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Proof That Yes Government Can, From The Void of Space

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I had made a New Years Resolution to return to diary writing, but I didn’t get more than two diaries in before I contracted COVID.  I am COVID positive.

Our whole family is fully vaccinated, and the adults have their booster shots.  But a group of children at our public school contracted COVID from within their church.  Instead of informing the school district, they communicated within their church group, and just quietly pulled their own kids out of school.

I am thankful for the vaccine. COVID has presented mildly, as a mild cold. Spread within the family was slow. We can thank the vaccine for this, and despite Republican best efforts, the mass vaccination of the United States is proof that government can work.

When confronted with their decision to inform their own in group but not the public school, we were met with bewilderment and misunderstanding. Explaining concern and a duty for others was as foreign a concept as a Lagrange point to a Neanderthal.  Which brings me to our next topic.

* * *

Don’t look now, but the $10 Billion James Webb telescope is fully deployed.

#NASAWebb is fully deployed! 🎉 With the successful deployment & latching of our last mirror wing, that's: 50 major deployments, complete. 178 pins, released. 20+ years of work, realized. Next to #UnfoldTheUniverse: traveling out to our orbital destination of Lagrange point 2! pic.twitter.com/mDfmlaszzV

— NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) January 8, 2022

In order to reach this point, the James Webb telescope had to successfully navigate 344 single point failuires in series; a failure of any would render the telescope inoperable. 

We’re at the begin cool down phase. The schedule is proceeding early.

And unlike the Hubble Telescope, the James Webb telescope isn’t servicable.  The Hubble Telescope resides in low earth orbit, because it is primarily an optical telescope, capable of capturing images in the ultravioletvisible, and near-infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. James Webb needs to see more in the infrared, although it can see in the visible spectrum as far as about orange.  And because James Webb needs to see in the infrared, it needs to be kept cold.  From Wikipedia, “the telescope must be kept below 50 K (−223°C; −370°F) to observe faint signals in the infrared without interference from any other sources of warmth.” Infrared energy heats matter up.  So if in near earth orbit like Hubble, the warmth from Earth, the sun, and even reflected from the moon, would warm the mirrors up, thereby blinding the instrument.  Oh, and our atmosphere adsorbs a lot of infrared electromagnetic radiation, which thankfully keeps us nice and warm, but also renders ground based infrared telescopes useless. 

So James Webb will be be deployed in space near the Sun–Earth L2 Lagrange point, a void in space about 1,500,000 km (930,000 mi) from Earth (about 1% the distance from the Earth to the Sun), where its 5 layer kite-shaped sunshield can protect it from warming by the Sun, Earth and Moon at the same time.  The telescope could really be anywhere far from the Earth, but LaGrange points allow spacecraft to stay put in these points with a minimum exertion of energy.  The nice thing about the L2 Lagrange point is that it is farther from the Earth than the sun, and from the perspective here on Earth, the James Webb telescope will always be in the same place; the telescope will complete one orbit in the same 365.256 days that it takes the Earth, despite being farther away from the Sun than the Earth.  I have a Ph.D. and I don’t fully understand it.

James Webb needs to see in the infrared because light emitted from the furthest reaches of the Universe, in the visible spectrum, has been shifted redder, past red, and into the infrared portion of the spectrum, by the expanding Universe

 James Webb has a primary mirror of 6.5m. Hubble, which has given us astonishing images now in its fourth decade, has a primary mirror of only 2.4m. So get ready for some amazing images in about 6 months time. 

But this hasn’t been the only amazing scientific mission of the Biden Administration.  NASA landed a rover the size of a car on Mars from a flying sky crane, and captured the whole thing on video. Oh, and there was a helicopter too.

And then we have NASA’s BFR, with its future 8m payload diameter, scheduled to launch some time this spring on a test flight around the moon.

It’s a BFR.

What can fit in an 8m diameter payload? Well, lots of things, including Hubble’s successor: LUVOIR. If you think Hubble captured magnificent images with a 2.4m mirror, imagine what we can see with a 15m diameter mirror.

Back on Earth, Republican opposition to fighting COVID is show that government can’t.  If government can, then they are a potential solution.  And our Republican’s can’t have that. So it’s good to discuss the amazing ways our government is succeeding.


Into a Political Heart of Darkness

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You’ll never believe who the New York Times interviewed. 

Despite Democrats representing the majority of American voters, with more voters having chosen the Democratic nominee the last 7 out of 8 times.  Despite the fact that the current 50 Democratic Senators represent 43 million more people than the 50 Republican Senators (187 million to 144 million).

Every political news story in America should begin by noting that: 1. Democrats have won the popular vote 7 out of the last 8 times 2. 187 million Americans get 50 democratic senators and 144 million get 50 Republican senators.

— Infinite Monkey Theorum Account (@NoFortunate) February 7, 2022

⬆️Every political story in America should begin with these two important facts.⬆️

Despite the fact that rural Americans are a whopping 19.3% of our population (and rural Americans in diners certainly fewer), the New York Times finally managed to find a Biden voter to interview.

...

I’m just kidding.

No they didn’t.

They interviewed supposed “independents” who voted for Trump and Obama or Biden at some point in their life. Frank Luntz helped them scrounge up these voters.

The New York Times paid Kevin McCarthy’s roommate to do a “focus group” of opinions about Biden which it then passed off as legitimate research. The New York Times hired the Republican live-in pal of the House Minority Leader to cook up Biden soundbites. Really sit with that.

— The Hoarse Whisperer (@TheRealHoarse) January 20, 2022

You want to know how these voters are feeling despite peace and a record economy?

Frank Luntz: Give me a word or phrase to describe life in America today.

Scott (53, white, Florida, works in health care): Divided.

Janet (66, white, Ohio, customer service): Dismal.

Julia (50, white, Illinois, small-business owner): Disappointment.

...

Nick (43, white, Pennsylvania, merchandise designer): Burned out.

...

Travis (45, white, Kansas, corporate finance): Lost.

No you don’t, and neither do I. Really don’t bother reading any further.  Save your sanity.

The New York Times continues to embarrass itself with its inability to find a Biden voter to interview, despite there being millions more of us. 

MERCH STORE HAS ARRIVED. Here's a pic. Shirts run a little small (but are fitted and pretty nice) so size up.https://t.co/l8cZ7x1IFYpic.twitter.com/fhnz3ZUObw

— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) January 20, 2022

But there is a bizarre compulsion to seek these voters out and center them in our discourse.  I presume it is not just neuroses or stupidity, so I set to find out why.  Why are these angry, white, rural voters so appealing.

* * *

One of the blessing and curses of the social media age is that these platforms can, under certain circumstances, provide us with a real-time, direct link to a person’s stream of conscious. Social media is probably the closest we, as humans, will ever come to reading minds.  That is, if Elon Musk stops torturing monkeys and gets neuralink to work (Warning: trigger link).

And now, it’s time for me to introduce my uncle. 

You see, my uncle would’ve fit right in with Frank Lunt’z focus group. 

My uncle openly claimed to be a Democrat, but had no problems voting for Republicans starting in the 80’s.  He voted for Obama in 2008, disgusted with George W. Bush’s stewardship of Iraq, the economy, and Katrina, before immediately turning on Barack Obama before he was even inaugurated.  He would vote for Romney and Trump, before pulling a crazy Ivan once more and voting for Biden in 2020, based on Trump’s chaos, complete mismanagement of the government, and the pandemic.  An educated man and a manager, his criticisms of Bush and Trump were insightful, truthful, and precise.  Each time he publicly repudiated a Republican President, I was hopeful he had connected Republican misgovernment with his distaste for mismanagement.  Before the Biden was even sworn in, though, he would immediately turn on the new President.  Thanks to the miracle of social media, I could watch on Election Night as his feed morphed from hoping Biden would win, to anger at Biden for actually winning.

* * *

The electorate is full of idiots. When canvassing for John Kerry in Florida in 2004, I spent almost an hour trying to convince an undecided voter to vote for John Kerry. Her self-professed most important issue was the environment, and she felt Bush (not Kerry) had a better record on the environment. I’m not kidding.  And she could not be persuaded otherwise. 

This is not my uncle.

My uncle is educated man and a consumer of mainstream news sources.  I’ve never seen a far right link appear on his social media feed.  I have no evidence he watches FOX News or has ever listened to Talk Radio.  He’s dismissed Limbaugh and Hannity as frauds and blowhards.  He watches PBS News Hour.  So what would make someone immediately become disillusioned with Democrats, before Democrats even take power?

I followed his social media feed closely, and engaged.

* * *

Have you heard crime is up?  If you have someone like my uncle in your life, you have. There are a lot of statistics, and many are contradictory.  It appears many statistical indicators lag, and so we don’t have a full picture for 2021 yet.  But I can tell you that while crime is up a little, this isn’t the 1980’s. In the aftermath of the January 6th riots, I inquired how he felt about this major assault on the US Capitol that left four police officers dead. His response? Did I hear about the latest petty crime? This culminated in him telling me that while the capitol attack was bad, did I hear about the smash and grab of Louis Vuitton hand bags in San Francisco?  Four dead officers. Hand bags for rich people stolen. Which do you think was more on his mind? Hand bags.

Have you heard that some transgender people are athletes, and they are competing in sports?  Of course you have, but if you have someone like my uncle in your life, you’re going to really hear about it.  He’s especially obsessed with the story of the transgender swimmer Lia Thomas.  Athletes may cheat by changing their gender, he says, and this is a major problem, as opposed to the actual long, sordid history of athletes cheating the typical ways in professional sports. Forget shoeless Joe Jackson, to my uncle, transgender athletes herald the collapse of competitive sports.  I asked him how he felt that Trump planned to cheat the election outcome, through various measures, and draw a salary for which he was not entitled should he have succeeded.  Cheating to gain the Presidency or Lia Thomas? Which do you think was more important to him? Lia Thomas. 

And this would go on and on, across too many subjects to detail here. No matter what the actual pressing issue facing society, my uncle would respond with the latest moral panic.

Like all panic, it wasn’t rational. The same person could be upset over stolen handbags, while deriding prosecutorial overreach of the parents of the Michigan school shooter.

* * *

If I didn’t know better, I’d say the Glenn Youngkin campaign was calling my uncle for advice on a daily basis. 

My uncle’s opinion of the economy and the direction of the country tanked not upon President Biden’s inauguration, but on Election Night, two months before a Democratic President would even take office.  I’m reminded of this famous graph of economic sentiment showing the sharp uptick when Trump won the Presidency, and sharp downtick when he lost it. 

The perception of the economy changed on Election Night, not Inaguration.

And it changed radically back on Election Night, not Iniaguration

It’s hard to fathom such a level of irrationality.

* * * 

So my uncle behaves as a typical Republican, despite how he self-identifies?  This explanation is facile and unsatisfactory.  It also runs counter to what I know of the man.

My Uncle is loving and intelligent. He has never uttered a prejudice or sexist phrase. 

But one day, my Uncle flew economy. My Uncle flew his entire life, many times in economy and many times in business and first class. The day in question he was flying economy. And while boarding the plane, he passed an African American woman sitting in first class.  The story gets painful and hard to write, but passing a first class passenger, who also happened to be Black and a woman, was noteworthy to him. Noteworthy enough to keep talking about it, way more than necessary (which was not at all).  He would not (or could not) come out and say why this was so noteworthy, only that her hairstyle, in his opinion, was quite extravagant.  

You see, my uncle is racist. Is he prejudice? I don’t know. But he is a racist.

* * *

I suspect that people like my uncle are equally mysterious to the DC Press.  This wasn’t an easy journey, I doubt they have the fortitude to undertake one of their own.   Why else keep interviewing rural white voters in diners?

A non-insignificant number of Biden voters wanted good government but also white supremacy. When I first heard Law and Order, I assumed Order meant something like towels on the bath rack being neatly folded.  I now realize it means racial and gender order.

Everyone knows that when republicans say “law and order”, they mean their racial and gender order, right?

— Infinite Monkey Theorum Account (@NoFortunate) January 22, 2022

Good government and the Republican Party are incompatible, so these voters, like my Uncle, ping pong between the parties.  The Democratic Party is the only institutional power many minority populations in the United States have.  Once in power, people, like my Uncle, feel that the order is inverted, and this is anathema.  And the polls show their disappearance.  Being the first to leave, and also being white men, the media pays extra notice.

* * *

The point of this painful diary is not to go chasing after voters like my uncle.  The New York Times has been beclowning itself for 6 years doing just this.  As long as the Democratic Party provides institutional power to those people that these swing voters feels should be on the bottom of the American order, there is no message, no strategy, no platform that will win them over.  That’s why I laugh at all these messaging articles.  People like my Uncle are gone the minute Biden takes the lead in the electoral vote count, and so Democrats might as well as turn out their remaining voters.  There are millions more of us, after all.

How to Answer: "Democrats Need to Win Rural Voters"

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Dear FSM, look at all that red.

Let’s get Computer to enhance just Tennessee as an example:

Hard to believe Republicans only won Tennessee 51% to 47% in 2000. Al Gore actually had little to do with it.

Land doesn’t vote, despite what Republicans think, and while the rest of the state has turned dark red, the remaining blue islands represent (from left to right) the population centers of Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga, and Knoxville.  Even with this massive overall shift, Republicans improved their statewide performance only 9% in 20 years.  And the massive red shift of the state elides a pretty strong blue shift(1) of the population centers.  But thanks to various unsavory features of the United States political system(2) (i.e, the Senate and the electoral college), rural areas are weighted disproportionately.   

If historical trends hold, the Democrats will probably lose House and Senate seats this fall.  This isn’t a doom diary!  For the record, I believe Democrats will do better in the house than past first midterm cycles under a Democratic President. But should Democrats have a bad night (or, with our media, even have an okay night), our psychopathic media wired for republicans will wind up the mighty doom Wurlitzer and profess, among other things, that Democrats need to improve their standing among rural voters. We already had a pre-doom article on the toxicity of the democratic brand in rural America!

So how do we answer “Democrats need to win more votes in rural America”?

* * *

First, this is a loaded question

No one asks why Republicans don’t win the urban vote.  That’s because rural America is Real America, and urban America is comprised of “Others”. It’s the same reason why press coverage of Democratic Presidents is overwhelmingly negative.

The Media is treating Biden like a black guy when they treated Trump like a white guy. The hate directed toward Biden is at the black voters who put him in office much like Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton.

— Robert Welch II (@RobertBWelchII) March 27, 2022

And let’s not pretend Republicans are something approaching popular.

Tell me again how the Republicans are so popular (GOP share of the vote the past 28 years) 1992: 37.4% 1996: 40.7% 2000: 47.9% 2004: 50.7% 2008: 45.7% 2012: 47.2% 2016: 46.1% 2020: 46.9%

— Infinite Monkey Theorum Account (@NoFortunate) March 23, 2022

That’s one showing over 48% since the Simpsons have been on the air.

* * *

In order to address this question, it essential to look at what’s been happening to America during the same time as rural regions trended red.

Depopulation is conveniently shown in red in this map.

It’s not exactly perfect, but basically, the most urban counties gained population and democratic vote while the most rural counties trended more republican while losing voters.  Nate Silver has more, but this makes sense from what we know about the various bases of the parties and where economic output of the Country is. 71% of the Country’s GDP is in the 16% of counties that are urban and blue.

Staggering.

I loathe an anecdotal argument, but the pattern mimics my own story, and that of my High School classmates who became professionals: every one who could leave red Florida, did so, either for a blue region in the state, or they now reside in a blue metropolitan area outside Florida.

There was a mass shooting just a few days ago in Arkansas. Mass shootings don’t even make the news anymore. It took place in a rural Arkansas county that lost 50% of the population since 2000.

* * *

But the system is still rigged to disproportionately favor rural areas, and despite Republicans being less popular than Democrats, they still have managed to win about half the time in the same 20 years.  Democrats may feel the solution is to direct good paying jobs to rural areas. But look what happened when an electric truck factory tried to come to a rural Georgia county promising 7500 good paying jobs.

It is billed as the largest economic development project in the history of Georgia, an electric vehicle factory that could grow to be five times as large as the Pentagon and produce as many as 400,000 emissions-free trucks a year.

The factory, to be built by the upstart electric automaker Rivian, is being heralded by many as a transformational $5 billion investment that will invigorate the local economy with 7,500 new green jobs and help accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy.

But then…

Speaking to a couple hundred local residents in a leafy park, Mr. Perdue invoked George Soros, the prominent Democratic donor whose hedge fund owns $2 billion in Rivian stock and who is a frequent target of conservatives…. “We can grow the economy without selling out and giving our tax dollars to people like George Soros,” Mr. Perdue said to cheers. “We can invest in rural Georgia without kicking our communities to the curb.”

That’s right. It’s not 7500 good paying jobs. It’s 7500 George Soros jobs.

So we get this story -- "Why aren't Dems more popular with people who believe they are an organized global pedophile ring?" -- again & again & again & again. I have no solution. But it's real dumb for a wealthy advanced technological culture in 2022 to be operating this way.

— David Roberts (@drvolts) February 17, 2022

Biden has promised $65 billion for rural boradband. Rural America, despite all the other problems it faces, has become a news desert.  Will providing broadband help? Or will it be George Soros broadband?

* * *

This isn’t to malign rural Americans.

There are still large numbers of Democratic voters in even the reddest of counties, and there are large swathes of blue areas in red states.

The need to win rural Americans crops up, usually after electoral setbacks, sometimes merging with the need for a 50-state strategy. When it invariably crops up again, Democrats shouldn’t compromise what they believe in to win voters who may not even be gettable. 

__________________

(1) From Wikipedia: Biden was able to improve his support in the Nashville metropolitan area, gaining 64.5% of the vote in Davidson County, the best Democratic performance in the county since FDR won 72.1% of the vote in 1944. At the same time, Biden also made gains in the Nashville suburban counties of WilliamsonRutherfordWilsonSumner, and Cheatham, performing considerably better than Hillary Clinton in 2016. For example, Biden lost Rutherford County, anchored by Murfreesboro, only by 56.6% to 41.2%, much lower than Clinton's 25.9-point loss in 2016. Additionally, he narrowed Trump's margins in Hamilton County--anchored by Chattanooga--only losing it by 9.7 points, the best Democratic performance there since Bill Clinton lost the county by 6.5% in 1996; and with 44.1% of the popular vote, the best Democratic percentage since Carter's 48% in 1976, consequently losing by 2.8 points. This is the first time a Democrat has even garnered 40% of the vote in Rutherford County since 2000 ...

(2) To one day be abolished.

And “Why Can't Democrats Message Like Republicans?”

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As I discussed in a previous diary, Republicans don’t have exclusive rights to knock on political consulting industries.  The previous diary was about the rural voter whisperers (and how to ignore them).  This diary is about ... the messaging magicians.

1. Not sure who @savethemiddle is, but this message is at the heart of the "moderate messaging" overhaul I want to work with Democrats on post-election, if we can survive. It teaches them how to message from a position of strength & on offense, rather than their current method,

— Rachel Bitecofer 📈🔭🍌🇺🇦 (@RachelBitecofer) November 3, 2020

For the record, I like Rachel Bitecofer very much. I think she has a lot of good points.  And she has every right to earn a living.  But the premise here is that if Democrats can’t fix their messaging problems (for a fee, I’m sure), they’re doomed. Democracy is doomed. We’re all doomed.  Democrats are already facing a ten alarm fire 😨 after (barely) losing a race in Virginia the President’s party has lost 7 of the 8 past cycles.  And Rachel Bitecofer is not without a point.  Look at this shocking story from Politico just today:

A shocking data point that explains much of Biden’s political troubles. More people think jobs have been lost over the last year (37%) than those who think they’ve been gained (28%). Unemployment is at 3.6%. https://t.co/xwRNSeAqFs

— Sam Stein (@samstein) April 3, 2022

Would proper messaging from Democrats overcome a media environment that wants a negative perception of the economy to help get Republicans back in power because boring Biden is bad for their ratings?  Probably not.  The White House has been very clear about the Biden Boom.

Also, if historical trends hold, the Democrats will probably lose House and Senate seats this fall no matter what they do.  So it’s a causal fallacy to assert that Democrats will lose because they don’t do what you prescribe.  This is not far removed from me threatening that the sun will set tonight plunging us into darkness unless Democrats fix their messaging. 

* * *

The Messaging Magicians tell us that not only are Democrats awful at messaging, Republicans are always on message, and super good at it too.  Remember, we’re in an environment where Republicans will probably see gains if they can just shit up and say nothing for the next 7 months. Let’s look at what has transpired recently:

  • Voldemort Sen. Rick Scott put out a terrifying 11-point plan for what Republicans would do if they win the midterms that would probably be less popular than COVID, if polled.

Mitch McConnell knows how to win the midterm: Oppose everything Joe Biden does, blame him for anything that goes wrong, but never lay out an agenda that turns the election into a choice rather than a referendum… Last week, however, Sen. Rick Scott ... threw a wrench into the machine with his “11 Point Plan to Rescue America,” a manifesto that mixes Newt Gingrich’s kick-the-poor ’90s with Trumpian authoritarianism, white Christian nationalism, overt attacks on voting rights, economic and constitutional illiteracy, and a Mack truck full of gaslighting.

Here we go again: even in the wake of a pandemic, the GOP just can’t quit their obsession with ripping health care away from Americans with pre-existing conditions. Meanwhile, Democrats are working to lower costs, expand access and #ProtectOurCare. https://t.co/ifZZ0p1BGS

— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) March 7, 2022

My take on the GOP rage over this is that Cawthorne ignored the unspoken rule of right wing conspiracy theories: They are only meant to smear political opponents, not your own team. https://t.co/2JGauwlMI6

— Amanda Marcotte (@AmandaMarcotte) March 30, 2022

This isn’t a hard rule to follow. Even halfwits the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert manage.

Now North Carolina’s senior Senator, Tom Tillis, says he’s backing Cawthorn’s primary opponent. In the context of electoral politics, that’s little short of a death sentence.

* * *

Yes, Democrats can always do better.

But Democrats do not have their own dedicated media ecosystem to maintain and reinforce National messaging, because Democrats lack the widespread authoritarian personality disorder necessary to seek biased reporting.  It’s why Air America failed.  Democrats consume News, Republicans consume propaganda.  Democrats also do not have a National political press on their side.  Josh Marshall famously wrote how the DC political press is wired for Republicans. With their craving of access, worship of power, insecurity, neediness, and penchant for vibes, laziness and false equivalency, yet with one eye always looking for the big cash out book deal, the DC Press will never get what they so desire from Democrats.

But all that Republican mess happened in about the span of a month. A month! Just because it’s not a National story doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Forget the messaging magicians. And don’t intimidate yourself by believing Republicans are masters of the messaging universe. Because they clearly aren’t. 

The Terror of Republicans

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Eliminationist, perigenocidal rhetoric was a part of the Republican Party for decades, albeit a fringe.  A levee separated what was talked about in polite quarters on the Sunday Morning shows from what swam in the recesses of the lower tier talk radio shows, and later the vilest of Internet sites. Trump was the first, in many ways, to breach this barrier.

But why was there such a barrier in the first place? Remember, the purpose of the Murdoch Media empire et al. was not just to drag the National discourse rightward and electorally kneecap Democrats, it was to constantly keep the crazy at bay.  Republican strategists knew the fringe was electorally toxic.  Think Todd Akin, who blew an easily winnable Senate race in a red state.

The President’s Party almost always has a bad midterm. Democrats don’t hold a large majority in the House, and the Senate is split evenly. President Biden hasn’t been that popular, although I don’t believe the polls are accurately capturing his approval. It would have been safe for Republicans to assume that the thing that always happens would just happen again. 

So why take on a crazy pandering strategy of reigniting the culture war?  Remember Todd Akin? The culture war was “lost” June 26, 2015 when the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges. The 2016 and 2020 Elections were hardly about cultural issues.  Republicans attempting to get the culture war going again is like Vladimir Putin trying to get the Soviet Union back together by invading Ukraine(1) .

And in just the past few weeks, Republican recommitment to the culture war crazy has only gotten worse:

One of the abiding features of early 21st century American politics is that a lot of change on the right happens in the subterranean world of what we used to call “the Crazy.” In the pre-Trump years it’s not that any of this was really hidden. ... But it was off the radar of most of conventional journalism and the mainstream political discourse because it wasn’t serious. It wasn’t real. It was just crazy antics on the margins. But as we’ve tried to chronicle for decades now, that was never the case. That was the real GOP politics. It controlled and drove the presentable mainstream leaders — the Boehners, Ryans, McConnells and more. The ascension of Donald Trump was in many ways a simple inversion of this dynamic, putting “the Crazy” in formal and open leadership of the party… Something has happened as recently as the last four to six weeks that follows this pattern, is important and dangerous and is still mostly coasting under the radar of “proper” U.S. political discourse and reporting.

It's hard to express just how radicalized far-right spaces have become in the last month, in part because this new brand of radicalization is so specific. These spaces have become openly, aggressively, mask-off anti-gay. They've also become extremely... anti-sports! It's weird!

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) March 31, 2022

Why engage in such electorally risky behavior? Because Republicans can read the same demographic trends we do, and they’re terrified.

* * *

The younger generation is more diverse than any preceding generation:

Source: Pew (2011)

Different ethnicities have starkly different attitudes towards things that matter to the right.  For example, opposition to gun control is a purely white phenomenon.

I acquired this image from a groyper account, fearing for his future in Texas.

While all generations have become more tolerant of same sex marriage, younger generations are more tolerant than older.

Do Republicans think revoking rights once granted in this Country is the way to reverse that trend?

Younger generations are also least likely to religiously affiliate, with regular church attendance being strongly correlated to voting republican.

Remember, this is just religious affiliation. Regular attendance would be lower.

The Pew Study is exhaustive, but it isn’t the only one to find the same results. The Washington Post found the same results in 2012, with a writeup from former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson that now sounds quaint in hindsight:

...Republicans and conservatives will be forced to make some adjustments over time.

The millennial shift will influence the way conservatives argue. The tone of Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum on social issues during the recent primary season — itself a throwback to the early days of the religious right — will not be an option. Republican rhetoric will need to be oriented toward shared moral aspiration instead of harsh judgment.

It’s been said that all generations become more conservative as they age, but this is not entirely true.  How generations initially vote tends to leave a lasting bias towards how they vote in subsequent generations.

There is a strong, older Republican contingent. But this was generated in 2011, meaning these ages are now 10 years older.

* * *

The above graphs don’t yet include Generation Z, which Pew studies separately. Suffice it to say the same social trends discussed progress to the younger generations.

What does all this translate to?

Electoral vote map in 2020 is only those age 18 to 40 voted. It is safe to assume that come 2024, this map would represent 18 to 44 year olds. 

* * *

If we had a functional media (the topic for a separate diary), the Sunday Morning discussion would be whether the Republican midterm strategy makes sense? Or whether it is alienating younger generations? My suspicion is that there is no strategy, and current actions are a blind panic slash rage towards a changing America.  But none of our esteemed pundits would dare press that question.  Still, let us not presume what we’re seeing, as dangerous and harmful as it is, is borne from some great strategy. This is the dangerous behavior of a cornered wild animal.

Notes:

(1) Just as Vladimir Putin has the capacity to do great damage fighting an ultimately losing war, Republicans will have the same affect reigniting the culture war. Questioning their actions in no way means to belittle the very real risk Republicans pose.  If you know someone who is LGBTQ+ and maybe not paying attention to politics please share Josh Marshall’s article with them.

Anatomy of a Polling Failure: Part 1 (Motive)

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I come with a warning.

I read dKos multiple times every day. I have since 2003! But haven’t written much in the past few months. I had been spending most of my time over on election Twitter (until space Karen rendered the site largely unusable).  Although my field isn’t political science, I am proud to have earned a Ph.D. and am intimately familiar with the data science used by everyone from elite media election analysts on down to just random election twitter users such as myself. 

At the beginning of the summer, some of us, under the guidance of Simon Rosenburg, Christopher Bouzy, Tom Bonier, et al., started to notice that the vaunted red wave was … not materializing in the data.

I have to thank @chrislhayes for broadcasting the most satisfying 2-minutes of television I've watched today. A perfect encapsulation of what Fox News has looked like over the past several months. pic.twitter.com/VTtV4KijYf

— Craig Harrington (@Craigipedia) November 10, 2022

That’s … not how things turned out. President Biden is on track for the 5th best midterm performance since 1930.  That’s right behind FDR after the Great Depression, George W. Bush after 9/11, and John F. Kennedy after the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

Assuming NV goes as expected, Biden is on track to score the 5th best party performance in at least the past 23 midterms. On many measures (e.g. legislation passed) he's had an astoundingly successful presidency. Some other notes... [Table adapted from: https://t.co/nRaU2qyqTS] pic.twitter.com/XKvUFeydGZ

— Patrick Murray (@PollsterPatrick) November 12, 2022

My final prediction, 22 days before the election, was that, based on data science, Democrats would win 51 Senate Seats (through PA, GA, NV, and AZ) and lose 10 House Seats. 

I should buy a lottery ticket.

No, it wasn’t 100% accurate(1)

But how could I, a nobody from Daily Kos, be orders of magnitude closer to the result than the experts who are paid millions of dollars to get this right? Only through a colossal failure of our elite media institutions. It will take more than one diary to fully explain how they could be so wrong, and the nobodies could be so right. The first installment is on what motivated them.

Motive

In short, our media elites were motivated to get this result wrong. People, this is really scary.

“So what?” you say. They look like fools.

Yes, they look like fools. The Dave Wassermans, the Charlie Cooks, the Larry Sabatos, the angry white men who run RCP, the Nate Silvers, all of CNN, they all look like fools. 

But a breakdown of this magnitude is more evidence we are living through one of the greatest media failures of the past two decades (and there is some stiff competition on that front).  A media this degraded cannot protect us from autocracy.

So what do I mean by media elites being motivated to get this result wrong? Shouldn’t they be motivated to get the result right? If you nailed this election, you would’ve looked like a genius! Everyone would click on you and you’d get wealthy. Behold, the concept of motivated reasoning!

Motivated reasoning is the phenomenon in cognitive science and social psychology in which emotional biases lead to justifications or decisions based on their desirability rather than an accurate reflection of the evidence...

Media elites identified a red wave (in contrast to contradictory evidence) because they wanted a red wave. And there was not a single media elite who dissented.

lot of egg on plenty of faces but it does seem like the Times was particularly strident predicting a Republican wave long before votes were counted. pic.twitter.com/8tq0HsAnsP

— Eric Schultz (@EricSchultz) November 12, 2022

If you think this has a connection to the media’s odd negative obsession with President Biden, you’d be right.  The media has been relentlessly negative towards President Biden.  So much that it caught the attention of the … Beltway media, a year ago. 

So why did the Beltway media want a red wave? Aren’t they all liberals themselves? Remember, stories of a red wave were often accompanied by stories of voters prioritizing economic concerns. (See also: here, here, here, here, yada yada yada). Despite inflation, the economy is really good. Here is the New York Times on October 17:

Republicans Gain Edge as Voters Worry About Economy, Times/Siena Poll Finds

With elections next month, independents, especially women, are swinging to the G.O.P. despite Democrats’ focus on abortion rights. Disapproval of President Biden seems to be hurting his party.

The Times Sienna poll for which the above article headlines was a major component of the red wave snowball, and I will come back to it (and Nate Cohen) in later diaries.  But just as the media was mad at Biden for taking away their forever war, supposed liberal elites wanted to take Biden down a peg for relentlessly pursuing pro-worker and fiscally expansionist policies.  Remember, these same elites are often unfortunately seated next to Larry Summers at dinner parties, and according to people like Larry Summers, Biden’s pro-worker and expansionist policies are the cause of inflation

Pains me to say this, but the red-wave predictions were not about polling or lazy punditry. They were about elite interests needing to see the Biden administration get a good spanking for their worker support and fiscal-expansion agenda.

— Siddhartha Mahanta (@sidhubaba) November 10, 2022

I’m not saying Larry Summers is right or wrong (he’s wrong), but the desire to see Biden up there offering a mea culpa Wednesday morning for writing everybody a $1400 check overwhelmed any and all sense of reason.

But believe it or not, this was not the only motive.

Another part was just general fear of Republicans. Polls had missed in the direction of Democrats famously in 2016 and also 2020. We will talk more about how the miss in 2020 in particular is especially dangerous, as there were serious signs of herding (pollsters adjusting their results to match others).  The greatest sin in Beltway media is being perceived of as “partisan” (which translates as “a liberal” to us).  Here is Dave Wasserman from just today.

You mean the partisan accounts WHO GOT EVERYTHING RIGHT?!? https://t.co/oaLnfXeTGV

— Infinite Monkey Theorum Account (@NoFortunate) November 13, 2022

Good Lord! How out of touch can you be! 

Coverage of the 2022 midterms paralleled coverage of Hillary Clinton in 2016. The beltway media didn’t want to be perceived of as partisan, and considered this a good opportunity to take Hillary Clinton down a peg.

The one grudge that I will never let go of is the grudge I hold against my fellow reporters who treated Hillary Clinton's Emails as the single most important issue facing voters in 2016. They did immeasurable harm to their country during a time of extraordinary peril.

— Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) November 13, 2022

And lastly, there was a purely financial motive. What we would consider nonpartisan media (i.e., elite media) is consumed almost exclusively by liberals. Conservatives don’t read the Washington Post or New York Times. They won’t watch CNN or PBS News Hour. They have their own media ecosystems. And elite media long ago discovered that negative stories about Democrats / positive stories about Republicans generate clicks. Scaring the libs is a major business element of elite media. 

So you add all these motives up, and you get motivated reasoning.

* * *

I’ve been working on additional diaries, going over what the data actually said, herding phenomena, how we knew rightwing pollsters were full of it, and more importantly, what we can do going forward. 

Notes:

(1) I was wrong in that OH would go for Vance by more than projected (6.5%, not 3% as I predicted), although Cheri Beasley lost by the 3% predicted. I didn’t give a margin for Mandela Barnes’ loss in that tweet, but in other tweets I had predicted larger than the ultimate margin of 1%.  I was also wrong on the magnitude of the House gains by Republicans (it appears they may gain 6 or 7, not 10).  

Anatomy of a Polling Failure: Part 2 (Garbage In, Garbage Out)

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I promised warned you there’d be more.  And where we last left off, I talked about how elite pundits were motivated to call this election wrong before it even began.

How could a Daily Kos nobody such as myself produce a prediction 3 weeks out far more accurate than those paid millions to do the same? 

For the record, here was my prediction:

I sprained my arm patting myself on the back.

This isn’t to brag, but to show how dangerously wrong elites with access to insiders and news media apparatus were about this election, and how easy it was to call this election right based on the data.

Garbage In…

Let’s start with the obvious. Republican pollsters flooded the zone with garbage polls.

Here is the polling average for the Senate broken out by pollster lean. The Senate outcome was IN LINE with an average of non-partisan pollsters. The evidence was right in front of the media. It was NOT Improbable. The non-partisan pollsters had ONE miss! https://t.co/w4FjnlZZuPpic.twitter.com/cCzePeJraz

— dcg1114 (@dcg1114) November 12, 2022

What the above table tells you is that non-partisan pollsters were calling this election precisely; media elites were motivated to ignore that.  And when it comes to partisan pollsters, some were more egregious than others. 

You mean a guy who looks like this wasn't on the level? I'm shocked! pic.twitter.com/FXpL2815LJ

— Infinite Monkey Theorum Account (@NoFortunate) November 10, 2022

Trafalgar has had an A- rating from Nate Silver. We’ll get to Nate in a minute. From the recent Slate article highlighting every single miss from Trafalgar this cycle:

A 2020 New York Times article about the company—published before Biden’s victory, even—noted that “Trafalgar does not disclose its methods, and is considered far too shadowy by other pollsters to be taken seriously.” But it does release crosstabs, i.e., breakdowns of polling responses by subgroup, which allow observers to see under the hood at least a little bit to find out how it gets its overall numbers.

But Trafalgar wasn’t the only pollster playing games this cycle. Data for Progress, an ostensibly left-wing polling operation, was notorious for also predicting a more rightward outcome of this election than the nonpartisan pollsters predicted. Data for Progress’s head lost $50,000 betting on races based on his own polling. 

Data For Progress’s head was literally betting on races based on his own polling. Not only is that unethical, but you should *never* hire someone who is willing to do that! It is a recipe for confirmation bias and may explain why they never reconsidered weighting from an R+7 year https://t.co/cRRLiWn7cI

— Blake Allen (@Blake_Allen13) November 15, 2022

Data for Progress has had a B rating from Nate Silver. And don’t forget patriot polling, which turned out to be two high school preppies just making stuff up.

#NEW Pennsylvania Governor @PatriotPolling Poll: Shapiro (D) 52% (+7) Mastriano (R) 45% 846 RV, 11/2-5https://t.co/8OF9qukbGWpic.twitter.com/kjAsnA3VsN

— Political Polls (@Politics_Polls) November 7, 2022

Was the high school kids’ work included in Nate Silver’s and the RCP averages?  You better believe it.  Also, here are the kids in case you think I’m making this up.

Patriot polling

Why? Why produce bad polling? Shouldn’t a pollster be motivated to be as accurate as possible? From the Slate article again:

One can only speculate as to where Trafalgar found a set of Gen Z voters—89 of them, according to the other data it provided—that broke 2-to-1 for the MAGA candidate in a swing state like Georgia. But there are rewards available in the attention economy for doing so, which provides free advertising for Trafalgar’s paid, private work. 

Trafalgar understands our attention economy. That’s all. Trafalgar founder Robert Cahaly knows that. And he made his money.

...and Garbage Out

And that brings us to our buddy Nate Silver, who decided a policy of Laissez-faire was the correct approach to obvious bad faith by partisan pollsters, thus rendering 538 the Facebook of polling aggregators. And no, it’s not like this issue wasn’t brought up to Nate Silver, who made the stunningly ignorant argument that because Democrats weren’t spamming the polling aggregates in response, their private polls were giving them bad news.  This argument was even repeated (but not necessarily endorsed) here on the front page back on November 2.

I think generally the complaint that GOP-leaning pollsters are "flooding the zone" is not sharp. 538s averages can adjust for them to some extent via house effects. And it's a free market. D-leaning pollsters could release polls too if they wanted; that they don't says something.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 5, 2022

First, to Nate Silver and the partisans making that argument:

Second, the issue was never about campaign internal polls, which Nate Silver knows are not included in the 538 average.  Campaigns have all sorts of strategic reasons for not releasing their internals (most importantly, it reveals where the releasing campaign believes the race is). The issue always was partisan, third party polls, often with either no published crosstabs and methodology, or wildly implausible crosstabs, spamming the polling aggregates.  This was a deliberate bad faith effort that was statistically apparent.  Look what it did to Nate’s own Senate forecast!

I circled the time period when the spam polls really show up. Look what it does to Nate Silver’s forecast. See how the 538 forecast goes from right to wrong in the course of two months.

Nate Silver’s final forecast was astonishingly 51R/49D with Democrats having only a 41% chance of winning 50 seats. They may win 51.  Nate Silver, ironically, would have been far more accurate if partisan polls were excluded from the average.  Nate Silver’s defense is that he has no idea whether the partisan or nonpartisan polls would be more accurate.  This is stunningly obtuse.

And RCP? Nobody should take this bunch of out of touch partisans seriously ever again.

So We Went Back to The Moon Yesterday

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We all know Apollo 17 was the last manned mission to the lunar surface, Gene Cernan stepping off the lunar surface December 14, 1972, with the following quote:

Bob, this is Gene, and I'm on the surface; and, as I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come—but we believe not too long into the future—I'd like to just (say) what I believe history will record: that America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus–Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17.

Almost 50 years later, in the early AM hours last Wednesday, November 16, NASA launched its brand new lunar rocket.

We are going. For the first time, the @NASA_SLS rocket and @NASA_Orion fly together. #Artemis I begins a new chapter in human lunar exploration. pic.twitter.com/vmC64Qgft9

— NASA (@NASA) November 16, 2022

This rocket is massive. It just leapt off the launch pad and blew the doors off the launch complex on the way up. Watch it again in slow motion.

Check out this slow motion shot of the four RS-25 engines and twin solid rocket boosters as they ignite and light up the night sky - lifting SLS off of Launch Pad 39B and sending @NASA_Orion toward the Moon! pic.twitter.com/7Rm0pW4TGX

— NASA_SLS (@NASA_SLS) November 21, 2022

The Space Launch System (SLS) isn’t just another rocket. It is the most powerful rocket ever launched, being 15% more powerful than the Saturn V, which was until now the most powerful machine ever built. Just how powerful is the SLS? It can put 95 metric tons in Low Earth Orbit and 27 metric tons into lunar orbit. The Space Shuttle, in contrast, could put only about 29 metric tons into Low Earth OrbitFuture configurations can do even more, and will feature a payload fairing of 10m! It has the power output equivalent to ever train locomotive in the United States running at once.

Do you have a favorite @NASA_SLS launch photo? 🙌 We do! Check out this awesome image of our four RS-25 engines taken by one of our employees. 🚀 NASA has #Artemis I photos too >> https://t.co/iHythy8Zvepic.twitter.com/HJTDbHiKa6

— Aerojet Rocketdyne (@AerojetRdyne) November 17, 2022

Where’s the Orion capsule now? A distant lunar retrograde orbit that will make it the furthest human rated spacecraft from Earth, ever.

Orion has now reached the Moon, here's how it will get back to Earth on the 11th of December. pic.twitter.com/2vvTw8AZ1Z

— Primal Space (@thePrimalSpace) November 21, 2022

It is expected to return home December 11.

There is controversy over the Space Launch System. The SLS rocket recycles older technology, is not reusable, and saw cost overruns and delays. Those are all true. But with current materials and technology, you can be reusable or have massive capacity, not both. And the SLS is in the latter category. So let’s celebrate Joe Biden and NASA returning the United States to the moon 50 years later.  Artemis 2, which will place more than just mannequins in the Orion Spacecraft, is scheduled for launch May 2024. So in the mean time, let’s celebrate NASA and President Joe Biden for what was accomplished. Here is the launch again in slow motion. 


Anatomy of a Polling Failure: Part 2.1 (The Aggregators Strike Back)

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Thank you very much to all who read Part 1 (why elite pundits were motivated to call this race so wrong from the get go), and Part 2 (the garbage polls, and garbage poll aggregators).

Before we get to Part 3, which concerns a group of people called the Fundamentalists, I wanted to talk about some ominous developments that have transpired since I wrote Part 2.

* * *

Since I last wrote, election folks confronted the elite aggregators (e.g., RCP, 538, et al.) hat right wing pollsters deliberately flooded the zone with garbage polls with the intent to skew the averages.  More importantly, this had been plainly apparent for months. Steve Bannon all but said this was the strategy a year prior!

I can't think of a race where the GOP flooded the zone with garbage polls more than WA Sen. The 538 average had Murray up 4.7 pts. She's going to win by close to 15. pic.twitter.com/VmlwojJuED

— Tom Bonier (@tbonier) November 23, 2022

Why Washington? Because it will silently pull Nate Silver’s model to the right without openly calling a race wrong. If Democrats are only winning Washington by 4.7, something that could happen in a red wave, then it will (falsely) put a whole bunch of House seats elsewhere in play, that Democrats must then dedicate resources to defend. That’s just what Democrats did, and it cost them the house. Here’s how that worked:

New: NBC News is projecting Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez will win WA-03. Lol @ FiveThirtyEight. pic.twitter.com/vtbg3zduYc

— Christopher Bouzy (@cbouzy) November 13, 2022

Nate Silver had Republicans with a 98% chance of winning that seat.  But again, nonpartisan polls were not wrong. Right wing pollsters were wrong. And aggregators were wrong for including them in their averages despite warnings from very smart people.

Battleground polling - '12 - 22. An average of non-partisan pollsters predicted EVERY battleground Senate race correctly. The ONLY miss in competitive races was AZ Gov - where the average was -.25. Junk conservative polling distorted reporting horribly before the '22 election. pic.twitter.com/T4obaRMDDf

— dcg1114 (@dcg1114) November 26, 2022

So how have the elite aggregators responded to the charge that, despite warnings, they included faulty polls? By attacking leftists.

Circa 1950-2015 both-sidesism was a shitty heuristic, but I've grown less confident since then that the alternatives are better.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 24, 2022

This is an astonishingly bad (and neo-reactionary) take. Nate cannot brook criticism from other (non-millionaire) election modelers. I know Nate was a member of this community. But going forward, this community really has to be careful about who they trust. Dave Wasserman of the supposedly non-partisan Cook Political report responded to criticism with the ad hominem of (leftist) ‘partisan’, the worst insult that can be leveled in elite punditry. 

Seeing quite a few “Dems are on track to hold the House” takes from partisan accounts without any seat-by-seat evidence to back it up. It’s close, but at this writing Dems aren’t hitting the rates they’d need to in the unresolved CA seats to get to 218.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 13, 2022

sickburnist praxis

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) November 13, 2022

Dave Wasserman is attacking Christopher Bouzy.

Bouzy does this as a hobby. And he's still been more accurate than anyone else....including you.https://t.co/7lBn5gaYjG

— Art Martin (@gartmartin9) November 13, 2022

Thank you for allowing me this update on the aggregators. I wish a single aggregator had said that they were misled by republican pollsters, and would strive to include only nonpartisan polls from reputable pollsters next time, but instead, they have spent their time attacking their progressive critics. 

Anatomy of a Polling Failure: Part 3 (The Fundamentalists)

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Thank you very much to all who read Part 1 (why elite pundits were motivated to call this race so wrong from the get go), and Part 2 (the garbage polls, and garbage poll aggregators). In Part 3, I want to talk about an influential group of elites called the fundamentalists.

Not these fundamentalists

The Fundamentalists

The fundamentalists believe that a limited number of fundamental factors affect election outcomes.  The factors are generally agreed to be:

  1. Presidential Approval Rating
  2. The "Economy”.
  3. Vibes?

That’s it.

As we’ll show here, there’s been 🚩warning signs🚩 that these indicators have been faulty and/or insufficient (in the current political moment). No fundamentalist heeded these warnings.

Nathaniel Rakich, a sabermetrics bro who works for 538, kicked off the fundamentalism back on Election Day 2020:

Congratulations to Republicans on their victory in the 2022 midterms!

— Nathaniel Rakich (@baseballot) November 6, 2020

When confronted with a conflict between the fundamentals and the polls, the fundamentalists argued… the polls must be wrong!

Democrats can’t be doing well. The polls must be wrong.

From an account followed by Yglesias:

Lots of deleted tweets out there. Thankfully the internet is forever

The fundamentals were a major basis for House ratings at the supposedly  “nonpartisan” Cook Political Report news letter. Here is Amy Walter Lady Hotline Josh two weeks before the election:

….with less than two weeks until Election Day, it looks as if the fundamentals— an unpopular president, deep frustration with the status quo, and stubborn inflation — are ultimately going to define this midterm.

Guess what? They didn’t.😂

We could dismiss the Cook Political Report as out-of-touch Beltway elites.  But Cook political ratings factor in to Nate Silver’s model, which we discussed in Part 2. Cook political ratings influenced where and how Democrats campaigned.

How did these elite media figures, who are trying to reduce election outcomes to a function of two fundamental numbers, get so misled? They got both the numbers wrong.

Joe Biden’s Approval:

Did you know Joe Biden is unpopular? Do you ever stop hearing about how unpopular Joe Biden is?  Presidential popularity is considered so important that 538 has an entire center dedicated to it. They report Biden’s approval to a tenth of a digit, multiple times a day! You can compare where Biden’s approval stands against predecessors going all the way back to Harry Truman! It’s that important!

Tom Bevan, someone who would be an angry suburban MAGA-dad if they hadn’t founded RCP, was anxiously tweeting out Biden’s falling approval rating last winter as proof positive of an impending democratic wipeout. Unfortunately, Tom deleted all those tweets before I could grab them for this diary. But it doesn’t take much intellectual curiosity to realize there is something peculiar about Biden’s job approval. Daily Kos gives us the incredible resource of Civiqs. And front page diarists still misunderstood Biden’s low approval rating. Let’s look at Biden approval, broken down by age group, on Election Day 2022:

From Civiqs

The first thing you’ll notice is that Biden’s affirmative approval rating is the lowest among the youngest voters.  And this is not just in Civiqs. We see this in every poll (here, here, etc.). This wouldn’t be notable, except for everything we know about these young voters. If the youngest generation were, say, trending right, then we could have more faith that the reported approval rating is accurate, but look at the exit poll from 2022:

Screen shot image from the Washington Post

The age groups unfortunately don’t align precisely with Civiqs, but they are close enough that we can still safely say the youngest voters were the most willing to support Democrats.

The causality between approval and voting intent is broken for the youngest voters, and it doesn’t converge until the 65+ demographic.

Our media elites can’t fathom that there has been a great decoupling between approval and voting intent, and that approval of President Biden is bidirectional.  In other words, those paid a quarter of a million a year to study elections can’t fathom that young voters see President Biden unacceptably to their right.  It really doesn't take much intellectual curiosity to debunk presidential approval. I did it here with Civiqs and 30 seconds. But this was apparently too much for the fundamentalists.

The Economy:

Did you know the economy is bad? Do you ever stop hearing about how bad the economy is? Just like Joe Biden being unpopular, it is because it is. Sure, unemployment is at record lows, wages are up, job growth has been stellar, and GDP has been positive. But the economy is bad because people say it is. Let’s go to Civiqs again and look at Republican perception of the economy:

Would you look at that😮 Republican negative perception of the economy falls to near 0 the day Donald Trump wins the Presidency, and then skyrockets the day he loses it. There is no economic news correlated to these dates. Republican voters so obviously conflate economic conditions with whether a Republican is in the White House. Republican President? Economy good. Democratic President? Economy bad. That’s it. Our elite election analysts don’t want to acknowledge that Republican voters simply give spurious answers on economic conditions.

"Now Democratic voters do the same thing", I’m sure you can hear the very serious pundits say. No they don’t. Again from Civiqs:

Democrats report no notable increase in negative sentiment when power transitions from Obama to Trump. They do when the coronavirus decimates the economy (i.e., their sentiment responds to reality). Moreover, Democratic negative sentiment actually fell during Trump’s time in office, as the economy healed and in accordance with positive economic reports after the initial Covid crash. All of this basically says that Democrats are honest in their assessment of the economy, Republicans are not. 

But because Republicans are a statistically significant portion of any survey, media elites see overall negative economic responses simply because a Democrat is in power. This causes the media to cover the economy more negatively, and gives rise to perceptions that Republicans are better for the economy (they aren’t). Negative coverage of the economy can affect perceptions of the economy, too, creating a feedback cycle.

But this causes cognitive dissonance with our media elites, because they see the same positive economic indicators and (reported) negative sentiment we do. Instead of investigating whether Republicans may or may not be providing honest economic sentiment, something that would take them 5 minutes and a dialup modem, they latch on to the one economic indicator that is negative (inflation). Back in spring, no less than the National Editor of the Cook Political report, gave away the game. 

The reality of inflation means that D’s can’t hope to present a ‘rosier’ picture of economy to help in midterms. Instead, have to make every race referendum on worst attributes/policies/personalities of GOP. Rarely works, but looks like only viable choice.

— Amy Walter (@amyewalter) April 12, 2022

In other words: Is the economy good? Sure! But because there’s inflation, the economy is bad. Remember, people continuously rate their own economic conditions as good! So how can the economy be “bad”?

* * *

Before I end, you may ask: why harp on the failure of the red wave to materialize? So what if the Democrats won? They won! My answer is that the media obsession with a red wave (contrary to the evidence) is the latest in a string of elite media failures.  These failures follow a set pattern, and you can draw a straight line from the impeachment of Bill Clinton, to the treatment of Al Gore in 2000, to the Iraq War runup, to the belief that Mitt Romney was winning after the first debate in 2012, to the treatment of Hillary Clinton in 2016, to the nonexistent red wave of 2022.  I am especially loathe to draw comparisons to the Iraq War, an elite media failure that saw the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.  But we will be able to demonstrate before the end of the series that if not for the red wave narrative, reaching as far as Democratic strategists who incorrectly allocated resources on account of a wave materializing, Democrats would have been able to hold the house. So yes, the media cost Democrats the House of Representatives. 

Carthage Must Be Destroyed

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The year is 152 BC. Rome has fought two wars against its neighbor in the Mediterranean, Carthage. Although Rome was ultimately successful in both wars, it suffered a number of humiliating losses along the way that shook faith in Roman military might. By 201 BC, Carthage nonetheless had been reduced to a small territory and ceased to be a threat to Rome.  

Scipio Africanus imposed a peace treaty on the Carthaginians which stripped them of their overseas territories, and some of their African ones. An indemnity of 10,000 silver talents[note 2] was to be paid over 50 years.[26] Hostages were taken and Carthage was prohibited from waging war outside Africa, and in Africa only with Rome's express permission. Many senior Carthaginians wanted to reject it, but Hannibal spoke strongly in its favour and it was accepted in spring 201 BC.[28][29] Henceforth it was clear that Carthage was politically subordinate to Rome...

Cato the Censor traveled to vestigial Carthage. He was shocked by the wealth and culture that remained. Upon return to Rome, he began to end all his speeches before the Senate with “Ceterum (autem) censeo Carthaginem esse delendam (Furthermore, I consider that Carthage must be destroyed), often abbreviated to Carthāgō dēlenda est (Carthage must be destroyed).  

Carthāgō dēlenda est...

Rome prepared for war against Carthage, for a third time

A large Roman army landed at Utica in 149 BC under both consuls for the year, Manius Manilius commanding the army and Lucius Marcius Censorinus the fleet. The Carthaginians continued to attempt to appease Rome, and sent an embassy to Utica. The consuls demanded that they hand over all weaponry, and reluctantly the Carthaginians did so. Large convoys took enormous stocks of equipment from Carthage to Utica. Surviving records state that these included 200,000 sets of armour and 2,000 catapults. Their warships all sailed to Utica and were burnt in the harbour.[62] Once Carthage was disarmed, Censorinus made the further demand that the Carthaginians abandon their city and relocate 16 km (10 mi) away from the sea; Carthage would then be destroyed.[62][63] The Carthaginians abandoned negotiations and prepared to defend their city.

Carthage ultimately was destroyed. Up to 750,000 people died, most of them civilians, and a further 50,000 Carthaginians were enslaved

* * *

Fast forward about 2,200 years to San Francisco, CA. Tech giant Twitter, a perpetual money loser, has finally started to turn the corner and generate a profit, or at least reduce its losses.

Year

Net profit / loss ($mm) 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021
-79
-645
-577
-521
-456
-108
1206
1466
-1136
-221

How did Twitter do it? Content moderation.

By 2021, Twitter was able to bring in $4.5B in advertising revenue. Advertising is basically Twitter’s only source of income. Content moderation brought more people to the site. Companies were willing to pay more money to advertise. And Twitter made more money. Viola! Moreover, the people who were coming to Twitter were the kind of people advertisers wanted (i.e., not Nazis). 

It’s the age old debate that’s been raging on message boards since the late 90’s and early aughts: free speech versus content moderation. And Twitter was showing in cold hard cash that being liberal while imposing moderate content moderation worked. So… dēlenda est.

* * *

People ask my why Elon Musk would light so much money to destroy Twitter? I tell them because Twitter was succeeding. Oh, there’s other, secondary motives tied up in this. It’s Elon. But at the core, Elon was willing to set a pile of money on fire because the very manner in which Twitter was succeeding was intolerable.

If you think I’m being speculative here, Elon has an actual record of doing the very same thing.

In 2008, California passed a proposition to build High Speed Rail. A communitarian endeavor is anathema to Silicon Valley. While Republicans set out to kill the project through lawsuits which delayed it and defunding in Congress, Elon had another strategy. Elon spent his own money to create a company which would outcompete California High Speed Rail in the public eye. While High Speed Rail became bogged down in lawsuits over land acquisition, Elon Musk proposed… hyperloop. “You stupid, communitarian liberals building 20th Century technology,” Elon said, “through my genius and advances in technology, I will build something cheaper, easier, and faster!” Who would want to spend $100B on high speed rail whose fate is subject to political pressures when a tech genius like Elon Musk can do it faster, cheaper, and easier?

Except hyperloop is vaporware. The concept wasn’t invented by Elon Musk — It’s been around for over 200 years. People haven’t built it because the technical hurdles, which I would be glad to elaborate on, are insurmountable. Did Elon Musk spend money to start a hyperloop company just to attack California High Speed Rail? Actually, yes.

Happy to have this confirmed: the goal of Hyperloop was to get California’s high-speed rail canceled. Musk and the Kochs, both trying to halt a transition away from automobiles. For Musk, fantasy technologies are preferable to real solutions.#cahsr#highspeedrailpic.twitter.com/OP0qndZKGJ

— Paris Marx (@parismarx) August 30, 2019

The hyperloop facility has since been demolished. A bunch of the high speed rail system has been constructed, but the future is now uncertain.

Carthāgō dēlenda est…

* * *

Twitter was many things. It was chiefly a piece of tech real estate, where activists could resided in close proximity to powerful elite. It was coveted by fascists, neo-reactionaries, and authoritarians for this very reason. Twitter is now purging mainstream liberal accounts. I migrated to Twitter from here, because activism through microblogging was easier for me, and easier to remain anonymous. The liberal community on Twitter has been decimated. Twitter will descend into 4chan; the fate that awaits all forums who refuse content moderation. And that’s just fine with Elon. This was his goal all along.

dēlenda est…

2023: Democracy Dying in Darkness is The Plan

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This may be your first day back to work in 2023. I want to tie together two, seemingly unrelated stories from the end of 2022.

* * *

The first is our friend from Royal Island, George Santos.

Look at how that vest and those glasses make him look so respectable!

Josh Marshall has summed up all the lies Santos has told, and all the trouble he may really be in. It is unclear whether Santos is even a United States citizen, which would make him ineligible for Congress. Swearing in is Tuesday, so we better find out stat whether he actually is eligible. For now, he really is an amazing headache for Republicans; they desperately need his vote, but keeping him around incurs an extremely high cost to their already damaged brand. No, I want to wind the clock back a couple of months, to the fall campaign.

Murc’s Law dictates that as soon as the news of George Santos broke, Democrats should be blamed. How could the Democrats have let this happen? For example:

The New York state Democratic party: It's an interesting question if they are more corrupt or more incompetent. The Santos thing is a point in the incompetence ledger. https://t.co/sJIU4JPxow

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) December 29, 2022

The truth is, opposition research(1) did uncover Santos’ lies. And so did the local paper. There was no one left to report it, and no one in the National Media (right next door) was listening.

A local paper broke the Santos story before the election; no one listened. Red flags "were brought to the attention of many folks in the media,” his opponent said, but "a lot of folks in the media are saying they didn’t have the personnel, time or money" https://t.co/sDRttiLsVe

— Lauren Wolfe (@Wolfe321) December 30, 2022

For those not from here, Santos’s district, NY-3, includes parts of the New York Time’s home turf. A small part, but still a part. And thus the claim by the Times is especially ludicrous.

NYT has spent six years sending armies of reporters to every diner in the Midwest, but when it fails to cover a congressional district that touches Queens it's out of their bailiwick. pic.twitter.com/di1919NUiy

— Craig Calcaterra (@craigcalcaterra) December 20, 2022

Newsday, for what it’s worth, is a shadow of its former self.  George Santos is one of the biggest stories of 2022, with National implications.

A local paper broke the George Santos story. Why was nobody listening? https://t.co/Zy6zqtftMX

— Elizabeth Kolbert (@ElizKolbert) December 30, 2022

Buta story on Santos lying conflicted with the New York Times National narrative of a red wave, so they ignored it.  Local papers have been so decimated(2), and the out of touch National political media is so blinkered, the local media outlets and the Democratic campaign were left to scream into the void.  

* * *

And that brings us to the second (seemingly unrelated) story from the end of 2022: Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. I had wrote about why Musk purchased Twitter a few weeks back. Since then:

Elon Musk’s net worth collapse is the biggest loss of wealth in modern history https://t.co/aH8lQCngEN.

— Judi Cunningham (@CarrieC75701474) December 29, 2022

You think Elon (and his investors(3)) would be mad about losing money. There’s a quote from the movie Tenet (2020)

People who've amassed fortunes like your husband generally are not OK with being cheated out of any of it.

No, this is money well spent, according to Elon and those who helped finance the purchase of Twitter. Elon Musk’s net worth collapse was driven by a collapse in Tesla’s stock price. People own those stocks. Rich people own lots of them. 

ROTF, LMFAO pic.twitter.com/beHJQ8lH3h

— Liam Nissan™ (@theliamnissan) December 27, 2022

You’d think those shareholders would be mad? Mad enough to, you know, replace Elon Musk as CEO? That’s something readily within their power. Or at least get Elon to stop being Elon? The fact that they won’t is a testament to their tacit approval. You see, these wealthy people are happy spending money for Elon to keep undermining liberal democracy. The destruction of Twitter was, as I noted, ultimately about destroying the main means of communication for liberal democracy. Now Elon wants to purchase Substack. Already, most major media is all owned by oligarchs, and exclusively liberal media is being increasingly paywalled by them

And that is their plan for Democracy: for it to die in darkness.

* * *

George Santos is a clown. But the fascist that does us in won’t be. And when that fascist comes for us, their plan is for there to be no accessible, liberal media left to report on it.

______________________

(1) Santos’s Democratic opponent, and the New York State Democratic Party, are not blameless here. 

(2) At the time the Santos story was breaking, Josh Marshall wrote this article on the Providence Journal.

(3) His investors are in the photo with him, above. None of them are good people who love Democracy.





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