney General Letitia James during the civil fraud prosecution. 

There’s whatever penalty the IRS may impose when it completes its audit of Trump’s 2015–2019 tax returns. There’s whatever lawsuits Trump’s current lawyers will file when he (or various Trump PACs, or the Republican Party) get tired of paying them. On top of all that, Deutsche Bank’s loans to Trump require him to maintain $50 million in “unencumbered liquidity” and a minimum net worth of $2.5 billion. Trump always thinks he’s bleeding money, but right now Trump really is bleeding money—at a hemorrhagic rate. 

Were we talking about a random real estate conman without the political baggage, my concern here would be about the seeming injustice of his legal plight in the New York case. Leaving aside whether said person would have been sued by the city to begin with, it seems beyond weird to me that interest on the judgment accrued retroactively to well before the judgment was handed down, thus increasing it by more than a third. And the notion that one should have to post a bond for the entire judgment for the privilege of filing an appeal is essentially a denial of the right to appeal.

But, of course, we’re not talking about an ordinary conman but rather a former President who has a not insignificant chance of being re-elected to that office. One who, in his previous stint, violated pretty much every norm—to say nothing of several Federal laws and the Constitution itself–with respect to financial propriety.* There’s simply no doubt in my mind, then, that he’d be willing to sell his office to wipe out these debts.

Yet, here we are, roughly seven months from the election and he’s leading or even with President Biden in most of the national and swing state polling.


*Obviously, his long effort to set the stage for discrediting the results of the 2020 election were he to lose and his attempts to steal it afterward, including inciting a violent attack on the Capitol, made those acts pale in comparison. But the focus here is on his finances, not his other deficiencies.

FILED UNDER: 2024 Election, Law and the Courts, US Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Tuesday’s Forum

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FILED UNDER: Open Forum
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Clip of the Day

Sit-up at attention edition.

Honest question to anyone reading this who plans to vote for Trump: how do you rationalize away his obvious admiration for dictators? How do you defend his obvious affection for Kim Jung Un?

FILED UNDER: 2024 Election, US Politics,
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Working From Everywhere is Getting Harder

The pandemic ruined everything.

· · 6 comments

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The Economist‘s Bartleby columnist declares, “Every location has got worse for getting actual work done.”

Work would be so much better if you could get work done. It has always been hard to focus amid the staccato rhythms of meetings, the relentless accumulation of messages or the simple distraction of colleagues thundering past. But since the covid-19 pandemic, every single place of work has become less conducive to concentration.

Start with the home office. The promise of hybrid working is that you can now choose your location depending on the task at hand. If you need to focus on work, you can now skip the commute, stay home and get your head down. This tactic would have worked well in 2019, when no one else was ever at home. Now there are likely to be other people there, too, grabbing the best spot for the Wi-Fi, merrily eating your lunch and talking loudly to a bunch of colleagues in their own workplaces. Home has become a co-working space but without any of the common courtesies.

While working out common courtesies with family members isn’t that hard, it’s true that working at home with others in the household is considerably more distracting than doing so alone.

Even if none of your family or flatmates is at home, they now know you might be. That spells disaster. Parcels are delivered with monotonous regularity; large chunks of the day are spent being photographed on your own doorstep holding intriguing packages that are not for you. Children who want food or money know where to track you down.

Delivery in Bartleby’s neighborhood must be considerably more theft-adverse than in mine. I can count the number of times I’ve been asked to sign for a package, much less be photographed holding it, since the pandemic on one hand.

Worst of all, jobs that once required a day off can now be done at no personal cost by booking them in for days when someone else is at home. “Are you going in today?” might sound like an innocuous question. It should put you on high alert. It means that a bunch of people with drills will storm the house just as you settle down to the laptop.

Obviously, partners should be able to coordinate such things for days when there aren’t demanding deadlines and the like. But, yes, my wife and I schedule things—in coordination with one another—for getting household tasks done.

On the one hand, yes, it makes the workday less productive. On the other, it means we can get things done during the workweek, leaving the weekends for other matters. That’s not a terrible tradeoff.

One natural response is to head to the place you were trying to avoid—the office. But its role has changed since the pandemic. It was never a great place for concentrating (the periods of lockdown were glorious exceptions). But it has become even less suitable now that the office is seen as the place where collaboration and culture-building happen.

Before you might have been able to sit in a cubicle, fenced off from other people; now openness is in vogue, which means fewer partitions and greater visibility. Before you might have had a normal chair and a desk; now you will be asked to wobble awkwardly on a tall stool at a champagne bar. Before you were interrupted; now you are being given an opportunity to interact. There is much more emphasis on meetings, brainstorming, drinking, eating, bouncing around on space-hoppers or whatever appalling activity builds team spirit. There is much less emphasis on single-minded attention.

This really hasn’t been my experience but my wife has had a bit of it. For a variety of cultural reasons, my organization—which is in a sense in competition with a non-resident version of ourselves—went back to work quickly after COVID and has emphasized getting back to the old routine. There’s more flexibility in terms of telecommuting and holding meetings virtually now—because the three-month shutdown for COVID proved we could do it—but we still have assigned offices and no more team-building than before.

My wife’s workplace is a weird hybrid, where everyone works from home three days a week but has to slog to the office two days just because. And, with the exception of one day a month where they all pretty much have to be there, there’s no coordination to maximize the team aspect of this in-office presence. Because she’s at the Pentagon, where space is at a premium, though, some people don’t have a desk they can call their own, having to find space where no one is currently sitting.

Juggling all of this is definitely more aggravating than a pure remote model. But it’s still mostly better than a pur at-office model as well.

Home is heaving, the office is off-putting. What about other places, like co-working spaces and coffee shops? These too have got worse since the pandemic, for two reasons. First, there is more competition for spaces. Everyone else who is finding it hard to concentrate has had exactly the same idea of heading to a third location.

Second, online meetings have made it acceptable to reach everyone everywhere. It used to be said that you are never more than six feet away from a rat; now the same is true of a Zoom call. Wherever you are—homes, offices, cafés, libraries, monasteries—someone is within earshot, yapping away about something that manages to be both tedious and impossible to ignore: the plight of local papers in Maine, the risk calculations behind Solvency 2 or why Denise is so impossible to work with.

I’ve never really done the coffee shop thing, aside from the occasional work-from-home day when I needed to escape the cleaning crew or something similar. And it’s been years since I’ve done that, so I don’t have a feel for the change.

There are ways around the concentration problem. One is to become richer: everything is so much easier if you have another wing of the house, or indeed another house. Another is deliberately to swim against the hybrid tide: if Monday is the day when most people work from home in order to focus, the office is going to be a better place to work that day. The most common and least healthy answer is to defer focused work until the evenings and weekends.

Having a larger space is indeed nice. Alas, the trend toward “open” floorplans has somewhat obviated the benefits.

This is not a lament for the pre-pandemic world. Just because each location has got worse as a place to do focused work does not mean that things have got worse overall. Hybrid work allows people to pick the most appropriate locations for specific tasks. The option of occasionally staying at home, even if home is noisier than it was before 2020, is still better for many workers and employers than the pre-covid norm of coming into the office every day. But wherever you are, other people are more likely to be there or to have a greater expectation of interacting with you. The ability to concentrate is sold as a benefit of flexibility. It can be the price you pay for it.

Quite right.

And, further, it’s worse emphasizing that these “problems,” such as they are, are the province of white collar knowledge workers. As the pandemic highlighted, those in the service sector don’t have the luxury of telecommuting. Ditto everyone from coal miners to carpenters to construction workers. All in all, it’s not the worst problem to have.

FILED UNDER: Economics and Business, , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Are Hamas Death Figures Fake?

Damned if I know.

· · 14 comments

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YahooNews points me to a March 16 Telegraph column by Jake Wallis Simons titled “This could be the devastating proof that Hamas is faking its death figures.”

One of the marks of anti-Semitism, George Orwell observed in 1945, is “an ability to believe stories that could not possibly be true”. Which brings us smartly to Hamas and how the broadcast media, aid organisations, international bodies and world leaders take its disinformation as gospel. Last week it became clear that this gullibility may have led to a crime against reality.

A new analysis of the group’s casualty statistics indicates that the rag-tag terror army may have pulled off one of the biggest propaganda coups of modern times. The figures, repeated by everyone from the White House to the BBC, are freighted with familiarity: 30,000 dead in Gaza, 70 per cent of whom are women and children. Yet it now seems overwhelmingly likely that these statistics are fabricated.

Professor Abraham Wyner, a data scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, has conducted a thorough analysis. He found that Hamas’s official civilian death toll was statistically impossible. “Most likely, the Hamas ministry settled on a daily total arbitrarily,” he wrote in an incendiary essay in Tablet. “We know this because the daily totals increase too consistently to be real. Then they assigned about 70 per cent of the total to be women and children, splitting that amount randomly from day to day. Then they in-filled the number of men as set by the predetermined total. This explains all the data observed.”

The giveaways were many. For example, the reported death toll mounted “with almost metronomical linearity”, Prof Wyner found, showing little daily variation. Obviously, this bore no resemblance to any plausible version of reality. Then there was the fact that, according to Hamas data from 29 October, 26 men came back to life; and the fact that on several days, no men were apparently killed at all, but only women. Were we really supposed to believe any of this?

In February, Hamas admitted to losing 6,000 of its fighters, representing more than 20 per cent of the total casualties reported. Given its claims that 70 per cent of the dead were women and children, there were two possible conclusions: either almost no male civilians had died, or almost all the men in Gaza were fighting for Hamas. Both were obviously absurd.

Therefore, the number of women and children killed was likely grossly exaggerated. If that is the case – if, as Prof Wyner suggests, “the casualties are not overwhelmingly women and children, and the majority may be Hamas fighters” – where does that leave western outrage? Has the West fallen victim to a monstrous con?

The true ratio of civilian casualties to combatants is likely to be exceptionally low, “at most 1.4 to 1 and perhaps as low as 1 to 1”. This, Prof Wyner says, is a “successful effort to prevent unnecessary loss of life while fighting an implacable enemy that protects itself with civilians”.

While I had been naturally skeptical of casualty reports issued by a terrorist group (and, frankly, I tend to be skeptical of any party to a war’s real-time numbers given both the very real propaganda incentives for misrepresentation and the “fog of war” making these assessments fraught even for honest brokers), I had seen enough claims by experts that we should take them seriously that I more-or-less stopped asking.

Looking at Wyner’s bio, CV, and Google Scholar pages, I consider him a highly qualified expert data scientist. He earned his PhD in Statistics from Stanford in 1993, has won multiple awards, and is a prolific and well-cited scholar. Judging from the handful of articles he’s published at Tablet and Forward, he seems to be an ardent Zionist and something of a COVID and climate change skeptic but there aren’t enough red flags to overcome his stature as a top-rate scholar.

Still, that works both ways. He published the above-referenced essay (“How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers“) on March 6. Even granting that he’s a statistician rather than an International Relations or Security Studies scholar, you’d think such devasting findings from someone of his stature would have made it to my attention in the intervening two weeks.

Wyner’s main evidence is in this chart:

About which he observes,

This regularity is almost surely not real. One would expect quite a bit of variation day to day. In fact, the daily reported casualty count over this period averages 270 plus or minus about 15%. This is strikingly little variation. There should be days with twice the average or more and others with half or less. Perhaps what is happening is the Gaza ministry is releasing fake daily numbers that vary too little because they do not have a clear understanding of the behavior of naturally occurring numbers. Unfortunately, verified control data is not available to formally test this conclusion, but the details of the daily counts render the numbers suspicious.

I stumbled on Caltech computational biologist Lior Pachter‘s March 8 post (“A note on ‘How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers’“) responding to Wyner’s analysis.

Wyner’s plot shows cumulative reported deaths over a period of 15 days from October 26, 2023 to November 10, 2023. The individual reported deaths per day are plotted below. These numbers have a mean of 270 and a standard deviation of 42.25:

The coefficient of determination for the points in this plot is R2 = 0.233. However, the coefficient of determination for the points shown in Wyner’s plot is R2 = 0.999. Why does the same data look “extremely regular” one way, and much less regular another way?

If we denote the deaths per day by x_1,\ldots,x_{15}, then the plot Wyner shows is of the cumulative deaths y_1=x_1,y_2=x_1+x_2,y_3 = x_1+x_2+x_3,\ldots, y_n=x_1+\cdots+x_n. The coefficient of determination R2, which is the proportion of variation in the dependent variable (reported deaths) predictable from the independent variable (day), is formally defined as R^2 =  1 - \frac{SS_{\mbox{res}}}{SS_{\mbox{tot}}} where SS_{\mbox{res}} is the sum of squares of the residuals and and SS_{\mbox{tot}} is the variance of the dependent variable. Intuitively, R2 is a numerical proxy for what one perceives as “regular increase”.

In the plots above, the SS_{\mbox{res}} are roughly the same, however SS_{\mbox{tot}} is much, much, higher for the yi in comparison to the xi. This is always true when transforming data into cumulative sums, and is such a strong effect, that simulating reported deaths with a mean of 270 but increasing the variance ten-fold to 17,850, still yields an “extremely regular increase”, with R2 = 0.99:

Sadly, I must confess that my long-ago statistical training has atrophied, and I likely never would have fully understood Pachter’s equations. In response to a commenter, though, he adds this bit of clarity:

There could be many reasons for these correlations. Maybe it’s an artifact of the age threshold for children and the distribution of age in Gaza. Maybe it’s the result of lags in recording deaths. Maybe it’s a happenstance arising from so few datapoints. Maybe the data was indeed faked.

I’ll note that there are all sorts of anomalies one can grasp onto. I noticed, for example, that the average, 270 is an integer. Adding up 15 random numbers and then dividing by 15 is unlikely to yield an integer. But it can happen (7% of the time). When one starts floating tons of hypotheses, especially with little data, evidence for one of them doesn’t carry significance.

Additionally, commenter Ken M adds this insight:

If you look at the numbers, it’s very clear that they update fatalities faster than the update #women or #children (and they don’t specify #men, that is just (#fatalities – #women-#children)). On some days fatalities update but there is no change in the #w or #c; on other days the increase in (#w+#c) exceeds the increase in #f. In other words, in the conditions of war, it is hard to get information. The Gazan Ministry of Health (GMH) makes a list of the name and ID # of every identifiable death; Israel maintains the registry of ID #’s so GMH can’t fake that. That’s why their numbers come out accurate. But in real time, they may get a number of fatalities from a hospital and get the names, which allow identification of #w or #c, only later, maybe much later. And if they get the list of names, they have to go through the registry to determine who is a child or an adult, and maybe for ambiguous names who is a woman or a man, and that probably takes time too. So #w and #c get updated with arbitrary lags, sometimes multiple days worth may suddenly get updated at once. So looking at day-by-day movements of these #’s is meaningless.

I’ll add two other things. First, he says there is no correlation between increment in #women and increment in #children, just like Lior showed that there is no correlation between increment in #fatalities and time. But if you look at the cumulative #women vs the cumulative #children, you get perfect correlation, R^2=0.99 (I checked), just like he finds perfect correlation between cumulative #fatalities and time. Second, for his day-by-day anticorrelation between women and men: because they don’t specify men, only #w and #c, and because they may update in bunches, when there is an update of a lot of women, it will look like there’s not many men (i.e. change in fatalities – change in (women + children) is small, or even negative). When there’s an update where they don’t know the identities so it looks like there’s no increase in the #women, it will look like there’s a big increase in men – all the fatalities will appear to be men. So that’s why you get an anticorrelation between #women & #men.

Looking at the numbers as a lapsed data scientist but as a still-engaged Security Studies scholar, my immediate problem with Wyner’s analysis was his assumption that the daily correlation between males and/or Hamas fighters killed and those of women and children ought to be pretty consistent. But there’s no reason that should be the case. The battlefield isn’t a constant, after all. Air strikes are likely to kill a much high percentage of noncombatants than commando raids, for example.

Further, Wyner himself acknowledges the fog of war and says, “The truth can’t yet be known and probably never will be.” Yet, the whole tone of the piece is one of certitude: Hamas is obviously faking the numbers.

All in all, I would be much more comfortable with “Be Cautious About Gaza Ministry of Health Casualty FIgures” than “How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers.”

FILED UNDER: World Politics, , , , , , , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

“Hostages”

Trump is giving aid and comfort to insurrectionists.

· · 19 comments

Let’s revisit and focus on a specific piece of Trump’s rhetoric that James Joyner noted yesterday, specifically this: describing those who have been tried and convicted of their actions on January 6th, 2021 as “hostages.”

This is not the first or only time he has used the term. Note the following from Truth Social (via The Hill):

“My first acts as your next President will be to Close the Border, DRILL, BABY, DRILL, and Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!” 

All of which makes me think of the following:

Section 3.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Trump is currently giving comfort (and promising aid) to insurrectionists.

It is as if allowing such a person access to the highest office in the land is a really bad idea and that the framers of the 14th Amendment tried to codify that fact into the US Constitution.

Side note: I still maintain that the last sentence of the section is the opposite of requiring Congress to act to implement the rule contained in the section, i.e., instead of telling Congress it had to pass a law, the passage states that Congress can overturn the strictures of section 3 via a super-majority.

No time for much more than an observation on this, as it struck me this morning driving in.

Some additional reading via MSNBC: Are these the Jan. 6 ‘hostages’ Trump promises to free?

Also allow me to add the following form Bill Kristol in referencing the first clip above:

But I come back to the salute.

I’ve never served in the military. So I’ve never really saluted or been saluted. But I served in the White House, and traveled with Vice President Quayle, and was near the men and women of the military a fair amount then. And I’ve been around the military a bit in subsequent years.

I’ve seen many salutes. And I’ve always found them oddly moving. They’re gestures of respect and acknowledgments of order. They embody a kind of rule of law, a setting aside of personal feelings. You salute the rank, not the man.

Presidents as civilians probably shouldn’t return salutes (they didn’t, I believe, until pretty recently). But if they do so now, they do so as a gesture of respect. Respect for the military who are serving our nation. And respect for the nation, for the republic, and for the Constitution that upholds it.

And to see Trump saluting the insurrectionists, the Americans he persuaded to violently break the law in the service of undermining the Constitution, was unnerving.

But perhaps also clarifying.

Trump salutes the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol.

Trump supports criminals.

The rest of us support the republic.

It is truly stomach-turning.

FILED UNDER: 2024 Election, Crime, US Politics, , , , , ,
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Putin Wins Again!

He's on a winning streak not seen since Stalin.

· · 4 comments

Maxim Shemetov/Reuters

NYT (“Behind Putin’s Potemkin Vote, Real Support. But No Other Choices.“):

The Kremlin stage-managed Russia’s presidential vote over the weekend to send a singular message at home and abroad: that President Vladimir V. Putin’s support is overwhelming and unshakable, despite or even because of his war against Ukraine.

From the moment the preliminary results first flashed across state television late Sunday, the authorities left no room for misinterpretation. Mr. Putin, they said, won more than 87 percent of the vote, his closest competitor just 4 percent. It had all the hallmarks of an authoritarian Potemkin plebiscite.

The Kremlin may have felt more comfortable orchestrating such a large margin of victory because Mr. Putin’s approval rating has climbed during the war in independent polls, owing to a rally-around-the flag effect and optimism about the Russian economy. The Levada Center, an independent pollster, reported last month that 86 percent of Russians approved of Mr. Putin, his highest rating in more than seven years.

But while the figures may suggest unabiding support for Mr. Putin and his agenda across Russia, the situation is more complex than the numbers convey. The leader of one opposition research group in Moscow has argued that backing for Mr. Putin is actually far more brittle than simple approval numbers suggest.

“The numbers we get on polls from Russia don’t mean what people think they mean,” said Aleksei Minyailo, a Moscow-based opposition activist and co-founder of a research project called Chronicles, which has been polling Russians in recent months. “Because Russia is not an electoral democracy but a wartime dictatorship.”

The Times’ coverage is representative:

There was a time when the American press credulously treated Russian elections as though they were real. And, no, I’m not talking about the brief period in which Boris Yeltsin was more-or-less the democratic leader of a French-style system. During the fake presidency of Dmitry Medvedev (May 2008-May 2012), when Putin stepped aside because he was term-limited, pretty much everyone pretended that the transition was real and that Putin, who instead was appointed prime minister, was no longer making policy decisions. Even Fox News (“Putin secures 5th term as Russian president in the election with no real opposition, addresses Navalny death“) now acknowledges the obvious.

This makes columns like Ishaan Tharoor’sRussia’s farce election sums up a grim moment in global democracy” something of a head-scratcher.

Three days of voting, staggered across 11 time zones and a vast stretch of the Earth, could only lead to one outcome: An emphatic reelection victory for Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was always clear that the Kremlin would exult in the landslide mandate accorded to Putin, who “contested” the vote against a handful of ciphers allowed to be presidential candidates. By Sunday evening, election officials announced a preliminary tally of that preordained result, reporting that Putin had won more than 87 percent of the vote, with three-fourths of the vote counted. State figures suggested a greater turnout than the previous presidential vote in 2018.

Even then, exiled watchdog groups reported episodes of ballot-stuffing, voter intimidation at some polling stations and other attempts at manipulation, including the alleged busing of Putin supporters to vote multiple times at different locations. In areas of Ukraine occupied and illegally annexed by Russia, observers recounted how local authorities coerced people to participate in the election at “gunpoint.”

Election officials were walking around the occupied town of Novomykolaivka, a local official, who has since fled to other areas of Ukraine, told my colleagues, “in a brigade accompanied by an armed soldier. He was carrying a weapon, so it was a threat, not verbal, but in fact it was a threat of violence.”

Thousands of Russians in big cities attempted to make their displeasure known at both the nature of Putin’s regime and the ongoing war in Ukraine by going to vote at noon Sunday — a symbolic act of solidarity with the late pro-democracy activist Alexei Navalny, who had long called for fairer and freer elections in Russia before dying in captivity. Many spoiled their ballots. Russian authorities clamped down on other forms of dissent and tried to encourage voters to go to the polls ahead of the designated protest time.

That need to cling to hope is profound and meaningful for anybody struggling under an authoritarian regime. And, on a global scale, the need to locate such hope is becoming more necessary. As already outlined in Today’s WorldView, the bumper year of elections worldwide in 2024 comes at a moment of “democratic recession,” with the health of democracies around the world in notable decline.

A new study this month from the V-Dem Institute, a leading center for the analysis of comparative politics at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg, laid out some of the worrying macro-indicators. The institute’s annual Democracy Report measures a democracy using a multidimensional data set based on a number of factors, including the civil liberties and freedoms afforded to all citizens, and their ability to participate in fair elections.

[…]

These findings dovetail with a gloomy Pew survey published last month. In polls put to respondents in a spread of 24 countries, researchers found that enthusiasm for “representative democracy” has slipped since 2017, when the organization conducted a similar survey. It found that a median 59 percent respondents were “dissatisfied with how their democracy is functioning,” and that close to three-quarters of those polled in countries as disparate as Argentina, Germany and Kenya felt that elected officials “don’t care” what they think. More than 40 percent said no political party in their country adequately reflects their views.

The survey found growing interest in alternatives to rule by elected officials, including an embrace of technocracy or even an autocratic strongman. “In 13 countries, a quarter or more of those surveyed think a system in which a strong leader can make decisions without interference from parliament or the courts is a good form of government,” noted Pew. “In four of the eight middle-income nations in the study, at least half of respondents express this view.”

Democratic backsliding is indeed a very real trend. Indeed, a colleague of mine, who grew up in Turkey, offers an elective on it. But it’s weird to lump Putin’s Russia, which hasn’t been a democracy in any meaningful sense in a long time,* into that camp.

Maybe we can chalk this up to the columnist’s dilemma of having to constantly find something to write about and needing a news hook around which to build it. But doing so in this instance sends the wrong impression to readers.

____________________

*Indeed, there is a debate among specialists as to whether the brief period between Gorbachev and Putin even qualifies. See, for example, Michael McFaul’s “Russia’s Road to Autocracy” and Maria Snegovaya’s “Why Russia’s Democracy Never Began,” both in relatively recent issues of the Journal of Democracy.

FILED UNDER: Democracy, Media, World Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Monday’s Forum

· · 46 comments

OTB relies on its readers to support it. Please consider helping by becoming a monthly contributor through Patreon or making a one-time contribution via PayPal. Thanks for your consideration.

FILED UNDER: Open Forum,
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Sunday Tab-Clearing

· · 9 comments

FILED UNDER: Tab Clearing, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Trump’s Routine Outrages

When being despicable is normal, is it still news?

· · 32 comments

Visitors to the major news sites that I frequent—The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, NPR, YahooNews, and Google News—could easily miss what one might think would be a big story: the presumptive Republican Party nominee for President making some rather outrageous comments in a profanity-laced tirade at a campaign rally. Of those, only NYT and YahooNews highlight the story high enough that I could see them without scrolling.

NYT (“Trump Says Some Migrants Are ‘Not People’ and Predicts a ‘Blood Bath’ if He Loses“):

Former President Donald J. Trump, at an event on Saturday ostensibly meant to boost his preferred candidate in Ohio’s Republican Senate primary race, gave a freewheeling speech in which he used dehumanizing language to describe immigrants, maintained a steady stream of insults and vulgarities and predicted that the United States would never have another election if he did not win in November.

With his general-election matchup against President Biden in clear view, Mr. Trump once more doubled down on the doomsday vision of the country that has animated his third presidential campaign and energized his base during the Republican primary.

The dark view resurfaced throughout his speech. While discussing the U.S. economy and its auto industry, Mr. Trump promised to place tariffs on cars manufactured abroad if he won in November. He added: “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a blood bath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a blood bath for the country.”

For nearly 90 minutes outside the Dayton International Airport in Vandalia, Ohio, Mr. Trump delivered a discursive speech, replete with attacks and caustic rhetoric. He noted several times that he was having difficulty reading the teleprompter.

The former president opened his speech by praising the people serving sentences in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. Mr. Trump, who faces criminal charges tied to his efforts to overturn his election loss, called them “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots,” commended their spirit and vowed to help them if elected in November. He also repeated his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, which have been discredited by a mountain of evidence.

If he did not win this year’s presidential election, Mr. Trump said, “I don’t think you’re going to have another election, or certainly not an election that’s meaningful.”

Mr. Trump also stoked fears about the influx of migrants coming into the United States at the southern border. As he did during his successful campaign in 2016, Mr. Trump used incendiary and dehumanizing language to cast many migrants as threats to American citizens.

He asserted, without evidence, that other countries were emptying their prisons of “young people” and sending them across the border. “I don’t know if you call them ‘people,’ in some cases,” he said. “They’re not people, in my opinion.” He later referred to them as “animals.”

[…]

Mr. Trump issued vulgar and derogatory remarks about a number of Democrats, including ones he often targets, like Mr. Biden and Fani Willis, the Atlanta prosecutor overseeing his criminal case in Georgia, as well as those widely viewed as prospective future presidential candidates, such as Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois.

Mr. Trump called Mr. Biden a “stupid president” several times and at one point referred to him as a “dumb son of a — ” before trailing off. He also compared Ms. Willis’s first name to a vulgarity, called Mr. Newsom “Gavin New-scum” and took jabs at Mr. Pritzker’s physical appearance.

Unlike some regular commenters, I don’t think the lack of prominence to these remarks—all of the sites covered them—is a nefarious plot to boost Trump to keep the race close. Rather, it’s a function of Trump acting outrageously with such regularity that it’s not newsworthy. It’s dog bites man rather than man bites dog.

I’ve long found myself doing the same thing for much the same reason. At some point, flogging the same story day after day gets monotonous. (For that matter, I’ve mostly stopped commenting on mass shootings, as I have nothing new to say about them and can already predict what the comments section will look like. And, while I covered the wars in Ukraine and Gaza on a daily basis at their outset, I now comment on them only sporadically.)

In the early days of Trump’s political ascendency, people constantly warned that his outrageous behavior was being “normalized.” To some degree, that has in fact happened. The press continues to cover it. They even describe it in ways that make clear they think it’s outrageous. But there’s also a certain “water is wet” quality to it.

FILED UNDER: 2024 Election, Media, US Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Ending Judge Shopping

A long-overdue reform is meeting resistance.

· · 8 comments

WaPo (“U.S. courts clarify policy limiting ‘judge shopping’“):

Federal judiciary leaders on Friday released the text of a revised policy directing district courts to assign judges at random in civil cases that have statewide or national implications, making clear that the policy is a recommendation and that they cannot force district courts to follow it.

The Committee on Court Administration and Case Management of the Judicial Conference of the United States, the policymaking body for the federal courts, released the guidance after receiving intense pushback about the change from judges, conservative lawmakers and judicial experts.

On Tuesday, conference officials announced that cases with statewide or national implications that are filed in single-judge divisions should no longer be automatically assigned to the judges who preside there. Such divisions exist in rural parts of the country where courthouses are spaced very far apart.

District courts may continue to assign cases to a single-judge division if those cases don’t seek to bar or mandate state or federal actions through declaratory judgment or injunctive relief, the Judicial Conference said. When random assignments are required, the case should be assigned to a judge within the same judicial district.

The policy does not apply to criminal or bankruptcy cases, according to the memo released Friday. “Case assignment in the bankruptcy context remains under study.”

The memo, shared with district court judges across the country, includes guidance explaining how the judges might follow the updated rule “while recognizing the statutory authority and discretion that district courts have with respect to case assignment.”

Judicial Conference officials said their intent is to address widespread concerns about “judge shopping” — or filing a lawsuit in a courthouse where the lone judge is known or suspected to be sympathetic to a particular cause. The tactic has drawn scrutiny in abortion, immigration and environmental cases, among other hot-button topics, as well as in patent cases, which have been concentrated in a single-judge courthouse in the Waco division of the Western District of Texas.

But the changes proposed to address the concerns have drawn a wave of new objections, with some saying the new policy violates federal statute 28 U.S.C. 137, which says that the chief judges of each district court are responsible for assigning cases.

[…]

Russell Wheeler, a judicial expert at the Brookings Institution, said the guidance “suggests, without saying so directly,” that conference officials are acting on their authority under federal statute 28 U.S.C. 331 to “submit suggestions and recommendations to the various courts to promote uniformity of management procedures and the expeditious conduct of court business.”

“Confusion resolved, and the Guidance on first reading seems eminently sensible,” Wheeler said in an email.

“This guidance was helpful,” Chief Judge Randy Crane of the Southern District of Texas wrote in an email. “It made it clear that the policy adopted by the Committee and the Conference was not a mandate. As such, it does not conflict with each court’s statutory authority to manage its docket. The guidance reflects that it is only an encouragement to the courts.”

As is so often the case, the problem is one that could best be addressed by Congressional action. Alas, that institution has been broken for quite some time, thus leaving the Executive to tinker around the edges.

Amusingly, at least some Members on both sides of the aisle recognize that there is a problem:

Democratic and Republican members of Congress, the Biden administration and organizations such as the American Bar Association have raised concerns about judge shopping in the past, and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. also highlighted the issue in his 2021 Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary.

In November 2021, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and then-Democratic senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont criticized the “extreme concentration” of patent cases in U.S. District Judge Alan Albright’s division in Waco. In a letter addressed to Roberts, who oversees the Judicial Conference, the senators asked the chief justice to direct the policymaking body to look into the matter and implement reforms.

“We believe this creates an appearance of impropriety which damages the federal judiciary’s reputation for the fair and equal administration of the law,” they wrote.

Sadly, I’m not sure that reputation is intact these days. But, yes, the ability to all but guarantee the desired outcome of a case by filing with a specific court is beyond outrageous. But the bigger outrage is the existence of so many judges that have essentially pre-judged certain classes of cases.

That said, from my lay standpoint, the guidance seems quite reasonable:

In issuing its guidance, the Court Administration and Case Management Committee noted that “public confidence in the case assignment process requires transparency” and suggested that judicial districts post their rules for case assignments on their websites and “avoid case assignment practices that result in the likelihood that a case will be assigned to a particular judge” unless there is a specific determination that the case should be heard in a particular location.

“The Judicial Conference’s longstanding policies supporting the random assignment of cases and ensuring that district judges remain generalists deter both judge-shopping and the assignment of cases based on the perceived merits or abilities of a particular judge,” the memo reads.

Sadly but not surprisingly, there are some in positions of power who prefer the status quo:

Much of the backlash against the new policy guidance has come from conservative judges and lawmakers, who accused the Judicial Conference and Democrats such as Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) of an attempt to grab power from conservative jurists in isolated jurisdictions.

Two days after the revised policy was announced, before the specifics were made public,Senate Minority Leader MitchMcConnell (R-Ky.) sent letters to about a dozen chief judges across the country advising them to ignore the change, saying it was up to them “to manage the caseload of your court according to the dictates of local circumstances and convention.”

The letter was also signed by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Tillis — who in 2021 questioned the concentration of patent cases in Waco.A spokesman for Tillis did not respond to a request for comment on the senator’s position Friday or early Saturday.

On Friday, after the text of the new guidance was released, a conservative judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit said he was “glad to see that folks appear to be backing off.”

“Judges should follow the law, and leave the politics to Congress,” U.S. District Judge James Ho said in an email. “The last thing we should do is gerrymander the rules to favor one particular political viewpoint.”

But, of course, the existence of Trump judges (Ho, you will not be shocked to learn, is one of them) and one-judge districts means said gerrymandering is a fact.

Other concerns strike me as valid:

Other judges have expressed concerns about practicality.

Chief Judge Alia Moses of the Western District of Texas said it was hard to imagine how a random-case-assignment policy would work in her far-flung district, where the next courthouse can be a multiday drive away. The desire to avoid targeting a specific lawsuit to a particular judge “is understandable,” Moses said in an email, “but difficult to apply in the real world in a district that is 93,000 square miles in size.”

In announcing the policy on Tuesday, Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th District Jeffrey Sutton, chair of the Judicial Conference’s executive committee, told reporters that one option for dealing with geographical distance issues could be holding some court proceedings online.

Wheeler, the judicial expert, questioned whether the conference will be able to persuade all district courts to follow the policy. He said judicial leaders could use the rulemaking process to amend the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which govern civil proceedings in the district courts.

But given the “hostile reaction, especially from those where the judge-shopping practice has flourished,” such a move would be a “tough slog,” he said.

“That leaves Congress. Dream on.”

Indeed.

FILED UNDER: Law and the Courts, , , , , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Stupid Poll Tricks

Two data points are not a trend.

· · 8 comments

Memeorandum pointed me to a story headlined “GOP Base Has Shriveled Compared to Last Presidential Election” at the husk of the venerable Newsweek. The clickbait headline did its job but, alas, the report was disappointing.

The number of people who describe themselves as Republican has slightly declined since the last presidential election.

The polling firm Gallup, which tracks party affiliation monthly, says that those identifying as Republicans has shrunk by two percentage points since 2020. In February 2020, 30 percent of those Gallup polled said they were Republicans, while 29 percent considered themselves Democrats.

As of February 2024, when the latest data is available, 28 percent say they are Republicans, while 30 percent say they are Democrats, showing Republican’s base declining. Newsweek contacted the Republican National Committee (RNC) by email to comment on this story.

So, we have two snapshot polls, taken four years apart, showing that Republican party ID is down 2% and Democratic party ID is up 1%. Which, of course, is well within sampling error. That’s . . . not particularly interesting.

This does not prevent them from devoting several paragraphs to explaining what may or may not be a trend, including multiple quotations from scholars.

FILED UNDER: Media, Public Opinion Polls, US Politics, , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

OTB’s Future

There's a fork in the road.

· · 66 comments

“Blog Ideas” by Owen W Brown is licensed under CC BY 2.0

As I’ve recounted more than once, this blog started on the free Blogstop service way back in January 2003 but quickly outgrew that, spinning off onto a private domain on a private server, with ever-increasing operation and maintenance costs. Almost exactly two years in, I started running advertisements and declaring OTB as a business on my income taxes. There was a short heyday in which this was a thriving enterprise, spanning a series of spin-off sites. It was, for a time, my full-time job, and for many years, I was even able to pay a few thousand dollars a year to folks who wrote for the site.

The bottom fell out of the ad business years ago, and for more than a decade, expenses have significantly exceeded revenues. After several years of expressing mild concern, my accountant issued a much sterner warning last week that continuing to write off losses year after year could have catastrophic consequences. Suffice it to say, I won’t be doing so in 2024.

When I made the decision to go ad-free five years ago, I observed, “Considering that I make a reasonable living in my day job, I’ve always felt rather sheepish asking people to contribute to the site.” That has remained the case, so I’ve seldom renewed calls for Patreon signups or PayPal contributions. The $1752.32 those avenues brought in last year covers slightly more than a third of what it costs to keep the site going.

The last site refresh was six years ago now and cost on the order of $8000. We’re definitely overdue for another one, as the backend is wonky because the theme isn’t compatible with the latest WordPress version.

Ultimately, then, something’s got to give.

There are times when I wonder if the site hasn’t simply run its course. Blogging is a vestige of another era, and while our logs indicate that we’re still reaching a decent-sized audience (roughly 100,000 pageviews and 20,000 unique visitors monthly), the commentariat comprises fewer than 50 hard-core readers. And, even though I’m not as prolific as I once was here, it still consumes 20 hours or more in an average week.

We could do more to attract patrons, but I’m not really sure what that would entail. We could wall off “Premium” content to those who pay, as is the practice at various Substack blogs and other media outlets. But that has never been the spirit of the site and would have the ironic effect of making it less valuable to paying customers since some of the commenters they enjoy interacting with now would be shut out.

We could move to Substack, a free WordPress site, or a similar alternative and retain a lighter version of the site. Part of the reason OTB is so expensive to run is that it’s so bloody old. There are 58,445 posts, 1,450,482 comments, and 22,891 images being managed by the databases. Indeed, I’ve maintained a separate server just to host images for much of the site’s history to keep it from bogging down. While part of what Steven and I enjoy about the current model is revisiting what we wrote about issues (or the comment section discussions of same) way back when, whether when researching new posts or through the serendipity of the Related Posts feature, that’s likely less of an attraction for most readers. Then again, I’m not sure it’d still be OTB.

I welcome your thoughts on the matter.

Note: I’ve made this post “sticky,” so it’ll remain atop the site for a couple of days to ensure it gets seen. New content will appear in reverse chronological order below it until then.

FILED UNDER: OTB History, ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

St. Patrick’s Day Forum

· · 23 comments

FILED UNDER: Open Forum
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

A Graph to Ponder

Post-Covid recovery edition.

· · 15 comments

I know macro-level GDP growth isn’t everything one needs to know about economic policy, but there is little doubt that the US has recovered better from the pandemic than our European allies.

FILED UNDER: Economics and Business, US Politics,
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Line of the Day

Martyr Complex Edition

· · 7 comments

The line: “Nobody has been treated like Trump in terms of badly.”

But the most credulous thing in the clip is the notion that Trump “studies” history. However, studying appears to mean having been “told.”

Bonus clip, acid edition:

FILED UNDER: 2024 Election, US Politics,
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Fixing The Credit Card System

It's great for the well-off but increasingly problematic for the larger economy.

· · 24 comments

Former Obama Treasury official and Brookings scholar Aaron Klein assesses “What the Fight Over the Capital One-Discover Merger Misses About Our Terrible Credit Card System.”

A fight has commenced over Capital One’s effort to acquire Discover, a deal that would birth an enormous credit card company rivaling Visa, Mastercard and American Express. The resulting competition could, in the short run, lower some costs to businesses and consumers. However, over the longer term, the merger would keep intact the broken and predatory system in which credit card companies profit handsomely by rewarding our richest Americans and advantaging the biggest corporations.

Credit card companies increasingly generate money via swipe fees, or the money merchants pay issuers every time a credit card is used. Total swipe fees rose 20 percent in 2022 to an estimated $160 billion a year nationally. The pandemic changed how we buy things, significantly increasing the share of transactions put on credit cards rather than conducted in cash, adding to the swipe fees merchants pay.

On top of this, a 2018 Supreme Court ruling effectively forces merchants to accept either every type of card — from, say, a basic Green Card to the Platinum Card — from an issuer like Amex or none of them. And even though fancier types of cards generally demand higher swipe fees, the ruling also barred merchants from incentivizing consumers to use the cheaper ones. These facts combine in a way that makes it even more appealing for Capital One, a giant credit card issuer, to merge with Discover, which owns a payment system, and generate greater profits from credit cards, particularly higher-end reward cards.

So, Klein is using a classic pundit’s trick of leveraging a development in the news as a hook to tout a pre-existing policy preference. Indeed, it’s not obvious that a possible Chase-Discover merger would have much impact at all on this particular set of facts.

Still, his concern is a valid one and at least some of his policy solutions are ones I haven’t seen before.

Credit card companies found they could command ever-greater swipe fees from merchants while at the same time offering their wealthiest consumers more deluxe credit cards that reward big spending with cash back, travel points, access to fancy airport lounges and the like — and then pass on the cost of those rewards to merchants. Merchants must then choose whether to accept and pay the higher swipe fee demanded by these platinum expensive cards or not take any from that card company.

As a quick aside, I don’t read the above-linked SCOTUS decision the same way Klein does. The case seemed to be a narrow one: whether Amex’ policy of disallowing merchants to steer customers to non-Amex cards, which charge lower swipe fees, violates anti-trust law. In a narrow 5-4 case, the Justices said No. But it’s quite possible that subsequent litigation has expanded that interpretation. (And, regardless, it’s quite likely Amex’s policy that its merchants must accept all of their cards or none.)

In our increasingly digital economy, most merchants have little alternative but to accept the pricey versions and to pay for the privilege. Naturally, merchants pass on their increased cost to all of their customers.

That, of course, is ultimately the main issue. Although, as Klein notes, there are smaller and less obvious ones as well. More on those shortly.

That’s how the rest of us, whether we pay with cash, a debit card or a middle-of-the-road credit card, wind up paying more — because we are subsidizing these rewards cards for whom only the wealthiest qualify. One study from economists at the Boston Federal Reserve estimated that the highest-income households profit over $1,000 a year tax-free from the payment system, adjusted for inflation.

That seems quite plausible. Points on my Costco Visa pay for the annual executive membership with a couple hundred bucks left over. And my Amazon spending is slightly subsidized by my Amazon Visa—which I don’t even have a physical copy of and use exclusively for purchases with them. And I have yet another Visa with Marriot used almost exclusively for stays with them. It’s not exactly lifestyle-changing, but better than nothing.

Remember those “smaller and less obvious” problems? Here we go:

Because swipe fees include a fixed cost in addition to a percentage of the total cost, small-dollar transactions are extremely expensive for merchants. My research found huge costs for such transactions as buying a cup of coffee or paying for a bus or subway ride. One year my oldest friend’s small coffee shop paid more in card processing costs than for coffee beans.

Big companies can leverage their resources to lower swipe fees, giving them a leg up. Starbucks stole a page from the credit card playbook and built an app that gives consumers rewards on future purchases if they upload larger amounts of money from their credit cards, thus lowering the total fees Starbucks has to pay the credit card companies for each swipe.

Some big businesses negotiate discounted swipe fees. Costco is the most aggressive; there have been reports that the big discount retailer’s contract with Citibank and Visa lowered its costs to 0.4 percent while a local dry cleaner may be paying closer to 3 percent.

The problem isn’t limited to nonwealthy consumers and small businesses: Parking meters that used to run on coins now rely on credit-card-powered apps, which charge transaction fees that can be over 20 percent, such as 45 cents on $2. Public transit agencies can lose 7 percent of the money they generate in fares in card-processing fees. A growing gap between what users pay and local agencies receive could stress budgets and require higher taxes, increased fees or reduced public services.

This is indeed problematic.The issue of micropayments is one that hadn’t really occurred to me. Once upon a time—as recently as 10 or 15 years ago—it would never have occurred to me to pay for something under $20 with a credit card. Now, I do so routinely.

Even more recently, I would routinely withdraw $200 or $300 from my ATM every few weeks. Now, even though that amount has diminished in buying power, it’ll last months. Indeed, I can’t remember the last time I withdrew cash. I pay for pretty much everything digitally or with a physical credit card now.

Amusingly, while I get small bonuses for using various cards, it only impacts my purchasing habits at the margins—using the three aforementioned merchant cards when shopping with those companies. For example, a local gas station that I frequently fill up at on the way to work has typically offered a 3-cent-a-gallon discount for using a debit card rather than a credit card and I’ve thus used my debit card there. Yet my Costco Visa gives me 5% “cash back” on gas. When gas was $4 a gallon, I’d have been far better off getting 20 cents cash back rather than saving the 3 cents. That would be true even at $3 or, hell, $1 a gallon. Rather obviously, though, the seller desperately wants customers to make the opposite choice.

Klein thinks an intervention is in order:

To fix the problem, Congress should legislatively correct the Supreme Court’s mistake. For starters, give merchants the power to reject the priciest credit cards, and let’s see if their users are willing to pay the true cost of their rewards. This solution ought to have some bipartisan support; the idea was strong enough politically to be supported by states as diverse as Ohio, Texas and Maryland. Bipartisan legislation to overturn a conservative Supreme Court ruling may sound like a pipe dream, but in payments policy we’ve seen a few examples such as the Durbin Amendment to what became the Dodd-Frank Act, which lowered debit interchange fees, received 64 votes (including 16 from Republicans) in the Senate and made it into law.

This sounds good in theory but I’d be angry if a merchant rejected my card at the point of sale. And it would be incredibly awkward at, say, a restaurant where the transaction was already completed minus the payment. And I suspect most people don’t carry an array of cards.

Second, brave policymakers could start taxing reward points. The richer you are, the more likely you qualify for bigger rewards. Progressive taxation rates mean that exempting rewards from taxation makes them nearly four times as valuable to those in the top tax bracket as the bottom. Why is interest from my savings account taxed, but the cash back from card spending not? Once upon a time the value of frequent flier miles was hard to quantify; now the Points Guy has it down.

I must admit that it had never occurred to me that points should be taxed but it’s perfectly reasonable. But if someone is making a million dollars a year and getting a whopping “$1,000 a year tax-free from the payment system,” are they really going to notice—much less change their behavior—over a $372 increase in their tax bill? Most of them would likely forgo the $1000 entirely for upgraded travel perks.

Finally, we could require all merchants have access to the same swipe-fee pricing, regardless of size. Why should the payment system give big business another advantage? The electronic cash register should not tilt the playing field.

This seems the most obvious solution to the larger problem. But I suspect that the second-order effect would be some combination of 1) higher fees to join the network and 2) exclusion of smaller businesses from the network.

As to the Capitol One-Discover merger:

Our payment system’s problems will not be solved by allowing or stopping a combination of Capital One and Discover. Adding a fourth major issuer to compete with the big three will make little difference if the system’s rules remain the same. Capital One already seems to be competing with American Express for wealthy customers who like elite airport lounges and big travel perks, which are funded in part from higher swipe fees. The rewards have kept getting richer over the past 20 years. Simply adding one more company to earn large profits through the existing system will hardly stop it.

Blocking the merger will fail to change the payment system that continues to drive greater rewards to those with the most money already, paid for by merchants and consumers who use cash, debit or lower-tier cards because they are not rich enough to qualify. As the economy continues to digitize with more micropayments, the credit card burden will keep growing, particularly on smaller businesses. Today’s large banks and payment companies will make more profit, sharing it based on who qualifies for elite status.

That strikes me as correct.

Klein concludes:

Until legislators are willing to change a system that showers tax-free rewards on the upper middle class, the cash register will continue to exacerbate the wealth gap and help big business get even bigger. It may feel great to stand up against a merger and fight those “big banks” — while enjoying a “free meal” at an exclusive airport lounge before taking a vacation using frequent flier miles. But if victory is more of the status quo, then the biggest losers will be those the government should protect the most.

I’m honestly surprised Klein, who’s considerably to my left on economic issues, didn’t propose a more radical but obvious solution: a government-run alternative. Given that digital currency has all but replaced traditional forms, it strikes me as perfectly reasonable for the Treasury to facilitate that new reality. There’s no reason it couldn’t back a digital payment network that charges an incredibly low break-even fee. It’s squarely within Congress’ enumerated powers under Article I, Section 8.

While the financial industry would obviously fight this tooth and nail, I don’t envision this totally supplanting credit cards, in that they would either be pay-as-you go (essentially debit cards) or at most a float (due at fixed intervals, as is the case with Amex and the practice most of us likely practice even with our points-earning credit cards; otherwise, they cost money rather than earn it). I would, for example, at a minimum continue using my Amazon, Costco, and Marriot cards when transacting business with them. Frequent travelers would continue building perks on cards designed for that purpose.

This would solve the micropayment issue, in that Starbucks and others who business primarily consists of transactions under $10 would presumably eschew all other payments unless they matched the government fee. And smaller merchants who can’t afford to pay exorbitant fees would do likewise and, since we’d probably all carry one, we’d get used to that pretty quickly. It sure beats “Cash Only.”

FILED UNDER: Economics and Business, , , , , , , , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Saturday’s Forum

· · 26 comments

FILED UNDER: Open Forum
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Pence Won’t Endorse Trump

Sic a mob on a guy and this is the thanks Trump gets.

· · 10 comments

Via CNN: Pence says he ‘cannot in good conscience’ endorse Trump.

“Donald Trump is pursuing and articulating an agenda that is at odds with the conservative agenda that we governed on during our four years. That’s why I cannot in good conscience endorse Donald Trump in this campaign,” Pence said on Fox News.

I would prefer he note that Trump is pursuing and articulating an agenda that undermines the US Constitution and democratic governance, rather than pretend like the issue is the lack of a “conservative agenda” but this is better than nothing.

This is not a big deal, but it is also not no deal at all. Every single Republican who refuses to endorse Trump increases the odds, even if just a little bit, that some Republican voters will simply choose not to vote for president in November. That could be the difference in states that matter.

Every little bit helps.

(And while this is a plus in Pence’s column, it still does not erase the role he played in helping Trump win in 2016 in the first place).

FILED UNDER: 2024 Election, US Politics, , ,
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

No Labels Continues to Have No Clue

An unserious plan by an unserious group.

· · 7 comments

Via WaPo: No Labels announces committee to select presidential candidate.

The centrist group No Labels announced a committee of 12 people Thursday who will decide in the coming weeks who should appear on the group’s potential third-party presidential ticket.

Led by co-chairs of the group — including former senator Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), retired Navy Adm. Dennis Blair and civil rights activist Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. — the committee will then take its recommendation to a separate group of No Labels supporters that is prepared to formally nominate the ticket on 48 hours’ notice.

This does not strike me as a way to compete in a race that has clearly been Trump v. Biden for quite some time now. The notion that there is anybody who could step in at this juncture and attract the needed attention to overcome the cultural and structural hurdles that are in place is, well, delusional.

And then there’s this:

Lieberman said in an interview on Wednesday that the group would have the ability to stop a candidacy from moving forward after a few months if it failed to gain traction and appeared to be a possible spoiler that could help elect former president Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee.

“We want to give the American people the third choice — bipartisan, moderate — that they say they want,” Lieberman said. “But if for some reason after two or three months, they say they don’t want it, we have got to be realistic and say, ‘This is not the year.’”

Ok, so by definition a candidate running under a specific label (i.e., a party) against candidates from other parties cannot be “bipartisan.” They would definitionally be a partisan. They could very well be moderate, and perhaps No Labels is a moderate party (or aspires to be because it isn’t much more than, ironically enough, a label at this point). But such a candidate would not be bipartisan.

I also think this is a great illustration of the way in which the current partisan duopoly thoroughly captures our national psyche because instead of defining No Labels on its own terms, Lieberman defines it in relationship to the Republicans and Democrats. In this formulation, the totality of political possibilities is somehow encompassed by The Two Parties, one conservative, the other liberal and, therefore, a moderate third wat can only mean a “bipartisan” hybrid. Moreover, the way to make this new party function is for politicians who have left The Two Parties to come together and form a third choice. Our political imagination is largely stuck in this binary simplism.

I would note that Lieberman himself never tried to form a party after he left the Democrats (or, more accurately, he failed to win re-nomination in 2006 and so switched to being “independent”–and often was described as an “independent Democrat” which again makes my point about the way the Two Parties capture our political minds).

The rest of the quote is weird as well, insofar as it implies some kind of recall option once a candidate is chosen. I would note a few things. First, for a No Labels candidate to be viable, it would have to be polling at extraordinarily high numbers in several states. That would mean commanding a plurality of the vote in enough states to deny any candidate an Electoral College majority. This isn’t going to happen. Second, to be a spoiler would mean a handful of votes in a couple of key swing states. While I honestly think this is not especially likely, the probability is not zero.

As such, if the option of being a viable candidate is zero and the chances of being a spoiler are greater than zero, what is the point of this process?

Side note, because I figure someone will bring it up: is it possible that some of No Labels’ secret donors are actually pro-Trump and want NL to be a spoiler? Maybe, but that all seems a bit too clever by half. I actually do think that politicians like Lieberman believe in their own version of the pundit’s fallacy that because voters tell pollsters they want moderate and/or new options this is the way to provide it to them. I also think that they are misunderstanding what the demand actually is while simultaneously misunderstanding the structural constraints of our system and how they shape competitive options.

And yes, I do want more parties in the United States, but just adding one more presidential candidate to the mix is not what I am talking about.

FILED UNDER: 2024 Election, Democracy, US Politics, , , ,
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Decision In Fani Willis Conflict Of Interest Hearing

tl;dr: Either he goes or she (and her office) go

· · 32 comments

Fulton County GA Prosecutor Fani Willis

This morning, Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee issued his ruling as to whether or not (1) Fulton County DA violated the law in entering into a romantic relationship with the special prosecutor she hired to handle the alleged attempt to overturn the results of the Georgia Election and (2) if her office would be disqualified from prosecuting said case. Here is the summary from Betsy Woodruff Swan and Kyle Cheney at Politico:

Judge Scott McAfee ruled that either Willis and her entire office, or another top prosecutor in the case, Nathan Wade, must step aside to prevent an “appearance of conflict” over potential financial improprieties caused by their romantic relationship.

Trump and his allies had failed to sufficiently substantiate claims that Willis’ romantic relationship with Wade had created an “actual” conflict of interest that required her and her office to be removed from handling the case, McAfee concluded.

“The Court finds that the evidence did not establish the District Attorney’s receipt of a material financial benefit,” McAfee ruled, despite characterizing the relationship as a “tremendous lapse in judgment.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/15/judge-rejects-trumps-bid-to-disqualify-georgia-prosecutor-00147286

As the decision was handed out at 9 am this morning, most analysts are still reading through it and parsing the reasons. Georgia Defense attorney Andrew Fleischman, who is a strong critic of Willis and her office, posted these thoughts about the decision on the platform formerly known as Twitter about the judge’s ultimate reasoning:

You can read all of Fleischman’s short analysis here. While Fleischman personally feels there was enough evidence to find a disqualifying conflict of interest, he notes in another post on Xtter that it definitely wasn’t open and shut. He also discusses the different potential lines of appeal that the defendants will most certainly take.

I think Judge McAfee’s decision is correct under Georgia law. That last part is critical. In some States, for example, California as Ken White (Popehat) has noted, that relationship definitely would be a violation of the law. Georgia statutes, on the other hand, are not as sweeping.

That said, regardless of whether or not there was an actual conflict of interest, Willis’s behavior was improper. That appearance of impropriety is enough to warrant addressing. Wade should have been removed from this case long before it reached this point. Honestly, this decision is doing her office a favor because it creates an opportunity to remove Wade from this case without losing face.

Either way, given the options of disqualifying the entire office or removing the special prosecutor (and, in doing so, eliminating this self-own headache), I expect we will get news of Wade’s “voluntary” departure from the case by early next week. In the meantime, I leave you with a sentence that Fleischman called out from the closing of the decision:

A reasonable observer unburdened by partisan blinders should believe the law was impartially applied, that those accused of crimes had a fair opportunity to present their defenses, and that any verdict was based on our criminal justice system’s best efforts at ascertaining the truth.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24482771-order-on-motion-to-disqualify

I suspect the Judge wrote this with a knowing eye to the criticism that this decision will receive from supporters of the former President (and most likely, as well, defenders of DA Willis). This quote also signals what Judge McAfee is focused on to guide his adjudication of this complex case.

FILED UNDER: 2023 Election, 2024 Election, Crime, Law and the Courts, US Politics, , , ,
Matt Bernius
About Matt Bernius
Matt Bernius is a design researcher working to create more equitable government systems and experiences. He's currently a Principal User Researcher on Code for America's "GetCalFresh" program, helping people apply for SNAP food benefits in California. Prior to joining CfA, he worked at Measures for Justice and at Effective, a UX agency. Matt has an MA from the University of Chicago.

A Photo for Friday

"Church Zone"

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Church Zone

“Church Zone”

March 10, 2024

New Orleans, LA

FILED UNDER: Photo for Friday, Photography
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Ides of March Forum

· · 100 comments

FILED UNDER: Open Forum
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

MAGA didn’t come from nowhere

The roots of MAGA run deep, through places like my old home.

· · 16 comments

When I was a teen, as soon as I received my driver’s license — a critical rite of passage anywhere, but especially in Southern California — I was out the door. After school, I often spent time at the glorious Huntington Beach Library, which was chock full of great books. (A collection of essays and short stories, such as “Billy Budd,” which addressed the big questions of moral philosophy was a particularly cherished find.) At the library, I’d do my homework, find something interesting to read, and figure out where to go next. Often, that was the excellent Balboa Theater in Newport Beach, which ran a rapidly changing, highly eclectic sample of movies that became the basis of my early film education beyond what was on TV. Or I might just make a late visit to the beach, wet my feet in the ocean, and then head home.

Earlier this week, I was shocked, but not surprised, that the Huntington Beach Library is the latest Kulturkampf battleground. It’s a minor skirmish, compared to, say, Ron DeSantis’ war on vaccination, saying “gay” in schools, and the Disney Corporation. But for me, it’s personal. The Huntington Beach mayor and majority of city council members are very right-wing, and they’ve ordered the library to move “sexually explicit” material from the children’s section to a special, guarded collection. What explicit material was already in the children’s section, you may ask? Here are some examples:

Obviously, telling a girl what to expect when her period starts is not what we normally mean by “sexually explicit.” Nor is a book about potty training. Sweeping these books, and others, in the city council’s dragnet is a natural outcome of the vagueness of the edict:

In the bright, ample children’s section, librarians began their review by flipping through books on shelves dedicated to the human body, health and puberty.

The librarians debated whether to move certain books, like one, a science book, with an illustration of a nude male body showing the muscular system, and another with a page full of photos, one of which showed the top half of a female toddler in a bathtub. The former stayed on the shelf; the latter got moved.

They also decided to remove a book that had information about miscarriages, though it had no accompanying photos.

Huntington Beach’s city council isn’t concerned with making fine distinctions among educational content on one side of an imagine fence, and titillation and pornography on the other. If it were, it would have done more than refer the librarians to Wikipedia for a definition of “sexually explicit.” Nor is this campaign merely an effort to err on the side of caution, when it comes to tender young minds.

Instead, the children’s section of the Huntington Beach Public Library is part of a larger campaign:

In the past year alone, the council — which is technically nonpartisan like all local bodies in the state — has championed a laundry list of MAGA priorities: It barred the Pride flag from flying on city property, banned mask and vaccine mandates, established a panel to review children’s library books for sexual content, and condemned President Biden’s immigration policies.

Huntington Beach, as you might remember, was the site of some of the loudest protests against masking. It has become a magnet for MAGA believers like the four members of the city council and the mayor, who are pushing these initiatives. They share the same MAGA revulsion for a world changing around them:

“We’re living in a state that’s not welcoming to us; conservative values are not really welcomed,” said Gracey Van Der Mark, Huntington Beach’s mayor and one of the council’s four Republicans. “We just want a safe space for people who share our values. And why shouldn’t we have that?”

Orange County has undergone a striking shift in the last couple of decades. It was once not only a deeply conservative part of the state, but also ground zero for both politicized Christian evangelicalism and Goldwater-style right-wing politics. (For an excellent account of the Goldwater-style Republicanism in Orange County history, see Lisa McGirr’s Suburban Warriors.) In the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties, voters elected Congressional representatives like John Schmitz, a member of the John Birch Society, Bob “B-1” Dornan, and Dana Rohrbacher.

The political situation has changed. With other demographic shifts, the county has become more purple than deep red. As a result, the Bircher or Bircher-ish Republicans have had less success: for example, Democratic opponents beat both Dornan and Rohrbacher. This has only heighten the sense of their former supporters as being under political, demographic, and economic siege, and made them willing to transfer their votes to people like the mayor of Huntington Beach and its MAGA majority on the city council.

Right wing extremism, including its most violent strains, flowers in regions undergoing these types of changes. But this worldview didn’t just spring into existence ex nihilo, several years ago..

Growing up in Orange County, I saw in real time the genesis of a triumphalist Christian evangelicalism, given solid form in places like the Crystal Cathedral and Melodyland. I also saw it become rapidly politicized. Long ago, some evangelicals were making false claims about how the United States was founded as a Christian nation.

The antipathy to people not of the Caucasian persuasion isn’t new, either. While immigrants were always accepted as a fact of life to some degree (for example, immigrant labor was the basis of the orange-producing farms that gave the county its name), sudden increases in immigrant populations, such as the influx of Vietnamese refugees from the fall of South Vietnam, created a strong backlash. Complaints about signs in unfamiliar languages, such as Vietnamese and Korean, were regular features of life in Orange County. So were nasty jokes about Central American refugees, using derogatory terms I prefer not to repeat.

Gays and lesbians (LGBTQ+ wasn’t an acronym yet) were also unwelcome, at least for some Orange County residents. The gay community center a few blocks from our home was vandalized. At a lunch held at the home of a donor to a local institution of higher education, one of the hosts casually said, “I don’t understand why the gays want all these special privileges.” (I was compelled to point out that being treated the same as everyone else was hardly “special.”) Anxieties about gay and lesbian “recruitment” was also commonplace.

Other precursors of MAGA also existed in Orange County. As I mentioned earlier, Bircherism was stronger in Orange County than many other parts of the state, and certainly the country. Bircherism brought with it a conspiratorial mindset. On a couple of occasions, someone recommended that I read None Dare Call It Conspiracy to get the real story of how a power elite controlled everything in America, behind the scenes. Even before the Satanic Panic, which largely turned on the axis of the McMartin Preschool fiasco, I encountered a few people who thought that Satanists were also hiding in the shadows, not just in Washington, DC, but in places like Newport Beach.

These proto-MAGA sentiments never had ambitions beyond Orange County. They appeared in editorials in the Orange County Register, the platforms of local politicians, the interactions with minority groups, and yes, occasional concerns about the content of the public library. Orange County politics remained, more or less, exactly that, the warp of weave of life in a famously right-wing county, and not even necessarily representative of what many Republican voters preferred.

That was only mildly comforting to me, when I was an adolescent and young adult living there. I always feared that these right-wing forces could take a much darker turn, the same off-ramp to catastrophe that other countries had mistakenly followed. Twenty or thirty years ago, people like the city council members and mayor of Huntington Beach would have been dismissed as somewhat comical, mostly innocuous characters, just another byproduct of life in Orange County. Today, there are part of something larger, and vastly more dangerous.

No longer are Christian Dominionist opinions confined to kooks like the Reverend Gene Scott, a staple of late-night TV in Southern California. Today, a broad swath of Republican voters believe that the Bible, or at least their reading of it, should be the law of the land.

No longer are anti-immigrant, anti-gay, anti-anyone-not-like-us opinions limited to the occasional fringe candidate, or local TV blowhards like Wally George. Today, these forms of bigotry are mainstream opinions for many elected officials, and the regular output of major media figures like Tucker Carlson.

No longer are deranged conspiracy theories rarely encountered, and usually of limited duration and impact. (Though I say that not to minimize the considerable damage that the Satanic Panic did.) Today, they’re part of a sizeable, sustained political movement, QAnon, that deifies Donald Trump as a savior against a sinister cabal of Satanic, liberal pedophiles. And that’s just one conspiracy theory among many, part of a nexus of belief in sinister forces in a secret war against the common, decent folk.

Huntington Beach is now roughly half of America. What used to be local is now national.

There are middle chapters in this story that I can’t cover in a single blog post. For example, a critical development in the decades since I was in high school was the rise of talk radio, then the rise Fox News, then the rise social media, as increasingly powerful media for connecting people of similar feelings beyond the bounds of their city or county, telling them that they were right to be afraid and outraged, and providing them with a kaleidoscope of targets for their rage. Another development was the increasing anti-pluralist and nascently authoritarian messages transmitted through these channels. But again, these are topics too large for one post.

At best, what I can accomplish here is pointing out that MAGA has deep roots in modern American history. All those recurring interviews with Trump voters asking where did they come from, and why do they believe these things, have always missed the point. The interviewees don’t have much new to tell us, since their sentiments, in a more primitive and limited form, have always been around.

What has changed? These opinions grew into something vastly bigger, more vigorous, more intertwined, and more destructive. The fringe, extremist politics of places like Orange County evolved into the rampaging, insatiable MAGA megafauna of our perilous age.

The next time I visit Orange County, I’d love to visit the Huntington Beach main library, but it will be a bittersweet pilgrimage.

FILED UNDER: Open Forum, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Kingdaddy
About Kingdaddy
Kingdaddy is returning to political blogging after a long hiatus. For several years, he wrote about national security affairs at his blog, Arms and Influence, under the same pseudonym. He currently lives in Colorado, where he is still awestruck at all the natural beauty here. He has a Ph.D in political science that is oddly useful in his day job.

Thursday Tab Clearing

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FILED UNDER: Tab Clearing, , , , , , , , ,
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Deepfakes and Election Disinformation

A long-predicted threat has emerged.

· · 13 comments

AP (“Election disinformation takes a big leap with AI being used to deceive worldwide“):

Artificial intelligence is supercharging the threat of election disinformation worldwide, making it easy for anyone with a smartphone and a devious imagination to create fake – but convincing – content aimed at fooling voters.

It marks a quantum leap from a few years ago, when creating phony photos, videos or audio clips required teams of people with time, technical skill and money. Now, using free and low-cost generative artificial intelligence services from companies like Google and OpenAI, anyone can create high-quality “deepfakes” with just a simple text prompt.

A wave of AI deepfakes tied to elections in Europe and Asia has coursed through social media for months, serving as a warning for more than 50 countries heading to the polls this year.

“You don’t need to look far to see some people … being clearly confused as to whether something is real or not,” said Henry Ajder, a leading expert in generative AI based in Cambridge, England.

The question is no longer whether AI deepfakes could affect elections, but how influential they will be, said Ajder, who runs a consulting firm called Latent Space Advisory.

As the U.S. presidential race heats up, FBI Director Christopher Wray recently warned about the growing threat, saying generative AI makes it easy for “foreign adversaries to engage in malign influence.”

I first wrote about the deepfake (then “deep fake”) phenomenon back in February 2018, calling it “a looming crisis” that “is going to be next to impossible to combat.” Not surprisingly, the technology has evolved considerably in the six years since.

With AI deepfakes, a candidate’s image can be smeared, or softened. Voters can be steered toward or away from candidates — or even to avoid the polls altogether. But perhaps the greatest threat to democracy, experts say, is that a surge of AI deepfakes could erode the public’s trust in what they see and hear.

Some recent examples of AI deepfakes include:

— A video of Moldova’s pro-Western president throwing her support behind a political party friendly to Russia.

— Audio clips of Slovakia’s liberal party leader discussing vote rigging and raising the price of beer.

— A video of an opposition lawmaker in Bangladesh — a conservative Muslim majority nation — wearing a bikini.

The novelty and sophistication of the technology makes it hard to track who is behind AI deepfakes. Experts say governments and companies are not yet capable of stopping the deluge, nor are they moving fast enough to solve the problem.

As the technology improves, “definitive answers about a lot of the fake content are going to be hard to come by,” Ajder said.

My suspicion is that this will mostly serve to reinforce existing beliefs and predilections and, regardless, be most impactful among the most credulous. But the larger point is that this will make people even more skeptical that there is such a thing as “truth” or a credible information source.

Some AI deepfakes aim to sow doubt about candidates’ allegiances.

In Moldova, an Eastern European country bordering Ukraine, pro-Western President Maia Sandu has been a frequent target. One AI deepfake that circulated shortly before local elections depicted her endorsing a Russian-friendly party and announcing plans to resign.

Officials in Moldova believe the Russian government is behind the activity. With presidential elections this year, the deepfakes aim “to erode trust in our electoral process, candidates and institutions — but also to erode trust between people,” said Olga Rosca, an adviser to Sandu. The Russian government declined to comment for this story.

China has also been accused of weaponizing generative AI for political purposes.

In Taiwan, a self-ruled island that China claims as its own, an AI deepfake gained attention earlier this year by stirring concerns about U.S. interference in local politics.

The fake clip circulating on TikTok showed U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman, vice chairman of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, promising stronger U.S. military support for Taiwan if the incumbent party’s candidates were elected in January.

Wittman blamed the Chinese Communist Party for trying to meddle in Taiwanese politics, saying it uses TikTok — a Chinese-owned company — to spread “propaganda.”

A spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, Wang Wenbin, said his government doesn’t comment on fake videos and that it opposes interference in other countries’ internal affairs. The Taiwan election, he stressed, “is a local affair of China.”

It’s hardly surprising that Russia and China are leading the way here. Disinformation has long been at the heart of their governing culture. But we’ll almost certainly see this infect the 2024 U.S. elections. Indeed, it’s already started to a very modest degree:

Audio-only deepfakes are especially hard to verify because, unlike photos and videos, they lack telltale signs of manipulated content.

In Slovakia, another country overshadowed by Russian influence, audio clips resembling the voice of the liberal party chief were shared widely on social media just days before parliamentary elections. The clips purportedly captured him talking about hiking beer prices and rigging the vote.

It’s understandable that voters might fall for the deception, Ajder said, because humans are “much more used to judging with our eyes than with our ears.”

In the U.S., robocalls impersonating U.S. President Joe Biden urged voters in New Hampshire to abstain from voting in January’s primary election. The calls were later traced to a political consultant who said he was trying to publicize the dangers of AI deepfakes.

The report goes on to note that the technique will be especially powerful in countries with relatively uneducated populations, noting particular concern about upcoming elections in India and Indonesia.

Not surprisingly, the EU is being more proactive on this than we are:

The European Union already requires social media platforms to cut the risk of spreading disinformation or “election manipulation.” It will mandate special labeling of AI deepfakes starting next year, too late for the EU’s parliamentary elections in June. Still, the rest of the world is a lot further behind.

The world’s biggest tech companies recently — and voluntarily — signed a pact to prevent AI tools from disrupting elections. For example, the company that owns Instagram and Facebook has said it will start labeling deepfakes that appear on its platforms.

But deepfakes are harder to rein in on apps like the Telegram chat service, which did not sign the voluntary pact and uses encrypted chats that can be difficult to monitor.

Naturally, there’s some backlash:

Some experts worry that efforts to rein in AI deepfakes could have unintended consequences.

Well-meaning governments or companies might trample on the sometimes “very thin” line between political commentary and an “illegitimate attempt to smear a candidate,” said Tim Harper, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington.

I’m skeptical on this front. Parody is a legitimate form of political speech but using deepfake technology for that purpose would seem to cross a line. We shall see.

Major generative AI services have rules to limit political disinformation. But experts say it remains too easy to outwit the platforms’ restrictions or use alternative services that don’t have the same safeguards.

Even without bad intentions, the rising use of AI is problematic. Many popular AI-powered chatbots are still spitting out false and misleading information that threatens to disenfranchise voters.

And software isn’t the only threat. Candidates could try to deceive voters by claiming that real events portraying them in an unfavorable light were manufactured by AI.

“A world in which everything is suspect — and so everyone gets to choose what they believe — is also a world that’s really challenging for a flourishing democracy,” said Lisa Reppell, a researcher at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems in Arlington, Virginia.

More threats to our democracy we don’t need.

FILED UNDER: Democracy, Science & Technology, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Thursday’s Forum

· · 76 comments

FILED UNDER: Open Forum
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

A Modest Racial Realignment

Explaining the inexplicable.

· · 21 comments

Russell Contreras, the Justice and Race reporter at Axios (and before that on a similar beat at AP for many years) looks at a number of polling trends to analyze “Democrats’ big vulnerability: Why they’re losing Black, Hispanic voters.

The topline result will be familiar to OTB readers, as we’ve been discussing this for a few years now:

New data shows that Democrats’ longtime advantage with Black, Latino and Asian American voters has shrunk to its lowest point in more than 60 years — creating a massive vulnerability for President Biden and congressional Democrats.

Why it matters: One of the most loyal parts of the Democratic coalition is suddenly in danger. Black and Hispanic men could vote Republican in numbers not seen since President Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected in the 1950s.

The big picture: Latinos, the nation’s largest non-white group, still lean Democratic. But they’ve been shifting Republican over the last two decades, and are no longer the slam-dunk Democrats they were in 1960 when JFK ran for president.

By the numbers: Democrats’ advantage among Black, Latino and Asian voters is at its lowest since 1960, Financial Times columnist and chief data reporter John Burn-Murdoch found by analyzing a massive set of polling data.

The intrigue: The drop-off comes even after Trump made several racist and bigoted comments about immigrants and people of color.

To be sure, the drop-off can be overstated: Blacks remain overwhelmingly Democratic and Hispanics are still more Democratic than Republican. Still, the trends are real and persist over a number of polls. The topline graphic Contreras uses is built on a quarter century of Gallup polling:

Last month’s Gallup takeaway on this matter (“Democrats Lose Ground With Black and Hispanic Adults“) noted:

We’ve been speculating for quite some time 1) whether this is somehow a false reading, owing to skewed polling (I highly doubt it) and 2) how this could possibly be the case, given the Trump/MAGA explicit appeal to White nationalists. Contreras offers this:

Between the lines: “Part of this is due to fading memories and weakening ties. Black Americans who lived through the civil rights era still support the party at very high levels, but younger generations are wavering,” Burn-Murdoch writes.

Reality check: Not all people of color have deep ties to the Civil Rights Movement. Many of their families arrived in the U.S. after the 1960s, said Republican consultant Mike Madrid, who’s based in Sacramento.

“Hispanic” has always been an odd grouping for this purpose, as Mexicans fleeing poverty, Cubans fleeing Communism, and immigrants from Spain have little in common aside from linguistic heritage.* And it makes sense that, six decades after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Blacks would have moved beyond being united by old grievances. Indeed, that’s a very good thing, indeed, even though the vestiges of slavery and Jim Crow are still with us.

I’m not seeing crosstabs on the above-linked Gallup poll. I’d be interested in seeing the relationship between race and sex here. My strong guess is that the Republican shift among Blacks and Hispanics is predominantly among men.

There has clearly been something of a small-r realignment of our parties that accelerated under but predates Trump. The GOP started a populist shift with the rise of the Tea Party in the 2010 cycle and the progressive wing of the Democrats started taking back power from the New Democrat wing as early as Barack Obama’s defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2008 but certainly with the ascendency of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders over the next three or four years.

The upshot was that Democrats became the party of the college-educated while Republicans gained a larger share of the “working class.” While this was predominantly a resorting of White voters, we’ve seen some of this with Black and Hispanic voters as well.

__________
*The Gallup polling at least has the advantage of separating non-Hispanic Whites and Blacks, creating three major racial categories rather than overlapping racial/ethnic ones.

FILED UNDER: Public Opinion Polls, Race and Politics, US Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Trump Guts RNC

A purge of the professional staff for, well, reasons.

· · 34 comments

This work is in the Public Domain, CC0

WaPo (“Trump takes control of the RNC with mass layoffs, restructuring“):

Former president Donald Trump took charge of the Republican National Committee this week with the political equivalent of shock and awe — leaving dozens out of work, revamping strategic priorities and raising fears among some former officials about the party’s future support for down-ballot candidates.

The senior leadership has been almost entirely replaced or reassigned, while dozens of lower-ranking officials including state directors were either fired or told to reapply for their jobs. A nationwide network of community outreach centers, once a fixture of the party’s efforts to attract minority voters, will be shuttered or refocused on get-out-the-vote efforts. The much heralded “Bank Your Vote” program, aimed at getting Republicans to vote early, will shift to a “Grow The Vote” program focused more on expanding the party’s outreach to less likely Trump voters.

Trump’s team, led by campaign adviser Chris LaCivita, is bringing in allies with what LaCivita says will be a leaner, more aggressive operation with more political experience.

“It is about changing a mind-set,” LaCivita said in an interview Tuesday. “The RNC is as much a part of the Trump campaign as the Trump campaign is part of the RNC. It is really important from our standpoint that everyone understand in a campaign that will be unprecedented in history that everyone has the same stated goal.”

The RNC’s political director, its lead data officer and communications director have all been replaced, according to people familiar with the moves. The chief of staff and top counsel voluntarily left before LaCivita took over.

One of the most experienced lawyers in GOP politics, Charlie Spies, who recently served as the architect of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s shuttered presidential effort, will take over as chief counsel.

Additionally, LaCivita is installing Christina Bobb — a former OAN reporter who has espoused false claims that the 2020 election was stolen — as senior counsel for election integrity. Bobb is the author of a book called “Stealing Your Vote: The Inside Story of the 2020 Election and What It Means for 2024” and promoted the audit of Arizona elections.

[…]

The new leadership at the RNC has discussed a broader effort over the coming months to challenge voter identification and signature verification rules that were put into place for the 2020 election.

“The RNC’s new posture as it relates to litigation is much more offensive and much less defensive,” LaCivita said in the interview.

Some Trump allies privately questioned the hiring of Spies, a longtime GOP lawyer who previously worked for super PACs that supported the presidential campaigns of Republicans Mitt Romney in 2012 and Jeb Bush in 2016.

LaCivita praised Spies as one of the party’s top campaign attorneys, who is well respected by donors for his fundraising innovations and actively involved in election litigation.

Some former Republican officials — caught off guard by the dramatic changes — have expressed concerns about the takeover, which normally happens in some form at the end of an open primary fight. Former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, long a close adviser to Trump, was described as blindsided by the scale and speed of the changes, which target her efforts to balance Trump’s interest with the rest of the party’s interests.

“There won’t be a RNC operation to help the greater party. They don’t care about the greater party,” said a former RNC official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect future job prospects. “The RNC is important to lots of people in down-ballot elections. They’re cutting off any service that doesn’t provide help to anyone but Donald Trump. It’s just all about Trump.”

While this had been foreshadowed for quite some time, it’s still truly and utterly bizarre. A major shakeup in 2016, when Trump first became the nominee, at least makes sense: a huge swath of the RNC staff openly despised Trump and what he stood for. But this has now been a Trump-loyal apparatus for eight years.

Beyond that, even if the only thing Trump cares about is loyalty to him and his own re-election campaign, he needs to get Republicans elected across the board to be able to implement his agenda. This will almost surely make that harder.

Axios’ Sophia Cai (“‘A harbinger of things to come’: Trump’s RNC shakeup signals plans for 2025“) sees it as a warning sign:

President Trump’s ousting of a huge chunk of the Republican National Committee’s staff is a preview of what he plans to do with federal agencies if he’s re-elected in November.

Why it matters: The Republican Party is now effectively the Trump Party. It’s been remade in a way that echoes Trump’s 2025 plan to oust moderates and nonpartisan civil servants from the government, pack federal offices with loyalists and expand presidential powers.

Driving the news: Trump’s new team atop the RNC — led by new party chair Michael Whatley and Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump — fired 60 staffers on Monday.

What they’re saying: Trump die-hards cheered the RNC firings.

[…]

Zoom in: Trump has promised to gut the federal workforce by reintroducing an executive order known as Schedule F if he wins a second term.

These people are delusional. Thankfully, their incompetence makes their attaining control of the government less likely.

FILED UNDER: 2024 Election, US Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Biden and Trump Secure Their Party Nominations

The inevitable is all but official.

· · 9 comments

Donald Trump and Joe Biden portrait style

WaPo (“Biden and Trump secure their parties’ presidential nominations“):

President Biden and Donald Trump on Tuesday both secured their parties’ nominations for the presidency, formalizing a general-election rematch that many voters dread but that had appeared virtually inevitable for months.

Biden won a critical mass of delegates to the Democratic National Convention with a victory in Georgia, hours before Trump clinched the Republican delegates he needed with a victory in Washington state. The Associated Press quickly projected wins for both men in Georgia, Washington and Mississippi on Tuesday evening. Trump was also projected to win Hawaii’s GOP caucuses.

While I’ve paid rapt attention to American politics for some 45 years now, I must confess that I had all but forgotten that there were primaries yesterday, much less that both candidates were in striking distance of hitting their delegate threshold. Then again, both went into the day unopposed, so the outcome was not exactly in doubt.

And, so, the rematch begins in earnest.

The general election is effectively well underway, with Trump and Biden sparring over immigration, the economy, abortion and each other’s fitness for office. Biden’s State of the Union address last week resembled a campaign curtain-raiser as he sought to reassure voters about his age and reinvigorate swaths of the Democratic coalition that are not enthused about 2024. Trump’s campaign this week took control of the Republican National Committee and fired dozens of staffers as it sought to function as a single operation and catch up to Biden’s fundraising.

Biden is attacking Trump’s antiabortion record and disdain for many U.S. commitments abroad, and he argues that Trump poses a unique threat to American democracy after attempting to overturn the 2020 election. “Donald Trump is running a campaign of resentment, revenge, and retribution that threatens the very idea of America,” Biden said in a statement Tuesday after winning the nomination.

This is unlikely to excite the electorate but it is what it is.

After a primary race that took the candidates across the country to places including Iowa, South Carolina and California, the general election is expected to be waged largely in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, with the possible addition of North Carolina. In 2020, Biden won six of those states, narrowly losing North Carolina to Trump. Recent polling, however, has shown Trump leading in many of the battleground states, as well as nationally, as Biden faces low approval ratings.

“Biden’s biggest challenge is consolidation of the base,” Democratic strategist Joel Payne said. “Obviously, Biden is going to do a pretty robust outreach to moderates and Republicans — but the first thing he needs to do is consolidate his base.”

Squaring that circle is, of course, tricky. How does one energize progressives and minority voters while persuading conservatives who disdain Trump to vote for you?

FILED UNDER: 2024 Election, US Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Wednesday’s Forum

· · 51 comments

FILED UNDER: Open Forum
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Red Lines

The perils of speaking loudly while carrying a small stick.

· · 28 comments

Veteran NYT correspondent David Sanger observes, “On the Tripwire of a ‘Red Line,’ It’s Often Presidents Who Trip.

When President Biden declared over the weekend that he was drawing a “red line” for Israel’s military action in Gaza, he appeared to be trying to raise the potential cost for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as their relationship plummets to new depths.

But he never said what would happen, exactly, if Mr. Netanyahu ignored him and continued Israel’s military operation by invading the southern city Rafah, a step that Mr. Biden has said — repeatedly — would be a major mistake. It is unclear whether he hesitated because he did not want to signal what response he might be preparing, or because he did not want to be criticized if he backed away from whatever action he is contemplating.

Or perhaps, given his long experience in the Senate and the White House, he remembered that drawing red lines turned out badly for Barack Obama when it came to Syria, and for George W. Bush when it came to North Korea and Iran. American allies in the Middle East were stunned by Mr. Obama’s reversal. Mr. Bush was later judged to have invaded a country that had no nuclear weapons — Iraq — while the North tested its first nuclear weapon on his watch.

Mr. Biden’s line-drawing was immediately dismissed — and matched — by Mr. Netanyahu, who shot back: “You know, I have a red line. You know what the red line is? That Oct. 7 doesn’t happen again.” The prime minister was referring, of course, to the Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people in Israel, left scores more as hostages and precipitated a war now in its sixth month.

Such talk of red lines is hardly new: Leaders of all stripes, from heads of democracies to vicious autocrats, often invoke the phrase to describe moves that another country should not even contemplate, because the consequences would be more painful than they could imagine. The odd thing in this case is that the lines are being drawn by two allies who regularly celebrate how close they are but whose dialogue has begun to turn somewhat poisonous.

[…]

In public, the White House will not discuss the subject. At a briefing with reporters on Air Force One on Monday, as Mr. Biden headed to New Hampshire for a campaign event, a White House spokesman refused to say what price Israel would pay if it crossed Mr. Biden’s red line. And Mr. Biden himself ruled out cutting off any defensive weapons, like Iron Dome, the U.S.-Israeli missile defense project that has intercepted short-range missiles shot into Israel by Hamas.

“It is a red line, but I am never going to leave Israel,” he said in an interview with MSNBC last week. “The defense of Israel is still critical. So there is no red line I am going to cut off all weapons, so they don’t have the Iron Dome to protect them.”

“But there’s red lines that if he crosses,” he added, drifting off from completing the sentence — or the threat. “You cannot have 30,000 more Palestinians dead.”

In using the red-line wording, with its vivid suggestion of some kind of tripwire, Mr. Biden was also wading into dangerous territory for American presidents. Time and again in the past few decades, Mr. Biden’s predecessors have described limits that America’s adversaries or allies could not step over without invoking the most severe consequences.

And time and again, they have come to regret it.

The number of cases offered is few and, indeed, Obama’s famous Syria declaration is the only one that I recall using the phrase “red line.” But Sanger’s larger point—that declaring that another country “better not” do something without being prepared to deliver on an “or else”—is indeed fraught.

Students often raise the Obama example in seminar and, while I agree that it was an error, I note that he at least had the good judgment not to compound it with a bigger one: following through. Assad’s use of chemical weapons didn’t materially change the level of atrocities in an already atrocious war nor the American interest in intervention. Drawing U.S. forces into that war would have been far worse than having a little egg on our faces. (And there were face-saving maneuvers: putting the ball in Congress’ court, which bought time for a modest deal negotiated by Secretary of State John Kerry with the help of the Russians.)

Several OTB commenters argued, in response to my post yesterday morning on Netanyahu’s thumbing his nose at Biden’s red line, that we should immediately halt aid to Israel. But the fact of the matter is that Israel going into Rafah won’t materially change the nature of the conflict nor U.S. interests or public opinion. Biden simply isn’t going to abandon an ally responding ferociously to a horrific terrorist attack.

FILED UNDER: Middle East, World Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Tuesday’s Forum

· · 46 comments

FILED UNDER: Open Forum
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

SOTabs

A little late, but here they are.

· · 4 comments

FILED UNDER: Tab Clearing, , , ,
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Netanyahu Doesn’t Care About World Opinion

Israel's prime minister is defying red lines and humanitarian concerns.

· · 27 comments

Paul Ronzheimer, the deputy editor-in-chief of BILD and a senior journalist reporting for Axel Springer, the parent company of POLITICO, had two separate reports in the latter last evening attacking the Israeli prime minister. Which is striking, given the firm’s rather staunch pro-Israel stance.

Netanyahu vows to defy Biden’s ‘red line’ on Rafah.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he intends to press ahead with an invasion of the city of Rafah on the southern border of the Gaza Strip in defiance of United States President Joe Biden, who has warned such an offensive would be a “red line.”

Amid signs of increasing frustration with Netanyahu, the U.S. president told MSNBC on Saturday that he opposed an escalation of the conflict into Rafah, and that he could not accept “30,000 more Palestinians dead.”

Relief organizations have warned that an attack on Rafah on the border with Egypt — now a refuge for about half of Gaza’s 2.3 million population — would result in widespread civilian casualties. Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said it would be “a humanitarian catastrophe.”

When asked on Sunday whether Israeli forces would move into Rafah, Netanyahu replied: “We’ll go there. We’re not going to leave them. You know, I have a red line. You know what the red line is? That October 7 doesn’t happen again. Never happens again.” The prime minister was referring to the murderous Hamas raid that killed more than 1,160 people in Israel and triggered the war.

Without naming them, Netanyahu claimed he had the tacit support of several Arab leaders for driving ahead with the onslaught against Hamas.

“They understand that, and even agree with it quietly,” he said in an interview with Axel Springer, POLITICO’s parent company. “They understand Hamas is part of the Iranian terror axis.”

[…]

Israel’s prime minister also doubled down on his rejection of the possibility of a Palestinian state — a topic that pits Israel against most of the rest of the world.

“The positions that I espouse are supported by the overwhelming majority of Israelis who say to you after October 7: ‘We don’t want to see a Palestinian state,’” he said.

Netanyahu also directly addressed criticism from Biden, who has said the Israeli leader is “hurting Israel more than helping Israel.”

Netanyahu hit back, saying while he didn’t know “exactly what the president meant,” if Biden was saying he was contravening the wishes or interests of Israel, he was “wrong on both counts.”

“[The Israeli people] also support my position that says that we should resoundingly reject the attempt to ram down our throats a Palestinian state. That is something that they agree on,” Netanyahu said.

When asked about the European view that there cannot be peace without a two-state solution, Netanyahu replied: “Yeah, they would say it. But they don’t understand that the reason we don’t have peace is not because the Palestinians don’t have a state. It’s because the Jews have a state. And in fact, the Palestinians have not brought themselves to recognize and accept the Jewish state.”

Even in the case of what he described as a change of Palestinian “leadership” and “culture,” Netanyahu still insisted Israel should have full security control of all Arab territory west of the River Jordan.

Still, Israel’s leader was careful in his criticism of his American counterpart, and even more circumspect when asked whether he would prefer Republican candidate Donald Trump. “The last thing I want to do is enter the American political arena,” he said.  

For Biden it’s becoming increasingly important not to alienate the left wing of the Democratic Party in the run-up to the U.S. election in November. At the same time, polling indicates Israel continues to enjoy widespread support among U.S. voters.

Netanyahu denies Palestinians are starving

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has denied people are starving in Gaza and blamed Hamas for the lack of humanitarian aid entering the occupied territory.

Hunger and malnutrition are widespread in the Gaza Strip. The United Nations warns that famine is imminent, with the organization’s expert on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, accusing Israel of starving Gazans deliberately. Meanwhile, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s has said people in Gaza are closer to dying than to living.

Responding to these claims, Netanyahu said: “We don’t have that kind of information. That’s not the information we have. And we monitor it closely.”

“More importantly, it’s not our policy. Our policies are to put in as much humanitarian aid as we could,” Netanyahu said in an interview with Axel Springer, POLITICO’s parent company.

The U.N. has determined that one in six children under the age of two in northern Gaza are suffering acute malnutrition and emaciation. The World Health Organization has also said children are starving to death in northern Gaza.

[…]

Netanyahu said he had suggested a maritime route for aid from Cyprus in a conversation with U.S. President Joe Biden two weeks after the war began, countering assertions Israel has resisted sea-borne aid.

Asked why more aid isn’t reaching Gaza by land, Netanyahu said: “Hamas is coming at gunpoint and stealing the food.

“Humanitarian deaths and starvation is, for us, it’s a tragedy. For them, it’s a strategy. They think that this will help them place more pressure on Israel to stop the war, leave them in place so they can repeat the October 7 massacre.”

Oddly, the link to the Axel Springer interview is actually to the first of the two POLITICO reports.

Aside from the clickbait headlines, there’s no obvious reason to gin up two reports from one interview. Still, they draw attention to the obvious tensions between Netanyahu—and Israel’s Gaza policy writ large—and the Biden administration’s preferences and big parts of American and Western public opinion. Netanyahu is, to say the least, not a likable fellow and he doesn’t bother to sugar coat his policies for the latter audience.

At the end of the day, he prioritizes Israeli security and, frankly, his own continuance in power, over all other considerations. To a large degree, that’s understandable. Still, while Hamas is surely doing its best to maximize Palestinian civilian casualties—just as it did Israeli civilian casualties on October 7—the world is naturally going to blame Israel for the sheer scale of them. This is especially the case given that unclear connection between the havoc being wreaked in Gaza and the ostensible war aim of rooting out Hamas for good.

FILED UNDER: Middle East, World Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Monday’s Forum

· · 94 comments

FILED UNDER: Open Forum
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Sunday Tabs

· · 28 comments

Reuters, “US senators make new push to make daylight saving time permanent.” Headline self-explanatory. Keep scrolling for more of the obligatory stories explaining what DST is that appear twice every year.

Derek Thompson, The Atlantic, “America’s Loneliness Epidemic Comes for the Restaurant.” tl;dr: While the industry has almost completely recovered from the pandemic shutdowns, “American restaurants are shifting from independent operators to chains, from slow food to fast(er) food, from east to west, from city centers to suburbs, from lunch and dinner to breakfast and late night, and from eat-in to takeaway.”

NYT, “Toyota’s Hybrid-First Strategy Is Delivering Big Profits.” tl;dr: Long criticized for being slow to get on the electric bandwagon, the automaker is doing bang-up business taking the middle ground.

WaPo, “That one last phone call Joe Biden always needs to make.” tl;dr: Delaware Senator Chris Coons is consulted on most of the hard calls. Biden trusts his staff but understands most have never had to stand for election and needs a sounding board with the pulse of the voters.

POLITICO, “The Mystery Social Media Account Schooling Congress on How to Do Its Job.” tl;dr: A 20-year-old British econ student knows more about Congress than just about anybody.

CNBC, “The job more parents are taking to get a discount on their kids’ college tuition.” tl;dr: At least three people have taken jobs working for colleges to take advantage of employee discounts. (The story is presented as a trend analysis but offers no data, only a few anecdotes.)

Today Show, “Five Guys customers say its prices are ‘out of control.’” tl;dr: It costs upwards of $20 for one person to get a burger, fries, and a soft drink at the chain. People aren’t happy but, somehow, they’re still in business.

FILED UNDER: Tab Clearing, , , , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Fixing the Schiff-Garvey Problem

The mess in California hides a more pressing issue.

· · 28 comments

Two articles in local papers flagged by YahooNews cast more light on last Tuesday’s primary in California.

Ranked choice voting advocates Marcela Miranda-Caballero and David Daley take to the LA Times to argue that “Steve Garvey’s strange win is a loss for California election reform.” You’ll never guess their solution.

The Dodgers don’t usually get any intentional help from their archrivals, the Giants. But something that strange just happened in California’s primary: Former Dodgers great and current Republican U.S. Senate candidate Steve Garvey advanced to the general election along with Democratic Rep. Adam B. Schiff — after being elevated almost entirely by the other team. The former National League MVP’s long-shot bid for the Senate benefited from an estimated $35 million in television ads from a surprising source: Schiff and his allies.

Why did the Burbank Democrat spend a small fortune boosting Garvey’s name recognition and blanketing the airwaves with ads that touted the former first baseman’s conservative credentials? You might call it a squeeze play: Schiff wanted to keep his two closest Democratic competitors out of the fall race, and he succeeded. Garvey claimed the second-highest vote total in the top-two primary, while Democratic Reps. Katie Porter of Irvine and Barbara Lee of Oakland finished in third and fourth, leaving them out of the running.

This is a classic example of a problem that could be solved by ranked-choice voting, a tested, nonpartisan reform that discourages this sort of gamesmanship and more accurately represents what a majority of voters want.

While I generally dislike the “jungle primary” system used by California, decry candidates or parties spending money to advance weak candidates, and support ranked choice voting, it’s not at all clear how it would solve this particular problem. Schiff would still have benefitted from boosting a weaker candidate who wouldn’t be the second choice of enough Californians to defeat him. Indeed, one imagines Garvey voters would prefer Schiff to Porter or Lee, so RCV might actually enhance the incentives for gamesmanship.

Miranda-Caballero and Daley offer a twist on a pure RCV model:

One option is for California to adopt a “final four” model such as the one being used successfully in Alaska. Instead of advancing just two candidates from the primary, the state admits the top four to the general election, which is then decided by ranked choice.

This allows multiple candidates of different ideological stripes within a party to run against one another without splitting the field, which is particularly important in an overwhelmingly blue state like California. It also helps ensure that both major parties have at least one candidate in the general election. That could have allowed Schiff, Garvey, Lee and Porter to all make their cases before a much larger and more representative November electorate.

Aside from narrowing the race to fewer candidates early, I’m not sure why you’d combine instant-runoff voting with a runoff. Aside from forcing people to show up twice in a system that has a built-in runoff and creating significant added expense, it allows the most motivated voters to weigh in first. Regardless, I don’t see how this model solves the Garvey problem, either.

Longtime California journalist Jim Newton takes to the Palm Springs Desert Sun to argue “California Republicans have been reduced to a foil for Democrats. That’s not good for anyone.”

The Republican Party established the citizens initiative, referendum and recall in California. It championed tax increases, gun control and expanded abortion rights. Earl Warren, a former state party chair and chief justice of the United States, looked forward to welcoming 10,000 new immigrants every Monday when he served as governor.

The GOP now has a new role in the nation’s biggest state: a foil for Democrats.

That’s not good news for California. It’s not even good news for Democrats, whose one-party rule grows ever more calcified and arrogant in the absence of meaningful debate. But it’s where we are.

Warren has been dead for half a century and was last elected governor almost three-quarters of a century ago, so I’m not sure the example is overly salient. But it sets up a larger point.

After a few paragraphs rehashing the Senate race and one for LA District Attorney, Newton continues,

One-party rule narrows debate and alternatives. Whatever you think of Garvey, it’s discouraging that the ideas California Republicans once espoused now can be easily ignored by ruling Democrats.

This is the state that gave us Warren, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, Republicans who once connected with California priorities. They saw the value of environmental protection – as president, Nixon created the EPA – and celebrated the contributions of immigrants.

Those with long memories or access to history books will recall that conservatives in California once welcomed migrant labor, while César Chávez was among those advocating for tighter border controls, since those immigrants competed for jobs with members of his union.

Warren built roads and universities and was willing to raise taxes to invest in the state’s future. He championed universal health care and liked to say that his job required him to provide for 10,000 new Californians every week. He was elected three times – once, in 1946, as the nominee of both the Republican and Democratic parties.

As for Reagan, the icon of modern conservatism, he raised taxes, supported gun control and expanded abortion rights as California’s governor.

But the Republican Party has slipped away from that history and positioned itself increasingly out of step with most Californians. This is a state that prizes its environment – a state office building bears the slogan “Bring me men to match my mountains” – values individual autonomy and hence abortion rights, and has a long history and relationship with Latin America.

Again, Newton’s examples are ancient history. Reagan’s second term as California governor ended in 1975 which, again, is almost half a century ago. It was a different Republican Party and, indeed, a different California.

But one needn’t go back quite that far to when the GOP was not only competitive but actually dominant in California. Republicans won the state’s electoral votes in every election from 1952 to 1988 save the disastrous 1964 contest. Republicans won the governorship in 1982, 1986, 1990, 1994, 2002, and 2006.

While my preference would be that Republicans chose their own nominee for the general election, the real problem isn’t that Democrats can use the jungle primary to manipulate the November matchup but that the party is so anathema to California voters that boosting Garvey comes with little downside risk.

Modest systemic reforms could help make our elections more representative of the wishes of the people. But a sane GOP that didn’t have to write off California would fix a lot of problems. How the hell we get there, I haven’t the foggiest.

FILED UNDER: 2024 Election, US Politics, , , , , , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Pope Urges Ukraine to Surrender, er, Negotiate

The "courage of the white flag" is a horrible idea.

· · 24 comments

AP (“Pope Francis: Ukraine should have the courage of the ‘white flag’ and negotiate an end of the war with Russia“):

Pope Francis said in an interview that Ukraine, facing a possible defeat, should have the courage to negotiate an end to the war with Russia and not be ashamed to sit at the same table to carry out peace talks.

The pope made his appeal during an interview recorded last month with Swiss broadcaster RSI, which was partially released on Saturday.

“I think that the strongest one is the one who looks at the situation, thinks about the people and has the courage of the white flag, and negotiates,” Francis said, adding that talks should take place with the help of international powers.

Ukraine remains firm on not engaging directly with Russia on peace talks, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said multiple times the initiative in peace negotiations must belong to the country which has been invaded.

Russia is gaining momentum on the battlefield in the war now in its third year and Ukraine is running low on ammunition. Meanwhile, some of Ukraine’s allies in the West are delicately raising the prospect of sending troops.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said Saturday that Francis picked up the “white flag” term that had been used by the interviewer. He issued a statement of clarification after the pope’s “white flag” comments sparked criticism that he was siding with Russia in the conflict.

Throughout the war, Francis has tried to maintain the Vatican’s traditional diplomatic neutrality, but that has often been accompanied by apparent sympathy with the Russian rationale for invading Ukraine, such as when he noted that NATO was “barking at Russia’s door” with its eastward expansion.

Francis said in the RSI interview that “the word negotiate is a courageous word.”

“When you see that you are defeated, that things are not going well, you have to have the courage to negotiate,” he said. “Negotiations are never a surrender.”

The clarified comments are less outrageous than the original ones, which may well just be the function of an 87-year-old man conducting an interview in a second language. Still, the Vatican’s neutrality reaches beyond amorality into immorality.

While there comes a time when accepting defeat is the only humane option, the notion that a people who have been invaded should simply accept their defeat because victory will be costly is outrageous. And, while it might save lives in the short term, acceptance of that idea only encourages more attempts at conquest.

FILED UNDER: Europe, Religion, World Politics, , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Sunday’s Forum

· · 34 comments

FILED UNDER: Open Forum
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Diversity Without Quotas

It's harder than I would have thought.

· · 18 comments

No to racism

The NYT Upshot blog put together an interesting interactive feature modeling several ways to “Create a Diverse College Class Without Affirmative Action.” It turns out to be rather difficult.

Selective colleges and universities can no longer use race-based preferences in admissions to create a more diverse student body. But what if they gave a break instead to lower-income students? Or those from high-poverty schools? Or those who do relatively well academically despite challenges all around them?

To explore those questions — and how much racial diversity is possible without “race-conscious” admissions — the Upshot worked with Sean Reardon, a professor at Stanford, and Demetra Kalogrides, a senior researcher there, to model four alternatives to affirmative action.

I’m going to skip the discussions of methodology and just cut to the results and analyses.

Scenario 1 of 4: A preference for poorer students

In this scenario, we give a moderate boost to applicants on a sliding scale according to their parents’ income: from an extra 150 points for students from the poorest families, to 0 points for students from the richest ones. This creates the slope of the cutoff line you see above.

Because each of our scenarios admits a fixed class of 500 students, the results are zero-sum: As some students are newly admitted, others who might have been admitted under different policies no longer are. The magnitude of that effect — and whom it touches — differs depending on the criteria.

In this case, as more low-income students are admitted, some high-income students with SAT scores just above 1300 no longer get in. That trade-off creates significantly more economic diversity, as this table shows:

The share of admitted students from the top income quartile falls by about 12 percentage points.

But the shifts toward racial diversity are modest. The Black student share rises by just one percentage point. Why? Black families are over-represented among poorer households in America, but in terms of total numbers, there are still many more poorer white households.

For this reason, income is a relatively weak proxy for race in admissions. A preference for lower incomes produces just that: students with lower incomes, not necessarily a much larger share of Black or Hispanic students.

This is definitely a smaller impact than I would have expected. A 150 point SAT bonus is massive but barely moves the needle on racial makeup—a modest one-point increase for Black and Hispanic students. Upper quartile Whites take a significant hit but the benefits mostly go to poorer Whites.

So, they added another layer of boost.

Scenario 2 of 4: Adding school poverty

This scenario takes the 150-point income preference in Scenario 1 and adds a second 150-point preference for students in higher-poverty schools, as measured by the share of students in that school receiving free or reduced-price lunch. A low-income student in a high-poverty school could get as much as a 300-point boost.

This produces even more economic diversity than the preference for parental income alone. And it further nudges up the share of admitted Black and Hispanic students.

We know that students with equally low family incomes differ from each other in many ways. For example, low-income Black and Hispanic students are more likely than low-income white and Asian students to live in high-poverty neighborhoods and attend high-poverty schools.

And so if one goal of an admissions policy is to account for the compound disadvantages minority students often face, it may help to pull in more information: not just about their parents’ incomes, but also about their households, schools and neighborhoods.

Colleges could further hone a preference like this by pulling in more factors, including neighborhood poverty rates, parental education levels and parental wealth.

Do something like that, and “now you have a group of students who have overcome a lot more in life than the ones who have just been handed everything,” said Richard Kahlenberg, a researcher at the Progressive Policy Institute who has argued for this kind of robust class preference. He also served as an expert witness critiquing race-based admissions in the litigation that led to the Supreme Court decision.

On the one hand, you’re now really getting at a lot of what affirmative action was supposed to address, a boost to those who have been disadvantaged by our institutional design for generations. But even with a 300-point head start, the impact is modest: only three percent more Black students being offered a spot in the class.

So, they add another boost.

Scenario 3 of 4: Finding the outliers

Here, we’re not just giving a boost to students who come from disadvantage. We’re rewarding students who perform better academically than other students with similar backgrounds.

This strategy identifies, for example, a student who has an 1100 SAT score — but whose score is 250 points above the typical student who also goes to a high-poverty high school and who has low-income parents who didn’t attend college. This strategy also discounts some of the wealthiest students whose 1400 scores look less impressive when compared with their equally well-off peers.

Students who outperform their peers are academic outliers, and that may indicate something special about them: “We’re admitting students on the basis of striving: students whose academic achievement exceeded expectations based on the access to opportunity that they had,” said Zack Mabel, a Georgetown researcher who has modeled admissions scenarios similar in concept to this one.

Of the scenarios tested so far, this one does the most to produce both economic and racial diversity, compared with admitting students on test scores alone. It also produces significant shifts among high-income white students; their share of the admitted class is 27 percentage points lower than it would be in a test-only environment. The resulting average SAT score of the admitted class is also the lowest of the scenarios so far, at 1340.

So, we’ve now finally got a significant boost in Black offers. And a huge increase in Hispanic offers. This comes at a huge hit to upper-income Whites and a significant hit to upper-income Asians. Yes, the average SAT is now considerably lower but still above the 1300 floor.

In the last scenario, they go yet another step, adding candidates who aren’t even in the pool.

Scenario 4 of 4: Casting a wider net

To create this scenario, we expanded the pool of applicants to selective colleges by modeling a recruiting strategy targeted at predominantly minority high schools.

First, we pull into the applicant pool all students of any race with SAT scores above 1000 at high schools where at least three-quarters of students are nonwhite. Then we rerun the preference for beating the odds from Scenario 3 with this larger applicant pool.

Here, they’re arguably cheating. The whole premise of the experiment was to admit more Black and Hispanic students on an entirely race-blind basis. Now they’re factoring race in explicitly. That almost certainly won’t fly.

But it works!

This strategy most notably captures more Hispanic students, and it produces by far the biggest shift toward lower-income students. It broadly redistributes seats held in an SAT-only scenario by high-income white students and, to a lesser degree, high-income Asian ones.

This is indeed a radically more racially and economically diverse class. And they argue it’s legal:

Although colleges can no longer employ racial preferences in admissions, several legal scholars said they believe schools can still consider race in recruiting strategies. The Supreme Court, in turning away another recent legal challenge, has also signaled — at least for now — that it’s permissible for colleges to pursue diversity as an end goal so long as racial preferences aren’t the means to achieve it.

Of the scenarios we’ve shown, an expanded recruiting strategy requires the most work from colleges. But it’s also “the big overlooked gold mine here,” said Richard Sander, a law professor at U.C.L.A. who has worked on admissions strategies at the law school level.

Such a recruiting strategy would mean not just tweaking statistical preferences, but also building relationships with high school counselors, traveling to college fairs, and perhaps developing dual-enrollment courses that introduce high school students to college work.

This kind of outreach — “to me, it’s everything,” said Jill Orcutt, the global lead for consulting with the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. She was previously the associate vice chancellor for enrollment at U.C. Merced, the most diverse school in the University of California system.

This would almost certainly be litigated because the intent here is obvious and the impact of the changes, given the zero-sum nature of admissions, is disparate, harming White and Asian applicants. But let’s say it’s legal. These schools are already going back to an SAT-heavy model because it’s costly and time-consuming to use other metrics. Scenarios 3 and 4 would seem to be incredibly labor-intensive—although it’s quite possible that this sorting could be outsourced and shared.

Additionally, we’ve added four layers of advantages to get these students into the class. Is that merely correcting from structural disadvantage? Or are we now admitting a larger share of students who aren’t academically ready?

Aside from the fact that almost all of our discussion about higher ed continues to be focused on the tiny handful of hyper-selective institutions, what’s interesting to me in all of this is that the Upshot gang is lumping “Black and Hispanic” together as a group, even though the considerations would seem wildly different. While I have no doubt that there’s a long history of discrimination against the subclass of Hispanic/Latino citizens who are non-White, they don’t share the history of slavery and Jim Crow with Blacks. (And even Black is fraught as a category, in that, there’s a real tension between the descendants of American slaves and more recent immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean on who should get access to these programs.) Every race-neutral criterion used here benefits Hispanics and lower-income Whites and Asians more than it does Blacks.

FILED UNDER: Education, Race and Politics, , , , , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Saturday’s Forum

· · 76 comments

FILED UNDER: Open Forum
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Porter Complains About ‘Rigged’ Election

Here we go again.

· · 18 comments

POLITICO (“Katie Porter pulled a Trump move after losing. Democrats are livid.“):

Fellow Democrats are excoriating Rep. Katie Porter for saying her opponents, including rival Rep. Adam Schiff, sought to “rig” California’s Senate primary — language that echoes former President Donald Trump’s election denialism.

Porter finished a distant third in the Super Tuesday contest behind Schiff and Republican Steve Garvey. The swift reaction to her social media outburst underscores how California’s enormously expensive Senate race — for a likely safe Democratic seat — has left lingering bruises. It also raises warnings for Democrats tempted to use rhetoric they’ve condemned as undermining public trust in the nation’s elections.

Porter’s claim spurred an indirect rebuke from Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who wrote that California’s vote was “not rigged.” And Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who formerly oversaw California voting as the state’s top elections official, called the notion “ridiculous” without naming Porter.

“It’s not rigged,” Padilla told POLITICO. “As the former secretary of state of California, I can assure you of the integrity of the elections and the results.”

Porter failed to advance beyond the primary after Schiff and a pro-Schiff Super PAC spent millions to buoy Garvey, a former baseball star and first-time political candidate who ran a lackluster campaign. The legal and well-established tactic under California’s top-two primary system nevertheless fueled criticism of Schiff backing a Republican to smooth his path to victory in November.

Porter had already assailed that “brazenly cynical” approach, and she lashed out again on Wednesday in an X post blaming her loss on “billionaires spending millions to rig this election.” She doubled down with a Thursday post saying the vote had been “manipulated by dishonest means.”

On social media, self-identified Democratic voters — including some who said they had supported Porter — expressed alarm that she would insinuate the vote was manipulated.

The backlash was especially notable after a primary campaign in which Porter and other Democrats regularly condemned Trump as an authoritarian threat to democracy. Schiff made that case most forcefully, capitalizing on his fame as an anti-Trump antagonist. The former president repeatedly alleged without evidence that California’s elections are riddled with fraud.

Porter positioned herself as a scourge of moneyed interests that she says corrupt the political process. In addition to facing a spending deluge from the pro-Schiff PAC, Porter was bludgeoned by a cryptocurrency industry offensive.

Caleb Ecarma at Vanity Fair (“Katie Porter Doubles Down on Claim Her Election Loss Was ‘Rigged’”):

That a Democratic lawmaker, and a particularly progressive one, would accuse her political adversaries of rigging an election is a curious choice. The term has become all but synonymous with Donald Trump following his refusal to accept his 2020 loss as legitimate. But rather than backpedal, Porter doubled down after receiving a wave of criticism. “‘Rigged’ means manipulated by dishonest means. A few billionaires spent $10 million+ on attack ads against me, including an ad rated ‘false’ by an independent fact-checker,” Porter wrote Thursday in a follow-up statement. “That is dishonest means to manipulate an outcome.”

“I said ‘rigged by billionaires’ and our politics are—in fact—manipulated by big dark money,” she continued. “Defending democracy means calling that out. At no time have I ever undermined the vote count and election process in CA, which are beyond reproach.”

Matt Lewis at The Daily Beast (“Katie Porter’s Ridiculous ‘Rigged’ Election Sour Grapes“):

To be sure, Porter isn’t claiming that she actually won the election or that the vote count was rigged. Still, you would think she would be a little more careful about tossing around the very term that Donald Trump has weaponized for the last several years.

For years now, people like yours truly have been warning others about the dangers of heated rhetoric that undermines institutions, tears apart the social fabric, and questions the sanctity of elections.

Given the context, responsible leaders should avoid using such rhetoric for the good of the nation. This is true irrespective of whether one is in favor of campaign finance reforms or other structural changes to our electoral system.

Aside from failing to guard her tongue (or Twitter hand, as it were), one gets the sense that politicians like Porter and Trump (and Stacey Abrams) are simply not prepared to admit defeat and accept responsibility for a failed political campaign.

It’s understandable that Porter, who has gained some fame as a progressive pundit, might resent garnering just 14 percent of the vote. But making excuses for poor performance won’t help. As CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski noted: “She lost by 20 points, but is saying the election is rigged because she was outspent.”

It’s also important to note that if Porter had simply won more votes than Garvey—a political novice—she’d still be in the runoff (in California, the top two candidates advance to the runoff, irrespective of political party).

And Porter isn’t the only ungracious loser. According to The New York Times, “Porter’s supporters described Mr. Schiff’s ad strategy as cynical and sexist, noting that it had the effect of locking out a qualified woman from the general election, which will leave the state without a female senator for the first time since 1992.”

If you’re keeping score at home, Porter’s claim is that she didn’t lose to Schiff (a prominent ally of Nancy Pelosi who made a name for himself as an opponent of Donald Trump) because he was a better candidate who has been around longer. She lost because billionaires rigged the system and because Schiff ran a sexist campaign.

Even if this were true, it’s not the kind of thing you would complain about publicly; to do so would label you as a sore loser and not a team player. Here, the maxim “Don’t get mad, don’t get even, get ahead” should rule the day.

Besides, it’s not like she’s as pure as the driven snow. The truth is that Katie Porter takes money from rich people. Every prominent Democratic (and Republican) politician takes money from rich people. Once you accept these terms, then—if you want to win an election—you have to raise enough money to combat what others say about you. Those are the rules. I didn’t write them, but every politician must abide by them.

At the end of the day, I think this is bigger than one race. I think this is a trend. Porter’s behavior tells us a lot about where we are as a society. Instead of graciously conceding defeat, politicians increasingly pretend they won. And even if they don’t go quite that far, they pretend that they somehow would have won (in Porter’s case, she would have overcome a 20-point deficit) if those meddling billionaires hadn’t gotten involved. To save face (and their fragile egos), they make excuses and shift the blame.

I mostly agree with Lewis here but have some sympathy for Porter. Yes, it’s sour grapes and a bad look to whine about losing a race. That’s especially true in a contest in which the eventual winner started in front and never gave up the lead. Here’s the polling aggregate from FiveThirtyEight:

Yes, echoing Trump’s language is especially problematic when “Democracy Is At Stake” is your party’s main election theme. And, yes, whining about the unfairness of it all has been a growing trend.

At the same time, as I noted two weeks ago when I first learned of the effort by Schiff supporters to boost Garvey and ice Porter out, this growing practice is simply unsporting. Calling the outcome “rigged” is silly. But, yes, Schiff and his billionaire pals spent a boatload of money ensuring that someone that has no chance at winning in November appeared on the ballot. It’s not surprising that Porter and her supporters are angry.

Then again, Porter ruffled some feathers of her own when she rushed to begin her campaign for Dianne Feinstein’s seat before Feinstein announced whether she’d run again—and did so in the midst of a natural disaster that killed more than a dozen Californians.

All in all, though, this is just a dumb move on Porter’s part. She’ll need the good will of Schiff and other California Democrats if she wants a political career in the future.

FILED UNDER: 2024 Election, US Politics, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Britt’s Response

Well, that was something.

· · 31 comments

So, having watched the entire SOTU, I decided to also do something I haven’t done in a very long time and watch the GOP response, delivered by one of the Senators from my state of residence, Katie Britt of Alabama.

Let me note that I have long thought this is a no-win speech, regardless of party and regardless of who the president is. You are always going to be going after the most powerful person in the world who is operating on a stage that cannot be replicated. These things are mostly forgettable, except when the person giving them does something noteworthy, like Senator Rubio’s infamous water bottle bit. (And I do expect that Senator Britt is going to be a character on SNL this weekend).

While I fully understand the opposition party’s desire for screen time, and also the undeniable attraction for a rising politician to get this kind of attention, I cannot think of an example that actually led to a given politician using this speech as a catapult to higher office. Although I may be forgetting someone who was able to capitalize.

Regardless, this was a weird speech given in a very weird manner. I am trying to put my finger on the whole thing. Part of it is that it was full of weird tonal swings. For example:

More clips here, via The Intelligencer: Katie Britt’s America Sounds Scary, But Not As Scary As Katie Britt.

I do have a bone to pick with that write-up, however:

But on Thursday night, she came across as perhaps the less impressive of the two Alabama senators — and her colleague is Tommy Tuberville.

I’m sorry, but as odd as the tonal swings were in this speech, Tuberville would have been a whole other ballgame of bad.

In general, I think that she was kind of doing a more intelligent and coherent version of Sarah Palin with a dash of Trump’s “American carnage” inauguration speech thrown in, but with a smile and in a kitchen.

A few observations:

  1. I am very tired of the kitchen table imagery. I understand what the goal is, but it is just tiresome at this point. (Also: weird imagery to suggest that she belongs in the kitchen–and I know enough about her to know that I think this did her a disservice).
  2. The notion that the border problems are this scary is just pure xenophobia. Yes, what happened to Laken Riley is terrible. That it tells us anything about the border or immigration policy is nonsense. N=1 is no way to make policy.
  3. The IVF thing is just amazing to me. The logical consequence of the GOP position on reproduction is exactly what the Alabama Supreme Court stated: that fertilized eggs are people. For the GOP to now try and make IVF a pro-life position is utterly nonsensical within the arguments they themselves have been making for decades.
  4. If Britt is concerned that retirees can’t afford both food and medicine without taking on part-time jobs, then maybe we have a problem with healthcare policy in this country.

More coverage:

In the Republican Party’s official response to President Biden’s State of the Union address, Ms. Britt delivered a jarring speech that toggled between an increasingly strained cheerfulness and a fierce glare as she gave ominous warnings about illegal immigration.

FILED UNDER: 2024 Election, US Politics, , , , , , ,
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Strong February Jobs Report

The numbers continue to be strong.

· · 3 comments

Via the NYT:

It was the third straight month of gains above 200,000, and the 38th consecutive month of growth — fresh evidence that after surging back from the pandemic shutdowns, America’s jobs engine still has plenty of steam.

[…]

The previous two months, December and January, were revised down by a combined 167,000 jobs, reflecting the higher degree of statistical volatility in the winter months. That does not disrupt a picture of consistent robust increases, which now looks slightly smoother..

At the same time, the unemployment rate, based on a survey of households, increased to a two-year high of 3.9 percent, from 3.7 percent in January. A more expansive measure of slack labor market conditions, which includes people working part time who would rather work full time, has been steadily rising and now stands at 7.3 percent.

FILED UNDER: Economics and Business, US Politics, ,
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

SOTU Thoughts

Biden did what he needed to do.

· · 14 comments

While I have not watched the State of the Union speech on a regular basis for some time, I decided that this year’s was likely to have significant political salience, so I watched the whole thing. Keep in mind that I find the entire State of the Union speech to be largely pointless from a policy point of view. As such, I actually, disagree with James Joyner that there is anything “shameful” about it being a political speech. It has always been a political speech and the fact that it has become more unruly in my lifetime is not a reflection, in my view, that the speech has gotten more political, but rather is a reflection of how partisan politics (and media politics) have evolved during that span.

In simple terms, the SOTU has always been aimed primarily at audiences outside the chamber and really isn’t about convincing Members of Congress of much of anything.

As a general matter, I have come around to the position of my friend and sometimes co-author, Matthew Shugart, Down with the State of the Union. But I also have re-evaluated my overall view of the speech as one that is quite clearly a purely political act not much different from a convention speech. It is a chance for the sitting President to get a substantial amount of attention (but not like it was when I was a child in the 70s when it was literally the only thing on TV save what might be on the local UHF station).

At any rate, Biden had one main goal: not appearing old. He achieved that goal in spades. While he occasionally stumbled over words, that is nitpicking. After all, most speakers do stumble at times and, moreover, Biden has never been a grand orator. Beyond that, he was able to deal with hecklers in the moment. He was not “Sleepy Joe.” Indeed, the critics on Twitter seemed fixated on the idea he was too loud and speaking too quickly. One suspects that if the word on the street is that Biden was too hyper at the SOTU, the Biden campaign will be thrilled. (Or, indeed, fiery).

A second goal, in my view, for Biden was to reassure, if not invigorate, Democrats watching the speech. I think he did that. He was on the attack and did not mince words on issues like Ukraine, democracy, and the border.

The speech was hardly a rhetorical masterpiece. And yes, there were errors (including using the term “illegal” to describe the person who killed Lanken Riley, which will not sit well with progressives–as well as pronouncing her name as “Lincoln Riley,” which will be used as proof of his dotage, no doubt). However, all of this has to be judged against expectations. Democrats have been incredibly anxious about whether or not Biden is ready for a campaign. Last night suggests that he is. Meanwhile, Republicans have been making it sound like Biden can barely function, and he demonstrated last night that was not the case. I would note that that was a foolish picture to paint since it set a very low bar, which Biden clearly cleared.

I would note, by the way, that Biden isn’t going to convince the FNC/MAGA crowd that he isn’t senile. He just needs to convince enough undecideds/independents/swing voters that he is capable of doing the job. The question is, therefore, what signal was sent to the casual voter last night? And I think the answer is that Joe is not as sleepy as has been advertised.

FILED UNDER: 2024 Election, US Politics, , , , ,
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Biden Delivers ‘Fiery’ Campaign Speech

The state of the union is apparently fiery.

· · 31 comments

As has mostly been the case in recent years, I skipped the State of the Union last night. The reaction of the press to it was almost comically uniform.

Beginning with the overseas press:

BBC (“State of the Union: Biden draws election battle lines in fiery speech“):

President Joe Biden delivered a fiery State of the Union address on Thursday, taking repeated swipes at Donald Trump and covering the broad themes of his re-election campaign.

Mr Biden used the term “my predecessor” to refer to Mr Trump 13 times in a speech that lasted more than an hour.

He accused his likely election opponent of “bowing down” to Russia and criticised him over the Capitol riot.

Mr Biden also covered immigration, abortion, the economy and Gaza.

The atmosphere in the House chamber was raucous at times, with loud cheering from Democrats and heckling from some Republicans.

It was a spectacle more typical of a political convention than a State of the Union address – a constitutionally mandated report that is usually heavy on pageantry and policy.

But this is an election year and the stakes for Mr Biden were high. He was feisty and confrontational as he sought to draw the battle lines for his nascent campaign.

Reuters (“Biden takes on Trump and Republicans in fiery State of the Union speech“):

President Joe Biden on Thursday laid out his case for re-election in a fiery State of the Union speech that accused Donald Trump of threatening democracy, kowtowing to Russia and torpedoing a bill to tackle U.S. immigration woes.

In a 68-minute address to Congress, Biden, a Democrat, drew sharp contrasts with his Republican rival and gamely challenged Trump’s supporters in the chamber during a speech that was watched as much for the 81-year-old president’s performance as it was for his policy proposals.

Biden charged Trump, his Republican challenger in the Nov. 5 election, with burying the truth about the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol assault, bowing to Russian President Vladimir Putin and blocking a bill to tighten restrictions at the U.S. border with Mexico.

On the Middle East, the president said he had been working for an immediate ceasefire to last six weeks between Hamas militants and Israel, and he warned Israel against using aid to Gaza as a bargaining chip.
The greater thrust of his remarks focused on Trump, though Biden did not mention him by name.

Biden opened by declaring democracy under threat at home and abroad and criticizing Trump for inviting Putin to invade NATO nations if they did not spend more on defense.

“Now my predecessor, a former Republican president, tells Putin, quote, ‘Do whatever you want,'” Biden said. “I think it’s outrageous, it’s dangerous and it’s unacceptable.”

Biden, who pressed Congress to provide additional funding to Ukraine for its war with Russia, also had a message for Putin: “We will not walk away.”

France 24 (“Biden takes on Trump and Republicans in fiery State of the Union speech“):

President Joe Biden on Thursday laid out his case for re-election in a fiery State of the Union speech that accused Donald Trump of threatening democracy, kowtowing to Russia and torpedoing a bill to tackle US immigration woes. France 24’s international affairs editor Kethevane Gorjestani delivers her verdict on the president’s address. [This is paired with a video]

Domestically, CNBC’s Christina Wilkie continued the theme (“Biden electrifies Democrats, spars with Republicans in fiery State of the Union address“):

A spirited President Joe Biden delivered a fiery, partisan State of the Union address on Thursday, fit for an election year with enormously high stakes in a divided nation.

“Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault here at home as they are today,” Biden said early in the speech.

“What makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack, both at home and overseas, at the very same time,” he said.

“Overseas, [President Vladimir] Putin of Russia is on the march, invading Ukraine and sowing chaos throughout Europe and beyond. If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you, he will not,” the president said to cheers from Democrats and a applause to smattering of Republicans.

“My message to President Putin is simple. We will not walk away. We will not bow down. I will not bow down,” Biden said.

The president also celebrated Sweden’s ascension into NATO earlier in the day, as Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson sat to the left of First Lady Jill Biden in her guest box.

On domestic policy, Biden was even more confrontational than he was on foreign affairs, repeatedly calling out Republicans and sparring live on TV with some of the loudest voices in the GOP caucus.

As a coterie of conservative Supreme Court justices sat just feet away from him, Biden excoriated them for overturning the reproductive rights enshrined in Roe vs. Wade.

“In its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court majority wrote that, ‘women are not without…electoral or political power’,” Biden said.

Then he paused and said to them, “You’re about to realize just how much.” With that, Democrats in the chamber jumped to their feet and clapped and cheered.

You get the idea.

Others:

Astute readers will have noticed a theme.

Given the narrative by Trump and his fellow Republicans—bolstered by the national press—that Biden is a dotard deep into senility, coming across as “fiery” is almost certainly a good thing.

As a general matter, I find the increasing practice of turning what is ostensibly an annual report to Congress on the state of the union into a partisan rally shameful. But that genie’s long out of the bottle and Presidents using the forum to embarrass their opponents, call out the Supreme Court Justices who are expected to sit there stoically for opinions they dislike, and the like has become the norm. As has jeering the President from the stands.

Beyond that, while there are certainly policy issues where I disagree with him, the President sounded strong themes about American foreign policy leadership that, not so long ago, would have resonated with the Republican Caucus—indeed, could easily have been delivered by Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, or either George Bush.

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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

A Photo for Friday

"Stages of Spring"

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Stages of Spring

“Stages of Spring”

March 3, 2024

Pike Road, AL

FILED UNDER: Photo for Friday, Photography
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Post-SOTU Forum

Have at.

· · 40 comments

FILED UNDER: Open Forum
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Thursday Tab Clearing

· · 21 comments

FILED UNDER: Tab Clearing, , , , , ,
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter