How Parenting Changes Politics

It's a cliche to say that becoming a parent changes your politics. But maybe not in the same way for everyone. Parenting, I think, amplifies one's protective instincts. It accentuates vulnerability -- there's this tiny baby, who you want all the best things for, but whom you are painfully aware is dependent on not just you but the whole world to determine the trajectory of his or her life. You want to keep your child safe, and yet you know that it's not ultimately all up to you (or your child, for that matter). It's one of those banalities that feels ridiculous but is true; that it's almost impossible to imagine loving and caring about someone more than the baby in your arms.

There are some people for whom that protectiveness manifests in a form of conservatism -- suddenly becoming a lot less willing to "risk" harms befalling their child (where "risk" is less "letting them climb a tree" and more "letting them attend school with the riff-raff"). But for me, at least, this overwhelming, almost painful sense of protectiveness unlocked a new level of empathy. That feeling of terror at the thought of something terrible happening your baby -- the omnipresent Geiger counter of fear? Every parent has that. Every child (and I include here adult children) has loved ones who feel that way about them too. To see something bad happen to another person -- for them to be in a position where they need help and can't get it -- it hits me like a tidal wave; oddly, not fully on their own behalf, but on behalf of those who love them. I both can't and can imagine how that would feel if it happened to Nathaniel. And all the clever rationalizations and political machinations that explain why this suffering or deprivation or injustice or explosion is the just one wither in the face of that crushing wall of empathy.

The other day I had an idea for a painting series (that is, if I were a talented artist, which I am not), which was to take classic depictions of war and battle and replace all the faces of the soldiers with those of babies. The thought of the painting makes me want to shut my eyes to and run away from my own imagination (which, from an artistic standpoint, is a good sign -- good art makes you feel things after all -- but is less pleasant when one can't create and just has to live with it in your own mind). Each man charging, rearing, falling, crying, in agony, lying still -- they are all someone's baby. No matter what side they're on, they have loved ones grieving for them. How can we not do everything in our power to avert such grief? It is an awful experience even to imagine it, much less to live through it. Even if the rational part of me can fathom -- barely -- that this cannot always be the absolute number one priority, boy should it put one hefty thumb on the scale.

Against the World on Abbott Elementary

*Spoilers for the most recent episode of Abbott Elementary*

So we need to talk about the big plotline on this week's episode of Abbott Elementary.

I'm talking, of course, about Melissa and her former student, Jonathan.

The basic thrust is that Jonathan has supposedly become a big New York City finance guy, much to Melissa's elation, as she remembers him as a smart kid from one of her first classes. She's eager to have him visit her class to deliver an inspirational message to her current students. Unfortunately, it turns out that Jonathan actually is facing prison time for being involved in a crypto scam, and he wants Melissa to write him a character letter for the judge.

Jonathan makes clear that he assumed Melissa would be on his side as a fellow hustler. She was the one who taught him that you had to take what was yours, that it was each of them against the world, that the system was rigged so why not play dirty, and so on. He assumes he was living out her lessons, so of course she would do her part to help bend the legal process in his favor.

As Melissa realizes what's going on, it's clear she's heartbroken but also a bit rattled. She limply tells Jonathan that he taught him to punch up, not down, and tries to remind him of the sweet boy she remembers teaching who genuinely did care for others. This all falls on deaf ears though, and ultimately Melissa refuses to write the letter.

There was something about this plotline that rubbed me the wrong way. Obviously, Jonathan is an adult, and it would be juvenile and simplistic to blame the parables of his third-grade teacher for his adult exploitative choices. However, what I wish we saw, but we didn't really, was a bit more reckoning and reflection from Melissa about what message she is sending her children when she delivers these "the system is out to get you, it's you against the world" sermons, because that narrative genuinely can breed a sort of egoism and nihilism of the sort adult-Jonathan embodies. Instead, the story beat lands more on "sometimes the kids just turn out bad, and you have to accept that", which is true, and heartbreaking, but it didn't inspire much in the way of growth. 

It helps that as the episode progresses, Jonathan becomes more and more cartoonishly sociopathic. His targets were confused seniors, the "lessons" he learned centered entirely around not getting caught, and he's already plotting his next scam even before his sentenced for the current one! (For what it's worth, I also felt they kind of went this direction with Draemon Winding, another former-student-turned-minor-antagonist). That Jonathan feels so irredeemable ultimately brings the episode in for a softer landing, since surely Melissa couldn't have had any role in hatching such a bad egg (even though Melissa specifically recalls him being a sweet kid with a good heart).

I'll also add here that while one character suggests to Melissa that his efforts to play on their past relationship is simply scammers being scammers, I actually don't think that's (wholly) true. Whatever else may be the case, Jonathan to my eyes seems to genuinely believe that Melissa would respect his hustle and be on his side (if he didn't, he'd have fed her a much more conciliatory, "I was wrong but now I see the light" story). That's more powerful evidence that she really was a (bad) influence on him --  again, not to overstate her role or culpability, but suggesting that she really should reflect a bit on what lessons she's imparting on her kids. Certainly, I can see the value of imparting to disadvantaged kids a bit of a chip on their shoulder as a motivating tool. But that medicine has side effects, and maybe it would have been valuable if Melissa realized it needed some tempering.

The BlueSky discourse of the day is the finding that GenX is by far the most resiliently pro-MAGA generational cohort. Some folks have suggested this is ironic, given GenX's paradigmatic mistrust of authority should have made them resistant to authoritarianism. But I'm not surprised at this link. My Arendtian theory of the appeal of Trumpism is that Trump is most appealing precisely to the sort of person whose ignorant cynicism styles itself as sophisticated realism -- they know that all politicians (and the entire "system") are liars and corrupt and bullshitters, and so they are unperturbed to see someone whose only sin seems to be being a bit more brazen than most (indeed, isn't that very brazenness in a sense more honest? At least Trump doesn't hide who he is!). The drumbeat of messages to the effect of "both parties are the same", "every politician is bought", "everybody is lying to you" -- all versions of "the entire world is out to get you, so go get yours" -- this mentality is a breeding ground for political fascism and social scamming. Again, without discounting intervening causes and his own agency, Jonathan Pierce is a predictable product of that worldview. And I wish the show and the character realized that.

Oh, and apparently Gregory and Janine are on the rocks? So you can talk about that too, if you want.

How To Handle Leopard Chow

Has there been a more resonant viral post in the past decade than "'I never thought leopards would eat my face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party"? It's so funny, and so evocative, and I can't believe we're going through it a second time.

But we are, and articles like this about axed federal workers ruing their votes are once again setting off a discussion about how the rest of us should relate to these remorseful Trump supporters. Basically the entire conversation is about being pulled between two entirely reasonable and understandable instincts.

1. Trump won the last election. If Democrats are going to win the next election, by definition they need to persuade some number of people who either voted for Trump or couldn't be bothered to vote against him to make a different choice. When at least some erstwhile Trump backers signal they're waking up and recognizing their mistakes, that's an unabashed good thing.
2. Trump voters made a choice that in all cases was some combination of bone-jarringly stupid and actively malicious. That they're now facing consequences for their actions is entirely their own fault and moral just deserts, and the idea that they're entitled to even a smidgeon of emotional care and support from the rest of us (many of whom are suffering too) is outrageous.

My basic belief is that if you are a professional political operative, you have to emphasize the first instinct over the second. That's not because the second is unreasonable or unfair! It's just that it's the job. If you don't think you can do it, if that thought makes your stomach turn, that doesn't make you a bad person, it just means you might not be cut out for this job. Politics as vocation is not a venue for people to simply pour out their personal emotional baggage, however genuine and heartfelt. Take a different job.

But most people, including most random Democrats who post on social media, are not professional political operatives, and our own frustration/schadenfreude should not be confused with some sort of official party line. It's one thing to say Democrats need to have message discipline, but that demand is an impossible one if it means preserving "discipline" over every BlueSky account with #resist in the bio.

As for me, perhaps the deepest root of my frustration is my sense that even for the leopard chow, these lessons will not be internalized. The WaPo article, for instance, notes at the outset that the protagonist's own family and loved ones are cheering the very governmental cuts that have destroyed her future. I'm sure they think her firing was a mistake, but it's prompting no broader reassessment. After all, how many times have we seen posts of the form of "I support the goal of eliminating government waste, but my job is important and I'm a hard worker, so I can't believe you would terminate me?" For every one of those posts, I guarantee that the guy you have mind as the example of "government waste" is drafting his own post explaining why his job matters while envisioning you as the right target to fire. The reality is that there just aren't, in the scheme of things, all that many government jobs that are useless or wasteful -- they're part of an important machine that makes society run. But as long as everyone thinks they're exceptional, they'll continue to miss the six-lane expressway starting from their contempt for their peers and ending at their own ruination.

Right after Trump was elected, I predicted this. The day after election day, I wrote of Trump's supporters that:

They will laugh as the leopard eats their neighbor's face, and then some number of them will be stunned, not just that the leopard turns on them, but that the people they were laughing with a moment earlier keep on laughing as it eats their face. There is no actual solidarity here, just an enjoyment of the cruelty and enjoyment of finding oneself on the right side of the cruelty, and there is perverse power in that -- your buddy next to you might get betrayed in an instant and it won't move the needle an inch. They will keep laughing even when their fellows are being hurt, so certainly they will keep laughing straight through our marches and protests and rage.

What are we do to do about this? Even if these people do recoil from the leopard gnawing on their face next election, they'll inevitably exhibit the memory of a goldfish the next a Democrat takes office and the price of eggs goes up 5 cents, or some Facebook meme convinces them that immigrants are going to eat their cat, or they just get bored with living in an era of unprecedented abundance and decide a little performative cruelty will fill their thirst for meaning. I just don't see a way of making the lesson stick with any scalability, and it's maddening.

Again, as a political message, none of this is useable. But that doesn't make the instincts unreasonable. Is it our job to try to win back half-eaten leopard chow, no matter how responsible they are for their own (and all of our) plights? Yes, it is. But nobody can judge us for judging them harshly, or having dim hopes that they'll actually clear the most bare-minimum bar of virtuous citizenship with any consistency going forward. They deserve the scorn they receive.

The Irrelevant Innumeracy of the Swarmed GOP Town Halls

Surely by now you've seen the stories about GOP congressmen, in deep red districts, being absolutely swarmed by angry constituents furious that they're not standing up to Trump, Musk, DOGE, and the buzzsaw attack on hardworking federal employees.

My thesis about this will be twofold. First, there's objectively less to these events than meets the eye. And second, it doesn't matter that there's objectively less to these events than meets the eye, and we should all behave like they're exactly what they appear to be.

Start with the first. The excitement over these protests relates to the sense that anger and outrage over Trump has expanded beyond the blue bubbles and is penetrating even dark red terrain. But the mistake here is something I alluded to in my How To Tokenize with Proportions post. A congressional district where a Republican won by, say, a 66-33 margin is by any measure a dark-red district. But it also is a district where one in three voters voted Democrat. One in three is a lot of people! In a congressional district of 750,000, it's 250,000 people! It is not hard to fill a high school auditorium, particularly if that 250,000 is feeling especially angry and activated.

It's an issue of framing, if you're generous, or innumeracy, if you're not: 33% doesn't feel very common, 1 in 3 feels very common. Politically speaking, the former is closer to accurate, which is why congressional districts where one sees 66/33 margins aren't typically treated as competitive.

But what innumeracy taketh away, innumeracy also giveth. The fact is that most people see a crowd of angry constituents filling an auditorium in a deep-red district and don't start doing math about how easy or hard it is to fill up the space given the baseline number of Democrats around. They just see the crowd. Politics is often a game of perception and of momentum -- people see others in their community and in their spaces expressing anger and fear and frustration, and it validates their own nascent feelings of anger, fear, and frustration. It makes them feel like they're not alone. It encourages them that these sentiments are common in their community, and that they're not weird or outcasts or loners if they feel them too. All of that starts to build a narrative conducive to resistance. And even if it doesn't mean the deepest-red congressional districts will flip blue in 2026, it gets that permission structure going that will make life very difficult for Republicans in more vulnerable seats.

So keep swarming. Keep yelling. Keep sharing those vids. Build up that narrative that people everywhere are mad as hell, and they're ready to fight. In politics, image becomes reality before you know it.

Saturation Ad Air War

One aspect of political culture I very strongly believe in is that most voters' knowledge of political affairs is primarily one of ambiance. They don't know much in the way of facts (what is the inflation rate, has crime gone up or down). They know a "mood". They feel that things are getting better, or worse. They hear a lot that America basically has open borders, or they hear a lot that abortion rights are going away. The connection to reality is pretty well unimportant (we definitely don't have open borders; abortion rights really are under threat). It's the sensation, the steady drumbeat of narrative, that moves them.

To that end, I've long thought that a good progressive billionaire project would be to continually air issue ads that are not tied to a given political race or even an election, but are just part of the backdrop every time one turns on the news or watches Monday Night Football. The goal of these ads should be to make certain hopes, fears, and moods simply part of our backdrop -- something "we heard somewhere." It should not cast itself as expressly political -- an effort to elect this or that politician. In fact, "issue ads" is probably the wrong moniker. It shouldn't present itself as political at all. It should be simply a story, told over and over again, until it seeps into the national subconscious.

What sorts of ads do I have in mind? I pitched one about abortion a few years ago. I had another idea for one about trans and gender non-binary issues:

A family is at home in classic suburbia: mom, dad, and a gender non-conforming adolescent kid. The scene is utterly mundane and ordinary, but with a touch of danger lurking in the background. Mom is cooking, but beside her one can see a newspaper headline announcing the latest right-wing attack on trans kids. Dad is telling a dad joke to the kid (who rolls their eyes), the TV news on mute in the background but the subtitles have a talking head calling families who provided gender-affirming care to their children sexual predators who should be thrown in jail.

Interspersed with each shot, we have a quick cut of heavily armed police massing outside the house. Right as everyone is getting ready for dinner, the door is battered open and the scene goes black. All we hear is the police demanding everyone on the ground, then demanding the child come with them as the family screams frantically. The last we hear is the kid pleading to their parents "don't let them take me!" 

What's the point of the ad? To put people (and particularly suburban parents -- political hell hath no fury like a suburban schoolparent scorned) in a mindset where families are in danger. Maybe their family. Maybe their neighbor's family. There's no lie here -- these are the stakes, and families are in danger. But the point is to prime them with that sensation in advance, so that it's what they immediately think of whenever the Trump administration announces policies that will be all about threatening families.

The ad is just an idea (and nobody wants my advertising ideas). And not all the ads need to be negative, necessarily (though as the opposition party, that's probably going to be the bulk of it). But the broader point is that liberals need to do everything they can to just saturate their narratives into the American bloodstream, not as part of a discrete political campaign, but simply as a background feature of what the world is right now. We can't wait for election season, and we certainly can't wait for an increasingly infirm legacy media to the job for us. These stories should be mainlined into every American home, by any and every medium available, and should start right now.

Conversations with Normies

I enjoy talking to my brother about politics because he is, for lack of a better way of putting it, far more normal than I am. He is not passionate about politics, but he's not ignorant about it either. He pays some measure of attention because he's a good citizen who cares about the world around him, but it's not something he's independently especially interested in. There are, of course, a lot more people like him than there are people like me, even though there are a lot more people like me talking about politics online. So chatting with my brother feels like getting a sense of the pulse of normie America (even though of course he's not necessarily representative).

In terms of ideology, my brother is probably best described as a moderate Democrat. His line for the past several years has been pretty consistent in saying that there is a universe where he could imagine voting Republican, but it is not our universe because he fully recognizes that the Republican Party in America today is fully captured by insane people. 

So there was never any question that he'll be voting blue come November. But we happened to have a chat about his current political outlook on things. I present these not as endorsement or non-endorsement, but simply because what he said may be of interest to a readership who I suspect is (like me, unlike him) very much not of the normie bent.

1. He loves Joe Biden. One of the first things he said was that he's annoyed and frustrated by the notion that Biden is "the lesser of two evils" or a sort of shit sandwich you have to swallow given the alternative. My brother thinks Biden is great! He thinks he's had a tremendously successful presidency! In particular, my brother gave Biden a bunch of credit for lowering political temperatures and trying to pursue actual solutions to problems rather than demagoguing and grandstanding. 

Admittedly, my brother started off as a Biden supporter -- he was his favorite candidate at the outset of the 2020 primary (back when David was deciding between Booker and Warren). But now he wonders if he's really alone in that assessment, because so much of the prevailing narrative is centered around how nobody actually likes Joe Biden, they at best tolerate him. My brother is a loud and proud "I like Biden" guy.

2. He's lost patience with Israel's Gaza campaign. We're both Jewish, and while neither of us is super religious, we've both stayed involved in Jewish life as adults (and unlike me, he's visited Israel). He was obviously repelled by what happened on October 7 and thinks Hamas is a despicable terrorist outfit. Nonetheless, his take on the current status of the conflict in Gaza is that at this stage it feels to him as if it is no longer (if it ever was) about Israel's security, and now is just unconstrained vengeance being taken out upon the Palestinian population. He has no trust in or love for Bibi, and thinks he needs to go.

3. He's interested in Freddie DeBoer. That was, of all the names, the person he said he'd been reading recently whose work had been resonating with him -- didn't agree with all of it, but found him thought-provoking particularly on matters of mental health and "wokeness". I confessed that I hadn't thought about Freddie DeBoer in ages, so I couldn't really react to it. I suggested reading Matt Yglesias' "Slow Boring"; he laughed because Yglesias and DeBoer apparently despise each other even as they (in his mind) didn't seem too far apart when it came to tangible policy beliefs.

4. He's skeptical about the impact of "woke" trends. He doesn't identify with the efforts to destroy trans health care or anything like that (again -- he recognizes the GOP is crazy). But he did express concern about what he described as "wokeness", even though he also said he thought that term was clearly imprecise for what he was speaking of since it also captures plenty of activity he fully approves of. 

At first, I assumed he was talking about certain cringy performative activities that I could imagine being grating to someone of his views. But he emphasized that it wasn't just a matter of performance -- in his space (the non-profit world), he felt as if impactful programs that were doing a lot of good in marginalized communities were getting short-changed as donor priorities redirected towards initiatives that could more easily packaged as messaging DEI values (even if they didn't tangibly improve as many lives in the communities they purported to be uplifting). So his grief was partially an objection to performance, but with a tangible kick. I recommended he read Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else) by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò; he said he had heard of it but hadn't had the chance to read it.

On The Ease of Having Friends With Political Differences

One of the feature creatures of the alt-center scare machine these days has been the alleged unwillingness of "certain" people (read: progressive Gen Z-ers and millennials) to make or keep friendships with persons they disagree with politically. 

That truly awful JILV poll generated stories breathlessly claiming that "two-thirds of progressives and 54 percent of 'very liberal' respondents said they have effectively 'cancelled' a friend or family member because of their political views" (the poll actually asked whether one had "lost a friend, stopped talking to a relative, or grown distant from a colleague because of political opinions or differences?", which is a rather far cry from "effective cancellation", but no matter) is one good example. This column from Samuel Abrams and Pamela Paresky, bemoaning the oversensitivity of college students who don't want to date peers who voted for the opposing 2020 election candidate, is another.

I have to say, I find this line of concern a bit perplexing. As a general matter, it seems incredibly easy for people to make and keep friendships across political difference. For example: this past election those of us who lived in Portland had quite a few ballot issues to vote on, including things like local bond issues, switching from run-off elections to ranked-choice voting, and altering the structure of our city government from a "commissioner" model to multi-member geographically zoned districts. As in all elections, I did my best to research these issues and come to a conclusion on them. But -- while I haven't asked any of my Portland friends or colleagues how they voted on any of these questions -- I can't imagine the possibility of losing relationships if they voted differently than I did. These political differences, it seems, are rather easily overcome by the bonds of friendship.

Now, the trumpeters of the "cancellation" epidemic narrative will surely cry foul here. The political differences they have in mind are not local Portland ballot initiatives; it's pedantic to use them as a falsifying example of the larger "problem". And I agree that these examples are obviously not the cases that someone like Abrams or Paresky or David Bernstein has in mind.

Which means it'd probably be useful to be specific about the actual cases one has in mind.

Consider, for instance, a trans college student. A live political controversy, right now, is whether or not they should have been legally prohibited from getting necessary health care in their teenage years and whether they should have been forcibly ripped away from their parents (who, in turn, should be imprisoned as child abusers) if they tried to provide such treatment. If such a student finds out that one of their "friends" believes that all of that should have happened; and will vote in order to make it more likely that this would happen, can we really say with a straight face that the student is wrong if they sever the friendship? If the friendship is indeed distanced -- and it won't always be, people are complex -- it would be both factually incorrect and uncharitable to the extreme to say that the student has shown an inability to tolerate "political differences", generally. The student surely would not make a similar judgment regarding political differences about the proper top marginal income tax rate. It is a specific "difference" that is beyond the pale for them, and with respect to that specific difference it's hard to say that their judgment isn't reasonable.

There are many classes of vulnerable individuals who face such questions as pertain to live political controversies. Gay and lesbian individuals, who learn a peer "differs" on the subject of whether their marriage should be forcibly dissolved and their very identity re-criminalized and subjected to prison time (both live subjects of political dispute, given emergent threats to Obergefell and Lawrence). If they distance from that relationship, is that really evidence of a broader failure to respect political difference? Undocumented "Dreamer" immigrants, who must reckon with the reality that "I may be torn from the only home I’ve ever known at any moment and a sizeable portion of what I thought was my community will cheer as they drag me off." If they react poorly to that difference, are they really engaging in cancellation?

We are not talking about "political differences" generally. We're talking about a subset of specific differences that pose deep, arguably existential, threats to individuals' lives and well-being. And to the extent there's asymmetry in how often progressives find a live political difference that fall into that category, that might reflect nothing more than an asymmetry in which political camp is overwhelming responsible for that particular type of existentially-threatening "difference." There is not any sustained progressive campaign to make it illegal for, say, Southern Baptists, to get married (and if you are a progressive who does support such a policy, any resulting loss of Southern Baptist friends would be entirely on your head!).

"Not every point of political disagreement can be treated as an existential threat to one's very existence." I could not agree more. Moreover, it seems blatantly obvious that nobody -- even the dreaded progressive Gen-Zers -- thinks otherwise. People have absolutely no problem making and keeping friendships and relationships across political difference, generally. They have a serious problem with certain specific political differences. Those who think that problem, is a problem, should do the courtesy of naming the issues. Then we can assess whether the young woman who was impregnated by rape is wrong to cut ties with the "friend" who says she should be forced to give birth on pain of a prison sentence.

Tell Me Who To Vote For, Portland Edition

It's primary season here in Oregon, and I'm new in town. Consequently, I don't know a ton about local politics here. I'm trying to learn -- I know that homelessness is, by far, the most important issue driving local politics, though I don't have a firm grasp on what the relevant policy divisions are -- but it probably won't happen in time for me to cast a ballot.

So I'll give the races I'm interested in and my preliminary lean, but I am open to more information and persuasion. If you're a Portlander and/or Oregonian, feel free to give me your take and/or efforts at persuasion.

Governor: Tina Kotek.

Of the two major candidates running, Kotek is the more progressive, but she's got a lot of institutional experience as former state house speaker. That's my sweet spot. Plus, the Oregonian endorsed her with the single hesitation that she may have been too ruthless in dealing with state Republicans, which, I have to be honest, I'm not viewing as a downside right now.

State Rep. (38th District): No lean

Daniel Nguyen vs. Neelam Gupta. It seems like Gupta is positioned as the relative progressive to Nguyen's moderate, but I don't have a strong sense of what that means in practice. To be honest, both of their campaign websites were pretty thin. Nguyen's seemed even thinner than Gupta's, but Nguyen seemed to have at least a little more experience. Maybe the tiniest lean towards Gupta, but a stiff breeze could push me the other way.

Bureau of Labor Commissioner: Christina Stephenson

Basing this solely on the Oregonian's endorsement, but they made a good case (and the other candidates they "considered" didn't really wow me).

Multnomah County Commission Chair: Sharon Meieran

A very soft lean here compared to Jessica Vega Pederson. Meieran represents my part of Portland on the city commission, and I like my part of Portland, so she gets some positive feelings off that. She also seemed to have non-platitude plans for dealing with issues like homelessness. Sharia Mayfield is pretty much out for me because she lacks significant political experience. Lori Stegmann doesn't grab me but you're welcome to make your case.

Multnomah County Sheriff: No lean

The Oregonian endorsed Nicole Morrisey O'Donnell, but there doesn't seem to be a lot between her and Derrick Peterson. Very open to persuasion here.

Portland Commissioner (Position 2): Dan Ryan 

Won a special election and now is the incumbent. Seems like a thoughtful guy doing a good job. AJ McCreary seems like the sort of activist-y tinged insurgent candidate that I worry won't actually be effective once in office.

Portland Commissioner (Position 3): Jo Ann Hardesty or Vadim Mozyrsky

Hardesty is the incumbent, and made her name securing some big wins for police accountability. That's worthwhile. But she also seems to have that simplistic activist-y mentality that drives me bonkers, and is limiting her ability to broaden her accomplishments. Simply intoning "it's developers' fault" isn't actually the basis for a policy reform. The Oregonian endorsed Rene Gonzalez, but criminalizing homelessness doesn't actually appeal to me, so he's out. Mozyrsky seems like a boring bureaucratic functionary type, which very much appeals to me, but I have no idea where he actually stands on anything. The Willamette Week's endorsement write-up captures my ambivalence well.

Portland Auditor: Simone Rede

It would take a lot for me to pick an Our Revolution/Green Party type (Rede's opponent, Brian Setzler) when there's a credible alternative in the Democratic field.

Metro Council President: Lynn Peterson

A light lean, but here my bias for experienced incumbents benefits the progressive over the centrist challenger (Alisa Pyszka). Peterson seems to have made some mistakes, but "I'm not her" isn't enough for me to back Pyszka, who seems far too tied to business interests for my tastes.

Metro Councilor, District 6: Duncan Hwang

Absolute slightest of lean here, based on incumbency. Both seem good. The Oregonian endorsed his opponent Terri Preeg Riggsby, but was impressed with both and their reasons for favoring Riggsby over Hwang didn't strike me as compelling.

Finding Agreement Suspicious

Here's a question for my loyal readers: Is there any position you can think of that you support but that, if you hear someone else supports it, you become more suspicious of them politically?

Perhaps intuitively that makes no sense. If you back a given stance, why would you look sideways at someone else who shares your view? But there are circumstances where I imagine it could make sense -- for example, when you have cause to believe most other people who hold your view do so for bad reasons, are using it as a stepping stone to enable policies you don't support, or that the view most commonly is a valid proxy for other positions one strongly opposes.

Imagine, for example, an African-American opponent of affirmative action, who believes that such programs engender White resentment while doing little to help the most disadvantaged in the Black community. Such a person might nonetheless conclude that most White opponents of affirmative action come to their opposition for other, less tasteful motivations, and so view them with political suspicion. If the person is generally liberal otherwise, they might recognize that most affirmative action opponents are politically conservative and that persons who loudly trumpet their opposition to affirmative action often are especially conservative (and even more especially-so on racial issues). Any of these could give cause to view your putative compatriots a bit askance.

One can imagine other circumstances as well. Someone who supports a ban on assault weapons but not a total prohibition on the sale of handguns might believe that many people who back the former do so in order to make the latter more palatable or feasible -- essentially a slippery slope argument. Where one has multi-peaked preferences (e.g., one prefers only an assault weapons ban > no gun ban > complete gun ban), then one might not want to empower who share your support for an assault weapons ban on the theory that they, unlike you, want  to go much further than that (see this article by Eugene Volokh for more on how these mechanisms work).

So I'll pitch the question again: Can you think of any policy areas where this applies to you? Positions that you hold, but where you're suspicious of most other people who claim to hold them? It's an interesting question, I think.

Should I PlagueWatch It?: Alpha House

I'm surprised it took me this long to watch Alpha House -- not only would it seemingly scratch the illusive West Wing itch, but it was the project that took Garry Trudeau away from my beloved Doonesbury. Come to think of it, maybe that's why I didn't watch it.

Alpha House centers on four Republican Senators who live together in a Washington, DC row house (based on real life!). It's sort of like The West Wing, except the Senate instead of the Presidency and Republicans instead of Democrats, and set in "the real world" (Obama is the president during the series, for example). The four main characters actually do a decent job running the gamut of Republican archetypes of the mid-2010s: the smart but probably corrupt one (Robert Bettencourt of Pennsylvania, who also does a good job as a Black Republican); the lazy, coasting off name-recognition one (Gil John Biggs of North Carolina, played to perfection by John Goodman as a former UNC basketball coach); the cluelessly homophobic but possibly closeted one (Louis Laffer of Nevada), and the hyper-ambitious but sex-addicted wunderkind (Andy Guzman of Florida, definitely channeling some Marco Rubio).

Is it good? Yes. It's main drawback is that it was clearly cancelled prematurely. But its two seasons are definitely worth watching. Other thoughts:

• The other main players on the show are the Senators' key staffers, who are all -- in true DC fashion -- overworked and underappreciated. They generally do a good job playing straight man to their bosses' antics, to good effect. The lesbian couple that's not exactly closeted but not exactly out either, given the known politics of their party, is a particularly good touch.
• There's a scene early in the series where a house guest walks in on John Goodman coming out of the shower. It's shot in such a way such that the bare ass of Goodman's character almost certainly is a body double -- which makes me wonder how one casts for that. "Wanted: John Goodman ass lookalike"?
• Janel Moloney, aka Donna Moss, has a fabulous arc as the hyper-conservative Tea Party Senator from North Dakota who carries a gun on Capitol Hill and says her favorite painting is of the British burning down the White House because it symbolizes what she wants to do to government. I don't know if making her Senator from North Dakota was specifically meant to be fan service, but the one cameo scene where she's on a panel with Bradley Whitford and just immediately tells him to "shut up" definitely was. I wonder how many takes it took because she accidentally called him Josh?
• Speaking of the recurring characters, Wanda Sykes is in the series as the quartet's next door neighbor and friend (who is also a Democratic Senator from Illinois). Wanda Sykes really should be in more things.
• We've got just enough distance that some of the Obama-era specific jokes are funny again. I particularly enjoyed the discussion of making the Benghazi committee permanent, so that "future generations" would not be deprived of the opportunity to investigate it.

The End of the Executive's Advantage

I've noticed something this cycle -- or at least I think I have -- that seems to augur a shift in some old presidential conventional wisdom.

The old CW was that Governors and other executive officials had an advantage running for President over Senators and Representatives, because the latter have a voting record one can inevitably comb through to cherry-pick something that sounds bad or controversial.

But this cycle, it seems that its elements of executive experience -- as a district attorney, attorney general, or mayor -- that has created the greatest points of vulnerability for aspiring Democratic candidates. The most damaging hits on Klobuchar and Harris, for instance, have not been Senate votes but rather conduct done as supervising government attorneys. Bloomberg and Buttigieg, of course, only have executive experience, and their programs and policies as mayor have haunted each of them (but especially Bloomberg) throughout the campaign. The fact that supervising executives can be tagged with buck-stops-here responsibility for the acts of subordinates (and often are legally required to sign off -- however notionally -- on policies that are in practice taken far below their level), makes it easy to find examples of dodgy or abusive behavior across an entire governmental bureaucracy (a legal argument here, a programmatic decision there) and tie them to the executive official.

I'm not entirely sure what is causing this shift. One possibility is that growing polarization means that politicians have largely given up on getting bills passed via compromise. Whereas in the past Senators and Representatives might have been willing to bite the bullet and vote for imperfect bills that muster bipartisan support by having something for everyone to love and to hate, now there is little incentive to ever vote for something that contains politically unpopular elements just to "get something done".

Another possibility is that actions that are especially within the ambit of executive officials -- most notably criminal justice -- have gone from politically "safe" (nobody ever lost an election by being too tough on crime) to politically precarious (we can now totally imagine folks losing election because they were too tough on crime).

Or maybe there is no so such shift and I'm making it up (or maybe it's a shift that exists in the primaries but will fade come the general). But it seems to me that in this primary, at least, we're seeing far fewer shots fired over this vote, and far more fired over that program. And it's maybe no accident that Senators (or, in Biden's case, former Senators) are dominating the remaining Democratic field (while nary a governor is to be seen). The conventional wisdom that voting records will sink long-standing Senators' presidential ambitions is looking pretty frail.

The Chaos Principle

The "best paper" in APSA's political psychology section this year was an exploration of the role of "chaos incitement" in contemporary politics, with particular reference to the rise of Trumpism (H/T).

The authors describe “chaos incitement” as a “strategy of last resort by marginalized status-seekers,” willing to adopt disruptive tactics. Trump, in turn, has consistently sought to strengthen the perception that America is in chaos, a perception that has enhanced his support while seeming to reinforce his claim that his predecessors, especially President Barack Obama, were failures.

Petersen, Osmundsen and Arceneaux find that those who meet their definition of having a “need for chaos” express that need by willingly spreading disinformation. Their goal is not to advance their own ideology but to undermine political elites, left and right, and to “mobilize others against politicians in general.” These disrupters do not “share rumors because they believe them to be true. For the core group, hostile political rumors are simply a tool to create havoc.”

This isn't purely a right-wing phenomena -- Bernie Sanders also carries some appeal to this cadre, and surely it describes much of what draws people to Corbynism in the UK -- but it does tend to benefit the right more. And that's actually a really important observation when considering how to appraise this sort of rhetoric when it does appear on the left. Generalized fulminations whereby "all politicians" -- left or right, Democrat or Republican -- are bought, corrupt, in the pocket of big businesses, indistinguishably in thrall to the interests of a narrow elite, help Sanders-types internally in intra-progressive debates, but help conservatives generally across a wider partisan system.

This generates a serious problem, because a quite viable and attractive strategy for left insurgents to win within the Democratic Party -- focusing on allegations that the DNC is corrupt, primaries are rigged, most Democratic pols are basically indistinguishable from Trump anyway -- is likely to prove cataclysmic for progressive chances in general elections. The reason isn't, as it's sometimes portrayed, that the party will have moved "too far to the left". Rather, it's because the political stylings and psychological orientation of this mode of argument, which more-or-less indiscriminately targets established institutions (including everything from party leadership to academic communities to scientific consensus), is one that structurally favors conservatives over progressives.

Any Institutionalist Non-Joiners About?

Here's an interesting contradiction about myself that I've long been aware of:

Politically, I'm very liberal. Temperamentally, I'm extremely conservative. I hate change, I love routine, and I'm so loss-averse it borders on being actually debilitating.

I don't think that combination is necessarily rare, but I always found it an interesting juxtaposition.

But there's another internal tension within myself that I only just realized, and I'm curious if anyone else identifies with it:

I'm very much an institutionalist (that is, I believe in "working inside the system" and think that our major social institutions, even when deeply problematic, can be reformed rather that needing to be burnt to the ground and rebuilt anew). But I'm very much not a joiner.

For example, while my college didn't have a Hillel, it did have a Jewish Students Club (and interest house), which I had relatively minimal contact with. I wasn't averse to it, and I'd go to events and stuff, but I had no formal affiliation with it. I never joined CarlDems, or any of the other political-activist groups on campus (then, as now, my political engagement was done almost exclusively by writing -- I was a columnist for our campus liberal magazine, the Carleton Progressive).

As an adult, I've never really been interested in becoming a "Jewish Professional" (working for the ADL or whatnot). I'm extremely reticent to sign petitions or campaigns, and I've never wanted to run for office. That said, I'm at root a defender of the major liberal institutions in America and in the Jewish community -- the ADLs, the Democratic Party, and so on. I don't always agree with them. But I basically think their problems can be reformed from the inside -- and accordingly I'm generally skeptical of organizations and movements I see as "insurgent" in nature.

Note that I'm not saying that this particular combination -- institutionalist non-joiner -- is a healthy or productive one. Indeed, now that I think about it it seems pretty quiescent (though it's weird to think of myself as politically non-engaged). But I'm more curious if this basic standpoint is one other people relate to.

Trendlines! (Almost) 50 State Edition

In politics as in anything else, one does not want to be caught fighting the last war. And so, reflecting on the last election, it's worth asking not where the states currently are on the red vs. blue continuum, but where they're going. What are the trendlines?

Note: A trend is just that -- a trend. A state can be "trending" blue but still be quite red, or vice versa. Nonetheless, I'm not including states that are, for lack of a better word, "boring" -- so overwhelmingly and consistently preferring one party or the other that it doesn't really matter of any side is marginally improving its prospects.

* * *

Alaska -- Blue: While still a pretty reliably Republican state, Democrats have been quietly making the last several congressional elections close. Rep. Don Young (R) may have served since 1973, but he hasn't gotten over 55% of the vote since 2012. An extremely robust independent streak (allowing, e.g., Lisa Murkowski to win a write-in Senate campaign) also makes Alaska a little more complicated than your average red bear.

Arizona -- Blue: Kyrsten Sinema's Senate victory caps off the official entry of Arizona into "purple" territory (strong performance on the House side too!).

Arkansas -- Red: Hey, remember how Bill Clinton was from Arkansas? That was a long time ago.

California -- Blue: California's leaned blue for awhile, but it wasn't that long ago that some Republicans could at least compete (remember the Governator?). Not today. The sweep of Orange County House seats cements the complete collapse of the Golden State's GOP.

Colorado -- Blue: It seems like Colorado almost leap-frogged over "purple" to go straight to "light blue". Cory Gardner has a massive target on his back come 2020.

Florida -- ???: Florida's a tough nut to crack. It was probably the purplest state to almost completely resist the blue wave this year -- the GOP performed about as well here in 2018 as it did in 2016. That's testament to (a) better-than-average performance among Latinos and (b) really cranking up the dial on rural Whites -- a good recipe for GOP success. The wildcard is the passage of Amendment Four, which significantly relaxed Florida's brutally draconian felon disenfranchisement laws. Most states, that wouldn't be enough to make a difference -- but Florida is close enough (and its felon disenfranchisement rates racially skewed enough) that it could matter.

Georgia -- Blue: Slowly but steadily, Georgia is getting competitive. But the emphasis is on "slowly". Brian Kemp's defeat of Stacy Abrams -- without even needing a run-off -- shows that there's still a ways to go before Democrats really put the Peach State in play.

Indiana -- Red: Obama managed to win here in 2008, but that seems like eons ago now. Indiana was always the most conservative of the rust belt states, but it's really tacked hard right over the past few cycles.

Iowa -- ???: Democrats won three of four House seats and almost managed to flip the fourth (a feat which, to be fair, reflects more on King's unique awfulness than any general Democratic competitiveness in western Iowa). But we lost what seemed to be a winnable governor's race, and rural midwestern states seem to be inching right. Hard to say which way the winds are blowing, but if you forced me to guess I'd say Iowa is more likely to get redder than bluer.

Kansas --- Blue: Again, it's a slow process, and not likely to show up on any presidential races anytime soon. But Democrats are starting to consistently compete in Kansas House races again, and, of course, we just took the governor's mansion.

Maine -- Red: Maine still has a decidedly blue lean. But its rural environs aren't as decisively blue as they used to be, and this is still a state that -- however flukishly -- gave Paul LePage two terms as governor.

Michigan -- ???: Michigan snapped back hard into the Democratic column in 2018, but it's still worth asking whether it will join a broader midwestern drift rightward. Debbie Stabenow's closer than expected Senate race against John James (she won 52-45) suggests that there's still plenty of fight left in Wolverine Republicans.

Minnesota -- Red: Republicans flipped two congressional seats from blue-to-red this cycle, and both were in Minnesota. They were washed out two Democratic gains in the suburbs, but there's no question Republicans have been consistently improving their performances here over the past few years. They may not be able to touch Amy Klobuchar, but one day Rep. Colin Peterson (D) is going to draw a real challenger and then it's quite likely Minnesota will have an even D/R congressional delegation.

Missouri -- Red: Time was Missouri was a national bellwether. No more: it's pretty firmly in the red camp these days.

Montana -- Blue: Jon Tester's best performance yet is buoyed by growth in the western -- and more liberal -- half of the state.

Nebraska -- ???: Democrats have been wondering if Omaha might give them an opening, but Kara Eastman actually did worse in her 2018 race against Rep. Don Bacon than Brad Ashford did in 2016. Yes, Ashford has the advantage of (one term of) incumbency, but 2018 was a much better year than 2016 was. The rest of the state remains ruby red.

Nevada -- Blue: The American west/southwest is probably the area where we're seeing the most decisive Democratic momentum, and Nevada -- where Harry Reid helped build a formidable Democratic machine -- is at the forefront of that. Like Colorado, Nevada seems to have jumped straight past "purple" and into "light blue".

New Hampshire -- ???: Like much of New England, New Hampshire seems to be consolidating blue a bit, but the Granite State in particular is notoriously politically volatile. Gov. Chris Sununu's (R) 53/46 re-election win was a bit closer than expected though.

New Mexico -- Blue: Of all the southwestern states, New Mexico has the longest standing blue roots, so in terms of "trend" it's probably moved less than some of its neighbors.

North Carolina -- ???: A few years ago, there was a lot of hope in the southeastern United States -- Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida -- as the big growth area for the Democratic Party. Looking back, it's been a mixed bag. The fact that the North Carolina legislature has gerrymandered itself to hell and back and has a questionable commitment to the entire concept of "democracy" isn't helping matters, but voters have put a kibosh on some of their worst instincts.

North Dakota -- Red: Do you know that Barack Obama kept North Dakota to a single digit margin in 2008? That feels like a long time ago. Goodbye Heidi Heitkamp -- you'll be missed.

Ohio -- Red: As non-college educated White voters have shifted red, things have gotten a lot harder for team blue in the Buckeye State. Sherrod Brown was a big bright spot in an otherwise dim Democratic performance this year.

Pennsylvania -- ???: "Pittsburgh in the west, Philadelphia in the east, and Alabama in the middle." Pennsylvania is tough to characterize. On the one hand, of all the "blue wall" Trump wins in 2016, PA was the most surprising, and Democrats performed well here in 2018. On the other hand, both the "Pittsburgh" and "Alabama" portions of Pennsylvania seem like the sort of places that could continue a red-ward trend -- albeit one perhaps offset by the bluing of greater Philadelphia.

Texas -- Blue: It's easy to overread Beto O'Rourke's performance this year -- which to my mind was equal parts (a) Texas getting bluer, (b) Beto being a really good candidate, (c) 2018 being a good Democratic year, and (d) everyone hating Ted Cruz. But still "a" is a real part of that story. I wouldn't characterize Texas as "purple" yet, but it's definitely moving in that direction. And importantly, Democrats are making serious plays in some of the suburbs.

Virginia -- Blue: The only southeastern state which has decisively taken a turn in the Democratic direction is Virginia. Virginia's DC suburbs are starting to catch up to their Maryland neighbors as deep blue pools, and Democrats are also performing decently downstate too.

West Virginia -- Red: No region of America has shifted more decisively towards the GOP than Appalachia, and no state is more Appalachian than West Virginia. Puts Joe Manchin's victory in perspective, though.

Wisconsin -- ???: Beating Scott Walker was sweet, and Tammy Baldwin had little trouble winning reelection to the Senate. But the midwest still seems to me to be a troublespot for the Democrats -- it's hard to imagine that if Minnesota is pivoting right, that Wisconsin will buck them and move left.

Post-Op Thoughts on Tonight's Elections

With one major exception -- the Kansas Republican gubernatorial primary -- most of the big races from tonight have been called. The biggest, of course, is the special election in the Ohio 12th, where Republican Troy Balderson looks to have just eked out a victory over Democrat Danny O'Connor to keep this seat red. That about exhausts the good news for the GOP, though -- a sub-1% win in an ancestrally Republican district that voted for Trump by double-digits can hardly be thought of as good news. If the country swings the way this district did, the Democrats take back the House by a comfortable margin.

That's the obvious takeaway. But what else have we learned tonight?

• O'Connor improved on Hillary Clinton's numbers pretty much everywhere in the district (save Balderson's base of Muskingum County) -- which you kind of have to, in order turn a double-digit deficit into a near-dead heat. But where he really outperformed is in juicing turnout in the most Democratic part of the district: Franklin County, home to The Ohio State University. What does that mean? Well, on the one hand it supports those who argue that the route to Democratic success lies in exciting the core base rather than chasing swing voters. But on the other hand, it also suggests that the core base is perfectly happy to get energized about a relative moderate like O'Connor (at least in the right district).

• The other tea leaf we're seeing is that Democrats are casting more ballots in these primaries than Republicans, even in locales that have generally been thought of as Democratic stretches. So far, more Democrats than Republicans have cast ballots in the WA-03 and WA-08 primaries, and are tight in the WA-05 -- all GOP districts (Reps. Jamie Herrera-Beutler and Cathy McMorris Rodgers hold the WA-03 and WA-05, respectively, while in the WA-08 Dino Rossi will be looking to hold retiring Rep. Dave Reichert's seat). Ditto the MO-02, where incumbent Rep. Ann Wagner was thought to be a tough, if reachable, target for Team Blue.

• Gretchen Whitmer's victory over Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan's Democratic gubernatorial primary shows what should be obvious: sometimes Sanders-style progressives win primaries, and sometimes they don't. Democratic Party voters are neither implacably opposed to left-wing candidates nor are they congenitally averse to them.

• What might be true, though, is that there is genuine progressive energy right now in big cities, especially around criminal justice issues. Ferguson City Councilor Wesley Bell's upset ouster of longtime St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch (he who unsuccessfully prosecuted the Michael Brown shooting) is the under-the-radar Big Deal of the day. I also think we can slot in Rashida Tlaib's likely victory in the race to replace Rep. John Conyers in the Detroit-based MI-13. If her lead holds, Tlaib, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, will become the first Muslim woman in Congress (she's also a J Street endorsee). Congrats to her!

• Finally, Missouri voters soundly rejected proposed "right-to-work" anti-union legislation, overturning the legislatively enacted bill by a crushing 2-1 margin. There's been a noticeable trend of union and working-class victories in some traditionally red-territories (think the teachers' strikes in Kentucky, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Arizona), and this seems like further evidence of a shifting tide on the issue.

Why Is Montgomery County Immune to Money in Politics?

The Democratic primary for the Montgomery County (MD) Executive race was a nail-biter this year, pitting progressive County Councilor Marc Elrich against business and political outsider David Blair. But -- pending a potential recount -- it looks like Elrich won the race by less than 100 votes.

Elrich was backed by the Democratic Socialists of America and other left-leaning groups, and they're claiming another victory. Blair, for his part, dumped almost three million dollars of his own money into the race only to come up short (Elrich chose to use public financing).

It's striking to see someone with that much of a financial edge lose a race like this. And it's not the first time Montgomery County Democrats have passed on well-financed candidates.

In 2016, businessman David Trone spent a record-setting $13.2 million dollars of his own money in the Democratic primary for the 8th congressional district, which largely encompasses Montgomery County, only to lose to American University Law Professor Jamie Raskin.  Raskin ran as the most progressive candidate in his 2016 primary race, and he's lived up to that label by becoming (according to Progressive Punch) the single-most liberal member of the entire House delegation.
(Trone, for his part, trotted northwest to the open 6th congressional district, where he just secured the Democratic nomination for 2018).

And that 8th district seat? It was open because its former occupant, Chris Van Hollen, made the jump to the U.S. Senate. And Van Hollen, for his part, won his initial 2002 Democratic primary over Mark Shriver (of the Kennedy Shrivers) despite being outraised 2:1.

Montgomery County is one of the wealthiest counties in the country, with a median household income of over $100,000. The consistent success of progressive Democrats beating back better-funded but more centrist foes makes for an interesting contrast to the claim that affluent suburbs will serve as a drag on moving the Democratic Party to the left.

Maybe this is just a series of anecdotes. But it sure seems that Montgomery County seems uniquely resistant to being swamped by big dollar candidates. Assuming that's right, what gives MoCo this rare immunity?

This is outside my area of political science. But here are some possibilities worth exploring:

• Diversity: Montgomery County is far more racially diverse than it is often given credit for. It is now a majority-minority county, though non-Hispanic Whites remain a plurality (44% non-Hispanic White, 20% Black, 20% Latino, and 16% Asian). That alone often correlates to a leftier-lean, and potentially more suspicion of big spenders in politics.
• Education: Montgomery County ranks seventh in the country in terms of residents with college degrees; third in the country for graduate degrees. It's possible that more educated voters are less effected by the boons one can buy with big money.
• Political proximity: Montgomery County comprises the northwest suburbs of DC, meaning that it has a lot of government workers and thus a potentially unique level of political literacy. That could translate to greater levels of political engagement, counteracting availability effects that emerge from carpet-bombing advertising strategies.

Everybody's Terrible ... But Maybe Not THAT Terrible

The Huffington Post has a new story up on how altering who is said to support a given policy changes how persons of different partisan persuasions register their opinions. So saying that "universal health care" is a Donald Trump-approved position makes Democrats less likely to support it and Republicans more so; attributing it to Barack Obama has the opposite effect.

For someone like me who is interested in how cultural affinities construct political beliefs, this is an important topic. That notwithstanding, I think the HuffPo article is potentially misleading in at least two respects. The first is the title -- "Republicans Like Obama's Ideas Better When They Think They're Donald Trump's" -- which implies this is a Republican problem when in reality (as the article makes clear) it is true of partisans of either party.

The second problem, though, challenges just how far we can take the implications of these findings. The issue is that while saying someone supports "universal health care" or "affirmative action" does tell us something, it doesn't tell us all that much. There are, after all, many different ways one might operationalize support for universal health care or affirmative action. And it is reasonable for a conservative to believe they are more likely to favor a Donald Trump-style instantiation, and are less likely to find Obama's version amenable (and vice versa). So for that reason, it is not entirely odd, or purely a matter of partisan hackery, that party identity affects how one responds to a question like "Do you agree or disagree with [Obama/Trump] about universal health care?"

None of this is to discount the point that cultural identity (here taking the form of party allegiance) plays a substantial role all its own. The literature supporting such an inference is robust, and this fits nicely into that puzzle. But it is worth taking this particular article with a grain of salt -- two grains, since its conclusions line up with those I generally share.

New York Primaries: Home of the Anti-Semite?

Daily Kos Elections has a good rundown of today's primary races (in New York, Colorado, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, and Utah). Most notable (and disturbing) is the possibility that not one but two raging bigots could score major party nominations in New York house races.

We've already talked about David Duke-endorsed Charles Barron in NY-08, where he's running to replace retiring Rep. Ed Towns (D). State Assm. Hakeem Jeffries is the establishment choice here and has vastly outraised Barron, but Barron has scored a few union endorsements as well as that of Towns (who was unhappy at lackluster establishment support for him back when Jeffries was mounting a primary challenge to him). I've seen no polling on the race, but there are reports that New York Dems are "panicking" about a potential Barron victory. Even if Barron does pull off the upset, though, it isn't over -- Jeffries is also on the Working Families Party line and will thus be on the general election ballot regardless.

Meanwhile, over in the NY-17, two Republicans are looking to challenge Rep. Nita Lowey (D). The establishment choice is hedge fund manager and Rye town supervisor Joe Carvin. But he's facing a surprisingly stern test from White supremacist and anti-Semite Jim Russell, who scored 38% of the vote when he was the Republican nominee for this seat in 2010 (despite official GOP disavowals of his candidacy after his racist views became known). With relatively high name recognition from his previous run, Republicans too are a bit nervous about what election night might bring.

Oh, the Empire State. What will you bring us next?

UPDATE: This is a stellar short profile piece on Barron, explaining where he gets his support. It's a mix of an old core of 60s-style pan-African radicals (who love that he does things like speak out in favor of Mugabe), coupled with an indefatigable focus on local issues -- combating drug gangs, cleaning up neighborhoods, attending local labor protests -- that has made him a respected figured amongst his constituents who couldn't care less about international pan-African liberation.

Lots of radicals with global visions flameout because they don't actually care about the community's they purport to represent. Barron appears to have enough energy to keep an eye on both prizes, and together it makes for a potent and dangerous combination.

Tempers Fugit

Over the past few days, we've seen a hard push back from the right against the notion that a ruling by the Supreme Court overturning the Affordable Care Act would severely damage the court's legitimacy. Indeed, they say, it is that very insinuation from the left that is problematic -- it would have the Court bow before a pressure campaign in opposition to what they think is the correct constitutional ruling. By definition, any consideration of these "legitimacy" concerns is inherently illegitimate -- as Ilya Somin puts it, it would have the Court "engage in genuinely political decision-making in order to avoid the mere appearance of it."

But I think this outlook doesn't really account for the argument the left is making and how they think -- not without justification -- that an anti-ACA ruling would be purely the result of politics, not law. From a liberal vantage point, the reason it is so hard to take the anti-ACA argument seriously as a matter of principle is simple: The structure of the ACA was originally a Republican innovation, the GOP's answer to Hillarycare, most associated with Mitt Romney. At that point in time, its constitutionality was not remotely controversial. The only things that have changed from now until then are (a) it became a Democratic plan rather than a Republican plan and (b) Republicans have staged a multi-year temper tantrum declaring it (much like everything else the Obama administration does) as a reincarnation of the Khrushchev administration. Given that, it is a very plausible belief that those factors (that it is an identifiably Democratic plan, and that Republicans have thrown a massive hissy fit about it) are the key variables in transitioning the anti-mandate argument from "off the wall" to "on the wall".

Consequently, in making the legitimacy arguments, liberals are trying to have a debiasing effect -- in essence, telling the Court that "were this not a flagship liberal law bitterly opposed by Republicans, you would not find this even remotely controversial. To the extent that you think this is even a live issue, it is likely a result of the underlying political currents, not legal argumentation." To be sure, I'm not arguing that someone like Randy Barnett only thinks the ACA is unconstitutional because its a high-profile Democratic agenda item which Republicans oppose. I am saying that were it for not those things, Randy Barnett would be another Richard Epstein -- a very smart guy whose opinions on the Constitution rarely enter the same time zone as mainstream legal practice. Randy Barnett's opinions are genuine, but they're only mainstream because he's riding a wave of Republican fury which is entirely political.

To buttress this point, imagine an alternative history.

It's early fall of 2008. The McCain campaign is floundering, and the selection of Sarah Palin as VP is widely seen as a disaster. Privately, Republicans have already written off the 2008 election. Moreover, while Democrats already control the House and Senate, it looks like they will entrench those gains even more on Obama's coattails. At this point, the order of the day is damage control.

Congressional Republicans confer. They know that one important Democratic policy priority is universal health care. With a huge mandate and swollen majorities, Republicans are worried that Democrats will be able to push forward the plan of their choice -- government-run, single payer health care. In addition to ideological opposition, Republicans are worried that this will give Democrats ownership over yet another flagship governmental program.

So they decide to get out in front of the issue. Congressional Republicans decide to put forward their own plan, modeled on Romneycare, with an individual mandate to buy private health insurance. Democratic leaders are surprised and taken aback, but are willing to negotiate. After all, the plan isn't that different from that put forward by the Obama campaign. More to the point, many Democrats have bitter memories of the 1990s health care fight, and do not care to die on the same hill twice in one go around. With a slumping economy, many Democrats would rather Obama be able to focus his political capital on stimulus and other job-creating measures, and don't want him to get bogged down in what could be an endless and resource-draining health care fight.

Of course, plenty of Democrats want to hold out for single-payer, and plenty of Republicans are opposed to any further government involvement in health care at all. Still, a moderate middle position manages to gain a working majority. And so, with minor tweaks, a law substantially similar to the ACA passes Congress with bipartisan support (albeit with opposition on both flanks).

If the ACA had been passed this way -- not with universal acclaim, but also not with partisan acrimony, and not associated as the main accomplishment of a politician Republicans had sworn to destroy, does the ACA get struck down? No. Does it come close to being struck down? No again. Indeed, I daresay it would not have even reached the Supreme Court. Of course some would still make arguments that the ACA was unconstitutional, but their views would be relegated to obscure corners of academia and libertarian think tanks (I don't mean this as an insult -- I sit in an obscure corner of academia, after all). In the courts and in the mainstream, the mandate would be viewed the same way it was viewed in the 1990s -- an easy case, raising no particularly controversial points of commerce clause jurisprudence and not capturing either the public or legal imagination.

And so we come back to my key thesis -- this case is only a "serious" case because of politics. Conservative Justices who are thinking about striking down the law should be rightfully made aware of the possibility, if not the likelihood, that their beliefs about the constitutionality of the ACA are being influenced in large part by these underlying political currents, and they should think quite critically about the degree to which their intuition that the law is unconstitutional is purely a "legal" one, or is subtly, unconsciously influenced by their surrounding political milieu. And the law is struck down, given the causal story I'm putting forward, I think liberals will be quite justified in believing that the decision is political -- not in the sense that conservative justices are self-consciously serving the interests of the GOP, but in the sense that the understanding of the constitution's requirements shifted almost entirely due to changes in substantive political positions, rather than "principled" beliefs about the scope of the commerce clause.

Now, I'm talking a lot about debiasing here -- this idea that we should make conservative Justices aware of the possibility, if not the likelihood, that they would not be seriously entertaining striking down this law were it not for the underlying political flow of the issue. Which of course raises the question -- shouldn't liberal Justices ask themselves the same question? And the answer is: yes, of course. But it's also relatively easily answered -- liberal judges tend to have an expansive view of commerce clause powers across the board. They aren't any more likely to strike down "conservative" laws which allegedly exceed commerce clause boundaries (see Raich). Had Republicans won the day in the 1990s and gotten their health care proposal passed, it would not have gotten any negative votes from the liberal justices. There might be other cases where liberal justices have to be more alert to the potential of political bias, but this doesn't seem like one of them.

Finally, with regard to the "actual" legitimizing or delegitimizing impact of the Court's decision. I have no idea what the reaction of the public will be to an anti-ACA ruling. It is true that polls demonstrate that most Americans dislike the ACA and think it's unconstitutional (though, of course, most Americans aren't trained lawyers and have no idea what makes something constitutional or not). On the other hand, most polls also demonstrate that most Americans like the individual provisions of the ACA. More to the point, public opinion is a fickle thing. It's been pushed to the right on this issue by loud and uncompromising conservative declarations that the ACA is a new Marxism. Paired against tepid defenses from the left, the right's greater passion gives the impression that they have the better of the argument.

An anti-ACA opinion will undoubtedly cause an explosion of anger from the left, and it will be interesting to see how the public reacts to that. If there is one thing that has been demonstrated over the past few years, it's that if a large group of people can be mad enough and loud enough for long enough, they can do a surprisingly good job of rallying the center. It's part of the reason why we're seeing such stark political polarization, and I don't think it's a good thing, but it's also a spiral I'm not sure we can escape from.

Influential Roundup

I had class today, and one of my students remarked that the Derrick Bell piece I assigned (Serving Two Masters: Integration Ideals and Client Interests in School Desegregation Litigation, 85 Yale L.J. 470 (1976)) was one of his favorites of the year. Of course it was -- Bell was a brilliant thinker who will be missed.

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Rush Limbaugh won't apologize to LRA victims after defending the terrorist cult group as simply a group of Christians that Obama wanted to oppress.

Tom Friedman assesses Barack Obama's foreign policy successes and failures.

The momentum to recall Scott Walker may have stalled, but it is still looking like a razor-tight race.

Some people have promoted this attack on nation-states as "the idea that will not die", but I'm supremely unconvinced. It is hardly the case that multi-ethnic states -- even those without weak governmental structures -- have been paragons of stability and harmony. And there are plenty of post-national movements that still have quite their share of blood on their hands.

San Francisco is a very, very strange place.

85-year old state senator releases a Rocky ad. Oh for cute.

Re: Occupy DC: "When the Jews show up, you know it's serious."

The mystery of why Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is seen as some sort of wonk, rather than a nutjob hack, endures.