Pyrian on 28/11/2019 at 01:31
When the left gets a popular movement, it fades away, when the right gets a popular movement, they fund and hijack it. The "Tea Party" is both very much still around and also a soulless corporate husk of its origin.
Starker on 28/11/2019 at 04:54
Quote Posted by heywood
I don't think that study shows what she thinks it does.
She ties the "left behind" hypothesis to changes in family finances between 2012 and 2016. Looking for a change in family finances
starting from 2012 misses all of the root causes. The people living in the rust belt who gave Trump this victory weren't left behind after 2012 (which was in the middle of a recovery BTW), they were left behind over a period of decades by structural changes, particularly the long term loss of manufacturing jobs that paid middle-class wages. The great recession was the last straw, and in the 2010 elections the Republicans won big all over the Midwest. There was a 63-seat swing from Dem to Rep in the US House, and similar swings in many state legislatures. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, North Dakota all flipped Dem to Rep in Senate races. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Iowa flipped Dem to Rep in gubernatorial races. The exact same states went for Obama twice, then flipped for Trump in 2016, which is how he won.
The other stupid thing about her research design was tying the "status threat" hypothesis to three indicators that are fundamentally economic: free trade, immigration, and China. The people who were left behind by declining demand for manufacturing and low skilled labor are naturally going to have strong opinions about globalization in general, and will tend to be more opposed to new free trade agreements and further liberalizing immigration. It's also pretty obvious that they will see China as a job sucker rather than an investment opportunity. Her status indicators are simply jobs issues, and therefore this isn't an alternative hypothesis at all.
In these Midwestern swing states, it really is all about the jobs. Despite all of the corruption and dysfunction of the Trump administration, those same states could swing for Trump again if his trade war is perceived to be helping.
EDIT: And now that I'm thinking about it, the populist wave in that part of the country was a factor even in the 2008 Presidential campaign. Ron Paul got a bump from it. And Obama pivoted to economic populism after securing the nomination.
I would think that one's economic status or feelings about their prospects have at least a little bit to do with economic anxiety or lead them to be more likely to vote for Lord Dampnut, but it doesn't seem to be the case. Not to mention that economic anxiety hardly explains the overwhelming support Lord Dampnut has from white evangelicals. And if it was true that support for Lord Dampnut was due to a long-standing resentment towards these issues, there wouldn't have been a sudden change in people's views, though (bolding mine):
Quote:
The assumption that respondents' views were essentially stable over time is incorrect (Table S1). Consistent with the hypothesis that threat leads to greater conservatism, the average party identification for Americans shifted in a slightly but significantly more Republican direction from 2012 to 2016. Also consistent with the threat thesis,
the American public became significantly more negative in its views of international trade from 2012 to 2016, and this declining support was especially severe among Republicans (Table S1). SDO rose significantly from 2012 to 2016, indicating an increased perception of threat to dominant groups.
At the very least, I think that the study shows more than you think it does (again bolding mine):
Quote:
Another limitation in the panel analyses is that I do not provide direct evidence that dominant groups feel threatened. Instead, I infer this from rising SDO and changing issue attitudes that suggest hunkering down in a protective manner. To address this shortcoming, the cross-sectional data illustrate how dominant group membership affected Trump support as well as whether those who reported that dominant groups were threatened were more likely to support Trump. Table S4 further confirms that whites and men were more likely to support Trump.
More to the point, feeling that “the American way of life is threatened” is a consistent predictor of Trump supportAnd while the aforementioned issues all have something to do with economy, then I would argue that the opposite is equally true: Republicans and especially Lord Dampnut are increasingly tying economic issues to white identity politics. Their message is not, "Let's make America better," it's not, "Let's improve our trade policy, so that the American worker gets more benefits," it's not, "Let's create a sensible immigration policy that accentuates the positive impacts while reducing the negative ones." Rather, it's, "Let's make America like it used to be", it's, "Let's ban muslims," it's, "Mexicans are drug dealers and rapists," it's, "Build a huge wall to keep everyone out."
demagogue on 28/11/2019 at 09:03
Yeah, value and identity politics. If I were in grad school analysis mode, I'd go a step further and say rhetoric that squeezes people's existential fears so much their amygdala and HPA axis spike and pump out so much cortisol and adrenaline they literally can't sit still until they "do something about it".
Starker on 28/11/2019 at 18:22
Yeah, if you hear about an invasion of young strong men marching to the US, bringing diseases and having Middle-Easterners among them, the economy is probably not the first thing that comes to mind.
catbarf on 29/11/2019 at 01:05
Quote Posted by Starker
Yeah, if you hear about an invasion of young strong men marching to the US, bringing diseases and having Middle-Easterners among them, the economy is probably not the first thing that comes to mind.
Republican rhetoric on South American immigration does talk up economics though; the most well-known soundbite is 'they're taking our jobs', and 'they freeload but don't pay taxes' isn't far behind. Those blue-collar voters who went to Trump are afraid of 'Mexican' immigrants undercutting their labor and sucking up welfare money, which (the former in particular) is fundamentally a perception that their economic security is threatened.
There's a contrast between that and the discussion regarding Middle Eastern refugees, where the talking points are more Islam, terrorism, and Sharia law.
Starker on 29/11/2019 at 03:13
Actually, these have been some of most common talking points for Central American asylum seekers. Haven't heard a lot about jobs regarding the caravans. On Fox News at least it was how they have leprosy and smallpox and Middle Easterners. And, at least the last election season, the talking points for Mexican immigration often veered into MS-13 and drugs and violent crime.
But sure, I'm not saying that there is no connection between these issues and economy or that it isn't brought up at all. Similarly, wage stagnation and other things are a real concern. It's just that the data doesn't seem to support economic anxiety as a predictor for voting for Lord Dampnut. In fact, black Americans who have some of the highest economic anxiety overwhelmingly didn't vote for him.
Starker on 1/12/2019 at 07:05
If you for some reason needed more proof that the Republican Party is no longer the party of Lincoln...
Nicker on 1/12/2019 at 15:48
Next time poll Republicans on George Washington VS George III.
Starker on 1/12/2019 at 18:00
Also, this is who Lord Dampnut's followers consider as a hero:
Quote:
(
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/30/us/politics/trump-seals-eddie-gallagher.html)
[...]
He was limp and dusty from an explosion, conscious but barely. A far cry from the fierce, masked Islamic State fighters who once seized vast swaths of Iraq and Syria, the captive was a scraggly teenager in a tank top with limbs so thin that his watch slid easily off his wrist.
Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher and other Navy SEALs gave the young captive medical aid that day in Iraq in 2017, sedating him and cutting an airway in his throat to help him breathe. Then, without warning, according to colleagues, Chief Gallagher pulled a small hunting knife from a sheath and stabbed the sedated captive in the neck.
[...]
When the captive was killed, other SEALs were shocked. A medic inches from Chief Gallagher testified that he froze, unsure what to do. Some SEALs said in interviews that the stabbing immediately struck them as wrong, but because it was Chief Gallagher, the most experienced commando in the group, no one knew how to react. When senior platoon members confronted Chief Gallagher, they said, he told them, “Stop worrying about it; they do a lot worse to us.”
The officer in charge, Lt. Jacob Portier, who was in his first command, gathered everyone for trophy photos, then held a re-enlistment ceremony for Chief Gallagher over the corpse, several SEALs testified.
A week later, Chief Gallagher sent a friend in California a text with a photo of himself with a knife in one hand, holding the captive up by the hair with the other. “Good story behind this, got him with my hunting knife,” he wrote.
As the deployment wore on, SEALs said the chief's behavior grew more erratic. He led a small team beyond the front lines, telling members to turn off locator beacons so they would not be caught by superiors, according to four SEALS, who confirmed video of the mission obtained by The New York Times. He then tried to cover up the mission when one platoon member was shot.
At various points, he appeared to be either amped up or zoned out; several SEALs told investigators they saw him taking pills, including the narcotic Tramadol. He spent much of his time scanning the streets of Mosul from hidden sniper nests, firing three or four times as often as the platoon's snipers, sometimes targeting civilians.
One SEAL sniper told investigators he heard a shot from Chief Gallagher's position, then saw a schoolgirl in a flower-print hijab crumple to the ground. Another sniper reported hearing a shot from Chief Gallagher's position, then seeing a man carrying a water jug fall, a red blotch spreading on his back. Neither episode was investigated and the fate of the civilians remains unknown.
Chief Gallagher had been accused of misconduct before, including shooting through an Afghan girl to hit the man carrying her in 2010 and trying to run over a Navy police officer in 2014. But in both cases no wrongdoing was found.
SEALs said they reported concerns to Lieutenant Portier with no result. The lieutenant outranked Chief Gallagher but was younger and less experienced. SEALs said in interviews that the chief often yelled at his commanding officer or disregarded him altogether. After the deployment, Lieutenant Portier was charged with not reporting the chief for war crimes but charges were dropped. So SEALs said they started firing warning shots to keep pedestrians out of range. One SEAL told investigators he tried to damage the chief's rifle to make it less accurate.
By the end of the deployment, SEALs said, Chief Gallagher was largely isolated from the rest of the platoon, with some privately calling him “el diablo,” or the devil.
[...]
and being opposed to executing prisoners of war and shooting civilians is apparently political correctness now:
Quote:
Chief Gallagher, who has denied any wrongdoing, declined through his lawyer to be interviewed. Mr. Trump's allies said the president was standing up to political correctness that hamstrings the warriors the nation asks to defend it, as if war should be fought according to lawyerly rules.
demagogue on 1/12/2019 at 18:14
If you remember that prisoners of war who are executed or tortured are his sworn enemy (he likes soldiers that "win", not ones that are captured or tortured), it starts to make more sense.
Recall that he requested that the "McCain" name written in gigantic letters on the side an entire warship be covered up with some kind of tarp during his visit to a naval base, and he tried all he could to refuse to lower the flag half mast after McCain's death, if you want a reminder of just how much he hates them.