BC POLITICS
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1/Politics thread time.

To me, the most important aspect of the 2018 midterms wasn't even about partisan control, but about democracy and voting rights. That's the real battle.

 2/The good news: It's now an issue that everyone's talking about, and that everyone cares about.

https://t.co/ipQ7Y0JCnG
3/More good news: Florida's proposition to give felons voting rights won. But it didn't just win - it won with substantial support from Republican voters.

That suggests there is still SOME grassroots support for democracy that transcends partisanship.

https://t.co/jHHieSkzTg
4/Yet more good news: Michigan made it easier to vote. Again, by plebiscite, showing broad support for voting rights as an issue.

https://t.co/ffEwTP2SPq
5/OK, now the bad news.

We seem to have accepted electoral dysfunction in Florida as a permanent thing. The 2000 election has never really ended.

https://t.co/auFaCR7WvH
6/Even worse news: What Brian Kemp did in Georgia was REALLY bad.

https://t.co/Bed8VRpopn
7/Kemp's success at engineering a victory for himself, through voter roll purges and other techniques of vote suppression, bodes ill for future elections, especially presidential elections.

The big worry is that it functioned as a trial balloon.
8/The worst news, of course, is Trump's continued lies about illegal votes - basically de-legitimizing democracy itself in the eyes of his base.

https://t.co/qcPP0wGGDR
9/The struggle over voting rights is important not just because democracy itself is important, but also because it tells us something about the future of race and partisanship in America.
10/After the 2012 election, the GOP had a big debate about whether to reach out to Hispanic voters or take a hard anti-immigration line - which would effectively represent a strategy of using xenophobia to try to win a bigger share of the white vote.
11/That debate was resolved when Trump won the 2015 primary.

The GOP abandoned hope of winning over nonwhite voters, and went with the "Sailer Strategy": https://t.co/jBH0K4JUv4 …
12/But since whites are a shrinking % of the electorate, the Sailer Strategy implicitly requires increasing vote suppression, gerrymandering, etc. to reduce the electoral power of nonwhite voters.
13/It was clear from the moment Trump beat Rubio and Jeb that electioneering would be increasingly important for the GOP electoral strategy going forward.

Which is why voting rights have become such a central issue.
14/Therefore, the voting rights issue isn't just about democracy.

It's about breaking the Sailer Strategy, and putting to bed the idea that electioneering can make nonwhite voters disappear.
15/Of course, the Sailer Strategy will probably be broken in time anyway by the desertion of Millennial and Gen Z white voters, simply because Trumpism is so horrible.

https://t.co/p3vGgC3A1D
16/But ensuring voting rights for all is the most important thing we can do to prevent our country from degenerating into a faux-democratic hell of ethnic bloc voting, racial division, spiraling distrust, and dirty electoral tricks.

(end)

More from Noah Smith

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Krugman is, of course, right about this. BUT, note that universities can do a lot to revitalize declining and rural regions.


See this thing that @lymanstoneky wrote:

And see this thing that I wrote:

And see this book that @JamesFallows wrote:

And see this other thing that I wrote:
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Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
1/Lately I've been reading a ton of books about immigration and diversity. The most recent one is "Americanism in the Twenty-First Century", by @debbiejsr.

https://t.co/neqzyYVaYS

What did I learn?

2/This book is not very "pop". It's a dry political science book that's basically a concatenation of several research papers, all based on one big survey that was done in 2004.

3/The survey, the 21-CAS, asks people about how they define their own identity - race, national origin, and/or "American".

It also asks them about what they think being an "American" entails.

4/Basically, the survey asks people about 5 types of "Americanism":
1. Feeling like an American
2. Believing traditional American values like freedom
3. Civic participation (voting, etc.)
4. Multiculturalism vs. blending in
5. Being white and/or Christian

5/I edited out a few others (e.g. being born in America, being a citizen, speaking English). Anyway.

The upshot is that except for being white/Christian, most of these definitions of "American" get broad endorsement from all groups of people surveyed.
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Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
This is so dumb and incorrect and wrong it's unbelievable.


Facts.


Facts!!


FACTS FACTS

Moar
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Noah Smith
Noah Smith
@Noahpinion
Bloomberg Ideas conference now starting! I will be live-tweeting it. You can watch on our Facebook or Twitter pages (links below)!


Our first panel is about cryptocurrency! We have @matt_levine, @tylercowen, @eiaine, @nirkaissar, and Camilla

Ou: Crypto will be useful for the unbanked.

Cowen: Crypto has to compete against a bunch of other emerging payments technologies. Bitcoin is too inflexible.

Cowen: I'll bet on the payments companies over crypto.
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Noah Smith
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To be honest, I think this is just the effect of Twitter.

If you're on Twitter all the time - as every political commentator now is - it's easy to think that whiny, big-talking Twitter slacktivists are "the Dems".

But what's happening out there on the ground?


This is another reason I think Twitter is so bad for society.

It convinces intellectuals and commentators that practically everyone who's on their side is an extremist.

Which makes them tolerate extremism out of a (false) feeling of necessity.

If you stay on Twitter too much (which we all do now), you start to think that the typical left-of-center person is some British wanker who quote-tweets "Imagine thinking this" to anyone who doesn't like the idea of "ending capitalism".

But he is not typical.

A majority of Americans are not on Twitter.

But *every* journalist, commentator, and intellectual *has* to be on Twitter.

So every journalist, commentator, and intellectual comes face to face with big-talking slacktivist faux-extremists day in and day out.

It's a problem!!

Online bubbles full of shouty faux-extremists are, in general, fine.

The difference is that every journalist, commentator, and intellectual is essentially forced to exist in THIS bubble, because their jobs require it.

Twitter is a dystopian technology.

(end)
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All the challenges to Leader Pelosi are coming from her right, in an apparent effort to make the party even more conservative and bent toward corporate interests.

Hard pass. So long as Leader Pelosi remains the most progressive candidate for Speaker, she can count on my support.


I agree that our party should, and must, evolve our leadership.

But changed leadership should reflect an actual, evolved mission; namely, an increased commitment to the middle + working class electorate that put us here.

Otherwise it’s a just new figure with the same problems.

I hope that we can move swiftly to conclude this discussion about party positions, so that we can spend more time discussing party priorities: voting rights, healthcare, wages, climate change, housing, cannabis legalization, good jobs, etc.
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In regards to the #CapitolCoup, I’m in a unique position. I monitored forums ahead of time and then was present for the coup itself.

These are my observations based on what I saw and the evidence that’s been collected so far. I reserve the right to adjust my analysis as needed.

Let’s talk about the organization of the coup first. Seeing some people insist that the coup must have been highly planned and coordinated.

Yes and no. This was a #StochasticCoup. We’ll see little evidence of direct communication between Trump and the insurrectionists.

Within the insurrectionists, there was not one group that executed the storming of the Capitol.

Rather, there were a number of smaller groups working independently towards the same goal. I expect you’ll see little evidence that these various groups communicated with each other.

What you will see is detailed planning and coordination within these small groups.

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Thread – The Buffoon in the White House (Irony)

1. A pal passed this to me the other day, and I saved it for today. The author is unknown (at least to me), but this has been posted on a number of blogs. An excellent read!
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Since the election what have we seen happen?

*HCQ is suddenly "safe" and quietly being reinserted back into literature for fighting the virus cheaply.

*The media suddenly cares about NY Covid victims and Cuomo's role in their death.

*The Lincoln Project have been exposed.
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JEN KIRKMAN \U0001f469\U0001f3fb\u200d\U0001f4bb
JEN KIRKMAN 👩🏻‍💻...
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1. For people mad at Dems. Can we try to understand how politics (not justice) works? Here are some things: the Dems simply wanted the phone call information to be added to the record. They threatened to call witnesses as a negotiation tactic - thus getting the Republicans to

2. do what the Dems originally wanted - enter the phone call on the record. If witnesses were called - the trial would have gone on for weeks - in the middle of a pandemic when relief HAS to be sent out now. And Merrick Garland has to be confirmed so the DOJ can get to work.

3. However, I WANT WITNESSES CALLED. I want them to have such explosive testimony that the whole world once again knows what it knows - that Trump is guilty. I want more Republican Senators to change their mind and vote to convict. The problem is? We would NEVER GET 17 to do so.

4. It fucking SUCKS. It SUCKS that the Democrats can't just call witnesses and make the Republican Senators appear to the world even more cowardly than they were - hearing that testimony and STILL voting to acquit. BUT that's the fantasy version where the media doesn't once again

5. start blaming Dems during this fantasy-witness-calling-trial for not getting Covid relief out, etc. The issue here is that NO MATTER WHAT - if Trump himself with Jesus back from the dead as his witness says, "I did it" the Republicans will acquit. The issue is that the GOP
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