I missed out on the @georgepbush swag yesterday: The koozie says "this is the only Bush that likes me. This is the Bush that got it right. I like him" - Donald Trump #txlege pic.twitter.com/pFTzQCmoRG
— Scott Braddock (@scottbraddock) June 3, 2021
Mike Pence’s own brother (GOP Rep. Greg Pence) is opposing the Capitol riot commission https://t.co/kpT7V7EZqt
— Amanda Terkel (@aterkel) May 19, 2021
Former president Donald Trump’s blog, celebrated by advisers as a “beacon of freedom” that would keep him relevant in an online world he once dominated, is dead. It was 29 days old.
Upset by reports from The Washington Post and other outlets highlighting its measly readership and concerns that it could detract from a social media platform he wants to launch later this year, Trump ordered his team Tuesday to put the blog out of its misery, advisers said.
On its last day, the site received just 1,500 shares or comments on Facebook and Twitter — a staggering drop for someone whose every tweet once garnered hundreds of thousands of reactions.
Trump still wants to launch some other platform — timing not yet determined — and didn’t like that this first attempt was being mocked as a loser, according to a Trump adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly about the former president’s plans.
Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses issues such as crime.
William Galston at Brookings notes that violent crime is getting worse.
The most recent detailed survey, completed on May 26 by YouGov, illuminates these trends. Asked which issues were “very big problems,” 49% of Americans place violent crime at the top of the list, compared to 39% for the economy and just 32% for the pandemic. Forty-five percent of Democrats regard violent crime as a very big problem, a surprising finding explained in part by the fact that 59% of Blacks and 52% of Hispanics put it in this category.
The politics of violent crime is complex. On the one hand, by a margin of 51 to 41 percent, Americans agree that “there is a problem with systemic racism in policing.” Conservatives offering the familiar exculpatory mantra—“a few bad apples”—are losing credibility. On the other hand, only 23% of Americans think that cutting funding for police departments is the correct response. Only 35% of Blacks, 26% of Hispanics, and 36% of Democrats endorse funding cuts. Across the board, most Americans want fairer policing, not less policing.
During his presidential race, Joe Biden understood these sentiments and briskly rejected demands to “defund the police.” Across the country, Democratic mayors have refused to do so, including some who initially supported these demands.Still, official statistics support public perceptions that violent crime is getting worse, and elected officials from the top on down are likely to be held responsible. Only 36% of Americans approve of President Biden’s handling of this issue, far fewer than for his management of the pandemic (54%) and the economy (45%). And the administration’s efforts to craft an effective response will face a Democratic Party that is divided on the issue, giving Republicans an opportunity to gain ground on it.
But a SCOTUS decision striking down Roe could change everything.
As of now, Republicans are more mobilized to oppose the Biden administration than Democrats are to support it, an asymmetry that could produce the mirror image of the 2018 midterms, when Democrats scored big gains and retook the majority in the House of Representatives. The Supreme Court could change this dynamic in a hurry. Democrats—especially Democratic women—would be protesting in the streets, and many independents and suburban Republicans would join them. Moderate Democrats for whom much of the Biden agenda is politically problematic would be handed an issue that enjoys majority support in their districts, complete with an identifiable enemy who evokes passionate opposition. This single issue would counterbalance Democrats’ political vulnerabilities on other fronts and could enable them to retain control of the House.
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. Some Republican leaders -- and a measurable number of rank-and-file voters -- are open to the idea of violent rebellion.
In February, Alex Kaplan reported at Media Matters:Here is the video of former national security advisor Michael Flynn saying that he thinks a coup like the coup in Myanmar should happen in the US. pic.twitter.com/7mGYjfXg18
— Mamie 😌 (@MC_Hyperbole) May 30, 2021
Supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory and users on far-right message boards are lauding the military coup in Myanmar and saying the U.S. military should take similar action against President Joe Biden over false claims of voter fraud.
On February 1, Myanmar’s military initiated a coup against the country’s civilian government, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, after her party won a majority in parliament in November. The military claimed the coup was necessary due to allegations of voter fraud in the election, though it has not provided concrete evidence of those claims. The Biden administration has condemned the coup and threatened to reimpose sanctions on the country in response.
Far-right message boards and those in the QAnon community cheered the coup as Myanmar “awakening,” drawing parallels to their own false claims that Biden was elected due to voter fraud and questioning “when will this happen here” and when the military will “arrest [American] politicians too.
Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses voter demographics.
Take a look at Gallup polling during the Biden presidency. Aggregating all the polls it has conducted so far (in order to get a large sample size), Biden's approval rating with Hispanics stands at 72% compared to a 55% overall approval rating.
That 72% is a clear improvement from how Biden did in the election with Hispanics. Biden won 65% of Hispanics, according to the network exit polls. An estimate from the Democratic firm Catalist (which lines up well with what we saw in pre-election polls) had Biden taking 61% of Hispanics. So this Gallup data suggests Biden's support may be up anywhere from 7 to 11 points from the election.
...
Recent incumbents seem to see their support among Hispanics rise in their reelection bids. In fact, the last five incumbents since George H.W. Bush did better with Hispanics than they did when they were elected to their first term.
What's notable about Bush is that he did better even though he lost when he sought reelection. Bush went from winning by 8 points in 1988 to losing by 6 points in 1992 (a 14-point swing). Yet, Bush went from losing Hispanics by 40 points in the 1988 exit polls to losing them by 36 points in 1992 (a 4 point swing in his direction).
Latinos who switched their votes, backing Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Trump in 2020, also played a role in the former president’s gains.
Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist who previously oversaw Latino outreach for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, conducted focus groups with some of them. He said that the women in those groups, who tended to identify as independents, voted for Clinton because they wanted to see the first woman president. The men, on the other hand, associated her with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who they believed to be good for the economy in the 1990s.
As for Trump, they gave him full credit for a robust economy prior to the Covid-19 downturn, and they didn’t blame him for mishandling the pandemic. But in most cases, they could just as well be persuaded to vote for a Democrat again.
“The good news for Democrats is that they’re all very encouraged about what they’re seeing from Joe Biden on getting the country opened back up because of vaccinations, about the stimulus checks — that went a long way,” Rocha said. “I think that 80 percent of all the Latinos that we talked to in these last focus groups could be persuaded back to vote for Joe Biden because, in their words, they’re seeing real results from his administration.”
Democrats should also be paying attention to people who haven’t participated in elections or have done so infrequently. Though there was massive growth in the number of new Latino voters in 2020, there are still many more non-voters: About half of Latino citizens of voting age did not turn out in November. That means “sky-high potential” for both parties in future elections, Odio said.
Our new book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties.
The survival instinct that this white-minority rage has triggered in craven Republican politicians is how the GOP mutated from a party championing individual liberty into a movement pushing monstrously statist authoritarianism. It is how the party of limited government began agitating for government truth ministries. It is how the party of exuberant free marketeers became a cabal of crony capitalists and knee-jerk protectionists. It is how the party that once fought Kremlin expansionism provided top cover for Russian intelligence attacks against U.S. institutions.
Republicans have tried to argue that if they are not in power, the Democrats and their ultraliberal allies will destroy our system of government and create a majoritarian nightmare. We must stay in power, they mewl, so that democracy itself will survive long enough to outlive the encroaching authoritarianism of the left.
These defenses are risible nonsense in the wake of Trump’s constitutional mayhem and the GOP’s descent into conspiratorial lunacy. But even on their own terms, Republican excuses are little more than lightly veiled defenses of minority rule. The GOP long ago abandoned any effort to convince women, people of color, immigrants, and others that the party had a place for them. Instead, Republicans in Congress have surrendered to the ignorance and racism of their most extreme voters in exchange for a continued life of privilege inside the comforting embrace of the Capital Beltway.
The Republicans, facing an investigation into an insurrection provoked by their own leader, have armored up and gone into armadillo mode. They will protect their own—rather than their nation and the Constitution they swore to defend. This behavior should serve as a warning: A party that doesn’t believe in anything ends up believing only in its right to rule. And a movement that believes only in its own power is a deadly enemy of constitutional democracy.
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.
Public Religion Research Institute:
A nontrivial 15% of Americans agree with the sweeping QAnon allegation that “the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation,” while the vast majority of Americans (82%) disagree with this statement. Republicans (23%) are significantly more likely than independents (14%) and Democrats (8%) to agree that the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.
Similarly, one in five Americans (20%) agree with the statement “There is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders,” while a majority (77%) disagree. Nearly three in ten Republicans (28%), compared to 18% of independents and 14% of Democrats, agree with this secondary QAnon conspiracy theory. Trends among demographic groups are similar to those of the core QAnon conspiracy theory.
Fifteen percent of Americans agree that “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,” while the vast majority (85%) disagree. Republicans (28%) are twice as likely as independents (13%) and four times as likely as Democrats (7%) to agree that because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence.
Matt Gaetz claimed the 2nd Amdt is for "maintaining within the citizenry the ability to maintain an armed rebellion against the government."
— Cameron Joseph (@cam_joseph) May 28, 2021
That's ludicrous—but alarming given 28% of Republicans think “American patriots may have to resort to violence."https://t.co/2TkMeBgV5r