#Stop Falling For Voter Depression and Suppression

[msclaritea]

Oct. 16, 2020, 4:30 PM CDT By April Glaser

“At Joe Biden’s town hall meeting on Thursday, Cedrick Humphrey, a young Black man from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, asked a question central to some of the most recent misinformation tactics at play in the election.

“Many people believe that the true swing demographic in this election will be Black voters under the age of 30, not because they’ll be voting for Trump, but because they won’t vote at all,” he said, adding that he shared this sentiment. “What do you have to say to young Black voters who see voting for you as further participation in a system that continuously fails to protect them?”

Biden answered by pointing to the importance of voting, and to the need to give Black Americans the means to amass wealth and improve access to education.

The question Humphrey posed to the former vice president and the Democratic presidential nominee is part of a broader trend unfolding in the final days before the election. Among all of the social media disinformation campaigns that have preyed on voters in the run-up to Nov. 3, one domestic-originated tactic has become particularly troubling. Some Black social media influencers as well as Black community groups on Facebook who are more progressive than Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, are targeting Black voters less by deceiving them and more by what experts describe as voter depression.

Voter depression isn’t about giving voters the wrong information that would keep them from making it to the polls, like discrediting mail-in ballots by disparaging the postal service.

Rather, with voter depression, the goal is to make people who would otherwise vote feel that there’s no reason to do so, stoking inaction and apathy.

This approach has been a particular challenge for the Biden campaign, while the same voter depression tactics aren’t being used as much on Republican voters, said Jacquelyn Mason, a senior investigative researcher at First Draft, a nonprofit that provides research and training for journalists.

“The absence of enthusiasm around a candidate can really contribute to interference in the form of voter depression,” Mason said. She added that since many progressive Black voters might not be excited about voting for Biden, it raises questions about what the point is of voting at all.

Memes and Micro-influencers

Earlier this month, an Instagram account with over 19,000 followers posted a video of a young Black man asking a series of questions: “Can we vote out systemic racism? Can we vote out police violence?,” before answering, “The obvious answer is no.”

“Don’t vote,” he concludes.

That video is one of thousands of posts in an increasingly popular genre of social media content aimed at discouraging Black people from casting their ballots this election cycle. One of the most prominent examples of voter depression has been the attacks on Harris and her prosecutorial record during her tenure as the district attorney of San Francisco and later the attorney general of California.

In one meme that went viral this month, a mosaic of people’s faces together formed a portrait of her. The meme received some of its most popular shares from accounts of Black conservative social media influencers. The mosaic claims to be a composite image made up of “all the black men she locked up and kept in prison past their release date for jail labor.” It's been shared over 23,000 times on Facebook with no warning next to it that indicates that the image isn’t actually what it claims to be: A closer look reveals the mosaic actually repeats the same faces over and over again.

These tactics started cropping up before the 2016 election with a clip that went viral of Hiliary Clinton where in a speech she referred to Black youth as “superpredators.” During that election, Russian operatives also ran thousands of fake social media accounts in the run-up targeting Black social media users on Facebook with ads based on their interest in “Martin Luther King Jr.,” “Black is beautiful” and the “African American Civil Rights Movement (1954-68).”

Many of those tactics have extended to the current election season. Just this month, Twitter banned a network of more than two dozen accounts of users pretending to be Black Trump supporters, but were in reality profiles created using stock images of Black people or images of Black people lifted from news stories and recycled to give a veneer of authenticity behind the fake accounts proclaiming allegiance to Trump. These accounts amassed hundreds of thousands of retweets and followers before Twitter removed them. While these examples aren’t explicitly voter depression tactics, they are part of a larger disinformation ecosystem that has focused on using Black identity as a way of manipulating the election.

But this election, many of the voter depression memes and posts circulating on social media aimed at dissuading Black people from voting in 2020 are not based on entirely false information.

What makes voter depression narratives so appealing and difficult to dislodge is that there can be “a grain of truth to them,” Mason said.

Voter depression targeting Black communities online are picking up momentum because, according to researchers, they’re coming from accounts people already have relationships with and appear to be authentic.

“Some of the tactics we worry a lot about and are seeing more of are from micro-influencers, like on Instagram Live,” said Jiore Craig, a vice president at GQR, a Democratic research firm, who advises campaigns on disinformation.

Micro-influencers engaged in voter depression may have as low as 10 to 30,000 followers and often speak to them directly to the camera, denigrating the value of voting.

“They are speaking to issues that present pathways to take what either candidate is saying about the voting process and saying instead, ‘Isn’t this just kind of BS?’ Planting the question is a part of the strategy,” Craig said.

“It’s a communication strategy, chipping away at what appears to be a preconceived belief. The name of the game in so many ways is about erosion of trust,” Craig said.

The end goal is to get their audience to then pose questions about the value of voting to their family or friend group––turning their audience into messengers and making the concept more legitimate.

Rebuilding Trust

Some Black advocacy groups are working to undo voter depression efforts with similar tactics, focusing on sharing relatable information from individuals voters trust.

One group leading this work is the political action committee run by the online racial justice organization Color of Change, which has for years conducted advocacy campaigns aimed at large social media platforms, like Facebook, where disinformation and hate speech flourish. This year the group is also working to engage Black voters who are most likely to be targeted by voter depression efforts, in part through a grassroots volunteer program where members are reaching out to friends and family to encourage them to plan their vote.

One of the ways the group is creating a narrative about the importance of voting is by talking about more local races in person and on social media, like district attorney seats, which are also on the ballot in many communities across the country.

“While many, especially irregular Black voters or voters who might be prone to not turn out to vote, might not see the importance of electing a president and the impact on their lives, we are having a conversation with them about the daily decisions that prosecutors make that are causing harm in black communities,” said Arisha Hatch, the vice president and chief of campaigns at Color of Change. “And when we engage in that conversation their mentality begins to shift.”

Greater accountability

In the past six months, Color of Change has been in multiple closed-door meetings with social media companies, like Facebook, Google and Twitter, to talk about what the companies need to do to ensure that their platforms aren’t being used to disenfranchise Black voters ahead of the 2020 election.

While those conversations have been useful––Facebook has promised to expand the definition of content it prohibits because it engages in voter suppression––Color of Change is calling for the company to enforce its policy changes consistently and transparently. NBC News reported in August that Facebook has given special exception to its rules against misinformation on conservative pages.

“The tech companies have a real responsibility in correcting some of the shifts we’re seeing about how information moves,” Hatch said. “That is not only influencing public policy but influencing a more polarized culture that just leads to more gridlock and more working-class people being left out of the American dream.”

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LUCIAN TRUSCOTT NEWSLETTER

You want to know what has doomed Nancy Pelosi’s attempts to get a bipartisan agreement to investigate the violent assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6? Every time she has talked about why we need a bipartisan commission or the select committee, she said they were necessary “so nothing like this will ever happen again.”

Republicans aren’t against investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection because they fear it will make them look bad. They’re against doing anything to make sure that such an insurrection doesn’t happen again.

The assault on the Capitol is already damaging to the Republican Party image, at least to outsiders. The Capitol was attacked by a violent mob of Trump supporters. It’s doubtful there were any Democrats among them. The assault took place immediately after a Trump rally on the Ellipse and was incited by the then-president. Several Republican members of Congress joined Trump in addressing the crowd, along with other famous party stalwarts like Rudy Giuliani. It was a Republican rally with a Republican crowd. So was the mob at the Capitol.

Republican members of Congress know it was their supporters out there beating down the doors of the Capitol, ransacking the well of the Senate and looting congressional offices. Republicans don’t want to investigate the violence at the Capitol because they want to leave the door open for it to happen again.

Most of them come from safe seats in Republican-majority congressional districts, many of them in Republican-controlled states. Republican senators, not all of them but most, come from Republican states in the South and Midwest. But every one of them can read census numbers, and every one of them understands that their days are numbered, even in states that have been Republican strongholds for decades, like Arizona and Texas. They saw the Election Day returns which showed previously Republican suburbs falling to the Democrats all over the country. They read the depressing voting numbers for millennials and younger voters that show them strongly leaning Democratic. Even a dull, lumbering beast like the Republican Party can tell when a water hole runs dry.

They can read the polls showing how popular Democratic issues are, including improved access to health care, the pandemic rescue bill, the infrastructure bill and the American Family Plan. How many calls have you heard Republicans make lately for repealing Obamacare? How many speeches have you heard them make saying we don’t need to spend money on crumbling bridges, obsolete airports and ancient, failing mass transit like the Long Island Railroad or the Chicago Transit Authority or the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority? They don’t dare oppose spending that is in any way grounded in reality. All they can come up with is screaming about “socialism” and “Democratic Party wish-lists,” because their constituents drive across cracking bridges and commute on failing transit systems and pay a third of their income on rent and a third on child care and way more than they can afford on health care.

Electorally, Republicans are hanging on by their fingernails. In 2020, in the midst of the worst pandemic since 1918, before a single American had received a life-saving vaccination, with 230,000 already dead from the coronavirus and more deaths on the way, voters turned out in record numbers. And Republicans lost. They lost the White House. They lost the House of Representatives. After a runoff election, they lost control of the Senate. They did well locally in Republican-controlled states, maintaining control of state houses and governorships, but they lost ground in the areas where the country is growing. They lost the big cities. They lost the suburbs. They lost in population centers in the South and Midwest and West. They lost in the places where people are moving, where young people are getting jobs when they graduate from college, where many seniors are choosing to retire.

After the 2020 election, Gallup found in a December poll that 31 percent of Americans identified as Democrats, 25 percent as Republicans and 41 percent as independents. When independents were asked whether they were “Democratic leaners” or “Republican leaners,” 50 percent said they leaned Democratic, and 39 percent leaned Republican. These were not good numbers for the Republican Party. Nobody knows better than Republicans that there are fewer of them than there are of us.

You’ve heard chapter and verse from me and others about how Republicans are passing voter suppression laws to make it more difficult for Democrats to vote. They know they don’t have the votes. They don’t have them now, and they’ll have even fewer of them in the future.

That’s why they’ve started to concentrate their efforts at the state level on laws that change how votes are counted and who counts them, moving the center of power from elected officials like secretaries of state and appointed officials like election administrators to state legislatures, inherently political bodies where the counting can be managed and controlled politically.

It’s why they’re clinging to Trump’s lie that the election was stolen from him, and it’s why their own efforts to “audit” the 2020 election results in places like Arizona are so shambolic and absurd. They know that if honest assessments are done of how the election turned out in battleground states, they will come to the same conclusions that a 55-page report by the Michigan state Senate did last week: There was no election fraud in the 2020 election. None. Zero. Nada.

They’ve been downplaying the assault on the Capitol, calling it “a normal tourist visit” as Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia did during a hearing a few weeks ago. He is among a growing number of Republicans in Congress who are making the case that nothing really bad happened on Jan. 6, so there’s no need to investigate it. They blocked the creation of a nonpartisan 9/11 style commission to investigate the insurrection, and they’re in the process of undercutting Pelosi’s select committee by labeling it as a Democratic exercise in blame-laying.

Furthermore, they’re absolutely right. When the select committee issues its report, it’s going to lay the blame where Republicans want it least: on Trump for inciting the riot, and on their own constituents for committing insurrection against the government. And the select committee will likely produce evidence that Republicans are not interested in seeing in the light of day: detailed accounts of the violence committed by the mob and reports of the preparations some of the mob had taken that we haven’t seen yet, such as evidence of weapons caches — and planning by some insurrectionists to use them.

Republicans don’t want a report that basically comes out and says, Here’s how close we came to a coup against our government, and here is what they are planning next. Laws that put partisan political bodies like legislatures in charge of counting votes make it much more likely that an upcoming election will end up in a political wrangle — not down in the states where the counting takes place, but in Washington.

Think about it: there were no controls whatsoever on that mob in Washington on Jan. 6. Estimates of the size of the crowd at Trump’s rally on the Ellipse ran as high as 30,000. More than 800 rioters are estimated to have broken through police barricades and entered the Capitol, with as many as 10,000 outside. They outnumbered police by the thousands.

What if that crowd had been armed? What if instead of carrying iron pipes and bear spray and flag poles they had been carrying AR-15s and pistols? What if some of them were carrying the kinds of bombs that were found outside the Democratic and Republican headquarters? Capitol police couldn’t stop them from overwhelming barricades and gaining entrance to the Capitol. Do you think they could have searched that mob for hidden weapons and bombs?

This is why Republicans don’t want to see an intensive investigation of the insurrection on Jan. 6. If an investigation proves how bad the insurrection was this time, it might predict what will be possible if a mob of 100,000 or more assault the Capitol or other governmental buildings in Washington, and what that mob might be capable of if they’re organized and armed next time.

The Republican Party has reached the point where it does not recognize the legitimacy of elections unless it wins them. Democratic political victories are per se illegitimate in Republican eyes. Republicans are lapping up their own lawlessness and ramping up the insanity. They are turning right-wing lunatics like Kyle Rittenhouse into folk heroes. He is the shooter in Kenosha, Wisconsin, who killed two people and wounded a third during Black Lives Matter protests following the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

Republican state legislatures in Oklahoma and Iowa have passed laws granting immunity to drivers who hit protesters with their cars during demonstrations on public streets. Multiple states already have laws allowing both open and concealed carry of firearms without a license, with more such laws on the way.

These are the kinds of laws that not only allow insurrection, but encourage it. The Proud Boys and the Three Percenters and the Oath Keepers and their ilk aren’t the right’s political fringe anymore. They are the Republican base — and the Republican future.

[96thdayofrage]

On the third night of the Democratic National Convention, President Barack Obama addressed the nation from the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia. In what’s being described as a “stark, sober address” intended to frighten Americans about the dangers of a second Trump term, the former president took a moment to acknowledge the hopelessness and cynicism that has become so prevalent in today’s political discourse:

“Look, I understand why many Americans are down on government. The way the rules have been set up and abused in Congress make it easy for special interests to stop progress. Believe me, I know. I understand why a white factory worker who’s seen his wages cut or his job shipped overseas might feel like the government no longer looks out for him, and why a Black mother might feel like it never looked out for her at all. I understand why a new immigrant might look around this country and wonder whether there’s still a place for him here; why a young person might look at politics right now, the circus of it all, the meanness and the lies and crazy conspiracy theories and think, what’s the point?”

Now, I’m not a factory worker, a Black mother, or a new immigrant, so I can’t speak for them, but Obama’s assessment of why each of those people may be “down on government” seems more or less accurate. Factory workers do feel betrayed, Black people in general have good reason to think the government never cared about them, and it stands to reason that new immigrants would feel unwelcome given the current administration’s overt hostility towards them.

Obama’s explanation for why young people have grown jaded, however, is far less convincing. In fact, it’s completely made up. As a fairly young person myself who discusses current affairs on a literal daily basis, I can assert with great confidence that young people today aren’t bitter about politics because of “the circus of it all, the meanness and the lies, and crazy conspiracy theories.” They’re bitter because of the failed presidency, and tone-deaf post-presidency, of Barack Obama.

Millennials such as myself remember what it was like to feel optimistic about politics. We first felt this sense of hope in 2008 when Obama first ran for president. We created a grassroots movement behind his campaign, carried him to the Democratic nomination in what initially seemed like a Quixotic battle against the Clintonian Democratic establishment, and voted for him in droves in November, propelling him to a landslide victory. And what did all of this hope, and effort, and enthusiasm get us, even when we won? Romneycare.

So in 2016, after a hugely disappointing Obama era, most of the young people who supported him twice, as well as a new generation of even younger voters, became equally involved in the Bernie Sanders campaign, which the Democratic Party conspired against in favor of Hillary Clinton, the very person the youth rejected in favor of Obama eight years prior. When she lost to Donald Trump, and Sanders ran again this time, yet another crop of young people supported him in overwhelming numbers. This time, it seemed there were enough of them to finally win, until, once again, Barack Obama, the man the older millennials invested their hopes in twelve years ago, intervened in the eleventh hour to align the party against the Sanders campaign, once again crushing the candidate that the youth had rallied behind.

In short, that’s why so many young people are “down on government.” It’s not because politics is too mean, or too circus-like, or that there are too many conspiracy theories to keep track of. It’s because young people invested their hopes in Barack Obama, and he failed them.

Obama continued:

“Well, here’s the point: This president and those in power — those who benefit from keeping things the way they are — they are counting on your cynicism. They know they can’t win you over with their policies. So they’re hoping to make it as hard as possible for you to vote, and to convince you that your vote does not matter. That’s how they win. That’s how they get to keep making decisions that affect your life, and the lives of the people you love. That’s how the economy will keep getting skewed to the wealthy and well-connected, how our health systems will let more people fall through the cracks. That’s how a democracy withers until it’s no democracy at all.”

While his assessment of youth apathy and cynicism was undoubtedly deceptive, this paragraph is pure Orwellian propaganda.

First, the premise is false. Anyone with any political understanding knows that there is a bipartisan consensus in Washington, D.C. that serves to protect and maintain the status quo. To classify “this president and those in power” as the sole beneficiaries of “keeping things the way they are” is simply dishonest. Obama’s subsequent claim that Republicans seek to depress and suppress the vote by depressing and disempowering the electorate is fair enough, but of course, Democrats have their own underhanded means of protecting their power, just as Republicans do.

In fact, I could very easily rewrite this segment of the speech to describe how the DNC protects its own interests at the expense of the common good. It would go something like this:

Well here’s the point – the Democratic establishment – those who benefit from keeping things the way they are – they are counting on your support. They know they can’t win you over with their policies. So they’re hoping to blackmail you into voting for them, and to convince you that your vote matters when it really doesn’t. That’s how they win. That’s how they get to keep making decisions that affect your life, and the lives of the people you love. That’s how the economy will keep getting skewed to the wealthy and well-connected, how our health systems will let more people fall through the cracks. That’s how a democracy withers until it’s no democracy at all.

Notice I didn’t have to change much at all. Because as far as political strategy is concerned, the only real difference between Republicans and Democrats is that the Republicans sell despair and the Democrats sell false hope. Republicans overtly encourage people to shun civic responsibility altogether and think only of themselves, whereas Democrats manipulate their base into participating in masturbatory dead-end exercises of meaningless civic engagement, i.e., voting for Democrats.

When we got involved, got inspired, and mobilized to elect the last Democratic president, did that stop the economy from being “skewed to the wealthy and well connected?” Did it stop people from “falling through the cracks” of our for-profit market based healthcare system? Did it protect our democracy from undue influence by oligarchs and demagogues? Of course not. If it had, the Wall St. criminals who tanked the economy would be in jail, we’d have at least a public option, and we wouldn’t have President Donald J. Trump.

And so when Obama addresses these issues, he speaks as though he were never the president; as though he were never in a position to prove to young people that government could in fact work for them; as if he was never entrusted with the task of renewing people’s faith in politics as a means for enacting positive change; as if he never rallied his base behind a campaign slogan of “Yes, We Can,” and as if he never let them down.

At this point, the only people still fawning over Barack Obama’s empty rhetoric and revisionist historicizing are those who don’t care how empty and revisionist it actually is. The liberal class’ privilege allows them to be hypnotized by Obama’s eloquence, charisma, and “classiness,” and to conveniently ignore both his failures as president and his inability to acknowledge them in his post-presidency. They pontificate about how much they “miss having a president who can speak in complete sentences,” as if complete sentences alone are of material benefit to poor and working class people struggling to make ends meet.

In 2008, Obama’s base of support was an idealistic coalition of multiracial young people brimming with excitement over his aspirational vision. Twelve years later, his speeches resonate only with those who can afford to revel in their superficiality. This much is obvious to anyone who’s not already in the tank for the Democrats, but it hasn’t seemed to dawn on Obama himself one bit. The lack of self awareness in this speech is a perfect example of why Democrats are so loathed by so many, and why they’re always the last ones to learn just how unpopular they are.

The rise of Donald Trump is an unfortunate but undeniable consequence of Obama’s failure to deliver on the promise of “hope and change.” If Barack Obama is too prideful, or too insulated from reality, to admit this to himself, it’s about time Democrats start admitting this to each other, because this whole convention gave off major 2016 vibes. We saw an elitist party basking in its own perceived moral and intellectual superiority while making no substantive policy pitches to anyone who they fear may be on the verge of giving up and staying home in November. Speaker after speaker stressed the importance of voting by insisting our democracy might fall if we don’t. Never did anyone stop and ask themselves why they should expect people to feel so invested in a “democracy” whose political outcomes have rendered 63% of Americans unable to afford a $500 emergency. Sure, democracy is nice for people like Julia Louis Dreyfus, whose roasting of Donald Trump on the convention’s final night went over predictably well with comfy #resistance liberals, but what good is it to everyone else if they don’t get anything out of it except the opportunity to vote for sleazy politicians who don’t look out for them?

This country is battered, broken, beaten down, and ready to throw in the towel. This was true four years ago, and it may be even more true now. The unfulfilled promise of the Obama years is a big part of why that is, a big part of why Trump was elected in 2016, and a big part of why America might just double down on despair in 2020.

[semperama]

This rant has been in me for a while, so buckle up.

I’m so, so tired of the fear-mongering about how Tr*mp is going to postpone the elections or refuse to leave office. To me, this argument is a illustration of how fucking awful our civics education is in this country. You have to ignore or be ignorant of every single aspect of our government in order to believe this is possible.

When it comes to postponing the election, there is simply no way the president could unilaterally make that happen. The date of the presidential election is set by Congress, and it can only be changed by Congress. Not only that, but the date the president’s term ends is set by the Constitution, and that can only be changed by a Constitutional amendment that would require approval from 2/3rds of Congress and then 3/4ths of the states. So even if a divided Congress was somehow convinced to move election date, Tr*mp’s term would still end on January 21st and the president would be the next person in the line of succession. That part gets complicated since, with no election, we would also have no Speaker of the House--so it would likely fall to someone in the Senate, though it may not be clear who since 1/3rd of the sitting Senators would also have ended their terms--but the point is, it’s not going to be Tr*mp.

Also, the elections are state-run, not federal-run anyway. It is up to states to pick electors, and technically they don’t even have to hold elections to do it. Allowing all citizens to cast a ballot is not mandated by the Constitution. But the point is, the states get the full authority to decide how to pick electors, and no arm of the federal government can interfere with that without a change to the Constitution.

“But what if he says he doesn’t believe the election results and refuses to leave? What if he declares martial law? What if [insert increasingly implausible nightmare scenario here]?”

For any of that to work, it would require a complete and total breakdown of American society. I’m not talking about the chaos we’re experiencing now--I’m talking about us fundamentally ceasing to exist as the country we currently have. It would mean that every member of Congress, everyone who works for the federal government, every Secret Service member, every person in the military has decided to support Tr*mp over the Constitution and the people of the United States. It would mean the rule of law is completely destroyed. Coups of this nature have historically happened in times of great crisis, where the current leader is overthrown and replaced by someone with broad populist support, often a military leader because they have military backing. Tr*mp does not have broad military or populist support. He does not have broad support in any quarter other than die-hard right-wing assholes. At the rate things are going, it is infinitely more likely that Tr*mp will be thrown out of office or forced to resign before the election than it is that he will stay in power afterward.

The reason all these fatalistic notions bother me so much is that they are always paired with an air of “Why even bother voting? Why even bother engaging with my responsibilities as a citizen? It won’t matter anyway.” Meanwhile there are ways that Tr*mp can undermine the election that are being largely ignored. If he refuses to fund the post office, none of us could receive mail-in ballots, and if COVID surges again in the fall, we could end up with severely depressed voter turnout. It is infinitely more probably that Tr*mp will end up being reelected because of voter suppression efforts than it is that he will somehow manage to stay in power by sheer force. And voter suppression is something we can all do something about. We can push our elected officials to make mail-in voting more widely accessible (START THAT NOW!!). We can donate to organizations fighting voter suppression (like Fair Fight Action). We can call out the kind of uninformed, fatalistic rhetoric that encourages so many people in this country to not even try to cast a ballot. 

Be informed. Be active. Stop using pessimism as a cover for ignorance and laziness. Fight for your rights as if they actually mean something, because they fucking do.

[whereareroo]

FREEDOM SCORE

WF THOUGHTS (3/18/21).

I'm depressed today. After you read this post, you'll be depressed too. Sorry.

America is supposed to be the "home of the free." Isn't that what the national anthem tells us? Isn't that what we've been taught forever? Isn't freedom an essential component of our national history?

I've always been proud to live in the land of the free. I was proud even though I was aware of the fact that America is an imperfect place. Too many Americans can claim, as Langston Hughes said in his famous 1935 poem, that "America has not been America to me." Despite my awareness of America's imperfection, I've always believed that we were on a march towards a more perfect union. Today, I am doubting my beliefs.

A few days ago, I was driving and listening to National Public Radio. They did a promotion for an upcoming segment on freedom in the world. I was shocked by a statistic that was referenced in the promotion. In a recent ranking of 84 "free nations" by a think tank, America ranked #53. That statistic stuck with me.

When I got home, I made a note to investigate the situation. Maybe I misheard the statistic? Maybe the think tank is a fake? There's no way that the degree of freedom in America ranks 53rd on a list of 84 countries! Right?

I easily found information on the think tank. It's called Freedom House. It's based in Washington D.C. It's been around since 1941. It's widely recognized as being the "gold standard" for organizations that study freedom around the world. Since 1972 it has been publishing an annual report, called "Freedom in the World," which assesses freedom in every country in the world.

The annual reports are detailed and dense. I suppose that the complexity is one reason that we don't hear about the reports in the mass media. The data set forth in the reports is used by academics, researchers, Congressional Committees, agencies at the United Nations, and other think tanks. Nobody disputes the data or the conclusions. If anything, the knock on Freedom House is that it isn't tough enough on America.

I think there's another reason that, particularly in the past 15 years, we haven't been hearing about these reports from our elected officials or the mass media. The reports show that freedom has been declining in America for at least 10 years. Why would anybody want to report that bad news? The keepers of our government, our elected officials, certainly do not want to highlight the decline of freedom in America. The mass media generally avoids such complex and depressing issues. We've been kept in the dark.

Despite my conclusion that Freedom House is a legitimate and respected organization, I was still hoping to find a way to discredit these reports. I didn't want to believe that America is #53.

I delved into the methodology. If the methodology is bad, even a good organization can reach the wrong conclusions. Unfortunately, the methodology seems very solid. To compile the report, a staff of 24 analysts studies data from all over the world. Before the annual report is released, it is reviewed by a team of 12 academics who study freedom all over the world. Then, everything is reviewed by 16 independent consultants. It's hard to question the methodology.

I still wanted to find a way to ignore the conclusion that America is #53. I looked for another organization that ranks countries. I learned that another respectable group is the Political Instability Task Force. It's funded by the CIA, and every year it ranks countries in terms of the level of democracy that exists. In the most recent ranking, America was #49. That's pretty close to #53. (I also found a third source that concluded that the annual Freedom House report has an 80% correlation to other respected reports.) At that point, I had no choice but to conclude that the Freedom House reports are accurate and that America has some big problems when it comes to freedom and democracy. Who would have guessed that 50 countries are doing better than us? Why isn't anybody talking about the fact that, compared to other countries, America gets a poor grade on freedom?

To do its "freedom ranking" for each country, Freedom House evaluates 25 issues related to political rights or civil rights. For each of the issues, the country is scored on a point system where "0" is the lowest score and "4" is the top score. Thus, the maximum positive score is "100."

America has been losing points in the following areas:

▪Electoral Fairness (because of voter suppression, voting obstacles, and foreign interference)

▪Electoral Corruption (big money is too influential)

▪Legislative Weakness (stalemates in Congress quash the will of the people)

▪Accountability (between elections, there is no way to remove bad players)

▪Transparency (too much is done secretly)

▪Politicized Judiciary (appointments based on politics instead of qualifications)

▪Overzealous Prosecutors and Discriminatory Prosecutions

▪High Homicide Rates from Gun Violence (causing various problems throughout society)

▪ Massive Inequality (gender, racial, sexuality, economic, educational, housing, health care, citizenship, religious)

▪Massive Economic Imbalances (income and wealth)

We all knew that we had problems in these areas. Were you aware of the fact that other countries are doing a much better job of overcoming these challenges? The result is that freedom is more widespread in other countries. Isn't that sad?

It's bad news that we're #53. There's worse news. Our "freedom score" has been declining steadily since 2010. In 2010, we scored a 94---which is still too low in my book. We're now down to 83. Yes, our freedom score has dropped 11 points in the last 10 years. We're not marching towards a more perfect union. We're going backwards. Over the past 10 years, only 24 other countries experienced such a large decline in their freedom score. I feel terrible that we're not in the top 50 with respect to freedom but we're in the top 25 with respect to anti-freedom trends.

Please don't tell me that our latest freedom score, a score of 83, is OK. In my school days, an 83 would be a "B" or "B-." Didn't you think that America would score an "A" or "A+" on the freedom scale. The truth hurts.

So what countries are kicking our butts with respect to freedom? You can probably guess some of them: Finland; Norway; Sweden; Canada; New Zealand; Denmark; Germany; Japan. You'll probably be surprised that we rank lower than countries like: Croatia; Argentina; Greece; Latvia; Chile; and Slovenia.

Freedom House characterizes 84 countries as totally "free." We're #53. Isn't that appalling. We're not even in the top half, and we're falling. It's awful.

Today is not the day for a detailed discussion about how to solve this awful problem. Let me just list a few very obvious steps that need to be taken:

1. We need to learn from other countries. What are they doing right? What are we doing wrong? We have to stop thinking that we're the experts on freedom. Obviously, we're not.

2. We need short term limits for all public offices. Career politicians seem to forget about freedom.

3. Our elections need to be fair. Voting must be easy for every voter. Incumbent politicians cannot be allowed to draw election districts that stack the deck. It's outrageous that that, throughout America, state legislatures are considering 250 bills that are designed to limit voting.

4. All election campaigns should be publicly funded at reasonable levels. We need to remove big money from the electoral process.

5. We should only elect politicians who take freedom--for everyone and at all levels--very seriously. If we don't wake up on this issue, we're going to be in a very sad place in 10 or 20 years.

6. All Americans need to vote. Those who are not enjoying full freedom in America need to protect themselves at the ballot box. It was nice that 158 million Americans voted in the last presidential election. Sadly, that means that 80 million eligible voters didn't vote. The system can't protect everybody, and bring freedom to everybody, if a big portion of the population refuses to elect leaders to champion their cause.

Through most of our history, there has been a slow but steady expansion of freedom in America. Sadly, we've fallen off the freedom trail. We're regressing. I'm confident that we can get back on track, but it will take work. As usual, the bulk of the work will have to come from those at the bottom of the heap. They need to engage in the political process and use their political power to demand equality and freedom. Most Americans will support efforts to expand freedom in America. In their hearts, most Americans still believe that universal freedom should be the ultimate goal in America. The forces in America that oppose widespread freedom must he removed from power.

Let me finish with more from Langston Hughes. He wrote "Let America Be America Again" in 1935. Sadly, despite all of the progress that we've made, we haven't created the America that Huges dreamed about. I urge you to read the whole poem. You should also read a bit about the life of Langston Hughes. As you consider the plight of freedom in America, reflect upon this passage from the poem:

O, let America be America again--

The land that never has been yet--

And yet must be--the land where every man is free.

The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

[megacircuit9universe]

Superstition

SAT SEP 26 2020

Everything hopeful that I wrote in the last entry, two days ago, has come under heavy fire... from the left.

Not that anybody reads this blog.  They don’t. 

Rather, it’s a kind of survival instinct to beat back complacency.  Don’t think for one second Biden has this in the bag, because if we do... not enough people will vote, and he’ll lose!

And I get it!..  We all remember 2016, when Clinton lost, because Democrats were overconfident, so many of those who weren’t super happy with her getting the nomination, either stayed home, or voted for a third party candidate, to symbolicly protest the two bad options we had in Trump and Hillary.

Nobody want’s a repeat of that in 2020.

But I feel like there’s a different shade of danger in getting too superstitious about Trump’s 2016 win.

A lot of factors were at play that year, as they are this year... from voter suppression tactics, to social engineering campaigns by Russia, being waged on Facebook and Twitter, to overconfidence, to apathy... but the one factor that was not at play, either that year, or this year... is magic.

I know I’ve speculated a lot about how all the Trumps on all the timelines managed to weasle their way into the Presidency at some point, between 2000 and 2028... and that on all of them, it’s a disaster... but...

...He doesn’t get into power by magic.  It’s because of the state of the Republican party, here in the turn of he century... and the birth of the internet, with all the upheval that has brought about.

The GOP was getting pretty scary back when W Bush was elected.  That was not a normal transition of power.  Peaceful, yes... but highly abnormal.  Bush basically declared his own victory, and then... acting with extreme confidence... Sued Gore to concede, before the last of the votes were... re-counted, in that situation... for just a few counties in Florida.

The Supreme Court backed him up... not on any valid legal argument... but on his confidence, and the endorsement of Fox News.  

Confidence matters!

And it doesn’t just matter... the Supreme Court has already set the legal precident that... when the Presidency is up for debate... confidence is decisive.

And we were just lucky, in 2000... that it was W... and  not Trump... but... W was still a huge nightmare President.  He used 9/11 as the excuse to do a lot of terrible things, including torture.  He sent our brothers and sisters in the national guard, and the U.S. Military into a pointless war in Iraq.

He, and his congressional cohorts, also squandered the historic budget surplus Clinton had given us... so badly... and lifted so many regulations on wall street... that by the end of his second term, we were plunging into a depression.

The housing market collapsed first... the first time property values had deflated since the end of WW2, and they weren’t just deflating, they were falling over a cliff.  And then the banking collapse began, in October of 2008... threatening to destroy civilization.  Look it up.  It was fucking serious.

Now, W never fantasized about serving a third term, or being President forever...

...but the GOP of 2000-2008 would’ve backed him up, if he had fantasized about dictatorship.  They were already that hell bent on world domination (hence the unilateral war in Iraq).

Trump is not magical.

He’s the product of an already corrupt GOP, who, was just waiting for the right idiot. 

Bush was not stupid enough... must go stupider!  Bush was not racist enough, or angry enough... must go full racist!  Must go full anger!

And that should have failed.... but now we had smart phones... and Twitter.  Never forget that Trump has been our first and only Twitter President.

He and his cronies, both in Moscow, and NYC, took full advantage of a moment in social media history... when it was still brand new, and all the rage... just hitting it’s first peak in popularity... with a population that was still very naive to it’s potential dangers.

Good timing?  Yes.  All predators have good timing.

Ruthlessly cunning?   Yes.  All predators are cunning and ruthless.

Magic?  No!

Before the invasion of Normandy... did they say, Nobody jynx this by thinking we’re gonna win!  Stop being so confident, Charmichael!  You’re gonna make everything worse than it already is!  Knock wood!

No.

They took a thorough assessment of the situation, and the enemy, and, with their best men, came up with a compitent plan... then threw everything they had at the bastards... crazy duck boats, delivering mass produced tanks and jeeps, and fully loaded soldiers... and numbers.  They knew they had the numbers.

And it was a hard battle, and the casualties were high, but they won.

Those U.S. D-Day casualties, by the way?..  2,811.

We’ve crossed the 200,000 mark, for U.S. Casualties of Covid19, in just seven months... at the hands of a madman, backed by a corrupt party, who will resort to anything to stay in power.

This is not the time to get superstitious.

And that goes for this mentality... about it being the worst year in history... that’s been going on since early 2016, long before anybody thought Trump could ever win.  Back in early 2016, it was simply the deaths of beloved icons such as Prince, and David Bowie, that made everybody complain that it was the worst year ever.  

It wasn’t as happy a year as 2015!  Waaaaah!

That mentality has not changed.  2017 was the worst year ever.  2018 was too.  As was 2019... such a horrible year.  And when Covid came along in early 2020... Well!  This really takes the cake!

And there is a defensive advantage, to growing cynical, and refusing to be surprised by more bad news, however terrible... and calling it out, and laughing in it’s face.

But that advantage is blunted, if you get too superstitious... in this case... assuming every day and month of every year is going to be worse and worse than the last, because it’s just fated to be so... and only losers hope.

No.

We are in a very dark hour, I’ll grant you that.

From climate change, digging in its talons around the planet, and promising to deliver much worse, on the regular, for centuries... and a Caronavirus that just won’t go away, because American fools can’t get the concept, and don’t have the decency to give a shit... to Trump, threatening to plunge the United States into a fascist nightmare, from which the nation may not recover without a civil war that sparks World War 3.

It’s not looking super great.

But the future is not inevitable... as any time traveler would be happy to preach.

Just as any move they make, can have drastic effects on the timeline... so does any move you make... especially in a dark historical hour like this. 

I still firmly believe, that Trump will not succeed in his bid to hold on to power.  He’ll be defeated, and he’ll be forced out, by January 20th.

We have the numbers... and the brains... and the resources... to get this done.

All we need now, is the certitude... and fortitude.

Lose the superstition!

I’m going to bed.

[americanbackyard]

Our Rise, Our Fall

One of the most focal things we have been shown in trumpland is his followers, his fans. There is a difference between supporters and fans in that a supporter can be shown reasons why not to support someone or something and there is a possibility that they might change their mind. A fan is much harder to convince that the object of their affection is not worthy of their time or emotions. Trump is one of a million to hold some kind of shine to people and become an icon in the culture of America. Or at least part of America. Not the good part...

A unique thing has happened in the case of trump's popularity in that we can now clearly see that many Americans do not pay attention to anything beyond tabloid type information, regardless of the nearly unlimited amount of real information available at no cost to them. We can now plainly see that there are many stubborn and selfish people out there who refuse to look into things for themselves and choose to join mobs of others who act and react the same way. These are the rabid fans. In the case of donald trump and what they believe him to be, they show us that their lives are not their own, even if they claim to want to be left alone by government and those who are not like them, ie; white christian republicans. The amount of hypocrisy is astounding with these people and there is no way to convince them of the ridiculousness of their ways. Yet they function in society somehow. Amazing how the human psyche works. This is the survival instinct that we see in homeless people who appear to have lost their minds yet still build a shelter of discarded objects and scrounge for food. Rabid fans build a shelter of twisted ideals and scrounge for justification of what really boils down to bigotry and stupidity.

For decades trump has been in the B-level news as if he were the only person with money, surrounded by women and golden objects and living in a towering palace and blah blah blah. Anyone who took a few minutes here and there over the years and actually read anything at all about the man could have seen that this is not the case. What we are able to see now about his history, regardless of seeing his taxes shows that he is a dime-a-dozen developer with no peers and no friends, a multiple bankruptcy failure, a man with dreams but only of himself, which he is unable to make come true due to his own lack of intellect or determination, a con man and a grifter, plus a racist. There is nothing at all to like about this man and nothing to worship as some do.

“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions...” - 2 Timothy 4:3 (1)

Even those who call themselves Christians who are fans of trump obviously have not read or begun to comprehend the scripture on which their supposed faith is from. Besides the religious aspect of The Bible there are many practicle warnings to heed and advice to be taken. Rabid trump fans do not take advice nor do they heed warnings. If they did, they would not be rabid trump fans. As we have seen for decades this is nothing new though, as televangelists and now trump's “spiritual advisor”, herself a complete fraud, screw over their flocks every second of every sermon... Why are people so gullible? Why are they so desperate? Could it be the same thing that causes people to worship deities that promise a better “life” after death? Try living in the now for God's sake, so to speak.

For some reason, people are able to overlook things like racism, perversion, fraud, lies, and other acts of diminished ethics if what they see is a shiny extension of the worst part of themselves that makes them feel better about being shitty, for lack of better words. I'd imagine they were raised to be that way as they likely did not learn that as an adult, at work, or in college or church, although looking at the messages of some churches, like the Westboro Baptist Church, or various colleges like Liberty University, it is possible but people were attracted to those places for some reason in the first place, and look at some of the fine people they churn out. Also there are many people in history that are beloved but had things about them that would make a normal person cringe. Historical figures today that are relished, and I don't just mean with confederate statues, which is a fine example of praising the wrong people, but popular politicians, athletes, entertainers or religious figures that were racist, child molesters, rapists, or a variety of other things that if your neighbor were one, you would want to kick their ass halfway to New Zealand.

What it comes down to is that people need to look at the reality of other people around them and understand what is real and what it not and how their own lives and the lives of those around them are more important than the lives of who they are fans of, and how they all connect. It's called “getting fucking real”, something that many forget. “Celebrities are fascinating because they live in a parallel universe—one that looks and feels just like ours yet is light-years beyond our reach. Stars cry to Diane Sawyer about their problems—failed marriages, hardscrabble upbringings, bad career decisions—and we can relate. The paparazzi catch them in wet hair and a stained T-shirt, and we're thrilled. They're ordinary folks, just like us. And yet… Stars live in another world entirely, one that makes our lives seem woefully dull by comparison. ” (2) Again, get a fucking life... But they are unable. Why? And how can we help them to help themselves and not affect us all and the whole planet really by not making stupid decisions based on falsehoods and unreality and believing in people like donald trump, Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Paula White, Pat Robertson, Ronald Reagan, Adolf Hitler, etc. We cannot. BUT we outnumber them. SO why are we not coming out in droves to defeat the insanity which enables them to continue in their relentlessness path of destruction and jeopardizes all of humanity on a daily basis? Sounds intense but let's face it, the more folks let politics and religion rule their world the more the corporations and pontiffs will take advantage of them. History tells of this over and over and over again. It's nothing new folks...

We are beyond the two party system at this point. It is now a puppet show in front of us while we have become a mob of idiots versus a huge living room of couch potatoes. We let in the interlopers and the freaks and some of us gladly accept them based on their excuses or shiny false badges of honor while others of us say “whatever” and go about dong nothing to stop the inflow of assholes into the system that we trust to run things while we are running the rat race. There are herds of people who are fired up over things that they are told affect them when they absolutely do not, yet they fall for it hook line and stinker singly based upon the emotions and simplicities of their personalities that their new heroes have honed in on to get what they want from them. “...why do people repose blind faith in leaders or ideologies? How is it that otherwise sane and sensible people become moronically incapable of grasping reality? The culprit: our brain. Still evolving and still primitive, it readily sacrifices rational evidence-based conclusions in favor of primal ones. And so conformism trumps individual judgement.” (3) So is it because we are still primitive? Racists have their own ideas about who is primitive but let's face it, the worst degrees of thought in this country are coming from the rightwing white pseudo christians, who pretty much measure up, or down actually, in evolutionary thought when it comes to primal instincts.

Then there are those who won't vote, or get up and stand up.

Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights! Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights! Get up, stand up, stand up for your rights! Get up, stand up, don't give up the fight! (4)

On the other hand many are prone to apathy and burnout, due in large part to the overexposure of the right's flock of sheep and the constant pressing of their presence by the wolves that lead them into their dens. “We use voting as a tool to transmit to others who we are,” explains Eyal Winter. An economist, he works at the University of Leicester in England and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. (5) So while the crazies identify with each other and go out and do what they can to make themselves known, others are simply distressed or depressed by it enough to give up and not take the same initiative to go make a difference and fight the powers that suck.

Let's face it though, which party is the one using the Electoral College to silence over three million voters and give trump the win? Which party is guilty of voter suppression in over a dozen cities, that we known of? Which party is guilty of vote tampering, voter intimidation, poll violations, and supports racism while arguing to abolish immigrants, even legal ones, and who holds children in cages, separates them from their parents forever, allows them to be raped, become sick, or die, and then traffics them out? It's all happening., and we let it.

When will it become unacceptable? When it becomes inconvenient? The easy way out of a major confrontation is to get out there and vote and let your voice be heard. The numbers will speak and cannot be overturned. Not yet at least. Unless we let it. We can easily see the wrongdoing of the right wingers in the discrimination of those who the right hates the most. The GOP is not christian by any means, nor or they civil servants, nor are they compassionate, ethical, scrupulous, professional, or on anyone's side besides their own. They are not the lesser of two evils, they are the evil. The lesser may be the only thing we have to curb them but we can work on that and turn it around. It all starts now, or it never starts, and the end is already here. Will those in the position to make positive change refuse to do so? Forget those who are fooled by it, this is about you, the ones who can make  the difference.

Perhaps both sides choose the path of least resistance. But who controls the controlling factors introducing us to our supposed paths?  That choice is ours alone. Common sense might dictate which side we take but in the end we should all be on the same side. And politics and religion are constantly used to keep us from doing that, so that they benefit and not us, even though we put them in charge, willingly, when we vote for them to “represent” us.

In the end what is it going to be? Are we all on our own? Is it survival of the fittest? Or of the most privileged? Will the meek inherit the Earth, or will the corporate enterprises destroy it? And will we let them? This is why it is imperative at this point to get things straight and not allow the absurd to flourish and to take command of the things that matter rather than allow the power mad to run amok. It's happening all over the world and has been for a very long time. Is it just human destiny then to drive itself into the ground? Perhaps. But if we are to get to the next level of a civil society then we have a lot of work to do.  We ourselves and our fellow humans need to make things work, and not just rely on some suit wearing zombies with a political label. A progressive party is not just a partisan party but one for all, to do what? PROGRESS. There is an entire side that does not get this yet but might learn from example. OUR example. And again, if they won't learn, it does'nt matter if we make our numbers count. They will survive and even thrive, even if they may never accept who helped them do it. That's okay though because that is what a civil society does. It sees a problem, diagnoses it, and urges those around them to try to figure out a solution together without doing further damage or taking the easy way out.

Maybe we are dealing with cognitive dissonance. Or maybe some people are just fucking stupid. I like  to think that nurture plays just as important a role as nature though, and that perhaps one can keep learning throughout life to see the big picture and utilize common sense, or at least common decency. Of course, that can only be taught. Or can it? Altruistic behavior is believed by some to be hereditary in many species, so hope is not be abandoned. As easily as hope may be offered up in the form of security and salvation in sensible terms, it can be sold too as something entirely different than what it actually is defined as, something redefined and repackaged by untruths and lust for power. Thus, the rabid trump fans. The ultra right wingers. The fanatical conservatives. The crazy republicans. Not all people on the right are evil, many just conveniently go along with their dimensions which they find themselves lazily confined in. We need to agree on a middle ground of decency and intelligence, of fairness and unity, and only voting and voicing will present that to those who cannot or will not see it. They won't change their minds and we can't change it for them, so we have to change ours and let them see what we can do together.

For once in my life I've got something to say I wanna say it now for now is today A love has been given so why not enjoy So let's all grab and let's all enjoy!

If the kids are united Then we'll never be divided If the kids are united Then we'll never be divided

Just take a look around you What do you see? Kids with feelings Like you and me Understand him, he'll understand you For you are him, and he is you

If the kids are united Then we'll never be divided If the kids are united Then we'll never be divided

If the kids are united Then we'll never be divided If the kids are united Then we'll never be divided

I don't want to be rejected I don't want to be denied Then its not my misfortune That I've opened up your eyes

Freedom is given Speak how you feel I have no freedom How do you feel?

They can lie to my face But not to my heart If we all stand together It will just be the start

If the kids are united Then we'll never be divided If the kids are united Then we'll never be divided

If the kids are united Then we'll never be divided If the kids are united Then we'll never be divided (6)

(1) The Bible

(2) Psychology Today, Carlin Flora, July 1, 2004

(3) DAWN, Peter Hoodbhoy, August 8, 2015

(4) Bob Marley, Get Up Stand Up, 1973

(5) Science News For Students, Bethany Brookshire, November 7, 2016

(6) Sham 69, If The Kids Are United, 1978

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

I

n the year since President Trump pulled off his stunning upset of Hillary Clinton, Democrats have blamed the result on all kinds of factors: James Comey’s letter, Russian hackers, voter suppression, Jill Stein’s candidacy and depressed African-American turnout, to name a few. The truth? In an election decided by fractions of percentage points, it’s easy to call just about anything a difference-maker.

But none of that gets at the heart of why so many people who cast a ballot for former president Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 — and who saw Trump as unqualified to be president — nonetheless voted for him. Although it’s far from a microcosm of the nation, there’s one place that I believe illustrates what happened in 2016 better than anything else.

In a nation increasingly composed of landslide counties — places that voted for one side or the other by at least 20 percentage points — Howard County, Iowa (population 9,332), stands out as the only one of America’s 3,141 counties that voted by more than 20 percentage points for Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016. Democrats can’t credibly blame Howard County’s enormous 41-point swing in just four years on a last-minute letter to Congress, voter ID laws or Russia-sponsored Facebook ads.

Howard County, about 150 miles northeast of Des Moines along the state’s border with Minnesota, is 98 percent white. Only 13 percent of residents age 25 and over hold at least a bachelor’s degree. Median household income in the county in 2015 was $49,869. The largest employers in Cresco, the county seat, include the Donaldson Company, an air filter manufacturer whose local workers belong to the United Auto Workers union, and Featherlite, which makes aluminum livestock and utility trailers.

Barack Obama speaks to members of the United Auto Workers union during a presidential campaign stop in Dubuque, Iowa, in 2007.

AP IMAGES

Contrary to the “Trump Country” stereotype, Howard County isn’t drowning in manufacturing job losses, high unemployment or an opioid crisis. In fact, its unemployment rate the month before the election was just 2.9 percent. The main gripe? Stagnant wages — and a gnawing feeling that people have been working harder and for longer hours while other parts of the country reaped much bigger rewards during the recovery from the Great Recession.

“When Trump said, ‘What the hell do you have to lose?’ a lot more people heard it than just African-Americans,” said Pat Murray, a Democrat who worked 29 years as a press brake operator at Donaldson and now serves on the Howard County Board of Supervisors. “Our wages have been stagnant, and our insurance has gone backwards,” he told me, citing the union-sponsored health plan’s surging deductibles. “We work 50, 60 hours a week because there’s no one to hire.”

“[Obama] saved us from another Great Depression, but it never really got back to the working class,” said Murray, who calls himself “as anti-Trump as they come” but says Clinton’s campaign took places like Howard County for granted in the November election. “The average Joe Blow isn’t hung up on the stock market. Democrats always say we’re going to fight for the working people. The last few elections, we haven’t shown that at all.”

Howard County, Iowa, encompasses a number of small towns like Lime Springs (left), Cresco (center) and Chester.

Bill Whittaker / Jon Roanhaus / Bobak Ha’Eri

Autopsies of the Clinton campaign frequently cite her inattention to Michigan and Wisconsin as a cause of her loss. But her failure to connect in places like Howard County probably had less to do with which states she visited — after all, she spent plenty of time in Iowa — and more to do with her image and message.

Clinton came to be seen as establishment and dishonest in a year when a plurality of voters wanted change. But in a baffling display of obliviousness, she spent much of the fall jetting between big-city rallies, which were often followed by closed-door, high-dollar fundraisers. She spent precious little time making her economic case before people in midsize cities or small towns like Cresco. And even though she outspent Trump $6.5 million to $2.2 million on Iowa’s airwaves, her ads were more about Trump’s antics than about how she would raise voters’ wages or how Trump might lower them — effectively ceding that ground to Trump’s utopian jobs promises and inescapable slogan.

Neil Shaffer, a farmer and watershed conservation official who chairs the county GOP, credits Trump with flipping the party’s script on trade. “We’re skeptical of career politicians,” he said, likening Trump’s outsider appeal in the so-called Driftless Region to that of former-wrestler-turned-Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura. “For however many years, Democrats and union leaders denounced NAFTA. All of a sudden, you had a Republican candidate saying that it’s all for big business. The average working person said, ‘Hey, here’s someone who’s not going by the party book, he’s breaking the mold.'”

As for Clinton? “She was elitist, was what I kept hearing,” said Laura Hubka, a Navy veteran and ultrasound technician who chaired the county’s Democratic party and knocked on doors for Clinton. “We’re a blue-collar town.”

Voters in Iowa show their support for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump during the 2016 election.

GETTY IMAGES

Last month, Hubka resigned her post as chair and published a scathing blog post about Democrats’ aloofness to voters in places like Howard County and the party’s failure to come to grips with the election result. “Can we just stop and admit we’re part of the problem?” she vented to me. “People who were longtime supporters didn’t want to hear what we had to say anymore.”

Holly Rasmussen was one of those who had reached a breaking point. An Obama voter, Rasmussen cited the way that ill-tailored new federal rules applied to her tiny Cresco cosmetology school as a driving factor in her defection to Trump. “Honestly, when we founded the school, I got to teach. But the last few years, I had to spend all day in my office because I’ve had to file campus crime reports,” she said. “And if we had two people who didn’t repay their loans out of the eight students we had, [the Department of Education] made it tougher for us to get financial aid. Because of the regulations, we had to close. Now, we’re just a salon and spa.”

So why did Rasmussen vote for Obama and Trump? “Just to shake up Washington, to be honest. We’ve been in a rut for so long. People here don’t want to be multi-gajillionaires. They just want to get paid a decent wage,” she said, noting that her 2016 choice “might have been different” had Bernie Sanders won the nomination.

Howard County wasn’t always a train wreck for Clinton. Ironically, in the epic 2008 Democratic primary campaign, Clinton ran as the candidate of labor and small-town America, rallying union halls, downing whiskey and beer for the cameras, and blasting Obama’s speeches as “elitist and out of touch.” She came in third place statewide and only carried 22 of Iowa’s 99 counties in that year’s caucuses. But Howard was one of the 22 she won.

By 2016, however, Howard County morphed into Sanders territory. The Vermont senator struck a nerve with his calls for a working-class revolution and his attacks on Clinton’s Wall Street ties and shifting rhetoric on the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

“I was shocked. I didn’t think a person would show up for Bernie,” said Murray, who chaired his precinct’s caucus. “But when I showed up, it was full of Bernie people.”

One such Bernie-crat was Mike Bigley, who spent 30 years as a Donaldson machinist and worked his way up from shop steward to president of UAW Local 120.1 “I liked his ideas on healthcare and free tuition,” said Bigley. “On caucus night, we had a majority for Bernie. Some of the union guys thought Clinton did crooked stuff to win [the nomination]. You hear a lot of things around the factory floor.”

“The Bernie people thought Hillary stole it,” concedes Murray, who said those voters’ distrust of Clinton carried over to November. “I’d say probably two-thirds of them went to Trump,” Murray said. Bigley, a self-described die-hard Democrat, said he wasn’t among them.

A Clinton supporter, left, and the candidate herself in Iowa in 2016.

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By the fall, anti-Clinton fervor in the community had reached a crescendo. The week before the election, emboldened Trump supporters took out a full-page newspaper ad and rented out the historic, city-owned Cresco Theatre and Opera House — a long-ago vaudeville haunt — for screenings of conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary “Hillary’s America” and the Benghazi film “13 Hours.” To Democrats’ dismay, the theater was packed.

For years to come, pundits and political scientists will debate whether working-class white voters’ sharp turn towards Trump had more to do with economic or racial resentment. Incidentally, despite its nearly all-white population, Howard County occupies a unique place in the history of America’s attitudes on race.

Riceville, on the western edge of Howard County, happens to be where, in 1968, elementary school teacher Jane Elliott pioneered the famous “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” classroom exercise that’s still used in diversity training courses today. Elliott’s exercise caused an uproar in the tiny town, made her an outcast in the teacher’s lounge and even resulted in violence and racial epithets aimed at her family. Now 83 and living a few miles down the road in Osage, Elliott told me she blames Trump’s election on a backlash against “eight years of a black man in the White House.”

But neither Howard County’s party chairs nor its left-leaning labor leaders cited racial resentment as a driving force behind the community’s seismic shift to Trump in 2016. “That pail doesn’t hold water,” said Shaffer, the GOP chairman, who eagerly points out that the county voted overwhelmingly for the nation’s first African-American president — twice.

The idea that voters who previously cast a ballot for Obama could not have been motivated, at least in part, by race when they made their 2016 choice has been disputed extensively in academic studies. But in my conversations with Howard County voters of both parties, the common thread of support for Obama and for Trump was resounding: anti-elitism.

Presidential candidate Donald Trump arrives to speak at an Iowa campaign event in 2016.

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Democrats’ next path to 270 Electoral College votes may not run through Iowa. After all, Trump prevailed by a slightly larger margin in the Hawkeye State than he did in Texas. But Democrats don’t have the luxury of simply writing off voters like the ones they lost in Howard County.

If Democrats want to retake the House in 2018, they’ll need to win congressional districts like Iowa’s 1st, which includes Howard County.2 The 1st District narrowly re-elected rough-around-the-edges GOP Rep. Rod Blum last November. More importantly, Howard County’s Trump-curious Democrats have countless analogs in states that will decide the 2020 election: not just in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but in Minnesota and Maine as well.

One year later, Rasmussen, the cosmetology school owner who previously voted for Obama, doesn’t have “massive regrets” about her vote for Trump. “For the most part, he’s doing a good job. I wish sometimes he’d stifle his Twitter account, but I’m not surprised by any of it. If you watched it, that’s kind of how he was,” she shrugged.

To rebuild lost trust and win support, future Democrats face the twin challenges of, first, persuading voters that Trump is on track to negatively affect their livelihoods and, second, reclaiming the mantle of working-class hero that every successful Democratic nominee has embraced since vaudeville ruled the stage at the Cresco Theatre.

“My dad told me, ‘You’ll never be rich enough to be a true-blue Republican,’” Bigley recalled. “Now there’s too much darn money in politics, on both sides.” His advice to his party? “Get out here in the sticks and roll around with us common folks for a week or two.”

[thisdaynews]

Silicon Valley faces partisan tug of war over 2020 census

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Silicon Valley faces partisan tug of war over 2020 census

Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg vowed the company would “treat next year’s census like an election.” | Drew Angerer/Getty Images

technology

Tech companies have pledged to take steps to prevent interference — but their efforts could further complicate Silicon Valley’s relations with the GOP.

Democrats are making a plea to tech giants like Facebook, Google and Twitter that failed to stop hoaxes and trolls from swarming the 2016 election: Don’t bungle the 2020 Census.

Some lawmakers fear that the once-a-decade tally will become a magnet for misinformation from overseas and U.S.-based trolls seeking to keep minority groups from filling out their census forms correctly — or at all.That would be a reprise of the Kremlin’s efforts to inflame social and political divisions before the last presidential contest, as well as a possible preview of interference in next year’s election.

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Democrats’ big worry is depressed census participation among minorities, which would give outsize representation to rural whites once states use the results to redraw their political districts in 2022.

And for the tech industry, they argue, the census is a chance to show that the companies have learned the lessons of 2016 — at a time when they’re under fire from an increasingly skeptical Washington.

“This is one of the most foundational aspects of American democracy and this will go a long way towards determining whether or not they view themselves as part of the American community,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) told POLITICO.

He and members of the Democratic-led Congressional Black Caucus are among Capitol Hill’s most active lawmakers on the matter. Black Caucus leaders met with Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg in May to discuss Facebook’s efforts to shield the census, a company spokesman told POLITICO.

More recently, the Black Caucus launched a 2020 census task force, and caucus spokeswoman Gabrielle Brown said the group plans to offer recommendations to tech companies on how they can bolster participation in the count. The caucus, whose members include several House committee leaders, is also eyeing a slate of hearings devoted to the census that are expected to touch on the online industry’s role, Brown said.

Tech companies have pledged to take some steps to prevent interference with the count — including a promise by Sandberg to “treat next year’s census like an election.” But their efforts could further complicate Silicon Valley’s relations with Republicans, who accuse the industry of catering to liberals.

Some critics on the right are already calling foul on the efforts the industry has previewed, alleging that the push to secure the census is politically motivated and meant to help Democrats.

“We’re supposed to trust that they will work with the census in a fair and equal way, and I just don’t see how anybody can conclude that,” said Dan Gainor, vice president of the conservative watchdog group TechWatch.The group has accused online platforms of systematically stifling conservative speech, an unproven charge that tech companies deny.

The concerns come at a charged time for the census. Next year’s count will be the first ever to allow residents to submit responses entirely online and to extensively rely on technology in the field over pen and paper, a shift that could make it especially ripe for misinformation. The normally staid process already became politically charged last year, when the Trump administration embarked on an ultimately unsuccessful quest to add a question about whether respondents are U.S. citizens, a move that opponents called a thinly veiled attempt to depress the count in heavily Democratic communities.

As the April 1 date designated as Census Day — the point by which the government will have made contact with all U.S. households — nears, any compelling evidence that the industry is failing to beat back misinformation would add further heft to calls in Washington to investigate, regulate or even break up big tech companies. The industry has faced widespread derision for allowing Russian-backed trolls and bots to spread fake news and divisive messages before the 2016 vote, including posts and ads that researchers have said were aimed at deterring African Americans from casting ballots for Hillary Clinton.

Some industry players are trying to get ahead of Washington and take action before being drawn into a political fracas. Sandberg’s pledge, which she announced in June as part of a civil rights audit, said the company would put “people, policies and technology in place to protect against census interference.”

Sandberg also teased plans to update the company’s content policies this fall to specifically address census misinformation. A Facebook spokesperson told POLITICO the update is expected to build off the company’s existing policies aimed at thwarting voter suppression efforts.

Facebook, Google and Twitter have also committed to help the Census Bureau quash false information about the tally, as Reuters reported in March. A Twitter spokesperson said company representatives have held several meetings with Census Bureau officials and civil rights groups to talk about those efforts.

But lawmakers like Schatz are still seeking greater commitments.

Last month, the Hawaii Democrat pressed the CEOs of Facebook, Google, Twitter and Reddit in a series of letters to “help ensure that the 2020 Census is full, fair, and accurate” by taking steps to restrict and disclose misleading information that appears across their products. He urged the companies to tweak their algorithms and policies to ensure misleading information is not recommended to users, to swiftly take down any fraudulent news about the census, and to provide reports to Congress and federal agencies on their efforts to maintain the tally’s integrity.

Meanwhile, Brown said the Congressional Black Caucus has reached out to tech companies to stress the importance of combating misinformation about the census, particularly as it relates to historically underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities.

“It’s well documented what Russian bots did at the behest of the Kremlin in terms of targeting communities of color with misinformation” in 2016, said Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), one of the House lawmakers leading the caucus’ task force. “I could see that same type of tactic being deployed when it comes to getting an accurate census count.”

Clarke added that the tech companies “need to join us in this particular campaign to make sure, particularly in communities that are hard to count, that they are working in concert with the Census Bureau to try to get as many people as possible to fill out the census.”

Sandberg’s May meeting was with three other Black Caucus members now spearheading the push: caucus Chairwoman Karen Bass (D-Calif.) and Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.). The sitdown preceded the following month’s announcement from Facebook on its census integrity efforts.

But even the ostensibly apolitical promise to prevent interference faced opposition from conservatives, including the Media Research Center, the umbrella organization for Gainor’s TechWatch group. It accused Facebook of working with liberal leaders to push “for even more censorship than Facebook already has” — questioning, for example, whether “any mention of illegal immigration on the census would be removed as ‘potentially suppressive.’”

Representatives for Facebook, Google, Twitter and Reddit declined to say whether they plan to implement Schatz’s recommendations. A Facebook spokesperson said the company appreciates “his input as we finalize the plans we recently announced regarding the census.” A Twitter spokesperson said the company intends to respond to Schatz’s letter, but declined to comment further.

A Google spokesperson said the company “is committed to combating misinformation and fraudulent activities to help ensure the integrity of the count,” but did not comment on Schatz’s specific requests. Reddit did not offer comment.

Some Democrats say the absence of more sweeping steps has left them nervous that the industry won’t do enough to help secure the census.

“We need much more effective preventive steps to take responsibility for some of the misuse of social media,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). “My feeling is that the tech companies have yet to fully take responsibility.”

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