#or at least one where the leading right wing party has lost a significant amount of seats

[wernerherzogs]

parliamentary elections tomorrow

[arcticdementor]

My article “Why is Everything Liberal?” has gotten a great deal of attention. See in particular thoughtful commentary from Bryan Caplan and Robby Soave at Reason.

This post is a followup, with two main goals. First, I’ve discovered additional evidence that liberals care more about politics, which I will just add on to what already was an extremely strong case.

Second, some people criticized the piece for not addressing what has changed recently. I think I’ve found the answer to that too, which is that the mobilization gap increased precipitously in 2016. It is at that time that we see Democrats overtake Republicans in fundraising, liberals overtake conservatives in signing petitions, and the left’s already sizable lead in protesting become much larger. While it seems that liberals have always cared more about politics if we are looking at the tail end of the distribution–i.e., those who become activists, journalists, or academics–it is only in 2016 that we see more noticeable and significant gaps open up in the next level down in the pyramid.

Since 2016, liberals have achieved true mass mobilization in a way conservatives never have in the modern era.

…

In 2016, fewer than 1% of conservatives had been to a protest in the last year, compared to 15% of extreme liberals, 10% of regular liberals, and 5% of the slightly liberal. Even moderates, at 2.4%, protested more than conservatives. Remember, this was before the Women’s March and the peak of BLM! The estimates for protest size used in the original post were pretty crude, but it’s nice to see self-reported data match what we see in the real world. Petitions tell the same story, but the differences are not as extreme: 61% of very liberal individuals had signed one in the last year, compared to just 26% of the very conservative.

…

Liberals already tended to protest more in the years leading up to 2012. But conservatives used to at least hold their own. This matches what we know from the real world, as this was the height of the Tea Party. Glenn Beck’s largely forgotten “Restoring Honor Rally” in summer 2010, for example, drew a lot of people, though nobody really knows how many. Wikipedia says “a scientific estimate placed the crowd size around 87,000, while media reports varied wildly from tens of thousands to 500,000.” This was also the time of Occupy Wall Street, so liberals weren’t exactly sitting on their hands, but conservatives at least made a showing. By 2016, conservative protesting had collapsed to practically nothing, while liberal protesting stayed at similar levels or, more likely, increased (hard to know for sure because of the time frame of the 2012 question being different).

…

In 2012, liberals were more likely to sign petitions than conservatives, but the gap was pretty small and there were many more conservatives in the country, which meant the right actually had more total people signing petitions. By 2016, more Americans than before were calling themselves liberals, and liberals were more mobilized, giving the left a substantial advantage.

Another thing we can do to see how relative mobilization has changed over time is to look at campaign donations. In the previous essay, I went all the way back to 2012, and showed that for every recent presidential election cycle Democrats brought in more money. I didn’t go back to 2008, as I was sure Obama outraised McCain, and I was of course right.

However, if you expand the analysis to midterm elections and all federal candidates, we see the Democrat advantage does not open up until 2016. Here are numbers I’ve gathered from Open Secrets for every election from 1990, as far back as data go.

…

In response to my piece, Ezra Klein argued that liberal domination of institutions was better explained by age and education polarization than liberals caring more. This is an argument I’ve seen him make elsewhere before (see also this and this from Josh Barro on Woke Capital).

…

Romney won college educated whites by somewhere between around 5% and 15%, while according to CNN’s 2020 exit polls, Biden won the same demographic by 12%. CNN actually has Trump barely winning college educated whites in 2016 (48%-45%). Education polarization is real, and the fact that college educated whites vote something like 15-30% more Democrat than they did in 2012 should be having some effects on board rooms and the larger mobilization gap. Yet educational differences do not seem nearly massive enough to explain the total liberal domination of institutions, as Republicans hold their own well enough with degree holders.

As far as the age gap, it can cut both ways. When I was growing up in the 1990s, the stereotype was that retirees had a lot of time on their hands and were therefore politically powerful, while young people were largely indifferent. Old people certainly have more money, and so you’d expect age polarization to actually give Republicans an advantage in donations. Yet since 2016 the trend has been the opposite. As parties have polarized more by age, Democrats have started winning the competition over fundraising. Maybe young people are inherently more likely to protest, but wouldn’t you expect old people to be just as capable of signing petitions? Thus, I’m pretty confident that age and education gaps are less important than the simple fact that liberals care more about politics.

…

The left has always had an advantage in committed activists. Yet, no matter whether you look at donations, protests, or signing petitions, the mobilization gap increased in 2016. Liberals had always protested more, but in 2016 the ratio was absolutely massive, being around 3.7x larger than it was around the time of the invasion of Iraq. This was before an upsurge of liberal protest activity that has included BLM, March for Our Lives, and most importantly, the Women’s March. Finally, the parties raised about an equal amount of money from 1990 until 2016, when Democrats took a lead that has now lasted three straight election cycles (2008 was an exception to the rule of parity in the pre-2016 era, when Democrats ran a fresh faced Barack Obama against John McCain, who seemed good at exciting Republican elites and MSNBC pro-war centrist types but not actual voters).

So what about “Woke Capital”? In many ways, business was the last domino to fall. Yes, liberals have always had more noisy activists, and corporations tended to bow to them on some issues when they got really agitated, like MLK day. But big business is more directly answerable to a wider swath of the population than are schools or non-profits, and so held out the longest. Coca-Cola and Walmart care more about what the median citizen thinks than does Harvard, The New York Times, or the ACLU. Yet after 2016, when the mobilization gap exploded, almost nothing in society could remain neutral, and pressure has come from both within and outside corporations for them to take a stand on almost all hot button issues.

Why was 2016 the year everything changed? Take a wild guess.

…

Just as the previous post raised further questions, this one does too. The most interesting thing to me is not simply protests and donations, but why one side has for over half a century now drawn more idealistic people who want to dedicate their lives to changing the world. The journalist-academic-activist complex is ultimately where power lies, and it has grown much stronger in the last 5 years because it has started to engage many more people at the intermediate level in the mobilization pyramid, among those who give money, sign petitions, and go to protests, and who find themselves between true elites on top and the mass of the largely indifferent voting public at the bottom.

If the rise of Trumpism explains the last five years, why did the left begin with such a strong built-in advantage? I hope to explore this question soon.

…

Moreover, right-wing protest culture has collapsed since the time of the Tea Party. It’s hard to know for sure, but other forms of conservative activism may have fallen off too. So even the degree to which Trump has actually mobilized the right must come with a caveat: he has turned out more Republican voters and gotten more people to donate small amounts of money, but few seem to want to make more substantial sacrifices, even compared to 2012.

Overall, the Trump era has provided mixed electoral results for Republicans. They won unified control of government in 2016, lost the House but kept the Senate in 2018, and came extremely close to winning again in 2020. Yet it has been an awful 4 years for conservatives who care about controlling institutions, or at least keeping them neutral, although even here it hasn’t been a complete loss. After all, the Trump era has given conservatives a comfortable majority on the Supreme Court, probably the most important single institution of all.

Federal court appointments last until death, while the widening of the mobilization gap is relatively new. Best case scenario for Republicans is that Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh live for a very long time, while the Trump era ends up being an anomaly in mobilizing the left to an unusual degree, with things going back to something resembling the pre-2016 historical norm. Worst case scenario is that things continue as they have for the last 4 years, with anti-Trump hysteria combining with the Great Awokening having created a class permanently mobilized for confronting racism and other evils, plus Republicans not even getting the mobilization on their own side that Trump gave them. A generation shaped by the experience of Trump and a party currently led by such uninspiring figures as Kevin McCarthy and Liz Cheney may end up giving conservatives the worst of all worlds.

[96thdayofrage]

This has been a long time coming. Back in 2010, with the Tea Party riding high in the news, Nils Gilman (author of "Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America") wrote a blog post, "Rightwing productions of history," that brilliantly explained how fake history empowers the right — which writes "history" for immediate propaganda value, with only the most tenuous concern for what actually happened historically — while academic history was too nuanced and complicated to help the left in those terms.

“There's an underlying irony here, which is worth underscoring,” Gilman wrote. “While the political right has largely lost the interpretive battle for the American past among professional historians, they remain far more sensitive than the political left to the political importance of dominating popular understandings of key episodes from the past.”

The surprise election of Trump may have shaken things up, however. There’s been a flood of popular writing about histories of populism, authoritarianism and threats to democracy since November 2016. Where all this leads is unclear, but at least the political importance of history has become a vital concern for the left as well as the right — which creates new possibilities. To better grasp how we got here, Salon sat down to interview Gilman about his insight from the Tea Party’s heyday, and what inklings it can provide for the days ahead.

What led you to write "Rightwing productions of history" in 2010?

There were a lot of things going on at that point. One had to do with the contested legacy of the Vietnam War, and counterinsurgency. There was a whole series of books coming out at that time written by various people who are not academics. Some of them were more or less credible sources: scholars but not academics. There's a verystrong consensus among academic historians about the historical legacies of counterinsurgency programs, and the counterinsurgency program in Vietnam in particular. Basically, the last successful counterinsurgency waged by a power in the global North against power in the global South was — and this is somewhat arguable — Malaya in 1961, although Malaya became independent shortly thereafter [as the nation now called Malaysia], so it’s almost a rule-proving exception.

During the high colonial period, there were many insurgencies that were put down. What brought colonialism to an end, more than anything else, was the rising failure or inability to put down insurgencies in Algeria, in Vietnam and so on.

That was the dominant consensus view among academic historians. Now [in 2010] the U.S. finds itself embroiled in trying to lead the counterinsurgency in Iraq. And that historical view of counterinsurgency wasn't going to work as a usable past for people who are trying to foment contemporary counterinsurgency programs in Afghanistan and Iraq. So a series of books started to appear — some of them more credible as histories than others. Max Boot (who I've known since college) and Mark Moyar (who my wife has known since college) are people I would certainly call credible intellectuals — they aren’t just making up bullshit. But they are very much engaged in a project of writing history that's informed by the need to create a past that works for present political purposes.

I should note that I was actually working as a consultant at the time, trying to help people in the U.S. government try to think more historically about the insurgency processes they were engaged in.

You said “there were a lot of things going on.” What else did you have in mind?

There was also this domestic issue, which is that there are a lot of stories to tell about the past, not just one. If you ask almost any academic historian today, “What was the primary cause of the U.S. Civil War?” the absolute overwhelming consensus is one word: “slavery.” You know, complicated multi-causal factor, but you boil it all away — no slavery, no Civil War, right? But that's not a narrative that a lot of people are very happy with.

In fact, it wasn't the predominant narrative for a long time. It wasn't the dominant narrative really until the 1960s and '70s when there was a whole new historiography on that. And there are people who want to contest that history now. There's this whole industry of people funded by right-wing think tanks and right-wing benefactors, who are interested in creating a narrative about the past which is useful for particular political projects in the present.

I actually think the political right is much better at this. Partly because they lost the academy, they want [to win] these battles to a very large extent, and are hyper-aware that the way the narrative about the U.S. past has solidified over the last generation or two makes it much harder for them to pursue certain kinds of policies. So that's the general frame for the piece.

At the beginning you wrote, “Over the last 40 years of production of American history, historical memory has been quite radically transformed.” How would you explain to a layperson what you meant by that?

There's different dimensions to it. One major factor is that, 30 to 40 years ago we got civics lessons in schools, which were historical stories that were told to present the political values of the country. The Revolutionary War was an uprising against the despotic foreign government, and against taxation without representation. There was education about the republican virtues. There was a story told about the rising arc of freedoms in the history of the country. These things were all told in a pretty explicit way. My kids are school-age now. They don't get that kind of explicit civics lesson anymore. This is part of the retreat of public institutions from engaging in moral suasion in general and American civic life. So that's one part of the story.

At the same time, there's been a real change in many of the dominant narratives about the U.S. past. Academic historians have increasingly told stories in the name of inclusion, social histories. Fifty years ago, the dominant kinds of historiography focused primarily on political elites. The social history of revolution, which began really in the 1960s, and then became the dominant movement in the '70s and '80s, was about teaching history "from below," as the saying goes.

This was the history of various working classes and oppressed groups, and groups that had been written out of history. Because the political history focused on elites naturally was the history of "dead white men," as the saying goes. So people became interested in telling stories about the history of women, of working-class people, of African-Americans. This is done in the name of inclusion, but when the stories get told, they also become stories of oppression. As those became the dominant stories, the history of the past was no longer a history necessarily of the arc of history bending toward freedom. It was a history of a long series of only slowly, haltingly and hesitatingly overcoming oppressions — centuries of suffering. This became a story that was much less celebratory of the American past.

That created problems.

It contrasted very sharply with the kind of story that, at the same time, Ronald Reagan wanted to tell about his shining city on a hill, a glorious beacon that all others look out to. So you started to get a stronger and stronger divergence between the kinds of stories told. Certain political factions in the country — nationalists, and also darker forces like white nationalists, and people who were actually interested in perpetuating these oppressions that these social historians were trying to decry — were not very happy with this turn of historiographical events, where the dominant story was no longer a celebratory story about elites building a great and powerful country. It was instead the story about various kinds of predatory elites who had oppressed large segments of the country, not to say the rest of the world.

That was a much less useful history for people who wanted to promote U.S. power, plus the power of certain constituencies within the country. They recognized that the understanding of the past that has become the dominant view of academic history was an actual block for them to be able to enact the kinds of policies they wanted to enact. So alternative history started to be written, not by academic historians but by other kinds of people.

You tweeted recently about best-selling “historians” not being academics. What’s the significance of that, as you see it?

The fact that Bill O'Reilly is the best-selling "historian” in the country I think tells you two things. One is that there's a huge amount of demand for different kinds of stories than the ones told by academic historians. Second -- and this is a point I really want to make -- why is Bill O'Reilly spending his time writing histories? Two things: One is he feels that having the kind of story he wants to tell about the past is important for his political project, and two, he sees that such histories do not exist.

It's not just Bill O'Reilly. Jonah Goldberg wrote a ridiculous book called “Liberal Fascism,” where he argued that contemporary liberalism is a direct lineal descendent from fascism, just because there are some resonances between the anti-classicalliberalism of FDR and the anti-classical liberalism of the fascists in the 1930s. There were a whole variety of different anti-classical liberalisms that arose in the context of the Great Depression. It was a major rebuke of classical liberalism, and the question was what to do about it. One answer was fascism. Another answer was communism. A third answer was the kind of mixed economy that FDR put together.

FDR is actually another very important figure in this. FDR has had, I would say, close to a cult following among American liberals, generally celebrated by American liberals as the greatest president of the 20th century.

I must have read a dozen books on him as a teenager.

Exactly. I mean he was celebrated as the guy who saved the country from the worst political fate. He saved American capitalism, he won the war. There were all sorts of things about him swept under the rug in those kinds of hagiographic narratives, matters relating to African-American civil rights, the Japanese-American internment, etc.  So there was some dissent. But basically, FDR was treated as a really important figure.

Republicans have had an explicit campaign to try to displace the memory of FDR as the greatest American president of the 20th century with the memory of Ronald Reagan. I think John McCain has an explicit project to make sure that more sites in the U.S. are named after Reagan than FDR. Why is that? It's a concerted campaign to control the symbolic understanding of the past.

One of the important things you highlighted is the asymmetry involved. There’s very little concern with getting the past right among conservatives, while among professional historians there's so much concern with getting it right that it becomes difficult to have a usable past.

This goes to the style of academic writing, which makes it hard to reach popular audiences. Every year the best-selling histories, whether they happen to have a particular political project or not, tend not to be written by academic historians. That's partly because of the stylistic job pressures within the academy.

There's a second dimension, which is  that academic historians, for the most part, are motivated by trying to get the story right, and to understand the balance, the complexity and the nuances. Academic historians will always tell you two things: It started longer ago than you think, and it’s more complicated than you think. Complexity is the enemy of clarification, for political purposes. Political communicators have to make strong, clear statements. It’s not useful for them to be nuanced.

In a larger context, there is a parallel here with what's happening in the sciences, whether it’s “intelligent design” vs. evolution, or the attacks on global warming. Chris Mooney in "The Republican Brain" argued that the liberal tradition sees reason as the search for knowledge, but that's not what the science actually says. Our complex minds actually developed from being social animals. It's relationships and persuasion that the mind is much more attentive to.

I'm not a neuroscientist so I can't speak to that directly, but it certainly sounds plausible. There is a fundamental relationship between liberalism — not welfare-state liberalism but skeptical, open-minded, non-dogmatic liberalism, a willingness to revise accepted positions that is central to the mindset of an effective scientist -- that are antithetical to political systems that are entailed by dogma. So there is a connection there.

One framework I find illuminating is the one evoked by Karen Armstrong in the introduction to "The Battle for God" — that of logos vs. mythos. The scientific mindset, expressive of logos, is where a great deal of energy of the political left has gone for a long time, both the center-left establishment and more progressive forces. If you want to change the system, you have two choices — one is looking back to how things used to be or were "supposed" to be, and the other is to study things in a problem-solving way, to figure out how we move forward — and that seems to resonate with science.

I generally agree with that, but here's my caveat. Effective politics speaks the language of mythos at least as much as the language of logos. My view is that populism is that style of politics which focuses on not logos, policy wonk detail but politics as a form of expression, as a vehicle for identity, and that takes place in the realm of myth. Really genius politicians manage to have some artful balance between the logos and the mythos. They manage their policy agendas that are rooted in logic and evidence, yet are able to express to people in a common idiom why this is meaningful to them, in terms of the larger values and beliefs -- call that mythos -- that they want to believe in.

I think the fundamental mistake that people make — policy intellectuals, especially — is to believe that everybody sees the world the way they do. Most people don't see the world and see politics the way somebody like you or me does. We're like political nerds, interested in policy details, and that's not how 99 percent of people think. They think about politics as a vehicle for other things. Nowadays, they think of it as a form of entertainment. That's why we have the entertainer in chief as a president.

[piilukko]

Electoral Shenanigans II – Finnish Municipal boogaloo

Finnish Municipal Election of 2017 is over and the votes have been cast and counted – at last, one might say after seeing months of campaigning and advertising.

Note: if you are entirely unfamiliar with Finnish politics and political culture, you might want to start here, for example, for a crash course how we got to this point and about the so called The Finns Party, our version of the right-wing populist movement. You might also want to check what a Finnish municipality actually it and what does it do. 

Worth noting is that those things are not entirely fixed. In the past municipalities were allowed to things like banning sales of all alcohol. They had the power to set regulations on public order – all of which was replaced by a state-wide Public Order Act in 2003. At moment government working removing healthcare and welfare from municipalities responsibilities and setting up county administration for them – but parties disagree and at the moment no one is 100% certain what a Finnish municipality is going to be in the future. And last and not least: not all Finnish people are entirely familiar with this either. Most of the candidates are ordinary people, not career politicians. The council members get financial compensation, but not salary, it is not their job. Sometimes people campaign and vote based on matters entirely beyond the scope of municipal politics.

Municipal elections are often seen as some kind of “half-way there” elections between parliamentary elections (both the parliament and city and municipality councils have four year terms and nowadays the municipal election really occur in the middle of the parliament term). Commentators often try find if policies on governmental level are having an effect on municipal level, if the voters are sending a message to cabinet ministers and the parties, but probably at least some voters are ignoring those factors altogether and voting purely on local matters. Especially in small town, where people know at least some council members personally – a Finnish municipality can be anything from Helsinki ,with its 600k residents,  to small villages of couple of hundreds residents – and the median is a couple thousands residents.

So, despite we kinda had like over 300 separate elections on the same day, with technically speaking nothing do with each other, maybe we can look some of the themes.

The True Finns lost big time. They are a populist party with a long history of as anti-establishment protest party for conservatives – anti-immigration, anti-European Union, anti-LGBT, anti-environmentalism, anti-whatever those damned hippies, liberals and bicyclists are trying this tme. A party for the honest heterosexual, white, meat-eating, house-owning. car-owning common man (and also the common woman, should she accept the traditional gender roles), we’ll also take good care your old mother struggling on her small pension, as long as you vote us and accept Carl G.E. Mannerheim as your lord and saviour.

Somewhat like Trump? Maybe, the main difference being a different political system and culture, the D’Hondt election system used here has it disadvantages but at least it’s not first-past-the-post and allows for a real multiparty system. True Finns chairman Timo Soini started building the party in the 90′s and started gaining more and more support election by election. 

After the collapse of the Soviet Union (which meant old school communism lost most of its appeal) Finnish politics have featured The Big Three of parties. Included are The Social Democrats – a moderate (very moderate) left-wing party). The Centre Party – a party started as the Agrarian League having moderate success in cities but absolutely ruling the rural areas. The National Coalition – the right-wing party, sometimes quite far on the right, I mean not as in nazi far-right, but on the political compass the they are scattered like some one fired a shotgun towards the right side of the chart – but at least they don’t hate people of color, they just hate people of no money. Especially their youth organization often sees no shame in literal minarchism (ironically they started as the monarchist party)

And at least for a moment, Soini was able to manage to transform this triumvirate into The Big Four, with the True Finns actually gaining more votes than the Social Democrats. And if you think I make this sound like a one man project, it truly is, in modern politics in Finland there are no other mainstream examples of the same person leading one party for twenty years.

Well, then they joined the government (as in were not in opposition anymore, if you are unfamiliar with consensus politics) in 2011 and their voters found out that not only they were unable to banish all foreigners (or at least the black people or at least the Muslims) like some of their voters must genuinely have believed. They also found no problem supporting the National Coalition’s and Centre Party’s austerity policies (remember the old mother and her pension) and also were unable to stop the loaning money to Greece (lost story short:most experts agree we are definitely not getting back, Greece is broke) and so their approval ratings made a historically bad dive. 

Not only their voters, many True Finn council members all around the nation lost their faith in the party, saw the writing on the wall or found out their party was full of brownshirts – be it ideological reasons or just hopes to be at least somewhat re-electable, they chose to switch parties mid-term. One famous example was Youtube celebrity Tykylevits, who as a very surprising move secede from True Finns and found the Green Party chapter of his small home town, gaining Greens two seats of 27, a significant feat in the middle of Centre Party country.

So, The True Finns lost roughly speaking one third of their support and I hope this is the start of their end as the natural lifespan of a populist party full of air reaches its finale. We cannot get rid of them altogether, but at least on the national level they will once again be a fringe party. They might go far-right (this time I mean nazi far-right) depending who will be elected as the chairman after Soini decided to not run for the position anymore – and most importantly who will remain, candidate-wise and voter-wise, when it becomes apparent the support for the “working man’s party” is fading. One of the main candidates for the seat is Jussi Halla-aho, a well known anti-immigration and anti-gun control zealot with very little opinions on anything else. Anway, the parliament election is in 2019 and I expect to see them losing similar amount of votes there.

The True Finns in Tampere were a great example of the mess the party is in. Their local chapter chairwoman was expelled from the main party, officially because of a minor economical mishap regarding travel expenses (which the party claim she did on purpose), I think it was really because she was too far-right for a party with parliament seats. Anyway, the chapter chose not to expel her (despite this being clearly against party rules) and instead chose her as one of their candidates. 

On the other hand they spent shitloads of money campaigning (on the local radio stations for example) against the Tampere tramway project, even though the council already voted green for it (48 votes against 18), they are already building the tracks and the city would have to pay reasonable amount of mount (I think 10% of the actual costs of the project?) to several companies if they scrapped the project at this point. And after all, the TF could have just said that they were against the project, the lost in the voting, they accept it and now they will concentrate on other matters.

This is not exactly how you get sensible people vote you, right, even if they agreed with you? They lost five of their ten seats.

The Big Three all got roughly 20% support each, nationwide, and there’s not much interesting to say about that. They all have lots of very loyal supporters and I would be surprised to see very rapid changes in their support nationwide, even thought this might happen in individual municipalities, where it all might be about whether some local popular person chooses to run for the next term or not. The same applies to the Swedish Party which is smaller but get’s the same amount of votes anyway every time.

The Greens won, about everywhere, getting their greatest share of votes in any Finnish election (Pekka Haavisto’s success in the presidential election of 2012 does not count) . They have branded themselves as the opposite of the True Finns – main themes include enviromental issues (including but not limited to climate change), LGBT rights, anti-racism and generally trying to keep the Finnish welfare state with free education and such from disintegrating. Bicycling activists and public transport advocates tend to join the party, first openly gay MP was Green, you get the idea.

For many urban dwellers who don’t care about politics that much, they are becoming the default party – “the Good Guys you should vote if you’re on the side of the Good Guys”. The transformation of a pure nature preservation society to a political party fighting for wide range of issues has alienated some of the hardcore environmentalists but was, I think, absolutely necessary, because the great masses (and not even yours truly) are not willing to accept the strict “eco-fascism” of likes of Pentti Linkola. I’d say they are the 21th century version of the Social Democrats. (The Social Democrats on the other hand, are still the 20th century version of themselves and will gradually lose MP seats because their voters die. Of old age)

One of the biggest surprises was Jyväskylä, where Greens become the biggest party, I think for the first time any city, ever. Might be because it’s midsize city with a rather big university, might be because some very popular candidates with personal following.

...and then there’s the Left Alliance, which started from the ashes of former communist parties but has reform itself to basically “we are just like the Greens, but we are also socialists” – emphasizing the old cliche that while The Greens refuse to define themselves on the traditional left-right scale, many see them as the “park and forest department of National Coalition”. As a challenge, The Left has it “industrial wing”, labour union activists, some of them who might not be willing to sacrifice jobs on the altar of environmentalism, should these two factors be at odds.

And at last, an election where the Left got more votes than last time, hooray! A moderate victory, but a victory nonetheless. Under the lead of very charismatic Li Andersson, it is possible the party may see similar success in the parliamentary election –hopefully the party will never again choose to enter the government with the together National Coalition, a move that was seen by many as selling-out, motivated by the party elite’s lust for “the backseat of a black Audi”, a common phrase symbolizing the prestige, luxury and financial compensation of a cabinet minister. 

(Yours truly voted for the Left so there might some bias in this post)

And then there’s the Christian Democrats, who changed their name to match a certain German mainstream party but are a fringe party still. They’re mostly from certain fundamentalist sects, liberal mainstream Christian usually joining other parties. They managed to get some more votes this time, perhaps because of their new chairwoman, an Olympic medalist in race walking and thus a former national hero. On the other hand, her predecessor was so unpopular she became one of the main memes in Finnish Tumblr and other social media.

Feminist Party, a newcomer, gained one seat in Helsinki, I suppose mainly because their chairwomen was invited to the fringe party panel on the TV and as one might guess, for a good public speaker it’s rather easy to look sane and professional, the other participants usually including libertarians and several communist parties unable to co-operate. 

I have mixed feelings about the party, I think there’s a lot of work to do in animal rights (a newly formed Animal Rights Party participated the same panel), ethnic minorities rights, feminist issues, QUILTBAG issues, environmentalism, city planning, not to mention class struggle, what else, and within this political system and D’Hondt voting, separating all these issues to their own separate parties sounds like the worst possible outcome. But what can i say if some-one feels that no other party is feminist enough? 

On the municipal level there’s always space for smaller players – Helsinki council has 85 seats and it’s all one voting distinct (no gerrymandering is possible) and many councils have local movements not participating in the state-level politics at all. On the parliament level, I fear the Greens, The Lefts, The Feminists and The Animal Rights Party will compete from the same votes and for example in Tavastia Proper only 14 MP seats are available and this might even mean none of them getting any seats. Satakunta and Lapland Distincts are even smaller. Hopefully they at least agree on electoral alliances.

Yarrr, The Pirates managed to get one seat in Helsinki and one in Jyväskylä (see the notion of Jyväskylä being a university town). I don’t share their idea of entire abolition of copyright, but they have a snowball change in hell in implementing it and otherwise many of them offer a welcome addition to politics. Many of them are IT professionals, municipal expertise in those issues (like buying infrastructure and support) has traditionally been scarce.

And finally, the Communists lost. After the mainstream communist parties (yes, that was a thing in Finland) crashed, burned and rose like the Phoenix as the Left Alliance, several people were unhappy with this, mainly because LA was not, well, communist, and promptly founded the Communist Party of Finland again. In the post-Soviet atmosphere, they have never got any MP seats or anything like that, but the municipal councils are another thing for them too and they actually have managed to have several seats in council, most famously in the big cities of Helsinki and Tampere.

Yrjö Hakanen, their former chairman, is popular character in the political life of our capital. I think not all his voters even are communists themselves, after all, in the city council he cannot seize the means of production, but he can and will speak for the poor, the old, the ill and the unemployed. Tampere, on the other hand, has historically been known as the “Red City” and only partly because brick-walled former factory buildings (these days used as museums and office space). But alas, in neither of the cities there were enough votes for the party and then something happened, something that in the 1970′s would have been bourgeoisie daydreaming and still in the 1990′s was hard to imagine – there will be no communists in the council.

The same happened in some smaller towns too and I haven’t checked all the election data, but it might be that last stronghold for literal communist will be Nokia (the city, not the phone company or the tyre company), and even there their seats we reduced from three to one.

(This didn’t not stop Timo Soini from announcing “bicycle communists”, whatever that means, have taken over Finland)

(There’s also “Communist Workers' Party – For Peace and Socialism”, yes, that is their official party name, but that’s an another story and not a very popular one)

EDIT: The Social Democrats lost support. With the True Finns collapsing and “freeing” 3.5 percent points and Coalition and Centre losing one point each. one would think, that one of the old “major” players, SDP, would gain support. No, they lost also a little from municipal election of 2012. Although they are bragging about a rise in popularity compared to the parliament election of 2015, I think that’s comparing apples with oranges.

So I went back in history and checked all the elections, checking all municipal, parliament and European parliament elections compared to previous one of the same kind – YLE and Wikipedia make this very easy – and the result is devastating: sometimes a party wins and sometimes a party loses, but last time SDP gained seats was in 2004. 13 years ago. That was before Youtube, several years before Finns started joining Facebook and so on. (I’m not saying this just for scale, SDP is definitely not a social media party).

This is beyond the scope of this post and this election, but I think, if no drastic changes of party image, organization and leadership are made, The Social Democrats will become a mid-size party, perhaps even a small party, someone has to fill the void and The Greens my guess who will fill a lions share of this void.

And then to the “I am not making this up”-section of this post.

Paavo Väyrynen is Finnish political legend, an MP and MEP for many terms, a minister of several cabinets, a long time Centre party chairman. He has always been and will always be – at least from my point of view, he was elected to the Parliament before I was born. He’s very hard to explain to any foreigner (after all, he’s from the Centre and that party itself is very hard to explain, why the agrarian party is often the most popular). 

He’s a dinosaur from the seventies, a player of games, the trickster of Finnish politics. He gets involved in scandals, is sometimes hit but them but surfaces again like a Whack-a-Mole. He has solid support in Northern Finland. He runs for parliament and refuses to accept the seat he won’t get a minister position. He’s chosen by the party on “suicide mission”, a disposable way past his “best before” candidate for a doomed campaign against Sauli Niinistö, he has fun and manages to bring himself back to spotlight of politics. The party gave him the title of “honorary chairman”, apparently because he was too valuable and popular to let go, but too dangerous and unpredictable to let to interfere with actual politics.

So he started his own party, which made the Centre Party expel him: except by the party rules, the main office cannot do that, the local chapter should expel him and he’s their hero. Party does not want to expel the entire local chapter and the situation remains stalemate.

However, while his new “Citizen Party” is already in official party register and should be able to appoint candidates to all elections, Väyrynen chose to enter the municipal election. In Helsinki. As an independent candidate on the candidate list of... Christian Democrats. Apparently he had composed an army of NIMBYs (mainly against building more apartments to Helsinki allowing it grow), including some far-right activist. The Christian Democrats found out about the nature of these candidates after the candidate list were already fixed, so they just chose to shun these people from their posters.

However, none of the problematic candidates were elected – Väyrynen himself was, with over thousand votes. Now we wonder should he accept the seat, after all, he might have technically difficulties attending council meeting, considering the fact that he is at the moment a MEP.

Finnish politics would be much, much more boring without Paavo Väyrynen.

Pictured: chairman of the Greens Ville Niinistö celebrating victory; Paavo Väyrynen

[douglasacogan]

Can I Sue Google If My Dog Gets Run Over?

Doggy run over by Google car

Amid speculation by some that Google driverless vehicles might just bankrupt personal injury attorneys, others are saying, “hey, not so fast.” More and more, we are hearing stories of forced wage increases for fast food workers by politicians trying to get re elected, and a backlash by employers. One recent trend is to outsource jobs to business friendly countries that honor job creators. Another reaction for many service businesses, is employers turning to automated equipment and technology just to avoid the ever increasing government encroachment into their feast or famine businesses.  Even Google, heavily invested in the progressive wing of the democrat party, seemingly is leading the way to replace the human element with technology.

Good or bad, the old model of forming unions, demanding benefits and other free stuff from people giving you a chance to gain work experience, especially for our youth, is falling apart. The new future for America is technology, not necessarily spending a large part of your life on a utopian college campus. Robert Kiasaki explained this years ago, but it appears that the need for re-election votes is fueling the decline of employer, employee relationships at a faster rate than technology is probably ready for.

So naturally, entrepreneurs that are seeking to achieve what is left of the American Dream are having to come up with creative ways of surviving these days. One example is in grocery store self checkouts. Cashiers are expensive when compared to grocers, for example. Consumers like me find it to be a hassle, so we stand in line to have a human cashier help us, as these self checkers remain unused in some cases. Of course, once the technology is improved, the goods will be automatically charged when you place them in your shopping cart, and the human cashier will be looking for another job. In other words, once the hassle factor is removed from technological advances, shoppers simply won’t miss the human cashier anymore.

In my last article dealing with Google’s new driverless vehicles, I discussed the potential driverless vehicle downside to PI attorneys, as well as the car accident field of PI law in general. I went into the fact that Google and other companies perhaps could even shield themselves from legal liability by forming partnerships with the government, similar to the Metrolink and Metro Rail systems. Then, a few weeks ago, I ran across another tragic story involving a Google driverless vehicle running over and killing a dog. That really got me thinking about my kids, especially small toddlers that are too small or low to the ground to be picked up by the current sensing technology.

In any event, this gives me a chance to discuss California law as it relates to the negligent killing of a family pet, using this latest and strange example of what seems to be coming our way with technological advances. The facts relate that Google is investigating itself over a “Street View Car” that ran over a doggy in Chile. Mapping the world is one of Google’s special features that other search engines and mapmakers do not have. In this case, images from a Street View car in Chile shows what appears to be a camera carrying vehicle running over a dog and leaving it for dead.

The scene can be watched shot by shot on Google Maps by following the Meza Bell 2815. The dog is shown walking in front of the car and then the rear facing camera shows the canine lying on the road without movement. Even following the zoom view back as far as it can go, the dog still does not get up off the roadway. Upon closer inspection, in one image the dog can be seen moving, but not getting up. This means it could either be severely injured or lying on the pavement for enjoyment. The other thing that can be seen is a person, who does not rush to the canine. This may mean one of two things.

Either the dog was not hit, or it is in an area where there is a large population of stray dogs and it is not unusual for one to be hit. Google has stated that it is investigating the images of the camera vehicle and dog to see what happened. They said they have guidelines in place to protect people and animals while mapping locations around the world. The search engine company stated this type of alleged incident is not uncommon. January of last year a camera vehicle was accused of hitting a donkey in Botswana when images of the Street View showed the donkey walking along side of the vehicle and then lying on the ground. Google proved the images were not what they appeared to be and it was not a hit and run incident. Go here to view some more of the disturbing pictures.

Who Do I Sue If Google Runs Over My Pet?

Assuming arguendo in this case that the incident took place in California, and it could be proved that your family dog, or cat was killed by a Google Driverless Vehicle, then what? Assuming there was no alliance between the state, local or federal government that would shorten the time for you to file a government claim, potential defendants would include Google, the government, manufacturers and producers of the car and sensing equipment, and any other party in the chain of commerce that brought the vehicle to the end user. If there was an occupant in the car with the ability to control or co pilot the car, then the occupant is also a potential defendant for all damages that were foreseeable.

What Kind of Damages Can I Get If Google Runs Over My Animal in California?

For purposes of this discussion, we will limit this discourse to California law, since I am only licensed to practice in this state. Under California law, an animal is considered property, so it is treated as “economic” damages ONLY. This means you can recover costs of the economic losses associated with the animal. Some cases involving the loss of an animal can be quite significant. A prize horse run over by a Google car could result in millions of dollars in economic losses for the market replacement value. It could turn out that the age, breed, training, purchase price, characteristic or other trait, gave it some extra-ordinary value. We can imagine a specially trained guard, seeing eye, or show dog that does AKC shows would have special value, and they do. But again, this is economic value, not sentimental value, which is pretty intangible when it comes to “property.”

A donkey being run over by a driver-less vehicle, is probably worth very little. If the donkey is used for work, the replacement value of the donkey, and lost work can be argued as damages. In most of the common cases, cars run over stray, or family dogs and cats. May drivers typically swerve to avoid animals crossing the road. And with good reason, California criminal statutes seek to prosecute people that violate the rights of animals. Some prosecutorial agencies, such as the City of Los Angeles, actually have their own “Animal Protection Units.”

The Vehicle Code also comes into play here, and seeks to maintain safe driving for the conditions presented on the road. Sometimes not swerving could be animal abuse, other times not swerving could result in a negligent chain collision, or a vehicle pile-up placing the driver civilly liable. In other words, the driver is expected to be mindful of all of this, because we are all”presumed to know the law.” The damages available sometimes will come in the form of a probation agreement and court order to pay as part of probation. These damages are in the form of “restitution.” These are typically what we see in DUI accident cases, when a drunk driver has to pay back the other crash victims or face “working it off” in jail.

Other damages you can seek as a grieving victim, could be the veterinarian bills for example. In some California jurisdictions, we have even seen awards that appear to be for “sentimental”, or peculiar value, which is something that most pet owning victims “really” want to begin with. In one unique case, a California jury found in favor of the plaintiff, and found that the dog was only worth ten dollars “replacement” value. But clearly, the jury was moved and wanted to find a way to send a message of sympathy. In that case, the trier of fact awarded an additional $30,000 for the “special value” of the dog, whatever that is. California law allows such an award if an item has “peculiar value” to the owner, and the person who harmed it knew that fact. But each case is different, and the cause of the death of the dog was due to veterinary malpractice.

Unless you can show some kind of special duty, as above, it is unlikely the loss of your dog will result in this types of peculiar value claims from what I am seeing in most jurisdictions however. Punitive damages and emotional distress are the newer forms of damages that creative lawyers are seeking to increase the value of these cases. Insurance companies, and house counsel for companies like Google, as well as co-defendants are likely to argue that most of these cases are at  the low end of the value spectrum. Most courts will probably agree. It is also foreseeable that these cases could clog our already underfunded courts, so I doubt these cases are the new thing, at least not yet.

If this technology is rushed, I can see not only dog and cat cases, but those involving children. The race to replace humans with machines has many unintended consequences. The government is unwittingly encouraging the mass exodus to machines and technology, and the fallout could mean many lawsuits and claims against companies like Google, or Amazon, for delivery drones crashing, etc. Many injury lawyers may cash in on these cases, since they may be easy settlements. Also, Google probably is not interested in dealing with massive amounts of small claims actions, which as sure to occur should the driverless vehicle be a safety flop.

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[itsfinancethings]

November 25, 2019 at 05:00AM

For grassroots candidates running for the U.S. Senate, one big, national endorsement can make or break an entire campaign. That’s why the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee—a powerful, Washington-based organization that spends tens of millions of dollars each cycle supporting Democratic candidates—wields such outsized clout. An endorsement from it is in effect the Establishment’s stamp-of-approval for the party’s biggest donors to cut checks.

But that’s also why the DSCC’s pattern of endorsing candidates early in their primaries has sewn resentment among some grassroots campaigns and progressive activists in a handful of crucial states, including Iowa, Colorado and North Carolina.

“I think there’s a general feeling that we would put forward better nominees as a party to defeat Republicans if we let voters decide candidates, as opposed to trying to divine from within the confines of the Beltway who we think is most likely to win over, say, Kentucky or Colorado,” Karthik Ganapathy, a progressive strategist, told TIME. The DSCC should embrace a “role as sort of intermediaries and arbiters as opposed to kingmakers,” he adds.

At a time when the Democratic party is increasingly split between its moderate, Clintonian wing and a more revolutionary, progressive left—represented by the rise of presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—DSCC endorsements also carry weighty implications for the future of the party. Some progressive critics argue that the DSCC mostly endorses moderate candidates.

“Their style seems to be [to choose] candidates who can stay on the phone all day to call big donors, do very few press events, and then put all of their money on television,” said Rebecca Katz, a progressive strategist, of the DSCC. “It’s their playbook.” (Republicans can be criticized on similar grounds, she says.)

A DSCC spokesperson says the organization endorses the most viable candidates as part of a broader, national strategic effort. “If we’re going to stop Mitch McConnell from gutting access to affordable health care, confirming partisan judges to lifetime appointments on the federal bench and Supreme Court, and attacking reproductive rights, then we need to win Senate seats,” Stewart Boss, a DSCC spokesperson, told TIME in an email. “We’re working with candidates who will do exactly that and help Democrats take back the Senate.” In recent years, some DSCC recruits have pulled out unexpected wins, including Sen. Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona in 2018.

The Democratic primary in Iowa, where at least four candidates are vying for the nomination to run against Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, is one example of where this tension is playing out. That race won’t heat up until after the Iowa presidential caucuses in February, and the field is still wide open. One October Emerson poll showed no clear front runner. Yet the DSCC has already endorsed a candidate: Theresa Greenfield, the president of a Des Moines real estate business.

Greenfield’s opponents accused the DSCC of anointing a winner from afar. “We shouldn’t rig elections,” retired Admiral Michael Franken, who is also running against Greenfield, told TIME. “And that’s a tough word—rig—but generally speaking the operatives in Washington, DC, do not have a track history in this state of choosing the most viable candidate.”

Kimberly Graham, who is also running against Greenfield, said the DSCC’s endorsement came too early. “Why not let the candidates who are going to get in the race get in, give them six months or whatever amount of time, and see what happens, see what they do?” she said in an interview with TIME. “If we really want a democracy then maybe we should back off a little bit and let the Iowa voters decide who is the best person to represent them.”

Early DSCC endorsements rankled outsiders in other states’ U.S. Senate races this cycle, too. In North Carolina, the DSCC backed army veteran and former state senator Cal Cunningham to take on Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, despite the fact that another Democrat, state Senator Erica Smith, is leading in polls. Smith has been running since January.

In a statement after the endorsement, Smith dismissed Cunningham an an “heir apparent” and accused the DSCC leadership, who she said she met with directly, of interfering in the democratic process. “Ultimately, the voters of North Carolina will decide who their next United States Senator will be — NOT a handful of DC politicians making back room deals in windowless basements,” Smith wrote.

A similar dynamic has played out in Colorado. In August, the DSCC endorsed former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper just two days after he joined the race after his failed presidential bid. Some of the Democratic candidates who were already running to challenge Republican Sen. Cory Gardner attacked the DSCC’s decision. “Democrats: This is a moment of decision. Do we want DC to dictate our choice and buy this election before any ballots are even cast—or do we believe voters still matter?” tweeted Andrew Romanoff, one of the candidates running to the left of Hickenlooper, a moderate. Meanwhile, former Obama-era Ambassador Dan Baer, who had raised almost $1.4 million for his campaign for that seat ended his bid when the DSCC weighed in.

In his first fundraising quarter in the race, Hickenlooper raised $2.1 million. Both Hickenlooper and Cunningham have a slew of endorsements in addition to the DSCC’s.

In Iowa in particular, many DSCC critics say the issue is not whether Theresa Greenfield is the right candidate; it’s that they believe voters should have been given time to consider each candidate’s merits before the DSCC weighed in. Greenfield received the DSCC’s backing just three days after entering the race, alongside an endorsement from EMILY’s List. She has since banked more endorsements from both national organizations, including NARAL Pro-Choice America, and local ones, including AFSCME Council 61 and several other unions. A number of current and former Iowa elected officials, including U.S. Representatives Abby Finkenauer and Dave Loebsack, have also endorsed Greenfield.

Jordanna Zeigler, Greenfield’s campaign manager, did not respond immediately to questions about the DSCC’s early endorsement, but described broad backing for her candidate. “We’re proud that Theresa’s earned support from across the state, including endorsements just this week from labor unions representing nearly 12,000 hardworking Iowans,” she said in a statement. “Her hard work and the growing momentum for her campaign are how Theresa outraised Joni Ernst last month and why she’ll flip this Senate seat in November.”

In the last fundraising quarter, Greenfield pulled in more than $1.1 million —slightly out-raising Ernst. The DSCC sees that as a success: its endorsement can help make candidates competitive in fundraising against powerful incumbents. But Graham, Greenfield’s more progressive opponent, says it has given some of the voters she’s spoken with the impression that “Chuck Schumer and the DSCC put their thumbs on the scale.”

DSCC endorsements have broader implications at a time when the Democratic party, pushed left by the rise of popular liberal candidates, is in a period of self-reflection and reinvention. Many progressives complain that the DSCC’s tendency to select more moderate candidates fails to reflect an increasingly liberal Democratic base—which, they argue, might translate to electoral wins with the support of the party.

According to one recent Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom poll, a combined 40% of likely Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa are planning to caucus in the presidential primary for one of the two top moderates, Joe Biden or Pete Buttigieg. But nearly a third—a combined 31%—planned to caucus for Sanders or Warren. (The poll had a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.)

Linn County Supervisor Stacey Walker, who endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders for the 2020 primary, noted that a DSCC endorsement—or the lack thereof—affects who enters the race in the first place. He considered running in the Senate race himself, but decided against it on the grounds that the primary was “orchestrated by Washington elites, instead of being left up to the voters.”

“I don’t have the privilege of challenging institutional forces on this scale without incurring significant damage to my political career,” Walker wrote in a post announcing he wouldn’t run for the Senate, “and at the end of the day, this fear won out over my courage and I’m not proud about that.” Walker has since endorsed Graham.

Penny Rosfjord, a former Iowa Woodbury County chair, dismissed concerns about DSCC’s effect on state elections. “I think that people are reading too much into it. I think that anybody can run for the Senate,” she told TIME. “I think this is a nonstory for me.”

But Ganapathy, the progressive strategist, argued that a DSCC endorsement can distort who gets into a race, who rises, and who receives fundraising dollars. “The whole idea behind a primary is just [that] we’re going to get better nominees if we actually let voters decide,” he said. In an ideal world, the DSCC would play a broader role: “Don’t direct resources to any single candidate, and if you’re going to help a candidate, help all candidates equally,” he said.

In 2016, Katz, another progressive strategist, worked for progressive Senate candidate John Fetterman in the Pennsylvania primary. Fetterman lost to DSCC-backed Katie McGinty—but McGinty went on to lose the general election. Two years later, Fetterman ran for lieutenant governor and won the state race. (Katz later added she sees what she characterized as a strategy to keep candidates out of trouble as the Republican playbook too.)

Iowa state Sen. Rob Hogg argues that because the DSCC is a national organization, it often fails to identify the candidate most appealing to in-state voters. In 2016, he emerged as a formidable primary opponent against DSCC-backed Patty Judge, who was ultimately defeated soundly. “I believe to this day that that was a mistake by the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee to intervene in that race,” Hogg said. In 2014, the DSCC endorsed Bruce Braley, who ran what most Democrats agree was a bad campaign. He too lost to Ernst.

“I don’t think Iowans have much confidence in the ability of the DSCC to pick candidates,” Hogg told TIME, describing DSCC endorsements as “meddling” in state primaries. “Unquestionably people want the DSCC to stay out of our primary,” he added. Hogg has not endorsed in the current primary.

Bryce Smith, the chair of the Iowa Dallas County Democrats, defended DSCC support as important to statewide candidates. But added that Iowa voters, who are used to using a very personal caucus system, are particularly sensitive to the notion of Washington selecting a nominee. “I definitely feel as though it kind of rubs against the grain,” he told TIME.

“In my personal view and what I hear from people is that that help comes once the nominee has been picked by Democratic voters,” he added. “I think that’s kind of the hurdle that’s being skipped by the DSCC.”

Eddie Mauro, who, like Greenfield, unsuccessfully ran for Iowa’s third district nomination in 2018 and also entered the Senate race this year, said that in conversations with Schumer and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, the chair of the DSCC, in the spring, he was also told that they did not want a primary. “We talked about the prospects of me running for the US Senate,” he told TIME. “They were concerned about having a primary, they preferred not to have a primary at all.”

In June, TIME reported that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also attempted to dissuade J.D. Scholten, the candidate who nearly beat Rep. Steve King in Iowa’s fourth district in 2018 who was at the time considering jumping into the 2020 Senate race, from running for Senate in an attempt to clear the way for Greenfield. “We don’t need a primary,” Schumer told Scholten, according to a source familiar with the situation. Scholten eventually chose to run in the fourth district again.

Greenfield ran in the Iowa third district primary in the 2018 cycle, a seat now held by Democratic US Rep. Cindy Axne, but dropped out after a campaign staffer faked signatures for her petition paperwork. The staffer later publicly apologized in an ad in the Des Moines Register.

What’s clear is that Democrats have their work cut out for them in 2020. Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina and Maine are among the most competitive races, although some Democrats argue that Iowa is within reach. The state voted for Trump by about 10 points and the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the 2020 race as “Likely Republican,” but President Barack Obama won the state twice and it wasn’t so long ago that Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin represented the state. And as the saying goes, Democrats have to fall in love.

[itsfinancethings]

For grassroots candidates running for the U.S. Senate, one big, national endorsement can make or break an entire campaign. That’s why the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee—a powerful, Washington-based organization that spends tens of millions of dollars each cycle supporting Democratic candidates—wields such outsized clout. An endorsement from it is in effect the Establishment’s stamp-of-approval for the party’s biggest donors to cut checks.

But that’s also why the DSCC’s pattern of endorsing candidates early in their primaries has sewn resentment among some grassroots campaigns and progressive activists in a handful of crucial states, including Iowa, Colorado and North Carolina.

“I think there’s a general feeling that we would put forward better nominees as a party to defeat Republicans if we let voters decide candidates, as opposed to trying to divine from within the confines of the Beltway who we think is most likely to win over, say, Kentucky or Colorado,” Karthik Ganapathy, a progressive strategist, told TIME. The DSCC should embrace a “role as sort of intermediaries and arbiters as opposed to kingmakers,” he adds.

At a time when the Democratic party is increasingly split between its moderate, Clintonian wing and a more revolutionary, progressive left—represented by the rise of presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—DSCC endorsements also carry weighty implications for the future of the party. Some progressive critics argue that the DSCC mostly endorses moderate candidates.

“Their style seems to be [to choose] candidates who can stay on the phone all day to call big donors, do very few press events, and then put all of their money on television,” said Rebecca Katz, a progressive strategist, of the DSCC. “It’s their playbook.” (Republicans can be criticized on similar grounds, she says.)

A DSCC spokesperson says the organization endorses the most viable candidates as part of a broader, national strategic effort. “If we’re going to stop Mitch McConnell from gutting access to affordable health care, confirming partisan judges to lifetime appointments on the federal bench and Supreme Court, and attacking reproductive rights, then we need to win Senate seats,” Stewart Boss, a DSCC spokesperson, told TIME in an email. “We’re working with candidates who will do exactly that and help Democrats take back the Senate.” In recent years, some DSCC recruits have pulled out unexpected wins, including Sen. Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona in 2018.

The Democratic primary in Iowa, where at least four candidates are vying for the nomination to run against Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, is one example of where this tension is playing out. That race won’t heat up until after the Iowa presidential caucuses in February, and the field is still wide open. One October Emerson poll showed no clear front runner. Yet the DSCC has already endorsed a candidate: Theresa Greenfield, the president of a Des Moines real estate business.

Greenfield’s opponents accused the DSCC of anointing a winner from afar. “We shouldn’t rig elections,” retired Admiral Michael Franken, who is also running against Greenfield, told TIME. “And that’s a tough word—rig—but generally speaking the operatives in Washington, DC, do not have a track history in this state of choosing the most viable candidate.”

Kimberly Graham, who is also running against Greenfield, said the DSCC’s endorsement came too early. “Why not let the candidates who are going to get in the race get in, give them six months or whatever amount of time, and see what happens, see what they do?” she said in an interview with TIME. “If we really want a democracy then maybe we should back off a little bit and let the Iowa voters decide who is the best person to represent them.”

Early DSCC endorsements rankled outsiders in other states’ U.S. Senate races this cycle, too. In North Carolina, the DSCC backed army veteran and former state senator Cal Cunningham to take on Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, despite the fact that another Democrat, state Senator Erica Smith, is leading in polls. Smith has been running since January.

In a statement after the endorsement, Smith dismissed Cunningham an an “heir apparent” and accused the DSCC leadership, who she said she met with directly, of interfering in the democratic process. “Ultimately, the voters of North Carolina will decide who their next United States Senator will be — NOT a handful of DC politicians making back room deals in windowless basements,” Smith wrote.

A similar dynamic has played out in Colorado. In August, the DSCC endorsed former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper just two days after he joined the race after his failed presidential bid. Some of the Democratic candidates who were already running to challenge Republican Sen. Cory Gardner attacked the DSCC’s decision. “Democrats: This is a moment of decision. Do we want DC to dictate our choice and buy this election before any ballots are even cast—or do we believe voters still matter?” tweeted Andrew Romanoff, one of the candidates running to the left of Hickenlooper, a moderate. Meanwhile, former Obama-era Ambassador Dan Baer, who had raised almost $1.4 million for his campaign for that seat ended his bid when the DSCC weighed in.

In his first fundraising quarter in the race, Hickenlooper raised $2.1 million. Both Hickenlooper and Cunningham have a slew of endorsements in addition to the DSCC’s.

In Iowa in particular, many DSCC critics say the issue is not whether Theresa Greenfield is the right candidate; it’s that they believe voters should have been given time to consider each candidate’s merits before the DSCC weighed in. Greenfield received the DSCC’s backing just three days after entering the race, alongside an endorsement from EMILY’s List. She has since banked more endorsements from both national organizations, including NARAL Pro-Choice America, and local ones, including AFSCME Council 61 and several other unions. A number of current and former Iowa elected officials, including U.S. Representatives Abby Finkenauer and Dave Loebsack, have also endorsed Greenfield.

Jordanna Zeigler, Greenfield’s campaign manager, did not respond immediately to questions about the DSCC’s early endorsement, but described broad backing for her candidate. “We’re proud that Theresa’s earned support from across the state, including endorsements just this week from labor unions representing nearly 12,000 hardworking Iowans,” she said in a statement. “Her hard work and the growing momentum for her campaign are how Theresa outraised Joni Ernst last month and why she’ll flip this Senate seat in November.”

In the last fundraising quarter, Greenfield pulled in more than $1.1 million —slightly out-raising Ernst. The DSCC sees that as a success: its endorsement can help make candidates competitive in fundraising against powerful incumbents. But Graham, Greenfield’s more progressive opponent, says it has given some of the voters she’s spoken with the impression that “Chuck Schumer and the DSCC put their thumbs on the scale.”

DSCC endorsements have broader implications at a time when the Democratic party, pushed left by the rise of popular liberal candidates, is in a period of self-reflection and reinvention. Many progressives complain that the DSCC’s tendency to select more moderate candidates fails to reflect an increasingly liberal Democratic base—which, they argue, might translate to electoral wins with the support of the party.

According to one recent Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom poll, a combined 40% of likely Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa are planning to caucus in the presidential primary for one of the two top moderates, Joe Biden or Pete Buttigieg. But nearly a third—a combined 31%—planned to caucus for Sanders or Warren. (The poll had a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.)

Linn County Supervisor Stacey Walker, who endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders for the 2020 primary, noted that a DSCC endorsement—or the lack thereof—affects who enters the race in the first place. He considered running in the Senate race himself, but decided against it on the grounds that the primary was “orchestrated by Washington elites, instead of being left up to the voters.”

“I don’t have the privilege of challenging institutional forces on this scale without incurring significant damage to my political career,” Walker wrote in a post announcing he wouldn’t run for the Senate, “and at the end of the day, this fear won out over my courage and I’m not proud about that.” Walker has since endorsed Graham.

Penny Rosfjord, a former Iowa Woodbury County chair, dismissed concerns about DSCC’s effect on state elections. “I think that people are reading too much into it. I think that anybody can run for the Senate,” she told TIME. “I think this is a nonstory for me.”

But Ganapathy, the progressive strategist, argued that a DSCC endorsement can distort who gets into a race, who rises, and who receives fundraising dollars. “The whole idea behind a primary is just [that] we’re going to get better nominees if we actually let voters decide,” he said. In an ideal world, the DSCC would play a broader role: “Don’t direct resources to any single candidate, and if you’re going to help a candidate, help all candidates equally,” he said.

In 2016, Katz, another progressive strategist, worked for progressive Senate candidate John Fetterman in the Pennsylvania primary. Fetterman lost to DSCC-backed Katie McGinty—but McGinty went on to lose the general election. Two years later, Fetterman ran for lieutenant governor and won the state race. (Katz later added she sees what she characterized as a strategy to keep candidates out of trouble as the Republican playbook too.)

Iowa state Sen. Rob Hogg argues that because the DSCC is a national organization, it often fails to identify the candidate most appealing to in-state voters. In 2016, he emerged as a formidable primary opponent against DSCC-backed Patty Judge, who was ultimately defeated soundly. “I believe to this day that that was a mistake by the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee to intervene in that race,” Hogg said. In 2014, the DSCC endorsed Bruce Braley, who ran what most Democrats agree was a bad campaign. He too lost to Ernst.

“I don’t think Iowans have much confidence in the ability of the DSCC to pick candidates,” Hogg told TIME, describing DSCC endorsements as “meddling” in state primaries. “Unquestionably people want the DSCC to stay out of our primary,” he added. Hogg has not endorsed in the current primary.

Bryce Smith, the chair of the Iowa Dallas County Democrats, defended DSCC support as important to statewide candidates. But added that Iowa voters, who are used to using a very personal caucus system, are particularly sensitive to the notion of Washington selecting a nominee. “I definitely feel as though it kind of rubs against the grain,” he told TIME.

“In my personal view and what I hear from people is that that help comes once the nominee has been picked by Democratic voters,” he added. “I think that’s kind of the hurdle that’s being skipped by the DSCC.”

Eddie Mauro, who, like Greenfield, unsuccessfully ran for Iowa’s third district nomination in 2018 and also entered the Senate race this year, said that in conversations with Schumer and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, the chair of the DSCC, in the spring, he was also told that they did not want a primary. “We talked about the prospects of me running for the US Senate,” he told TIME. “They were concerned about having a primary, they preferred not to have a primary at all.”

In June, TIME reported that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also attempted to dissuade J.D. Scholten, the candidate who nearly beat Rep. Steve King in Iowa’s fourth district in 2018 who was at the time considering jumping into the 2020 Senate race, from running for Senate in an attempt to clear the way for Greenfield. “We don’t need a primary,” Schumer told Scholten, according to a source familiar with the situation. Scholten eventually chose to run in the fourth district again.

Greenfield ran in the Iowa third district primary in the 2018 cycle, a seat now held by Democratic US Rep. Cindy Axne, but dropped out after a campaign staffer faked signatures for her petition paperwork. The staffer later publicly apologized in an ad in the Des Moines Register.

What’s clear is that Democrats have their work cut out for them in 2020. Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina and Maine are among the most competitive races, although some Democrats argue that Iowa is within reach. The state voted for Trump by about 10 points and the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the 2020 race as “Likely Republican,” but President Barack Obama won the state twice and it wasn’t so long ago that Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin represented the state. And as the saying goes, Democrats have to fall in love.

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For grassroots candidates running for the U.S. Senate, one big, national endorsement can make or break an entire campaign. That’s why the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee—a powerful, Washington-based organization that spends tens of millions of dollars each cycle supporting Democratic candidates—wields such outsized clout. An endorsement from it is in effect the Establishment’s stamp-of-approval for the party’s biggest donors to cut checks.

But that’s also why the DSCC’s pattern of endorsing candidates early in their primaries has sewn resentment among some grassroots campaigns and progressive activists in a handful of crucial states, including Iowa, Colorado and North Carolina.

“I think there’s a general feeling that we would put forward better nominees as a party to defeat Republicans if we let voters decide candidates, as opposed to trying to divine from within the confines of the Beltway who we think is most likely to win over, say, Kentucky or Colorado,” Karthik Ganapathy, a progressive strategist, told TIME. The DSCC should embrace a “role as sort of intermediaries and arbiters as opposed to kingmakers,” he adds.

At a time when the Democratic party is increasingly split between its moderate, Clintonian wing and a more revolutionary, progressive left—represented by the rise of presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren—DSCC endorsements also carry weighty implications for the future of the party. Some progressive critics argue that the DSCC mostly endorses moderate candidates.

“Their style seems to be [to choose] candidates who can stay on the phone all day to call big donors, do very few press events, and then put all of their money on television,” said Rebecca Katz, a progressive strategist, of the DSCC. “It’s their playbook.” (Republicans can be criticized on similar grounds, she says.)

A DSCC spokesperson says the organization endorses the most viable candidates as part of a broader, national strategic effort. “If we’re going to stop Mitch McConnell from gutting access to affordable health care, confirming partisan judges to lifetime appointments on the federal bench and Supreme Court, and attacking reproductive rights, then we need to win Senate seats,” Stewart Boss, a DSCC spokesperson, told TIME in an email. “We’re working with candidates who will do exactly that and help Democrats take back the Senate.” In recent years, some DSCC recruits have pulled out unexpected wins, including Sen. Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona in 2018.

The Democratic primary in Iowa, where at least four candidates are vying for the nomination to run against Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, is one example of where this tension is playing out. That race won’t heat up until after the Iowa presidential caucuses in February, and the field is still wide open. One October Emerson poll showed no clear front runner. Yet the DSCC has already endorsed a candidate: Theresa Greenfield, the president of a Des Moines real estate business.

Greenfield’s opponents accused the DSCC of anointing a winner from afar. “We shouldn’t rig elections,” retired Admiral Michael Franken, who is also running against Greenfield, told TIME. “And that’s a tough word—rig—but generally speaking the operatives in Washington, DC, do not have a track history in this state of choosing the most viable candidate.”

Kimberly Graham, who is also running against Greenfield, said the DSCC’s endorsement came too early. “Why not let the candidates who are going to get in the race get in, give them six months or whatever amount of time, and see what happens, see what they do?” she said in an interview with TIME. “If we really want a democracy then maybe we should back off a little bit and let the Iowa voters decide who is the best person to represent them.”

Early DSCC endorsements rankled outsiders in other states’ U.S. Senate races this cycle, too. In North Carolina, the DSCC backed army veteran and former state senator Cal Cunningham to take on Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, despite the fact that another Democrat, state Senator Erica Smith, is leading in polls. Smith has been running since January.

In a statement after the endorsement, Smith dismissed Cunningham an an “heir apparent” and accused the DSCC leadership, who she said she met with directly, of interfering in the democratic process. “Ultimately, the voters of North Carolina will decide who their next United States Senator will be — NOT a handful of DC politicians making back room deals in windowless basements,” Smith wrote.

A similar dynamic has played out in Colorado. In August, the DSCC endorsed former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper just two days after he joined the race after his failed presidential bid. Some of the Democratic candidates who were already running to challenge Republican Sen. Cory Gardner attacked the DSCC’s decision. “Democrats: This is a moment of decision. Do we want DC to dictate our choice and buy this election before any ballots are even cast—or do we believe voters still matter?” tweeted Andrew Romanoff, one of the candidates running to the left of Hickenlooper, a moderate. Meanwhile, former Obama-era Ambassador Dan Baer, who had raised almost $1.4 million for his campaign for that seat ended his bid when the DSCC weighed in.

In his first fundraising quarter in the race, Hickenlooper raised $2.1 million. Both Hickenlooper and Cunningham have a slew of endorsements in addition to the DSCC’s.

In Iowa in particular, many DSCC critics say the issue is not whether Theresa Greenfield is the right candidate; it’s that they believe voters should have been given time to consider each candidate’s merits before the DSCC weighed in. Greenfield received the DSCC’s backing just three days after entering the race, alongside an endorsement from EMILY’s List. She has since banked more endorsements from both national organizations, including NARAL Pro-Choice America, and local ones, including AFSCME Council 61 and several other unions. A number of current and former Iowa elected officials, including U.S. Representatives Abby Finkenauer and Dave Loebsack, have also endorsed Greenfield.

Jordanna Zeigler, Greenfield’s campaign manager, did not respond immediately to questions about the DSCC’s early endorsement, but described broad backing for her candidate. “We’re proud that Theresa’s earned support from across the state, including endorsements just this week from labor unions representing nearly 12,000 hardworking Iowans,” she said in a statement. “Her hard work and the growing momentum for her campaign are how Theresa outraised Joni Ernst last month and why she’ll flip this Senate seat in November.”

In the last fundraising quarter, Greenfield pulled in more than $1.1 million —slightly out-raising Ernst. The DSCC sees that as a success: its endorsement can help make candidates competitive in fundraising against powerful incumbents. But Graham, Greenfield’s more progressive opponent, says it has given some of the voters she’s spoken with the impression that “Chuck Schumer and the DSCC put their thumbs on the scale.”

DSCC endorsements have broader implications at a time when the Democratic party, pushed left by the rise of popular liberal candidates, is in a period of self-reflection and reinvention. Many progressives complain that the DSCC’s tendency to select more moderate candidates fails to reflect an increasingly liberal Democratic base—which, they argue, might translate to electoral wins with the support of the party.

According to one recent Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom poll, a combined 40% of likely Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa are planning to caucus in the presidential primary for one of the two top moderates, Joe Biden or Pete Buttigieg. But nearly a third—a combined 31%—planned to caucus for Sanders or Warren. (The poll had a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.)

Linn County Supervisor Stacey Walker, who endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders for the 2020 primary, noted that a DSCC endorsement—or the lack thereof—affects who enters the race in the first place. He considered running in the Senate race himself, but decided against it on the grounds that the primary was “orchestrated by Washington elites, instead of being left up to the voters.”

“I don’t have the privilege of challenging institutional forces on this scale without incurring significant damage to my political career,” Walker wrote in a post announcing he wouldn’t run for the Senate, “and at the end of the day, this fear won out over my courage and I’m not proud about that.” Walker has since endorsed Graham.

Penny Rosfjord, a former Iowa Woodbury County chair, dismissed concerns about DSCC’s effect on state elections. “I think that people are reading too much into it. I think that anybody can run for the Senate,” she told TIME. “I think this is a nonstory for me.”

But Ganapathy, the progressive strategist, argued that a DSCC endorsement can distort who gets into a race, who rises, and who receives fundraising dollars. “The whole idea behind a primary is just [that] we’re going to get better nominees if we actually let voters decide,” he said. In an ideal world, the DSCC would play a broader role: “Don’t direct resources to any single candidate, and if you’re going to help a candidate, help all candidates equally,” he said.

In 2016, Katz, another progressive strategist, worked for progressive Senate candidate John Fetterman in the Pennsylvania primary. Fetterman lost to DSCC-backed Katie McGinty—but McGinty went on to lose the general election. Two years later, Fetterman ran for lieutenant governor and won the state race. (Katz later added she sees what she characterized as a strategy to keep candidates out of trouble as the Republican playbook too.)

Iowa state Sen. Rob Hogg argues that because the DSCC is a national organization, it often fails to identify the candidate most appealing to in-state voters. In 2016, he emerged as a formidable primary opponent against DSCC-backed Patty Judge, who was ultimately defeated soundly. “I believe to this day that that was a mistake by the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee to intervene in that race,” Hogg said. In 2014, the DSCC endorsed Bruce Braley, who ran what most Democrats agree was a bad campaign. He too lost to Ernst.

“I don’t think Iowans have much confidence in the ability of the DSCC to pick candidates,” Hogg told TIME, describing DSCC endorsements as “meddling” in state primaries. “Unquestionably people want the DSCC to stay out of our primary,” he added. Hogg has not endorsed in the current primary.

Bryce Smith, the chair of the Iowa Dallas County Democrats, defended DSCC support as important to statewide candidates. But added that Iowa voters, who are used to using a very personal caucus system, are particularly sensitive to the notion of Washington selecting a nominee. “I definitely feel as though it kind of rubs against the grain,” he told TIME.

“In my personal view and what I hear from people is that that help comes once the nominee has been picked by Democratic voters,” he added. “I think that’s kind of the hurdle that’s being skipped by the DSCC.”

Eddie Mauro, who, like Greenfield, unsuccessfully ran for Iowa’s third district nomination in 2018 and also entered the Senate race this year, said that in conversations with Schumer and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, the chair of the DSCC, in the spring, he was also told that they did not want a primary. “We talked about the prospects of me running for the US Senate,” he told TIME. “They were concerned about having a primary, they preferred not to have a primary at all.”

In June, TIME reported that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also attempted to dissuade J.D. Scholten, the candidate who nearly beat Rep. Steve King in Iowa’s fourth district in 2018 who was at the time considering jumping into the 2020 Senate race, from running for Senate in an attempt to clear the way for Greenfield. “We don’t need a primary,” Schumer told Scholten, according to a source familiar with the situation. Scholten eventually chose to run in the fourth district again.

Greenfield ran in the Iowa third district primary in the 2018 cycle, a seat now held by Democratic US Rep. Cindy Axne, but dropped out after a campaign staffer faked signatures for her petition paperwork. The staffer later publicly apologized in an ad in the Des Moines Register.

What’s clear is that Democrats have their work cut out for them in 2020. Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina and Maine are among the most competitive races, although some Democrats argue that Iowa is within reach. The state voted for Trump by about 10 points and the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the 2020 race as “Likely Republican,” but President Barack Obama won the state twice and it wasn’t so long ago that Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin represented the state. And as the saying goes, Democrats have to fall in love.