Trump Lies About South Africa

Our forthcoming book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is off to an ominous start.  His dishonesty is even more intense than in his first term.

Riley Mellen and Aric Toler at NYT:

In a White House meeting on Wednesday, President Trump showed President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa a social media video of a rural road lined with white crosses and hundreds of vehicles.

Mr. Trump told Mr. Ramaphosa that the footage showed “burial sites” of “over 1,000” white farmers in South Africa.

A New York Times analysis found that the footage instead showed a memorial procession on Sept. 5, 2020, near Newcastle, South Africa. The event, according to a local news website, was for a white farming couple in the area who the police said had been murdered in late August of that year.

The crosses were planted in the days ahead of the event and were later removed.

The misrepresentation of the footage took place during a stunning meeting in which Mr. Trump made false claims about a genocide against white farmers. Mr. Trump dimmed the lights to play the footage, presenting it as evidence of racial persecution against white South Africans.

Bill McCarthy at Yahoo:

US President Donald Trump brandished a stack of printed articles at the White House Wednesday that he claimed documented a genocide taking place against white people in South Africa.

Mixed into the deck of papers he unveiled before South African leader Cyril Ramaphosa, however, was a months-old blog post featuring a photo from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"Death of people, death, death, death, horrible death, death," Trump said as he flipped through the headlines, which he said were published in "the last few days."

House Elections

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.

Hans Nichols and Stef W. Kight at Axios:

The House GOP's worst fears are being confirmed, after they privately sounded the alarm all summer about getting outgunned.

Why it matters: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y) and his allies are outspending Republicans in nine of the 10 most expensive House races of the cycle.Still, seven of the most expensive seats are currently held by Democrats, bolstering the GOP's view that they are on offense in 2024.

Money won't decide who controls of Congress, but it provides a clear advantage.

By the numbers: In the 10 most expensive races, the candidates, parties and outside super PACs are on track to spend $283 million in TV and digital ads, according to data compiled by AdImpact. More money could be dropping.

Nicholas Fandos at NYT:

Representative Mike Lawler of New York wore blackface as part of a Halloween costume when he was a college student almost two decades ago, according to photographs recently obtained by The New York Times.

The images, taken around October 2006, show a 20-year-old Mr. Lawler at a campus social gathering dressed as Michael Jackson. He is wearing a black shirt and a red jacket and, in one photo, is striking a signature Jackson dance pose. His face has also been visibly darkened.

Kids do stupid things, but this is the more disturbing part:

In 2005, as a high school senior, Mr. Lawler flew from New York to California to attend parts of Jackson’s criminal trial. The pop star had been charged with molesting a 13-year-old boy at his Neverland Ranch; the case ended in acquittal.

J. Randy Taraborrelli, a Jackson biographer, helped get Mr. Lawler into the courtroom and recalled in his book that the young fan had been “so disgusted” by testimony against Jackson “that he couldn’t help but mutter something derogatory under his breath.” Mr. Lawler was removed from the courtroom, according to Mr. Taraborrelli’s biography, “Michael Jackson: The Magic, the Madness, the Whole Story.”

No doubt the Lawler revelation was the result of oppo.  At NPR, Deirdre Walsh reports on the coordinated campaign in New York State:

Gillibrand, Hochul, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and state party leaders have opened 40 offices in seven House districts and hired 100 full-time staffers. Republicans have just five similar "battle station" offices.

Democrats linked state and local party operations. That effort has allowed them to make over 2 million contacts with voters between knocking on doors and phone calls, according to a spokeswoman for Hochul.

The strategy focuses on a more sophisticated get-out-the-vote effort, but it also includes going on offense on the issues that hurt the party the most two years ago — crime and immigration.

 

 

 

The Politics of Race

Our latest book is Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Our next book will look at the 2024 race.  Kamala Harris is a woman of mixed-race ancestry.  Trump has a history of exploiting racial division.

He is playing a double game here.  On the one hand, he has questioned her Black identity, both in his remarks to the National Association of Black Journalists and in a social media post:

In polls earlier this year, Trump was overperforming among Black men.  It is likely that he was trying to hold onto his gains by convincing a segment of Black voters that Harris is inauthentic.  Like Barack Obama, she is Black but not descended from people held to slavery in the United States.

So far Harris is surging among Black survey respondents but Trump is still doing better than previous GOP candidates.  Some surveys suggest that young Black voters are more conservative than their elders.

The other side of the game is a naked appeal to old-fashioned white racism.  See below.  How can the campaign do both?  One word-siloing.  The decline of the MSM and the rise of hyperspecialized online media make it possible to get away with sending conflicting messages to different groups.

The Trump campaign went full racist. wow. pic.twitter.com/qJc9r4ITHf

— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) August 13, 2024

Is Trump Okay?

 Our most recent book is Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Less than 48 hours after Biden's withdrawal, Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee.  And in just a few weeks, the race has changed. Trump thought the age issue would be his greatest asset.  Now that he is facing an opponent 18 years younger and increasingly showing his 78 years, it has become one of his greatest weaknesses.

 Christopher Cadelago at Politico:

The man who almost crashed in a helicopter with Donald Trump told POLITICO Trump confused him with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown — despite the former president’s repeated insistence it was Brown.

It was Nate Holden, a former city councilman and state senator from Los Angeles, who said in an exclusive interview late Friday that he remembers the near-death experience well. He and others believe it happened sometime in 1990.

“Willie is the short Black guy living in San Francisco,” Holden said. “I’m a tall Black guy living in Los Angeles.

“I guess we all look alike,” Holden told POLITICO, letting out a loud laugh.

Trump said that his helicopter companion told him terrible things about Kamala Harris.  Mr. Holden certainly did not do so.  In 1990, he would not have even known about a newly-hired deputy district attorney in a county more than 300 miles away.

Maggie Haberman at NYT:

“We have the flight records of the helicopter,” Mr. Trump insisted Friday, saying the helicopter had landed “in a field,” and indicating that he intended to release the flight records, before shouting that he was “probably going to sue” over the Times article.

When asked to produce the flight records, Mr. Trump responded mockingly, repeating the request in a sing-song voice. As of early Friday evening, he had not provided them.

Mr. Trump has a history of claiming he will provide evidence to back up his claims but ultimately not doing so.

Donald Trump unravels, calling NYT reporter @maggieNYT "Maggot Hag-er-man" after he was called out for lying being in a helicopter crash.

Trump's campaign has always been about retribution and revenge. pic.twitter.com/jWkx7SbgjJ

— American Bridge 21st Century (@American_Bridge) August 10, 2024

Trump's Luck Abruptly Ran Out

Our most recent book is Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Less than 48 hours after Biden's withdrawal, Kamala Harris became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee.  She also ended his lucky streak.

Brent D. Griffiths at Business Insider:

Trump had the greatest summer of his political life. After years of jokes about Republican infighting, the Democratic Party was truly in disarray as panic spread about President Joe Biden's fitness to lead the ticket.

National polls showed that Trump was in the best position of any Republican presidential hopeful in more than two decades. Many Democrats were worried about a blowout. And to top it all off, Trump finally got the raucous convention coronation he craved. During the lovefest, his two former primary foes, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, urged the party to unite around Trump.

In the middle of it all, Trump survived an assassination attempt. Some thought the moment would change the 78-year-old. It did not.

Natalie Allison and Alex Isenstadt at Politico:

Scrambling to put an end to Kamala Harris’ ascent, Donald Trump’s campaign and outside allies came up with a plan: Hit her on immigration, her record as a “liberal prosecutor” and as a “radical.”

It didn’t last long.

During a 34-minute question-and-answer appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists, Trump questioned Harris’ Black identity. He said he would pardon violent Jan. 6 rioters, and he didn’t directly answer when asked if his vice presidential pick, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, would be ready to assume the presidency.

The exchanges overshadowed the attacks his political operation has made against Harris in recent days, while Trump still seems to be searching for an effective message to damage her.


“They don’t have a narrative that they’re comfortable with about how to take down Harris,” said Chuck Coughlin, an Arizona-based political strategist. “He’s grasping around. I think he’s desperately grasping around with his instincts. I don’t think his team has any way to put their handle on this, and so he’s instinctually grasping around for what to say.”

Politico:

THE BIG MO’ — This morning, KAMALA HARRIS’ presidential effort announced that it raised a massive $310 million in July — two-thirds of which came from first-time donors — and has $377 million in cash on hand. More from Elena Schneider

What that means, vis-a-vis DONALD TRUMP:
Harris outraised Trump massively. In July, Trump and his affiliated committees pulled in $138.7 million. Harris and her allied groups more than doubled that.Harris has more cash on hand. Trump and allies have a massive $327 million warchest. But Harris and allies have the edge by $50 million. More on Trump’s haul

The prisoner release elevated Harris and made Trump look petty.  The Independent:

 The United States and Russia completed their biggest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history on Thursday, with Moscow releasing journalist Evan Gershkovich and fellow American Paul Whelan, along with dissidents including Vladimir Kara-Murza, in a multinational deal that set two dozen people free.

Gershkovich, Whelan and Alsu Kurmasheva, a journalist with dual US-Russia citizenship, arrived on American soil shortly before midnight and were greeted by president Joe Biden and vice president Kamala Harris, before joyful reunions with their families.

The historic prisoner swap deal has been hailed as a diplomatic victory across the world, with the apparent exception of Donald Trump, who bitterly posted on Truth Social that the US never makes good deals and the negotiators were an “embarrassment”.

Trump was the one to suffer embarrassment, because he had claimed that only he could secure the release:

 

Rightward Shift Among Chinese Americans in SF

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.  Our next book will carry the story through 2024.

 Jim Carlton  and Christine Mai-Duc at WSJ:

Long a reliable voting bloc for the left, Chinese-Americans have been important drivers of a recent backlash against progressive policies in San Francisco, which has grown in support and been backed by tech industry money.

Members of the Chinese community, who make up one-fifth of this city of 810,000 and a slightly smaller percentage of registered voters, say they have been particularly incensed by incidents of anti-Asian violence, school policies they believe have emphasized equity over merit, and street homelessness. Many are also upset that property crime has long been higher in San Francisco than most other major cities, though it has dropped this year.

Chinese-Americans were among the most emphatic backers of ballot measures passed last month mandating drug screening for public welfare recipients and expanding police powers, as well as the 2022 recall of the three school board members and the district attorney, Chesa Boudin. Their margin of support for those efforts was 10 to 30 percentage points higher than the overall San Francisco voting population, according to an analysis of publicly available data by research firm Data Second. The firm is run by the husband of Marjan Philhour, a candidate for San Francisco Board of Supervisors running on a moderate platform.

...

In the past, Chinese-Americans often voted for representatives from their own community, in which political activists had close ties to left-wing political movements. That was particularly true in Chinatown, the oldest enclave of Chinese immigrants in the U.S., dating to the 1850s.

As Chinese residents climbed the socioeconomic ladder, however, they increasingly moved to the city’s western, more suburban neighborhoods and began voting for reasons other than ethnic representation, political analysts and community leaders said.

Many Chinese-American voters grew angry at the political establishment during the pandemic, when prolonged school closures and a move away from merit-based admissions at one elite high school incensed families who put an emphasis on education.

Asian Americans to Democrats: "we want safe streets, good schools and less progressive ideology." That's the message and 2024 warning from San Francisco. Footnote about our unfortunate experience at the end. @OutFrontCNN story features @JoelEngardio. Producer: @jasonkCNN pic.twitter.com/6Up96sGD5H

— Kyung Lah (@KyungLahCNN) March 23, 2023

Divided, Indeed

 In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.    It is the "coalition of the ascendant" v. "the coalition of the resentful.

From Pew:

The rural - urban divide

The racial and educational divide:

The religious divide:

Tennessee Backfire

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.  The GOP has supermajorities in the TN Legislature.

Elizabeth Wolfe and Raja Razek, CNN:

Two Democratic members of the Tennessee House of Representatives were expelled while a third member was spared in an ousting by Republican lawmakers that was decried by the trio as oppressive, vindictive and racially motivated.

Protesters packed the state Capitol on Thursday to denounce the expulsions of Reps. Justin Jones and Rep. Justin Pearson and to advocate for gun reform measures a little over a week after a mass shooting devastated a Nashville school.

 

Rep. Gloria Johnson on why she survived while two of her colleagues were expelled from the Tennessee House: "Well, I think it's pretty clear. I'm a 60-year-old white woman and they are two young Black men." pic.twitter.com/6dNbW9dOHz

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 7, 2023

Steve Benen at MSNBC:

Stepping back, if GOP leaders don’t yet fully appreciate the degree to which this is likely to backfire, this will probably dawn on them soon.

For one thing, over the course of this week, the story about the Tennessee Three made the transition from local controversy in Nashville to a national outrage. As the dust settled on yesterday’s developments, for example, the White House issued a statement condemning the expulsions.

“Today’s expulsion of lawmakers who engaged in peaceful protest is shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent,” President Joe Biden said. “Rather than debating the merits of the issue, these Republican lawmakers have chosen to punish, silence, and expel duly-elected representatives of the people of Tennessee.”

He wasn’t alone. There were related condemnations from the Congressional Black Caucus, among other congressional Democrats from both chambers. Barack Obama added a statement of his own.

The Republican majority in Nashville, in other words, set out to silence the Tennessee Three. In the process, the GOP helped make the Democrats heroes to a worthy cause.

What’s more, if Republicans think they “won” the broader fight by kicking Jones and Pearson out of the legislature, they’ll soon learn otherwise: There’s nothing stopping the two men from running anew for the seats they held. In fact, it’s a safe bet they’re going to win, rejoining the institution that unjustly expelled them.

They may not even have to wait too long: Local officials have the authority to appoint temporary legislators to fill the vacancies, and no one should be surprised if they choose Jones and Pearson.

The Politics of Affirmative Action

 As we note in Divided We Stand, the defeat of California's Proposition 16 was the most underreported political story of 2020.

John Ellis at WSJ:

What nobody realized was that the entire country had become increasingly hostile to the use of race in such decisions. A 2022 Pew Research Center poll found that 74% of Americans oppose the use of race in college admissions. Even more surprising, 68% of Hispanics, 63% of Asians and 59% of blacks also opposed it. The same applied to both political parties, with 87% of Republicans and 62% of Democrats objecting.

But as the public attempted to slam the door shut on racial preferences, the universities were busy trying to open it wide. The stealthy end-runs around the law gave way to support for “equity”: the desire for racial proportionality in all things—never mind that the Supreme Court has held that quotas in college admissions are unlawful. Accordingly, many colleges have begun to abandon the use of test scores in applications.

In line with this hardening of campus attitudes, increasingly powerful diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracies arose to achieve these aims. Consider The University of California, Berkeley, which now has a Division of Equity and Inclusion, a title that gives it a standing on campus equivalent to its Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences. The university’s division has an array of highly paid managers. Eight have the title “director,” one of which is for “diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging,” and there are several assistant vice chancellors. Similar offices abound on campuses across the country, where they are major actors in promoting all manner of progressive causes, from social justice to critical race theory and anticapitalism.

Poll: Culture War Hurts Dems

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.   There are some favorable signs for Democrats in the 2022 midterms -- but energy and inflation are not currently among them.  Neither is the culture war.

Sarah Ferris and Ally Mutnick at Politico:

Democrats’ own research shows that some battleground voters think the party is “preachy,” “judgmental” and “focused on culture wars,” according to documents obtained by POLITICO.

And the party’s House campaign arm had a stark warning for Democrats: Unless they more forcefully confront the GOP’s “alarmingly potent” culture war attacks, from critical race theory to defunding the police, they risk losing significant ground to Republicans in the midterms.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is recommending a new strategy to endangered members and their teams, hoping to blunt the kinds of GOP attacks that nearly erased their majority last election and remain a huge risk ahead of November. In presentations over the past two weeks, party officials and operatives used polling and focus group findings to argue Democrats can’t simply ignore the attacks, particularly when they’re playing at a disadvantage. A generic ballot of swing districts from late January showed Democrats trailing Republicans by 4 points, according to the polling.

It wasn’t all bleak, though: The data showed that Democrats could mostly regain the ground lost to Republicans if they offered a strong rebuttal to the political hits. When faced with a “defund the police” attack, for instance, the presenters encouraged Democrats to reiterate their support for police. And on immigration, they said Democrats should deny support for “open borders or amnesty,” and talk about their efforts to keep the border safe.

If Democrats don’t answer Republican hits, the party operatives warned, the GOP’s lead on the generic ballot balloons to 14 points from 4 points — a dismal prediction for Democrats when the GOP only needs to win five seats to seize back the majority. But when voters heard a Democratic response to that hit, Republicans’ edge narrowed back down to 6 points, giving candidates more of a fighting chance, especially since those numbers don’t factor in Democrats going on the offensive

Leftward Lurch

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.  

Lloyd Green at The Daily Beast:

Virginia voters’ rejection of Terry McAuliffe’s claim that parents should not “be telling schools what they should teach” is a reminder that taxpaying parents are not bystanders to their children’s education. Two plus two equals four is an objective fact—few outside of academe believe the equation to be a construct engineered by an oppressive patriarchy. At the end of the day, there is hell to pay if the family checkbook or Wall Street’s ledgers don’t add-up.

Right now, the Democrats are looking flat-footed and tone-deaf. Nationally, they have vowed to push back “aggressively” against Republican charges that progressive school systems have made critical race theory and white privilege cornerstones of the educational experience. Skepticism is warranted as the Democrats struggle with the competing demands of their upstairs-downstairs coalition, one that is also forced to worry about what AOC is thinking.

Despite rising crime, the Biden administration has attacked cash bail in the name of racial equity. Just remember, it was South Carolina’s James Clyburn, the No. 3 Democrat in the House, who lamented the left wing of his party making “defund the police” their battle-cry.

Meanwhile, Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice is expected to offer a full-throated defense of race-based affirmative action before the U.S. Supreme Court in the Harvard admissions case. In case anyone forgot, California’s voters resoundingly rejected that path at the same time they were saying “no” to a second Trump term.

...

As ever, culture counts. These days, just over half of Americans (52 percent) believe the Democratic Party has moved too far to the left, but only 35 percent say the Republican Party has moved too far to the right. Right now, the Democrats need to wake up and smell the coffee: It’s burning.

Base Race in Virginia

Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state elections.  The 2021 Virginia governor's race is a  curtain-raiser for the midterms.

Robert Tracinski at The Bulwark:

In Virginia, we’re in the home stretch of a campaign for governor that may set the tone for national politics for the next three years. If so, it’s going to be a long three years.

On the Republican side is Glenn Youngkin, a businessman who, if left to his own devices, would probably be a conventional, old-fashioned, moderate Republican perfectly tailored for voters in Northern Virginia. But these days, the price of admission to Republican politics is fealty to the myth that Donald Trump really won the 2020 election and it was stolen from him. Youngkin never quite went all the way on election trutherism, but he sure did play footsie with it.

Yet his Democratic opponent, former governor Terry McAuliffe—a Virginia governor can serve two terms, but not consecutively—has engaged in some election trutherism of his own, more recently on behalf of Stacey Abrams and more famously on behalf of Al Gore.

It’s one of those matchups that have you wondering whether either party is capable of nominating a candidate who isn’t compromised by his base. This elemental fact set the pattern for the rest of the campaign, including an unexpected fight over who controls the public schools.

If McAuliffe loses in a state that voted by a wide margin for Joe Biden last year, it will be because of a gaffe which fits the usual puckish definition: a politician accidentally telling the truth. In this case, the truth was that McAuliffe does not believe parents should have much say about what is taught to their kids in public schools.

“I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decision,” McAuliffe said during the debate. “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

There is a case to be made that individual parents shouldn’t be able to dictate the content of public school curriculum for everyone else. But McAuliffe conveyed a wider sense that public schools are not answerable to the public—and then the Democrats and the teachers’ unions doubled down on it.

Insurrectionists and "The Great Replacement"

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's dishonesty and his record of disregarding the rule of law.  Our next book, Divided We Stand, looks at the 2020 election and the January 6 insurrection.

Robert A. Pape at WP:

The Chicago Project on Security and Threats (CPOST), working with court records, has analyzed the demographics and home county characteristics of the 377 Americans, from 250 counties in 44 states, arrested or charged in the Capitol attack.

...

When compared with almost 2,900 other counties in the United States, our analysis of the 250 counties where those charged or arrested live reveals that the counties that had the greatest decline in White population had an 18 percent chance of sending an insurrectionist to D.C., while the counties that saw the least decline in the White population had only a 3 percent chance. This finding holds even when controlling for population size, distance to D.C., unemployment rate and urban/rural location. It also would occur by chance less than once in 1,000 times.

Put another way, the people alleged by authorities to have taken the law into their hands on Jan. 6 typically hail from places where non-White populations are growing fastest.

CPOST also conducted two independent surveys in February and March, including a National Opinion Research Council survey, to help understand the roots of this rage. One driver overwhelmingly stood out: fear of the “Great Replacement.” Great Replacement theory has achieved iconic status with white nationalists and holds that minorities are progressively replacing White populations due to mass immigration policies and low birthrates. Extensive social media exposure is the second-biggest driver of this view, our surveys found. Replacement theory might help explain why such a high percentage of the rioters hail from counties with fast-rising, non-White populations.

Racial and Ethnic Categories

 In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In our next book (title TBA), we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.

Janet Adamy and Paul Overberg at WSJ:

The government, which plays a dominant role in setting racial and ethnic categories, hasn’t developed the tools to keep pace with a shifting population, demographers say. Four decades ago, for example, the U.S. Census added an ethnic “Hispanic” category to its authoritative survey of America’s demographic contours. Today, Hispanics include a vast population of both new immigrants and multi-generation American families with varying depths of ties to Latin America. New research suggests that many Hispanics are assimilating in ways that echo how Italian, Polish, and other European immigrants a century ago were eventually absorbed into the American mainstream. As they do, they are diverging economically, socially and politically.

...

Sociologists say that projections for a white minority rely on outdated concepts of race. The federal government generally counts anyone with nonwhite lineage as a minority, a practice that echoes the “one drop” rule that once allowed discrimination against people with even minimal Black ancestry. The Census Bureau currently projects that the share of people defined as white by this restrictive definition will drop below half of the population by 2045. But by using a broader definition—including as “white” anyone with a white parent and a parent of another race—whites would be about 55% of the population and would remain a majority even in 2055.

The government’s majority-minority projections use almost exclusively the “one drop” way of counting. For example, 42 million people checked “Black” on the Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey and an additional 4.7 million marked “Black” and another race. But historically, the bureau hasn’t distinguished between these two ways of self-identifying as Black. Moreover, roughly 60% of mixed-race babies have one parent conventionally considered white, and another who is Hispanic, Asian or mixed race (typically white and minority). They are more likely to live alongside whites and, once they grow up, to marry whites than their single-race minority counterparts, research shows.

“The majority-minority story that we’ve all imbibed, that is very widely believed, is a distortion,” said sociologist Richard Alba. In his new book, “The Great Demographic Illusion,” the City University of New York professor argues that the projection assumes a rigidity to racial and ethnic boundaries that does not reflect surging intermarriage or America’s experience with immigration.

...

Ian Haney López, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, surveyed and conducted focus group interviews with Latino voters in the run-up to the election. He found that a quarter saw themselves as a group that remains distinct over generations, much as Blacks do. But half minimized the importance of race and said they believed Latinos can get ahead through hard work, or they considered themselves more akin to European immigrants who eventually became part of the mainstream. This latter group was more likely to support Mr. Trump than those who saw more continuity in their racial identity. “There are a significant number of Latinos that do not want to see themselves as a subordinated group,” Prof. López said.

President Trump received 36% of the votes of Latinos without college degrees and a third of the votes of Latinos with college degrees, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 110,000 voters conducted the week before the election. Latino support for Trump rose with income, the opposite of what happened for whites. Mr. Trump won 31% of voters from Latino households making less than $50,000 a year and 40% of voters from Latino households making more than $100,000 a year.

 

Party Coalitions

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House.

Pew reports on party identification:

White non-Hispanic voters continue to identify with the Republican Party or lean Republican by a sizable margin (53% to 42%). Yet white voters constitute a diminished share of the electorate – from 85% in 1996 to 69% in 2018/2019. And the growing racial and ethnic diversity of the overall electorate has resulted in a more substantial change in the composition of the Democratic Party than in the GOP: Four-in-ten Democratic registered voters are now nonwhite (black, Hispanic, Asian and other nonwhite racial groups), compared with 17% of the GOP.

Just as the nation has become more racially and ethnically diverse, it also has become better educated. Still, just 36% of registered voters have a four-year college degree or more education; a sizable majority (64%) have not completed college. Democrats increasingly dominate in party identification among white college graduates – and maintain wide and long-standing advantages among black, Hispanic and Asian American voters. Republicans increasingly dominate in party affiliation among white non-college voters, who continue to make up a majority (57%) of all GOP voters.

 

Pols Who Do Not Help the GOP Brand

In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race.

A number of GOP pols are proving to be problematic for the party brand.

Will Sommer at The Daily Beast:

A believer in a conspiracy theory the FBI classifies as a possible domestic terrorist threat is in a prime position to soon be elected to Congress, after coming in first in a Republican primary in Georgia on Tuesday.

QAnon conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has frequently posted messages about the bizarre pro-Trump conspiracy theory on social media, handily leads the primary field of Republicans in Georgia’s heavily Republican 14th District. Greene, who beat her closest opponent by more than 20 percent, will head to an August run-off after receiving 41 percent of the primary vote.

Greene is an outspoken supporter of QAnon, a conspiracy theory based on a series of anonymous messages posted online by a mystery figure named “Q.” QAnon believers think that Donald Trump is engaged in a shadowy war against a cabal of global elites, including the Democratic Party, and will soon arrest or even execute top Democrats in an event they know as “The Storm.”

Despite such ludicrous claims, Greene has praised QAnon. In a video posted online, she called the anonymous “Q” a “patriot” and said that their predictions had been accurate.

“Many of the things that he has given clues about and talked on 4Chan and other forums have really proven to be true,” Greene said.

Greene’s QAnon beliefs haven’t stopped her from winning the backing of at least one high-powered Republican. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) endorsed her bid, calling her “exactly the kind of fighter needed in Washington to stand with me against the radical left.” Greene has also been boosted by $44,000 in spending and $78,000 in earmarked contributions from the House Freedom Fund, a PAC tied to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, according to campaign finance watchdog group Open Secrets.

Laura Bischoff at The Dayton Daily News:

During a hearing on whether to declare racism a public health crisis, state Sen. Steve Huffman, R-Tipp City, asked if “the colored population” is hit harder by the coronavirus because perhaps they don’t wash their hands as well as other groups.

Huffman, an emergency room physician, asked a witness before the Senate Health Committee on Tuesday why COVID-19 is hitting African Americans harder than white people.

“My point is I understand African Americans have a higher incidence of chronic conditions and it makes them more susceptible to death from COVID. But why it doesn’t make them more susceptible to just get COVID. Could it just be that African Americans or the colored population do not wash their hands as well as other groups or wear a mask or do not socially distance themselves? That could be the explanation of the higher incidence?” he said.

Ohio Commission on Minority Health Director Angela Dawson responded to Huffman: “That is not the opinion of leading medical experts in this country.” COVID-19 impacts the respiratory system so those with chronic conditions are more vulnerable, she said.

Ohio Legislative Black Caucus President Stephanie Howse, D-Cleveland, said Huffman’s word choice and question represent systemic racism.

Trump and Riots

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's dishonesty and his record of disregarding the rule of law. 

President Trump: "Our country is doing well." pic.twitter.com/KmRzSMkLhd

— The Hill (@thehill) May 31, 2020

George Floyd's brother calls for first-degree murder charges and the death penalty for the officers involved in Floyd's death; says conversation with President Trump was so fast that he "didn't even give me the chance to speak." https://t.co/qtx409aqpW

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) May 31, 2020

Crossing State lines to incite violence is a FEDERAL CRIME! Liberal Governors and Mayors must get MUCH tougher or the Federal Government will step in and do what has to be done, and that includes using the unlimited power of our Military and many arrests. Thank you!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2020

Much more “disinformation” coming out of CNN, MSDNC, @nytimes and @washingtonpost, by far, than coming out of any foreign country, even combined. Fake News is the Enemy of the People!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 30, 2020

Police are purposefully targeting reporters all over the country, in video after video. There’s no other way to describe it. https://t.co/HjwdCnQcia

— Trevor Timm (@trevortimm) May 31, 2020

Trump and Riots

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's dishonesty and his record of disregarding the rule of law. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.  

Twitter flags Trump for "glorifying violence" after he says Minneapolis looting will lead to "shooting" https://t.co/w9nE1hQ6UI

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 29, 2020

Lest anyone doubt the original meaning of "the shooting starts." Miami News, December 26, 1967 https://t.co/PnaxOl9wuk via @_newspapers

— Jack Pitney (@jpitney) May 29, 2020

The 1960s and 1970s molded @realDonaldTrump's worldview. After the 1968 Chicago riot, polls showed that the public sided with the police over the rioters. Young Donald apparently noticed. https://t.co/ZrijiEaMxl

— Jack Pitney (@jpitney) May 29, 2020

Protester-initiated violence (again, irrespective of police violence), helped move public towards concern for “social control.” In 1968, I find violent protests likely caused a 1.6-7.9% shift among whites towards Nixon’s “law & order” campaign and helped tipped the election. 16/ pic.twitter.com/5D1TARpRhJ

— Omar Wasow (@owasow) May 27, 2020

The Best People, Continued

 In Defying the Odds, we discuss the people surrounding Trump. (The update -- published in 2019 --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.)

The choice of servants is of no little importance to a prince, and they are good or not according to the discrimination of the prince. And the first opinion which one forms of a prince, and of his understanding, is by observing the men he has around him; and when they are capable and faithful he may always be considered wise, because he has known how to recognize the capable and to keep them faithful. But when they are otherwise one cannot form a good opinion of him, for the prime error which he made was in choosing them.

Andrew Kaczynski, Nathan McDermott and Em Steck, CNN:

The new spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services in a series of now-deleted tweets made racist and derogatory comments about Chinese people, said Democrats wanted the coronavirus to kill millions of people and accused the media of intentionally creating panic around the pandemic to hurt President Donald Trump.

Michael Caputo, a longtime New York Republican political operative who worked on Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, was appointed last week as Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at HHS, a prominent communications role at the department which serves a central role in the federal government's response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Caputo, a prolific user who often tweeted insults and profanity, recently erased nearly his entire Twitter history from before April 12. CNN's KFile used the Internet Archive's "The Wayback Machine" to review more than 1300 deleted tweets and retweets from late February to early April many of which were regarding the rapidly spreading coronavirus.

While he occasionally weighed in with praise for public officials or more straightforward observations, tweets from this period are also littered with conspiracy theories and controversial language to go after perceived critics of the Trump administration.

In a series of tweets on March 12, Caputo responded to a baseless conspiracy theory that the United States brought the coronavirus to Wuhan, China, by tweeting that "millions of Chinese suck the blood out of rabid bats as an appetizer and eat the ass out of anteaters."
He followed up at another user, "Don't you have a bat to eat?" and tweeted at another user, "You're very convincing, Wang."

NEW: @MichaelRCaputo may have deleted the tweets that @KFILE uncovered, but there’s audio too.

Here’s a clip from his podcast talking about Chinese peoples’ eating habits
“where they suck the blood out of bats and eat the ass out of anteaters”. https://t.co/V2YzbsPly9 pic.twitter.com/i6qQLQ8Abc

— Weijia Jiang (@weijia) April 23, 2020

Ben Fox at AP:

The senior Department of Homeland Security official who was thrust into the spotlight by President Donald Trump to describe the effects of temperature on COVID-19 has been the subject of misconduct allegations for his previous government work.

A Department of Energy Inspector General investigation was still pending Friday based on evidence submitted by a whistle-blower that William Bryan abused his government position with energy consulting work in Ukraine.

It’s unclear if Trump was aware of that investigation when he called on Bryan at his daily briefing Thursday to explain DHS research that prompted a presidential riff on the potential to cure the virus with disinfectant and kill it with sunlight.

"That's Been the Story of Life"

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the 2016 campaign. The 2019 update includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. The 2020 race, the subject of our next book, is well under  way.  

Coronavirus presents unprecedented challenges to public policy and the electoral process.

Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing:

Q Okay. Why do you keep calling this the “Chinese virus”? There are reports of dozens of incidents of bias against Chinese Americans in this country. Your own aide, Secretary Azar, says he does not use this term. He says, “Ethnicity does not cause the virus.” Why do you keep using this? A lot of —
THE PRESIDENT: Because it comes from China.
Q — people say it’s racist.
THE PRESIDENT: It’s not racist at all. No. Not at all. It comes from China. That’s why. It comes from China. I want to be accurate.
Q And no concerns about Chinese Americans —
THE PRESIDENT: Yeah, please, John.
Q — in this country?
THE PRESIDENT: No.
Q And to the aides behind you, are you comfortable with this term?
THE PRESIDENT: No, I have a great — I have great love for all of the people from our country. But, as you know, China tried to say at one point — maybe they stopped now — that it was caused by American soldiers. That can’t happen. It’s not going to happen — not as long as I’m President. It comes from China.
...

Q Mr. President, perhaps I could second follow up. How are non-symptomatic professional athletes getting tests while others are waiting in line and can’t get them? Do the well-connected go to the front of the line?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, that — you’d have to ask them that question. I mean, they — I — I’ve read —
Q Should that happen?
THE PRESIDENT: No, I wouldn’t say so, but perhaps that’s been the story of life. That does happen on occasion. And I’ve noticed where some people have been tested fairly quickly. Look, we inherited a very--
Q Would you encourage them to defer their test to others?
THE PRESIDENT: Excuse me. Excuse me. We inherited a very obsolete system. This was a system that was out of date, obsolete, or it was a system that was never meant to take care of the kind of quantity, the number of people that we’re talking about — millions and millions of people.

...
Q Yeah. Mr. President, your credibility ratings are very low. There was a recent NPR poll --

THE PRESIDENT: Who are you asking with that question?
Q I’m asking —
THE PRESIDENT: Because I see that they’re very high. You know, if you look, I’m 95
percent in the Republican Party.
Q Credibility, sir —
THE PRESIDENT: We just had a poll that was done by a very reputable group. We’re — I’m beating Sleepy Joe Biden by a lot in Florida — in the state of Florida and in other states. You know, so I don’t really know who you’re talking about.

...

Q: There’s federal — there’s reporting that the federal government has a plan that shows that this coronavirus outbreak might last as much — as long as 18 months. Are you seeing those numbers? Could this actually last —
THE PRESIDENT: No, we’re not seeing that at all.
Q And then the — my second question is, there are some — at least one White House official who used the term “Kung flu,” referring to the fact that this virus started in China. Is that acceptable? Is it wrong? Are you worried that that having this virus be talked about as a “Chinese virus,” that that might help —
THE PRESIDENT: I wonder who said that.
Q That might (inaudible) —
THE PRESIDENT: Do you know who said that?
Q That — I’m not sure the person’s name, but would you condemn the fact —
THE PRESIDENT: He used —
Q — the “Kung flu” —
THE PRESIDENT: Say the term again.
Q The — a person at the White House used the —
THE PRESIDENT: No, just the term.
Q — term “Kung flu.” My question is —
THE PRESIDENT: “Kung flu”?
Q — do you think that’s wrong? “Kung flu.” And do you think using the term “Chinese virus” — that puts Asian Americans at risk, that people might target them?
THE PRESIDENT: No, not at all. No, not at all. I think they probably would agree with it 100 percent. It comes from China. There’s nothing not to agree on.