Thursday, April 26, 2018

Net Neutrality- Tess van Hulsen Presentation


What does it all mean???

Michael Cohen to Take Fifth Amendment in Stormy Daniels Lawsuit

Trump would "prefer" the popular vote?

Regarding campaign/election reform: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/26/trump-electoral-college-popular-vote-555148 

Appraisals II

Lee (203): "Bipartisanship is particularly problematic for a party seeking to win a larger share of institutional power"

Schier (137):  "The American founders did not design a system to encourage and enhance an ideological politics"

Schier (136): "...the decline in the vital function of intermediation."A paradox: are more democratic parties bad for democracy?

 From CBO:



Budget: compare opinion on cuts with the composition of federal spending.


Examples of multiparty systems:  CanadaBritainIsrael

Causes of the two-party system:

Types of Third-Party Movements
Reasons for Third Party Bursts

  • Major party deterioration and issue responsiveness
  • Economic decline
  • Unacceptable major party candidates




Julie's Oral Presentation

The Impossible Presidency

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

For those searching for alternative reasons driving Trump's election

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/05/reinventing-america/556856/

The article presents some interesting findings about the contradictory views Americans hold about the country and their immediate communities. Fallows explores an improving culture and increasing social capital at the local level.

Theres has been a lot of talk (Trump voice)...

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/existential-anxiety-not-poverty-motivates-trump-support/558674/

Appraisals I

A few more items about 2016


Responsible Party Government

A few years after the Contract, Newt reflected:
We had not only failed to take into account the ability of the Senate to delay us and obstruct us, but we had much too cavalierly underrated the power of the President, even a President who had lost his legislative majority and was in a certain amount of trouble for other reasons. I am speaking of the power of the veto. Even if you pass something through both the House and the Senate, there is that presidential pen. How could we have forgotten that?
Issue ambivalence:

Abortion:  survey trends and interviews
Budget:  compare opinion on cuts with the composition of federal spending. From CBO:




Monday, April 23, 2018

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Cognitive Dissonance Update



From the Public Religion Research Institute:


 

GOP Nomination, General Election

Review:

Table 1.1: Mapping American Politics, 2016 (P. 10)


Left
Center
Right

Outside
Bernie Sanders
   Donald Trump
    Ted Cruz
    Rand Paul
    Ben Carson
    Mike Huckabee
    Tea Party
Middle (Inside-Outside)

Jim Webb
        Chris Christie

Marco Rubio

Inside

Nancy Pelosi
     
  Mitch McConnell
     John Kasich
        Jeb Bush


Paul Ryan
                                                            Hillary Clinton

Henry Olsen and the Four Faces




Cruz and the insider taint

Trump actually drew from evangelicals and somewhat conservatives.





Key is aversive partisanshipTrump and Nixon

The General Election

IT WAS NOT THE DEBATES

IT WAS NOT THE ADS


Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Conservative Politics and Doomsday Prep

This article is about a year old, but I recently read it for another class and found it super interesting. Essentially, there is a large community of doomsday preppers who are super wealthy (generally new money) and one section of this article focuses on the fact that there seems to be a correlation between conservative politics and doomsday prep.

Early Voting

I apologize if we covered this earlier in the semester and I forgot, but..
On page 172 of Defying the Odds, there is a discussion about early voting in the 2016 election. An estimated 40% of voters cast their ballots before election day, before major turning points in the race occurred. How early are people allowed to start voting this way? Can the date that people are allowed to start early voting be changed, so that people cannot vote until maybe just a week or two before?

Brendan Busch's Presentation

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1h8cBJjmQsrngsDmC3FG9Q-rJ9gTsTyPXJNXA9Dc_gac/edit?usp=sharing

Last Assignment, Spring 2018

Pick one:
  • The authors had to write Defying the Odds very quickly and finish by January 2017.  The public now has more information about many aspects of the 2016 campaign (e.g., campaign finance, Russian meddling).  Pick one of these aspects and develop it.  What do we know now that we did not know 15 months ago?  How would this additional information affect the book's interpretation of the campaign?
  • For responsible party government to happen, writes Hershey (p. 350), "all the elected branches of government would have to be controlled by the same party at a particular time." [Emphasis in the original.]  This situation has existed since January 2017.  So do we have responsible party government?  Explain with reference to class readings, discussions, and outside research.
  • Schier and Lee finished their books before the 2016 election.  Write an update either to Lee, ch. 9 or Schier, ch. 7.  Explain how subsequent events either confirm the chapter's argument or raise new questions that the author does not address.
The specifications:
  • Essays should be typed (12-point), double-spaced, and no more than four pages long. I will not read past the fourth page. Please submit papers as Word documents, not pdfs.
  • Cite your sources. Please use endnotes in Turabian format. Endnotes do not count against the page limit. Please do not use footnotes, which take up too much page space. 
  • Watch your spelling, grammar, diction, and punctuation. Errors will count against you. Return essays to the Sakai dropbox for this class by 11:59 PM, Tuesday, May 1. Papers will drop one gradepoint for one day’s lateness, a full letter grade after that.

Implications of Paul Ryan's Departure

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/04/house-speaker-paul-ryan-departure-trump-world/

What does the departure of establishment and moderate Republicans from office mean for the future of the party ideologically? Who are the conservative casualties of the Trump presidency?

Blaise's Presentation

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1UdWsfiQQmbBXAnwySTlJKcsVwh3UqWf0eFAvfo1cQOs/edit#slide=id.p

Sunday, April 15, 2018

US-led Syria Strikes: A Distraction from Trump's Troubles?


 More info here from Aljazeera

Thursday, April 12, 2018

The 2016 Election: The Nominations

See page 18 of the book.  Joan C. Williams at The Harvard Business Review:
Michèle Lamont, in The Dignity of Working Men, also found resentment of professionals — but not of the rich. “[I] can’t knock anyone for succeeding,” a laborer told her. “There’s a lot of people out there who are wealthy and I’m sure they worked darned hard for every cent they have,” chimed in a receiving clerk. Why the difference? For one thing, most blue-collar workers have little direct contact with the rich outside of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. But professionals order them around every day. The dream is not to become upper-middle-class, with its different food, family, and friendship patterns; the dream is to live in your own class milieu, where you feel comfortable — just with more money. “The main thing is to be independent and give your own orders and not have to take them from anybody else,” a machine operator told Lamont. Owning one’s own business — that’s the goal. That’s another part of Trump’s appeal.
Hillary Clinton, by contrast, epitomizes the dorky arrogance and smugness of the professional elite. The dorkiness: the pantsuits. The arrogance: the email server. The smugness: the basket of deplorables. Worse, her mere presence rubs it in that even women from her class can treat working-class men with disrespect. Look at how she condescends to Trump as unfit to hold the office of the presidency and dismisses his supporters as racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic.
Trump’s blunt talk taps into another blue-collar value: straight talk. “Directness is a working-class norm,” notes Lubrano. As one blue-collar guy told him, “If you have a problem with me, come talk to me. If you have a way you want something done, come talk to me. I don’t like people who play these two-faced games.” Straight talk is seen as requiring manly courage, not being “a total wuss and a wimp,” an electronics technician told Lamont. Of course Trump appeals. Clinton’s clunky admission that she talks one way in public and another in private? Further proof she’s a two-faced phony.

Silo Country:  News media sources 

The Democratic Party, 1992 (p. 34):





The party coalitions change (p. 40 of the book)




The Gallup "Would Not Vote For" Question


Between now and the 2016 political conventions, there will be discussion about the qualifications of presidential candidates -- their education, age, religion, race and so on. If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be _____, would you vote for that person? June 2015 results

Democratic nomination polls

Republican nomination polls


If you look up the word cringeworthy....



Lincoln - Oral Presentation

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1os6Ajf8QnRFCmOtV-2S3zBmrvYfhLNm3_9BFh8OL5CY/edit?usp=sharing

Wednesday, April 11, 2018

McKenzie - Oral Presenation


The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics 
Mark Lilla, Professor of Humanities at Columbia 



   “We must understand that there is a difference between being a party that cares about labor and being a labor party. There is a difference between being a party that cares about women and being the women’s party. And we can and we must be a party that cares about minorities without becoming a minority party. We are citizens first.”
Senator Edward M. Kennedy (1985)

                Part 1 - Anti-Politics: Reagan Dispensation
                Part 2 - Pseudo-Politics: New Left’s Identity Politics = Evangelism
                 Part 3 - Politics: Reset!


“This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially radically politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else’s oppression.”
“The Combahee River Collective Statement” (1977)


From We to Me //The Personal is Political

“The line between self-analysis and political action is now blurred” (p. 85)

“The more obsessed with personal identity campus liberals become, the less willing they become to engage in reasoned political debate” (p. 90)


Lilla calls for an end to Identity Liberalism: “In recent years American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing.” (NY Times Op-Ed)

-       Clinton’s calling out explicitly to African-American, Latino, LGBT and women voters = strategic mistake: “If you’re going to mention groups in American, you had better mention all of them.” - Lilla



Congressman Boehner once said he was “unalterably opposed” to legalization. Now we have this:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-11/ex-speaker-john-boehner-joins-marijuana-firm-s-advisory-board

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Jeff Sessions Responsibilities

Check out this article from 2016 detailing Sessions' potential responsibilities if elected

The 2016 Election: A First Cut

The Big Picture: 2016

Insider-Outsider/Left-Right

Table 1.1: Mapping American Politics, 2016 (P. 10)


Left
Center
Right

Outside
Bernie Sanders
   Donald Trump
    Ted Cruz
    Rand Paul
    Ben Carson
    Mike Huckabee
    Tea Party
Middle (Inside-Outside)

Jim Webb
        Chris Christie

Marco Rubio

Inside

Nancy Pelosi
     
  Mitch McConnell
     John Kasich
        Jeb Bush


Paul Ryan
                                                            Hillary Clinton




Well we're living here in Allentown
And they're closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem they're killing time
Filling out forms
Standing in line

-- Billy Joel

  Image result for manufacturing employment output


Declining Mobility



Education and Incarceration:



Life expectancy and support for Trump

Coming Apart:




Education


Rising Earnings Disparity Between Young Adults with And Without a College Degree

At the other end of the spectrum:  the dream hoarders

Geography and inequality