Friday, November 14, 2014

GRANTING AN AUDIENCE TO A PROFESSIONAL TROUBLEMAKER

A lot of bull rounded up this week
The post-election spin and counter-spin continues and is unlikely to abate for awhile.

The victors, of course, have the expectation that they get to write the history. On the national level, the soon-to-be Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell is mumbling the usual about elections "meaning something" and the "will of the people." Translation? "We'll do what we want to do and don't take responsibility for any of it."

Ian Reifowitz in the Daily Kos takes a good, hard look at how well McConnell has heeded the "will of the people" over time. As it happens, when that will swung in the direction of Democrats, well...not so much. He points to how different things were in 2009 following an election where both houses of Congress went strongly Democratic along with the executive branch. More than that, "just over 57 percent of eligible voters actually turned out to vote, the highest level in four decades."

How well did the GOP respect that reality?

And now, "after midterm elections that saw the lowest voter turnout since 1942 at barely 36 percent," suddenly Democrats are supposed to get in line.

Meanwhile, up in Southlake, one of the wealthiest communities in the United States, Tea Party favorite, Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, claims that "In Texas, the results were an overwhelming confirmation of our state’s approach to governance."

Honestly, how overwhelming was that confirmation? 

There's a great deal of attention on how Gov-elect Abbott resoundingly defeated Sen. Wendy Davis. But what's not spoken of is how the Abbott vs. Perry race came out. That is to say, how many GOP voters turned out to 
Looks like we're turned onto a dead end
confirm Abbott compared to those that showed for Perry in 2010?  Abbott's "overwhelming confirmation" was, in fact, significantly smaller than what Perry got. Though the final numbers aren't in, about 50,000 more people did vote for Abbott than Perry. That's about a 2% increase. But between 2010 and 2014, the number of registered voters rose 6.7%. Abbott had to polled 100,000+ more to match what Perry did in terms of the percentage of registered voters. It['s even worse in terms of the eligible-to-vote. So rather than an "overwhelming confirmation,"it's more like a resounding "meh."

The Contrarian Chorus:

Meanwhile, the contrarians make more convincing, less self-serving arguments. It seems clear that what we really saw was the ultimate triumph of money in politics and the confirmation of the oligarchy that goes with it. 

Ben Ptashnik in TruthOut puts it simply:

Let's not hesitate to say what is obvious: This was an entirely corrupt and rigged election. What we witnessed last Tuesday, on Election Day, is just how dirty the right-wing corporate and fossil fuel oligarchy is willing to play. They exceeded our worst expectations and cheated so boldly that despite all we know about them, it still sent shivers up our collective spine.

In addition to the Supreme Court opening the floodgates to allow billionaire bucks to drown out the Voice of the People, there's also GOP voter suppression including the Voter ID law here in Texas. How many were kept away won't be clear for some time. It will take a concerted effort from well-funded social scientists to tease that out of the data, according to Drew DeSilver, a Senior Writer at the Pew Research Center.  I asked him if it was knowable, and if so - what would it take? 

First off, you'd need to wait for the full, official tallies of votes, down to at least the county level (and ideally the precinct level), which I assume won't be out for several weeks. I don't know what voting-law changes Texas has made between 2010 and 2014, but you'd want to account not just for those changes, but for differences in how strictly/loosely they were enforced in different localities. Then you'd also need a model of expected 2014 turnout absent any voting-law changes, which would have to take into account population growth, demographic changes, which races were on the ballot, and other factors that you'd expect to influence turnout. You’d want a good demographic portrait of the 2014 electorate, better than you get from the exit polls, but that comes from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, which won't be out for a few months. And you'd probably also want to compare 2010-14 turnout differential in Texas to other states that had made similar changes to their voting laws. 

So it's a major undertaking. Perhaps Greg Abbott, in one of his last acts as Attorney General, could commission an independent study to get the facts? I mean, he's going to want to argue for Voter ID when it comes before the Supreme Court. Won't he want the facts to be sure that justice is done?

While you're holding your breath, Juan Thompson in The Intercept collects the anecdotal evidence to show "How Voter Suppression Helped Produce the Lowest Turnout in Decades."

Speaking of the Supreme Court, it look like, at long last, New York Times court reporter Linda Greenhouse has reached a tipping point. Now that the conservative block on the court has taken it upon themselves to gut Obamacare, there's no use kidding ourselves any longer:

In decades of court-watching, I have struggled — sometimes it has seemed against all odds — to maintain the belief that the Supreme Court really is a court and not just a collection of politicians in robes. This past week, I’ve found myself struggling against the impulse to say two words: I surrender.

A Professional's Pride:

Finally, following up on my maudlin Veteran's Day recollection of what I did during the run-up to the Iraq war, I found this delightful online comment that came a few years after as I got into another political fracas in 2006. This person's revisionism is amazing. I spoke out against the lies that brought us to war. I was lucky enough to have a public platform to say, loud and proud, that there were NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION. 


Well, the fact that I was vindicated must have been too much to bear. So this is what he made of it instead:


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Tips? Suggestions? Ideas? Drop a line to carl (at) inanityofsanity (dot) com

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