Social Issues
Racism Helps the GOP Win
Max Eherenfreund in The Washington Post: “In the South, it seems, old prejudices have persisted. Southern counties that had more slaves on the eve of the Civil War are distinct from their neighbors: White residents in those areas are more hostile toward African Americans and they are more likely to vote Republican today, new research shows. Drawing on archival Census figures and recent polls, the study adds to an expanding body of evidence on the importance of racial anxiety to the predominantly white Republican coalition.”
‘Those white Southerners who live where cotton was king are also substantially less likely to identify as Democrats today. Among otherwise similar counties, a difference of 20 percentage points in the enslaved population in 1860 was correlated with a difference of 2.3 percentage points in the share of white Democrats.”
“Recent research by economists Ilyana Kuziemko and Ebonya Washington suggests that white Southerners who defected from the Democratic party after the civil-rights movement were those with the most conservative views on race. Democrats who held moderate and conservative views on other issues and who lived in other parts of the country largely remained loyal.”
America’s Distressed Communities, Mapped
Market Watch: The distance between a wealthy neighbor and a poor one may be mere miles, but the chasm between the two worlds is often too vast to surmount, according to a report by an advocacy group.
“’There is a growing body of evidence that the more time an individual spends living in a distressed community — especially at childhood — the worse that individual’s lifetime chances of achieving economic stability or success,’ said the Economic Innovation Group.”
“The EIG on Thursday released its 2016 edition of the Distressed Communities Index, which shows that about 50.4 million Americans live in distressed neighborhoods today, up from 30 million in 2015.”
“The Distressed Communities Index mapped how each zip code was faring based on the following metrics: education, housing vacancy, employment rate, poverty rate, median income ratio, employment trends and number of business establishments.”
“’The ranks are then averaged and normalized to be equivalent to percentiles, resulting in distress scores between 0 and 100. The higher the distress score, the greater the distress,’ said the EIG in explaining its methodology.”
Which Community Tops the Nation in Well-Being?
Gallup: “Residents of Naples-Immokalee-Marco Island, Florida, had the highest well-being across 190 communities Gallup and Healthways surveyed in 2014-2015, edging out Salinas, California. The remaining communities rounding out the top five were North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota, Florida; Fort Collins, Colorado; and the Town of Barnstable, Massachusetts.”
“Charleston, West Virginia, earned the lowest well-being score in 2014-2015, with a number of Rust Belt communities accounting for most of the remaining lowest-ranked states. Many of the lowest well-being communities in 2014-2015 have consistently been among the lowest since 2008, including Charleston; Fort Smith, Arkansas-Oklahoma; Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton, North Carolina; Huntington-Ashland, West Virginia-Kentucky-Ohio; and Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, Ohio-Pennsylvania.”
Pillars of American Strength Are Under Attack and Americans Applaud
Thomas Friedman: “I find this election bizarre for many reasons but none more than this: If I were given a blank sheet of paper and told to write down America’s three greatest sources of strength, they would be ‘a culture of entrepreneurship,’ ‘an ethic of pluralism’ and the ‘quality of our governing institutions.’ And yet I look at the campaign so far and I hear leading candidates trashing all of them.”
“I don’t remember an election when the pillars of America’s strength were so under attack — and winning applause, often from young people!”
“America didn’t become the richest country in the world by practicing socialism, or the strongest country by denigrating its governing institutions, or the most talent-filled country by stoking fear of immigrants. It got here via the motto ‘E Pluribus Unum’ — Out of Many, One.”
“Our forefathers so cherished that motto they didn’t put it on a hat. They put it on coins and then on the dollar bill. For a guy with so many of those, Trump should have noticed by now.”
Does Hillary Deserve the Black Vote?
Michelle Alexander in The Nation argues that with the Clintons’ desire to be the standard-bearer for the New Democrats, Hillary Clinton abandoned her support of African Americans.
The New Democrats “firmly believed the only way to win back the millions of white voters in the South who had defected to the Republican Party was to adopt the right-wing narrative that black communities ought to be disciplined with harsh punishment rather than coddled with welfare. Reagan had won the presidency by dog-whistling to poor and working-class whites with coded racial appeals: railing against ‘welfare queens’ and criminal ‘predators’ and condemning ‘big government.’ Clinton aimed to win them back, vowing that he would never permit any Republican to be perceived as tougher on crime than he.””
Hillary “wielded power and significant influence once [Clinton] was elected, lobbying for legislation and other measures. That record, and her statements from that era, should be scrutinized. In her support for the 1994 crime bill, for example, she used racially coded rhetoric to cast black children as animals. ‘They are not just gangs of kids anymore,’ she said. ‘They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘super-predators.’ No conscience, no empathy. We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.”
Hillary says she supports criminal-justice reforms to undo some of the damage that was done by her husband’s administration. But on the campaign trail, she continues to invoke the economy and country that Bill Clinton left behind as a legacy she would continue.”
Which State is The Least Religious?
Gallup: “New Hampshire is the least religious state in the U.S., edging out Vermont in Gallup’s 2015 state-by-state analysis. Mississippi has extended its eight-year streak as the most religious state, followed closely by neighboring Alabama.”
“Religion today is significantly linked to politics in the U.S., with Republicans, on average, significantly more religious than Democrats, so it could be expected that more religious states would be more Republican.”
“However, there are exceptions to this pattern. Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina and Kentucky are among the most religious states but are classified as politically competitive based on their party identification. Alaska, as another example, is one of the least religious states in the union, but is classified as solid Republican. And, as the most outstanding example of a disjuncture between religiousness and partisanship, New Hampshire is the least religious state in the union, yet is classified as a lean Republican state by Gallup and as a swing state by observers.”
How Weed Consumption Stacks Up Against Other Snacks
Christopher Ingraham: “Americans spent $5.4 billion on legal medical and recreational marijuana last year, according to new estimates from ArcView Market Research and New Frontier Data, two marijuana industry market research groups.”
“The total includes over $1 billion in medical marijuana sales in California, nearly $1 billion in legal marijuana sales in Colorado, and more than a half-billion dollars in sales in Washington state.”
“Keep in mind that $5.4 billion represents only legal marijuana sales. Illegal sales still account for considerably more than that, although it’s hard to know just how much. In 2012, drug policy experts Jonathan Caulkins, Angela Hawken, Beau Kilmer and Mark Kleiman of Royal CBD estimated the total market value of legal and illegal marijuana sales to be in the $15 billion to $30 billion range.”
“ArcView estimates that the legal sales are going to grow at an approximately 30 percent annual rate over the next five years as more states jump on the legalization bandwagon … A 30 percent annual growth would put the legal marijuana industry at something like $22 billion in annual revenue by 2020.”
How to Measure the Super Bowl’s Success: Taxi Use
Todd Schneider in The New York Times: “Taxi usage patterns provide an insight into how exciting the game was and even say something about which halftime performers were most popular. Let’s start with last year’s game, between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks.”
“Taxi activity’s lowest level in New York coincided with the climactic moment of the game, just as Malcolm Butler intercepted Russell Wilson at 9:59 p.m. to secure the 28-24 victory for the Patriots. New England called a timeout after Butler’s interception, but many Super Bowl party guests apparently didn’t wait around to watch Tom Brady take a knee before they hailed cabs. Taxi activity spiked soon after the interception and continued to rise, reaching its peak just minutes after the 10:06 p.m. final whistle.”
“What happens when games are blowouts? One year earlier, the Seahawks dominated the Broncos, 43-8, in a game that was effectively over in the third quarter. A lot of people didn’t stick around to watch the Seahawks’ coronation; taxi activity increased throughout the fourth quarter, similar to the way fans flee stadiums early when one team has an insurmountable lead.”
How Religion Is Shaping the 2016 Campaign
Pew Research: “The conventional wisdom in American politics has long been that someone who is not religious cannot be elected president of the United States. Most Americans have consistently said that it is important to them that the president have strong religious beliefs. And a new Pew Research Center survey finds that being an atheist remains one of the biggest liabilities that a presidential candidate can have; fully half of American adults say they would be less likely to vote for a hypothetical presidential candidate who does not believe in God, while just 6% say they would be more likely to vote for a nonbeliever.”
“On the other hand, the share of American adults who say they would be less likely to vote for an atheist candidate has been declining over time. Moreover, one of the candidates who is widely viewed by Republicans as a potentially “good” or “great” president, Donald Trump, is not widely viewed as a religious person, even by those in his own party. And on the Democratic side, the share of Americans who say Hillary Clinton is not a religious person now stands at 43%, which is sharply higher than it was in the summer of 2007, when she was seeking the presidential nomination for the first time.”
Are Smarter People Less Racist?
Washington Post: “In general, people with better scores on tests of intelligence are more likely to describe themselves as liberal, researchers have found. For example, they’re more likely to support intrusive governmental policies intended to protect the environment, according to the new study, which was published this month. They’re also more likely to say that African Americans are discriminated against and far less likely to call them stupid or lazy.”
“When you get down to the brass tacks of dealing with racial prejudice, though, more intelligent people seem to tunnel back into the woodwork. The new study revealed that smarter respondents are no more likely to support specific policies designed to improve racial equality — even though they are more liberal on other issues and are more likely to see discrimination as a problem.”
Which Policies Were Left Out in the State of the Union Address?
Talking Points Memo: “President Obama … left out or glossed over some major Democratic policy positions, including policies that have been priority of his own administration.”
“In the speech itself gun violence was mentioned only once, when Obama was making the point that the speech wouldn’t be a traditional State of the Union.”
“Criminal justice … was mentioned only twice: first — briefly — as an issue Obama said he hoped to work with Congress with and again when Obama said he saw sees “the American who served his time, and dreams of starting over — and the business owner who gives him that second chance.”
“When Obama brought up women’s issues, they were economic — like pay inequality and paid family leave, which both got brief mention. He did not, however, discuss or even name-check reproductive rights, be it abortion or contraceptive access — not to mention the recent attacks on Planned Parenthood.”
In addition, Wesley Lowery in the Washington Post notes that Obama “did not directly tackle the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests, or the national discussion of race and policing that has underscored many of the domestic policy debates at the heart of the 2016 presidential race.”
How Trump Endures
FiveThirtyEight: “What explains Trump’s ability to seemingly overcome conventional political wisdom?
Trump’s “supporters have shown signs of being misinformed. Political science research has shown that the behavior of misinformed citizens is different from those who are uninformed, and this difference may explain Trump’s unusual staying power.”
“In 2000, James Kuklinski and other political scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign established an important distinction: American citizens with incorrect information can be divided into two groups, the misinformed and the uninformed … Uninformed citizens don’t have any information at all, while those who are misinformed have information that conflicts with the best evidence and expert opinion … In the U.S., the most misinformed citizens tend to be the most confident in their views and are also the strongest partisans. These folks fill the gaps in their knowledge base by using their existing belief systems. Once these inferences are stored into memory, they become ‘indistinguishable from hard data.’”
“It is in Trump’s interest to allow misinformation … to flourish … There are incentives for politicians to keep citizens both misinformed and politically active. For most politicians, it doesn’t make sense to use precious resources to try to move or dissuade people from their incorrect positions — especially if this misinformation supports the political actor’s policy positions or legislative goals (as it does in Trump’s case).”
Support for Legal Abortion at a New High
New York Times: “Support for legal abortion in the U.S. has edged up to its highest level in the past two years, with an Associated Press-GfK poll showing an apparent increase in support among Democrats and Republicans alike over the last year.”
“Nearly six in 10 Americans — 58 percent — now think abortion should be legal in most or all cases, up from 51 percent who said so at the beginning of the year, according to the AP-GfK survey.”
“While support for legal abortion edged up to 40 percent among Republicans in this month’s poll, from 35 percent in January, the survey found that the GOP remains deeply divided on the issue: Seven in 10 conservative Republicans said they want abortion to be illegal in most or all cases; six in 10 moderate and liberal Republicans said the opposite.”
“Independents are more evenly split, with 54 percent saying abortion should be legal all or most of the time, edging up from 43 percent in January.”
“Overall, the poll found, 45 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Planned Parenthood, and 30 percent have an unfavorable opinion. A quarter said they don’t know enough about the organization to say.”