Month: October 2022

It’s now the #4 economy in the world

I think that you can extrapolate from that that it’s also a ginormous contributor to America’s wealth. Check it out:

Gavin Newsom is as familiar as anyone with the media narrative of earthquakes, persistent wildfires, droughts, homelessness and companies fleeing California to Texas for a tax- and regulation-free lifestyle. This is nothing new. California’s governor recalls a 1994 Time Magazine cover story citing “a string of disasters rocks the state to the core, forcing Californians to ponder their fate and the fading luster of its golden dream.”

And yet, “the California dream is still alive and well,” the state’s 40th governor said in a Zoom interview a month before his probable reelection.

He’s not wrong. California’s economy has proven relatively resilient, first through the pandemic and now through the current period of elevated inflation. So much so, that the Golden State’s gross domestic product is poised to overtake Germany’s as the fourth largest in the world after the US, China and Japan. It had already leapfrogged Brazil (No. 7) and France (No. 6) in 2015 and supplanted the UK (No. 5) in 2017. Although many of California’s current figures won’t be published until 2023, estimates suggest the state may have already caught Germany, with at least one forecast implying California is ahead by $72 billion when considering the state’s recent growth rate.

California’s trajectory is most transparent in the growing divergence between its 379 companies with a market value of at least $1 billion and the 155 publicly-traded firms based in Germany meeting a similar benchmark. Whereas corporate California revenues and market capitalization rose 147% and 117% during the past three years, Germany mustered inferior gains of 41% and 34%, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The margin of Germany’s nominal GDP of $4.22 trillion over California’s $3.357 trillion last year was the smallest on record and is about to disappear, with Europe’s largest economy barely growing in 2022 and forecast to shrink in 2023.

“All this data continues to belie the dominant narrative and illusion” of California’s “best days being behind us,” Newsom said. “As somebody who’s grown up in California, I feel pride in California’s resilience, leadership, its entrepreneurs, its formula for success that goes back over half a century,” he said, highlighting the state’s “conveyor belt for talent.”

The truth is that California outperforms the US and the rest of world across many industries. That’s especially relevant with renewable energy, the fastest-growing business in California and Germany. The market capitalization of California companies in this business increased 731% the past three years, or 1.74 times more than their German counterparts, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Notable examples include Fremont-based Enphase Energy Inc., a solar and storage solutions provider, up 916%, or more than twice the 410% returned by wind-farm maker PNE AG in Cuxhaven along Germany’s North Sea coast. 

The dichotomy between corporate California and corporate Germany is most pronounced in their top three industries. California technology hardware, media and software saw sales increase 63%, 95% and 115% the past three years, boosting market valuations by 184%, 54% and 58%, data compiled by Bloomberg show. In Germany, health care, consumer discretionary and industrial products were erratic with a 43% increase and declines of 2% and 7% during the same periods. Market values rose a paltry 40%, 8% and 10%. 

California’s three-to-one growth advantage is similarly reflected in a comparison of the top 10 companies. Firms led by Google parent Alphabet Inc., Apple Inc. and Visa Inc. will see revenues rise 8% following last year’s 34% increase as they turn $100 of sales into $$49 of profit. They increased their employment by 10%. Germany, led by SAP SE, Deutsche Telekom AG and Siemens AG, will sell 4% more of their products in 2023, down from a 10% increase in 2021, while generating $44 of profit from every $100 of sales. The German workforce declined 2% on average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Germany, of course, has been severely impacted by the war in Ukraine. 

Still, with just 40 million people, the California economy is punching above its weight on the world stage. Job creation is a particularly strong area, with unemployment falling to 3.9% in July, the lowest since data was compiled in 1976, before rising to 4.1% in August. The gap separating the state from the US national rate of 3.5% is the narrowest since August 2021 and for the first time since 2006, California’s joblessness dipped below Texas (the largest two states for non-farm payrolls). The state’s jobless rate similarly outperformed Germany by almost a percentage point, the most since February 2020, data compiled by Bloomberg show. 

Contrary to the prevailing perception of business dysfunction and exodus of people since the start of Covid-19 pandemic, the San Francisco Bay area accounts for 78% of the market capitalization of all publicly-traded companies in California, up from 70% five years ago. San Francisco’s 42 listed companies, which forecasts suggest will see sales growth of 14% in 2023 and 2024, are 62% more numerous today than at the end of 2018 when London Breed became the first black woman and 45th mayor of the city. Oakland, home to the third-largest port in the state and eighth-largest in the US, has grown at a faster monthly rate (9.9%) than No. 1 Los Angeles (0.3%) and No. 2 Long Beach (8.7%) since 2015 when Libby Schaaf became the city’s 50th mayor. 

“There’s a reason why people continue to do business here,” Breed said in a City Hall interview with Bloomberg News earlier this month. “It’s because of the talent.” Breed also said that she’s hearing of people who are moving back to the Bay area. “A lot of the same people” who decided “to leave don’t want to stay in areas where they don’t feel there’s a community, culture — that’s what San Francisco brings to the table.”

Schaaf, who grew up in Oakland and completes her second term in January, agrees. “We value innovation but we also value diversity and equity,” she told Bloomberg News in an interview in her City Hall office earlier this month. “It’s nice to see those values are economically rewarded because California was very much lambasted” during the Trump administration.

California is not without its problems, god knows. Our big cities (I live in the big one) are dealing with the same problems all big cities are dealing with, particularly homelessness and property crime. There’s plenty of discontent among the citizenry, as always. But from any objective standard, California does not deserve the opprobrium that’s hurled this way by so many in America. It’s an economic powerhouse and we should be grateful it contributes so much to the greater good of this country. Instead, Republicans deride and degrade us and tell us to rake the forest even as they retreat to their corners and wail like two year-olds if anyone dares to criticize their states. It’s infuriating.

But we still have good weather … for now.

(And yes, the stupid voters)

Michael Cohen (not that one) takes on the notion that if Democrats lose it’s because they are all inept and have no idea what they are doing. And he homes in on the real issue. There’s a reason so many voters are subject to demagoguery (and, in fairness, super-charged charisma.)

I’m not saying the American electorate is dumb because that’s simplistic and masks that most Americans are indifferent, at best, to national politics. But let’s be clear: average political discourse in this country is not an Algonquin Fucking Round Table.

I’ll grant you the sample size is not huge, but in my experience talking to voters, their understanding of American politics is maybe a foot wide and half an inch deep (and these are the people who show up to campaign rallies and events). More often than not, they parrot the talking points they hear from politicians or whatever media source they last read.

Guess how many Americans, in a recent survey, could name the three branches of government? 47 percent. (For the record, it’s the executive, judicial and legislative branches). The same survey found that 55 percent knew who controlled the House of Representatives, and 61 percent agreed knew who controlled the Senate.

Ninety-one percent of Americans say the Supreme Court impacts their daily lives as citizens. But guess how many Americans can’t name a single Supreme Court justice? More than half.

Few Americans know what the Federal Reserve does or the role it plays in limiting inflation.

How about understanding fundamental constitutional rights? These results are from a recent survey by the Annenberg Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

“When asked unprompted to name the protections specified in the First Amendment:”

-Freedom of speech was cited by 63%, down from 74% in 2021 and 73% in 2020.

-Freedom of religion was named by 24%, down from 56% in 2021 and 47% in 2020.

-Freedom of the press was named by 20%, down from 50% in 2021 and 42% in 2020.

-Right of assembly was named by 16%, down from 30% in 2021 and 34% in 2020.

-Right to petition the government was named by 6%, down from 20% in 2021 and 14% in 2020.

I’m cherry-picking here, but the data is clear: Americans are, by and large, woefully ill-informed about how their government works.

I get it; Americans hate politics. They are not much interested in the policy issues that most of us obsess over. Nonetheless, I can assure you if the news media explained over and over again that inflation is a global phenomenon, it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference. Democrats could talk about the threats to American democracy until they are blue in the face. Reporters could write one story after another about GOP efforts to undermine democracy — and, by and large, they have done just that. There’s little evidence that it would motivate voters outside of pure partisans (and they are already motivated).

And if you don’t believe me, watch this simply amazing video of Republican voters whatabout-ing January 6:

Identity Is Everything

The other day, I looked at my various retirement holdings and almost cried at how much money I’d lost in the past year. Still, that decline in my financial fortunes will play no role in my voting decision this Fall. This would make me an unusual swing voter but a normal regular voter — because most voters make choices based not on particular policies or ideologies (most of which they don’t fully understand) but rather on their partisan and social identities. If you’re a Democrat, you vote for a Democratic candidate. Same if you’re a Republican. Voting identities, however, are not just about partisan affiliation. If you’re Black or White; a gun owner, a college-education woman, a non-college-educated man, an evangelical Christian, or an America Jew, etc., you’re personal identity is conflated with your political identity — and, in turn, that drives your decision-making on voting.

As a result, the vast majority of the electorate is immune to media reporting and political messaging because they already know who they are supporting before they know who is on the ballot. That is why political parties and candidates place such a significant emphasis on motivating their most loyal supporters. They know those people are almost certainly going to cast a vote for them.

What about swing voters? These ever-shrinking slice of the electorate, whose votes are most up for grabs, tend to be the least informed Americans. As the legendary political scientist Philip Converse wrote 60 years ago, in words that continue to resonate today, “Not only is the electorate as a whole quite uninformed, but it is the least informed members within the electorate who seem to hold the critical balance of power, in the sense that alternations in governing party depend disproportionately on shifts in their sentiment.”

Part of the reason is that, like most Americans, swing voters rarely see the connection between government action and their own lives (that’s partly why politicians rarely get credit for their legislative accomplishments). As the political scientists Larry Bartels and Christopher Aachen wrote a few years ago in their fantastic book “Democracy For Realists,” “voters are much more apt to punish their leaders than they are to reward them.” Bartels and Aachen also show that voters do a very poor job assigning responsibility for changes in their economic welfare. Their views on the economy are primarily based on what’s happening in the lead-up to Election Day — not the relative change over the entirety of a politician’s term. So, in other words, voters are more focused on what you’ve done for them lately — not what came before.

So Democrats can come up with the best messaging in the world, and they will still run into a brick wall on voters who a) always vote Republican, b) pay so little attention to politics that they don’t even hear it, c) lack the analytical skills to appreciate and understand the arguments Democrats are making d) base their voting decision on whims and their current sentiment when they cast a ballot.

Where political media has failed is in leading so many of us to believe that voting represents a rational decision-making process informed by careful consideration of the policy issues at hand.

Then again, maybe it’s a quasi-rational decision to vote on high gas prices because that’s something tangible that genuinely affects one’s life. Threats to democracy are largely speculative. Yes, January 6 happened, but Biden still became president, and the country didn’t collapse. I get why many politically-engaged Democrats think it’s a big deal (and I share that sentiment), but for swing voters, who already hate politics, think all politicians are corrupt and don’t see the connection between their own lives and political decisions made in Washington, all of this democracy talk likely seems like an abstraction.

But It Works On Me …

There’s another element to this fetishization of messaging that is always the most indirectly telling — the assumption that the best messaging is what appeals best to my biases. You see this in all three examples above: “I think this issue is important. Surely others feel the same.”

But here’s an unintentionally fantastic example from a recent newsletter post by Matt Yglesias. He notes that more than a few liberal commentators have complained that voters are willing to accept “literal fascism” and “female serfdom.” And he asks:

So to tempt voters away from literal fascism, have they been given candidates in the purple districts (D+4/R+4) who disagree with progressives about gun control? Who support banning late-term abortions? Who have qualms about trans women competing against cis women in college sports? Who favor changing asylum law to try to cut off the flow of migrants arriving at the southern border? Who think it’s a problem that college admissions offices discriminate against Asian applicants and low-income whites? I’m not saying every candidate in every swing district should dissent from party leaders on all those subjects, but how many dissent on any of them? For that matter, given that everyone agrees gasoline prices are politically significant, how much effort did Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Joe Biden put into thinking about how how to spur an oil production recovery back when they were planning the transition?

You don’t need to like or approve of the fact that some voters are more fearful of the mainstream Democratic Party policy agenda than they are of GOP kooks. But factually, it is true. And the mainstream party leaders have repositioned themselves to the left of where they were 10 years ago based on the incorrect idea that persuasion no longer mattered and you could win elections purely by amping up the base.

Here’s a funny thing about all these examples cited by Yglesias — they neatly align with his political biases. Go figure!

Maybe Democratic candidates should target voters “who disagree with progressives about gun control,” but is there any reason to believe that the most effective Democratic politicians are the ones who piss all over their party? Maybe that works for a Democratic candidate running in red state Ohio, like Tim Ryan, but it hardly seems optimal for a House Democratic candidate running in a suburban district where voters are particularly concerned about gun violence and are less likely to be gun owners. Maybe a Democrat could win some support by expressing “qualms about trans women competing against cis women in college sports.” But it seems more likely that the people who truly care about that issue lean toward voting Republican. Moreover, why would that issue be decisive for voters who, as poll after poll indicates, are more concerned about the economy, abortion, and guns?

One thing that constantly amazes me about so much of what masquerades as political analysis is that people who have no experience running campaigns, working on campaigns, talking to voters, and understanding the idiosyncracies of 435 individual districts or 50 American states have absolute certainty about what political messaging works in each of them — and what doesn’t. More often than not, their messaging critiques are heavily influenced by their personal biases and ideological priors and not a sophisticated understanding of voter preferences.

Moreover, none of us — even the most intrepid political reporters — knows the messaging in 35 Senate races and 435 House campaigns. Every House district and every state is unique. There is a reason campaigns pay good money for pollsters and set up focus groups — to understand what messages will appeal to persuadable voters. As a result, they know better than any of us what is likely to work and what isn’t — and to be clear, since every district and state is different, what works for them may not work in other places.

And, yet, at the end of the day, it still might not matter because partisanship is a helluva thing, there are a shrinking number of swing voters, and sometimes there are races that simply aren’t winnable. In fact, the overwhelming majority of elections this year will not be competitive at all. And in the handful of competitive races, there are a host of other factors that could influence voter choice: for example, whether a candidate is well-known, likable, or an effective politician.

I know it’s depressing to hell to hear that so many of our obsessions about national politics fall on deaf ears and that the billions spent on political advertising and outreach influence only a small segment of the electorate (and, generally speaking, the least informed among us). But there’s a reason I call this newsletter “Truth and Consequences.”

Of course, I do this too. I’m always criticizing the Democrats for failing and it always reflects my biases. It’s human. And I don’t necessarily think that anyone should defer to their judgment because “they are the experts” because really political strategy is more of a tea leaf reading and artistic endeavor than any kind of quantifiable science. So let a thousand opinions flourish.

For instance, I think that people who observed the events of January 6th (really, the entire Trump presidency with the GOP’s servile acquiescence) and came out of it believing that everyone’s corrupt and anyway it all worked out ok are either dumb or willfully obtuse. But that’s just me.

But I’m entirely in agreement that much of the voting public is ignorant, misinformed, often lazy, myopic and yes, stupid. They mostly see politics as a team sport, a fan club, a reality show or something else equally shallow. A lot of it is informed by their families, friends and community and isn’t very specific beyond that. And yes their political and social “identity,” however that’s defined, will lead most people to one of the two parties and because the two parties have less in common than any time in modern memory, it’s not a tough choice. It so happens that the public is pretty evenly divided and we are very dependent on those weird swing voters who are among the least informed and most idiosyncratic of all.

I don’t know that to do about it. But always blaming the Democrats for failing to have “the right message” really misses the point. They certainly need to do better. But I defy anyone to say definitively what that might mean other than fielding wealthy geniuses with the charisma of movie stars and the common touch of Real Americans in every single race. And even that would only take us part way.

“In hindsight, unquestionably”

The day before yesterday:

Yesterday:

It’s actually not as bad as you think. Barrack frames himself as a sort of victim of cancel culture because of his association with Trump. However, he also sideswiped him with some shade:

The 75-year-old California native, who led Trump’s 2016 presidential inaugural committee, revealed that he “thought that as soon as [Trump] was elected, he would be more moderate and more acceptable.” 

However, Barrack testified, his connection to the administration made shareholders of his company, Colony Capital, “upset” and was the reason he said he was “sitting with all of you today.”

Asked about the impact on his business, Barrack said, “The owners of public shares vote with their feet.”  And he added that with “the continued drama that this president found himself in … a lot of these institutional shareholders were upset that I was involved with the president.”

When asked if he regrets his support for Trump’s campaign and his association with the administration once in office, Barrack told the jury, “in hindsight, unquestionably,” adding that politicians, regardless of party, are “just involved in ugliness.”

It’s hard to say how Trump took this. He hasn’t responded to these comments. But he can’t be happy that Barrack said he wishes he didn’t support Trump and assumed when he did that he would have been “more moderate” and “acceptable.”

By the way, there’s an excellent chance that Barrack will be found not guilty (the word is the case is pretty weak) and if that happens I’m sure Trump will accept Barrack’s victory as another of his own. And sadly, every such victory strengthens Trump’s hold on his deluded flock.

The Mar-a-Lago case is heating up

Attorney Renato Mariotti on the news that the DOJ is ramping up its stolen documents case against Trump:

What should we make of news that DOJ sought testimony from former Trump official Kash Patel and Trump employee Walt Nauta in the Mar-a-Lago criminal investigation?

Today the New York Times reported that former Trump official Kash Patel, who has said publicly that he supposedly personally witnessed Trump verbally declassified documents, took the Fifth before a D.C. federal grand jury.

Patel reportedly took the Fifth “many” times in response to questions from federal prosecutors.

In addition, the Times reported that Walt Nauta, who worked in the White House as a military valet and cook and now works for Trump personally at Mar-a-Lago, has been interviewed.

Apparently Nauta’s initial statement to prosecutors conflicted with evidence, leading them to be “skeptical” of his “initial account.”

DOJ has security camera footage showing Nauta “moving boxes out of a storage area at Mar-a-Lago” and has interviewed him twice about that.

The Times reported Nauta indicated that Trump directed him to move boxes, which would be important evidence that Trump was trying to obstruct the DOJ’s investigation.

But that conflicts with his initial account to the DOJ, and now they’re threatening him with charges.

As for Patel, federal prosecutors have now asked a judge to force him to testify, presumably by granting him immunity for his testimony. If he is granted immunity, he would be forced to testify because you can’t assert the Fifth if you have no potential criminal liability.

So what does all of this mean?

It is common for witnesses like Nauta to have conflicting accounts that evolve over time. Initially, a witness can be reluctant to be truthful and then open up more during subsequent interviews.

This makes them challenging witnesses at trial.

Defense counsel (in this case, Trump’s lawyers) could use Nauta’s conflicting stories to suggest that his testimony at trial is unreliable.

Prosecutors aren’t looking to actually charge Nauta and are likely using potential charges to motivate him to be forthcoming.

It’s apparent that prosecutors are trying to develop Nauta as a potential witness against Trump. You don’t put this much effort into developing a witness like him unless you’re considering criminal charges.

At trial, his eventual testimony would be backed up by the video.

As for Patel, his story that he was in a room with Trump while he was President when he supposedly verbally declassified documents is very difficult to believe.

Prosecutors are right to try to lock that down, and Patel was right to avoid repeating that lie under oath.

Patel’s decision to take the Fifth is a rare savvy move by him. The fact that DOJ is trying to compel his testimony suggests that he isn’t their target.

Compelling his testimony makes sense if the goal is to get him to admit that he lied, undercutting Trump’s defense.

All of this suggests that DOJ is pressing forward with a criminal investigation and that Trump is their target. That’s significant news that suggests that they won’t be satisfied by a deal in which Trump gives them any remaining documents.

Also, the fact that this testimony occurred in the District of Columbia suggests that it will be indicted in D.C.

The Constitution requires that crimes be charged in the place where they occurred. But here, the crime occurred in multiple places.

D.C. is a wise choice. Among other things, the DOJ is based there and there is strong case law in D.C. federal courts that the need for grand jury testimony outweighs executive privilege and even attorney-client privilege between government attorneys and the president.

Regular readers know that I am skeptical that Trump will end up paying a price for what he’s done (except possibly at the ballot box in 2024) but since I am not a soothsayer or an oracle, I figure it’s important to post the opinions of those who are following the legal cases just in case.

One thing we do know is that if any else had taken those classified documents and refused to give them back, they would be in deep, deep legal trouble and would almost certainly pay a price. That the person who did it is a former president actually makes the crime much worse.

But ultimately, he believes that all of America’s classified intelligence belongs to him. Personally. After all he told Bob Woodward: “It’s all mine”

When our president says do it … that means that it is not illegal

We keep saying MAGA is a cult of personality surrounding Donald Trump. Exhibit Infinity is this clip below from MSNBC.

None of what we are seeing is new, Bishop William Barber said here on Saturday, referring to conservatives’ voter suppression efforts since before the Civil Rights era. But I can’t help seeing how the MAGA defense of all crimes Trump-related calls back to former President Richard Nixon’s famous 1977 interview with David Frost:

Frost: So, what in a sense you’re saying is that there are certain situations and the Huston plan or that part of it was one of them where the president can decide that it’s in the best interest of the nation or something and do something illegal.

Nixon: Well, when the president does it … that means that it is not illegal.

Frost: By definition –

Nixon: Exactly … exactly….

Plotting to overturn an election, battling police, sacking the Capitol, stealing state secrets … it’s all legal, by definition, if the president does it or sanctions it.

If there is blame to be assigned for Jan. 6, Joe Scarborough observes, the MAGA panel believes it’s Nancy Pelosi’s fault, it’s Democratic operatives’ fault, it’s the Capitol Police’s fault. Those arrested for the violence are political prisoners, etc. They have mainlined the kool-aid. Some of them probably have no memory of Nixon, but excusing their own for what are clearly crimes is nothing new, is it?

Fight internecine battles another day

A repeated theme in Anand Giridharadas’s “The Persuaders” (I’m about halfway through) is “Is there room among the woke for the waking?” The issue at hand is whether those on the left edge of the left — at the cutting edge of consciousness, if you prefer — possess enough critical mass form to move the culture in their direction by themselves.

Veteran activists Giridharadas profiles have decided they do not. Success means expanding their movements without compromising them. They’ve learned to “call in” progressives with whom they mostly agree rather than just calling them out for their failings, to focus more on conversion than on hunting heretics. They walk a fine line seeking to coalition with more moderate allies without watering down their own goals.

Progressives face a critical choice in 2022, writes Norman Solomon, the journalist and activist, a Bernie Sanders delegate in 2016 and 2020. French leftists this year held their noses and voted with moderates for president Emmanuel Macron this year to hold back far-right Marine Le Pen. The truce held long enough for France to dodge a bullet.

The American left — the woke and the waking in Giridharadas’s terms — needs a similar united front this November. “Claiming that there are no significant differences between the two parties is a form of super-ideological gaslighting on automatic pilot,” Solomon believes (Salon):

Now, progressives in the United States face similar choices. In key House districts and states with pivotal Senate races — including Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — leftist voters could tip the balance of congressional power. At this point, in the balloting that ends on Nov. 8, the choice is binary: neoliberalism or neofascism.

“Neoliberal” is a catch-all on the left for “to my right” the way the right uses “socialist” and “communist” to designate “to my left.” Given the threat at hand, Solomon is willing to set aside calling out the Democratic leadership class for its neoliberal sins even while he does so. But better that our wheezing democracy live so the woke may reengage the waking another day.

Republicans in office and even more extremist candidates seeking to join them are blending in with political scenery they’ve created to normalize gliding farther and farther rightward. They’re the electoral shock troops of a party now fully engaged in what scholar Jason Stanley, in his book “How Fascism Works,” calls “fascist politics.” What seemed dangerously outrageous not long ago can soon come to seem normal — and in fact even more dangerous.

In Stanley’s words, “Normalization of fascist ideology, by definition, would make charges of ‘fascism’ seem like an overreaction, even in societies whose norms are transforming along these worrisome lines…. The charge of fascism will always seem extreme; normalization means that the goalposts for the legitimate use of ‘extreme’ terminology continually move.”

Progressives have overarching responsibilities to oppose the corporate power that ushers in oligarchy and also to oppose the far-right forces that lead to tyranny. Focusing on just one of those responsibilities while dodging the other just won’t do.

“We will be living with the consequences of this crossroads for the rest of our lives,” Solomon concludes. We dare not take the wrong fork.

From my perch, I’ve not heard rumors of a “none of the above” movement on the left this year. Solomon seems worried enough to address it in print.

Is “status anxiety” supposed to excuse their anti-social behavior?

Let’s offer up a nice rationalization for why people are behaving like animals, shall we? They can’t help it. They’re just upset that they have to share the world with people who don’t look and think like them. Poor guys.

When Representative Troy Nehls of Texas voted last year to reject Donald J. Trump’s electoral defeat, many of his constituents back home in Fort Bend County were thrilled.

Like the former president, they have been unhappy with the changes unfolding around them. Crime and sprawl from Houston, the big city next door, have been spilling over into their once bucolic towns. (“Build a wall,” Mr. Nehls likes to say, and make Houston pay.) The county in recent years has become one of the nation’s most diverse, where the former white majority has fallen to just 30 percent of the population.

Don Demel, a 61-year-old salesman who turned out last month to pick up a signed copy of a book by Mr. Nehls about the supposedly stolen election, said his parents had raised him “colorblind.” But the reason for the discontent was clear: Other white people in Fort Bend “did not like certain people coming here,” he said. “It’s race. They are old-school.”

A shrinking white share of the population is a hallmark of the congressional districts held by the House Republicans who voted to challenge Mr. Trump’s defeat, a New York Times analysis found — a pattern political scientists say shows how white fear of losing status shaped the movement to keep him in power.

The portion of white residents dropped about 35 percent more over the last three decades in those districts than in territory represented by other Republicans, the analysis found, and constituents also lagged behind in income and education. Rates of so-called deaths of despair, such as suicide, drug overdose and alcohol-related liver failure, were notably higher as well.

Although overshadowed by the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the House vote that day was the most consequential of Mr. Trump’s ploys to overturn the election. It cast doubt on the central ritual of American democracy, galvanized the party’s grass roots around the myth of a stolen victory and set a precedent that legal experts — and some Republican lawmakers — warn could perpetually embroil Congress in choosing a president.

To understand the social forces converging in that historic vote — objecting to the Electoral College count — The Times examined the constituencies of the lawmakers who joined the effort, analyzing census and other data from congressional districts and interviewing scores of residents and local officials. The Times previously revealed the back-room maneuvers inside the House, including convincing lawmakers that they could reject the results without explicitly endorsing Mr. Trump’s outlandish fraud claims.

Many of the 139 objectors, including Mr. Nehls, said they were driven in part by the demands of their voters. “You sent me to Congress to fight for President Trump and election integrity,” Mr. Nehls wrote in a tweet on Jan. 5, 2021, “and that’s exactly what I am doing.” At a Republican caucus meeting a few days later, Representative Bill Johnson, from an Ohio district stretching into Appalachia, told colleagues that his constituents would “go ballistic” with “raging fire” if he broke with Mr. Trump, according to a recording.

Certain districts primarily reflect either the racial or socioeconomic characteristics. But the typical objector district shows both — a fact demographers said was striking.

Because they are more vulnerable, disadvantaged or less educated white voters can feel especially endangered by the trend toward a minority majority, said Ashley Jardina, a political scientist at George Mason University who studies the attitudes of those voters.

“A lot of white Americans who are really threatened are willing to reject democratic norms,” she said, “because they see it as a way to protect their status.”

I’m sorry, but what exactly are the Democrats supposed to do about this? They are already the party that passes policies to help people and offer opportunity in their economic circumstances. They are the party of the working man and woman and they protect the social safety net, lower prescription drugs prices, offer affordable health care. etc. So it’s not that. It’s the other thing.

Are Democrats supposed to adopt their racist attitudes? Excuse them? Take punitive actions against immigrants and people of color. Withdraw their support for women’s rights? Guess what? They already tried that. It didn’t work.

Lincoln understood this:

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly – done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated – we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas’ new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

There is no appeasing them because they insist on dominating others — and forcing them to agree with them. If they don’t they are the enemy.

A scary new survey

As we see monstrous antisemitism raise its head once more in America, this finding is very disturbing:

Almost two-thirds of young American adults do not know that 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, and more than one in 10 believe Jews caused the Holocaust, a new survey has found, revealing shocking levels of ignorance about the greatest crime of the 20th century.

According to the study of millennial and Gen Z adults aged between 18 and 39, almost half (48%) could not name a single concentration camp or ghetto established during the second world war.

Almost a quarter of respondents (23%) said they believed the Holocaust was a myth, or had been exaggerated, or they weren’t sure. One in eight (12%) said they had definitely not heard, or didn’t think they had heard, about the Holocaust.

More than half (56%) said they had seen Nazi symbols on their social media platforms and/or in their communities, and almost half (49%) had seen Holocaust denial or distortion posts on social media or elsewhere online.

The survey, the first to drill down to state level in the US, ranks states according to a score based on three criteria: whether young people have definitely heard about the Holocaust; whether they can name one concentration camp, death camp or ghetto; and whether they know 6 million Jews were killed.

The top-scoring state was Wisconsin, where 42% of millennial and Gen Z adults met all three criteria, followed by Minnesota at 37% and Massachusetts at 35%. The lowest-scoring states were Florida at 20%, Mississippi at 18% and Arkansas at 17%.

Nationally, 63% of respondents did not know 6 million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, and more than one in three (36%) thought 2 million or fewer had been killed.

Eleven per cent of respondents across the US believed that Jews had caused the Holocaust, with the proportion in New York state at 19%, followed by 16% in Louisiana, Tennessee and Montana, and 15% in Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Nevada and New Mexico.

Nationally, 44% of those questioned were able to identify Auschwitz-Birkenau, and only 3% were familiar with Bergen-Belsen. Six out of 10 respondents in Texas could not name a single concentration camp or ghetto.

The good news is this. Despite some ignorance of the details, these younger Americans still have the right values:

However, almost two-thirds (64%) of American millennial and Gen Z adults believe Holocaust education should be compulsory in schools. Seven out of 10 said it was not acceptable for an individual to hold neo-Nazi views.

Perhaps many of them don’t know the full history of the Holocaust and antisemitism but they also aren’t antisemites.

They’re putting Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block

If Republicans win the congress they will be feeling their oats. They’ll do splashy investigations, impeachments and “oversight” and now apparently they’ve decided it’s a good time to destroy the world economy in order to enact some of the things on their old time wish list, the destruction of “entitlements” being at the top. Luckily, we have a president who won’t capitulate but the game of chicken these Republicans are planning to play, to flex their muscles and show the nation who’s really in charge, is extremely dangerous in a world with such a precarious economy.

I believe them. We know that Republicans have been trying to do this for ages but it’s always been opposed by the biggest voting bloc: seniors. It concerns me that if these fanatics turn this into MAGA doctine, the Trumpers might just go along. They are nothing if not amenable to suggestion.

It remains to be seen if Trump himself will join this crusade. He always said he would protect Social Security before. But if these Republicans in congress succeed in convincing their voters that “entitlement reform” is MAGA, I’m pretty sure he’ll go along. He’s very attuned to his flock.

The real question is why they didn’t do worse

Today we have a new study out that shows kids fell way behind in math and slightly less so in reading during the first year of the pandemic. Naturally everyone’s blaming the schools and the teachers for not teaching in person, even though we had no vaccines and nobody knew in the first year how deadly it was going to end up being for kids. (We knew it would kill adults — it killed hundreds of thousands — but who cares about them?)

Josh Marshall has some thoughts:

Lot of write ups of new text results today, the first that gives apples to apples comparison nationwide. They show steep drops in reading and especially math over the pandemic. But most write ups – I’m looking especially at you Axios – leave one point mostly unmentioned.

The results show little correlation if any between test results and duration of school closures. The results are just out. And perhaps deeper analysis will show them. But at least on initial review they’re not there either on a state or school district basis. This doesn’t end the debate about school closure policy and remote. There are other measures of learning and there is also the psychological/cognitive development impact. But it’s an important check on a widespread and highly questionable assumption.

Every time we hear new details about the academic or emotional challenges kids are having today there’s a chorus of people who attack teachers unions, or school boards or blue states about closures. But there’s another possibility: that students are suffering because they lived through a chaotic and horrifying historical event that completely upended everyone’s life. The assumption that all the bad stuff was tied to excessively long closures isn’t just a thing on the right. It’s also pushed heavily by hordes of highly credentialed sociologists and economists. It may be less true than a lot of us think.

Chalkbeat looked at the data and did find some limited correlations. But if you look at their actual breakdown it looks very limited at best. Also notable that edu policy is often more by district than state.

https://www.chalkbeat.org/2022/10/24/23417139/naep-test-scores-pandemic-school-reopening

It wld actually be surprising to me, indeed, is surprising to me that there’s not more correlation. Kids I know in my social circle have examples where they took subject year 1 during remote and then took subject year 2 afterwards but they were lost in the second year because none of the year 1 class was retained and maybe was never learned. But again, the data here shows the correlation is very limited at best.

Originally tweeted by Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) on October 24, 2022.

I’m going to guess that even if they had kept the schools open, many teachers would have had to quit because they were living with illnesses and other co-morbidities or taking care of elderly or sick people. Many parents would have kept their kids out of school and tried to homeschool them themselves and a lot more teachers and staff would have been hospitalized and died. Everything would have been so disrupted (and frankly, horrifying) that kids would have lost much of that year anyway.

Everyone hated virtual but maybe we should be asking ourselves if we weren’t very lucky to have had it. The alternative might have actually been much worse for the kids.

And, as Josh says, kids were suffering from the same thing the rest of us were suffering from: a terrifying pandemic that turned the whole world upside down which none of us knew how to deal with. Of course children paid a price for that. They always do during major calamities. To blame teachers unions and school administrators for that is simply seeking a scapegoat for something over which none of us had any control.

And the fact that we had a miscreant running the country who was far more concerned with his re-election than saving lives certainly didn’t help. He’s personally responsible for much of the chaos and insecurity we all went through during that time.