#David Leonhardt

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning:

The New York Times has recently come under fire for platforming writers who push disinformation on transgender care. In the last several months, articles from anti-trans authors such as Pamela Paul and others have repeatedly been cited to justify harsh crackdowns on trans care in Republican-controlled states. Now, in the wake of President Joe Biden withdrawing from the 2024 election and endorsing his vice president, Kamala Harris, the largest newspaper in the United States has published advice for her that many may find completely unsurprising: target transgender kids to appear more moderate. In an article published in the New York Times newsletter, The Morning, a long-time senior writer David Leonhardt listed five issues that Kamala Harris could target to appear more moderate to voters and win votes. One of the issues was transgender rights, suggesting that the Democratic Party should compromise on transgender issues to gain support in the next election.

[...]

Notably, Leonhardt makes a weak case in his advice for Vice President Harris that many will view as unsurprising. The link chosen to support his claim that Democrats are "well to the public’s left" on transgender issues merely directs readers to another New York Times article by Pamela Paul, which has already been fact-checked and found to contain false and misleading information. The Pamela Paul story falls far short of supporting the idea that the public is significantly opposed to transgender issues.

While some polls show opposition to aspects like sports participation, more recent surveys indicate that the public is against bans on gender-affirming care and does not view transgender issues as particularly salient or worth legislating over. Gallup, Navigator, and the LA Times have all released polls within the last three months showing that the American public views trans issues as a major distraction, opposes forced outing policies, and rejects bans on gender-affirming care for transgender youth. In Gallup’s case, multiple ways of asking about gender-affirming care bans did not affect the result.

[...] Ultimately, if Vice President Harris aims to win the 2024 election, she might instead consider the recession of anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ panic within public opinion and the documented failures of anti-LGBTQ+ platforms in the political arena. By standing firm on protecting transgender care and rejecting far-right pressures, Harris could present herself as a candidate of integrity and empathy, rather than someone who attacks whatever marginalized group the New York Times has designed as politically expedient to do so.

NY Times writer David Leonhardt has terrible advice on transgender health issues for Kamala Harris: become more like the Labour Party on trans issues.

Harris (and the Democratic Party) should reject that advice and stand up for trans people unapologetically.

[deadpresidents]

Have you read Ours was the Shining Future by David Leonhardt? It's more a history of the American Dream and 20th century America than a presidential history, but several presidents feature prominently (mainly Roosevelt, Nixon, and Reagan).

No, I have not, but it looks like an interesting read. I'll have to remember to check it out.

[tomorrowusa]

Most things in life, and especially a basic respect for democracy and the rule of law, have to be cultivated. What is striking about the Republican Party is the extent to which it has, for decades now, cultivated the opposite — a highly instrumental view of our political system, in which rules and laws are legitimate only insofar as they allow for the acquisition and concentration of power in Republican hands.

Most Republicans won’t condemn Trump. There are his millions of ultra-loyal voters, yes. And there are the challenges associated with breaking from the consensus of your political party, yes. But there is also the reality that Trump is the apotheosis of a propensity for lawlessness within the Republican Party. He is what the party and its most prominent figures have been building toward for nearly half a century. I think he knows it and I think they do too.

– Jamelle Bouie at the New York Times on how Donald Trump is likely the natural result of the drift to lawlessness by the GOP over the past half century.

The narcissistic infantile Trump claims that he's being persecuted and has been singled out for political reasons. But if anything, prosecutors have been exceptionally careful about this investigation because of Trump's political standing.

Jamelle Bouie's NYT colleague David Leonhardt describes what happened to three people charged with the same sort of crimes that got Trump indicted.

And of course there the still-pending case of Jack Teixeira.

Trump not only knowingly shipped loads of classified documents, including nuclear secrets, to his home but he apparently used them to show off to his buddies – like Teixeira.

All Republicans can do is prattle false equivalences about Hillary's email server or equate Joe Biden's and Mike Pence's accidental retention of a handful of papers after their vice presidential terms were over.

Many Republicans seem to feel that they should be exempt from the law for life just because they're Republicans.

The GOP cannot call itself the "party of law and order" if they themselves refuse to obey the law.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

op-ed by David Leonhardt: Why Are Republican Presidents So Bad for the Economy? - The New York Times. Per Leonhardt:

A president has only limited control over the economy. And yet there has been a stark pattern in the United States for nearly a century. The economy has grown significantly faster under Democratic presidents than Republican ones.

It’s true about almost any major indicator: gross domestic product, employment, incomes, productivity, even stock prices. . . . The gap “holds almost regardless of how you define success,” two economics professors at Princeton, Alan Blinder and Mark Watson, write. They describe it as “startlingly large.”

First, it’s worth rejecting a few unlikely possibilities. Congressional control is not the answer. The pattern holds regardless of which party is running Congress. Deficit spending also doesn’t explain the gap: It is not the case that Democrats juice the economy by spending money and then leave Republicans to clean up the mess. Over the last four decades, in fact, Republican presidents have run up larger deficits than Democrats.

That leaves one broad possibility with a good amount of supporting evidence: Democrats have been more willing to heed economic and historical lessons about what policies actually strengthen the economy, while Republicans have often clung to theories that they want to believe — like the supposedly magical power of tax cuts and deregulation. Democrats, in short, have been more pragmatic.

         Leonhardt’s op-ed is filled with helpful charts and additional analysis to support his thesis. If you have access to the online edition of the NYTimes, I highly recommend Leonhardt’s analysis. (This free link may work for some of you: Leonhardt op-ed 2023-01-20.)  Leonhardt’s analysis confirms what we all feel in our bones: When Democrats win, everyone wins.

[minnesotafollower]

Analysis of Recent U.S.Immigration Surge        

A New York Times columnist, David Leonhardt, has provided an analysis of the recent surge in U.S. immigration. Here are the seven highlights of that analysis.[1] “1. The immigration surge since 2021 has been the largest in U.S. history, surpassing even the levels of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Total net migration — the number of people coming to the country minus the number leaving — will…

[contemplatingoutlander]

One of the greatest cons the Republicans ever pulled on the American people is convincing them that their “pro-business,” anti-regulation, tax-cutting, trickle-down economic policies are better for the national economy than are Democratic policies.

It's about time the financial sector acknowledged that the economy is almost ALWAYS better under Democratic administrations.

For instance, according to a Feb. 2, 2021 article by David Leonhardt in The New York Times:

A president has only limited control over the economy. And yet there has been a stark pattern in the United States for nearly a century. The economy has grown significantly faster under Democratic presidents than Republican ones. It’s true about almost any major indicator: gross domestic product, employment, incomes, productivity, even stock prices. It’s true if you examine only the precise period when a president is in office, or instead assume that a president’s policies affect the economy only after a lag and don’t start his economic clock until months after he takes office. The gap “holds almost regardless of how you define success,” two economics professors at Princeton, Alan Blinder and Mark Watson, write. They describe it as “startlingly large.”

Since 1933, the economy has grown at an annual average rate of 4.6 percent under Democratic presidents and 2.4 percent under Republicans, according to a Times analysis. In more concrete terms: The average income of Americans would be more than double its current level if the economy had somehow grown at the Democratic rate for all of the past nine decades. If anything, that period (which is based on data availability) is too kind to Republicans, because it excludes the portion of the Great Depression that happened on Herbert Hoover’s watch.

After eliminating some possible explanations for this data, Leonhardt concludes:

That leaves one broad possibility with a good amount of supporting evidence: Democrats have been more willing to heed economic and historical lessons about what policies actually strengthen the economy, while Republicans have often clung to theories that they want to believe — like the supposedly magical power of tax cuts and deregulation. Democrats, in short, have been more pragmatic.

Duh! Like with nearly everything else in Democratic administrations, the Democrats pay attention to the conclusions of experts in various fields, rather than creating policies based on ideology.

Republican administrations tend to do the opposite. And with the ascension of Trump they in fact devalue (and often demonize) expert opinion and science and promote their own crackpot theories instead.

THIS is a very important message that Democrats have to get the American people to pay attention to.

Republican economic policies are evident in poor Southern red states.

Democratic economic policies are evident in wealthy Northeast and West Coast blue states.

The distinction is very clear.

WHOA. Morgan Stanley, one of the largest banks in the US, now credits BIDENOMICS for producing an “unexpected surge” in our economy & says this Bidenomics is “driving a boom in large-scale infrastructure.” Bidenomics is working. We must shout this from the rooftops.

[darkmaga-returns]

Two years ago, The New York Times (NYT) warned that one of the greatest “threats” to American democracy was the so-called “growing movement inside … the Republican Party” to “refuse to accept defeat in an election.” How dare Republicans question the 2020 election when the Times’ David Leonhardt could simply dismiss legitimate concerns as “rigged” talk?

Fast forward to today and the Times is strangely silent about the real election denialism coming from Democrats. Rather than acknowledge that Sen. Bob Casey, D-Penn., refuses to concede a race he clearly lost, the Times is putting a rosy spin on the situation, calling it a “twist” in the electoral process.

According to The Times’ Nick Corasaniti, “In Pennsylvania, the Election Litigation Continues, With a Twist.” Corasaniti is well aware that what is unfolding in the Pennsylvania Senate race is nothing short of lawlessness. It’s why he acknowledged in the subhead that at least four counties are openly defying a state Supreme Court order that “undated or misdated mail ballots cannot be counted.”

The Times, which has had no problem reporting on “election denialism” could have called out this blatant disregard for the rule of law. But instead they are downplaying it as a mere difference of opinion between county commissioners and the state’s highest court.

[dozydawn]

Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean Exhibition Gala, 1984. Photographed by Frank Leonhardt, Heinz Kluetmeier, Eileen Langsley, and David Madison.

[yuisdad]

Otome game characters who share the same English VAs.

I’ve been seeing otome game fans making posts about otome games sharing the same voice actors, but I wanted to make a post regarding their dub actors. These come from their anime adaptations, with the major dubbing companies being Sentai Filmworks and Funimation/Crunchyroll.

Cw: Illich Guardiola was blacklisted for attempting to marry his 16 year old student. He’ll be mentioned, but I do not support him in the slightest.

Andrew Love:

Takuma Onizaki (Hiiro no Kakera)

Toshizo Hijikata (Hakuoki)

Dante (Arcana Famiglia)

Yuma Mukami (Diabolik Lovers More,Blood)

Greg Ayres:

Mahiro Atori (Hiiro no Kakera)

Heisuke Todo (Hakuoki)

Azusa Mukami (Diabolik Lovers More,Blood)

David Matranga:

Yuichi Komura (Hiiro no Kakera)

Keisuke Sannan (Hakuoki)

Richter (Diabolik Lovers)

Haru Natsume (Stand my Heroes)

Corey Hartzog:

Shinji Inukai (Hiiro no Kakera)

Chikage Kazama (Hakuoki)

Kanato Sakamaki (Diabolik Lovers)

Illich Guardiola

Suguru Omi (Hiiro no Kakera)

Sanosuke Harada (Hakuoki) *Was replaced by Phil Hyde for the movie series

Leraldo Anzaldua:

Ryo Kutani (Hiiro no Kakera)

Hajime Saito (Hakuoki)

Hilary Haag:

Aria Rozenburg (Hiiro no Kakera)

Princess Sen (Hakuoki)

Brittney Karbowski:

Kiyono Takara (Hiiro no Kakera)

Chizuru Yukimura (Hakuoki)

Christa (Diabolik Lovers)

Baby Kou Mukami (Diabolik Lovers More,Blood)

Adam Gibbs:

Zwei (Hiiro no Kakera)

Ryunosuke Ibuki (Hakuoki Dawn of the Shinsengumi)

Ruki Mukami (Diabolik Lovers)

Shelly Calene-Black:

Vier (Hiiro no Kakera)

Sumire (Arcana Famiglia)

Baby Ruki Mukami (Diabolik Lovers More,Blood)

David Wald:

Masataka Ashiya (Hiiro no Kakera)

Isami Kondo (Hakuoki)

Reiji Sakamaki (Diabolik Lovers)

Rempart Leonhardt (Code Realize Guardian of Rebirth)

Daisuke Seki (Stand My Heroes)

Luci Christian:

Shizuki Ugaya/O-Chan (Hiiro no Kakera)

Felicità (Arcana Famiglia)

Beatrix/Baby Laito Sakamaki (Diabolik Lovers)

Rob Mungle:

Drei (Hiiro no Kakera)

Mondo (Arcana Famiglia)

Blake Shepard:

Souji Okita: (Hakuoki)

Ikki (Amnesia)

Libertà (Arcana Famiglia)

Laito Sakamaki (Diabolik Lovers)

Shannon Emerick:

Kaoru Nagumo (Hakuoki)

Orion (Amnesia)

Donatella (Arcana Famiglia)

Baby Ayato Sakamaki (Diabolik Lovers)

Houston Hayes:

Kyo Shiranui (Hakuoki)

Shin (Amnesia)

Shin Tsukinami (Diabolik Lovers)

Clint Bickham:

Kashitaro Ito (Hakuoki)

Luca (Arcana Famiglia)

John Swasey:

Ryojun Matsumoto (Hakuoki)

Fukulota (Arcana Famiglia)

Karlheinz (Diabolik Lovers More,Blood)

Molly Searcy:

Oume (Hakuoki Dawn of the Shinsengumi)

Mine/Baby Toma (Amnesia)

Jay Hickman:

Waka (Amnesia)

Debito (Arcana Famiglia)

Tiffany Grant:

Elmo/Federica (Arcana Famiglia)

Baby Kanato Sakamaki (Diabolik Lovers)

Maggie Flecknoe:

Meriella (Arcana Famiglia)

Heroine (Amnesia)

Yui Komori (Diabolik Lovers)

Margaret McDonald:

Kosuzu (Hakuoki Dawn of the Shinsengumi)

Baby Keita Maki (Stand My Heroes)

Christopher Wehkamp:

Ogai Mori (Meiji Tokyo Renka)

Sosei Arakida (Stand My Heroes)

Haruo Sakaguchi (Kenka Bancho Otome)

Daman Mills:

Shunso Hishida (Meiji Tokyo Renka)

Nemo (Code Realize Guardian of Rebirth)

Takaomi Hiyama (Stand My Heroes)

Sakuya Nakajima (Kenka Bancho Otome)

Ian Sinclair:

Charlie (Meiji Tokyo Renka)

Abraham Van Helsing (Code Realize Guardian of Rebirth)

Justin Briner:

Charlie (Meiji Tokyo Renka) *Episode 6 of the SimulDub

Finis Beckford (Code Realize Guardian of Rebirth)

Stephen Fu:

Kyoya Saotome (Meiji Tokyo Renka)

Go Miyase (Stand My Heroes)

Tora Tanaka (Kenka Bancho Otome)

Terri Doty:

Baby Yakumo Koizumi (Meiji Tokyo Renka)

Hikari Onigashima (Kenka Bancho Otome)

Megan Shipman:

Mei’s Mother/Shino (Meiji Tokyo Renka)

Etty (Code Realize Guardian of Rebirth)

Dallas Reid:

King Tatsuno (Meiji Tokyo Renka)

Natsuki Sugano (Stand My Heroes)

Jill Harris:

Cardia Beckford (Code Realize Guardian of Rebirth)

Rei Izumi (Stand My Heroes)

J. Micheal Tatum:

Arsène Lupin (Code Realize Guardian of Rebirth)

Tsukasa Asagiri (Stand My Heroes)

Chris Guerrero:

Impey Barbicane (Code Realize Guardian of Rebirth)

Makoto Tsuzuki (Stand My Heroes)

Brandon McInnis:

Count St. Germain (Code Realize Guardian of Rebirth)

Kenta Shimamura (Kenka Bancho Otome)

Austin Tindle:

Herlock Sholmes (Code Realize Guardian of Rebirth)

Aki Kagura (Stand My Heroes)

Totomaru Minowa (Kenka Bancho Otome)

Apphia Yu:

Sisi (Code Realize Guardian of Rebirth)

Hinako Nakayama (Kenka Bancho Otome)

Ricco Fajardo:

Shun Imaoji (Stand My Heroes)

Yuta Mirako (Kenka Bancho Otome)

Jarrod Greene:

Koya Kirishima (Stand My Heroes)

Houou Onigashima (Kenka Bancho Otome)

[pandemic-info]

Welcome to the “You Do You” Pandemic | The Nation

In his 1992 book The Culture of Contentment, a series of essays that ring very true today, the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote that “individuals and communities that are favored in their economic, social and political condition attribute social virtue and political durability to that which they themselves enjoy. That attribution, in turn, is made to apply even in the face of commanding evidence to the contrary.” This is the exact problem we face now: a favored class that sees its own comfort as a sign that everything’s fine. As a result, the members of the Church of the Contented Establishment—from the White House to Jha and his Brown colleague Emily Oster, to David Leonhardt at The New York Times and Leana Wen at The Washington Post, to even infectious-disease doctors like Monica Gandhi at the University of California San Francisco—are pushing a narrative about Covid and our public health that, thanks to its influence within elite circles, is more subtly corrupting and poisonous than anything that outright Covid denialists like Ron DeSantis have come up with.

[mooretoons]

Division

This whole cartoon is a response to a single article in the New York Times, “Two Families Got Fed Up With Their States’ Politics. So They Moved Out.” Well, and taking a potshot at David Leonhardt, whose bloodless newsletter appears in my inbox every morning, like a turd on my doorstep. I moved to Portland in 1995, when housing was still affordable and employment was easier to find. Yet the seeds…

[azspot]

Most professionals now vote for Democrats, which is a stark change from past decades. Most working-class voters vote Republican, partly because they see Democrats as an elite party dominated by socially liberal and secular college graduates.

David Leonhardt

[tomorrowusa]

The spy balloon isn’t hugely significant on its own, but it adds to the sense that Beijing’s competence has been exaggerated.

David Leonhardt at the New York Times.

There’s been a lot of hype regarding China this century. But a number of its actions suggest that its success has been overstated.

China is a totalitarian state. The government tries to micromanage the lives of its citizens. The way it handled the COVID-19 pandemic was an avoidable disaster.

The Chinese government foolishly refused to use mRNA vaccines produced in Europe and North America. Its own homemade vaccines were less effective and required the draconian “zero COVID” policy to keep the virus from spreading.

This article may explain why the Chinese government failed to effectively vaccinate its population when it could easily afford to.

Moderna refused China request to reveal vaccine technology, Financial Times reports

China has had a policy of forcing foreign companies to share their tech secrets as a prerequisite for doing business in China. Western businesses, salivating at the thought of massive profits on the mainland, mostly agreed. China was probably able to gather more tech know-how this way than through industrial espionage and hacking.

So Moderna (and likely BioNTech & Pfizer) wisely refused to hand their intellectual property over to the Chinese authorities. So the only people in China who eventually received the mRNA vaccines were foreign nationals who lived in the country.

As I noted a minute ago, China can easily afford the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines but the government has refused to import them because the companies would not submit to tech extortion.

When China’s zero COVID policy abruptly ended, the longstanding effort to extract intellectual property from the West severely backfired. Many of China’s top scholars, scientists, and intellectuals were among the numerous COVID-19 fatalities. It’s true that they were mostly elderly, but many still had years of productivity ahead of them.

In China’s Covid Fog, Deaths of Scholars Offer a Clue

Those are just the more famous ones. There are probably many additional less well-known scientists who died in recent months.

So the Chinese government is not only less competent than it would like the world to believe but it is also less competent than many anti-Chinese politicians in the West would like to have us believe.

[tuulikki]

From a discussion of Fredrik deBoer and his book, How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement, written by David Leonhardt:

Radical and Practical

The most successful political movements tend to share a few features. They start with activists whose goals can seem so audacious as to be unrealistic. (Otherwise, there would be no need for a movement.) Over time, the movement’s leaders make careful decisions about how to accomplish at least some of those goals. They appeal to public opinion. They collaborate with unlikely allies. They work the system to change the system.

It was true of the civil rights movement, which combined radical aims with patriotic symbols and nonviolent protest. More recently, the gay rights movement accomplished rapid change partly by emphasizing traditional values like marriage and military service. The lessons also apply to the political right: Abortion opponents spent decades patiently taking over the Republican Party and making the case that voters have a right to choose their own policies, state by state.

Recent progressive movements have tended to be less strategic, explains deBoer, a self-described leftist. Occupy celebrated its lack of structure, including its lack of concrete goals. “Demands are disempowering since they require someone else to respond,” one Occupy protester told The New York Times in 2011. Black Lives Matter refused to name leaders, contrasting its approach with the old top-down civil rights movement. #MeToo, befitting its hashtag, never quite became an organized movement.

None of the three created a mass organization with a long-term plan — as labor unions, civil rights groups, evangelical Christians and other successful movements did in past decades.

Occupy and Black Lives Matter also allowed unpopular positions to shape their public image — and weaken them. For instance, polling shows that most Black Americans support major changes to policing but not less policing. Much of Black Lives Matter, however, focused on cutting police funding. One organizer wrote a Times Opinion article titled “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police.”

The recent movements have instead had more success changing elite institutions that tend to be filled by fellow liberals. The winners of prestigious cultural awards have become more diverse. Media organizations now capitalize Black when describing somebody’s race. President Biden has made Juneteenth a federal holiday. Universities emphasize identity in their curriculums.

Symbols over substance

These are real changes, but deBoer notes that they have little effect on most people’s lives. They instead reflect what the political philosopher Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò calls the “elite capture” of social justice campaigns. “Today,” deBoer writes, “left-activist spaces are dominated by the college-educated, many of whom grew up in affluence and have never worked a day at a physically or emotionally demanding job.” For that reason, these spaces prioritize “the immaterial and symbolic” over “the material and the concrete,” deBoer argues.

DeBoer’s writing can be withering, as the best polemics often are, and few people will agree with all of his arguments. But his central point is important, whether you’re part of the political left, center or right: Calling out injustice isn’t the same as fighting it.

“The spirit of 2020 was always a righteous spirit, and the people and organizations that powered that moment had legitimate grievances and moral demands,” he writes. “What we need is practicality, resilience and a plan.”

[waitinqroom]

david leonhardt with the new york times this morning on affirmative action

[gnatswatting]

• Successful campaigns, like movies and novels, tend to have heroes and bad guys. —David Leonhardt

New York Times New York Times (at Internet Archive)