For those who aren't following the UK election, things are heating up. Worth seeing how it plays out. This piece plays into some points by Artappraiser and Peracles in their latest blogs. Some clippings:

As evidenced by the prime minister’s travails, an entire way of doing politics – deadened, arrogant and often absurd – is dying in front of our eyes. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party has revealed that the received wisdom of the past 15 years was wrong, and that talking in plain-spoken, moral, essentially socialist terms about the fundamental condition of the country need not entail political disaster.

I then stuck my head into the local barbershop, where the two young proprietors said that they mostly followed the election on Twitter, because they liked the “jokes”. They then rattled through a few of their favourite Theresa May memes, largely centred on the idea she is the unthinking android Maybot. 

This is part of the reason the Conservative campaign has unravelled. Before the advent of social media, politicians could teeter on the brink of absurdity and repeatedly fall the wrong way, safe in the knowledge that we all had to wait for the next helping of Spitting Image or edition of Private Eye for their bubble to be burst. Now it happens instantaneously. Moreover, for all its flaws, the Facebook age is egalitarian in spirit. Woe betide the politician who will not turn up to the debate, or who seems to have an aversion to meeting the public. 

In the midst of all this, what can politicians do? Be yourself. Do not dissemble. Forget the old idea that if you endlessly parrot the same lines, you can be sure that most people will see the message only once or twice: the likelihood is that the parroting will be edited into a 20-second video clip, and you will be rendered absurd. Treat the orthodox media’s rituals with a gentle mockery, which chimes with how most people feel about them.

There are worse things than St. Louis, but I'm hard-pressed to remember what they are. Valiant effort to document both the atrocities and the daily survival. I've been there, done that, didn't get the t-shirt. Someone should, even if it's a lo-cost "Fast Fashion" shirt.

Current headline story @ WashingtonPost.com, by Abby Phillip & John Wagner, June 2

The Democratic base, already strongly against President Trump, needs little incentive to oppose him. But Democrats expect that Trump’s decision to leave the climate deal will serve more as a recruiting tool for their candidates in the midterms and in the presidential cycle.

Can an autocrat be ridiculous? Can a democracy be destroyed by someone who has only the barest idea of what the word “democracy” means? We imagine the villains of history as cunning strategists, brilliant masterminds of horror. This happens because we learn about them from history books, which weave narratives that retrospectively imbue events with logic.....Historians....bring an unavoidable perception bias to the story: If a historical event caused shocking destruction, then the person behind this event must have been a correspondingly giant monster. Terrifying as it is to contemplate the catastrophes of the 20th century, it would be even more frightening to imagine that humanity had stumbled unthinkingly into its darkest moments.....

By Erica L.  Green @ NYTimes.com, June 2

The education secretary, often criticized as an out-of-touch billionaire, has staffed her administration with a diverse set of subordinates, some from unlikely sources.

[....] Among her appointees: a progressive Democrat who believes a broken education system is a form of white supremacy; a sexual assault survivor who is currently in a same-sex marriage; and a second-generation American who ran a federal program that helped undocumented immigrants.

While the education secretary has done little to highlight the diversity in her administration — the department declined to make any of the appointees available for interviews — DeVos watchers say that diversity should encourage critics to focus more on her actions than their preconceptions. [.....]

This piece by a former Clinton strategist argues for the opposite of the Sanders' strategy. Instead of focusing on WWC Democrats who crossed over to Trump, he urges Democrats to pursue Romney Republicans who crossed over to Clinton. In short, he advocates growing the party by appealing to socially progressive, fiscally conservative suburbanites.

Part of me suspects that this trend is inevitable, but as a fiscal progressive, it saddens and disturbs me. Anyway, it's worth the read even if you disagree with him.

There are two potential explanations for why predominantly white manufacturing counties became more Republican and diverse manufacturing counties voted more Democratic in this election. 

The first is that economic shocks were different across white and diverse counties.  Perhaps white manufacturing towns specialise in products more prone to technological change or facing pronounced import competition; alternatively, white manufacturing towns may have been largely one company towns with few alternative employment opportunities.

The second is that the two groups reacted differently to economic changes that have occurred over time.  It is possible that white manufacturing towns rejected existing policies, such as openness to trade and increased income redistribution (for example, through the Affordable Care Act); while diverse manufacturing towns rejected the message that economic conditions in the US were deteriorating.

The analysis shows that the second explanation – different reactions to economic change – is more consistent with the data.