Good news out of Michigan, if you believe in the Polling Fairy:
Lansing — Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has leads over all five of her potential GOP challengers less than four months before Election Day, raising doubts about whether a Republican wave will make landfall in Michigan.
The (paywalled) article goes on to say that Whitmer leads her GOP rivals by between 9 and 15 points. That seems pretty solid. I don’t follow Michigan politics closely, but Whitmer is incredibly impressive from what I’ve observed from afar.
On the other hand, this Axios piece that dissects the recent NYT-Siena poll is…all over the place:
Democrats now have a bigger advantage among white college graduates than they do with nonwhite voters, Axios’ Josh Kraushaar writes from a New York Times/Siena College poll.
Why it matters: We’re seeing a political realignment in real time.
Democrats are becoming the party of upscale voters concerned more about issues like gun control and abortion rights. Republicans are quietly building a multiracial coalition of working-class voters, with inflation as an accelerant.
What’s happening: House Republicans boast this year’s class of new candidates is the most diverse in history.
The NRCC notes that 29 of its 75 House targets have a Hispanic population over 15%. In the Times/Siena poll, Ds hold a 20-point advantage over Rs among white college-educated voters — but are statistically tied among Hispanics.
Hispanic voters backed Democrats by a nearly 50-point margin in the 2018 midterms. In the 2016 congressional elections, Dems lost white voters with a bachelor’s degree.
We know Dems lost ground with Hispanic voters in 2020, but if I’m understanding this analysis, there’s been a 50 point swing in four years (2018-2022)? I am skeptical.
I am also skeptical of the claim that Repubs are building a “multiracial coalition,” unless Axios means that in the same sense that the Proud Boys are a “multiracial organization.” Also, why are gun safety and abortion rights assumed to be “upscale” voter issues?
My impression is that the economic dislocation caused by the pandemic is one factor that led more working-class Hispanic voters to back Republicans in 2020 in states like Florida and Texas. Inflation may be playing that same role now.
I don’t fully understand this because Republicans have done exactly jack and shit to alleviate the economic impact on those populations, but it seems to be real. For example, DeSantis gets credit in Florida for opening everything back up early, even though lots more people died as a result. He also gets credit for a strong economy while Biden gets dinged for that very same economy, so it doesn’t make much sense.
Anyhoo, make of it what you will. Open thread.
ETA: We’re having a site issue that might make your comment go into moderation. Water Girl is working on it! Thanks!
ETA 2: I think it’s fixed — thanks, WG!
jonas
I think there’s a lot of anxiety in many Hispanic communities about illegal immigration — even though many of them may have been undocumented when they came, they now see large numbers of new arrivals from Central America esp. as threats to the meager gains they have made since establishing themselves in the US. We may see that as a bit ironic, but it’s how it is (and always has been). Also, in places like Texas, Louisiana, Colorado, and New Mexico, Latinos now hold a lot of well-paying blue collar jobs in the energy industry and see Democrats’ environmental positions as threatening their livelihoods.
cain
It’s just the media trying to create some tension for the election. Fuck them.
waspuppet
Glenn Kessler needs to resign. Like, right the fck now.
Arrest made in rape of Ohio girl that led to Indiana abortion drawing international attention
https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2022/07/13/columbus-man-charged-rape-10-year-old-led-abortion-in-indiana/10046625002/
Instead, he gives us this:
Update: An arrest has been made in this case, proving I will type literally whatever conservatives are mad about today with no first thoughts, much less second, whatsoever. More details below.
FTFY.
PS: Resign.
PPS: In case you had any smart ideas about pointing this out to him:
different-church-lady
Ancidata: I’m working on the road in the Outer Banks this week. Went to a t-shirt shop and all the Trump-loving Biden-hating gun-humping stuff was on the discount racks (and I mean all of it).
VOR
@jonas: Yes. I recall seeing an article about Republican voters of Hispanic heritage in 2020. The article focused on Texas, where there are Hispanics whose families have been in place since prior to the creation of Texas itself. These people did not have solidarity with more recent immigrants from Central America or the Caribbean. Instead, they were more likely to be concerned about illegal immigration and hence vote Republican.
Roger Moore
You always have to be careful about the “statistical dead heat” thing, especially when talking about subsets of the population. For a typical poll, the margin of error for all voters is going to be something like 3-4%. Given that Hispanics are less than 20% of the population, the margin of error among Hispanic voters is going to be more like 8-10%. That means a 55-45 split could be described as a statistical dead heat. You should always, always look at the raw numbers rather than just accept “statistical dead heat”.
RobertB
@different-church-lady: I went to Nags Head three weeks ago, and was lucky enough to avoid the gift shops. However, the Trump and Brandon garbage is still going strong at the flea markets here in Ohio.
West of the Cascades
Speaking of polling, there was some very encouraging post-Dobbs polling recently – https://www.prri.org/…/political-and-religious…/ – lots of interesting results, but especially this figure showing that at least 64% of people in every religious affiliation except white evangelical Protestants now favor abortion being legal in most or all cases.
The one that jumped out at me was the shift in Hispanic Catholics – in 2010, 51% said that abortion should be legal in most or all cases. In June 2022, 75% said that. Among Black Protestants, the shift over those twelve years was from 56% to 75%.
Anyone who was polling Hispanics and African Americans about which party they support before Dobbs needs to go back and re-sample.
PaulB
If you want to read the paywalled article, the same trick works for the Detroit News that also works on the New York Times site and the Washington Post site. In your browser settings, turn off JavaScript for the site. That blocks the script that shuts off access.
cain
@VOR: Until the realize the system will discriminate against them just as much as the recent immigrants.
It’s natural to feel like your competing with illegal immigrants even if you came the same way. It’s like trying to protect a good thing. The thing is that – you’re still better off electing Democrats who might have a better foreign policy that doesn’t penalize central america such that they end up losing their livelihood.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@different-church-lady: You should send this to TaMara as a good news story :-)
Matt McIrvin
Man Party vs. Woman Party, maybe?
Belafon
I don’t read a lot of Axios, but when I do, I realize they are there to cause problems for Democrats. They’re not analyzing actual problems, they’re just making up stuff to interfere with Democrats trying to get stuff done.
Anonymous At Work
Question: Why do white women back a party that regards them as furniture?
Answer: They regard themselves as whites who are also women as opposed to women who are white.
How this applies to Hispanic Republicans, writ overly-large, see themselves as racially white and being prospective small-business owners, with the ethnicity of Hispanic.
Baud
I don’t like conservatism in any form, but it is a good thing if the GOP were to become more multi-racial. It would also be a good thing if white working class weren’t so heavily GOP. It’s not good for the country for the two parties to be divided by race — in a two-party system, they should be divided on economics.
In the end, if the GOP wins legitimately and doesn’t use its power to end democracy, I don’t have much room to complain, even though I believe their policies would be devastating to a lot of innocent people.
Baud
Site is slow.
Scout211
@waspuppet:
I couldn’t read his article since it’s behind a pay wall but he hasn’t changed the headline. It still implies that a “one source” story is “hard to confirm.”
But an official arrest when the perpetrator has confessed is not hard to confirm Glenn Kessler!
After I posted the Dispatch story in the last thread Betty C has used her Twitter to highlight all the right wing media people working hard to cast doubt on this story. Thanks BC!
But seriously, do these people have one shred of decency?! (Not intended to be an actual question because of course they don’t).
JPL
@jonas: Since Mexico is now helping with border infrastructure, I think Biden should highlight that.
Republicans want to destroy public education, and families want their children to have the best education possible. I think that they are being used by republicans.
Baud
Test
Scout211
Moderation clean-up on #13, please?
gene108
I think some clever operatives in the Republican Party learned a lot about targeted digital advertising from Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, and to a lesser extent Google about how to data mine and use all the publicly available information, as well as paying social media companies for their internal data, to micro target Hispanics in Texas, for example.
Link to a clip from a 2017 BBC documentary series on the influence of tech companies. The clip focuses on Trump’s 2016 digital operation.
gene108
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s definitely at play in how the media portrays Republicans versus Democrats. Republicans are the man party. Democrats are the woman party.
ETtheLibrarian
I don’t believe for a second that Republicans are building a multi-racial organization. That’s just….no. Maybe in 5, 10, 15+ years we will see it but right now there is nothing in what their platform is (anything for tRump) or what their messaging is (anything for tRump + lots of white supremacists) that allows for that much less a 50 point swing.
Old Dan and Little Ann
I befriended an old acquaintance on fb last month. Today he was bitching about inflation and how it’s part of Biden’s agenda. I commented about fox website agenda, linked it, and asked why they have zero reporting on yesterday’s hearings. Fair enough you’d think. Ha. He unfriended me. I texted his brother with this story and he wrote, “he’s a grumpy Trump supporter. ” No shit.
Baud
Still borked?
Betty Cracker
I had to approve every comment. That was weird. Reported!
Balconesfault
The far right and QAnon types have been very successful in pumping social media targeted at the Spanish speaking community.
Add that conservatives have been very successful at buying out talk radio in Latino areas and driving out any opportunity to hear balanced reporting.
For example in texas, you can’t hear NPR anywhere south of Corpus Christi in the Rio Grande Valley.
When irony is that while liberals took the threat of covid to Hispanic populations much more seriously, and were constantly highlighting the lack of access to adequate health Care and the stresses of intergenerational living situations that exacerbated the death toll in Hispanic communities ..
Meanwhile the small businesses that a lot of Hispanic families own and run took a hit during covid shutdown times, and didn’t have the sophistication and connections to tap into payroll support funds as effective as, say, Wall Street financial firms … And so some lingering resentment over The shutdowns still remains and is focused on democrats.
Fortunately although belatedly, there are people who understand this and are working to try to make the necessary investments to change things.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/george-soros-targets-hispanic-media/
Scout211
I think the site froze for about 20 minutes and we were all sent to an alternate reality that some call moderation. Cue the scary music.
ETA Okay, still moderation glitz happening.
Ohio Mom
@waspuppet: I don’t know who Glenn Kessler is, a very quick google says he’s some sort of (rabid right wing) journalist.
He had lots of company in doubting the victim existed, let alone was raped and had an abortion, as the Columbus Dispatch (in your link) reports, “Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost questioned the validity of the account during an appearance on Fox News this week.”
I’m for Yost resigning too but don’t expect to even hear anything like an apology.
Betty Cracker
I’m still having to approve each comment. Not sure why, but I have reported it, so hopefully it’ll be fixed soon. Sorry for the inconvenience!
Mai Naem mobile
I see lots of newer Hispanic American immigrants in smaller evangelical churches in Phoenix. I think these churches end up being community gathering places where they help each other navigate through the trials of being new immigrants but the pastors tend to be very conservative which influences them. Anecdotal but I’ve met a few people like this – anti-abortion, anti- gay rights and ofcourse anti-Obama when Obama was in office.
Villago Delenda Est
@cain:
It’s all about the horserace, particularly with the nimrods of Tiger Beat on the Potomac. Fuck ’em.
Ohio Mom
There is definitely something up with the site, I had a comment that took forever to load and when it did, straight into moderation.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I agree 100%; the racial polarization in the two parties is bad for the country.
Geminid
@different-church-lady: A saturated market. The same is happening to Mike Lindell’s pillows.
I hope you’re getting time to enjoy the Outer Banks. The sun’s a little high these days, but dawn and dusk sure are nice. As long as the wind is blowing the mosquitos away.
Regulon
@PaulB: Thanks for the tip.
Scout211
@Ohio Mom: his statement via his Twitter:
https://mobile.twitter.com/OhioAG/status/1547274735897247744?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
The replies are harsh, and should be.
Splitting Image
Abortion is an immigration issue. Access to health care is so important that women will move from states where they can’t get it to states where they can. If Latinos vote to help the Republicans shut down illegal immigration into the U.S., the Republicans will reward them by make it illegal for Latinas in Republican-controlled states to move somewhere they can get treated properly when they need to. This will hurt the average Latino family more than immigration into the county, legal or otherwise, ever will.
It’s standard practice for the G.O.P. to take two related issues and frame them so that Democratic efforts to deal with one problem amount to ignoring the other while Republican claims to care about the second problem make them the party of the common man/working class/real Americans.
That said, I wouldn’t underestimate the amount of effort the Republicans are going to put into wooing Latino voters, especially with ad buys in Spanish-language media. That is not a problem which should be ignored.
Villago Delenda Est
@gene108: Democrats are the human party. Rethugs are the male chauvinist swine party.
JaneE
This has been the pattern for a long time, and no one seems to even notice much less call them on it.
When Trump was president, low unemployment numbers were one of the few things he could legitimately claim, even if he was only responsible for part of the job increases since 2008, and when Trump started claiming the lowest numbers in history no one bothered to point out that some of them really weren’t. More people employed was good, and if some of the jobs weren’t so good, at least they were working.
Biden’s unemployment numbers are historically low, if not the “lowest in history”. Better yet, the bottom workers has seen higher wage increases than than those at the top, at least as a percentage of their wages. But inflation is finally starting to revert to mean, and all those years of below target mean we need a big jump to reach the same place the fed wanted us to be about now. Of course it is painful, but at least some of it should be temporary. Notably, gas prices have already been dropping for two weeks now. But to listen to the news is to hear nothing but terrible assessments and predictions for the economy.
If the Republicans are in charge, even a major recession will find the blame spread everywhere except the GOP policies, even when those policies made a major contribution to the conditions causing the slowdown. If the Democrats are in charge, effective emergency measures that turn the economy around and keep people working instead of sleeping in tent cities will be ignored except to call them bailouts where possible.
Our media is just soooo liberal.
lowtechcyclist
@Roger Moore:
The problem is, the smaller your sample, the more your proportions can jump around like a Hoyt Wilhelm* knuckleball. Say Hispanics are 15% of the population. Your sample of 1000 may contain 150 Hispanics. The difference between a 55-45 majority and a 50-50 split is 7 or 8 respondents. The reason why the margin of error is so big for subgroups is that a very small number of unrepresentative respondents can screw up your proportions.
It’s still worth looking at the raw numbers, because if the phenomenon of one side having an edge, but within the MOE, repeats in poll after poll, then you probably have something real that a single poll isn’t enough to ascertain. But one within-MOE proportion in one poll? Tells you nothing.
* File under “telling people you’re old without saying you’re old.”
Villago Delenda Est
“Your comment is awaiting moderation”. Yup, something is up with the site!
trollhattan
When I read “white college graduates” instantly thought “Liberty U or BYU?”
trollhattan
@Villago Delenda Est: You know or do not know what you did or did not do.
lowtechcyclist
Testing because a previous comment is awaiting moderation. Did I get too deep into the statistical weeds?
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est:
The site is tired of our shit!
Betty Cracker
WG is working the comment problem, but I’ll un-moderate y’all as quick as I can until resolved. (Or until happy hour, whichever comes first, and if the latter, y’all are on your own!)
Scout211
New story up on the Columbus Dispatch.
“Ohio AG Dave Yost cast doubt on 10-year-old rape victim case, now ‘rejoices’ at arrest”
lowtechcyclist
I think of Axios as an outfit that exists to make the travesty that is Politico look good by comparison.
Betty Cracker
@Scout211: So glad that scum-bucket is getting dragged on Twitter!
Doug R
191 respondents in that NY Times poll, which would be a 7% MOE if it was actually random. I suspect a “nationwide” poll that small wouldn’t be that random.
Doug R
Moderation? What?
Baud
@Scout211:
We rejoice every time a Republican is voted out of office.
MisterForkbeard
@Scout211: What always get me is that being a loyal Republican requires being an evil asshole at this point. Because you’re not allowed to believe that you or your policies have ever done anything wrong, so you have to claim that all the suffering you caused is imaginary.
Even this. With a 10 year old girl that was raped. They have to demogogue even this, because being a Republican requires an acceptance and encouragement of evil and harm.
Mai Naem mobile
@ETtheLibrarian: anecdotal but there’s 2 GOP Hispanics in the primary vying to run against my Dem rep Greg Stanton’s seat. Also anecdotal – in AZ we have governor appointed state judges but then they run to be retained or not. They pretty much are always retained. Anyhow, there’s only one hispanic John Flores on the AZ SC and he was among one of several AZ SC judges up for election. He’s a pretty conservative judge and GOP. He got more votes to retain than the other SC judges and I figure its because of Hispanics voting to retain him because he’s got a Hispanic name and not his conservative values.
Splitting Image
The Confederacy was a sort of multi-racial coalition. As was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.
different-church-lady
@Geminid: I’m kinda stuck at Kill Devil Hills, which seems to be an endless strip mall highway with a beach on one side. The seafood’s been amazing, but the hotel is an expensive dump and there’s nothing within walking distance, temps approaching the 90s and humidity approaching the 80s. Won’t judge all of the OBX on this one experience, but I’m ready for this trip to be done.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker: No fair, you’re three hours ahead!
We appreciate your efforts on our cranky behalfs. (behalves?)
Mai Naem mobile
@ETtheLibrarian: anecdotal but there’s 2 GOP Hispanics in the primary vying to run against my Dem rep Greg Stanton’s seat. Also anecdotal – in AZ we have governor appointed state judges but then they run to be retained or not. They pretty much are always retained. Anyhow, there’s only one hispanic John Flores on the AZ SC and he was among one of several AZ SC judges up for election. He’s a pretty conservative judge and GOP. He got more votes to retain than the other SC judges and I figure its because of Hispanics voting to retain him because he’s got a Hispanic name and not his conservative values.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: Huh. Thought it was something I said. I guess not!
The Moar You Know
I am not. Hispanics are going to move to the GOP quite solidly even if the GOP doesn’t stop implying that they’re rapists and drug dealers. A lot of the social issues (trans rights, abortion, recognition of blacks as human beings, that sort of thing) that Dems have been moving on in the last four years are anathema to most Hispanics.
Almost Retired
I don’t have anything to add to the conversation, but I crave approval. Approve me, please Betty Cracker!
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: The problem is that the Republicans’ economic program is actually mostly unpopular. So they’ve got to bang the drum on something else to get votes.
That wasn’t always the case. Reagan beat Jimmy Carter partly by saying he’d fix the economy. And after a few rocky years that actually made Reagan very unpopular during his first term, things recovered enough that he could run on the awesomeness of Republican economics in ’84 and win huge. And the aura was still there in ’88. (The walls fell in in ’92.)
Republicans are hammering the inflation line hard because it’s what worked for them in 1980 and they figure it will again. It’s the best shot they’ve got. But I suspect they still need more than that.
Butch
I live in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. For one thing, Whitmer has done a good job; for another, her GQP opponents span the range from unimpressive to odd to outright criminal. (One has been accused of participating in January 6.)
Betty Cracker
Appears to be fixed!
Sandia Blanca
There’s an organization called Cambio Texas that focuses on increasing voter participation in the Rio Grande Valley. They produced an interesting report about what happened in Texas in the 2020 election; it’s worth a read: https://www.cambiotexas.org/2020-post-election-report
FelonyGovt
A lot of Hispanics are leaving the Catholic Church and joining evangelical churches, putting them on the Republicans’ side re abortion, same-sex marriage, trans rights etc. I don’t know what you do about that
OR what Mai Naem Mobile said.
Matt McIrvin
@Splitting Image: You sometimes hear that the Confederate States of America never broke its promises to the Native Americans. Of course, it didn’t have a lot of time to break any promises whatsoever. But given that the same generals who won the Civil War were often busy exterminating Native people before and after, I can’t imagine there was much Union sympathy among them.
Eolirin
I do think we have a potential problem that a lot of hispanic groups are culturally more naturally aligned with Republicans. Especially the men.
The only thing that’s really prevented them from forming an effective alliance is how racist the white part of the GOP is.
So we shouldn’t necessarily count on holding that bloc as eventually they’ll be considered more white than brown, as long as they speak English, much like the Irish and Italians eventually got acceptance, at which point they’ll be able to find more of a home with the GOP.
Hopefully by that point the GOP will be forced to be more moderate in their positions and we’ll have broken some of the fascism leanings out of them. And hopefully we get enough of the college educated whites that the loss isn’t catastrophic, but there’s the beginnings of a realignment there for sure.
Religious intensity, views on masculinity, education level, rural vs urban. Those are going to be bigger than racial lines if we can hold on to our democracy.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
The Trail of Tears started in the South. Albeit pre-Civil War.
Baud
Moderation problem still exists.
Geminid
@different-church-lady: When I was a kid living in Northern Virginia, my family would camp every summer at the Hatteras Point campground. The Outer Banks definitely are nicer the further south you go but they’ve really changed since the 1960s.
Now when I can, I camp at Huntington Beach State Park, 20 miles south of Myrtle Beach. The water’s warmer and the waves are lower. I’m a wimp when it comes to swimming.
Baud
If Latinos do move to the GOP based on cultural issues, it’ll be interesting to see how non-socially-conservative but GOP-leaning whites respond. It’s a sad fact that people will tolerate a lot of bullshit from their own tribe that they wouldn’t tolerate from other tribes
ETA: No moderation with this comment.
Ohio Mom
@Scout211: Thanks, I enjoyed those take-downs.
I see Yost is still insisting the girl could have had her abortion in Ohio, obviously not true, that’s why she had to be taken to Indiana.
Scout211
So the right wing has found their new hook on the 10 year old child rape. Ohio 10-year-old’s alleged rapist is Guatemalan illegal immigrant: ICE source
So no apologies for the previous horrendous news stories but now let’s blame illegal immigration!!111!
These people are truly disgusting.
kindness
Where I live, the Central Valley of California, a lot of the Hispanic folk I work with switched from Catholic to Evangelical. Honestly their Catholicism was more hard core than I’m comfortable with, and let’s face it, Evangelicals are the anti-Christ Christians. They believe in all the things I was taught Jesus said not to do.
Old Dan and Little Ann
@different-church-lady: We spent 4th of July week in Corolla. No complaints but after 5 days I needed out of the heat and sun…I spend my time applying sun screen and finding any shade.
ian
Guarantee that whatever follows this sentence is complete utter horseshit.
JML
the “Latino” vote is also getting much more complex, though and polling isn’t doing a great job keeping up with it. There’s differences in political leanings that tie back to the number of generations in the US, country of origin (some of these polls dump people with heritage from Puerto Rico in with Mexican, Cuban, and Colombia and smart people know that you can’t dump all of them in the same box and call them “Latino” and expect to get a predictive result), and more. I’m reminded of when someone tried to put a naturalized Somali council member in the same bucket with a black council member whose family had been in the city for 3 generations.
But the vote is getting more complicated for Democrats and can’t be taken for granted. It’s not just “the GOP want to ship you all out of the country, vote for us” and we get the vote.
RobertB
@different-church-lady: Nags Head to Kill Devil Hills is basically Myrtle Beach without the golf courses. I recommend farther south, to Rodanthe or Avon. A little more peaceful.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
This is why I’m not a fan of the Gen. Sherman stanning that you see from time to time around these here parts…
RobertB
@Geminid: If you want to get some of that old-style flavor and pretend that US 168 doesn’t exist, you can drive on NC 12 from Kill Devil Hills to Nags Head. You get a notion of what it looked like 20+ years ago.
zhena gogolia
Roger Moore
@ETtheLibrarian:
I think what the Republicans are doing now is figuring out how to use different language communication channels to focus messaging on very specific target groups. So, for example, the message in Spanish media in south Florida is very different from their message overall, and different from the message in Spanish media in south Texas. That lets them call Mexicans a bunch of rapists in English media while still potentially getting the vote of Spanish speakers. It’s definitely something the Democrats could learn from, even if they choose to use it less dishonestly.
Splitting Image
@kindness:
The long-standing truth about conservative Christians is that their religion is determined by their politics, not the other way round. If the Catholic Church were to completely dismantle its internal misogyny, woman-hating Catholics wouldn’t become less misogynist. They would simply abandon the church and join another one that allowed them to stay just as they were.
Evangelical Christianity has spent decades setting itself up as the go-to destination for anyone whose own church has started treating Those People as human beings. They are accepting of all kinds of beliefs, as long as you hate the right people.
Polling aside, there is a certain amount of this going on, both in the U.S. and elsewhere. Frankie the Woke Pope is trying to deal with some of his Church’s worst aspects, and evangelicals are actively recruiting his detractors.
Kropacetic
As a gay man, I’m not seeing it.
Republicans are the toxic party; across all boundaries of gender, race, sexuality, religion, and affluence.
rikyrah
@Ohio Mom:
We are going to get more of these from Red States. It’s an obvious question to pose to Republicans everytime they are on television…whenever the next one comes up, and it will.
Geminid
@RobertB: The Atlantic beach community I like most is Tybee Island, Georgia. It’s twenty minutes east of Savannah. They had the foresight there to impose height and footprint restrictions so the houses are only three stories high (counting the first floors which typically are just columns). Tybee Island has a lot of nice , shady walking.
The best beach camping I ever enjoyed was at Fort Pickens, on Pensacola bay. The site extends 8 miles from the entrance and there’s a lot of good biking, I guess (I don’t bike). There is a big Civil War era fort that the Union forces seized early in that war. Its open to the public. Fort Pickens was further fortified in the first half of this century. There are large concrete bunkers for big naval guns, and plenty of smaller ones. One of my tent sites had its own machine gun nest. There is a small fishing pier on the bay side that is free with the park admission. Pensacola is a long ways for me; it’s four hours past Atlanta, and Atlanta is a nine or ten hour trip from here.
Kropacetic
@rikyrah: He had lots of company in doubting the victim existed
They went from denying the existence of entire student bodies to simply individuals…progress?
LeftCoastYankee
I would imagine that misogyny, homophobia and transphobia have a multi-racial audience and the Republicans have used all their cynical dark arts in trying to turn that into a few more votes.
Kropacetic
@LeftCoastYankee: As long as you behave in culturally acceptable way as defined by Republicans and are willing to defend the abusive practices of all components of the GOP tent, you’re welcome there.
Baud
An especially good question since the consensus in this thread is that the GOP has an in with Latinos on social issues like abortion.
Roger Moore
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
I’m not a fan of the General Sherman stanning because it’s mostly among people who think we could have solved all our problems by mass murder. Even apart from not liking people who think the problem with the ACW was that not enough people died and we needed to follow it up with a pogrom, I have sincere doubts that anything like that would, or could, have happened had Lincoln lived and accepted it. The sad truth is that Northerners as a group didn’t particularly like Blacks and weren’t never likely to spend a lot of time and effort protecting their civil rights once the war was over, much less commit mass murder of their fellow Whites in their name.
Steeplejack
Lost in the commotion but worth noting:
Baud
@Steeplejack:
It’s in the book.
Kropacetic
Who is most affected by bad policy on personal autonomy and public safety? The answer may surprise you…
WaterGirl
Yes, the plugin we use for moderation and anti-SPAM lost its mind again. It behaved as though we didn’t have a license for the plugin, which we do. It said we could buy it, but of course we already own it. It said we could enter our API key, but it flipped me off every time I tried to do that.
While I waited to hear back from our site developers, I tried entering the API key a few times (always getting the bird in response and even tried updating the plugin, which it wouldn’t let me do.
By the time I heard back from the developers, the problem had righted itself and they had done nothing to fix it.
My conclusion:
For whatever reason, there was a communication issue between the plugin and whatever servers it typically accesses as it does moderation. Once the plugin could successfully “phone home” it knew the API key without my entering it again.
So some sort of communication problem. Once it stopped throwing all of you into moderation I did update the plugin, and that updated. ♀️
Baud
@WaterGirl:
When it flipped you off, was there a picture like we have for the pie filter?
UncleEbeneezer
@WaterGirl: I have no idea what any of this means, but I blame Biden and Merrick Garland.
Phylllis
A drinking town with a fishing problem.
waspuppet
@Scout211: Sorry I forgot to look for yr comment; I didn’t see a FP post on it, although I’m confident one is coming.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
D’oh! Silly me.
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore: We could have done better by carrying out something along the lines of post-WWII de-Nazification, which, in the Western-occupied areas at least, was not particularly vengeful or bloodthirsty, but made very clear that the Germans bore fault and could not go on as they had before in any way. But the problem with that is that the North was itself not particularly committed to Black civil rights. The measures passed during Reconstruction went remarkably far, but there was a limit to how far Northern whites in the 19th century would go to enforce them.
Geminid
@Roger Moore: Sherman never would have countenanced mass executions of Confederate prisoners, nor would have Grant. Just from a strictly pragmatic view, that would have triggered terrible reprisals against Black people in the unconquered South. And it’s not like racism was some baccillus concentrated in the Confederate army; racism was everywhere among white people.
Sherman did believe in destroying property. He bragged that in his campaigns of 1864-65 he destroyed $100 million of property and only $20 million was of military value. British historian W.F.C. Fuller* thought this was bad practice. All that cotton Sherman’s troops burned wasn’t going anywhere and when the war ended the nation could have put it to good use. One use I think about would be paying for a force of 25,000 African American cavalry to police the South during Reconstruction. They’d have made short work of the Klan.
* Fuller, The Generalship of U. S. Grant (1928). Great book.
Redshift
Apples and oranges – the 50-point difference is between Hispanics overall in one year and Hispanics with college degrees in another, which means pretty much nothing.
ian
@Matt McIrvin:
Why didn’t we think of doing the same thing we had done to the Nazis when we finished the American Civil War? Those foolish union politicians, they had the example just eighty years in front of them!
piratedan
@Steeplejack: also worth noting, apparently the FBI and Homeland security were also asleep at the switch.
Its also apparent that the GOP is convinced that they’ll still get away with all of this… everything from supporting sedition to sabotaging the interests of everyday Americans simply because an idea comes from a Democrat.
Loads of polling showing that the everyday voter is concerned about the economy, yet how many are aware that the GOP voted against legislation to prevent price gouging by refusing to allow it to be discussed at the Senate?
we all claim that people are ignorant and apparently if we continue to rely on the MSM to discuss the issues of the day, all we get is polling and little education on the issues sans context… shit they’re more concerned about whether JB should run in 2024 than in just how many Congressman were involved in the plot to overthrow the government.
Josie
@Sandia Blanca: Thanks for posting this. I hope Democratic leaders in Texas take note of this information. I spent most of my life in the Rio Grande Valley and found much of this material to be on target.
Scout211
Good article in Neiman Lab by Laura Hazard Owen summarizing the wild and dangerous news reporting about the 10 year old victim and her perpetrator. The greater problem she writes is that there will be more and more stories with “one source” as more and more pregnant persons are denied abortions in their state. She wonders if the media is ready for it.
ETA: I cut some of the quotes because I was quoting too much of her commentary. It was a listing of many of the horrible opinion pieces and news articles by the right wing news media designed to cast doubt on the accuracy of the story.
Please go read the whole thing. Reporting the stories of those seeking abortions in states who ban them are stories that need to be told. And told accurately.
James E Powell
@JML:
Definitely. In truth, there is no such thing. I would like it if all our candidates would stop using terms like Hispanic, Latino, Latinx, etc. Use the country of origin, if that seems necessary, or just address specific needs. We don’t talk to Irish Americans as if they’re from Denmark.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
This isn’t entirely off topic… I’ve been noticing that the media really riveted to the Jan 6th hearings, and I believe it is because they are being handled as a coherent story with lots of evidence. I think the reason the media skews to GOP framing is BECAUSE they tend to do a better job of telling short, coherent sounding stories about the economy, defense, social issues, etc. Those stories are crap, but they can sound reasonable. I don’t think it is just that these folks are lazy. I think a lot of them aren’t very bright. You have to lead them along the path, because they aren’t good at connecting the dots. I mean these people have been reporting on the Trump administration and all its players for how long? Yet, so many of them sound really shocked by the revelations. How is that even possible if they were paying the slightest attention?
We all need to be better at telling coherent stories about why voting Democratic makes sense and will make the world better. For the latino/hispanic/whatever community, we can’t just say, ‘They hate you because they are racist’. For a lot of GOPers, its maybe true. But as one example, the GOP are telling a simple story about we are unraveling 1000’s of years of social order and faith with our embrace of gay rights, trans rights, women’s rights, etc. They have always been good at making that scary. Gay people in the 90s beat that attack back for a time by coming out and being more boring than threatening. The story was, ‘Look.. I’m not threatening. I’m just like you. They are being mean for no good reason.’ As they dehumanize us, we have to work to make sure they can’t miss our humanity. As they tell simple stories that make us responsible for the results of their policies, we have to be better at making it easy for people to understand why that is wrong
If its not clear, I’m saying we ALL need to be better at this.
azlib
I big part of the headline inflation number is energy prices and in particular gasoline. Those prices are heading down which will start showing up in the headline inflation number. The better number to watch is the core inflation number which is still running just under 6%. The Feds target is 2%.
What irritates me is unemployment is very low, but the media talks all the time about inflation, inflation, inflation! The overall economy is in incredibly good shape. Inflation is caused mostly by a much stronger recovery from the pandemic which disrupted supply chains plus Putin’s war. There is still a shortage of labor which also impacts the supply side.
gene108
Conservatives want us subservient to their whims. They don’t care who gets hurt in their quest for total control.
https://chirblog.org/fire-back-federal-court-mothers-day-another-challenge-aca-puts-access-preventive-services-risk/
Wapiti
@West of the Cascades: the shift in Hispanic Catholics – in 2010, 51% said that abortion should be legal in most or all cases. In June 2022, 75% said that.
I’d offer a hypothesis: as Hispanics see more abortion rights in traditionally Catholic Latin America, their perception shifts.
Before the 2020 election, my Irish-American neighbor with a first generation Irish-American spouse confided that in the past abortion was their primary concern, but that was no longer the case. Ireland legalized abortion in 2018. Coincidence? I think maybe not.
James E Powell
@LeftCoastYankee:
The appeal of a swaggering loudmouth who ignores the rules and gets away with it cuts across ethnic lines.
Anecdotal: Back in 2016 Trump was the overwhelming favorite of my Mexican-American male students.
Sandia Blanca
@Josie: Thank you, Josie. It’s good to hear that validation, as we’re contemplating giving them some money.
evodevo
@different-church-lady: Yep – you got it…If you were expecting to get ANYWHERE without a car, you are gonna be disappointed. We vacationed there for 30 years because the in-laws owned a beach house, and it was a mandatory spring and fall outing, for a week or so. Gas was expensive then, because captive audience on the Banks – it’s 50 miles inland or north or south, so you were stuck paying whatever the going rate was for gas. I imagine it’s hell nowadays. SOOOO glad we sold that beachhouse as soon as my MIL passed away. Haven’t been near a beach since lol
lowtechcyclist
@The Moar You Know:
That’s been true for some time, but IIRC the 40% of the Latinx vote that GWB got in either 2000 or 2004 is still as good as the GOP has done with that group.
No doubt, over time, Hispanics will increasingly identify as white and vote like it. I could introduce you to an example or two of people who are already there. But I don’t think there’s going to be a 20% swing, let alone a 50% swing, from one election cycle to the next.
Citizen Alan
@Anonymous At Work:
You underestimate the extent to which some women benefit from the Patriarchy because they’ve learned how to game it to their advantage. Do you think someone like former sorority girl and Home Economics major Marsha Blackburn could have become a US Senator if she were a pro-choice Democrat?
Citizen Alan
@Betty Cracker:
In the same sense that racial polarization was bad for Apartheid-era South Africa (which is to say, not bad at all for the white minority rulers).
Citizen Alan
@Geminid:
Like Andy Johnson would have ever tolerated that. His impeachment was direct result of his efforts to protect the KKK in its infancy,
Geminid
@Citizen Alan: Ahh. Finally saw this. A counterargument: For the first few months of his Presidency, Andrew Johnson was very hostile to the Confederates. “Treason must be made odious,” Johnson snarled, but his plans to put Conferderate military leaders on trial were stymied by Grant, who threatened to resign.
It was only later, when Johnson understood that he would never be supported by Republican politicians, that he turned to the South as a future base of support and then undermined Reconstruction.
Johnson did not have a strong base of support at the time, though. He very narrowly avoided conviction in an impeachment that was brought on in part over disputes with the Secretary of War over Reconstruction policies. Johnson was essentially a lame duck after that.
I could not say for sure that a force of 25,000 Black US Cavalry could have been established. With a determined Republican Congress and the prestige of Generals Grant and Sherman behind it, though, I can’t agree that it couldn’t have been, especially if it could be financed by the sale of confiscated cotton.
Anyway, my greater point is that a more rigourous Reconstruction was possible, and that this possibility is a lot more plausible and practical than the vengeance fantasy of mass executions that I see some of my bloodthirsty contemporaries entertain.