ICYMI: President Joe Biden will deliver remarks during a service at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church to celebrate the birthday of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The current pastor is Sen. Raphael Warnock. https://t.co/doSMGiylgc
— Atlanta Journal-Constitution (@ajc) January 13, 2023
Health news:
With bipartisan congressional support and just under $1 billion in federal funds, the nation's new 988 mental health helpline has raked in over 2 million calls, texts and chat messages since launching in July.
A look at what's next for 988 @APhttps://t.co/mKoJlG5WJU
— Amanda Seitz (@AmandaSeitz) January 10, 2023
Ten years of work in 10 countries, 25 study sites, dozens of collaborators, and over 8000 participants showing that criminalizing gay men is the most significant predictor of HIV risk.
There is no path to ending #HIV or #AIDS with punitive laws in place.https://t.co/HN67jOaBjI pic.twitter.com/WwcwoNOYlD
— Stefan Baral (@sdbaral) January 8, 2023
“Independent” (of thought or reason)
If you're an independent but you still vote like a partisan, you have probably replaced party-driven polarization with media-driven polarization, & I cannot say that is any better https://t.co/wfKU9Sq9lv
— chatham harrison is tending his garden (@chathamharrison) January 13, 2023
like, i know a few genuine independents and they want things like an end to all federal income tax and also want socialized healthcare
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) January 13, 2023
My bet is the majority of people who attacked the Capitol on January 6 were independents. Self-identified independents over 40 are probably more reactionary than the average self-identified Republican voter. https://t.co/AMuJ3tPI2M
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) January 14, 2023
Baud
Aren’t a lot of liberal young people not registered with the party?
ETA: It took me a couple of years to actually register as a Dem after I started voting.
Baud
Baud! 20XX!: Like a genie in a bottle.
Baud
The mental health line story is amazing. I hadn’t heard about that.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I didn’t register as a D until we moved to Iowa, where the primaries/caucuses were closed. I’d always lived in Michigan, where they were open.
OzarkHillbilly
As Steven Taylor says (and has the data to back it up) there are very very very few true independents. The vast majority vote the same in every election but want to pretend they are above all that partisan BS.
@Baud: Here in Misery we have no party registration, but everybody knows how I vote (it’s public record which primaries I vote in) and my email shows where my contributions go.
RandomMonster
@Baud: I too started as an Independent when I first voted at 18. I take it as a sign of growing maturity that I switched to Democratic sometime in college.
Baud
@RandomMonster:
I matured late. My current goal is 2027.
Ken
Damn, they’re going to be mad they forgot to ask for a sparkly pony that craps gold, which I understand is traditional in these “I want government that…” lists.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Hopefully your emails aren’t public record.
chrome agnomen
in today’s polarized political arena, independents are idiots, trying to have things both ways. yearning for the manchinema party to get off the ground. epitomizing the perfect being the enemy of the good, and thereby making everything worse. prima donnas letting the two parties do the heavy lifting on policy, though evidence of that is lacking from the right. a major reason why we can’t have nice things.
feeling cranky this morning.
p.a.
“No difference between the parties” is the strangulated cry from someone with a half-eaten face getting medical care via Obamacare.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Meh, my reps and senators all know how I feel about things. So do all my neighbors. I’m that “crazy Libtard that lives down Hwy A…”
WereBear
@Baud: Baud’s reach should exceed his grasp.
It is part of your No Pants platform.
Benw
@Baud: like Cristina Aguilera we’ll have to rub you the right way
Starfish
In Colorado, a third of the voters are independents. We have an open primary system where independents receive both primary ballots but are only allowed to return one.
Most of the independents that I have met are younger voters and not party people.
A lot of younger people seem opposed to various institutions like churches, universities, and so on. These institutions have always (in their lifetimes) been broken and not served them well.
Do you want a politician who will sell out your future by compromising with the oil and gas lobby or no?
Michael Bersin
@OzarkHillbilly:
Political conversations in Missouri with heaping helpings of “expertise” and the individual firmly stating, “I’ve been a registered [party name] for [x] years,” don’t usually end well around me.
I usually reply, loudly enough so that everyone in the room can hear, “No, you’re not.” [long pause, not long enough so that they can indignantly reply] “Voters in Missouri can not register by party.”
I’ve just heard that confident assertion far too much over the past thirty years.
Tinare
I have a couple of friends who are registered as independents who seem to think it’s a badge of honor to not be a partisan. I tried to explain to one of them why it was stupid to not pick a party in Pennsylvania (a closed primary state). The response was that they thought they should be able to vote in primaries anyway. So they’re really unicorns should be real people. Both were McCain-like republicans. Both are totally shocked at what the Republicans have become, so they are actually people who are easily fooled, imho.
Baud
@Starfish:
Non-institutionalists aren’t really any more effective or morally better than institutionalists. They just don’t have a label that can be the subject of attacks and derision.
Starfish
@Benw: It has been so long since I have thought about that song. Baud should definitely use it as one of his campaign songs to appeal to the independents.
Josie
@Baud:
Which is the real reason they cling to their non-institutional label.
Starfish
@Baud: If they can kill the politicized evangelical movement, I am here for it.
Gin & Tonic
@WereBear: I’d prefer not to read about “grasp” and “no pants” on a Sunday morning, SVP.
Immanentize
@Baud:
Baud is Barbara Eden?
Baud
@Starfish:
Keeping the evangelicals’ political party out of power is the best way to do that IMHO.
Geminid
@Baud: “Independents are not a monolith!”
Social science researchers find that Independents actually are a very disparate group. Large chunks vote for one or the other main parties fairly consistently. But some often vote against the party in power, perhaps deeming divided government better than one party having the upper hand.
Some Independents do not like extremes and swing away from the more extreme party. This may be born out in the way Virginia’s Democratic politicians (usually) prevail against Republicans even though Democratic Party affiliation polling* shows them with a 35-38% share of the state’s voters. When the subject of California’s Independents came up here the other day someone said that a majority of this group has voted for Democrats lately. That could be a response to the radicalization of the state and national Republican party.
I think there are swing voters, not many but enough to turn close elections in purple states and districts. This may have been the case in Virginia in 2021 and New York last November. Low Democratic and high Republican turnouts definitely hurt Democratic candidates. I think a 3-5% swing among the Independent vote also contributed to the 12% swing from Joe Biden to Youngkin, and to the defeats of New York Democrats in districts thought to be light-blue.
*Virginia does not register voters by party, so this number is taken from the Wason Center polls of registered voters. One question always asks people to self-identify by party. Another question asks people to pick an ideological self-description: Very Conservative, Conservative, Moderate, Liberal, Very Liberal.
There are also questions about age, gender and ethnicity, as well as issues up for consideration before elections and in current General Assembly sessions.
prostratedragon
Tribute to Dr. King by Adolphus Hailstork, performed by the Chineke! Orchestra of the UK: “Epitaph for a Man Who Dreamed.”
Suzanne
@Tinare:
Yeah, it’s because those people look on party registration as part of their self-concept instead of a tool of influence.
I understand it, but it isn’t really smart. In your day-to-day life, party registration doesn’t mean all that much, in that it doesn’t make demands on your life. Hell, it can be secret, if you want.
My personal politics are probably closest to the Warren/Squad wing of the party, but I am keenly aware that I have zero influence without a party registration.
The Dark Avenger
I am not a member of a party with an organized agenda. I am a Democrat.
Kay
@Tinare:
They want incoherent sets of things – low taxes but universal healthcare, less corruption and lawbreaking but also fewer regulations, a 50/50 ideologically balanced compisition of a legislative body – thereby ensuring deadlock- but also fast and decisive action on their demands.
There aren’t “more independents” (no matter what people tell pollsters) because the electorate is intensely polarized. More of them are mostly voting for either Republicans or Democrats, but in true Independent fashion, they want to vote like partisan without being one.
JPL
OT Sad news for the GA fans among us. An offensive lineman and recruiting staff member were killed earlier in a car crash. Two other members of the team were hurt but their names have not been released. WSB TV
A 21-year-old male passenger sustained minor injuries and a 26-year-old female passenger sustained serious injuries.
Edited to add that AJC has more info link
bbleh
Certainly almost all the “independents” I know are actually dependably partisan leaners, and the few that aren’t are basically not just nonpartisan; they’re non-political: they tend to be uninformed, uninterested in learning, and IF they vote it’s spur-of-the-moment and basically whimsical.
And yeah, right now, most of the partisan-leaning “independents” are Republicans in all but name who don’t want to be associated with those riff-raff.
Amir Khalid
@The Dark Avenger:
These days, though, they’re not Will Rogers’ Democratic party any more. They do have an organised agenda now. Whereas the Republicans’ “agenda” is just tax cuts for the rich, misery for the rest, and placating its out-of-control kindergarten class.
Starfish.
@bbleh: Yes! The “proud” independents are usually not very political and uninterested in learning
I don’t think what you are saying about partisan leaning independents is true. I think that there are Democratic independents and not just Republican ones. I think the flavor of independent varies by age group, and we are going to see the shift soon.
Jinchi
I never understand this take on the Gallup data. We only have two parties in this country and one of them is openly hostile to a large fraction of the population. What do you think the voting habits of a “truly independent” voting population would look like?
mrmoshpotato
To quote bluegal’s mocking of these both-siderist idiots, “I’m an indeeependaant!”
JMG
Roughly half the voters in solidly Democratic Massachusetts are registered without party affiliation, that is, independents. Many of them are actually Republicans who do so to vote in Democratic primaries where their votes might have some impact on the election, knowing general elections for most offices will be foregone conclusions. I would assume the reverse is true in red states with open primaries.
Matt McIrvin
Aren’t open or semi-open primaries more common than they used to be? If you get no voting advantage from being registered with a party, people may figure there’s no reason to have a registered party affiliation, and then they self-identify as independent. There could be less to this than it appears.
mrmoshpotato
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! And I doubt these stupid children bother to vote either.
Starfish.
@JMG: That makes sense to register as an independent if you are a Republican in MA. If you don’t, you get no say in who your officials are at all.
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: I suspect there are a significant number of voters–enough to swing close elections–who just vote for whoever seems to be winning.
OzarkHillbilly
@Starfish.: The same can be said of voters here in rural Misery but I can’t bring myself to vote for the devil’s hand maidens because they aren’t the devil themselves.
mrmoshpotato
@Ken:
Sir, I’m damn sure that Wilmeristas want unicorns that shit rainbows out of their eyes.
Miss Bianca
@Matt McIrvin:
@Starfish:
I think this is largely true in CO, anyway. I also think open primaries are a cop-out, personally, and I wish we didn’t have them. However, I do confess that at times I have felt the temptation to switch my registration to independent, primarily because the Republicans are the only party in power in my county, and will be for the foreseeable future.
However, the ironic thing is that now the Republicans are bellowing about the open primary system and threatening to switch back. Because, apparently, the reason they are being wiped out at the state level is that they aren’t radical and reactionary *enough*, and it’s all the fault of those darn kids who aren’t Republicans fucking with them in the primaries, man!
Which is delusional, but then again, they are Republicans, so I repeat myself.
StringOnAStick
One thing not being registered with a party does is keep you “protected” from voter outreach projects by party. It makes it harder to reach D leaning young people so we have to come up with other ways to reach them. That’s where the elected officials with strong social media games get more credit/support than their legislative achievements would suggest.
Kay
Besides the ludicrous, made-up numbers they push into media, the exclusive focus on blue states and school closings ignores the data.
Florida famously pretended the pandemic didn’t exist – Florida students had larger drops in national standardized tests than California students. They haven’t found any real connection between number of days schools were closed and the overall well being of students. They expected to! Hell, I expected it. But they do not, in fact, have it. So they’ve just decided to pretend they do.
It’s just junk.
JMG
@StringOnAStick: Years ago I had a co-worker who was registered independent in New Hampshire. In 1988, back in the pre-Internet era, he said prior to that state’s primary he was inundated with junk mail and phone calls from both parties’ plethora of presidential candidates and bitterly regretted his decision.
JPL
@StringOnAStick: In GA they use primaries to make a determination. That is not foolproof because you can vote in either primary.
Baud
@Kay: That’s a third of California’s 2022 GDP.
Apparently, California’s economy shrunk by a third and no one noticed.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Every self-described “independent” I know is a lying sack of shit, they all vote straight ticket GQP or cop out by voting for glibertarians. Maybe, just maybe, they didn’t vote for the Orange Fart Cloud the second time around but the rest of their ticket? Straight party line vote.
I’ve always called them “Embarrassed Republicans”.
A large chunk of them also happen to be your basic Totebagger Radio type who profess their “independence” (while still voting per above) because political parties are sooooo partisan and besides BOTH SIDES!!!!!!!. They reek of adopting a moral superiority is one is aligned with “the system” and so on.
Geminid
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: We’ll put you down as “undecided”!
More seriously, successful purple state and district politicians do not, like many here, disparage Independents. They don’t dis them, but rather shape their messaging so as to attract them. I’m not saying Democrats have to cater to Independents in policy, but purple state and district Democrats make sure not to alienate them in how political programs are presented.
Baud
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: As someone mentioned above, I think it depends on the age demo. I think most younger independents skew left and, if they vote, vote Dem.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
I’m not sure when I first registered with a party. Virginia doesn’t have registration by party; not sure about SC. I may not have been able to register as a Dem until my wife and I moved to Maryland in my mid-40s.
bbleh
@Starfish.: yes I meant per para 1 the ones I know, but I’m an old.
Jinchi
I think this is exactly right. There is no value to a voter in being registered to a particular party, except the ability to participate in a closed primary.
In a lot of states, “unaffiliated” voters are allowed to choose which primary to vote in, while “declared” voters are locked in. Registering as (unaffiliated / independant / no party preference) is the choice with the most options in that system. Other states are completely open, and it doesn’t matter on a personal level at all.
But I don’t think most “unaffiliated” voters identify as independent. They just aren’t affiliated.
Burnspbesq
@mrmoshpotato:
I wanted a unicorn that pisses Pilsner Urquell and shits New York Super Fudge Chunk, but with all my health issues I shouldn’t have either one any more.
Geminid
@Miss Bianca: Virginia does not register by party so all primaries are open. The radical wing of Virginia’s Republican party gets around this by whenever possible using the caucus/convention method to select candidates. That’s how 5th District Congressman Denver Riggleman was ousted by Bob No-Good in 2020.
The establishment wing cries, “You dummies! We can’t win statewide without Independents now, and we are better off involving them in choosing our nominees.” But the radicals know they can pack caucuses with their zealots, and whereas more normal voters will take a few minutes to vote in a primary they are less likely to spend a couple hours at a caucus with all the knuckle draggers .
Bill Arnold
@Baud:
I did not register as a Democrat until after a few decades of voting. (For Democrats, with maybe two exceptions, one because the Democrat in a local race had scored the Right To Life Party endorsement. Never voted Republican for a high office.)
Jinchi
I don’t think you can cater to independents, because they cover the spectrum. What a candidate can do is cater outside the party base, which should make them more electable in the general election.
PaulB
My email inbox, my text messages, my voicemail, and my US postal mail would all like a word with you.
JWR
Margaret Brennan is very concerned about Biden’s lack of transparency by not immediately telling the people about these most likely misplaced documents. And Chuck Todd has Rod Rosenstein on to tell us his opinions on transparency. Next up, Ron Johnson tells us about, wait for it… Hunter Biden’s Laptop!! Yeah, you go, Chuck
ETA, Johnson accuses Todd of having him on just to argue with him, which I would say is true.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone 😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning…..
rikyrah
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Yeah, that’s how I see it too
Baud
@JWR: Haha. If they’re reaching for the “transparency” argument, they’re flailing.
Bets on when the NYT starts talking about clouds and shadows.
Brachiator
@Geminid:
That may have been me. In California there are more people registered as Independent than registered as Republican, but a plurality of these people will vote for Democrats and punish extreme right wing candidates and policies. From one study.
Independent voters tend to be moderate. Other states may be different, but in California, the idea that Independents are conservative Republicans who won’t confess simply is not true.
ETA. The data is from various reports by the Public Policy Institute. For some reason the link tool did not work on my smartphone browser.
Let me try a plain link for those who might be interested.
https://www.ppic.org/publication/california-voter-and-party-profiles/
For the past few election cycles, it has been practically impossible for a Republican to win statewide office, governor or senator, etc. But local or congressional office is another matter.
Also, currently there may be slightly more registered Republicans than Independents, but the GOP still is weak here in the state.
Baud
@Baud:
I have no idea how I typed ellipses.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Good lord. I was just thinking we haven’t heard a whole lot about Bill Barr’s Renfield in the last couple years
(not entirely fair, since Rosenstein was Renfielding for trump before we ever heard of Barr, but trump had so many Renfields)
JPL
This is the local feed for the service at Ebenezer Baptist Church
Watch | 11ALIVE Live and On-Demand Videos | Atlanta, Georgia | 11alive.comWatch | 11ALIVE Live and On-Demand Videos | Atlanta, Georgia | 11alive.com
Kay
@Baud:
The author is a professional expert witness- he makes big bucks testifying against public school districts in lawsuits brought against them – usually about how school funding does not impact student achievement. That they roll him out as some sort of “data driven” impartial is just embarrassing.
But it’s a HUGE SHOCKING NUMBER so the innumerates in media will robotically repeat it with no independent thought at all.
What I love is the SPECIFICITY of the made up numbers. It’s “1.2” not “1”. You’re making it up! Round it off!
NotMax
A veritable myriad of ways this can (read: will) go south real quick.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: Denver Post is already there, with a headline about how Biden’s political future is “clouded”. And no, I won’t provide a link, I am that damn disgusted with them.
lowtechcyclist
@bbleh:
And yeah, right now, most of the partisan-leaning “independents” are Republicans in all but name who don’t want to be associated with those riff-raff.
How is that remotely possible? With 28% of the electorate identifying as Dems, 28% identifying as Repubs, and most independents with a partisan lean being Republicans in all but name, the Dems should be getting routinely crushed at the polls.
And we’re not. As frequently noted, the GOP Presidential candidate has won a plurality of the popular vote only once since 1988. Gerrymandering (including the Senate and the Electoral College in that description) is the only thing that keeps them in the game.
Mike in NC
So today I’ve heard on TV about the debt ceiling crisis, the border crisis, the classified document crisis, and maybe a few other crises that I already forgot about. Seems like we only have these parade of crises when a Democrat sits in the White House. Go figure.
Baud
@Miss Bianca:
The NYT of the West!
I remember during the Tara Reid fiasco, the media were demanding that Biden allow them access to all his archived Senate papers. He told them no. That was awesome.
@Kay:
Disagree. He should say that the lockdown cost California $1,248,537,847,589.68.
Another Scott
@NotMax: This is a cynical Blue Light Special advertisement for campaign contributions from the crypto “industry”.
Rep. French Hill:
I don’t see anything about protecting the public from scammers. I see instead guys saying they will be gate keepers, telling regulators what they can and can’t do, and telling the crypto bros that they better be on these people’s good side, wink-wink nudge-nudge.
Grr…,
Scott.
Kay
More excellent work by the anti-woke Substack millionaires!
They vanquished the formidable foe of the Oberlin Student Council and the 31 Yale law students with bad manners, but somehow managed to miss that the governor of a state with 22 million people is supressing political speech with state action every single day.
So focused on scolding and controlling 19 year old college students on the Left they missed the middle aged, anti-speech, government-backed crusade on the Right- the one that actually affects people.
These are our “public intellectuals”. Just low godammned quality thinkers. I suspect it’s nepotism.
NotMax
@Mike in NC
Lost the remote? There’s other channels.
;)
Bill Arnold
@Kay:
Wow. From a skim, that Hoover Institution study is junk. No real discussion of causality. Economic projections full human lifetimes into the future stated as fact.
The Economic Cost Of The Pandemic: State By State (Eric Hanushek, January 4, 2023)
(pdf)
If, for instance, a large (say 50 percent, for purposes of argument) part of the damage to education is due to organic mid or long term brain damage caused by SARS-CoV-2 among a subset of infected/recovered students, the policy implications are rather different than they would be if it were entirely due to school closures.
To prevent more damage to children, ventilation improvements, mandatory masks in school when there is significant community spread, vaccines (probably; it is likely that they reduce average amounts of virus shedding per case). Closures would be a last resort.
NotMax
@Another Scott
Can’t help wondering if French Hill changed his name to Freedom Hill during that brouhaha.
//
Kay
@Baud:
When it turned out that FL sunk so far in math that should have triggered immediate questions from people who were GENUINELY interested in the well-being of children. Because schools were open in FL, so what was going on? It was kind of good we had some closed longer and some closed shorter- a comparison!
Nope. They just stuck to their original ideologically driven theory. They just removed all references to data out of red states.
We still only know this “children were negatively affected by the pandemic” – no one is asking why.
Kay
@Bill Arnold:
I agree. It’s amazing how it’s been rewritten already. Ohio was the first state to close schools. Hardly a liberal bastion. Private schools and charter schools in urban areas stayed closed longer than public schools, so probably not wholly driven by labor unions?
None of it matters. This is the narrative they like and they’re sticking with it.
James E Powell
@Matt McIrvin:
Those are the voters who put Trump in the White House in 2016. They voted for him because it was a media event and they wanted to be part of it.
Jeffro
Now there’s a line of work I might have to look into (only on the other side, and with facts).
“Mr. Fro, pro-public-school witness for hire” – I like it!
Kay
@Jeffro:
His thesis is that public school students will do as well with 8k funding as they do with 12k funding or 18k funding.
Which flies in the face of every fancy private K-12 school and private college tuition rationale in the country, but maybe private school students are just better and worthier of more funding.
Kay
@Jeffro:
You have to get hired by a think tank so you have time and space to develop your real money gig on the side.
That regular income is crucial while you make a market for your bullshit.
delphinium
@Another Scott: LOL-now suddenly these guys think diversity and inclusion are okay?
Kay
I’m going to Denmark for a month this summer. We’re renting an insanely cute little tiny house by the sea. I have a son, daughter in law and grandaughter there so I am thrilled I can hang out with baby for awhole month.
We love southern California for vacations so have spent a lot of time renting in the LA and San Diego area and the vacation rentals in Denmark are quite a bit cheaper. Airfare is more expensive of course but we have airfare to CA too. Scandinavian summer is something else- the days are so long. Delicious.
Kelly
Rodney Crowell “Preachin’ to the Choir”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpaR1F7FTJg&ab_channel=RodneyCrowell-Topic
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I too registered as an independent for the first year after I became a citizen. I wanted to see if any other party would woo me and send me info. None did. I have always voted D even when I was registered as an independent.
schrodingers_cat
Ian Bremmer is an idiot, I don’t know why anyone listens to him. Check out his front page story on Modi and you will see what I am saying.
The Dark Avenger
@Amir Khalid: If they have one it’s pretty much a secret to the news media and the base of their constituents.
J R in WV
@Starfish:
If they can kill the politicized evangelical christo-fascist movement, I am here for it.
Fix’d that for you~!!~