Executive Politics and the Courts

 Tenatative list for next week:  you may trade times, but tell me.

Monday

• Daphne Achilles
• Cary Dornier
• Sascha Douglass
• Kirby Kimball
• William Parker
• Nick Teresi
• Alec Vercruysse
• Luke Williams
• Melinda Ximen

Wednesday

• Camille Doherty
• Nichole Jonassen
• Michaela Jones
• Madison Lewis
• Ria Passi
• Zachary Torrey
• Rachel Wander
• Nathan Worley
• Andy Xu

GOVERNORS AND EXEC OFFICIALS

• RGA DGA
• RAGA DAGA

Red states with Democratic governors:

• Kansas (Laura Kelly)
• Kentucky (Andy Beshear)
• Louisiana (John Bel Edwards)

Blue states with Republican governors:

• Maryland (Larry Hogan)
• Massachusetts (Charlie Baker)
• Vermont (Phil Scott)

SCOTUS and Party Politics

Flashback to our February 6 class:

Nixon 1968 (at about 19:30)

SCOTUS politics was pretty partisan in the 19th century.  Lincoln's 1858 "House Divided" speech included ... conspiracy theory

We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different potions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen,- Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James, for instance-and we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortieses exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few-not omitting even scaffolding-or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared to yet bring such piece in-in such a case, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first lick was struck.

Supreme Court nominations as campaigns

Current justices

Clarence Thomas

• John Danforth
• EEOC & speechwriters
• John Eastman
• Virginia Thomas 

Note who presided over his confirmation hearing:

The State Courts and Judicial Elections




Dark money and other special-interest funding

Party in Government I -- 2022

For next time, Hershey, ch. 14.

Very brief  (7-8 minute) oral presentations next week

Hill leadership and party networks

• House  -- Pelosi and McCarthy
• Senate -- Schumer and McConnell

Edmund Burke:

 In all bodies, those who will lead, must also, in a considerable degree, follow. They must conform their propositions to the taste, talent, and disposition, of those whom they wish to conduct: therefore, if an assembly is viciously or feebly composed in a very great part of it, nothing but such a supreme degree of virtue as very rarely appears in the world, and for that reason cannot enter into calculation, will prevent the men of talent disseminated through it from becoming only the expert instruments of absurd projects!

CQ Party Unity scores 1956-2020  (Hershey 308; we alsosaw this graph on 1/26/22)

CQ/Roll Call on 2021:

States

• State Government Composition
• Trifectas
• Legislatures grow more polarized  -- and the reasons
• Policy in the states

Abortion, Texas, and California:

Presidential Nominations and Elections

For Monday, Hershey, ch. 13. 

The Yang Gang explains caucusing:

Things went poorly:

The Black Vote, Biden, and 2020.

Biden connects, at about 7 minutes in.

Conventions

 

The General Election

DO RUNNING MATES MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

Campaign Strategy and  Message Grid

How people voted:

The "most secure election in American history."

The 2016 and 2020 Electoral Vote

2020 Popular Vote

 

Research Project, Spring 2022

 Pick one:

• If you are taking part in the legislative simulation, analyze your experience and explain your role's relationship to the party system. Even if you are representing an individual or group that is not officially partisan, do the positions of the individual or group serve one party better than the other?  If available, consider past testimony or legislative lobbying.   
• Write on another relevant topic of your choice.  Use your reflection email this week to describe your topic.

Either way, consult scholarly sources and cite primary-source material (e.g., debate transcripts, congressional documents, survey results, vote data).

• Review my research & writing page.
• Review my research lecture.

On April 4 and 6, you will make brief (7-8 minutes) oral presentations on your research in progress.

The specifications:

• Essays should be typed (12-point), double-spaced, and no more than six pages long. I will not read past the sixth page. Please submit papers as Word documents, not pdfs.
• Cite your sources. Please use endnotes in the format of Chicago Manual of Style. 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 (in Word format) to the Sakai dropbox for this class by 11:59 PM, Friday, April 16. Papers will drop one gradepoint for one day’s lateness, a full letter grade after that.

The Nomination Process

For Wednesday, Hershey, ch. 11.

In this week's writeup, give me a brief description of your research project.

Simulation roles

The old system (start about 8:00)

 

A student and her impact on nomination politics!

Types of primaries

The blanket primary and California Democratic Party v. Jones. Writing for the majority, Justice Scalia said:

In concluding that the burden Proposition 198 imposes on petitioners' rights of association is not severe, the Ninth Circuit cited testimony that the prospect of malicious crossover voting, or raiding, is slight, and that even though the numbers of "benevolent" crossover voters were significant, they would be determinative in only a small number of races. But a single election in which the party nominee is selected by nonparty members could be enough to destroy the party. In the 1860 presidential election, if opponents of the fledgling Republican Party had been able to cause its nomination of a pro-slavery candidate in place of Abraham Lincoln, the coalition of intraparty factions forming behind him likely would have disintegrated, endangering the party's survival and thwarting its effort to fill the vacuum left by the dissolution of the Whigs. Ordinarily, however, being saddled with an unwanted, and possibly antithetical, nominee would not destroy the party but severely transform it. "[R]egulating the identity of the parties' leaders," we have said, "may ... color the parties' message and interfere with the parties' decisions as to the best means to promote that message."

Runoff primaries

Fusion: eight states let candidates get the nomination of more than one political party: Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Mississippi, New York, Oregon, South Carolina and Vermont.

In Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party, SCOTUS upheld anti-fusion laws.

Election law and procedure at the state level

California party organization endorsements Democrats and Republicans

In "nonpartisan" elections





The current process

What happens if you voted for a candidate who dropped out?  

Parties in the Electorate II

For a week from Monday, read Hershey, ch. 9 and 10 and pick a research topic.

Religion
The God Gap:

The college gap:

Demographics of 2020 vote

A shift among Hispanics?  Focus on Colombian Americans

Note:  only two percent of Hispanics use "Latinx" and 40 percent find it downright offensive.

Asian American votes

• Complexity of Asian American vote
• Pan-Asian identity?

Turnout and Voting Mechanics

• VAP/VEP and turnout
• Turnout demographics
• Early and Mail Voting

Parties in the Electorate Part I

 For Thursday, read Hershey ch. 8.

Apr 2, 4: Oral Presentations, 6-age research paper -- on any relevant topic of your choice -- due April 8.  

Party registration is not the same as party identification

These 19 states do not provide for party preferences in voter registration: Alabama, Georgia, Hawaii,  Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

Thirty-one states and DC do register by party.

Party change over time: another look at the cinematic map

Trends in party affiliation through 2014:

Recent trends (with leaners) --"The myth of the independent" (Hershey, p. 138).

Coming Apart

• Neighborhoods
• Race, ethnicity, education and party bases
• Aversive Partisanship
• Example: "If you are a zombie or a human rodent who wants a shadow-life of timid conformity, then put away this essay and go memorize the poetry of Amanda Gorman. Real men and women who love honor and beauty, keep reading."
• "Nearly a quarter of college students wouldn't be friends with someone who voted for the other presidential candidate — with Democrats far more likely to dismiss people than Republicans — according to new Generation Lab/Axios polling."
• Dating and marriage
• News sources and Factual beliefs
• Rationalization
• Authoritarianism and violence:

Religion
The God Gap:

Campaign Finance II

 For Monday, read Hershey, ch. 6 and 7.

Types of advocacy groups (Hershey 279-285)

PACs and Super PACs

Dark Money and Democrats

Democracy Alliance

As part of their membership in the Democracy Alliance, donors agree to giving $200,000 per year to a list of preapproved organizations, in addition to dues that fund the operations of the group itself, according to a spokesperson. The alliance has supported the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, the progressive media watchdog Media Matters for America and the American Constitution Society, a liberal counterpart to the conservative Federalist Society.

Dark Money and January 6 (and CPAC)

"But start to follow the money, and you don't know where the f*** it's going to take you."

The Churn

Interlocking directorates

Common vendors

Evading coordination limits by Microsite B-Roll:

(Same with Mitch)

Foreign money is illegal, but... Russia plays, too.

From the Mueller report:

The IRA [Internet Research Agency, Russian troll farm in St. Petersberg] organized and promoted political rallies inside the United States while posing as U.S. grassroots activists. First, the IRA used one of its preexisting social media personas (Facebook groups and Twitter accounts, for example) to announce and promote the event. The
IRA then sent a large number of direct messages to followers of its social media account asking them to attend the event. From those who responded with interest in attending, the IRA then sought a U.S. person to serve as the event's coordinator. In most cases, the IRA account operator would tell the U.S. person that they personally could not attend the event due to some preexisting conflict or because they were somewhere else in the United States. The IRA then further promoted the event by contacting U.S. media about the event and directing them to speak with the coordinator. After the event, the IRA posted videos and photographs of the event to the IRA's social media accounts.


The Office identified dozens of U.S. rallies organized by the IRA. The earliest evidence of a rally was a "confederate rally" in November 2015. ... From June 2016 until the end of the presidential campaign, almost all of the U.S. rallies organized by the IRA focused on the U.S. election, often promoting the Trump Campaign and opposing the Clinton Campaign. Pro-Trump rallies included three in New York; a series of pro-Trump rallies in Florida in August 2016; and a series of pro-Trump rallies in October 2016 in Pennsylvania. The Florida rallies drew the attention of the Trump Campaign, which posted about the Miami rally on candidate Trump's Facebook account (as discussed below).

This ad, created in October 2016, targeted, people age 18 to 65+ interested in Christianity, Jesus, God, Ron Paul and media personalities such as Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Mike Savage, among other topics. | Democratic House members

Posted on: Facebook
Created: October 2016
Ad spend: 64 rubles ($1.10)

IT CONTINUED IN 2020