Election by Actual (Not Fictional) People

As someone once said, "Follow the money."

Interesting study, deserving of further research.  But these results are consistent with other studies showing that conservatives tend to view the world in black/white terms, as compared to liberals who accept shades of grey.

Excerpts from an important, fascinating, scholarly book about the corrosive influence of money in pollitics and the newsmedia.  This article specifically focusses on Fox News' role, strategy and influence on American democracy.  This is my favorite paragraph:

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Between the cocoon effect and the shameless disregard for consistency and intellectual honesty, it is not surprising that professional surveys tend to find regular viewers of Fox News to be more ignorant about what is actually happening in the world compared to those who watch other networks. In November 2011, Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind Poll examined how New Jerseyans watched television news, and the poll concluded that “some outlets, especially Fox News, lead people to be even less informed than those who say they don’t watch any news at all.” In some surveys, to be accurate, Fox News does not rank at rock bottom in terms of audience knowledge. But on balance, it is the clown dunce of TV news. No other network ever comes close to getting the sort of assessment Fox News received from World Public Opinion, a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland, in 2010. As one reporter summarized it, PIPA conducted a “survey of American voters that shows that Fox News viewers are significantly more misinformed than consumers of news from other sources. What’s more, the study shows that greater exposure to Fox News increases misinformation. So the more you watch, the less you know. Or to be precise, the more you think you know that is actually false.” As Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson concluded in their study of the Tea Party, “Fox News makes viewers both more conservative and less informed.” What may be most revealing is that there is no evidence that this finding bothers the management of Fox News in the least.>>

Meanwhile, deaths exceeded births among non-Hispanic whites for the first time in at least a century, a fact that the NYT played up.  Even more alarming to WSJ readers was this tidbit: "America is browning from the bottom up."

Really?  That's the kind of characterization that encourages the racist yahoos who tweeted in protest at an 11-year-old Mexican American boy singing his heart out with the National Anthem.

<<The problem for Republicans is that however careful they are, they're not going to be able to stop prominent members of the party or the conservative movement from making these kinds of slips. Because these are their actual views, as well as the views of many of the party's core supporters. And in the end, no amount of outreach to women, or improved message discipline, can hide that.>>

Montana has some of the more interesting state politics in the country.

Surprise, surprise.

Couldn't resist...

Not surprisingly, Mitch McConnell is dead wrong about the First Amendment: it doesn't shield speakers or financial supporters from criticism.  It promotes robust criticism and debate.  

Hey, GOP.  THIS, not in-person voter impersonation, is voter fraud.

You know your voter suppression law is really bad when you can't even get Scalia to vote your way.

Whattaya think?  Are racist/homophobic tweets by the children of politicians newsworthy?  This article argues so.

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there is a not insignificant portion of the GOP electorate that exists as a fever swamp of racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-immigrant hatred, and bigotry of all sorts. Obviously not all Republican politicians and voters, or not even a majority of them, are racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-immigrant bigots. But it’s a sizable enough constituency that a key part of the Republican message is to use coded—and sometimes not so coded—language to appeal to this crowd.

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To read Tanner Flake and Joey Heck’s online posts is to see the powerful strain of bigotry that exists within a certain sector of conservative politics. It’s true that children of Democrats can be just as wretched as children of Republicans and can do equally idiotic, terrible things. (See the news of Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu’s son, Connor, being arrested on charges of drunk driving and hit-and-run driving or any one of Al Gore III’s repeated arrests for driving under the influence and reckless driving.) But when bad Democratic kids behave badly, they’re way more likely to drive 100 mph while drunk than to say the president chucks spears. Likewise, you rarely ever see Democratic officials getting in trouble for passing on horrible, racist chain emails or making horrible racist remarks. This has everything to do with the political differences between the two parties and their voters.

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Interesting take...

It was destined for faiure, anyway.  Can't simply re-label trash as treasure and expect to get away with it for long.

Close call as to who is more delusional: Mitt or this guy.

It's too bad that neither party seems to be adjusting to actual facts.

“I’m going to be real honest with you, the Republican Party doesn’t want black people to vote if they’re going to vote 9-to-1 for Democrats,” 

So, what's the answer?  Try to win over those groups to your side?  Or discourage disfavored groups from voting?

You can guess which option the GOP is taking.

I doubt that a Democrat could have written such a damning indictment of today's GOP.  The key is the recognition that "branding" or "technology" will not win over young folks to vote Republican unless there are changes in policy and a rejection of the GOP's most prominent spokespeople.  Good luck with that.

Important short video about the North Carolina GOP's shameful attempt to reduce voting by people they believe are "undesirable."

It's gotta be true.