Tag Archives: 2018 Election

Democracy

Democratic Sheriff dismantles accountability for deputy misconduct

[August 15, 2019 update: The Los Angeles County Democratic Party is expressing buyer’s remorse over its 2018 endorsement of Alex Villanueva. On August 13, the party passed a resolution calling on the Sheriff “to restore the public’s trust in the Sheriff’s Department.”]

Last year Alex Villanueva was a surprise winner against the incumbent in the race to become the new sheriff of Los Angeles County. I don’t live in LA so I’ve followed this only from afar, but as near as I can tell Villanueva’s main goal in office is to rehire deputies who have been fired for a variety of offenses, including unreasonable force, domestic violence, lying, and so forth. He started off with a couple of rehires, then announced six more, and apparently the total is now up to a couple of dozen or so.— Kevin Drum, “LA Sheriff Really Hates It When Bad Folks Get Fired.“

Drum points to Villanueva’s pledge to kick ICE out of the county jails, which engendered broad support among Hispanic voters, as the key to his victory, then he adds:

So far he’s kind of done that and kind of hasn’t, but in any case his top priority by far has been a so-called “truth and reconciliation” committee whose job is to reinstate fired deputies and make it clear that everyone knows the good old days are back.

As a Los Angeles County voter, I can confirm Drum’s impression. (The article Drum cites, “Sheriff’s chief says she quit over ‘highly unethical’ demand to rehire deputy fired for abuse,” reports a new revelation: a week before Villanueva was sworn in, his incoming chief of staff asked the department’s chief of professional standards to alter retroactively the disciplinary records for Caren Carl Mandolyn, fired after a string of misconduct incidents, because the new Sheriff’s “No. 1 priority” was to reinstate him, which he has done.)

I watched, with interest and dismay, the 2018 campaign for sheriff play out over many months. That campaign connects to issues—such as partisanship, group interests within a broad coalition, shortcuts used by voters, and opposition to Trump and Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies—related to the themes of this blog. Without further ado, here are some observations by your fearless editor (who follows local politics mostly by reading the Los Angeles Times and listening to Southern California Public Radio):

The County of Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department is an imposing fiefdom for (whomever happens to be) the Sheriff, who is independently elected and substantially free of meaningful oversight by the County Board of Supervisors (which oversees virtually everything else in county government). LASD patrols unincorporated areas of the county and more than three dozen cities, provides security for the county courthouse (Superior Court), and runs the massive county jail system. (Note: LAPD, the Los Angeles Police Department, which has jurisdiction within the City of Los Angeles, is a separate agency from LASD.)

The Sheriff’s Department is huge, insular, and—both within the county jail and out on the streets—the department has had more than its share of “problem deputies” and a widely discussed history of scandals.  

Jim McDonnell—a former high ranking officer at LAPD, who left to become Chief of Police in Long Beach—ran for sheriff after his predecessor, Lee Baca, who portrayed himself as a reformer, was caught up in a scandal that resulted in a prison sentence (though Baca is out on bail while appealing his conviction). McDonnell won election in 2014 (defeating Undersheriff Paul Tanaka, now in prison) and, while the controversies swirling around LASD didn’t disappear, the sheriff seemed me to be doing a credible job in his first term. 

Sheriff McDonnell was, however, a former Republican in a Democratic stronghold. While the office of sheriff is nonpartisan, and while McDonnell had dropped his Republican registration, 2018 was not a good year for Republicans (or unaffiliated former Republicans) running in Los Angeles County, which has the greatest concentration of Democrats in the nation’s most revved up blue state.

It’s safe to say that McDonnell was unprepared for a competitive reelection bid in 2018. McDonnell had ample funds to conduct a campaign and his endorsements included a number of prominent Democrats, such as L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti and County Supervisor Hilda Solis, as well as District Attorney Jackie Lacey and the Los Angeles Times editorial board, but—perhaps because going back more than a century, no incumbent sheriff had lost an election in Los Angeles County—he was caught flatfooted. His campaign, which acted as though he could coast to victory, was clearly outmatched by Villanueva’s effort.

Alex Villanueva hustled. He met with community groups, attended forums (which McDonnell often conspicuously declined to attend), and emphatically embraced a reform agenda (while doling out large portions of contempt for the incumbent sheriff). His promises:

  • Reform the LASD by cleaning house, top to bottom, and raising standards across the board
  • Rebuild the organization around the principles of community policing
  • Restore trust that has been lost between the community and the LASD, and within the LASD itself.

Sounds good. Nonetheless, I didn’t find Villanueva to be a credible candidate, because he lacked leadership experience (he had never risen above the rank of Lieutenant after 3 decades in the Sheriff’s Department); he had never held public office, or taken a leadership role in immigration rights, or shown any other evidence of being a trustworthy agent of change; his rhetorical salvos directed at McDonnell and ICE often didn’t seem to bear close scrutiny; and—this was the critical point—Villanueva locked arms with the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs (ALADS), the deputies’ union—a tenacious opponent of deputy accountability and implacable foe of reforming the institutional culture within LASD—which bankrolled his campaign.

I wasn’t the only critic who was not persuaded. Steve Martin, former mayor of West Hollywood (one of the cities where LASD patrols) and former president of the Stonewall Democratic Club (ironically, a prominent backer of Villanueva in 2018), who has a long history of advocating progressive reform of LASD, articulated his objections to Villanueva in an op-ed the week before the election. (Although I didn’t see this op-ed last November, it lays out a clear case for opposing Villanueva’s candidacy.)

Martin notes Villanueva and ALADS’s opposition to McDonnell’s commitment to cooperate with the District Attorney’s office in investigating more than 300 problem deputies. He references Villanueva’s attacks on McDonnell’s cooperation with ICE, but notes that this cooperation is governed by California’s sanctuary state law (no matter who heads LASD), that Villanueva’s differences with McDonnel (when examined closely) were sometimes negligible, and that—once in office—there would be significant limits (in contrast to his over the top rhetoric) on what policy changes he could actually bring about.

Most significantly, Martin highlights ALADS’s role in fighting reform:

Over the years it has been obvious that ALADS, the union representing the rank and file deputies, has been a consistent opponent to reform.… A Villanueva administration would give us the same sort of window dressing we saw under the Baca/Tanaka regime, with little meaningful change. Electing a relatively low ranking former deputy backed by a union that opposes deputy accountability, is not a receipt for reform.

I was flummoxed as I watched the campaign unfold. It was understandable why immigrant rights groups and other opponents of Trump’s disgraceful anti-immigrant policies would focus on Villanueva’s criticism of ICE, but what about civil rights, social justice, and prison reform concerns more generally? Deputy misconduct (on a force where out-of-policy misbehavior is widely recognized) was overlooked. Why did the Democratic Party go all-in for this guy?

I believe the answer is that Villanueva ticked off all the right boxes in his campaign. (Just as important: McDonnell’s campaign failed to offer a convincing rebuttal to Villanueva. As noted above: McDonnell’s campaign seemed to think they could ride the advantages of incumbency to reelection, while Sheriff McDonnell even boycotted community forums, instead of meeting and communicating with voters.) Consider:

Villanueva campaigned (mostly under the radar of the L.A. Times) for Latinx support throughout the county. (“He will be the first sheriff to speak Spanish since 1888.”)

He campaigned in African American neighborhoods as well and gained significant support. The Sheriff’s Department has not been much-beloved in many neighborhoods.

He ran as a reform candidate and critic of LASD’s past leadership. (“He was also the founder of an organization dedicated to fighting against the administrative corruption of Sheriff Lee Baca and Paul Tanaka.”)

He pledged to double down on community policing. (“He will establish community policing countywide, hire additional deputies to keep our streets safe, and have a local pipeline to create diversity in the department. He wants to ensure the County Sheriff’s Department is transparent and available for all residents of Los Angeles County.”)

And of course he ran against ICE.

But most of all, he ran as a Democrat:

It has been 138 years since our last Democratic Sheriff. In order to protect our communities and our families we need to elect a Democrat for Sheriff.

This November, help make history. Elect a Democrat for Sheriff.
Vote Democrat for LA County Sheriff. Vote Alex Villanueva.

The image above (a screen grab from Fox 11 News) is from a Villanueva campaign brochure. Though most voters probably couldn’t have picked Jim McDonnell out of a lineup, the pairing of the Sheriff and Trump aimed to make an impression they would remember.

Two factors, in my view, were especially powerful in this campaign: The first, was linking McDonnell to Trump’s immigration policies and pledging to distance the department from ICE. The second, more significant factor was the Democratic Party endorsement. Note that there was no indication on the ballot that Villanueva was a Democrat, since this office is nonpartisan. But his affiliation was conveyed by his campaign at every opportunity: on his website, in his literature, on door hangers, mailed brochures, and social media, in Democratic club voter guides, and in many stories in the press, on radio, and TV: Villanueva was the Democratic candidate for sheriff.

Voters rely on cues to make decisions. Jonathan Bernstein has pointed out that even well informed voters are not “remotely qualified” to make independent judgments about the large number and range of issues they are asked to vote on. That’s why we “take the shortcuts” that are available to us. We look at a range of trusted sources —officials, groups, others who master the nitty-gritty details we have no time or expertise to delve into—to come to an understanding and make decisions. And, as Bernstein notes, among the cues available to us: “The biggest one is party affiliation.”

So, in Democratic Los Angeles County, voters turned out an experienced incumbent to make Alex Villanueva the Sheriff.

On his first day in office the new sheriff, who had repeatedly clashed with his superiors during his 30-year tenure at LASD, immediately removed the top 18 executives in the department and required 500 supervisors to reapply for their positions, creating more questions about Villanueva’s judgment and priorities. More alarmingly, he eliminated two constitutional policing positions created by McDonnell to advise the sheriff on use of force and disciplinary matters.  

Aside from his unconventional approach to management, thus far Villanueva has presided over an LASD that looks pretty much what the department looked like in the bad old days, as a recent headline suggests, “Cop group with matching skull tattoos costs taxpayers $7 million in fatal shooting.” Are the secret societies that deputies join, groups that feature: names such as Banditos, Jump Out Boys, Grim Reapers, and Regulators; matching tattoos (skulls and guns are popular); gang signs exchanged by the deputies; and accusations of links to unlawful behavior on the street and in the county jail—as well as violence, harassment, and bullying directed at deputies who haven’t joined the cliques—a problem that demands a sheriff’s attention? Or, as Villanueva suggested, is the issue no more serious than intergenerational “hazing” (a bonding experience to create esprit de corps among deputies, perhaps)?

At this point, with each new story of the direction that the new sheriff is taking the department, progressive criticism has begun to appear. And, it turns out that critics of Villanueva’s anti-ICE rhetoric and his promise to “physically remove” ICE agents from the jails were right: within federal law and California’s sanctuary law, the Sheriff’s Department has only limited leeway. “While Villanueva has indeed banned uniformed ICE agents from the jails he has replaced them with private contractors, which critics have called a distinction without a difference.”

After Bernstein’s comment on the primacy of party affiliation, he adds: “If the party endorses a candidate, you have a good idea how that person will behave in office.”

That’s where I think the local Democratic Party, and all those Democratic clubs, failed Democratic voters. They didn’t foresee Villanueva’s “main goal in office” (as Kevin Drum put it). Why not? I don’t think they were looking very hard. Not in 2018.

The Democratic Party is a coalition of social groups. The Democratic agenda emerges from the separate agendas of those groups. Sometimes there are disagreements among constituencies, but often there are groups with standing in the party that can lead on issues within their province. Such groups have, in Jo Freeman’s words, “policy sovereignty over a policy territory and can generally designate those issues and positions within it that are to be part of the party line.” The immigration rights groups in 2018 had standing to dictate the party line: unequivocal opposition to ICE.

And, of course, their position was fortified by another Democratic group: the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs. ALADS is a public employee union and as such is a part of the Democratic coalition. While the Los Angeles County Professional Peace Officers Association (PPOA), which represents LASD supervisors, endorsed McDonnell, a number of other Los Angeles unions joined ALADS in supporting Villanueva. (Competing endorsements from organized labor didn’t seem to be especially significant in this race.)

Immigration activists took Villanueva at his word. They pushed for a sheriff whom they regarded as committed to their agenda. No other Democratic groups had reason to object to this agenda and furthermore no other issues were as prominent during the 2018 campaign.

All other concerns related to LASD—the use of unreasonable force, domestic violence, abuse of prisoners in county jail, outlaw cliques at LASD stations, and holding deputies accountable for misconduct—were more or less submerged. ICE, on the other hand, was a hot issue. So concerns with ICE carried the day.

It’s a testament to Trump’s extremely hateful policies and the degree of harm he has inflicted that activists were not more wary of Alex Villanueva: a man with no track record to show that he was up to job or that he could be trusted to serve the public faithfully. (It’s also additional evidence of McDonnell’s feckless campaign that these concerns failed to become live issues.)

While I believe that Jim McDonnell is a man of integrity, who was pursuing a genuine reform agenda and would have steadfastly tracked California’s sanctuary law (as Villanueva has done), the local Democratic Party disagreed with me (and convinced most voters as well).

One could, of course, decide that the relatively modest changes vis-à-vis LASD and ICE that Villanueva has implemented outweigh the issue of deputy accountability at the department. It is possible to decide that on balance this is the right choice. Immigrant rights activists may reasonably hold this view.

But the fact that a number of progressives are reassessing their judgments about the new sheriff, as well as their silence or muted objections in 2018 suggest that Democratic endorsements of Villanueva were not grounded on a balancing of interests. Instead, the urgency of opposing Trump and ICE took precedence, precluding a well-grounded evaluation of the man who is now our sheriff.

Democratic dominance in Los Angeles, Democrats’ fierce resistance to Trump and commitment to immigrants, in the absence of meaningful countervailing factors in 2018, has resulted in the election of a sheriff who is squelching reform and accountability at LASD. Public safety and trust in law enforcement are casualties.

Democrats, Donald Trump, Republicans, Tribalism

Gender and religion – the People’s House takes a couple of strides toward better representing Americans


After the overwhelming Democratic victory for the control of the House of Representatives – Democrats won by nearly 10 million votes nationally, which was the greatest popular vote margin in U.S. history – a highly diverse Congress convened yesterday. It doesn’t look quite like America – but it’s closer than ever before.

A woman became Speaker of the House for only the second time; Nancy Pelosi, who made history the first time, made history again. More women – 102 – will serve in the 116th Congress than in any previous House. (And consider this contrast: in 1989 there were 16 Democratic women and 13 Republican women in Congress. In 2019, there are 89 Democratic women and 13 Republican women in Congress.)

Two Native American women will serve in this Congress. And, heralding greater religious diversity, two Muslim women (a Somali-American and a Palestinian) will serve.

A PEW survey notes that even with the new members, Congress still doesn’t accurately represent Americans’ religious preferences and ‘by far the largest difference between the U.S. public and Congress is in the share who are unaffiliated with a religious group. In the general public, 23% say they are atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” In Congress, just one person – Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., who was recently elected to the Senate after three terms in the House – says she is religiously unaffiliated, making the share of “nones” in Congress 0.2%.’

Ed Kilgore notes that the two parties present a stark contrast regarding religious diversity: “With the exception of the two Jewish Republicans in the House, all of Congress’s non-Christians and religiously unspecified members are Democrats. Professed Christians are over-represented in both parties’ congressional ranks…”

Meanwhile, evangelical Christians continue to be the most devoted, unwavering supporters of one Donald J. Trump, a man (in Michael Gerson’s words) “prone to cruelty, bigotry, vanity, adultery and serial deception.” Gerson, who embraces a never-Trump conservatism, notes in an op-ed in this morning’s newspaper – borrowing a phrase from Ronald Brownstein – the “hardening loyalty” of evangelicals to Trump.

Gerson suggests that something other than fidelity to the Gospel lies behind this support:

Trump has understood something about evangelical Christians that many are unable to articulate themselves. White, theologically conservative Protestants were once — not that long ago — a culturally predominant force. Many of their convictions — on matters such as sexuality and public religiosity — were also the default settings of the broader society. But that changed in a series of cultural tidal waves — the Darwinist account of human origins, the application of higher criticism to the text of the Bible, the sexual revolution — which swept away old certainties.

Americans, in an increasingly diverse country, have reason to celebrate more diverse representation at the national level. Democrats are at the forefront of the changes taking place. Make no mistake: Trump and Republicans, 89% of whom approve of the job he is doing in the latest Gallup Poll (December 17-22), view diversity as a threat. Identity politics, tribalism, and cultural anxiety have swamped faith, hope, and charity in this group.

(Photograph is MSNBC screengrab of Kyrsten Sinema, a departing member of the House just elected to the U.S. Senate from Arizona, taking the oath of office with her hand on a law book, which contained the Constitution of the United States, rather than a religious text.)

Democracy, Democrats, Donald Trump

Blue wave brings reassurance: Elections matter; Trump’s base isn’t growing; Democrats turned out to vote in the midterms

The 2018 midterm elections ended one-party rule in Washington. A Democratic majority in the House of Representatives will restore Congressional oversight of the Executive Branch and the checks and balances the Founders envisioned.

Democrats and activists opposed to Trump have been energized since before his 2017 inauguration. By election day – following the battle over Kavanaugh’s nomination and the president’s deceitful campaign of fear-mongering and violent political rhetoric – the Trump base was also revved up. The result: 49.2 percent turnout (as of November 11), the highest rate in a midterm election in the past 100 years.

As of today (as votes are still being counted in undecided races) Democrats have picked up 31 seats in the House, which will welcome record numbers of women, including the first Native American and Muslim women. With a highly unfavorable Senate map – 10 Democrats were running in states Trump won – the Republican majority will increase by no more than two (Florida is still counting ballots and Mississippi will have a December runoff). Democrats flipped more than 300 legislative seats, made a net gain of 7 governorships, and will have 27 (of 51) attorneys general in place in January 2019.

What’s most significant in this picture is the return of checks and balances. No president has shown more contempt for the political and governing norms that sustain our republic. At a time of extraordinary prosperity and relative peace, Americans chose to rebuke the President and the Congressional majority that has been complicit in Trump’s assault on democratic institutions.

In their book, How Democracies Die, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblat write:

Institutions alone are not enough to rein in elected autocrats. Constitutions must be defended—by political parties and organized citizens, but also by democratic norms. Without robust norms, constitutional checks and balances do not serve as the bulwarks of democracy we imagine them to be. Institutions become political weapons, wielded forcefully by those who control them against those who do not. This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy—packing and “weaponizing” the courts and other neutral agencies, buying off the media and the private sector (or bullying them into silence), and rewriting the rules of politics to tilt the playing field against opponents.

Flipping Congress from red to blue was not a certainty. Trump’s election generated intense grassroots push-back from left-of-center groups and aroused citizens. The Women’s March protests across the country (and the world) on January 21, 2017 set the stage. The outpouring of volunteers and huge number of campaign contributions lead the way to the November 6, 2018 general election.

Electoral rules and practices in a number of states tilted the playing field through stratagems reminiscent of the Jim Crow era. The proceedings in some cases did not constitute free and fair elections: too many institutional norms were shattered to suppress the vote. But the elections were free and fair enough to bring about change. That’s worth celebrating.

November 21, 2018 update:

 

Democracy, Democrats, Donald Trump, Republicans, Tribalism

“You need to vote because our democracy depends on it.” Barack Obama sounds alarm, implores students to step up to restore American values

In the twenty-two months since leaving the White House, Barack Obama has kept quiet. He broke his silence on Friday in a speech at the University of Illinois, making it clear he believes the country is in crisis, having strayed from our values, and urgently needs to get back on track:
“I’m here today because this is one of those pivotal moments when every one of us, as citizens of the United States, need to determine just who it is that we are. Just what it is that we stand for. And as a fellow citizen, not as an ex-president, but as a fellow citizen, I’m here to deliver a simple message, and that is that you need to vote because our democracy depends on it.”

Obama painted a picture of “fitful progress, uneven progress” throughout American history, as our country moved nearer our ideals, while describing “a darker aspect to the American story.”

Each time we’ve gotten closer to those ideals, somebody somewhere has pushed back. The status quo pushes back. Sometimes the backlash comes from people who are genuinely, if wrongly, fearful of change. More often it’s manufactured by the powerful and the privileged who want to keep us divided and keep us angry and keep us cynical because it helps them maintain the status quo and keep their power and keep their privilege. And you happen to be coming of age during one of those moments.

It did not start with Donald Trump. He is a symptom, not the cause. He’s just capitalizing on resentments that politicians have been fanning for years, a fear and anger that’s rooted in our past but it’s also born out of the enormous upheavals that have taken place in your brief lifetimes.

The former president reminded students of the financial crisis at the time he took office and the progress he made in setting things right – but the fear remained.

So we pulled the economy out of crisis, but to this day, too many people, who once felt solidly middle class, still feel very real and very personal economic insecurity. Even though we took out bin Laden and wound down the wars in Iraq and our combat role in Afghanistan, and gotten Iran to halt its nuclear program, the world’s still full of threats and disorder that come streaming through people’s televisions every single day.

And these challenges get people worried. And it frays our civic trust. And it makes a lot of people feel like the fix is in and the game is rigged and nobody’s looking out for them, especially those communities outside our big urban centers.

And even though your generation is the most diverse in history, with a greater acceptance and celebration of our differences than ever before, those are the kinds of conditions that are ripe for exploitation by politicians who have no compunction and no shame about tapping into America’s dark history of racial and ethnic and religious division. Appealing to tribe, appealing to fear, pitting one group against another, telling people that order and security will be restored if it weren’t for those who don’t look like us or don’t sound like us or don’t pray like we do, that’s an old playbook. It’s as old as time.

He continued, “And in a healthy democracy, it doesn’t work.” The old playbook falls flat. When, however, “the better angels of our nature” are eclipsed, things go awry.

But when there’s a vacuum in our democracy, when we don’t vote, when we take our basic rights and freedoms for granted, when we turn away and stop paying attention and stop engaging and stop believing and look for the newest diversion, the electronic versions of bread and circuses, then other voices fill the void. A politics of fear and resentment and retrenchment takes hold and demagogues promise simple fixes to complex problems. No promise to fight for the little guy, even as they cater to the wealthiest and most powerful. No promise to clean up corruption and then plunder away. They start undermining norms that ensure accountability and try to change the rules to entrench their power further. And they appeal to racial nationalism that’s barely veiled, if veiled at all.

He indicted the Congress of the United States for its failures:

This Congress has championed the unwinding of campaign finance laws to give billionaires outside influence over our politics. Systematically attacked voting rights to make it harder for young people, the minorities and the poor to vote. Handed out tax cuts without regard to deficits. Slashed the safety net wherever it could, cast dozens of votes to take away health insurance from ordinary Americans, embraced wild conspiracy theories, like those surrounding Benghazi or my birth certificate, rejected science, rejected facts on things like climate change, embraced a rising absolutism from a willingness to default on America’s debt by not paying our bills, to a refusal to even meet, much less consider, a qualified nominee for the Supreme Court because he happened to be nominated by a Democratic president. None of this is conservative.

I don’t mean to pretend I’m channeling Abraham Lincoln now, but that’s not what he had in mind, I think, when he helped form the Republican Party. It’s not conservative. It sure isn’t normal. It’s radical. It’s a vision that says the protection of our power and those who back us is all that matters even when it hurts the country. It’s a vision that says the few who can afford high-price lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions set the agenda. And over the past two years, this vision is now nearing its logical conclusion.

He denounced the lack of checks and balances, passage of $1.5 trillion tax cuts for the richest Americans with resulting skyrocketing deficits, carte blanche to polluters and dishonest lenders, repudiation of the global climate change agreement, eroding our relationships with allies, cozying up with Russia, and sabotaging the Affordable Healthcare Act. He also criticizes, in passing, the infamous Anonymous op-ed:

In a healthy democracy, there’s some checks and balances on this kind of behavior, this kind of inconsistency, but right now there’s nothing.

Republicans who know better in Congress, and they’re there, they’re quoted saying, yes, we know this is kind of crazy, are still bending over backwards to shield this behavior from scrutiny or accountability or consequence, seem utterly unwilling to find the backbone to safeguard the institutions that make our democracy work. And, by the way, the claim that everything will turn out okay because there are people inside the White House who secretly aren’t following the president’s orders, that is not a check. I’m being serious here. That’s not how our democracy’s supposed to work.

These people aren’t elected. They’re not accountable. They’re not doing us a service by actively promoting 90 percent of the crazy stuff that’s coming out of this White House. And then saying, don’t worry, we’re preventing the other 10 percent. That’s not how things are supposed to work.

This is not normal. These are extraordinary times. And they’re dangerous times.

Finally, Obama urged his listeners to participate in the political process  – and, especially, to vote – to change the country’s direction:

Thirty minutes, 30 minutes of your time, is democracy worth that? We have been through much darker times than these and some how each generation of American’s carried us through to the other side. Not by sitting around and waiting for something to happen, not by leaving it to others to do something but by leading that movement for change themselves.

And if you do that, if you get involved and you get engaged and you knock on some doors and you talk with your friends and you argue with your family members and you change some minds and you vote, something powerful happens.

The complete speech, annotated by Amber Phillips, is available at the Washington Post.

Democrats, Donald Trump

Women are leading the Resistance to Trump and focused on generating a Blue Wave in November

In a previous post I suggested that the greatest threat to a Blue Wave this fall was sky high Republican turnout on behalf of a president with historically low approval ratings. Trump’s campaign strategy is to gin up his base by stoking division, including (as Paul Ryan has observed) straight-up trolling his perceived enemies. Thus far, his base is sticking with him as measured by his “own party” approval ratings. He is also able to sway a huge swath of Republican primary voters.

But of course the Trump onslaught can’t help but rile up his opponents as well. What reasons do we have for believing that a Blue Wave will crest on Election Day?

First, a brief aside to consider several views of what a ‘wave election’ is. Nate Cohn tweets:

Amy Walter at the Cook Political Report, looking at the elections Cohn references – 1994, 2006, and 2010, provides a bar graph illustrating the number of seats needed by the out-party in each case plus the number of additional seats they actually won:

(Click for link at Cook Political Report and scroll down to view larger image.)

“By this metric,” she writes, “a gain of 35 seats by the Democrats should be considered a wave.”

Alexi McCammond at Axios points to a report by Ballotpedia, which begins with this definition: “We define wave elections as the 20 percent of elections where the president’s party lost the most seats during the last 100 years (50 election cycles).” Based on this criterion, Democrats would need to win 48 House seats for it to constitute a wave.

The bottom line, of course, isn’t whether the Democratic margin of victory hits a designated historical benchmark – though the political impact will be amplified as the margin of victory increases – it’s whether or not the Democrats win working majority in the House. At this stage, we don’t know, but if it happens, what will drive that victory?

“Reports from journalists and academics describe grassroots organizational activity by left-of-center citizens and groups that is unequalled since Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign, and disproportionate political engagement among women that may have been last matched during the push for the Equal Rights Amendment four decades ago,” writes David Hopkins at Honest Graft, who believes this is the underreported story of 2018, receiving only “a small fraction of the media coverage that was directed to the Tea Party movement in advance of the Republican victories of 2010.”

Hopkins argues that because the media loves conflict and – unlike the Tea Party, which aggressively challenged the Republican establishment – the grassroots movement opposing Trump hasn’t fractured the Democratic Party, created anti-Washington fervor, or given rise to ideological purity.

“We are left, instead, with a picture of millions of Americans arrayed from the political left to the center, disproportionately well-educated, suburban, and professional, who are simultaneously captivated and repulsed by the day-to-day behavior of Donald Trump.”

Theda Skocpal, a scholar who studied the Tea Party and has looked more recently at the opposition to Trump, notes that while activists from both groups sound surprisingly similar (“I used to vote. Now I realize my country could be lost, and I have to do more.”), the resistance to Trump is a center-left phenomenon led overwhelmingly by women. Skopal estimates that 70% of Indivisible participants, for instance, and most of its leaders, are women.

“These are middle-class women’s networks, with some men in them. They turned around public opinion on the Affordable Care Act. They were behind Conor Lamb’s victory, along with the unions. They’re everywhere, and they have made a real difference. They’re likely to be the key to congressional victories, if they happen.”

Tea Party activists were clustered on the ideological far right and infused with anti-establishment fervor. The Resistance looks different. She notes that it is not being driven by Bernie Sanders’ followers, nor the left-most stalwarts in the Democratic Party. Instead, they are as likely to occupy the middle of the road as the far left.

“They’re not likely to be highly ideological. They care about good government, health care, education, decency toward immigrants and refugees. A lot of them got involved through church networks…..

A lot of them are progressive, but they’re also pragmatic. They don’t insist on the leftmost candidate. They’ll get behind any reasonable Democrat.”

Will the anti-Trump movement push Democrats to the House majority in 2018? There are powerful obstacles to overcome. The most prominent, as George Packer puts it: “Democrats have a habit of forgetting to vote between Presidential elections.” And the demographic groups that boast the highest level of support for Democrats – such as young people, black and Latino communities, and working class folks – are the most likely to forget.

At this stage, though, the wind is at the Democrats’ backs. A study released at the beginning of this week, revealed a surge of Democratic enthusiasm, as measured by turnout in 2018 primary elections: up 84% compared with 2014. In comparison, Republican turnout is up only 14% relative to 2014.

But the bottom line is that votes cast, not increased turnout, will carry the day on November 6. And in many of the House districts that Democrats need to flip, Republicans outnumber Democrats. Plus, Republicans are simply more reliable voters.

Consider: among the most talked about House seats that Democrats are targeting nationally are a number of California districts, seven of which have been on the Democrats’ Red to Blue wish list for more than a year. They are: CD 10 (Jeff Denham); CD 21 (David Valadao); CD 25 (Steve Knight); CD 39 (Ed Royce – retiring); CD 45 (Mimi Walters); CD 48 (Dana Rohrabacher); and CD 49 (Darrell Issa – Retiring).

In six out of these seven districts, Republicans on the June 2018 primary ballot received more votes than Democratic candidates did. The only exception was CD 49, where 92,837 votes were cast for Democrats and 89,839 votes for Republicans. Representative Issa, alone among the Republican Congressmen from these seven districts, narrowly avoided defeat in 2016. The Cook Political Report rated (as of August 9) CD 49 as ‘Lean Democratic,’ though there is a slight Republican registration edge, with a Cook Partisan Voter Index (PVI) rating of ‘R+1.’

But, while Republicans turnout more reliably, more Democrats get out to vote for general elections than for primaries. With a ballot for California’s Governor and the U.S. Senate in November, Democratic turnout will dwarf what we saw in June. So Democrats can expect to be highly competitive, if not quite favored. Cook rated four of these races ‘Republican Toss Up’: CDs 10, 25, and 39, which all have a PVI rating of ‘Even,’ along with CD 48, which has a PVI of ‘R+4.’ Cook rated CD 45 as ‘Lean Republican’ (PVI: ‘R+3’) and CA 21 as ‘Likely Republican’ (PVI: ‘D+5’).

If Democrats flip the House in November, credit a diverse group of activists throughout the country, but count on middle-class women to drive the change. As Theda Skocpol describes the movement to resist Trump, “This will not look like a far-left reinvention of Tea Partiers or a continuation of Bernie 2016. It will look like retired librarians rolling their eyes at the present state of affairs, and then taking charge.”

Photograph: editor’s photo of January 20, 2018 Women’s March in Los Angeles.

 

Democracy, Donald Trump

National security officials at odds with President regarding ongoing Russian attacks on democracy

“”In Helsinki, I had a great meeting with Putin. We discussed everything. I had a great meeting. I had a great meeting. We got along really well. By the way, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. That’s a really good thing. Now we’re being hindered by the Russian hoax — it’s a hoax, OK?” – Donald Trump (at 1 minute, 20 seconds into the video by CBC).

This dismissal of “the Russian hoax” came only hours after the White House presented a briefing from the administration’s top national security officials underscoring a pervasive, ongoing, 24/7 effort by Russia to weaken American democracy and disrupt the 2018 elections.

“The reality is, it’s going to take all of us working together to hold the field, because this threat is not going away.  As I have said consistently: Russia attempted to interfere with the last election, and continues to engage in malign influence operations to this day.

This is a threat we need to take extremely seriously, and to tackle and respond to with fierce determination and focus.”– Christopher Wray, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

“The intelligence community continues to be concerned about the threats of upcoming U.S. elections, both the midterms and the presidential elections of 2020.

In regards to Russian involvement in the midterm elections, we continue to see a pervasive messaging campaign by Russia to try to weaken and divide the United States.” – Dan Coats, Director of National Intelligence

“Our democracy itself is in the crosshairs.  Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of our democracy, and it has become clear that they are the target of our adversaries, who seek, as the DNI just said, to sow discord and undermine our way of life.” – Kirstjen Nielsen, Secretary of Homeland Security

When reporters asked Mr. Coats about the substance of the Helsinki meeting – 17 days earlier, which the President boasted about in the video above, the Director of National Intelligence acknowledged that he was not privy to what was said: “I’m not in a position to either understand fully or talk about what happened at Helsinki.”

Photo: screen grab from C-SPAN.

Donald Trump, Polls, Tribalism

If it looks like a Blue Wave is coming, Republican voters will double down to suppress it

“Mr. Trump’s job approval rating rose to 45% in a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, the highest mark of his presidency and up 1 percentage point from June….

Underpinning Mr. Trump’s job approval was support from 88% of Republican voters. Of the four previous White House occupants, only George W. Bush, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, had a higher approval rating within his own party at the same point in his presidency.”

Donald Trump appears to be defying gravity:

When it comes to polling, Mr. Trump has proved paradoxical.

“Welcome to the latest and most daring of Donald Trump’s high-wire acts, in which the president increases his degree of difficulty and manages yet again to stay on his feet,” said Fred Yang, a Democratic pollster who helped conduct the survey with Republican Bill McInturff.

These survey results point to the greatest threat to a Blue Wave election that flips the House from Republican to Democratic control in November. Wave elections are powered by the amped up enthusiasm of voters in one party and the deflated spirits of voters in the other party. Both factors contribute. (Let’s set aside for another time various definitions of ‘wave election.’ For the purposes of this post, just suppose that we’re considering something simpler: Whether or not the Democrats will retake the House in 2018. Of course a host of factors, not just emotional highs and lows, generate election victories. And a host of factors, including events that will take place between now and November 6, will influence the results this fall. Put aside these complicating factors for the purposes of this discussion.)

Donald Trump’s support is ‘paradoxical’ because, on the one hand, surveys show he is highly unpopular (“Mr. Trump’s overall approval rating continued to rank among the lowest of any modern president at this point his first term, and the poll turned up warning signals for him.”) and he persists in acting as president of a factional government: he is focused on his base (not unusual), but (unlike previous post-World War II presidents), he is making few if any moves to attract support from voters not already on board with him. Much of what he says and does appears by design to alienate folks who aren’t part of his base – which “increases his degree of difficulty,” as Yang observed.

On the other hand, focusing virtually exclusively on the base is working for him on at least one level: His support, as measured by polling, shows that he has an extremely high “own party” approval rating. (In polling at the 500-day mark, approval from his own party exceeded every previous president, going back to Truman at the beginning of the polling era, with the single exception of the 43rd president, when Americans rallied ’round the Commander in Chief following 9/11.)

Paradoxical though it may be, Trump’s strategy is to focus on riling up his base – and the way to do that is often to deliberately provoke the opposition. A headline in this morning’s Washington Post featured a quotation from Paul Ryan (on the proposal to revoke security clearances of Trump critiques). Said the Speaker of the House: “I think he’s just trolling people.”

I agree. I believe this is a deliberate strategy. Like the popular campaign chant, “Lock her up!” (which Jeff Sessions heard and repeated this morning while addressing a crowd of conservatives), this is another case of trashing longstanding institutional and governing norms. And that’s the point: Trump vents, critics jump, and his base rallies behind him.

The result – as the Wall St. Journal/NBC News poll suggests – is an extraordinary level of support from the GOP base, at a time of general presidential unpopularity. This is something we haven’t seen before.

Republicans are doggedly sticking with Trump, even as his overall approval numbers are at historic lows.

There have been mixed signals regarding the likelihood that we are heading into a wave election, or even a more modest result that will bring a Democratic majority to Congress.

All kinds of things can – and will – happen between now and election day, but at this stage, the greatest threat to Democrats flipping the House is the possibility of sky high Republican turnout for an unpopular and divisive president.

November 21, 2018 update: Donald Trump succeeded in generating the “sky high Republican turnout” I referenced in this post. But there just weren’t enough of them to hold back the Blue Wave: “Trump’s Base Isn’t Enough.”