No, Emulating Mallory McMorrow Will Not Solve the Democrats' Problems

Nor will the abortion issue by itself. But at least here, there is progress to be made if handled sensibly. I explain in my latest at The Liberal Patriot:

"Mallory McMorrow is having a moment. The Michigan legislator made a short speech assailing a fellow legislator who had accused her in a fundraising email of “grooming and sexualizing” kindergartners, which was subsequently viewed millions of times on McMorrow’s Twitter feed. Her message, delivered with some well-chosen personal touches, boiled down to: stand up to hate.

The speech was rapturously received in Democratic circles, particularly among activists and Democratic-leaning pundits. One went so far as to compare McMorrow to Nelson Mandela and Vaclav Havel. And many asserted that here, finally, was a blueprint for an effective Democratic midterm strategy.

Democrats should contain their enthusiasm. When you think about it, what McMorrow is recommending is basically what Democrats have already been doing—calling out their opponents for being hateful, bigoted and/or racist—but doing it more loudly and unequivocally. The idea here seems to be that a message’s effectiveness is directly proportional to the vigor with which it is asserted.

This is a fallacy. If a message has underlying weaknesses and fails to connect to significant and real voter concerns, it will not become more effective by simply increasing the volume. The weaknesses will still be there and voters’ concerns will not magically go away."

Read the whole thing at The Liberal Patriot!

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The Mallory McMorrow Fallacy

Or Should We Call It The Popeye Fallacy?

The Complicated Views of Young Voters

I think it's fair to say that neither party and most pundits do not have a particularly nuanced or accurate view of young voters' inclinations. John Halpin has the data at The Liberal Patriot:

"All Americans would like their political leaders to listen to them and take their views into serious consideration when making policy decisions. This is the democratic way. Unfortunately for America’s young people, political elites today grossly misunderstand and distort their views in ways that undermine young people’s impact on the decisions of government and the direction of politics.

The stereotypes of young people run wide and deep. According to left-wing activists, young people primarily care about issues like student debt, climate change, and racial justice and will only support parties or leaders who take maximalist positions on these issues. In turn, this reductive conception of young people suits right-wing activists just fine, making it easier for them to decry the supposed radicalism of young people and tar their politics as hopelessly out of touch with more mainstream Americans.

But looking at the great new Harvard Youth Poll conducted with more than 2000 Americans ages 18-29, it turns out that much of this conventional and ideologically convenient wisdom is untrue. Young people are far more diverse in their political views than generally acknowledged, and the issues that tend to unify young people across educational lines—things like health care and fighting poverty—are not the same ones that the nation’s political elites are fighting about all the time. Most importantly, young people face serious economic challenges that contribute to an overwhelming sense of fear about the future, rising mental health challenges, and political disengagement.

Consider these findings:

Young people are not overwhelmingly liberal or Democratic—most are moderates and many are Independents with big divides by education level......"

Read the whole thing at The Liberal Patriot!

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“You don’t understand me.”

Young people are right. Political elites don’t see the complexity of thei

Chart of the Day

Public opinion on affirmative action. Just in case you think that affirmative action, as it is generally understood, is actually popular. (YouGov data)

https://today.yougov.com/.../american-attitudes-college...

As Goes Pennsylvania, So Goes the Senate

My latest at The Liberal Patriot ponders the Democrats' challenge this year in Pennsylvania. A close look at the data does not inspire optimism.

"If the Democrats don’t take the Republican-held Senate seat in Pennsylvania this November, their chances of keeping control of the Senate take a big and perhaps fatal hit. That’s because they need to take at least one seat from the Republicans to compensate for losing any one of three Democratic-held toss-up seats (Arizona, Georgia and Nevada). Pennsylvania is probably their best bet for doing so. Failing that, they are extremely vulnerable to the most dreaded outcome: losing control of both the House and the Senate.

But to take that Pennsylvania seat, they need to solve their Pennsylvania problem—their weakness among working class voters. In the teeth of what President Biden’s pollster John Anzalone has termed “the worst political environment” of his lifetime, the Democrats have to somehow hold together the Biden coalition of voters that managed—just barely, by a single percentage point—to take back the state from the GOP in 2020. That coalition’s success depended critically on Biden’s improved performance among Pennsylvania’s vast population of white working class (noncollege) voters, which must be considered unstable given the political history of the state.

That’s the old part of the Democrats’ working class problem in the state. The new part is their deteriorating support among nonwhite working class voters. Both can be illustrated by a brief review of 2020 election results in the state."

Read the rest at The Liberal Patriot. And subscribe--it's free!

THELIBERALPATRIOT.SUBSTACK.COM

The Democrats’ Pennsylvania Problem

Something Old, Something New

Public Opinion on Abortion

Time to get re-acquainted with the data, now that it looks the Supremes are going to strike down Roe v. .Wade! This is a complicated issue--more complicated than many Democrats think--but, handled carefully, this is an issue on which Democrats can potentially make real gains even in the current dreadful political environment.

Click thru the link for lots more charts and tables from Gallup.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx

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A Plea for Asylum from the Culture Wars

At The Liberal Patriot, John Halpin puts in his application:

"To: Department of Homeland Security, Political Sanity Division

RE: REQUEST FOR ASYLUM

To Whom it May Concern:

As sensible but politically displaced citizens, we request internal asylum from America's never-ending culture wars. We don't care about Disney or Ron DeSantis or CRT or “groomers” or the Trump family or radical activists on Twitter. We seek refuge from daily assaults on our sanity from ideological warriors on the left and right. We come in peace and offer America our full commitment to equal dignity and rights for all and tolerance of different perspectives and practices.

We believe America has serious issues to address like inflation, energy security, immigration, violent crime, poverty, affordable housing, drug addiction, environmental decline, China, and that psycho in Russia. All we ask is that our nation’s political elites try to help us confront these larger problems in a serious manner and stop trying to impose their personal ideological and moral views on everyone else.

All of us would just like to go about our daily lives, enjoy time with family and friends, and pursue meaningful political activities for the good of the country. But no one sitting atop the commanding heights of our cultural and political institutions seems to listen or care, so here we are.

America just a few short years ago was still a land of “Live and Let Live” and “Don’t Tread on Me.” Americans in the past may not have seen eye-to-eye on many issues, but few resorted to calling each other “hateful bigots” or “pedophiles” as a matter of course. Few people tried to force their entire belief systems on everyone else—through the media, the schools, the legislatures, or the courts. People mostly respected individual rights and the diversity of American backgrounds and viewpoints."

THELIBERALPATRIOT.SUBSTACK.COM

End Endless Culture Wars

A request for asylum from America's degraded politics.

How to Fix the Democratic Brand, Director's Cut

In case you missed it first time 'round, here is a longer version of the essay that appeared a few weeks ago in National Review and to which I linked in an earlier post.

THELIBERALPATRIOT.SUBSTACK.COM

How to Fix the Democratic Brand

It Can Be Done, But It Won't Be Easy