Saturday, April 9, 2022

Ohio Senate Race: A Test Case in the Heart of the Rust Belt

The Ohio primary is less than a month away and Donald Trump still hasn't endorsed a Republican in the Senate race. Much of the media coverage has focused on Josh Mandel and J.D. Vance, who appear to be in a contest to show which of them can be more extreme in their attempt to get the nod from the former guy (or at least to win over his supporters).

What hasn't garnered much attention is that, at this point (with polls showing that almost 30% of likely voters are undecided) the race is essentially a tie between Mandel and millionaire investment banker Mike Gibbons, who has poured $11 million of his own money into his campaign. 

Perhaps recognizing that he had lost his lead to Gibbons, Mandel got into a bit of a dick-swinging contest with his opponent at a recent debate.

The dick-swinging continued long after the debate was over. 

In light of all of that, I have to admit to being amused when Jane Timken, the only woman in the race, put out an ad suggesting that her opponents are "guys who overcompensate for their inadequacies" while referring to herself as "Trump [cough, cough] tough." 

Demonstrating what happens to a frontrunner in a large Republican primary field, this clip of Gibbons from back in September finally garnered some attention this week:

These millionaires (Senator Rick Scott included) don't seem to have learned anything from another investment banker, Mitt Romney, who once suggested that the 47% of Americans who don't pay federal income taxes are freeloaders. Of course, he went on to lose Ohio to the Black guy.

The question for these two candidates is "what is their actual agenda for supporting the economic interests of working class voters of Ohio?" On his web site, Josh Mandel never addresses the issue. As his campaign slogan says, he's all about being "pro-God, pro-Gun, and pro-Trump." It probably won't surprise you that Gibbons dishes out the same old Republican line about trickle-down economics.

Politicians don’t create jobs, businesses do. I have created jobs. I know firsthand that businesses create jobs when taxes are low and government gets out of the way.

So when it comes to Republicans, working class voters in Ohio have a choice between grievance politics and trickle down economics from a guy who thinks they don't pay enough in federal taxes.

In the Democratic primary, it is pretty clear that Tim Ryan will emerge as the nominee. As one of the more conservative members of the House, he wouldn't necessarily be my first choice. But then, I'm not an expert on Ohio politics. Someone who is an expert - Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown - has gone all-in for Ryan. 


So Sherrod Brown says that Ryan will put workers at the center of his agenda. But according to Jasmine Ulloa at the New York Times, Ryan is struggling to connect with white working class voters.
Mr. Ryan is trying to win back his party’s voters...throughout Ohio as he runs for Senate. His problem in Trumbull exemplifies the larger problem for Democrats in the Midwest: The lingering appeal of Trumpism and the erosion of support for the party among the white working-class voters who once formed a loyal part of its base in the industrial heart of the country... 
Like other Democrats in long-shot races, Mr. Ryan must stay firmly within a narrow lane as he vies to replace Senator Rob Portman, a Republican who is retiring. Mr. Ryan does not tout Medicare for All and other transformative policies that tend to energize progressives, and he does not want to talk about transgender women in sports and other divisive issues. Instead, he wants to campaign strictly on jobs, manufacturing and taking on China. 

Regardless of which Republican extremist wins the nomination next month, this Senate race in Ohio will be a test case for whether or not a white male centrist Democrat can win back working class voters in the Rust Belt. That's what I'll be keeping my eye on between now and November.

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Friday, April 8, 2022

On the Ballot in November: Hate vs Hope

Every morning, after making coffee and taking my dog for a walk, I check in on the news and read my Twitter feed. The latter is always filled with stories like the ones Dana Milbank collected to demonstrate that DNC Chair Jamie Harrison was right, the GOP is built on fraud, fear and fascism. I'm not going to repeat all of the examples Milbank documented because the hate emanating from the right is one of the major contributors to the depression I've been feeling lately. It is so incredibly ugly that I, for one, become increasingly immobilized if I dwell on it.

On the other hand, we have news like the most recent report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that the #BidenBoom is still soaring and this week, unemployment claims were the lowest we've seen in this country since 1968. I got a kick out of the way that White House Domestic Policy Advisor Susan Rice reacted to that news.

Then yesterday, this happened: 

As Sen. Cory Booker reminded us, no one could steal our joy at that moment. I was celebrating, but didn't get tearful until I saw the picture up above. At first, I didn't know why that one got to me. But then Maya Wiley helped me understand.

A couple more tweets took it to a deeper level. 

Joe Biden has served as vice president to this country's first African American president and hired the first Black and South Asian vice president. Now he's appointed the first African American woman to the Supreme Court. But that's not all.

To date, Pres­id­ent Biden has nomin­ated the most demo­graph­ic­ally diverse set of judi­cial candid­ates in history, includ­ing the first LGBTQ woman to serve on a court of appeals, the first Muslim Amer­ican to serve as a federal judge, and the first Black woman to ever serve on the Supreme Court. Twenty-six percent of all Black women currently serving as active judges were nomin­ated by Pres­id­ent Biden. Nearly 30 percent of Biden’s nomin­ees have served as public defend­ers.

Moving from his judicial nominations to his cabinet, we see the most diverse group in history:


Getting back to the picture up above, my reaction was all about wanting to be the kind of ally Joe Biden has become - the kind that is generous in spirit and always makes space for other people.

But that's not just what I want for myself. It's what I want for this country too. 

As Jon Favreau once said, "every election is a competition between two stories about America.” Never has that been more true than this November. On the one hand, we have the hate-filled agenda that has consumed the Republican Party. On the other, this is what's possible:

The hardest thing for me to grapple with these days isn't just the hate emanating from elected Republicans. It's that there is even a question about which direction this country wants to go. I desperately want to have faith in my fellow Americans. But it is being sorely tested right now.   

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Thursday, April 7, 2022

"No Tallywhaker" is Madison Cawthorn's Definition of "Woman"

Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) was ridiculed by a lot of people for asking Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to define "woman" during the confirmation hearings. But as it turns out, the question is producing some interesting responses when turned back on Republicans.

Reporters Arthur Delaney and Jennifer Bendery posed the question to Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Several refused to answer, but here are a couple of the responses.

Two X chromosomes - Marsha Blackburn and Chuck Grassley
Someone who has a uterus - Josh Hawley

Two of the most performative trolls from the House side weighed in as well.

We came from Adam’s rib - Majorie Taylor Greene
X chromosomes, no tallywhacker - Madison Cawthorn

On the X chromosomes, Delaney and Bendery point out that there are women born with only one X chromosome and men born with two X chromosomes. Also, when asked whether a woman who has her uterus removed for medical reasons is still a woman, Hawley stumbled a bit and eventually suggested that a woman has a vagina. As Monica Hesse pointed out, that means that Hawley "would be forced to accept trans women, post-gender affirming surgery, as women too."

Hesse also had a little fun with Greene's response.
I’m not sure how much closer this gets any of us to a definition of womanhood that we can actually use in The Year of Our Lord 2022. How is a women’s college or women’s athletic team supposed to incorporate the Adam’s rib test into their eligibility policies? Is there a swab for ancestral rib residue?
You see Republicans, it's not so easy, is it? 

Someone with an open mind would begin to question their gender assumptions when faced with these facts. But of course with these Republicans, that was never the point. 

There are some questions this whole episode has raised for me, though. The most prominent is "why didn't Blackburn ask Jackson for a definition of "man?" Perhaps the answer to that one is correlated to the fact that all of the right wing fear-mongering about transexuals has focused on men who transition to women. 

It might be that Cawthorn's "no tallywhacker" is a clue that helps us answer that question. His definition of what it means to be a woman boils down to not having a penis - the symbol of manhood. In other words, having a penis is the norm/default and women are defined by their lack of one. Similarly, it is unthinkable/outrageous that a man would want to give up his penis to become a woman. 

All of this reminds me of how enraged I got a few years ago when the Daily Caller published an article by James Poulos titled "What are women for?" Here's part of how I responded at the time:
So yes, the author...is really asking the question about the utility of women. Of course, the next question that comes to any non-misogynist's mind is "utility to whom?" For the author who is obviously a man, the answer to that question must be a given because it never comes up. The result is that underlying the whole thing is that the question of women's utility to men must be an important question that we should all ponder deeply.

Subconsciously, these kinds of discussions always assume that maleness is the default. The definition of a woman is determined by her deviation from that norm, which must be justified by her utility to the norm. We have to recognize the depth of misogyny inherent in those assumptions if we're ever going to root it out. 

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Wednesday, April 6, 2022

A Building Backlash Against GOP Hate

As I mentioned previously, following the news these days can be depressing. For me, one of the drivers has been to wake up every day to the escalating hate coming from right wingers. To combat all of that, I decided to take a deeper look into whether the right wing's anti-wokeness agenda is working. 

A poll from Navigator asked a series of questions about the right wing obsession with book banning. Here's what they found:

As you may or may not know, there has been a growing push to remove certain books from schools across the country that local groups deem too problematic because they include content about race, gender, or sexuality. Knowing this, do you support or oppose banning certain books from public schools?

Support - 25%
Oppose - 65%

The results of a CBS/YouGov poll were even more dramatic.


Similarly, PPRI surveyed 5,000 respondents and found that “More than three quarters (76%) of Americans both agreed that teaching children about the history of racism in America will help our country move toward a healthier future and disagreed that is would hold our country back from making progress.” More Democrats than Republicans share this sentiment, but even among the latter, a significant majority (57 percent) is not inclined to whitewash (literally) the nation’s history of racism.

Perhaps all of that is why Rep. Jamie Raskin will hold a hearing this Thursday on politically motivated efforts to ban books and censor free speech in schools and public libraries. Witnesses include Ruby Bridges, who is not just a symbol of the desegregation of U.S. schools, but can also address the fact that a right-wing parents’ group seized on a Tennessee law limiting the teaching of race to mount an attempt to ban a book about her.

Most of these anti-wokeness campaigns were fueled by Republican success in the 2021Virginia election where Glenn Youngkin promised to end the teaching of critical race theory in schools. Conventional wisdom developed to suggest that he had won over (predominantly white) suburban women with that message. But a deeper dive into election results by TargetSmart revealed that assumption to be demonstrably wrong.

They further found that "Voters age 65 and older are an estimated 15.9% of Virginia’s population according to the census, yet accounted for 31.9% of all ballots cast in 2021." We don't know what motivated those seniors to turn out in such record numbers. Perhaps it was their fear about critical race theory being taught in schools. But if so, there is no indication that it similarly motivated the parents of school children.

As I've already noted, the focus on the Virginia governor's race overshadowed what happened in other local races.

Ballotpedia, a website that tracks U.S. politics, identified 96 school districts with a total of 302 seats up for election where social issues and the coronavirus response were major campaign issues. That includes, for example, questions of mandatory masks in school, comprehensive sex education, rights for transgender students and how race is taught in classrooms...

Ballotpedia found that candidates who took conservative stances on race, gender and pandemic issues did not win most of their races. Of the 275 candidates that Ballotpedia was able to label, about 28 percent of the winners had taken a conservative stance.

We've recently seen similar things happen across the country. For example:

In New Hampshire, where bitter debates over school masks and “critical race theory” (CRT) have dominated local politics for more than a year, the season of parent rage ended in a stunning sweep of school board elections last week by progressive public school advocates. “It was a complete repudiation of the GOP’s attempt to drive a wedge between parents and schools,” says Zandra Rice Hawkins, executive director of Granite State Progress. Of 30 candidates designated by the group as “pro–public education,” 29 won their races—many in traditionally “red” regions of New Hampshire. Across the state, culture warriors and advocates of school privatization lost to candidates who pledged to protect and support public education.

Here is what happened in school board races yesterday in Wisconsin:

If Republicans were using Wisconsin’s April 5 school board elections as a test run for state and national elections this fall, the results were mixed.

Republican-endorsed candidates picked up seats in districts including Waukesha and Kenosha. But in other areas, including Beloit, La Crosse and Eau Claire, despite unprecedented involvement by outside groups, major political parties on both sides and even rightwing billionaire and GOP megadonor Diane Hendricks, conservative candidates lost, as voters rejected hyperpartisan, negative school board politics.

In Eau Claire, all three school board candidates who ran on anti-LGBT platforms lost to the incumbents and their allies.

We're hearing a lot these days about hateful anti-woke legislation being passed in red states like Florida, but not as much about what recently happened in Indiana.

The Indiana Senate killed controversial House Bill 1134, which would have banned several "divisive concepts" and given more power over curriculum and classroom activities to parents, Monday night after several hours of closed-door discussions in the Republican caucus.

Even though Republicans have a supermajority in the General Assembly, Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray, R-Martinsville, said he didn't have the votes to support the bill that was inspired by nearly a year of debate about "critical race theory" in the state's public schools.

All of these developments are worth keeping an eye on. It is possible that, flying under the radar at the grass roots level is a backlash to the escalating hate campaigns that are emanating from the right. As NBC News just reported, "in 2010, Democrats had a 10-point lead among women with college degrees; it’s now ballooned to 38 points." One can only imagine what happens to that constituency when/if the Supreme Court guts or overturns Roe v Wade while Republicans continue to ramp up their hate campaigns against women, people of color, and LGBTQ Americans.

As Jennifer Rubin suggested, "Democrats who concluded that voters were rebelling against “wokeness” might want to reconsider." Perhaps, contrary to what the neo-New Democrats are suggesting, it is time to "lean in" to these issues as Republicans become more hateful and extreme every day. 

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Tuesday, April 5, 2022

It's Not Our Economy That's Depressed. It's Our Spirits.

Last Friday the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. added 431,000 jobs in March. They also adjusted January and February numbers up by 95,000 and noted that the unemployment rate fell to 3.6%. The U.S. economy has now had 11 straight months of job gains over 400,000 - something that's never happened since the government started maintaining national jobs records in 1939.

Beyond the employment numbers, BLS reports that "over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings have increased by 5.6 percent." But almost no one is pointing to this news, which is a pretty BFD.

When you hear reports that an average wage gain of 5.6% isn't keeping up with 8% inflation, keep in mind that those making less than $20/hr are actually beating inflation - by a long shot.

What has been confounding pollsters and pundits for months now is that Americans still seem sour about how the economy is doing. It has become a matter of conventional wisdom to suggest that rising inflation is a bigger concern. 

But a recent poll by Navigator suggests a different problem. They found that only 28% of respondents thought that more jobs had been created in the last year. Thirty-seven percent thought that more jobs had been lost and 14% thought he labor market evened out between jobs created and jobs lost. In other words, over half of those polled (51%) were misinformed about job creation over the last year. That is an astounding discrepancy.

It is not surprising that the MAGA crowd is misinformed. Just take a look at what Rep. Lisa McClain said at the recent Trump rally in Michigan.

But as the Navigator poll shows, Democrats and Independents are also misinformed. How does that happen? I'm going to let Eric Boehlert explain.
Just look at the relentlessly dour economic coverage. For the press, inflation remains the dominant, bad-news-for-Dems economic story. Even on Friday, the day the stellar jobs report was released, “inflation” was mentioned on cable news nearly as often as “jobs,” according to TVeyes.com.

Axios contorted itself by claiming Biden’s promise to add “millions” of new jobs (which he’s already accomplished) was being threatened because there aren’t enough workers...The home-run report itself was often depicted as a mixed bag. These were some of the glass-half-empty headlines that appeared in the wake of the latest runaway numbers:

• “America’s Job Market Is On Fire. Here’s Why It Doesn’t Feel Like It” (CNN)

• “Booming Job Growth Is a Double-Edged Sword For Joe Biden” (CNN)

• “Why a Great Jobs Report Can’t Save Joe Biden” (CNN)

• “Unemployment Hits Pandemic Low in March, But Uncertainty Looms Ahead” (Washington Post)

• “Biden Gets a Strong Jobs Report, But a Sour Mood Still Prevails” (Washington Post)

Totally normal journalism, right? The president announces another blockbuster jobs report and the press presents it as borderline bad news.

I doubt that most low-information voters pay much attention to actual numbers when it comes to employment data. But as some of those headlines suggest, there is a "mood" that prevails, regardless of the #BidenBoom. The question is whether, by focusing on what's wrong with the economy, the press is reflecting or helping to create that mood.

I would suggest that, at this point, Americans are exhausted - I know I am. We've had a rough couple of years and several things have contributed to that foul mood.

  1. We finally got rid of the liar-in-chief, only to witness an attempted coup that led to a violent attack on the Capitol. 
  2. The coronavirus pandemic has now been going on for a full two years - with a constant on-again/off-again resurgence.
  3. Over one million people have died of COVID, leaving millions of family, friends and loved ones to grieve their loss.
  4. Republicans have adopted a hate-filled politics fueled by performative trolls.
  5. With an assist from right wing news, mainstream media continues to focus on what they perceive to be this administration's failure.
  6. War crimes being committed by the Russians in Ukraine dominate the news.
I begin to wonder whether a lot of us aren't experiencing a kind of collective depression. If so, we can chose whether to deny it or name it. If we do the latter, it may help clarify that it is not our economy that is depressed - but our spirits. That's the beginning of the healing process. 

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Sunday, April 3, 2022

The Latest "Culture War" Battleground: DeSantis vs. Disney

It has been fascinating to watch Florida Governor DeSantis and Fox News take on DisneyWorld. To put this in some perspective, here are a few statistics to keep in mind:

  • DisneyWorld employs 77,000 Floridians, making it the biggest single-site employer in the United States.
  • Every year 20,000,000 people pay the exorbitant price of $116/day to visit the theme park.
  • Disney owns 27, 258 acres (43 square miles) of land in Florida – about the same area as all of San Francisco and two times the size of Manhattan.
  • Worldwide, Disney brings in over $67 billion in revenue every year.
Nevertheless, because Disney spoke out against Florida's "don't say gay bill," Republicans in the state are contemplating doing something pretty drastic.
Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis addressed on Thursday the suggestion of repealing a 55-year-old state law that allows Disney to effectively govern itself on the grounds of Walt Disney World, following the company’s public opposition to a controversial parental rights law in Florida.

"What I would say as a matter of first principle is I don’t support special privileges in law just because a company is powerful and they’ve been able to wield a lot of power," DeSantis said during a press conference in West Palm Beach, Florida on Thursday.

The 55 year-old law DeSantis referred to is the 1967 Reedy Creek Improvement Act. 

In the early 1960s, Walt Disney wanted to build a second theme park on the east coast. He chose an area in central Florida, but kept his plans a secret. Multiple shell companies began buying up land at very low prices from unknowing landowners (the company now brags that they only paid $5 million for the entire acreage). 

Once the land was secured, Disney petitioned the state for the creation of a special taxing district that would give his company almost total autonomy within its borders. The district would provide government services such as land use regulation and planning, building codes, waste treatment, utilities, roads, bridges, fire protection, emergency medical services and environmental services. In other words, with the 1967 Reedy Creek Improvement Act, Disney was successful in avoiding all of the "red tape" that comes with adherence to local policies and became a government unto itself.

That is the law that DeSantis and Florida Republicans are now threatening to unravel. While I find the kind of deal-making Florida entered with Disney back in the 60s appalling, it is not hard to imagine the kind of havoc that would be unleashed on the state if they actually followed through with their threat. 

DeSantis is pretending that these moves against Disney are not simply retaliation for their stand on his "don't say gay bill." But Fox News propagandists like Laura Ingraham aren't even trying to be subtle.

"These businesses [Disney and Apple] should really learn this lesson now before it's too late: Stay in your lane," Ingraham said. "Because if your CEOs want to dive into contentious political issues, about which they know nothing apparently, expect to be treated like any lame political pundit, on, let's say, MSNBC."...

"When Republicans get back into power, Apple and Disney need to understand one thing: Everything will be on the table – your copyright and trademark protection, your special status within certain states, and even your corporate structure itself," Ingraham said.

What's fascinating about all of this is that the marriage between big business and the Republican Party has long been one of the strongest in American politics. Why would someone like Ron DeSantis stake his claim to be the GOP presidential nominee on being willing to go after one of the biggest corporations in the country?

The answer to that question goes back to the early 1970s when Republicans used the racism of the Southern Strategy to convince Dixiecrats to switch parties. A few years later, Paul Weyrich collaborated with white Christian evangelicals to bring their flocks into the fold. As a result, the GOP became the party of big business, racists, and Christian nationalists. 

While the mainstream media is addicted to the idea of Democrats in disarray, they've pretty much ignored the fact that so-called "establishment Republicans" - like Mitt Romney and Mitch McConnell - are currently at war with the MAGA crowd. The former are the relics of a time when the GOP was the party of big business and the latter consist of the racists and Christian nationalists (lots of overlap) that currently make up the base of the party. 

At this point, the base is winning. It's not just DeSantis who is proving that point. A year ago, when Amazon workers were trying to organize a union in Mississippi, Marco Rubio (who has traditionally been a big business Republican) wrote an op-ed in support of the workers.

For decades, companies like Amazon have been allies of the left in the culture war, but when their bottom line is threatened they turn to conservatives to save them. Republicans have rightly understood the dangers posed by the unchecked influence of labor unions...But the days of conservatives being taken for granted by the business community are over.
Here’s my standard: When the conflict is between working Americans and a company whose leadership has decided to wage culture war against working-class values, the choice is easy — I support the workers.

Are Republicans really determined to break ranks with big business to fan the flames of their so-called "culture war," or is this simply a matter of posturing. We'll have to wait and see how it all plays out. But this is precisely why I've been talking about a major political realignment being underway in both parties. Here's what I wrote about that three years ago:

The forces that are at work in each [party] are very different and they won’t play out in one election—but will become more evident over time. In light of that, it is incumbent on all of us to let go of assumptions that have guided our prognostications in the past, which will eventually be obsolete, and remain open to the new dynamics that are in the process of emerging.
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Saturday, April 2, 2022

How to Outsmart a Bully

In their quest to ramp up the politics of fear and resentment, red state Republicans are busy passing bills to restrict what schools can/can't teach. But even in this day of outright racism, sexism, and homophobia, they're still trying to dog whistle their intentions. So the bill recently signed by Florida Governor DeSantis never uses the word "gay," "homosexual," or "transgender." Here's some of the actual text:

Lines 97-101: Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.

For example, the bill not only bans teaching about homosexuality, but also heterosexuality - because that is also an orientation.

A teacher in Palm Beach, Florida seems to have figured that out.

That is absolutely brilliant! It reminds me of this:
In 2014, after the Supreme Court ruled that the regular recitation of prayers before town meetings did not violate the First Amendment, provided that towns do not discriminate among religions, the [Satanic] Temple decided to test just how much religious liberty towns allowed. They volunteered to perform a Satanic benediction in an Arizona town where the board had regularly opened with a Christian prayer. In that case, the town preferred to abolish the practice of opening prayers.

The bullies behind these bills/court rulings are going to leave openings like this pretty often for two reasons: (1) they want to hide behind dog whistles, and (2) they assume that white Christian male heterosexuality is the norm to which their their bills/rulings will default. 

Most of the time the response to bullies like Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans has been to expose the racism, sexism, homophobia behind their dog whistles. But I'd say that it is high time to go on the offensive and challenge the "norms" that assume the default will always be white Christian male heterosexuality. Do Satanists get the benefits of "religious freedom?" Should we protect children from being "groomed" by heterosexuals?  

That is precisely how you outsmart a bully.   

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