amanda marcotte

The science it out: It is about race

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Thanks to this concise tweet by Salon‘s Amanda Marcotte

For alerting me to the piece by her fellow Salon writers Sean McElwee and Jason McDaniel on how it truly has been racism, and not economic angst as so many believe, that has fueled the rise of Donald Trump.

The American National Election Studies 2016 Pilot Study, a presidential primary extension of a long-running election survey, asked 1,200 eligible voters about the election, and their views on race, from Jan. 22 – 28, 2016. The poll had a number of questions designed to measure racial animus.

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Democratic voters sit out yet another off-year election. Let’s examine why.

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

wheel-of-fortune

This is getting old. Tuesday was election day across the nation and Democrats performed poorly, yet again, as they have tended to do the past several elections that are not Presidential general ones. The reason for it is obvious: low turnout, averaging about 30% nationwide. The explanations behind that reason that liberals will come up with are akin to the game show “Wheel of Fortune”, where in the final round the common letters picked to guess the winning phrase had become so predictable that the show just started spotting them to the contestants years ago: R,S,T,L,N,E.

The R,S,T,L,N,E of Democratic losses are as follows, in no particular order of importance and with no judgment on my part on their veracity, as all are true to varying extents:

1. Democrats don’t have a message.
2. Democratic candidates run as Republican lite and run away from President Obama.
3. Gerrymandering.
4. Voter suppression and other logistical impediments to voting.
5. Citizens United and the flooding of elections with huge amounts of money from well-heeled right wing ideologues.
6. Demographics.

Let’s take them one by one:

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Practically no one thinks they’re the bad guy

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

david brooks

David Brooks wrote (quelle surprise) an insipid NYT column advising social conservatives to tone down their devotion to litigating other people’s sex lives and instead embrace the “compassionate conservative” shtick of George W. Bush circa 2000. It reads like a stump speech for Jeb(!) Bush.

Social conservatives could be the people who help reweave the sinews of society. They already subscribe to a faith built on selfless love. They can serve as examples of commitment. They are equipped with a vocabulary to distinguish right from wrong, what dignifies and what demeans. They already, but in private, tithe to the poor and nurture the lonely.

The defining face of social conservatism could be this: Those are the people who go into underprivileged areas and form organizations to help nurture stable families. Those are the people who build community institutions in places where they are sparse. Those are the people who can help us think about how economic joblessness and spiritual poverty reinforce each other. Those are the people who converse with us about the transcendent in everyday life.

This culture war is more Albert Schweitzer and Dorothy Day than Jerry Falwell and Franklin Graham; more Salvation Army than Moral Majority. It’s doing purposefully in public what social conservatives already do in private.

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Conservative women sure get away with being bossy

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Sheryl Sandberg has sparked a healthy debate with the campaign she started aimed at getting people to stop using the word “bossy’ to describe girls. While it may not seem like a big deal at first, when you think about it and look at the evidence, it’s clear that “bossy” is applied to assertive girls far more often than similarly outgoing boys and is really a euphemism for something else. As Amanda Marcotte puts it:

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