The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Racializing a policy issue is counterproductive in U.S. politics

    By artappraiser on Sun, 04/25/2021 - 1:13pm |

    Comments


    by artappraiser on Sun, 04/25/2021 - 1:17pm


    by artappraiser on Sun, 04/25/2021 - 1:19pm

    here's the rest of the thread from Micah English, one of the authors of the study:

     


    by artappraiser on Sun, 04/25/2021 - 1:39pm

    Running across this tweet reminded me about how on Dag we don't focus on what's going on with primary education and CRT, but it is clearly a topic that is huge, huge, enormously divisive and passionately turning a lot or normally liberal people against other liberal people like no other topic could. When it comes down to your kids and their future, that's everything for many people:

     


    by artappraiser on Sun, 04/25/2021 - 1:45pm

    An ultimate example of counter-productivity is not denouncing people like this in attempting to create a coalition, they are turning off many more people to the policy cause than they bring


    by artappraiser on Sun, 04/25/2021 - 1:50pm


    by artappraiser on Mon, 04/26/2021 - 7:05pm

    Thomas B. Edsall reports on the real world results of THE ABOVE research paper in the NYTimes - makes clear it's hit the world of Dem strategists and analysts and PoliSci like a bomb thrown in the middle of a hand-to-hand combat battle:

    Should Biden Emphasize Race or Class or Both or None of the Above?

    April 28, 2021

    Should the Democratic Party focus on race or class when trying to build support for new initiatives and — perhaps equally important — when seeking to achieve a durable Election Day majority?

    The publication on April 26 of a scholarly paper, “Racial Equality Frames and Public Policy Support,” has stirred up a hornet’s nest among Democratic strategists and analysts.

    The authors, Micah English and Joshua L. Kalla, who are both political scientists at Yale, warned proponents of liberal legislative proposals that

    Despite increasing awareness of racial inequities and a greater use of progressive race framing by Democratic elites, linking public policies to race is detrimental for support of those policies.

    The English-Kalla paper infuriated critics who are involved in the Race-Class Narrative Project.

    The founder of the project, Ian Haney López, a law professor at Berkeley and one of the chairmen of the AFL-CIO’s Advisory Council on Racial and Economic Justice, vigorously disputes the English-Kalla thesis. In his view, “Powerful elites exploit social divisions, so no matter what our race, color or ethnicity, our best future requires building cross-racial solidarity.”

    In an email, López wrote me that the English and Kalla study

    seems to confirm a conclusion common among Democratic strategists since at least 1970: Democrats can maximize support among whites, without losing too much enthusiasm from voters of color, by running silent on racial justice while emphasizing class issues of concern to all racial groups. Since at least 2017, this conclusion is demonstrably wrong.

    English and Kalla, for their part, surveyed 5,081 adults and asked them about six policies: increasing the minimum wage to $15; forgiving $50,000 in student loan debt; affordable housing; the Green New Deal; Medicare for All; decriminalizing marijuana and erasing prior convictions.

    Participants in the survey were randomly assigned to read about these policies in a “race, class, or a class plus race frame,” English and Kalla write.

    Those given information about housing policy in a “race frame” read:

    A century of housing and land use policies denied Black households access to homeownership and neighborhood opportunities offered to white households. These racially discriminatory housing policies have combined to profoundly disadvantage Black households, with lasting, intergenerational impact. These intergenerational impacts go a long way toward explaining the racial disparities we see today in wealth, income and educational outcomes for Black Americans.

    Those assigned to read about housing policy in a “class frame” were shown this:

    Housing is the largest single expense for the average American, accounting for a third of their income. Many working-class, middle-class, and working poor Americans spend over half their pay on shelter. Twenty-one million American families — over a sixth of the United States — are considered cost-burdened, paying more for rent than they can afford. These families are paying so much in rent that they are considered at elevated risk of homelessness.

    The “race and class group” read a version combining both race and class themes.

    English and Kalla found that

    While among Democrats both the class and the class plus race frames cause statistically significant increases in policy support, statistically indistinguishable from each other — among Republicans the class plus race frame causes a statistically significant decrease in policy support. While the race frame also has a negative effect among Republicans, it is not statistically significant.

    Among independents — a key swing group both in elections and in determining the levels of support for public policies — English and Kalla found “positive effects from the class frame and negative effects from both the race and class plus race frames.”

    A late February survey of 1,551 likely voters by Vox and Data for Progress produced similar results. Half the sample was asked whether it would support or oppose zoning for multiple-family housing based on the argument that [....]


    by artappraiser on Thu, 04/29/2021 - 1:28am

    hmmm, after reading this review of his speech, combined with remembering Joe's "uniter vs. divider" desires, these clips suggest the class framing is gonna dominate for the foreseeable future

    then there was this to wrap up my bias confirmation with a bow:


    by artappraiser on Thu, 04/29/2021 - 1:54am

    Makes me wonder if Bernie backers might have gotten more of what they wanted earlier w/o the strange 4-year interlude by supporting Hillary stronger in 2016. Guess we'll never know 


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 04/29/2021 - 2:03am

    this columnist at the LATimes visits Trump-to-Biden swing town of Pueblo, CO and finds idiosyncratic voters who are pleased with the "pleasantly boring" nature of Biden and specifically mentions: as opposed to the polarizing nature of not just Trump but also Hillary:

    Great ⁦@markzbarabak⁩ dispatch from Pueblo, CO, an old western steel town that went for Trump in ‘16 and Biden in ‘20 — and, so far, seems pleased with the new “pleasantly boring” era. https://t.co/jmn50TqMuu

    — Eli Stokols (@EliStokols) April 29, 2021

    Meanwhile Susan Glasser at the New Yorker is definitely seeing a 'class not race' thing shape up as she says it is starting to seem like, not Bernie, but Elizabeth Warren of the primaries won the presidency and not the Joe Biden of the primaries:

    “To anyone who remembered last year’s Democratic primaries, the President’s first address to a joint session of Congress sounded as if Elizabeth Warren, and not Biden, had won.” https://t.co/0HbIic4jr6

    — Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) April 29, 2021

     

    It makes me think of what we discussed about the results ot the Louisiana special House election results the other day. We were definitely thinking of people choosing "boring" instead of passionate activism; there was also the "calm" thing, a word which the LATimes guy also uses as well as "pleasantly boring".

    But that's personality, not policy! The opposite of what this thread is about.

    A reminder: the Democrats LOST seats in the House this last election, purportedly, according to post-election "family meetings" with moderates and activists arguing about it, because of framing policy along the lines of "defund police" activism and "socialism"

    Which begs the question: how do you get the idiosyncratic voters on board with strong policy changes that might be framed as radical culture wars by the other side?

    I intuit a clue., and am inspired here from the LATimes piece, not from the independent types at the beginning, but from this guy quoted at the end of it. He looks like a Trump fan but calls himself a "Republican conservative"

    Eric Yoxey is a conservative Republican who gives Biden a B, mostly for his handling of the COVID pandemic.

    (Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times)

    excerpt from end, throwing in the comment from an Independent as well

    Eric Yoxey, 58, is a conservative Republican who owns a pharmacy in Pueblo’s Mesa Junction neighborhood, on the hillside overlooking the Arkansas River. He echoed concerns about Biden’s gusher of spending — “too much money being pushed too fast” — and criticized the president’s handling of the immigration crisis on the border with Mexico. “He’s made a bad thing worse,” Yoxey said.

    But overall, he gives Biden a B for his performance so far.

    “He’s done a great job” handling the COVID-19 pandemic and listening to medical and scientific experts rather than winging it or, worse, downplaying the disease the way Trump did, Yoxey said. “He’s also on the right track trying to pull people together, to bring us together as a nation.”

    Elkins, the third-party-voting independent, voiced a similar sentiment.

    Trump was willing to tear the country apart to win a second term, he said. Elkins’ hope is that Biden lowers the political heat and lessens the unease many Americans felt — about economic displacement, about the country’s role in the world, about exactly whose interests Washington is serving — which all played large parts in Trump’s election and in the unrelenting turmoil that followed.

    “Decisions made out of panic or fear are rarely good ones,” Elkins said, “as we saw.”

    Back to Hillary, then. I sense you think of her as unfairly tarred as a divisive personality. But I for one, always saw her that way, I think it was an obvious Achilles heel she always had. Althoiugh actually moderate about policy, she was always passionately feisty, a fighter, going back to "well I suppose I could have just stayed home and baked cookies", and even as a Goldwater kid. Which made it easy to paint her as a lefty activist. There was no calm, no boring. I've seen you suggest more than once that this is a prejudice towards powerful women.

    I think it is more about feistiness, the passionate fighter persona. Joe doesn't do that, and he's not female. Clearly the new Rep. from Louisana doesn't do that either and he's male.

     Neither did FDR as I see him. I just think passionate fighter personalities can't sell radical policy change. On the world stage, I think of Angela Merkel, not often seen as angry.

     I think Liz Warren straddles the line ot both, I think she seems too angry too often, when her policies are actually quite moderate.

    I think it's not about feminism, it's about having a more feminine, moderate approach to your public persona as a  politician It's the "leader" thing, it's about being the calming safe parent that's not going to turn on you and scream at you.  Bernie's biggest downside was his "angry old man shaking fist" persona. Bernie's "more socialist" policies can often sell to Vermont independent types and Reagan Dem types if you tamp down his "angry old man" thing.

    It's about having a stereotypically strident male personality, not actually about being male of female. Keeping in mind male chauvinist pig Trump never had a majority with his selling of politics of resentment and anger, won through other means...


    by artappraiser on Thu, 04/29/2021 - 10:28am

    p.s. is also the "catch more flies with honey than vinegar" thing. and the Ben Franklin version is even more accurate Tart Words make no Friends: spoonful of honey will catch more flies than Gallon of Vinegar.

    You can even do that with left activist types, contrast members of "the squad", AOC vs. Tlaib or Omar, friendly and fun vs.seeming angry all the time. I think one of the most useful effective attacks by right wingers is to say the lefties are trying to "shove" this or that policy "down our throats." That only really sticks if the people being attacked are strident types. It's not going to stick to Joe, he doesn't talk vinegar. And tart words make for enemies, not friends. Think Bill vs. Hillary, he was famously always trying to make everyone a friend since he was a little kid, would go up to people and say "would you be my friend?"

    Moderate personality is just more able to push radical policy change. "Sunny" Ronnie = same thing. Look at the famous debate quip against Mondale for a good example: . I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience  Not an attack dog of rivals in public.


    by artappraiser on Thu, 04/29/2021 - 10:47am

    tweet from Krugman thread on how GOP really ain't got nothing to offer in policy, all they have is to "be afraid" of the passionate strident personalities you suspect because of their personality;you're right to be suspicious they don't like you, they won't leave you alone, and they are going to end up taking your job and your hamburger


    by artappraiser on Thu, 04/29/2021 - 11:10am

    Josh Kraushaar quoting Peter Baker's NYTimes' report on the speech confirms class framing:


    by artappraiser on Thu, 04/29/2021 - 11:29am

    On the peculiar dangers of making policy all about fighting one powerful narcissist:

     


    by artappraiser on Thu, 05/06/2021 - 2:32pm

    Our evidence suggests that the Floyd protests served to further racialize and politicize attitudes within the domain of race and law enforcement in the U.S.

    (found retweeted by colleague Omar Wasow Asst Prof, Princeton Politics. I study protests, statistics & race.)

    In other words: TOTALLY COUNTEPRODUCTIVE TO CAUSE.


    by artappraiser on Mon, 05/10/2021 - 1:30am


    by artappraiser on Mon, 05/10/2021 - 1:42pm


    by artappraiser on Thu, 05/20/2021 - 8:38pm

    (and GOP counterattack often wins when they try. BECAUSE: elite manner and thought does not jive with the majority!)


    by artappraiser on Wed, 05/26/2021 - 10:08pm

    I have some pride in these cultural-industrial EuroAmerican experiments largely (but not only) built by classes of white people. The Russians tho white have largely been outside that experiment, mostly chipping away but Peter the Great seemed to have the right idea. The European Union while nice is a bit incomplete still - huge gaps in instituting foreign policy, encouraging innovation, handling crises like Covid - but the Greek/Roman thing was crucial - Brits couldn't have done it on their own for sure, but added the right panache (a somewhat curious word for Brits, sometimes flare, sometimes a bit not Ng)

    1776 was a bit like Chaos Moneys' image of Silicon Valley - started by some clever white guys, but designed as an open growable model that allowed all comers except they had to check for "cultural fit", which was kind of that Henry Ford thing - any color as long as kind of white. Chinese, Hispanic, Black, whatever - just act a bit white. Not cowboy-wilderness-hoot-em-up Chicago-gangland kind of white, just show-up-for-work educate-the-kids be-free-but-not-too-much-headache kind of white. Again, it's "cultural fit" - we know it when we see it, but hard to define, sure is exclusionary but these days less and less. If you're eating breakfast cereal, you're pretty much in. If not, we may or may not have a problem.

    I like what largely white people have done with culture, including appropriating others' art and twisting it a bit, also the tech his of course. I like how "we" have taken literature, from Dickens on, even though "Color Purple" and "Cry the Beloved Country" easily fit that development - the author's skin color doesn't redefine the cultural milieu, though can shift it. There certainly is more acceptance of Black influence on American "white" culture vs Chinese or other Asian, Hispanic, Native - there's no real equivalent to Public Enemy or Motown or Chuck Berry or similar non-musical cultural influences. Polish or Italian or Irish are just subsets of "white" America, come on out for St Paddies or Cinco de Mayo kind of thing. Wall Street is money white; Silicon Valley is Indian-Asian-Black--Hispanic-white white.


    by PeraclesPlease on Thu, 05/27/2021 - 1:17am


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 05/31/2021 - 9:50am

    You gotta laugh that in another woke circle, the speaker would be excoriated for appropriating an Afro-American head wrap and some kind of African-type cloth for her blouse. To me, it borders on blackface. cheeky 

    Ah, but this is what zealous grade school teachers do, isn't it? And they call it being creative.


    by artappraiser on Mon, 05/31/2021 - 10:37am

    Just how overtly she's threatening to fire them - man, anyone speaks like that to me, if I have the slightest chance to leave or get revenge...


    by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 05/31/2021 - 11:36am

    I do love this so:


    by artappraiser on Mon, 05/31/2021 - 6:35pm

    MSN paywall-free link for the same article:

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/a-middle-class-rebellion-against-progressives-is-gaining-steam-opinion/ar-AAKGpvT

    excerpt:

    [....] This new middle-class rebellion isn't rejecting everything that progressives stand for; the Left's critique of neo-liberal excess is resonating, as is the need for improved access to health care. But the current focus on "systemic racism," coupled with a newfound and heavily enforced cultural conformism and the obsessive focus on a never-ending litany of impending "climate emergences" are less likely to pass muster with most of the middle class, no matter how popular they are with the media, academics, and others in the progressive corner.

    And this new middle-class rebellion is being bolstered by a wide-ranging intellectual rebellion by traditional liberals against the Left's dogmatism and intolerance. Indeed, what we're about to see has the potential to reprise the great shift among old liberals that had them embracing Reagan in reaction to the Left's excesses of that generation.

    In a way, this should not be surprising. After all, the progressive base is limited: According to a survey conducted by the non-partisan group More in Common, progressives constitute barely eight percent of the electorate. The report also found that fully 80 percent of all Americans believe that "political correctness is a problem," including large majorities of millennials and racial minorities.

    Party line journalists may see President Biden as the new champion of the middle class, but every time he adopts central tenets of the new Left, he undermines his pitch. And this happens not infrequently: The Biden Administration has adopted elements of the "anti-racist" agenda, for example, by explicitly favoring Black farmers for subsidies, rather than focusing on all farmers in need. Race issues may be popular on college campuses and in the human relations departments of giant corporations like Lockheed and Amazon, but a recent Yale study found that language based on inclusivity around class was far more popular than one focused largely on race, even with progressive voters.

    This is not the message coming out of the Biden administration, which has put a premium on diversity hiring and "equity," despite the fact that racial quotas, in hiring or in college admissions, are unpopular with three out of four Americans, including African-Americans and Hispanics; 65% of Hispanics, 62% of black Americans and 58% of Asians oppose affirmative action in college admissions.

    Biden is similarly losing the middle class on immigration. Already many Latinos, particularly in Texas and Arizona, fear the loss of border control that accompanied the shift from Trump to Biden administrations. The crisis at the border has the potential to overwhelm the economies, health and welfare systems in heavily Hispanic border communities, which is sparking alarm among border state Democrats.

    None of this is to suggest that minorities will vote for Republicans en masse in the near future [....]


    by artappraiser on Fri, 07/09/2021 - 9:44pm

    example of related from guy I just ran across, self-describes as Pro-Free Speech. Classical Liberal, and against all those who would prevent free speech & open debate.

    as to his point in tweet #5, reminds me of what I posted recently this other thread, two grownup black guys basically offended as being marketed to as naughty and dumb children, certainly no "dignity" there in that video ad for vaccination


    by artappraiser on Fri, 07/09/2021 - 10:02pm

    similar:


    by artappraiser on Sat, 07/10/2021 - 3:29am


    by artappraiser on Sat, 08/21/2021 - 10:18pm

    cross-link to related MINORITY VS. MINORITY: PARTISANSHIP AND INTER-GROUP COMPETITION AMONG ASIAN AMERICANS


      by artappraiser on Fri, 10/08/2021 - 3:06am