The Axios article is written by the one person who sees the same Black face given strategically close seating at a Trump rally & thinks, "Golly, the Blacks love Trump! Whaddascoop, chief!"
Axios is usually bullshit from top to bottom – it’s the purest, concentrated version of hot take punditry – if other political reporters are like white wine spritzers, Axios is like grain alcohol.
Also, right now EVERYONE hates Dem politicians, including their own voters. The centrist Dems are mad because they think the problem is “wokeness,” and progressive Dems are mad because Biden and the Dem leadership are not being aggressive enough around the threat to civil rights and democracy itself, as well as being mad so little of the Dem agenda has made it through *a Democratic House and Senate.* And *everyone* is mad about inflation.
But I remain very skeptical a substantial number of Black people will vote for the GOP, a party that so *nakedly* seeks their subjugation and immiseration, simply because of the price of gasoline.
Republicans are building a strong, multi-racial coalition that is making significant inroads with Blacks (which is why Republicans are working so very hard to keep Black people from voting), Latinos (which is why Republicans want to deport most of them), LGBQT+ folks (which is why Republicans want to kill most of them), and the working class (which Republicans believe should be happy to work for subsistence wages).
Oh gods thank you Roy. This bs piece has been plastered all over the LGM comment section by panicked commenters who ought to know better, and when I’ve tried to point out it’s nature I get slammed for sticking my head in the sand.
Last week’s story: “Dems open borders bringing in Hispanics to replace white Americans.” This week’s story: “Dems losing support among Hispanic voters to Republicans.” Next week: “Dems [verb] [adjective]Hispanics [verb] Republicans.”
"But that’s not how the prestige press operates. Part of the reason is, Dog Bites Man — it’s more newsworthy and fun to suggest Democrats are tighty-whitey and Republicans the new soul men. It’s not true, but it’s fun."
On one hand, mainstream reportage on the important stuff is that there's barely yesterday and nothing before and tomorrow's fine to speculate about wildly and without any need to tie it to facts. Meanwhile, the mainstream also chooses to not care about framing or, again, providing any contexts. Nearly everything is thus little more than abstractions, vibes, feels.
Or, you know, bullshit, little better yet far more harmful than, I don't know, the stuff in Monday's post, maybe.
Back in the wayward youth, I worked briefly in the very bottom of opinion polling stuff and was near ground zero for how empirical fact was converted into complete bullshit for marketing purposes (although apparently the BS didn't quite work). So between that, cynicism about people now tending to play polltakers, and that Times polling that found that cancel culture is real and even the masses are concerned, I'm at a point of not giving too much weight to Times polls. Too, it can require far more time to dive in, review the questions, parse them for biases, see how the answers are tallied than JFC just describing that just involved more time than it's worth at this point in life. Let's leave it that I get a bad whiff from it.
Meanwhile, regarding the press, the GOP and inflation: Still waiting to see a simple explanation why jacking up interest rates would any way resolve this round of inflation. As an old, I know the theory but I don't see any way that it's applicable now beyond making the Powers That Be and Wall Street happy which, BTW, has nothing to do with this round of inflation.
As for the media and the Rs, waiting for our exceptional mainstream press to ask Republican pols when they whine about the shitty job Biden's doing what their solution is. The closest thing they have is wanting Voelker 2.0 which... I don't have the interest in gong into now. But I tend to repeat so probably sooner rather than later I'll drop that rant. And if you know what 1.0 did, you can surmise what good v.2.0 would do.
Picking up on a thread from yesterday's conversation, the notion that Hispanics would ever vote for the Democrats in the percentages that Black folks do was always a fantasy (and the basis, I think, for Ruy Teixeira's Emerging Democratic Majority.) As Ta-Nehisi Coates likes to say, Whiteness is always open for redefinition if needed to maintain a majority. Also Coates: There's only ONE ethnic group that's excluded from Whiteness.
"The Latino voters prefer Democrats too, but it’s much closer — 41% to 38%. The tightness is significant. Those voters went overwhelmingly for Biden in 2020, so you can’t say that for Democrats the numbers are good news."
There's another issue here that pundits are determined to ignore: They assume that Latinos are nonwhite, but as the Census always reminds us "Hispanics may be of any race". Traditionally it's white Hispanics, especially Cuban and and Mexican, who vote Republican, and Black (Puerto Rican and Dominican) and Indigenous (especially Mexican) Hispanics who vote Democratic. It's not completely clear (the relevant Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Hispanic_and_Latino_Americans is really badly written) but the increase in Latino Republicans probably matches an increase in the number of Latinos who regard themselves as white from 2000 to 2020, become more dominant English speakers, and taken on Republican views on immigration and taxes.
What it is not is a great sign for Democrats, as you say, but it's also not a sign that Republicans are becoming more "mulitracial", any more than their desperate reach after terrible candidates like Herschel Walker and Mayra Flores does.
I read somewhere that the percentage of scientists who now self-identify as Republican is in the single digits, and maybe even the low single digits. Just one small factoid in the overall trend of Democrats becoming "The Party of Educated Professionals".
So now I'm wondering: Exactly how many OB-GYN's need to be jailed before doctors (usually a reliably Republican constituency given their wealth) might follow scientists down the same path?
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Whenever media types (or anybody) reference polls or stats it's always worth a few extra minutes to click on the links and take a gander at the numbers yourself. Invariably, there is at least one "what the fuck are they talking about?" moment when you see that the numbers don't support the conclusions supposedly based on their "analysis" of them. For example, as Roy points out, Axios claiming "Democrats now have a bigger advantage among white college graduates than they do with nonwhite voters, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll." First off, there is only one question about Dem/Rep preference at all, there is no category of "nonwhite voters", and, as Roy indicates, in the answer to this one question, the preference of Black voters for Dems is 75%, with Hispanics at only 3% -- either way, how do you distill this to a result for "non-white voters"? Second, the Dem preference for white college-educated voters is 41%. How is that a bigger advantage than "non-white voters?"
The rank dishonesty of these writers is sometimes breathtaking, especially when they actually link to the numbers they're supposedly writing about, knowing that few readers, if any, will look for themselves.
Then there's the reliability of these survey polls at all. But that's a whole other issue.
"a substantial 78% to 3%"
No need for that 'substantial', but you slipped it in there anyway, and THAT's why we read you.
2 marks!
The Axios article is written by the one person who sees the same Black face given strategically close seating at a Trump rally & thinks, "Golly, the Blacks love Trump! Whaddascoop, chief!"
Axios is usually bullshit from top to bottom – it’s the purest, concentrated version of hot take punditry – if other political reporters are like white wine spritzers, Axios is like grain alcohol.
Also, right now EVERYONE hates Dem politicians, including their own voters. The centrist Dems are mad because they think the problem is “wokeness,” and progressive Dems are mad because Biden and the Dem leadership are not being aggressive enough around the threat to civil rights and democracy itself, as well as being mad so little of the Dem agenda has made it through *a Democratic House and Senate.* And *everyone* is mad about inflation.
But I remain very skeptical a substantial number of Black people will vote for the GOP, a party that so *nakedly* seeks their subjugation and immiseration, simply because of the price of gasoline.
Republicans are building a strong, multi-racial coalition that is making significant inroads with Blacks (which is why Republicans are working so very hard to keep Black people from voting), Latinos (which is why Republicans want to deport most of them), LGBQT+ folks (which is why Republicans want to kill most of them), and the working class (which Republicans believe should be happy to work for subsistence wages).
Oh gods thank you Roy. This bs piece has been plastered all over the LGM comment section by panicked commenters who ought to know better, and when I’ve tried to point out it’s nature I get slammed for sticking my head in the sand.
"what I would call a substantial 78% to 3%."
That's just, like, your opinion.
Last week’s story: “Dems open borders bringing in Hispanics to replace white Americans.” This week’s story: “Dems losing support among Hispanic voters to Republicans.” Next week: “Dems [verb] [adjective]Hispanics [verb] Republicans.”
"But that’s not how the prestige press operates. Part of the reason is, Dog Bites Man — it’s more newsworthy and fun to suggest Democrats are tighty-whitey and Republicans the new soul men. It’s not true, but it’s fun."
On one hand, mainstream reportage on the important stuff is that there's barely yesterday and nothing before and tomorrow's fine to speculate about wildly and without any need to tie it to facts. Meanwhile, the mainstream also chooses to not care about framing or, again, providing any contexts. Nearly everything is thus little more than abstractions, vibes, feels.
Or, you know, bullshit, little better yet far more harmful than, I don't know, the stuff in Monday's post, maybe.
Back in the wayward youth, I worked briefly in the very bottom of opinion polling stuff and was near ground zero for how empirical fact was converted into complete bullshit for marketing purposes (although apparently the BS didn't quite work). So between that, cynicism about people now tending to play polltakers, and that Times polling that found that cancel culture is real and even the masses are concerned, I'm at a point of not giving too much weight to Times polls. Too, it can require far more time to dive in, review the questions, parse them for biases, see how the answers are tallied than JFC just describing that just involved more time than it's worth at this point in life. Let's leave it that I get a bad whiff from it.
Meanwhile, regarding the press, the GOP and inflation: Still waiting to see a simple explanation why jacking up interest rates would any way resolve this round of inflation. As an old, I know the theory but I don't see any way that it's applicable now beyond making the Powers That Be and Wall Street happy which, BTW, has nothing to do with this round of inflation.
As for the media and the Rs, waiting for our exceptional mainstream press to ask Republican pols when they whine about the shitty job Biden's doing what their solution is. The closest thing they have is wanting Voelker 2.0 which... I don't have the interest in gong into now. But I tend to repeat so probably sooner rather than later I'll drop that rant. And if you know what 1.0 did, you can surmise what good v.2.0 would do.
Does the working class include women? Or do they just stay home and take care of the kids and do their nails?
Picking up on a thread from yesterday's conversation, the notion that Hispanics would ever vote for the Democrats in the percentages that Black folks do was always a fantasy (and the basis, I think, for Ruy Teixeira's Emerging Democratic Majority.) As Ta-Nehisi Coates likes to say, Whiteness is always open for redefinition if needed to maintain a majority. Also Coates: There's only ONE ethnic group that's excluded from Whiteness.
"The Latino voters prefer Democrats too, but it’s much closer — 41% to 38%. The tightness is significant. Those voters went overwhelmingly for Biden in 2020, so you can’t say that for Democrats the numbers are good news."
There's another issue here that pundits are determined to ignore: They assume that Latinos are nonwhite, but as the Census always reminds us "Hispanics may be of any race". Traditionally it's white Hispanics, especially Cuban and and Mexican, who vote Republican, and Black (Puerto Rican and Dominican) and Indigenous (especially Mexican) Hispanics who vote Democratic. It's not completely clear (the relevant Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Hispanic_and_Latino_Americans is really badly written) but the increase in Latino Republicans probably matches an increase in the number of Latinos who regard themselves as white from 2000 to 2020, become more dominant English speakers, and taken on Republican views on immigration and taxes.
What it is not is a great sign for Democrats, as you say, but it's also not a sign that Republicans are becoming more "mulitracial", any more than their desperate reach after terrible candidates like Herschel Walker and Mayra Flores does.
I read somewhere that the percentage of scientists who now self-identify as Republican is in the single digits, and maybe even the low single digits. Just one small factoid in the overall trend of Democrats becoming "The Party of Educated Professionals".
So now I'm wondering: Exactly how many OB-GYN's need to be jailed before doctors (usually a reliably Republican constituency given their wealth) might follow scientists down the same path?
What’s happening: House Republicans boast this year's class of new candidates is the most diverse in history.
Have they hit double digits on the number of PoC candidates? They have many crazy women, but they have many more crazy men candidates.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Whenever media types (or anybody) reference polls or stats it's always worth a few extra minutes to click on the links and take a gander at the numbers yourself. Invariably, there is at least one "what the fuck are they talking about?" moment when you see that the numbers don't support the conclusions supposedly based on their "analysis" of them. For example, as Roy points out, Axios claiming "Democrats now have a bigger advantage among white college graduates than they do with nonwhite voters, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll." First off, there is only one question about Dem/Rep preference at all, there is no category of "nonwhite voters", and, as Roy indicates, in the answer to this one question, the preference of Black voters for Dems is 75%, with Hispanics at only 3% -- either way, how do you distill this to a result for "non-white voters"? Second, the Dem preference for white college-educated voters is 41%. How is that a bigger advantage than "non-white voters?"
The rank dishonesty of these writers is sometimes breathtaking, especially when they actually link to the numbers they're supposedly writing about, knowing that few readers, if any, will look for themselves.
Then there's the reliability of these survey polls at all. But that's a whole other issue.
Was your father a conductor on the Baltimore & Ohio?
Sorry, forgot to mention how excited I am to learn that abortion rights is now a concern of only "upscale voters"!
That makes these t-shirts supporting the Hoosier Abortion fund the latest in Haute Couture!
https://www.bonfire.com/hoosieraf/