Tim Ryan Is Winning the War for the Soul of the Democratic Party

By artappraiser on Sat, 10/22/2022 - 2:30pm |

"Tim Ryan Is Winning the War for the Soul of the Democratic Party" by @AlecMacGillis is outstanding journalism. https://t.co/jdFTTASymf (It's 95% reporting, 5% opinion, but there's no way to indicate that in the Times system, so it just becomes "opinion.")
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) October 22, 2022

URL:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/21/opinion/tim-ryan-democrats-midterms-ohio.html

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Yes, great piece. Democrats, after capitulating to the Evil Geniuses’ anti-worker political economics for two generations, are finally course-correcting with @TimRyan et al, but as @AlecMacGillis says, “the problem for him — and also for them — is that it may have come too late.” https://t.co/pNUvPOLyq9
— Kurt Andersen (@KBAndersen) October 22, 2022

by artappraiser on Sat, 10/22/2022 - 2:31pm

He worries a lot about electability: https://t.co/Abhj4I3rfW
— Malcopticon (@Malcopticon) October 22, 2022

by artappraiser on Sat, 10/22/2022 - 2:46pm

haven't listened yet but want to; found retweeted by Yglesias:

This is very good. Everyone should listen. https://t.co/J959dMGrH5
— Matt Lewis (@mattklewis) October 22, 2022

by artappraiser on Sat, 10/22/2022 - 2:50pm

This is why activists make bad politicians. You may think voters are worried about the wrong stuff but if you want to win elections you’d better address those worries. (Also, man do I hate the word “problematic.”) pic.twitter.com/rFy4OpXxYp
— Carl (@HistoryBoomer) October 24, 2022

(He's being kind!)

by artappraiser on Mon, 10/24/2022 - 1:10am

A chart which argues this is more than likely wishful thinking:

Democrats are increasingly the party of highly educated upper middle class whites that are simultaneously economically sheltered and convinced democracy *Literally* ends if republicans are elected. https://t.co/Rmo3pLDlFp
— Sock Puppets United (@ReasonedCenter) October 31, 2022

by artappraiser on Mon, 10/31/2022 - 1:26am

Storming the Capitol & encouraging Russia to tamper with the elections, while preventing eligible voters from voting for partisan reasons just might be as much of a concern as "the economy", especially if taking away democratic rights hurts people's job access or salaries or support payments for medical issues or...

And it was the 80s when people who didn't have dick to invest started to cheer the Dow Jones as if that *had to* trickle down to their well-being, vs the reality that sometimes e.g. sometimes rich people just sit on that extra cash, or that banks that are taking government bailouts can turn around and do massive robo foreclosures on people hurting from that economy crashed by the prior "adults in the room" administration, or that the same elected gov officials wrongly taking business subsidies are then turning around and voting down much smaller gov bailouts for the needy, or then there are the top "it's the economy stupid" Republican goons who are giving mostly targeted tax cuts to the rich that aren't actually paid for by anything but deficit while pretending they're still Reagan-era "deficit hawks".

The huge dishonesty in this little questionnaire is galling. Republicans also talk a lot about "defense" and "security", but here they gave Putin access via Trump meetings and NRA-infiltratiin, support for Putin's goons on Kiev, tried to end sanctions against Russia over Crimea, publicly praised Putin as this "great" leader, etc.

by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 11/05/2022 - 3:17pm

Storming the Capitol & encouraging Russia to tamper with the elections, while preventing eligible voters from voting for partisan reasons

I just don't agree that all Republicans are fine with those things. I suspect a lot of GOP voters and downticket GOP politicians don't go along with that, but they are still voting Republican and running as Republicans (i.e, your statehouse reps, your lt. gov., your state attorney general, your city councilman, etc...)

You're also being 'dishonest' in framing it black or white, but those voters, they aren't buying your shtick, it doesn't work with them. I'd like to understand what does, is all.

by artappraiser on Sat, 11/05/2022 - 3:36pm

Awfully goddamnrd quiet for people who don't believe. A lot of people are critical of the Russian populace for not protesting more forcefully if they really don't support Putin's overreach. But American Republican voters seem to either show the same kind of indifference or active support.

And here's how Republicans are "fixing the economy" - the word "fixing" having 2 meanings - top brackets get more than 2 to 3 times the *percent* of lower brackets, a huge dollar difference - yet those Republican voters somehow care about the economy and this distortion? For what reason, to allow Elon to easier buy Twitter and Jeff Bezos do rocket launches for the rich, or is there actually some real "economy" benefit vs empty rhetoric posturing?

Update to add: of course they gave *something* to the rubes, just much more to the economic elites.

The Trump tax cuts [CNN]

Biden claimed at the Thursday rally in New Mexico that under Trump, Republicans passed a $2 trillion tax cut that “affected only the top 1% of the American public.”

Biden correctly said in various October remarks that the Trump tax cut law was particularly beneficial to the wealthy, but he went too far here. It’s not true that the Trump policy “only” affected the top 1%.

The Tax Policy Center think tank found in early 2018 that Trump’s law “will reduce individual income taxes on average for all income groups and in all states.” The think tank estimated that “between 60 and 76 percent of taxpayers in every state will receive a tax cut.” And in April 2019, tax-preparation company H&R Block said two-thirds of its returning customers had indeed paid less in tax that year than they did the year prior, The New York Times reported in an article headlined “Face It: You (Probably) Got a Tax Cut.”

The Tax Policy Center did find in early 2018 that people at the top would get by far the biggest benefits from Trump’s law. Specifically, the think tank found that the top 1% of earners would get an average 3.4% increase in after-tax 2018 income – versus an average 1.6% income increase for people in the middle quintile, an average 1.2% income increase for people in the quintile below that and just an average 0.4% income increase for people in the lowest quintile. The think tank also found that the top 1% of earners would get more than 20% of the income benefits from the law, a bigger share than the bottom 60% of earners combined.

The distribution could get even more skewed after 2025, when the law’s individual tax cuts will expire if not extended by Congress and the president. If there is no extension – and, therefore, the law’s permanent corporate tax cut remains in place without the individual tax cuts – the Tax Policy Center has estimated that, in 2027, the top 1% will get 83% of the benefits from the law.

But that’s a possibility about the future. Biden claimed, in the past tense, that the law “affected” only the top 1%. That’s inaccurate.

This wasn’t the first time Biden overstated his point about the Trump tax cuts. The Washington Post fact-checked him in 2019, for example, when he claimed “all of it” went to the ultra-rich and corporations.

by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 11/05/2022 - 6:54pm

It's not so simple anymore, not just about "jobs"; more about status and r-e-s-p-e-c-t?

One challenge with with a pretty direct materialist lens on why Dems are losing ground with working class voters is that empirical evidence for such an effect seems weak at best. If we abstract what we mean by material loss a bit, can we find better empirical evidence? (1/N):
— Andy Timm (@Andy_Timm) October 29, 2022

To define a typical version of the case I’m saying isn’t super empirically grounded: Dems went full neoliberal on free trade and deindustrialization in recent decades; that had winners and losers, and the losers were working class factory workers, typically in the Midwest. (2/N)
— Andy Timm (@Andy_Timm) October 29, 2022

These jobs haven’t really been replaced, and so when these voters swung right they were responding to their material conditions. This feels like something I’d like to believe is true as a fairly material lefty; it also feels like something I’d want us to say when running. (3/N)
— Andy Timm (@Andy_Timm) October 29, 2022

The challenge is this is weakly empirically supported (at least in aggregate). @davidshor has a good description of how this doesn’t work out his appearance on Rationally Speaking (https://t.co/cmrsq6oKUq) (4/N) pic.twitter.com/VjP4tFRxPX
— Andy Timm (@Andy_Timm) October 29, 2022

I played around with similar regressions in grad school; it’s hard to get the answer I expected in a best faith attempt at the right formulation. A big coefficient on trump_vote ~ job_loss certainly doesn’t as instantly and robustly appear as materialists would hope. (5/N)
— Andy Timm (@Andy_Timm) October 29, 2022

As Shor suggests, the dominant alternative theory is a post-materialist lens: with rising standards of living, people are less completely motivated by material, and vote on values increasingly. I this this is quite plausibly true, and an underrated US explanation. (6/N)
— Andy Timm (@Andy_Timm) October 29, 2022

But I’ve been curious (and yes, politically-motivated as someone who’s politics tend to emphasize material) for a while whether this type of narrow conceptualisation of material loss sells materialism short. (7/N)
— Andy Timm (@Andy_Timm) October 29, 2022

That brings us to the recent paper that motivated this thread: https://t.co/F1WS6PFsGT. As the title suggests, the authors (@thmskrr, @briittavs_ ) develop “status discordance”, wherein intergenerational status expectations, not narrower material concerns are examined (8/N)
— Andy Timm (@Andy_Timm) October 29, 2022

With this frame, using German HH panel data, they’re able to find clearer evidence for what I’d call a cost of postindustrial occupational changes. Those who feel intergenerational status discordance are shown to be pushed towards extreme parties (amongst other things) (9/N): pic.twitter.com/EgmfbDt4D0
— Andy Timm (@Andy_Timm) October 29, 2022

One could argue that this is getting outside proper materialism, but this feels like a reasonable and important reframe. We’re still evaluating how people’s material conditions make them feel and act politically, the reference class is just more severe. (10/N)
— Andy Timm (@Andy_Timm) October 29, 2022

This is fairly compelling to me on a first read (still having a deeper methods simmer), and suggests why the materialist political project may be so difficult of late. We’re not just contending with people’s material circumstances, we’re confronting material expectations. (11/N)
— Andy Timm (@Andy_Timm) October 29, 2022

This seems like a super promising frame for understanding the current political moment, and I’d love to see relevant work on the US context too. This feels quite challenging, but I’m curious if this can in any way be action guiding for political messaging and organizing.(12/N)
— Andy Timm (@Andy_Timm) October 29, 2022

As a final note, I think there’s a useful parallel here with how I think about racial threat; as @dhopkins1776 and co show, local demographic changes aren’t a sufficient explanation for rightward swing (https://t.co/hwDc6hi6mZ). My sense is a expectational loss might be. (13/N)
— Andy Timm (@Andy_Timm) October 29, 2022

by artappraiser on Tue, 11/01/2022 - 6:57pm

GUNS:

Not too bad for a Democrat pic.twitter.com/a0TkBWDT7V
— Tim Ryan (@TimRyan) November 4, 2022

by artappraiser on Sat, 11/05/2022 - 10:58am

Yglesias:

Tim Ryan is probably going to lose but he's clearly running *way* ahead of Biden and this race is a reminder that swing voters and real and offers a model for how to do better at persuading them. https://t.co/uAGWc2WJ75
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) November 9, 2022

by artappraiser on Tue, 11/08/2022 - 10:16pm

Tim Ryan: "I have the privilege to concede this race to JD Vance, bc the way this country operates is that when you lose an election you concede. You respect the will of the people. We can't have a system where if you win it's a legitimate election & if you lose someone stole it" pic.twitter.com/7BTPJAsVu0
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 9, 2022

by artappraiser on Wed, 11/09/2022 - 12:42am

Tim Ryan Is Winning the War for the Soul of the Democratic Party

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